Marking the 30th anniversary of the historic African Elephant Conservation Act, Elephants and Us will explore Americans’ relationship with elephants as it has evolved over centuries from one of exploitation to stewardship, and the leadership role the United States has taken in wildlife protection. The African elephant is the largest land animal in the world and is now subject to unsustainable levels of illegal killing and trade practices. This exhibit will feature the opening and signature pages from the 1988 African Elephant Conservation Act, on loan from the National Archives and Records Administration.

In June 1969, LGBTQ community members spontaneously demonstrated in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan. This event and others from that time were pivotal to the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement. The museum will mark this 50th anniversary with a display featuring objects from its LGBTQ collections.

About the Artifact Walls

Artifact walls highlight the depth and breadth of the collections in hundreds of linear feet of glass-front cases lining the center of each floor. They reflect the museum’s core mission to collect, study, and exhibit objects from our nation’s rich and diverse history.

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.

June 6, 2018 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.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the historic African Elephant Conservation Act, Elephants and Us will explore Americans’ relationship with elephants as it has evolved over centuries from one of exploitation to stewardship, and the leadership role the United States has taken in wildlife protection. The African elephant is the largest land animal in the world and is now subject to unsustainable levels of illegal killing and trade practices. This exhibit will feature the opening and signature pages from the 1988 African Elephant Conservation Act, on loan from the National Archives and Records Administration.

In June 1969, LGBTQ+ community members resisted a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in lower Manhattan. The museum will mark this 50th anniversary with a display featuring objects from its collections that put the history of that memorable event within a larger and longer experience of being gay.

About the Artifact Walls

Artifact walls highlight the depth and breadth of the collections in hundreds of linear feet of glass-front cases lining the center of each floor. They reflect the museum’s core mission to collect, study, and exhibit objects from our nation’s rich and diverse history.

Every April, people throughout North, Central, and South America celebrate Pan American Day. The roots of Pan American Day go back to 1890, when the First International Conference of American States convened to establish the International Union of American Republics, an organization that would strengthen the bonds of friendship, mutual understanding, and respect for diverse cultures and peoples.

In 1930, the 24 countries of the Pan American Union’s governing board adopted a resolution to commemorate that first meeting and reinforce the common bonds and mutual goals established to promote goodwill between the countries of the Western Hemisphere; Pan American Day was born! A few years later, in his 1933 inaugural speech, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted the importance of the Good Neighbor Policy, recognizing the United States’ need for strong personal, political, and economic relations with its southern neighbors. When Roosevelt delivered his speech, few would have guessed that, just a few years later, Donald Duck would become an "ambassador at large" to facilitate U.S. policy.

As a diplomatic strategy, the Good Neighbor Policy increased in importance in the years leading up to World War II due to the rising influence of the Nazi regime throughout Europe and its attempts to make inroads into Central and South America, especially Argentina. As the Nazi propaganda machine became a serious threat to the Allied powers, the United States was compelled to develop its own campaign to strengthen support for South America. To develop closer economic and personal relationships, Roosevelt established a new agency, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Nelson Rockefeller was appointed as the new agency’s head but, in time, the affable Donald Duck would become the agency’s most successful spokesman.

Early attempts by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to encourage Hollywood studios to produce films targeted at both U.S. and South American audiences had failed miserably. Instead of feel-good movies accentuating the diverse peoples, traditions, and cultures found in South America, the American film studios created movies rife with stereotyped bandits, thieves, and buffoons. South Americans found the films racist, insulting, and pandering. Hoping to smooth over relations, Rockefeller approached Disney and requested some movie shorts. By this time, both Snow White and Pinocchio had been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, and Disney enjoyed widespread popularity in South America.

Walt Disney saw this as an opportunity to promote his own publicity tour. From August to October 1941, he and a handpicked team of musicians, artists, animators, writers, and soundmen toured the countries of Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, and Mexico. The group was encouraged to explore and record the geography, architecture, music, art, and traditions of the different South American cultures. They returned with an abundant supply of story lines, design concepts, and ideas for new characters. Donald Duck, who by this time had surpassed Mickey Mouse in popularity, was the obvious choice to be the star of the films.

In the years that followed, the Disney studio developed books, film shorts, and comic books that celebrated the people and cultures of Central and South America.. In total Disney produced 12 cartoons, four of which—"Lake Titicaca,""Pedro,""El Gaucho Goofy," and "Aquarela do Brasil"—were released in 1942 under the movie title Saludos Amigos. In it, Donald Duck played a bumbling American tourist traveling around South America with a new friend, José Carioca, a Brazilian parrot. The film was an overwhelming success in both North and South America.

Two years later, in December 1944, Disney released its second South American-themed movie, The Three Caballeros, in Mexico City. The film introduced viewers to a host of new characters, including Panchito Pistoles, a Mexican rooster. The first half of the movie featured only cartoon subjects, but in the second half Disney introduced a technology called live-action animation, which included real actors who appeared alongside and interacted with the animated characters. Disney chose Aurora Miranda, a popular actor across North, South, and Central America, to play opposite Donald, José Carioca, and Panchito Pistoles.

The success of these films suggests that Disney’s promise of a new version of the Good Neighbor Policy worked. North, South, and Central Americans welcomed Donald Duck and his crew of creative characters, and Roosevelt’s work to foster "international good-will and cooperation" were realized. Who would have guessed that the Good Neighbor Policy would be carried out by a duck?

Melodie Sweeney is an associate curator in the Division of Cultural and Community Life. She has also blogged about the Marx Brothers, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and Wilkins and Wontkins.

The view from the western side of the museum is spectacular. It includes the western end of the National Mall, the World War II Memorial, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and, of course, the Washington Monument. During a recent meeting, I looked out the window at this view and began wondering why the nation decided to build a tall marble obelisk as an homage to our first president. As it turns out, it is quite a story!

The idea to build a memorial to George Washington pre-dates both Washington, D.C., and Washington’s presidency. In the 1780s, members of the Continental Congress resolved to build an “equestrian statue” in Washington’s honor, but there was a debate over the location of the statue. Washington’s death in 1799 renewed interest in a memorial to honor him. That year, Congress recommended that a “marble monument be erected in Washington, and that the family of General Washington be requested to permit his body to be deposited under it.” Eventually, plans to entomb Washington beneath the monument were abandoned.

Although the proposal of a monument to Washington was introduced several times, no progress was made. In the early 1830s, several prominent Washingtonians decided they had had enough—if Congress wasn’t going to build a monument to the first Commander in Chief, they would; and so the Washington National Monument Society was formed. The society put forward a call for designs and later selected the winning proposal: a marble obelisk with surrounding colonnade, designed by Robert Mills.

To raise money for the project, the monument society appointed agents to collect funds, and public participation was limited to $1 so that all could contribute. However, after three years the society had only collected $20,000, and due to a recession in the late 1830s, collecting was suspended. After the recession, the $1 limit on contributions was lifted. To raise money the society made lithographs for contributors who donated at least $1; the lithographs showed the proposed design alongside signatures of various prominent politicians of the day, including Zachary Taylor, James Polk, George Dallas, Henry Clay, Millard Fillmore, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Additionally, contribution boxes were placed in post offices around the country. 

In 1849, after receiving a block of marble for the monument from the citizens of Alabama, the society began soliciting blocks of marble from other states, territories, trade unions, Native American tribes, and foreign governments. Not all donations were equally popular. On the evening of March 5, 1854, several men broke into the monument’s construction site and stole a block of marble that had been sent by Pope Pius IX. The men then threw the stone into the Potomac River. Although no arrests were made, it was common knowledge that the perpetrators were members of the American Party, more commonly known as the “Know-Nothings.” The Know-Nothings, who quickly rose to political power in the 1840s, were strongly anti-Catholic and opposed the growing number of immigrants to the United States. 

From 1855 to 1858, the Know-Nothings seized control of the Washington Monument Society. During this time, very few monetary contributions were collected and only a few feet of marble were added to the monument. Ultimately, the Know-Nothings fell from political power and returned the monument to the Society’s original members, but the lack of progress convinced many Americans that the federal government needed to intervene. In February 1866, President Andrew Johnson stated, “Let us restore the Union and proceed with the monument as its symbol until it shall contain the pledge of the States of the Union . . . Let us restore the Union and let us proceed with the monument founded as its symbol until it shall contain the pledges of all the States of the Union . . . Let your monument rise . . . higher and higher.” Ten years later, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a joint resolution stating “we, the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress assembled, in the name of the people of the United States . . . do assume and direct the completion of the Washington Monument, in the City of Washington.” This joint resolution, unanimously adopted by both the House and Senate, meant that the Washington Monument Society ceded “all property, rights, and privileges” to Congress. Now, Congress was officially responsible for completion of the Washington Monument. 

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Casey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was appointed to resume construction of the monument. After inspecting its “stub” he found that the foundation did not provide enough support and the section of marble installed by the Know-Nothings was inferior and needed to be removed. Under Casey’s direction, progress on the construction of the monument proceeded quickly and efficiently. Between 1880 and 1882 the monument grew in height—from 154 feet to 340 feet. In November 1884 the monument hit the 520-foot mark, temporarily becoming the tallest structure in the world. 

Finally, in February 1885 the dedication of the Washington Monument took place. During the ceremony, Senator John Sherman stated, “the monument speaks for itself—simple in form, admirable in proportion, composed of enduring marble and granite, resting upon foundations broad and deep, it rises into the skies higher than any work of human art. It is the most imposing, costly, and appropriate monument ever erected in the honor of one man.”

Although the monument was dedicated in 1885, it wasn’t officially ready to receive visitors until 1888. Since its opening, hundreds of thousands of people have climbed to the top, and hundreds of thousands more have used the monument as a landmark. Not only is the Washington Monument a memorial to our first president, but it has been a witness to numerous events on the National Mall. The monument stood as a backdrop to the Civil Rights demonstrations in the 1960s and played a key part in the 1963 March on Washington. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the monument’s grounds were used as a rallying point for both anti-Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard. For the nation’s bicentennial, the monument was the centerpiece of a fireworks display. And in 1987 an AIDS quilt with the names of those who had died was displayed on the National Mall with the Washington Monument standing in the background. Most recently, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a life-sized image of the Saturn V rocket that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into outer space was projected onto the Washington Monument. The monument has borne witness to innumerable events in Washington, D.C., and it will bear witness to countless more. 

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

The history of girlhood is not what people think; it is complicated. Young women are often told that girls are “made of sugar and spice and everything nice.” What is learned from history is that girls are made of stronger stuff. They have changed history. From Helen Keller to Naomi Wadler, girls have spoken up, challenged expectations and been on the frontlines of social change. Through their lives, what it means to be a girl—and a woman—has always been part of the American conversation. Girlhood (It’s complicated) will showcase unexpected stories of girlhood, engaging the audience in timely conversations about women’s history.

With a design inspired by zines, the 5,000-square-foot gallery will have five story sections: Education (Being Schooled), Wellness (Body Talk), Work (Hey, Where’s My Girlhood?), Fashion (Girl’s Remix), plus seven biographical interactives stories, A Girl’s Life. The design will feature custom murals and illustrations by artist Krystal Quiles. The exhibition will tour the country through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service from 2023 through 2025.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which recognized women’s right to vote, the museum will open Creating Icons: How We Remember Women’s Suffrage. Highlighting women’s achievements in winning suffrage, it invites audiences to explore how the country celebrates milestones, what people as a nation remember, what (and who) has been forgotten or silenced over time and how those exclusions helped create the cracks and fissures in a movement that continues to impact women’s politics and activism.

Using a jewel box approach, the museum will display a group of artifacts in conjunction with graphics and media, interweaving stories of the famous and the forgotten. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be a 6-foot-tall portrait of Susan B. Anthony. Painted by Sarah J. Eddy in 1900, the work depicts an idealized Anthony being presented with flowers by young boys and girls on her 80th birthday. The exhibition will also feature items donated between 1919 and 1920 by the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (now the League of Women Voters), materials related to Adelaide Johnson, Alice Paul, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, and Nannie Helen Burroughs, and contemporary items from the 2017 Women’s March as well as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s gavel.

January 17, 1920, was an important day in American history. Why? Because on that day the grand social experiment called Prohibition was first enforced. The Volstead Act, the law that put enforcement teeth into the Eighteenth Amendment, banning intoxicating beverages, went into effect. The transformation of the nation from an alcoholic republic to a dry state created a surprising list of winners and losers.

Let’s start with the obvious people who lost out: drinkers, especially working-class immigrants. Temperance advocates worried about immigrant men who gathered—and drank—in saloons. “Alien illiterates rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace,” proclaimed prominent Prohibitionist Frances Willard. Of course many temperance advocates had a double standard; a drink for themselves with dinner was good manners, but booze for others (especially working-class people) was dangerous.

The increasing number of immigrants, and their bars, was a source of race- and class-based fear for many white middle- and upper-class people born in the United States.  By 1900, there were 300,000 saloons across the nation (one for every three hundred citizens), and they were heavily concentrated in urban areas. The neighborhood drinking establishment was where working-class men aired grievances, organized politically, and found jobs. The patrons, speaking their native languages (such as German, Croatian, and Italian, among others), worried Temperance advocates who feared the saloon customers were socialists or communists and perhaps fomenting political upheaval. To save America, the saloon must go.

While Prohibition may have killed saloon culture, it didn’t end the consumption of alcohol. Working-class men moved their drinking from saloons into their homes, private halls, “athletic clubs,” and illicit bars. Affluent Americans also continued to drink. Famed Chicago mob boss Al Capone was reported to have said “When I sell liquor, it is bootlegging. . . . When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, it is hospitality.”

One unexpected downside of Prohibition was its impact on the health of the nation. While alcohol consumption initially decreased after implementation of the Volstead Act, working-class consumers soon turned to alternative forms of alcohol, not all of which were safe. Patent medicine and over-the-counter goods with a high percentage of alcohol (even hair tonic) were consumed for off-label purposes. 

Tainted alcohol was an even bigger problem—especially for poor people. Alcohol is an important industrial chemical, and large quantities are produced for use as solvents in paint, antifreeze, and other non-potable substances. Industrial alcohol is not taxed like drinking alcohol and is denatured (purposely adulterated) to make it unattractive for human consumption. During Prohibition, denatured ethyl alcohol and deadly methyl alcohol found their way into the U.S. beverage stream. Many people got sick and some died from unregulated and tainted alcohol.

Retailers and producers of alcohol also lost out during Prohibition. Closing saloons was not only a blow for men who frequented the drinking establishments, but meant a significant loss of business in immigrant communities. Of all licensed saloons, 80% were owned by first-generation Americans.

Some beer producers turned to legal nonalcoholic beverages, but with only limited success. Others made ice cream, cheese, ceramics, and even homebrewing supplies. Vintners and distillers had different options. Since the United States has a large religious population, the Volstead Act allowed for the production and shipment of sacramental wine. Sales went up with Prohibition, essentially making some priests and rabbis bootleggers. A 1925 report by the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ angrily reported that “there is no way of knowing what the legitimate consumption of fermented sacramental wine is, but it is clear that the legitimate demand does not increase 800,000 gallons in two years.”

Most distillers closed their operations during Prohibition, but another loophole in the Volstead Act allowed for the sale of medical whiskey. While medicinal whiskey had been sold by pharmacies for years, sales skyrocketed during Prohibition. Affluent customers could afford the three-dollar physician visit to get a prescription for legally purchasing their whiskey. In general, however, alcohol producers and retailers took a financial loss during Prohibition.

But, not all sellers of alcohol took a loss. The amount of money to be made in bootlegging was astronomical. Booze is big business. According to United States Attorney Emory Buckner, bootleg liquor sales in 1926 amounted to $3.6 billion. That was about the same as the U.S. federal budget at the time. Bootlegging was an opportunity for entrepreneurial criminals to become fast millionaires. But smuggling, transporting, and distributing large amounts of alcohol was complicated. Criminals organized national operations to manage and conduct their business. Where crime had once been local, the Volstead Act inadvertently promoted the development of organized crime. And competition between rival operations soon became violent.

Despite Prohibition, many Americans chose to flout the law and continue consuming alcohol at home or in illicit bars. Making matters worse, the poorly paid Prohibition officers hired to enforce the Volstead Act often found lucrative opportunities in criminal sales of alcohol. The resulting rise in government graft and corruption led to a lack of respect for authority that continued after Prohibition was repealed. 

Who were the winners during Prohibition? One was quick meals. As saloons closed during the first decade of Prohibition, the number of restaurants in the country tripled, and eating patterns changed with the rise of quick meals. Luncheonettes, cafeterias, and soda fountains sprang up in largely urban neighborhoods catering to middle-class and lower-middle-class workers.

Women helped win the argument for Prohibition. White protestant women were the principle advocates for Prohibition. Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League made a moral argument, claiming that men squandered money on drunkenness, putting their wives and children at risk. Women’s and family rights were recognized and protected to a degree by Prohibition. More importantly, these activist groups not only won their argument when Prohibition became law, they developed skills and expectations that applied to another cause: woman suffrage. In general, the 1920s was an era of increased rights for women (although to different degrees). 

The ultimate loser in the tale of Prohibition was the Eighteenth Amendment itself. Andrew Volstead, author of the Prohibition enforcement act, was defeated in 1922 in his bid for an 11th term in Congress. Widespread unemployment and the economic chaos of the Great Depression fueled political upheaval. The 1932 elections swept many “wets” (politicians opposed to Prohibition) into office. Widely considered unenforceable and a failure, the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment were repealed by passage and ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. The effort for a government-led common good (Prohibition) was replaced by a public desire for a good time. Americans could legally drink again. 

Peter Liebhold is a co-curator of the American Enterprise exhibition in the Mars Hall of American Business. 

In 2020, the Fifteenth Amendment—the first voting rights amendment added to the U.S. Constitution—celebrates its 150th anniversary. You’ve likely heard, perhaps on the news or in the classroom, that the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave or granted African American men the right to vote. It’s a turn of phrase that works as a shorthand.

Unfortunately, it’s also a bit misleading.

As written, the Fifteenth Amendment does not explicitly grant anyone the right to vote. Instead, it prohibits federal and state governments from placing restrictions on voting based on three criteria: race, color, and previous condition of servitude. The entire amendment is two sentences long:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

Later voting rights amendments to the U.S. Constitution—especially the Nineteenth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments—copied the Fifteenth’s structure and its wording, declaring that the right to vote “shall not be denied” on account of sex or age, respectively. These amendments removed important barriers to suffrage, but they stopped short of affirming that all Americans have a constitutional right to vote. Even today, U.S. states have incredible power over who is allowed to participate in elections.

But the problems with this shorthand—saying the amendment gave African Americans the vote—go deeper than the level of language. Perhaps most importantly, this phrasing obscures what happened after the Constitution was amended. For a brief time after its ratification in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment worked as intended, sweeping away laws and constitutional provisions that had prevented African American men from voting. However, by the end of the 1800s, state governments throughout the South had adopted new laws and regulations that did not directly reference race or color but still stripped African American men of their access to direct participation in the nation’s political life. Literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, intimidation, and violence—including violent assaults and lynchings—were all used to silence African American voters and exclude them from the polls.

African Americans and their allies fought against these restrictions and other injustices, but it took decades of protesting, lobbying, organizing, and legal challenges—forms of political activism that went beyond the ballot—as well as the active intervention of the federal government to ensure that the Fifteenth Amendment could live up to its revolutionary potential. Ultimately, the full promise of the Fifteenth Amendment was not realized until the 1960s, almost a century after it was added to the U.S. Constitution.

In 2020, the Fifteenth Amendment turns 150. To mark the anniversary, the museum’s blog is publishing a series that reexamines the amendment, exploring its origins, its ratification, and its many legacies for the nation.

Jordan Grant is a Digital Experience specialist in the Office of Audience Engagement.

The museum has created a new collecting initiative focused on how undocumented activists are leading fights for political representation. On face value, it seems unusual that people without citizenship could be a force in government.  It’s unusual but not unprecedented. In fact, these new acquisitions  will add to existing collections that highlight how people—without citizenship or voting rights—have effected change and expanded mainstream democratic practices throughout our history. These collections and the incoming acquisitions will reflect the fact that it’s perhaps unusual, but not unprecedented that people without citizenship papers can effect change in government policy.

Over the next two years, a team of historians will travel to six sites to learn how undocumented  people mobilized and gained traction from 2000 to the present. By collecting objects and oral histories, the initiative will record the processes by which these undocumented activists found ways to participate in democracy.   

We caught up with the team to learn more about what they are hoping to discover.

How did this project start? 

Our collecting began right here in front of the museum. On March 5, 2018, a group of young activists gathered outside the National Museum of American History as part of a demonstration that brought thousands to Washington, D.C. Just six months prior, President Donald Trump announced that the policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, more commonly known as DACA, would be rescinded. In response, young people and their allies marched to press Congress for support in passing the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act—the DREAM Act.

Two of our curators went out to observe and collect. Curator Mireya Loza struck up a conversation with a young woman from Nebraska who wore homemade, painted butterfly wings. As curators, we wanted to add the wings to the collection. But the team also recognized that we had to think bigger to document the scope and impact of this movement. The young woman’s story spoke to a significant fact: that undocumented people live and work in every state. We realized that if we stayed in D.C. and focused on big marches, we would only be scratching the surface of a much bigger story. The power (and the urgency) of this movement seemed to lay at the local level and we set out to explore this.    The wings were the spark of a new collecting initiative: New Paths to Change: Undocumented Immigrant Activism, 2000 to the present.

What does this moment teach us about American history? 

We were struck by how political movements led by undocumented organizers resonated with our existing collections. At the museum, political history curators have a long tradition of collecting democracy in action. This movement seemed particularly significant because of how impactful undocumented organizers have been. They gained enough political momentum to shape federal policy and gain at place at the table with the Obama administration. This set of actions resulted in DACA, a policy memorandum announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. The memorandum states that people who came to the United States as children younger than 16, having met several requirements, can obtain deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. Undocumented organizers helped get DACA on the table. Activists without citizenship getting attention from a presidential administration doesn’t happen very often, and we want to learn how they mobilized. From the DREAM Act, to DACA, to issues around criminalization, undocumented organizers have shaped policies, influenced elections, re-framed debates about immigration, and sparked national conversations about exclusion and belonging.

These objects and oral histories will join a robust political history collection  that documents the robust history of national political debate. Our collections document how people participate in democracy. We do this by collecting political campaigns, voting rights, and a wide variety of grassroots actions. 

In particular, the undocumented organizing material will complement other collections reflecting other moments in our nation’s history in which people without the vote transformed the nature of citizenship —such as the Civil War and Reconstruction, woman suffrage, and the civil rights movements. Pursuing collections related to these political movements is part of the museum’s commitment to documenting how our democratic process works and changes. 

These objects will also join the museum’s collections that relate to immigration, dating back to our nation’s founding. 

What do you mean when you say “undocumented” and “undocumented organizing”?

The collecting initiative defines the word “undocumented” to mean lacking authorized legal documents or having a liminal (temporary) protective status (such as DACA) to reside in the United States. 

Undocumented organizing consists of social, political, and cultural movements led by undocumented people. Until recently, most undocumented people avoided mainstream politics. Established immigrant rights groups advocated on their behalf. This began to change, and by 2008, undocumented organizers had formed their own movements. 

Who are you collecting from? 

Our team is reaching out to individuals and organizations involved in key moments, such as the well-known campaigns for the DREAM Act and DACA. 

We are also broadening our understanding of undocumented organizing by learning from people who originally became politically active through those well-known campaigns and are now engaged in issues such as deportation and criminalization.   

In addition to collecting objects, we are recording life history interviews with organizers who have participated in local, regional, and national campaigns within this people’s movement. These interviews are known as oral histories. The audio and transcriptions of these interviews will live in the Archives Center, where they will be preserved and made accessible to the public.

Where are you collecting? 

We are collecting on two fronts: the national level and the local level. Undocumented organizing strategies are often developed on the ground to respond to rapidly changing local and state policies. To fully understand the effectiveness of undocumented organizers, our team had to take an in-depth look at a variety of sites. While this collection can never be comprehensive, the initiative focuses on six specific sites to recognize the differences and variations of strategies, policies, and ideologies that impact how people organize. Those sites are North Carolina, Southern California, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Chicago, and Mexico City. Mexico City provides an opportunity to recognize the reality of some undocumented organizers who have voluntarily returned or been deported, and how they are advocating for themselves in their home country based on learned tactics and influences of the undocumented organizing in the United States. The project is guided by the expertise of community leaders, scholars, and undocumented organizers.

Who should I contact to donate an object?

You can reach our team at NMAHColllectingInitiative@si.edu.

The collecting team includes Nancy Bercaw, Patricia Arteaga, and José Centeno-Meléndez. Nancy Bercaw and Patricia Arteaga were interviewed for this piece. Nancy Bercaw is the chair of our political history department and Arteaga is a curatorial assistant. The team was interviewed by Amelia Grabowski, the museum's acting social media and blog manager. 

The collecting initiative received federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. 

More Information

DACA
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a policy memorandum announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. The memorandum states that people who came to the United States as children (younger than 16) and met several requirements can obtain deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. Applicants would be eligible for a work authorization. Unlike federal legislation, DACA does not provide a pathway toward citizenship. 
DACA came to be because of a push from community leaders and activists when the DREAM Act of 2010 came five votes short in the Senate. Back to top

DREAM Act
First introduced in Congress in 2001, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would provide a pathway towards citizenship for undocumented youth who came to the United States as young children and met stringent conditions. The undocumented youth were dubbed as “DREAMers,” a nod to the acronym for the act. For almost two decades, and with slight variations, the bill has received bipartisan support but has yet to pass legislatively. Back to top

Every election season in the United States revolves around a set of issues—health care, foreign affairs, the economy. In 1868, at the height of the Reconstruction, the pressing issue was black male suffrage. When voters went to the polls that November, they were asked to decide if and how their nation's democracy should change to include black men, millions of whom were newly freed from slavery. It was up to voters to decide: should black men be granted the right to vote?

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that this question was answered just two years later in 1870, with ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment stipulates that citizens' right to vote cannot be restricted based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In 1868, however, there were no definite plans for a Fifteenth Amendment. The decision was still in voters' hands.

Although African Americans had been fighting for freedom and full citizenship throughout U.S. history, their demands were generally ignored, rejected, or suppressed. Voting rights reflected this larger pattern. Before the Civil War, few states were willing to extend suffrage to groups other than white men. Among the Northern and Western states where slavery was outlawed, only a handful—most clustered in New England—allowed black men to go to the polls. (Even in these states, black women—like all women in the United States—were not allowed to vote. By 1868, most political leaders and activists had chosen to decouple the question of woman suffrage and black male suffrage for strategic reasons. They did not think a majority of the nation would support giving women the ballot, and they feared that a push to secure women's right to vote would doom efforts to enfranchise black men. Both in the 1800s and more recently, writers sometimes obscure this aspect of the story by using universal terms like "black suffrage").

The Civil War transformed every aspect of life in the United States, including the political calculus behind black male suffrage. With the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln committed the United States to ending slavery; he did not, however, define what freedom would look like for African Americans in a postwar world. After Lincoln's assassination (and, later, the impeachment of his successor, President Andrew Johnson), members of the radical wing of the Republican Party took control of Congress and began to define what Lincoln's "new birth of freedom" would look like, principally by supporting the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Together, these amendments barred most forms of "slavery and involuntary servitude" nationwide, established birthright citizenship, and guaranteed the "privileges and immunities" and "due process" for all U.S. citizens. Neither amendment, however, directly addressed the issue of African Americans' voting rights.

Of the various groups who fought to keep black male suffrage at the forefront of political debate in the 1860s, none were more important than African Americans themselves. Well before the Civil War ended, African Americans made the case that their ability to protect their rights and freedoms depended on their right to shape politics directly at the polls. Many black commentators pointed out the hypocrisy of asking African Americans to serve in the nation's military but then denying them suffrage when they returned from the battlefield. Delegates at the the 1864 National Convention of Colored Men in Syracuse, New York, expressed this point eloquently in the conference's address to the nation, asking "Are we good enough to use bullets, and not good enough to use ballots?"

Black leaders also stressed that extending the franchise to black men would safeguard the Union's victory in the Civil War. As Frederick Douglass promised listeners during an 1863 address, formerly enslaved African Americans, if given the vote, would become the U.S. government's "best protector against the traitors and the descendants of those traitors who will inherit the hate, the bitter revenge which shall crystallize all over the South, and seek to circumvent the government that they could not throw off.""You may need him to uphold in peace" Douglass cautioned, "as he is now upholding in war, the star-spangled banner."

After the Civil War, members of Congress took small steps towards enfranchising black men. They began by eliminating racial qualifications for voting in places where the federal government had direct control over elections, such as Washington, D.C. and federal territories. National leaders' efforts to establish black male suffrage nationwide took a dramatic leap forward in 1867. Fresh from victories in a midterm election, Republicans in Congress overrode President Johnson's veto to pass a series of Reconstruction Acts. The first act, approved in March 1867, required former Confederate states to form new governments that enfranchised all "male citizens...twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition" before they could be readmitted to the Union.

Under these new laws (and with the backing of the U.S. military) black men in most of the former slaveholding states could vote and run for office. Tens of thousands did. Their votes at the state level created the nation's first biracial state governments. They also laid the foundation for the first black representatives in Congress.

Ironically, in 1868, the main political hurdle that black male suffrage faced was winning approval in the North and West—regions of the United States that had remained loyal to the Union cause during the Civil War. In states that had fought for the Union during the Civil War, legislators could not use the Reconstruction Acts to directly intervene in elections and shape qualifications for voting. At the same time, state-level referendums that would have extended suffrage to black men in the North and West stalled and failed in mid-1860s. In election after election, Northern and Western voters made it clear that, while they would support enfranchising black men in the South, they had little interest in adding them to the electorate in their home states.

The unresolved debate over black male suffrage shaped the presidential election of 1868. Fearful that Northern voters would reject their party's approach to Reconstruction, the Republican Party nominated a candidate with guaranteed broad appeal throughout the North and West: Ulysses S. Grant. After much debate, the Democratic Party chose Horatio Seymour, then governor of New York, as their candidate.

The Democratic Party's platform openly criticized how the Reconstruction acts had stripped former Confederate states of their right to regulate voting at the state level, free of federal oversight. This was a thinly veiled attack on black male suffrage. The party's candidate for vice president, Francis Preston Blair Jr., made the attack explicit in his acceptance letter, which was read at that year's convention. Blair condemned Republican leaders for substituting "as electors in place of men of our race. . .a host of ignorant negroes who are supported in idleness with the public money."

Although the Republican Party platform continued to support extending the right to vote to all Southern men, irrespective of race, it fell far short of calling for black male suffrage nationwide. Rather than risk alienating white voters in the North and West, the party pledged to leave states that had remained loyal to the Union the authority to regulate voting rights, even if that meant those states continued to deprive black men of the vote.

Ulysses S. Grant's narrow victory in 1868 encouraged members of the Republican Party to reconsider their position. On one hand, many contemporaries believed that the party's support for black men's voting rights—tepid though it was—had cost it votes. At the same time, Republican leaders were cheered to see that newly-enfranchised black men throughout the South had come out to support Grant's election. Enfranchising black men nationwide would, they hoped, secure their party's political future.
 
Other elected officials who supported black male suffrage for less politically motivated reasons were cheered by the moderate victories the cause had secured in 1868, as voters in states like Iowa and Minnesota had voted in favor of laws that allowed black men to vote. Though conflicting, these various signals were enough to convince a majority of Republicans in Congress that their party should act quickly to enfranchise black men nationwide before the political winds shifted against them.

Therefore, at the start of Congress's session in late 1868, Republican members of Congress were primed to support an amendment to the Constitution that would nationalize black male suffrage. Instead of whether a Fifteenth Amendment should be created, the question became: what should it say?

Jordan Grant is a Digital Experience specialist in the museum's Office of Audience Engagement.