Museum sits like a church hat with cornrow patterns. “They’ll see how beautiful I am. And be ashamed.” — Langston Hughes Photo: Tony Carnes/A Journey through NYC religions
The museum features the small Bible that belonged to Nat Turner, the pastor who led a bloody slave revolt. The Books of Genesis, part of Leviticus, and Revelation are missing. The first page opens with Leviticus 4:32. From the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of Maurice A. Person and Noah and Brooke Porter.
“The Birth of A Nation” is a movie biography of Turner who acted on the basis that each slave was “a child of God” made for a purpose to rise against evil.
The museum will include the Center for the Study of African American Religion in order to promote further research into the large role spirituality has played in African America’s past and present. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, an Associate Professor of African American Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and the Director of Black Church Studies, will lead the effort. Her scholarly specialties include African American Religious History; Womanist Theology; African American Literature; and Race and Religion.
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