Religion on Display at African American Museum

Taken together, the display of the material artifact of Till's casket, the work of interpretation in the memorial to his life, and McClary's prayerful watch over the room highlight the expected and unexpected ways the NMAAHC features religion as part of the story of African-American history and culture. The museum's curators and exhibit designers have attended to religion in varied forms and institutional contexts consistently throughout the three floors of History Galleries, and discussions of African-American religious life appear in the Community and Culture Galleries. The sheer amount of material culture on display in the museum in general and representing African-American religious life specifically is a powerful testament to black presence in America from its very beginnings. Exhibits on the floor focusing on “Slavery and Freedom, 1400-1877” present the material culture of religious life under slavery, often highlighting continuity of African traditions, as in the display of a cloth accompanied by pins, shards of glass, a cowrie shell, and buttons found under the floorboards in the attic of a house in Newport, Rhode Island and believed to be components of an nkisi, used by BaKongo people for power and protection. This section also features items such as a drum from the Sea Islands and glass beads from a burial site in Virginia, both representing connections to West and Central African religious practices.