Our mission is to empower people to create a just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the complexity of our past.

African Americans turned to the courts to help protect their constitutional rights. But the courts challenged earlier civil rights legislation and handed down a series of decisions that permitted ...

The indications or uses for this product as provided by the manufacturer are: Aids in relieving distress and discomforts of colds by its fourfold action -- as an analgesic, as an antipyretic, as an ...

Nineteenth-century Plains Indian drawings have often been called “ledger” drawings because they were made with pencil, ink, and watercolor on pages of old ledger or account books. When young Plains ...

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first machine that could record sound and play it back. On the first audio recording Edison recited, “Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white ...

This commercial bread-slicing machine was designed and manufactured in 1928 by Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960). It was used to slice loaves of fresh bakery bread at Korn's Bakery, in Rohwedder's ...

“I meekly followed [the nurse] through the long ward, unable to return the gaze of the occupants of the twenty-six beds, … and with a sinking heart watched her raise the head of a poor fellow in the ...

Jack Kilby’s demonstration of the first working integrated circuit (IC) in 1958 revolutionized the field of microelectronics. Instead of using discrete transistors, resistors, and capacitors to form a ...

This Kermit the Frog puppet was created by Jim Henson in 1955 for Sam and Friends. It is the first Kermit puppet, and it is made from Jim Henson’s mother’s old spring coat and a pair of Jim’s blue ...

Cookie Monster is a live-hand puppet originally performed by Frank Oz and currently performed by David Rudman. In a live-hand puppet, like Cookie Monster, one of the performer’s hands is in the puppet ...

Latino history is American history. Latinos trace their origins to Latin America and other Spanish colonies, both in the Caribbean and in the contemporary United States. These groups include, but are ...