International Black History Museum Opens At Former Slave Port

The International African American Museum was privately dedicated Saturday in downtown Charleston, according to a local news report.

The reportedly well-attended event featured community members as well as local and national leaders, according to the WCSC news. The South Carolina museum stands on the grounds of Gadsden’s Wharf, the same place where about 100,000 Africans were once delivered and enslaved. The $120 million, 150,000-square-foot (14,000-square-meter), nine-gallery edifice contains exhibits and artifacts exploring how the labor, perseverance, resistance and cultures of African Americans shaped the Carolinas, the United States and the world, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama joined in with a video message, according to the WCSC news report. “It’s a powerful museum, one that every American can learn something from. It’s an important part of our collective history,” Mr. Obama said. Mrs. Obama, in her remarks, said the “museum will paint a bigger, broader, more complex picture of where we’ve come from and who we are as a nation today.” (RELATED: Unknown Dinosaur Fossil Discovered In Museum’s Archives)

“We are here to honor the untold story of the African American people. The challenge with trying to bury a story,

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