Ceremonial Pen Used to Sign the Voting Rights Act
Object Details
- Date
- 1965
- Medium
- Frame: metal, wood, black velour; Pen: metal, plastic; Label: ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Frame: 6 5/16 × 10 3/8 × 1 3/16 in. (16 × 26.3 × 3 cm)
- Cite As
- Ethel Lois Payne Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Avis R. Johnson.
- Caption
- When a U.S. President signs a bill, a select number of people receive pens used for the occasion. This ceremonial pen was given to journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911-1991) in recognition for her civil rights activism. The fountain pen’s metal nib connects to a black, plastic feed followed by a tapered, translucent barrel, also plastic. A black and gold frame holds the pen above a summary of the bill, Senate 1564. President Lyndon B. Johnson used this ceremonial pen to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6, 1965. The previous year, President Johnson presented Payne with a ceremonial pen at the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also in ACM’s Collection. The pens are treasured tokens of political favor.
- Accession Number
- 1991.0076.0105
- Type
- framed pen
- See more items in
- Anacostia Community Museum Collection
- Data Source
- Anacostia Community Museum
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Metadata Usage
- CC0
- Record ID
- acm_1991.0076.0105
This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Open Access page.
International media Interoperability Framework
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.