Smithsonian: From Field to Factory

This website is important not only because it displays the content of a significant exhibit but it also reveals a small layer of African American History in relation to the larger American context. In other words, this website is important because the Smithsonian, one of the most important organizations in this country, sponsors it. A careful historian must examine what has not been included on this web page. The Smithsonian curators may have decided to utilize the recent trend towards examining the agency of unlikely populations and therefore focused on “the migrants themselves.” In this way they can avoid showcasing some of the real ways that white terrorist organizations prompted a massive migration. While curators made the Ku Klux Klan a part of the exhibit mention of the organization is noticeably absent from the web page.