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Home > News > World News > Article > Barack Obama throws open first Black American museum

Barack Obama throws open first Black American museum

Updated on: 26 September,2016 08:11 AM IST  | 
Agencies |

Amidst racial strife over police shootings of African-American men, President Barack Obama dedicated a sprawling museum devoted to black history, saying it will help to tell the world “a richer and fuller story of who we are”

Barack Obama throws open first Black American museum

First lady Michelle Obama hugs former President George W Bush, in an image that has since gone viral. Pic/AP
First lady Michelle Obama hugs former President George W Bush, in an image that has since gone viral. Pic/AP


Washington: Amidst racial strife over police shootings of African-American men, President Barack Obama dedicated a sprawling museum devoted to black history, saying it will help to tell the world “a richer and fuller story of who we are”.


Opening the Smithsonian Institution’s first national museum about African-American history here yesterday, Obama, the first African-American president, said that the new museum elevates the often-overlooked impact of black Americans.


Drawing on key figures and moments in history, from slavery through to present day protests over police shootings of African-American men, Obama said, “By knowing this other story we better understand ourselves and each other. It reaffirms that all of us are America, that African-American history is not separate from our larger American story.”

The opening ceremony for the museum also was attended by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, former Presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The effort to bring the museum to life was finally set in motion in 2003 when Bush signed a bill creating it. Ground was broken in February 2012.

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