Lonnie Bunch Quotes (15 Quotes)

This is too important to fail, because it is holding a nation's--holding a people's--culture in my hands, ... My litmus test will be, Would my ancestors be happy.

My first task for tomorrow is to stop smiling.

This is how to understand America. So having the Museum of African American History and Culture on the mall, surrounded by the other museums, will make African-American culture central to all Americans.

I want to talk to the elders within the African American community. I want to get their sense, and their blessing, and an artifact or two,

In some ways, this museum in Washington gets to do something very important, ... It can be a lens to help us all better understand what it means to be an American--to use African-American culture as that lens to understand the history of this country as well.

It's important for this museum to have a good idea of the vision of others.

Ebony and Jet increased the visibility of blacks and said that there is a diversity of experience in the black community. Not everyone is poor, and there are celebrities.

There must be appropriate tension between stories of real pain, loss and tragedy with those of resiliency, optimism and hope, ... It must give those of the culture a real sense of legitimacy and possibility, but also be a museum that is a lens into what it means to be an American, with a message that all of us are shaped indelibly by this African-American experience.

Organizers say they hope the exhibit will bring the unvarnished reality of the bus boycott home to viewers. In some ways, we've romanticized the civil rights movement, ... We often forget just how strong the walls of segregation were, just how close to the surface racial hatred was. This wasn't simply a walk in the park.

I can still remember the first time I was ever in Jet or Ebony, and suddenly all my mother's sisters said, 'I guess you are doing OK.' It didn't matter that I was in the New York Times or other papers.

There will be stories in here of great pain, great tragedy, great brutality, ... because you can't run away from that because those are instructive.

Going past the '70s and '80s there was a great reliance on the celebrity, the movie star and the person who sold a million records. People would argue that Ebony didn't become the journal to discuss substantive and thorny issues.

It will tell the stories of African-American culture from slavery through civil rights.

The North was not heaven, but it was free of the most obvious violence stemming from racism. Blacks were allowed to vote and this gave them opportunities to build black banks and business communities and this contributed to opportunities for education.

I have rarely experienced a city that is so enamored with its history. Chicagoans revel in their history.