Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1936, Johnnetta Betsch Cole grew up in an upper-middle-class household. However, she quickly realized that “money could never really protect me from racism.” At the age of five, she walked into a whites-only neighborhood where a boy called her the n-word. She never forgot the incident that “tore at me.” “As if the boy, no bigger than I was, was attacking me with daggers,” she recalled. Prestige ran through Cole’s family history. Her great-grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, became Jacksonville’s first Black millionaire and co-founded the Afro-American Life Insurance Company as well as founding the Black-owned community of American Beach. Her mother worked as an English teacher and registrar and filled their home with Black art and classic literature. The library became Cole’s sanctuary, where she buried herself in books that transported her to another world. Her passion for learning led Cole to enroll at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, at fifteen years old. One year later, she transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she discovered her passion for anthropology. She graduated from Northwestern University and received her doctorate in 1967. Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3xDUtt3 #APeoplesJourney #HiddenHerstory 📸 Photograph by Vandell Cobb. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

#DYK that Alfred L. Cralle patented the ice cream scoop in 1897? 🍨 Cralle noticed the difficulty ice cream servers were having scooping ice cream with one hand and holding the cone in the other while working in the Markell Brothers drugstore in Pittsburgh. The newly patented design kept the ice cream from sticking and is still widely used today. #NationalIceCreamDay 📸 Courtesy of Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

#OnThisDay in 1896 Mary Church Terrell and fellow activists Frances E.W. Harper, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). The organization was established with the intention of addressing social matters such as lynching, education, suffrage, care for children and the elderly, job readiness, fair wages, and more. “Lifting as we climb,” the slogan of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), became a well-known motto for Black women’s activism in the late nineteenth century. Their project of racial uplift focused on combating harmful stereotypes surrounding Black women. “ The reasons why we should confer are so apparent…We need to talk over not only those things which are of vital importance to us as women, but also the things that are of special interest to us as colored women…” Ruffin said in their inaugural conference. When the organization was incorporated in 1904, it was formally renamed the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC). They continue their efforts today. #ANationsStory #APeoplesJourney 📸 Mary Church Terrell, 1953. Photograph by Bertrand Miles. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Today, we remember Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar, curator, singer, composer, organizer, activist, and member of our museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee. Dr. Reagon was a cultural force who spent her life’s work fighting for freedom and justice. Reagon’s life work supported the concept of mutual respect: respect for self and those who move among us who seem different from us. She has left the world a tremendous legacy, and her presence will truly be missed. Learn more about her life and legacy: https://s.si.edu/3Lu1srN 📸 1. Leah L. Jones/NMAAHC. 2. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © 1985 Flying Fish Records.

Today, we remember Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar, curator, singer, composer, organizer, activist, and member of our museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee. Dr. Reagon was a cultural force who spent her life’s work fighting for freedom and justice. Reagon’s life work supported the concept of mutual respect: respect for self and those who move among us who seem different from us. She has left the world a tremendous legacy, and her presence will truly be missed. Learn more about her life and legacy: https://s.si.edu/3Lu1srN 📸 1. Leah L. Jones/NMAAHC. 2. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © 1985 Flying Fish Records.

Today, in honor of Mary McLeod Bethune and her legacy, our museum opened “Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism.” This dynamic reenvisioning of the “Bethune Room,” a special gallery dedicated to the story of Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women, first opened in 2016 as part of the “Making a Way Out of No Way” permanent exhibition. “Forces for Change” offers new perspectives on Black women as activists and illuminates the history of Black women affecting social change. Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3xUjkZJ Credit: 📸 Mona Makela/NMAAHC

Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and the first to serve as a federal judge. She played a pivotal role as a front-line lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, leading litigation that integrated the University of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and other institutions. Born to working-class immigrants from the West Indies, Motley avoided overt racism as a child. However, when she traveled by train to college in Tennessee, she encountered Jim Crow laws. Upon reaching Cincinnati, Ohio, local customs directed her and others to an aging, rusty car marked “colored.” Reflecting on this experience, she wrote, “Although I had known this would happen, I was both frightened and humiliated. All I knew for sure was that I could do nothing about this new reality.” Learn more: https://s.si.edu/3xDUtt3 #APeoplesJourney #HiddenHerstory 📸 World Telegram & Sun Photo by Fred Palumbo. New York, 1965. Courtesy of Library of Congress, 2011645202.

#OnThisDay in 1862, journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, MS. Wells is remembered as a voice for the voiceless, and one of our nation��s foremost critics of racial injustice and as a journalistic champion of the truth. ⁣ After a tragic illness, Wells lost her parents and moved to Memphis, TN. She began her career in activism early as a student at Fisk University, turning to writing and chronicling issues of race and politics in the Deep South. Under the name “lola,” Wells became a leading voice on issues of racial injustice and eventually owned three newspapers, including the “Memphis Free Speech,” “Headlight, “and the “Free Speech.” However, it was the deaths of Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart—three African American business owners in Memphis—that ignited her charge to take on a campaign against lynching. The men were murdered after they opened a grocery store that competed with a White-owned store. In response, Wells traveled the South gathering records of lynchings and wrote “Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All its Phases” in 1892. Her reports outraged some southern White communities, and she was never able to return to Memphis. ⁣ In 1898 she took her anti-lynching campaign all the way to the White House, urging President William McKinley to act to save Black lives. Although several bills would be introduced, the United States did not federally outlaw lynching until March of 2022 with the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. #ANationsStory #APeoplesJourney 📸 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, c. 1893. Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Join us for a special event celebrating James Baldwin's 100th birthday! Explore his impact on contemporary theater and film during a panel discussion with Suzan-Lori Parks, Robert Jones Jr., and NMAAHC Museum Specialist Tulani Salahu-Din. Writer, activist, and scholar Darnell L. Moore will moderate this insightful conversation. Take advantage of this celebration of James Baldwin's enduring legacy.  #JamesBaldwin100 Free. Attend in person or watch online. Registration required to attend in person. More info: https://s.si.edu/45ZllQR Photo credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Photographed by Sedat Pakay, 1964

Join Smithsonian Education for the education event of the summer! Starts tomorrow. Free registration: https://lnkd.in/guYWJppM