Entertainment legend Bill Cosby is asking for your help to fund a major project he hopes will be around for you and your great-great-great grandchildren to appreciate. Cosby is launching a new campaign to raise $100 million toward a national slavery museum to be built among the battlefields of the Civil War. The price tag for the new museum: $200 million. That’s where you (we) come in. Cosby is calling on each American to contribute $8 to help with the museum fund. The actor has already committed $1 million of his own money to the project, and is rallying others to dig deep as well.
“The incentive is that they would join in with the rest of the United States of America in saying yes, as an American, I gave $8 to help build something that tells the story,” Cosby said in an interview with various media outlets.
He went on to say that in a country with some 300 million people, “even a tepid response would surpass the $100 million goal.” However, Cosby is a realist and admitted this kind of campaign generally fails miserably. But, he told reporters: “I’m going to try again because I’m going to present this national slavery museum as a jewel that’s missing in a crown.”
If you haven’t been following the plight of the proposed U.S. National Slavery Museum, then you may be unaware that it has been going on for more than a decade. Cosby’s plea marks the latest attempt at fundraising… and raising awareness. Project managers have struggled for years to find a location for the museum and just recently settled on a site near the Rappahannock River, a region where many Civil War battles were fought.
As for the seemingly obscure $8 request… organizers say even that has symbolic significance. In a campaign to create what is billed as the first national museum dedicated solely to telling the story of American slavery, “the figure 8, shape, is both of the shackles, which is the symbol of slavery and if you turn it on its side, it’s the symbol of infinite freedom.” Currently, project managers say, the museum has raised about $50 million.