My friends. Today my heart is so full. But not in the way I expected.

I spent the day at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. From the 10am opening to 3:30pm when I had to run for my plane. It still wasn’t enough time. I only finished perhaps half of the incredible tapestry of history and culture that the museum presents for us.

It’s okay; I’ll be back later this month. Knowing that, I fought my overachiever urge to hurry through, to make sure to “see it all.” As though I could really *see* it that way.

So I soaked it in slowly, taking notes as I went. To learn for myself, and to share with you here.

Most of all, like I said, I noticed that the experience wasn’t what I expected. Because I thought it would be heartbreaking. Tragic. Infuriating.

Silly me.

It is, of course, all those things in many places.

But that could never be the full truth of the story of Black people in America.

I found it… powerful. Full of power. The only true way it could be.

Here are my notes to myself, for whatever power may be in them to move your heart too. They are more or less in the chronological order of the museum’s exhibits.

• Theft of people from Africa = largest forced migration in human history!

• Wealth from slave trade built European countries too, not just U.S.

• OMG OMGGG the beautiful antique silver tea sets I love are tied to slavery, where did that sugar come from for the sugar bowls?

• 48 of 100 captured Africans survived to destination; life span was 7 years on colonial rice and sugar plantations. One in ten slave trade voyages had rebellions!

• By 1664 NYC had more enslaved residents than any city in North America – 40% of population! At time of revolutionary war, one fifth of Colonial population was enslaved.

• I grew up in Boston and we studied the Boston Massacre every effing year, how did I never learn that Crispus Attucks, first person killed in the Massacre, was a fugitive slave?!?!

• Aaaaargh Elizabeth Freeman, known as Mum Bett, sued for her freedom and helped to end slavery in Massachusetts WHY DON’T I KNOW ABOUT THIS

• This whole museum is an absolute refutation of the hideous “they liked slavery, they didn’t know any better” trope – shows rebellion across the centuries, lawsuits for freedom, British and colonial armies promising freedom in exchange for fighting, mothers screaming for children from auction block, constant running away and thus the Fugitive Slave Act to prevent escapes, FFS that’s pretty clear evidence of not liking it!!!!!

• WOW link between slavery and genocide – when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 restricted westward expansion of slave territory, that meant enslavers needed to expand territory internally and thus took away tribal land inside existing U.S. borders.

• Sigh, even though I know better than to believe the false narrative that the Civil War was about states’ rights, I still learned a different comforting lie. I was taught that it was a war to free the slaves. Nope, it was only originally to restrict the growth of slaveholding territory. Until African-American soldiers and leaders and protestors forced the issue to be about emancipation.

• Congress compensated enslavers in 1862 when slavery was abolished in DC – where are reparations to those enslaved????? Didn’t they lose more for generations?

• Listening to recordings made in the 1930s of formerly enslaved people – my grandparents were young adults then. Oh my god this also means that people were continuing to search for stolen loved ones during the lifetime of my parents. Formerly enslaved people were still alive then!

• Little Rock high school desegregation in 1957 when President Eisenhower had to nationalize the Arkansas national guard to overrule the governor’s order to bar Black students from the school – less than 15 years before I was born. And it wasn’t til today that I did the math that the civil rights act of 1964 is less than 8 years before my birth. It only *seemed* like ancient history to me. Wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t. Isn’t.

• The idea that BLM is a terrorist group is pretty outrageous in view of the literal terrorism practiced by white people against civil rights leaders in the 1950’s and 60’s aka just before I was born. Besides the assassination of MLK – I didn’t know his home was bombed with his wife and baby inside during the Montgomery bus boycott in the 50’s. And so many other bombings. 50 unsolved bombings in Birmingham Alabama alone in the 50’s and 60’s. Including the infamous church bombing that killed the 4 little girls.

That’s where I had to leave off. For now. But I’ll be back.

Years ago, I got to visit the Titanic museum in Belfast. It made that tragedy real to me in a visceral way, beyond dusty newspaper articles or even the detailed grandeur of the epic movie. The Titanic museum made me feel, really FEEL, the terror of what happened that night and the tragedy of all the lives lost.

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture did that too. Of course it did. Yes and… it made me feel the *life* of the centuries of people who experienced the terror and the tragedy of being Black in an America that has always dehumanized Blackness. Not just the loss of their lives but the LIFE of their lives.

So, yes, there are horrors like lynching exhibits with actual photos of hanged men. But it’s all framed in terms of how these intentional horrors were designed to oppress AND how Black people have always resisted and found joy on their own terms. It is a multi-century holistic portrait of beauty, strength, love, and liberation.

If this view of history is divisive – I count it as a good thing to be divided from my own old habit of not seeing the cruelty and injustice that is part and parcel of our country’s past history and current wealth.

Learning to see and appreciate Black history and culture will be the work of a lifetime, for me. I’ll be back here. Soon.

Onwards, my friends. For all of us.