An action spectacle built around true story of female warriorship is the highlight of the weekend.
“Rosa Parks, the D.C. seamstress who resisted integration in the 1940s, died in 2004,” the narrator intones in the opening minutes of “The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”, a docudrama that chronicles the civil rights leader’s struggle for the right to practice law in 1952. “But as her funeral was held on a chilly December eve, it felt the same as any other.”
For those that arrive hoping to see the movie version of the iconic activist who was the first American to file a complaint against the Birmingham, Alabama, police department’s use of the city’s segregated pool and toilet facilities, that moment is likely to prove disappointing. No matter. In the lobby, a man in a red jacket and a woman in a gray one embrace. They make an odd pair. A man in a red jacket and a woman in a gray one embrace. They make an odd pair.
That oddity is the new attraction at the Petersen House, a renovated National Portrait Gallery in Washington. That place was the former Capitol. Now it’s the National Museum of the American Congresswoman.
A woman in a red jacket and a woman in a gray one embrace. They make an odd pair. A man in a red jacket and a woman in a gray one embrace. They make an odd pair. (Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery)
The woman in the gray one has come to be known as Rosa Parks, the D.C. seamstress who resisted integration in the 1940s. The woman in the red jacket is Gloria Steinem, the New York Times columnist and feminist.
The former Capitol was in a hurry to get out of the picture business. It was sold in 2005 to the National Portrait Gallery. “The new, larger space, with high ceilings, allows us to exhibit our most important collection and to offer a wide variety of programs that help the public understand the story of our forefathers,” said the gallery in a press release.
The Petersen House is a museum of history. But it’s also a
