Fragments Tell a Story of Pain and Pride

Mark Lyons

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. More Photos >

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

PHILADELPHIA — By now the question that frames a new $14 million exhibition opening on Thursday at the National Constitution Center here is one that shouldn’t have to be asked and should have already been fully answered. It comes from the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, to whom the first gallery in this large exhibition is devoted — the only black intellectual or writer to get such attention: “Would America have been America without her Negro people?”READ MORE