In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tomorrow, I wanted to share a quick post about my trip to the new addition to Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian museums – the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
As many of you may no, this museum opened to the public on September 24, 2016. The museum has been so popular that even though admission is free, you have to register for a ticket in advance. As of today, advance tickets are already gone through March 2017! That’s how popular this museum is.
I was fortunate enough to land a ticket and go to the museum back in December. It was a very cold Sunday morning but I was so glad I went. I spent over 4 hours in the museum exploring everything from slavery to Motown to the Civil War to the great African-American influencers throughout history. It was a very surreal experience for me to be honest. Overwhelming even. There are 8 levels of African-American history and culture that it made me realize how much history I don’t even know. To read the stories of people who lost their lives so that I could live a life more free than they did really tugged at my heart strings. To stand in front of the real casket that Emmett Till was buried in was an experience out of this world. (His mom had his body exhumed and donated the original casket he was buried in to be displayed in the museum.) It also reminded me of how history is literally repeating itself now. All of the freedom that our ancestors fought so hard to OBTAIN is requiring us to fight even harder to MAINTAIN!
I know many of you may not get the chance to see the museum yet so I just wanted to share a few of the pics that I took that day in honor of all of those brave African-American souls who have paved the way for us today and have made their mark in history! Enjoy the gallery of photos below and remember, black lives have ALWAYS mattered – yesterday, today and forever more!
~V.Davis
OnlyLadyV 