Library of Congress's Blog, page 146

Collecting Comedy

(The following is an article from the May/June 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. Daniel Blazek, a recorded sound technician at the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Preservation, wrote the story. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

Newspaper and Current Periodicals Reading Room.

Groucho Marx perhaps best explains the importance of the Library’s comedy collections. In a television clip of his 1965 appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Marx discusses “a rather impressive” letter he received from then-Librarian of Congress L. Quincy Mumford requesting the comedian’s personal papers. Johnny Carson read the letter aloud.

Then Marx said, “I’m so pleased, having not finished public school, to find my letters perhaps lying next to the Gettysburg Address, I thought was quite an incongruity in addition to being extremely thrilling. I’m very proud of this thing.”

What’s Your Sign?

Gemini. Etching by Sidney Hall, 1825. Prints and Photographs Division.

For fun, members of my roller derby team figured out their astrological atlas, I suppose as a way to see how compatible each of us are and to understand our personality types for the purpose of working and competing together. The atlas is essentially a breakdown of your zodiac sign, including your rising sign, moon sign and sun sign. I admit this was very foreign to me – my knowledge of astrology only goes as far as the fact that I’m a Gemini and that my mother will occasionally read me my horoscope (usually only if it’s positive).

Americans have exhibited a bizarre fascination with demystifying their destinies. Gaining recognition in the late 1800s, the reputation of horoscopes has morphed from an ancient pseudo-science into a respectable discipline – featured almost daily in U.S. newspapers by the early 1900s.

This article from the Dec. 30, 1894 issue of The Salt Lake Herald reads like a veritable who’s who of “fashionable devotees” in high society.

“Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt is devoted to astronomy, with a decided leaning toward astrology. Perhaps considering the recent unpleasantness in her domestic circle she may be depending upon a combination of the planets to restore harmony after their period of hostile influences had passed.” Vanderbilt went on to divorce her husband, millionaire William Kissam Vanderbilt, in March 1895.

View from above of the zodiac in the marble floor of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building. 2007. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

Another article from The Sun (April 25, 1909) features an interview with an unnamed astrologer, who discusses clients, typical horoscopes and predictions for 1909. Apparently the astrologer takes issue with some female clients because they don’t want to tell their age, which is a requirement for accurate predictions.

Today, horoscopes and astrology are still as popular as ever. You don’t have to go too far to find a psychic offering palm reading or tarot cards. You can even get your horoscopes sent via text message.

Still, there has and will always be skeptics. I think this quote from The Evening Bulletin sums it up quite nicely:

“But it cannot be too often asserted that there is no truth in the art and never was. The sun and all the planets may be in conjunction and exert no more influence for good or evil over a baby than a passing milk wagon in the street.”

Divination chart from Tibet. Late 20th century. Asian Division.

You can explore the topic further and trace the horoscope craze through the Library’s collection of historical newspapers.

Many of the beautiful images adorning the halls of the Library feature astrological symbols–take note of the giant zodiac on the floor of the Great Hall. In fact, a sunny space in the southeast corner of the Thomas Jefferson Building, known as the Hall of Elements, is adorned with pastel-colored paintings representing the four elements and crowned by a disc in the domed ceiling that represents the sun. Although astrologers aren’t charting their future on its walls, the room does see researchers and scholars coming and going.

Of course, interest in astrology pre-dates our 19th century ancestors, with ancient civilizations and early explorers living and being guided by the stars themselves. The Library’s online exhibition, “World Treasures of the Library of Congress,” highlights a variety of historical foreign texts that focus on how mankind explained and ordered the universe.

Library in the News: April 2015 Edition

April headlines covered a wide range of stories about the Library of Congress.

The Library recently acquired a collection of rare Civil War stereographs from Robin Stanford, and 87-year-old Texas grandmother and avid collector.

“The images are rich and incredibly detailed,” wrote reporter Michael Scotto for New York 1.

Michael E. Ruane of The Washington Post spoke with Stanford.

“I’m so glad they’re here, because they will be available for everybody,” she told Ruane. “On the other hand, I’m going to miss them.”

The story of the Library’s acquisition was also featured on PBS Newshour and the Associated Press.

Other Civil War collections in the Library were also featured in a story from a Fox News affiliate in Roanoke, Va. Bob Grebe reported on Appomatox artifacts preserved at the institution, including original Matthew Brady photographs and Alfred and William Waud drawings.

In other collection news, the Library’s Dayton C. Miller flute collection made headlines thanks to a recent concert featuring the instruments.

And still making news was the Library’s acquisition of the Rosa Parks collection. Al Jazeera offered a glimpse into several of its items.

While many of these collection items are available digitally, the Library has other items on physical exhibit.

NPR highlighted the Library’s Music Division exhibition on theatrical design.

“Intrepid curators have created a small exhibition that lifts the curtain on how magic and spectacle are achieved on bare theater stages,” wrote reporter Susan Stamberg.

Offsite, the Washington Nationals baseball team is highlighting items from the Library’s vast baseball collections as part of an exhibit at Nationals Park. Urban Daddy featured it as part of a “What’s New” slideshow.

Dave Berry spoke of touring the Library itself and using its collections for research.

“At an overlook above the reading room, I was awestruck … Everyone was looking up and around. I was looking down … at three orderly rings of oak desks lit by lamps with green glass shades,” he wrote for the Tyler Morning Telegraph. “People on the floor seemed to be doing what people do in libraries … reading, studying, taking notes, exploring mounds of books and exploring the stacks. I wanted to be down there.”

In addition to exhibitions, tours and collections available to the public for research, the Library also hosts a variety of events. One such event is the annual poet laureate lecture to close out the spring literary season. This year, outgoing poet laureate Charles Wright invited former poet laureate Charles Simic to join him in conversation. The Washington Post covered the event.

“It made the star-power of Thursday evening’s presentation at the Library of Congress all the more impressive,” wrote Ron Charles. “There was the 20th U.S. poet laureate sitting on stage with the 15th U.S. poet laureate, their Pulitzer Prizes tucked discreetly behind them.”

The Library’s Capitol Hill campus isn’t the institution’s only branch. Several overseas offices are tasked with collecting and researching.

“The employees of the Library of Congress’s Overseas Offices don’t have just any job. They’re tasked with tracking down critical-yet-obscure materials from around the globe and bringing them stateside, all with the goal of making sure Congress–and anyone else who wants to use its library–has access to the world’s most current and comprehensive collection of information,” wrote Rachel Roubein for the National Journal.

“All of the LOC’s six overseas offices are in often unstable regions, but that’s by design,” reported Bridget Bowman for Roll Call. “The offices serve areas that may not have systems in place to archive and catalog books, publications, newspapers, maps, etc.”

And last, but certainly not least, the Library celebrated its 215th birthday on April 24. As Sadie Dingfelder of The Washington Post pointed out, it was also the birthday of Barbra Streisand, although the Library has a few on the singer and actress. Dingfelder went on to note some of the notable items in the instiution’s collection, such as the Gutenberg Bible, Abraham Lincoln’s scrapbook and the very first book printed in the U.S.

The Writer’s Almanac on NPR’s Morning Edition also mentioned the Library milestone.

The Sinking of the Lusitania

“The hour of two had struck and most of the first cabin passengers were just finishing luncheon. Suddenly at an estimated distance of about 1,000 yards from the ship there shone against the bright sea the conning tower of a submarine torpedo boat. Almost immediately there appeared a churning streak in the water and the trail of a death-dealing torpedo was marked. Passengers who saw the onrushing engine of destruction found no time for deep reflection. Instantly there was an explosion. Portions of the splintered hull of the steel vessel mounted upward over the waves to mark the stroke of the torpedo and fell again to mingle with still more debris sent aloft by the explosion of a second torpedo,” so reads “The Tragedy of the Lusitania” (1915), by Capt. Frederick D. Ellis.

Lusitania arriving in New York for first time, Sept. 13, 1907. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Prints and Photographs Division.

On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank the British cruise liner Lusitania traveling from New York to Liverpool, England. In a scant 18 minutes, the luxury liner with nearly 2,000 passengers sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 passengers perished; more than 100 were Americans, including millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, writer Elbert Hubbard and theater producer Charles Frohman.

Only a couple of weeks before, the German Embassy published a warning in newspapers telling passengers that travel on Allied ships was “at their own risk,” including mentioning the Lusitania specifically. Germany had declared the waters around the United Kingdom a war zone. The fact that the Lusitania had been built with the ability to be converted into an armed merchant cruiser and that she was carrying war contraband was enough to incite Germany to attack.

According to a post from the Library’s Now See Hear! blog, within a month, the busy Victor Military band recorded “National Airs of the Allies,” a medley of anthems and national songs of France, Belgium, England and Russia. The sinking itself was soon memorialized in song in Charles McCarron and Nat Vincent’s “When the Lusitania Went Down,” published within weeks of the event. In February of 1916, Frederick Wheeler recorded “Wake Up, America,” which urged Americans to stand ready to join the fight.

German submarine U20, said to be the one that sank the Lusitania. Between 1914 and 1919. Prints and Photographs Division.

While the sinking of the Lusitania was not the single largest factor contributing to the United States entering World War I two years later, it certainly solidified the public court of opinion against Germany. In addition, the deadly attack was also a turning point in modern warfare. Traditional mandates had called for warning commercial vessels before firing upon them. However, the introduction of the submarine posed a new threat of stealth attacks.

During the war, sections in newspapers captured the details and intensity of the fighting, introduced technological innovations to a curious and interested American public and documented the work and play of the home front. These pictorials were important tools for promoting U.S. propaganda and influenced how readers viewed world events. Images from the battlefields and dramatic coverage of casualties from the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania contributed to the U.S. decision to join the war.

The sinking itself has also been the topic of controversy, including the possibility that the Lusitania was deliberately put at risk in order to drag the U.S. into the war and that the ship was carrying undeclared war munitions in her cargo.

The Library has a wealth of material related to the sinking of the Lusitania and WWI, including a guide to historic newspaper articles, photographs and a compilation of digital collections.

A Whole New Ballgame

(The following is an article written by Mark Hartsell for The Gazette, the Library of Congress staff newsletter.)

The display at Nats Park explores baseball’s roots and D.C.’s baseball past. Courtesy of the Washington Nationals.

The Library of Congress is taking its collections out to the ballgame, reaching a new audience in a new venue.

The Washington Nationals in April opened an exhibition at Nationals Park that, through Library photos, explores baseball’s roots and celebrates the game’s traditions – especially in the nation’s capital.

“Baseball Americana from the Library of Congress” opened April 6 on the main concourse at the stadium’s home-plate entrance and continues indefinitely.

The exhibition features more than 30 oversized facsimiles of Library treasures covering more than two centuries of America’s pastime: the game’s origins, early competition, the men and women who played the game – Hall of Famers, members of Congress, soldiers – and those who cheered it on.

Library and Washington Nationals officials first discussed the idea two years ago while organizing an event to celebrate the Library’s acquisition of the papers of sports broadcaster Bob Wolff.

“There were several ideas discussed that arose from conversations with the librarian and the Development Office about ways we could work together with the Nationals that would be mutually beneficial,” Director of Communications Gayle Osterberg said. “Curators from several divisions brought some of the Library’s baseball treasures to share with Nationals representatives at a meeting in the summer of 2013.

An integrated Marine Corps team poses at Camp Lejeune in 1943. Prints and Photographs Division.

“Of course, when they saw the wonderful collections items and heard curators tell the history and stories, the notion of having a facsimile display at Nationals Park seemed like a good fit.”

Prints and Photographs, Manuscript, Music and Humanities and Social Sciences division curators worked with the Interpretive Programs Office and the Publishing Office’s Susan Reyburn – co-author of the 2009 Library publication “Baseball Americana” – to identify themes and items of interest to the Nationals.

The Library supplied the club with text and digital images, and the Nationals did the rest.

“So many people have contributed time and enthusiasm toward making it come together,” Osterberg said. “It will be a nice way to showcase the diversity of Library collections in a sort of unexpected location.”

The exhibition represents a new kind of outreach in another way.

“We’ve had traveling exhibitions go to many different places,” senior exhibit director Betsy Nahum-Miller said. “Something like this, where we do a display offsite that wasn’t an exhibit here, is a first.”

The Library preserves the world’s largest collection of baseball material: sheet music, baseball cards, photographs, films, newspaper clippings, broadcasts and recorded sound.

It holds the first film of a baseball game (Edison’s 1898 “The Ball Game”), the original copyrighted version of sports’ greatest hit (“Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” of course), the personal papers of pivotal figures (Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson), perhaps the earliest baseball card (“Champions of America,” 1865) as well as the countless accounts of victory, defeat, historic teams and wretched losers found in the millions of newspaper pages of the institution’s collections.

“That you can find a box score here at the Library for almost any game I think is pretty remarkable,” Reyburn said.

“Baseball Americana from the Library of Congress” provides a taste of that to a new audience on its own turf – Nationals Park.

Curators divided the exhibition among seven themes: baseball roots, presidential pitches, congressional games, music, Washington baseball history, women in the game and – using images donated by servicemen to the Veterans History Project – baseball and the military.

A 1787 printing of “A Little Pretty Pocket-Book” features verse and woodcut illustrations depicting outdoor activities for children – and provides the earliest-known printed mention of the game in America.

“A Little Pretty Pocket-Book” (1787) provides the earliest-known mention of
baseball printed in the United States. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

“The Ball once struck off/Away flies the Boy/ To the next destin’d Post/And then Home with Joy,” the author wrote in “Base-Ball.”

“The most fascinating strength of the Library’s collections is the Colonial material,” Reyburn said. “Nobody else has this material. It’s so rare.”

Many images explore the capital’s baseball past through scenes at Griffith Stadium, the ballpark that for more than 50 years served as home to the Washington Senators.

In the exhibition photos, Senators players raise the American League pennant in 1925, Babe Ruth slides into third, Hall of Famer Walter Johnson loosens up before taking the mound, Joe DiMaggio mingles at an All-Star Game and, on Ladies Day, fans visit with Bucky Harris, the player-manager who, at age 27, took over the Senators and led them to a World Series title.

A rare sheet of baseball cards dates to a still-earlier era of the game in D.C.

The Goodwin tobacco company in 1887 submitted the uncut sheet of photos of “Washington Base Ball Club” players to the Library as a copyright deposit. The company never distributed the cards in this form; the full sheets were only used to secure copyright and for advertising purposes.

“To produce large quantities efficiently, baseball cards are printed onto large sheets and later cut into individual cards,” said Phil Michel of the Prints and Photographs Division. “The cards are rarely seen in their uncut form on the original printing sheets, especially from the early years of production.”

The exhibit also highlights the D.C. roots of a baseball ritual: presidential pitches, a tradition inaugurated by William Howard Taft in Washington on opening day, 1910.

“It took time to become an annual ritual,” Reyburn said. “Most of them seemed to have been legitimate baseball fans. Woodrow Wilson truly was. A couple of them really did attend a lot of games.”

As defending American League champions, Washington Senators players raise the
pennant early in the 1925 season. Prints and Photographs Division.

Exhibition images show Taft, Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt tossing first pitches from the stands – though not always successfully. Roosevelt’s throw, according to contemporary news accounts, struck a photographer’s camera, and the ball bounced into the hands of a nearby policeman.

Baseball and America, the exhibition notes, grew up together. The Library’s collections grew with them.

“I think people will be very surprised that the Library of Congress collects baseball and that this is important for the Library to collect,” Nahum-Miller said. “They’ll see that the Library collects all different kinds of things from American culture, including sports.”

The baseball exhibition is also available online.

Happy 215th Anniversary Library of Congress!

A Message from the Librarian

Today, on the Library of Congress’s 215th anniversary, I want especially to congratulate the Library’s extraordinary staff for their work in building this amazing, one-of-a-kind institution.

I am, and always will be, deeply grateful for all they do.

The heart and soul of this great library always has been its multitalented and dedicated staff that has served Congress and the American people in ways unequaled by any other institution.

The Library possesses the largest and most wide-ranging collection of recorded knowledge ever assembled – a statement of fact that, somehow, still fails to convey the breadth of the service this institution provides.

The Congressional Research Service produces the authoritative, nonpartisan analysis and research Congress needs to perform its constitutional duties, and we also support Congress through the work of the nation’s largest law library.

The U.S. Copyright Office protects and preserves the sole depository of the intellectual and cultural creativity of the American people. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped provides the only free public library reading service for blind and visually impaired Americans, wherever they live.

The Veterans History Project collects and preserves firsthand accounts of our veterans’ wartime service and makes them available to the public so that all may know their stories and sacrifices. The World Digital Library gathers great examples of cultural achievements from around the world and presents them, in seven languages, to a global audience.

As the de facto national library of the United States, the Library acquires, preserves and makes accessible – free of charge – the largest and most-diverse accumulation of curated knowledge and creativity in history.

This magnificent accomplishment has been made possible by the continuous support of the U.S. Congress, the greatest patron of a library in history, and by the exceptional work of the dedicated and long-serving Library staff.

Whether working at the heart of the Capitol Hill complex, the NLS offices on Taylor Street, the film- and recorded-sound-preservation facilities in Culpeper, the storage facilities in Landover or offices scattered around the globe, individuals collectively make the Library the great institution it is.

At our Cairo offices, director William Kopycki and his staff acquire important, hard-to-get primary materials from developing nations for the Library’s own collections and those of other U.S. and global research institutions. The Cairo office – like those in Islamabad, Jakarta, Nairobi, New Delhi and Rio – carries out its mission in the face of great challenges: war, terrorism, political unrest, censorship, poverty, huge geographic distances.

At NLS, John Hanson, head of the Music Section, helps make music possible again for thousands of visually impaired musicians. The Music Section provides the public with access to the world’s largest source of braille music material – a lifeline for visually impaired musicians who otherwise might not be able to pursue their dreams.

In the Preservation Directorate, book-binder and collections conservation expert Nathan Smith carries out a combination of art and science – repairing bindings, filling paper tears, re-creating beautiful bindings and making special preservation boxes – that helps preserve historical materials for future generations.

In the Veterans History Project, director Robert Patrick and his staff for 15 years now have collected and preserved the individual stories of America’s wartime veterans, from the last living veterans of World War I to the dwindling generations of World War II and the returning veterans of recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. To date, more than 96,000 such oral histories have been archived at the Library.

Lee Ann Potter and the Educational Outreach team show teachers and librarians across the country – both in-person and online – how to incorporate the Library’s incredible trove of digitized primary-source material into K-12 curricula. In the last fiscal year, for lifelong learning both onsite and online, the Educational Outreach team and its Teaching with Primary Sources partners delivered primary-source professional development to 23,196 teachers in 374 congressional districts.

And through their “Mostly Lost” programs, Rob Stone and Rachel Parker of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division have helped identify scores of silent films whose titles had been lost to history – and, in doing so, help preserve the nation’s motion-picture heritage.

These are but a few examples of the countless, important service activities performed here each day – cataloging, reference services, copyright registration, security, visitor services and many others. Collectively, our curators, docents and volunteers are greatly increasing the number of visitors to the Library and its exhibitions. The Library is an irreplaceable asset to the United States and the world’s pre-eminent reservoir of knowledge.

As we celebrate this 215th anniversary, the Library’s staff members can be proud of this institution’s historical record of service to Congress and the American people and their own contributions to it.

With appreciation and happy birthday wishes,

James H. Billington

Librarian of Congress

(The story was also featured in the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.)

We’ve Got Style

Portrait of Pierre Balmain and Ruth Ford making a dress. Photo by Carl Van Vechten, Nov. 9, 1947. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Every year, top fashion designers, style bloggers and journalists, celebrities and other movers and shakers gather in chic cities across the globe to showcase and check out the latest styles in clothing, accessories, hair and even makeup.

Fashion shows for Autumn/Winter womenswear is usually held in February, with the Spring/Summer looks being exhibited in September. Bridal Fashion Week kicked off April 15 in New York City.

I myself love fashion and giddily peruse the reviews and images that highlight the best and worst of the participating designers. The creativity and sometimes audacity of their styles has me both wanting to go shopping while wondering how one is supposed to actually wear what they are showcasing. If anything, noticing fashion trends is really a lesson into our own culture and history, how our tastes have evolved over time and how we are inspired and influenced by our own surroundings.

Anna Wintour, famed editor of Vogue Magazine, once said, “One doesn’t want fashion to look ridiculous, silly, or out of step with the times – but you do want designers that make you think, that make you look at fashion differently. That’s how fashion changes. If it doesn’t change, it’s not looking forward.”

The Library of Congress recently launched a fashion-related Pinterest board, which surveys fashion trends from yesteryear. Represented are styles for men, women and even children – from fancy dress to hats to hosiery (“the new fashion trend” of having hose blend in with the color of your dress.

Modelès de Madame Carlier. 1897. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

What’s interesting to notice is how trends have changed and the historical evidence of cultural and societal shifts. Pointed out are variations in hairstyles, makeup, accessories, hemlines, heel heights and colors. Women wearing hats and gloves may tell us about the formality or modesty of an era. Images of women reveal revisions in desired body shape over time. Material for clothing may vary with tariffs, rationing or new technologies. Children’s clothing reflects shifts in concepts of childhood.

The Library has a large collection of fashion magazines and pattern books that can help further trace the evolution of fashion. You can observe clothing styles appropriate for different years, seasons, activities, age levels, and classes in long runs of titles such as Harpers Bazaar, which dates back to 1867; McCall’s Magazine (1897-2001), Vogue (1892-present) and Butterick Fashions (1931-1957).

The Butterick Publishing Company also produced The Delineator, a women’s magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It provided its readers with sewing patterns and stories on current fashions. This January 1926 issue features patterns from Paris, advice on the home gymnasium and a story on how to find beauty.

For further reading, check out this guide to the fashion industry from the Science, Technology and Business Division. It represents a selection of the many resources in the Library of Congress that may be useful for the study of this topic.

A Day of Mourning

President Abraham Lincoln’s railroad funeral car. Photo by S.M. Fassett, 1865. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The 16th president was shot by John Wilkes Booth the evening of April 14 and died nine hours later on April 15.

Several days later, Lincoln’s body would begin its long train-trek home to Springfield, Ill., where he would be buried on May 4. Departing April 21, 1865, from Washington, D.C., his funeral procession would travel 1,654 miles through 180 cities and seven states. Nicknamed “The Lincoln Special,” the nine-car funeral train would essentially travel the same tracks that carried the then President-elect east in 1861. Follow the journey with this special presentation in the Library’s Lincoln Bicentennial exhibition.

Lincoln’s coffin was taken off the train at each stop and placed on a horse-drawn hearse that rode through the city to a place the public could pay their respects. Throngs of people lined the streets to watch the funeral procession. Millions more lined the train tracks as the slain president made his final journey home.

The sorrow of the nation was palpable in reports from newspapers across the country.

items in the collection relate to Lincoln’s funeral, including music, newspaper articles, mourning cards, funeral programs and more.

Young Gun

Cover of Pat F. Garrett’s “An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid.” 1882. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

In 1882, Sheriff Pat Garrett published his account of the apprehension and death of Billy the Kid, whom he shot and killed on July 14, 1881.

“‘The Kid’ had a lurking devil in him; it was a good-humored, jovial imp, or a cruel and blood-thirsty fiend, as circumstances prompted. Circumstances favored the worser angel, and ‘The Kid’ fell,” Garrett wrote in “The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid.”

Marshal Ashmun Upson, a friend of Garrett who was also a newspaper journalist, actually ghostwrote the book.

In the fifth version of the book it was noted in an introduction by J. C. Dykes: “Garrett and Upson became very close friends, and this friendship endured until Upson’s death at Uvalde, Texas, in 1894. He was buried there in a cemetery lot owned by Pat Garrett. Garrett and Upson – friends and a writing team that produced a remarkable book.”

According to Garrett in the introduction to his book, “I am incited to this labor, in a measure, by an impulse to correct the thousand false statements which have appeared in the public newspapers and in yellow-covered, cheap novels.”

Historians have criticized Garrett’s account as inauthentic and biased, suggesting that he wrote the book to improve his image. However, while the book sold few copies when it was published, it remained an important reference for future historians and would turn the Kid into a legendary figure of the West. The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds one of the rare copies of Garrett’s book.

Statue of Billy the Kid in the arts district of little San Elizario, near El Paso, Texas. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Feb. 15, 2014. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Billy the Kid – also known as William Henry McCarty (his actual name), William H. Bonney and William (or Kid) Antrim – was born in New York City about 1859. As a young teenager, he moved with his family to New Mexico, by way of Kansas and Colorado. Following the death of his mother, McCarty was soon displaced and began his descent into a life of crime.

In 1875, the Kid was arrested for the first time for being caught with a stolen basket of laundry. He later broke out of jail – his first jailbreak of several. On the lam, the fugitive continued to steal his way through Arizona and Mexico, including thieving horses and cattle.

In 1877, Billy the Kid joined up with a rough gang and became a key figure in the 1878 Lincoln County (New Mexico) War, which was essentially a feud between established town merchants and competing business interests. During the war, he and his gang, The Regulators, killed Sheriff William J. Brady and Deputy George W. Hindman.

Francisco Trujillo, one of the Lincoln County Regulators, gives an account of his encounters with Billy the Kid in a collection of manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project at the Library of Congress.

In addition, this account of Ella Bolton Davidson goes further into the final battle of the Lincoln County War and murder of Sheriff Brady.

The young gunslinger’s crimes earned him a bounty on his head, and he was eventually captured, convicted of murder and sentenced to hang before he made his dramatic escape from the Lincoln County jail on April 28, 1881. In the process he killed two prison guards, Bob Ollinger and J.W. Bell.

Newspapers reported him making his escape saying, “I am fighting the whole world for my life, and I mean business.”

Old Lincoln County Courthouse and Jail, where Billy the Kid was held. Photo by James Rosenthal, 2005. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Billy the Kid was reported to be responsible for the murder of 21 men by the time he was 21 years old (the actual number was likely around 10). Newspaper articles of the time recounted his crimes, with the body count anywhere from 11 to 19 to 36. Such papers as the Las Vegas Gazette often carried news of his exploits.

He avoided capture until July 14, when he was ambushed and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett at a ranch house. Billy the Kid is buried in Fort Sumner, N.M.

This article from the July 26, 1881, issue of the Omaha Daily Bee gives an account of the night Garrett shot Billy and includes Garrett’s report to the governor of New Mexico.

Some papers aggrandized the exploits of the young gunslinger, such as this article, reprinted from the Pennsylvania Times. The “correspondent” allegedly made an acquaintance with someone who had a “wonderful experience with the celebrated bandit.”

In response, other papers ran stories criticizing the Times article.

“He needs no bogus silver spurs stuck on his heels by a Philadelphia scribbler to send him galloping down to a bloody and dare-devilish immortality in the annals of this strange, wild territory.”

Sources: history.com, pbs.org, “Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life,” by Robert Utley

The Power of a Poem

(The following is an article from the March/April 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. Editor Audrey Fischer wrote the story. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

This portrait of Billie Holliday performing in a New York nightclub appeared in Down Beat magazine in 1947. William P. Gottlieb, Gottlieb Collection, Music Division.

Billie Holiday’s iconic song about racial inequality was penned by a poet whose works are preserved at the Library of Congress.

Recorded in 1939, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” brought the topic of lynching to the commercial record-buying public.

Few may be aware that the song was based on a poem written several years earlier by Abel Meeropol (1903-1986), a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, who was deeply affected by a 1930 photograph of a lynching.

Born in the Bronx, Meeropol attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he later taught English. The school’s other notable creative alumni include James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Richard Rodgers, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Neil Simon and Ralph Lauren.

Meeropol published most of his work under the pseudonym “Lewis Allan,” in memory of the names of his two stillborn children. In 1937, his poem originally titled “Bitter Fruit” was published under his given name in the Teachers’ Union publication “The New York Teacher” and under his pen name, in the Marxist publication “The New Masses.”

Meeropol later set it to music and gave it to the owner of Café Society, an integrated cabaret club in New York’s Greenwich Village. The club owner shared it with Billie Holiday, one of the club’s regular performers, who sang it at the end of a set in 1938–to a stunned audience. She recorded it the following year under the title “Strange Fruit.” In 1999, Time magazine named “Strange Fruit” the song of the century. In 2002, it was selected for preservation in the inaugural National Recording Registry.

Abel with wife Anne Meeropol, the first person to sing “Strange Fruit” in public, circa 1935. Courtesy of Michael and Robert Meeropol.

Like many who railed against social injustice during the 1930s, Meeropol was a member of the Communist party. At a Christmas party at the home of civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, Meeropol and his wife were introduced to the young children of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. The children were orphaned when their parents were executed in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy Era. A few weeks later, the children were sent to live with the Meeropols and took their last name.

Meeropol, who taught until 1945, continued to write songs for such artists as Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. One of his more well-known works, “The House I Live In,” was sung by Sinatra in a 10-minute short film written by Albert Maltz. The 1945 film, which was made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, received an honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946. In 2007, it was added to the list of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.