National Archives at Philadelphia

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Black Americans fought for equality long before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In 1884, while Jim Crow was in its infancy, a group of black Baltimoreans purchased first-class tickets to board the Steamer Sue, which plied the waters between Maryland and Virginia. About an hour into the voyage, the ship’s chambermaid informed the group that the captain would not permit them to occupy the first class cabin because the ship’s regulations prohibited African Americans from that part of the vessel. The travelers protested their treatment by staying up all night in the ship’s saloon. When the women returned to Baltimore they filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore, Chesapeake, and Richmond Steamboat Company.

You can learn more about this case, and how researcher Dr. Dennis Patrick Halpin unraveled the story, by checking out his guest post on NARA's Rediscovering Black History blog: https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2018/12/18/early-civil-rights-protest-and-the-steamer-sue-case/

Archives Technician Andrew Salyer may have bitten off more than he could chew with this one...

While searching through our U.S. District Court records for a researcher, Andrew opened the wrong box and found several exhibits of dental products (including fake teeth). After going through the case with a fine tooth comb, he discovered the case was about a product that was alleged to decrease recovery times after dental surgeries (U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division, Civil Case No. 77-732 Harry Snead, Wayland J. Eley, and Louis M. Johnson v. Julian F. Hirst). Andrew has plans to sink his teeth into the case in the coming weeks to write a blog post about it, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to share his findings.

Check out recent blog post by Archives Specialist Matthew DiBiase: "Face Off: Derek Sanderson vs. the NHL"

Thousands of Indigenous women experienced involuntary sterilization and removal of their children in the 1960s and 1970s. A case file from our holdings of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Norma Jean Serena et al. v. Natalie J. Leezer et al., tells the story of Norma Jean Serena's fight for justice after her forced sterilization and wrongful removal of her children in 1970.

The photograph featured here is a panorama of the vast Olympic National Forest in Washington State.

This photograph was included with information about a fire detection system, which the David W. Taylor Model Basin was looking into procuring in the 1960s.

Seen here is a photograph of a man and woman on a trail to Heart's Content in Allegheny Forest near Warren, PA. This pictures comes from a collection of photographs from the Northeastern Forest Timber Management Research Station.

Seen here is a photograph of United States Forest Service employee posing with the root system of a pitch pine that was pulled out with a tractor near New Lisbon, New Jersey. This is one of many pictures from this series of photographs that depicts the various aspects of the work of the U.S. Forest Service Northeastern Forest Experiment Station.

The National Archives launched the 1950 Census website on April 1, 2022. We hope you’ve had a chance to search the 1950 Census and learn more about your family history and life in the United States in 1950. The website has already had more than 1.4 million visitors, including 44 million page views and over 1.2 million names transcribed!

You can continue to help transcribe and refine our name index. Transcribing or submitting name updates helps improve the accuracy of the name index and make the records more searchable.

Because the initial name index is built on optical character recognition (OCR) technology, we know it is not 100% accurate. This is where we need your help! We encourage you to try out the 1950 Census website’s built-in transcription tool to help refine the name index. Need ideas where to start? Interested in helping with more complicated forms? While you can transcribe any name or any page within the 1950 Census, we’ve identified several specific areas where we’d like your help transcribing.

Happy Census Day! Join us for the virtual celebration at 10 am ET at http://archives.gov/1950census