Special Report

Race in America

To mark the Smithsonian's multi-year initiative, Our Shared Future: Reckoning With Our Racial Past, which will confront the history and legacy of race and racism through live and virtual events, pop-up exhibitions, digital resources, and other offerings, Smithsonian magazine has compiled this collection of relevant coverage.

The Smithsonian's Race and Our Shared Future: Reckoning With Our Racial Past initiative centers on six pillars. Getty Images

Artist Tyrus Wong, with kites of his own design, at California's Santa Monica Beach

How Tyrus Wong Spent 106 Years Making the World More Beautiful

Josefina "Joey" Guerrero (third from right) received the Medal of Honor With Silver Palm for her actions during World War II, which were “instrumental in saving the lives of many Americans and Filipinos,” according to the award citation.

This Filipina Spy Used Her Leprosy as a Cover to Thwart the Japanese During World War II

Hazel Ying Lee (right) and fellow pilot Virginia Wong (left)

This Chinese American Aviatrix Overcame Racism to Fly for the U.S. During World War II

Asian American History

The Granada Relocation Center, also known as Amache, had cramped Army-style barracks that housed thousands of Japanese Americans and people of Japanese descent.

A Japanese American Incarceration Camp in Colorado Is America’s Newest National Park

A 1942 Memorial Day service at Manzanar, a Japanese American incarceration camp in California

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

How a 1924 Immigration Act Laid the Groundwork for Japanese American Incarceration

Theodore S. Gonzalves

Participants on a bus tour at the 2014 community pilgrimage to Tule Lake

Why the Language We Use to Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

Tamiko Nimura, Zócalo Public Square

Black History

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How Black Americans in the South Boldly Defied Jim Crow to Build Business Empires of Their Own

By Victor Luckerson

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Remarkable Documents Lay Bare New York’s History of Slavery

Carolyn Eastman

A grand jury tasked with investigating the riots argued that the violence outside Peekskill “was basically neither antisemitic nor anti-Negro in character.”

The Peekskill Riots Revealed the Racism and Antisemitism Hidden Beneath the Surface of the Anti-Communist Movement

Matthew Schuerman

Latino American History

Beginning in the early 20th century, Marfa's Mexican and Mexican American students attended the one-story adobe school up to ninth grade.

New National Park Site Spotlights School Segregation in Texas

The cemetery is located near a Spanish colonial church built in Huanchaco, Peru, around 1535.

16th-Century Skeletons of Children Infected With Smallpox Discovered in Peru

Ellen Ochoa was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House last week, becoming the tenth astronaut to receive the country's highest civilian honor.

Ellen Ochoa, Former NASA Astronaut and First Hispanic Woman in Space, Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

Christian Thorsberg

Native American History

As evidenced by Gordon Parks' A Woman and Her Dog in the Harlem Section (1943), New York pets had evolved from hunting assistants to companions by the 20th century.

See Images of New Yorkers and Their Pets Across Three Centuries

Red Bear’s Winter Count, Martin E. Red Bear, canvas and acrylic paint, 2004

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

From Powwows to Smartphones, See the Past and Present of Indigenous Plains Life in Narrative Art

Could different backyard birds, such as a robin and a bluebird, produce viable offspring?

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Could a Robin and a Bluebird Have Babies? And More Questions From Our Readers

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