Louise Daniel Hutchinson

Louise Daniel Hutchinson (June 3, 1928 – October 12, 2014) was an American historian. She was the former Director of the Research at the Anacostia Community Museum. Growing up in Washington, D.C., Hutchinson was exposed to the Civil Rights Movement and the importance of community. Hutchinson worked closely with the African American community of Washington, D.C., and staff at the Smithsonian Institution to help build the Anacostia Community Museum. She was a historian of the Anacostia community.

Biography

Early life and education

Louise Daniel Hutchinson was born in Ridge, Maryland, to Victor Daniel and Constance Eleanor (nee Hazel), but was raised in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C. At Howard, she studied under Ralph Bunche, John Hope Franklin and E. Franklin Frazer. Soon thereafter, she married Ellsworth W. Hutchinson, Jr. and they had six children. She also worked as a substitute teacher.

Career

The Smithsonian

Hutchinson started working as a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in 1971. She researched African American portraits, such as the legacy of John Brown, and also worked on the exhibition The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution. The following year, she became an Education Research Specialist, where she worked on partnership projects between the museum and D.C. Public Schools. about the Anacostia community, The Frederick Douglass Years, Out of Africa: From West African Kingdoms to Colonization, and Black Women: Achievements Against the Odds. Hutchinson also developed the museum’s oral history program and helped found the Anacostia Historical Society. Hutchinson also focused on public engagement, providing advice and information to scholars, students, teachers, and amateur historians when many other Smithsonian scholars would not respond directly to public queries.

Death She died at the age of 86 on October 12, 2014.

Selected works Hutchinson, Louise Daniel. The Anacostia Story, 1608-1930. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press (1977). Hutchinson, Louise Daniel. Anna J. Cooper, a voice from the South. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press (1982). Hutchinson, Louise Daniel. Out of Africa: From west African kingdoms to colonization. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press (1979).