Even before they got the vote, young people were historically involved in politics, particularly in the last half of the 19th century. From 1840 to around 1900, young men marched in uniform, carrying illuminated torches and lanterns in parades that must have been a spectacle to behold. Designed to last only through an election season, these lanterns are often in fragile condition today—and that's where conservation comes in to light the way.

In the museum's new exhibition, American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, visitors will come across a case full of campaign torches and lanterns, some of which are made of paper. The paper lanterns presented unique conservation challenges, as they were not meant to last long and have deteriorated in different ways. These lanterns are a great example of conservation work in action. Down in the conservation lab, we treat fragile items that are often unable to be exhibited or used for research due to their condition—bringing them back to life, in a sense.

The eagle paper lantern currently on display was an especially interesting item to work with. The bottom of the lantern is made from a thicker, heavier card stock than the rest of the lantern, and inside at the bottom there is a small metal candleholder. The lantern was meant to be lit by candle inside and held from the top by a thin metal handle. At this point, however, the paper has weakened and torn, making this original handling impossible, partly because the base is too heavy. The paper of the lantern is accordion-folded, and the majority of the folds were damaged in some way—either already torn or looking like they might soon. The worst of the damage was found toward the base, where the paper had torn completely because of the strain from being held as intended.

These folds all had to be either repaired or supported with a thin Japanese tissue adhered with wheat starch paste. In this case, I used kizukishi, a slightly thicker, strong, long-fibered tissue. I worked from the inside of the lantern to repair tears, so this tissue wouldn't be seen. I was able to use the opening at the top to access the repairs, though it was at times challenging to keep the lantern open to the right height and tension as I worked and waited for repairs to fully dry.

To keep the lantern open after treatment, I cut a piece of Mylar (an inert plastic that can be sealed to itself at the edges) equal to the circumference of the lantern, and to the most comfortable height for the paper. We like to trust paper and the objects we work with to tell us how to work with them, rather than force them to do what we'd prefer. When advising on book openings for display, for example, we figure out where the book opens most comfortably, without too much strain on the binding. The same idea works here, so I extended the lantern as far as the paper felt safe. I cut Mylar to that height and placed it inside. It worked to keep the lantern extended.

For display, we knew it would be potentially damaging for the lantern to hang from its metal handle, but everyone still wanted it to look like it was hanging. Our mountmakers devised a solution that gave the lantern a clear plexiglass circle to sit on, with an arm that goes up a side and attaches just inside the upper lip to hold the lantern in place. It is attached to a ceiling-mounted rod, giving it the effect of hanging.

A box has been made to the dimensions of the lantern for long-term storage when it isn't on display, so this item that wasn't meant to last will now be safe and stable for many years to come.

Carrie Smith worked as paper conservator for the exhibitions in the museum’s new wing, The Nation We Build Together. She thanks museum photographer Hugh Talman for the photos and recommends learning about this project at The Henry Ford for further reading. Still want to know more? The author enjoyed this newsletter update from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.

The history behind a single object can often tell many stories. In 2004 the museum acquired a stock certificate from an early Internet start-up. At first glance, you can probably imagine the types of stories we might tell with this object. However, when context places it in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, this stock certificate's history becomes much more complex.

Donated by Hoover, Inc., to the museum's Division of Work and Industry, the stock certificate is a reminder that the World Trade Center was a target, symbolically representing America's economic might and reach. The stock certificate is also a piece of reality, as fragments of paper rained down all across the city of New York following the collapse of the World Trade Towers.

Congress designated the museum as the official repository of the story of September 11, and the museum continues to collect artifacts that reflect what happened that day and the aftermath. How do you preserve the history of an object—especially a tragic history—and how does that history inform the conservation treatment the object receives in preparing it for potential display?

While the answers very much depend on the object in question, making this particular stock certificate's tumultuous history immediately obvious to the viewer is especially important. The certificate arrived in the Paper Conservation Lab as a pile of paper bits stored in the envelope and inert plastic sleeve shown below. Organization of these fragments was needed to make some order out of the chaos, to make the story of the certificate clear, and to provide a safer permanent storage solution.

To achieve these objectives, the fragments were categorized by charred paper color, ink lines, and shape to make the original size of certificate clear. Once staff members knew how to put it together, the intentional decision was made to place the pieces slightly apart—not fitting together quite perfectly—thus maintaining their history in demonstrating the destruction the attacks caused. This was accomplished by using something called solvent-set tissue paper. The tissue is coated with an adhesive that is not tacky at room temperature, but can be activated with ethanol. This allowed for the pieces to be placed in desired positions, secured with ethanol applied with a miniature paint brush, and then weighted down while the softened adhesive set to establish a strong connection. This process made organization and workability easier, as secured fragments wouldn't move around while adjusting others. The fragments can be seen on the tissue in the photos below.

Next, MicroChamber paper, an alkaline paper infused with zeolites, was placed behind the solvent-set tissue. Zeolites are compounds that act as molecular sieves, removing and neutralizing acids, pollutants, and volatiles (compounds that can vaporize easily). Even this many years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, vapors from smoke damage may still come off the certificate, which can be harmful to the object. These layers of paper were then encapsulated with the inert plastic Mylar, sealed to itself at the edges. Encapsulation secures all the pieces together and will keep the document safe while it is in storage, ensuring dust and water cannot reach it. Due to paper's sensitivity to light, this document will likely spend a lot of time off display but, even in storage where light exposure is low, protection and stabilization are important. This entire treatment is readily reversible, meaning future generations of conservators could safely get it back to its original condition if the need arose.

The intent of conservation is not to make an object appear new again but to care for the object while upholding its history—which, in this case, includes the visible damage to the object. It can be easy for conservation work to become a standardized routine of cleaning and repairing to stabilize an object. But it is important to remember to step back and think about an object's specific story and setting in order to develop an appropriate and safe conservation, storage, and display plan that will allow a sometimes tragic story and damage to be preserved.

Devin Mattlin completed a summer 2017 internship in the Paper Conservation Lab.

Getting to handle and study treasured artifacts, pursuing fascinating research adventures all day, and building inspirational exhibitions—people who work in museums sure are lucky. But much of the time, museum workers do all these cool things behind the scenes. All that changes on Wednesday, September 13, 2017. Curators and other museum staffers will be lured away from their daily work to answer yourquestions for Ask a Curator Day, so get your questions ready. You can ask your question on Twitter and our roster of smart, interesting staff members will do their best to get you an answer. See the schedule below.

How many biologists does it take to administer a check-up to an 11-foot, 160-pound honeycomb (Himantura uarnak) stingray? Exactly 8. pic.twitter.com/SbhF5IYVxD

— CA AcademyOfSciences (@calacademy) August 28, 2017

11-12 a.m. EDT: Clothing, philanthropy, and military history

Nancy Davis, Curator, Division of Home and Community Life. I will answer questions on clothing, accessories, jewelry, and domestic life objects. I enjoy talking about objects and clothing that people bring to this country from their homelands because for several years I have been working on the exhibition Many Voices, One Nation, which includes these types of objects. One of my favorite things in this exhibition is the colorful carnival costume and mask from Puerto Rico.

Amanda Moniz, David M. Rubenstein Curator of Philanthropy, Division of Home and Community Life. I'm thrilled to answer questions about the exhibition Giving in America and building the new collection in the history of philanthropy. Part of my work this year is rediscovering objects in the collection that tell stories about giving. I was excited to see objects such as medals from the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Numismatics Collection. The humane society movement of the late 1700s and early 1800s had nothing to do with animals. Rather, it promoted the rescue and resuscitation of drowning victims. I would love to chat about what the movement meant to Americans in the founding generation.

Frank A. Blazich Jr., Curator of Modern Military History, Division of Armed Forces History. I will answer questions about the American home front, World War II, the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy, and prisoners of war. I'm particularly pleased to chat about the Vietnam War, both as the son of a disabled combat veteran and on account of my recent work with the collection of a posthumous Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient. One of the my favorite things in the museum is the khaki flying jacket of Ensign George H. Gay Jr., on display in our exhibition The Price of Freedom: Americans at War. Gay wore this simple and unadorned jacket in the Battle of Midway, and as the sole aircrew survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8 on June 4, 1942, he was an eye witness to the destruction of three Japanese aircraft carriers and a major turning point in the Pacific War.

Ryan Lintelman, Curator, Divsion of Culture and the Arts. I will answer questions about the history of American entertainment, including theater, movies, and television. I'm particularly excited to chat about the early years of the American film industry because I recently spoke about it at the NYC Podfest for the Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast. One of my favorite things in the museum is the Indiana Jones hat, because it proves that anyone, even a tenured professor, can become a hero.

Carrie Kotcho, A. James Clark Director, Education and Impact. I’m a history educator and an education technologist, so I’m especially excited to speak with teachers and students about “doing history.” There are so many ways to make history learning active and experiential. We offer hundreds of media, interactive, and primary source learning resources on our History Explorer teacher portal and we train thousands of teachers via our Let's Do History Tour program. My favorite object in the museum is the Greensboro Lunch Counter because four young students made a decision to make our country a better place by sitting there. If you love to learn, let’s talk!

1-2 p.m. EDT: Money and political history

Bethanee Bemis, Museum Specialist, Political History. I'll answer questions about the American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith installation. I want the public to have the opportunity to understand the work that goes into a museum exhibition behind the scenes. My favorite objects? Writing boxes of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton. They offer a window into the personalities of three of our Founding Fathers, our collective memory of the national narrative, and the importance of material culture all at once. Plus, who wouldn't want a writing box like one of these?

Claire Jerry, Curator, Political History. I work most closely with the collections related to 20th- and 21st-century politics, particularly campaigning. I would love to talk to you about presidential speeches or all those odd items that have promoted presidential candidates. Ask me how campaigns used soap, tobacco, toys, or stickers—the odder or creepier the object the better!

Hillery York, Collections Manager, National Numismatic Collection. I have blogged about new monetary technologies in the numismatic collections, worked on The Value of Money exhibition now on display, and helped to digitize certified plate proofs. I'm particularly excited to chat about iconography on coins including mythological creatures, cityscapes, and the sigils from Game of Thrones.

Emily Pearce Seigerman, Museum Specialist, National Numismatic Collection. I'm looking forward to answering questions about Byzantine, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean coins and Revolutionary War-era medals. I'm particularly excited to chat about digitization because it helps so many people from all over the world interact with our collection. One of my favorite things in the museum is The Value of Money exhibition because it compels you to think about currency—something we all interact with—in a new way.

2-3 p.m. EDT: Business history and music

John Troutman, Curator, Division of Culture and the Arts. I will answer questions about our musical instruments collection. I'm particularly excited to chat about our guitar collection, and the installation of our planned permanent exhibition on the history of entertainment in the U.S. The exhibition is scheduled to open in 2020. One of my favorite things in the museum is the Yellow Cloud guitar that Prince donated to the American History museum, because it so beautifully conveys his original sense of style and sound.

Peter Liebhold, Curator, Division of Work and Industry. My curatorial responsibilities include agriculture, manufacturing, and mining—and I can't wait to answer questions about those areas of American history! Throughout my professional life, I've been involved with industrial history and the effort to preserve the working history of the nation. I have curated numerous exhibitions, including American Enterprise. You can also ask me about Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942–1964, Barriers to Bridges: Asian American Immigration after Exclusion, and America on the Move. Right now, I'm working on a book titled Food Tech: Commercialized and Revolutionized, which examines the intersection of technological and social change in agriculture.

Leslie Poster, Editor. Commas and adverbs and moods, oh my! I'm here to answer your questions about editing at the National Museum of American History. I worked on all of the exhibition projects in our newly opened wing, themed The Nation We Build Together. I'm also a fan of the museum since long before I became its editor, so I'm happy just to gush about my favorite exhibitions of yesterday and today. Did I mention how cool it is to work in a museum? Y'all, I've got stories!

3-4 p.m. EDT: Entertainment history 

Hanna BredenbeckCorp, Project Assistant, Division of Culture and the Arts. I'll answer questions about groundbreaking comic Phyllis Diller, as well as cataloging and housing music, sports, and entertainment objects at the museum. I'm particularly excited to chat about the Phyllis Diller gag file digitization project, because it made it possible for everyone to enjoy 52,569 of Phyllis Diller's best jokes from anywhere in the world. One of my favorite things in the museum (besides anything Phyllis Diller of course) is the South Bend Blue Sox baseball dress worn by Betsy Jochum. The story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is an inspiring narrative of athletic strength and sisterhood—and the end of A League of Their Own always makes me cry.

But what to ask? Don't feel pressured to come up with the perfect question. "Tell me more about your favorite research topic" is a good start and sure to invite some interesting stories and facts. Here are a few of our favorite questions we answered last year on maritime history, editing museum labels, the history of money, and women in World War I and on political history, guitars, and becoming museum professionals.

Kenneth Cohen, Curator, Culture and the Arts. I'm looking forward to taking your questions related to sports history. I think it's important for Americans to know that sports have never existed only as an escape from everyday life, but in fact have helped shape the country in lots of ways. From issues of equality to regulation and deregulation, Americans from all walks of life have debated and laid out the kind of nation they want in part by playing and cheering. My favorite object? It's more of a "game" than a "sport," I think, but I love the 1949 Milton Bradley board game called "Lobby," in which you have to get a bill through Congress while some special interests help and others hinder your efforts. Anyone want to create a version of that for PlayStation or Xbox? 

Erin Blasco is an education specialist in the Office of Audience Engagement.

Every museum curator searches for that incredible iconic object, a fabulous artifact that is both physically interesting and represents a great moment in American history. Sadly, such artifacts rarely materialize, and some of the best stories turn out to be apocryphal. However, sometimes you strike gold. It was my luck to beat the odds and collect an incredible story about American business history, a story of political change, economic revolution, and social impact—it was the real deal.

The object? The Laffer curve napkin. A seemingly simple cloth napkin with some writing on it, this object was so much more. Most people in business and economic history know the often-told story of four men coming together in 1974, having a meal, and charting a new direction for the Republican Party and U.S. tax policy. Displeased with President Gerald Ford's decision to raise taxes to control inflation and with the Republicans' loss in the midterm elections, economic professor Art Laffer, Wall Street Journal associate editor Jude Wanniski, and politicians Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney met to discuss new strategies at the swanky Two Continents Restaurant in Washington, D.C., a block from the White House. 

Laffer argued that lowering taxes would increase economic activity and raise total government revenue. In the excitement of the moment, he pulled out a pen and sketched a graph on one of the restaurant's napkins to illustrate his point. That napkin became a touchstone in the rise of supply-side economics. Also called Reaganomics, supply-side economics is a theory that argues lowering taxes and decreasing regulation will stimulate economic growth.

Collecting is a curatorial black art. It is difficult to find great objects and harder yet to get people to part with their priceless possessions. Even at great institutions like the Smithsonian, you'll discover that many artifacts come into collections through curatorial relationships.  

In my career, I have had the opportunity to collect two napkins. One is from the entrepreneur and inventor Felix Zandman, who mentioned it during an oral history interview. The opportunity to collect the other famous napkin arose because of a behind-the-scenes tour. We were developing our business history exhibition, American Enterprise, and were giving countless tours to subject-matter specialists and prospective supporters. In mid-November 2012 I gave a tour to Steve Fink, a California venture capitalist. 

Fink enjoyed seeing Milton Friedman's briefcase but told me what we really needed was the Laffer curve napkin. I laughed and said, "If you can find it, we would love to collect it." Of course, like many other business historians, I had heard the story of the power lunch that changed politics, but I assumed the napkin was apocryphal.

I believed the meeting had happened, but that the napkin did not really exist—it was too good to be true. I was pretty confident in my version of the story because I had recently read Art Laffer's article in which he recalled the gathering, but qualified Wanniski's popular account of the meeting, saying "the restaurant used cloth napkins and my mother had raised me not to desecrate nice things." Imagine my surprise when I got a call from Fink saying he found the napkin and here is who I needed to call.

It turned out that the napkin did exist and was carefully preserved in a safe deposit box owned by Patricia Koyce Wanniski (Jude's widow). I made a plea to Patricia and she said she had to think about it. After all, the napkin was a prized family possession iconic of a seminal event. Eventually she decided that giving the napkin to the nation would solve the family problem of which child might eventually inherit the artifact. Today the napkin is displayed in the American Enterprise exhibition in a section of the show called Power of Finance.

What happened between the meeting in 1974 and the napkin joining the museum's collections? For such an extraordinary napkin, this part of the story is pretty ordinary. Jude brought it home from the 1974 meeting and put it on his desk. His second wife, Christine Bobal, found the napkin and put it in a drawer. No one thought much about it. In 2005 Patricia was cleaning Jude's things out after he died and was sorting through clothes for donation. She rediscovered the napkin at the bottom and back of a handkerchief and underwear drawer. Realizing the importance of the napkin, she moved it to the safety of a bank vault.

While the napkin sat in a drawer and then a bank, the idea sketched on it—the Laffer curve—has taken on symbolic importance critical to the birth of supply-side economics. Some people vilify what became known as Reaganomics; some (like presidential candidate Ross Perot) ran against tax cuts (or fears of increases in national debt), while others held it up as the nation's economic solution. 

Interestingly, the Laffer curve's path to fame was slow. Art Laffer, a young professor at the University of Southern California (USC), had preached 14^th-century historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun's theory to his USC economic students. The concept did not have a specific name–it was just wonkish economic philosophy. Things took off four years later when Wanniski published an article, "Taxes, revenues, and the 'Laffer curve'" in the journal National Affairs in the winter of 1978. The catchy "Laffer curve" name and the great story of the meeting helped Laffer's theory take off. In 1978 Wanniski was fired from the Wall Street Journal for political activity and he became an economic consultant to politicians. Wanniski advised President Ronald Reagan, helping him develop the Reagan tax cut and implement supply-side economics.

But back to the artifact itself. One might ask, is this the only napkin on which Art Laffer drew? Probably not. Any good speaker develops techniques and replicates successes. Other Laffer curve napkins may exist, but the Smithsonian object is special. Curators love to look at objects, and this object says a lot. Laffer notes the location (Two Continents Restaurant), memorializes the main participant (Donald Rumsfeld), and signs and dates the piece. And for me that date is so important. The meeting took place on September 13, 1974, almost two months before the midterm elections. It may be that Wanniski, like many other great journalists, embellished the story just a tad.

Peter Liebhold is a co-curator of the American Enterprise exhibition. 

A note to our readers: This blog post contains imagery that some may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

Between 50,000 and 150,000 opponents of the war in Vietnam protested at the Lincoln Memorial before moving on to the Pentagon on October 21, 1967. In the words of Jerry Rubin, an organizer of the March: "We were throwing red paint on the Pentagon. People were breaking into the Pentagon. They were running into the sides of it. People were getting clubbed, and it was bloody."

I found this quote in Rubin's interview in the Joan and Robert K. Morrison Collection in the museum's Archives Center. This collection of transcripts, images, and tapes was part of the research that the Morrisons, a mother-and-son team, conducted to write their book From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It. As anti-war protests were an area of interest for my studies, I began to explore the collection, as well as our other holdings pertaining to the anti-war movement.

The war in Vietnam truly divided the nation. In popular memory, it is often characterized by the brutal recollections of the veterans who served in Vietnam and of the anti-war protesters. Rubin ensured that the March on the Pentagon was particularly memorable. He had a flair for the dramatic: he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and showed up wearing a Revolutionary War costume. (In later congressional appearances, Rubin continued to don costumes, dressing as a guerrilla fighter and Santa Claus, among others.)

Rubin believed that protests had to be entertaining to stick in the public consciousness, so he organized the Pentagon March accordingly. One of the most famous images of the Vietnam protests was taken there: the picture of a young man placing a flower in the barrel of a gun. This image highlighted the playful, peaceful, striking images that Rubin strove to create of the protesters, in contrast to the violence that they faced. Rubin admitted that when the police attacked the protesters, they were playing into his hands, creating the media-ready images he wanted.

Rubin's youth movement, the "Yippies," were not the only group involved with the March—and not the end of the anti-Vietnam War material available for research in the museum's Archives Center. As Universal Newsreel video from the time stated, the March on the Pentagon was "a loose confederation of some 150 groups and included adults, students—even children." This "confederation" came together on October 21, 1967, but also fanned out for protest actions in a variety of ways. The Archives Center also has material from women's groups, religious groups, and scientists involved in anti-war protests. Below, I provide a sample of Archives Center holdings on each topic—there's so much more to explore than can fit in one blog post.

Women's groups

Many people were dismayed by the loss of life in Vietnam, and not just by the deaths of Americans. Protest groups mourned the loss of life among Vietnamese civilians, particularly women and children. Pamphlets distributed by many groups—especially women's groups—before and after the march portray the grief of Vietnamese parents for their children, with graphic images of napalm injuries, and call upon the sympathy of many. These pamphlets were targeted at women and mothers in particular, in the hopes of mobilizing the women of America. Many of these pamphlets, now housed in the Archive Center's Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, called for President Lyndon B. Johnson to bring their children home and to stop the war altogether.

Religious groups

Religious leaders of all backgrounds were active as well, both during the march and in protests of their own. The Morrison Collection has transcripts of interviews with Catholic priest and anti-war activist Philip Berrigan. In them, Berrigan describes how he and other religious leaders would destroy draft cards using blood or homemade napalm. The symbolism of blood was important to the movement; Berrigan spoke at length in his interviews about the importance of blood in Catholic theology and how non-Catholic groups used blood to symbolize the loss of innocent life.

In the interview, Berrigan also discussed his cooperation with Jewish and Protestant leaders, as well as comparing his own experiences with those of Daniel Berrigan, his brother and fellow activist. (Learn more about Philip Berrigan in his New York Times obituary.)

Groups of scientists

There were plenty of protests against the war beyond the March on the Pentagon. Scientists at MIT and other institutions found themselves increasingly horrified by the technological advancements in weapons of war and called for a separation of science and the military, even organizing a halt of all research to protest the war and to call attention to it. The Archives Center has a collection containing the records of the Science Action Coordinating Committee (SACC), which organized the research halt.

Rubin boasted years later that even though the March on the Pentagon was not immediately successful, over the long term it did change the face of American politics and shift public opinion toward the protesters. Deliberately audacious and full of spectacle, it drew the eye and redirected the conversation, focusing attention to the anti-war movement and setting the stage for other protests.

Stephanie Haeg completed a summer 2017 reference internship in the museum's Archives Center. She is a senior at the College of Saint Benedict. To make an appointment with the Archives Center or to explore the material available there, start on the Archives Center website.

Have you heard? We have a new dress on exhibition. It's true. There has been an addition to the First Ladies exhibition. First Lady Melania Trump visited the National Museum of American History today to formally present her 2017 inaugural ball gown to the collection. The vanilla silk crepe off-the-shoulder gown has a slit skirt, a ruffled accent trim encircling the neckline that flows down to the hem to trail ever so slightly onto the floor, and a thin claret ribbon tied around the waist in a small bow. It was designed by Hervé Pierre in collaboration with Melania Trump and it is now on display in the center of the museum's First Ladies exhibition. 

Mrs. Trump is the ninth first lady to take part in a presentation ceremony. They have become one of those traditional Smithsonian moments—a chance for the museum to thank the first lady for her donation and to mark her inclusion in one of the most beloved exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1964 Lady Bird Johnson began what would become a new tradition by coming to the Smithsonian's new museum building, the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History), to present a gown to the collection. Originally, she was represented by the evening gown she wore at a White House state dinner for British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Mrs. Johnson later donated her 1965 inaugural ball gown to the collection.

Soon after a presidential inauguration, the museum begins receiving questions from the public about when they will be able to see the new dress on exhibit. It takes anywhere from six months to a year and a half after the inauguration for the new gown to appear on display. During that time curators, conservators, collections managers, exhibit designers, exhibit production specialists, graphics specialists, editors, event planners, museum program and communication specialists, security staff, and building facilities staff are working to update the exhibition and, with the first lady's staff, to plan the event. It takes a team to put an object, especially a first lady's gown, on display.

LisaKathleen Graddy is a curator in the museum's Division of Political History. If you're curious, the undulating ruffled trim is her favorite part of the new gown. 

Several decades after the American Revolution, George had come to be known to many of his countrymen as “pater patriae,” or “the father of his country.”

No, not that George!

I am speaking, instead, of George III, the king who had once held the loyalty of Britain’s North American colonists but who lost their allegiance when they chose independence in 1776. Americans are accustomed to seeing George III as the villain of the day—tyrannical and cold-hearted, not like liberty-loving George Washington, the father of our country. But do we need to think again?

Some background

It is tempting to imagine monarchy as a well-established and stable system, but that wasn’t the case with the English monarchy in the early modern era. During the 1600s the English executed one king (Charles I) and overthrew another (James II) before they finally found reliably Protestant rulers in William and Mary in 1689. King William III and Queen Mary II agreed to abide by limits established by custom and by Parliamentary laws; they renounced the “absolutist” power that the English associated with the Catholic monarchs of France and Spain. That renunciation made them and their successors acceptable, but not necessarily beloved. A few decades later, when King George I came to power from Hanover in Germany, his new subjects did not greet him with particular affection.

The three Georges

Three different Georges ruled England from 1714 to 1820, and during that very long reign attitudes toward the monarchy changed substantially. We see that change partly in the growing number of public celebrations that revolved around the royal family—festivals on coronation days, observations of royal birthdays and marriages, expressions of thanks for healthy births or sorrow for royal deaths. Modest under George I, such events became both more common and more lavish under his successors. Equally important, celebration of the monarchy engaged more people outside of England, as Wales and Scotland became more integrated into the kingdom. Many people gradually developed a new identity as “Britons.” The monarchy provided a focus for that identity. The kings’ diminished stature vis-à-vis Parliament made it possible for Britons of different sorts to admire and celebrate them as paternal, unifying figures.

In America

Interest in and affection toward the monarchy was also evident in the North American colonies. The colonies were even more thoroughly Protestant than England, and some colonists fought on the king’s behalf in conflicts with the Catholic French and their indigenous allies in North America. Worshippers at growing numbers of Anglican churches prayed for the health of “his sacred majesty,” and tavern-goers toasted the king’s success. Shortly after his coronation in 1760, engravings of George III became available for colonial purchasers to display in their households, along with ceramic pitchers and plates decorated with the king’s arms. Those who were not affluent enough for such purchases might take part in public celebrations, dinners, and drinking parties. Historian Brendan McConville writes, “As they embraced a Protestant, British identity and the Protestant succession, provincial Americans shifted their perception of the monarch from a dreaded ruler to an object of affection who would arbitrate all imperial relationships.”

The problem with George

Of course, George III lost the affection of the colonists. Ironically, he did so in part because he behaved as non-absolutist kings were supposed to behave—by supporting the sovereignty of Parliament. Since the colonists did not recognize Parliament’s authority over them, they directed their case for independence directly against the authority they did recognize. So the Declaration of Independence cast George III as the villain of the piece, indicting him for crimes of omission and commission. For many, the breaking point had come in 1775, when the king declared the colonies to be “in rebellion” and sent British and Hessian troops across the Atlantic to combat them. Patriot Americans concluded that George was despotic and heartless, simply not the father of his American subjects, who went their separate way.

Father of his country

While losing the American colonies did not make George III popular at home, many Britons responded to the American war by rallying to defend their system and extol their constitutional monarchy. Events of the 1790s encouraged these sentiments. Britons saw France erupt into revolution, regicide, and social and political turmoil. Some were inspired by these events, but more conservative Britons found them frightening. They cheered as British forces took on French armies under the revolutionary governments and the emperor Napoleon. By 1810, the 50th anniversary of George III’s coronation, many Britons were grateful for the constitutional stability that their nation had enjoyed. The king was not personally responsible for all that stability—he himself suffered from recurrent bouts of mental illness and yielded power to a prince regent once and for all in 1810. Despite that, many people found in George III a symbol of a certain idea of British-ness and an ideal of a patriot leader. He was seen as a modest man, fond of family and of farming, and able to rise above the partisan rivalries that caused conflict in the government. Historian Linda Colley describes the resulting celebration of the king as the “apotheosis” of George III—his elevation to a status of widely beloved, if not strictly divine.

George and George

Interestingly, Americans valued many of the same qualities in George Washington, who was widely given the same title of “father of his country” after his death in 1799. Does this tell us anything important?

For all the differences between an elected four-year presidency and a hereditary lifetime monarchy, there seem to have been common expectations for those who filled these positions in these years. We see a common notion of a patriot leader, one who was modest and honest in his personal and domestic life, even if sometimes at the center of impressive civic ceremony. This ideal leader rose above personal gain and mere petty partisanship. He united the nation by pursuing the common good, the welfare of the entire nation rather than a particular part. While neither George may have lived up to that ideal as fully as some of their most romantic biographers would claim, both Georges took that ideal seriously and shaped their own lives and the lives of their nations by taking the ideal to heart.

The two Georges’ political descendants have fared very differently in the court of public opinion. As the English royalty have ceded political power, the monarchy has become increasingly symbolic and nonpartisan, significant to British identity and unity perhaps, but less significant to policy making. By contrast, unforeseen by founders of the nation, presidents soon became leaders of their political parties, avowedly partisan to one set of interests. Yet Americans also expect their president to fill the ceremonial role as chief of state, which requires a president to act as representative of the nation as a whole. Fulfilling these contrasting expectations remains a challenge to every holder of the office. The question remains: do Americans today want or need a unifying parental figure to lead us? And how important is such a figure to our sense that we are a single people, sharing a common “country” with one another?

Barbara Clark Smith is a co-curator of the exhibition American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith and a curator in the Division of Political History at the National Museum of American History.

Peek through a partially opened door in a new exhibition exploring the grandness, boldness, and complexity of America’s democracy. You’ll see a video of the late Senator Alan Cranston, who intervened with banking regulators to help a major campaign donor, saying on the Senate floor, “I am far from being the only senator to do what I have done.” And you’ll watch the late Representative James Traficant telling reporters at the House ethics committee, “There are no ethics in politics.”

American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, which opened last June, explores the bold experiment of creating a democracy from a monarchy. It demonstrates how Americans in a diverse society participate in their government and the principles and ideals that govern the nation’s political system.

But one small part of the exhibition demonstrates something else. It explores the dynamic between participation by those willing to spend lots of money and politicians eager for payoffs—the dirty laundry of U.S. politics. And that’s why visitors can look through a cracked-open door to see a television screen, playing a three-and-a-half-minute video loop of political scandals. The new exhibition couldn’t tell the story of American democracy “without talking about money, corruption, and power,” said Harry Rubenstein, former chair of the museum’s Division of Political History and leader of the team behind the exhibition. Rubenstein said he wanted to symbolically show that corruption takes place behind closed doors, “so we cracked the door open to show scandals.”

A label near the door explains that “well-funded” lobbyists have represented large corporations and established organizations. Then comes the kicker: “And where money and power meet, there is always the possibility that in this representative democracy not everyone is listened to equally.” In this and other sections, the exhibition demonstrates that our democracy sometimes exists "beyond the ballot."

Rubenstein said two of the scandals featured in the section’s accompanying video epitomize the influence of money in politics: the downfall of corrupt super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the FBI sting known as ABSCAM. The beginning of the video loop shows the disgrace of Abramoff, who served 43 months in prison until 2010 after lavishing gifts on congressional and executive branch officials and earning great wealth while bilking American Indian tribes.

In ABSCAM, FBI video shows corrupt congressmen taking bribes in an operation that burst into public view in 1980. One U.S. senator, six congressmen, and more than a dozen other criminals and corrupt officials were arrested and found guilty, including several who were filmed accepting cash from an undercover agent. In one of the most famous filmed lines ever spoken in modern times by a corrupt politician, then-Representative Michael Myers of Pennsylvania told an undercover agent: “Money talks in this business and bull**** walks.”

The Abramoff case “was the modern marker of money and influence,” Rubenstein said, explaining his choices for the video. “ABSCAM was the classic case” of bribery behind closed doors and became familiar to many Americans when it inspired the hit movie American Hustle in 2013.

Others scandals you’ll find in the video loop include the following. How many of these do you remember?

• James Traficant, an Ohio congressman, in 2002 went to prison for corruption and became the second House member expelled since the Civil War. Michael Joseph “Ozzie” Myers was the first, in 1980. Traficant’s description of politics in the video: “It is dog eat dog. Castrate your opponent.”
• Alan Cranston, at the time the assistant Senate majority leader from California, received a severe reprimand from the Senate’s ethics committee in 1991 for “improper and repugnant” conduct. He was one of five senators who improperly received political donations from savings and loan owner Charles Keating and his associates while intervening with federal regulators on the owner’s behalf.
• Vice president Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace in 1973 after pleading no contest to federal income tax evasion in exchange for prosecutors dropping corruption charges. He was fined $10,000, sentenced to three years of probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals.
• Former Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana began a 13-year federal prison sentence in 2012 for corruption in a case mainly involving his efforts to secure contracts in Africa from businesses giving him payoffs. The case attracted wide attention when $90,000 in ill-gotten cash was found in Jefferson’s freezer. Jefferson was released late in 2017 after several of his convictions were thrown out.
• Former California Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham served more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty in 2005 to wire fraud, mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to commit bribery. He kept a record of the bribery amounts he received on congressional stationery.

“We are constantly trying to make democracy work as a system for people,” Rubenstein said. “But there are times when political democracy doesn’t work all that well.”

Larry Margasak is a retired journalist who has written about the museum’s Steinway Diary Project, Hollywood during World War II, the origins of the New York subway, and the emotional attachment of visitors to the Ruby Slippers fromThe Wizard of Oz.

February 2018 marks the 70th Anniversary of  the professional debut of Jean Stapleton (1923 to 2013) at the Equity Library Theater in New York City. This month, the museum received a donation from the actress's family that showcases her career. You can learn more about the donation here.

During its run between 1971 and 1979, the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family captivated Americans by using the strikingly different members of the Bunker family to bring national issues to the small screen. At this same time, a similarly groundbreaking Constitutional amendment was traveling down the long road to ratification: the Equal Rights Amendment. It’s easy to imagine Archie Bunker, the conservative protagonist of the hit show, dismissing the amendment and its revolutionary take on gender equality. His wife Edith, on the other hand, would have wanted to carefully consider the amendment and its effect on women, including her daughter Gloria. Edith’s thoughtful, empathetic challenge to Archie’s reactionary bigotry mirrored political debates occurring around the nation in the 1970s. Whereas Edith, whom the New York Times called “Archie Bunker’s Better Angel,” held her progressive views quietly, the actress who portrayed her, Jean Stapleton, was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights.

One of my first tasks as an intern with the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History was helping to process the collection of Jean Stapleton’s papers acquired by the museum in May 2017. Stapleton, a native of New York City, was best known for her role as Edith on All in the Family. Yet her decision to take on such an iconic role has often led individuals to overlook not only her prolific career as a stage actress but also her involvement in various organizations on behalf of human rights and women’s rights in particular. When not in costume, Stapleton spoke in favor of the ERA and devoted herself to furthering the mission of the Women’s Research and Education Institute. She even traveled with other members of the Actors’ Equity Association to the Soviet Union in order to promote “cultural exchange” between artists living in the two nations.

In recognition of her tireless work on and off stage, Stapleton received honorary degrees from several distinguished universities throughout her life. One of these was Wilson College, a traditionally all-women institution in southern Pennsylvania not far from the Totem Pole Playhouse, where Stapleton appeared in many productions alongside her husband, William Putch. She was also given the honor of delivering the commencement address at the college in 1983.

Graduation is still many months away for the members of the Class of 2018, and the commencement address they will hear is probably far from their minds. Yet if Stapleton were to address graduating students today, her message might still resonate with them, even though her use of the ERA to illustrate some of her points is no longer as immediate or compelling.

Perhaps the most pervasive theme found in Stapleton’s speech is that of individuality, and she reminded the graduates, “Your very own intelligence…that you were born with and which has been developing in you through your experience…will sustain you and impel you to solutions that lead to a better quality of life.” For Stapleton, individuality involved holding oneself accountable for one’s decisions. She believed that it is the responsibility of each person to ensure that those decisions promote justice in our world for men and women alike.

When speaking to students, Stapleton often shared an anecdote about being denied a part that she hoped for, to illustrate her view that disappointments, when perceived as opportunities for growth, can help individuals to become the best versions of themselves. A firm believer that we are not one another’s adversaries, Stapleton would likely remind us that the sentiment can be difficult to remember if we allow ourselves to harbor the kind of “resentment or envy” that she had sometimes experienced. Young people still take this message to heart by resolving that past setbacks will not prevent them from striving to become the person they ultimately hope to be. With this self-awareness, students can inform themselves about contemporary issues and help bring about the change they believe to be necessary—something Stapleton encouraged the Wilson College Class of 1983 to do. To me, Stapleton’s message is just as resonant today as it was almost 35 years ago.

On September 27, 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified by the state of Pennsylvania, a place that Stapleton held dear to her heart. Although the amendment ultimately would not become part of the U.S. Constitution, Stapleton continued to encourage the graduates she addressed and many others not to be passive. And while she did explicitly acknowledged the “simple justice” of the ERA in her address and assured the graduating class that she regarded as inevitable the recognition of “equal personhood,” her rousing words could encompass any perceived injustice that might inspire a person to strive for change.

Stapleton would have applauded the decision made in Pennsylvania on this day just as she applauded the graduates of Wilson College over a decade later.

If you are interested in learning more, set up an appointment with the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History to browse the Stapleton Papers. The documents, newspaper articles, photographs, and numerous awards in this collection provide unparalleled insight into the life and career of the actress who portrayed Edith Bunker.

Katherine DeFonzo completed a summer 2017 internship in the Archives Center. She is a senior at Fordham University Rose Hill.

The trauma of losing its first leader, George Washington, was greatly felt by a new nation. Ezra Stiles, a pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Newport, Rhode Island, and later president of Yale, implied in one of his wartime sermons that the nation perceived Washington as an instrument of God. This view was shared by many artists and poets of the revolutionary era.

After George Washington died on December 14, 1799, Samuel Folwell, an artist from Philadelphia, created a series of designs for memorial embroidered pictures to honor his death. Other artists followed his example, and these embroidered pictures became known as mourning pictures. They included an assortment of plinth and urn forms, mourners, angels, and trees in a garden setting. These symbols had classical roots and were brought to the American colonies in the 1600s. Folwell’s wife, Elizabeth, had a school in Philadelphia where many of these embroideries were probably executed.

The oval embroidered memorial above is dedicated to George Washington. It features an urn-topped plinth. The urn is inscribed “GW” and the inscription on the plinth is “SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS WASHINGTON.” To the left of this group are two weeping willow trees with crossed trunks. Overhead is an angel with a trumpet and a laurel wreath. Many people see the willow tree as a symbol of mourning and sorrow. The angel, trumpet, and laurel wreath could signify the deceased being summoned by the trumpet of the archangel.

Not only were pictures embroidered in memory of George Washington, but young ladies, often in academies for women, also worked embroideries in memory of deceased relatives. According to an object record from the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem displayed on the website of the Bethlehem Digital History Project, “the mourning piece later transcended its original purpose and became a fashionable needlework motif exemplifying refinement and culture.”

Because the embroideries created by the young women used advanced techniques, the students often had help with stitching as well as with painting the background, the faces, and hands. I’ll share with you a few of the interesting mourning pictures in our collection and what we’ve been able to learn of their makers: Susan Winn, Hannah Walbridge Converse, Olive Brown, and Hester Ann Posey. Because the lives of women in this era are often poorly documented, these objects are particularly important in increasing our understanding of their lives and their roles in their families, communities, and their nation.

The example above was embroidered by Susan Winn, around 1816, in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and dedicated to her sister Caroline, who died in infancy in 1806. It is 25 ¼ x 25 ¼ inches. A cloth-draped urn on which is printed “rests in Peace” appears at the top of the plinth. The woman and girls depicted wear necklaces with pendants or plaques; the one worn by the girl on the right is lettered “SW.” The boy holds a book on which is printed “Ble—ed are the Dead that die in the L—-.” Printed in blue ink on the front of the plinth is “Sacred to the Memory of / my dear Sister / CAROLINE WINN. / Sweet be Thy sepulchral rest / Sister dear! supremely blest! / May the ties which us unite / Be renew’d in realms of light! / Erected by / Susan Winn.”

Susan Winn was born October 18, 1801, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a flour merchant and entered Susan and her sister Elizabeth, who was two years younger, in Linden Hall Seminary in 1815. Located in Lititz, it was a Moravian boarding school. This is where she embroidered this picture.

Another mourning picture in the museum’s Textile Collection was made by Hannah Walbridge Converse. A memorial to several members of the William Poole family of Williamston, Vermont, the mourning picture led us on a genealogical journey. Hannah Walbridge Converse lived with the Poole family while teaching school in Williamston. She painted it on cotton velvet in 1828 and it is 20 x 27 inches.

Inscribed on the pedestal is “Sacred to the memory of Leonora Poole who died August 16, 1828 aged 16 years 6 months and 3 days." Below on the pedestal is “There is a voice from the tomb, Sweeter than song.” To the right on the small pedestal is inscribed “Sacred to the memory of Sally Poole who died Dec 7th 1807 aged 3 years and 10 months." Also inscribed is “To the memory of Warren Poole who died August 13th 1798 aged 9 months and 10 days. Sacred to the memory of Curtis Poole who died Dec 20, 1800, age 3 weeks."

On the back of this picture dedicated to members of the Poole family—many of them quite young—was attached a slip of paper that made it known that the picture was made by Mark Hanna’s grandmother. Well who was Mark Hanna, and why was he so notable? If you are from Ohio, you may know who he is. For the rest of us, it took another clue to solve that puzzle. A flyer about President William McKinley was in the museum’s accession folder that mentioned Hanna. Hanna was McKinley’s campaign manager and was also a senator from Ohio. With that connection made, Google and Ancestry.com led me to Hannah Walbridge Converse, the maker of this mourning picture.

Hannah Walbridge was born in Stafford, Connecticut, on October 11, 1751. She married Israel Converse on June 27, 1771. Israel served in the Revolutionary War at the Lexington alarm in 1775 and then again later in 1775 and 1776. In 1780 they moved to Randolph, Vermont, where they were among the first settlers. Hannah and Israel had a son named Porter. Israel died in 1806. Hannah probably found employment as a teacher to support herself. She died in Ohio, two years after making this picture, on October 17, 1830. Porter went on to marry and have a daughter who married Leonard Hanna—Leonard Hanna’s son was Mark Hanna.

In addition to these pictorial mourning works, girls sometimes also crafted samplers with mourning or “in memoriam” aspects.

After she stitched an alphabet, she changed the thread color to black, to indicate death or mourning, and included the inscription: “GENERAL G / WASHINGT / ON PRES, US / BN, FEBRAUR / Y 22 1732. DEC / DECEMBER 14 1799. OLIVE / BROWN BORN / NOVEMR 7, 1782.”

Olive Brown was born November 7, 1782, in Winchendon, Massachusetts. On November 30, 1809, she married Dr. Nathaniel Howard from Temple, New Hampshire. They had four children. She died March 13, 1820.

In 1837, 14-year-old Hester Ann Posey combined a family record with a memorial to her sister Margaret. It is 27 x 25 1/4 inches. On a pyramidal monument flanked by rosebushes and butterflies, under a weeping willow tree, she stitched, “sacred to The Memory of Margaret Posey Who died Feb 2 A.D. 1824 aged 8 YS 1 Month and 14 days.”

In a box on the left she included this poem, "Weep not my friends as you Pass by, as you are now so once Was I, as I am now So you must be, prepare to meet me in Eternity.”

Hester Ann Posey was a teacher. She did not marry. Toward the end of July 2016, a descendant of Posey’s came to the museum to see her sampler. She informed us that Posey’s death date was November 7, 1916, and that she was buried in Frederick, Maryland, at the Mount Olivet Cemetery. It is always wonderful when a descendant or others can help us correct or complete our genealogical information about the maker or user of an object in the Textile Collection.

You will find additional mourning pictures by Mary Stevenson, Mary Gorham, Mary Parker, and Sophia W. Childs in the embroidered pictures object group.

Sheryl De Jong is a volunteer in the Textile Collection, Division of Home and Community Life.

Museums are full of “firsts”—objects that represent the first person to complete a task, to win an award, to hold a position, to achieve a goal, or to reach a new height. Firsts must mean something to us. Look at how many expressions we have for them: blazing trails, opening doors, breaking barriers, shattering ceilings, paving the way.

Firsts help us create a timeline. They are benchmarks we use to document change and, hopefully, progress. We celebrate firsts, and we analyze them.

The museum’s Political History collection holds material related to George and Martha Washington, the first president and first lady of the United States; John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States; and Frances Perkins, the first woman to be a cabinet secretary.

Today we welcomed a new first into our collection, with objects donated by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who in 2007 became the first woman to serve as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

During this morning’s ceremony, Democratic Leader Pelosi visited the museum and donated the gavel she received and used at her 2007 swearing-in ceremony, the suit she wore during the ceremony, the vote tally of the election, her reading copy of her first speech as Speaker, and a copy of that day’s Congressional Record.

Nancy Pelosi’s donation joins objects in the museum that reflect firsts achieved by women who changed America and who inspired—and continue to inspire—others to make change themselves.

Along with her suit, the clothes on stage represented firsts: the ensemble worn by Marian Anderson, the first African American performer to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, during her historic concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939; the U.S. Army mess dress uniform worn by Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays, the first woman to attain the rank of general in the U.S. military; the judicial robe worn by Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice; and the in-flight suit worn by astronaut Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space.

Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1940, the daughter of Annunciata and Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. Her introduction to American politics came early. During her childhood, her father served as both a U.S. congressman and as the mayor of Baltimore. She married Paul Pelosi in 1963 and the couple moved to San Francisco, where Nancy Pelosi raised a family of five children and began a career in Democratic politics, serving as a member of the Democratic National Committee from California.

In 1987 Nancy Pelosi was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. There were only twenty-four women in the House of Representatives then, and none were in leadership positions. Her committee assignments included the Appropriations Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She championed legislation to bring equality for more Americans. In 2001 she became the first woman to serve as a party whip; one year later she was the first woman elected to be a party leader. And in 2007 Pelosi became the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives. As Speaker, Pelosi worked to pass legislation that included the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Clean Energy and Security Act, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Today she is one of the most recognizable figures in American politics.

In her 2007 speech, the newly sworn-in Speaker noted the significance of firsts:

For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters, now the sky is the limit. Anything is possible for them.

The firsts we celebrate are often chosen because they, in some way, change the trajectory of American history. They create diversity, add new experiences and viewpoints, and create new possibilities. But they also can represent important points of continuity with the past. Nancy Pelosi was the first woman Speaker of the House. And the 52nd Speaker of the House. Change and continuity. A women’s first, an American first, and a part of a position that can trace its roots to the earliest days of our country.

This is a wonderful donation for Women’s History Month, one that will be both part of the National Museum of American History’s longstanding effort to document the history of women in America and the first in our expanded curatorial effort to document women in American politics. So for all the trail-blazers, door-openers, barrier-breakers, ceiling-shatterers, and way-pavers—we’re here waiting for you, ready to tell your American stories.

Lisa Kathleen Graddy is a curator of political history at the National Museum of American History. She looks forward to many years of encouraging American women to make their stories part of the national collections.

Fifty years ago, on April 11, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill that was to end discrimination in most of the nation’s housing. Today, a half century later, fair housing advocates are still trying to make it work.

The year was 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated a week earlier. His death plunged the nation into moral crisis, and cities went up in flames. Once again, assassination demonstrated that violence could overturn the rule of law. President Lyndon B. Johnson—whose deep commitment to ending discrimination produced landmark civil rights measures in 1964 and 1965—desperately needed new legislation to restore faith in government.

And he got it on April 10, 1968.

As troops responding to the unrest still ringed the U.S. Capitol, the House of Representatives gave final congressional approval to a bill designed to end discrimination in 80 percent of the nation’s housing. Johnson wasted no time, signing the bill a day later. After the signing he handed out the pens he used to affix his signature, including one now on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, on loan from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

Johnson said that “fair housing for all—all human beings who live in this country—is now a part of the American way of life.” The law, expanded over the years, protects people from discrimination when they are renting, buying, or securing financing for any housing. The prohibitions specifically cover discrimination because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, and familial status.

But did Johnson’s pronouncement of “fair housing for all” come true? The evidence shows he was far too optimistic.

An exhibit case commemorating the 50th anniversary of the law says that continued housing discrimination and segregation is evidence of “unfinished business,” in the words of former Senator Walter Mondale, a cosponsor of the bill.

The display, in the museum’s Within These Walls exhibition, includes a 1957 photo of an African American woman, Daisy Myers, who moved with her husband into the all-white Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania. Myers, pictured holding her young child, “endured rock-throwing crowds, blaring music, and telephone threats,” the caption explains. She died in 2011, but a fictionalized version of her story is told in the George Clooney-directed 2017 film Suburbicon.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, in its 2017 Fair Housing Trends report, noted that racial and ethnic disparities in access to credit, subprime lending, foreclosures, racial steering and redlining have perpetuated housing segregation.

“As a result, in today’s America, approximately half of all Black persons and 40 percent of all Latinos live in neighborhoods without a White presence,” reported the alliance, which describes itself as “a consortium of more than 220 private, nonprofit fair housing organizations, state and local civil rights agencies, and individuals.”

The alliance noted there were 28,181 reported complaints of housing discrimination in 2016, and fair housing organizations were responsible for addressing 70 percent of them.

Some cities also have stepped up with enforcement efforts. The city of Santa Monica, California, holds workshops for landlords to enforce its local ordinance, focusing on discrimination against families with children and people with disabilities. “Doing workshops for 11 years turned a lot of landlords into the choir,” Gary W. Rhoades, deputy city attorney, said in an interview.

Rhoades said that, since 2015, the city has settled about 20 fair housing claims out of court. Santa Monica filed five lawsuits under its own fair housing law during the same period, with two settled favorably for the city and tenants, while the other three cases are pending.

Arguably, the federal government could use its leverage to try to create integrated neighborhoods. It could require state and local governments to enforce the housing law in order to receive some of their federal funds. However, attempts to create integrated neighborhoods have often run into vehement homeowner protests.

Finally, in 2015, things suddenly started looking up for advocates of stronger enforcement.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, created space for challenges to lending rules, zoning laws, and other housing practices that have a harmful impact on minorities. The court’s decision allowed cases to proceed even if there was no proof of intentional discrimination.

Buoyed by the decision, the Obama administration weeks later issued a rule requiring local jurisdictions to scrutinize their housing patterns for racial discrimination, and publicly report the findings every three to five years. Communities would have to set goals for reducing segregation in housing and track the progress. The rule said non-compliance could result in loss of federal funds to localities, but the administration said it really wanted a spirit of collaboration.

But in January 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development filed a notice that it was suspending the requirement until 2020—but did not repeal it.

The agency contended in a statement that “many program participants struggled to meet the regulatory requirements of the . . . rule, such as developing goals that could be reasonably expected to result in meaningful actions. . .” The statement added that “program participants struggled to develop metrics and milestones that would measure their progress” and contended that HUD could use the extra time to provide the technical assistance to get the local plans accepted.

The fair housing law, formally the Civil Rights Act of 1968, was the third major civil rights bill signed by President Johnson. It was preceded by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which demanded equality for those seeking a job, eating a meal in a restaurant, and seeking lodging in any state, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which affirmed the right of every citizen to vote.

But the 1968 law presented Johnson with a new challenge. While the first two laws were aimed primarily at the South, King had taken the crusade for fair housing to the North—specifically Chicago.

In 1966 King and his family rented an apartment on the city’s West Side. They and local activists were met with fierce opposition, and in one case an angry white mob met the activists with bricks, bottles, and rocks.

“I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’m seeing in Chicago,” King said.

King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The Senate had already passed the housing bill, getting past a filibuster by a single vote. The assassination may have influenced the House’s timing, although supporters in the 250–171 vote argued the bill would have passed anyway.

Fifty years later, supporters of the law are using the anniversary to make sure Americans know their rights.

The Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office has distributed a minute-long fair housing video that brings to life the characters created by a local seventh-grade student, from John the wheelchair user, to John’s friends and family, and then finally his landlord.

On a larger scale, the National Fair Housing Alliance announced it will be celebrating the law’s anniversary throughout the year by “engaging communities in conversations and facilitating action.”

The alliance report quoted the late African American senator who coauthored the law, Edward Brooke, on the government’s continuing obligation to ensure fair housing.

“The law is meaningless unless you’re able to enforce that law,” he said in 2003. “It starts at the top.” He said the president, the attorney general, the secretary of HUD, and elected leaders need to make “racially, ethnically, and economically integrated neighborhoods a reality, and we as citizens have an obligation to demand that change.”

The Museum thanks the National Association of Realtors for its sponsorship of Within These Walls, including the new case on the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act.

Larry Margasak is a retired Washington journalist and a volunteer at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He has previously written about the origins of the New York City subway, a museum display on the influence of lobbying money in politics, and piano manufacturer William Steinway’s long-gone amusement park that is now covered with the runways of LaGuardia Airport.

On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into World War II. The very next day U.S. Army troops requisitioned half of Walt Disney’s Burbank, California, studio for their use. But space was not all that Disney would provide the troops. Artists, animators, and Walt Disney himself pitched in, enlisting Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and other beloved Disney characters in the war effort.

Throughout the early 1940s, Disney churned out military training films, educational shorts (provided to the U.S. government at cost), and military insignia for over 1,000 different units in the U.S. armed forces (provided free of charge). Disney’s entire stable of characters was employed in the name of patriotism, and by 1943 newspapers were reporting that up to 90 percent of the Disney studio’s work was for government agencies.

In 1943 The New York Times singled out Donald Duck, in particular, as an “ambassador-at-large, a salesman of the American Way” for his representation of the United States both at home and abroad. By the end of the war, however, the title “Salesman of the American Way” may well have belonged to Walt Disney himself. The use of Disney’s characters in war-related work helped to strengthen the perception of the Disney brand as a symbol of the United States and its values.

Disney was most prolific during the war as a morale booster for the troops. Company artists created images of Disney characters for unit patches, eventually providing insignia to almost 1,300 units in the U.S. armed forces. Requests were so numerous that the studio had to set up an entire five-person unit devoted to insignia, under the lead of artist Hank Porter, to even come close to meeting demand.

Disney partnered with several other government programs to educate citizens and encourage them to do their part for the war effort. Disney characters appeared on posters, in books, and even on war bonds to boost their appeal to children. Examples from the museum’s collection include a series of posters made for the Food and Nutrition Committee of the California War Council, as well as a book with movable characters created at the “suggestion” of the U.S. Treasury Department. Disney designed the book The Victory March to teach children the importance of saving stamps for war bonds.

At the beginning of World War II, Disney’s most famous product was animation, which logically was put to patriotic use in educational shorts and training films—and it even played a role in international diplomacy. Animated shorts were used for many different purposes. The New Spirit helped explain income tax laws enacted in 1942 to help fund the war, while Fall Out—Fall In provided entertainment aligned with current events and promoted patriotic service, as exemplified by Donald Duck.

The Studio’s work was not just instrumental in the United States’ war effort; using Disney characters to speak on behalf of the U.S. government also solidified the idea—building since Disney’s 1930s cartoon work—that the brand was associated with patriotism and a symbol for America writ large. This association continues to be fostered today as seen in the nightly flag retreat ceremony held at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, where park visitors gather to honor the American flag and the country’s veterans.

The objects featured here are only a small sampling of what the Disney Studios produced during World War II, but they offer a window into how one of America’s favorite brands contributed to the nation’s victory and became inextricably linked to the country itself—with a bit of Disney diplomacy and a whole lot of Mickey Mouse morale.

Bethanee Bemis is a museum specialist in the Division of Political History. She has previously blogged about Disney and the American Experience, suffrage history, and dead presidents.

What is it about Abraham Lincoln and vampires? When Seth Grahame-Smith published his action/horror mash-up novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, scholars cringed. Few historians studying the 16th president were willing to go on the record to say what many truly thought, but suffice to say, it was not as supportive as the praise given for turning the life of Alexander Hamilton into a Broadway play. Nevertheless, a Lincoln/vampire connection does exist, and part of that story is now in the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1886 three men—New York businessman and art collector Thomas B. Clarke, Century Magazine editor Richard W. Gilder, and famed American artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens—contacted the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Spencer Baird, with a proposal. The three represented a consortium of subscribers who had recently purchased from Douglas Volk casts of the life mask and hands of Abraham Lincoln—items made by Volk’s father, Leonard, in 1860. If the Smithsonian promised to preserve the plaster mask and hands, and to guarantee that no future copies were ever made from the originals, the group would donate its Lincoln relics and a set of the bronze copies made by Saint-Gaudens. 

On January 1888 the institution received the donation. It consisted of the original plaster life mask and hands, a bronze set produced by Saint-Gaudens, a signed affidavit from Leonard Volk, and an illuminated list of the 33 subscribers who, as a group, made the donation. The list includes well-known friends and admirers of Lincoln such as John Hay, the former president’s private secretary. But one name curiously stands out: Bram Stoker, the Irish-born author of Dracula.

Why did Bram Stoker join the group, and how did he ever learn about the project? When the museum was given the opportunity to collect Stoker’s copy of the life mask, we decided to find answers to these questions.

It turned out that American poet Walt Whitman held the answers. Stoker—like a number of young Irish students at Trinity College in Dublin—was drawn to this rebellious voice from across the ocean that explored the notion of manly love and comradeship. In 1872 Stoker began a correspondence with the poet. In what can only be considered fan letters, Stoker poured out his soul and declared himself a Walt-Whitmanite.

For much of his professional life, Stoker was the business manager for celebrated actor Henry Irving and his Lyceum Theatre in London. As the theater’s manager, Stoker made several trips to the United States in the 1880s. These trips allowed him to meet his literary idol—who, in his estimation, did not disappoint. Stoker would later write, “I found [Whitman] all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him.” During these visits, Whitman shared with Stoker his memories of his own personal hero, Abraham Lincoln. Stoker recalled how “our conversation presently drifted towards Abraham Lincoln for whom he had an almost idolatrous affection. I confess that in this I shared; and it was another bond of union between us.”

In 1886 Stoker visited Saint-Gaudens’s New York studio, hoping to persuade the artist to make a bust of Whitman. Saint-Gaudens expressed interest in creating a sculpture of the poet, but it never materialized due to Whitman’s declining health. By chance, sitting in the studio were the original casts of Lincoln’s life mask and hands. Seeing the relics, Stoker not only joined the list of subscribers, he convinced Henry Irving to participate as well.

Back in London, with the bronze mask of Lincoln resting on the podium, Stoker delivered a series of lectures on America in which he presented the stories that Whitman had shared with him. At his death in 1913, Stoker’s widow auctioned off many of his possessions. Prominently listed in the sales announcement were the author’s notes on Dracula, his Whitman collection, and the cast hands and mask of Lincoln.

The life mask found its way into the personal collection of prominent American financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. (the whereabouts of the hands are unknown). He would pass the mask on to his son Nelson Rockefeller, who shared Lincoln’s presidential ambitions and would become governor of New York and vice president under Gerald Ford. Nelson gave the life mask to his daughter Mary Rockefeller, who presented it to her Springfield, Illinois-born husband, Thomas Bruce Morgan, whose career included being a writer; magazine editor for LOOK, Esquire, and The Village Voice; and press aide to presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and New York City Mayor John Lindsay. Following Morgan’s death, his children, Kate and Nick Morgan, hoped to find a more public home for Bram Stoker’s life mask and offered it to the National Museum of American History. This not only resulted in a wonderful new acquisition to the collection, but also led the museum to answer the riddle of Stoker’s involvement with the original donation in 1888.

While the mystery of how and why Bram Stoker joined the group of subscribers has been solved, additional connections between Lincoln and vampires will have to wait for another day. 

Harry R. Rubenstein is a curator in the Division of Political History.

This June marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert “Bobby” Francis Kennedy. Being a native Northern Virginian, I knew that the stadium where the Washington Redskins played from 1961 to 1996 was named for Robert Kennedy. (The stadium was originally called District of Columbia Stadium, DC Stadium, and was renamed RFK Memorial Stadium in January 1969.) I also knew that Robert Kennedy was a younger brother to President John F. Kennedy and that he too was assassinated. However, like so many students of my generation, my middle and high school history classes only made it to World War II before the end of the school year, so I never had a chance to study Robert Kennedy’s life.

For the past few weeks I’ve been on a quest to learn about who Robert Kennedy was. What is his legacy? Do we remember him because he was working to enforce and expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Do we remember him because if he had won the Democratic Nomination for President he may have defeated Richard Nixon in the 1968 election? Or do we remember him because he was a Kennedy?

What I’ve learned is that Robert Kennedy appealed to many, not because he was John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, but because he continued that youthful and optimistic hope that his brother had brought to the country eight years prior. He had a vision of what America could be and did what he could to make that vision a reality. He is remembered because a large number of Americans felt that they could relate to him in one way or another. The fact that so many Americans remember him as “Bobby” Kennedy is instructive. Bobby was a rare political who “mingled” with the average American. He didn’t just stand on a platform and give speeches; he got down on the ground, down to their level, and spoke to them. He wanted to know the issues that plagued them and in turn tell them what he could do, not tell them what they wanted to hear.

As attorney general (a position he held from 1961 to 1964), Kennedy fought for integration and voting rights, and he tackled organized crime—does the name Jimmy Hoffa ring any bells? He deployed the U.S. Marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and to escort James Meredith to class at the University of Mississippi. He also ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to end segregation at interstate bus terminals. As attorney general, Kennedy threatened the owner of the Redskins to integrate the team, or he would revoke the team’s lease because the stadium was federally owned. Ironically, or because of this, DC Stadium was renamed RFK Memorial Stadium.

In 1964 Kennedy resigned from his position as attorney general and was elected senator from New York. While serving as senator, he continued to advocate for civil rights and human rights around the globe. Kennedy also was a critic of the war in Vietnam, and he urged the Johnson Administration not only to not escalate the conflict but to work toward an end of the war in Vietnam.

In March 1968 Kennedy threw his hat in the ring and announced his candidacy for president of the United States. In his announcement speech he said, “I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I’m obliged to do all that I can.” In the late 1960s only a handful of states held campaign primaries. Kennedy won numerous primaries, including in D.C. Several campaign polls showed Kennedy in tough competition with other leading candidates, including Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

In April 1968 Kennedy was in Indiana on a regularly scheduled campaign stop when he was informed that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed. Although Kennedy and King weren’t necessarily allies in the civil rights movement, Kennedy noticed the work of King and other civil rights leaders and incorporated their undertaking into his agenda as attorney general, senator, and presidential candidate. Instead of his planned speech, Kennedy stood in the back of a truck in front of a gathering of thousands of African Americans in Indianapolis and told them what had happened in Memphis, Tennessee. Warned of violence and riots, and without a police escort, Robert Kennedy insisted that he be the one to tell the crowd. He was able to connect the assassination of King to that of his brother. He understood what King’s death would mean to the African American communities not just in Indianapolis but around the country. Many give Kennedy credit for helping to keep the peace in Indianapolis when other cities across the country broke out in violence.

Two months later, on June 5, Kennedy was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles celebrating his win in the California primary. After addressing a crowd of supporters, plans changed and Kennedy was to meet directly with the press instead of meeting a second group of supporters. It was in the kitchen hallway that Sirhan Sirhan fired eight shots. Three of those shots found their mark and struck Kennedy in the head and neck. Five others near the kitchen were injured, but survived.

The funeral service for Robert F. Kennedy was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. His body was then transported by train to Arlington National Cemetery, where at a rare evening burial he was laid to rest next to his brother John F. Kennedy. Thousands of mourners lined the train route to pay their respects.

On my quest to learn about Robert Kennedy I have learned that, like most people, he was multidimensional. The late 1960s was a turbulent period in our nation’s history. There are so many issues to be studied and discussed. On this 50th anniversary there are new books on Kennedy being published, and magazines such as People and LIFE are printing commemorative issues. It is a time in which we can look back and remember what was and what could have been. We look back to see how far we have come in 50 years and wonder what will happen in the next 50 years.

Sara Murphy is a museum specialist and collections manager in the Division of Political History. She has previously blogged about how first families have memorialized and mourned as well as the process of exhibition installation.

The month of July plays host to the birthdays of both the United States of America (July 4, 1776) and Disneyland (July 17, 1955). This is perhaps appropriate, as Disneyland and its East Coast counterpart, Walt Disney World (which opened in October 1971), have evolved into American icons themselves. Though they are parts of a large company with global reach, Disney parks still hold a special place in American culture as illustrators and sometimes originators of American myths and folktales. Their iconic status can give visitors the sense that the parks have something to teach them about the American experience.

On a visit to Epcot at Walt Disney World last year, I was standing outside of The American Adventure, an attraction that specifically addresses American history (I believe I was in line for ice cream, another important part of the American experience), when a mother told me she had brought her son to “have his history lesson.”

One way Disney parks earned this sense of authority has been by gathering Americans for the communal celebration of national holidays, particularly patriotic ones such as Independence Day or Flag Day. In particular, Disney’s staging of a bicentennial celebration of America’s founding helped to cement a link between the theme park and its home country that already existed. In honor of two July birthdays—Disneyland’s 63rd and America’s 242nd—let’s revisit Disney’s largest celebration of America’s birthday: “America on Parade.”

America’s 1976 Bicentennial saw celebrations across the country, from President Gerald Ford presiding over nationally televised fireworks in Washington, D.C., to individual citizens painting their mailboxes red, white, and blue. For sheer numbers of viewers, however, perhaps no part of the celebration was as influential as Disney’s “America on Parade.” Designated as official Bicentennial events by the U.S. government, these daily parades took place for over a year at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. An estimated 25 million people witnessed the festivities. (By contrast, 3.7 million people visited Independence National Historical Park in 1976, the seat of the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence which the year’s celebrations marked.)

The spectacle was an all-out extravaganza of Americana and, at that time, the largest daily parade Disney parks had ever seen. Cast members costumed as eight-foot-tall characters called the “People of America” performed alongside 50 floats illustrating larger-than-life scenes from American history and folktales, including Betsy Ross’s (mythic) sewing the American flag and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. The parades included student marching bands brought in from all over the country, fireworks, and even a moment in which the crowds were encouraged to join piped-in choruses for a communal singing of “America the Beautiful.” According to a souvenir book sold in the parks at the time, the parade was a “delightful sampling of the people, creations, events, and accomplishments which have all combined to make the country great.”

But the parades did more than just entertain. After visiting both the Magic Kingdom park in Florida and Colonial Williamsburg during their bicentennial celebrations, journalist Dick Schaap wrote in the New York Times that the celebration placed the Disney parks alongside other living history park as repositories of national heritage and places of communal celebration. “The cradle of democracy blends with the height of imagination, and every day through September, 1976, ‘America on Parade,’ a spectacular Bicentennial salute, marches straight down not Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg but Main Street, U.S.A., in the heart of Disney World," Schaap said. "And there, at the head of the parade, bearing drum and fife and Betsy Ross’s original pennant, dressed in tricorner hat and patched with bandages, stand the three symbols of the American Revolution: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy.”

As to the place of Disney in American history, the celebration certainly left an impression on Schaap’s then-six-year-old son, who after their Williamsburg to Walt Disney World tour wryly told his father, “George Washington may be the father of this country, dad, but Walt Disney is its guardian.”

“America on Parade” helped to solidify the idea that Disney parks were spaces many Americans looked to for celebrations of their national heritage. The California theme park and the United States of America share more than a birthday month; they share a cultural and historical language when it comes to our collective memory. What have you learned about the American experience from a Disney park?

Bethanee Bemis is a museum specialist in the Division of Political History. She has previously blogged about Disney during Word War II, woman suffrage history, and dead presidents.

While most of us have heard of the victory gardens of World War II, many of us may not realize that those gardens are seeded in a history of World War I. Between 1917 and 1919 children across the United States enrolled as soldiers in the United States School Garden Army, a program that promoted sustainable gardens in suburban and urban communities. Supported by President Woodrow Wilson—who used money from the Department of Defense to fund the program—millions of children converted their yards, empty lots, and other vacant spaces into gardens. The U.S. government promoted school gardens in a series of short stories published in newspapers around the country. The series “The Stories the Dewdrops Told” educated children about gardens, food conservation, and food preservation, and encouraged them to do their part for the war effort. Per a common slogan at the time, “Food will win the war.”

Dolly, the main character of the series, introduces readers to several Dewdrop Fairies. The young girl explains that her family’s garden expanded during the war and that her older brothers, captains in the United States School Garden Army, considered maintaining the garden part of their duty. In the series, different Dewdrop Fairies teach how and when to plant vegetables based on their unique needs, as well as how to use fertilizer to help plants grow. Dolly learns that if seeds are planted too deep or not deep enough, they won’t grow, and there won’t be enough food to send to children in France who do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables because of the war. The Dewdrop Fairies also reminded that readers could join the 3,000,000 soldiers in the School Garden Army just by asking their teacher.

Children who grew up working in the School Garden Army used their knowledge to create the victory gardens of World War II. To support this new war effort, they created sustainable backyard gardens. However, postwar inventions and technologies made different foods more accessible. Refrigerators, freezers, and new methods of transportation changed how we acquired and used food. As we purchased more and more of our food at grocery stores, backyard gardens once filled with tomatoes and squash faded to weed-filled grass. Parents and children alike spent less and less time gardening, as fresh fruits and vegetables were easily accessible.

Collectively, we are becoming more aware of sustainable farming, we are creating gardens in our backyards again, and we are composting food scraps rather than tossing them in the trash can. In 1995 Alice Waters, an American chef and restaurateur, created the Edible Schoolyard program at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, California. Its concept was to change the way students think about food. On a one-acre plot, students grow, harvest, and prepare foods from their garden. While the work at the Edible Schoolyard program and Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s organic garden at the White House were not a collaboration, they both worked to achieve similar goals—to promote healthy eating habits in children.

In 2009, along with 25 students from Bancroft Elementary in Washington, D.C., Michelle Obama planted the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden of the 1940s. Like most first-time gardeners, the First Lady and students experienced some trials and tribulations. For example, they discovered that some of the plants placed next to each other were not companion plants—a lesson Dolly had learned from the Dewdrop Fairies. Like Dolly, they learned about “imps,” unwanted pests and weeds that grow in gardens. Perhaps the Dewdrop Fairies visited the White House garden and shared important information with Mrs. Obama and the schoolchildren to help their garden grow!

Although not shared through newspaper articles and propaganda posters, the message of the Dewdrop Fairies is returning to suburban backyard gardens and Edible Schoolyard programs now operating in 53 states and territories. The Dewdrop Fairies’ legacy lives on as another generation of children learns the joys of gardening: the sheer delight of seeing a seed transform into a plant that will produce enough food to enjoy and share with neighbors throughout the season.

Sara Murphy is a museum specialist and collections manager in the Division of Political History. She has previously blogged about how first families have memorialized and mourned as well as the process of exhibition installation.

This past Saturday, August 25, Arizona Senator John S. McCain III bid the nation farewell. For 60 years, McCain served the country either as a naval officer or as an elected official. Like everyone, his life experienced public and personal highs and lows with the added factor of always being cast in the public eye. In life as in death, this aspect of Senator McCain will not change.

As a curator of modern military history, when asked to reflect on his life I look to the Vietnam War. My late father served in the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry in Vietnam in 1966 until enemy fire ended his combat service. The war forever remained imprinted on his soul and forever changed his destiny. The same, I believe, can accurately be said for McCain.

Son and grandson of decorated admirals, McCain’s pedigree preordained a naval career. Like his forefathers, the young McCain found his character tested in a Pacific theater war.

On October 26, 1967, while flying his 23rd combat mission, McCain's plane was shot down. Forced to eject, McCain broke both his arms and his right leg and almost drowned when he landed in Trúc Bạch Lake in Hanoi. There, he was beaten and bayoneted by his initial rescuers before being taken to the infamous Hỏa Lò Prison, better known as the “Hanoi Hilton.” No American had ever entered the Hilton in worse condition than McCain.

As a prisoner of war, McCain encountered several attempts at exploitations by his Vietnamese captors for propaganda purposes. Deemed the “crown prince” for his status as the son of Admiral John S. McCain Jr., the younger McCain’s medical treatment proved primitive at best. Brought out for propaganda interviews and visits by senior communist officials, McCain remained a incapacitated celebrity in squalid conditions. In late December, guards moved McCain out of Hỏa Lò to another prison camp on Hanoi’s outskirts nicknamed “the Plantation.” Near death and weighing barely 100 pounds, McCain found himself in the care of two Air Force pilots who fed him, bathed him, and helped him with other functions.

In March 1968, the airmen moved out. For two solitary years, McCain lived in a ten-foot-square windowless room with two small ventilation holes in the ceiling. A senior prison official urged him to accept an early release. McCain infuriated his captor by refusing the offer unless every fellow prisoner was also released. Torture began in August. McCain suffered cracked ribs, smashed teeth, and new fractures to his right leg and left arm. At last McCain broke and made a forced propaganda statement. Down but unbroken, he bounced back and continued to resist despite repeated beatings and punishments. Unity with his fellow prisoners and faith in his country strengthened his resistance throughout the ensuing years.

Released on March 14, 1973, he returned home with honor. His limp would prove permanent, and his arm movement would continue to be limited, his right arm two inches shorter. Retiring from the navy in 1981, McCain turned to politics.

The call to public service saw multiple Vietnam veterans enter Congress. McCain joined fellow POWs Jeremiah Denton, Sam Johnson, and Douglas Peterson in the Capitol Building. In the early 1990s, while on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, McCain shared the chairmanship with a fellow Vietnam naval officer John Kerry. Together the men advocated for the normalization of diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995. McCain stated publicly then that “We have looked back in anger at Vietnam for too long. I cannot allow whatever resentments I incurred during my time in Vietnam to hold me from doing what is so clearly my duty. I believe it is my duty to encourage this country to build from the losses and the hopes of our tragic war in Vietnam a better peace for both the American and the Vietnamese people.” Thereafter he visited Vietnam over 20 times, and news of his death met with praise and sympathies from former adversaries with whom McCain found camaraderie and common cause for peace and prosperity.

In the 21st century, McCain confronted another controversial, complicated conflict, the War on Terrorism. Abuse and torture of prisoners again found itself a source of national uproar. In the 2005 legislative process for the annual Defense Appropriation, McCain introduced an amendment that prohibited the inhumane treatment of prisoners by military personnel and spoke out against the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” He continued throughout the remainder of his Senate career to argue that torture is both immoral and compromising of the nation’s values and honor while providing nothing of actual military value to the interrogators. This past May, McCain released a statement that “the methods we employ to keep our nation safe must be as right and just as the values we aspire to live up to and promote in the world.” These observations were foundational to McCain’s life after Vietnam, grounded in heart and soul as well as sinew and bone.

The passing of Senator McCain also leaves one closing observation. Unlike the nation’s world wars, it is extremely unlikely that any combat veteran of the Vietnam War will ever sit in the Oval Office. As many have paused to reflect on the tumultuous political and military events of 1968, the reflections invariably bring basic questions before us. What did we learn? What have we become? Had McCain won the 2008 presidential election, his beliefs and ideals forged in the over five years of imprisonment in Vietnam undoubtedly would have influenced the policies of his administration and the nation. His opponent in that election, former President Barack Obama, was too young to serve in the conflict, but bore witness to its ramifications to the nation. In response to McCain’s passing, he wrote, “Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt.”          

As the bugle and rifles sound at the funeral this Saturday, may we give pause to remember those veterans of the Vietnam War who continue to serve the nation as Senator McCain did, who in his own words, “made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

Frank Blazich Jr. is a curator in the Division of Armed Forces History. He has previously written about the life and legacy of Corporal William T. Perkins Jr., a 20-year-old Marine deployed to Vietnam as a combat photographer, and Captain James K. Redding’s experience in the Battle of Hue.

Like many other churches in the early republic, the Congregational meetinghouse in Castine, Maine, served both sacred and secular functions. Built in 1790, it was home not just to worship services but town meetings and judicial proceedings. Taxpayers paid its pastor’s wages. Though the ratification of the First Amendment made such arrangements unconstitutional at the federal level, a year after the meetinghouse’s construction, at the local level church and state remained very much entwined for decades. When parishioners heard the tolling of the 692-pound bell Paul Revere cast for the meetinghouse steeple in 1802, they knew it might signal time to pray—or time to vote.

More than two centuries later, Americans tend to expect a much sharper divide between religion and all levels of government. And yet churches and other houses of worship continue to play an essential role in local, state, and national elections. Along with schools, libraries, rec centers, and other private and public institutions, thousands of churches (and a growing number of synagogues and mosques) serve as polling places across the country. In some areas, churches account for half of all available voting sites.

Early on, electoral use of churches was a practical matter. In rural locales especially, churches were often the only buildings large enough to host community functions, acting when necessary as schools and hospitals as well as polling places. In towns and cities with more options available, voting might occur anywhere that could hold a crowd. As historian Rosemarie Zagarri has noted, in both the colonial era and the first decades of the republic “elections could be held at almost any public venue—from a town hall to a courthouse to a church or tavern.” No matter where voting occurred, it was often so disorderly—at times thanks to an air of celebration, at others due to the potential for violence—that every setting would be equally filled by the noise of democracy, even those that might be a peaceful sanctuary on any other day.

Despite the pragmatic origins of the practice, voting in churches has become far more complicated over time. The expected political neutrality of polling sites has not prevented some churches from using their status as moral arbiters on Election Day. In the 1800s, churches with well-known stances on hot-button political issues, such as temperance and woman suffrage, hoped votes cast within their walls might be in keeping with the tenets of their faith. As recently as 1986, hundreds of Florida churches refused to serve as polling places to protest petition drives seeking to put pro-gambling initiatives on the ballot.

Other churches have seen their electoral stewardship not as proponents of particular measures with religious implications but rather as proponents of democratic participation. Throughout the middle of the 1900s, locally organized programs across the country encouraged ministers and priests to toll their church bells hourly while the polls were open. Doing so, one 1960 program in Pennsylvania put it, would “remind voters that liberty and freedom can be preserved only by the use of their free balloting.”

With questions of religious freedom and diversity becoming ever more politicized, in recent years the use of religious buildings for voting has been challenged in the courts and behind the scenes on election commissions. In 2007 a Florida lawsuit objecting to sectarian messages visible during voting in a Catholic Church was dismissed by a federal judge who maintained that voting in churches was constitutional. Elsewhere in Florida a few years later, a mosque was removed from a list of county polling places after local election officials received complaints and threats of violence if the practice continued.

Whether driven by First Amendment concerns or prejudice against minority religious groups, objections to voting in houses of worship often raise an issue highlighted by recent scholarship. Over the past decade, several studies have shown that where one votes matters. Though every state has laws prohibiting the display of campaign materials at voting locations (usually stating that political signs cannot be displayed within 100 feet of a polling place entrance), it is possible that polling places themselves subtly affect the choices of those who step behind the voting curtain. Religious sites, these studies suggest, exert a small but measurable influence on votes cast.

Yet at a time when non-voters far outnumber members of either political party, having as few barriers as possible to voting, and making abundant venues available, can only be a benefit. Whatever future generations might decide about the church-state implications of voting in houses of worship, the practice has been a vital part of American history since before the first ringing of Paul Revere’s bell.

Do you know where you would go to vote in the next election? Find your nearest polling place here.

Peter Manseau is the Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the National Museum of American History.

James Buchanan. Do you recognize this name? According to TIME magazine’s “Top 10 Forgettable Presidents,” you probably don’t. Chances are, if you do recognize it, you remember Buchanan as one of the worst leaders to live in the White House. And, as he ranks number 43 in at least one recent survey of presidential greatness, your memory would serve you well.

James Buchanan’s resume was impressive. On paper, Buchanan appeared more prepared than most for the presidency, serving as President Andrew Jackson’s Minister to Russia, as President James Polk’s Secretary of State, as ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Franklin Pierce, and as a member of the House of Representatives and of the Senate (winning multiple reelections). This raises the question: Why then was his administration so bad and forgettable? Fortunately, our political history collections contain a number of recently cataloged objects and prints that shed light on our 15th president’s career.

With the nation on the verge of a civil war, the only Pennsylvanian president swore the oath of office on March 4, 1857. As a slavery sympathizer, Buchanan made critical mistakes that historians often cite as complacency in the instigation of the Civil War. Decided two days after his inauguration, the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case ruled that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.] and sold as slaves” was not considered American citizens and therefore had no legal standing. The newly inaugurated president supported this ruling alongside many anti-abolitionists.

In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed popular sovereignty of the citizens of a territory to determine if theirs should be a slave or free state. Buchanan once again fatally allied with the South and supported the admission of Kansas as a slave state to expedite the official state-making process of the territory. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act proved to abolitionists that the country, and its new territories, were not headed toward an end to slavery. The act served as further validation to Southern slave owners and only increased the bitter tension between the North and the South. “Bleeding Kansas” further wounded the abolitionists’ campaign with the administration’s Southern sympathies.

Buchanan’s decision to side with slaveholding interests wasn’t the only strike against his presidency. The Panic of 1857 struck in the beginning of Buchanan’s time in office, leading the country into a financial crisis in addition to the morality crisis of the slavery question.

As Buchanan’s presidency continued into its fourth and final year, tensions in the Southern states were at an all-time high. States began to threaten secession and Buchanan woefully responded in his final message to Congress: “the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union.” The president’s only plan was to create an amendment that reaffirmed the constitutionality of slavery. The Northern states responded with fierce criticism and South Carolina seceded the Union on December 20, 1860.

By the end of his presidency, Buchanan’s only fans may have been in Minnesota, Oregon, and Kansas, as these states were admitted to the Union during his stay in office. Labeled a traitor by his fiercest enemies, the retired Buchanan received daily death threats and crude letters criticizing him for his role in Southern secession. As the Union and the Confederate forces were battling bayonet to bayonet, Buchanan was fighting his own personal, pity war of defense that some referred to as “Buchanan’s War.” In 1866 he composed his memoir, The Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, to defend his policies against his critics. Its preface reads:

The authorities cited in the work will show that Mr. Buchanan never failed, upon all suitable occasions, to warn his countrymen of the approaching danger, and to advise them of the proper means to avert it. Both before and after he became President he was an earnest advocate of compromise between the parties to save the Union, but Congress disregarded his recommendations.

If the preface is any indication, it appears that James Buchanan suspected that he would be judged as a less than competent historical figure. He hoped he could persuade posterity to rank him higher than his contemporary Americans had. Perhaps Buchanan’s failures are remembered so harshly because they are juxtaposed with the heroic acts and eloquent voice of his successor: Abraham Lincoln. Is Buchanan remembered for being such a bad president because one of the most effective presidents was the next tenant of his political home? Is the 15th president often forgotten because everyone remembers the 16th so much more?

It is difficult to say exactly how Buchanan would defend himself today. At the very least, he would likely hope the average American would recognize him. So, for the 15th president’s sake, I’ll remind you once more of his name: James Buchanan.

Hailey Philbin is a former intern in the Division of Political and Military History.