I’ve visited quite a few historic sites in my travels, but as impressive and important as they were, none spoke to me with quite the intensity expected. I must confess I’m not a big history buff so my excitement is somewhat limited. So I’ve decided to focus on something closer to home and to the issues of the day. I am sharing photos I took at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C. The museum opened in September of 2016, several years after we left D.C. to Los Angeles. But we got to visit it in 2017 during our first visit to D.C. since moving. Everybody had been raving about it and it lived up to all the built up expectations. It’s not only an architectural wonder, the exhibitions are impressive and all done with such sensitivity and good taste! Their photo and video collections are out of this world. You start your self-guided tour on the ground level and work your way through history, floor by floor. I’m only sharing photos of the historic part of the museum, which looks at African American history from slavery to the struggles of the civil rights movement and more recent events. The images are very powerful and beautiful. This part of American history is still especially relevant now, given the racial divide Americans have been witnessing in the past couple of years.

For Patti Moed’s Lens-Artists Challenge: History