New Slavery Museum Struggling to Find Donors, Support From Blacks
/By JULIA M. KLEIN
MAYOR L. DOUGLAS WILDER used to beg his reluctant father, born in 1886, to tell him stories about how his parents fared during slavery.
After some urging, ''my father used to talk about how his father and mother were separated,'' Mr. Wilder said. According to the family's oral history, Mr. Wilder's grandfather walked 18 miles each way every weekend to see his wife and children in Ashland, Va. Because he never got a travel pass, the white overseer at his Richmond plantation threatened to whip him as punishment.
Mr. Wilder said that his grandfather told the overseer: ''You know -- this is foolish. I'm not going anywhere.'' Sympathetic, the overseer suggested a solution that would satisfy the slave master, ''I'll whip this saddle, and you have to try and act like I'm beating you.''
Tales like this will be preserved by the United States National Slavery Museum, which, Mr. Wilder said, will explore how slavery served for centuries as the country's economic engine, benefiting both the North and the South.
''The story we'll tell is how slavery was a business,'' he said.
That is, if the cash-strapped project becomes a reality. For the lack of fund-raising success so far, Mr. Wilder faulted the economy, the subject, competing African-American museums and mayoral obligations that have limited his time on the project.
Nevertheless, Mr. Wilder, 77, a former governor of Virginia, remains undaunted. He has been nurturing the idea since a 1992 visit to Goree Island in Senegal, where he saw the Door of No Return at the House of Slaves memorial. Overlooking the ocean, this was the last stop for kidnapped Africans before they were forced onto slave ships. The next year, at a conference in Gabon, Mr. Wilder announced his museum plans.
Mr. Wilder considered three main sites in Virginia: Jamestown, Richmond and Hampton. He settled on 38 acres of pasture and woodland in Fredericksburg, near Interstate 95. The land was donated by Larry D. Silver, the developer behind Celebrate Virginia, a project involving offices, hotels, residences, a golf resort and a water park.
As of now, the only sign of the museum is the Spirit of Freedom Exhibit Garden, whose centerpiece is a sculpture of a man whose unshackled hands are raised to the sky.
Mr. Wilder said that was about to change. The first phase of the $200 million project, a $10 million visitor center, will be built this year, he said. But the opening date of the museum itself -- designed by the architect C. C. Pei, a son of I. M. Pei -- remains unclear.
Only about $50 million, including pledges and in-kind donations, has been raised so far, museum officials say. The entertainer Bill Cosby, a board member, has donated about $1.2 million, Mr. Wilder said, but corporate, foundation and government money has been harder to come by.
''It's the damnedest time in the world to talk about raising money, with the recession being what it is,'' he said.
Vonita W. Foster, executive director of the museum, said fund-raising had slowed over the last couple of years. ''We were doing real well till Katrina hit,'' she said. ''We had foundations and companies tell us that they had to redirect funds. It was just devastating.''
A fund-raiser in Washington in June 2006, with performances by Ben Vereen and Mr. Cosby, netted about $50,000, Ms. Foster said. Corporate fund-raising was so disappointing that the museum, at Mr. Cosby's suggestion, started a campaign urging that every American donate $8. But that effort has raised less than $1 million, she said.
The museum, once built, will be ''transformative,'' said Lyn Henley, a Topanga, Calif., exhibition designer whose past projects include the ''Trail of Tears'' display at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Okla. ''I think people who visit the museum will leave it changed. Any time you look at slavery, you're looking at the dark side of humanity, our evil side. To look at that and see how people have overcome it is inspirational.''
The exhibition is designed to start with an African village, showing how people lived before they were enslaved. To evoke families being torn apart, ''we're going to separate families a little bit,'' and museum passageways will narrow to symbolize the loss of freedom, Ms. Henley said. The shipboard experience will be captured by firsthand accounts.
The upper level will depict the arrival of enslaved Africans on American shores. Among the exhibitions, Ms. Henley said, will be documents ''of the founding fathers and the slaves they held, and the slaves that they held in their arms or raped.''
Displays will also demonstrate how slaves maintained their religion, communities and family ties ''even when family members were sold away, even at great personal risk,'' Ms. Henley said.
The story will continue through the Civil War and end with a legacy section that features a theatrical presentation and artifacts showing the persistence of racial stereotyping in America. ''The theme,'' Ms. Henley said, ''is, 'We are one people.' Moral rules need to apply to everyone.''
Mr. Wilder chose Mr. Pei to design the museum after he expressed interest in the project. ''He let me know he wasn't looking for some kind of derivative design that would speak about the horror of slavery,'' Mr. Pei said, ''but wanted something that was forward-looking.''
Mr. Pei's solution is a Modernist style structure: roughly speaking, a split cube with the two halves joined asymmetrically by a glass atrium. In the atrium will be a replica of a slave ship.
Despite the museum's promise to conclude visits on an uplifting note, Mr. Wilder said that resistance to the subject remained strong. ''More whites are interested in it,'' he said. ''They know that it's a story that needs to be told.'' But within the African-American community, he said he found ''a subliminal resistance -- not spoken, it's not articulated. It's an uncomfortable thing.''
Ms. Foster said that about three-quarters of the corporations she had approached had declined to donate. ''You know, slavery is not a touchy-feely topic,'' she said. ''People are a little nervous about it. My pitch is that this is simply American history.''
Corporations that have responded most generously are Philip Morris USA, based in Richmond, which has given $250,000; Wachovia Corporation, which has given $100,000 to the museum's educational program; and SunTrust Banks, which gave $60,000.
Georgette Dixon, senior vice president and manager of national partnerships for the Wachovia Foundation, said that Wachovia, which in 2005 apologized for its ties to the slave economy, was ''committed to promoting and preserving African-American history.'' As for other corporations, Ms. Dixon added, ''they just have to look at what their priorities are and determine where this fits within their priorities.''
Mr. Wilder said that his project would be the first American museum to treat slavery in such depth. But he added that the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open on the National Mall in 2015 and also covering slavery, has been an obvious rival for money and attention.
That museum's council includes Oprah Winfrey; the music producer Quincy Jones; Robert L. Johnson, chief executive of Black Entertainment Television; and Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express.
''We ran into considerable opposition from the people who wanted to construct the thing on the Mall in Washington,'' Mr. Wildersaid. ''There were people who felt that if we were to get started we'd be asking for federal money, which we will be and we have.'' He added that backers of the Washington museum said: '' 'Don't give it to them -- give it to us.' ''
Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the Mall museum, said: ''I have no idea about what he's talking about. I know I and my staff have been extremely supportive of the work that Doug Wilder is doing, and in my mind I'm not in competition at all.''
Because of its Smithsonian affiliation and Mall location, Mr. Bunch said that his institution would have greater visibility. ''That doesn't mean that people who support me think that what Doug Wilder is doing isn't important,'' he said. But he added that ''it's always hard to raise money when you're exploring subjects that sometimes are considered difficult.''
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and majority whip, calls Mr. Wilder's project ''a great concept -- if that's what you want to do.'' Mr. Clyburn, chairman of the board of another new museum, the International African American Museum, said that his museum, to be built in Charleston, would explore the achievements of South Carolina blacks, slave and free.
''You have to be very careful that you don't play into people's prejudices,'' Mr. Clyburn said. ''If you're going to be a slavery museum, I think it can be done in a way that doesn't celebrate it as an institution but deals with it as a historical fact that nobody should run away from, and no descendant should be ashamed of. It's the country that ought to be ashamed.''
Gerald A. Foster, the United States National Slavery Museum's scholar in residence, said that the Fredericksburg museum was ''not interested in casting blame, or asking for reparations,'' but rather in telling ''a more comprehensive story of one of the most neglected chapters in American history.''
Mr. Wilder said the museum had already wasted too much time and money holding academic conferences to discuss its contents and making ''all this fuss about what's in it, what's not in it.'' Having something concrete to show donors, like a visitor center, will break the fund-raising logjam, he is convinced. ''I'm not worried about anything other than the need for us to move past where we are and get something to come up out of the ground,'' he said.
Mr. Wilder also said he would spend time this spring, with Mr. Cosby and other museum supporters, wresting money from corporate leaders. He said he would look them in the face and say: ''O.K., now you know the deal. Now, I came for the check.''
