Reflect at Alexandria African American Heritage Park
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Historic Alexandria, United States
This seven-acre park is an oasis within the City of Alexandria. Dedicated as a memorial to African American contributions to Alexandria’s history, it encompasses the Black Baptist Cemetery established in 1885. Stroll through the park to discover sculptures honoring Alexandria’s African American community and spaces for quiet reflection.

Does an amendment give you the right to vote?
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, United States
You’ve likely heard, perhaps on the news or in the classroom, that the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave or granted African American men the right to vote. It’s a turn of phrase that works as a shorthand. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit misleading.

Meet Anna Dickinson: Trailblazing orator and political firebrand
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, United States
At only 21 years of age, Dickinson cemented her status as one of the most famous abolitionists in the nation. But it was a shocking news article that sparked her first foray into public activism when she was just 13 years old.

Join a Collective Video Response to "A Hard Road to Freedom"
2099-01-01 00:00 (Pacific/Niue) | Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, NC, United States
A Hard Road to Freedom: Positively Impacting the Present
View a video on the Black experience on North Carolina’s Outer Banks during the Civil War and early Reconstruction that includes period photography and drawings. Viewers ages 18-30 participate by answering lending input related to the video that will be turned into a video response to A Hard Road to Freedom and viewable on the museum’s website.
A Hard Road to Freedom informs viewers of the struggle of enslaved and formerly enslaved people that flocked to Hatteras Island and Roanoke Island, NC during the war to seek freedom, refuge, and work. Viewers can gain an understanding of a transitional and complex time in history where society was battling views of enslavement and freedom. The video brings to the fore the challenges faced by African Americans in the 1860s. It highlights the successes and failures of the Freedman’s Colony on Roanoke Island -where the Union Army was encamped and where more than 2,000 African Americans flocked between 1862-1867. The video also invites dialogue on how the past helps us understand the present and inform the future.
With the latter in mind, the 2022 Civic Season program includes a questionnaire created to illicit response and provoke thought on how, with knowledge, people can gain understanding and bring people closer to one another in an inclusive and humanitarian sense. The goal is to provoke self-reflection, inspire action, and examine the role history education can play by following this little-known chapter of history to modern day. In the end, the goal is to make a lasting personal and emotional impact that motivates positive action.
Questionnaire
This questionnaire will be posted on our website and open to viewers between the ages of 18-30. The criteria for choosing questionnaire answers to include in the subsequent video will be those that share positive ideas and reflective thought to make a difference in life.
Participants also will provide an image of themselves or one that they identify with in a positive way to be included with their answers that will be combined to create a collective video response to A Hard Road to Freedom. The response will be called Positively Impacting the Present and posted on the museum website with A Hard Road to Freedom.
1. How did this video affect you emotionally and intellectually and why?
2. What image(s) in the video moved you the most and why?
3. Do you feel the Freedman’s Colony was successful? Explain.
4. What could have been done to improve conditions in the Colony? How would your idea be implemented?
5. How can you reach your age demographic with your message?
6.How can this video influence your future actions?
7. Share an idea or plan to make a difference through a community program or a personal action based on equality, inclusion, and the specific needs of a community.
8. How does this video affect your views on the presentation of history in education?
9. Does social inequity affect your life? If so, how, and how have you managed?
10. Has history affected your life and how?
11. What role does language play in promoting inclusion?
12. What is the most important thing you learned by watching this video?
13. How can understanding the past inform the future?

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Slavery: Short Film
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Fourth Wall Films, United States
In this excerpt from the Emmy-nominated “Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe”, Harriet is exposed to the realities of slavery during the years she lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. These life-changing experiences shape her as a person and prepare her to write her influential novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

Online Exhibition "Chez Baldwin: An Exploration of the Life and Works of James Baldwin"
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, 1400 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 21560, United States
Chez Baldwin is a digital exhibition that explores James Baldwin’s life and works through the lens of his house in St. Paul de Vence, France, where he resided the last seventeen years of his life. Photographs of the interior and exterior of the house, a medieval villa, grace the pages of the section titled “Power of Place.” For Baldwin, his home in St. Paul was an enormously powerful place for writing, healing, and gathering.
The exhibition’s core also includes four additional stories that provide an introduction to Baldwin, insight into his international travels as well as details about his civil rights activism, and an overview of his literary career. Images of collection objects acquired from the house are integral to Chez Baldwin.
Also featured is a Learning Lab for teachers where a Baldwin literary achievements timeline, a listing of resources, links to NMAAHC public programs about Baldwin, and notes by authors who have recently written about Baldwin’s life in St. Paul can be found.

Racial Equity Resources
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Living Room Conversations, United States
The motto of Living Room Conversations is respect, relate, connect. We know that in the pursuit of racial equity, individual conversations are not the final stop in the journey. Conversations can help us better understand individual bias and racism, as well as consider how racism is part of our systems and institutions.
Our hope is that these conversation guides and resources will be one step in your process, and that you will use insights gained from the conversations to determine next steps for you and your community.

Living Room Conversations LIVE: Juneteenth
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Living Room Conversations, United States
In this Living Room Conversation LIVE, six Black community leaders gather to share what Juneteenth means to them, offer ways others can honor this day, and consider their vision for continued liberation.
Join us in this Living Room Conversations LIVE to witness a heartfelt conversation exploring themes of race, freedom, Juneteenth celebrations, and liberation.

History Film Forum: My Name is Pauli Murray
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Smithsonian National Museum of American History, United States
Pioneering attorney, activist, poet, and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray was an incredibly influential figure of the 20th century who has largely been forgotten by history. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat, a full decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal legislation; Pauli Murray was already knee-deep fighting for social justice. Murray shaped landmark litigation—and consciousness— around race and gender equity. As an African American youth raised in the segregated South—who was also wrestling with broader notions of gender identity—Pauli understood, intrinsically, what it was to exist beyond previously accepted categories and cultural norms. Both Pauli’s personal path and tireless advocacy foreshadowed some of the most politically consequential issues of our time. Told largely in Pauli’s own words, My Name is Pauli Murray is a candid recounting of that unique and extraordinary journey.
Join Academy Award-nominated directors (RBG) Julie Cohen and Betsy West in a conversation with National American History Museum curator Fath Davis Ruffins as they explore the making of the film and why “you can’t teach American History without Pauli Murray.”
Presented by the Smithsonian Associates and Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History through generous support of Dan Manatt.
We also wish to thank Participant and Amazon Studios for their collaboration on this program.

Intertwined: The Enslaved Community at George Washington’s Mount Vernon (Podcast)
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | George Washington’s Mount Vernon, United States
Intertwined tells the story of the more than 577 people enslaved by George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. Told through the biographies of Sambo Anderson, Davy Gray, William Lee, Kate, Ona Judge, Nancy Carter Quander, Edmund Parker, Caroline Branham, and the Washingtons, this eight-part podcast series explores the lives and labors of Mount Vernon’s enslaved community, and how we interpret slavery at the historic site today.
Intertwined is narrated by Brenda Parker. It is co-created and co-written by Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske. The series is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association and CD Squared.

#1 in Civil Rights Virtual Exhibit
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Missouri History Museum, United States
On September 22, 1964, a banner headline in The St. Louis American proclaimed St. Louis as the “Number One City in Civil Rights.” In the article, Judge Nathan B. Young argued that St. Louis—more than any other city in the US—was pre-eminent in the country’s struggle for civil rights based on the number of Supreme Court cases that originated in St. Louis and the city’s long history of protest that led to significant change.
Today the claim that St. Louis is the most important city in US civil rights history may seem surprising, but that’s because so much of St. Louis’s activist past has been forgotten. The country’s civil rights history has too often been written about a limited number of places during a limited period of time. In the process, cities such as St. Louis have largely been left out of the national narrative. “#1 in Civil Rights” reclaims that history.
This exhibit doesn’t aim to prove that St. Louis is the most important city in the country’s civil rights history, but it does argue that St. Louis’s freedom struggle is more substantive than is usually recognized—and that it’s too important to be ignored.
The content included in this digital experience was part of a larger exhibit entitled “#1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis.” The exhibit was created by the Missouri History Museum and was on display there from March 2017 to April 2018.

Camping While Black: African American Experiences in Iowa Summer Camps, 1925-1950
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, IA, United States
In the 1900s, summer camp was a quintessential part of American childhood. But not everyone had equal access to c camp. Explore the ways Black communities in the Midwest created opportunities for their children to attend residential summer camps with Dr. Sarah Eikleberry, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair in the Department of Kinesiology at St. Ambrose University.

Learning about MLK, Racism, and Activism (for Educators and Caregivers)
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | National Museum of African American History and Culture, United States
If the complex concept of race, the deep history of racism, and the importance of activism is challenging for adults to understand — how do we share these stories and lessons with children? Use this guide to learn more about how children understand race and start conversations and activities about Martin Luther King, racism and activism.

Civil Rights: Before, During and After the World Wars
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, United States
A resource developed in partnership with the Library of Congress, asks should you fight for a country that is fighting against you? “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” That is the official motto of the state of Iowa. Liberties and rights refer to our freedoms to pursue our own goals, but they must balance those with the rights and liberties of others. Rights and liberties often deal with restrictions on what the government can do, but they also include what we can or cannot do to others.
Students will reflect on the following questions:
What is the story of the disenfranchised Iowans who contributed to Iowa’s effort during World War I?
Did their contribution to the war effort influence society’s beliefs about each of these groups of Iowans?
Did the public support these disenfranchised groups and their contributions to the war effort, or did they continue to treat these groups poorly?

African Americans and the Civil War
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, United States
A resource developed in partnership with the Library of Congress, asks, “how should the African-American story of the Civil War be told?” While slavery was the major issue separating the North and South, it was not slavery itself that sparked the conflict. The South wanted to secede from the Union, and the North refused. While President Abraham Lincoln personally opposed slavery, he recognized that it was legal under the U.S. Constitution at the time. He also recognized that few in the North were ready to go to war to free the slaves. For Lincoln and the northern majority, preservation of the Union was the foremost goal.
Students will reflect on the following questions:
How did President Abraham Lincoln and Congress’ approach to handling slavery evolve throughout the Civil War?
What contributions did enslaved people and free African Americans make to the Union war effort?
After a Union victory and the close of the war, what possibilities did the future hold for all African Americans?

Reflecting on the Reconstruction Era
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, Des Moines, United States
A resource developed in partnership with the Library of Congress asks, “did the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War result in freedom, equality and civil rights for African Americans?” The Reconstruction Era lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1877. Its main focus was on bringing the southern states back into full political participation in the Union, guaranteeing rights to former slaves and defining new relationships between African Americans and whites. While very little fighting occurred on Iowa soil and Iowa had never legalized slavery, black migration of former slaves into the region and the national focus on civil rights forced Iowa to reconsider its own racial relations.
Students will reflect on the following questions:How free were African Americans during Reconstruction?Were African Americans considered equal members of society and treated as such?How much political power did African Americans have during Reconstruction?

Reconstruction and Its Impact on Human Rights
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, Des Moines, United States
A resource developed in partnership with the Library of Congress asks, “was Reconstruction a success?” The Reconstruction Era lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to 1877. Its main focus was on bringing the southern states back into full political participation in the Union, guaranteeing rights to former slaves and defining new relationships between African Americans and whites. While very little fighting occurred on Iowa soil and Iowa had never legalized slavery, black migration of former slaves into the region and the national focus on civil rights forced Iowa to reconsider its own racial relations.
Students will reflect on the following questions:
How did the presidential election of 1876 end Reconstruction?
How did the U.S. Supreme Court originally interpret the Constitution’s Reconstruction amendments?
How did the South restore white supremacy after the fall of Reconstruction?

The Impact of George Washington Carver's Travel to Iowa
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, United States
This webinar discusses how Iowa was a turning point in George Washington Carver’s life. Happenstance brought him to Iowa with a here-and-there education, but he was a determined, educated young man when he left for Tuskegee University.

Rediscovering Heroes, Heroines & Helpers on Central Iowa's Underground Railroad
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, United States
Learn about the Underground Railroad in Iowa, with a focus on the Jordan House in West Des Moines, as well as the Forever Free program which introduces the heroes, heroines and helpers of the Underground Railroad in central Iowa.

Learn About the History of Redlining in Iowa
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | State Historical Museum of Iowa, IA, United States
In this episode of Iowa History 101, “Redlining in Iowa,” experts Kendyl Larson and Felicite Wolfe discuss the history of redlining in Iowa and its impact.

Black Migration In Iowa
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, IA, United States
In this session, genealogist Ricki King presents a journey of Iowa’s Black history, starting with Iowa’s statehood, that illustrates some of the reasons why families and individuals moved to Iowa, moved around Iowa, left Iowa, returned to Iowa and then left again.

Exhibit Conversation Guide: "Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience."
2099-01-01 00:00 UTC | National Museum of African American History and Culture, United States
Take a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture with a niece, nephew, child, or another young person in your life this summer and use this conversation guide as you walk through the exhibit, Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience. This guide is a tool caregivers and educators can use to facilitate conversations and connections to art in the Reckoning exhibit with children.
Through art and photography, Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience. demonstrates the struggle Black Americans have faced in their pursuit to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms promised in the United States constitution. In the face of systemic and direct racism and violence, the resistance and resilience of Black Americans have inspired hope and created change. Black artists document and challenge racial and social inequity through their work, inspiring viewers to resist inequalities, remember the past, and rise up in spite of the pain to continue the quest for justice.

Visit Freedom House Museum in Alexandria, Virginia
2099-01-01 00:00 (America/New_York) | Historic Alexandria, 1315 Duke Street, Alexandria, VA, 22314, United States
Visit the newly reopened Freedom House Museum at 1315 Duke Street. This site is what remains of a large complex dedicated to trafficking thousands of Black men, women, and children from 1828 – 1861. This Museum honors the lives and experiences of the enslaved and free Black people who lived in and were trafficked through Alexandria, Virginia and now includes three floors of powerful exhibits that showcase Alexandria’s Black history and the Black experience in America. Slavery, race-based laws, and racial terror erased and diminished African American history and contributions from the national narrative; however, this Museum seeks to reframe white supremacist history. The Museum is open Thursdays and Fridays 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., Saturdays 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sundays and Mondays 1 – 5 p.m.

Rep Ep 3: Muslim Cool
2099-01-01 00:00 (Pacific/Niue) | At Your Service Imprint, United States
Conceptualized by Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, the journey of Muslim Cool takes us on an exploration of Knowledge of Self through the lens of hiphop, Islam, and Blackness. The stories we tell through our names, music, and the identities formed around us. Storytellers include Dr. Su’ad, Maimouna Youssef aka “Mumu Fresh,” Brother Ali, and Ilyasah Shabazz. Come for the music. Stay for the perspective you never thought you’d hear.
