lettertoboardofdirectors

University School of Milwaukee 2100 West Fairy Chasm Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53217 January 28, 2009 Board of Directors at the The US National Slavery Museum 1320 Central Park Boulevard, Suite 251 Fredericksburg, VA 22401 Dear Board of Directors, We are students from the University School of Milwaukee and in our eighth grade English class we are engaged in a book on slavery. Our literature circle is reading a book called __Send One Angel Down__ by Virginia Frances. On the website www.wikispaces.com we have created a mock exhibit on the different areas of slavery addressed in the book. We believe that our exhibit accomplishes the goal of your museum, which is to educate and help people better understand the hardships and toll of slavery in the United States of America. Our exhibit will illustrate to visitors the inhumanity of slavery and oppression of a proud people. It will accomplish this by drawing the museum guests into the stories of their daily hardships and humiliation. If we were to actually create this exhibit we would make sure that it was entertaining to every museum visitor. The exhibit would have buttons to touch, figures of slaves, and models of cabins and houses. We would have one room that was all for the explanation of the breeding of female slaves. There would be a few breeding cabins painted on the walls so that they looked like they were off in the distance. Then there would be a cabin that a visitor could walk through. This would be the main breeding cabin and there would be mannequins of the babies that were kept there and pregnant women working there. In the room to the left, a visitor would be able to walk through a field of cotton and see the everlasting rows of white fluff. In this room there would be figures of field workers that would tell facts about field workers lives if you tapped them on the shoulder. Also you would find a mannequin of the overseer with a frown on his face and a whip in his hand. If you tapped him on the shoulder he would tell you about his role in the field. If you walked into the next room you would find a wall of buttons. If you pressed them they would tell you your fate as a slave. The next room would portray the slaves living quarters. Yet again there would be cabins that the visitor could walk through to see what cramped quarters the slaves had. Inside the cabins there would be the slaves “beds” and a few slaves sleeping. An example of what the Master’s house would look like would be painted on the wall of the last room. There would be mannequins of the Master, his wife, and their kids. Around them there would be mannequins of house slaves. If you tapped the Master on the shoulder he would tell you what his job was on the plantation and also his justification for slavery. If you tapped the house slaves on the shoulder they would tell you about their job around the Master’s house. We think that visitors would be engaged and enlightened while visiting our exhibit. We thank you for reading our letter and hope to hear from you soon. We hope you enjoyed our ideas and welcome you to visit our virtual museum at http://4sendoneangeldown13usm.wikispaces.com/Pprojectnotes. Thanks again, Sincerely Yours, USM Eighth Grade Students