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Historian makes history as CEO
Jersey roots prepared him Bunch, the first African American secretary of the 173-year-old Smithsonian, grew up in a white suburb in northern New Jersey. “As the only black kid in the neighborhood, you learn so much about how people judge you without knowing you,” he said. “Jersey taught me to run, to fight and to talk
DECEMBER 2019
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PHOTO BY KATHY HUTCHINS / SHUTTER-
By Margaret Foster A girlfriend convinced Lonnie G. Bunch III to jump out of an airplane when he was 17 years old. “I jump out, and I’m yelling, screaming, cursing,” Bunch — now the new head of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. — recalled in an interview with the Beacon. But he learned something important from the experience. “It taught me that I could do things that scare the heck out of me if I took a deep breath and took the step,” said Bunch, now 66. “That’s really what’s shaped my career.” Since then, he’s figuratively taken the leap into the unknown more than once. In his new role, for example, he oversees 19 museums, 21 libraries, research centers and the National Zoo, which together attract more than 30 million visitors a year. But perhaps even more of a leap of faith was his prior gig, as founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. When Bunch accepted that position in 2005, the museum was little more than an idea. It had no money, no artifacts — not even a plot of land. Bunch tells the story of how that museum, the National Mall’s newest, finally opened in 2016 in his most recent book, A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama and Trump, which was published in September.
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ARTS & STYLE Historian Lonnie G. Bunch III is shown accepting the NAACP President’s Award in 2017 for his work as founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch, who recently published a memoir about the museum’s creation, was installed as the new Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution on Nov. 1. He is the first African American to hold the position.
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my way out of things. Those are skills that have served me throughout my career.” Bunch credits his grandfather, a former sharecropper from North Carolina, with inspiring his love of history. Bunch was in-
trigued by photographs in his grandfather’s books, particularly those whose only caption read “anonymous.”
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