Museums and the Story of Slavery

Despite the passage of nearly 150 years since its legal end, many North Americans are reluctant to talk about slavery. Fundamentally, the history of slavery and its legacy pose particular problems because this history contradicts the national narrative of freedom, independence, self-reliance, equality, and justice. The hundreds of years of suffering, brutality, exploitation, and domination inflicted by enslavement belie the image North Americans want to see and project to themselves and to others. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton describe this dilemma as “the nation's most enduring contradiction.” ¹