Fath Davis Ruffins

Fath Davis Ruffins is Curator of African American History and Culture in the Division of Cultural and Community Life at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) at the Smithsonian Institution. She has been a historian and curator at NMAH since 1981. Between 1988 and 2005, she was the head of the Collection of Advertising History at the NMAH Archives Center. She has curated or consulted on several major African American exhibitions and on many community history projects around the country. Her early publications were among the first to explore the history of African American preservation efforts. In 2018, her most recent publication, “Building Homes for Black History: Museum Founders, Founding Directors, and Pioneers, 1915–1995,” won the G. Wesley Johnson Award from the National Council on Public History for the best article in the journal The Public Historian.