September 24, 2015
WASHINGTON, DC - Coalition for the National Museum of the American People director Sam Eskenazi today invited Latino organizations and leaders to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by supporting the museum.
On October 1, the museum backers will be calling on the White House to create a commission to study establishment of the museum. This effort corresponds to the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on October 3.
The museum already has the support of more than 150 ethnic, nationality and minority organizations that want to see their stories told in our nation's capital, including 15 Hispanic and Latino organizations.
The American People Museum will incorporate the stories of Hispanics and Latinos starting with the first Spanish and Portuguese arriving in the hemisphere in the 15th century, the first permanent settlement in Florida in the 16th century, and migration into lands in what is now the U.S. Southwest in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The story will proceed with the U.S. taking over those lands as well as Puerto Rico in the 19th century, and Latino immigrants crossing our southern border from Mexico, Central and South America and crossing Caribbean waters from Cuba and the Dominican Republic during the 20th and into the 21st century.
The museum's story will begin with the first peoples in the Western Hemisphere and the great tribal cultures and civilizations that they created.Hispanics, along with American Indians, will be the only groups whose stories will be told through all four chapters of the museum's story.
"The history of Hispanics and Latinos becoming Americans told in the context of every group becoming Americans will be powerfully told and a unifying theme in the National Museum of the American People. People from every American group will come to see their own story and will learn about all of the others."
Right now, no group's immigration or migration story is told on the National Mall in Washington; the National Museum of African American History and Culture will be the first to do so when it opens next fall.
Eminent scholars will help develop the story told in the museum making it a center of cultural and historical education for all Americans. More than 100 scholars of ethnic immigration and migration history, including 15 Latino history scholars, are associated with this effort.
Last fall six of these scholars, Professors José Moya, Barnard College and Columbia University; Albert Camarillo, Stanford University; Vicki L. Ruiz, University of California, Irvine; Maria Cristina Garcia, Cornell University; Michael Jones-Correa, Cornell University; and Cecilia Menjivar, Arizona State University, signed a statement:
"As scholars of Latino history, we believe that the story that we collectively study and write about should be incorporated into the National Museum of the American People where it will be seen by the widest possible audience."
"We and many of our colleagues will be fully engaged in making sure that the museum tells the fundamental and accurate history of Latinos in the United States and Hispanics. The National Museum of the American People can be the embodiment of the country's original national motto: E Pluribus Unum - From Many, One."
Latino Heritage Month is from September 15 to October 15.
The Coalition consists of 170 ethnic, nationality and minority organizations and more than 90 scholars who focus on immigration and migration history.
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To interview Sam Eskenazi: sam@nmap2015.com; 202-744-1868.
For more information about this project, go to www.nmap2015.com.