Experience History
With Time Travel Tours

Home Blog About us Contact us

Liberation to White House Tour

Time Travel Tour to the National Museum of African American History & Culture

The tour begins in the shadow of The National Museum of African American History & Culture whose three-tiered ornamental bronze-colored cast-aluminum lattice architecture, its African welcoming porch, and its exhibitions, combine to give you a first sense and spirit of Liberated Americans of African Descent.

This building stands as a milestone, one in a long line of such buildings tracing the advance of America towards embracing its destiny to build unity in diversity with justice and equality for all. 121 years ago in 1895, the "Negro Building" was built temporarily in Atlanta at the Cotton States and International Exposition, just 30 years after the end of 250 years of state sponsored kidnapping and imprisonment of Americans of African descent within industrial scale concentration camps. On the Exposition's "Negro Day," on December 26 1895, to nearly 5000 Americans, Rev. J. W. E. Bowen famously gave his "Appeal to the King." In this very modern sounding oration he described not only the significance of these magnificently housed milestones, but also to where they direct our collective gaze.

"The erection and equipment of the Negro building; the Negro's place of usefulness and honor, in this most notable of southern expositions and the general satisfaction expressed with his accomplishments are all additional marks of unpreceived but positive changes in society...With regard to the Negro's place in American life, it was formerly stated that he was only fit for servitude...The Negro's place will be what he makes for himself, just as the place of every people is what that people makes for itself, and he will be no exception to the rule...These simple results that may be seen in the Negro building are from a people just thirty years in freedom. They represent many spheres of labor and enterprise and show what may be accomplished under a more perfect system of life and labor. They show, moreover, that the Negro has been an apt and faithful student of his teachers in the mechanism of his skill as well as in the intellectual product of his brain...The Negro's present days of infancy and of small beginnings are no criterion to measure his future by. The depths from which he has come and the obstacles surrounding him must be remembered when expressing judgment of him...To understand the rapid strides that the Negro has taken one must know the pit from which he was digged, and the rock form which he was hewn" - Rev. Bowen

This tour seeks to provide you with that knowledge to understand this achievement, this milestone museum. To travel back through time to the pit itself, and to witness firsthand the death blows given to those manacles of monstrous horror and racism from which we continue to work towards reconciliation from. Rev. Bowen heralded a new class of Americans of African Descent who would separate themselves from their enslaved past, ushering in a culture of arts, educations and ownership, setting out a broad vision for the “New Negro” leading directly to the Harlem Renaissance which gave birth to the 1907 African American designed, built and paid for "Negro Building" at the Jamestown Exposition, and thereafter the 1915 collective efforts of the 218,000 African Descent American veterans of the Civil War who envisioned and began the collection of funds to build this present building. Their National Memorial Association represented apart of the National Negro Renaissance which was led at the time by Washington DC's Dr. Alain Locke who demanded recognition of a high level of African Descent American culture even as the War Veteran's themselves were denied the honor of marching down pennsylvania Ave on the 50th anniversary of their victorious war over their enslavers. These buildings imply an outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices of the enslavement continuation laws which were enacted to maintain key components of the vile injustices which large segments of America worked to foster.

African American communities and individuals across the nation participated in 2008 during the museum's 'Save Our African American Treasures' program which toured the country. These early meetings resulted in the museum gaining access to incredible artifacts of the Liberation to White House Tour, including the Shawl and Hymnal of Harriet Tubman and the Bible of Nat Turner to name just a few.

As we prepare to visit the places and times when those artifacts became historic, turn your gaze to the buildings immediate north where the White House which held an August 10 1863 meeting of President Lincoln and a self-liberated American of African Descent Mr. Frederick Douglass. The topics were serious, the unequal pay of African Descent American soldiers, the excecution and reenslavement of captured African Descent soldiers. Lincoln began with the claim that “the employment of colored troops … could not have been successfully adopted at the beginning of the war.” Although the wisdom of enlisting colored troops was still untested and was a “serious offense” to popular prejudice, the president argued, colored troops “had larger motives for being soldiers than white men” and “ought to be willing to enter the service upon any condition.” The fact that they received lower pay was a “necessary concession to smooth the way” and one that would ultimately be corrected. Following the meeting Douglass returned to recruiting for the Union Army which helped lead the Union Army to victory and liberate 4 million Americans from enslavement.

Mrs. Harriet Tubman will invite you to come visit her Eastern Shore Maryland birthplace and where and how she escaped from enslavement there and helped almost a hundred others do the same. During the war many of those who could not escape prior, joined the Union Army to liberate their family members who had been sold south, and one of their Captains, Wallace A. Bartlett, of Company I of the 19th USCT will also join us on this journey. This time travel will take us from the Eastern shore Douglas escaped from to President Barak Obama's return to that same White Houe room on the opposite side of the desk from which Frederick sat. This is a journey to witness the liberation, the self-emancipation, the enlistment in the Army of Americans of African Descent and how that experience contributes to the heroic battles which remain.