Artifacts that Show the Country's History of Racism and Triumph are Being Restricted, Here are Museums Keeping that History Alive
We tell our stories and the legacy of our complex but beautiful history in this country through the artifacts and cultural objects we display and pass down. Recently, federal sites have restricted or prohibited public access to important historical artifacts.
As a result, reports AP News, museums nationwide are displaying artifacts that are cultural markers of the landmark events that took place during America’s Civil Rights era.
Amber Mitchell, curator of Black history at the Henry Ford, shared, “What we do here is help explain our story, as a community, as a culture, as a society to those who may not have lived through it, who may not remember it or who may have a different memory than what we collectively understand.”
In particular, when you visit the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit you can see the bus Rosa Parks rode when she historically refused to give up her seat in 1955.
Also onsite is the desk where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. planned marches, at the “Liberty and Justice for All” exhibit.
Here is a list of artifacts and the museum that houses them, curated by AP News:
Fountain pens used by President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act are on display at The National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Copies of the Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 that desegregated the U.S. military on display at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.
Shards of stained glass from windows at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, are on display at The National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Parts of a car owned by NAACP activist Vernon Dahmer are on long-term loan to The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Clark Doll, a plastic, dark-skinned toy doll used by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark during the 1940s while studying the impact of segregation on Black children. The doll is on permanent display in the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas.
