Public History
Buffalo Soldiers on Bicycles
This is one of my favorite stories from our visit to Fort Snelling: After the American Civil War, Congress created six regiments of Black soldiers, led for the most part by white officers, known informally as Buffalo Soldiers.[1] One of those regiments , the 25th Black Infantry, was posted at Fort Snelling in 1880. Eight…
Read More
Calling All Citizen Archivists
Depending on where you hang out online or what news media you listen to, you may have heard a call from the National Archives Catalog for volunteers with the “superpower” of reading cursive to join their Citizen Archivist program.* Almost thirty thousand new catalogers signed-up in the week after the call went out—100 times their…
Read More
From Portable Pianos to Portable Organs
Earlier this week My Own True Love and I were at an event at an aviation history museum in Poplar Grove, Illinois.* In the course of chatting with the executive director, the GI Steinway (aka the Victory Vertical) came up. The director mentioned that another museum in the community had a portable organ made for…
Read More