Political Equality:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

How does a group convince the government their story needs to be told? Why some groups and not others?

"More than anything else, then, stories are powerful because they do not fill in all the blanks. They open up a space in which the listener's own thoughts, feelings, and memories can flow and expand. They inspire an internal dialogue and thus insure a real connection" (Bedford 2001, 29).

Political Equality:

What is it? How to "get" it? How to learn about it?

live free from bondage and intimidation

access to education

own property

marry

Jewish lobby and political power

Colonial period: officeholding, professional, social restrictions

1924: President Coolidge gives Native Americans right to vote

1962: Native Americans gain voting rights in all states

1975: Voting Rights Act amended

"The Israelites especially should be kept out…they are such an intolerable nuisance."

1978: American Indian Religious Freedom and Indian Child Welfare Acts

US during WWII

1980s: Native Americans' voting rights are in jeopardy

populist antisemitism, Johnson–Reed Act, KKK

Process

Member of Congress proposes legislation to establish a commission to study the creation of a national museum OR establishment of the museum (rare)

• NMAI: 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act

Opened in 2004

• USHMM: 1978 - President Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust

1980: Congress voted unanimously to establish it

Opened in 1993

• Belmont-Paul: transferred to NPS in 2015 and dedicated as a national monument in 2016

• NMAAHC: It's complicated...



Whose stories are left

to be told?



1929: law creating a commission for the museum was signed by President Coolidge.

The Smithsonian American Latino Museum Act was introduced to Congress in September 2016.

1991: Smithsonian blue-ribbon commission recommended the creation of a national museum.

The US Interior Department took over the commission’s work.

2001: established the NMAAHC Plan for Action Presidential Commission to develop a plan to move forward

In 2014, Congress approved the creation of a congressional commission to study the creation a of National Women's History Museum, and in 2016 the commission recommended establishing the American Museum of Women’s History.

1986: Joint Resolution “to encourage and support” private efforts to build a memorial and a museum in Washington, DC.

2003: Congress enacted The NMAAHC Act establishing a museum within the Smithsonian Institution.

The National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture Act was introduced to Congress in December 2015.