Hitler is an easy enemy; Saddam was an apt nemesis. Drawing attention away from slavery allows Americans to feel smugly superior. Nothing like that could happen in the land of the free, home of the brave. Americans are deluded into thinking that nothing evil has happened on our time. A slavery museum will force Americans to take responsibility for a slave trade it perpetuated and for a plantation economy it profited from. Remembering slavery is therefore a frightening and controversial prospect for many Americans. It is easier to point the fingers where others went wrong than it is to face the darkness within our own past. The memory museum reminds visitors that slavery was not limited to the plantation; it was a way of thinking that in many ways persists till this day. For instance, exploiting human beings for economic expediency appears to be a capitalistic norm in our country. Slavery still exists today in the income disparity between the wealthiest and poorest Americans. The association between race and poverty can also be traced to slavery and these are the issues that a memory museum can address frankly. No memory museum of slavery would be complete without an explication of African-American history, which is sorely lacking from public school curricula.

School children learn more about Booker T. Washington than about W.E.B. DuBois. The memory museum changes...

Slavery did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation. The museum will erase this myth by showing how the children and grandchildren of slaves were prevented from participating in American political and economic life to the same extent as whites. Even in the so-called free states, racism prevented blacks from being treated like human beings. The museum addresses these facts through a fascinating and interactive exhibit that includes photographs as well as historical documents.
It is time America admits its wrongdoing fully. As Sontag suggests, the memory museum must "acknowledge that the evil was there." In Germany, state-of -- the art museums testify to the traumas of the Holocaust; America needs to acknowledge our own sordid past through similar establishments. A memory museum serves several functions: preventing collective memory loss, creating a richer and more accurate historiography, and encouraging collective action. In this sense, museums serve social and political functions and also change the collective consciousness of America. A slavery memory museum is like a living document testifying to one of the most important chapters in American history. The memory museum not only unearths the past, it also offers hope for the future.