Hey everyone. This is Jonathan Kapart and welcome to this bonus episode of Cape Up.

The National Museum for African American History and Culture opens Saturday in Washington, D.C.

and its founding director, Lonnie Bunch, is my guest.

We talk about how the museum went from idea to completion,

how he went about gathering the artifacts that tell the history of a people and a nation,

and what happened when he visited a man claiming to have possessions of Harriet Tubman.

And literally I am so jaded.

I'm saying, oh man, what am I doing here?

He pulled, he pulled out one box, not a big box, one box.

And he starts out by pulling pictures of Harriet Tubman's funeral that no one had ever seen.

He's got my attention.

If there's an overall message of the museum, it is this from Lonnie Bunch.

This is a story that is too big to be in the hands of one community.

It really is the story that has shaped us all.

Hear him say that and more right now. Lonnie Bunch, thank you so much for being on Cape up and having us in your fabulous new museum.

Thank you. Welcome.

How does it feel to finally have this day here with the museum opening?

It is unbelievably humbling because so many people contributed to this and that in many ways

I always knew this day would happen but that's because I'm good at fooling myself.

But how many years did it take? It took more than 10 years to...

Well, it's taken 11 years since I started. And so that's when the whole process began.

But so therefore, it's been the longest time you could ask

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