The Declaration’s Journey

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, an exhibition examines the Declaration of Independence's considerable impact and influence on other declarations of rights. The museum highlights how more than 100 nations, as well as rights movements around the world, integrated the Declaration's ideals into their own independence movements and features declarations from Haiti, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and Korea, as well as Native American Declarations of Sovereignty and Independence and speeches and printed materials that echo this foundational American document. Additional artifacts survey the Declaration’s history, including the chair Thomas Jefferson is believed to have used while working on the Declaration in Philadelphia in 1776,  the hard metal prison bench from which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. composed his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963, the desk at which Elizabeth Cady Stanton sat while working on The History of Woman Suffrage, and a printed copy of Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”   

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.