CBS This Morning to preview National Museum of African American History on Monday

CBS This Morning will broadcast live from the Smithsonian’s new National Museum Of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) on Monday, September 12th. The much-anticipated and hard-won museum doesn’t officially open until September 24th and the crowds are certain to be enormous for the forseeable future, so this is a chance to get a preview tour of the museum, and a thorough one at that. Guests include museum director Lonnie Bunch, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Civil Rights icon Representative John Lewis, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, historians and donors.

The 2-hour broadcast will be presented with limited commercial interruptions and feature interviews with lawmakers, historians, and curators who were part of bringing the museum to life.

Viewers will get a preview of the roughly 36,000 artifacts highlighting African American life, music, sports, and politics.

“It’s going to take you on a historical journey. They’re going to have a slave house. Slave ships. Emmett Till’s coffin. So you go from that, to the election of President Barack Obama all in one building,” said host Gayle King.

CBS This Morning streams live here. I don’t know if the full broadcast will be made available on the website after broadcast or if they’ll save it for CBS’ subscription streaming service.

The museum will be throwing a three-day music festival on the grounds of the Washington monument the weekend before the opening. Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration features musicians from a panoply of African American musical traditions including jazz, gospel, R&B, brass band and hip-hop. The lineup includes Public Enemy, The Roots, Living Colour and Meshell Ndegeocello. The food concessions look to be scrumptious too.

Tickets to the National Museum Of African American History and Culture on grand opening weekend (September 24-25) are no longer available. Free timed passes were offered through ETIX, but they flew off the proverbial shelves. Because interest is so high and the crowds sure to be huge, the museum is continuing to issue timed passes through the end of the year to ensure visitors can enjoy the experience without being crushed and buffeted in the traffic. Starting Monday, September 26th, visitors can get a timed pass at the museum when they show up on the day, but of course they’ll have to wait until their allotted time, and that’s no guarantee they won’t have a long line to wait in or that they’ll be ushered in the doors precisely on schedule. Advanced passes for September and October released on September 6th, and have already all been snapped up. ETIX only has passes available now for November and December.

The NMAAHC’s website was redone recently and is excellent, with large swaths of its collection digitized. Very much worth a long, leisurely browse.