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Jackson: Visit with history that's worth the wait

Waiting in line on the National Mall for free tickets to be distributed to get inside the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, I became despondent. What if we didn't get in?

Waiting in line on the National Mall for free tickets to be distributed to get inside the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, I became despondent. What if we didn't get in? That possibility was raised by a security guard as she walked down a line of more than 300 people waiting for timed admission tickets to be passed out at 9 a.m. Some had been waiting since 5 o'clock.We had driven to Washington the day before to meet my son and his wife, Dennis and Andrea, who flew in from Houston. Our agenda included only two items: to see each other and the museum. My son volunteered to get up early and save us a spot in line. He arrived around 6 a.m. We got there from our hotel shortly after 8. There were about 60 people ahead of us. "You might not get in," said the guard.

That danger has existed ever since the museum officially opened on Sept. 24. It's free to get in, but tickets are distributed for crowd control. More than 100,000 visited the museum in its first 10 days, and more than 700,000 tickets for admission through Dec. 31 have been distributed, many of them online. That leaves precious few for poor souls like us who wait in line for leftovers.

We got tickets. But only about a half dozen others behind us in the long line were as lucky. Hundreds were turned away empty-handed. Many milled around, having been advised by the guard that sometimes families or groups with an extra ticket or two would give them away. Craving breakfast, we didn't stick around long enough to see if scalpers were taking advantage of the situation. But had we not gotten free tickets, I would have been willing to pay. We had come too far.

Our tickets said 2:30, but the official handing them out said we should come back at 1 p.m. So we did, and were promptly allowed in, which made us wonder why there were admission times. There was no limit on how long you could stay once inside. But there were lines there too. The longest line was for entry into the History Galleries, three underground levels with exhibits depicting the African American experience from slavery to modern times.

The first level has exhibits covering from 1400 to 1877, including slave revolt leader Nat Turner's Bible and a silk lace and linen shawl given to Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman by Queen Victoria. There were also the ramshackle remains of a slave cabin brought to the museum from South Carolina. Seeing small shackles made for a slave child made me think of my granddaughters.

I was more affected, though, by the second level of the History Galleries, which covered America from the end of Reconstruction to 1968. It included artifacts from my hometown, Birmingham, Ala., which was ground zero for much of the civil rights era. I've written about growing up when George Wallace was governor, Bull Connor was public safety commissioner, and segregation was the law of the land. The exhibits brought back memories of what I had experienced or heard about as a child.

There were shards of the stained-glass windows that were blown out when Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed in September 1963. Klansmen were retaliating because the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had won modest concessions from merchants with his integration marches that spring. Killed were four little girls, including 11-year-old Denise McNair, who attended my elementary school.

Just as moving was seeing the casket of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago youth who was murdered in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi for speaking to a white woman. Till's body was so mutilated that he was only identifiable by a ring he was wearing. His mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see what racists had done to her child.

The third level of the History Galleries looks at America from 1968 forward, which includes the Black Power movement that occurred when I was in high school and college. Artifacts associated with the Black Panthers, hip-hop culture, and the Obamas are also included in this gallery. There's even Radio Raheem's boombox, which blasted Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" in Spike Lee's 1989 movie Do the Right Thing.

The four upper levels of the museum include the Community Galleries, with exhibits depicting African American achievements in the military and sports; and the Culture Galleries, which explore artistic endeavors ranging from hair styling and culinary arts to musical expression and dance. An Explore More area includes an Explore Your Family History Center, but we were too tired to check it out.

The museum is still a work in progress. Some exhibits aren't complete. For example, a segregated railcar was waiting for its seats to be installed when we were there. But that only means the museum experience will get better. When it does, I hope its patrons become more diverse. I am happy that so many African Americans are making this pilgrimage, but I saw too few white faces. All Americans need to know this too-often neglected history.

Harold Jackson is editorial page editor for the Inquirer. hjackson@phillynews.com