Celebrating African American History and Culture

Nearly 400,000 square feet, with eleven galleries on five levels, the National Museum of African American History and Culture presents the full spectrum of African American history and culture from slavery and Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Era and into the 21st century.

Within the Museum there are four gallery clusters; Art, Community, Culture and History. They help visitors understand the African American experience across time and place.

Lyles Station was founded in the mid-19th century as part of a migratory movement of thousands of African Americans from the Upper South to the Old Northwest Territory states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to stake their claim to land, territory, and freedom. The Lyles family used this original 19th-century plow on their farmland.

African Americans found ways to develop cultural anchors and social networks in order to endure and succeed in the United States: whether in slavery or in free communities; in segregated black urban neighborhoods or the rural South; or as part of the black elite or the working class.

This handkerchief is associated with the Double Victory campaign during World War II. It represented the call for victory against racial injustice in the United States and victory in the war abroad.

The Bayou Classic is an annual football game played between two of the most prestigious historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) football programs--Grambling State University and Southern University in Louisiana. This trophy is the most recognizable trophy in HBCU sports. It signifies the importance of HBCU football as well as HBCU sports and traditions within African American culture.

Freemasons or Masons are one of the world’s oldest fraternal groups and were initially linked to medieval craft guilds. Masons are organized as independent associations known as Lodges. They are founded on spiritual ideals of brotherhood, supporting others and the general betterment of humankind.

Shown here is Daniel Hendricks. He is wearing Masonic regalia.

Shown here are Daniel Hendricks' daughters during the 1920s. The Order of the Eastern Star is also a fraternal organization of women and men. Founded in the late 1800s by Dr. Robert Morris for the female relatives of men who were involved in Freemasonry, it strives to maintain the same types of moral and spiritual principles for its members.

African Americans have been actively involved in Masonry since the 18th century when Prince Hall, a free black living in Boston founded a branch of the North American Freemasonry. At the time blacks were restricted from joining white lodges.

The J Dilla collection includes the custom-made Minimoog Voyager synthesizer and Akai MIDI Production Center 3000 Limited Edition used by producer and MC James Dewitt Yancey, aka J Dilla (1974-2006). These items were donated in J Dilla’s memory by his mother, Maureen Yancey. J Dilla used these pieces of equipment to create his famous and distinctive beats for hip-hop, soul, and rhythm & blues artists. These items are part of the museum’s growing Music & Performing Arts Collection.

This seat is the first object that was acquired by the Museum. The donor, Juan García, researches and records storytelling traditions of Afro-Ecuadoran communities.

The spider image on the boat seat possibly references the character of Anansi, the clever spider, who is prominently featured in storytelling traditions of West Africa, the West Indies and the southern United States. Enslaved Africans were taken to the West Indies and to the southern United States, and they carried the Anansi stories with them. The names of the spider tales were transposed and became Nancy stories in the West Indies and Aunt Nancy in the southern states in America.

Essayist, playwright, novelist, and civil rights activist, James Baldwin (1924-1987) is known for his exceptional talent as a writer. He was forthright and poignant in his exploration of issues of race, sexuality and unflinching appreciation of the black experience in America. This inkwell was in James Baldwin’s writing studio in his home in St.-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France, where he began residing in 1968.

On September 15, 1963, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair, were killed when members of the Ku Klux Klan placed sticks of dynamite under the front steps of the church. The broken glass from the stained glass windows of the church document the devastating event that took the lives of these four little girls.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened on September 24, 2016.