The first Black secretary of the Smithsonian and a man responsible for overseeing 19 museums, 21 libraries and the National Zoo, Lonnie G. Bunch III may be a living legend, but he once had to break into his own office with a crowbar.

The year was 2005, and Bunch had recently been tasked with founding the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). He had only one staff member, no funding, no collections and no site on which to build the now-iconic institution, but he did have an office space located just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When Bunch showed up for his first day on the job, he found his door locked, so he asked the building’s front desk agent to let him in. That person refused, explaining he could not be sure of Bunch’s identity. So Bunch appealed to security — again, to no avail.

“I just consider myself a kid from Jersey trying to make it in the big city,” the historian said to a virtual crowd at the University of Delaware on Wednesday, Feb. 24. And one thing this Jersey upbringing afforded him? A spirit of resilience. In a Black History Month event hosted by UD’s Biden Institute, in partnership with the UD Office of Institutional Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the Center for Black Culture, Bunch explained that a member of the building’s maintenance staff eventually passed by with a crowbar in tow. He asked to use the tool and, in short order, went to work dismantling his own door.

“I knew at that point we were going to have to be nimble and smart,” Bunch said. “Find a way to work within the system, but also never let a system keep us back. So I kept that crowbar as a reminder to always use a little extra force if you need to, in order to get something done.”

In this wide-ranging talk, titled "Exhibiting the Past, Imagining the Future: A Conversation With Lonnie G. Bunch III," the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian detailed this inauspicious beginning for the museum, now the country’s most comprehensive cultural institution of its kind. He also shared his thoughts on what comes next for preserving the story of Black history in America and why this work is so integral to the soul of the nation. 

“To state the obvious, what we have experienced within this country for these past months and what we will continue to experience for some months to come has really divided us and brought some real ugliness to the surface,” Valerie Biden Owens said in her introduction. Biden is vice chair of the Biden Institute, a UD graduate and sister of President Joe Biden, who is also a UD graduate. “We have had to fight the pandemic, we have our country’s reckoning with our racial history, and we also have our reckoning with planet Earth, which we have not cared enough for. So having Secretary Bunch here is a gift, because there is no more fitting way to start [the semester] than with a man of wisdom, a man who represents hope, a man who represents optimism and a man who is smart enough to connect all the dots because he knows what has come before.”

Prompted by questions from moderator Trevor A. Dawes, vice provost for libraries and museums at UD and May Morris University Librarian, Bunch reflected on his childhood, during which his grandfather — born to slaves on a plantation  — would take him into the family’s basement to read. One particular day, this grandfather noted historical pictures of Black schoolchildren in one text, with no identifying information.

“I remember him saying: ‘Isn’t it a shame that people could live their lives, die and all it says here is unidentified or anonymous’,” Bunch recalled. “And that just grabbed me. I became fascinated looking at pictures, trying to imagine what their lives were like. Were they happy? Successful? How did race touch them? Even though at the time I didn’t know what a historian was, I knew that part of what motivated me was the need to make visible those who are often left out of history, and to give voice to the anonymous.”