To get a literal taste of the world, there are few better spots to visit than Epcot at Disney World in Orlando Florida. Sure, there aren’t a bevy of rides or characters at Epcot, but the French pastries are legit and the German sausages are for real.
If you don’t have the discretionary income to trot your family around the globe for real, and really, who does?, Epcot provides the exhilarating experience of jetset travel in miniature, all while you’re visiting the happiest place on Earth with your kids.
While dozens of foreign countries are represented in architecture, art and food at Epcot, America isn’t ignored in the least. The Kinsey Collection, located in the American Heritage Gallery, gives Disney World visitors an honest, gut-punch slice of real American History, the kind too often (read: ALWAYS) left out of our kid’s history textbooks and grade school lesson plans.
Inside the small but electrifying galley you’ll see, and interact with via hi-tech embellishments, artifacts and art from the personal collection amassed by the Kinsey family, items including a first edition Frederick Douglas book, a 1867 book of slave songs recorded by abolitionists, a distribution of population report showing African-Americans as 3/5ths a person. I mean, Jesus Christ that’s hard to look at, but so damn important to reckon with as a citizen of this great but extremely complicated country.
It’s free to walk through The Kinsey Collection at Epcot’s World Showcase and I highly encourage you to do so with your kids. What’s inside the gallery IS American history like you rarely get to see and experience it.
