Source: Christopher Polk / Getty
Oprah Winfrey was on the CBS This Morning to discuss the new National Museumof African American History and Culture that will officially open on September 24th in Washington D.C.
She’s not just a bystander who’s gleaming with pride, she’s also a member of the museum’s council and Oprah was telling CBS, “It’s just moving and profound,” Winfrey said. “I’m actually a dancing emoji today, a dancing emoji. I’m so happy!”
Oprah was one of the people who pushed for the museum since 2004 after former President George W. Bush signed a bipartisan legislation that got the project started.
She tells us how excited she was when she did a walk-thru inside the museum, “literally doing everything I could to hold myself together” and she even quote Maya Angelou by saying, ‘I come as one but I stand as ten thousand.'”
She considers the museum as something moving too and she said it’s like the, “poem actually has its own voice through the museum because the tens and thens antennas of thousands of people who represent the culture of African-American history are represented in this museum.”
The museum has captured 487 quotes of words that were once spoken by a variety of people and one was done by Ida B. Wells. Ida B. Wells was known for being a journalist, newspaper editor, an early leader for the Civil Rights Movement… she was one of the founders for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People aka NAACP in 1909.
They captured her quote: “The way to high wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
“I mean, I could start crying right now,” Winfrey said. “Walking through the museum is like touching the face of the past that has allowed you to be who you are. And I just think that for all of America, this helps elevate the narrative of African Americans’ contribution to our country.”
Oprah called the museum, “America’s museum,” saying that it’s because it wouldn’t have come about without contributions of the ones who donated and the $270 million funded by Congress too.
“Wonderful story about this is, of course there were large donors, but it’s the $25 and the $100 and the $15 and Alfred Street Baptist Church- which came together and gave a million dollars through all of their members- that makes this really America’s museum,” Oprah said.
We can add Oprah to that list of donating individuals too because Oprah also donated money, she donated $20 million to the museum. The museum has named a theater the “Oprah Winfrey Theater” which she said that she had hopes that it would be “the place for common discourse and conversation that elevates who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going as a people, as a culture, as a nation.”
“When I think about the kids of conversations and concerts and art exposure that will happen in that theater, it makes me proud,” she said.
The museum has many upcoming events like the one that they have on Saturday, September 24, 2016.
They will have a concert, Hip-Hop, funk and rock by Living Colour, Public Enemy and The Roots.
VIA:CBSNEWS
