Reflection on The Reginald F Lewis Museum The Reginald F Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture that is in Baltimore city, was opened in 2005 and it devoted to the struggles and hardships that African-Americans of Maryland had been through. The museum is filed with quotes and saying that gave me a small hint of how it might have felt to be an African American at that time and place.
And as I wandered around the galleries, I was presented with how race, ethnicity, biological features and even gender played a role in huge discrimination and mistreating of African American. The first gallery was mostly presenting how African-Americans had strong self-determination to rebuild what they have lost in almost 200 years of slavery. From families to even businesses and communities. And the last gallery focused about the ancient cultural traditions and skills in music, art, dance, sculpture, storytelling and literature that was brought by African slaves. The second gallery is called “Discover The Labor That Built a Nation in Building Maryland, Building America”. It was presenting who the labors that were taught to African-Americans through slavery is now being used as skills to build a better life for the African-Americans in this nation.
Slavery impacted on the economy by working for plantation owners in the south. And thus the numbers of slaves were fast increasing because of the rise of King Cotton in the lower south. and also because of the increase in the tobacco markets. Racism and mistreating was also toward others at that time. For example, kids where taught that brown eyed people are inferior to blue eyed people even if they were still called whites. The social functional approach was mostly used at that time when it comes to African-Americans.
Even after they become free from slavery, they were continued to be mistreated. They were a huge impact on the economic and sociologic world. Since they were the workers and they were also the ones who organized their own organizations at that time. In conclusion, this museum presented slavery from different approaches and even showed that mistreatment was something that even the whites themselves had experienced. Yet it if a fact that no matter how much mistreatment people had encountered, it was not close to what African-Americans had felt.
