Description: Curator Keith E. Melder's efforts to create the first permanent exhibit on African American history at the National Museum of American History was successful, but its journey faced difficulties and hatred from the public.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14623,size=300,left]Born in 1936 in Washington DC, John Robert Edward Kinard would become the first African American director of a Smithsonian museum at the age of 31. Kinard’s circuitous path into museum work took him from development work in Africa to community organizing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a dilapidated theater on Nichols Street in DC’s