Save your history, museum urges blacks

Evelyn Johnson's father has never liked talking about his time in the Army during World War II. He was angry that black servicemen like him fought for freedom overseas only to come home to face discrimination, she says.

Johnson, however, now has a window into her father's experiences, having recently inherited about 30 letters he wrote his mother while stationed in North Africa and Italy.

On Saturday, Johnson learned how to best preserve the box full of letters — written in pencil, still folded in their original envelopes — at an event organized by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.