Tag: We the 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.

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

 

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.

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

 

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.

---

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

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.

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

 

 

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.

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

 

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.

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