Special Report
Race in America
To mark the Smithsonian's multi-year initiative, Our Shared Future: Reckoning With Our Racial Past, which will confront the history and legacy of race and racism through live and virtual events, pop-up exhibitions, digital resources, and other offerings, Smithsonian magazine has compiled this collection of relevant coverage.
Now Open in Kansas City, The World’s First Barbecue Museum Is a Feast for the Senses
Jump in the bean-themed ball pit, solve a pork puzzle and pose with a championship mustard belt at the new Museum of BBQ
A Young Sailor’s Remains Return Home 84 Years After He Was Killed at Pearl Harbor
Neil Frye was 20 when Japan launched its surprise attack on December 7, 1941. He has been laid to rest with full military honors in his home state of North Carolina
This Exhibition Spotlights the Black Artists Who Called France Home in the 20th Century
A blockbuster show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris spotlights 300-plus works by 150 artists of African heritage
Black History
New Museum Examines the History of American Public Housing—and the Stories of Its Residents
Located in a preserved 1930s development in Chicago’s West Side, the museum includes three recreated apartments representing families of different decades and demographics
![Senator Joseph McCarthy “comes along really chronologically halfway through the story [in the early 1950s], and there’s a lot that happened before he was even on the scene,” says author Clay Risen.](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/ee-zkNhyyeZSehRcxDnYUB-QAj4=/450x300/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/dd/f0/ddf0fc8a-56de-40d6-ae40-efcb46ac804b/gettyimages-515261284.jpg)
Newly Declassified Documents Reveal the Untold Stories of the Red Scare, a Hunt for Communists in Postwar America
In his latest book, journalist and historian Clay Risen explores how the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy upended the nation
The Nation’s First Black Female Doctor Blazed a Path for Women in Medicine. But She Was Left Out of the Story for Decades
After earning a medical degree in 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler died in obscurity and was buried without a headstone
Asian American History
A Field of Dreams Built in an Unlikely Place: A Japanese American Internment Camp
A baseball diamond buried long ago at Manzanar has been rebuilt to honor the Americans who once played the sport there
On This Day in 1944, the Supreme Court Upheld the Executive Order That Incarcerated Over 120,000 Japanese Americans During World War II
Even at the time, the now-notorious decision provoked strong dissent from three justices worried about sliding into the “ugly abyss of racism”
During World War II, This Farmer Risked Everything to Help His Japanese American Neighbors
When the U.S. government sent the Tsukamoto family to an incarceration camp in 1942, one neighbor stepped up to save the farms they left behind, giving them something to come home to
Latino American History
Celebrate Day of the Dead With These 15 Scenes of Festivities and Remembrance
These images from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest show how communities in Mexico and beyond mark Día de los Muertos.
New National Park Site Spotlights School Segregation in Texas
The Blackwell School was once Marfa’s only public school for Mexican and Mexican American students
16th-Century Skeletons of Children Infected With Smallpox Discovered in Peru
The toddlers’ remains were buried around the beginning of the Spanish conquest of South America
Native American History
These Everyday Artifacts Tell the Story of Harriet Tubman’s Father’s Home as Climate Change Threatens the Historic Site
The Maryland Department of Transportation launched an interactive virtual museum, showcasing finds from where Ben Ross lived after emancipation
See Lily Gladstone’s Stunning Oscar Gowns Designed by an Indigenous Artist
The two gowns were a collaboration between Gucci and a porcupine quillwork artist. Both are now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
How Canyon de Chelly Brought a Photographer Back to Life
Wayne Martin Belger set out to make indelible photos of a mystical site on the Navajo Nation. First he needed to relearn how to walk