A fort in Mozambique oversaw the selling of more than 400,000 slaves. “The amount of money invested in slaves was more than the amount invested in railroads, banks and businesses combined,” Lonnie Bunch, founder director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), tells Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes. Slavery was “the economic engine of Europe and the United States.” While in Mozambique, Punch proceeds to show Pelley the remains of a slave ship. Such artifacts will be on display at the NMAAHC when it opens in 2016. The nearly 400,000-square-foot museum will sit on five acres adjacent to the Washington Monument.
The exterior of the NMAAHC is now complete but there is work to do inside. While museum-goers await the opening, those in DC will be treated to seven-minute film that will be projected against the museum’s five-story facade during the evenings of November 16, 17, and 18. The video, entitled “Commemorate and Celebrate Freedom,” will pay tribute to the culminaton of the Civil War, the ratification of the 13th Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act which passed in 1965. Bunch says the visual display a “dynamic event.” Pelley’s interview with Bunch will air on 60 Minutes on November 1 at 7pm on CBS.
