Cultures & Communities - Overview
Furniture, cooking wares, clothing, works of art, and many other kinds of artifacts are part of what knit people into communities and cultures. The Museum’s collections feature artifacts from European Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, African Americans, Gypsies, Jews, and Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. The objects range from ceramic face jugs made by enslaved African Americans in South Carolina to graduation robes and wedding gowns. The holdings also include artifacts associated with education, such as teaching equipment, textbooks, and two complete schoolrooms. Uniforms, insignia, and other objects represent a wide variety of civic and voluntary organizations, including youth and fraternal groups, scouting, police forces, and firefighters.
"Cultures & Communities - Overview" showing 3 items.
"In-Out" Basket
- Description
- The process of manufacturing such baskets is called "sewing," but it is actually a process of binding and coiling long strands of grass. In the wetlands, two kinds of grasses are used; "sweetgrass," and more recently, black rush, also known as "bullrush." Strips of oak wood, or palmetto fronds are used to bind together long bundles of grass, which are then coiled into a particular shape. Makeshift tools, such as broken-off spoons, flattened nails, or cow ribs are used for the coiling and binding process. Sometimes, colored grasses or pine needles are used in the show baskets, although the use of sweetgrass, bulrush, and palmetto is standard.
- Today, the role of the men and boys is to gather the materials, the women do the weaving and market the baskets. Until recently, baskets were sold from family-operated roadside stands, but increasingly, they are sold at county fairs and cultural festivals. Many of the older women regarded basketmaking as a carefully guarded community secret, but many of the younger women give basketmaking seminars to people from outside of the communities. The women of an earlier generation were not always comfortable with the term "gullah", younger women tend to recognize its historical and cultural value.
- Today, the baskets are for domestic and decorative purposes, rather than agricultural use, and there is a much wider variety of shapes than when baskets were used on the plantations. Some coil weaving produces wall decorations, ladies' hats, and men's caps. Although there are no fixed rules for terminology, certain shapes are often given specific names. Some of the named shapes are for placing utensils inside the baskets.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1970
- ID Number
- CL*298252.18
- collector/donor number
- C.26.1.
- accession number
- 298252
- catalog number
- 298252.18
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Woman's African-style Headwrap
- Description
- This headwrap dating between 1972 and 1984 was worn by Fath Davis Ruffins, an African American woman in Washington, DC. Ruffins bought the fabric for this headwrap and matching dress, which is also in the Smithsonian collections, at an African shop on Georgia Avenue in Washington, DC. It was made in 1972 but was worn as part of a summer "dress-up" outfit through 1984. Elaborately tied headwraps were worn by young African American women during this period to acknowledge their West African ancestral roots.
- The flat cotton rectangular panel is a large floral "Java Print" in three shades of green with yellow accents on a cream background with a dark green with yellow floral design border. The forty-six inch long rectangle is narrower on one short side (twenty inches) than the other (inches) with stitched edges. "Guaranteed Dutch Java Print" is stamped on the selvage.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1972-1984
- used by
- Ruffins, Fath Davis
- maker
- Ruffins, Fath Davis
- ID Number
- 1992.0456.001
- accession number
- 1992.0456
- catalog number
- 1992.0456.001
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Mt. Zion Mission Baptist Church Sign
- Description
- The Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church sprang up in rural areas across the South following the Civil War, providing a place of rest and community for freed slaves. Even if church services only occurred once or twice a month when a traveling minister visited, the house of worship provided not only a place to rekindle faith but as a school and meeting house for fraternal clubs. Homecomings came around harvest time, bringing visitors from across the country. Relatives and neighbors who had moved away came back to spend time with family, sharing stories of their lives in northern cities. The often-embellished picture of northern urban life painted at such reunions encouraged others to contemplate boarding trains north.
- World War I brought a new era of industrial opportunity for African Americans, But as production demands grew, wartime recruitment took away traditionally white and immigrant factory workers. Northern labor recruiters, newspapers, and word-of-mouth spread news of higher wages and regular work being offered to African Americans willing to move. Desire for better treatment and better paying jobs brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans north.
- Those left behind in the South found continued solace and fortitude in the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, leading the way in continuing the fight for basic civil rights for all. Freedom songs sung in marches and jails spread to whites traveling from northern colleges to join in the struggle, spreading lyrics and ideas back north that have now become familiar to those visiting the National Mall and public squares across the country participating in democratic demonstrations of a range of popular issues.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Mt. Zion Mission Baptist Church
- ID Number
- 1986.0812.01
- accession number
- 1986.0812
- catalog number
- 1986.0812.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center