Library of Congress's Blog, page 32

Pocket Globes: The Whole World in Your Hand

A pocket globe that turns on a spindle, housed in a protective box, from the collection of Jay I. Kislak. Photo: Shawn Miller. Geography and Map Division.

Pocket globes, the colorful, world-in-miniature creations of 17th- to 19th- century cartographers, were never a serious venture. Charming trinkets, 3-inch art objects for a gentleman’s desk. A child’s toy. A bygone artifact of the age of exploration.

“They were the kind of thing you’d keep on your desk next to the inkwell and blotting paper,” says John Hessler, curator of the Library’s Jay I. Kislak Collection.

He’s standing in a storage room of the G&M Division, a large, clean space with horizontal filing cabinets for maps and prints. Set out on top of one of these is a collection of 74 pocket globes, given this month to the Library by Kislak’s family and the foundation he left behind. It was, to the best of the Library’s knowledge, one of the largest private collections in the world. It’s now part of the national library.

The dozens of tiny globes, crafted between 1740 and 1875 in Europe and the U.S., are made of everything from ivory to papier-mache. The largest can fit in the palm of your hand. The smallest, in the center of your palm. There are some on stands and others in plush round boxes. Some feature a tiny globe covered in vellum, with continents and countries painted in delicate colors.

The exteriors of their encasing boxes are made of shark skin. Open other boxes and you’ll find the interior – curved, to accommodate the globe – painted with constellations, as if the night sky were a sphere of its own. Some turn on tiny spindles; others are fixed in place.

The lettering and artwork on the globes reveal the world as it was understood in earlier centuries. Photo: Shawn Miller. Geography and Map Division.

The donation brings the total number of pocket globes in the Library’s collections to nearly 100, an extraordinary size, as Kislak was a prodigious collector. His collection at the Library of Mesoamerican art, artifacts, rare books and manuscripts – more than 3,000 items in all ­– dates from around 2000 BCE to the 21st century.

The pocket globes are a British creation, believed to be first made by mathematician and printer Joseph Moxon in 1673, according to the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, part of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. While globes are believed to date back 2,000 years to the Greeks, the oldest surviving one (the Erdapfel, or “Earth Apple”) was made in Germany in 1491 or 1492. Famously, it did not include the Americas.

Moxon started making his miniature globes, about 3 inches in diameter, more than 150 years later, when the curvature of the Earth and its land masses were much better understood. The little globes reached their peak popularity in the late 18th century.

They were not serious scientific objects but artistic ones, with the continents and countries outlined in different colors, complete with place names, tiny paintings of fanciful animals or zodiac signs in the ones with constellations in their shells. Finer ones, made of ivory, were likely “status symbols for wealthy gentlemen,” the museum notes, a desktop ornamentation in a proper library that would have shown a taste for fine art in the sciences. Simpler models were toys for children, perhaps to show how the globe spun.

Today, anyone can buy a tiny globe, made of rubber or plastic, things that only cost a few cents to make, the geographic world a known entity. This collection of pocket globes is a reminder of an earlier time (not all that long ago) when the complete planet was something bold and original to consider; something that was a marvel to be able to hold in the palm of one’s hand.

Dozens of pocket globes from the private collection of Jay Kislak, recently donated to the Library. Photo: Shawn Miller. Geography and Map Division.

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Free to Use and Reuse: Athletes!

The cover of Fawcett Publication’s Jackie Robinson comic #5 from 1951. Serial and Government Publications Division.

This is a guest post by Amelia Torres, a spring intern in the Office of Communications.

The Library’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free prints and photographs are, as always, yours for the taking. You can explore sets that include compilations of travel posters, autumn and halloween, weddings,  movie palaces and dozens more.

Since summer sports are upon us, let’s check out this one on … athletes!

Jack Roosevelt Robinson — Jackie — is one of the most consequential athletes in national history, and arguably the most.

In 1947, when brutal Jim Crow segregation still ruled most of American life, Robinson broke the color line in professional baseball, at the time the nation’s preeminent sport. Playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, mostly at second base, he endured innumerable death threats to become Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year, later its Most Valuable Player and a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

He went on to a second career as a prominent activist for civil rights and social justice, setting the template for the athlete-activist that continues today. His daughter, Sharon, was at the National Book Festival in 2019, discussing her memoir on growing up with her father and his commitment to social justice, “Child of the Dream.”

Today, Major League Baseball has not only retired Robinson’s jersey number, 42, from the entire league, but on April 15 — the anniversary of Robinson’s debut — every player on every team wears his number. No player in any other sport is honored in this way.

Even when he was still playing, though, Robinson seemed larger than life: He got the comic-book treatment as a hero then, too.

The photo above is the cover of Fawcett’s #5 in its “Jackie Robinson” series, which ran for six original issues over four years. (The Library has four of these.) This one from 1951 is 36 pages and includes biographical stories about Robinson, from a narrative of a series against the St. Louis Cardinals to his college days at UCLA.

The cover features Robinson wearing his blue Dodgers cap, his name in raincoat yellow, the rest of the type in bright white with lots of exclamation points. All of this was set against a bright orange background, the type of eye-popping color scheme typical of Fawcett comics.

Comic books in the midcentury covered all sorts of things, from romance to superheroes, but it’s important to keep in mind that Robinson’s comic was before segregation was overturned. It was more than a decade before the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 transformed much of American life. Before all this, Robinson was inspiring the nation — even its young readers — to believe in a future that they couldn’t yet imagine.

All for just 10 cents.

Joan Newton Cuneo behind the (sizable) wheel in the 1910s. Photo: Harris & Ewing. Prints and Photographs Division.

Joan Newton Cuneo, people! Race driving queen!

The lady was born into a wealthy family in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1876. As a kid, she learned how to operate one of the family’s steam trains. She took to newfangled automobiles, too.

By 1905, she was 29, a wife, mother, and race car driver, initiating a trailblazing career that lasted a decade. She hit the Glidden Tour for several years, road rallies that went several hundred grueling miles across parts of the country; roads, having never been made for automobiles, were terrible. She crashed. She came back. She had great success at a series of races ­­­in New Orleans. In every race, she held her own against male competitors. She once hit 111.5 mph on the Long Island Motor Parkway, a record for female drivers. She was a national celebrity.

Racing officials never warmed to the idea of a woman behind the wheel, though, and women were soon banned from races in the American Automobile Association. She kept on for a while, but a divorce, more bans against women drivers and a remarriage to a wealthy mill owner led to a more traditional life in Ontonagon, Michigan, a small village on the shore of Lake Superior.

She died in 1934 at the age of 57, her fame and exploits mostly forgotten.

“Mad for Speed: The Racing Life of Joan Newton Cuneo,” a 2013 biography by Elsa A. Nystrom, revisited her extraordinary career. In June 2018, the National Automobile Museum put her on the cover of its magazine, Precious Metal, describing her as a “racing hero.”

Above, we catch up with her in her prime, sometime between 1910 and 1917. Oddly, she posed without one of her signature hats. Nystrom writes that Cuneo always appeared in public as “feminine, not a feminist, dressed as a lady should … (but) not afraid to challenge the male establishment.”

You can see that sensibility here, in the common-sense bun, the wedding ring and a driving uniform with what appears to be a pleated skirt. It’s a picture that says power, direction and drive.

Women in a low-hurdle race in Washington, D.C., in the 1920s. Photo: National Photo Company. Prints and Photographs Division.

Lastly, let’s check out a track event, the low hurdles. This was particularly challenging for women in the early years of the 20th century, as proper ladies were deemed to be too delicate for most forms of strenuous exercise, much less competitive athletics, so our hurdlers had to make do with bloomers, skirts and blouses.

Women were allowed in a few events in the second modern Olympics in 1900, but of the 997 athletes in those games, only 22 were women. There were no Olympic track events for women until 1928. (Today, all Olympic events have female competitions and 48 percent of all Olympic athletes are women.)

The photograph above was taken in the 1920s at Central High School (now Cardozo) in Washington, D.C. The clothing certainly suggests we’re not fully in the Jazz Age, so it’s likely this was early in the decade.

Our hurdlers don’t appear to be teenagers, they’re not wearing school colors and there are no students in the stands, so we’re guessing this was not a school function but some festive holiday event — perhaps the Fourth of July, Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend. The sailors in uniform and the large American flag at the bottom left give that idea some support.

Some lively music, lemonade, a civic speech or two and some light-hearted athletic competition; look, the ladies are running the hurdles! The sun is out, there’s a light breeze, it’s a good time. World War I and the flu pandemic are over now; the Roaring Twenties are upon us.

Title IX, the landmark legislation that would pave the way for equality in women’s sports, was still half a century away.

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War as They Saw It

A Soviet tank rusts in the Afghan countryside. Photo: Dean Baratta. Veterans History Project.

— This is a guest post by Nathan Cross, an archivist in the American Folklife Center. It first appeared in the Library of Congress Magazine.

Service members long have used photography as a means of capturing the essence of their experiences. As technology improved, cameras became more available, and pocket-sized digital cameras gave service members in Iraq and Afghanistan the freedom to take hundreds of photographs without having to worry about running out of film.

Today, hundreds of those images are housed in the collections of the Library’s Veterans History Project. The project recently released a research guide focused on photo collections contributed by veterans of the global war on terror that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Joseph Beimfohr’s photos let viewers peek into his war.

Beimfohr enjoyed his time in the Army, as can be seen by his broad smile in photos with Iraqi soldiers and civilians. But he did not shy away from harsh realities, either, and he prepared himself and his soldiers for the worst situations they could face. In his photos, he and his section undergo medical training, learning to start IVs — an unpleasant but necessary skill when lives hang in the balance.

Joseph Beimfohr in Iraqi in 2005 in full battle gear. Photo courtesy of Joseph Biemfohr. Veterans History Project.

On July 5, 2005, Beimfohr faced one such worst-case scenario. An improvised explosive device detonated under his feet, grievously wounding him and killing another soldier. Injured in both legs, his hand and abdomen, Beimfohr had both legs amputated. Despite being told by doctors he wouldn’t walk again, Beimfohr was walking on prosthetic legs within six weeks and went on to compete in adaptive sports such as paramarathons and paratriathlons.

“I’ve learned that we place the limitations on ourselves as far as what we think we can’t do,” he said. “People will tell guys that are injured, ‘Oh, you won’t be able to walk, you won’t be able to do this and you can’t do that.’ And then we go out and do it.”

Beimfohr gutting it out in rehab. Veterans History Project.

Dean Baratta served as an Army intelligence specialist deployed to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan as part of a task force responsible for base security.

In an early email home, Baratta characterized his unit’s mission in optimistic terms: “So many armies have come to Afghanistan to fight and die for prestige, money or power. We actually have the opportunity to make the lives of countless people better and, in turn, the world safer for everyone.”

The photos in his VHP collection convey a palpable sense of dashed hope, of shattered idealism. There are joyous scenes, such as a Christmas parade at Bagram, and idyllic vistas of the Afghan mountains and countryside are captured in rich colors. But there also are heart-wrenching pictures of poverty and the detritus of decades of war — often in stark black and white.

In his day-to-day work analyzing security threats around Bagram, Baratta learned firsthand the frustrations of trying to bring about positive change as part of an unwieldy international intervention while navigating complex and often cynical local politics.

“I’m an idealist at heart, and I went in really hoping to see some change and being able to point to one thing that I really improved some lives or made things a lot better or something,” Baratta said in his VHP oral history. “And I left not really feeling that way.”

The photos of other Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in VHP’s holdings provide many other visual accounts of service and sacrifice. Captured in the oral history interviews they gave and the personal photographs they took, these veterans’ stories offer a human collage of the American military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Researcher Story: U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

Congressional portrait of U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink, 1994. Prints and Photographs Division.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink co-wrote “Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress,” published this month. Wu is a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Irvine. Mink is a scholar and writer, who with her father donated her mother’s papers to the Library in 2007. Their biography is the first to delve into the life of the trailblazing legislator and champion of Title IX.

  How did the two of you decide to collaborate?

Wu: When I started conducting research on Patsy Mink, Wendy Mink was one of the first people I contacted. We began with conversations and oral history interviews, then we decided to become co-authors. Wendy lives near the Library, so I would visit her and have dinner at least a couple of times a week while I was in D.C. for research.

Patsy wanted Wendy to write her biography, but I believe Wendy felt uncertain as to how to move ahead. As a political scientist, she did not want to write a completely personal biography of her mother. And as the daughter of Patsy Mink, Wendy did not want to write like a political scientist about someone she knew so intimately.

I’m so grateful for this collaboration, because Wendy authored beautiful and moving memoir vignettes that begin each chapter. She also read and edited all the chapters for accuracy and to add some details. I think it’s fitting that we have this feminist partnership to collectively write about someone who practiced feminist political collaboration.

Mink: Meeting Judy was a godsend, our decision to collaborate resolving my own inner drama over how to write as one person with two voices, the personal and the political-historical, simultaneously memoir-ish and scholarly. Writing was sometimes painful, especially when excavating certain experiences, but working with Judy was always a joy, and our common project was always motivating.

Tell us about Patsy Mink and why she’s important.

Judy Wu. Photo courtesy of the author.

Wu: Patsy Mink is largely overlooked in academic studies and popular memories of feminist politics of the 1960s onward. The recent Hulu miniseries, “Mrs. America,” exemplifies this historical amnesia. Mink was not even a character on the show, even though she was a key feminist, antiwar and environmentalist legislator and political leader during the so-called second and third wave of feminism.

Mink advocated for intersectional feminist policies that carefully considered how race, class and gender shaped women’s lives. As a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii, she brought a Pacific worldview with her to Washington, D.C. And, she worked collaboratively with those outside of the halls of Congress, particularly movement activists, to develop and advocate for policies to achieve equity. Given how jaded most Americans are about politicians, I believe Mink served as a model for ethical political leadership.

What resources did you use?

Wu: I became inspired to research Patsy Mink because I saw a feature on the Library website about her papers. As a historian, I relish the exploration of archives. However, I don’t think I understood how much archival materials the Library holds (over 2,000 boxes). I began researching Mink in 2012, and the book is coming out 10 years later. That’s how long it took to go through the materials, and I wasn’t even able to read everything or write about everything that I read. I also researched other collections, but the Library’s constituted the central source.

Mink: I began exploring my mother’s papers episodically in 2007–08. I started at the beginning of the collection and worked my way through chronologically, collecting scans of materials I expected to consult later when I was ready to put a story together.

I began to work in the papers systematically around 2010 or 2011 and was prepared to begin writing about the early period but was stymied by inner debates over voice. Even with writer’s block, I continued to collect and organize scanned materials from the collection.

Once Judy and I decided to collaborate and the idea of vignettes emerged, I began to chart my explorations in the collection based on topics I needed to cover. The finding aid worked miracles in helping me reach across the collection to find materials in varied locations about common subjects.

Did your research lead you to any surprises?

Wendy Mink. Photo courtesy of the author.

Mink: Given my close relationship to the subject, I can’t really say that I was surprised by my encounters with the collection. But I was delighted to be reminded that my mother kept everything. So, there’s lots of context material, third-party material, movement/activist material in the collection that help to flesh out decisions she made, projects she was part of, struggles she engaged.

Wu: There were many surprises for me. One of the periods of Mink’s life that I find fascinating is her time away from the House of Representatives. She served both on the Honolulu city council and in the State Department as assistant secretary of oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. It was so interesting to see how consistent Mink’s political values were, whether she was in the halls of Congress or in  the city council.

Also, Mink’s time in the State Department revealed profound differences between the executive versus the legislative branches of government. On the one hand, Mink had greater reach as an assistant secretary. On the other hand, she was so hamstrung by the bureaucracy, particularly one that privileged male knowledge and expertise and organizational hierarchies. Although Mink also faced obstacles as a legislator, she definitely thrived and preferred the role of being a lawmaker.

What advice do you have for other researchers using the Library’s collections?

Wu: I benefited so much from being able to talk to Meg McAleer, the historian in the Manuscript Division who processed Mink’s papers. Her insights about the collection and how Mink’s presence in the paper archives differed from other congressional papers were really helpful. So, if you have a chance, talk to the person who processed the collection!

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Letters Straight to Your Heart: The Library’s Centuries of Correspondence

Jacqueline Kennedy at the memorial service for Robert Kennedy. She wrote conductor Leonard Bernstein afterwards, in a letter now at the Library. Photo: . Prints and Photographs Division.

This article also appears in the Library of Congress Magazine.

The letter, written on vellum, is more than 500 years old. It is one of the most consequential missives in world history. It is one of the top treasures of the Library, sealed away in a secure cocoon.

Written in the wake of Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage to the west, the letter from Pope Alexander VI to the Spanish monarchy gives them papal authority to forever claim “all islands and lands, discovered and to be discovered, toward the west and south, that were not under the actual temporal rule of any Christian powers.”

Many scholars believe it is the first written reference to the New World, and it lays out the deadly course of colonialism that Europeans were to inflict on the peoples of the Americas.

The Library’s scribal copy of the letter, a papal bull known by its Latin name of Dudum siquidem, is from around 1502. It is one of three copies known to still exist.

As world-changing as it was, it’s only one letter in the Library’s stunning collection of correspondence that has helped shape the world as we know it, stretching back more than a thousand years. Written by the famous and the forgotten in any number of languages and dialects from all over the world; penned, etched, scrawled, typed and penciled in by kings, presidents, scholars, soldiers, nurses, artists, trade workers, escapees from slavery, musicians, baseball players and beauticians; about subjects from the weighty to the whimsical; the letters can be found on everything from ancient vellum (as calfskin is called) to dime store postcards.

Let’s look at a couple of thank you notes, those timeless missives of good manners, to get an idea of the range we’re describing.

Here’s one in Latin that Ivo, the bishop of Chartres in France, wrote to Matilda of Scotland, queen consort of Henry I, around 1100 A.D., thanking her for help in repairing his church’s roof. And here’s one from Fred MacMurray, cast as the antihero in 1944’s “Double Indemnity,” to James M. Cain, author of the original book, thanking him for saying kind words about his performance.

Dates and documents record the bare bones of history, of what happened when and where. Personal letters tell what it felt like at the time, capturing the humanity of the age. Intimate, rarely written for publication, they are poignant reminders that while epochs and eras change, the affairs of the heart do not.

“Wolfgang Mozart.” The young musician signed this letter in 1770. Music Division.

“Kiss mamma’s hand for me 1000000000 times,” wrote Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a sunny 14-year-old, on March 30, 1770, to his sister, Marie. He was performing in Italy. Like most kids, musical prodigies or no, who are way from home, he was missing his mom.

“It’s 4:00 in the morning — after this long day,” Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to Leonard Bernstein on June 8, 1968, sleepless after the funeral of her brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated. Bernstein, a close friend, had conducted the music at the service.

Now, as the nation reeled in the long hours of the night, she was huddled alone at a desk in her mother’s Georgetown home, no doubt haunted by the earlier assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. “Everyone has gone to bed — but I just want to stay up by myself — to think about so many things — and about today ­— In awful times — I think the only thing that comforts you is the goodness in people —”

Love, one is reminded in this cascade of letters, takes many different forms in many different eras. John Carvel Arnold, a Union soldier in the Civil War, was stationed near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on Aug. 28, 1864, pining for his wife, Mary Ann, back home in Pennsylvania.

“I want you to write to me oftener than you do,” he wrote, even though she was illiterate.

“Dear and Beloved Husband,” she had a friend write back two months later, showing a trace of marital affection and irritation, “you no (sic) that i can’t write myself and so i can’t write back when i pleas (sic).”

The Library, the largest in world history, has hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of these moments, frozen in time.

Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American poet and philosopher of his day, writing to an obscure newspaper reporter named Walt Whitman on July 21, 1855. Emerson was extolling Whitman’s self-published book of poetry that almost no one had read. It was called “Leaves of Grass.”

“I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” Emerson famously wrote, his letter launching Whitman to fame, saying that his “free brave thought” had resulted in “incomparable things said incomparably well.”

The collections are also filled with other voices, singing not of America’s glorious raptures, but railing against discrimination, violence and oppression, the fiery American determination that insists on the freedoms promised in the Constitution.

“I will never consent to have our sex considered in an inferiour (sic) point of light,” wrote Abigail Adams, the second first lady of the United States on July 19, 1799, to her sister.

Elizabeth Blackwell, the nation’s first female physician, on March 4, 1851, wrote a spirited rebuke to her friend Lady Noel Byron, who had suggested that women physicians should take a “second place” to men.

“I do not wish to give (women) a first place, still less a second one — but the most complete freedom, to take their true place whatever it may be.”

“Parks, my dear husband…” Rosa Parks wrote to her husband on October, 11, 1957. Manuscript Division.

In January of 1966, during the heyday of the civil rights movement, jazz singer and activist Nina Simone (famed for her iconic “Mississippi Goddam”) urged her friend and fellow jazz artist Hazel Scott, who had been living in Paris, to come back home: “…everybody is in fight now, Hazel — everybody — And it’s exciting!!!”

There are also moments when one can see great names of history caught up in frustrations known to us all. Who, in an era when email and texting has replaced much of traditional letter writing, hasn’t written out an angry email — and then, upon mature reflection, hit the delete button?

Abraham Lincoln knew your pain.

On July 14, 1863, he wrote a three-page letter to the nation’s chief military leader, Gen. George Meade, chastising him for not pursuing the defeated Confederate Army after Gettysburg. And then, thinking the better of it, stuffed it in an envelope, writing on the outside: “To Gen. Meade, never sent or signed.”

And finally, there are glimpses of moments that make the nation what it is.

Woody Guthrie in 1943. Photo: Al Aumuller. Prints and Photographs Division.

Woody Guthrie, one of the most influential singers of the 20th century, was always moved by the idea that the nation belonged to the millions of its unknowns, the sorts of hardworking men and women that Whitman and Zora Neale Hurston and so many others had written about. He wrote the first draft of “This Land Is Your Land” in 1940 to emphasize the point, with lyrics that would be finalized as:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

A few months later, on Sept. 19, he wrote to Alan Lomax, his friend who, along with his father, John, headed the Library’s Archive of American Folk Song (now part of the American Folklife Center). Guthrie’s letter hums with his twangy Oklahoma accent, his wisdom of the prairies, the ribbon of highway peeling away into the distance, the song of the nation at the tip of his pen:

“All I know how to do Alan is to keep a plowing right on down the avenue watching what I can see and listening to what I can hear and trying to learn about everybody I meet every day and try to make one part of the country feel like they know the other part and one end of it help the other end.”

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Historical Documentaries are the Key to Understanding Our Common History as Americans

Elizabeth Coffman, director of “Flannery,” accepts the 2019 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film from from Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and filmmaker Ken Burns. Photo: Shawn Miller.

This is a guest post by Courtney Chapin, Executive Director of The Better Angels Society.

Looking together at our common history is a way for Americans to see one another, to celebrate what makes us similar and what makes us different. The turbulence of the present moment is a wake up call for us to reflect deeply on how we arrived here, and the medium of film makes that history accessible to as many as possible – providing a hearth around which we can gather to consider the ideas and events that bind us together across time.

There’s never been a greater need for historical documentaries. They are essential to examining our past, understanding ourselves, and building a national discourse on what defines us as Americans. They have the power to educate, inform, and provoke thoughtful discussion with friends and family, making us wiser and our democracy stronger.  That’s why The Better Angels Society, the Library of Congress and the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation established the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in 2019.

The Prize annually recognizes a history documentary in the late stages of completion that uses original research and compelling narrative to tell stories that bring American history to life using archival materials. Our goal when establishing the prize was to lift up the abundance of talent in documentary filmmaking, which might not otherwise have a path to sharing their work more widely. The winner receives a $200,000 finishing grant to help with the final production and distribution of the film. In addition, one runner-up receives a grant of $50,000 and three to four finalists each receive $25,000. These funds are used for finishing, marketing, distribution and outreach.

Last year’s winner, “Gradually, then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit” (directed by Sam Katz and James McGovern), paints a vivid picture of city once heralded as the spirit of American manufacturing, music, and democracy. But Detroit kicked its fiscal can down the road for decades, eventually plummeting into insolvency and culminating in the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The film tells the inside story of how a state-appointed Emergency Manager and the people of Detroit confronted financial ruin and navigated a treacherous path towards a new beginning.

Other films have focused on lesser known stories. A 2021 finalist, “The Five Demands” (directed by Greta Schiller), paints the picture of the 1969 student strike at the City College of New York. Although waves of student activism took place in the late ’60s, most stories widely known today revolve around white, middle- to upper-class students. Yet, Black and Puerto Rican students led a little-known national Black student movement that transformed the culture, mission and curriculum of higher education. And 2020 finalist “Punch 9 for Harold Washington” (directed by Joe Winston) told the story of Chicago’s first African-American mayor, who paved the way for many future political leaders–including former President Barack Obama.

Since we established the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film, we’ve experienced countless events that have united and divided us – a pandemic, a presidential election, global conflict, cultural shifts and environmental flux. In times like these, we are committed to bringing philanthropy to American history documentaries so that Americans have quality history stories to turn to in order to gain a clearer perspective on the present. Submissions for this year’s prize are open, and we encourage documentary filmmakers to share their work and help us understand the past and provide greater depth to the present. To learn more about submission guidelines and deadlines, visit The Better Angels website.

The Roots of Cinco de Mayo: The Battle of Puebla

A poster for a Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Francisco in 1984. Artist: Réne Castro. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Maria Peña, a public relations strategist in the Library’s Office of Communications.

A batch of 36 Mexican letters recently acquired by the Library not only offers a vivid description of the last months of the Second French Intervention in Mexico, including the Battle of Puebla (Cinco de Mayo) in 1862, but also the complex alliances of global powers jousting for influence in the Americas against the backdrop of the U.S. Civil War.

The letters, obtained from a rare books dealer, offer a reminder that Cinco de Mayo is not a celebration of Mexican independence, as is often assumed in the U.S., but rather an unexpected victory over French invaders that also helped sound a death knell for the Confederates in the Civil War.

“The United States was divided in civil war at the same time, with concurrent definitive battles in Arizona and New Mexico — all part of the area ceded to the United States by Mexico just 14 years earlier,” said Suzanne Schadl, head of the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division. “These letters offer researchers an opportunity to examine another piece of a complex puzzle during the mid-1800s in North America.”

The new collection of letters by Mexican historical figures, still to be digitized, includes descriptions of complex military planning, weapon inventory and movement, and even how to deal with deserters.

Cinco de Mayo has its roots in an 1861 decision by Mexican President Benito Juárez. Facing a nation in financial ruin after two years of civil war, he suspended payment of foreign debts to the United Kingdom, Spain and France. All three nations sent warships to Mexico to seize payment, landing in Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast. The first two soon cut deals for repayment and withdrew. The French, led by Emperor Napoleon III, had more on their minds, planning to conquer the nation and establish a pro-French monarchy to rule it.

An elite French military force headed for Mexico City was stopped on May 5, 1862, at Puebla, a city about 80 miles southeast of the capital city. The Mexican forces were led by Texas-born general Ignacio Zaragoza. Working with a ragtag army, he defeated the superior French forces. The French withdrew and were forced to await reinforcements, which took nearly a year. The victory only delayed the eventual French victory (that government lasted until 1867, when it was overthrown) but it was a significant morale boost for a beleaguered nation.

Benito Juarez letter. Latin American, Caribbean and European Division.

One of these letters from the Library’s recent acquisition was written by President Juárez while Puebla was still under Mexican control. He fired off a letter on March 18, 1863, to his minister of war, Col. Miguel Blanco, asking that a local leader, Feliciano Chavarría, be named political and military chief.

The letter — brief, handwritten — is now fragile and yellowed with age. In it, Juárez orders Blanco to take care of the issue because “what is convenient is that this matter be dealt with briefly,” according to a Spanish-language transcription. It’s the only one penned by Juárez in the collection.

But in the United States, the victory at Puebla played an important role by delaying French rule in Mexico. France had not recognized the Confederacy — no nation ever did — but was considering it. According to Clark Crook-Castan, a historian, former U.S. diplomat and vice president of the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, the victory at Puebla delayed French consideration of a plan that might have helped the Confederates.

“The French hoped to circumvent the Union naval blockade by shipping long-range artillery overland to Texas and on to the Confederate armies in the east,” he said.

By the time the French gained control of the Mexican border with Texas in the summer of 1863, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had already won the Battle of Vicksburg, cutting off the Confederates’ access to weapons from the west.

The subsequent Cinco de Mayo celebrations in California and elsewhere in the Southwest were fitting because California Latinos were strong Union supporters and had helped finance Juarez’s army.

Some of the earliest American celebrations of Cinco de Mayo date back to 1866, when the Mexican Patriotic Club in Virginia City, Nevada, held a party with “grand success,” according to the Gold Hill Daily News. As the Mexican flag waved on the club’s flagstaff, the party stretched into the afternoon with celebratory gunfire, a live music band “and a good social time.”

In 1867, leaders from Mexico and the Mexican American community celebrated Cinco de Mayo at a fancy hall in California, where political speeches in English and Spanish filled the air, while “tastefully attired” ladies, mostly young and “slowing with ardent sentiment,” made up a third of the audience, according to the Daily Alta California.

In 1870, a wire-service roundup of news from San Francisco published a one line item: “The Mexicans are celebrating the anniversary of the defeat of the French at Puebla, by salutes, to-day.”

Statue of Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin in San Agustin Plaza in Laredo, Texas. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

Other articles in the Library’s Chronicling America, an online directory of American newspapers published between 1836 and 1922, detail celebrations over the ensuing decades in places like San Francisco, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and San Antonio, Texas.

A 1936 celebration on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border made front page news in the Nogales International, while another Arizona newpaper, El Sol, published a lengthy profiles of Zaragoza in 1942, calling him a “hero” and highlighting his Texas roots.

So as you gather with friends for the 160th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo, you might have to remind some that is is not Mexican Independence Day (that’s Sept. 16). But now, as you sip a beer and munch tortilla chips dipped in guacamole, you can share a story about how, as Crook-Castan, the retired American diplomat puts it, the French defeat at Puebla had a profound impact on the Civil War and “it may well have saved the Union.”

Joan Miró’s “Makemono” Scroll — All 32 Feet of It!

A colorful section of “Makemono,” unrolled by Library staff. Photo: Shawn Miller. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

—This is a guest post by Stephanie Stillo, a curator in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Throughout his career, pioneering surrealist Joan Miró pushed the boundaries of art.

In a piece recently acquired by the Library, Miró took that experimentation to new, extreme lengths — 32 feet, to be exact.

The artwork, “Makemono,” is a colorfully illustrated silk scroll that the Spanish artist created in collaboration with French lithographer Aimé Maeght in Paris in 1956.

In the years following World War II, Miró became increasingly experimental, initiating projects that employed lithography, pochior, woodcuts, calotypes and various forms of texturizing and defacement in printmaking.

It was in this period of great creativity that Miró partnered with Maeght to create “Makemono” — a showcase of vibrant colors and technical prowess.

As its name suggests, Miró modeled the scroll after picture and calligraphic scrolls of ancient East Asian origin. Similar to traditional Asian scrolls, which present a narrative journey for the viewer, Miró filled “Makemono” with his own biomorphic characters, such as birds, eyes and the moon — an evolving visual language of figures that became the artist’s trademark throughout 20th century.

To complete the experience, the scroll is housed in a hand-carved, painted and varnished wood box, also composed by Miró.

The acquisition of “Makemono” complements the notable holdings of Miró material in the Aramont Library, a collection donated to the Library several years ago. In private hands for over 40 years, the Aramont Library consists of 1,700 volumes of literary first editions, illustrated books and an astonishing collection of “livres d’artiste” — books produced by some of the most important modern artists of the 20th century.

“Makemono” achieves a distinct blend of East and West, with an added taste of Miró’s native Catalonia — a true landmark in his own notorious experimentation with different forms of visual storytelling.

Researcher Story: Elizabeth D. Leonard

Elizabeth Leonard. Photo courtesy of the author.

Civil War historian Elizabeth Leonard has written a number of books about the role of women on the battlefield and the social and political reverberations of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. She’s researched those books, including her soon-to-be-published title, “Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life,” in the Library’s Manuscript Division.     

Tell us about your background and research interests.

I am a native of New York City and received my Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of California, Riverside, in 1992.

While pursuing my doctorate, I took a particular interest in a course on the American Civil War and was struck by the absence of women in any of our readings. The assumption seemed to be that women had been irrelevant to the war effort and had not been affected by the war itself in any meaningful way. I was sure that these assumptions were false, and my desire to fill such a glaring gap in the literature led me to my dissertation topic, which became my first book, “Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War.”

All of my subsequent research has been on the Civil War (or the Civil War era), though it has moved away from a focus on women specifically.

How do you select subjects?

For an Americanist, the Civil War era is, of course, a topic of unending interest and importance. Having begun my career as a scholar of “Yankee women” who sustained the Union effort in various ways, I have generally been guided from project to project by one or more questions that remained unanswered at the time I put the previous project to bed.

In the course of my research on “Yankee Women,” I began to wonder about the experiences of women from both sides who did go into battle on behalf of their respective causes and so were planted the seeds of my second book, “All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies.”

While completing that book, I found myself questioning why so many of the “she-rebels” I encountered had avoided harsh punishment despite their often violent anti-Union behavior, while Mary Surratt had been tried, convicted and summarily executed shortly after the war as one of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators in assassinating President Lincoln. One could argue that Surratt, whose involvement in the conspiracy was actually rather murky, bore the brunt of all the restraint exercised by the Union against she-rebels during the war. Researching her led me to the story of Joseph Holt — the prosecutor of the Lincoln assassination conspirators — and so on.

Leonard’s latest book, “Benjamin Franklin Butler.”

Why did you decide to delve into Butler’s story?

Anyone who studies the Civil War era in any depth eventually meets up with Benjamin Butler. A prominent lawyer and Democrat in Lowell, Massachusetts, before the war began, Butler volunteered for military service early and thus became Lincoln’s senior “political” general, in which capacity he famously established the “contraband” policy that protected slavery’s runaways from being returned to bondage.

After the war, Butler served for a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives — defending and advancing the rights of Black Americans, women and workers — and for a term as governor of Massachusetts.

Butler was also an alumnus of Waterville (now Colby) College in Maine, where I taught for nearly 30 years. Indeed, I consider him easily Colby’s most important Civil War-era alumnus, though Elijah Parish Lovejoy has traditionally gotten much more attention.

During my early years at Colby, when I still knew very little about Butler beyond the epithets that so commonly attached to his name, I envied neighboring Bowdoin College’s association with the dashing and widely celebrated Joshua Chamberlain, who not only attended Bowdoin but also taught there before leaving to join the Union army.

Then, at a conference in the early 2000s, I confessed my Bowdoin-envy to the great historian Gary Gallagher, who quite appropriately (and gently) chastised me for not digging deeper into Butler’s wartime — and indeed life — story. I eventually decided to take Gary’s advice, and here we are.

When did you first start using the Library’s collections?

I began doing research at the Library when I started work on my dissertation in 1989. I have published seven books since then, all of which have relied to a greater or lesser extent on the magnificent collections in the Library’s Manuscript Division as well as the generous assistance of its congenial and deeply well-informed staff. I am grateful!

Do you have any advice for other researchers on navigating the Library’s collections ?

Be focused. Do whatever planning you can do in advance (much information and many detailed finding aids are available online); come with a clear idea of the materials you hope to examine (but be prepared to experience both happy and frustrating surprises); and do not hesitate to avail yourself of the expertise of the gracious and generous archivists there who know the collections so well!

Frederick Law Olmsted: A Well Designed Bicentennial

Frederick Law Olmsted. Engraved by T. Johnson; from a photo by James Notman. 1983. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

This month, the Library is recognizing this week’s bicentennial of the birth of writer, administrator and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of the U.S. Capitol grounds and public parks and spaces around the country. Activities include an Olmsted Bicentennial exhibit in the Jefferson Building and a series of By the People crowdsourcing transcription challenges for online volunteers.

The Library holds the largest collection of manuscript materials in the nation related to Olmsted’s long career, as well as the records of the 20th-century successor firm operated by his sons.

The Manuscript Division holds both Olmsted’s personal papers and the records of Olmsted Associates. The landscape architecture firm based in Brookline, Massachusetts, was operated by Olmsted sons Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.  and John Charles Olmsted, and featured  many talented associates. These collections are digitized and available online.

The bicentennial exhibit charts Olmsted’s life from his youth through modern reinterpretations of the public parks he designed. The five-case display is on view on both sides of the Great Hall through June 4. It features items from the Manuscript Division, the Prints and Photographs Division and the general collections in combination with reproductions of drawings and photographs from the National Park Service’s Olmsted Archives at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline.

A crowd lunches during a 1907 May Day party in Central Park, one of Olmsted’s most famous projects. Prints and Photographs Division.

In April up to the anniversary on the 26th, the Library’s By the People crowdsourcing transcription program also hosted a weekly series of special “By Design: Frederick Law Olmsted and Associates” campaign challenges. Based on the subject file in the Olmsted papers manuscript collection, the challenges gave online volunteers a chance to get up close and personal with Olmsted. The volunteers transcribed select printed and handwritten materials from his papers or items from various geographical regions that were the focus of Olmsted’s many projects and proposals.

Olmsted gained experience growing up in the woodlands of the Connecticut Valley and on trips in New England and New York, including to Niagara Falls and Lake George. He widened his observations through travels as a young man to England, Europe and China. As a journalist and travel writer in the fraught decade before the Civil War, he published observations of park and garden systems internationally and wrote of the economy and sociology of the slaveholding American South and Texas.

His breakthrough as an innovative planner of public parks came just before the war, when he partnered between 1857 and 1861 with architect Calvert Vaux to implement their award-winning design for Central Park in Manhattan. After the war began, Olmsted served as general secretary for the U.S. Sanitary Commission and helped devise a system of “floating hospital” ships to transport the ill and wounded of the Union Army.

After the war, he proposed projects located in all regions of the country and parts of Canada, emerging as the  foremost spokesperson for the public parks movement. His treatises on the planning, access and use of public parks influenced the creation of the Emerald Necklace system of greenways in Boston and the formation of Yosemite National Park by an Act of Congress in 1890.  The Olmsted legacy reached into Canada with Mount Royal Park, and was manifested at Niagara Falls, in the Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, campuses in California and Gallaudet University in the District of Columbia.

He was an important mentor to his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and step-son, John Charles Olmsted. He also mentored a stream of young associates, most affiliated with Arnold Arboretum and Harvard University.  After his death in 1903, the work of the Olmsted firm was carried on into the next half-century from his Fairsted home and headquarters in Brookline.  Associates of the firm included Edward Clark Whiting, who was responsible for much of the firm’s planning for Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

The Library joins the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the National Association for Olmsted Parks, the National Park Service, local Olmsted park conservancies and many other institutions and organizations across the nation in recognizing the ongoing impact and history of Olmsted’s theories of public parks and two generations of Olmsted family landscape designs.