The city's new Museum of African American History features the largest exhibition in the country on black people, museum officials say.
The 16,000-square-foot core exhibit offers a 400-year survey of the legacy and heritage of blacks. Artifacts include astronaut Mae Jemison's NASA flight suit, a copy of the jailhouse door in Birmingham, Ala., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was once confined, and a ballot box used by "colored people" when voting was segregated.Also featured is a walk-through installation simulating a ship known to have taken part in the slave trade. Its wooden panels are covered with more than 2,500 names of European ships believed to have been involved in the trade. Detroit students were body models for 50 cast figures depicting Africans inside the 70-foot ship's hold.
The museum also has space for educational programming, including a 317-seat theater, an amphitheater, three classrooms and a research library.