ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the beginnings of racial discourse in the museum context, from the Smithsonian’s founding through to the mid-1950s. This chapter sets out the role of museums as a positive, legitimising force for the White elite. It suggests their significance as sites which helped to form at least two key racialising ideas that have, in many ways, lasted into the present day: Black people as a ‘problem’ for museums to solve and museums as neutral centres of higher knowledge, existing for the benefit of all of humanity. The chapter focuses on early White responses to Black institution-building and the emergence of Black public history as key developments which underpinned the later Black Museum Movement. It shows how debates around the validity of ‘self-segregation’ and the inferior characteristics of culturally specific movements evolved during this time, as White fears of Black collective consciousness surfaced.
