Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, America was legally ruled by segregation – the separation of citizens based on race and ethnicity. These laws, both formally written into law and local, societal norms, often were based on historic Black Codes.

While working for Ford Motor Company, the first African American automobile designer, McKinley Thompson, Jr., conceived of an idea for an all-terrain vehicle that would do for Third World countries what the Model T did for America.

The Mattox Home in Greenfield Village tells the story of one family living in rural Georgia in the 1930s. Learn more about the family, their community, and how they lived.

Innovator George Washington Carver is featured in a new digital experience in the Agriculture exhibit at Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.

The Henry Ford remembers Damon J. Keith, a civil rights icon and courageous champion for social justice.

President Abraham Lincoln signed The Freedmen’s Bureau Act on March 3, 1865, to provide food, clothing, fuel, and temporary shelter to freedmen, their wives, and children in areas of insurrection (in other words, within the Confederate States).

Learn how U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith has brought the perspective of African American history to her office--and to her own poetry, in her collection "Wade in the Water."

On February 4, The Henry Ford is celebrating what would have been Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday with a National Day of Courage. Find out what's in store.

How does one interpret art? How does one view activism or protest? These concepts have merged for centuries to convey a message and drive change. “Activist Art,” as defined by the Tate Museum in London, is “a term used to describe art grounded in the

In 2023, The Henry Ford acquired an incredible piece of art: a wooden sculpture by New Orleans artist Jean-Marcel St. Jacques, entitled “A Wooden Quilt for Big Mama.” St. Jacques’s wooden quilt weaves together many threads from both St. Jacques’s own