Southerners have a saying, "Bit dog always hollers." That's how Jody Powell, President Carter's former press secretary, responded when asked about criticism, coming mainly from Republicans, that Carter had overstepped the bounds of good taste in his eulogy of Coretta Scott King by mentioning that she and her husband had been illegally wiretapped. Carter did not imply that Republicans were responsible. Indeed it was President Kennedy and his brother Bobby who authorized the FBI's eavesdropping on Martin Luther King Jr.

Yet with Senate hearings going on in Washington on the legality of Bush's domestic-spying program, it was inescapable that people would make the connection to present-day abuses. The FISA law (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) was signed into law by Carter, and he is justifiably angry about the way Bush brushes it aside as a troublesome bureaucratic impediment. Whether the funeral of a civil-rights icon was the right place and time to jab Bush is debatable, but it's not surprising given Carter's strong feelings.

Coretta King spoke out against the Iraq war and no doubt would have appreciated the occasional discordant political note in the rosy tributes paid to her.  Bush deserves credit for sitting through it all despite the awkward moments and remaining good-natured and even eloquent in his eulogy. That evening he welcomed the Harlem Dance Theater to the White House for a special performance, and among the guests was Lonnie Bunch, the director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. "Hey, Bunch!" Bush said, clapping him on the back, a familiarity Bush earned when he signed legislation creating the museum in December '03. It had been a long time coming. Georgia Rep. John Lewis first introduced the legislation in 1988, and every year after that, to no avail. Even President Clinton, who's been called the first black president because of his close ties to the African-American community, couldn't get enough support in Congress for the museum.

Bush's museum action pulled off the seemingly impossible. With his re-election campaign looming and needing help to win more of the black vote, he mustered the votes to build the museum on federal land, and to provide $250 million, half what the proposed structure is expected to cost. Sure, there was political self-interest, but Bush is also personally committed. One of the first checks the Smithsonian got for the new African-American museum came from the president and his wife, Laura. Then the newly re-elected Bush directed a portion of the funds that went unspent by his Inaugural committee to the museum. That amounted to a cool $5 million. The African-American museum is still seven years off, but it's been awarded space on the Mall in Washington off Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, an apt location since the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution secured civil rights for black Americans after slavery.  Bunch promises the museum's exhibits will be "a lens into what it means to be an American," the optimism and resilience that are core values of the black experience along with the Gordian knot of race relations.

Bunch is off to a good start, but raising money is never easy, and there's strong competition from across the river in Virginia. Former governor Doug Wilder, now mayor of Richmond, was in Washington this week unveiling his plans for a National Slavery museum, and he's a lot farther along than anybody dreamed possible. He's got the land (32½ acres on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, Va.) and he's got an acclaimed architect, Chen Chung Pei, son of the legendary I. M. Pei, whose vision includes the full-scale replica of a slave ship. Wilder is the grandson of slaves but he couldn't get his father to talk about the subject. "He would bite on his pipe so hard it almost snapped in two," Wilder recalls. His own interest was piqued on a visit to Goree Island, a slave transit point in the African nation of Senegal, when he looked out the "door of no return" where slaves would board the ship, and realized he was governor of a state where many of them were taken. He determined then their story had to be told, and what better place than in Virginia, which had more slaves than any other place.

Wilder is gambling that an illuminated sign with a slave ship at the exit off I-95 in Fredericksburg will draw visitors, and he resists the notion that he is competing with Washington. "You can't have too many [museums], and there's enough money to go around," he says, smiling.  "Just give us ours." He's counting on what he calls "enlightened self-interest" from corporations who acknowledge past participation in slavery, "not reparations," he adds, "but acknowledgment of doing what is right." Actor Ben Vereen, who played Chicken George in "Roots," accompanied Wilder and put it more bluntly: "Corporate America, we need you now. We bought your cars—we smoked your cigarettes—now it's time to tally up."  The U.S. National Slavery Museum is scheduled to open in 2007.