Staying slavery museum's course
After 13 years, Wilder still raising money; weekend gala to help

BY KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Jun 2, 2006

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FREDERICKSBURG -- L. Douglas Wilder can remember as a boy asking about his grandparents, who were slaves.

"He would not talk about it," Wilder recalled of his father during a speech this year in Washington. "My mother would encourage him and said, 'Robert, tell him, please!' And he would bite down on his pipe, clench it and almost snap it in two. And he would tell a little, and a little, and I would ask for more."

Wilder, who rose to become the nation's first elected black governor, is pressing to build a museum in Fredericksburg that will tell the story of his grandparents and millions of others who suffered under the yoke of slavery in the United States.

It is a mission he first conceived during a trip to West Africa as governor of Virginia in the early 1990s. Tomorrow night, the journey takes him to the Warner Theatre in Washington for a black-tie gala fundraiser, featuring entertainers Bill Cosby and Ben Vereen, to benefit the United States National Slavery Museum.

. . .

Wilder was heading a trade and cultural delegation from Virginia when he visited Goree Island in Senegal in June 1992. While touring the island's slave house, where natives were held before being shipped from Africa, he came to a door of no return -- the place where slaves were loaded onto ships.

"The slaves look out into the ocean and see absolutely nothing. This is where they are finally to get on the ship and to leave that homeland forever," he said. "Our forebearers were shipped away from here never believing they should ever come back and could come back. And yet, here I'm coming back in spirit, representing them to the extent that I'm governor of the state that many of them were shipped to as slaves."

Wilder set about trying to plan a museum near Jamestown, the birthplace of the nation and the place where some historians say Virginia's first slaves stepped ashore. He formally announced plans for the museum during a visit to Africa in 1993.

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Wilder, however, was unsuccessful in securing his preferred site near Jamestown. He began looking elsewhere. In the spring of 2001, he announced that Fredericksburg was on a short list of potential sites.

Wilder said he had wanted to build the museum in Richmond, his hometown, but that the city showed lackluster interest. Then a friend, Fredericksburg real-estate developer Larry Silver, invited him to see a 38-acre parcel along the Rappahannock River. "I came up, half-hearted," Wilder recalled.

He was smitten with the tract. In October 2001, he announced Fredericksburg had won over other competing cities, including Richmond and Hampton.

Speculation that Wilder might choose to move the museum to Richmond has been a constant undercurrent since then, more so since he was elected Richmond's mayor. But he has repeatedly vowed the museum will be built in Fredericksburg.

The Times-Dispatch made repeated efforts to talk with Wilder about the National Slavery Museum. The public relations firm hired by the museum was unsuccessful in arranging an interview, despite requests from the newspaper starting in mid-May, and Wilder did not return phone calls this week, including yesterday. Wilder's comments in this article are from his Feb. 7 appearance at the National Press Club in Washington.

. . .

Some people have questioned building a museum of such national scope in Virginia, let alone near a commercial development in Fredericksburg.

In addition to slaves being shipped to Virginia in its earliest days as a colony, Wilder notes that four of the nation's first five presidents were slave owners. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, he said, Virginia had more slaves than any other state or colony.

"Everything happened in Virginia," he said.

He notes that Fredericksburg, which had a bustling slave trade of its own and was the site of major Civil War battles, is midway between the capital of the Confederacy and the nation's capital and Washington's bevy of tourists.

Some critics have wondered whether the museum is needed, particularly with the Smithsonian Institution planning the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Several other large museums that address slavery have been built in recent years around the country.

Vonita Foster, the U.S. National Slavery Museum's director, said yesterday that while other museums explore the broader scope of the black experience, "not one has a mission of telling the complete story of slavery."

Bethany Criss, a spokeswoman for America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, which opened in 1988, has a ready answer for those who question the emergence of museums exploring slavery.

"Are there enough art museums? People wouldn't necessarily question the existence of those other museums," Criss said. "The more museums there are to address this part of America's history, the better."

. . .

U.S. National Slavery Museum officials say they have more than $50 million in cash and pledges.

Construction of the 250,000-square-foot museum is estimated at $100 million. The building's design is an ambitious one, crafted by Chien Chung Pei, who helped his father, I.M. Pei, design the famed glass pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris. Pei's design for the slavery museum includes a full-size reproduction of a slave ship, which Wilder hopes will give visitors a better idea of the cramped quarters slaves endured on their voyages across the Atlantic. The museum also has amassed more than 5,000 artifacts and other items, including slave bills of sale, shackles and a bed believed to have been carved by a slave around 1840.

The opening date for the museum has been pushed back repeatedly. Wilder initially said he hoped to break ground in 2003 and open the museum in time for next year's commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. But only a ceremonial ground-breaking has been held; construction has not begun. Wilder concedes the museum probably will not be completed in 2007, as most recently envisioned, but he hopes a portion of it can be opened then.

The museum has turned to not only the entertainment circle but to corporate donors too. Wilder lists Wal-Mart, McDonald's and US Airways as companies that have pledged support.

Meanwhile, he has said it would be the right thing for other companies to give, especially those whose history includes involvement in the slave trade. He specifically mentioned JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia at the National Press Club; both banks have acknowledged their predecessor companies were involved in the trade of humans.

"All of these companies should seek participation in our campaign as enlightened self-interest," he said. "Not as a sense of reparation -- and I want to be as clear as I can be about that -- but as a sense of acknowledgement of doing what is right, doing the right thing."

The museum would no doubt be a significant part of Wilder's legacy. He says the museum is about creating an educational legacy for future generations, helping children and adults learn about the horrific nature of slavery and how people overcame it and succeeded.

"People were able to rise above what some said they could not do," he said. "Have we reached the point where we can afford to rest? The answer is no. We've got to keep moving."
Contact staff writer Kiran Krishnamurthy at kkrishnamurthy@timesdispatch.com or (540) 371-4792.
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