As COVID-19 deaths spiked in 2020, Suzanne Firstenberg’s public art installation "In America: How could this happen…"
Museum Artifacts
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
9/3/2020
In this handheld, small booklet carried and distributed by Union soldiers, it contained the brief but powerful words of the Emancipation Proclamation. Some of those Union soldiers were African American, and they carried and read this message granting freedom to those enslaved. Have students think ab
Grade Range:
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts
Date Posted:
9/10/2015
Abraham Lincoln came to understand that to achieve a lasting peace, slavery must end. He had always opposed slavery, but had never sided with abolitionists who called for its immediate end. Lincoln had sought solutions that would make slavery gradually fade from white society—limit its location
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/17/2010
Physical Description
Oxidized metal bugle.
Specific History
This bugle was salvaged from the wreck of the USS Maine.
General History
USS Maine was a second-class battleship built between 1888 and 1895. It was sent to Havana, Cub
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
11/10/2008
The ENIAC was a large, general-purpose digital computer built to compute ballistics tables for U.S. Army artillery during World War II. Occupying a room 30 feet by 50 feet, ENIAC—the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer—weighed 30 tons and used some 18,000 vacuum tubes. It could compu
Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/23/2010
The forage cap was introduced just in time to become the signature headgear of the Civil War soldier. This model was the most popular worn by the Union army, officers and enlisted men alike.
Grade Range:
5-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
12/9/2010
Enlistment paper of John Edwards in His Majesty's Provincial Service, 1760.
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
4/22/2010
The Environmental Movement
This button depicts the ecology symbol, a small letter “e” inside the larger letter “O,” the letters standing for “environment” and “organism.” Cartoonist Ron Cobb invented the symbol in 1969. The ecology symbol appeared in a g
Grade Range:
6-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
3/5/2009
This Thai passport was seized in the well-publicized 1995 El Monte, Calif., sweatshop raid. The passport is part of a larger Smithsonian collection of artifacts documenting apparel industry sweatshops, focusing on the El Monte operation (72 workers were discovered working as slaves). With a legit
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
7/1/2008
The family fallout shelter represents the public policy assumptions of the atomic age, namely, that with enough preparation, the American family and with it the nation's social and political fabric would survive a nuclear attack. This free-standing, double-hulled steel shelter was installed benea
Grade Range:
K-12
Resource Type(s):
Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
1/27/2009
Family photograph albums hold the history of generations, preserving the memories of birthdays, holidays, travels, and all general aspects of life. African American Mary Taylor used her 35mm Bell and Howell camera to document her family's life in the black community of Los Angeles, California, du
