Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

Meet with preservation specialists, receive a professional review of your family heirlooms, and learn best practices to assist in preserving them. Free. More info: https://s.si.edu/4f07fCM

Do you need help preserving your family’s home movies? Our museum’s media conservators can work with you to digitize your audiovisual media in a variety of formats. Acceptable formats include motion picture film (16mm, Super 8 and Regular 8mm), obsolete videotape formats (Hi-8/8mm, MiniDV, 3/4" U-matic, VHS, Betacam, 1" open reel video and 1/2" open reel video) and various audio formats. Digitization services are free and by appointment on our second floor in the Explore Your Family History Center. Schedule your in-person appointment by emailing NMAAHC-Digitization@si.edu 🎥 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts. Supported by the Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History. Courtesy of the Foye family.

Mary McLeod Bethune was born #OnThisDay July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, the fifteenth of seventeen children born to parents who had been enslaved. Eight of her older siblings were born into slavery. The family managed to purchase five acres of land from their former enslavers, which helped the household financially. Bethune was the only one of her siblings to receive an education, inspired by her teachers to one day open her own school focusing on empowering Black women. In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune. Although the couple separated nine years later, they never officially divorced, and she retained his surname for the rest of her life. Bethune founded the Dayton Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904. Her first students were five girls and her five-year-old son. The school eventually grew to 250 students. Due to grave health disparities and lack of medical treatment for Black residents in Daytona, she opened the Mary McLeod Hospital and Training School for Nurses there in 1911. The facility later helped contain the influenza pandemic of 1918. She also spearheaded the effort to persuade the city to build a high school for Black students. Her school later merged with Cookman Institute, Florida’s oldest Black college, to become Bethune-Cookman College. In 1935, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women, and the NAACP awarded her its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, for raising the prominence of Bethune-Cookman College and her relationship with the Roosevelts. In honor of Bethune's life and legacy, we are opening “Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism,” in our Making a Way Out of No Way exhibition. The new gallery is a dynamic reimagining of the space dedicated to Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women. Explore: https://s.si.edu/3xZVefT 📸 1. and 2. Courtesy of State Archives of Florida. 3. Courtesy of Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images.

Born #OnThisDay in 1936, June Millicent Jordan’s literary works and activism have been influential in the ongoing fight for recognition and justice for marginalized communities. Jordan self-identified as bisexual and her works explored gender, race, immigration, and representation. She professed a profound desire to be her authentic self: “to tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that’s political in its most profound way.” Jordan was a prolific writer who authored more than twenty-five major works of poetry, fiction, and essays along with numerous children’s books. Author Toni Morrison described Jordan’s career as “a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art.” #HiddenHerstory #APeoplesJourney 📸 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Estate of Lloyd W. Yearwood

Born #OnThisDay in 1915, poet and writer Margaret Walker used her first novel, “Jubilee”, to craft a semi-fictional account about a biracial enslaved woman born during the American Civil War. The book took thirty years to write. Based in Georgia and Alabama, it spanned the periods of American slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Literature professor Joyce Ann Joyce has cited Jubilee as “the first truly historical black American novel.” Critical studies of the book emphasize Jubilee as the prototype for novels that present black history from a black perspective. Walker was born into a family of storytellers, musicians, ministers, and teachers. She first heard about slavery through bedtime stories that her maternal grandmother would tell her. As she grew older, she pushed her grandmother for more details with the intent to write stories based on what she heard. Later, she conducted extensive research on every facet of the black experience regarding the Civil War. She stated, “most of my life I have been involved with writing this story about my great-grandmother, and even if Jubilee were never considered an artistic or commercial success, I would still be happy to just finish it.” #HiddenHerstory #APeoplesJourney 📸 Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Thirty years ago today, Essence Communications Inc. Magazine projected the cultural vibrancy of their award-winning periodical onto the stage with the inaugural Essence Festival of Culture. The four-day music festival brought together a diverse roster of genres and the most celebrated artists in African American music who performed on a mainstage, as well as smaller standing-room only stages throughout each day. Like the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival (Black Woodstock), the Essence Festival of Culture also used the festival to promote personal and community well-being, racial uplift, social justice, and financial literacy. The original celebration, held over the July 4th holiday weekend in 1994, grew out of a 25th anniversary commemoration of the magazine and featured iconic performers including Gladys Knight and Luther Vandross. Promising a celebration of pure Black joy, Vice President of the Essence Festival of Culture Hakeem Holmes, said, “For three decades, the Essence Festival of Culture has blossomed into a pillar of our culture. It spans generations and echoes life stages, growing at the vibrant intersection of art, culture, freedom, and justice. As the festival approaches its 30-year milestone, we are excited to welcome and celebrate with all our closest family and friends around the world.” 📸 Courtesy of Essence/Getty

“The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me...This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn...What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” - Frederick Douglass, 1852 In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered his evocative Independence Day speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3iwpkv6 #APeoplesJourney #ANationsStory 📸 1. No. 44, Weighing Cotton, ca. 1895. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman and Sandra Lindley. 2. Ambrotype of Frederick Douglass, 1855-1865. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

📕 Meet author & Visual Afrofuturism artist, Tim Fielder during a book signing for “The Graphic History of Hip Hop,” his first in a series of graphic novels which blends music, art and history through the lens of Afrofuturist art. The series is a collaboration between Fielder and preeminent historian of Afrofuturism, Walter Greason. Free. Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3WaQnC5

Students in grades 7 to 9, join author and illustrator Tim Fielder Tim Fielder to learn and practice how to become a historian through graphic art and comics. Learn the process that historians do to investigate history. Then, use the stories and objects in our special exhibition “Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures,” to find sources and inspiration for your graphic art. Lastly, discuss how to interpret history through graphic art and comics. Free. Registration required: https://s.si.edu/3XHh4PU   

Join us and special guest Tim Fielder as we learn and practice how to become a historian through graphic art and comics. Free. More Info: https://s.si.edu/3XHh4PU