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History

A cartoon by illustrator Thomas Nast shows a member of the White League and a member of the Ku Klux Klan joining hands over a terrorized black family.

Created 150 Years Ago, the Justice Department’s First Mission Was to Protect Black Rights

In the wake of the Civil War, the government’s new force sought to enshrine equality under the law

Shannon LaNier, a TV news anchor, has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. “He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn’t practice it. He owned people. And now I’m here because of it.”

These Portraits Revisit the Legacies of Famous Americans

Photographer Drew Gardner painstakingly recreates the images with the notable figures’ descendants

Now behind fences erected by the police, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park has been criticized ever since its dedication.

What Frederick Douglass Had to Say About Monuments

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth’

Painting of Charlotte Cushman, 1843, by Thomas Sully

LGBTQ+ Pride

Charlotte Cushman Broke Barriers on Her Way to Becoming the A-List Actress of the 1800s

In the role of a lifetime, the queer performer was one of the first practitioners of ‘method’ acting

Thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters congregate at Los Angeles' Hollywood and Highland intersection on June 7, 2020.

History of Now

How Urban Design Can Make or Break a Protest

Cities’ geography can aid, underscore or discourage a movement’s success

A man passes by graffiti on the side of the slave quarters of Decatur House in Washington, D.C.

History of Now

What the Protesters Tagging Historic Sites Get Right About the Past

Places of memory up and down the East Coast also witnessed acts of resistance and oppression

It wasn’t until the 1964 elections that city residents could participate in presidential elections. “It’s only then that Washingtonians got two electoral seats,” says historian Marjorie Lightman.

The History of D.C.’s Epic and Unfinished Struggle for Statehood and Self-Governance

Control of the federal city was long dictated by Congress until residents took a stand beginning in the 1960s

Love is the Message, The Message is Death,by Arthur Jafa
, film still, 2016

Now for the First Time, Arthur Jafa’s ‘Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death’ Streams Online

The seminal work, a contemporary Guernica, is the first joint acquisition for the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book and the first American woman to earn a living from her writing. This frontispiece engraving is held in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

Women Who Shaped History

The Multiple Truths in the Works of the Enslaved Poet Phillis Wheatley

In this endearing homage, poet-scholar drea brown finds ancestral and personal healing

Cegape or Strike the Kettle (Lakota, ca. 1841–?). Untitled painting, collected in 1893. North or South Dakota. 20/5176. Most large paintings of this kind focus on a single event, often a battle. This painting, made by a follower of Sitting Bull, shows warriors—figures on horseback carrying lances and shields—within the Lakota way of life.

Smithsonian Voices

How Lakota Values Endure 144 Years After the Battle of Little Bighorn

Following Custer’s defeat, tribal leaders made difficult decisions to ensure the safety of their people that continue today in the time of COVID-19

Demonstration on May Day with antifascist banners, on May 1, 1929 in New York.

A Brief History of Anti-Fascism

As long as the ideology has threatened marginalized communities, groups on the left have pushed back with force

A sign asks Navajo residents to stay safe and warns of a curfew near the Navajo Nation town of Casamero Lake in New Mexico on May 20, 2020.

Covid-19

COVID-19 Adds a New Snag to the 2020 Census Count of Native Americans

The nation’s indigenous population has long been undercounted, but the pandemic presents extra hurdles

Henry VIII likely commissioned this painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold toward the end of his reign.

When Henry VIII and Francis I Spent $19 Million on an 18-Day Party

Five hundred years ago, the English and French kings proclaimed their friendship—and military might—at the Field of Cloth of Gold

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The Bloody Hell of Okinawa

More than seventy-five years ago, the final great battle of WWII convinced Allied leaders to drop the atomic bomb on Japan

The Washington Family, painted by Edward Savage in New York City while Washington was the nation's president. The children in the portrait are Martha Custis Washington's grandchildren, to whom George was a father figure.

The Father of the Nation, George Washington Was Also a Doting Dad to His Family

Though he had no biological children, the first president acted as a father figure to Martha’s descendants

The Pyramid of the Magician stands over 100 feet tall and contains five different temples built in succession.

The Maya Ruins at Uxmal Still Have More Stories to Tell

The remains of a provincial capital on the Yucatan Peninsula attest to a people trying to fortify their place in the world

Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams and other members of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign march through the lunar lander exhibit at Kennedy Space Center before the launch of Apollo 11.

Smithsonian Voices

How Space Exploration and the Fight For Equal Rights Clashed Then and Now

Smithsonian curator Margaret Weitekamp reflects on the historic parallel between 2020 and 1969

Stewart Adams had originally set out to find a cure for rheumatoid arthritis.

The Inventor of Ibuprofen Tested the Drug on His Own Hangover

Stewart Adams’ headache subsided—and his over-the-counter pain reliever became one of the world’s most popular medications

Cookbook author Lena Richard (above with her daughter and sous chef Marie Rhodes) was the star of a 1949 popular 30-minute cooking show, airing on New Orleans' WDSU-TV.

Meet Lena Richard, the Celebrity Chef Who Broke Barriers in the Jim Crow South

Lena Richard was a successful New Orleans-based chef, educator, writer and entrepreneur

Boxed Day-Glo orange mac and cheese like this is an invention of the past century.

How Boxed Mac and Cheese Became a Pantry Staple

Processed cheese solved the problem of the dairy product going bad, and it was incredibly convenient

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