The theme guiding the Northwest African American Museum in 2025 — which also marks new president and CEO Brandon Bird’s first full year in the position — is “Forward Together,” a tribute and response to the question-posing title of the last book the late Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his lifetime: 1967’s “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”

“Throughout the remainder of 2025, we’re going to continue to put resources to community-centric activities and events or subject matter we feel will help inform our community around healthy ways to be interconnected,” Tacoma-born Bird said in late February. “We think a great way of doing that — or being anchored in that — is to share our nation’s history, especially the Black experience … as an opportunity not just to inform but to anchor all of us around how we learn from history in order to move together in the present.”

Read the full feature at 425.