The Man Who Built 'The Blacksonian' and the Lessons the Past Can Teach Us
Lonnie Bunch, founder of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the first black historian to lead The Smithsonian, is a bastion against Trump's nonsense, writes Bonnie Greer.
Full disclosure: The fourteenth Director of the Smithsonian, called “Secretary”, and I are old friends.
He told me once that his beloved late father was a GI stationed in Britain during the run-up to D-Day and way beyond.
So was mine. Two Black men serving with other Black men in a racially segregated army. Fighting the Wehrmacht outside and racism within. If that can even be imagined.
Neither Lonnie Bunch nor I were around at that time, but our dads’ story is part of us, part of our history and just one more thing that we have in common.
The city of Chicago is another. The Windy City is my hometown and, before I knew him, Lonnie, to great acclaim, was director of the prestigious Chicago Historical Society (Chicago History Museum) there.
Another thing that we have in common is the British Museum.
Once, when I was a Deputy Chair of the Museum, I took Lonnie to see our latest show – an exhibit lent to us by China – a number of statues from its famed “Terracotta Army”, objects from about 210-209 BCE in the form of soldiers ready to protect the Emperor after death.
The exhibit was stretched out on the floor as if the soldiers were marching toward the spectator, as the Emperor intended his guard in the afterlife to look like. Beautiful and impressive, I had seen it a few times.
But while viewing it again, Lonnie suddenly said “Look!"
One of the figures, apart from his eyes, had decidedly African features. Today he would be considered a Black man.
I can’t describe what it made me feel to see this statue, but let me just say that finding the hidden, the deep, is very much what Lonnie would do. And does.
His forensic mind, his search for truth and surprise, helped change my idea about China and Chinese history forever.
He used the Antiques Roadshow as a model and guide in collecting objects for the museum he built – The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) known fondly as “The Blacksonian”.
The ordinary folks who show up with their treasures for Antiques Roadshow gave him the idea of going – many times literally – door-to-door to persuade people to dig in their closets. Look beneath their beds for things that they had, things that they thought were of no use. What he found shed light on US history – with its complexities, its story without end.
Most Black folks never think that what they have is of any real value, outside of their own families. Maybe most people think that.
But Lonnie showed African Americans that this was not true. He put what they had in a museum. A museum – for all to see.
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