On Second Thought For Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The​ ​past​ ​and​ ​the​ ​present​ ​were​ ​featured​ ​in​ ​the​ ​September issue​ ​of​ ​Smithsonian​ ​Magazine.​ ​That​ ​issue​ ​is​ ​called​ ​"Black in​ ​America."​ ​The​ ​magazine’s​ ​release​ ​coincided​ ​with​ ​the opening​ ​of​ ​the​ ​new​ ​National​ ​Museum​ ​of​ ​African​ ​American History​ ​and​ ​Culture​ ​in​ ​Washington,​ ​D.C.​ ​We​ ​talked​​ ​with​​ ​Editor-in-Chief Michael​ ​Caruso about ​how​ ​they​ ​chose what​ ​to​ ​include​ ​and​ ​what​ ​to​ ​leave​ ​out.

It’s been more than 50 years since a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The predominantly African-American congregation was preparing for Sunday service. Four girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley -- were killed in the explosion. Many other people were hurt. The bombing served as the inspiration for Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey's poem, "We Have Seen." It was featured in the September issue of Smithsonian Magazine. 

Georgia Congressman John Lewis had pushed for this museum for years. His story as one of the original Freedom Riders is included in Magazine's "Black in America" issue. The Freedom Riders included more than a dozen civil rights activists who traveled to Mississippi and Alabama to fight segregation on transit systems. We talked with Congressman Lewis about the third and final installment of his graphic novel series, "March," that deals with those days.

While John Lewis stood up to the oppression in the Jim Crow South, others fled to different parts of the country. By 1970, around six million blacks had made the trip. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson of Atlanta writes about this mass exodus in the September issue of Smithsonian Magazine. She explained where the Great Migration fits into the larger landscape of African American history.

The creation of a museum isn't always easy. Author Tonya Bolden documented the process in her book "How to Build a Museum.” We talked with her, Clark Atlanta University professor Daniel Black, and Smithsonian Magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael Caruso, about why it took about a century to build this museum.