ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 4, 1996 TAG: 9612040064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Former Gov. Douglas Wilder said he will try again next year to find a site to build a slavery museum.
``There's a great deal of interest, national interest,'' Wilder told The Washington Times.
Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, proposed the museum while on a trip to Africa in 1993. He left office in January 1994,
He earmarked $100,000 in seed money for construction of the project in his final state budget proposal. He also helped form the nonprofit Jamestown Slave Museum.
Wilder said he still hopes to build the museum near the historic Jamestown Colony. But he said he was intrigued with the possibility of building it at Hampton University.
The Hampton University Museum, built in 1868 just after the Civil War, already holds a wealth of African-American art.
Jeanne Zeidler, director of the university museum, said it focuses on freedom and the achievements of freed blacks. Adding a slavery museum would offer visitors two sides of black history in one place, she said.
``We've got a great museum, but the idea of having a slavery museum on campus would expand the tale,'' she said.
One of the museum's artifacts is the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the portion of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the District of Columbia. ``That pen ends Mr. Wilder's story, but it starts ours,'' Zeidler said.
Wilder said Jamestown would be the best spot for the museum because that's where blacks were first enslaved in this country.
A Dutch ship carrying slaves ran aground at Jamestown in 1619. While most historians mark the event as the introduction of the first African slaves into Virginia, recent evidence hints that slaves may have lived at Jamestown even earlier.
Wilder said putting the museum near Jamestown also could help it capitalize on public interest in the recent discovery of the English settlers' original three-sided fort, which dates from 1607.
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