Government, Politics, and Reform - Overview
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are all represented in the Museum's collections—by a surveying compass, a lap desk, and a top hat, among other artifacts. But the roughly 100,000 objects in this collection reach beyond the possessions of statesmen to touch the broader political life of the nation—in election campaigns, the women's suffrage movement, labor activity, civil rights, and many other areas. Campaign objects make up much of the collection, including posters, novelties, ballots, voting machines, and many others. A second group includes general political history artifacts, such as first ladies' clothing and accessories, diplomatic materials, ceremonial objects, national symbols, and paintings and sculptures of political figures. The third main area focuses on artifacts related to political reform movements, from labor unions to antiwar groups.
"Government, Politics, and Reform - Overview" showing 6 items.
"Freedom to Breathe" Environmental Poster
- Description
- Scientific studies have linked air pollution to quality of life and health issues. To emphasize the need to control the quality of the country’s air, this poster shows the Statue of Liberty, an American symbol of freedom, wearing a gas mask because she has lost the freedom to breathe clean, healthy air. Produced in 1969 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, it resembles rock music posters of the era.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1969
- referenced
- U.S. Public Health Service
- ID Number
- 1988.0522.01
- catalog number
- 1988.0522.01
- accession number
- 1988.0522
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
March on Washington Handbill
- Description
- The March on Washington, August 28, 1963, was the largest civil rights demonstration the nation had ever witnessed. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 250,000 Americans of all races gathered to petition the government to pass meaningful civil rights legislation and enforce existing laws establishing racial equality. The March for Jobs and Freedom was conceived by A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, coordinated by Bayard Rustin, and supported by almost all the major civil rights organizations and many labor unions and religious organizations. Its speakers included Randolph, John Lewis, James Farmer, Walter Reuther, and Martin Luther King Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech invoked the hopes of all Americans seeking racial justice.
- This handbill was donated in 1964 by Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a principle organizer and chairman of the Washington, D.C., coordinating committee. It is one of many items in the Museum's civil rights collection that helps document and preserve this pivotal event in American history.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1963
- associated date
- 1963 08 28
- speaker
- King, Jr., Martin Luther
- organizer
- Randolph, A. Philip
- coordinator
- Rustin, Bayard
- speaker
- Lewis, John
- Farmer, James
- Reuther, Walter
- organizer
- Fauntroy, Walter
- related organization
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- ID Number
- PL*251855.04a
- catalog number
- 251855.04a
- accession number
- 251855
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
"Tierra o Muerte"
- Description
- Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the annexation of Texas, the land claims of many Mexican families were not respected, either by the new English-speaking settlers or by the U.S. government. Dispossession from family- and community-owned lands dealt a severe economic blow to the livelihood of generations of Mexican Americans. The issue of land evokes especially bitter memories in New Mexico. In 1967, the year this poster was made with the slogan Tierra o Muerte, meaning Land or Death, a Hispanic land rights organization called La Alianza, led by Reies López Tijerina, raided the Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. In addition to reclaiming land from the government of New Mexico, the goals of the raid were to free imprisoned Alianza members and to arrest the district attorney who was prosecuting them as communists and outside agitators. The raid on the courthouse was ultimately unsuccessful and Tijerina served time in a federal prison. Although seen by some as a divisive figure, Reies López Tijerina was as recognizable as Cesar Chavez to many Chicano activists of the late 1960s. Mirroring similar political tensions in the African American community, Chicano civil rights activists were torn between leaders such as Chavez, who advocated nonviolence, and leaders like Tijerina, whose political strategy was decidedly more militant.
- Date made
- 1967
- ID Number
- 1990.0654.01
- catalog number
- 1990.0654.01
- accession number
- 1990.0654
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model of Bucyrus-Erie Stripping Shovel
- Description
- In 1960, the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presented this 14-inch-high, scale model of what was to become the world's largest stripping shovel to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later that year, the President transferred this gift to the Smithsonian Institution. The Bucyrus-Erie Company had custom-designed this monster machine for the Peabody Coal Company. Bucyrus-Erie engineers anticipated that they would need two years to manufacture the behemoth, and an additional six months to assemble it at the site of the open-pit mine. (They planned to ship the machine's parts in over 250 railcars.) When finished, the shovel would weigh 7,000 tons, soar to the roofline of a 20-story building (some 220 feet high), and be able to extend its enormous 115-cubic-yard dipper over 460 feet, or about the length of an average city block. (The dipper's capacity would equal that of about six stand-sized dump trucks.) Fifty electric motors-ranging from 1/4 to 3,000 horsepower-would power the shovel, which was designed to be controlled by a single operator, perched in a cab five stories high. Publicists for Bucyrus-Erie called this the "largest self-powered mobile land vehicle ever built."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1960
- recipient
- Eisenhower, Dwight D.
- maker
- Bucyrus-Erie Company
- ID Number
- MC*317688
- catalog number
- 317688
- accession number
- 231557
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Santa Maria
- Description
- In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed a small fleet of three small ships west from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to find a shorter route to the riches of Asia. Before his voyages, Chinese and Indian luxuries for European markets were transported over the long and hazardous overland route through Arabia.
- The three-masted vessel Santa Maria was the largest of Columbus’s expeditionary vessels and his flagship. Measuring around 70 feet in length, it carried a crew of 40 men. The Santa Maria and Columbus’s other fleet members the Niña and the Pinta were older ships used for coastal trading rather than vessels designed for ocean crossings. Nine weeks after the little fleet left Spain, land was sighted in the Caribbean on 12 October 1492, but exactly which island Columbus’s crew first spotted remains disputed.
- The fleet went on to explore the north coasts of the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti). On Christmas Day 1492, the Santa Maria ran aground on a reef off Hispaniola and was declared a total loss. The ship’s timbers were salvaged and used to build a small fort on shore. Fortunately for Columbus, he was able to return to Spain on the Niña.
- Instead of Asia, Columbus had landed in the Caribbean islands on his first voyage. Although they were already inhabited, he claimed them for Spain. Columbus made three more voyages to the western hemisphere between 1493 and 1504.
- Waves of conquerors and colonists—both free and enslaved—followed. What was a triumph for Spain became a catastrophe for native peoples. New livestock, plants, diseases, and beliefs unsettled centuries-old communities and ecosystems, changing and destroying the lives of millions.
- This model was built at the Museo Maritimo de Barcelona, Spain, under the supervision of museum director Jose Maria Martinez-Hidalgo y Teran, who published a book on the Santa Maria in 1964.
- Date made
- 1965
- ID Number
- TR*325800
- catalog number
- 325800
- accession number
- 260040
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Liotta-Cooley Artificial Heart
- Description
- This is the first total artificial heart implanted in a human body. It was developed by Domingo Liotta and implanted by surgeon Denton Cooley on April 4, 1969, at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston. The recipient, Haskell Karp, lived for sixty-four hours with the artificial heart pumping oxygenated blood through his body until a human heart was available for transplant.
- Although Karp died soon after receiving a real heart, and some criticized the surgery as unethical because it was without formal review by the medical community, the procedure demonstrated the viability of artificial hearts as a bridge to transplant in cardiac patients.
- Date made
- 1969
- maker
- Liotta, Domingo
- ID Number
- 1978.1002.01
- accession number
- 1978.1002
- catalog number
- 1978.1002.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center