Return to story

A clear vision of a murky past Lonnie Bunch working to tell story of his people, his nation

September 10, 2005 1:06 am

By PAMELA GOULD

WASHINGTON--Lonnie Bunch was sitting at Reagan National Airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago last month when a woman with a magazine walked up and stared.

She wanted to know if he was indeed the man she'd been reading about. When he acknowledged he was, she began loudly telling everyone nearby that he was famous.

The bearded and bespectacled Bunch said it was embarrassing, and quite an odd experience for someone whose chief interest has been writing about 19th-century history. But in his new role as founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, the 52-year-old New Jersey native knows a bit of celebrity could be an asset.

Bunch's job is to chart the vision for the new museum, find objects to tell its story and get enough government and private support to pay the $300 million to $400 million it is projected to cost.

His goal, he said during an interview this week in his temporary offices about two blocks from the National Mall, is to do it all within a decade.

As Bunch travels the country to raise awareness of the new museum, the vision he lays out is of a facility that speaks to all Americans.

"In some ways, this museum in Washington gets to do something very important," Bunch said in July when addressing the Association of African American Museums. "It can be a lens to help us all better understand what it means to be an American--to use African-American culture as that lens to understand the history of this country as well."

He said the museum has an opportunity to help visitors take a critical look at the nation and ask probing questions such as how the country is doing in living out the principles crafted by the Founding Fathers.

While reveling in the rich history of black American musicians, artists and dancers, the museum will also look at evils such as slavery and lynchings, and cases of quiet courage such as Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus.

"There will be stories in here of great pain, great tragedy, great brutality," Bunch said, "because you can't run away from that because those are instructive."

There also will be stories of people who achieved against the odds and people who maintained their dignity, their humor and their culture despite being deprived of their liberties.

Inside his seventh-floor office, Bunch has two things he said he can't do without in his work--his books and a black-and-white photograph of a former slave.

"I never go anywhere without her," he said.

The unknown woman stands in a field, a huge basket beneath her left arm, and a hoe--taller than herself--slung over her right shoulder.

Bunch found the photo in the Smithsonian's archives in the 1990s when he was curating an exhibit that dealt with slavery for the National Museum of American History.

He noticed that the woman's knuckles are swollen, her dress is tattered and she looks much older than her years.

"There's a weariness in her form and yet she still is going forward," he said. "As a historian, I really use the past to hopefully inspire other people, but it keeps me going as well."

The third week into his job, Bunch spoke before the Association of African American Museums, a group he said has been crucial to his success in the museum field and that he plans to call on in developing this new facility.

He explained that his idea is to make the effort a collaborative one through programming and traveling exhibits and by publicizing across the nation the facilities that deal with various aspects of the story his museum will tell.

The goal, he said, is to bring people into the Washington museum and send them out to the other facilities dotting the country.

That game plan was greeted with enthusiastic applause from the hundreds attending the annual conference of the AAAM.

With that strategy, Bunch said, he sees no conflict or competition with the U.S. National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg that organizers plan to open in October 2007. Though Bunch said the story of slavery will have "an important and central role" in the D.C. museum, he sees no problem having another facility devoted to the topic so close.

"It's like being a teacher," he said. "You can't have too much history.

"All the people who come to Washington may not come to Fredericksburg, so some redundancy is important."

But with that in mind, Bunch said, "It's important for this museum to have a good idea of the vision of others."

He said he hasn't heard from anyone connected to the Fredericksburg museum in quite a while, but said he'll call them if they don't call first.

Bunch spoke at the first symposium on the slavery museum, held at Howard University in March 2002. In May 2003 he hosted the next symposium, at the Chicago Historical Society, the museum where he served as president until accepting his current job.

Bunch said he doesn't want the stories in Washington and Fredericksburg to be identical, but thinks that can easily be avoided.

"I don't worry about overlap. I just want us to be as effective and efficient as we can be," he said. "I mean, how many Civil War battlefields are there?"

But Bunch is facing a challenge the slavery museum and others encounter--trying to find authentic period objects to display.

"If you don't have the artifacts, I think you give up the right to call yourself a national museum," he said.

One way Bunch can gain insight into the Fredericksburg project is through one of that museum's board members.

Noted historian John Hope Franklin serves on the slavery museum's board and is chairman of the Scholarly Advisory Committee being assembled for the Smithsonian's new venture.

That panel currently has five members--two historians, a legal scholar, an art historian and an anthropologist who is also a museum consultant. Bunch hopes to add another 10.

Their role will be to help shape the story the museum will tell. They're to begin meeting next month.

Another key issue to be resolved is where the museum will be built. Four sites in the nation's capital are being considered; President Bush has endorsed one on the National Mall.

Bunch knows picking a site is a sensitive decision, so he's planning to hold at least two town-hall-style meetings after getting a consultant's report on the four sites. The report is due in mid-October, and the museum's board of regents is expected to make a decision in January, he said.

In the meantime, Bunch has much to do--including putting a fundraising strategy into place--and plenty of weight resting on his shoulders.

At the AAAM conference, Bunch shared the statistics from a Smithsonian survey in the 1990s. It showed that 81 percent of white Americans felt slavery was irrelevant to them and that 62 percent of blacks either had little interest, were disappointed about it or were embarrassed.

"I'm not embarrassed by my slave ancestors," he told his colleagues. "I am in awe of their abilities."

Bunch researched his family history in the 1980s. He knows that ancestors on both sides of the family were slaves in North Carolina.

And he knows that a haggard woman in a photo on his wall reminds him of his grandmother.

So as the married father of two undertakes the greatest challenge of his career, he isn't concerned about the spotlight of celebrity, but about something that resonates more deeply.

"This is too important to fail, because it is holding a nation's--holding a people's--culture in my hands," Bunch said this week. "My litmus test will be, Would my ancestors be happy?"

To reach PAMELA GOULD: 540/735-1972pgould@freelancestar.com