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African American

Mormon church donates $2M to African American Museum

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
African American
Exterior of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, July 20, 2016. Photo by Fuzheado, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is donating $2 million to the International African American Museum for the creation of a family history center.

Church Elder David A. Bednar presented the donation Wednesday in Salt Lake City to Michael Boulware Moore, the president and CEO of the museum planned in Charleston, South Carolina.

Bednar says the museum will help visitors “discover and connect with ancestors.”

The museum says in a statement the facility will be built on the former Gadsden’s Wharf in Charleston, where nearly half of all enslaved Africans first entered America.

The museum plans to begin construction later this year and open in 2021.

The Mormon church operates the genealogy organization and website FamilySearch.

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