James Baldwin’s 1961 assertion holds true in 2018. Americans are in heated disagreement over what it means to be “American.” Over the following days, Marabou will explore how American museums interpret and express their own definitions of what Baldwin calls, an “extremely controversial proper noun.”

The above quote can be found on page 139 in Collected Essays by James Baldwin, published in New York by Literary Classics of the United States, 1998. It is from the 1961 work, “Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son,” Part One: 1. The Discovery of What It Means To Be an American.