“A former laundress who became a millionaire from her hair-care company, Madam C. J. Walker (1867–1919) was a leading philanthropist of the early 1900s. Because of her pioneering role in both business and philanthropy, she's featured in two museum exhibitions: American Enterprise and Giving in A

“Wartime often catalyzes developments in philanthropy. In 2017, the museum added the Bowl of Rice party banner, from fundraising efforts to aid people in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, to its collection. Curator Theodore S. Gonzalves, a scholar of Asian American history, answered three

Are the tactics used by suffragists to fight for political power still effective?  Suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment marked an important moment in the progression of women’s participation in our democracy and civic life. Yet it was an imperf

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on this portable desk of his own design. It features a hinged writing board and a locking drawer for papers, pens, and inkwell. By the summer of 1776 members of the Second Continental Congress prepared to declare thei

This single reversible right and left plow model is part of a large collection of model plows that were transferred from the Department of the Interior to the U.S. National Museum in 1910. In 1952, curator Edward C. Kendall researched the model plows and desired to catalog and identify the typolo

This archived webcast features filmmaker Ken Burns discussing this documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. The webcast included historian Clay Jenkinson, Smithsonian curator Harry Rubenstein, and Roosevelt biographer Geoffrey Ward. The conversation covered varied topic

Although we might think of fax machines as a relatively recent (if somewhat dated) technology, this episode uncovers the surprising history of the wireless fax machine. Host Tory Altman speaks with Hal Wallace, associate curator of the museum's electricity collection, about this 1930s device that

How did women serve in uniform during World War I? In this episode, host Tory Altman joins Curator Margaret Vining of the Museum's Division of Armed Forces History to talk about women's service in the conflict, and how their contributions helped the cause of the woman suffrage movement.

Why are objects useful teaching tools? How should you choose which objects to use? Learn the answers to these questions from Richard Kurin, the Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, who recently published his new book "History of America in 101 Objects

  Our Founding Fragments video series gets up close and personal with historical treasures in the collection of the National Museum of American History. This is our fifth episode in the series, and in it our host Tory joins curator Dr. Margaret S