The Old Maid
02-28-2003, 01:50 PM
Once upon a time there was a Toon Zone poster who enjoyed museums. Yrs. Truly happened to read an old newspaper which featured a full-page tribute/obituary to a Dr. Charles Wright in Detroit. As yours truly doesn't live in Detroit, this must have been an important man for the news to travel so far. It seems he'd founded a museum, the largest of its kind in the world. Naturally I had to go.
Charles Wright was an ob/gyn physician who kept his collection of American and African memorabilia in his office's waiting room. In time the collection outgrew the waiting room, then the suite, then a converted mobile home, then its first brick building. Today's Charles Wright Museum of African American History (http://www.maah-detroit.org/) now resides in a state-of-the-art 120,000 square foot facility on the Warren Avenue "museum row." (I counted three museums in two blocks.)
I paid $3 parking and $5 admissions. Since I invited you, you get in today for free. Sorry, no photography allowed inside the museum hall. (I've seen similar rules in genealogical libraries -- something about old papers not being able to withstand the intense light.) Just follow with your imagination.
You will open elaborate doors to the massive stone rotunda. To the right is the gift shop, to the rear the auditorium (seats ca. 150), and ahead a sculpture of the African Madonna Yom marking the entrance to the main floor. Yom has no feet so that she will not be mired in the past ; she is pregnant to show hope for the future.
The museum is sweeping and open, making tour groups very navigable here. The exhibit closest to the entrance is dedicated to inventions and discovery. Here we find astronaut Mae Jemison's inflight suit, on loan from NASA. We see Garrett Morgan's safety hood (invented 1914). He originally marketed it to firefighters. I've heard of it but I didn't know it was that big. Hey, it works and that's all that matters, right? In 1916 Morgan and his brother donned safety hoods to rescue dozens of people from a disaster. The publicity brought in orders from all over North America, but --
(as Brother Price said, "Y'all got your airsick bags? because this'll make you sick")
over half the fire departments cancelled their orders when they learned the device was invented by a Black man. (Too bad for the victims, huh.) The U.S. Army did purchase a safety hood and modified it to become the gas mask that saved troops from poison gas during World War I. So the army, air force pilots, submariners, and firemen can all trace their equipment back to Morgan's safety hood. He was one of the most prolific inventors in American history.
Did you know that the banjo was originally the West African instrument the banjar? Did you know that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt profile minted on the American dime was sculpted in 1943 by Dr. Selma Burke? Or did you know that free Blacks used to be called African Americans after the Revolutionary War but they chose to change it? This was because of the insults and pressure to "go back to Africa." Many free Blacks moved to Liberia or Haiti. However, only the free were coerced to leave. Slaves had to stay. "There was a sense that free Blacks had an obligation not to abandon the enslaved." Consistent with this proto-abolitionist movement, free Blacks stopped calling themselves African and started called themselves "colored" or "colored Americans."
Anyhow, I didn't start the exhibits in order so that's why you didn't either. To start the exhibit in order, you have to go to the back wall. Now that I've figured it out, we're here at the back. Here we find a chart of ancient African empires. (Africa is oriented upside down in accordance with Kemet belief.) A notice credits the Dogon people of Mali with discovering the white dwarf star Sirius B several centuries before anyone else, a fact which influenced their theology. It also influenced their art, which tends to be directed skyward. A display case includes artifacts from many cultures : the Ashanti, Akan, Mende, Yoruba, Bamana, Igbo, Senufo, Dogon, Kota, Shona, Salampus, and Kuba. There's a beautiful stretch of kente cloth framed on the wall.
Next are panels and exhibits tracing the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. Several preserved documents : docking manifest of a slave ship in Mobile, Alabama ; diagrams of the interior of a fully-packed slave ship ; a bill of sale for a mother and all her children. Sets of shackles are preserved.
The Underground Railroad exhibit makes special mention of Michigan's contributions to the UR's success (the museum being located in Michigan, after all). The code name for Detroit was Midnight because it was usually the last stop before Canada (a.k.a. Heaven, Canaan, or Promised Land). There were other reasons the state became so prominent to the Railroad. Once a crowd intentionally started a riot so that in the confusion a Black couple could escape from jail. Then in Cass County (south of Kalamazoo) the locals repulsed two parties of slave catchers. The South printed long denunciations of Michigan's "fanaticism." As a result, even more escapees gravitated there.
Do you like model ships? Two families sacrificed their family heirlooms (well over a century old) to create a model of the slave ship Sunny South. The hull was carved from a chest belonging to the Bland family and the sails contributed by a Jewish sailmaking family the Bennetts. Caption : "Each with the memory of a holocaust of their people, this model ship exemplifies the possibility of healing."
But dominating the museum floor is a life-size cross-section of the interior of a slave ship. This mockup recreates neither the largest nor the smallest ship of that purpose. Printed around the "hull" are the names of more than 2,500 ships implicated in the slave trade. Inside the hull are sculptures of people. Slavers preferred to ship young adults. Therefore local students volunteered to be cast as figures for the exhibit.
On the other side of this ship, an exhibit marking the Civil War leads to the Jim Crow displays. These sections list the absurd restrictions and loopholes that determined who voted and who did not vote. Collectibles from the era vary from unique to offensive, from print materials to kitchen items, from a Klan hood to a tube of "Darkie Toothpaste." (Yes, that's a brand name.)
A section shows the growth of the Detroit area as a result of the automobile jobs to be found there. (Local emphasis again.) Richard Wright and many others went to Chicago, but census records show that the Black population of Detroit increased an incredible 661 percent between 1910 and 1920. Too often, though, the Klan followed the workers north, playing on Northerners' fears of losing their new jobs.
A display case still holds the dress that Carlotta Walls, one of the "Little Rock Nine," wore in 1957 on her first day of school. Also included is her report card, which placed her on the honor roll. And then --
and then they told me it was closing time and I had to leave! Aiiee! I didn't even get to see the Sixties, or the Motown exhibit, or the Panthers-at-the-Olympics, or the Seventies, etc. etc. etc. (Maybe it's not all bad I went out of order. If I'd saved the inventions displays for the end, I wouldn't have seen them at all.) I didn't even get to see the gift store or anything in the picture gallery. The guidebooks (Mobil, Frommer, Fodor) all tell you this museum takes an hour. I was there longer than that, I'm a fast reader, and I only saw half of it. Believe me, it takes longer than an hour.
If you go, take Interstate 75 to exit 53-A (Warren Avenue). The museum is on Warren east of M-1 (Woodward Avenue) and west of I-75 (exit 53-A). It shares a parking lot with the Science Center. Whatever freeway you take, take it to I-75 because the on-off ramps on the other freeways just confuse out-of-towners. If you're more of a train person, the train station is supposed to be located off US-10 (the Lodge Freeway) ; take the Lodge south to I-75 south.
Was it worth the trip? Oh yes. Would I go back? I don't know when I'll be nearby again, but sure, I'd go back.
Charles Wright was an ob/gyn physician who kept his collection of American and African memorabilia in his office's waiting room. In time the collection outgrew the waiting room, then the suite, then a converted mobile home, then its first brick building. Today's Charles Wright Museum of African American History (http://www.maah-detroit.org/) now resides in a state-of-the-art 120,000 square foot facility on the Warren Avenue "museum row." (I counted three museums in two blocks.)
I paid $3 parking and $5 admissions. Since I invited you, you get in today for free. Sorry, no photography allowed inside the museum hall. (I've seen similar rules in genealogical libraries -- something about old papers not being able to withstand the intense light.) Just follow with your imagination.
You will open elaborate doors to the massive stone rotunda. To the right is the gift shop, to the rear the auditorium (seats ca. 150), and ahead a sculpture of the African Madonna Yom marking the entrance to the main floor. Yom has no feet so that she will not be mired in the past ; she is pregnant to show hope for the future.
The museum is sweeping and open, making tour groups very navigable here. The exhibit closest to the entrance is dedicated to inventions and discovery. Here we find astronaut Mae Jemison's inflight suit, on loan from NASA. We see Garrett Morgan's safety hood (invented 1914). He originally marketed it to firefighters. I've heard of it but I didn't know it was that big. Hey, it works and that's all that matters, right? In 1916 Morgan and his brother donned safety hoods to rescue dozens of people from a disaster. The publicity brought in orders from all over North America, but --
(as Brother Price said, "Y'all got your airsick bags? because this'll make you sick")
over half the fire departments cancelled their orders when they learned the device was invented by a Black man. (Too bad for the victims, huh.) The U.S. Army did purchase a safety hood and modified it to become the gas mask that saved troops from poison gas during World War I. So the army, air force pilots, submariners, and firemen can all trace their equipment back to Morgan's safety hood. He was one of the most prolific inventors in American history.
Did you know that the banjo was originally the West African instrument the banjar? Did you know that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt profile minted on the American dime was sculpted in 1943 by Dr. Selma Burke? Or did you know that free Blacks used to be called African Americans after the Revolutionary War but they chose to change it? This was because of the insults and pressure to "go back to Africa." Many free Blacks moved to Liberia or Haiti. However, only the free were coerced to leave. Slaves had to stay. "There was a sense that free Blacks had an obligation not to abandon the enslaved." Consistent with this proto-abolitionist movement, free Blacks stopped calling themselves African and started called themselves "colored" or "colored Americans."
Anyhow, I didn't start the exhibits in order so that's why you didn't either. To start the exhibit in order, you have to go to the back wall. Now that I've figured it out, we're here at the back. Here we find a chart of ancient African empires. (Africa is oriented upside down in accordance with Kemet belief.) A notice credits the Dogon people of Mali with discovering the white dwarf star Sirius B several centuries before anyone else, a fact which influenced their theology. It also influenced their art, which tends to be directed skyward. A display case includes artifacts from many cultures : the Ashanti, Akan, Mende, Yoruba, Bamana, Igbo, Senufo, Dogon, Kota, Shona, Salampus, and Kuba. There's a beautiful stretch of kente cloth framed on the wall.
Next are panels and exhibits tracing the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. Several preserved documents : docking manifest of a slave ship in Mobile, Alabama ; diagrams of the interior of a fully-packed slave ship ; a bill of sale for a mother and all her children. Sets of shackles are preserved.
The Underground Railroad exhibit makes special mention of Michigan's contributions to the UR's success (the museum being located in Michigan, after all). The code name for Detroit was Midnight because it was usually the last stop before Canada (a.k.a. Heaven, Canaan, or Promised Land). There were other reasons the state became so prominent to the Railroad. Once a crowd intentionally started a riot so that in the confusion a Black couple could escape from jail. Then in Cass County (south of Kalamazoo) the locals repulsed two parties of slave catchers. The South printed long denunciations of Michigan's "fanaticism." As a result, even more escapees gravitated there.
Do you like model ships? Two families sacrificed their family heirlooms (well over a century old) to create a model of the slave ship Sunny South. The hull was carved from a chest belonging to the Bland family and the sails contributed by a Jewish sailmaking family the Bennetts. Caption : "Each with the memory of a holocaust of their people, this model ship exemplifies the possibility of healing."
But dominating the museum floor is a life-size cross-section of the interior of a slave ship. This mockup recreates neither the largest nor the smallest ship of that purpose. Printed around the "hull" are the names of more than 2,500 ships implicated in the slave trade. Inside the hull are sculptures of people. Slavers preferred to ship young adults. Therefore local students volunteered to be cast as figures for the exhibit.
On the other side of this ship, an exhibit marking the Civil War leads to the Jim Crow displays. These sections list the absurd restrictions and loopholes that determined who voted and who did not vote. Collectibles from the era vary from unique to offensive, from print materials to kitchen items, from a Klan hood to a tube of "Darkie Toothpaste." (Yes, that's a brand name.)
A section shows the growth of the Detroit area as a result of the automobile jobs to be found there. (Local emphasis again.) Richard Wright and many others went to Chicago, but census records show that the Black population of Detroit increased an incredible 661 percent between 1910 and 1920. Too often, though, the Klan followed the workers north, playing on Northerners' fears of losing their new jobs.
A display case still holds the dress that Carlotta Walls, one of the "Little Rock Nine," wore in 1957 on her first day of school. Also included is her report card, which placed her on the honor roll. And then --
and then they told me it was closing time and I had to leave! Aiiee! I didn't even get to see the Sixties, or the Motown exhibit, or the Panthers-at-the-Olympics, or the Seventies, etc. etc. etc. (Maybe it's not all bad I went out of order. If I'd saved the inventions displays for the end, I wouldn't have seen them at all.) I didn't even get to see the gift store or anything in the picture gallery. The guidebooks (Mobil, Frommer, Fodor) all tell you this museum takes an hour. I was there longer than that, I'm a fast reader, and I only saw half of it. Believe me, it takes longer than an hour.
If you go, take Interstate 75 to exit 53-A (Warren Avenue). The museum is on Warren east of M-1 (Woodward Avenue) and west of I-75 (exit 53-A). It shares a parking lot with the Science Center. Whatever freeway you take, take it to I-75 because the on-off ramps on the other freeways just confuse out-of-towners. If you're more of a train person, the train station is supposed to be located off US-10 (the Lodge Freeway) ; take the Lodge south to I-75 south.
Was it worth the trip? Oh yes. Would I go back? I don't know when I'll be nearby again, but sure, I'd go back.