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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture.

What It Means to Tell the Truth About America

And what happens when empirical fact is labeled “improper ideology.”
by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on April 21, 2025

An Intimate History of America

A reminder of history's proximity is prompted by a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
by Clint Smith via The Paris Review on December 18, 2017
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

‘It Reminds You of a Fascist State’: Smithsonian Institution Braces for Trump Rewrite of US History

Normally staid historians sound alarm at authoritarian grasping for control of the premier US museum complex.
by David Smith via The Guardian on March 30, 2025
Collage of Black woman and marriage certificate.

Why Is America Afraid of Black History?

No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.
by Lonnie G. Bunch III via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Illustration of Black oystermen in dredging boats along the Chesapeake Bay

The Double Life of New York's Black Oyster King

Thomas Downing was a fine-dining pioneer with a secret.
by Briona Lamback via Atlas Obscura on September 28, 2022
original

Our Flag Was Still There

How is the first half of the 19th century depicted in and around the nation’s capital? Ed Ayers hits the road to find out.
by Ed Ayers on July 19, 2022
Destruction from the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921.

Reflections on the Artifacts Left Behind From the Tulsa Race Massacre

Objects and documents, says the Smithsonian historian Paul Gardullo, offer a profound opportunity for reckoning with a past that still lingers.
by Paul Gardullo via Smithsonian on May 24, 2021
Chart of race-based castes.

The Limits of Caste

By neglecting the history of the Black diaspora, Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" fails to reckon with systems of racial capitalism.
by Hazel V. Carby via London Review of Books on January 21, 2021

‘Hey Boy, You Want To Go See A Hangin’?’: A Lynching From A White Southerner’s View

You cannot have reconciliation without empathy. And you can’t have empathy unless people know the past pain that informs our present.
by Jonathan Capehart via Washington Post on June 9, 2017

Long-Lost Manuscript Has a Searing Eyewitness Account of Tulsa Race Massacre

A lawyer details the attack by hundreds of whites on the black neighborhood where hundreds died 95 years ago.
by Allison Keyes via Smithsonian on May 27, 2016

At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History

The urge to police the past is hardly an invention of the Trump Administration. It is the reflexive obsession of autocrats everywhere.
by David Remnick via The New Yorker on April 6, 2025
Car interior with Chuck Berry reflected in side view mirror.

An Anthropologist of Filth

On Chuck Berry.
by Ian Penman via Harper’s on May 4, 2023
Frederick Douglass Patterson, behind the wheel, with an unidentified passenger in a 1910 or 1911 Maxwell automobile in for repairs at the C.R. Patterson & Sons car repair shop, before the Pattersons began making cars themselves.

How America’s First — and Only — Black Automakers Defied the Odds

C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield became the first Black-owned automobile manufacturer in 1915. More than a century later, it remains the only known one.
by Kevin Williams via Retropolis on February 18, 2023
Tourists taking photos at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
partner

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Coca Cola Strategy: Selling King’s Dream to the World

Martin Luther King’s words are available publicly — for a price.
by Daniel T. Fleming via Made By History on January 16, 2023
Dancing crowds and a DJ at the 2022 Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, Washington

How the Block Party Became an Urban Phenomenon

“That spirit of community, which we all talk about as the roots of hip-hop, really originates in that block party concept.”
by Briana A. Thomas via Smithsonian on August 10, 2022
Visitors at the National Museum of Natural History in D.C. take in the exhibits.

Human Bones, Stolen Art: Smithsonian Tackles its ‘Problem’ Collections

The Smithsonian’s first update to its collection policy in 20 years proposes ethical returns and shared ownership. But will it bring transformational change?
by Peggy McGlone via Washington Post on July 27, 2022
Diver holding stone

The Search for Lost Slave Ships Led This Diver On An Extraordinary Journey

Explorer Tara Roberts took up diving to learn about the human side of a tragic era. She wound up connecting with her family’s inspiring past.
by Tara Roberts via National Geographic on February 2, 2022
Shot full of bullet holes, a sign marking where police recovered the body of Emmett Till.
partner

Excluding Black Americans From Our History Has Proved Deadly

Why it's so important to remember even our ugliest and most racist chapters.
by Nancy Bercaw, Dave Tell, Tsione Wolde-Michael via Made By History on October 20, 2021
Photos of victims in the 9/11 museum

The 9/11 Museum and Its Discontents

A new documentary goes inside the battles that have riven the institution and shaped the historical legacy of the attack.
by David Klion via Intelligencer on August 26, 2021
An embroidered sack that says "My great grandmother Rose, mother of Ashley gave her this sack when, she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina, it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of pecans a braid of Rose's hair. Told her it be filled with my Love always, she never saw her again, Ashley is my grandmother, Ruth Middleton 1921

To Find the History of African American Women, Look to Their Handiwork

Our foremothers wove spiritual beliefs, cultural values, and historical knowledge into their flax, wool, silk, and cotton webs.
by Tiya Miles via The Atlantic on June 8, 2021
A slave in chains behind an American flag

Germany Faced its Horrible Past. Can We Do the Same?

For too long, we've ignored our real history. We must face where truth can take us.
by Michele Norris via Washington Post on June 3, 2021
Yearbook photo of a an African American girl, in front of newspaper headlines and pictures of her as an adult

Meet Claudette Colvin, the 15-Year-Old Who Came Before Rosa Parks

Claudette Colvin is a Civil Rights hero you've probably never heard of. In 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, months before Rosa Parks.
via CNN on February 21, 2021
Photograph of a former slave interviewed by the Federal Writers' Projects

Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It

The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past.
by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on February 9, 2021
Bubbles with numbers of black Georgia school teachers, centered is 1896 when there were 3316.

American History XYZ

The chaotic quest to mythologize America’s past.
by Sasha Frere-Jones via Bookforum on November 9, 2020

Watching “Watchmen” as a Descendant of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Who should be allowed to profit from depictions of traumatic events in Black history?
by Victor Luckerson via The New Yorker on September 20, 2020

Why the Black National Anthem Is Lifting Every Voice to Sing

Scholars agree the song, endowed with its deep history of Black pride, speaks to the universal human condition.
by Janelle Harris Dixon via Smithsonian on August 10, 2020

American Slavery: Separating Fact From Myth

Before we can face slavery, learn about it and acknowledge its significance to American history, we must dispel the myths surrounding it.
by Henry Nash Smith via The Conversation on June 19, 2017

Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom

The Great Dismal Swamp was once a thriving refuge for runaways.
by Richard Grant via Smithsonian on September 1, 2016

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