Museum Summary Kismet African American Heritage Museum

MUSEUM SUMMARY KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM

The Kismet African American Heritage Museum will be a natural museum of African American History and Culture committed to share the life stories of an African American people, led by architect designer Lessie Esynzor a native New Yorker. Nestled in the quaint community of Pacoima, California directly across from the Discovery Cube Museum will sit the design building on 15 acres of land totalling 653,400 square feet.

It’s convenient location is surrounded by several colleges, middle school magnet programs, libraries, shopping malls, theaters and restaurants. Spanning four floors, our self-guided tour will offer a chronological narrative of the tragic effects of slavery in America. Throughout the visitors journey, they will explore through thousands of artifacts, documents, photos, audios, videos and other collections. Our more than 12 exhibitions, 13 interactive stations, theaters, libraries and lecture halls will engage our audience in a never to be forgotten history of an African people from slavery to freedom of the African Americans.

The entrance of the museum will walk us through the doors of the architect and sculptures of the Dogan tribe, one of Africa’s most fascinating tribes that mysteriously vanished. They were best known for their mask dances, wooden sculptures and architect. Their art has remained the most authentic on the African continent. These doors will portray ancestral figures that once protected the people of the village and their families. The first patent on the door knob was in 1878, by an African freed slave, an inventor named Osbourne Dorsey. Our door knobs will reflect his African art. Above the entrance the words “One World Two Doors” will be written which represents the door of no return and the door of new beginnings.

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 1 The museum foyer will be a mural of an elephant named Raju, beautifully engraved in the marble flooring. A cascade of water will flow from his eyes into exotic ponds at each side of him. This will set the ambience for the museum. This mural speaks of Raju’s 50 years in chained bondage. When freed among a waiting crowd, a photographer captured his tears as he ran towards a herd of other elephants. The story of Raju will represent the years of bondage of the indigenous African people. Given the history of the African and African American, we too shall weep until all are freed, especially those in the Motherland and the African American. A contribution of coins will be thrown into the ponds to express an extension of ourselves to not only the trials of the people, but also to the preservation of extinction of animals in Africa’s rainforest. We believe our support to this cause will heighten awareness to the concern and safety of these animals.

Moving beyond the foyer of the museum, visitors will explore with their children the amazing history of Africa and African American people. We will provide popular and wide ranging interactive entertainment activities with consideration in design creations for cognitive skills development in children. Our exhibits will be vast in exploration of African wildlife. Our display rooms will show The Most Beautiful Birds of Africa and their Top Ten Strangest Animals of the World.

Visitors will also be fascinated with our Charles Drew Medical and Science Lab. They will learn about African American scientists and inventors with hands-on participation with this interactive exhibit. Children and their families will find enjoyment in the Children’s Library and Study Room,

All the real fun and entertainment will be in WeeTown, a designed interactive station and simulated community which presents a sense of home and community activities for families, as well as an educational experience. Here is where we enjoy family and gain a greater understanding on the importance of family values which was always a tradition of the African culture and the African American Mom, dad and

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 2 children can go fishing in a pond using magnetic fishing poles to catch beautiful East African colored fish such as the pink cichlids, the violet, red and orange sea goldie, the powder blue surgeon and the zebra lionfish. Young boys can also mow the lawn while learning the history of John Albert Burr who invented the lawn mower. WeeTown visitors can enjoy the mechanics shop where the boys can put tires on a safe and durable plastic car, learn where the engine and transmission goes and also install a radio that will play for them. The car will be made of soybeans like that of the 1942 invention by George Washington Carver. WeeTown will also have a designed kitchen with a puzzle carved out onto the walls where children learn to place all the items such cups, plates and flatware. They will also learn table setting skills and if they make an error, a light will go off indicating the error. This design is for children ages 2 to 3. It’s a cognitive skill set where children will learn shapes and sizes. They will also learn to hang curtains and make the bed. Children can visit the beautiful flower patch where they learn about the different flowering plants that are indigenous to the tropical dry forest of West Africa. They can practice ironing or drying clothes with the ironing board or dryer invented by an African American woman Sarah Boone.

Our next visitors journey will be the Cultural and Science Puzzle Zone. Here is where children can dig for precious gemstones from Africa to learn and identify their colors, shape and value. Using anatomically correct magnets, children will learn to place magnets on the body that identifies the race and culture of a people and social status. They will use the magnets to identify different ages to the appropriate bodies. We believe this will promote both hand and eye coordination and inspire crucial and linear thinking. Example: Would a child put white face on an African American body, or a young face on an older body? Would they put the face of a man that appears rich on the body of a man that’s dressed poorly?

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 3 The Rainforest exhibit will allow visitors to walk through and swing with the animatronic monkeys and other animals that will pop up from the brushes or crawl onto the rocks. Children will be asked to share with us what they learned about the Rainforest. They can tell us of their experience in a written letter that can be mailed to the museum and the story that’s best told will afford the winner the opportunity for discounts and prizes upon their next visit. This creates a desire for them to return.

Our Waste Management exhibit will probably be the most rewarding experience for the children. They will learn about inventions such as the first toilet. trash can, garbage disposal, incinerator and trash truck and the introduction a pretend city called Rookeezville.. The children will see an interesting display of how Benjamin Franklin in 1792 used slaves to carry Philadelphia’s waste downstream. There will be small exhibits showing how the pigs roamed freely in Washington DC to eat the garbage and slop left in the alleys and streets. Rats and cockroaches infested most dwellings including The White House. In 1866 New York’s Metropolitan Board of Health declared a war on garbage forbidding the throwing of dead animals, garbage and ashes into the streets. In the 1880s many Americans still believe that the disease such as Typhoid fever was caused by gases coming from garbage and sewers. Also in that same year, in New York City scavengers removed more than 15,000 horse carcasses from the streets. In 1885, 180 garbage disposals and incinerators were built in the United States.

The 1900s began a new era of dealing with trash. There were over 3 million horses working in American cities, producing over 20 lbs of manure, and gallons of urine every day , most of which was left on the street. This is when American cities began to estimate and record collected waste and small and medium sized towns built piggeries where swine were fed fresh and cooked garbage. It was reported that 75 pigs would eat through a ton of garbage per day. In 1937, George Dempster invented the first wheeled garbage truck. The Waste Management exhibit

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 4 will be the largest in the museum. The children will ride in a virtual garbage truck that allows them not only to visit garbage landfills and waste management refuse plants, but also the pretend city of Rookeezville.

Rookeezville, is a go-green community. The simulated garbage trucks will be able to flash spotlights on sections of the city where you ‘ll see two of the characters Freckles and Moose who are neighbors taking the trash out. We will see how the trash that was unfortunately dropped on the ground by Freckles, goes down the sewage drain, killing both fish and beautiful dolphins. This is all actually just a nightmare he has because of his neglect to properly dispose of the trash. In this dream scene his family, cat and dog will be swept away by the monstrous Garbage Gobblers that are huge balls with trash attached to them and threaten to take over the city if not stopped. Freckles is awakened from his dream by the vision of his little sister with the remote control to his video game. When Freckles goes to school, he shares his story of what happened, and all laugh except Hoops, who tells them about his grandmother who is ill with malaria because of the toxic waste from the improper disposal of trash. The Rookeez decide to take action and create a cleaner community by proper disposal of trash.

This exhibit will be designed with the use of special effects in 3D cinematic live action The awe inspiring very vivid scenic images will come to life with sounds of children’s laughter, barking dogs and the wind blow of trash down the street. We will actually smell the green grass and flowers that make up the cozy feel of the community.

Our Oodles and Goodles Chocolate Candy Store will have many chocolate treats for the enjoyment of our visitors. A percentage of all sales from the candy store will go towards the continued efforts and fight against child slavery on the cocoa farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Another treat will be the Strawberry Fool Dessert Parlor, which is a mixture of strawberries and heavy cream, a coveted dessert in Ghana, Liberia and

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 5 Nigeria. We will offer wine tasting with this dessert; also grapes, imported cheeses and gourmet crackers. Guests can have wine tasting parties and take the desserts with them as a special memory of their visit with us. This will certainly increase traffic to the museum. Visitors will also find exciting memorabilia in our gift shop and boutique. We believe that the children and family’s experience at the museum will be a much shared story.

The trolley ride through The Chocolate House exhibit which will be similar to a travel through Disney’s It’s A Small World will be both exciting and rewarding educational experience. The children will enter the doors of The Chocolate House to see beautifully designed fictional homes of famous candy makers of chocolate. In the backdrop you will see children working on the farm. The history of chocolate in its value in America will be narratively told.

Moving to our NASA S.T.E.M. interactive gallery, children will explore the history of NASA and learn of its three most important African American women - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, who were instrumental in helping NASA win the 1962 Space Race between the U.S. and The Soviet Union. Though these women were indispensable to NASA’s challenge during their work there, they were oppressed with strong Jim Crow overtones, but they did not allow these persecutions to compromise their capabilities. Clippings from the film Hidden Figures will also be shown to enhance the story of these women’s journey.

The Varnetta P. Honeywood Family Garden will be a refreshing resting place while still learning the importance of Ms. Honeywood’s work. Varnetta was an African American painter, writer, businesswoman and Spelman College graduate. It would be during Varnetta’s travel to Nigeria in 1977 would later inspired the theme for her paintings that hung on the walls in interior settings for The Cosby Show, A Different World, 227, My ​ Wife and Kids, Smart Guy, The Steve Harvey Show, Gullah Gullah Island, The Golden Girls and Melrose Place. She worked with Bill Cosby to create ​ KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 6 the characters and illustrations for Little Bill. Cosby credited Honeywood with a positive depiction of African American life, where you can see teenagers doing homework, a family cooking a meal and girls doing their hair, rather than showing segregation, starving and homelessness. The garden will have beautiful statues of children splashing their feet in the river bed, a mother sitting with her daughter on a bus bench braiding her ponytail, and a wife sharing a meal with her husband under a shade tree near the river. Varnetta died of uterine cancer September 12, 2010 in Los Angeles. All donations collected from the landscaped river will go towards the Varnetta P. Honeywood Foundation. RIght before the entrance way into the family garden, you will see a replica of a segregated water fountain with statues of a little white boy and black girl.

Visitors will certainly enjoy our restaurants such as the Crying Elephant with foods that made its way from Africa to Louisiana Creole dishes such as Jambalaya, Gumbo, Red Beans & Rice & Shrimp Creole. The Whistle Stop Clubhouse Cafe for children, will be brightly colorful and creatively designed with a menu of American foods.

On the second floor we will share the wonderful stories of Royal Kings and Queens and the natural resources and Beauty of Africa as it were before slavery. Before the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Africans were an indigenous and powerful people that had achieved many magnificent things in the field of science, technology, engineering and math now recognized as S.T.E.M. Egypt was the first of many great African civilizations with over 2,000 years of advancement in medicine and art. They dressed proudly in regal attire and well-adorned headdresses. People such as the Yoruba tribe that sprang up from the kingdom of Benin. Their civilization goes as far back as 500 B.C.

Studies of the Benin showed that they were highly skilled in ivory carving, pottery, rope and gum production. From the 13th to the 15th century, the Mali kingdom which was the largest and spread across west and northeast

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 7 Africa had an organized trading system with gold dust and agricultural produce being exported north. Cowrie shells were used as a form of currency. Gold, salt and pepper were traded. The Songhai kingdom grew very powerful and prosperous, it had a well-organized system of government. They developed currency and imported fabrics from Europe. Timbuktu became one of the most important places in the world, libraries and The Sankore University were built there and became the first meeting place for poets, scholars and artists in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

We will move from this history to the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

One of the exhibits will show a group of Europeans plotting, scheming and negotiating on how they will move the more than 7 million slaves that were taken from their homeland. Both the ship and the negotiating scene will be encased in beveled glass displays with strong backdrops such as sand and water. Great sculpturing in the eyes of the Europeans in the negotiating scene must be powerful to embrace their sinister intent. We want our audience to truly understand the malice, the hate and the atrocity imposed upon the humanity of a people. This scene will then transition us to a 1,500 sq. ft. bronze wall. There visitors will find the most precious and humbling artifacts, documents and exhibits of an enslaved and bondaged African. The carefully sculpted images of men, women and children seen in the most undignified way will surely tell the story of a people stolen and soon forgotten as they sailed away on the Jesus de Lubeck, which was the first ship to transport the Africans from their natural homes to the antipathy of a world unknown. This exhibit of these sculpted images will be carved into sections in the wall where visitors can touch their wounded and broken bodies and run their fingers across their saddened eyes. They will also be able to slightly lift the shackles on their ankles and hands to put them in the moment and grasp the essence of what bondage felt like.

This exhibit will be under 3D LED lighting to capture the true depth of their pain.

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Another exhibit in the museum will be the Cotton Fields reflecting the harsh life of cotton picking slaves. Within the vision of this exhibit, we will experience the cruelty of a mother giving birth to her baby in the field and having to continue to work. This scenery will become so vivid with the use of faux lighting, a lighting system that looks and behaves like sunlight imitating the brightness and color of the sky; 3D special effects will also allow us the imagery of sweat dripping from the workers’ faces and the movement of cotton in the backdrop, and with audio wie will hear the baby’s cry.

Our most memorable blockbuster exhibit will be a 2,000 sq. ft. Hanging Bridge over a river bed shown in our Ida B. Wells Memorial Hall of Civil Rights in remembrance of the more than 700 men and women that lost their lives by lynching during World War I and II and the Jim Crow Era. The most notorious of lynchings were of two brothers and sisters who were both pregnant. Many say that after more than 50 years later, they still visualize the babies wiggling in their stilled mother’s bodies. We will capture the emotions of this travesty with the use of special effects and audio. Our audience will be taken in the moment with the sound of the wind blowing and sway of the hanged bodies. You will also hear hushed whispers from the witnesses that were present at the scene. The bridge still stands in Mississippi today. The NAACP demanded an investigation but was told by the Mississippi governor that they could go to hell.

We will move around a curved wall to the Ida B. Wells Memorial Hall of Civil rights. Here the displays will show the history of over 100 years of lynching with the story of Emmett Till being told and the case of Margaret Garner called Peggy. An enslaved African American woman and pre-Civil ​ ​ War America who was apprehended by U.S. Marshalls acting under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 for the murder of her daughter. Margaret believed her death would be better than slavery. Her story was the inspiration of the novel Beloved, which garnered Toni Morrison a 1987

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 9 Nobel Prize. Thomas Satterwhite, Noble‘s 1867 painting was based on Garner’s story. Memorial Hall will also tell the story of Ms. Wells who was an original founder of the NAACP and fought many years against slavery and for the civil right of African Americans. And with this exhibit the music will set the ambience for this story Music adds a sentimental touch to stories as such and this exhibit will set the ambience we will hear the softly played song by Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit”.

Our most honorable showcase displays will be to pay homage to more than 400,000 African Americans that were drafted in World War II, those that fought in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, The Civil War, Revolutionary War and the 42,000 that were sent to the Soviet War overseas. Combat troops such as the Harlem Hellfighters and Tuskegee Airmen must also never be forgotten.

The Harlem Renaissance began to shape the new culture of the African American. As the elevator doors open to the third floor, you will step onto 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue into The Cotton Club. The audio sounds of Duke Ellington will place you right into the action. Though this was a white establishment only, notables such as Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. could be seen at any time in the club. Turning the corner to 596 Lenox Avenue, you will arrive at The Savoy Ballroom where the adrenaline is running high, while some are being entertained by The Harlem GlobeTrotters, who were at the time known as the “Savoy Big Five”. The atmosphere is explosive as many danced the Jitterbug most of the night in what was known “as the world’s most beautiful ballroom” and “the Home of Happy Feet.” Though The Harlem Renaissance ushered in black artistic expression and the era of The Jazz Age, it ended abruptly with The Great Depression and the crash of the Stock Market.

There would be many Civil Rights protests that took place in the history of the African American, but the one that would change the face of the lives of African Americans forever would be the bombing of the 16th Street

KISMET AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM 10 Baptist Church in Alabama that was a significant religious center and also home and meeting place of the Civil Rights Movement. The KKK who had resurfaced had called to make continuous threats to bomb the church, and on September 15, 1963, with some 200 church members at 10:22 AM, the church was bombed. Most escaped with the exception of four African American girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Westley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair were found under the rubble. Though Dr, King spoke before 8,000 people at the funeral, this did not calmed the outrage that spread across the country. Although the FBI had the identity of the bombers under J, Edgar Hoover;s instruction, they were never brought to trial.until until Alabama Attorney General Bob Baxley reopened the investigation in 1977 and Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was charged and convicted. He died inn prison in 1985.

The deaths of the four girls was of significant importance because the bombings did exactly the opposite of what the perpetrators intended. This atrocity led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To give the sense of the impending danger to the unknowing church members, the display will capture the moment of them singing lowly to organ music as our audience hears the ticking of the bomb under the church and watch the hands of the clock within the display continually move around to the time of the bombing.The hands will stop at 10:22 and then repeat move again. This will be repeated so that all visitors will see the same experience.

These are some of the main exhibits that we believe will be the highlight of the museum. Other exhibits will feature the life and new beginnings of African Americans and the successive in law, medicine, politics, the arts, film, music, television, people such as Arthur Ashe and Flo Jo must always be remembered. And we will certainly give Congresswoman Maxine Waters her reclaimed time for standing for the civil rights and being a voice the African American struggles of crack cocaine, police injustice and economic disparity. Thank you for perusing this document.

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