Reckoning with Our Racial Past in Los Angeles
Three downtown Los Angeles museums presented a collaborative series of public programs in connection with the Smithsonian initiative in December 2023.
3D Digital Collections
These objects highlight meaningful stories to help us learn more about the complicated history and legacy of race and racism while also humanizing the stories that have helped build a more equitable shared future.
An Initiative for Social Change
Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past emerges from both centuries of systemic racism and its urgent, present-day reality. With this new initiative, we seek to spark positive social change and build a more equitable future through interdisciplinary scholarship, creative partnerships, dialogue, and engagement.
Through 'Race and Our Shared Future,' we hope to grow engaged, intergenerational communities of learners and doers.Learn about our initiative
Stories from a D.C. Neighborhood
Part of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum exhibition, A Right to the City, several people share their experiences with changing city streets, segregated American society, and preserving cultural legacy.
Our Foundational Pillars
Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past is built on six thematic pillars. Each is designed to make issues of race and systemic racism understandable, relevant, and, most importantly, changeable.
We think about race from multiple perspectives, from the individual to the institutional.Read about the pillars
At a time when the nation is in crisis, all of our institutions need to contribute to making the country better.
Recommended Viewing
Understanding the past is the key to building a better shared future, but where do we begin? A new series of videos, created in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, illuminates how systemic racism shows up in our lives and offers resources to help create change.