Library of Congress's Blog, page 116

Pic of the Week: Saint Patrick’s Day

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Puck magazine cover marking Saint Patrick’s Day in 1911

What do parades, shamrocks, and green beer bring to mind? Saint Patrick’s Day, of course. The first Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in the United States took place in the 18th century in Boston and New York, and festivities expanded in the 19th century as more and more Irish immigrated to the country.

Today, Saint Patrick’s Day is observed nationwide by people of all backgrounds—akin to the Fourth of July or Halloween. But early on, Irish immigrants saw it partly as a way to express their civic pride against anti-immigrant detractors.

Puck was one such detractor. A political satire magazine published between 1877 and 1918, its cartoons caricatured the Irish—depicting negligent servants, scheming political bosses, and reckless agitators. By March 15, 1911, when the cover shown here was published, the magazine had softened its treatment somewhat, although not entirely.

Titled On the Seventeenth—The Irishman’s Idea of Atlas, the cover shows an old Irish man as the god Atlas holding aloft a globe on which Ireland makes up an entire hemisphere. In his other hand, he clutches a shillelagh, a thick stick often used as a weapon. Shamrocks line the sides and bottom of the design, and the title Puck is made of Celtic knots.

Like many Puck covers, this one came into the Library’s collection through copyright registration. The magazine’s publishers, Keppler and Schwarzmann, registered the cover art with the U.S. Copyright Office on March 13, 1911, depositing two copies.

More than 2,500 colorful Puck cartoons are available in the Library’s prints and photographs online catalog.

 

Women’s History Month: Collection Documents Hard-Won Victory

(The following is a guest post by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.)

“Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history.”

—Carrie Chapman Catt

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Carrie Chapman Catt

March is Women’s History Month, so what better collection to highlight than the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection?

Formed in 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, melded together two separate women’s organizations that employed different tactics. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, chose to work mainly at the federal level. The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell and Julia Ward Howe, worked at the state level. NAWSA combined both of these methods, securing the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 through a series of well-orchestrated state campaigns under the dynamic direction of Carrie Chapman Catt. She drew on the talents and personalities of many accomplished women to steer the movement toward victory and the hard-won right to vote.

The NAWSA Collection, which resides in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, was based initially on the library of Chapman Catt, which she donated to the Library of Congress on November 1, 1938. Others involved with NAWSA subsequently donated their libraries to the collection, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller and Mary A. Livermore. In total, the collection consists of nearly 800 books, pamphlets, newspapers, scrapbooks and other ephemera dating from 1890 to 1938, a selection of which is available online.

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A pamphlet containing a history of “The Woman’s Journal,” the official publication of the American Woman Suffrage Association

The online selection of materials was prepared with several user groups in mind: students at the high school and college levels interested in developing a basic understanding of the suffrage movement; teachers of courses at these levels; and advanced scholars engaged in research. In all cases, materials were selected that best represent NAWSA as an organization and its place in the woman suffrage campaign.

Collectively, the materials offer a view of how the suffragists worked diligently to secure the right to vote. Regardless of their approach or temperaments, in the end, we have these firebrands to thank.

Susan B. Anthony once remarked, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.” Indeed, women have come a long way in just under 100 years, and Anthony would likely be quite proud. Yet Chapman Catt did not take victory for granted, stating, “The vote has been costly. Prize it . . . understand what it means and what it can do for your country.” Chapman Catt understood the struggle that was and that it might likely persist into the future.

Additional Digital Resources of Interest

The Susan B. Anthony Collection

“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” by Mary Wollstonecraft

Blog posts: Celebrating Creative Women and A Suffragist in the Kitchen 

Webcast: Catch the Suffragists’ Spirit: The Millers’ Suffrage Scrapbooks

 

New Online: Walt Whitman, Alan Lomax and More

(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.) 

Before we jump into new offerings, we’d be remiss if we didn’t remind you of December’s release of the upgraded presentation for the George Washington Papers Collection. Read all about it in Julie Miller’s excellent blog post here.

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The African American History Month portal is all new for 2017.

African American History Month

February was African American History Month, so we updated our with new content and a new mobile-friendly design. Developed in collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the portal pays tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society. Read more from our Educational Outreach team here.

Walt Whitman Papers

The papers of poet Walt Whitman (1819–92) in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection consist of approximately 28,000 items spanning from 1763 to 1985. The bulk of the items date from the 1840s through Whitman’s death in 1892 and into the 20th century. The collection of correspondence, literary manuscripts, books, proofs and associated items represent periods of Whitman’s life from his early time living in New York, his middle age in Washington, D.C., and the last phase of his life in Camden, New Jersey. The papers include primary documentation of Whitman’s friends and family; his experience as a civil servant and hospital volunteer in Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War; his contributions as a lecturer and social commentator; and his decades-long career as a journalist, prose writer, poet and literary and arts critic. Barbara Bair’s blog post shows off some collection highlights.

Roman Totenberg Papers

Joining our existing Roman Totenberg Papers Collection is a new collection of related material, the Roman Totenberg Papers: Totenberg-Wilk Holocaust Material. These documents, letters, telegrams, drawings and photo albums bear testament to the Totenberg family in Poland before and during the Holocaust and to violinist Roman Totenberg’s unwavering efforts to rescue those left behind.

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Alan Lomax’s collection includes primary source items from his recording trips, like this log from his 1952–53 Spain trip.

Alan Lomax Manuscripts

Back in 2015, we released an initial version of the Alan Lomax Manuscripts Collection, which includes ethnographic field documentation, materials from Lomax’s various projects and cross-cultural research created and collected by Alan Lomax and others on traditional song, music, dance and body movement from around the world. Originally released with around 25,000 items, we’ve now added substantial new content, bringing the total amount of pages available to over 300,000. Nicole Saylor has all the details here.

Presidential Speeches

Presidential Speeches: What Makes an Effective Speech? is new for teachers. Classroom materials include audio, video, pictures and manuscripts from presidential speeches by Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson and more.

Women’s History Month: Zora Neale Hurston Dramas

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Portrait of Zora Neale Hurston in midlife

Zora Neale Hurston died in obscurity in a Florida nursing home in 1960. But her standing as a distinguished writer of African American literature was already on the rise in 1997 when a retired Copyright Office staff member serving as a volunteer identified 10 little-known play scripts she had deposited decades earlier for copyright registration. The discovery of the scripts, added to other known Hurston plays, established her as an important 20th-century dramatist.

Born in 1891, Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, and began writing and publishing short stories, poems and plays while attending Howard University. Later, she won a scholarship to Barnard College, where she studied with noted anthropologist Franz Boas and earned a bachelor’s degree. She conducted folklore studies under his direction in the American South in the 1920s and recorded folk music there and in the Caribbean in the 1930s with folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. She drew on this work and her own life experiences in her writing, celebrating the African American folkways of the rural South.

Interest in Hurston revived in 1975 when acclaimed novelist Alice Walker published an essay, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” in “Ms. Magazine.” Hurston’s books came back into print, her life became the subject of study and a commemorative stamp was created in her honor.

Hurston was known initially as a folklorist and a novelist before she became known as a playwright; her 1937 novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” is regarded as an American classic. It was the rediscovery of the scripts she deposited for copyright registration that uncovered the extent of her dramatic aspirations. She deposited them between 1925 and 1944. All but one—“Mule-Bone,“ coauthored with Langston Hughes—remained unpublished when the retired staff member found the Hurston scripts in the Copyright Drama Deposit Collection.

The collection consists of drama deposits registered as unpublished with the Copyright Office between 1901 and 1977. Different Library divisions acquired select titles over the years, but the bulk of the collection was transferred to the Manuscript Division in the 1980s. Since then, division staff, interns and volunteers have been researching it and creating an inventory of its contents. Eventually, the entire collection will be microfilmed; selected scripts, including Hurston’s, will also be retained in paper format.

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Program from the 2000
premiere of “Polk County” at the Library

“The discovery of the unpublished Hurston play scripts radically changed scholarly appraisal of Hurston,” explained Alice Birney, the collection’s former curator, now retired. “It now seems that the theater may have been her best medium for integrating folklore, autobiography and music.”

Between 1997 and 1999, Birney organized a series of lunch-hour staff readings at the Library of the unpublished scripts. The readings culminated in the professional production of “Polk County,” a play Hurston coauthored with Dorothy Waring, on December 11 and 12, 2000, in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium; the Arena Stage of Washington cosponsored the production with the Library. Hurston had deposited the script of the folk comedy, set in a Florida sawmill camp, in 1944.

“I am particularly pleased to see one of our 250,000 unpublished copyright drama deposit typescripts come to the professional stage here for a world premiere at the Library of Congress,” stated James Billington, who was Librarian of Congress at the time. “This work is but one of a rich treasure chest of neglected creative items deposited for copyright in the past but never performed.”

The Arena Stage performed the play again in its own theater in 2002. To accommodate scholarly interest, the Library made the Hurston scripts available online.

 

Pic of the Week: Ladies of Liberty

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Cokie Roberts reads to students in the Young Readers Center. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Author and journalist Cokie Roberts visited the Library’s Young Readers Center on March 6 to read from her new children’s book, “Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation,” adapted from her bestselling adult work of the same title. Illustrated by Caldecott Honor-winning artist Diane Goode, the book features biographies of 10 influential women from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Third-grade students from Seaton Elementary School in Washington, D.C., listened to Roberts read in the Young Readers Center while students from elementary schools in Arkansas and Pennsylvania listened to a video recording that was streamed live. Roberts took questions from students in all the locations.

A student from Pennsylvania asked her why she decided to write about women. “If you only know about half of the human race, and not the other half of the human race, you don’t know the whole story,” she responded.

Everybody Wins! DC, a nonprofit that promotes children’s literacy, cosponsored the reading, which took place as part of the Library’s observance of Women’s History Month. Everybody Wins! DC is a longtime partner of the Library’s Center for the Book, and Library staff members have served as reading mentors to students at a nearby elementary school for the past seven years.

Library Welcomes New Blog

“Copyright: Creativity at Work” is a new blog of the U.S. Copyright Office. Karyn Temple Claggett, the office’s acting Register of Copyrights, wrote the inaugural post, published today.

The blog will introduce readers to the important work of the Copyright Office and its multitalented staff—many of whom have a personal stake as musicians, artists, and book lovers in the office’s mission to support authors and users of creative works.

Upcoming posts will inform readers about the office’s studies and reports, developments in domestic and international copyright law and policy, registration practice and other exciting news related to the Office.

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Eric Smith is one of many Copyright Office staffers who pursue the arts. He is a published poet and spoken word performer who has performed on hundreds of college campuses nationwide. Photo by David Rice.

Read the inaugural post here and consider subscribing.

My Job at the Library: Connecting Teachers with Primary Sources

(The following is an article from the January/February 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine , in which Danna Bell of the Library’s Educational Outreach Office discusses her job. The issue can be read in its entirety here .)

 

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Danna Bell. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis.

How would you describe your work at the Library?

I am production coordinator for the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog. I write blog posts and contribute to our Twitter feed. The goal of the Educational Outreach Office is to make primary sources an integral part of classroom activities. Primary sources can engage students and encourage critical thinking, analysis and exploration. I assist in the creation of teacher resources, including Primary Source Sets and eBooks. My favorite task is serving as the team’s Ask a Librarian contact, answering questions from teachers throughout the world.

How did you prepare for your current position?

I have a bachelor’s degree in public administration and a master’s degree in college student personnel from Miami University. After serving as a dorm director and an academic counselor, I needed a change. When I considered other careers, I realized I enjoy providing information. That, along with a love of libraries bred by the Enoch Pratt library system in Baltimore, my hometown, led me to librarianship.

I started at the Library of Congress in 1998 as part of the National Digital Library, providing reference support for the Library’s American Memory project—a gateway to the Library’s rich primary-source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. I subsequently worked with the Digital Reference Section and later joined Educational Outreach.

I have held leadership positions in several professional associations. I served as president of the Society of American Archivists in 2013–14.

How has technology changed the way the Library shares its resources with students and educators?

Digitizing and providing online access to the resources of the Library of Congress in the early 1990s coincided with school districts asking teachers to use primary sources in the classroom. That was truly perfect timing!

The explosion of educational technology has spurred our work. We have converted several Primary Source Sets into eBooks. We reach teachers through webinars and our Teaching with Primary Sources partners. Teachers can also access content when it’s convenient for them on the Library of Congress YouTube page.

How can the Library help educators teach students about the electoral process?

As the home of the papers of 23 American presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, the Library has much to offer teachers and students in the way of election history. A special online presentation documents the presidential inaugurations. The Library’s Chronicling America website allows users to see how historical newspapers (1789–1922) covered the presidents.

Educational Outreach staff recently updated our online “Elections” feature. The Law Library of Congress and the Library’s Prints and Photographs and Music Divisions also have special online presentations about elections and inaugurations.

In the case of 21st-century elections, the Library has been archiving websites pertaining to presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections since 2000.

Women’s History Month: The Legacy of Hannah Richards

(The following guest post was written by Beverly W. Brannan, curator of photography in the Prints and Photographs Division.)

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Tintype of Hannah Richards from the William Henry Richards Collection

The Library purchased the collection of William Henry Richards (1856–1941), a law professor at Howard University, in 2013. The collection includes manuscript and visual materials, including a tintype of Hannah Richards, William’s grandmother, who was born in captivity but later freed. Research into her life—a story of determination and resilience—suggests she may have motivated William’s successful career. Besides being a law professor, he was a civil rights activist and a supporter of temperance and women’s right to vote and own property in the District of Columbia.

The library edition of Ancestry.com shows that Hannah Richards was born in Virginia, probably near Danville, around 1800. She belonged to Gabriel Richards (1739–1826), who moved to Roane County, Tennessee, in about 1805. He later relocated to McMinn County, Tennessee, where he died in 1826, freeing Hannah in his will. But there is more to the story.

Freed slaves were always at risk of being re-enslaved after being kidnapped or jailed for trivial offenses. Hannah almost lost her freedom for keeping company with a man. She was arrested in 1828, according to databases, and charged with harboring “a certain Negro slave Sandy without either written or verbal authority from . . . the said boy’s master” for two years. Papers filed in McMinn County court stated that Sandy had been “with her at her place of living on Sunday nights.” Hannah was fined $2.20 for “harboring and entertaining” Sandy, $2.00 for her jail fee and $0.75 for the justice of the peace. She was warned that if she did not pay all the costs as well as an additional $2.00, she could be sold into slavery for nonpayment of debt.

Hannah’s appeal went to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which returned the case to the McMinn County court. Fires at the courthouse destroyed any documentation of what happened next, although Hannah’s troubles certainly did not end there. In about 1855, she was abducted and taken to a plantation in Alabama. She escaped and returned to McMinn County.

At some point, Hannah may have married, and she must have had at least one child who remained free: the 1860 census indicates that her grandson, William, whom she raised, was the son of free parents.

Some time in 1860, when William was four, he was abducted. Hannah appealed to friendly white neighbors who found her grandson and returned him to her. Then, with William in tow, she did housework in homes around Athens, Tennessee. Young William learned the alphabet from children in the houses where she worked. Like much of East Tennessee, McMinn County was deeply divided on the issue of slavery. It provided 12 regiments for the Union Army and 8 for the Confederates during the course of the war.

William attended Quaker school until he was 17 and then taught in Quaker schools for five years. In 1878, at age 22, he enrolled in Howard University’s Law School, helped by a loan from a mentor. In 1881, he graduated first in his class and worked at the U.S. Treasury Department for four years to repay the loan. Then he returned to Athens, presumably to be near his grandmother. He practiced law and served as alderman and mayor. Later, he moved to Washington, D.C., to teach law at Howard University.

Records suggest that Hannah died in 1889, having accomplished much. Not only did she maintain her own freedom, but she also shielded her grandson from slavery, educated him and helped him rise to the middle class. She may also have anticipated the social justice issues he would champion and his movement into the emerging black intelligentsia in the nation’s capital, sometimes known, in the parlance of W.E.B. Du Bois, as “the talented tenth.”

The William Henry Richards collection contains 109 visual materials held in the Prints and Photographs Division. A few of the photographs have been digitized. Unprocessed images can be seen by advance appointment through the Ask a Librarian link on the Library’s website. Richards’s personal papers are in the Library’s Manuscript Division.

Literacy: Libraries Without Borders

(The following is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.)

The Ideas Box, Libraries Without Borders’ portable media center, provides young Congolese refugees with information and education resources in a camp in Burundi. Photo courtesy Libraries Without Borders

You have probably heard about the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. But do you know about Libraries Without Borders?

Libraries Without Borders provides a different type of aid: Since 2007, the organization has been supporting community development in 20 countries around the world through literacy promotion. In 2016, LWB was recognized for its innovative work with a Library of Congress Literacy Awards International Prize.

Pam Jackson, chair of the awards program, acknowledged LWB: “Its civic-minded, community-based promotion of equality through library access has made a difference in many countries around the world.”

One of LWB’s signature programs is the Ideas Box, a portable classroom, media center and library that fits on two standard pallets and can be installed in 20 minutes.

According to Allister Chang, general director of Libraries Without Borders, “Anywhere resources are needed, we want to bring it.”

You can see a short film about LWB’s work and how the amazing Ideas Box is set up, ready to work in 20 minutes. Each unit contains a satellite internet connection and a server, a generator, 25 tablets and laptops, six HD cameras, a large HD screen, board games, arts and crafts, and a stage for music and theater.

Want to tell the world about the great work you, or an organization you know, are doing in literacy (and perhaps win a Literacy Award in the process)? Then visit our site today and fill out an application.

PTSD: A Lasting Impact of War

(The following guest post was written by archivist Rachel Telford of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project).

“I went to the VA and I said, with tears in my eyes, I hurt. I mean, I really, really hurt, and I think Vietnam had something to do with it.”

—William Barner, January 2006

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William Barner in uniform, late 1960s

William Barner survived a year in Vietnam serving in a Howitzer Battery, but he did not return unharmed. Following his service, Barner was unable to control his anger and had difficulty keeping a job. Almost 40 years after his discharge, he was finally diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Exploring the experiences of veterans and the impact of military service inevitably means discussing PTSD. The most recent installment of the Veterans History Project’s Experiencing War web feature recounts the stories of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in different career fields who have returned from war bearing the invisible scars of their experiences. The collections in this exhibit were chosen with an eye toward exploring the variety of experiences of servicemen and women who have suffered from PTSD as well as the striking similarities.

Each veteran describes symptoms such as nightmares, anxiety, anger and difficulty maintaining personal and professional relationships, and all but the youngest among them tell of living with these symptoms for decades. Though understanding of PTSD grew after World War II, it did not begin to expand significantly until the 1980s. Many veterans of Vietnam, Korea and World War II have been diagnosed only recently.

Navy photographer Raymond Eldred Metcalf spent the Korean War traveling between combat units to collect images of Navy planes in action, surviving bombings and sniper fire, all while armed with nothing but his camera. In his VHP interview, he said, “When I got out there wasn’t even anybody to talk to … because nobody understood, and it seemed like nobody cared except me.” He experienced nightmares and suffered from depression but had nowhere to turn for help. Returning from Vietnam more than 15 years later, Arthur T. Baltazar, who served with the Army as a perimeter guard, experienced the same types of nightmares and despondency. He thought, “Nobody cares. I can’t believe that nobody cares what we went through. Not just me, but all the vets.”

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Reynaldo Puente, fourth from right, in a group photo with a nuclear missile, 1974

Though PTSD may typically be associated with combat, those serving away from the front lines are not immune. Reynaldo Puente was a nuclear missile crewman in Germany during the Cold War. When his unit went on alert status, he feared not only for his own life, but also for the safety of his loved ones in the event of nuclear warfare. Fortunately, Puente and his crew never had to launch their nuclear weapons, and he returned to Texas to begin a career as a police officer. Unfortunately, nightmares and anxiety eventually forced him to leave the police force. After many years and several more careers, Puente shared his story with a friend who was a psychiatrist, and she suggested he seek treatment for PTSD.

Among veterans of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that between 11 and 20 percent experience PTSD in a given year. Larry Rosenthal, a New Jersey National Guardsman, was activated after the September 11 terrorist attacks and went on to serve in Afghanistan. Upon his return from war, he experienced sleeplessness, heightened awareness and difficulty controlling his emotions. Unlike his predecessors, he didn’t have to wait years to find the help he needed. He shared, “One Sunday I blew up . . . in a fit of what they call blind rage. And I said, ‘Time for counseling,’ and the VA was there.”

The veterans featured in this exhibit share difficult stories that illuminate one of the most lasting impacts of war. For some, PTSD became more than simply an individual struggle. Army veteran David Polhemus became a counselor to soldiers like himself who live with PTSD; former medic Wendy Taines returned to school to learn more about PTSD so she could advocate for veterans; and William Barner spends his free time helping fellow veterans navigate the VA healthcare system.

Visit the exhibit to hear their stories and view all of the featured collections.