Through the story of the beautiful coiled basket, the Freedom Center’s new exhibition, Grass Roots, demonstrates the enduring contribution of African people and culture to American life.

The exhibition opens on Feb. 10, 2009, in the Jack H. Skirball Gallery.  Featuring more than two hundred objects, including baskets made in Africa and the American South, African sculptures, paintings from the Charleston Renaissance, historic photography, and new video, the exhibition traces the history of the coiled basket on two continents and shows how a simple farm tool once used for processing rice has become a work of art and an important symbol of African-American identity.

This exhibition was organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, in cooperation with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, and the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Association.

Grass Roots is supported, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Getty Foundation (for the exhibition publication), the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and the MetLife Foundation. Funding for the video components of the exhibition has also been provided by The Henry and Sylvia Yaschik Foundation, South Carolina Humanities Council, and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

As a gift from Pampers, admission to the Freedom Center is free for each of the concert days.  Pre-booked groups are not eligible for the free admission.

Within the framework of the mission of the National Underground Railroad Center, the election of Barack Obama as the first person of color to be President of the United States is of surpassing historical importance.

For many citizens — whites as well as blacks — the election signals the healing of a long-festering wound in our national psyche: the wound of the legacy of slavery that for too long prevented African Americans from fully participating as equal members of society.   The promise of equality, as it emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War 143 years ago, was delayed, postponed and opposed until passage of landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s.  But even then, rights guaranteed in the law did not always or everywhere translate into full acceptance or acknowledgment.  While voters claimed that they had gotten “over race,” it was clear from the meager number of blacks elected to national office (only one African American U.S. Senator in the 20th Century) that the white majority, for whatever reason, could not or would not affirm the principle of racial equality.  Just how much of a struggle it has been for blacks in America to achieve equality is poignantly described in this New York Times article.

Today, with the nation grappling with two wars and confronting an economic crisis that is prompting fear of another Great Depression, voters have placed their confidence and trust in a man with an inspiring vision of hope and inclusion and a clear purpose to bring the nation together in common cause.  The parallel to another, now distant time, is worth remarking upon:  in 1861, with the United States in crisis, voters turned to a man with inspiring vision and clear purpose to prevent the nation from splitting apart.  Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois, became the nation’s 16th President and set in motion actions that not only changed the course of history, but opened the long, winding path that has now culminated in the election of an African American as President of the United States.

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There is much analysis and opinion online and in print about the meaning and significance of the Presidential election.  Tom Friedman’s column in the New York Times is especially relevant in the way he links Obama’s election to America’s long struggle with the vestiges of slavery.  Also, here’s an editorial from Galesburg, Illinois, about the symbolic meaning of Obama’s victory.

“Our nation’s racial wounds have not disappeared, but in one day — Nov. 4, 2008 — Americans put distance between the horrors and civil injustices that haunt our past.”  Tom Martin, Editor, Galesburg (IL) Register-Mail

We welcome your thoughts on this historic moment.  Please post your comments and thoughts about what this election means to you.

One of the exhibition's interactive games

Update:  Here’s the Cincinnati Enquirer’s quick take on the exhibit.

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War is an exhibition that appeals to everyone from school groups to Civil War history buffs and human rights scholars.

Please Note the Following Important Schedule Information: The Freedom Center is closed on Mondays and in addition, we also will be closed on the following Sundays while the Lincoln Exhibition is showing:

October 19, November 2, November 16 and November 30, December 14 and December 28.

The exhibit provides a succinct yet masterfully comprehensive review of Abraham Lincoln’s brief term as President.  It was a time fraught with unparalleled challenges, any one of which would have overwhelmed even the most capable of leaders. That Lincoln was able — with sheer determination and incomparable vision — to steer a course that brought the nation through a bitter civil war, preserved the Constitution, and set in motion the abolition of slavery is one of history’s watershed accomplishments.

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