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: The Court of Chancery was the high-level English law court where the battle between Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker was resolved. Chancery was also such a legendary money-pit of bureaucratic red tape that Charles Dickens lampooned the court in his novel Bleak House, depicting centuries-long, fortune-destroying lawsuits that only mildly exaggerated the delays and
Description: When James Smithson claimed in his will that “the best blood of England” ran through his veins, he was referring primarily to his family connection to the medieval Hungerfords.1 The Hungerfords were royal companions and powerful politicians in their heyday, and this good fortune managed to endure for centuries before dwindling away. Their family estates, passed down in some