National Museum of African American History and Culture - Museum Collection

Museum Collection

The Smithsonian Institution listed the number of items in the museum collection in 2012 as either more than 18,000 pieces or more than 25,000 pieces. As of January 2012, the more notable items in the collection included:

• Items owned by Harriet Tubman, including eating utensils, a hymnal, and a linen and silk shawl given to her by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Related items include a photographic portrait of Tubman (one of only a few known to exist), and three postcards with images of Tubman's 1913 funeral.
• The glass-topped casket originally used to display and bury the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till, the victim of racially-motivated torture and murder in Mississippi. Till's death sparked the modern African American civil rights movement.
• The dress which Rosa Parks was sewing the day she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the first incidents of mass civil disobedience in the modern African American civil rights movement.
• A Selmer trumpet owned by jazz musician Louis Armstrong.
• A dress owned by actress and singer Pearl Bailey.
• A cape and jumpsuit owned by American soul singer James Brown.
• A collection of costumes designed by director and costume designer Geoffrey Holder for his 1976 musical, The Wiz (an adaptation of the L. Frank Baum novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). The costumes won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design, the play won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Holder won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical.
• A cherry red Cadillac convertible owned by rock and roll singer Chuck Berry.
• An amplifier, speakers, and turntables used by Tony Crush a.k.a. DJ Tony Tone of the Cold Crush Brothers.
• A railroad car from Chattanooga, Tennessee, used by African American passengers during the Jim Crow era.
• A sign from a bus in Nashville, Tennessee, from the Jim Crow era which indicates which seating is for blacks only.
• A public drinking fountain from the Jim Crow era with the sign "colored" (indicating it was for use by blacks only).
• A badge from 1850, worn by an African American in Charleston, South Carolina, indicating the wearer was a slave.
• Feet and wrist manacles from the American Deep South used prior to 1860.
• Garments worn by African American slaves.
• An 1874 home from Poolesville, Maryland. The dwelling was constructed by the Jones family, who were freed slaves. The Joneses later founded an all-black community nearby.
• Boxing headgear worn by Cassius Clay (later to be known as Muhammad Ali).
• Gymnastic equipment used by artistic gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Douglas was the first African American, and first non-Caucasian of any nationality, to win the women's artistic individual all-around gold medal. She was also the first American gymnast ever to win both the team and individual all-around gold at the same Olympics.
• A Bible owned by Nat Turner, who led an unsuccessful slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831.
• A letter by Toussaint L'Ouverture, African American leader of the Haitian Revolution slave revolt in 1791.
• Dresses and other garments by fashion designer Ann Lowe. Lowe designed clothing for the Du Pont family, Roosevelt family, and the Rockefeller family. She also designed items for wealthy etiquette expert and socialite Emily Post and her family, and created Jacqueline Bouvier's wedding dress for her 1953 marriage to John F. Kennedy.
• The Purple Heart and footlocker owned by James L. McCullin, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen.
• The desk of Robert Sengstacke Abbott, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper founded in 1905.
• A PT-13D Stearman biplane trainer aircraft operated by the United States Army Air Corps and used in 1944 for training members of the Tuskegee Airmen.