Library of Congress's Blog, page 100

Free to Use and Reuse: The Story of Abraham Lincoln

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President Abraham Lincoln (center) with Allan Pinkerton (left) and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand at Antietam, Md., October 1862. Photograph by Alexander Gardner.

Last week, the Library announced a new online presentation of Abraham Lincoln’s papers from his time as a lawyer, congressman and the 16th president. The refreshed digital collection follows a multiyear project to update the Library’s previous presentation with additional features, full-color images and new material.

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Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

To celebrate, we’re highlighting items from the Library’s vast Lincoln holdings on our home page this month. Browse through original documents and images including the earliest known draft of the Gettysburg Address, handwritten by Lincoln; photos of Lincoln on the battlefield; a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation; and much more.

The items are from Lincoln’s papers as well as from the Prints and Photographs Division, the Library’s Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, the Civil War Sheet Music Collection and elsewhere. They have no known copyright restrictions—meaning you can use them as you wish.

“The thousands of manuscripts, documents and images that tell the story of Abraham Lincoln’s life are an invaluable resource, and more people than ever can study these primary sources from the Library of Congress,” says Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress. “More than 150 years after Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, his model of leadership and public service continues to inspire us as a nation.”

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Life mask of Lincoln. Clark Mills, artist. February 1865.

Here are some of the items we’re showcasing on the home page:

Lincoln’s printed copy of his second inaugural address. Historians believe he read from this copy to deliver his inauguration speech on March 4, 1865. For the first time, this document is included with the collection online.

A photograph by Alexander Gardner of Lincoln delivering the second inaugural address on the east portico of the U.S. Capitol.

A picture of Lincoln with his son Tad taken in Gardner’s Washington, D.C., studio on February 5, 1865, the final photo session of Lincoln’s life.

A February 1865 life mask from the Library’s Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana.

Scroll down for more examples and write a note in the comments section of this post if you find an interesting way to use a digitized image!

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Lincoln on the battlefield in Antietam, Md., October 1862. Photograph by Alexander Gardner.

 

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Portrait of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner from the final photo session of Lincoln’s life, February 5, 1865.

 

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An illustration of Lincoln’s funeral from Harper’s Weekly, May 13, 1865.

 

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Broadside advertising $100,000 reward for the capture of Lincoln assassination conspirators.

Veterans Day: Struggling to Build a New Life after War

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

Every country has found itself face to face with this situation at the close of a great war. From Rome under Caesar to France under Napoleon down even to our own Civil War, the problems arose as to what could be done with the soldiers to be mustered out of military service.

—Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane to President Woodrow Wilson, 1918

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U.S. Employment Service poster promoting employment of veterans. Poster artist Gordon Grant.

What to do with returning soldiers—how to reintegrate them into peacetime society—was a central challenge for the U.S. government after World War I.

Of course, it was not the first time the U.S. had waded into the waters of international conflict: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War were all precedents. Yet the Great War represented the first time the nation fully harnessed its industrial might and political capital while also drafting a military to fight overseas. During the Civil War, roughly 8 percent of the military was conscripted, compared with 72 percent during World War I.

Ultimately, the First World War helped spur activism on behalf of and by veterans while also laying the groundwork for a 20th-century disability-rights movement. It is possible to trace the formation of a vibrant veterans’ movement by exploring the Library’s exhibit “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I,” holdings in the Prints and Photographs Division and the papers of Woodrow Wilson in the Manuscript Division.

Civilian gratitude for the sacrifices of the American Expeditionary Force shared space with fear regarding the kind of values and infirmities veterans might carry home from abroad. They returned to an economy lumbering toward recession, a militant labor force willing to strike for better pay and benefits and a public anxious about political radicalism, race and immigration.

In some cases, government actions helped to darken the national mood. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ginned up antipathy toward immigrants and unions, for example, by painting each with the brush of political radicalism, jailing thousands and deporting hundreds, including the anarchist political activist Emma Goldman. Organized labor saw the brief gains it made during the war evaporate; immigrants witnessed Congress pass restrictions on immigration that would remain for decades.

Upon discharge, veterans received $60, just enough to purchase new clothes. Even with the freshest of threads, returning WWI veterans encountered great obstacles in such an environment. By April 1919, an estimated 40 percent or so of veterans remained unemployed.

None of this is to say the government ignored veterans entirely. As the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act to promote vocational training in agriculture, industrial trades and home economics. The following year, the government created the United States Employment Service to place workers in jobs created by mobilization and aid returning veterans in finding work.

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U.S. Employment Service/Red Cross poster promoting employment of veterans. Poster artist Dan Smith.

Ultimately, the service referred 6 million workers for roughly 10 million job openings, but proved less helpful to veterans once funding diminished after the war. The Smith-Hughes Act also struggled to live up to its promises: Veterans complained of distant and unhelpful vocational counselors, among other problems.

For black veterans especially, the transition proved harrowing. Emboldened by military service and seeking to lay claim to the rights of citizenship, many black veterans endured harassment by white racists and even death; lynching doubled in the years between 1917 and 1919. During summer 1919, cities across the country, including Washington D.C., experienced horrible race riots that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage and over 100 deaths. Governments, state and federal, did little to assuage the inequality and indignities suffered by returning black soldiers.

Realizing that veterans needed a political voice, a cadre of military officers established the American Legion in 1919. It was one of nearly 175 organizations established in the wake of the war to represent veterans, but it quickly became the most politically powerful veterans lobby in the nation. Within its first year it drew 843,000 members; by 1931, it claimed over a million.

The organization’s advocacy for veterans, particularly its efforts to draw attention to their sacrifices, raised public awareness regarding military service and its effects. “The first duty of the American Legion,” national commander Hanford MacNider argued, “is to see that those men who came back from their service, blinded, maimed, broken in health and spirit, who must live the war forever in their homes through the country, get a square deal from the Government they fought for.”

Critics took the organization to task for its hypernationalism and militant anticommunism, which sometimes targeted immigrants and union activists and contributed to civil liberties violations. The legion also reasserted racial hierarchies—local branches were allowed to exclude African-American veterans—and failed to truly advocate for black soldiers.

Still, the American Legion’s full-throated advocacy and political influence helped to persuade the government in 1921 to establish the United States Veterans Bureau, a precursor to today’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Though the bureau struggled with accusations of waste, graft and corruption, this imperfect beginning did establish veterans as a legitimate political voice in American politics and set the tone for future efforts to reintegrate returning soldiers into the body politic.

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

New Book: American Libraries

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division, about “American Libraries 1730–1950,” published this fall by W.W. Norton and Company in association with the Library of Congress .

You can find libraries at the heart of many different communities, from the center of a town or a college campus to a shared toolbox at a construction site. The new book “American Libraries,” written by architectural historian Kenneth Breisch, takes you on a tour of the interior spaces as well as the public facades of libraries throughout the United States from 1730 to 1950. By way of introduction, here’s a sampler of the more than 450 photographs and architectural designs that fill the volume to the brim.

The Library Company of Philadelphia represents the world of private libraries featured in the first chapter. Designed in 1876 by Addison Hutton, multistory iron stacks house the books. I’d love to explore those shelves.

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The Library Company of Philadelphia’s stacks. Photograph by Jack Boucher, 1962.

A panoramic view featuring the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University confirms the centrality of a library on a college campus. The academic libraries chapter describes various plans and styles chronologically: early, linear alcove, panoptic, classicism (Low Library), eclecticism and modern.

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Low Memorial Library of Columbia University. Photograph by Haines Photo Co., 1909.

The chapter on government libraries features the Library of Congress, from its origins in the United States Capitol to the three buildings that comprise the national library today on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

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Aerial view of Capitol Hill featuring the three buildings of the Library of Congress—Madison, Jefferson and Adams—in the right foreground. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, 2007.

Public libraries are so numerous in the United States that they fill the final three chapters of the book, starting with large urban public libraries from coast to coast.

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Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, 2011.

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Tower of the Central Library in Los Angeles. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The functional requirements of a public library are clearly delineated in their floor plans: a gracious or inspiring entry area, a space to serve children, a classroom for teaching and study, a reference and reading area and the book stacks. Architect Henry Hobson Richardson introduced the Romanesque Revival style for libraries in the late 1800s, which provided grand, distinctive exteriors as seen in the image below.

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First-floor plan for the Scoville Institute, now the Oak Park, Ill., Public Library. Photograph of an architectural drawing by Patton and Fisher, ca. 1886.

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Exterior of the Scoville Institute, now the Oak Park, Ill., Public Library. Photograph of an engraving, ca. 1890.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No book on library architecture would be complete without a close look at the Carnegie era of the early 1900s. Andrew Carnegie and his foundation endowed more than 1,600 library buildings in almost every state and territory of the United States. Lighting fixtures might seem to be the focus for the photograph below. But the real joy for a public library is tables crowded with children of many ages, ready to read.

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Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, ca. 1900–05.

From the book’s foreword by the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden:

American Libraries 1730-1950” is the 11th and last title in the visual sourcebook series launched by the Library of Congress in collaboration with W. W. Norton in 2003. Bringing this series to conclusion with a book about libraries—their functional designs as well as their beauty and value to society—is especially fitting for us as the national library of the United States.

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Read the Library of Congress Press Release: New Book Highlights Architecture of U.S. Libraries.
The Norton/ Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks series covers barns, canals, theaters, lighthouses, bridges, public markets, Eero Saarinen buildings, dams, cemeteries and railroad stations.

World War I: The Great War in Song

This is a guest post by Mark Hartsell, publications editor in the Office of Communications. It first appeared in “Veterans on the Homefront,” the November–December issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The entire issue is available online.

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In America, no song is more associated with the Great War than George M. Cohan’s “Over There.”

The Library preserves recordings and sheet music of thousands of tunes from World War I.

The Great War inspired thousands of songs, music that a century later still evokes a world at war, families separated, loved ones lost: “Over There,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning.”

Recordings of many of those songs are collected on the National Jukebox, a Library of Congress website that makes historical sound recordings from 1901 to 1925 available to the public for free. The songs of the World War I period, and the recordings of them in the Jukebox, reflect the spirit of nations going to war and the men and women caught up in the conflict.

One of them was Ernestine Schumann-Heink, a Czech-born operatic singer who moved to the United States, became an American citizen and, later, strongly supported the war effort on recordings found on the Jukebox—“Just Before the Battle, Mother,” “When the Boys Come Home,” a vocal version of “Taps.”

The site also features the Nora Bayes recording that made “Over There” a hit. Listen to it here:

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Hundreds more war-related songs by other artists are also accessible: “Goodbye Broadway, Hello France!,” “Lafayette (We Hear You Calling),” “It’s a Long Way to Berlin, But We’ll Get There!,” “When You Come Back, and You Will Come Back, There’s the Whole World Waiting for You.”

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“The Men Behind the Men Over There,” by Leo Friedman and Ralph G. Williams.

When America entered the war, popular songwriting and the music-publishing industry centered in Tin Pan Alley had reached their zenith. Over the years, the Library acquired more than 14,000 examples of sheet music related to the war and eventually made them available online.

Those songs collectively reveal America at war, its confidence (“The Kaiser Will Be Wiser When the Yankees Take Berlin”), its strength (“The Yanks with the Tanks”), its acknowledgment of war’s cost (“Shrapnel Blues”) and even its humor (“Would You Rather be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?”).

In America, no song is more associated with the Great War than George M. Cohan’s “Over There.” The online collection features original sheet music for “Over There” and dozens of the spin-offs inspired by Cohan’s enormously popular tune: “Over Here!,” “The Boys Over There,” “The Girls Over There,” “The Men Behind the Men Over There,” “When I Send You a Picture of Berlin, You’ll Know It’s Over, ‘Over There.’ ”

The reality behind the music, of course, was a brutal conflict, waged with revolutionary weapons, that inflicted tens of millions of casualties and created untold misery.

Lt. Col. John McRae served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915. Presiding over the funeral of a comrade killed in the battle, he noticed how quickly poppies grew around the graves of the fallen.

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“In Flanders Fields,” adapted by Edith Groff, John McCrae and Edna Howard.

Moved, McRae wrote “In Flanders Fields,” a poem set to music by many songwriters during the war (and which later inspired the symbolic “remembrance poppies” still worn today to commemorate war dead).

The Library’s World War I sheet-music collection holds dozens of versions, a somber reminder of millions of young lives lost a century ago:

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place …

“We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.”

Pic of the Week: Noted Filmmaker Highlights the Value of America’s Film Heritage

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Photo by Shawn Miller.

Celebrated filmmaker Christopher Nolan, left, joined Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in the Coolidge Auditorium on November 2 in a conversation about his personal experiences directing, writing and producing some of the most popular and acclaimed movies in cinematic history, including his latest, the World War II epic “Dunkirk.” He also spoke about the importance of film preservation and commented on topics including the value of continuing to shoot film in a post-digital age and the theatrical experience of it.

The event was one of several the Library is hosting this week to further its mission to celebrate and preserve America’s audiovisual heritage. Nolan is a member of the National Film Preservation Board and has been outspoken about the importance of film to our cultural history.

“As a member of our National Film Preservation Board, Christopher Nolan is a strong advocate for the preservation of this important part of our cultural history,” said Hayden upon announcing the event. “We’re proud to work with him and the entire film community—including writers, directors, actors, studio executives, theater owners and archivists—to make a lasting contribution to film preservation.”

Native American Heritage Month: Celebrating Sarah Winnemucca

November is National Native American Heritage Month. This annual recognition of the contributions of Native Americans to our national culture began in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan proclaimed November 23–30 of that year “American Indian Week.” In 1990, President George H. W. Bush extended the observance to an entire month. Every year since then, U.S. presidents have called for celebrating Native-Americans during the month of November, urging all the peoples of the United States to learn more about Native-American culture.

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Sarah Winnemucca’s statue in the Capitol Visitor Center. Photo by Judith Nierman.

In that spirit, we thought it would be a good time to highlight the remarkable story of Sarah Winnemucca. A powerful advocate for her people, she is also considered to be the first Native-American woman to secure a copyright and publish in the English language. In honor of her achievements, a six-foot-four bronze likeness of Winnemucca, sculpted by Benjamin Victor, was unveiled in 2005 in Emancipation Hall, the majestic gathering space in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.

Born in 1844 as Thocmetony, or “Shell Flower,” Winnemucca was a member of the Northern Piute tribe from an area that would later become the state of Nevada. The tribe had its first contact with white settlers shortly after her birth. Her grandfather, Chief Truckee, sought an amicable relationship with them, taking Winnemucca and other relatives to California to live and work among settlers when Winnemucca was a child. By age 10, she had learned English and Spanish. When she was 13, she lived in the household of William Ormsby of Genoa, Nevada, and later attended school briefly at the Convent of Notre Dame in San Jose.

In the meantime, the gold rush to California and the settlers it attracted to the West had undercut the Piute’s traditional way of life. In 1866, Winnemucca’s tribe asked her to use her English-speaking ability—a rare skill among her people—to ask the U.S. Army to stop the depredation of Piute bands by settlers. She agreed and went on to become an intermediary between her people and the U.S. government. She served variously as a translator, an interpreter and a teacher in interactions between her people and white settlers—sometimes incurring hostility for her approach to doing so.

Winnemucca published and copyrighted “Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims” in 1883 during a lecture tour of the East Coast in which she gave hundreds of speeches about her people’s lack of land, sustenance and rights. She had earlier traveled to Washington, D.C., to press President Rutherford B. Hayes to help.

In “Life Among the Piutes,” Winnemucca uses tales of hardship and human interest to persuade readers to pressure the U.S. government to change its Piute policy. The final chapter includes a petition to Congress for this purpose.

Winnemucca’s husband, Lewis H. Hopkins, helped Winnemucca by gathering material for the book at the Library of Congress. Educator Mary Peabody Mann edited the draft manuscript, and she and her sister, activist Elizabeth Peabody, hosted Winnemucca in their Boston home during Winnemucca’s lecture tour.

When Winnemucca returned to Nevada, she founded the Peabody Indian School, where she taught children in their native language and in English. Despite some success, the school suffered from financial shortfalls, including lack of support from the government, which demanded assimilation in Indian education. In 1887, the school was forced to close.

Four years later, Winnemucca died at her sister’s home in Henry’s Lake, Nevada, at age 47. The New York Times published news of her death on the front page of its October 27, 1891, issue, citing Winnemucca as the “most remarkable woman among the Piutes of Nevada.”

“It has been written that Sarah died believing she had not accomplished much—unconvinced that her life had an impact,” former senator Harry Reid of Nevada said at the dedication of Winnemucca’s statute in 2005. “I think if she could see us today, she might change her mind.”

For more information about National Native American Heritage Month, visit the newly updated web portal of the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The portal is a collaborative project to pay tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans and to recognize their important contributions to the United States.

New Online: Rhode Island Folklife Project Collection

This is a guest post by folklife specialist Ann Hoog.

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A Rhode Island woman puts the finishing touch on a Ukrainian Easter egg, or “psyanky,” demonstrating one of the traditions documented in the Rhode Island Folklife Project Collection.

The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce the online release of the Rhode Island Folklife Project Collection.

Between 1977 and 1997, the AFC conducted 25 ethnographic field projects and cultural surveys in various parts of the United States, resulting in a rich body of visual and aural documentation of our nation’s cultural heritage. In celebration of its 40th anniversary in 2016, the AFC set the goal of making all the survey collections available online.

So far, in addition to the Rhode Island project, the AFC has released the Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection, the Montana Folklife Survey Collection and the South-Central Georgia Folklife Project Collection. By the time all the collections are online, over a quarter-million new items will have been added to the Library’s digital collections.

The Rhode Island Folklife Project Collection resulted from an ethnographic field project conducted from July 15 to December 31, 1979, by the American Folklife Center in cooperation with the Rhode Island Heritage Commission, the Rhode Island Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Historical Society.

The collection consists of approximately six linear feet of manuscripts and ephemera, 200 sound recordings and 17,000 photographs documenting the ethnic, regional and occupational traditions of Rhode Island, especially the ethnic arts of the African-American, French-Canadian, Greek, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Lithuanian, Narragansett, Polish, Portuguese and Ukrainian communities.

Fieldworkers for the American Folklife Center created the documentation. Longtime AFC staffer (and native Rhode Islander!) Peter Bartis took initial photos before the survey started. The other fieldworkers were Michael E. Bell, Thomas A. Burns, Carl Fleischhauer, Henry Horenstein, Geraldine Niva Johnson and Kenneth S. Goldstein, the project’s director.

The collection’s photographs cover subjects such as houses, barns, beaches, yards, gardens, orchards, churches, cemeteries, street scenes, landscapes, seascapes and religious processions. Many photos document occupational culture, including photos of textile mills, sawmills, markets, restaurants, Jamaican migrant workers, woodworking, boat building, fishing, clamming, gunsmithing and taxidermy. Others feature recreational subjects, including baseball, horseshoes, sailing, picnics, arts and crafts, sand sculptures, music and dance.

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Two boys at a French-Canadian family picnic in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Photo by Henry Horenstein.

Among the photographs are more than 9,000 by photographer Henry Horenstein, one of the fieldworkers. From occupational settings to picnics to Pawtucket Red Sox games, Horenstein’s wonderfully framed photos are a highlight of the collection.

Sound recordings include interviews, plays, music, dance and church services, such as a September 16, 1979, service at Mother Key’s Memorial Church of God in Christ in Newport, Rhode Island. Listen to it here:

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In addition to this church service recording, the collection includes an interview with Mother Key (Reverend Margie Key), a radio broadcast of one of her sermons and more than 300 related photographs.

Additional Rhode Island Folklife Project Collection manuscripts, small publications, ephemera, planning documents and more are available in the American Folklife Center’s reading room at the Library of Congress.

Celebrating and Advocating #Preservation of America’s Audiovisual Heritage

This is a guest post by Gayle Osterberg, director of the Office of Communications.

The advent of recorded sound and moving images has enriched our lives beyond measure. We have heard the voices of presidents and shared the beauty of piano concertos. We have watched tragedies unfold worldwide, and in our own backyards. We’ve been transported by movies that captivate, beguile, frighten and inspire. We have absorbed voices of affirmation, division, satire and song. In short, we have come to understand our world a little bit better.

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A technician at the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center inspects a historical film reel. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library is home to more than 5 million audiovisual works, including more than 3.6 million sound recordings and more than 1.7 million film, television and video recordings, representing more than a century of audiovisual production. They include newsreels, popular song, independent film, early field recordings, blockbuster movies—every type of recorded sound and moving image you can think of.

Collecting and preserving these works—each one a mini time capsule—is an enormous mission. As technology continues to evolve, so must collecting and preservation practices. And as the volume of these creations intensifies, it really does take a community of individuals and institutions to make sure future generations will be able to access these windows into 20th-century—and now 21st-century—life.

The Library this week is hosting multiple events focused on celebrating and furthering these efforts, in collaboration with some of our preservation partners, and we invite you to follow along in a few different ways.

Follow along on social media: We will be sharing fun facts and tidbits about our audiovisual collections and preservation efforts all week on Twitter @LibraryCongress and Facebook.
Watch live programs on Facebook and YouTube: We are streaming programs on radio preservation and in celebration of public broadcasting’s 50th anniversary.
Nominate your favorite sound recordings and films: Cast a vote for songs or films for the National Recording Registry and the National Film Registry. Remember—they must be at least 10 years old.

More about what is happening at the Library this week:

The American Film Institute this week celebrates its 50th anniversary, and we are so grateful for its partnership over the years. AFI was founded as a national organization to focus attention on film preservation, to actively seek motion picture materials in need of preservation and to work in partnership with existing archives—like the Library of Congress—to secure permanent homes for these national treasures.

The Library’s collection includes more than 37,000 titles acquired in collaboration with AFI. These collections include original nitrate negatives and masters from major studios such as Columbia, RKO and Universal. Classics from early days of American film are among these collections: “Citizen Kane,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “All Quiet on the Western Front”—to name a scant few.

The collection also features an important corner in film history: films with all-black casts, originally intended for black audiences. These collections span 1918–1955 and range from drama to musical variety shows. The Library has partnered with Kino Classics to provide restored versions of many of these films to modern-day audiences.

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Christopher Nolan

Also this week, the Library hosts celebrated filmmaker Christopher Nolan for a special conversation with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Nolan is a member of the National Film Preservation Board and has been outspoken on the importance of film in our cultural history.

On Friday, two events at the Library will be live-streamed and offer a window into radio preservation and the history and impact of public broadcasting.

The ephemeral nature of radio, the lack of technology to preserve early broadcasts, neglect, emerging audio formats and underrepresentation of diverse genres are contributing factors in the crisis facing the preservation of America’s radio heritage. More than 300 of the nation’s top scholars and archivists will gather in and around Washington, D.C., throughout the week to address the state of radio preservation and what steps can be taken.

On Friday, the Library joins our partner in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, WGBH, in presenting four hours of programming celebrating the pioneers of public television with “Preserving Public Broadcasting at 50 Years.” The event will feature Cokie Roberts, Judy Woodruff, Jim Lehrer, Dick Cavett and many of the founders of classic public programming, including David Fanning (creator, “Frontline), Hugo Morales (co-founder, Radio Bilingüe), Bill Siemering (co-founder, creator of “All Things Considered) and many more.

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A selection of radio microphones. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Follow along throughout the week on Twitter @LibraryCongress #preservation, and tune in live on Facebook and YouTube to these events.

Preserving America’s Radio Heritage

Friday, Nov. 3, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m. ET

Facebook: facebook.com/libraryofcongress

YouTube (with captions): youtube.com/Libraryofcongress
Preserving Public Broadcasting at 50 Years

Friday, Nov. 3, 2–6 p.m. ET

Facebook: facebook.com/libraryofcongress

YouTube (with captions): youtube.com/Libraryofcongress

Pic of the Week: Caring for the Library’s Oldest Poster

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Photo by Shawn Miller.

Library of Congress conservators use enzymes and small hand tools to gently remove the cloth backing from the verso of a giant poster created to advertise a 19th-century circus. The treatment is part of an effort to preserve the poster, the earliest surviving one in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division.

Titled “Five Celebrated Clowns Attached to Sands, Nathans and Company’s Circus,” the poster came into the Library’s collections as a result of being deposited with a copyright registration in 1856. Measuring almost 12 by 7 feet, it showcases five nearly life-size clowns.

Its size suggests that it was meant to be visible at a distance when adhered to the side of a building or a barn. Joseph W. Morse, who devised a system for printing theatrical posters from large blocks of wood, designed the poster. It was originally printed on 10 paper panels in four colors using 40 hand-carved wood blocks.

The Sands, Nathans and Company’s Circus operated from about 1855 to 1863 and was noted for its two performing elephants, Victoria and Albert.

The conservators shown here are, from left, Emilie Duncan, Claire Valero and Bailey Kinsky.

New Online: Scary Stories and More

This is a guest post by Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center. An earlier version was published on “ Folklife Today ,” the center’s blog.

[image error]With Halloween just around the corner, the Library of Congress has released a new web guide to Halloween resources at the Library. It features select materials on the folk customs, fine art, pop culture and literature of Halloween and Día de Muertos, or “Day of the Dead,” observed in Mexico and elsewhere in North America on November 1.

Library collections range from classic films like “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Nosferatu” and “Carnival of Souls” to recordings of storytellers spinning yarns about ghosts and witches. There is documentation of spooky séances with the great Harry Houdini, iconic artwork of Edward Gorey, essays by well-known scholars such as Jack Santino, photographic documentation of Halloween traditions . . . and, of course, thousands of wonderful books. The new web page will act as your guide through the Library’s spookier side!

If you plan to be in Washington, D.C., between October 27 and November 1, consider also checking out our pop-up exhibition of some of the best of these scary treasures. The event is called LOC Halloween: Chambers of Mystery, and it’s sure to add both cheer and chills to your All Hallows season.

For now, let me share with you “Married to the Devil,” an outstanding tale of the supernatural from the collections of the American Folklife Center. You can listen to it in the audio player and read along with my own transcription, below that.

The story comes from Bessie Jones (1902–84), a singer and teller whose extensive repertoire was recorded by Alan Lomax. His organization, the Association for Cultural Equity, has a nice biography of Jones online if you want to know more. For the present, let’s just say that she was an extraordinary talent, a leader of her Georgia coastal community and a cultural ambassador for her traditions. In 1982, she became part of the first annual group of National Heritage Fellows from the National Endowment for the Arts, a particularly distinguished group. Of course, Lomax’s extensive documentation of Jones is part of our archive here at the American Folklife Center.

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Bessie Jones (front) performing with the Sea Island Singers at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1960. Alan Lomax Collection.

Transcribing stories from people whose dialect is different from your own can be a challenge. Even Lomax, who knew her quite well, had to ask for clarification at one point! In most cases, I’m pretty sure I captured what she’s saying, though a few phrases could go either way: is she saying “yard dog” or “guard dog?” These moments of uncertainty even affected the title of the story. While the folks at the Association for Cultural Equity called it “Story of a Girl Who Got Engaged to the Devil,” I’m reasonably sure they go through with the wedding, so I decided to call it “Married to the Devil” instead.

“Married to the Devil” is a version of one of the most widespread magical tales in African-American tradition. In most American versions, the person who needs to escape the Devil is a man, and the helper is the Devil’s daughter. In this unusual version, the person escaping is the Devil’s newly married wife, and the helper is—well, let’s just say “it’s complicated!” A nice aspect of the story is that Bessie Jones gives Alan Lomax a little lesson in interpretation at the end. It’s one that I suspect a lot of African-Americans of her era would agree with. The fact that the story carries wisdom with both religious and practical applications may help explain why it was so popular with that community.

My transcription style is one that tries to keep some of the texture of oral performance. Rather than just organizing into paragraphs, I’ve made the unit of transcription the spoken line, bounded by pauses or other segment markers. In this, I follow some of my teachers in folklore, anthropology and linguistics, though I’m sure any deficiencies are purely my own fault.

Representing reported speech, which Jones only sometimes indicated with phrases like “say” or “she said,” was a challenge. I settled on using quotation marks throughout. But when the rooster sings, I used the block-quote function to set the singing off more fully from the plain text: a breakthrough into performance within the performance!

In the end, my goal was to represent how Bessie Jones told the tale, mainly for the benefit of listeners who might not catch the words of her dialect without some effort. So please listen to Bessie Jones tell the story, and scroll through my transcription as a form of subtitles.

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This girl, she was…a girl, they say

She THOUGHT that she was so pretty.

Everybody always told her she was pretty.

And she just had all…she just was IT, you know.

And her parents was rich and everything, and had plenty.

And she was their only one, and she had plenty.

So she told her mother that she was going to marry the prettiest man in the world,

That she wouldn’t be made ashamed nowhere, you know.

So, her mother told her, says: “Uh-huh. All right.”

And she wanted the prettiest man in the world.

Everybody come along and tried to marry this gal, and she said “No, no. No, no.”

So the Devil, he knows, you know.

The Devil made himself pretty, which he ARE pretty.

He made himself most beautified and charming,

Magnificent, you know, to look at, see. Very easy on the eyes.

He come up to the door

And all dressed up, you know,

He knew how to charm her, you see.

He come up there to the house, and he had his big rubber-tired buggy, you know,

They had buggies in those days…a fine buggy, and his…a fine horse.

His harness, it looked as silver to her.

Everything was charming to her eye…you know, he KNOW what to do.

And the buggy, it looked like the spokes was gold.

Red, Lord, it was just beautiful.

Whoo! And he was just IT!

He stepped out of there with all his diamonds and everything,

And all his glittering pins, whoo!

And he had his, his charm from head to feet.

And those pants he had on,

Looked like you could shave yourself with that crease in it, you know.

Oh, he was set a…he was set aside!

So that time, she seed him.

And all those charms, that’s went all through her,

Cause he knew how to do it.

So she said, “momma, this is the prettiest man in the world!”

“Look at…he’s stopping at this house, look AT him!”

And so, they looked at him.

And so, said, “sure is a pretty man!”

So he come to the door, and he talk and he talk

And he wanted to see the girl, and so all that,

So then, she walked OUT, you know,

She wanted to see HIM,

Let him see HER.

She’s all dressed to kill.

She sit and talk with him, and talk and talk.

So, he was after due to ask her to marry him,

She was ready, cause she didn’t want nobody else to get him.

Said she would marry him.

All right, said, “you’re ready to marry.”

“What we have to do to get married right now?”

“You got the preacher?”

Brought him back there, and they MARRIED.

She had to go home with him.

He had such a fine home.

He told her all about his nice home,

How beautiful it was,

And all…he just told her everything,

And she could look at him and tell he was all right.

And so they started out.

She left mother and everything that day,

And started on out.

And went through beautiful towns.

And seen most pretty homes.

She said, “Ooh, I wish that…I hope…”

“I HOPE my home be pretty like that.”

He said, “Ye-e-e-s-s-s, be prettier than that!

Prettier than that!”

Every town they go through,

There were big places seen,

She’d wish about it,

He’d say “yours be prettier than that.

Prettier than that, don’t worry.

Prettier than that.”

So finally, she comes to get into the country,

And missing houses,

And she wasn’t looking at him then,

She was waiting to see another town

Or another pretty house, or something.

She could see a smoke from far away,

And quite naturally know there was a town, somewhere.

And that’s goin’ on, and goin’, and goin’, and goin’,

And she wasn’t even noticing.

After a while, she noticed that she began to, you know, jerk up and down,

That way, like some bumpin’, and she looked to see how bumpy, you know,

How the road wasn’t ridin’ smooth no more.

She looked round, and then he done turned.

Two great big old horns up on his head,

Two great big red eyes, a wide mouth,

And lookin’ at…she looked at his hands,

He looked like that…an old Devil complete.

His horse was a grasshopper,

The Devil’s buggy was a road cart.

[Alan Lomax: A what?]

It done turned into a road cart. You know, a road cart.

See, that’s why she was bouncing so.

Then she sat there.

She was scared to death, too far from home to look back.

Didn’t know what to do.

Just sat right there, she was that scared.

Rolled on to his home,

Got out…he didn’t even tell her to get out

She just got on out.

Well, she stepped out the thing with a cry,

She didn’t know what to do.

So the Devil’s wife, she seed ‘em,

She come to the door and she called her,

Said “girl,” said “I know my husband fooled you down here.”

Said “this is the Devil’s place.”

Said “he’s…my husband’s the Devil.”

Oh, she was so outdone.

She told her he’d fooled her

And told her, says, “I know,”

Says, “That’s what he do”

“He fools people.”

“So if you want to get away,”

“And,” says, “I know you do,”

Say, “I want to help you get away,”

“I’m going to tell you HOW to get away.”

“So you go out there to the lot,”

“And you’ll see two horses.”

Say, “now, two of them horses, both those horses,”

“Comin’ in to the…gate.”

“And one of those horses gonna say ‘catch me’”

“And the other horse gonna say ‘don’t catch me.’”

And say, “and I’m going to give you a piece of iron, a grain of wheat, and one drop of water.”

Say, “you go on out to the lot,”

“And when you get there, and meet these horses…”

Say, “you see the big lot?”

She go, “yeah”

Say, “you get the horse that say ‘DON’T catch me.’”

Say, “when you get…when you go up that road,”

“You get up the road,” say “you…about five miles,”

Say, “you’ll see big signs all the way,”

“Every five miles, it’s marked.”

Say, “and you get about five miles,”

Say, “you…drop this grain of wheat.”

“And you go, and you get five miles further”

“Then you drop this iron,”

Say, “and the next five miles, you drop this water.”

All right, so, she said, “and you’ll get back home.”

You know, being taught how not to follow the Devil.

All right, she went out back to the lot,

And the horses come up to the gate,

One said “catch me,” and one said “don’t catch me.”

(Other said “catch me,” said “don’t catch me.”)

So she got on the horse that said “don’t catch me.”

She got on him.

And boy!

Her and that horse, that horse went on by then

When the word was “don’t catch me.” He MEANT that,

“Don’t catch me” when [she] get on, so he GOES.

And he went to going.

Old Devil’s ROOSTER’s now, was the only guard dog they have, you know.

The rooster he was walking around there,

Great big steps is, “clomp, clomp.”

He sees she’s gone.

He sees the horse is gone.

He went on out to the Devil’s workshop out there,

The Devil out there was out workin’ in the workshop,

Bam-nm, Bam-nm, Bam-nm, Bam-nm, knocking on iron, tin,

He’s a workin’.

Old rooster he come out there

He says to the Devil, he says:

That young lady you brought here is gone awaaaaay!

Old Devil heard nothin’, he’s noisy, he ain’t heard it, didn’t hear.

Rooster flutters up:

That young lady you brought here is gone awaaaaay!

He THOUGHT he understood it. He stopped to listen.

Old rooster crowed again:

That young lady you brought here is gone awaaaaay!

Ha, he’s thrown everything down, he runs to the lot

And there was his Don’t Catch Me gone!

He got on Catch Me.

And HIM and Catch Me, HIM and Catch Me got behind her,

And when she got to about five miles,

This one wheat, done turned into a great wheat field

And he had to go back home to get his wheat-cutter and cut it down

To see how to get the horse through there,

So he cut he cut that wheat down, and HIM and old Catch Me,

They was gone, they was gone.

So they got way up the road, and there up sets a GREAT big thing,

Well, it was so high, well, he couldn’t hardly get no way to get over it,

Couldn’t get around it.

So he had to go back. That was the iron bridge.

He had to go back home and get his iron saw and saw that bridge in two

He sawed, he sawed, he got the bridge sawed in two.

And then he pulled out behind her again.

And HIM and that horse, they got way up there and see that ocean of water

That one drop, it made an ocean of water.

There.

He left his…he run back, and got his oxen.

He got some drink oxen in Hell

He got them oxen to come back.

When they come back he turned them and said “drink, ox, drink. Drink, ox, drink.”

And then he looks and sees Don’t Catch Me floatin’, comin’ on back across the water.

She done made it safe!

And [he’s] comin’ back.

So, that’s the only thing that mattered,

‘Cause Don’t Catch Me had done put her landed!

So that’s just a great text, you know, if you understand it.

You see, how the Devil can tempt you

And get you into tribulation

But you got to put something BETWEEN you and him!