In 1990, scholars found a Sierra Leonean woman who remembered a nearly identical version of a tune passed down by a Georgia woman’s enslaved ancestors
Smithsonian Photo Contest Galleries
To mark the February heritage month, these images from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest offer proof that African American history is timeless
Mary Cardwell Dawson created unprecedented opportunities for aspiring Black musicians
Two historians tell us why the pioneering 19th-century feminist, suffragist and abolitionist’s legacy has so frequently been misrepresented
Untold Stories of American History
Denied burial alongside Union soldiers killed during the Battle of Gettysburg, the 30 or so men were instead buried in the all-Black Lincoln Cemetery
Historian Camilla Townsend separates fact from fiction in the life of the Powhatan "princess"
Untold Stories of American History
Charles Lewis Tiffany purchased the surplus cable from the 1858 venture, turning it into souvenirs that forever linked his name to the short-lived telecommunications milestone
The story behind the glitzy stretch of highway that became the destination for America’s most sublime—and most sordid—aspirations
Inside the search for a plane shot down over the Pacific—and the new effort to bring its fallen heroes home
Untold Stories of American History
Harriet M. Buss' missives home detail the future congressman's candid views on race and the complicity of Confederate women
Feminist. Preacher. Abolitionist. Civil rights pioneer. Now the full story of the American icon's life and faith is finally coming to light
A few weeks after the president delivered the Gettysburg Address, he called on Congress to welcome immigrants as a "source of national wealth and strength"
Untold Stories of American History
Before Theodore Roosevelt Island was transformed into a tribute to the nation's "conservation president," a prominent Virginia family relied on enslaved laborers to build and tend to its summer home there
Now with 13 Academy Award nominations to its credit, the blockbuster film comes after nearly eight decades of mythologizing the father of the atomic bomb
The long-awaited follow-up to "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" centers on an American aerial group nicknamed the "Bloody Hundredth"
When it was introduced in 1984, Apple's Macintosh didn't have any striking technological breakthroughs, but it did make it easier for people to operate a computer
An exhibition at LACMA traces the roots of modern media to the Great War, when propaganda mobilized the masses, and questions whether the brutal truths of the battlefield can ever really be communicated
The archival trove chronicles the extreme measures administrators took to ensure Black sharecroppers did not receive treatment for the venereal disease
For millions of enslaved people, bondage stole more than freedom—it severed a link to the past. Now their descendants are recovering their heritage
A new generation is discovering the rambling Southern route of William Bartram and his legendary 1791 travelogue
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