Director of the National Museum of American History Reflects on the Challenges of Our Historic Times
Anthea M. Hartig, the Director of the National Museum of American History, reflects on the challenges of living through a historic time.
Since the colonial era, in times of peace and war, the African American experience of inequality included being denied medical treatment equal to that received by white peers. Unequal treatment continued during World War I. Not even the era's increasing humanitarian efforts were immune to inequality. Groups like the Crispus Attucks Circle for War Relief, founded by Black Philadelphians, worked to help members of their own communities.
Every election season in the United States revolves around a set of issues—health care, foreign affairs, the economy. In 1868, at the height of the Reconstruction, the pressing issue was Black male suffrage.
Maggie Lena Walker was the first Black woman in the nation to organize and run a bank. And she did it in the segregated South in the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.