Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad

Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad highlights little-known stories and describes the less-understood maritime side of the Underground Railroad, including the impact of African Americans’ paid and unpaid waterfront labor. Self-emancipation along the Underground Railroad was not entirely by overland routes. A great number of enslaved persons made their way to freedom using…

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The Smithsonian Looks at How the Slave Trade Shaped the World

“In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World” is the product of a 10-year collaboration among nearly two dozen curators at 10 institutions on four continents. The exhibit goes beyond the Smithsonian’s traditional American focus to tell a global story of the ways that slavery shaped the modern world.

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Exhibit — Living for the City: The Black Middle Class in Milwaukee

Exhibit — Living for the City: The Black Middle Class in Milwaukee

A traveling exhibition in conjunction with the “Living for the City: The Black Middle Class in Milwaukee” oral history project, which challenges and complicates existing narratives about Black Milwaukee mired in narrow assertions of poverty, segregation, incarceration, and educational underachievement. These are not the only stories to tell about Black Milwaukee. Research confirms that Milwaukee’s…

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The Negro Motorist Green Book

Green Book

Visitors will explore film, photographs, interactives, and oral histories from travelers and “Green Book” business owners; compare “Green Book” sites then and now; and appreciate historical objects from the Smithsonian and from a variety of “Green Book” sites. This Illinois Holocaust Museum exhibition includes artifacts from business signs and postcards to historic footage, images, and firsthand accounts that illustrate not just the apprehension felt by Black travelers, but also the resilience, innovation, and elegance of people choosing to live a full American existence.

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