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U.S. museums, libraries collect signs of women's protests challenging Trump

by Sebastien Malo | @SebastienMalo | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 24 January 2017 19:31 GMT

A young girl uses protest signs to build a wall while taking part in the Women's March to protest Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th president of the United States close to the White House in Washington, January 21, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

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"We're very confident that these (signs) will find their way into exhibitions"

By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Homemade signs that protesters waved when marching against President Donald Trump across U.S. cities last weekend were being collected for posterity by museums and libraries on Tuesday, officials said.

The Washington D.C.-based National Museum of American History and smaller institutions said they were in the process of collecting and sorting through protest signs they now considered records of nationwide protests of historic proportions.

Women activists, outraged by Trump's campaign rhetoric and behavior they found to be especially misogynistic, spearheaded scores of marches in the United States and sympathy rallies around the world on Saturday.

The Republican Trump insulted female reporters, a female political rival and other women over their looks, and a video surfaced in which he could be heard bragging about groping women and making unwanted sexual advances.

His behavior inspired a raft of signs handcrafted by protesters, many celebrated for their creativity, some saying "Hey Trump! Women are people too" and others reading "Girls just wanna have fundamental human rights."

The New-York Historical Society, the oldest museum in New York City, said its staffers had collected some 20 signs at marches in Washington D.C. and New York City.

It hoped some of the artifacts would speak to future generations about the mood of the current era.

"They have a personal story," said Margi Hofer, who heads the museum. "We're very confident that these will find their way into exhibitions."

Among the museum's best finds, which are preserved in acid-free folders and flat-file drawers, was a sign reading: "Strong women scare boys and excite men."

The National Museum of American History dispatched its curators to hunt for signs in the downtown Washington D.C. area where marchers amassed, it said in an online statement.

A day earlier, its team of political history curators were also on site to collect materials as Trump supporters swarmed the park to witness his inauguration as the country's 45th president.

"This is part of the museum's long tradition of documenting how Americans participate in the political process," it said.

Among other institutions recording the weekend's historic events were the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's library and those of the University of Southern California.

The Newberry Library, a famed research library specializing in humanities located in Chicago, Illinois, said hundreds of messages of interest had poured in after it asked the public to donate their protest signs in Twitter messages.

The dozens of signs it had received so far added to "millions of items in (its) collection, ranging from medieval manuscripts to the signs that people marched with last Saturday," said Alex Teller, a spokesman for the library.

They will be part of a new collection focused on recording the social turmoil that has rocked the United States in recent years, including protests against racial injustice, Teller told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

"It seems like we've entered a period of time where political activism is shifting and changing and more and more people are becoming involved in protest events," he said.

"We wanted to make sure that we were documenting those shifts."

(Reporting by Sebastien Malo @sebastienmalo, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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