The Museum is scheduled to reopen May 14th.
The Museums address is 1400 Constitution Ave NW. Cross streets are 14th Street, 15th Street and Madison Drive.
It is about a half a mile walk from both the Federal Triangle and Smithsonian Metro Stations. Both of those Metro Stations are on the Orange, Silver and Blue Metro lines.
As of September 2016, notable items in the collection included:
Items owned by Harriet Tubman, including eating utensils, a hymnal, and a linen and silk shawl given to her by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
The dress which Rosa Parks was sewing the day she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Parks’ action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and her action was one of the first incidents of civil disobedience in the 1950s and ’60s African American Civil Rights Movement.
A Selmer trumpet owned by jazz musician Louis Armstrong.
A dress owned by actress and singer Pearl Bailey.
A cape and jumpsuit owned by American soul singer James Brown.
A railroad car from Chattanooga, Tennessee, used by African-American passengers during the Jim Crow era. Pete Claussen and Gulf & Ohio Railways (the company he founded in 1985) donated more than $222,000 to restore the car, which was built by the Pullman Company in 1922.
A sign from a bus in Nashville, Tennessee, from the Jim Crow era which indicates which seating is for blacks only.
A segregated drinking fountain from the Jim Crow era with the sign “colored” (indicating it was for use by blacks only).
A badge from 1850, worn by an African American in Charleston, South Carolina, indicating the wearer was a slave.
Feet and wrist manacles from the American Deep South used prior to 1860.
Garments worn by African-American slaves.
An 1874 home from Poolesville, Maryland. The dwelling was constructed by the Jones family, who were freed slaves. The Joneses later founded an all-black community nearby.
The Museums exhibits are arranged in an order that you should begin your visit on the bottom floor and make your way up one level at a time. You will need to take the elevator down. Its a very interesting experience going in. In some cases, there are escalators that can take you between floors. Make sure your camera has room for lots of pictures and plenty of battery charge, you will find lots of interesting things to photograph inside the museum. When visiting the upper floors, there are openings in some of the windows that give you clear views of other significant attractions in Washington DC.
The Washington Monument is closest, it’s worth taking a walk up to the Monument in order to get an up-close visual of just how large and impossible this structure must have been to build. You are also very close to the American History Museum and the South Lawn of the White House.