Many Voices, One Nation: A Cultural Companion Reflection at the Smithsonian

When you walk into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, you expect to be awed.

And we were.

We stood before the Star-Spangled Banner, enormous and fragile, carrying the weight of centuries. We were swept back to childhood by Dorothy’s ruby slippers, impossibly small and still shimmering with magic. We paused at Clara Barton’s early ambulance—not a vehicle as we imagine one now, but a simple covered wagon with a red cross painted on its side—reminded that courage and care often begin humbly. We were surprised and delighted by the artistry and engineering of the lowrider Gypsy Rose, and, of course, completely gobsmacked by the elegance, symbolism, and sheer presence of the First Ladies’ dresses.

These are the moments people come for. These are the objects we remember from school trips and postcards and collective memory.

And yet.

It was none of these that stayed with me in the hours after we left.

Instead, it was a small seal, tucked into an exhibition titled Many Voices, One Nation, that lingered quietly but insistently.

The seal tells a lesser-known story about the origins of the Great Seal of the United States. In 1776, artist Pierre Eugène Du Simitière proposed a design that reflected the people already shaping this new country: an English rose, an Irish harp, a Scottish thistle, a French fleur-de-lis, a Dutch lion, and a German eagle. A visual acknowledgment that America was never meant to be a single-origin story.

The Continental Congress ultimately chose the American bald eagle instead—but they kept Du Simitière’s motto:

E Pluribus Unum.
Out of many, one.

It’s a phrase we see on coins and buildings, often without a second thought. But standing there, reading it in context, it felt less like a slogan and more like a promise—one we are still struggling to keep.

This is why museums like this matter so deeply. Not just for spectacle or nostalgia, but for grounding. I found myself thinking that all our national leaders should walk these halls regularly—not to celebrate power, but to remember purpose. To remember that immigration, diversity, and pluralism were not accidental outcomes of our history, but foundational ideas.

And all schoolchildren should be learning this phrase in civics class—not as vocabulary to memorize, but as a concept to wrestle with. What does it actually take to build one nation out of many voices? What responsibilities does that place on us?

Would our forefathers be proud of every choice we’ve made along the way? Almost certainly not. Our history is marked by contradictions, exclusions, and painful failures alongside progress and hope. But the American experiment was never meant to be finished. It was meant to evolve—to be questioned, corrected, expanded.

The future remains open. Possibility still exists. And sometimes, it’s not the largest flag or the most famous artifact that reminds us of that—but a small seal, quietly asking us to do better.

As a Cultural Companion, these are the moments I cherish most: when history doesn’t shout, but whispers—and stays with you long after you’ve gone.