Afro-American Museum for City

Over 100 members of Detroit’s Negro population have banded together to form an Afro-American Museum.

Headed by Dr. Charles H. Wright, founder of the African Medical Education Fund, the group is united in a common interest of Black Men in history. The International Afro-American Museum (I.A.M.) hopes to demonstrate how a knowledge of Negro history will restore a sense of pride and dignity to all black Americans.

The chief concern of I.A.M. is the racist dogma used to justify slavery in the New World that proceeded to set the black man apart from the human race. It painted a distorted and false image of the African World, one of jungle slavery, ignorance, brutality and superstition. It portrayed the Negro as an inferior being who contributed little or nothing to history or to human culture.

Historians and others who should have known better, have done nothing to erase this image. As the Negro went from slavery to second class citizenship, he became an invisible man. In schoolrooms, churches, and in the popular press, Negro and white America have not been told the truth about the contributions of Black men to the New World.

The new museum will work at giving Negroes a proper historical identity and sense of pride of being descendants of African peoples.

Afro-American exhibits will include panoramic displays of true-to-life scenes, paintings, sculpture, murals, photographs, and maps. On display will be artifacts that were a part of outstanding events of American history--the chains, and shackles of the slave ships, clothing, ornaments and furniture.

Since history books overlook the fact that the Africans brought to America farmers and craftsmen, the museum will also exhibit the woodworking, tanning and metal-work of the slaves.

Lectures, plays and a mobile unit of art exhibits will take up much of the Museum’s agenda. Membership is open to public subscription and school age children will be able to receive full membership for as little as five or ten cents.

Because the theme around the museum and cultural center is freedom, I.A.M. invites the white community to support and participate in its efforts. Freedom from ignorance is the goal and Detroit can use some of it.