Chapter Eight
The National Mall was a long way from the pig farm near Parker, Kansas, where Sam Brownback grew up. An avid runner, Brownback loved jogging along the Mall and admiring the beautiful monuments and museums. Aside from the exercise, these regular jogs helped the devout Senator recharge his spiritual batteries; he could pray and meditate about what it all meant and how best to serve the country as he took in the picturesque scenery.
In the spring of 2000, Brownback was deeply involved in the fight against the scourge of contemporary human trafficking, and he sponsored the groundbreaking Trafficking Victims Protection Act in the Senate, which passed Congress and was signed into law by the President later that year. As he ran past the various museums on the nation’s front yard, noticing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and pondering its admonition that we should “never forget,” he began to wonder why there was no museum to tell the story of the curse of American slavery, why there was nothing to ensure that our nation would never forget that horrific injustice. With that realization, he felt as if God was speaking to him, and he made a commitment to work toward the creation of such an institution.
First elected to the House in 1994, and to the Senate in 1996, Brownback missed the extensive Congressional debates over a national African American museum that took place in the 1980s and early 1990s. He soon learned that John Lewis had led those efforts in the House, and he contacted Lewis to ask if they could meet.
The meeting ran much longer than scheduled. Lewis and Brownback discussed their respective visions for a museum. While Brownback was initially focused on slavery, through their conversation, he came to support Lewis’s plan of creating a national museum that told not only the story of slavery, but of the entire African American experience, including the many contributions of African Americans to our society and culture.
Lewis’s office is itself practically a museum, the walls and shelves chock full of iconic photographs, memorabilia, plaques, awards, and books relating to his heroic work during the Civil Rights movement. As these two men got to know each other, Lewis pulled down a copy of Without Sanctuary from one of the overflowing shelves. Lewis had written the foreword for the book, which tells the story of lynching photography in America. Together, they flipped through the pages, pausing at a postcard that had been made of a lynching, in which a young White boy stood smiling for the camera while a festive White crowd and a tortured and disfigured Black man appeared in the background.
The symbolism was striking; here was a souvenir one would send or keep from a “vacation,” showing the racist indoctrination of a White child and an unabashed, public, illegal execution. From that moment forward, Lewis had an ally in the Senate. But Brownback was not just any ally; he was a Republican with the political capital and the will to bring this project to fruition.
Adding to the coalition, Lewis sought the assistance of Congressman J.C. Watts, Republican of Oklahoma, with whom he had just worked successfully to pass legislation supporting the study of minority health issues by the National Institutes of Health. Like Brownback, Watts was first elected to the House in 1994. He had remained in that chamber and already become the fourth-ranking member of his party in the House as Republican Conference Chair, placing him in regular contact with the Speaker of the House and the President. Watts was eager to help; indeed Mark Mitchell, the musician and museum advocate I had met after seeing his performance on BET television, had already met with Watts to encourage him to get involved.
Lewis then recruited his fellow Georgian, Max Cleland, a first-term Senator who was himself a hero, having lost both of his legs and part of his right arm to an exploding grenade while serving in Vietnam. Cleland and Watts, like Brownback, were new to the fight for a national African American museum, but they gamely agreed to help lead the effort. Lewis, Brownback, Watts, and Cleland became our four musketeers, two from each party, and two each in the House and Senate. They became the core of the coalition to move the project forward.
Finally, we received reports that President George W. Bush, who had just taken office following a close election that was battled all the way to the Supreme Court, wanted to back the museum and that his staff would monitor our progress and push for support. So by the beginning of 2001, Lewis had amassed a formidable political coalition.
I had stayed in contact with Lewis’s office, and learning of these developments convinced me and my organization to turn our focus back toward establishing this museum through Congress, particularly since our efforts on Plan B were stagnant, thanks to the non-funding of our grant by the city. I was thrilled with the progress. Forming this new coalition was truly an astounding turn of events, a real game changer. Hearing all of this, one would reasonably believe that the path to the passage of museum legislation would now be easy and straightforward.
Not so fast.
As the Four Musketeers spoke to their colleagues on the House and Senate floor, working to build support for the museum, four African American women led the corresponding efforts behind the scenes. Tammy Boyd, La Rochelle Young, Kerri Watson, and Donnice Turner were the staffers assigned to this project for Lewis, Brownback, Watts, and Cleland, respectively. They performed the vitally important, but publicly unnoticed, work of talking with the staffs of the key congressional committees, the Smithsonian, interest groups, and constituents to build support for the museum, as well as to beat back any opposition and craft detailed legislative language to achieve the objective and garner the votes to pass it.
This was no mean feat. Particularly so, because members of the Smithsonian staff made clear to them that the Institution was not in favor of the plan. They trotted out the familiar reasons: the Arts and Industries Building would not work or would be too expensive; there was no other space on the Mall for a new museum; the museum would not have a collection; Congress would not fully fund it and private donors would not make up the difference. Some Smithsonian staff members even contended that the best path forward was to build up the Anacostia Museum, which the Smithsonian Institutional Study Committee had determined was not a viable or appropriate alternative when it reviewed the issue a decade earlier. The Smithsonian staff warned that Lewis and his colleagues risked another embarrassing failure if they proceeded.
As the four congressional staff members spoke to their colleagues on the committees with jurisdiction to authorize and pay for the creation of the museum, they were met with these same points of resistance. It became apparent that the Smithsonian staff was undermining their efforts. As Lewis, Brownback, Watts, and Cleland, learned of these developments, they determined that they would have to address this problem at the member level.
The Four Musketeers summoned Lawrence Small, Secretary of the Smithsonian, and Sheila Burke, then an undersecretary and Small’s right hand, to a meeting in Watts’ Capitol office. Cleland was unable to attend, but Lewis and Brownback were present with Watts, together with the four staffers who had spent the preceding weeks navigating the gauntlet of opposition and doubt.
Small made his position quite clear: He was opposed to legislation that would create this new museum within the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian had too many other pressing capital needs and priorities and the bill was doomed to fail. He urged the legislators either to abandon their mission or to change course by creating the museum outside of the Smithsonian, like the Holocaust museum. In Small’s view, the Smithsonian had enough problems, and it did not need what he viewed as another.
Lewis, Watts, and Brownback pushed back, noting their hard work to put together a bicameral, bipartisan coalition in support of the museum, and all of the work done over the years to answer the questions and doubts raised.
Brownback was incredulous at the Secretary’s position. “Do you mean to tell me that, if we introduce this legislation, you will testify publicly to the Congress that you oppose it?” he demanded.
Small deftly responded, “I would hate to have be put in that position, Senator.”
Brownback had had enough, and he walked out of the room.
Those four key staffers, Boyd, Young, Watson, and Turner, called me a few minutes after the meeting ended. I felt their anger, hurt, and frustration through the speakerphone. I, too, was devastated, though not surprised, by the outcome of the meeting. It was a punch in the gut.
But Lewis, Brownback, Watts, and Cleland had not gotten where they were in life by backing down from opposition. Besides, they knew that they had a broad base of support in Congress, plus the backing of President Bush. Indeed, Vice President Cheney had summoned them to a meeting at his office in the Capitol building to encourage and offer support for the creation of this museum.
Undaunted, they directed their staffs to continue the efforts. Mark Mitchell and several others had created a non-profit called the Friends of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Friends Group worked alongside my organization to get prominent citizens and organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League, predominantly Black fraternities and sororities, and numerous other entities to send letters to members of the House and Senate, encouraging them to support the museum.
Lewis and Brownback met with the grassroots supporters in the Longworth House Office Building to gird us for battle. Lewis recounted the commitment of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and Brownback spoke of the warrior spirit of the radical abolitionist John Brown, who had lived in the area where his mother grew up and his family still had property, a man who inspired him and his friends to play “John Brown” as kids.
To demonstrate the urgent need for Congress to finally approve and fund this institution, I shared my research showing the history of efforts to create this museum going back to 1916. The history surprised everyone involved. Up to that point, they’d all believed the efforts to create a national museum had begun no earlier than the 1960s. Staff used this history to draft talking points and “Dear Colleague” letters, encouraging members and their staff to support this museum. Enough was enough. Summing up the situation, I later penned an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled, “How Much Longer Must We Wait?”1
In the meantime, the coalition finalized the language of the companion bills to be introduced in the House and the Senate. Despite my own reservations, the consensus developed that the best way to proceed was for this museum to be operated by the Smithsonian and established in the Arts and Industries building. My organization decided to embrace that idea in order to get everyone on board because, in Washington, it is often the case that even if people have the same general goal, nothing can move forward if they disagree on the means to achieve that goal.
The House and Senate bills provided that a semi-autonomous council, consisting of twenty-five voting members and seven non-voting members, would govern the museum. I was quite proud that the principals named my non-profit as one of the organizations to advise Congress on the appointment of the council members. Most remarkable of all, I felt like I saw the best of our political system, the way it was intended to work, as we attempted to get this bill off the ground.
By May 3, 2001, the bills were ready to be introduced. The co-sponsors would include not just the original four compatriots but most of the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House, as well as Trent Lott and Harry Reid, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate.2
Among the leafy trees and blooming flowers on the Senate side of the Capitol grounds, Lewis and company convened a press conference to announce their museum legislation and to show the deep bipartisan support for the bill. Mr. Lewis opened up by thanking Watts, Brownback, and Cleland for their leadership, and he noted that, almost exactly forty years prior to that day, he had come to Washington, D.C., for the first time, with dozens of other college students, to participate in the Freedom Rides. Then, interracial groups of young people had boarded buses headed South, testing the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States as to whether there really was freedom from racial discrimination in public transportation and public accommodations.
Forty years later, Lewis proclaimed that he and his colleagues had gathered in a similar spirit, “in a bipartisan fashion, with one mind and in one accord,” to introduce the legislation to create this museum. Lewis pointed out that, even though African Americans have made vital contributions to the country, those milestones often go virtually unrecognized, and that, “until we have a complete understanding of the African American story, we cannot completely understand ourselves as a nation.”3
Brownback added that, “one of the most important chapters in our nation’s story of human freedom and dignity is the history and legacy of the African Americans and their march toward freedom, legal equality, and full participation in American society. Yet in our nation’s front yard, the National Mall, there is no museum set aside to honor this legacy.” He declared that, while there were over two-hundred African American museums around the country telling portions of the story, it needed to be showcased at the national level and on the Mall.
Cleland echoed this theme, observing that when he was growing up in 1950’s Georgia, an African American who came to a White person’s home was expected to come around to the rear and enter through the back door. He said, “Thank God we’ve come a long way from that,” and he added, “I think that’s part of what we’re saying here today, that no longer does any American have to come through the back door to be a full participant in American history and in American society and citizenship.”
Watts added his pleasure to be part of the effort, “to make this dream a reality,” because, “African Americans have played an integral role in building this country and making it the superpower it is today.” He noted that museum bills had previously passed the House and the Senate, but in different sessions of Congress, and that it was time for both chambers to pass a bill and send it to the President so it could become law. Watts argued that it was quite fitting to locate this museum on the Mall, proximate to the site where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his epic “I Have A Dream” speech. The creation of this museum, he said, would, “help bring America one step closer to fulfilling Dr. King’s dream.”
Brownback commented that, “you don’t see this array of people supporting too many pieces of legislation,” and indeed the press conference was quite an improbable assemblage. Senator Hillary Clinton, then a newly-elected Democrat from New York and former First Lady, and Senator Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, both agreed that the passage of this legislation was imperative, and both noted that Brownback had personally visited them to seek their support. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Texas and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), reported that the CBC was unified behind the bill, and she thanked the bipartisan leadership and the President for their support. Senator John Edwards, first term Democrat from North Carolina, also spoke eloquently in favor of the bill.
The bipartisan bonhomie was so strong that, during the Q&A with reporters about the depth of support for the bill, Watts, knowing full well that President Bush was firmly on board, turned to Clinton and joked, “Senator Clinton, if the Administration doesn’t support [the bill], I’ll ask for a recount myself.” Everyone on the stage burst out in laughter, friends enjoying each other’s company and letting bygones be bygones.
It was a spectacular day. Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, came to lend his support, and I was honored to meet him. Mark Mitchell and the members of the Friends Group were also there in force, and I valued greeting them as well. Several among the Friends Group were relatives or descendants of prominent African Americans, including Judith Turrentine, widow of the renowned jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, and Jim Henson, the great nephew of famed explorer Matthew Henson.
The president of the Friends Group was also there, a man who identified himself as Frederick Douglass IV and the great, great grandson of Frederick Douglass. With his beard, natty suit, and fedora, this gregarious gentleman evoked the famed abolitionist, and I always enjoyed my conversations with him. While no one I knew questioned his claim at the time, the Washington Post later reported that he had been unable to produce documentation corroborating his genealogical claims to Douglass repositories at the National Park Service, Howard University, or the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center, that some aspects of his story were contradicted by Fred’s own father and by documentation found by the Post, and that some documented descendants of Frederick Douglass called him “Fake Fred.”4 Whether or not Fred was truly a scion of the great 19th century historical figure, as he continues to maintain, he was certainly a witness to history on that momentous day.
On a Tuesday morning just four months later, everything would change for all present at the sunny press conference. Cleland, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was in the midst of an early morning meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donni Turner, his staff member, was preparing the Senator’s briefing materials for a hearing later that day. Suddenly, aides to the Joint Chiefs interrupted and rushed the generals and admirals out of the Senator’s office. A plane had just struck one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Soon after, Capitol Police came to take Cleland, together with all other Senators and the Vice President, to secure locations. The staff was informed that all hearings and official business were cancelled, and individual staffers scattered. As they scrambled hither and yon across the Mall, they learned that a second plane had hit the other Twin Tower, and they could see the smoke in the distance bellowing from the Pentagon.
I, too, remember the horror of that day, because I worried for Amina, who worked a few blocks from the White House, and for my best friend, Melvin Williams, who worked in the World Trade Complex. Fortunately, Amina was able to get safely home, but as I watched the news coverage of people jumping out of windows and the collapsing Twin Towers, all I could do was pray. I did not know which building housed Melvin’s office, and I was unable to get word that he was safe until late that afternoon.
This horrific day changed our country’s priorities and the congressional outlook toward the museum project. Congress now focused on a war resolution, the USA Patriot Act, and the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, in addition to the launch of an investigation into what went wrong in preventing the 9/11 attacks.
To top things off, the terrorist attacks had a significant economic impact, generating congressional hesitance to spend money while the economy suffered. Even though the House bill had well over two-hundred co-sponsors and plenty of support to ensure passage, and the Senate bill was supported by most of the key leadership, the seeds of doubt about the potential cost to create the museum, particularly with respect to refurbishing the Arts and Industries Building, began to take root.
Everyone sprang into action. I asked Marshall Purnell, the architect, to help me review various cost estimates, architectural plans, and engineering studies of the Arts and Industries Building. I reviewed our findings with the staff of the Four Musketeers, and we agreed that I should seek a meeting with Secretary Small and Undersecretary Burke to try to pin them down on the amount of, and basis for, the cost estimates that the Smithsonian staff members were feeding Congress. Small agreed to the meeting.
Prior to October 16, 2001, I had never been in the Secretary’s suite within the Smithsonian Castle. Like Congressman Lewis’s office, it was full of artifacts, but rather than commemorating the Civil Rights movement, these were from all time periods and from all fields of endeavor. While waiting, I gazed at the paintings, sculptures, rare books, and other historical pieces adorning the anteroom. A stuffed leopard, poised as if ready to pounce, stood across from me in the corner, looking much too realistic for my comfort. As I got up to enter Small’s office, I pondered whether I was predator or prey, and I felt even more grateful to have Purnell there as backup.
Unfortunately, the crazy events of that time had forced Hilary Shelton to cancel on our meeting. Shelton led congressional relations for the national NAACP, and I knew him from my prior advocacy against racial profiling. He had agreed to join me to share the views of the NAACP with the Smithsonian, but because of his frequent visits to Congress and the mailings of anthrax-filled envelopes to Senate offices, he was due at the doctor for an anthrax test as a precaution.
Nonetheless, Purnell and I had a productive, if sometimes contentious, meeting with Small and Burke. Ultimately, they agreed to what I believed were realistic cost estimates for the Arts and Industries Building. Additionally, they both said they could support the legislation as it had been tweaked by staff.
No matter how much anyone in Congress wants to do something, if the proposal does not have the support of the appropriations committee responsible for its funding, that proposal will never get approved. No one wants to create something that will simply die on the vine. And so it was, in the fall of 2001, when Lewis and Watts found themselves in a fateful meeting with Congressman Ralph Regula, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee vital to the museum bill. Regula was doubly important because he was also a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents.
In that meeting, Lewis and Watts learned that the détente with Small was too little too late. The damage had already been done. Regula insisted that the museum proposal needed more study, and he pressed Lewis and Watts to agree to move forward in two steps. Congress would create a commission to study the various issues, and Regula promised to fund it. Regula committed that so long as the commission reported to Congress with a workable plan, Regula would support the museum’s establishment and funding.
Backed into a corner by a person who held the purse strings, and also served as a Regent on the Smithsonian’s governing body, Lewis and Watts had no choice but to agree. A similar meeting took place not long thereafter, this time between the key Senate and House appropriators and Lewis, Watts, Brownback, and Cleland. Tom Downs, a lobbyist with the powerhouse law firm Patton Boggs who represented the Friends Group, sat outside with the staff while those in session ironed out the details of the compromise.
At the conclusion of the meeting, everyone stood to shake hands and convey their congratulations, particularly to Lewis, who had led the struggle for this museum for a decade. Downs looked into the room and saw a particularly poignant scene: Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and chair of the Senate appropriations committee, a White man who had belonged to the Ku Klux Klan as a young person in the 1940’s before renouncing the organization, stood locked in an embrace with Lewis, congratulating him and vowing to support the museum commission. I regret that no one was able to capture that image because, in sharp contrast to the photo of the lynching that Lewis and Brownback had contemplated when they first met to forge their alliance, this picture truly would have been worthy of a postcard.
I confess that I viewed this compromise with great trepidation. Over the prior eight decades, there already had been at least four commissions to study whether and how to create a national African American museum. And still there was no museum.
Hoping to achieve a better outcome, I dug in and worked with staff members to write the strongest bill possible. If we were going to settle for a commission, it would have to be one with some teeth. A bill was drafted to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture Plan for Action Presidential Commission, named as such because it would create a plan of action detailing how to move forward. Rather than a commission to draft a report with vague recommendations that ultimately sat on a shelf and gathered dust, this was a commission tasked with writing an actionable plan, with the expectation that, if the members performed and returned with a sound strategy, it would be implemented. That was the only way I was willing to take part.
I was pleased with this outcome, particularly since, as before, my organization was named in the bill—this time as a potential source from which to appoint a member of the Presidential Commission.
The appropriators and congressional leaders kept the first half of the bargain. On December 11, Mr. Lewis, with Watts and Regula as co-sponsors, introduced the Presidential Commission bill.5 As members of the majority party, Watts or Regula could have laid claim to sponsorship of the bill, but in the bipartisan spirit that permeated this venture, they deferred to Lewis, the longest champion of the issue. The bill bypassed all committees and passed the full House on the same day. The House bill was then sent to the Senate, where it passed the full Senate by unanimous consent on December 17.
For the Congress, this constituted action at warp speed, highly unusual except for urgent, non-controversial legislation. To me, these actions were again symbolic of the support for the idea and the intent to keep the momentum going. This belief was confirmed when President Bush signed the bill into law on December 28th.
A year earlier at this time, I felt like I was barely standing. Now, I was on cloud nine, especially when Mr. Lewis wrote the Speaker of the House to recommend that I, along with Claudine Brown and Lerone Bennett, Jr., be appointed to the Presidential Commission. The train was moving forward, and it appeared that I would not only be on it, but helping to drive. Perhaps I wasn’t the prey after all.
My wife, who had devoted so much to this undertaking, shared my elation. She also suggested that perhaps it was time for me to get a job.