#captital

Recently, I traveled to the African American history museum in Washington D.C.

My parents are on a vacation so I decided to take a little action of my own and drive down to D.C. After all, why should they have all the fun while I’m stuck at home house sitting. 

After driving at least four to five hours, underestimating D.C Traffic, and getting super scammed at a Georgetown parking garage I made my way across town and began my hour walk to the Washington Monument where the Museum lies in Tandem. I’ll be giving a break rundown of my journey before I can describe my thoughts on the museum. 

The first thing I notice about D.C is the layout. D.C has a lot of green space and it’s spaced out pretty well. There’s a lot of public spaces to sit down and rest in and this creates a lot of roundabouts, which if you aren’t a D.C or Boston you have no idea how to deal with them. 

The second thing I noticed about D.C. is the way the buildings are designed. D.C. has a very ‘modern’ look to it and the buildings have a very uniform-like neatness to them. I can’t really compare the city to any of cities I’ve been to because those cities are much larger in square footage. The buildings all seemed to be offices and very utilitarian in design. D.C. also has a refreshing lack of skyscrapers so you never feel to claustrophobic.

The third thing about D.C I noticed is that the people have a very uniform look to them. D.C is the nations capital so there’s a strong sense of professionalism in the city. The people who live and work around D.C proper have a sense ambition to them and it seems to lend itself to the type of people who are interested in expanding their social circles and people who are interested in furthering their own careers instead of making genuine connections. I don’t think I’d live in D.C for an extended period of time because it again, it seems like a city that’s very clique-ish. 

Now that I’m finished talking about my initial thoughts of the city I can talk about the museum.

First of all the museum is huge. I didn’t have any real estimate on how long I was going to spend but I ended up staying about three hours because there was so much to learn about and explore 

The museum really covers most aspects of African American history. Aspects like slavery and civil rights are covered but the museum also focuses on entertainment and sports. There’s also exhibits to parts of African American culture/history like African Americans in the military of black businesses. Seeing a dedication to the African Americans who fought in wars and some of their commendations. It really makes you value their sacrifices when you get physical evidence of what they did and tried to do.

I liked how the museum put an emphasis on Hip Hop and rap and explained it’s important use as an outlet for disfranchisement inner city youth. The exhibit also has a Walkman which I thought it was interesting/funny. The exhibit also highlighted how badly redlining and other processes hurt African Americans.

 The museum has a ‘class’ where you can use websites to track your genealogy which was super important because it confirms my ancestry being traced to Slavery. I think being able to track where your grandparents lived is super important and makes you value the opportunities you have and the opportunities they didn’t have.