www.cincinnati.

com | Printer-friendly article page Page 1 of 3

October 8, 2009

'Focused' Freedom Center turns 5

By Mark Curnutte
mcurnutte@enquirer.com

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will celebrate its fifth anniversary Saturday with
a sharpened focus of purpose and the reduced staff size and annual budget more in line with
attendance.

Few of its supporters could have predicted the rocky road the center would have traveled since its
glitzy, star-studded riverfront opening in August 2004 - attended by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, then-
First Lady Laura Bush and actress Angela Basset.

Growing pains that any new corporation endures, is how Donald Murphy, Freedom Center CEO and
president, describes the challenges of its first five years. Among them, both real and perceived:

• Divergent and overly ambitious attendance projections.

• Lack of riverfront development around the center on the Banks.

• The recession.

• Lack of clarity on how to carry out its mission.

The annual budget has been pared in half, from $11.5 million to $5.7 million, Murphy said. The center
trimmed its number of full-time employees from 100 to roughly 50.

"We're focusing on the fundamental message of the triumph of the human spirit," Murphy said. "If you
could put it into one word, we're talking about triumph. We want people to walk away from this
museum inspired."

Early attendance projections varied from 200,000 to 1 million annually, said Paul Bernish, the center's
chief communications officer. Lofty and somewhat unrealistic expectations have haunted the museum
since.

The center drew 280,000 visitors in 2005, but attendance has fallen off since, leveling off to an
average of 176,000 a year. It expects to surpass 900,000 by year's end and top 1 million in 2010.

Attendance through nine months in 2009 is ahead of 2008. The center cut prices - including a drop
from $12 to $9 for adults - in February to try to increase foot traffic.

It is receiving no public funding to operate, Bernish said, though the center is in a "deficit situation."

Five years into its existence, the Freedom Center continues to be a lightning rod, the focus of
impassioned criticism and critical acclaim that reflects Greater Cincinnati's ongoing clumsiness with
racial, taxation and development questions.

Some elected officials and many private citizens criticized the Freedom Center when it tried to sell the

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091008/NEWS01/910090349/+F... 10/9/2009
www.cincinnati.com | Printer-friendly article page Page 2 of 3

development rights to a 1.6-acre plot of land - the grassy area to the immediate south of the museum
- for $500,000 each to the city and county. Murphy said the decision was made to yield the rights
because the center did not want to further delay Banks development.

Former state Rep Tom Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, opposed public funding to operate the center. It
received about $45 million in city, county, state and federal money for construction, compared to
about $67 million in private donations.

An initial request for $1.25 million from Ohio, however, was declined this year because of the state's
budget shortfall.

The center received $200,000 from the city in 2007 to pay off construction debt. Another $1 million
came from the Ohio Department of Education in 2007 and 2008 for social studies programs and
transportation for fifth- and eighth-grade students throughout the state.

The Freedom Center has won an annual competitive grant of some $1 million from the U.S.
Department of Education since 2005 for its programming.

Despite its efforts to embrace struggles for freedom worldwide - its contemporary slavery exhibits and
programs address genocide in Darfur and child slavery in Haiti - the center can't connect to African-
Americans in Avondale, said Christopher Smitherman, president of the 3,000-member Cincinnati
NAACP chapter.

"The Freedom Center continues to struggle because it continues not to do the kind of substantive
outreach to the African-American community that it needs to do," he said.

He would like to see the Freedom Center take issue with what he says is the disparity in City of
Cincinnati contracts to African-American-owned businesses, significantly higher rates of infant
mortality and HIV in the black community and the explosion in home foreclosures in Hamilton
County's predominately black neighborhoods because of what he says are predatory lending
practices.

The Freedom Center "needs to use its position to call attention to those issues," Smitherman said.
"Economic slavery is going on right here."

Still, Smitherman applauded former Freedom Center CEO John Pepper, a driving force in the
establishment of the museum, "as having his heart in the right place."

The center has reached out to the local community and its institutions. Murphy sites its partnership
with the Reds in playing host to events related to Major League Baseball's first Civil Rights Game,
which returns to Cincinnati in 2010. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory chose the Freedom Center as the
permanent display site for a piece of the Berlin Wall given to Cincinnati by the German city.

"We've had some fits and starts, but we've done some good things," Murphy said.

The center receives more than 90 percent favorable evaluations from visitors, including the hundreds
of teachers who attend field trips with the 270,000 students in grades 4-12 who have toured it.
Distance learning programs originating at the Freedom Center are in place not just in Cincinnati but
several other U.S. municipalities, including Chicago, Akron and Baltimore County, Md.

There is renewed focus on making its exhibits and programs more appealing to a wider audience,
such as recent traveling displays on Abraham Lincoln, African Origins of American Art and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The Chicago Tribune wrote of the Freedom Center: "If you see only one museum in Cincinnati, this
should be it."

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091008/NEWS01/910090349/+F... 10/9/2009
www.cincinnati.com | Printer-friendly article page Page 3 of 3

The immediate and long-range futures are bright, Murphy said.

"We need more voices, younger voices involved in our forums, we need broader appeal," he said.
"What I'd like to see most in the next five years is the struggle for freedom told in a comprehensive
manner, not in bits and pieces."

Additional Facts
If you go

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will celebrate its fifth anniversary with several
events Saturday at its building, 50 E. Freedom Way, Downtown.

• 10 a.m.: Film Festival, with showings of "Inside Islam," "Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story" and
"Cabin in the Sky." Former television news anchor Nick Clooney will host the 2:30 p.m. screening of
"Cabin" and lead a discussion of the 1943 musical - it had an all-black cast - after its showing. The
film festival is included in regular admission - $9 for adults, family of four for $18, $6 for students.

• 6-10 p.m.: Reception and dinner, "Triumph of the Human Spirit," during which Clooney, Reds owner
Robert Castellini and former Essence Magazine editor Susan Taylor will be honored as "Everyday
Freedom Heroes" for their "commitment to community engagement, human rights and social justice."

• Child-oriented and family events also will be held throughout the day.

• Cost: $75 for all evening activities.

• Tickets: (888) 778-7321.

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091008/NEWS01/910090349/+F... 10/9/2009