Philadelphia Weekly

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It isn't really till the very end of "America I Am" that we see just how much white people have outright stolen from African-Americans over the last 400 years. Following room after room of moving but staid history and memorabilia, the exhibit's closing video finally gets feisty, explicitly laying out the overt cultural thievery perpetrated over the decades--the millions that white musicians have made copying black tropes and styles.

It's nothing new. Long before Eminem stole his flow from Tupac, or Madonna stole her moves from Janet, Elvis Presley stole "Hound Dog" from Big Mama Thornton. It was the 1950s, and record producers realized they could make some money from white musicians recording R&B. Except they couldn't call it rhythm and blues, with that term's racial connotations. (The commonly used term "race music" obviously wouldn't do either.) So they called it rock 'n' roll instead.

The video has fun with this grand heist, juxtaposing MC Hammer with Vanilla Ice, Sam and Dave with the Blues Brothers, over a music bed of OutKast singing, "I like the way you move ... " It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Even though "America I Am" covers history since Africans first arrived here, there's little from before the Civil War that you didn't study in school. But after the South secedes--and particularly into the civil rights era--the exhibit comes alive in a whole new way.

The jaw pretty much drops upon spotting Frederick Douglass' "free pass" letter from Abraham Lincoln--the president's note indicating it was okay for Douglass to move freely about the states. Same with Rosa Parks' fingerprint card from her arrest in Montgomery, Ala. Also in the how-did-they-get-that? category: the bench and cell-door key from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birmingham jail, and the typewriter on which Alex Haley wrote Roots. These artifacts balance the abundant history lessons leading up to 1865.

Beyond the glass cases and video screens, though, the Constitution Center has scheduled a number of cultural and historical events throughout the exhibit's run. On Monday the museum hosts "August Wilson and the Century Cycle," a night of dramatic readings exploring the playwright's African-American-centric works. Next month is "Ida B. Wells and the African American Freedom Struggle," discussing the journalist/activist's role in early black civil rights.

At times it's a pretty bleak exhibit--the earliest rooms you walk through, detailing the slave trade, are shrouded almost entirely in darkness, with artifacts including African shackles and the actual dungeon doors from the Cape Coast Castle, where Ghanaian prisoners were held before boarding ships for the New World.

But there's fun to be had as well. The guitar that Prince famously scandalized at the 2007 Super Bowl is here, purple as ever, reminding us that, like a musical-genius King Midas, everything the man touches turns into a phallic symbol. And the room of classic dresses and suits worn by famous black entertainers makes you hope they get a hold of Aretha Franklin's gift-wrap hat for the exhibit's future stops. (After premiering at the National Constitution Center, "America I Am" moves on to a 10-city, four-year tour.)

In thinking about that hat, it's tough to imagine how the exhibit would feel had the election turned out differently. Barack Obama is an undercurrent tracing through almost every room--he's the one many of these warriors were waiting for. There's a sense of relief that this election wasn't stolen like in years past--a larceny that would've made Madonna's moves and Eminem's rhymes sound positively original.