Library of Congress's Blog, page 28

Crime Classics: Ed Lacy’s Edgar Award-Winning “Room to Swing”

“Room to Swing” is the newest addition to the Library’s Crime Classics series. Cover art adapted from Federal Art Project poster advertising the Sioux City Camera Club.

This is a guest post by Hannah Freece, a writer-editor in the Library’s Publishing Office.

“I broke par in Bingston.”

With this enigmatic statement, private eye Toussaint Moore opens “Room to Swing,” Ed Lacy’s Edgar Award–winning 1957 novel, the newest addition to the Library of Congress Crime Classics series.

It’s the hard-hitting story of a Black detective battling racism, a murder frame-up and the mysteries of an early reality television series about unsolved crimes. It’s a compelling story, popular when it was released in midcentury America, and the most influential of Lacy’s prolific career.

The narrative wastes no time. After that one-sentence opener, Moore continues, “It took me less than a minute to learn all I wanted to know—that I’d made a mistake by coming here.”

Here’s the set-up: A private detective in Harlem, “Touie” Moore is hired by the producers of a true crime reality television show to tail a suspect. When Moore finds his quarry dead—and himself framed for the crime—he must travel to the suspect’s hometown in fictional Bingston, Ohio, to solve the case. He encounters hostility and suspicion from the town’s white residents who balk at cooperating with a Black detective. To clear his name, Moore returns to New York to trap the murderer and confront his accusers.

Lacy was the pen name for Leonard S. Zinberg, a New Yorker who knocked out more than two dozen tough-guy crime novels published as paperback originals (“Go for the Body,” “Shakedown for Murder,” “Sin in Their Blood”) and more than one hundred short stories in a career that spanned nearly three decades. He was Jewish, married to a Black woman, a communist for many years, and an early and ardent advocate of civil rights for Black Americans. (Ralph Ellison, who moved in many of the same New York literary and social circles, reviewed Zinberg’s first book in 1940 in New Masses, a Marxist magazine.) When Zinberg died in Harlem of a heart attack in 1968 at age 56, the New York Times reported his inexpensive books, part of the midcentury love affair with pulp fiction, had sold more than 28 million copies.

He wrote “Swing” in mid-career, earning a footnote as the first white writer to place a Black detective at the center of a noir mystery. Published in 1957, it won the Edgar Award the following year for the best mystery novel.

As Crime Classics series editor Leslie S. Klinger describes in his introduction, the noir genre features “cynical, morally ambiguous protagonists [who] often found themselves caught in a whirlpool of events, slowly sucked into disaster.” Lacy created a tense drama in which Moore fights unseen forces—not only the true killer, but the racism that pervades American society.

While Lacy was not writing from lived experience, he made an earnest effort to capture the unique struggles of a Black man in the 1950s. Moore’s simultaneous skepticism and determination to exonerate himself place him firmly in the hard-boiled tradition.

Lacy was also innovative in setting “Swing” in the context of a reality television show called “You—Detective!” The producer who hires Moore describes the show as follows: “We rehash some unknown but factual crimes, and offer a reward if any viewer can nab the criminal. It’s been done before; you’ve probably seen similar shows.”

Unidentified actors recording “Gang Busters,” 1950. Phillips H. Lord Collection. National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

Modern audiences surely have, but in 1957, the format was still novel. The concept of a true crime program with audience participation had its roots in radio. The “Gang Busters” radio show debuted in 1935 featuring dramatized plots pulled from the headlines. Actors portrayed key figures in each case, including heroic law enforcement officers, all accompanied by thrilling sound effects: sirens, whistles, gunfire, and fisticuffs. The show was wildly popular, ran for two decades, coined the phrase “coming on like gang busters” and sought to valorize the police while teaching audiences that “crime does not pay.”

The show, the creation of veteran radio star Phillips H. Lord, also featured descriptions of real fugitives gleaned from local police departments and the FBI. Listeners were encouraged to contact law enforcement with any information, just as viewers are in the fictional “You—Detective!”

FBI Wanted bulletin for Ruth McElvain, 1954. Phillips H. Lord Collection. National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

The success of “Gang Busters” led to its television adaptation in 1952. Other TV programs soon followed, though it would be decades before the genre’s longest-running shows, “America’s Most Wanted” and “Cops,” premiered in 1988 and 1989, respectively. The popularity of true crime in new formats like the podcast “Serial,” which debuted in 2014, shows Americans’ enduring enthusiasm for the genre. (“Gang Busters” was added to the National Recording Registry in 2008.)

With its republication of “Room to Swing,” the Library celebrates another under-recognized masterpiece, the 12th in the Crime Classics series. Launched in 2020, the series features some of the finest – if faded from popular memory – American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s. The list includes “The Conjure-Man Dies,” “That Affair Next Door,” and “Last Seen Wearing.” Drawn from the Library’s collections, each volume includes the original text, an introduction, author biography, notes, recommendations for further reading and suggested discussion questions from mystery expert Klinger.

Crime Classics are published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the Library of Congress. “Room to Swing,” published on October 4, is available in softcover ($14.99) from booksellers worldwide, including the Library of Congress shop .

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Researcher Story: Julie Centofanti

Julie Centofani. Photo courtesy of the author.

Julie Centofanti, a biology student at Youngstown State University, started a club at her university in 2020 to transcribe historical documents included in the Library’s By the People  project. A longer version of this interview appears on the Signal blog. 

How did you find out about By the People?

I’m a member of the Youngstown State University Sokolov Honors College, and we are required to earn 60 volunteer hours per year. Serving the community can be challenging for any college student, and the COVID-19 pandemic made it even harder.

So, I did what any college student would do: research virtual volunteer opportunities on the internet. Through my travels, I found BTP. I have always loved learning about history, and I discovered that the Library offers the perfect way to preserve history and earn volunteer hours! 

Tell us about your club.

In summer 2020, I met with Mollie Hartup, the associate director of my honors college, and we discussed possibly hosting a virtual event for other honors students to transcribe historical documents. In August, we organized the first transcribe-a-thon on WebEx. Since then, we have hosted multiple transcribe-a-thons and now have biweekly two-hour meetings for students to earn volunteer hours in a virtual environment.

We start each meeting with a tutorial in which we review available BTP campaigns and documents to transcribe and review. Afterward, students log into the Library, choose a campaign and transcribe. During the session, students can ask questions by sharing their screens, and they collaborate to determine words or phrases that may be difficult to read.

At the end of the meeting, we discuss interesting documents we transcribed, along with the number of pages we transcribed or reviewed. Students earn Transcribing Club prizes, such as pins, pens and other gifts when they attend a certain number of meetings.

What are some interesting documents you’ve come across?

I have found countless documents interesting.

The first project I worked on was the Theodore Roosevelt campaign. I have always enjoyed reading about the personal documents that Roosevelt received, either from family or friends. While transcribing, I found an 1899 letter he received when he was governor of New York particularly interesting. It discusses the conditions of troops in the Philippines and promotions of exemplary officers.

As a biology student in the premedical track, I am also fascinated by health care from the past. Many documents in the Early Copyright Title Pages campaign discuss remedies for health problems. It is interesting to see similarities and differences in health care from the 1800s to today.

What advice do you have for first-time transcribers and students who might want to organize their own club?

For new transcribers, I would recommend treating each campaign or document with an open mind. Transcribing documents in cursive or illegible handwriting can be challenging, but each document has its own story.

To start, I would suggest a short document that is easy to understand. This will build confidence and a sense of accomplishment. If you cannot complete a page, save your work and move to the following document. Your time and dedication to the Library will be greatly appreciated.

For students looking to organize a college transcribing club, I would recommend reaching out to other students through a university newsletter, online forum or promotional posters or forming a group within your major.

Then, create a transcription tutorial on paper or video, so students are not intimidated or nervous to begin transcribing. The Library has resources to help you put together a transcription presentation. And I created a tutorial to use during my meetings.

From there, set up a meeting date. In a university setting, your transcribing club can be virtual or in person. Many students enjoy collaborating in person, so they can meet other students and help each other with difficult documents.

In any case, it is imperative to encourage students as they first begin transcribing. To do this, ensure that the students choose a campaign they would like to learn about or something that relates to their major.

Another way to encourage students is to set goals for them to attend meetings. For example, we have Transcribing Club levels for students who attend meetings. Students who attend 15 meetings earn the Bronze Award, students who attend 20 meetings earn the Silver Award and students who attend 30 meetings earn the Gold Award. Students also earn small prizes for reaching a new milestone.

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Amelia Earhart, in History’s Hands

Amelia Earhart’s handprint, signed by famed pilot. June 28, 1933. Manuscript Division.

A shorter version of this story appeared in the July/August edition of the Library of Congress Magazine. 

The best clues to a person’s character lie right in the palms of their hands. That, at least, is what Nellie Simmons Meier believed.

Meier, you see, was one of the world’s foremost practitioners of the “science” of palmistry in the 1920s and ’30s. She and other palmists thought they could divine one’s character, personality and, perhaps, even their future by studying the shape of the hands and the lines of the palms.

Meier was so renowned for her work that some of the world’s most famous folks — Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Gershwin, Booker T. Washington and Susan B. Anthony, among others — sought her insight. Many trekked all the way to Tuckaway, her cottage in Indianapolis, for consultations.

Sitting in the parlor, Meier examined their hands, seeking clues to what made them tick. She also made prints of their hands and wrote character analyses based on her readings. In 1937, she published her work in a book, “Lions’ Paws: The Story of Famous Hands.”

Eventually, she donated a portion of her original material to the Library — the Manuscript Division holds autographed handprints and photographs of 135 notable figures as well as the character sketches she wrote for each.

In 1933, Meier examined a pair of hands that, wrapped around the controls of a Lockheed Vega 5B, helped make aviation history. Just a year earlier, Amelia Earhart had flown from Newfoundland to Ireland — the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic by a woman. When visitors see Earhart’s handprint in the Library today, they often comment upon its size. Earhart stood 5 feet and either 7 or 8 inches (both are listed in official records) tall, about four inches taller than the average American woman in 1930, and the handprint gives an impression of athletic, physical capability.

In her own examination of Earhart’s hands, Meier saw signs of a natural caution that, she wrote, “acts as a preventive to her taking unnecessary risks or doing foolhardy stunts.”

Part of Meier’s analysis of handprints: “I wanted to see the characteristics which her hand revealed…” Manuscript Division.

Yet, flying was inherently risky, and Earhart was pushing boundaries.

So it was that, four years after that meeting with Meier, Earhart took flight on another attempt to make history, this time as the first woman to fly around the world, aided only by navigator Fred Noonan.

Following a shakedown flight from Oakland, California, Earhart and Noonan departed Miami on June 1, 1937, in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra bound for Puerto Rico, South America and points far beyond. After covering more than 19,000 miles over the next month, the pair took off from Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, headed for the pin-drop-sized Howland Island, more than 2,500 miles away. The uninhabited island, little more than a coral atoll, covers less than one square mile and rises just 20 feet above the sea.

Amelia Earhart in the cockpit of a Lockheed Electra. Undated. Acme News Service. Prints and Photographs Division.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, anchored off Howland Island, made radio contact with the pair repeatedly over the course of seven hours in the early hours of July 2. The signal was eventually strong and the reception clear, with Earhart’s plane reporting at one point they were less than 100 miles from Howland. The Itasca sent up a smoke screen to help the pilot and navigator spot them in the early morning glare.

But something went amiss; the cutter and the plane never spotted one another. After a few hours, Earhart reported they were running out of fuel and still couldn’t find the island. Radio contact ended. By 11 a.m., the ship’s officers concluded the plane had gone down.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately authorized the most extensive (and expensive) air and sea search in U.S. history. It turned up nothing. Earhart and Noonan were declared lost at sea by the end of the month. A government report concluded the pair had run out of gas and crashed in the open sea, but books, theories and searches continue to this day, spurred by radio signals that some say came from Earhart days after the plane went down. High-tech expeditions have searched the ocean floor around Howland Island, while others have focused on an uninhabited atoll 350 miles away, Nikumaroro, on the theory that the pair managed to land on a reef that was dry at low tide, were badly injured and survived for several days. None has been proven conclusively.

Today, though, Earhart’s pioneeering legacy lives on, and the Library still preserves the images of those hands that made history.

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It’s About (Danged) Time: Lizzo at the Library!

Lizzo checks the sheet music while playing one of the LIbrary’s flutes. Photo: Shawn Miller.

It all started with a tweet.

Last Friday, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden saw that the one and only Lizzo was coming to D.C. for a concert. The pop megastar is a classically trained flautist. The Library has the world’s largest flute collection.

Taking to Twitter, the Librarian played matchmaker, tagging Lizzo in a tweet about the world-class flutes.

“Like your song,” she tweeted, “they are ‘Good as hell.’ ”

One of about 1,700 flutes in the collection, she teased, is the crystal flute made for President James Madison by Claude Laurent — a priceless instrument that Dolley Madison rescued from the White House in April 1814 as the British entered Washington, DC during the War of 1812.. Might she want to drop by and play a few bars?

Lizzo did a hair toss, checked her nails and took to Twitter herself. The 34-year-old has been training on the flute since she was a child. As a college student, she played in the University of Houston marching band. She even performed online with the New York Philharmonic orchestra during the pandemic.

“IM COMING CARLA! AND I’M PLAYIN THAT CRYSTAL FLUTE!!!!!” she tweeted the next day.

She pulled up to the Library on Monday. Hayden and the Music Division staff ushered her into the flute vault, giving her a tour of the highlights. It’s quite the sight. The main body of Library’s collection was donated in 1941 by Dayton C. Miller, a renowned physicist, astronomer and ardent collector of flutes who was intrigued by their acoustics. His collection includes a walking stick flute, which may now be on Lizzo’s wish list for the holidays.

Now. About that crystal flute.

Laurent was a French craftsman, a clockmaker by trade, who was born in the late 18th century. He took an interest in flutes as a pastime. He patented a leaded glass flute in 1806. Most flutes at the time were made of wood or ivory, but Laurent’s glass invention held its pitch and tone better during changes in temperature and humidity. They were popular for a few decades, but he was almost alone in making them and they faded from popularity after flutes began to be made of metal in the mid-19th century. Today, only 185 of his glass flutes are known to survive, and his crystal flutes are even rarer. The Library holds 17 Laurent flutes, by far the largest collection in the world.

They were near the height of their popularity when Laurent sent a particularly elegant crystal flute to President Madison upon the occasion of his second inauguration. Its silver joint is engraved with Madison’s name, title and the year of its manufacture — 1813. It’s not clear if Madison did much with the flute other than admire it, but it became a family heirloom and an artifact of the era.

President James Madison’s crystal flute, engraved with his name and the year it was made — 1813. Photo: Library of Congress.

Before Lizzo arrived, the Library’s curators in the Music Division made sure that it could be played safely and without damage. This sort of thing is not as unusual as it might sound. Many of the Library’s priceless instruments are played every now and again, even the five stringed instruments by Antonio Stradivari. Those, in fact, were given to the Library by Gertrude Clarke Whittall with the stipulation that they should be played from time to time. Music fans can hear the Library’s Stradivari and some of our other classic instruments — the 1654 Nicolò Amati violin and Wanda Landowska’s Challis clavichord — during the fall 2022 Concert Series.

So, Monday. Our two stars meet cute.

Lizzo reverently took Madison’s crystal flute in hand and blew a few notes. This isn’t easy, as the instrument is more than 200 years old. She blew a few more when she was in the Great Hall and Main Reading Room. Then, reaching for a more practical flute from the collection, she serenaded employees and a few researchers. It filled the space with music as sublime as the art and architecture.

Cameras snapped and video rolled. For your friendly national library, this was a perfect moment to show a new generation how we preserve the country’s rich cultural heritage. The Library’s vision is that all Americans are connected to our holdings. We want people to see them.

Lizzo with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in the Library’s flute vault. Photo by Shawn Miller

So when Lizzo asked if she could play the flute at her Tuesday concert in front of thousands of fans, the Library’s collection, preservation and security teams were up the challenge. When an item this valuable leaves any museum or library, for loan or display in an exhibition, preservation and security are the priorities. At the Library, curators ensure that the item can be transported in a customized protective container and a Library curator and security officer are always guarding the item until it is secured once more.

For obvious reasons, we don’t say much more about security in public. But when the Library sent Thomas Jefferson’s Koran to the World Expo in Dubai last year, conservation, preservation and strict environmental requirements were enforced. The Library and the State Department executed a plan to transport and securely display the Koran. A Library professional with experience preserving and maintaining the security of important cultural items accompanied the Koran at every step.

The same sort of security was in place for the Madison flute to rejoin Lizzo onstage at Capitol One Arena. When Library curator Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford walked the instrument onstage and handed it to Lizzo to a roar of applause, it was just the last, most visible step of our security package. This work by a team of backstage professionals enabled an enraptured audience to learn about the Library’s treasures in an exciting way.

As some of y’all may know I got invited to the Library of Congress,” Lizzo said, after placing her own flute (named Sasha Flute) down on its sparkling pedestal, which had emerged minutes earlier from the center of the stage. Following the aforementioned, highly popular Twitter exchange between Lizzo the Librarian of Congress, the crowd knew what was coming.

“I want everybody to make some noise for James Madison’s crystal flute, y’all!” They made more noise than the instrument, having been at the Library for 81 years, has been exposed to in quite some time. Maybe ever.

She took it gingerly from Ward-Bamford’s hands, walked over to the mic and admitted: “I’m scared.” She also urged the crowd to be patient. “It’s crystal, it’s like playing out of a wine glass!”

Lizzo played just a few notes on the flute, “trilling” the instrument, but she threw her signature twerk into the short performance, sending the audience into a fresh frenzy.

“We just made history tonight!” she exclaimed. “Thank you to the Library of Congress for preserving our history and making history freaking cool! History is freaking cool you guys!”

And now, thanks to Lizzo, it’s just that much cooler.

The Work of George Chauncey, LGBTQ Historian and Kluge Prize Honoree

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George Chauncey took to the stage in the Library’s Great Hall last Wednesday night to formally accept the 2022 Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. It was a black tie event that had an emotional undercurrent that belied both the formal wear of the crowd and the formal nature of academic dinners.

Chauncey, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University and director of the Columbia Research Institute on the Global History of Sexualities, is the first LGBTQ scholar to win the Kluge’s prestigious $500,000 prize. After four decades helping pioneer the field in academia – and of testifying or filing briefs in court cases that helped establish gay rights – the awards ceremony had the feeling of a victory lap.

“With pride tonight, it is my honor to say that Dr. Chauncey is the first scholar – the first scholar, not the last – in LGBTQ+ studies to receive the Kluge Prize,” said Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, before draping the Kluge medal around Chauncy’s neck, in front of an applauding crowd of Madison Council members, members of congress and invited guests. “The Library of Congress’ mission is to connect and engage with all Americans, and that means telling the rich, diverse stories of all citizens of this country.”

Chauncey, acknowledging the award by joking that he was “never going to win an Olympic medal,” thanked friends, family and colleagues, but most emotionally his spouse, Ronald Gregg. Gregg, a film historian and director of the master’s program in Film and Media Studies at Columbia, met Chauncey in Chicago three decades ago. They have been together for 28 years and married for eight – the latter due in no small part due to Chauncey’s key work on the Supreme Court cases that legalized gay marriage. Without Gregg, Chauncey said, “I could barely imagine my life.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden bestows the Kluge Medal on George Chauncey, while Kluge Director Kevin Butterfield looks on. Photo: Shawn Miller.

“I gratefully accept this prize not just for myself but on behalf of a field of study and a group of courageous scholars whose work on the LGBTQ past was marginalized for far too long,” he said in his 15-minute acceptance speech. “To have the Library of Congress recognize the scholarly quality and significance of this field is profoundly important.” 18:57

Chauncey’s research over the decades has shown that laws criminalizing homosexuality are not millennia-old traditions of western society, but mostly creations of mid-century American conservative politics, beginning in the Depression and continuing for the next half century.

“Chauncey’s work gives us that story that we need to tell about ourselves so that we can be our better selves,” said Martha S. Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, in an interview before the ceremony.

“Gay New York” is Chauncey’s best known book.

Chauncey’s landmark 1994 book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940,” documented that in the first three decades of the 20th century gay life in many American cities was often relatively open and tolerated, reaching a peak in the Jazz Age 1920s. During Prohibition, speakeasies serving illegal liquor became a popular attraction for millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens, creating an realm where social rules were far more relaxed.

In this environment, openly gay, cross-dressing acts became popular (particularly in New York), making camp humor standard fare in many nightspots. Singers such as Gladys Bentley (who performed wearing a tuxedo) and Gene Malin, who performed camp novelty songs, were headliners. The “pansy” craze swept the east coast, drawing thousands gay and straight partygoers of all races and economic backgrounds to drag balls.

At the same time, Chauncey wrote, the societal understanding of what made a man “gay” was profoundly different than today for a number of reasons. For one, the growth of cities brought millions of people, many of them single young men, into urban environments and away from the strictures of family and small-town life.

In these cities, societal norms of the era also prohibited women from being in many workplaces, almost all saloons (unless they were prostitutes) or even to be unaccompanied in public. In these overwhelmingly male environments, men who sometimes or even frequently had sex with other men were not considered to be homosexual unless they were openly effete, known at the time as “pansies” or “faeries.”

In “Gay New York,” Chauncey demonstrated this now-forgotten world, showing that particularly among working-class men there was far more acceptance of such relationships, particularly if they were private.

Only a reactionary wave of laws that began in the austerity of the Depression created an entire class of people as “gay” and then discriminated against them in almost every facet of society. This created the realm of the gay “closet.”

Chauncey, born in the 1950s, grew up as the son of a Presbyterian minister in the Deep South who campaigned for civil rights. He learned early that stands for social justice were often unpopular and greatly discouraged, sometimes with violence.

He received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Yale University. After a difficult time finding work as a young historian specializing in what was then considered to be a small and unimportant field, he landed a teaching position at the University of Chicago from 1991 through 2006. He returned to Yale as the Samuel Knight Professor of History & American Studies from 2006 to 2017. He then moved to Columbia.

In court, he’s been involved in 30 cases that targeted gay rights, testifying or filing amicus briefs about his research. Four of those cases went to the U.S. Supreme Court, including landmark cases Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which overturned the nation’s remaining sodomy laws; and the marriage equality cases, United States v. Windsor in 2013 and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

Chauncey joins a prestigious group of Kluge winners that includes the most recent honoree, Danielle Allen, a political theorist at Harvard University; Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president of Brazil; Drew Gilpin Faust, a Harvard historian; and John Hope Franklin, the veteran scholar of African American history.

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An Evening with Hazel Scott, Sept. 28!

Hazel Scott, intense and assured, in an undated publicity shot. Photo: Unknown. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Anne McLean, a music specialist in the Music Division.

On Sept. 28  — that’s Wednesday — the Music Division partners with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Washington Performing Arts to present a special event saluting a pathbreaking Black artist: “Celebrating Hazel Scott: Pianist, Singer, Actress and Activist.”

The evening offers a display from the Library’s Hazel Scott collection and a sneak-peek excerpt from a new ballet created to honor her, “Sounds of Hazel.” Dance Theatre of Harlem company member Daphne Marcelle Lee will perform a brief segment to a recording by Scott herself. Biographer Karen Chilton will moderate a discussion on Scott’s life and legacy with choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher; Virginia Johnson, artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem; Adam Clayton Powell III, Scott’s son; and Music Division archivist Janet McKinney. The event is free but we ask that you do register to attend.

A prodigiously talented jazz and classical pianist, Scott was a glamorous figure, fluent in seven languages, and a brilliant star on stage and screen in the 1940s and early 1950s. As this blog noted  it in the January–February issue of LCM, “Hazel Scott was the gorgeous face of jazz at the midcentury.”

She was featured in several Hollywood films, always appearing as herself, a bandleader and formidable pianist, performing virtuosic sets that often juxtaposed classical music and jazz. You can see her tour-de-force turn in the 1943 film “The Heat’s On,” where she plays on two pianos simultaneously while whirling between them on a swiveling stool — a feat to which Alicia Keys paid homage at the 2019 Grammy awards.

Scott’s circle of friends included legendary pianists Fats Waller and Art Tatum — she regarded both as family members — as well as many artists who are icons today: Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Leonard Bernstein and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.

Hazel Scott and Lena Horne, longtime friends, at a night spot in New York. Prints and Photographs Division.

Scott’s marriage to Harlem congressman and minister Adam Clayton Powell Jr. brought her wider fame and heightened visibility as an influential civil rights activist. In 1950, addressing insinuations of Communist sympathies, she insisted on giving testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee; it was a stance that would cause the cancellation of her new television program, The Hazel Scott Show, and damage an extraordinary career.

The Library’s Scott event starts in the Whittall Pavilion at 5:45 p.m. with a display of treasures from the Scott collection, drawn from nearly 4,000 items, including music, photographs, letters, datebooks and diaries.

At 7 p.m., a short documentary will follow the creative team behind “Sounds of Hazel,” including choreographer Rea-Fisher and composer Erica Lewis-Blunt. Daphne Lee will perform a solo from the ballet set to Scott’s scintillating performance of Frédéric Chopin’s “Minute Waltz,” from the film “Broadway Rhythm.”

“Hazel Scott was a diva with a capital ‘D,’ ” Rea-Fisher said, “but she was also super-grounded. She was not afraid to be raw and rough while also being glamorous.”

Because of her audacious nature, Rea-Fisher added, Scott was erased from history. “So, [celebrating] her for all that she is and was is really super, super exciting.”

Capping off the evening, pianist Janelle Gill will play Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” in a nod to Scott’s classical performances and her own composition “Give Thanks” with bassist Michael Bowie and drummer Lenny Robinson.

Connecting Andean Voices and Heritages

Children dressed for Ecuadorian National Day, in New York City, 2021. Photo: Camilo Vergara.

This is a guest post by Giselle Aviles, a reference librarian in the Hispanic Reading Room of the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division.

The Hispanic Reading Room has a new research guide, Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections. This guide, with resources in English, Spanish and Quechua, facilitates research about Andean peoples through language, literature, visual arts and music.

We used video interviews to connect with Indigenous people from Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru and their communities in New York, Massachusetts and the greater Washington, D.C. area.

My field of study is anthroplogy, but I am also trained in documentary films. When I looked at our Indigenous digital collections, I couldn’t help but feel they were disconnected from the communities they represented. So in creating this research guide, I envisioned resources in languages that represented the communities in their home countries and in the U.S. as a way of making the items in the collections – photographs, maps, books and so on – come alive. I wanted these communities, like all others, to feel like we were preserving their stories in their voices. That’s what the national Library is supposed to do. Three interns — Monica Soto, A.B. Bejar, and Pamela Padilla — worked with me and did an incredible job in 10 weeks of summer internship!

The guide is divided into eight sections with an introduction to the Andean world followed by themes of language, storytelling, poetry, arts, photography, textiles and music.

In Runasimi: the Language of the People, Dr. Américo Mendoza-Mori, professor at Harvard University, explains the importance of “creating more spaces to recognize disciplines and traditions of knowledge that for so long were overlooked or just seen as objects of study.” For him, “the displacement that many heritage speakers requires healing. And through that healing process we open up and we bond.” He hopes this work will help Quechua speakers and their descendants in the U.S. to contribute to the continued relevance of the language.

This section also includes the experience of Shana Inofuentes, co-founder of The Quechua Project, a non-profit that promotes use of the languague in the D.C. area, home to the largest Quechua community in the U.S. As Shana shares, “There are many families in our community whose parents maybe don’t speak Spanish as their first language, or not much at all, or maybe learned it when they came to the U.S. I have friends who just learned Spanish when they came to the U.S. because they only spoke Quechua back home.”

In Yachaysapa Willakuykuna: Andean Life & Memory through Storytelling, Elva Ambía, director of Quechua Collective of New York, narrates how the library in her community wouldn’t accept books in Quechua. Her persistence, social activism and help from her family overcame that, resulting in the inclusion of 30 Quechuan books in that library. Ambía is also the author of “Qoricha,” a children’s book about friendships, written in Quechua, Spanish and English. Jessica Huancacuri read parts of it as part of our project.

In Taki Kapchiy: the Sounds of the Andes, Peruvian musician Renata Flores shares the importance of Quechua in her songs. Here it is in Spanish and then in English:

“Siento que esa identidad que tenemos con el Quechua debería ser cada vez más libre y deberíamos hablarlo con más libertad, porque es algo que nos representa, es algo que que es nuestro, que son nuestras raíces, que no se debe perder. La música ha sido una manera para mí, para poder sentirme orgullosa de quien soy y de dónde vengo. Y sé que muchos de nosotros lo vamos a sentir igual. La música andina transmite todas esas emociones y pues para las personas que saben hablar Quechua y que todavía tienen la oportunidad de hablarlo con fluidez, de practicarlo, de, de poder enseñarlo, también les diría: ama penqa kuspa kaych’achawpiy rimaykusun, que no se avergüencen de hablar en Quechua, que no tengan miedo de hablarlo y practicarlo porque es algo tan bello que no se puede perder.”

“I feel that the Quechua identity should have more freedom and we should speak the language more freely, because it is something that represents us, it is something that is ours, our roots, that should not be lost. Music has been a way for me to feel proud of who I am and my origins. And I know that many of us will feel the same way. Andean music transmits all those emotions and so for the people who know how to speak Quechua and who still have the opportunity to speak it fluently, to practice it, to be able to teach it, I would also tell them: ama penqa kuspa kaych’achawpiy rimaykusun, to not be ashamed to speak Quechua, to not to be afraid to speak it, and to practice it because it is something so beautiful that cannot be lost.”

Questions about the project? Use our Ask A Librarian service. It puts you in touch with a reference librarian, just as if you walked into the Library. Tupananchiskama! See you later!

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My Job: Ashley Jones

Ashley Jones. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Ashley Jones is a visual information specialist in the Office of Communications. She designs the Library of Congress Magazine, the Gazette and other publications.

Tell us about your background.

I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland. Art has always been a part of my life. I credit my elementary school art teacher with igniting my passion for art. I continued to create art all throughout my secondary schooling. Baltimore County has a great magnet school system where students can focus on a specific area of study in addition to their regular academic classes. This program gave me the opportunity to study painting, sculpture and photography in middle and high school.

I received a bachelor’s degree in fine art from Parsons School of Design, where I studied communication design. Communication design blends elements of graphic design with elements of marketing and strategic communication. In addition to communication design, I took a lot of art and design history courses. This gave me a wealth of knowledge that I still use to this day. Like many millennials, my college graduation coincided with the Great Recession. It was difficult to find work in a creative field during that time. I freelanced as much as possible during this time in order to develop my skill set and portfolio.

Libraries have always played an important role in my life. As a child, my mother would take my sibling and me to the Library multiple times a week. It was a place to do homework, meet new friends and discover a new book. At Parsons, we had access to multiple universities around New York City. This became an invaluable resource during my studies.

What brought you to the Library, and what do you do?

After graduating, it was important to me to have a job that made use of the degree I earned. I came across a posting online for a visual information specialist at the Library. I applied and was chosen to join the Office of Communications.

I work primarily with the Library’s publications including the Gazette, the Library of Congress Magazine (LCM) and the calendar of events. I serve as art director for the annual report. I also work on other design-related projects as assigned. These projects range from printed ads to social media graphics.

What are some of your standout projects?

I recently completed a refresh of the calendar of events. We stopped producing the calendar due to the pandemic. This pause in production actually provided an opportunity to reflect on the look and feel of the publication. The new design showcases the eye-catching Library orange and provides more space to highlight Library programming.

I have worked on many issues of the LCM. The January-February 2022 jazz issue is one of my recent favorites. Issues featuring great photography are my favorite to work on. You can view that issue here {https://loc.gov/lcm/pdf/LCM_2022_0102...}

What do you enjoy doing outside work?

Outside of work, I enjoy creating illustrations digitally and by hand. I am currently working on a painting. I used to paint a lot in high school, and I’ve wanted to get back into that practice lately. I also enjoy trying out new recipes from around the world. I enjoy making dishes from the Beryl Shereshewsky YouTube channel. People from all over the world submit recipes to her and she tries them out. Karaoke is another pastime that I enjoy. I received a karaoke machine one year for Christmas, and I have been hooked ever since.

What is something your co-workers may not know about you?

I initially went to Parsons to study fashion design. That fashion design program was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was filled with long hours and lots of nonstop innovation. I learned so much about myself during that time. Ultimately, communication design was a better fit, but I wouldn’t trade my time spent in the fashion department for anything.

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Jason Reynolds, Back with a Newsletter!

Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is back from summer break.

It’s been a long time and I apologize for my absence. But I’ve been writing and reading and thinking, and reading some more, and writing some more. Oh, and sweating. I’ve been doing so much sweating, thanks to the swelter of what has been the hottest summer ever. In the history of the whole world. I hope you spent most of your summer in the pool. Or in the A/C. Or in a snow cone machine. Or in a meat locker. Okay, maybe not in a meat locker, but definitely inside a snow cone machine. Like…your head…inside of it. That’s how I hope your summer has gone, because I love you.

Me? Like I said, I’ve been reading, writing, and sweating. And preparing. For what, you ask? I can’t hear you from inside the snow cone machine. I’m kidding. I can’t hear you from inside the classroom because I know y’all are back in school, which I hope at least has air. Anyway, what am I preparing for? Tour! I’m getting ready for the final stretch of my ambassadorship, a victory lap, heading down south to spend some time with some of y’all who happen to live in the hottest places in the U.S.! And I couldn’t be more excited.

I can’t wait. It almost feels like the first day of school. When I was a kid, I would be so gassed up the night before that I could barely sleep. I’d have my outfit laid out, fresh shirt and pants, fly shoes, crisp haircut, all so that when I got on the school bus on that first day, everyone would notice how cool I looked, and more importantly, how I’d grown an inch taller. And that’s kind of what I’m hoping happens when I go on this last tour run. What I’m so anxious about. I want to walk into a school to see my homies, my folks, my crew, my squad, my people, and compare notes about how good we look and how much we’ve grown. And guess what we won’t be talking about? Reading and writing! Okay, maybe we’ll talk about reading and writing a little, but not as much as the teachers. And not as much as we’ll be talking about sweating. Not actual sweating (no sweat talk!) but about what we’re sweating right now. Which sneakers. What music. What TV shows. What flavor of snow cone. And what victory lap should we (but really YOU) be preparing ourselves for now.

With that being said, Happy Back to School Time…Happy School Year…Happy First Quarter…what do we call this? Happy Try to Be Happy You’re Back in School and Summer’s Over but It Was Too Hot Anyway but at Least It Was Summer and Summer Is Always Summer Which Is to Say Summer Is Always Amazing Because There Are No Desks or Lockers or Strange Smells In The Cafeteria Time!

Or something like that.

Jason

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Rest in Peace, Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II on a 1957 visit to the U.S. Photo: Bob Lerner, LOOK Magazine. Prints and Photographs Division.

Queen Elizabeth II reigned over the United Kingdom for nearly a third of the United States’ existence, a poignant observation from the national capital of a country that her predecessors once fought to keep as a colonial outpost.

She started out as a princess, became queen and seemed to evolve into the definition of regal restraint and poise. She was the longest reigning monarch in her nation’s history, a woman who kept a stiff upper lip and her head above the tumults of the day, be they the end of the nation’s colonial empire or of family scandals. Her job was to personify the national ideal and she did.

She visited the Library twice and left the staff in awe both times. The lady had presence.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on their 1957 visit to the U.S. Photo: Bob Lerner, LOOK Magazine. Prints and Photographs Division.

The first was in 1951, when she was Princess Elizabeth, and then in 1991, when she was Queen Elizabeth II.

Here’s account of the latter visit from the Library’s Information Bulletin:

“On May 15 the Library rolled out the red carpet. The occasion was a call from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as part of a three-day state visit to Washington. She came came with a party of 17, including her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

As hundreds of onlookers craned their necks, stood on their toes, binoculars at the ready, for even a peek at her majesty from behind a blockade across the street, the official party was greeted at about 1 p.m. … A long, black limousine with the queen arrived at the southwest front of the Jefferson Building driveway …”

The royal party was greeted by then-Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and led up a red carpet to be received by a large delegation of Senators and Congressmen. A high school band played, and a reception included film and entertainment personalities including actors Jane Fonda (with her then-husband Ted Turner), Ben Kingsley and Angela Lansbury, who, with director Martin Scorsese, were in attendance as part of a British film festival co-sponsored by the Library and BAFTA, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts.

 Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visiting “Shrine” documents at the Library of Congress, November 1951. Library of Congress Archives

In 1951, she was still Princess Elizabeth and Harry Truman was still president.

Here’s how the Library’s Information Bulletin recorded that visit:

“Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, expressed great pleasure that [the Library of Congress] was included in their tour on Friday, and the Princess was deeply impressed with the fact that so many staff members turned out to greet them. Mr. Clapp conducted the 20-minute tour of [the Library], which included viewing the Main Reading Room from the Gallery and exhibits on the second floor.

“In addition to Their Royal Highnesses, the Royal party included the British Ambassador Sir Oliver Franks and Lady Franks, Canadian Ambassador Hume Wrong and Mrs. Wrong, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson and Mrs. Pearson, the Princess’ Lady in Waiting, Their Royal Highnesses’ Equerry, the Secretary of the Royal Household, and Mr. John F. Simmons, chief of protocol in the State Department. Official photographers and press representatives also accompanied the party. LC staff members who were presented to the Royal couple were: Messrs. Buck, Mearns, Andreassen, Adkinson, Wagman, Keitt, Fisher, Gilbert, Krould and Webb.

“Besides viewing the Main Reading Room and the Shrine documents, the visitors saw the memorabilia of the Presidents, the “Milestones of American Achievement” and other regular LC exhibits, and a special display arranged in their honor, which included: A letter of condolence on the death of President Lincoln from Queen Victoria to Mrs. Lincoln; a letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe calling attention to the importance of friendship with Great Britain; a letter in King George V’s handwriting to President Wilson expressing “deep satisfaction” that the two English-speaking nations were working together; and a sketch of the Battle of Trafalgar between Lord Nelson and the combined fleets of France and Spain, with a letter describing the action.

“Both the Princess and the Duke expressed keen interest in the exhibits. They had learned the Gettysburg Address and were pleased to see the original; the Princess was particularly interested in Queen Victoria’s letter, asking how LC happened to have it; the Duke studied the sketch of the Battle of Trafalgar; and both of them asked questions about the Shrine documents and the new preservation processes.”

It was, of course, another time. There’s a new King now, Charles III, and a new era. Carry on.

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