The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented all but a few Chinese to enter the United States legally. In 1906, a major earthquake and resulting fire in San Francisco destroyed public records, allowing many Chinese to claim that they had been born in San Francisco. These men, with newly established c

This undated black and white print depicts an Irish immigrant wearing a large campaign ribbon, tails, and striped breeches standing in front of two adjacent, flag draped campaign booths. One booth is occupied by a member of the “Loco Foco Committee,” and the other by a member of the “Tammany C

Demand for inexpensive, mass-produced women’s clothing spurred the rise of early garment factories. The ILGWU was formed in 1900 by bringing together several smaller local unions to fight to end sweatshop production, higher wages, and improve working conditions in the cities where the garment fact

This exhibition is about Clotilde Arias, a Peruvian immigrant who came to New York City in 1923 at age twenty-two to study music. Decades later she translated the national anthem into the official Spanish version at the request of the U.S. government. Arias died in 1959 in Manhattan at age fifty-eig

View the American Revolution through a global lens in The American Revolution: A World War, which examines the 1781 victory at Yorktown and the Franco-American partnership that made it possible.  The American Revolution was far more than an uprising of discontented co

This ongoing collection of posts from the National Museum of American History's blog "O Say Can You See?" share stories and objects about The Nation We Build Together.

Since the 1950s, demand has soared in the United States for cookbooks featuring diverse ethnic cuisines. Reflecting a heightened interest in foods and flavors from various cultures, the explosion of ethnic cookbooks—and ethnic restaurants and markets—serves to educate the general public while

Following independence, citizens of the new nation sought to forge their own identity and create a unique history. They established holidays such as the Fourth of July and later Thanksgiving Day and chronicled the story of America from the landing at Plymouth Rock through the Founding Fathers and

James Smithson might be surprised to learn about some of the objects in the collections at the institution he established. The Englishman bequeathed his fortune to found "at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge a

This historical investigation is aligned with the C3 Framework and from C3teachers.org. This inquiry prompts students to investigate the factors, conditions, and conflicts related to westward expansio