Sara Sunshine (b. 1936) (Clio Award)
Cuban American Sunshine is known as the grande dame of Hispanic advertising. She co-founded the nation’s first Latino ad agency, the Spanish Advertising and Marketing Service, and was part of the first wave of Hispanic advertising executives in the early 1960s. Arguing that ads needed to be uniquely designed for the Hispanic market, she conducted market research by visiting bodegas around New York City and talking to the owners and customers to figure out shopping trends. Sunshine and her company received the first Clio given to a Latino-owned agency in 1987.
Lillian Vernon (1927–2015) (purse)
Vernon and her family immigrated to the US from Germany after escaping the Nazi regime of the 1930s. Vernon inherited her family’s entrepreneurial spirit and adopted the nickname “Queen of Catalogs” as she built one of the nation’s most successful mail-order catalogs. Pregnant with her first child, Vernon searched for a way to stay home and yet augment the family budget. Racking her brains for a product that she could sell from her home, Vernon decided on monogrammed accessories for teenagers and turned her kitchen into a mail-order business. Combining marketing skills, careful production management and risk-taking, Vernon grew her enterprise into a major corporation. Vernon’s company became the first business founded by a woman to be publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Maggie Lena Walker (1864–1934) (Burroughs Number 9 adding machine)
In 1903, Walker did the unimaginable: She created a bank and hired Black women to run it. Living in the segregated South, Walker started St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and dedicated her life to African American advancement. As the only Black woman bank president in the nation, she advocated for Black working women and girls by creating jobs, funding educational institutions and participating in prominent civil rights organizations. Through St. Luke’s, she also founded a newspaper and department store. Later in life, Walker also became an advocate for people with disabilities after suffering from paralysis.
The “Only One in the Room” display is part of the museum’s 2020 celebration of the “Year of the Woman,” which strives to amplify women’s crucial role in history during the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment. Other recently opened exhibitions include “Girlhood (It’s Complicated)” and “Creating Icons: How We Remember Woman Suffrage,” both part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative #BecauseOfHerStory. The initiative represents one of the country’s most ambitious efforts to collect, document, display and share the compelling story of women, deepening the understanding of women’s contributions to the nation and the world. It amplifies women’s voices to honor the past, inform the present and inspire the future.
Through incomparable collections, rigorous research and dynamic public outreach, the National Museum of American History seeks to empower people to create a more just and compassionate future by examining, preserving and sharing the complexity of our past. The museum, located on Constitution Avenue N.W., between 12th and 14th streets, is open Friday through Tuesday between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. Admission is free, but reserved timed-entry passes are required. To make reservations, visit si.edu/visit. For Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000.
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