Early efforts to establish a federally owned museum featuring African-American history and culture can be traced to 1915 and the National Memorial Association, although the modern push for such an organization did not begin until the 1970s.

In the early 1980s, Tom Mack (the African-American chairman of Tourmobile, a tourist bus company) founded the National Council of Education and Economic Development (NCEED).

[9] Mack contacted Representative Mickey Leland about his idea for a national museum focusing on African Americans, and won his support for federal legislation in 1985.

Kinard and the AAMA instead advocated that Congress establish a $50 million fund to create a national foundation to support local black history museums as a means of mitigating these problems.

[18] While the group discussed the issue informally, Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams, Jr.[c] publicly suggested in October 1989 that "just a wing" of the National Museum of American History should be devoted to black culture, a pronouncement that generated extensive controversy.

There were many on the Smithsonian's Board of Regents who believed that "African-American culture and history" was indefinable and that not enough artifacts and art of national significance could be found to build a museum.

[35] Under the leadership of its new Secretary, Lawrence M. Small, the Smithsonian Board of Regents reversed course yet again in June 2001 and agreed to support a stand-alone National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Congress swiftly agreed, and on December 29, President George W. Bush signed legislation establishing a 23-member commission to study the need for a museum, how to raise the funds to build and support it, and where it should be located.

Alternative proposed sites included the Liberty Loan Federal Building at 401 14th Street SW and Benjamin Banneker Park at the southern end of L'Enfant Promenade.

[51] The above-ground floors featured an inverted step pyramid surrounded by a bronze architectural scrim, which reflected a crown used in Yoruba culture;[52] specifically, these three stacked trapezoidal shapes were inspired by the top of an Olowe of Ise sculpture[53] which is now on display inside the museum.

The exterior of this structure, whose frames lean outward to create the corona, consisted of a thin screen or "scrim" perforated by geometrical patterns based on historic iron grilles found in African-American communities in Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Commission of Fine Arts repeatedly urged the architects to use bronze for the scrim, as it created a "shimmering, lustrous effect under many lighting conditions" and "conveyed dignity, permanence and beauty".

[63] Duranar paint was the first substitute proposed by the architects, but the commission members rejected it, noting that it had a "putty-like appearance under overcast conditions" and visually fell "far short of the beautiful poetic intention promised by the concept design".

[65] Actress Phylicia Rashād was the Master of Ceremonies for the event, which also featured poetry and music performed by Denyce Graves, Thomas Hampson, and the Heritage Signature Chorale.

To compensate, 85 US gal (320 L) per minute of water were pumped out every day during construction of the foundation and below-grade walls, and a slurry of cement and sand injected into forms to stabilize the site.

[69] As the lower levels were completed, cranes installed a segregated railroad passenger car and a guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary on November 17, 2013.

[86] On March 27, the museum drew criticism for agreeing to include a small number of items from the career of actor Bill Cosby in a planned exhibit about African Americans in the entertainment industry.

The technology firm had previously worked with the NMAAHC to create a 3D interactive exhibit which allows visitors to see artifacts in a close-up, 360-degree view using their mobile phone.

[96] The 22-minute film stars Lupita Nyong'o, Don Cheadle, Regina King, David Oyelowo, Angela Bassett, Michael Ealy, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, André Holland and Glynn Turman.

Events depicted include William IV's royal assent to the UK Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, the release of Motown's first number-one song, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvellettes, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the night then-senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Museum officials began to limit the number of people who could take the elevator (and thus enter the exhibit) to mitigate this problem, although this led to still longer lines in the foyer.

[120] NMAAHC director Lonnie Bunch III said that the exhibit explored one way in which slavery might be presented at the National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens in 2015.

RedEye on Demand (a subsidiary of Stratasys) used a fused deposition modeling printer, which laid down tiny layers of molten plastic to slowly build the statue.

[122] Smithsonian officials were so pleased with the process that they began laying plans use it to laser image and 3D print a vast number of items in their collection, which they could then share inexpensively with the rest of the world.

[159] In a review for The New York Times, art critic Holland Cotter wrote, "The extremely complex narrative, with uplift and tragedy seemingly on a fixed collision course, spreads over five floors of galleries", and that it "holds some of the oldest and most disturbing material."

[167] Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote that the museum is the "most impressive and ambitious public building to go up in Washington in a generation" and that despite "some flaws and unfortunate signs of cost-cutting, the design succeeds almost precisely to the degree that it is enigmatic and even fickle, spanning huge gulfs in the national character without being naive enough to try to close them.

She describes 14-year-old Till, who was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman: "Though his body was severely disfigured, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral, hoping to show the world the effects of racial injustice.

"[169] Because of its lengthy name and the unpronounceable acronym NMAAHC derived from it,[168] a few journalists, following the trend established on social media, used the nickname "the Blacksonian" for the museum, based on its content and its relationship to the Smithsonian.

[4][170] The Washington Post architectural critic Philip Kennicott assessed the museum as its one-year anniversary, concluding that the NMAAHC has "changed the center of gravity on the Mall" and created "energy along 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW that feels new, and welcome".

[172][173] Some examples that were claimed to be part of white culture were objectivity; rational, linear thinking; emphasis on the scientific method; hard work being the key to success; delayed gratification; the nuclear family; self-reliance; and being polite.