Natural History

Lloyd Lochridge (0:02)

To start, tell me where you're from. Where were you born?

Diane Patrick (0:06)

I was born in the Bronx, in New York City.

Lloyd Lochridge (0:10)

This is Diane Patrick.

Diane Patrick (0:12)

When I was a small child, I lived with my mom. My mom was poor, she was a single mom, she was on welfare.

Lloyd Lochridge (0:22)

Growing up, Diane's mom never took her to museums. But over the years, Diane would occasionally go on school field trips to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Diane Patrick (0:32)

I've always hated that museum. It used to take us there as kids in school, and I hated that museum so very much.

Lloyd Lochridge (0:41)

Why?

Diane Patrick (0:42)

Because it was dark and it had animals and insects displaced. I was not interested in that. Oh, it was awful.

I dreaded going there and I vowed I would never go there as an adult.

Lloyd Lochridge (0:56)

When Diane visited the Natural History Museum as a kid, she almost certainly wandered into the achy hall of African mammals. It's the big room in the middle of the building. It's dimly lit with a herd of taxidermied elephants standing in the center, like they just wandered in off the savanna, frozen in time. Surrounding the elephants on each wall, there are big dioramas behind glass built to look like real African landscapes. Lions crouched in tall grass, a leopard dragging its kill up into a tree, gorillas standing in a misty forest clearing. Whether you're compelled by these exhibits or unsettled by them, one thing is clear. They're incredibly lifelike works of art and craftsmanship. But young Diane was not impressed. Not because the exhibits in Akeley Hall weren't impressive. It just wasn't her thing. Or at least that's what she thought at the time.

What she didn't know then was that her grandfather, who she'd never met, was famous in this museum.

His name was Sinclair Clark, and he was a master taxidermy tanner, who helped create many of the museum's most astonishing exhibits, including the herd of elephants in the center of the hall, which are still seen by many visitors today.

Sean Decatur (2:05)

On a typical summer day like today, there'll be 10,000 or so folks who come through the museum, and the overwhelming majority will come through that hall.

The elephants in particular, just, they're iconic, right? I think they're among the things that people think of when they think of the museum. They have been highlighted in movies ranging from Night at the Museum to Malcolm X.

Lloyd Lochridge (2:33)

Diane's grandfather's legacy in this museum is so significant that the president of the museum made time to talk to us on very, very short notice.

Sean Decatur (2:41)

I'm Sean Decatur, president of the American Museum of Natural History. And this is something that I feel a great deal of pride and importance, as someone who identifies as African American, that it was a black man who played a role in these iconic elements of a hall that continues to be amazing for visitors today.

Lloyd Lochridge (3:05)

Sinclair Clark's legacy has become Diane's family lore. But you can't have family lore before you know your family.

And it would take Diane a long time to discover where she came from.

Diane Patrick (3:16)

It doesn't happen when you're 12

It doesn't happen when you're, you know, 20, because you're out there. It's hard growing up. You got to figure things out.

Lloyd Lochridge (3:28)

I'm Lloyd Lochridge, and this is Family Lore. What do you remember about your mom?

Diane Patrick (3:42)

Not a lot. The main thing I remember about her, which is so strange, is that she mispronounced words.

And that was obvious to me. And I was a child. And to this day, I ask myself, where did I come from that I knew, as a child, that a human adult was mispronouncing words? And that was because she was from the south. You know, and we lived in a place where a lot of people were from down south.

And they all talk the same. You know, they had certain accents. I found out later that some of them were from the Gullah Geechee area.

Lloyd Lochridge (4:28)

Of Georgia?

Diane Patrick (4:29)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cause that's where my mother was born, which I found out much later when I was a grown up.

Lloyd Lochridge (4:35)

Yeah, that's where Clarence Thomas is from.

Diane Patrick (4:37)

Well, don't blame that on me.

But, so she would say things to my ear. It sounded like she was saying, we have apple time. And I'm thinking she was trying to say we have ample time, you know, and you know, just little words and I would correct them in my head. So it was just funny that that was my little snobby internal conversation.