Felicia Bell

Felicia Bell is the senior advisor to the director at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. A public historian and museum field leader, Bell began this position on March 2, 2020. Additionally, her Smithsonian experience has included a detail where she served as the director of public engagement for the initiative “Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past,” organized to bring together resources from across the Smithsonian to explore how Americans understand, experience, and confront racism through several critical lenses like wellness, wealth, and the arts. Previously, Bell was the director of Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum, located at the site where Mrs. Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. She has also served as the director of education and outreach at the Coastal Heritage Society in Savannah, Georgia, and held the same position at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society in Washington, D.C., where she testified before Congress for a public memorial and recognition of the enslaved and free Black craftsmen who built the U.S. Capitol. She has received numerous awards and honors including recognition by the legislature of the State of Alabama and the 2020 Citizen of the Year Award from the Montgomery Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Dr. Bell earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Savannah State University, a master of arts in historic preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design, and a doctor of philosophy degree in U.S. history from Howard University in Washington, D.C.