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"It should be in the Smithsonian or the Met. But it's on me."

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a musician and scholar who used her rich, powerful contralto voice in the service of the American Civil Rights Movement and human rights struggles around the world, has died at 81

Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, collecting items from clothing to signs that will help tell the story of the 2024 presidential election. Conversation U.S. politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed them last week, before they set out…

Thousands of Republicans, from a presidential candidate to grassroots party members, began assembling in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024, for that quadrennial political ritual, the party convention. Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History were there, too. They’re self-described “scavengers” of the physical objects that make…