Description: A look at the relationship between Smithsonian Secretary Samuel P. Langley and the Wright Brothers during the sometimes contentious race to achieve flight.
Description: Friday, September 15th, 2017 marks the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Anacostia Community Museum. Originally named the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Secretary Ripley envisioned this as a place to reach out to black residents of Washington, DC who were not seeing themselves in the museums on the Mall. Reporting on the opening of the museum, Secretary Ripley writes that
Description: Historian Lonnie Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian’s 19th museum. Growing up with a love of history and a sense that African Americans deserved “a voice,” his education and early career gave him the research, museum, and management experience that allowed him to successfully develop an idea into a
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8629,size=350,left]C. Malcolm Watkins was an unlikely revolutionary; nevertheless, he would lead a vanguard of curators who brought African American history into the Smithsonian in the 1960s and 1970s. C. Malcolm Watkins, Smithsonian curator and cultural historian, brought African American history into the Smithsonian in the 1960s and 1970s. Attentive
Description: On June 16, 2006, Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum changed its name for the third time, signaling a renewed focus on local Black history and beyond.