via Wikimedia
Museums centering the heritage of the African Diaspora uplifts our past and present while informing our liberated futures.
The prevalence of such centers is more abundant than many assume.
There are museums devoted to our triumphant moments, such as civil rights museums in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina. There’s also the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition in New Haven, Connecticut - just to name a few!
Then there are those that could be on a college campus around the corner from you.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), such as Spelman College, curate world-class exhibitions of fine art by Black artists.
Historic sites also maintain collections that celebrate the legacies of Black leaders.
Check out the Mary McLeod Bethune and Frederick Douglass national historic sites in Washington, D.C. or the Medgar Evers Home Museum in Mississippi and Martin Luther King, Jr. national historic site in Atlanta, Georgia.
There are even establishments that focus specifically on the professional impact of Black folks, including the African American Firefighter Museum in Los Angeles, CA, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum in Chicago, Illinois.
Visiting and sending a donation to these institutions is crucial to ensuring their survival, and reinforces the need for archives, galleries, historical societies, and library collections that celebrate our history.