DOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC in VOA Special English.

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I'm Doug Johnson.

This week we play love songs for Valentine's Day...

And answer a question from China about bullet train development in the United States...

But first an exploration of African American history at the Kinsey Collection exhibit in Washington.

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DOUG JOHNSON: February is Black History Month in the United States. The central message this year is African Americans and the Civil War. Two hundred thousand blacks joined the Union Army of the North to fight the Southern separatist Confederate Army. Their wives, mothers and sisters supported them in many ways. Yet their stories are not widely known.

An exhibit in Washington, D.C., holds important clues to this history and more about blacks in America. Faith Lapidus has our report.

The Kinsey Collection

FAITH LAPIDUS: The National Museum of African American History and Culture is presenting the exhibit. It is called "The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey – Where Art and History Intersect."

It is being shown at the NMAAHC gallery at the National Museum of American History on the National Mall. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is to begin building its own center next year.

Bernard and Shirley Kinsey began collecting African American art and historical objects in the nineteen seventies. Bernard Kinsey says it started with an old document sent to him by a friend.

BERNARD KINSEY: "It was a bill of sale from William Johnson, eighteen thirty-two, for five hundred dollars. And when I opened that Fed-Ex up and held this document in my hand it was like I was holding this brother in my hand. And I said I want to know everything about him, and how he lived and this period. And that just started this deep and wide quest."

The bill of sale is in a part of the show called "Stories of Slavery and Freedom." The bill of sale, like many objects in this area, is extremely unsettling. The physical fact deepens the knowledge that people were once considered property.

There is a second bill of sale nearby. This time the purchaser is Henry Butler in eighteen thirty-nine. The bill shows a payment of one hundred dollars to Anne Graham of Washington, D.C. for the freedom of Henry Butler's wife and four children. The bill states: "Signed, sealed and delivered."

There are also a pair of shackles from around eighteen fifty. This device was placed around the ankles to restrain captives on the way from Africa to the Americas. The exhibit display explains that the shackles are so small they may have been for a child.

As visitors move through the show, they move forward in time. Covers of Harpers Weekly magazine give an idea of the involvement of black men in the Union Army. One cover shows the Twentieth Colored Infantry of Eighteen Sixty-Four receiving a silk banner in New York City. The banner was made by their mothers, wives and sisters. A proud African American crowd watches the ceremony.

In the "Freedom Struggles" area, there are signs of racial separation. These include a drinking fountain sign with arrows pointing one way for "whites" and another for "colored."

Toward the end of the exhibit visitors reach "Remembering the Faces of a People." This joyous section includes oil paintings, woodcuts, drawings, sculpture, photographs, fabric art and more. It shows the many ways African American artists see themselves and their community.

And it was the best part of the Kinsey Collection for visitor Aaron Crenshaw, of Woodbridge, Virginia.

AARON CRENSHAW: "The touching artwork. I never knew about, never knew existed. Been in the military so I've seen, like, the military side. But the art factor. It's just an eye opener, if you've never seen it before."