To begin to grasp the breadth and depth of “America I AM: The African American Imprint,” the sprawling exhibition opening today at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, it helps to know some numbers:

• 500 years of history covered, from “The Door of No Return,” which slaves departing Ghana passed through on their way to the New World, to video of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

• 22,000 square feet, nearly double the space at the exhibit’s first stop at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center.

• Nearly 300 artifacts, including more than 40 new to the show.

• 18 months to pull it all together after journalist Tavis Smiley had the brainstorm of an exhibit that would answer a provocative question scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois posed in 1903: “Would America have been America without her Negro people?”

Source : (www.accessatlanta.com)