Alva Review-Courier -

WASHINGTON (AP, posted Sept. 21, 2016) — When the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture opens this week alongside the Washington Monument and the National Museum of American History, it will firmly — and finally — anchor the black experience in the nation's narrative.

"In 1915 . they say, 'There should be a monument. There should be a memorial that honors our contribution,'" said Michelle Wilkinson, one of the museum's curators. "Not just a pile of stone, or a shaft. It needs to be a museum."

Fifty years after the end of the Civil War, black citizens in Washington, D.C., f...