Brownback just mentioned that he would make sure the African American history museum gets built on the mall.
As a reminder: Calvin Coolidge signed legislation creating a black history musem his last day in office. That was March 4, 1929. Malcolm X was almost 4 years old. Martin Luther King, Jr., was two months old. The museum still hasn't been built.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect this museum is a rope-a-dope...
If the first person who thought of this idea of a black museum had put $50 in the bank every year after the idea was first proposed in 1915, in 1928 when the legislation passed Congress or in 1929 when Coolidge signed it, the interest in 78 years would have been enough to pay for the museum without a dime of government money.
I'm not opposed to the museum, by the way. But the reality is that the museum would be get built faster if it were a Jazz Museum. There won't be any of the drama about how much to highlight slavery or white guilt; it would highlight a great part of black history; and it would still give off the lovely fuzziness that a museum on African American history supposedly would.
CJL
