Library of Congress's Blog, page 19

Hans Christian Andersen’s Wild Scrapbooks

In his fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen created worlds of imagination and full of heart: A lovestruck mermaid seeks an eternal soul, a foolish emperor parades around in invisible clothes, an outcast duckling searches for a welcoming family.

Besides authoring timeless stories such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Ugly Duckling,” Andersen occasionally created special scrapbooks as gifts for children of a few lucky acquaintances.

The Library holds one of them in its collections, assembled by Andersen and good friend Adolph Drewsen in 1862 for Drewsen’s 8-year-old grandson, Jonas.

Andersen and Drewsen filled the scrapbook (or “billedbog,” Danish for picture book) with images chosen from American, English, German and French periodicals and books. They cut out pictures, hand-colored them and glued them into the book. Andersen wrote poems or rhymes for 19 of them.

Over 140 pages, Andersen showed a world of adventure and fantasy. Soldiers fought battles in faraway places, explorers traversed the unknown. Around them moved a menagerie of walking, flying, swimming, slithering creatures.

Between a snake, a crocodile and figures of a man and a woman, Andersen inscribed a verse: “He is not afraid of/ the big snake/ and has come so close/ that the hair on his head is standing up straight/ He is engaged/ You will notice his sweetheart/ standing near the snake’s tail/ Her skirt is blue; the maiden has poise/ She glances at the snake and the crocodile/ and says: “Little ones, please lie still.”

The scrapbook is part of a collection of first editions, manuscripts, letters and presentation copies gathered over a 30-year span by Danish actor Jean Hersholt — probably the most comprehensive collection of Andersen material in America. Hersholt donated it to the Library in the 1950s.

Today, some 160 years after he put scissors, glue and pen to paper, this billedbog demonstrates in different way Andersen’s unsurpassed talent for appealing to young imaginations.

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New! “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” from Library’s Crime Classics Series

This is a guest post by Allen Nguyen, a Widening the Path intern in the Library’s Publishing Office .

Ambitious and daring showgirl Margaret O’Dell, nicknamed the “Canary,” has earned the ire of multiple men. When she is found murdered in her apartment, the blame quickly falls on the men entangled in her aspirations; all were near her home on the night of her death. But the apartment is securely locked when the body is found the next day. The police are baffled.

Such is the setup of the “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” by S. S. Van Dine, the latest in the Library’s Crime Classics series. Originally published in 1927, the novel follows Philo Vance, a man of high intuition and powerful psychological analysis, as he discovers the culprit behind this locked-room mystery. He observes not just the facts, but also the minds of the suspects, delving into the realm of psychology. He dissects their personalities and behaviors, and, in the climax of the novel, analyzes how they play their cards when under the watchful eyes of the law, deducing who among them could have the wits — and bravado — to pull off this seemingly impossible murder.

S. S. Van Dine, 1936. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.

S. S. Van Dine — a pen name for Willard Huntington Wright — not only serves as the author but is also the narrator and assistant to the sleuth. Wright, born in 1888 in Virginia, began his writing career as a literary editor for the Los Angeles Times, eventually becoming an influential art critic. Facing financial instabilities, in the mid-1920s he turned to writing detective fiction and assumed the name of S. S. Van Dine, penning a dozen novels featuring Philo Vance. The majority of these novels became bestsellers, alleviating Wright of his financial troubles.

Published during the golden age of detective fiction, “Canary” was the second book in this eventual 12-volume series. As Kirkus wrote in their review of our Crime Classics reissue, the novel is an “undeniable landmark in the history of the genre.” Philo Vance’s popularity placed him alongside other great sleuths of the time, such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Like them, Philo Vance appeared in multiple film adaptations.

Just two years after the publication of “Canary,” it received a film adaptation in 1929 starring William Powell as Philo Vance and Louise Brooks as Margaret O’Dell. But it came at a difficult moment in film history — the switch from silent to sound films, or “talkies.” The first was the landmark Al Jolson film, “The Jazz Singer,” in 1927. Silent films then in production scrambled to add sound, which required scenes to be reshot; that was the situation for “Canary.”

But after Paramount reneged on a salary increase promised in Brooks’ contract, she refused to reshoot her scenes.

Louise Brooks in a publicity shot from the early 1920s. Bain News Service. Prints and Photographs Division.

Contract disputes between actors and their studios were common in this period. Hollywood saw the transition to talkies as “a splendid opportunity … for breaking contracts, cutting salaries, and taming the stars,” as Brooks put it.

This frustration had been years in the making. Several of the biggest stars of the day had banded together in 1919 to create their own production company, United Artists. At the helm were renowned Hollywood figures D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. (The National Audiovisual Conservation Center at the Library houses a wealth of resources on this significant era of film.)

(L-R, front row) D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks establishing United Artists, 1919. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.

Fast forward a decade later to talkies. Brooks’ efforts were not successful. Paramount planted a lie in the papers about her voice being unusable for talkies, irreversibly damaging her reputation in the new era of sound films, and hired actress Margaret Livingston to voice over Brooks’ original scenes. Despite critics panning the overdubbing, the film was fairly successful, and the series — both books and film — continued to be popular. Eventually 17 Philo Vance films would grace the silver screen, leading the American Film Institute to nominate Vance to their list of “100 Years … 100 Heroes & Villains” in 2003.

Van Dine contributed significantly to the detective fiction genre, and “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” stands out as one of his most popular works. This most recent publication of the Library’s Crime Classics series will give readers a taste of Philo Vance as they seek the truth alongside this inimitable detective.

Library of Congress Crime Classics are published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the Library. Each volume includes the original text, an introduction, author biography, notes, recommendations for further reading and suggested discussion questions from mystery expert Leslie S. Klinger. “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” is available in softcover ($14.99) from booksellers worldwide, including the Library of Congress shop.

Primary Documents: The Library’s Amazing Resource for Teachers

This is a guest post by Lee Ann Potter, the Library’s director of educational outreach.

Lisa Suders hears a familiar refrain from her students as they begin history lessons about child labor: We’d rather be out making money at a job than sitting in class.

“There is always a chorus of students who say they would rather be working than be in school,” says Suders, who teaches eighth-grade social studies in Northville, New York.

Their interest in work, however, offers a teachable moment: Suders draws on primary resources from the Library to show students what work historically has meant for children.

She and her students examined photographs taken by sociologist Lewis Hine and read a report he wrote for the National Child Labor Committee in 1909, titled “Child Labor in the Canning Industry of Maryland.”

For young people today, Hine’s report and photos are eye-openers.

A boy working in a low tunnel more than a mile inside the Turkey Knob Mine in Macdonald, West Virginia, in 1908. Photo: Lewis Hine. Prints and Photographs Division.

He describes shocking conditions in workplaces that employ very young children. “Little tots” worked long hours around dangerous machinery, with no safety precautions. During the winter, many of them went south with their families to shuck oysters. In one family, children aged 3, 6, 8 and 9 all worked, and all but the youngest worked long, hard hours. “They were routed out of their beds by the boss at 3 a.m. and worked until about 4 p.m.,” Hine reported.

Suders’ students worked in pairs to answer questions about the report, analyzed Hine’s photos of the children at work and participated in a class discussion. The lesson, Suders says, “definitely took away the ‘glamour’ of making money as a kid instead of ‘just sitting in school,’ ” and her students showed genuine wonder about what life might have been like for those children.

What Suders and her students experienced was the power of primary sources — original documents, photos and accounts of history from people who had a direct connection to it. Primary sources generate enthusiasm for learning by helping students make personal connections with the past and its participants.

Since 2006, the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources program has been empowering educators like Suders to make use of the Library’s digitized collections in ways that are valuable to them and their students.

The program does this by offering professional learning opportunities such as workshops, webinars, institutes and fellowships; developing teaching resources, including the Teachers Page and the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog; extending TPS grants to schools, libraries, universities, museums and associations; and supporting the TPS Consortium, a network of hundreds of partners across the country.

Every year, the program engages thousands of teachers, who reach millions of learners. At the core of the program are the Library’s collections. Across the curriculum, across the grade spectrum and across the country, Library collections serve as teaching tools that capture students’ attention, foster inquiry and promote problem solving skills.

“This has been transformational,” says Jeff Farr, a teacher of at-risk students in an alternative education environment. “Students that previously acted out so that they could leave the classroom are now coming in and actively participating. Wish I could bottle this …”

Farr had witnessed a significant change in student engagement when he taught a unit about Japanese American internment during World War II, using primary sources from the Library’s collections.

One photograph in particular captured the attention of, and surfaced empathy from, his students — most of whom have been unsuccessful in traditional classroom settings and come to his school under burden of expulsion, reassignment, pending judicial action and/or as a transition from a detention facility.

The photograph (at top of this post), taken by Farm Security Administration  photographer Russell Lee featured a Japanese American child — bundled in an overcoat, a tag hanging off the coat — preparing to be evacuated from the West Coast with his parents in April 1942.

Other FSA photographs inspired teachers and students in Peñasco, New Mexico. In fact, the nearly 500 images of people, structures and activities taken in their small town during the early 1940s by Lee and John Collier have played a major role in the Peñasco Independent School District’s efforts to design and implement a K-12 curriculum to teach the history of New Mexico, of the Peñasco area and of Picuris Pueblo, a historic pueblo just south of Taos.

Father Cassidy, a local priest, speaking at the dedication of the new health clinic operated by the Taos County cooperative in Peñasco, New Mexico, in 1943. Photo: John Collier. Prints and Photographs Divsion.

But the power of the photographs extends beyond the curriculum. The photos have encouraged intergenerational communication and relationship building — students are learning from elders about the people and places featured. These conversations and student interest in the portraits of community members taken decades ago led to an unexpected after-school program where students, primarily from Picuris, have been taking portraits of their peers and families. This program prompted another unexpected outcome.

“To support their photography,” Michael Noll of the Peñasco ISD says, “we were able to connect with the son of photographer John Collier, who returned unpublished photos, taken at Picuris, from a personal collection to the Pueblo.”

Haley Rooney, a middle school teacher in Michigan, also was drawn to photographs taken by Lee and others as she was developing a lesson for her Introduction to Spanish class focused on combating stereotypes about where Spanish is spoken around the world. For the activity, she identified dozens of images in Library collections that included Spanish words and encouraged her sixth-graders to analyze and annotate them to determine where they were taken.

“My students were incredibly engaged in this activity,” Rooney says. “There were many great discussions about what clues they could see in the photos that backed up what they thought. After we discussed all of the photos and they had looked at all of them so deeply through the primary source analysis, our conversations regarding the use of Spanish were much more informed.”

Prompting wonder about another place and time, and the experiences of those who came before is something primary sources do exceptionally well for students of every age.

Ilene Berson and Michael Berson are professors at the University of South Florida who are co-directing a Teaching with Primary Sources grant project that involves a number of partnering organizations, including the University of South Florida College of Education, the Tampa Bay History Center, the Florida Office of Early Learning and the three Tampa Bay Early Learning Coalitions.

Their project focuses on infusing primary sources into early childhood instruction to foster emergent visual literacy and historical inquiry with young children. In the first phase of their project, while identifying community-based primary sources that are appropriate for preschoolers, they developed a supplemental resource for educators called “Tampa Bay ABCs.” Similar to flashcards, each letter of the alphabet is represented by a word, illustrated by a primary source related to Tampa Bay. For example, P is for pirate, illustrated with a stereograph image from 1926 of the pirate ship Gasparilla in the bay.

“By engaging with primary sources, children are able to explore complex topics and develop a deeper understanding of historical and cultural contexts,” the Bersons report. “This has also helped to foster empathy, tolerance and respect for diversity, as children are exposed to a range of perspectives and experiences.”

Furthermore, their observations suggest that the “implementation of research-informed strategies that infuse primary sources into early childhood instruction can have a transformative impact on the learning experiences and outcomes of young children.”

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Louise Glück, Nobel Prize Winner, Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Dies at 80

Louise Glück, the poet whose often personal, always searching work won the Nobel Prize in 2020 and who served as the U.S. poet laureate for the Library in 2003-2004, has died at the age of 80. The cause was cancer, and she passed away at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the New York Times reported.

It was a notable passing in American letters, as Glück won almost every poetry award in the canon — the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book  Critics Circle Award, the National Humanities Medal — during a career that established her as one of the nation’s greatest writers of the past half-century.

“Louise Glück was masterful in her craft,” said Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, in a statement. “The precision and beauty in her work spoke to all of her readers because it was a reflection of their own lives.”

She was born in New York in 1943, raised on Long Island and graduated from Columbia University, publishing her first book of poetry in the late 1960s. She rose to prominence in the 1970s, but her career ascended to lofty heights in the 1980s and 1990s, as awards, honors and fellowships poured in. She joined Yale University as a professor in 2004.

The Library has many resources on Glück, but perhaps none is more touching than a recording of her reading at an event nearly half a century ago. It’s from her second collection, “The House on Marshland,” at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium on April 21, 1975. (She starts at the 36:50 mark.)

It is, in retrospect, a remarkable moment. The young poet, then in her early 30s, so much in front of her, so clearly nervous at the podium. A bit later in the program, she’ll say she was pleased that in this book she was better able to write love poems than in early efforts.

“Um, mostly they didn’t turn out well — I mean, not as poems but as experiences — but it was nice to be able to record them,” she said, drawing a laugh from the audience.

Still, there’s a solemn air here at the beginning. She’s introduced by another U.S. poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz, who closes his remarks by saying, “everything she touches turns to music and legend.”

Applause, silence, footsteps on the stage, papers rustle. The place is as quiet as church.

Then:

“Can you hear? In the back?” she asks the crowd softly, and you’re struck, from the vantage point of today, by how incredibly young she sounds.

Her first poem, then, “All Hallows.” Her voice — clear, slow, almost a chant — reads the first seven lines about a rural farm field, the hills darkening, the crops picked clean, a “toothed moon” rising. And then she reads the rest:

“This is the barrenness

of harvest or pestilence.

And the wife leaning out the window

with her hand extended, as in payment,

and the seeds

Distinct, gold, calling

Come here

Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.”

It’s a voice, a vision, that the world would come to revere.

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Hispanic Heritage Month: Two Mexican Stories, Including Dolores del Rio

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, which makes it an excellent time to check in on the Library’s collection of Free to Use and Reuse images, this time from a set devoted to Hispanic life and culture. Visitors to this space will recall that the Library has tons of images that are copyright free, and you may use them in any way you wish.

This time, let’s look at two very different images of Mexican women who came to the U.S. for work.

First is the dazzling image of the legendary actress Dolores del Río (the stage name of María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete), who rose to incandescent stardom in the silent film era, became an international symbol of Hollywood’s golden age and then went home to become a star in Mexican cinema for three decades. She was the first Latina to be a major star in Hollywood.

Her first film was in 1925; her last was in 1978. She was so sophisticated, so gorgeous, so magnetic on screen that, in the 1920s, she was billed as the female Rudolph Valentino. She later had an affair with Orson Welles, who called her “the most exciting woman I’ve ever met.” Playwright George Bernard Shaw once gushed “the two most beautiful things in the world are the Taj Mahal and Dolores del Río.” She was besties with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She hung out with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. You want to know how big a star she was? In 1933’s musical farce, “Flying Down to Rio,” one of her best-known movies, she got solo top billing, her name far larger and more prominent than two young co-stars just starting out … Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

She was born in 1904 to an aristocratic family in Durango. The family finances were wiped out in the Mexican Revolution, and they were often in physical danger. They fled to Mexico City, and, still a teenager, she got into acting as a way back to high society. Suffice it to say, it worked. She married young and was in Hollywood, with her new stage name and her first screen credit, by the time she was 21.

But by the mid-1940s, she tired of Hollywood’s controlling studio system and returned to Mexico to work as a collaborative actress, not just a movie star. She was a fabulous success there, too. She died in 1983, at her home in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 78.

The mural was painted in 1990 by Mexican American artist Alfredo de Batuc at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and North Hudson Avenue. Touched up and refreshed over the years, it was photographed in 2010 by Carol M. Highsmith. It’s no surprise that de Batuc used such swirling colors and romantic imagery to portray the woman who both lived a dream and inspired dreams in so many more. It is, like the lady herself, a show-stopper. Also like her, it has staying power. It’s still there.

Daughter of a Mexican field laborer; her name was not recorded. Taken near Chandler, Arizona, in May of 1937. Photo: Dorothea Lange. Prints and Photographs Division.

Here’s another image with staying power, but from a different part of the Mexican experience in the U.S.: This intense, Depression-era photograph of the child of a Mexican field laborer in 1937 Arizona.

It’s the work of legendary photographer Dorothea Lange, who had been working as a photographer for the federal Resettlement Administration, a government agency formed to raise public awareness of the plight of farmers. This agency evolved into the better known Farm Security Administration. The FSA photographs, now at the Library, produced many images that have become part of the national narrative, none more famous than the “Migrant Mother” photograph that Lange took in 1936 of field laborer Florence Owens Thompson.

We don’t know much about this child at all, other than she was somewhere near Chandler, Arizona, in May 1937. Chandler, these days an outlying suburb of Phoenix, was a tiny town then, around 3,000 people, with farm fields all around. Lange was there to document the poverty of the Depression. Her film rolls show she worked her way around town, taking photographs at several different locations and moving fairly quickly.

She viewed her photography as social activism, not as art. She did not record the names of many of her FSA subjects, including “Migrant Mother,” and often only took a few exposures – just seven for “Mother,” for example. It’s almost certain this encounter with the child was quick and straightforward: A stranger approaches, an introduction, the camera raised, a few snaps. The stranger leaves.

Did Lange ask the girl to frame her face with her hands? Did she say, “Look at me, please?” In any event, caught in the frame are those burning black eyes that match her hair, the furrowed brow on one so young, the simple clothes and, most of all, the uncertainty, the worry.

Two photographs, one of a glamorous woman painted on a brick wall, the other of a tentative girl posed in front of a blank one. Two Mexican women who came north and found such different countries.

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Dancing the Danzón: Hispanic Heritage Month

Ballroom dancers would argue that the danzón is a metaphor for romance, like a graceful waltz through history, and with good reason. The rhythms of different cultures have blended in Caribbean and Latin American dance halls in this sensuous genre for nearly 150 years. The dancers’ steps narrate stories spanning generations.

Born in 19th-century Cuban dance halls, danzón eventually became the country’s official national dance. It continues to thrive outside the big island’s borders, in Mexico and beyond, in orchestra halls and dance salons, leaving an indelible mark on Latin American culture. Its legacy resonates in dances such as salsa, mambo, cha-cha and bolero. It also shares similarities with American music traditions, such as jazz and big band swing.

Still, it’s a genre all its own and a lovely bit of romance to remember during Hispanic Heritage Month here in the U.S. The Library has plenty of music, films and books to help you explore its rich history. It also held a danzón exhibition in late September.

Originating from the English country (or folk) dance, danzón was adapted by the French as contredanse and the Spanish as contradanza. Originally, this kind of dancing was for several couples, starting in two lines (gentlemen on one side, ladies on the other), with each couple working their way to the front of the line, then falling back to the rear. This developed into the quadrille, which included four, if not five, couples executing swirling (but chaste) turns with different partners in the group, working their way back to the beginning.

But in 19th-century colonial Cuba, with sugar plantations mixing European and African cultures, the danzón melded African rhythms with European musical structure. Something new was afoot.

Danzón’s charm lay in the connection between a couple as they engaged in fluid movements without being overtly sexual, their eyes locked. As the women’s flowing dresses billowed and twirled, and the men dipped and spun them until the music faded, audiences would nod, smile and applaud. This sensuous genre took off in dance salons, where Cuba’s elite gathered. It quickly became a symbol of national identity.

The father of danzón was Miguel Faílde. His orchestra premiered the first danzón piece, “Las alturas de Simpson,” (“The Heights of Simpson”) in Matanzas in 1879. It had the characteristic slow tempo, charanga instrumentation and intricate dance choreography that came to define the genre.

You can see this in the 1991 film “Danzón” by Mexican director María Novaro. (The Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center preserves 35 mm prints of the film.) The film captures the music’s nostalgic and romantic essence.

The story revolves around Julia (María Rojo), a telephone operator by day and danzón enthusiast by night. She goes on a frantic search for her missing dance partner, Carmelo (Daniel Rergis), in the port town of Veracruz.

The film showcases the elegance and tradition of danzón against a backdrop of vintage décor. Couples in elegant attire glide across polished dance floors under the soft, warm glow of ornate chandeliers. Young enthusiasts and seasoned aficionados yield to the music with deliberate movements and intricate footwork, swaying with grace and poise, powering through turns, spins and dips.

“Danzón is a movie that bets on nostalgia, reviews our sentimental education, and that I tried all the time to make in a ludic, playful way,” said Novaro during a 2015 interview in Mexico City with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Oral History Project. “[This movie] was about revisiting our sentimental education but in the ’90s, and also feminist, right? With a different perspective of how things should be or how the dialogue between men and women should be.”

A song from the score, “El teléfono a larga distancia” (“Long-distance Telephone”), a lively instrumental composed by Aniceto Díaz in 1921, is also preserved at the Library. A click on the link will take you to the recording.

The Library holds other resources about danzón, including books, recordings, music scores and documentary films. This includes a documentary about the life and music of Israel López, known as “Cachao,” an extraordinary bass player and composer of danzón and mambo. “Salón México,” a 1949 film directed by Emilio Fernández — featuring a cabaret dancer who wins a danzón contest — is also part of the Library’s collection.

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Hundreds of Hebrew Manuscripts Now Online

The Library recently digitized some 230 historic manuscripts, some of them more than a thousand years old, in Hebrew and similar languages such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Yiddish.

The collection, available online for researchers and the public for the first time, includes a 14th-century collection of responsa, or rabbinic decisions and commentary, by Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona. He is considered one of the most prominent authorities on Jewish law of all time.

The digital project, funded by the David Berg Foundation, offers a highly diverse collection of materials from the 10th through the 20th centuries, including responsa, poetry, Jewish magic and folk medicine.

“The generosity of the Berg Foundation has enabled the Library of Congress to achieve a long-standing goal of making its rich collection of Hebrew manuscripts even more accessible to researchers,” said Lanisa Kitchiner, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division. “The collection reflects an extraordinary manuscript tradition of immeasurable research value.”

Its existence and online presence, she added, are “both an inspiration and an invitation to admire, engage, draw upon and advance Jewish contributions to humanity from the 10th century onward.”

Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries is particularly well represented in the collection through numerous manuscripts on subjects including wedding poetry in Judeo-Italian and a considerable corpus on Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Together, the newly digitized manuscripts offer a rich and often intimate glimpse into Jewish life over the centuries.

An illustration from “Order of Prayers Before Retiring at Night.” African and Middle Eastern Division.

Other highlights of the collection include:

The Passover Haggadah, also known as the“Washington Haggadah,” created in 1478 by Joel ben Simeon, a Hebrew scribe who is today considered one of the finest Jewish artists of the period.The 18th-century“Order of Prayers Before Retiring at Night,” a Hebrew miniature created in Mainz, Germany, in or around 1745.A fragment of unpublished poems by Solomon Da Piera (1342–c.1418), one of the last of the great Hebrew poets of Spain.A large fragment of an autograph manuscript by Moses b. Abraham Provençal from 1552.An unpublished novel in Hebrew written just after the first Zionist Congress in 1896.

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An African American Family History Like No Other

When the Library opens its new Treasures Gallery next year, displaying some of the most striking papers and artifacts that span some 4,000 years, one of them will certainly stand out: The Blackwell’s Kinfolk Family Tree.

It’s a dizzying, almost overwhelming piece of folk art that depicts the genealogical history of an African American family from Virginia. It’s 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide, contains more than 1,500 names spread out on curving trunks, branches and leaves and details family connections from 1789 to the 1970s. Its most famous member? Arthur Ashe Jr., the tennis great.

“The first time I saw it, my chin nearly dropped to the floor,” says Ahmed Johnson, the reference librarian in the History and Genealogy Section who worked with the family to donate the canvas. “And the fact that it’s an African American family that can trace its way back to the first ancestor? Slavery usually made that impossible.”

The Blackwell’s Kinfolk Family Tree as of 1959. Artist: Wilfred T. Washington. History and Genealogy Section. 

The research, and the strikingly original canvas, comes from decades of work by the late Thelma S. Doswell, a D.C. school teacher and genealogist who wrote several books on the field. She got started early, being entranced by all the people she did not know at a family reunion.

“I met so many people I didn’t know,” she told a family newsletter in 1982. “I told my mother then that I had to know who these people were.”

She dug into files at the U.S. National Archives, state and local courthouses and antebellum census documents that listed names of the enslaved and sending detailed questionnaires to relatives. The genealogical work, as Johnson pointed out, succeeded in undoing what slavery was designed to do: dehumanize the people trapped in its clutches. Her work was admirable by any standard, Johnson said, but considering the historical hurdles faced by Black American families, it was exceptional.

“It’s always a hit every time we display it,” Johnson said. “People just can’t get over it.”

Doswell created the tree’s folk-art design and artist Wilfred T. Washington put ink to canvas, writing in names by freehand. It was unveiled at the 1959 family reunion.

“I was just a kid then,” says JoAnne Blackwell, president of the Blackwell Family Association, in a phone call from her home in New Jersey. “But it made such an impression on me and everyone else. It made me want to go back to the reunion every year.”

At the foot of the tree is a heavy black rectangle with “The Blackwell’s Kinfolk” written out by hand, in red ink and capital letters. “From 1789” is in gold lettering at the bottom right corner.

A gray rectangle lies directly below that, with an explanatory code in red and black lettering. It spells out the abbreviations used in the tree: “M/B” means marriage bond, “U/M” means unmarried, “N/C” means no children and so on.

The spreading tree above is massive and irregular — it sometimes resembles a meandering river breaking off into multiple streams and creeks rather than orderly tree branches marking the procession of time and generations.

Another striking feature: The tree follows the Blackwells’ matrilineal heritage, with women’s names as or more prominent than the men’s. JENNIE BLACKWELL is the huge name at the base of the trunk, from which everyone else descends, with a smaller notation of “M/B” MIKE below it.

Most names are in small, neat black lettering tucked within the boundaries of a green-bordered leaf. Jeanette. Alvin. Cleotis. Josephine. Cordelia. The name of Ashe, the tennis star, is marked out in gold leaf. Matching gold lettering at the bottom explains: “Tennis Champion – World.” (Ashe won five Grand Slam titles, playing singles or doubles.)

 

The Blackwell family. Photo: Courtesy JoAnne Blackwell.

“I chose the oak tree for its characteristic strength,” Doswell told a Washington Post reporter in 1987 in a feature story about the family tree.

Doswell hardly stopped in 1959. She kept at her research and, aided by enthusiastic family members filling out their own histories, completed two more family trees. Both are larger, more detailed and more straightforward in design. The second version, completed in 1971, has 3,333 names and is at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore.

The third tree, completed in 1991, documents some 5,000 names and is at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond.

Ultimately, Doswell was able to trace the family back to west Africa. The names of the first members put on a slave ship bound for the United States: Ama and her daughter, Tab. They were forced upon the Doddington and landed in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1735. There, her research shows, they were bought at an auction by slave owner James Blackwell.

The family’s newest historians, Richard Jones and Laura Blackwell Anderson, have digitized more than 6,200 family members onto a genealogical website service, making the history accessible to all family members.

The family is also planning their reunion next summer in Yorktown, so that they can visit the places where the family’s story began in North America nearly 300 years ago. It has been, as Doswell’s work makes clear, an epic journey.

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Missed You Much: The Library’s ASCAP Concert Bursts Back into Life

Pop hits, R&B grooves and Broadway anthems thumped through the Coolidge Auditorium Wednesday night as the We Write the Songs concert burst back into life for the first time in four years, featuring songwriters such as Jermaine Dupri, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Madison Love and Matthew West.

You wanted to hear Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much” by the songwriters who put it together? A song from Broadway’s Tony Award-winning “Dear Evan Hansen” by the duo that scored it? Mariah Carey’s monster hit “We Belong Together” presented by co-writer Dupri?

This was your night — with the occasional asterisk. Dupri cheerfully noted his vocals were best kept to demo tapes and studio sessions. “I don’t let people actually hear me sing my demos,” he told an amused audience. “I actually, like, destroy the demos after I do it and the artist hears it.” He let backup singer Nicki Richards handle the soaring vocals.

The 90-minute, invitation-only showcase is an annual event (save for the recent COVID-caused gap) by the Library and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Foundation. It demonstrates to an audience heavy with members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers, often in danceable fashion, why the rights of creative artists have to be protected. The Library is the home of the U.S. Copyright Office, which registers creative works for legal protection. ASCAP is the nonprofit organization that represents the individual artists.

“I have hugged so many legislators in the last half minute, I feel like running for office,” Paul Williams, the Academy Award-winning songwriter and ASCAP president, told the crowd as he helped open the show with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “To us music creators, the Library is our Fort Knox. It’s the Fort Knox for our copyright.”

The show was composed of two-song sets by five artists: Dupri, Love, West, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Each was introduced by the congressional representative from their home district, which, in the above order, meant Georgia, California, Tennessee, New York and Virginia.

In between the hits were backstories about the songs and one-liners about the music business.

Pasek and Paul’s Broadway patter got laughs from the crowd by noting the wild spectrum of across-the-aisle groups that identified with their showstopper, “This is Me,” from “The Greatest Showman.”

“It was an LGBTQ anthem and also Trump played it at Camp David,” Pasek said.

Jimmy Jam (left) and Terry Lewis closed the show at the We Write the Songs concert at the Library. Photo: Kevin Silverman.

Pop music’s Love, who has written (or co-written) songs for Pink, Ava Max, Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, Addison Rae and Jason Derulo, thanked her mom for making her take chess lessons in high school, which gave her the framework for “Kings & Queens,” a 2020 hit she co-wrote for Max.

“It’s a super female-empowerment anthem,” she told the crowd. “Sometimes a song comes together day-of, but other times it takes months and months of chipping away to make it perfect, and that was the case with this one.”

Singer and songwriter West, who sings “songs of hope for people who are feeling hopeless” in a Christian tradition, brought his guitar and a sense of humor onstage.

“A lot of people who don’t know contemporary Christian music, they think that we don’t celebrate platinum (records),” he said. “They think we only give out gold, frankincense and myrrh records.”

Just a few minutes later, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis were up there, closing the show with the thumping “Miss You Much,” with backup singer Jenny Douglas-Foote knocking out the lead vocals.

The crowd rose by the third note, as if on cue. Dupri bopped just across aisle from Love. Child swayed two rows down. Everyone sang along.

It was that kind of crowd. That kind of night.

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“Books That Shaped America” Series Starts

Some of the most important works by Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston and Cesar Chavez will be the focus of a new television series being produced by C-SPAN and the Library.

The 10-part series — “Books That Shaped America” — starts on Sept. 18 and will examine 10 books by American authors published over a span of nearly 250 years and that are still influential today. It will be hosted by Peter Slen, the longtime executive producer of C-SPAN’s BookTV.

“The idea that C-SPAN, working with the Library of Congress, has is to just start talking about books that matter,” said Douglas Brinkley, the author and presidential historian, in an onstage conversation last week with Librarian Carla Hayden, “and these are 10 to get us going.”

The series arises from a 2012 Library exhibit, “Books that Shaped America.” That exhibition was assembled by Library curators and specialists with the final selections determined by a public survey. The dozens of books on the list were chosen for their sustained impact on the nation, not whether they were the “best” or “most well-loved,” and the exhibit provoked plenty of conversation.

Likewise, viewers of this televised version will be able to weigh in with their own thoughts. This guide from C-SPAN provides background on the books and when they will be featured.

This time around, the Library didn’t select the books but it is helping to feature those being discussed. The audience will see Library copies of first editions authored by Paine, Douglass, Hurston, Mark Twain and others. More context will be given by the Library’s copies of rare photos, maps and correspondence.

” ‘Books That Shaped America’ will shine a light on a diverse group of books and authors whose skill with the written word and powerful storytelling left a lasting impression on our nation,” said Hayden. LOC press release.

The show will proceed chronologically, with the first book published in 1776 and the final one in 2002.

Zora Neale Hurston in 1938. Photo: Carl Van Vechten. Prints and Photographs Division.

There are two books from the 18th century, both central to the foundation of the country: “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and “The Federalist” by Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. The Library holds original copies of each.

The 19th century is represented by four works, three nonfiction and one novel. They are propelled by epic journeys of one sort or another as the nation fought over slavery and expanded relentlessly westward.

They are “History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark,” based on the journals kept by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as their crew of explorers set out to cross the western part of the continent after the Louisiana Purchase. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” was the astonishing literary debut of a man who would become the nation’s clearest moral voice against the evils of slavery and white supremacy. “The Common Law” by Oliver Wendell Holmes is regarded as one of the great works of American law and legal reasoning.

The sole work of fiction from the century, often argued to be the great American novel, is “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Twain. The 1884 novel saw Twain put his good-hearted but socially outcast teen, who has faked his own death to escape his abusive father, in league with Jim, a Black man who has just escaped slavery, on a raft down the Mississippi River, both in search of freedom.

By the end of October, the show will move into the 20th century for three books, none of which address the world wars, Depression, civil rights movement, space race or any other of the major events of the century.

Willa Cather’s “My Ántonia” from 1918 is a beautifully written novel set in the frontier country of rural Nebraska, where orphaned young Jim Burden meets young Ántonia Shimerda. It’s a story of immigrant families on hardscrabble farms, the Great Plains rolling out before them. Jim and Ántonia’s friendship evolves over the years as the West and the Great Plains do, too.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” once nearly forgotten, is Zora Neale Hurston’s classic from the Harlem Renaissance. It’s a tale within a tale, as Janie Crawford, approaching middle age, returns to her Florida hometown and recounts her tumultuous life and relationships to a friend. It’s Janie’s story, but it’s really about the Black neighborhoods and towns of Florida in the early 20th century struggling to survive.

“Oftentimes novelists can get into the tone and tenor of your time and bring you into feel what it was like,” Brinkley said. “Some of the books on our list, particularly Zora Neale Hurston, is one that does that. It brings you there.”

The final book of the 20th century to make the list is something completely different — a set of economic and sociological essays by Milton and Rose Friedman. Published in 1980, “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement” is a treatment of the relative merits of free market economics. It spawned a 10-part series on public television, too.

Lastly, placing a foot into the current century, there is “The Words of Cesar Chavez,” a 2002 anthology of works and speeches by the famed labor leader, who founded the organization that gained fame as United Farm Workers. He was also recognized with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Cesar Chavez in a 1979 interview. Photo: Marion S. Trikosko. Prints and Photographs Division.

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