Black America's Footprint: Why are Federally (and state) Funded Black History Museums Failing Nationwide?

It was something written in P.D. James novel Children of Men. For reasons never quite explained, the human population of earth is infertile, with the sobering expiration date on humanity necessitating plans for what will happen when the last person alive dies:

$110 million for a black museum in Cincinnati... that no one goes to

All over the world nation states are preparing to store their testimony for the posterity which we can still occasionally convince ourselves may follow us, those creatures from another planet who may land on this green wilderness and ask what kind of sentient life once inhabited it. We are storing our books and manuscripts, the great paintings, the musical scores and instruments, the artifacts. The world's greatest libraries will in forty years' time at most be darkened and sealed. The buildings, those that are still standing, will speak for themselves. The soft stone of Oxford is unlikely to survive more than a couple of centuries. Already the University is arguing about whether it is worth refacing the crumbling Sheldonian. But I like to think of those mythical creatures landing in St. Peter's Square and entering the great Basilica, silent and echoing under the centuries of dust. Will they realize that this was once the greatest of man's temples to one of his many gods? Will they be curious about his nature, this deity who was worshipped with such pomp and splendor, intrigued by the mystery of his symbol, at once so simple, the two crossed sticks, ubiquitous in nature, yet laden with gold, gloriously jeweled and adorned? Or will their values and their thought processes be so alien to ours that nothing of awe or wonder will be able to touch them? But despite the discovery--in 1997 was it?--of a planet which the astronomers told us could support life, few of us really believe that they will come. They must be there. It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us. (p. 4)

Mortality is a tough pill for most people to swallow; for others, the realization that we will one day die is a reality easily digested.

But we will all leave behind a legacy.

Good or bad, we will be remembered.

If every human alive today suddenly became infertile, with scientists unable to reproduce a test-tube baby, it’s important – vitally important – to remember the contribution of America in the post-civil rights era.

For long after the last human died, all the great museums built across America in the past thirty years would tell a fascinating story about the struggle fought in the twilight of mankind’s existence.

Take for instance the $110 million National Underground Museum Freedom Center. Finished in 2004, this museum celebrates the loose confederation of individuals who helped slaves escape north.

Liberation.

Yet, it’s a museum almost no one visits. [Underground Railroad Freedom Center battling tough times, USA Today, 2-6-12]:

It opened to great fanfare and promise in 2004. Now, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, whose exhibits focus on the story of the American struggle for freedom, especially that of African Americans, is in deep financial trouble that could force it to shut down. 

Located where African Americans crossed the Ohio River into freedom, the center has cut expenses severely but faces a $1.5 million shortfall in its 2012 budget, said Freedom Center board Co-chairman John Pepper and other center leaders.

Same with Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture; projected to garner more than 150,000 visitors a year when it was built (largely with public funds), it has consistently failed to attract more than 38,000 a year and failed to generate $2 million in revenue (the state government annually matches this amount, meaning shortfalls must be picked up by the taxpayers of Maryland).

The free market speaks, though no one dares listen to what such poor attendance means.  [Reginald Lewis Museum takes action against poor attendance and low funding, Baltimore Business Journal, 12-13-13]

Built for $38 million in the 1990s, the over-the-top black supremacist museum in Detroit, The Charles Wright Museum of African American History can no longer be supported by the taxpayers of the 83 percent black city.

White America's footprint... it's on the moon

The combined black power of more than 550,000 black taxpayers helped turn the lights out on Detroit being a viable city, with the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history happening almost 40 years to the date Coleman Young became the first black mayor of the city.

Now, the museum dies too. [Rochelle Riley: Detroit's African-American museum needs to be spared, too, Detroit Free Press, 2-14-14]:

We’ve endured tragic and embarrassing headlines for so long, maybe we’ve forgotten: 

City Council pro tem goes to prison 

Mayor goes to prison 

City Council president disappears after accusations 

City declares bankruptcy 

City may sell art to settle debts 

Now imagine one more: Detroit bankruptcy shutters nation’s largest African-American history museum. 

No entity is immune from the city’s bankruptcy. But we ought to save the Charles H. Wright Museum to avoid the embarrassment. 

And by we, I don’t mean just the city. 

Detroit owns the Wright, the nation’s largest institution committed to preserving and teaching the public about the African-American experience, according to its mission. 

Under its contract with the museum, which expires in 2019, Detroit is to provide a significant amount of the museum’s operating expenses. That support dropped from 48% in 2010 to 21% this year. The board, which met last week, made publicly clear that the museum is not sustainable without city funding. 

Walt Douglas, chairman of Avis Ford and a museum board member, said in a letter to Mayor Mike Duggan that in a city with more than 550,000 African Americans, the Wright “should not be forgotten or overlooked” during bankruptcy negotiations and subsequent budget battles.

Funny: every folly Detroit has endured that Rochelle Riley laments has been while black citizens have been in control of city hall and held a black vise on the public sector (cronyism in jobs to connected members of the black community, no-bid contracts to the right minority-owned firms…).

The Charles Wright African American Museum is an extraneous, superfluous building; the condition of Detroit in 2014 is ultimate testament to black history in America.

Just as people choose to stay away from Detroit, they also decline a visit to the black history museum found there.

The same is true of the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina (but they’ve got the original Woolworth’s table!); a $42 million black history museum in Pittsburgh is going the way of the Underground Railroad Freedom Museum in Cincinnati. [Pittsburgh Center Honoring Playwright Finds Itself Short on Visitors and Donors, New York Times, 11-23-13]:

The bank has sued to foreclose. The city’s philanthropic groups, with names like Mellon and Heinz, have withdrawn support. The $42 million August Wilson Center for African American Culture, a bow-front building inspired by a Swahili sailing ship, is high and dry.

The free market has spoken.

Loudly.

From sea-to-shining-sea, federally (state) financed black history museums fail to attract an audience and rarely stay solvent.

America is much more than black history; indeed, the contributions of black Americans could realistically fit on the back of a baseball card.

A card you couldn’t trade away even for a piece of chewed gum that had lost its flavor.

No matter what you do in life, you can’t prolong a meeting with the reaper.

You will die.

It’s what you do in life that defines you.

Strangely, the collective individual lives of black Americans (when housed in a million-dollar building) fail to inspire a crowd… a ready audience spoon-fed white guilt from the moment their old enough to have a cogent thought.

Were mankind to die off tomorrow, or the entire population to become infertile, these simple facts remain for the ages long after we died off:

Black America’s footprint is Detroit: once known as the “Paris of the West,” today it’s a city filled with decaying, blighted reminders that a civilization once flourished there.

White America’s footprint?

They are on the moon.

Happy Black History Month.