After announcing resignation, Smithsonian Secretary heads to Milwaukee

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

September 10, 2026

Anya Sesay, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Lonnie G. Bunch, III moderates a panel at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library. (Lauren Gerson/LBJ Library, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

After announcing Sept. 8 that he’s stepping down from his position at the end of the year, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III is heading to Milwaukee to discuss what he has called the “fool’s errand” of building a sustainable cultural institution that champions Black art and elucidates the nation’s cultural narrative.

Bunch is the first of many national museum leaders invited to Milwaukee by the Bronzeville Center for the Arts as part of its speaker series, “From the Ground Up.” The series, produced in partnership with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Chipstone Foundation, highlights those who have waded through the deep waters of race, identity and power while building monumental national institutions.

As the Bronzeville Center for the Arts works on its forthcoming Black Arts and Culture Museum, it is looking to lauded leaders who’ve steered institutions with a similar mission to the arts center.

Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, established by Congress in 2003. He worked to build the museum through three presidencies that spanned party lines, including President Trump’s first term.

Find events like these in our calendar.

More breaking news.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.