Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14623,size=300,left]Born in 1936 in Washington DC, John Robert Edward Kinard would become the first African American director of a Smithsonian museum at the age of 31. Kinard’s circuitous path into museum work took him from development work in Africa to community organizing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a dilapidated theater on Nichols Street in DC’s
Description: From the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846, African Americans have made substantive, but often unacknowledged, contributions to the Smithsonian. Explore the contributions African American employees at the Smithsonian have made to the Institution and the challenges they have faced. [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8309,size=300,left]The City of Washington ended the slave trade in