"Our Stories Have Shaped Every Corner of Our Culture"

"Scripture promised that if we lift up the oppressed, that our light will rise in the darkness, and our night will become like the noonday. And the story contained in this museum makes those words prophecy. And that’s what this day is about, that's what this museum's about.
"I, too, am America. It is a glorious story, the one that’s told here. It is complicated, and it is messy, and it is full of contradictions, as all great stories are, as Shakespeare is, as Scripture is. And it's a story that perhaps needs to be told now more than ever."

Time provides a transcript of President Obama's speech at the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.