Library of Congress's Blog, page 171

Inside the March on Washington: A Time for Change

(The following is a guest post by  Kate Stewart, processing archivist in the American Folklife Center, who is principally responsible for organizing and making available collections with Civil Rights content in the division to researchers and the public.)

For many Americans, the calls for racial equality and a more just society emanating from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, deeply affected their views of racial segregation and intolerance in the nation.  Since the occasion of March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago, much has been written and discussed about the moment, its impact on society, politics and culture and particularly the profound effects of Martin Luther King’s iconic speech on the hearts and minds of America and the world.  The Library of Congress exhibition “A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington” which opens on Aug. 28, is an opportunity to both celebrate the occasion and to renew the discussion about the ideals that underpinned the march and the broader struggles for freedom.

This post is the first in a series that will explore the “insider” perspective on the march as experienced by individuals who helped organize or in some other way helped shape the events leading up to Aug. 28, 1963.  In popular consciousness, the march has come to stand as the symbolic high point of the Civil Rights Movement and a testament to the fundamental goals and aspirations of all who participated in the broader struggle.  However, when seen through the eyes of those who organized and participated in the event, more complicated and nuanced appraisals emerge, regarding the march itself as well as the broader political, social and cultural context surrounding it.  In particular, those who had fought for racial equality and social justice “in the trenches” of the segregated South viewed the march as yet another moment in which to press their demands for permanent change, as well as a strategic opportunity to continue to fight against the status quo.  In the two following interviews from collections in the American Folklife Center, on-the-ground activists (who were college students at the time), reflect on the historical and political circumstances in which the march was planned.

Sisters Joyce and Dorie Ladner grew up in Mississippi and became civil rights activists as teenagers in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a student at Jackson State University, Dorie was expelled for participating in a civil rights demonstration. She then went to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, commonly pronounced “Snick”), a group founded in 1960 by college students who challenged segregation through sit-ins at restaurant counters, protest marches and other forms of non-violent direct action.  In the interview excerpt, she discusses the physical harm and brutality that front-line activists endured during the summer of 1963 – jailing, beatings and even murder – leading up to the march in August.  Joyce Ladner describes her shock and sorrow at hearing about the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, a friend since childhood, and her subsequent decision to move to New York to work with her sister and others to plan the march.

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Courtland Cox was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., when he helped found the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) to protest segregation in the D.C. area. Members of NAG soon joined with other student groups across the nation to found SNCC. In these excerpts, Cox recalls internal tensions and differences among student activists over the tactics and strategies to use in pressing for social change, particularly the principles and philosophies of non-violent protest, which were espoused by John Lewis and other student leaders.  He then recalls how, in 1962, he and fellow Howard students Stokely Carmichael and Tom Kahn staged a protest in Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s office because of Kennedy’s refusal to speak with them about fellow Howard student, Dion Diamond, who had been falsely charged and jailed in Louisiana for organizing protests there.  In Cox’s perspective, the hope that activists had for meaningful change after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Kennedy election in 1960 waned and turned into outright confrontation by the time of the march, due to the federal government’s “go slow approach” to desegregation.





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Last Word: Rep. John Lewis and the March on Washington

(The following is an interview from the July-August 2013 edition of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

John Lewis, then leader of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, rises to speak at the March on Washington in 1963. Detail ©Bob Adelman, Prints and Photographs Division.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) discusses his memories of the March on Washington and its legacy.

You were one of the leaders of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Aug. 28, 1963. Tell us about some of your experiences that day.

On the morning of the march, I traveled with the other speakers to Capitol Hill and met with Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate. We met with the chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Then, we traveled to the Senate and also met with the majority and minority leaders. We discussed the need for strong civil rights legislation from the Congress.

After we left Capitol Hill, our plan was to link hands and lead the marchers from Capitol Hill down Constitution Avenue to the Washington Monument. We thought there might be a few thousand people, but in the end there were over 250,000. When we came out to the street, I looked towards Union Station and saw a sea of humanity marching. I said to myself, there goes our people, let me catch up to them. We linked arms and started marching with the crowd. They literally pushed us down the street, toward the memorial and onto the stage.

That day, I spoke sixth and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke last. His speech was amazing. He turned the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial into a modern- day pulpit. We did not have a sense of the magnitude of that day, at the time, but he knew—and we knew—he had made an impact. After the speeches were over, people were still coming to the National Mall from all over America. We were invited to the White House by President Kennedy. He met us at the door of the Oval Office and he was standing there almost like a beaming father. He shook hands with each speaker and said to each one, “You did a good job.” And when he got to Dr. King he said, “And you had a dream.”

Your book “Across That Bridge” shares life lessons for those committed to bringing about social change. What are some of those lessons?

The movement taught me to have faith, to never give up, to always love and to not become bitter or hateful. Most importantly, it taught me to pace myself for the long haul. The struggle for equality will not last a week or a year; it is the struggle of a lifetime.

Your soon-to-be published book, “March,” is in the form of a graphic novel. Why did you choose to use this format to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement?

The format was chosen to reach more young people and children, so they can know the history and meaning of the Civil Rights Movement. It is an attempt to bring the movement alive through drawings and words.

Do you believe President Obama’s election is the realization of Dr. King’s dream?

The election of President Obama is a significant step towards making Dr. King’s dream become a reality, but it is not the true fulfillment or realization of his dream. It is only a down payment on King’s dream of building a “Beloved Community”—a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being. We have come a long way, down a very long road toward accomplishing this ideal, but we are not there yet. We still have a great distance to go before we realize the true meaning of Dr. King’s dream.

Civil rights leader John Lewis is the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district. Rep. Lewis is the author of “Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement,” “Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change” and “March,” a graphic novel about the Civil Rights Movement. 

MORE INFORMATION

Listen to Rep. John Liews at the 2004 and 2012 National Book Festivals.

InRetrospect: July Blogging Edition

The Library’s blogosphere kept things cool in the July heat with a variety of posts representing the wealth and breadth of the institution’s collections and initiatives. Here are just a few selections.

In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog

Ben-Hur and Music to Race Chariots By

Robin Rausch talks about musical adaptations of Lew Wallace’s well-known book.

Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

Stinky Flowers

D.C. goes wild over the “corpse flower.”

In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

A Duel with Rifles

A debate in early 19th century Congress leads to a tragic end.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

3 Things to Change the World for Personal Digital Archiving 

Bill Lefurgy offers advice on making digital archiving easier for today’s society.

Teaching with the Library of Congress

Our Favorite Posts: Crossing the Delaware: General George Washington and Primary Sources

The blog looks back on a post about Washington’s 1776 crossing of the Delaware River.

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

A Summer Holiday in the Isle of Wight

Jeff Bridgers beats the July heat by looking at some photochroms in P&P’s collections.

From the Catbird Seat: Poetry & Literature at the Library of Congress

Always a Laureate 

Rob Casper talks about Natasha Trethewey’s first year as Poet Laureate.

 

The “Essential” Opera

There are so many things about the upcoming Library of Congress exhibition, “A Night at the Opera,” that I feel personally connected to. Several of the operas highlighted in the 50-item display are like a program of operas I have sung in my last few seasons as part of The Washington Chorus.

Set design for Puccini’s “Turandot” by Galileo Chini. Music Division.

Each season, we usually do a program of “essential” compositions by a composer. And, in the past, we’ve highlighted the works of Giacomo Puccini and Richard Wagner – both maestros featured in the exhibition, which opens next Thursday.

On display for the first time in the exhibition is a colorful set design by Italian Art Nouveau artist Galileo Chini (1873-1956), created for the very first production of Giacomo Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1926. I had the opportunity to sing this opera when the chorus included selections from all three acts as part of our “Essential Puccini” concert. The legend of a bloodthirsty princess whose icy, vengeful heart softens as she comes to know true love was brought to life with musical grandeur, with the chorus keeping pretty busy throughout, as Puccini wrote much for an accompanying ensemble.

“A Night at the Opera” also will commemorate Wagner’s bicentennial He was born in 1813. He’s actually one of my favorite composers, so being able to sing some of his works has been a particular treat. The exhibition features a holograph manuscript (in the composer’s own handwriting) score of his “Siegfried Tod,” from which the scheme for his four-opera cycle, “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” developed. Handwritten on the manuscript leaf amongst the music notes is “Walküren” or “Valkyries.” I actually had the opportunity to view this manuscript a couple of years ago and then sang selection’s from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, including “Ride of the Valkyries,” for another Washington Chorus program, the “Essential Wagner,” last season. So, you could say, things came full circle for me.

This original Wagner manuscript leaf shows an early sketch for his four-opera cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Photo by Abby Brack Lewis.

I just really love full, formidable and somewhat overwhelming music, and both of these operas have it in spades. And, the thing about both of them, too, is that even if you don’t know much about these operas or the genre itself, you’ve likely heard and are familiar with some of the music. That should make checking out the upcoming exhibition even better.

“A Night at the Opera” opens Thursday, Aug. 15, in the Performing Arts Reading Room. You can read more about it here.

 

 

 

LC in the News: July Edition

News of Library of Congress acquisitions and initiatives led the headlines in July, with stories on the recent donation of the Lilli Vincenz papers and work of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation to preserve television.

“History is written by the victors, but also by the scrapbookers, the collectors, the keepers, the pack rats. By those who show up, at the beginnings of things and with the right technology,” wrote Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse. “In one corner of the climate-controlled manuscript division, on a series of otherwise empty shelves, sits Lilli Vincenz’s unprocessed collection. … Twelve boxes. Cream-colored. Heavy. Inside: meticulous fragments of the gay rights movement of the latter half of the 20th century.”

Also running pieces were The Blade, The Associated Press (in the Las Vegas Sun), advocate.com and the Huffington Post.

“Preserving these shows turns out to be a challenging and time-consuming task. But unless the videotapes are transformed, experts say, future generations will have a diminished appreciation of the era of JFK, flower power and Watergate” wrote Washington Post reporter W. Barksdale Maynard on the Packard Campus.

CBS This Morning’s Jan Crawford reported on the facility’s efforts as well.

News of the Library’s exhibition, current and upcoming, also made the media spotlight.

Opening Aug. 15 is “A Night at the Opera,” an exhibition featuring 50 items celebrating the musical art form.

“Open the shrine!” wrote The Washington Examiner, quoting Wagner’s “Parsifal.” The story also featured a 13-picture slideshow to accompany the article.

Also running brief announcements were the Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post.

The Library’s “The Gibson Girl’s America” exhibition, which opened in March, was highlighted in the Washington Post Express (June 27).

“With her arched eyebrows, corseted waist and elaborate updo, the Gibson Girl could have come off as stiff. But in Charles Dana Gibson’s iconic illustrations, which graced the pages of Life, Scribner’s and other magazines at the turn of the 20th century, she was vivacious, athletic and smart,” wrote reporter Sadie Dingfelder.

Where Magazine also highlighted the exhibition and the Library in its July 2013 issue.

In a headline not to be missed, “Busy Babies at the Library of Congress,” the Washington Post  took a trip to the Library’s Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building to enjoy its art and architecture.

“Washington D.C. is not exactly known as a laugh-riot city, and certainly not through its very serious marble sculpture. But it turns out the Library of Congress — of all places —offers something of a respite from that reputation,” wrote reporter Valerie Strauss. “On a recent trip to the library, I was amused by the sculpted baby boys — known as putti in Italian Renaissance art. … It is said, according to one of the tour guides, that the sculptor, Philip Martiny, was asked to sculpt putti in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance (as the building itself is designed).  Martiny said he didn’t want to sculpt little Italian babies in an American building in the nation’s capital, but felt it was only right to create strong American babies who were busy and industrious. And so he did.”

Also continuing to make the news were announcements regarding teachers selected for the Library’s Teacher Institutes. Local coverage came from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Connecticut.

And in a last piece of interesting news, The Huffington Post took several of the Library’s Civil War stereographs and made them into animated gifs.

 

Experts Corner: Civil Rights Collections

(The following is an interview from the July-August 2013 edition of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

Adrienne Cannon, African American history and culture specialist for the Manuscript Division, discusses the scope of the Library’s civil rights collections.

When did the Library of Congress begin collecting material documenting the Civil Rights Movement?

Throughout its 213-year history, the Library has endeavored to document every facet of the African American experience. With the establishment of the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress in 1870, a large percentage of these materials have been collected as copyright deposits, while others have been acquired as gifts or through purchase and subscription. The Carter G. Woodson Papers, given between 1929 and 1938, provided the first manuscripts related to the fight for civil rights. The collection includes the papers of John T. Clark, a National Urban League official.

Several years ago the Library mounted an exhibition marking the centennial of the NAACP. How did the Library come to acquire this important collection?

The Library acquired the NAACP Records in 1964 with the help of Morris L. Ernst, a friend of Arthur Spingarn, the NAACP’s longtime counsel and president. Totaling approximately 5 million items, the NAACP Records are the largest single manuscript collection acquired by the Library— and the most heavily accessed.

The NAACP Records are the cornerstone of the Library’s civil rights collections. The Library’s comprehensive civil-rights collections also include the original records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the National Urban League and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; and the microfilmed records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These records are enhanced by the papers of such prominent activists as Roy Wilkins, Moorfield Storey, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Joseph Rauh, Mary Church Terrell, and Jackie Robinson. When Thurgood Marshall donated his papers to the Library in 1991, the documentation of his 60-year career, from civil rights lawyer to Supreme Court Justice, were finally brought together in one place.

Does the Library’s Manuscript Division continue to acquire material pertaining to the struggle for civil rights?

Yes. The Roger Wilkins Papers, a gift, arrived in January 2013. They chronicle his career as a civil rights lawyer, journalist and professor. In recent years, the division also received the papers of James Forman, Herbert Hill and Tom Kahn. Forman’s papers cover his leadership of SNCC, as well as his involvement in CORE, the NAACP and the Black Panther Party. Hill’s papers document his multi-faceted career, including his tenure as NAACP labor secretary. Kahn’s papers include his memoranda and notes on the 1963 March on Washington as first assistant to Bayard Rustin, the event’s chief organizer.

What other resources does the Library hold on the Civil Rights Movement?

In addition to the personal papers and organization records in the Manuscript Division, the Library’s other custodial divisions hold related resources in a wide variety of formats such as photographs, newspapers, radio and television broadcasts, film and sound recordings. The Library’s American Folklife Center preserves oral history interviews with those who experienced the movement first-hand. The Library is also collaborating with the Smithsonian Institution on the Civil Rights History Project, a congressional initiative to survey the nation’s existing Civil Rights-era oral history collections and to record additional interviews that will be housed in the American Folklife Center.

MORE INFORMATION:

Civil Rights Resource Guide

View the NAACP centennial exhibition

Brush Stroke of Beauty

Hallway in the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building. Photo by Carol Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division

It is rather hard to believe that at one time some of the decorative murals that adorn every nook and cranny of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building weren’t even known to be there. In the decades after it opened in 1897, the building became increasingly overcrowded with growing staff and collections. By the 1970s, the Jefferson’s decorated spaces were obscured with partitions and dropped ceilings.

In the 1980s, the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) began major renovations to restore the splendor of the Jefferson Building for the American people. According to the AOC’s Barbara Wolanin, who was in charge of the murals restoration during the renovation, the original artists copyrighted their work and, that, coupled with historic photographs of the murals and construction records and letters in the Library’s Manuscript Division, helped AOC’s decorative painters and fine art conservators bring the murals back to life. You can read more about the project in this article from the December 1997 issue of the Library of Congress Bulletin.

“The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, remains, since its opening in 1897, the most elaborately embellished public building in the United States. It symbolizes and celebrates American achievements and values at the end of the 19th century in an elaborate iconographic program where the architecture, painting, sculpture and decorations work together almost seamlessly, a triumph of what we now call the “American Renaissance,” said C. Ford Peatross, founding director of the Center for Architecture, Design & Engineering in the Library’s Prints & Photographs Division. “The murals were executed by a number of artists, some of them the finest of the time, and they are a critical tool in conveying the Jefferson Building’s intended messages. Not only do the murals inform the increasing numbers of people who visit the Library of Congress, both in person and online, but their glowing colors and beautiful compositions provide a truly joyous experience. They are a public treasure that we must protect and preserve.”

Even today, AOC craftsmen continue their work in caring for the ornate walls of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building. Go behind the scenes in this video, produced by the AOC, with one of their decorative painters, Dean Kalomas, to see how they maintain the artistry of the building.

Make sure to check out the Architect of the Capitol YouTube channel to watch videos and learn more.

You can take a virtual tour of many of the Library’s spaces, including several of its most decorative in the Jefferson Building. For more information on the history of the Library of Congress and its buildings, see “Jefferson’s Legacy: A Brief History of the Library of Congress” and “On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Buildings of the Library of Congress.”

Death of a President

The Dallas Morning News announces a national tragedy. Serial and Government Publications Division

(The following is a story written by Library of Congress archivist Cheryl Fox for the July-August 2013 edition of the Library of Congress Magazine. You can download the issue in its entirety here.)

As the American people struggled to come to grips with the death of president John F. Kennedy, the nation’s Library provided reference, refuge and remembrance.

Just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963, White House Special Assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger called two Library of Congress officials at home to “relay an urgent personal request from Mrs. Kennedy.” Just nine hours after the president’s death, the calls on behalf of the newly widowed wife of John F. Kennedy were placed to Roy Basler, director of the Library’s Reference Department, and Manuscript Division Chief David C. Mearns. The request was for documentation of Abraham Lincoln’s lying in state.

According to William Manchester in “Death of a President,” First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy remembered an engraving of Lincoln lying in state that she had selected to illustrate the first public guide to the White House, published in 1962. The image showed Lincoln’s coffin, shrouded in black crepe, on a catafalque in the East Room.

A 19th-century image from Harpers Weekly depicts Abraham Lincoln’s funeral. Serial and Government Publications Division

Mearns volunteered to go to the Library at once to get copies of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (later renamed Leslie’s Weekly) and Harper’s Weekly, in which the images could be found. He asked James I. Robertson, a noted Civil War scholar and executive director of the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission, to join him, along with James Sutton, head of the Newspaper and Periodical Section of the Serial Division. Mearns and Basler later documented their activities, which are preserved as part of the Manuscript Division’s David C. Mearns Papers, 1918-1979. Mearns wrote:

Upon arrival, we went directly to the Manuscript Division, where I distributed flashlights. Mr. Sutton went off to collect Washington and New York newspapers. Dr. Robertson and I went to the Main Building to examine contemporary general periodicals. In Leslie’s Weekly we found excellent pictures of the scene in the White House’s East Room and in the rotunda of the Capitol. … We selected and marked those [newspapers] which contained the fullest and most precise accounts. I then called Dr. Schlesinger, and described to him the materials we had gathered together. He instructed us to deliver it to the Northwest Gate of the White House, which Dr. Robertson did. I reached home about half past one.

The Nov. 26, 1963, issue of the Library’s Information Bulletin notifies staff about procedures in the wake of the president’s assassination. Library of Congress Archives

Throughout the national period of mourning, from 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22 until 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 26, a skeleton staff at the Library of Congress was at work. Basler, Mearns and many other staff members fulfilled numerous media requests, created reports on presidential succession and a bibliography on firearms-possession laws. They even offered the cold and weary mourners refuge in the Library’s Jefferson Building as they waited to file past the President’s coffin lying in state across the street in the U.S. Capitol. During the month that followed the state funeral, the Library presented an exhibition of books by the late president and other memorabilia.

Inquiring Minds: Studying Decolonization

(The following is a guest post by Jason Steinhauer, program specialist in the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.)

Each year the International Seminar on Decolonization, sponsored by the National History Center (NHC) and hosted by The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, brings together young historians from the United States and abroad to Washington, D.C., to study and discuss the history of decolonization in the 20th century. The seminar takes place in July-August, and is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. We sat down with Marian J. Barber, associate director of the NHC, to learn more.

Q. Tell us briefly about Decolonization: what does the term mean, and what period of history does it refer to?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “decolonization” as “the withdrawal from its colonies of a colonial power; the acquisition of political or economic independence by such colonies.” For the purposes of the International Seminar on Decolonization, it means the dissolution of empires, mainly in the period after the second world war and the emergence of new nations, particularly in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The empires we focus on most are those of the European maritime powers such as Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain; but among the participants and the speakers whose lectures accompany the seminar have been scholars of Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Italian imperial history and those who study the post-colonial Middle East.

While such conflicts are always a part of the seminar, a major emphasis has been what comes after, particularly the evolving relationships of newly independent states to their former colonial masters, as well as interactions among the new nations. Members of the seminar apply the techniques of sub-disciplines such as cultural, social, political, diplomatic, gender, economic and military history to help them understand and explain the ways that decolonization has helped reshape the world.

Q: Why the need for a Decolonization Seminar? How did it come about and what purpose does it serve?

The height of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s was accompanied by the development of area studies programs, particularly those concentrating on Asia and Africa. Historians working in those fields often found themselves at odds with scholars of modern Europe and the U.S. The decolonization seminar is intended to bring the two groups together to create a new field that recognizes their differences and commonalities and builds upon both.

W. Roger Louis, member of the Library of Congress Scholars Council, founding director of the National History Center of the American Historical Association, and a leading scholar of the end of the British Empire, developed the idea of the seminar in 2005, in collaboration with the John W. Kluge Center. It has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2006.

Q: What’s the connection to the Library of Congress? Why host the seminar at the Kluge Center each year?

The seminar was conceived early in the life of the NHC out of the longtime collaboration of Roger Louis and Prosser Gifford, then-director of the Library’s Office of Scholarly Programs, who had co-edited influential volumes on decolonization in Africa in 1982 and 1988. When Carolyn Brown became director of the Library’s Kluge Center in 2006, she continued the relationship, cemented when Roger Louis became a member of the Library’s Scholars Council in 2007.

The seminar continues to return to the Kluge Center each year because of the superior research facilities of the Library of Congress; the generosity and resourcefulness of the Library staff and the Library’s reference librarians; as well as the opportunity to be a part of one of the world’s great centers of intellectual endeavor. As historians, we particularly appreciate the opportunity to meet in the historic Jefferson Building!

Q: What is the study of decolonization helping us understand about our world today?

Decolonization helps us understand that the world we are encountering today is ever-changing, the product of the interactions of many cultures and societies and many different systems of economics and politics over many decades. By allowing us to see how today’s world of nations developed from a world of empires and colonies, it helps us envision a future unimaginable to the inhabitants of the colonial past.

Roger Louis lectures at the Library on July 30 at 4 p.m. in the Kluge Center, the final lecture of this year’s Decolonization Seminar. To learn more about the seminar, click here . To see a full list of this year’s seminar participants, click here .

 

A Rare Book By Another Obama

(The following is a story written by Mark Hartsell for the July-August 2013 edition of the Library of Congress Magazine. The full issue is available for download here.)

Barack Obama Sr. / Associated Press

The Library of Congress holds a rare book written decades ago in Kenya by the father of the 44th U.S. president.

The author’s name, listed on the title page, is familiar even if the language is not: “olosi gi Barack H. Obama.” The language is Luo, an African tribal dialect, and the Obama in question isn’t the 44th president of the United States, but his father.

The African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress holds an exceedingly rare copy—only four are believed to exist—of a book written decades ago in Kenya by the president’s father. “Otieno, the Wise Man,” or “Otieno Jarieko” in the original Luo, was published in Kenya in 1959 to promote literacy at a time when adult illiteracy was widespread.

The slim, 40-page volume also is the product of a collaboration that proved pivotal in the Obama story—the book’s editor helped Obama Sr. get to the United States, where he met and married a woman with whom he had the child who would become the first African American to be elected president.

“Books like ‘Otieno’ are part of the historical documentation of presidents and their families,” said Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division. “This book documents, in a tangible way, the father of the first African American president. It helps show what his values and interests were and helps illustrate what kind of man he was.”

“Otieno, the Wise Man” was a three-volume series produced by the Kenya Adult Literacy Program and published by the East African Literature Bureau to promote literacy as well as health, good farming practices and citizenship.

The Library holds copies of the first two volumes. The authorship of Vol. 1 is unclear: An illustrator is credited but no author is listed. Printed on the inside cover of Vol. 2, “Wise Ways of Farming,” however, is this note: “Written by Barack H. Obama for the Education Department of Kenya under the direction of Elizabeth Mooney, literary specialist.”

In his 2012 biography of the president, “Barack Obama: The Story,” author David Maraniss writes that Obama Sr. was performing clerical duties at the literacy program offices when the managers decided to publish primers in five tribal languages. Mooney chose Obama to write the Luo version.

“He was interested in bringing modern techniques to his homeland, and he realized he could make a bit of money through writing,” Maraniss wrote. “So for a time he willingly put himself into the mind of his wise fictional protagonist, Otieno.”

Obama’s tenure at the literacy program office ultimately was most important not for the book but for the connection he made with his editor, Mooney. “Betty” Mooney was an American who spent her life promoting adult literacy in India, Africa and the United States. In Nairobi, she headed a British government project that helped adults read in the local tribal languages.

In addition to the writing job, Mooney also offered to help Obama continue his education in the United States. According to Maraniss, entrance exams, served as a reference and provided financial support.

And crucially—though by chance—she helped Obama find the school he would attend. Leafing through the Saturday Evening Post magazine, she saw an article about a “colorful campus of the islands”—a school with a beautiful setting and a multiracial student body. She passed the article to Obama, who liked what he saw and chose to attend the University of Hawaii. There, he met Ann Dunham. They married and had the son who later became an American president.

The Library of Congress acquired its copy of “Otieno, the Wise Man” in March 1967—41 years before the author’s son was elected president and the historical significance of the book could be fully understood. It is believed that the acquisition was made possible by the Library’s Field Office in Nairobi, which was established the previous year.

Image from the Library’s copy of “Otieno, the Wise Man,” by Barack Obama Sr. / African and Middle Eastern Division.

The book, Deeb said, illustrates the importance of collecting a wide range of material, even though some material might seem puzzlingly obscure at the time it is gathered. Such material often proves valuable—decades later, in many cases—in ways unimaginable when it was acquired.

For scholars, the book also is useful in ways other than the historical importance of its connection to President Obama. It shows Kenya at a time when it was rapidly evolving technologically, socially, economically and politically. In 1963, four years after the book’s publication, Kenya declared its independence from the United Kingdom.

Volumes such as “Otieno, the Wise Man” also play an important role in the preservation of indigenous languages. UNESCO estimates that half of the more than 6,000 languages spoken today will disappear by the end of the century.

“It is important that at least one place in the world be a repository for those languages,” Deeb said. “When those languages are preserved in a place like the Library of Congress, the whole world thinks more highly of them and wants to preserve them as well.”