U.S. Rep. John Lewis envisions a slave ship exhibit, depicting the passage from West Africa to America.

The chairman of Howard University’s Afro-American studies department, Russell Adams, wants to be sure there’s a place for the stories of today’s black middle class and the problems of the black underclass.

The challenges of capturing all the triumphs and tragedies of American blacks in the first National Museum of African American History and Culture are just starting to emerge as the project crawls forward from concept to reality.

It should “tell the story of African Americans from the days of slavery to the present,” said Lewis, a civil rights leader and longtime proponent of a national black museum.

“Part of that story has not been told, and in America so many people grew up … without knowing the contributions of their fellow Americans.”

A 23-member museum commission was created under legislation sponsored by Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia, and signed into law by President Bush in December.

Its members are expected to be named in the next few weeks. They will have $2 million and nine months to come up with a plan for establishing the national museum in Washington.

Specifically, they will have to report on the availability and cost of collections that would be housed in the museum, where it would be located and who should operate it.

Most supporters agree the museum should be broadly focused. But figuring out how to tell the story of the black experience in America can be a delicate issue, Adams said.

“If the museum picks the big themes of the evolution of the society, they can tell a story that has sunshine and shadows without aggravating race relations. That’s always a problem,” Adams said.

People “don’t want to come to Washington and come out of the museum in tears, or come out of the museum wanting to hit somebody.”

Frederick Douglass IV, president of Friends of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, envisions a place that would be interactive and appeal to young people.

“I wouldn’t want it to just be a dusty display of books and some old clothes and some photographs on the wall,” said Douglass, who regularly performs reenactments of his abolitionist great-great grandfather’s life. “I want it to come off the walls.”

The commission will also have to address how a national museum would affect other black history museums. There are more than 200 such local and regional museums, historic sites and galleries, said Rita Organ, former president of the Association of African American Museums.

While the association fully supports a national museum, she said, it also is concerned about whether a national museum would divert federal and private money away from the other institutions.

This isn’t the first time a commission has studied the creation of a national black museum. A plan in 1929 never got off the ground, said Robert Wilkins, president of the National African American Museum & Cultural Complex, a group he created to advocate for a national museum.

“I shouldn’t have to be doing this, and others shouldn’t have to be doing this in 2002, but we’re going to see it through,” said Wilkins, who left his job as a public defender to devote all his attention to the museum project.

“There’s a long history with this, and unfortunately it’s a long history of neglect.”