Library of Congress's Blog, page 103

Trending: Congressional Black Caucus Takes Center Stage

[image error]

A 1972 photograph of Congressional Black Caucus members including, from left, Shirley Chisholm, William Clay, Sr., Charles Diggs and Ronald Dellums. Photo by Warren K. Leffler.

This week, thousands of people from around the country will gather in the vast Washington, D.C., Convention Center to take part in a decades’ old tradition: the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation. From September 20 to 24, participants will hear from approximately 100 hundred speakers, including many members of Congress, who will challenge them to think creatively about public policy issues facing African-Americans and the global black community.

We know much about the CBC’s history, its impact on national politics and the triumphs and setbacks of its leaders thanks in part to a book researched and written at the Library of Congress by Rep. Major R. Owens (D-N.Y.). When he retired from Congress in 2007, he accepted an invitation from the Librarian of Congress to serve as a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center. While he was here, he drafted “The Peacock Elite: A Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus.”

[image error]

Major Owens, seated, with Rep. Maxine Waters at a 2007 Kluge Center event focusing on Owens’ history of the CBC. Photo by George Clarkson.

Owens’ residency at the Library was perhaps a fitting conclusion to his career: he began his working life as a professional librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library in 1958. During his time there, he became active in politics and the civil rights movement. In 1974, he was elected to the New York state senate; in 1982, he won the seat in New York’s 11th congressional district vacated by founding CBC member Shirley Chisholm upon her retirement. Owens served in the House of Representatives for 24 years and was an active member of the CBC.

The CBC came together as a formal organization in 1971 in the 92nd Congress to serve as a voice for the African-American community and, as expressed in its original mission statement, to “promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens.”

In domestic policy, the CBC has supported efforts to improve educational quality and access to education and health care, reduce unemployment, protect voting rights and ensure better housing and child care for poor and working-class citizens. In foreign policy, the CBC has highlighted international human rights and issues on which it believes U.S. policy may conflict with American values of liberty and equality.

Today, in the 115th Congress, the CBC has 49 members in the House of Representatives and the Senate, including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a founding CBC member who is serving his 26th consecutive term in the House.

The title of Major Owens’ book, “The Peacock Elite,” refers to elected officials, Shirley Chisholm among them, who have been skilled at using public display to achieve goals. His book analyzes the success of these individuals in helping to improve the lives of African-Americans as well as quieter behind-the-scenes efforts.

In October 2007, as a Kluge Center visiting scholar, Owens hosted a panel of U.S. representatives and political scientists to discuss the subject matter of his book. The panel included Rep. Maxine Waters (D- Calif.), a current CBC member; two founding CBC members, Ronald Dellums and Louis Stokes; and political scientists Ronald Walters, then at the University of Maryland, and Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University. Listen to the presentation here.

{mediaObjectId:'2925E23E9B70000AE0538C93F116000A',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

Inquiring Minds: Hunting for Treasure in the Manuscript Division

[image error]

Students of Professor Ross Davies of George Mason University Law School hold up the Library of Congress reader identification cards they obtained to complete a research assignment Davies requires.

Ross Davies has been a regular in the Library’s Manuscript Division for about two decades now. He has worked with papers of Supreme Court justices, consulted collections on the federal courts and introduced his students to the Library—a “treasure hunt” he assigns requires them to find resources in the Manuscript Division and the Law Library. He has even donated original materials.

Davies teaches at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law—administrative law, contracts, employment discrimination and legal history are among his courses. He has written extensively about the U.S. court system but also about other subjects such as labor unions, the beginnings of golf at the Supreme Court, baseball and the fictional private detective Sherlock Holmes.

Besides his scholarship and teaching, Davies is known for his much-sought-after Supreme Court bobbleheads, which he designs and distributes through “The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law.” He cofounded the journal while in law school to publish brief, readable legal articles meant to provoke discussion.

Here, Davies answers a few questions about his experiences at the Library.

[image error]

Ross Davies

What first brought you to the Library to do research?

When I was in law school, I spent part of one summer—it was 1996—working in the Washington, D.C., office of one of the great law firms, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. I spent some of my spare time in D.C. doing research for a paper on the development of what is known as the “good faith exception” to one of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rules—the Mapp v. Ohio rule, which permits criminal defendants in state prosecutions to challenge the admissibility of evidence obtained through “unreasonable searches and seizures.” I ended up spending a lot of time in the Manuscript Division Reading Room. I left at the end of the summer with half-a-dozen three-ring binders full of photocopies of useful documents from the papers of several justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. During the course of that summer, I also got an excellent education in archival research from the kind and patient and knowledgeable Library staff in the reading room.

 Which collections have you used?

I doubt I can remember them all. Here are some: the papers of Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black, Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Harold Burton, Benjamin Curtis, William Day, William Douglas, Gabriel Duvall, Felix Frankfurter, Arthur Goldberg, John Harlan, Oliver Holmes, Robert Jackson, Horace Lurton, Thurgood Marshall, John McLean, Samuel Miller, William Moody, William Paterson, Wiley Rutledge, Joseph Story, George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter, Byron White and Levi Woodbury and about Chief Justices Salmon Chase, Oliver Ellsworth, Melville Fuller, Charles Hughes, Harlan Stone, William Taft, Morrison Waite and Earl Warren. I’ve spent time in other collections as well, including the papers of Edward Bernays, James G. Blaine, Benjamin Bristow, Benjamin Butler, J.C. Bancroft Davis, Frederick Douglass, William Evarts, Duff Green, James Kent, Anthony Lewis, Groucho Marx, Donald Richberg, Carl Swisher and William Wirt.

What do you value most about the collections you’ve used?

The opportunity to work directly with primary sources, unfiltered by the corrections and manipulations of intervening generations. And there is also something a little bit magical—almost a kind of time travel—about holding pieces of paper that were also held, even written on, by the historical figures whose works I’m studying and whose thoughts and actions I’m trying to understand.

[image error]

Supreme Court bobbleheads designed by Davies on a shelf in the Manuscript Division. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Tell us a little about the “treasure hunt” you ask your students to conduct.

I teach a course called Institutions of American Law for first-year law students. One part of the course is a “treasure hunt,” in which they must visit several government institutions in the Washington, D.C., area and perform various tasks. One of those institutions is the Library of Congress, where they must perform three tasks:

Get a reader card. This is easy to do. The Library has an astonishingly efficient and user-friendly on-site system for issuing cards.
Find the Library department where the Papers of Harry A. Blackmun, a Supreme Court justice from 1970 to 1994, are kept. (They are in the Manuscript Division Reading Room.) Then, take a picture of an “opinion log sheet” from a case file in one of 24 boxes from the Blackmun Papers. Students tend to be nervous about this, until they meet someone on the Library staff—they’re all knowledgeable and helpful and nice—and get to use the handy finding aid for the Blackmun Papers.
Find the Library department that has a set of official reports of decisions and opinions of the Supreme Court. (It is the Law Library.) Then, take a picture of the first page of the official opinion of the Court in the case listed on the opinion log sheet the student photographed in the Manuscript Division Reading Room.

Why do you think it is important for your students to visit the Library to do research?

First, they are in Washington, D.C., home to the greatest collection of written and sketched and published human work in the world. They should know how to tap that resource. Actually going through the process at least once will help them do so with confidence again in the future.

Second, they should know just how easy it is to use the Library, and how friendly and knowledgeable the Library staff is. Here is what one of my students said to me (via email) after visiting the Manuscript Division Reading Room: “All in all, it was a great experience getting to know the ancient way to look up things (not just type in then enter, then get whatever you need), the scale and value of the scripts kept here, and most importantly, the attitude and hospitality of the staff.” I hear similar things from many of my students who visit the Library.

Third, at a more general level, my students (like all of us) probably benefit from an occasional reminder that while Googling is one good way to do research, it is not the only way, and there are useful and interesting resources that are best accessed—and, in some situations, can only be accessed—by going to a library. My students’ experiences at the Library are excellent evidence of that reality.

How did you come to be a collection donor, and what did you donate?

I came to be a collection donor for three reasons. First, I believe that documents produced by officials of our national government should be preserved for the benefit of the people of this nation, and that as many of “we the people” as reasonably possible should have access to as many of those documents as reasonably possible, as easily and affordably as reasonably possible. For officials of our national government, there are few acts that make for a more democratic and public-minded legacy than donating their papers to the Library; conversely, there are few acts that make for a more antidemocratic and elitist legacy than donating their papers to private institutions. Second, I know from long and direct experience that the Library does the best job of achieving those goals. Third, a former official of our national government, Bennett Boskey, gave me some documents produced while he and his colleagues were federal officials—specifically, members and staff of the Supreme Court—with the understanding that I was free to do donate them to the institution of my choice. And so, of course, I chose the Library of Congress.

What has your experience been like generally working with Library staff as a researcher and donor?

Great, simply great. They are knowledgeable, resourceful, nice and very, very patient!

Trending: An App to Answer Your Questions about the Constitution

This is a guest post by Margaret M. Wood, legal reference librarian in the Law Library.

Two years ago, in honor of Constitution Day—celebrated annually on September 17—I wrote a post about the publication “Constitution of the United States: Analysis and Interpretation,” also referred to as the “Constitution Annotated.” Along with the U.S. Code, it is one of my favorite work resources.

[image error]Unfortunately, it is a behemoth of a work—it takes two hands to hold the volume, which weighs a good 10 pounds. Fortunately, the text is also available online through Congress.gov and through the U.S. Government Publishing Office, whose digital system includes both the most recent edition (2016) as well as historic editions back to 1992.

But given my penchant for bringing work topics into social situations, even the online version is not very practical. I cannot, very easily, fire up the computer during a conversation at a dinner or cocktail party. However, fortunately for me, there is an app for the “Constitution Annotated.” It debuted in 2013, when Congress.gov was still in beta, and has since been updated.

Using this app, I can just whip out my phone during a casual conversation with friends and provide them with information about our tripartite system of government or search for words and phrases that will help me win my argument. The app allows me to easily access sections of the “Constitution Annotated,” the historical note on the formation of the Constitution and the annotated amendments being particular favorites. It also allows me to search the document for a word or a phrase such as “we the people.” Alternatively, I can search for U.S. Supreme Court decisions governing the freedom of expression guaranteed in the First Amendment, such as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, or cases on the Fifth Amendment’s “rights of person,” such as Miranda v. Arizona.

My colleague Andrew Weber provided two screen shots of the app below. Now you, too, can wow your friends!

[image error] [image error]

 

Pic of the Week: Introducing Tracy K. Smith, the 22nd Poet Laureate

 

[image error]

Tracy K. Smith. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Tracy K. Smith took the stage in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium on Wednesday night, September 13, for her inaugural reading as the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She read from each of her published works, concluding with poems from her forthcoming collection, “Wade in the Water.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden hosted the event, which kicked off the Library’s 2017–18 literary season. First-ever National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman opened the evening with an original poem written for the occasion.

A recording of the reading is available on the Library’s YouTube channel.

Trending: Start the School Year with the Library of Congress

This is a guest post by Stephen Wesson of the Education Outreach Program.

[image error]As educators return to the nation’s classrooms and school libraries, we are delighted to launch another year of teaching ideas and discovery at loc.gov/teachers and Teaching with the Library of Congress! The Library’s K–12 education program supports teachers and school librarians in the effective use of the Library’s resources, and we hope educators will find it a source of inspiration in their work.

All our resources focus on the educational power of primary sources. Primary sources are the raw materials of history—materials that were created by participants in or witnesses to historical events. By supporting students as they analyze these sources, teachers can help them engage with difficult topics, build their critical thinking skills and create new knowledge.

The Library’s vast online collections offer students countless primary sources for exploration, from around the world and across thousands of years of human history, and we present free resources to support this exploration at our portal for educators.

Our online teaching tools make it easy for teachers to find the primary sources they need and to put them to use in their classrooms quickly and effectively. They support teachers at all grade levels and across the curriculum, from English and language arts to history and social studies, from science to music to art, and can be searched by state and national content standards. Recently, we’ve published a series of blog posts focusing on teaching with multimedia resources and on using primary sources in science classrooms and in the primary grades.

We’re always working to create more resources and find new ways to support educators. This year, we plan to share new resources on the Civil War, informational literacy and world history, as well as provide a platform for the Library’s latest Teacher in Residence and showcase exciting new online collections and new initiatives from the Library.

Here are some blog posts with activities teachers can use right away!

Learn more about ways to incorporate the Library’s primary source analysis tool into classroom activities.
Find effective ways to use informational texts.

Remember that you can use the “Search this blog” box for keyword searches of our past posts. We have several years’ worth of posts archived, so there’s a good chance we’ll have published something of interest to any educator.

You can also find resources for teachers on the Library’s YouTube channel and through our Twitter account for teachers, @TeachingLC.

We’d love to hear your ideas as well—please share your thoughts with us in the comments section of this post. We wish you and your students a rewarding year, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Poetry 180: New Poems Added to the Mix

[image error]

Billy Collins at the 2014 National Book Festival. Photo by Colena Turner.

Anne Holmes of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center wrote this post, which first appeared on “ From the Catbird Seat ,” the center’s blog.  Tracy K. Smith, the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library, will give her inaugural reading in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium this evening, marking the beginning of her laureateship. Like her predecessors, Smith will identify projects to carry out during her tenure. “Poetry 180” came into being as a laureate project of Billy Collins, who served from 2001 to 2003. He initially selected 180 contemporary poems, one for each day of the school year, with high school students in mind. Collins envisioned the poems being read aloud to all members of a school community. The poems are accessible  on the Library’s website ; poetry lovers can also subscribe to receive a daily poem by email or RSS feed . Here Holmes writes about an update to Poetry 180 and conveys a message from Collins.

This month, as thousands upon thousands of high schools around the country bittersweetly sounded their morning bells for the first time this school year, we at the Poetry and Literature Center sounded our bells as well. Why, you ask? Because the start of the school year also brings with it the start of Poetry 180, and this year is particularly exciting—we’ve added 10 new poems to the mix.

Billy Collins, former poet laureate and creator of Poetry 180, offers this message for the new school year:

I would like to extend a personal welcome to everyone who is visiting the newly updated Poetry 180 website. The website, as many of you know, was my pet project when I was poet laureate. I decided that poetry was most endangered in high school for reasons too numerous to go into here. My idea was to collect 180 poems, which could be read aloud to the assembled high school, one for every day of the school year. Going forth with no idea of what kind of response the site would attract, I was surprised and gratified to see the sizable number of schools, even some in English-speaking countries far from the United States, who began participating in the program. I was even more gratified to hear from scores of high school teachers in person, most of whom approached me after a reading, who reported not only that they used the poems on the website (and the print volumes that followed), but that the program worked! The most poetry-phobic students found themselves intrigued and even charmed by a poem, and that was enough to break through to students, to show them that poetry can be a pleasure as well as an academic subject.

With the help of the staff of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, I have periodically updated the poems on the website—“freshened the jukebox,” as we began to say. And for the beginning of this school year, the website features many new poems. So dig in anywhere and be prepared to find 180 poems that are readable, engaging and entertaining for you and your students.

If you’re familiar with Poetry 180, you might just recognize the newly added poems on your own. For those seeking a cheat sheet, though, here’s what the first half of the school year has in store:

“The Good Life” by Tracy K. Smith
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz
“Question” by May Swenson
“Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa
“How Bright It Is” by Brian Turner
“Walking Home” by Marie Howe
“El Florida Room” by Richard Blanco
“A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth” by Wislawa Szymborska
“Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary” by Kevin Young
“The Revolt of the Turtles” by Stephen Dunn

Whether you’re reading them out loud in a classroom or in your living room, we hope these poems stir up new ideas, questions and the hunger for more.

If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to our daily Poetry 180 e-mail blast or RSS feed. And stay tuned—Billy Collins will be refreshing the Poetry 180 jukebox for the second half of the school year, too.

How has Poetry 180 made an impact on you or your students? Share your stories in the comments.

Listen to Billy Collins

Billy Collins talks about why he developed Poetry 180 at the 2002 National Book Festival.


{mediaObjectId:'2ABCEE2413CD007EE0538C93F116007E',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

 Billy Collins reads at the 2014 National Book Festival.

{mediaObjectId:'0357DCDB062302A8E0538C93F02802A8',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

The Art of Etching: Masterpieces by James McNeill Whistler

This is a guest post by Katherine Blood, curator of fine prints in the Prints and Photographs Division, and Linda Stiber Morenus, a longtime paper conservator and special assistant to the director of scholarly and educational programs. The post was first published on “ Picture This ,” the blog of the Prints and Photographs Division.

Known for his credo “Art for Art’s Sake,” American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was a virtuoso etcher whose delicate lines and dreamlike atmospherics were achieved through rigorous work.

[image error]

“The Doorway,” etching by James McNeill Whistler, c. 1879–80

Through the end of this month, visitors to the Library of Congress can explore a special display of original Whistler etchings alongside the artist’s etching needle and one of his original copper etching plates. All come from the Library’s extensive Whistler collection, which includes over 400 etchings, lithographs and drawings, as well as photographs, technical materials, ephemera, correspondence and books. Even if you do not plan a trip to Washington, D.C., the prints featured in the display and many more are available online.

Etching is an intaglio printmaking technique that uses acid to etch lines below the surface of a metal plate. As co-curators of the display, we selected 16 etchings Whistler made throughout his career, including superb impressions from his “French Set,” “Thames Set,” “Venice Set” and “Amsterdam Set” series.

[image error]

“Longshoremen,” 1859

Side-by-side comparisons printed on different papers, with variant approaches to ink application, and in different states before and after plate changes, highlight the artist’s evolving practice and careful choices to create artworks so compelling they continue to inspire artists and audiences today.

Each time the etching plate changes and is reprinted, a new “state” is produced. In the etchings below, Whistler’s earlier state of “The Pierrot” combines delicate etched lines and a thin skim of ink (or plate tone) in the foreground. The later state has extensive additions of lines that suggest deep, floating shadows. Whistler also added his butterfly monogram near the upper left corner. Though the action is set on an Amsterdam canal, Whistler has poetically imagined the young man in the role of Pierrot from the Italian commedia dell’arte.

[image error]

“The Pierrot,” 1889

[image error]

“The Pierrot,” 1889

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also not to be missed is an original etching by 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt, who was one of Whistler’s early influences.

[image error]

One of three “Art of Etching” display cases, with Whistler’s etching needle and an original copper plate in the center of the case. Photo by Katherine Blood.

“The Art of Etching: Masterpieces by James McNeill Whistler” is on display through September 30 in the Library’s Jefferson Building. For further explorations, the Library’s Whistler holdings are ready to study and enjoy in several of its research centers, including the Prints and Photographs Division, Manuscript Division, and Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Learn More

Glean some more clues about Whistler from other items digitized from the Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection of Whistleriana.
Revisit earlier blog posts relating to Whistler and to Rembrandt.
Have a look at the finding aid for the Pennell-Whistler Collection in the Manuscript Division.
View a list of works relating to James McNeill Whistler in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Dive deep in the online catalogue raisonnė: Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg and Joanna Meacock, “James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné,” University of Glasgow, 2012.

Inquiring Minds: Folklife Center Shines a Light on the Skiffle Craze

[image error]

Billy Bragg, center, visited the American Folklife Center offices in July when he came to the Library to talk about his new book about skiffle. The 1950s music genre popularized the guitar, inspiring John Lennon, Jimmy Page, David Bowie and many others to embark on music careers. Here Bragg holds the original record sleeve for a 1934 field recording of ”Rock Island Line” from the John A. Lomax Southern States Collection. The song launched the skiffle craze in England when singer and musician Lonnie Donegan had a major hit with it in 1956. With Bragg are, from left, Folklife Center senior staff members Betsy Peterson, John Fenn and Nicole Saylor. Photo by Stephen Winick.

When Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center learned about Billy Bragg’s 2016 album, “Shine a Light,” he quickly contacted the album’s publicist to invite the English singer-songwriter to speak at the Library. The reason: the album, recorded with American folksinger Joe Henry, includes several songs known to the world thanks to recordings in the Library’s folk archive. Sadly, Bragg was too busy during his 2016 tour to come.

What Winick didn’t know at the time was that “Shine a Light” came about because of Bragg’s research for a book about skiffle—a genre heavily influenced by many recordings in the Library’s archive. Skiffle was a homegrown music craze in 1950s and 1960s England that skyrocketed the guitar to the forefront of the music scene. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and David Bowie all started out playing skiffle.

Earlier this year, when Bragg published his skiffle book, “Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World,” he thought the time was right to speak at the Library. But he had a problem: he couldn’t recall who had extended the invitation to him the previous year.

Here Winick tells the story of how he connected with Bragg, and he answers questions about skiffle and its precursors in the Library’s folk archive. Bragg appeared at the Library on July 21 in an event co-sponsored by the Folklife Center and the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. A recording of Bragg’s talk is available on the Library’s website.

First, tell us a little about Billy Bragg.

Billy Bragg is a singer-songwriter who came to prominence in the 1980s. He came out of the punk movement, but he performed solo with a guitar, which made his music very similar to the singer-songwriters on the folk scene. He began to get interested in political songwriting around the time of the big UK miners’ strike in 1984 and 1985, which aligned him even more with the ideals of the folk movement. In the 1980s, he was often called “folk-punk.” In his first couple of years, he had a hit with one of his love songs, “A New England,” when it was covered by the pop singer Kirsty MacColl. Then a year or two later, he found himself singing a very political song called “Between the Wars” on “Top of the Pops,” a major English pop music TV show. He’s continued over the years to write very moving songs about human relationships and also witty polemical songs about politics.

Another thing Billy is known for is his work with Woody Guthrie’s lyrics. In the late 1990s, Woody Guthrie’s family realized that, in addition to his famous songs like “This Land is Your Land” and “Pastures of Plenty,” Woody had written thousands of lyrics for which no music survived. The family decided to get someone to write music for them. In trying to think about who might be a modern equivalent of Woody, they came up with the idea of asking Billy Bragg. So Billy set some of these great lyrics to music. The Guthries also called in the group Wilco, and eventually Billy Bragg and Wilco released the three albums that make up the “Mermaid Avenue Sessions.” Of course, Woody is a figure forever associated with the Library of Congress folk archive, since his first extensive recording sessions were here in 1940. So this was one of the first connections I knew about between Billy Bragg and the archive.

How did you get into contact with Bragg?

I have to confess that I first met him as a fan in the 1980s. Billy’s about 10 years older than I am, so his initial success as a musician happened when I was a teenager. I was buying his records and going to his concerts when he visited the U.S. I got my girlfriend at the time to listen to Billy’s music, and she loved it. Her name is Jenny Lewis, and her brother Avi was a host on the TV channel MuchMusic, which was Canada’s answer to MTV. So Jenny raved to Avi about Billy Bragg. She says that it was partly because of us that Billy got airplay on MuchMusic in the 1980s. Avi eventually moved on and became a political journalist but remained friends with Billy.

Their friendship came in handy for me later. After I tried and failed to get Billy to come to the Library in conjunction with the “Shine a Light” album, he decided he wanted to come here to talk about his book. But we had only been in touch through a publicist, whom he wasn’t working with anymore, so he had to find me again. Luckily, he remembered the story about Avi’s sister’s former boyfriend being a Billy Bragg fan at the Library of Congress. So he reached out through the Lewises. I got a message from Jenny saying, “Send me your contact info at work. Billy Bragg wants to meet with you.” It turned out that Billy and I were both going to be at the Folk Alliance International meeting in Kansas City this past February, so we met there and hatched the plan for him to come here.

What, exactly, is skiffle?

Skiffle is a music genre that was created in the 1950s in Britain. It grew out of the scene called “Trad Jazz,” which is essentially New Orleans-style jazz—a lot of ensemble playing with almost no solos. In clubs with no amplification, everyone played loud. With no time for one player to rest while another played a solo, the brass players’ lips periodically went numb. They had to take breaks throughout the evening. To avoid losing the audience, some bands figured out that they could have their string players and drummers keep playing and do mini-sets between the band numbers. A lineup developed that included a singer with a guitar along with double bass and drums or percussion. The bigger bands were already playing African-American music. So for repertoire, these smaller ensembles looked to another facet of the same root tradition: African-American folksong. They ended up doing mostly covers of black American folk ballads and blues.

The most famous skiffle artist was Lonnie Donegan. He was a member of two of the top Trad Jazz bands, Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen and The Chris Barber Jazz Band. In the jazz bands, he played banjo, but when the breaks occurred he was the guitarist and singer for the smaller groups. For both Colyer and Barber, he recorded a few skiffle numbers to fill out their jazz albums in 1954. One of the songs he recorded with Barber, “Rock Island Line,” was reissued as a single in late 1955. It was a surprise hit in the final week of the year and became one of the biggest hits of 1956. From there, skiffle took off and was one of the most popular styles in Britain for a few years.

What is the importance of skiffle in the music world?

It was the first guitar-led music to become popular in Britain. It was a pretty simple music, too—before rock-and-roll or R&B came to Britain, it was the first style where you could play a song with three chords on a guitar. As a result, huge numbers of kids started playing music. Teenage skiffle bands sprang up everywhere, mostly with a guitar, a homemade bass made out of a tea chest (a ubiquitous kind of packing crate in Britain) and a washboard for percussion. Although as a fad, skiffle didn’t last that long, it made a whole generation of teenagers pick up guitars. Those teenagers included Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, Dave Davies, David Bowie, Roger Daltrey and lots of other rock musicians, as well as Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and many others on the folk scene. The British rock explosion in the 1960s, as well as the folk scene of that era, both came out of skiffle.

What is the connection between the Library’s folk archive and the skiffle craze?

I mentioned that the repertoire that skiffle folks drew on was largely African-American folksong. Specifically, that 1956 hit for Lonnie Donegan, “Rock Island Line,” was a song he had learned from a record by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly.” In 1934, Lead Belly was an assistant to John Lomax, a collector for the Library of Congress, when “Rock Island Line” was collected from several prison work gangs in Arkansas. Lead Belly learned the song and sang it himself for Lomax. So the Library has the original field recordings, for which Lead Belly was part of the recording crew, and also the first recordings of Lead Belly singing “Rock Island Line.” It was one of many Lead Belly songs from the archive to be made into skiffle hits, including “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie,” “Midnight Special,” “Diggin’ My Potatoes,” “Ol’ Rattler,” “Pick a Bale of Cotton” and others. As Billy points out, George Harrison once said, “No Lead Belly, no Lonnie Donegan. No Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles.”

More generally, the Library of Congress folk archive made its field recordings available as albums as early as the 1940s, edited by archivists Alan Lomax, Benjamin Botkin and later Duncan Emrich. Crucially, the United States Information Service maintained a lending library in London with the goal of spreading American ideals through exposure to our culture. That library stocked the archive’s records. So a generation of young people, including Lonnie Donegan, were able to listen to Library of Congress field recordings, which became one of the most important sources for the skiffle repertoire. You can listen to the Lead Belly recording of “Midnight Special” here:

{mediaObjectId:'CEA2B42FBD340108E0438C93F0280108',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

Why don’t we know more about the genre, given its influence?

Two reasons, I think. First, the fad never happened in the U.S. The closest American equivalent as a movement was rockabilly. But there was never a genre called “skiffle” here, so it’s like a lot of cultural things that British people would recognize but Americans wouldn’t. If you told most Americans you had some scrumpy at a knees-up, or that you were getting into grime music, most of us wouldn’t know those cultural references. Second, the fad was short-lived, and almost every skiffler who got truly famous, except for Lonnie Donegan himself, got famous for later pop styles, especially rock. So “skiffle” is an unfamiliar name for a phase in the career of musicians like Paul McCartney. It’s not the phase that we remember, it’s the longer careers of those skiffle kids.

Still, taken on its own terms, skiffle played a vital role in 20th-century pop music, which I think Billy Bragg’s book and his talk at the Library both highlight really well. I was delighted to bring him to the Library, and I’m glad the talk is online for people to watch and learn from.

{mediaObjectId:'566CC3632361009EE0538C93F116009E',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

Watch Live in Support of Literacy

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

On January 31, award-winning author and literacy advocate Stephen King helped the Library launch our annual call for nominations for the Library of Congress Literacy Awards honoring organizations working to promote literacy and reading in the United States and worldwide. Throughout the winter, 18 additional authors, including Kwame Alexander, Ken Burns and Margo Jefferson added their voices of support for the importance of literacy.

This year’s recipients will be announced TONIGHT during the Library of Congress National Book Festival Gala beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern, and you can join us live on the Library’s Facebook page at facebook.com/libraryofcongress and our YouTube site (with captions) at youtube.com/LibraryOfCongress.

Illiteracy remains an enormous problem around the world. Seven hundred and fifty-eight million adults cannot read or write a simple sentence. Approximately 1 in 3 primary school-age children globally are not learning the basics in reading. In the United States, 65 percent of fourth graders read at or below the basic level.

Each year, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of David M. Rubenstein, the Library of Congress presents three leading organizations with cash awards to support their life-changing work.

Tune in tonight to see which organizations will be honored and to learn more about their inspiring work. Then, consider ways to support literacy promotion in your own home town. For inspiration, a list of previous recipients and additional organizations honored for exhibiting best practices can be found here: http://read.gov/literacyawards/winners.html.

And enjoy some of the inspirational words of authors who participated in this year’s announcement:

Reading gives you an inner life. It helps your imagination. It helps you form your values. It gives you worlds to measure and balances the world you’re in. . . . It sharpens your intelligence . . . every nation, every country needs citizens with values and rich interior lives and imaginations that allow them to move past just themselves.

—Margo Jefferson

We are a country stitched together by words and more importantly their dangerous progeny, ideas.

—Ken Burns

Books are magic. Books make your heart soar, they break your heart, they make it rise again. Books move you, entertain you; they enlighten you.

—Harlan Coben

It’s important that literacy and reading are encouraged by the Library of Congress because reading is the most essential and available skill that people use to realize the American dream.

—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Trending: Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

This is a guest post by Abby Yochelson, a reference specialist in the Main Reading Room.

 

[image error]

In an example of work from the 1770s, two blacksmiths hammer steel bones for a pair of stays—an 18th-century women’s foundation garment—while a client is being fitted.

 

Career guidance takes many paths. In the 1970s, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang this advice from an Ed and Patsy Bruce song:

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks

Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such

Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

But vocational counseling must keep up with the times. For centuries, technological changes have transformed or eradicated jobs. Work as a lamplighter, bowling-pin boy or power monkey no longer exists, while new jobs like social media strategist and video game designer are on the rise, as a 2015 post on this blog pointed out. More recently, passionate discussions about artificial intelligence and robots replacing human endeavors have been much in the news.

The combination of Labor Day, robots taking over the world and the start of a new academic year inspired me to revisit age-old questions students and their parents confront over the issue of work: for students, what would I like to be when I grow up? What major should I choose to get a good job? Or, from a parent’s perspective, what should I encourage my child to study so she will be hired?

[image error]

Title page from the 1757 edition of Campbell’s “The London Tradesman”

A couple years ago, while completing a short-term assignment in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, I became fascinated by a book that answers many of these questions—albeit from an 18th-century viewpoint. “The London Tradesman” by R. Campbell was first published in 1747. By 1757, it was in its third edition and, somewhat inexplicably, two different publishers reprinted the book in 1969. The balance of the title provides a better understanding of its scope: “Being an Historical Account of all the Trades, Professions, Arts, both Liberal and Mechanic, now practised in the Cities of London and Westminster, Calculated for the Instruction of Youth in the Choice of Business.”

Before getting to actual job descriptions, Campbell provides lengthy “Advice to Parents, to study and improve the Genius, Temper, and Disposition of their Children, before they bind them Apprentices.” He relates a sad tale of prideful parents forcing their boys into unsuitable positions—a would-be admiral, parson and attorney—all brought to a bad end. If the brothers could have simply swapped professions based on their natural interests and talents, this would have ended happily.

Glancing through the table of contents, you see that professions such as attorney and architect are still with us; whale-bone stay-maker, not so much. Brewers and distillers are having a resurgence, while wax chandler has evolved into a more artisanal occupation. In terms of changing technology, candlelight was replaced by gaslight and then electricity, but today entire shops are devoted to candles once again.

The “London Tradesman” breaks broad categories, such as “Of Painting in General,” into more specific classifications: drapery-painter; herald, house and coach painter; and colour-men, among them. House painters are still with us in abundance; herald and coach painters have gone the way of the snuff-box maker.

In case your curiosity was aroused by the term “drapery-painter,” here’s the basic description:

The Drapery-Painter is but the lowest Degree of a liberal Painter; he is employed in dressing the Figures, after the Painter has finished the Face, given the Figure its proper Attitude, and drawn the Outlines of the Dress or Drapery. A Portrait-Painter who is well employed has not Time to cloath his Figures, and therefore employs a Drapery-Painter to finish that Part of the Work.

Campbell includes descriptions of businesses; required qualifications, education and abilities; and wages. Some creative professions such as sculptor or musician have headings indicating that genius and talent are also required. Depending on the job, other headings reveal that temper and disposition, degree of strength and age or measure of knowledge or learning must be considered.

[image error]

Contents page from “The London Tradesman.”

Campbell never hesitates to express his opinion of the character of those holding a particular occupation. Of herald, house and coach painters, he remarks, “The Journeymen of this branch are as dirty, lazy, and as debauched a Set of Fellows as any Trade in and about London.” Parents, don’t pick this job for your children!

Most of the occupations described are for boys, but certain jobs, such as millinery, are clearly designed for girls. There are, however, firm warnings to parents to think long and hard before sending their daughters into the hat business. “Take a Survey of all the common Women of the town, who take their Walks between Charing Cross and Fleet Ditch,” Campbell writes. “I am persuaded, more than one Half of them have been bred Milliners, have been debauched in their Houses, and are obliged to throw themselves upon the Town for Want of Bread.” Campbell maintains that private millinery shops are a gathering place for rakes and may be fronts for assignations or bawdy houses. There’s no job description for “common woman.”

Not all of the guidance is directed at parents. Campbell also provides “Advice to the young Apprentice how to behave during his Apprenticeship,” as well as “Lastly, Directions how to avoid the many Temptations to which Youth are liable in this great City.” This is clearly a good model for any handbook intended for an intern newly arrived in Washington, D.C.

It’s hard to say whether the U.S. Department of Labor knew about “The London Tradesman” when it began producing the “Occupational Outlook Handbook” in 1948. A standard reference source in schools and libraries, it is now released biennially online.

The handbook supplies a wealth of information on hundreds of occupations (architect, yes; milliner, no). Besides basic descriptions of jobs, pay and educational and skill requirements, it estimates the outlook for individual professions—particularly beneficial for college students pondering the big questions. Recent outlook statistics show a downward trend for travel agents and bank tellers, for example, but the prospects are rosy for information security analysts.

The handbook links to a career outlook site with the catchy heading “You’re a What?” It lists occupations including mystery shopper, polysomnographic technologist and genetic counselor, all developed in the last couple of decades. But Campbell would have been familiar with two jobs on the list: farriers and chimney sweeps.

Sadly, no advice is given to parents, but perhaps mamas will be happy to know that cowboy is not found in the A–Z list of occupations.