December 10, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 5,1423

WASHINGTON: Almost a century after an African-American memorial was first proposed for the US capital, a grand vision for a museum encompassing black life in the United States is moving toward realisation.

Backed by $2 million in federal funds, a special commission appointed by Congress and President George W. Bush started work this year on a feasibility study for a national museum of African-American history and culture.

“I think it goes without saying that African-Americans have been the major backbone in building and developing America into the country that it is today,” said commission chairman Robert Wright.

“Unfortunately...African-American history, like African-American life in America, was very suppressed. That needs to be told. I think that time has come.”

The commission is just the latest in a long line of panels over the past century to study the same issue, with so far no museum to show for their efforts.

Wright, who jokes he has had to go part-time at his job as head of a Virginia-based information technology firm to chair the museum commission, is quick to note that there is still much work to be done before the current deal is sealed.

LONG HISTORY: The museum project, which grew from a 1915 proposal by a group of black Civil War veterans for a national “Negro Memorial” in the capital, came closest to becoming a reality when president Calvin Coolidge in 1929 signed a bill into law authorising construction.

But according to current commission member Robert Wilkins, a Washington lawyer and long-time proponent of such a museum, the Great Depression derailed fund-raising efforts and institutional memory of the legislation was lost.

Wilkins said the project surfaced again after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, but disagreements over where to put a museum, as well as a lack of funding, eventually scuppered plans.

The Smithsonian has a museum in Washington devoted to African-American history and culture, but a spokeswoman said it is not on the scale of a national museum.

Nevertheless, Georgia Democrat Representative John Lewis and other politicians from both parties and chambers of Congress kept pushing the plan with colleagues, and in 2001 their efforts paid off when lawmakers voted the new commission into being.

COLLECTIONS UNTAPPED: The contents of the museum will probably be less controversial to determine — covering the sweep of African-American history from the early days of slavery to emancipation, Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movement.

Along the way, the museum will feature the contributions of black Americans to every sphere of public life, including science, music, literature, the arts, sports, architecture, the military and politics.

Far from detracting from the importance or fund-raising ability of major regional African-American museums and university collections, organisers say the museum could become instead an important resource for them.

Although data on potential collections available for purchase or donation will not be available until the end of the year, the signs are already good that a national museum would prompt donations from previously untapped quarters.

Commission member Claudine Brown, who formerly headed a Smithsonian initiative to create a national African-American museum, said it could also follow the example of the city’s acclaimed Holocaust Museum, using film, video and other electronic media to tell the story of African-American life.—Reuters