A home for Northwest African-American history - at last! [View All]

This project has been decades in the making - it's very exciting to finally see it come to fruition, so I wanted to share!

If all goes as planned next year, visitors to the Northwest African American Museum's grand opening at the historic Colman School will pass an outdoor sculpture garden on one side of the entrance and see artists working in an outdoor studio on the other.

Inside, at the heart of the museum's 6,500 square feet of gallery space, they'll walk past a resemblance of a slave ship lined with exhibits explaining how blacks who migrated here from the East and South left their mark on the region's business, political and cultural life. They will learn that Seattle's small black population produced one of the greatest rockers of all time, Jimi Hendrix, and that the city embraced its first black mayor, Norm Rice.

Rotating shows will feature works by important black artists such as Jacob Lawrence and James Washington and will re-create the happening scene of local nightclubs such as the Black & Tan, which hosted Ray Charles and Duke Ellington among others.

In short, the long-abandoned schoolhouse located next to the Interstate 90 lid will come back to life as the place learns what it means to be black in the Pacific Northwest and why it matters.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002873170_museum18.html