“You are not judged on the height you have risen, but from the depth which you have climbed.”  -- Frederick Douglass, 1881
 
The poignant contributions of black Americans in Maryland, from the state’s earliest history to the present, will be featured in a series of compelling exhibits inside a sparkling, state-of-the-art facility of black granite that spans 82,000 square feet -- the largest black history museum on the East Coast. 
    
On June 25, 2005, after 11 years of planning, the glass doors of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History and Culture will open to the public. The museum will be the state’s newest premier facility highlighting more than 400 years of history and accomplishments of Maryland’s black community.

Sandy Bellamy, the museum’s executive director, said the $30-million museum will offer a powerful testament to Maryland’s black experience through education, struggles and achievements through hardships.  
 

Photo provided by Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland

The museum will showcase a wealth of black history and the accomplishments from icons like Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery in Maryland, freed herself and played a major role in freeing millions of slaves, to contemporary heroes like Cathy Hughes, owner of the nation’s largest black-owned media company, and the late Reginald F. Lewis, a native of Maryland, who became the first African-American to own a Fortune 500 corporation, TLC Beatrice Foods International.
 
“Visitors will also get a good understanding of the plight of African-Americans through adversity,” Bellamy told BlackAmericaWeb.com.  “The museum focuses on achievements of African-Americans and the ideals of self-determination and entrepreneurship that are motivators for African-Americans today.”
 
The 82,000 square-foot facility will accommodate permanent and changing exhibition space; interactive learning environments, a two-story theater, an information resource center, an oral history listening and recording studio, a museum shop, a cafe, two classrooms (one of which will be a distance learning lab provided by Verizon Communications), meeting rooms, an outside terrace and reception areas.
 
The opening exhibit -- making its first mid-Atlantic debut -- will feature “A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie.” The slave ship is believed to be the world’s largest source of tangible objects from the early years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and one of the most significant archeological discoveries of the 20th century. The exhibit will run through January 2006.
 
The Henrietta Marie exhibit also features the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and their participation in the underwater exploration of the slave ship. The exhibit documents their ceremony at sea in 1993, when NABS members (including this writer) placed a one-ton concrete monument on the ocean floor near the slave-ship wreck to commemorate the African lives that were lost aboard the Henrietta Marie, and other slave ships that sailed the Middle Passage.    
 
The museum will provide a series of educational programs for both children and adults. Officials also established a partnership with the Maryland State Department of Education to develop a curriculum and teacher training to reach more than 850,000 students and 50,000 teachers. In June 2002, the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation awarded the museum a $5 million endowment to the Museum’s educational programs.
  
“Like no other museum in the nation, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum is an institution demonstrating the diversity of the African-American experience through stories, oral histories, exhibits and public programming,” George L. Russell, Jr., the museum’s chairman, said in a statement. “It will also celebrate those African-American Marylanders who, through their legacies, encourage future generations to keep reaching for their dreams no matter what.”
 
Located on Pratt Street near downtown Baltimore, the museum is minutes away from the famed Inner Harbor, the city’s flagship tourist destination.  
 
A resource center for visitors will also be available to learn about the black experience from the past to the present, both throughout Maryland and internationally. Learning stations with touch-screen computers, printers and Internet access will link guests to current and historical information.
 
Bellamy said the museum will also feature a hands-on, interactive children’s area. “We want kids to think big -- about engineering, building cities and building communities,” she said. 
 
For adults and young adults, Bellamy added, the museum will offer exhibits about black churches, poetry, politicians, business leaders and how blacks made a living on the Chesapeake Bay.
 
“Visitors can experience what it was like to dredge for oysters and caulk ships like Frederick Douglass,” she said. Douglass was also a native of Maryland.
 
The facility has received significant financial support from the State of Maryland, Peter G. Angelos, Comcast Corporation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the St. Paul Companies, Verizon Communications, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Whiting-Turner Contracting, among others. 
 
Over the years, donors presented the museum with many priceless, one-of-a-kind artifacts that document the history and culture of the black community.
 
“We have an exhibit on slavery,” Bellamy said, “but also we show how faith has enabled the black family to stay together through adversity.”
 
And there is a barber-shop exhibit, a staple in the black community, that depicts real-life conversations about politics and the black experience.
 
“We decided to begin the political discussion on a grass-roots level,” Bellamy said. “They can sit in the barber’s chair and listen to real discussions, real debates about crime in the black community, education, lack of jobs and how it impacts the quality of life for African Americans.”
 
Bellamy said other offerings will also feature exhibits about blacks in the military, the Harlem Renaissance, and black artists like Jacob Lawrence. Museum officials say they expect more than 300,000 visitors in the museum’s first year.
 
“The permanent exhibition,” Bellamy said, “will introduce visitors to Maryland’s rich heritage that will inspire both young and old, regardless of race, with a sense of understanding of the innovative contributions that African-Americans have given to our world.”