Smithsonian 175th Film Fest: Black Aviators Videohistory Collection

In the 1930s, Black men and women navigated institutionalized biases and racism to secure their pilot licenses. Fifty years later, Ted Robinson, an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration who served as the National Air and Space Museum's historian of Black aviation, interviewed a few of those groundbreakers. On Friday, February 25, 2022, at 12 p.m. ET, Smithsonian historians Dr. Pamela Henson and Hannah Byrne will showcase the Black Aviators Videohistory Interviews conducted at the National Air and Space Museum in 1989 and in Chicago in 1990. The audience will hear aviators Janet Harmon Bragg and Cornelius Coffey share their trailblazing stories about breaking barriers and reaching the clouds. This screening will be the first time some of these videos have been made available online to the public. Registration: Google the Smithsonian 175th Film Fest: Films from the Smithsonian Institution Archives or https://www.si.edu/events/detail/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D154949233 About the Smithsonian 175th Film Fest: Films from the Smithsonian Institution Archives To celebrate the Smithsonian Institution's 175th anniversary in 2021, the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is hosting monthly programs featuring films from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution Archives. The series will be hosted virtually between August 2021 and August 2022. In addition to the film screenings, archivists, conservators, and subject experts will also provide some context to the videos, share a little about their work, and answer questions from the audience during the one-hour programs. These screenings will also be the first instance that the films have ever been screened online to the public. There are multiple ways to watch. Audiences can either register for the webinar or tune into the livestream on our YouTube channel homepage.