(VNF) - More than 100 years after it was originally proposed, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is opening its doors in Washington, D.C.

President Barack Obama speaks during the dedication ceremony for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

US President Obama and his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, opened the new museum on the National Mall on September 24^th by ringing a bell from a historic African American church with help from the Bonner family, the eldest of whom, Ruth Bonner, was the daughter of a man born a slave in Mississippi.

The USD 540 million Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is the only one of its kind in the country, exclusively dedicated to black American history.

"We are not a burden on America, or an object of shame and pity for America," Obama, the first black US president, said at the opening ceremony on Saturday.

"We are America."

He also said the museum will give people "a better understanding of themselves" by teaching them about others - slaves, the poor, black activists, teachers.

"A clear-eyed view of history can make us uncomfortable. It will shake us out of familiar narratives. It is precisely because of that discomfort that we learn and grow and harness our collective power to make this nation more perfect. That's the American story that this museum tells. One of suffering and delight. One of fear but also of hope," Obama said.

The push for the museum began in 1915 with African American civil war veterans looking for a way to commemorate America's black experience.

Former President George W Bush signed the law authorizing the construction in 2003.

The Obamas and Bushes watches as a choir performed the US national anthem. (Photo: EPA)

Bush also spoke at the opening ceremony and said the museum will inspire the nation to "go further and get there faster" on its journey towards justice.

Bush said a great nation does not hide from its history, "it faces its flaws and corrects them".

Former President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who cosponsored legislation authorizing the museum, were present at the ceremony.

The museum contains 36,000 items, from trade goods used to buy slaves in Africa to a segregated railway car from the 1920s and a red Cadillac convertible belonging to Rock’n’Roll pioneer Chuck Berry.

The artefacts are grouped in 12 inaugural exhibits organized into three sections: history, community and culture.

Highlights include the dress Rosa Parks was sewing before she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus, abolitionist Harriet Tubman's hymn book, an USD 600 bill of sale for a teenage girl called Polly, and the coffin of Emmett Till, a teenager whose brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 mobilized the Civil Rights Movement.

The building was designed by British architect David Adjaye.

Source: 360nobs.com

Minh Phuong