The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t take any more. I was emotionally exhausted. On overload. Spent. In need of a break.

Still, I want to go back.

I want to keep understanding. I want to keep learning. I want to better understand. I want to never forget. I want to never repeat the wrongs.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., sent me on this roller coaster of emotions. This museum opened in September 2016 on the National Mall; another incredible Smithsonian.

Stephanie and I started our visit last month with the special exhibit In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World, which closes June 8.

A lunch counter of sorts, bottom left, lets people choose from a menu of movements to participate in, asking questions that show how you may have participated. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

The museum’s website says, “(This) is a global curatorial project that explores, interrogates, and reframes the histories and legacies of slavery, colonialism, and freedom on an international scale. The project grew out of decade-long collaboration between international curators, scholars, and community members working to tell stories of slavery and colonialism in public spaces.”

While I knew the United States wasn’t the only country enslaving humans, the international aspect of the exhibit clarified the global horrors.

“Colonialism and racial slavery did not just create wealth for individual slave traders and enslavers. Entire industries, nations, and institutions profited,” a panel explains. “This exploitative wealth gained from colonial expansion and enslaved labor set the uneven foundations of capitalism and the class and racial hierarchy of the modern world.”

We raped the people and the land. It’s estimated that “90 percent of African cultural artifacts reside outside of the continent.”

Much of the United States was built by slave labor—not just Africans.

“Enslaved African Americans, leased out by their slave owners, mined sandstone from local quarries and built the United States Capitol, the White House, and the Smithsonian Castle. Congress, the institution that guarded the people’s freedom, held sessions in a building constructed by forced labor. Americans witnessed the daily march of shackled slaves sold south in the capital city,” the exhibit says.

This special exhibit was thought-provoking by itself.

This quote from Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is worth remembering and embracing. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Then we embarked on seeing most of the rest of the museum.

“… galleries explore the lives and stories of African Americans from their earliest days on the continent, from the harsh realities of slavery and its impact on our culture to the Civil War and Reconstruction, the era of segregation, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the present day,” a brochure says.

It was disturbing to walk through a train car with Whites Only and Colored Only sections. The price of a ticket was the same, but the accommodations were not.

No photos could be taken in the Emmett Till exhibit. Here lies the original glass-topped casket that held the body of the battered 14-year-old. This was so powerful, so gut-wrenching.

A Smithsonian press release from August 2009 says, “The body was exhumed for an autopsy in 2005 during another criminal investigation into his murder, and Till was reburied in another coffin. The glass-topped coffin was found in poor condition in a storage shed on the cemetery grounds during a police search last month, following the arrest of cemetery employees accused of digging up more than 300 graves and reselling the plots. Till’s plot was undisturbed.”

Around every corner is something to learn. A few hours were not enough.