Smithsonian Affiliations

Smithsonian Affiliations Bringing you updates, photos and news from more than 200 Smithsonian Affiliates in the US, Puerto Rico and Panama. We want to share it with you!

Smithsonian Affiliations develops long-term partnerships with museums and educational organizations to make Smithsonian collections and related resources widely available. We collaborate with each Affiliate to enrich their communities with artifact loans, traveling exhibitions, educational programs, technical assistance, and professional development opportunities. The Smithsonian is an endless pla

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Richard Allen, born a slave, bought his freedom during the American Revolution and became a preacher. He founded the Afr...
02/05/2025

Richard Allen, born a slave, bought his freedom during the American Revolution and became a preacher. He founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, in 1794.

Free African American communities grew and established independent churches, mutual aid societies, and schools in New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other towns. Explore Richard Allen’s story in our “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” traveling exhibition when it opens at The Long Island Museum, part of our Smithsonian Affiliations, on February 20.



Image: National Portrait Gallery USA

We love Elizabeth Keckley’s incredible story. Thank you for sharing, Anniston Museums and Gardens!
02/04/2025

We love Elizabeth Keckley’s incredible story. Thank you for sharing, Anniston Museums and Gardens!

🖤✨ Celebrate Black History Month with Us! ✨🖤
This February, we honor African Americans and Labor, highlighting the crucial yet often invisible contributions of Black people across history, industries, and communities.
📅 First Week Focus: February 3–7

We’re kicking things off with a story from Before and During the Civil War (1861–1865):
Enslaved women often crafted fine fashion and beautiful needlework associated with elite southern white women. They produced ornate heirloom quality textiles, including delicate whitework and lace. Though agricultural work made up the majority of labor on plantations, a consistently vital role among enslaved people came from textile work. Highly skilled, these women developed a keen understanding of measurements, materials, tools, and techniques. Many passed on these trades to their children. Some women, like [Elizabeth Keckly,](https://www.searchablemuseum.com/elizabeth-keckly-why-she-sewed) were able to work for themselves and, over time, buy their way out of slavery. Keckly, who would purchase her freedom for $1200, opened her own shop in Washington, D.C., and became the personal dressmaker for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
*Photo Courtesy of Howard University.*
"With my needle I kept bread in the mouths of seventeen persons for two years and five months." **Elizabeth Keckly** Dressmaker and Business Owner, 1868

🌟 Why This Matters: Their labor, resilience, and ingenuity helped shape the America we know today. It’s time to ensure their stories are told and celebrated.

👉 Join us!Follow along as we share powerful stories, photos, and artifacts this month. Together, we’ll amplify the voices and contributions of those who laid the groundwork for progress. Read more about this powerful history here: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/moments/black-history-month

📣 Let’s spread the word — share your thoughts and favorite stories with us! Use to join the conversation.

02/04/2025
Check out the fascinating connection between Detroit’s Techno music scene and Afrofuturism at our Affiliate Michigan Sta...
02/04/2025

Check out the fascinating connection between Detroit’s Techno music scene and Afrofuturism at our Affiliate Michigan State University Museum!

Tuesday – Saturday | 10:00AM – 5:00PM 311 Abbot (6th floor), downtown East Lansing February 4 – April 30, 2025 Register Here Afrofuturism, a movement that combines African diaspora culture with Black…

02/04/2025

From our Smithsonian Affiliate the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum!

Part 2: From 1941-1946, some 1,000 African American pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, and became America’s first African American military airmen.

The Tuskegee Airmen’s success in es**rting bombers in WWII - having one of the lowest loss records of all es**rt fighter groups, and being in constant demand for their services by the allied bomber units- is a record unmatched by any other fighter group.

These men represented an important step forward for a more inclusive and equitable aviation industry and military. On July 26, 1948, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces.
_____
Video Segment : “Wings For This Man”, filmed and produced in 1945 by the U.S. Army Air Forces and was the first motion picture unit about the Tuskegee Airmen.

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful local African American history, Historic Annapolis!
02/04/2025

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful local African American history, Historic Annapolis!

Celebrate Black History Month with our Smithsonian Affiliate The Long Island Museum!
02/04/2025

Celebrate Black History Month with our Smithsonian Affiliate The Long Island Museum!

We begin our observance of by sharing a photograph of a young participant in a local civil rights demonstration held on March 5, 1960, generously gifted to the Long Island Museum by Long Island Civil Rights leader Eugene Burnet.

Following the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins protesting segregation at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in early 1960, the NAACP organized pickets in solidarity. Demonstrations took place in Jamaica (pictured here), as well as in Flushing, Astoria, and Hempstead, continuing at various locations across New York every Saturday for many weeks.

This photograph, along with others in the collection gifted by Burnett, will be on view at LIM for our exhibition “Building the Ballot Box: Long Island’s Democratic History” starting February 20, 2025 in our History Museum.

Learn more about the exhibition at longislandmusuem.org
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Photograph of a young boy holding a sign during an organized Long Island Civil Rights demonstration in Jamaica, Queens in front of the Woolworth building, 1960. Long Island Museum, Gift of Eugene Burnett, 2014.
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Thank you for sharing this incredible Green Book history with us, Museum of Us!
02/04/2025

Thank you for sharing this incredible Green Book history with us, Museum of Us!

Celebrate Black History Month with our Smithsonian Affiliate the Oklahoma Historical Society by exploring their incredib...
02/04/2025

Celebrate Black History Month with our Smithsonian Affiliate the Oklahoma Historical Society by exploring their incredible and FREE online resources chronicling the Black experience in Oklahoma! www.okhistory.org/blackhistory

Do you know the incredible story of Maestro Raymond Harvey? Check out our Smithsonian Affiliate Springfield Museums’s po...
02/04/2025

Do you know the incredible story of Maestro Raymond Harvey? Check out our Smithsonian Affiliate Springfield Museums’s post!

Happy –In celebration, join us as we honor the very first recipient of the Ubora Award in 1992!

Originally from New York City, Maestro Raymond Harvey holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and a Doctorate Degree from the Yale School of Music. Prior to joining the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, he served as Associate Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and as Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony.

Maestro Harvey has achieved both national and international recognition marked by his ever-increasing invitations for guest conducting and speaking engagements around the globe. In addition to his outstanding performances at Symphony Hall, Maestro Harvey expanded community outreach, leading the orchestra into colorful summer programming at Stanley Park in Westfield and at our own Forest Park in Springfield. The 1991/92 season marked the sixth year that Raymond Harvey had been the music director and maestro for the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

Learn more about the Ubora and Ahadi Awards, presented by the African Hall Committee:
https://springfieldmuseums.org/ubora/

Smithsonian Affiliations Smithsonian Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

Celebrate the stories and experiences of African American communities with our Smithsonian Affiliate Conner Prairie! htt...
02/04/2025

Celebrate the stories and experiences of African American communities with our Smithsonian Affiliate Conner Prairie! https://www.connerprairie.org/black-history-month/

February is Black History Month, and we are honored to celebrate and amplify the voices of people of color in our community of the past, present, and future: https://www.connerprairie.org/black-history-month/

View some Hoosier History makers you should know, watch a few curated videos, read our blog and discover more about Black History Month and Conner Prairie: https://www.connerprairie.org/black-history-month/

Join Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in celebrating ASALH: Association for the Study of African American Life and History 2025’s official theme, African Americans and Labor. Learn more: https://nmaahc.si.edu/blackhistorymonth

Share Your Dream with Us: Living Dream Wall: Join us in honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s infamous speech by participating in our Online Dream Wall. We encourage you to continue sharing your dreams and inspirations by sharing your message, image, artwork and video on social media using or uploading your vision by clicking on the QR code on the wall. Both ways will share your dreams and connect community: https://www.connerprairie.org/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-day/

Discover more from the Smithsonian: https://www.si.edu/events/black-history-month

Smithsonian Affiliations

On view now at our Affiliate Cleveland History Center!
02/03/2025

On view now at our Affiliate Cleveland History Center!

The Poor People’s Campaign was the first nationally-organized demonstration after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. For 43 days between May and June 1968, demonstrators demanded social reforms while living side-by-side on the National Mall in a tent city known as “Resurrection City.”

Women and family issues were central among the concerns of the Poor People’s Campaign. Women not only helped shape the antipoverty movement’s goals, but they also created new models for social movement leadership.

As the principal organizer, the National Welfare Rights Organization brought thousands of participants to the event from across the country. During her speech, Coretta Scott King made the important role women would play in leading the fight for human rights clear.

“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence”

—Coretta Scott King, Mother’s Day rally speech, May 12, 1968

Explore the history and legacy of the Poor People’s Campaign in our traveling exhibition “Solidarity Now! 1968 Poor People’s Campaign,” on view now at our Smithsonian Affiliate the Cleveland History Center through April 20.



Image: Courtesy Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

01/31/2025
01/29/2025

Celebrating the with our Affiliate National Museum of Nuclear Science & History! 🐍Wednesday, 29th January 2025, marks the beginning of the new lunar year. This year is the Year of the Snake.🐍

01/29/2025
01/29/2025

Happy Lunar New Year! 🐍♥️ The Year of the Snake is said to be a transformative time. The snake is known for being wise, intuitive, clever, and mysterious; it has a certain calmness to all of this which makes it perfect for problem-solving and communicating.

These wooden bookends were carved out of pine by Minoru Fujita while incarcerated in Manzanar concentration camp. Fujita carved a cactus with a snake crawling upward toward the top on each of the bookends.

Crafts made in the concentration camps have been of much cultural significance for JANM and the Japanese American community. Held in captivity in adverse conditions, many turned to craftwork to while away their free time. Mr. Fujita's story shows the ingenuity that we bring into the Year of the Snake.

Credit: Japanese American National Museum, Gift of Ron and Helen Takata, 2002.167.1A,1B

Celebrating the   with our Affiliate the International Storytelling Center!
01/29/2025

Celebrating the with our Affiliate the International Storytelling Center!

As we welcome the Year of the Snake, let us celebrate the power of storytelling—a timeless tradition at the heart of the Lunar New Year.

The Snake symbolizes wisdom, transformation, and intuition, reminding us that every story we tell holds the power to shape our journey. Whether it’s the tales passed down through generations, the legends of the zodiac, or the stories we create as families gather to celebrate, this holiday is a time to reflect on the narratives that connect us.

Just as the Snake sheds its skin, the New Year invites us to shed old chapters and begin anew, with hope, prosperity, and creativity leading the way.

Our Affiliate the Museum of Mississippi History is celebrating the   by sharing this abacus or suanpan, brought to Missi...
01/29/2025

Our Affiliate the Museum of Mississippi History is celebrating the by sharing this abacus or suanpan, brought to Mississippi by Moon See Low, a Chinese immigrant who later became the proprietor of the Canton Food Market.

Join us in welcoming the year of the snake this ! The snake is a symbol of change, creativity, and wisdom. Pictured is an abacus, or suànpán, brought to Mississippi by Moon See Low, a Chinese immigrant who later became the proprietor of the Canton Food Market. The abacus is famously used for calculation, and the one pictured below was used in the shop for that very purpose. Learn more at
https://bit.ly/40OuHOq

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