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movement that peaked with the Oklahoma City

Freedom Center bombing in 1995.

exhibit explores Coming off its most popular exhibit in its six-
year history, "Without Sanctuary: Lynching
terror in America Photography in America," which drew more than
15,000 visitors, the Freedom Center has found a
niche with this type of edgy, thought-provoking
By Mark Curnutte • mcurnutte@enquirer.com • and controversial exhibits that build on its
September 10, 2010 slavery foundation.

Prevailing wisdom, especially today, might say
that terrorism in the United States is a 21st
century phenomenon.
On this, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11
attacks, thoughts turn to commercial airliners
slamming into the World Trade Center towers in
New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Two charred steel pieces from United Airlines
Flight 175, which hit the World Trade Center's
South Tower at 9:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, are
the stirring close of the exhibit "Terror in
America: Enemy Within," which opens Saturday at
the National Underground Railroad Freedom
Center.
Yet internal terror is as old as the United States
itself, the exhibit shows, starting with the British
burning of Washington, D.C., in 1814.
"This exhibit is about the evolution of national
security while balancing individual civil liberties,
always an important mission for the Freedom
Center," said center curator Dina Bailey.
"Terror in America" has met with opposition at
other museum stops across the country, said
Keith Foster, who breaks down and installs the
exhibit.
"Throughout the museum community, the main
thing with this exhibit is fear," said Foster, who
works for Evergreen Exhibitions in San Antonio.
He put finishing touches on "Terror" this week at
the Freedom Center.
"The Freedom Center isn't afraid to challenge
visitors. A lot of museums don't want to do that.
This feels like the perfect place for an exhibit
like this."

The display originated at the International Spy Advertisement

Museum in Washington 2004 before starting to
tour in 2006.

"Most Americans ... regard Sept. 11 as a turning

point that forever changed their sense of s
ecurity in the United States," said Milton Maltz,
Spy Museum founder and board chairman. "The
fact is, however, that Americans have endured
thousands of incidents of terror, violence or
subversion right here at home by domestic
terrorists and foreign agents."

Starting with the Revolutionary War, "Terror in

America" continues to the German sabotage of
World War I, through the rise of the Ku Klux Klan
in the 1920s and onto the Cold War and militia

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http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100910/NEWS01/9110339/Exhibit-examines-terror-i... Page 2 of 3
"Terror" is broken down into nine major events
and periods when Americans faced threats from
enemies within its borders and how the
government and public responded.
Some of the events are better known, such as
the march in 1925 of 30,000 Klansmen down
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. A women's
Klan robe is part of the exhibit, which details
how the Klan grew from a small vigilante group
bent on harassing former slaves after the Civil
War to a powerful force of four million members
that expanded to target immigrants, Jews and
Catholics.
Another section familiar in recent U.S. history is
the national reaction to the Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the development of
interment camps housing Japanese-Americans
during World War II.
A lesser-known event examined in full is the
bombing by German secret agents of a
Manhattan munitions depot in New York Harbor
in 1916. It contributed to the United States' entry
into World War I and the passage of the
Espionage Act (still in effect today to prohibit any
interference in military action) and the growth of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The journey through frightful and destabilizing
chapters in American history takes visitors to
Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when
disgruntled U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh
detonated a homemade truck bomb in front of
the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
McVeigh, a militia movement sympathizer upset
with the federal government's handling of a
religious cult standoff two years earlier in Waco, T
exas, which led to the deaths of 76 people, was
later executed. The Oklahoma City bombing,
symbolized by a rescue worker's helmet, killed
168 people, the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S.
soil until Sept. 11, 2001.
"Terrorism in whatever form is an assault on
http://news.cincinnati.com/fdcp/?1284386456138
freedom," said Donald Murphy, Freedom Center
president and chief executive. "Our freedoms, as
this exhibition dramatically demonstrates, have
been challenged internally since our founding.
And it is a reflection of the strength of our
democracy that we have not succumbed to the
terrorists' agenda."
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"Enemy Within"
Paul Bernish, a member of the Founding Board of the
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, will
lead the Freedom Center's involvement in raising public
awareness of modern forms of slavery, and will
represent the Freedom Center with anti-slavery non-
government organizations and government officials.
Tickets for the "Enemy Within: Terror in America," are
$12 for adults. The museum is open from 11 a.m. to
5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
New post
Paul Bernish, a member of the Founding Board of the
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center - and,
for the past six years, the museum's marketing and
communications officer - has been appointed Director
of Antislavery and Human Trafficking Initiatives. It is
believed to be the first such position responsibility in
the American museum field, and coincides with the
Oct. 9 scheduled opening of the Freedom Center's
exhibition on modern forms of slavery, "Invisible:
Slavery Today."
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