Across the street, the former Carver Theatre was built in 1948 as the first nonsegregated movie house in Southeast Washington. After closing in 1957, it became a roller rink, a church, and a funeral parlor before a museum moved in a decade later and transformed ideas about what a museum could be. Smithsonian Institution Secretary S. Dillon Ripley, believing that most low-income people did not go to museums, decided to bring a museum to them. Several D.C. neighborhoods competed to host a Smithsonian branch, and Anacostia secured it through negotiations by D.C. Councilmember Stanley Anderson and citizens organized as the Greater Anacostia People's Corporation. When the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum opened in 1967, the Smithsonian had never produced a major exhibition on African American history or culture and had never employed any African American curators. John Kinard, an anti-poverty worker and local activist with no museum experience, was chosen to lead it, and although he later called the job a leap in the dark, the experiment succeeded. Many residents east of the river experienced museum-going for the first time. Early displays included a model of a Mercury space capsule and dinosaur bones, but with community input the focus soon shifted to local history, arts, and issues, telling visitors that their history mattered too. At Kinard's insistence, community youth helped design and produce much of the museum's programming. After the museum gained national recognition for its exhibit “The Rat: Man's Invited Affliction,” which featured live rats, Kinard sought more space. In 1987 the museum moved to a new building at Fort Stanton Park, and in 2006 it became the Anacostia Community Museum.
