National Museum – Bringing All Americans Together!

November 25, 2019November 25, 2019

#40: The U.S. Holocaust Museum and the National African American Museum Are Models for the National Museum of the American People

From left: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of the American People

In a series of blogs over the next several months, we will look at a broad range of subjects to show how the proposed National Museum of the American People compares to and diverges from our nation’s two best story-telling museums, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This blog simply lists the topics that will be discussed in future blogs. Topics will include:

The feasibility studies that led to creation of the USHMM and the NMAAHC and how the NMAP will follow the lead of the African American feasibility study.

How both museums tell their stories and how the NMAP will follow their examples.

An exploration of the timeline to build both museums and why the NMAP will aim to follow the USHMM lead in this area.

The USHMM is independent of the Smithsonian Institution; the NMAAHC is a part of the Smithsonian. This blog will discuss the governance structure that might work best for the NMAP.

Both the NMAAHC and the USHMM have notable buildings in which they are housed and a local architecture firm (MTFA) has developed a rendering of what the NMAP could look like (see photos above). The role of the architect for these museums and how the building design relates to their stories will be discussed.

As story-telling museums, the visitor at both existing museums are on a chronological path telling a dramatic story about significant historic events with a beginning, a middle and an end. Both museums employed the same exhibition designer. This blog will examine how both museums will inform how the NMAP tells its story.

The USHMM and the NMAAHC used two different models to raise money to plan and build those museums. The NMAP plans to follow the lead of the USHMM to plan and build the museum.

Both existing museums receive significant annual federal appropriations to operate their institutions. The NMAP plans to follow a different path without federal appropriations to operate the museum.

This blog will explore the importance of location and a prime location being sought for the NMAP. The USHMM and the NMAAHC are both located In Washington between 14^th and 15^th Streets (renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place on the Holocaust Museum block). The African American Museum is on the north side of the National Mall and the Holocaust Museum is just to the south of the Mall, both prime locations.

We will explore the visitor experiences at the NMAAHC and the USHMM and examine what that experience will be like at the NMAP.

This issue will discuss the purpose of both existing museums and how they achieve it and will discuss the purpose of the NMAP and the plan to meet its purpose.

The USHMM and the NMAAHC deal with the historic and contemporary ravages of genocide, racism, xenophobia, slavery and anti-Semitism. So will the NMAP.

The USHMM has a scholarly Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The NMAP will have a Center for the Advanced Study of the American People with connections to scholarly institutions throughout the nation and the world.

Both the USHMM and the NMAAHC welcome school groups and provide curricula material focused on their respective subjects. The NMAP will have a vigorous program to welcome students on their visits to Washington and plans to have a national outreach program to help teach civics that incorporates the history of every group that has come to this nation from the first to the present no matter where on Earth they or their ancestors came from.

How much do visitors to the USHMM and the NMAAHC see their own stories told in those museums? The NMAP will tell the story of every American group and visitors from every country will learn about peoples from their nations who became Americans.

The African American Museum’s story starts in Africa and in Europe and then quickly transfers to the New World and the United States. The Holocaust story focuses on the nation’s where the Holocaust was perpetrated and brings in the United States along the way and finishes with the two nations where most Holocaust survivors settled, Israel and the U.S. That museum has relations with nations throughout Europe. The NMAP will have relationships with nations throughout the world with countries that fed people into our nation over the eons and centuries through today.

Both the NMAAHC and the USHMM have had strong bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. The NMAP will endeavor to have bipartisan support from all of our nation’s political leaders.

How do all three museums compare with the National Museum of American History?

How do they compare with the National Museum of the American Indian?

How do they compare with the proposed National Museum of the American Woman?

There are proposed national museums for Asian Pacific, Irish and Latino Americans. How would they fit in with the NMAP?

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

April 13, 2019September 12, 2019

#37: You Don’t Have to Be a Smithsonian Museum To Make It in Washington, DC

One of the issues for the National Museum of the American People is whether it will be part of the Smithsonian Institution or independent of it. In this article we’ll look at some of Washington’s museums, both public and private, that are independent of the Smithsonian. In future blogs we’ll discuss Smithsonian museums and proposals for new museums in Washington.

National Gallery of Art

While there are many great art museums in Washington, we’ll only touch on one here because it is on the National Mall, the National Gallery of Art. While it seems part of the Smithsonian it is actually independent of it. It consists of two major buildings, the neo classical West Building opened in 1941, the East Wing that opened in 1978, and the NGA sculpture garden that opened in 1999. This complex stretches from 3^rd Street to 9^th Street along the Mall on Constitution Avenue. The NGA has 4.3 million visitors a year and is asking this year for an appropriation of $137 million to operate.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The USHMM, located just off of the National Mall near the Washington Monument, has served about 1.7 million visitors a year since it opened. It receives an annual appropriation now of approximately $59 million a year. It is a public-private partnership like the Smithsonian and has recently undertaken a long-term $1 billion fund-raising effort. The museum opened in 1993 and was the first significant museum in Washington that tells its story in a chronological fashion. Early visitorship studies found that the average visitor spent about 3 hours walking through the museum’s story about the history of the Holocaust.

Spy Museum

The International Spy Museum opened in Washington in 2002 as a private museum and has had about 300,000 visitors a year since it opened. This Spring it is moving to a large new building a few blocks off of the National Mall on L’Enfant Plaza. It is just a block away from the NMAP’s favored site at the Banneker Overlook. The Spy Museum charges $23 for adults for visitors to walk through the history of the dramatic spying profession around the world.

Bible Museum

Another new museum in Washington opened in 2017, the Museum of the Bible. A private museum funded by the founders of the Hobby Lobby, it tells about the history of the bible. It charges $25 per adult and has had 500,000 visitors during its first six months.

National Geographic Museum

Operated by the National Geographic Society, its exhibits focus on natural history, culture and history along the lines of the society’s National Geographic Magazine. The society was established in 1888 and is a non-profit organization in Washington. Located in downtown DC, this museum charges $15 for adults to visit its exhibits.

Newseum

The Newseum, started by the Freedom Forum funded by the Gannett newspaper company, promotes the 1^st Amendment clause to the Constitution calling for freedom of the press. It moved to its DC location on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol Building in 2008. While it says it has 815,000 visitors a year and charges $25 for adults to visit, it announced in January that it sold its building and will close the museum.

National Archives

The National Archives is most famous for displaying the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Archives attract 1 million visitors a year to its building across the street from the National Mall on Pennsylvania Avenue. The federal agency was born in 1934. Before that, federal documents were housed by the State Department and the Library of Congress. It is funded by federal appropriations.

Library of Congress

An arm of Congress, the three buildings of the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill attract 1.6 million visitors, most of them to its Jefferson Building across the street from the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Holdings include one of the original Guttenberg Bibles. Its collections of books and documents is massive and it changes its displays periodically. Its reading room is one of the most interesting and famous rooms in the Nation’s capital. Its funding is from federal appropriations.

National Museum of the US Navy

Operated by the U.S. Navy at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, the museum chronicles the U.S. Navy from its beginning during the Revolution through today. Located on a military base poses some hurdles for visitors, but it is free and counts about 200,000 visitors a year. The Navy Yard is located adjacent to the Washington Nationals baseball stadium and has a Metro stop near the main gate of the Yard. While smaller collections of Navy memorabilia opened in 1865 soon after the Navy Yard opened, the current museum opened in 1963.

German American Heritage Museum

Located in a townhouse in the Penn Quarter of downtown Washington, this museum focuses on the heritage of all Americans of German descent. The museum is free and is operated by the German American Heritage Foundation. It opened in 2010.

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

This museum chain opened its Washington branch in 2007. It features wax likenesses of U.S. presidents, first ladies, cultural icons and famous people from music, sports, media and entertainment. Located downtown, it costs $22 per adult ($18 online) for tickets.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 28, 2019February 13, 2019

#16: World Class Architecture Design Expected For National Museum of the American People

The design above at the Banneker Overlook site in Southwest Washington features four soaring structures arising from the grass covered roof of the central building. It evokes several aspects of the proposed National Museum of the American People’s story: waving flags of nations; books opening to reveal the four chapters of the story of the making of the American People; and sails over a landscape of waves recalling the vessels that brought so many to this land.

The maritime aesthetic also relates to the nearby marina where an extension of the museum could berth boats like those used by natives that plied nearby waterways and ships used to bring early European settlers, slaves and others to these shores.

During the day, the textures of the concrete “flags” will constantly change with the movement of the sun’s shadows across the facade. At night, films could be projected onto these surfaces. The design, conceived by MTFA Architecture, calls for a state of the art green building that would serve as a model for the Southwest Washington, DC Ecodistrict.

The building housing the National Museum of the American People would need to accommodate its core permanent exhibition. It would also need to have space for components including special exhibitions, a film theater, auditorium, bookstore and gift shop, dining facility, classrooms, genealogical center, and library and archives. In addition, there would be a need for offices for Museum administrators, scholars, curatorial staff, educators, security, maintenance and other staff.

The NMAP feasibility study, which we’ll discuss in our next blog, would develop preliminary space requirements for the Museum based on space required by other major museums with similar programs.

MTFA Architecture, an award-winning firm located in Arlington, Virginia, created this design for the National Museum of the American People on a pro bono basis. The firm specializes in projects that shape our culture, build on commerce and positively shape people’s lives. They have a long history of projects that build consensus for planning and design involving mixed use, commercial, cultural and educational functions and incorporate environmentally sound features. MTFA designed the recently built St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church just down the street from the Banneker site.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 24, 2019February 13, 2019

#15: Banneker Overlook Is Favored Site For National Museum of the American People

The gathering of peoples from throughout the world is the essential and ongoing American story. Yet there is little in our nation’s capital that tells the full story about all of the peoples that came to make this nation. This has left a monumental void in the midst of our capital that needs to be filled.

The favored site for the National Museum of the American People is the Banneker Overlook site. It is an eight-acre slope at the end of L’Enfant Promenade, an extension of 10th Street, S.W. The site is on a direct axis with the iconic Smithsonian’s Castle Building and reaches down to Maine Avenue and the Washington, D.C. waterfront along Washington Channel, an inlet of the Potomac River. It is adjacent to I-395.

The site is a short walk from the L’Enfant Metro stop. It is the only Metro stop that serves 5 of the system’s 6 lines. Washington’s Spy Museum is relocating to L’Enfant Promenade. There would be auto and bus access and parking nearby.

The large site affords an opportunity for the design of an architecturally significant building along with an inviting landscape. It is already one of the major sites in Washington designated as a location for a future national museum by three federal agencies that oversee the capital and the look it presents to the world — the National Park Service, National Capital Planning Commission and U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. The Overlook site is now under NPS jurisdiction.

The site also sits at the nexus of a major municipal effort to invigorate the DC waterfront area adjacent to the city’s bustling fish market. Across Maine Avenue from the museum site is the Southwest Waterfront project which opened in 2017 and includes condos, shops, restaurants, a river walk and other amenities to draw visitors from the Mall to the waterfront.

While the Banneker site is already joined to Washington’s core tourist area by a roadway and pedestrian walkway across I-395, there could be an effort to build a lid over the freeway to offer a stronger connection to these two sides of Washington. Such a lid could incorporate a park and sculpture garden to reflect the themes of the Museum. The proximity to the waterfront would also be used to extend the Museum’s exhibition reach to a pier where boats — actual and replicas — used for the migration and immigration to the U.S. are moored for visitors to explore.

While the Arena Stage theater anchors Maine Avenue at one end, this museum could anchor the redesigned waterfront at the other end. The Museum’s international food court and plaza, with a mix of restaurants and a gift shop along Maine Avenue, could remain open after museum hours and help to stimulate nighttime street life.

The site could include provisions for landscaping that could include major water features and flora to enhance the beauty of the Museum building and its property. It could also include works of commissioned art relating to the subject matter of the Museum.

Legislation would be required to transfer the Banneker Overlook site to the National Museum of the American People. The Museum at this site would present the opportunity to create a unique and lasting addition to our capital that tells our American story in an unforgettable manner.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 21, 2019February 13, 2019

#14: Celebrating the African American Museum On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Coming into Montgomery (Collection of the SI NMAAHC)

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is one of the greatest story-telling museums in the world; the proposed National Museum of the American People will do well to emulate it.

The NMAAHC depicts the 500 year struggle of African Americans beginning with their enslavement first in Europe and then soon after in the Western Hemisphere. A century later when the first permanent European colony in what is now the Untied States was established by the English at Jamestown in 1607, the first slaves followed 12 years in 1619.

The African American Museum carries that history of enslavement forward through the Civil War, a brief post-war period of reconstruction followed by the imposition of segregation for another century until the Civil Rights Movement go underway in the 1950s and continues through the early years of the 21^st Century.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who we celebrate today, is a central figure in this segment of the story.

The NMAAHC begins its story after carrying visitors three stories below ground level and proceeds with its narrative as visitors wind upward through the difficult history of African Americans emerging into a space of contemplation before arriving again at ground level. From there, visitors are ready to explore the broad and deep accomplishments of African Americans on the Museum’s upper floors.

The story of African Americans, told so poignantly in the NMAAHC, will also be told in the National Museum of the American People in the context of the story of the making of all Americans. That segment of the story will be the same in both museums.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 10, 2019February 13, 2019

#11: NMAP Has Broad Support From Organizations Representing All Americans

The 248 ethnic organizations (and counting) that have signed on to support the National Museum of the American People all want one thing: they want their stories told about how and when and why they came to this land and nation and became Americans. And they want them told in a major national museum near the center of our nation’s capital.

The will tell the story of the making of the American People starting with the first humans in the Western Hemisphere and continuing through today. The organizations that have signed on represent 73 different ethnic/nationality/minority groups that together represent virtually every sizable group in the nation, well over 95 percent of all Americans. The museum will embody our original national motto – E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One).

The museum will tell all of our stories through four chapters of the museum’s permanent exhibition:

1) First Peoples Come (15-20,000 years ago to 1607;

2) The Nation Takes Form (1607-1820);

3) The Great In-gathering (1820-1924); and

4) And Still They Come (1924-Today).

Of the 248 organizations backing the museum, there are 135 representing groups whose ancestors came from every part of Europe, 37 who came from throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands, 36 from the Americas, including 14 Native American organizations, 18 from Africa and a variety of others from throughout the world.

Italian, Scandinavian and Scottish Americans each have 10 organizations backing the museum; Irish, Russian and Polish Americans each have 9 organizations signed on; and there are 8 German, 7 Jewish and 6 Baltic American organizations. All of the organizations are listed on the museum’s web site.* Generally, people who put down “American” on the Census form have ancestors who came from England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany during the 17 and 18^th centuries. They and their descendants thoroughly intermingled and 200 years later they describe their ethnicity as American.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 7, 2019February 13, 2019

#10: Would the NMAP be Part of the Smithsonian … or Not?

Museums in Washington, DC fall under three forms of governance:

Part of the public Smithsonian system
Public but independent of the Smithsonian
Private

The National Museum of the American People could be governed in any of these ways … or in a new way.

The Smithsonian Institution, with ## museums and other facilities in and around Washington and other facilities elsewhere, is obviously the dominant model in this region. Two of its newest museums both focus on groups of Americans, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian. Most of its museums focus on art, several on science, both physical and natural, and three on history of people, the National Museum of American History as well as the African American and American Indian museums.

There are efforts to have the Smithsonian build two more museums, one about the history of American women and the other about the American Latino. The NMAP also requested that the Smithsonian undertake a feasibility study for a museum about the making of the American People.

While the Smithsonian would undoubtedly like to be able to take on all these projects it is being pushed to the wall financially by significant unplanned costs. The biggest is the unexpected need that came to light in the last couple of years to completely renovate the most visited and largest museum in its system, the Air and Space Museum.

Engineering studies of that museum revealed that its entire façade needs to be replaced by new and significantly thicker marble cladding along with other extensive renovations taking place in concert with the new façade. The price tag is around $1 billion for this work. In addition, the extraordinary success of the African American museum has led to a range of unanticipated expenditures.

While the Smithsonian is run as a public-private partnership and receives corporate and other private support, the largest share of its annual operating income is from federal appropriations.

There are also other significant public museums in the Washington area that are independent of the Smithsonian. Museums in this category include the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Gallery of Art, both its main building and its East Wing. All three are on or just off of the National Mall.

Other public non-Smithsonian museums in the DC area include those operated by the National Park Service, the Army, Navy and Air Force and some others operated by federal agencies and local governments. Some of these are also operated as public-private partnerships.

Three of the newest museums in Washington are private: the Newseum, the Spy Museum and the Bible Museum. They have been supported by some combination of private organizations and wealthy individuals.

Given the Smithsonian’s fiscal issues and the current fiscal climate in Washington a new approach is needed now: A public museum paid for and operated with private donations. The planning and construction of the US Holocaust Museum was paid for by private funding and while it continues to receive significant gifts for a variety of special programs and exhibitions, the bulk of its annual operating expenses are from federal appropriations and it is considered a public museum.

National Museum of the American People is proposing a new public-private relationship where all of the funds to plan, build and operate the museum would come from private donations and other non-federal sources, it would be designated a public museum by Congress and land for the museum, a priceless commodity in Washington, could be transferred from one federal agency, the National Park Service for example, to the museum’s governing entity. At the same time, all of the funds to plan, build and operate the museum would technically be gifts to the government earmarked for that purpose.

In this model, private funding would pay for a feasibility study which in turn would pave the way for Congressional action designating the museum as a national museum, transferring the land for it, setting up the museum’s governing body and requiring all of the funds to come from private or other non-federal donations.

The governing body for the NMAP could be selected by a process involving public and private sector officials as designated in the legislation creating the museum institution.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

January 3, 2019February 13, 2019

#9: Ch. 4 — AND STILL THEY COME: 1924-2024

This is the fourth of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The 4th chapter of this story will take us from 1924 through 2024. The National Museum of the American People will portray the changes that mark the dynamic rich mixture of people that we label “American” as it continues to evolve.

Taking Citizenship Oath at Naturalization Ceremony in Seattle

Immigration slowed to a trickle after 1924 until the end of World War II due to the imposition of quotas. These were based on already existing subpopulations of the United States. While it remained relatively easy to emigrate from Western Europe, those from Eastern and Southern Europe, Africa and Asia had a much more difficult time getting into the U.S. This slowdown was exasperated by the Great Depression and there was even a net emigration away from the U.S. during the deepest four years of the Depression.

Following the Second World War, America became the preferred home for refugees from Europe, including Holocaust survivors. From 1941 to 1987, the U.S. accepted 4.4 million immigrants from Europe, 4.3 million from Asia, and 5.5 million from Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico.

From 1948 through 1980, some 2.3 million persons were admitted to the U.S. as humanitarian and political refugees, including about 450,000 persons displaced after World War II from 1948 through 1952; 692,000 Cubans from 1962-79; and 400,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians from 1975-79.

The fourth chapter of the NMAP’s permanent exhibition will continue to tell the story of migrations within the country. It will include the forced migration of Japanese to internment camps during World War II, the continuing westward movement, the movement of African Americans from the South to the industrialized North as well as the movement of vast numbers of Americans from cities to suburbs, and the current movement of young people to cities.

In the post-War years, immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico became major parts of this story. During recent years, immigrant groups in significant numbers have included Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, South Asians and Vietnamese. Others have included Caribbeans, Central Americans, Soviet Jews, Dominicans, Haitians, Africans and a variety of Europeans. Over the last few decades, one of the biggest national stories has been the steady flow of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, from Mexico and Central America. The compelling story of new immigrants to our nation is still writing itself.

Today, immigration is an issue that has opened a significant rift in our nation’s body politic. One of the goals of the National Museum of the American People is to help bring our nation back together by telling the story of the making of the American People … all of us.

NOTE: Some of the material herein is based on Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars are expected to develop a detailed outline of the Museum’s story following the establishment of the Museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

December 20, 2018February 13, 2019

#8: Ch. 3 — The Great In-Gathering: 1820-1924

This is the third of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The third chapter of the story that the National Museum of the American People will tell brings us up to the period of our great grandparents, our grandparents and, for many, our parents. It delves into the history of those groups that came from all over the world during this great century of immigration from 1820 to 1924. This century, characterized by industrialization and urbanization and tragically punctuated by the Civil War, saw 36 million immigrants flow to the United States. The ancestors of most Americans came here during this period.

About two-thirds, 22.4 million, came between 1881 and 1920. The decade 1901 to 1910 alone saw 8.8 million immigrants, almost a million every year. In general, older stock European immigrants moved to settle the western frontiers while newer immigrants tended to stake their fortunes in the new urban and industrial frontiers.

From 1820 to 1914, 30 million came from Europe, including 5 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.5 million Italians, 2.6 million Poles, 2.6 million English and 2 million Jews (at first mostly from Germany and then from Poland and Russia).

In addition, 2.2 million crossed over from Canada, 900,000 crossed from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, 370,000 were Chinese and 275,000 were Japanese. Others included Scandinavians, Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, Hungarians, Russians, Austrians and others from Eastern Europe. All of these peoples added to the rich mix we call Americans

The stories of each of these and other immigrant groups, and the change in immigration patterns over time of these groups, will be told in this chapter of the National Museum of the American People. The further geographical expansion of the nation to include ever more peoples will also be covered, including the movements into lands purchased (Alaska and parts of Arizona); obtained through treaty and annexation (the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and most of Texas); and war (the U.S. Southwest, including California, and Puerto Rico).

This period ends with a series of restrictive immigration laws including the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s and the Immigration Act of 1924.

This chapter includes the story of Ellis Island from 1892, when it opened, until it stopped functioning as a reception center in 1932. Some 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island, a third of all that arrived during this century of immigration. While some of these stories are told in many ethnic museums around the nation, with Ellis Island being the most prominent, nowhere is the full story of this period told in a full chronological and comprehensive manner.

NOTE: Some of the material herein is based on Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars are expected to develop a detailed outline of the National Museum of the American People’s story following the establishment of the Museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

December 18, 2018February 13, 2019

#7: Ch. 2 – The Nation Takes Form: 1607–1820

This is the second of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The second chapter of the story that the National Museum of the American People will tell covers the major settlement groups who came to America from 1607 to 1820 and the consequences of this settlement on the native peoples in what is now the Eastern U.S. The chapter will also focus on the inflow of Western Europeans and Africans in the East, and Hispanics settling in what is now the U.S. Southwest. This chapter is bisected by the American Revolution and creation of the nation.

It will go on to explore the new nation’s westward expansion as it takes in new peoples with the Louisiana Purchase extending the nation to the Mississippi River and the annexation of Florida. The migration within what is now the United States by both settlers and natives will also be covered.

Chapter 2 begins with the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown in 1607. This is generally recognized as the beginning of the Colonial Period. While scholars will provide the essential history of this period, the NMAP will also explore myths and legends about these times, some of which persist.

Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries, as they pushed west across the continent, reported encountering pristine forests and massive herds of bison and believed that it was always thus. Now, our best evidence suggests that humans settled and dominated most of the land and kept the vegetation and bison in check long before Europeans arrived. In the two hundred years after the near demise of the native population due to disease and government policies, both before and after the nation was formed, the bison population exploded, the land went to seed and “virgin forests” spread.

As visitors walk through this history from 1607 to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 they will learn that about 600,000 Europeans who came and 300,000 Africans who were brought to the English colonies. Virtually all of the Africans came as slaves and about half of the Europeans were indentured servants or convicts.

While English immigrants dominated this influx and largely settled in Virginia, Maryland and New England, only a minority, even in New England — even on the Mayflower itself — were Pilgrims and Puritans. While some indeed came to escape religious persecution, most of the English came for economic opportunities. It took about a century before these colonies achieved a self-sustaining population.

The African slave trade with Europe began in the mid-15th Century, before Columbus’ voyage, with the Spanish and Portuguese importing slaves first to Europe and Atlantic islands and then to Spanish and Portuguese America.

It has been calculated that up to a third of all slaves taken out of Africa died aboard ships as they sailed across what was known as the Middle Passage. An unknown number of lives were also lost in Africa, mostly in a strip about 100 miles wide along the central West Coast, as a result of the slave trade from attempts to capture them and on their journey to ports of embarkation.

More than 10 percent of imported slaves — some 50,000 — came after Congress abolished the slave trade in 1810. Slaves brought to this land are the ancestors of more than 20 million Americans, the second largest group in the nation after German Americans.

This chapter also begins showing an inkling of the great diversity of peoples that will characterize the American people. By 1790 there were significant numbers of Scotch, Irish and German immigrants living side-by-side with the English colonists, with smaller numbers of Dutch, French, Swedish, Spanish and others. Each group added to and influenced the language, culture, economy and politics of the fledgling nation.

The Scotch settled primarily in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The first Irish immigrants tended toward the middle and southern states. Few Germans went to New England and instead migrated to the middle states, with Pennsylvania getting most of them.

The Dutch went mostly to New York and New Jersey where the early colony of New Amsterdam had been. The French settled almost entirely in the Northwest Territories of modern Canada and on a long and narrow swath that ran from Detroit down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

The Spanish at this point were in territories in Florida, California and New Mexico. The largest of a small contingent of Swedes was in New Mexico. Jews were scattered throughout the colonies and established outposts in the port cities of New York, Newport, Savannah, Philadelphia and Charleston. Smaller numbers of many other European ethnicities came as well, mixed among other groups.

The National Museum of the American People will show where each group settled and how they contributed to the creation of the nation.

At the heart of this chapter is the story of the creation of the nation. The history about the relationship of the 13 colonies with England, the actions and reactions that led to that relationship souring to the point of being irreconcilable, the American Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States of America will all be told.

Groups that played significant roles in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, played a major role during the war, and were represented among the Founding Fathers are part of this story. The museum will also explore where the ideas came from for our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution.

Facets of this chapter are told in partial ways at a variety of on-site museums and recreated exhibitions such as at Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Plimoth Plantation, Savannah and Charleston. The new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington tells the story about African slavery in the United States during this period and the new American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia tells the story about that war.

But there are no institutions that tell the full and comprehensive story about this phase of the making of the American people. The National Museum of the American People will be the first to do so.

NOTE: The material herein is based in part on the books 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars will develop the museum’s story following the establishment of the museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People