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About the Director
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The Slavery Museum project...
Richard Edward Smith II, born September 7, 1964 in Washington,
D.C., is an architect in Washington, DC. He holds both a Master's of Architecture and a Bachelor's of Science in Architecture degree from the University of
Maryland, College Park, Maryland. He also holds an Associate in Arts in Architectural Technology from Montgomery Community College in Rockville, Maryland.
Mr. Smith is a seven-year veteran of the United States Army where he served in the Military Police Corps from 1983 to 1990.
His tours of duty included the former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Panama and Honduras. He was stationed last at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland where he was honorably discharged in February of 1990.
He and his wife, Minna Smith have two children. They currently reside in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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Slavery Museum Project
To continue a fruitful dialog on race in this country, it needs to be understood that Black slave history in America is important not
only to Americans who are the descendants of Black African slaves but as well to those of European, Asian and other origin ancestries. What perhaps can be agreed upon is that slavery itself was a crime and a
sin perpetrated upon the people forced into it. However, for today's America, there ends the agreement about what its effects have been since slavery was legally ended.
Segregation, which certainly can be seen as an extension of slavery, continued the pain and suffering of blacks in this country, and moved the inheritance of slavery from one
generation to the next all the way into the 1960s. The conflict is that most Americans do not believe in the "inheritance" of slavery. In their view, removing the legal obstacles to
access to all facets within American society should have been sufficient to remedy all of slavery's effects. But the story for most Black Americans is quite different. Herein
lies the great racial divide within the United States of America.
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