Articles

If you wanted to make a call from the late 19th until the mid-20th century, you first needed to connect with your operator. She was everywhere: telephone companies, department stores, small businesses, doctors’ offices, even the halls of Congress. She was the friendly voice who linked you to your friends, family, and the wider world.

Hundreds of vintage automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles gathered in Greenfield Village for our 75th annual Old Car Festival. It remains the longest-running antique auto show in the United States.

Following The Henry Ford's acquisition of the Jackson Home, our curatorial staff spent time speaking with people who had firsthand experience of the Civil Rights Movement.

In Oakland, California, 1966, a group of young Black radicals formed The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to elevate Black political and community power. Learn more about the organization’s Alabama origins here.

Wallace A. Rayfield was among a very small and elite group of university-trained African American architects working in the early twentieth-century. Across his vibrant career, he produced homes, churches, schools, and commercial buildings throughout the USA—including the Jackson Home.

The simple duck decoy is not so simple. Decoy styles, craftsmanship, and artistic qualities transform them from basic hunting tools to folk art treasures. They tell stories of the changing relationships between humans, wildlife, and the environment, past and present.

Marguerita Mergentime’s designs for printed table linens are perpetual conversation starters. This self-taught New York City-based textile designer used museums as her education and, in some cases, her inspiration.

Emeline Morrow Miner was a self-taught, unheralded craftswoman. She had a spark of creativity in her core that led her to create exquisite work in a variety of media: painting, leatherwork, quilting, crocheting, and most significantly, rug hooking.