[Posted Nov. 30, 2007]

Slow Fundraising Does Not Deter Slave Museum Planners

Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal & Guide
 
       Ten years and eight months after the United States National Slavery Museum (USNSM) was incorporated into a non-profit organization, raising the money to make the facility a reality has been slow and construction has not yet begun.
       As of today, according to a spokesman for the organization founded by former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, only $50 million of the $180 million needed to build the 318,000 square foot facility has been collected. Once built, the  USNSM will set on a 38-acre site on the  Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, in Northern Virginia.
       “Fundraising has been slow and we think it is the state of the economy and all of the other organizations who are competing for a shrinking number of dollars,” said  Matt Langan, the official spokesperson for the museum.  "But  enough money has been raised to begin constructing  the first phase of the project by this time next year.”
       According to Langan, the construction of the USNSM will come in three phases. The first phase which is worth some $10 million will be the 2500 square feet visitors center. Second will be the 160,000 square feet  exhibition hall.  It will house 20 permanent exhibits as well as temporary exhibition space spanning the chronology of slavery from ancient Africa to the 20th century.  It will be built at a cost of $55 million
        Langan said the  final stage will be the  education building and atrium.

       It will cost some $115 million, this 155,000 square foot portion of the facility will  be the home for the “Center of Learning” which will provide educators, scholars and the general public the opportunity  to more fully explore elements of the exhibits and narratives about slavery.
       One of the  signature features of the USNSM, will be a well-lighted replica of a slave ship which will be seen from the river and nearby I-95.

       During the final year of his tenure as the nation’s first black governor, Wilder, in 1993, first proposed the USNSM. Wilder, who is now mayor of Richmond, envisioned the USNSM as being the  only institution of its kind in North America "to devote its mission exclusively to the complex issue of slavery and its social, economic and political dimensions,” according to Langan.    
    “There are a number of other distinguished  museums which depict various components of black history,” said Langan. "But we are the only one which has the specific mission of looking at slavery.  We  want to enlighten people about the history and the dimensions of slavery not only in the United States, but worldwide.”
       Langan said that while Wilder spearheaded the museum's fundraising effort, his mayoral duties have not totally sidetracked his fund raising efforts.
      Wilder  has sought donations not only from corporate coffers, but individuals and philanthropic organizations.
      Celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby have also gotten involved. Two years ago, Cosby suggested that each American should donate $8 symbolic of the design of the shackles which held restrained black slaves in the bowels of slave ships which criss-crossed the Atlantic and Caribbean delivering  their precious cargo.
       “Not only is the mayor  working every day to raise the money we need, but the staff and associates are out here every day,” Langan said.  "As the time goes, one feels comfortable that money will  be rolling in at a steady pace when the new year begins.”
       Slavery, Langan said,  is identified as one of the most  controversial and  emotionally disturbing aspects of American history.
       But slavery  had its footprints on most of the world's continents. In Africa,  men and women were enslaved as spoils of war and traded as free sources of labor to allied tribes of the victors.
       The Portuguese  upon conquering warring factions in Central Africa started the slave trade to the Americas.
         Jamestown, the first British Colony in North America, was initially comprised of Africans who were not slaves, but indentured servants.
Approximately 12 million black Africans were shipped to the Americas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Of these, 5.4 percent (645,000) were brought to what is now the United States. The slave population in the U.S. had grown to 4 million by the 1860 Census.

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