Dr. Matthews: I will probably start the story at the end of it, which is building a museum is not building an office building. Okay. These are two very different kinds of spaces. Museums are designed for people to roam around.

NARRATION: On the east side of historic Charleston, South Carolina, overlooking the waterway you'll find a structure elevated over 18 columns with a garden just below. It's the International African American Museum or IAAM.

DR. MATTHEWS: the museum itself seems to be on a top floor because the museum is built atop Gadsden's Wharf, the former site of one of our nation's most prolific slave trading ports.

And one of our design features is that our building hovers over the site, folks will see the design and assume it's because we're on the water in Charleston, which floods every other Tuesday. but that's not why. It's actually about honoring that space.  to respect the hallowedness of the grounds that we stand on.  And what's interesting is that when you explain that to people, their relationship to the space changes.

NARRATION: I’m Brian Maughan, chief innovation and marketing officer with Fidelity National Financial, and this is Built – where you’ll meet creative leaders in the commercial real estate industry and hear how they do what they do.

This season, we’re taking a closer look at the places where we gather, including museums. The IAAM serves as a hub for learning, reflection, and dialogue about the the African American experience. The museum was designed with intention and detail inside and out that reaches across time – from the past and into the future.

Act I: Setting the Stage - A place of history, the story before the museum

NARRATION: The Port of Charleston is one of the most productive ports in the world today, generating billions of dollars in economic activity every year. And from the International African American Museum, not far from the South Carolina Aquarium, you get to see all sorts of ships come and go through the Harbor, moving furniture, textiles, and thousands of other goods.

But during the times of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, this port was also significant. Just between 1710 and 1808, Charleston received over 800 ships bringing people taken from their land across Africa, forced to cross the Atlantic to become the propellant of the new world's economy.

IAAM Tour: Those Africans beginning their American journey quite literally on these grounds.

NARRATION: Malika Pryor is our guide today, and she is the chief learning and engagement officer for the IAAM.

IAAM Tour: we affectionately refer to it as the I’AM. I highly recommend everyone else does too.

NARRATION: For over 3 centuries, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade forcibly displaced an estimated 12.5 million Africans, with approximately 10.6 million surviving the harrowing journey known as the Middle Passage across the Atlantic.

IAAM Tour: it's estimated that about 40 percent of all captive Africans Passed through Charleston. And so there is a contemporary estimate that 9 out of every 10 African Americans with historical roots in the United States have at least one ancestor that passed through Charleston.

NARRATION: Nearly half of Africans brought to the United States originated from Senegambia, which includes present-day Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, and west-central Africa, encompassing modern Angola, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon.

NARRATION: If you were captured -sometimes with your family or friends-, you would have been moved to a port. Probably pushed through the "door of no return," a notorious fort in Elmina, Ghana, where you'd have seen Africa for the last time. Then you'd have been placed in the bowels of a ship, and be subject to a journey that would last an average of 63 days. Only to make port here, in South Carolina.

IAAM Tour: So there's an archaeological, but also architecturally significant find with respect to the grounds, and that was the historic edge of Gadsden's Wharf itself. We were able to find that literal edge. However, from an interpretive place point it marks the literal beginning of those captive Africans’ American journey. This is the point at which they are stepping off of those ships and making their way into Charleston. In some instances, as enslaved in Charleston, in other instances, Charleston being a point, a blip, if you will, in their journey before making their way elsewhere.

IAAM Tour Brian: Where is that line?

IAAM Tour:  Right here, this is it right here.

NARRATION: A steel band across the ground marks the edge that today stands next to a memorial pool. You can hear the sound of water meeting the steel. To the left you can read major ports of departure in Africa and to the right, there is a list of major points of arrival.

IAAM Tour: There were major points of arrival on the Pacific side as well, thinking about Colombia, Panama, which obviously have very vibrant African descended cultures. But visitors never cease to be surprised when they see Veracruz, Mexico, sometimes they're even surprised by Cuba, although Cuba was a major point of arrival. And Brazil by far is where the single largest number of captive Africans are being brought. So this was really shifting both population, but cultural memory and without question economy.

NARRATION: If you made it alive, this would be the beginning of your story, and your descendants' story in America.

The institution of slavery would place these people in plantations or mines. In fields where they would grow cotton, sugar cane, tobacco...

And it's likely that enslaved Africans introduced rice cultivation in the Americas.

IAAM Tour: When rice was first undertaken here in South Carolina, The cultivation failed. And so the determination was made to seek after African communities that were already in the business of rice cultivation.

So this wasn't just about bringing a skill, this was also about bringing a technology that would allow them a level of intelligence and capacity to innovate

NARRATION: In addition to the edge of Gadsden's Wharf, at the I’AM, you can see the foundation of a storehouse that existed here, long before the museum’s foundation. That building would come much later.

Act II: Site Survey - building it, describing it

NARRATION: The story of the museum is decades long and it starts at the biggest office in the city.

DR. MATTHEWS: The first sort of public conversation about creating a museum of the African American story in Charleston was announced in 2000, at former Mayor Joe Riley's State of the City Address.

NARRATION: Dr. Tonya Matthews is the president and CEO of the International African American Museum. And she's talking about Joseph Patrick Riley Jr, who served as Mayor of Charleston for an impressive 10 terms. He is one of the longest-serving mayors in the United States, holding office from December 15, 1975, until January 11, 2016.

DR. MATTHEWS: He had uh read a book. It had transformed some of his thinking about the history and the hidden stories here in Charleston, and he himself was shocked and probably a little bit angry that he didn't know and grew up with these stories. And so he wanted a museum, initially in particular to talk about Charleston's connection to slavery.

But as more people came into the circle, the story morphed and grew on much of the community, in particular, African Americans wanted to tell a bigger, fuller story. They didn't want a museum that was just about slavery. The African American story is bigger than that.

NARRATION: Over 2 decades ago the museum was just an idea. Making it a reality took a lot of effort.

DR. MATTHEWS: That first half really was all about building political understanding, political will, And when I say political, I mean, in its authentic sense, meaning the art of getting people into conversation. First decade, let's just convince folks that this should be done and that we can do it.

The second decade is okay. Now, how right? this is not a little story, we don't want a little museum. Charleston and former mayor Riley always go big.

NARRATION: And building a museum of this magnitude required more than political will. It required funding.

DR. MATTHEWS: We are at the end of the day a $120 million startup project. interestingly, I'm proud to say the money came from everywhere,

NARRATION: A significant contribution came from the charter membership program, which started at $25.

DR. MATTHEWS: when I first walked in, I said, “Are we selling ourselves a little cheap here, guys?” But then as I learned and I talked and I immersed, that was about giving everyone the opportunity to say, I was a part of this and I built this.

DR. MATTHEWS: And so at the end of the day, we had more than a hundred corporate supporters. We had state and regional support and we had more than 50,000 charter members. So when you come with that level of broad support, then you really can say, all right, we could be about community. could be about building a structure that was more than just a structure.

NARRATION: The I'AM building was designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Moody Nolan. We got to talk to Curtis J. Moody, the founder and chairman of Moody Nolan, an architecture and design firm headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. He's also the principal in charge of their design studio: Studio 9.

CURT: We've been with the project for 12 to 15 years. We found out about it. And we were fortunate that we won the interview.

NARRATION: But way before joining this project, Curt had to climb mountains of his own.

CURT: The journey I took was not the typical journey, I was 12, 13, and I had gone to a friend's house, saw his father's, he was a contractor drawing on his table. And, found out that he had studied architecture for one year. At the time I didn't know it was architecture. I thought it was draw pretty buildings and all that stuff. So I went to my counselor and I said, “I'd like to draw buildings.” And she told me, “that's what an architect does.” And she says “why don't you be a draftsman? Because black architects don't exist. People hire architects and normally it's somebody that's not like you”. She said, “it's easier to be a drafts person.” And I said, “I don't want to just be handed, I want to do the design.”

She was trying to help me. She's just being honest.

NARRATION: Curt decided not to back down and attended The Ohio State University, after graduating, he had to prove that high school counselor wrong.

CURT: I was very practical. I knew that black churches. Were more likely to hire me than other people. And if I could prove I can do a good building, I could go after other work.

NARRATION: And so, Curt designed a church that's still standing, and with that Moody Nolan was created. And since its creation in 1982, it has gained recognition.

CURT: we are the largest African American owned firm in the nation.

NARRATION: Curt says that in the beginning, the I'AM was supposed to be built in a different location. And when Moody Nolan joined the project, not many knew of Gadsden’s Wharf.

CURT: they hired Ralph Appelbaum and Associates to do museum planning. They're specialized in museums. They found out that a site across the street was Gadsden's Wharf.

CURT: And at this time, Moody Nolan designed a concept to bridge over the street with a plaza. We won an international design award for that design, but we were fundraising and the mayor felt they needed a bigger name than Moody Nolan. So he asked me to come to Charleston and meet with Harry Cobb, which was Pei Cobb Freed. They had designed the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

NARRATION: And while the team was coming together, the land was too.

CURT: The mayor had brought in people from Recreation of Parks. They had sold off half of the property. He asked if they could get it back. They could,  And we moved on from there as to, Harry becoming leading designer with us as executive architects.

NARRATION: And in this process of selecting the land, they realized the project wasn't only about reclaiming 17th and 18th century history but also modern history.

DR. MATTHEWS: this neighborhood was an area belovedly referred to as the Burroughs.

NARRATION: I'AM president Dr Tonya Matthews

DR. MATTHEWS: It was an African American community, multi generations, that was decimated by Hurricane Hugo and some of the subsequent gentrification. And so it became really important not for us to just tell the history of the space, but also perhaps welcome some folks back home.

NARRATION: The landscape in this project was designed by Hood Design Studio, a landscape architecture and public art studio practice based in Oakland, California. Paul Peters is a principal and landscape architect there, and he was part of the team behind the I'AM.

PAUL: We were brought into the project by the late Harry Cobb from Pay Cobb Free.

NARRATION: Hood design was started over two decades ago by Walter Hood, a McArthur Genius and professor and chair at UC Berkeley. Their work often looks at history or memory to challenge the way people experience places.

PAUL: Harry brought in Walter to work on the project early on. One of the first things that happened is we brought together, I wanna say about 20 to 25 people that ranged from local artists, there were historians, academics. There was the members of the IAM board at the time, a design team, and we orchestrated this four-Day tour that took place on a bus, and we just went around to different sites around Charleston that were important to this place.

NARRATION: They visited Sullivan's Island -a key entry point and quarantine station during the transatlantic slave trade; Middleton Place -a plantation that today is a National Historic Landmark- and other locations with historical significance around the city.

PAUL: And we also hired an archaeologist to mark the site, Gadsden's Wharf, as well as the storehouse. And give a presentation on the history of this place. And We would have breakfast in the morning, get on the bus, go on a tour through these different places, and we had these amazing ideas and stories that emerged at the end of the four days.

CURT: The city itself has a historical connection.

NARRATION: Architect Curt Moody again.

CURT: Uh, it's not just about the site, it's about what happened at that city, because they're slave borders. There's places they sold slaves in the city. There's a people called Gullah people.

NARRATION: The Gullah Geechee are the descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans brought to the lower Atlantic states. They ended up on isolated coastal plantations, so they were able to retain some of their African traditions that today translate on their food, art, and spirituality. And they developed their own unique language: the Gullah.

CURT: they're still there. We had a queen, matter of fact that participated in certain meetings.

NARRATION: Marquetta L. Goodwine has been the head of state of the Gullah Geechee Nation since 2000, when she was elected Queen Quet. A graduate from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, she works to preserve the Gullah Geechee people's culture and mitigate the effects of climate change on their way of life.

NARRATION: Understanding the history of the city was critical for the team’s conception of the project.

PAUL: If you begin to look at Charleston, if you wander around the city, you'll see that it's telling a particular narrative. And this is a constructed narrative but it's telling a story of white power in the United States.

And so that's done through its colonial architecture. It's done through its historical reflection of even its lights and its benches and its paving. None of its original. It's being reconstructed, and so the biggest challenge was creating a distinctly black space in a white city, coming down to things like. Not doing the paving that's found in other parts of the city, or not doing this historical bench because to us that was reinforcing an identity or a narrative of Charleston that we did not want to tell, so every element of the landscape needed to tell the truth and that meant it being different than Charleston.

NARRATION: And during this process, the team explored many ideas for the I’AM’s landscape.

CURT: Originally the building was to have a sunken area because underneath all of the water that's there now, is the actual wharf. We were going to dig down to the wharf itself and have a ceremonial place, but it would fill with water, we'd have to pump it and different things. As time went on it became difficult.

NARRATION: So they decided to build above ground. The design started in earnest around 2015 and it took a few years.

CURT: We came up with column spacing first because you can't put space on the ground floor because of the floodplain

NARRATION: The team wanted to honor the site, so they placed it over 18 pylons that elevate the museum building 13 feet above ground. And once the team agreed on the design, they presented the idea to the mayor.

CURT: at that meeting Harry had the full model, all one story. And the mayor liked it.

NARRATION: They moved forward, developed the documents for the design, and broke ground in 2019. Construction began in January of 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic delayed construction about a year.

Finally, on June 27, 2023 the International African American Museum opened its doors.

PAUL: If you come in through the bird's eye, if you're flying over the site. The first thing you're probably gonna notice is the building which breaks from the traditional historic grid of the city, which is intentional. It's almost like a floating ship that's docked on the water.

CURT: Harry made sure that the design looked toward the island that's out in the water, where the slaves were dropped off first. Then back toward the city on the other end. You don't see any windows on the sides of the building, only on two ends. You're looking toward the city and this exhibit has a connection to that. Then when you go the other end, you're looking toward the water and toward the island and there's an exhibits have a connection to that. so, there were really a lot of thinking about what goes where in that museum.

IAAM Tour: The grounds, like the building, are very modern.

NARRATION: Malika Pryor again

IAAM Tour: There's very little here that's literal. However, everything is intentional. From the cypress benches to the palm groves, which are Canary Island palms, which grow on and off the coast of West Africa.

Every design decision is tied to that triangulation, that relationship of peoples of African descent here in the United States, on the continent of Africa, particularly West and West Central Africa, as well as the Caribbean and South America.

NARRATION: Malika is showing us the African Ancestor's Memorial Garden. A set of gardens designed by Hood Design Studio. They use live plants and art to accentuate the historical landmarks on site.

NARRATION: And although the place bares the scars of dark times in our country, here at the I'AM people embrace the African principle of Sankofa, which can be translated to “to go back and get it” to learn from the past

IAAM Tour: The way in which we engage this story, the African American journey is on this continuum where enslavement is neither the beginning nor the end, but where whether it is the before, the during, or the after that moment in time, African Americans are building their story at this intersection of incredible trauma and triumph. And here is an intersection in and of itself.

NARRATION: When Gadsden’s Wharf was in the business of the transatlantic slave trade, it would have storehouses to hold captive Africans waiting for the price to increase so they could be auctioned. Archeological evidence of a 1795 storehouse was found here. And today, towards the south of the property there's an interpretation where the storehouse once stood.

IAAM Tour: the architectural footings of what we believe was one of those storehouses was uncovered during the excavation process.

And there had been some contemplation of building a replica, but there was a determination that instead, this brick outlay that you see here, representing the square footage, would be placed instead.

NARRATION: Across the storehouse lies a gauntlet, a set of double black granite walls that on the outside have an engraving of Dr. Maya Angelou's poem "I Rise."

Maya Angelou: …bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave.

   I am the hope and the dream of the slave, and so naturally.

  There I go rising.

NARRATION: On the interior, that black granite is polished to near mirror finish.

IAAM Tour: So what it's creating is an opportunity for every single visitor to reflect. And there lie five kneeling figures that appear to be in some ways emerging from the grounds and facing towards the harbor.

So we have the literal outline of what we believe was this space that, quite frankly, was torturous, inhumane. As a matter of fact, in the winter of 1807, approximately 700 lives were lost in these storehouses when an unexpected frost came across the Charleston Harbor. And yet, the hope. That is such a fundamentally human feeling, but also decision.

IAAM Tour: Because that hope kept people alive. That hope allowed people to love. That hope allowed people to build families and that made me possible.

IAAM Tour: let's take a walk this way.

DR. MATTHEWS: So you move from that space under the cover of these giant majestic date palm trees. Bigger than most of the palm trees that you will see here in Charleston. They're in their own little forest or glade. And right there in front of those is the infinity reflection pool, the tide tribute.

IAAM Tour: The tide tribute is a fountain that mimics the ebb and flow of tide, when you're looking down it gives the appearance of bodies submerged under water, and that's intentional because this is a memorial to every man, woman and child who was lost to that harrowing journey across the Atlantic. And the reliefs themselves are inspired by the Brooks Diagrams, um, which are a pretty well-known illustration of how captive Africans would have been placed at the bow and the bowels of ships.

IAAM Tour BRIAN: Wow, that's powerful.

NARRATION: The Brooks diagrams, derived from the Liverpool-based slave ship Brookes, served as crucial evidence in British Parliamentary hearings advocating for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.

PAUL: We took those images and serialized 'em across the fountain. So as the water fills, the images are masked by the reflection of the light off of the water. And as the water drains. The bodies begin to emerge. And so water is an important feature, but also light and shadow are extremely important, especially in Charleston, a place where it's really hot in the summer. And so the importance of being able to have microclimate or go into a shade, and that was another important idea that Pay Cobb Freed had with the building sitting over the site gave you this beautiful contrast between being in shadow, being in the cool versus being out in the sun.

NARRATION: The pool is only about 2 inches deep, but the effect is impactful.

CURT: We had, a lady that worked for us from Nigeria

NARRATION: Curt Moody again

CURT: and she was the project coordinator at the time and we talked about the door of no return over in Africa, and how the slaves were captured and then came through that door and then came across the water and then through the building.

That's why the water connection, the water where we have a bunch of let's say facsimiles of slaves laying down in the boat and then, the water comes over them, at certain times that connection is real. That's what happened. Not many places in the world would you be able to have the same kind of connection.

NARRATION: Moving along in the garden, if you turn left, towards the north, you'll find lush vegetation.

PAUL: In contrast to this dark experience to the south we have these contemplative gardens, these places for respite, and so you'd see oak trees, a sweetgrass field, a stele garden, a low country garden that's beginning to riff on the elements of the low country landscape, but also elements of the African diaspora. And so they're in opposition, but in relationship to each other.

NARRATION: And that ebb and flow in the water, is a motif that repeats in the landscape itself, because over time, the garden is changing.

PAUL: The oak grove is really inspired by just walking around Charleston and the surrounding landscape, and you'll see these beautiful old oak trees and the epiphytes, which are the Spanish moss that's coming off of them that begin to fill the air.

It's a simple idea of planting this grove of oaks and suggesting that in the future the Spanish moss might come in and this might create this other landscape 15, 20 years from now, and understanding how these might change over time.

NARRATION: Another important material in this project -and in Charleston- is brick.

PAUL: It's ubiquitous everywhere you go. It's a handmade material made by enslaved people in Charleston. And so it was important to bring that back. We had a father and a son that made the curved brick walls that sit in the north garden.

There's also the brick paving that marks the old storehouse. And you'll see that the facade of the building up above is made with the same brick and has a beautiful handmade quality to it.

NARRATION: From out here in the gardens, you can see that the museum’s facade includes yet another reclaimed material.

PAUL: Probably the most used material on the site is tabby paving,

DR. MATTHEWS: Tabby is this very old way of making concrete through mixing shell pieces and sand and that kind of thing.

DR. MATTHEWS: You don't really want to build a modern building completely out of tabby. But thinking in terms of you know, we've got your solid modern structures and then wrapped around that we're doing the tabby

PAUL: This is just beautiful concrete paving. And the sea bottom shells make up the texture of the paving.

PAUL: Those come from the bay just right at the edge of the water. And so people's bodies sort would have perished in the bottom of this water. Were bringing back these shells up to the surface to create a sign to that history.

IAAM Tour: The African Ancestors Memorial Garden is a place for people to come and sit and remember their ancestors. And so when I think about that experience for myself as a descendant of enslaved Africans, that's a very literal experience, to come and remember my ancestors who would have once lived through and in a system, where in spite of their humanity, they were absolutely treated and contemplated as property.

The people who would traverse through these grounds, they are all our ancestors. They built our collective story. They don't live at the margins. They don't live only in a culturally specific space. They helped create the things that we understand as life. And so we all get to come and be welcomed here to remember them.

Act III: An active place where people gather - living it

IAAM Tour: the transatlantic slave trade doesn't give birth to the African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. It's the people. And so what we're really exploring on the second level is the heart of that story.

IAAM Tour: Welcome to the second floor. This is our only interior floor. It's about 43,000 square feet of a 150, 000 square foot campus.

NARRATION: When you arrive on this floor, you walk past a wall of screens showing images across a 400 year timeline including images of enslaved people but also preachers, dancers at Mardi Gras, and today's idols like Serena Williams.

IAAM Tour: We like to think of it as the trailer for the museum. It provides grounding and a snippet of what you can expect.

DR. MATTHEWS: We really try to introduce folks to what I call maybe African American superpower, which is black folks ability to simultaneously hold the sensations of trauma and joy. And it's not trauma on Tuesday and joy on Thursday.

It's all woven in together and you get a hint of that outside. But when you come inside, we have really tall ceilings and the east west plane of the building is all glass, right? So you can see straight through from one end of the building to the other. And there's so much energy and life and breathing.

NARRATION: The museum is divided into two wings. The East wing has a geographic and cultural focus, while the West wing holds the chronological history. It houses 12 permanent exhibitions, including 9 galleries, and 1 special exhibitions gallery that alternates between two and three exhibitions every year, and a continuous run of online exhibitions that anyone can check on the Google Arts & Culture platform.

DR. MATTHEWS: We're a history museum, but for our art collection, we decided to go contemporary.

NARRATION: The core exhibitions feature more than 30 works of art, over 150 historical objects, and numerous films and digital interactive experiences. Historians and descendants of those who came to North America via Charleston have researched and preserved stories of the enslaved. Records have been found in everyday objects like jugs or family bibles, in rice fields of South Carolina's Lowcountry, or passed down through oral traditions, ensuring the legacy endures.

IAAM Tour: So we are in the East wing. We're heading towards the Harbor, towards the Atlantic, towards the Cooper. no matter which way you were walking, you were always just above the gardens.

NARRATION: We made our way through the "American Journeys Gallery," a 530-year exhibition that explores the people, events, and narratives that influenced American history through the international lens of the African Diaspora.

IAAM Tour: We really start with 1492 because while that's not the beginning of a North American story. It is the beginning of America, as we understand it and know it

NARRATION: Among dozens of objects, there's a lithograph with the title "Come and Join Us Brothers," published in 1863 by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments. And one of two American flags flown over the Capitol on April 4, 2018, to honor the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

There are stories about rebellions, the civil war and the civil rights movement. There are stories around Jim Crow and lynchings. And throughlines exploring revolutions and other significant steps of the African experience.

IAAM Tour: movements for independence were happening across the ocean on the continent of Africa and beyond, particularly in the Caribbean. And then it's going to bring you through the black arts movement, into that national movement known as Black Lives Matter which brings us to the present moment.

NARRATION: As we continued our exploration of the museum, we encountered the "Gullah Geechee exhibition," an entire gallery that examines the history of the Gullah Geechee peoples and the problems that their communities are facing today.

Next, Malika brings us to an installation called Departure.

IAAM Tour: right beneath us is the installation that marks the historic edge of Gadsden's Wharf. And notes major points of departure. What do you see?

IAAM Tour BRIAN: A lot of names

IAAM Tour: What else?

IAAM Tour BRIAN: Their names… oh wow!

IAAM Tour: That's right. So the youngest person on this wall is two. And all of these individuals are names that were pulled from a slave ship database. These are ships that were commandeered because they were engaged in the outlawed practice. as it was outlawed in 1807 by the British Empire and in 1808, the United States.

NARRATION: These were likely Spanish ships, and Malika says others continued with the practice until 1867. To one side you can read African names:

IAAM VOICES: Kumba, Barula, Moosa, Kwadu, Tombar, Kuaku, Seasha

NARRATION: And to the other, anglicized names, because slavery not only took their freedom, but also their names.

IAAM VOICES: Lucy, Phyllis, Bella, London, Big Mungo, Mary, Old Clorinda

IAAM Tour: You know immediately that these are very Anglicized names, perhaps Biblical names. but clearly not names that reference the people's origins. and these are not random names. These are also names of actual people who would have worked as enslaved here in South Carolina.

IAAM Tour: While these are complex and complicated conversations that we're having here in the museum, I like to think about both the exhibition's design, but also the construction of the building being a guide. It walks with you. Sometimes, I think, carrying you.

CURT: We can design throughout the building where things go. And we did.

NARRATION: Curt Moody again

CURT: But Applebaum has to put the story together. So as you're walking through, you get snippets of what happened. Our hope is that we will excite you enough that you'll study a little bit later what really happened.

CURT: The stories that are told throughout in this case are real. They're not subject to, oh, we think this happened. No, this did happen. Now. You should know this happened, and not many buildings tell you that story.

NARRATION: One of the anchors at the museum is the Center for Family History, created in an effort to connect people across time.

DR. MATTHEWS: Now, genealogy is genealogy. Everyone has it, so we can serve everyone. But there has been some mythology around African American genealogy, thinking that we couldn't get back more than a couple hundred years. Because of the way records were kept or unkept during the period of slavery, it's not impossible. It's just difficult. and so we're here to do the work. We're connected to the largest genealogy databases in the world and we're still growing.

NARRATION: At the center, they offer classes and many online resources for people interested in exploring these connections.

DR. MATTHEWS: And then as you leave that space, you'll pass our special exhibitions gallery, and then you are, happily, plumped into the gift shop. And that is how you end your journey.

BRIAN: Exit through the gift shop.

DR. MATTHEWS: Appropriately at the museum. [Laughs]

NARRATION: The museum has been open for a few months now, and the experience is different for everyone.

DR. MATTHEWS: I think the African American community was very concerned with the ability to tell the truth about these stories that we hadn't really been talking before. For some of the members of the non African American communities, primarily the white communities, whether or not you were supportive of the museum, the question is, “am I going to get yelled at? Okay, just, hey, just let me know. Yeah, I'll prepare. I'll buckle up,” And that was very interesting because there was sentiment on both sides. Some folks said, yes, we need a place where we can be yelled at with the truth.

And other folks knew that's not a good idea. I don't think that's the way we should go. But as audiences come into the building, it's very interesting. Initially, I think folks are struck by the beauty of the space, the beauty and the majesty, and it just puts you in a different mindset.

And then you see the poetry, and then you see the art, and then you see the history, and then you see the stories. What we've tried to do is just inspire curiosity, like courageous curiosity in that space.

NARRATION: And after all, this museum was designed to bring people together.

DR. MATTHEWS: These are supposedly the taboo conversations and subjects. And so for you to be standing side by side with a stranger, purposefully, is one of the weird things that we've noticed about the gathering.  And it leans into what I think of as a museum's superpower. We are one of the last places on earth where you are rewarded, applauded for learning in public.

When you think about this space in particular, there is a rumor, a myth that these kind of stories are not for everyone, and to create a space that disputes that gently, lovingly, beautifully. It's an extraordinary opportunity. This museum could be anywhere, but it is phenomenal that we are in South Carolina, right? And so you got to take that on not just as privilege, but as responsibility.

PAUL: It's an act of reconciliation in the United States.

NARRATION: Paul Peters again

PAUL: I'm Canadian, and so we've been going through this process of reconciliation in our country, which is a process of telling the truth.

And so for the United States, I think it's important that these sites become part of this conversation and this act of reconciliation. And so I'm hoping that people come here and they see, wow, there's this truth that's in the past, but it's also contemporary, but it's also this broader story about the beauty of black culture, about the African American diaspora.

I hope that it would allow people to become empowered or believe in their ability to tell truths, do beautiful acts in their own cities, their own places, their own communities.

DR. MATTHEWS: Humans are storytellers. It's literally what we do.

BRIAN NARRATION: If you want to check out photos of the International African American Museum visit us at builtpodcast.com

Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. This episode was produced by Sandra Lopez-Monsalve and edited by Genevieve Sponsler. Production support by Emmanuel Desarme. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel. Our location producers for this episode are Lisa Gray, Bruce Roberts, and George Drake Jr. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Special thanks to our guests, and to Kourtney Jones, Tasha​ Harris, Karen​ Gary, and Regine Ramos.

I’m Brian Maughan.

Thanks for listening and remember, every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world.