Library of Congress's Blog, page 34

Shackleton’s Antarctic “Turtle Soup” Book

The classic night photo of the Endurance, stuck in polar ice. Photo: Frank Hurley. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Abby Yochelson, a reference specialist in the Main Reading Room.

When the well-preserved wreck of the Endurance recently was discovered deep in the Antarctic’s icy waters more than a century after it sank, international headlines followed.

The Endurance was last seen in 1915, when it became trapped and slowly crushed by pack ice during an expedition headed by renowned polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. The three-mast, 144-foot ship sank beneath the ice and waves of the Weddell Sea, falling some 10,000 feet to its watery grave. Shackleton and his crew of 27 survived, but only by a series of death-defying ocean voyages in a lifeboat. It’s widely celebrated as one of the great survival stories of modern times; the Library’s online catalog lists 75 titles about the expedition.

But an earlier Shackleton voyage to Antarctica also produced a remarkable book, if one not nearly so dramatic. “Aurora Australis,” put together during Shackleton’s 1907-1909 polar voyage, is the first book “written, printed, illustrated and bound in the Antarctic,” as Shackleton put it. Fitting for its harsh native environment, about 25 copies were bound with packing crate boards repurposed from the ship’s pantry. The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division has one of these, marked with “turtle soup” and “honey” for their original contents. About 60 or 70 more were printed, but were never bound. Scholars think about 75 total copies, bound or unbound, still exist.

The frontispiece of “Aurora Australis.” Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

“Aurora,” edited by Shackleton and illustrated by George Marston, is an illustrated anthology with three poems, seven articles of fiction and nonfiction, all written by crew members and scientists while they were huddled at the expedition’s cramped winter quarters. The lovely title is taken from the sky lights seen in the Southern Hemisphere, similar to the more familiar aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere.

It doesn’t have a daring plot of survival but it does have those wooden covers!

The inside cover of the Library’s copy of  “Aurora,” made from a packing crate of turtle soup. The book has been turned sideways for the photo. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

They’re marked for mouth-watering items such as butter, sugar, stew, petit pois, beans, chicken and oatmeal. The Library’s copy, with “turtle soup” and “honey,” make for an unlikely combination gastronomically, but these boards cover our book in fine fashion.

This Shackleton expedition was the first to ascend 12,448-foot Mount Erebus, the volcanic peak that is the second highest point on the continent, so much of the book covers that work. There’s an illustration, “Under the Shadow of Mt. Erebus,” by Marston; a nonfiction account of the climb, “The Ascent of Mt. Erebus,” by T.W. Edgeworth David, director of the scientific staff; and a ballad in rhymed couplets, “Erebus,” by Nemo, presumably a pseudonym for one of the crew.

One would think that “Life Under Difficulties” describes the harsh conditions experienced by the crew. Instead, James Murray, a biologist, provides a detailed examination of rotifers, “beautiful little cone-shaped animals of crystal transparency, with a ruby-red eye in the middle of the large head.” (At least this is what these sea creatures might look like if you could examine them under a microscope.)

Undated photo of Ernest Shackleton . Photo: Bain News Service. Prints and Photographs Division.

While some of the articles describe daily life, others are more fanciful. “An Interview with an Emperor” features an Emperor Penguin speaking in something like a Scots accent – and accusing the crew’s geologist (the article’s author) of stealing rocks. “An Ancient Manuscript” is written in Biblical prose for comic effect:

“Go thou therefore, dwell in this land, travel over the face of the same, tear out its secrets, and should it also be that thy hand shall uproot the great pole which the wise men do call the South Pole; then do I say unto thee that it shall not be forgotten of thee in the years which are to come.”

The discovery of the Endurance will undoubtedly trigger new fascination in that expedition’s story and admiration for the polar explorers of the era. Reading “Aurora Australis,” though, provides a glimpse into the creative and often humorous side of these adventurous men and their determination to gain an understanding about unknown parts of our world.

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“Not an Ostrich” Exhibit Now at the Library

An unnamed photographer for the H.C. White Company nonchalantly checks his camera, perched on a steel beam 250 feet in the air. Detail from a stereograph. Photo: H.C. Hine Co. Prints and Photographs Division.

The title of the Library’s just-opened exhibition, “Not an Ostrich,” is certain to make some people scratch their heads, wondering, “What on earth could this be about?” For many of them, the Library hopes, it will inspire a trip to the Jefferson Building to find out. Since we’re now open again, we invite you to see for yourself — but you can check out the exhibition online, too.

Either way, you’ll  discover the power of photography. More than 400 pictures from the Library’s holdings take viewers on a  journey through America’s history — from the beautiful and the heartening to the disturbing and the humorous.

Along the way, they’ll learn about the Library’s vast photographic collections, the art of photography and some of the women and men who have gone to extraordinary lengths to document the American scene. The pictures extend from the earliest photographic process (Robert Cornelius’ 1839 daguerreotype self-portrait) to the latest in digital photography (a Camilo José Vergara’s 2017 Harlem streetscape).

“Please take a moment to stop by the show. You can dip in and out, and you’re sure to find at least one image that will stop you in your tracks for a closer look or bring a smile to your day,” said Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division.

Renowned photography curator Anne Wilkes Tucker organized the exhibition, whose full title is “Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America’s Library.” It debuted in 2018 in Los Angeles at the Annenberg Space for Photography, which enlisted Tucker as curator. At the Library, it will open in the Jefferson Building’s southwest gallery.

To put the show together, Tucker visited the Library monthly for a year and a half, working closely with photography curator Beverly Brannan and other specialists to identify images to feature. The task was enormous, considering that the division holds more than 14 million photographs, and Tucker was asked to include undigitized and never-before-exhibited items among her selections.

“I just sat there, and the staff brought me pictures,” Tucker told the New York Times in 2018. “I never knew what I was going to get. I looked at slides. I looked at contact sheets. I looked at prints. I looked at stereos. … I loved it.”

Tucker estimates that she looked at nearly a million images. “I would pick pictures that struck me visually,” she recounted in an interview with the magazine Hyperallergic. First, she whittled her choices down to about 3,000, then to around 400 that she feels are “a true representation of the Library’s collection.”

Her selections include icons such as “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange, “American Gothic” by Gordon Parks, a photo of the Wright Brothers’ first flight and a recently acquired portrait of a young Harriet Tubman.

But they also include hundreds of images of everyday people going about their lives over the decades from West to East, North to South. Some are joyous (a girls’ soccer team celebrating a win). Some are troubling (a Black teenager being harassed at a North Carolina school). And others are fascinating — some in a scary way (a photographer perched atop an under-construction highrise).

The exhibit’s signature photo, “Not an Ostrich,” depicts actress Isla Bevan holding a goose — definitely not an ostrich — at a 1930 poultry show in Madison Square Garden. For those interested in actual ostriches, there’s even an 1891 photograph of a peddler of feather dusters, often made from ostrich plumes.

British actress Isla Bevan holding an exotic, Sebastopol goose as the 41st annual Poultry Show at Madison Square Garden in 1930. Photo: Unknown. Prints and Photographs Division.

Tucker made sure to include the work of photographers of many different interests and backgrounds — more than 140 — in the exhibit. For example, the show includes a photo of the Apache leader Geronimo by Emme and Mayme Gerhard, trailblazing early 20th-century camerawomen; a hula-hooping grandmother by Sharon Farmer, the first African American woman to serve as White House photographer; and a self-portrait by Will Wilson of the Navajo Nation.

In support of the Annenberg show, the Library released more than 400 photos online from the exhibit, many newly digitized and rarely seen publicly before.

The Library’s presentation of “Not an Ostrich” is mostly, but not exactly, the same as the Annenberg exhibit. That’s because the Library’s gallery does not perfectly mirror the more modern Annenberg space, and some captions were edited for the Library’s audience, said Cheryl Regan of the Exhibits Office.

At the Library, the show has 11 sections mounted across 10 walls. About 70 framed reproductions are included — the exhibit consists exclusively of reproductions — accompanied by digital slide shows featuring hundreds more photographs and a 30-minute documentary, “America’s Library.”

Eight exhibit sections explore the categories of photographers; panoramas; portraits; icons; the built environment; arts, sports and leisure; social, political and religious life; and science and business. Another three  cover the work of Vergara, Carol M. Highsmith and the Detroit Publishing Company.

The latter two share a wall, offering views of America separated by a half century or so. Highsmith has been documenting the nation’s culture, people and landscapes for more than four decades. Before her, the Detroit Publishing Company, one of the world’s major image producers from 1895 to 1924, chronicled natural environments and cities across the U.S.

“Taken together, the scope and sheer tenacity applied by both Carol Highsmith and the Detroit Publishing Company in creating a visual portrait the United States is awe inspiring,” Regan said.

Besides the juxtaposition of Highsmith and Detroit Publishing, Regan said she finds photos by Stanley Kubrick especially intriguing — there are two in the show. One is a 1947 photo of the bodybuilder Gene Jantzen with his wife and baby son; the other is a quirky image of three men testing a mattress at a 1950 furniture convention.

Lookit those baby biceps! Iconic film director Stanley Kubrick took this kinda strange picture of bodybuilder Gene Jantzen with wife Pat and eleven-month-old son Kent. Photo: Stanley Kubrick. Prints and Photographs Division.

Known for his films — “Lolita,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange” — Kubrick was a staff photographer at Look magazine before he pursued filmmaking.

“It’s interesting to look at young Stanley Kubrick and try to figure out, is his aesthetic getting established early on, so that it comes out in his later film work in interesting ways?” Regan said.

Personal tastes aside, Regan believes visitors will find the exhibit exciting. “I hope that they find surprises, that it piques their curiosity,” she said. “I hope they go online to see millions more images in the Library’s collections.”

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The (Very Polite) Letters Behind “Double Indemnity”

“Double Indemnity” was so daring by 1944 standards that some lobby cards tried to make the crime noir tale look more like a romantic comedy. Paramount Pictures.

“Double Indemnity” is one of Hollywood’s classic films, the standard-bearer for noir cinema and a career highlight for stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. With the Oscars being handed out Sunday, it’s good to keep in mind that the Billy Wilder-directed “Double,” with a legendary script by Wilder and crime-writer icon Raymond Chandler, was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1945.

It’s also good to keep in mind that it won exactly zero.

In Hollywood lore, it’s one of the all-time snubs, joining cultural touchstones such as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Vertigo” as films that won a place in history but not at the Oscars. It was, however, inducted into the Library’s National Film Registry in 1992, recognized as a film of national cultural importance.

The Library has a fascinating exchange of letters between the “Double” stars and novelist James M. Cain, whose book was the basis for the film. (Cain also wrote “” also made into a noir classic that also won no Oscars.)

The letters, contained in Cain’s papers at the Library, give us a glimpse into Hollywood history, how scandalous the movie was at the time and at the manners of a bygone era. Today, stars tag their peers in tweets; in the 1940s, they sat down at a typewriter or picked up a pen and wrote letters. There was a formality, a way things were done, that has been obliterated by changing times and technology. It’s almost impossible to imagine the following exchange taking place today.

“Dear Mr. MacMurray,” Cain typed on Feb. 4, 1944, after they both attended a Los Angeles premiere of “Double” from which MacMurray had ducked out early, meaning Cain had missed him at the ensuing reception. “Your portrayal of that character is simply terrific, and the way in which you found tragedy in his shallow, commonplace, smart-cracking soul will remain with me a long a time … (if) I ever weaken and begin to pretty my characters up, I shall remember your Walter and be fortified.”

Cain’s congratulatory note to MacMurray, Feb. 4, 1944. Manuscript Division.

This was more than Tinseltown gushing.

“Double” was outrageous and dangerous, the kind of fare that gave stars pause about lending their names to it, particularly in the era when Hollywood was governed by the censors at the Motion Picture Production Code.

First published as a magazine serial in 1936, “Double” is the tale of lusty Los Angeles insurance agent Walter Neff (MacMurray), who makes a house call on a rich client, the scent of honeysuckle in the air, only to find the husband absent and his bewitching spouse, Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), clad in nothing more than a towel and a smirk.

Swilling bourbon and trading double-entendres, the pair soon kill the husband, framing it as an accident so they can collect a fat insurance payout. It ends in double-crosses, gunfire and regret.

“I killed (the husband) for money and a woman,” MacMurray’s character says in the movie’s most famous line. “I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman.”

“I killed a man for money and a woman….” MacMurray and Stanwyck in a key moment from “Double Indemnity.” Paramount Pictures.

Few mainstream stars wanted to play such a role, and MacMurray, a straight arrow if ever there was one, seemed spectacularly unfit for it. He grew up in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, for heaven’s sake, and spent the 1930s in the studio system playing nice guys in lighthearted pictures. By the early’40s, he was one of the highest–paid actors in the trade, making $430,000 (about $7 million today), according to his biography on the Internet Movie Database.

We can deduce that MacMurray was a polite man who observed social courtesies because he answered Cain’s letter immediately, with a space of just five days between the two letters. But he responds to Cain’s typewritten missive with a handwritten note — a personal touch. He was a big star, after all, and perhaps didn’t want Cain to think he’d had a secretary knock this out.

“Dear Mr. Cain — I want to thank you for your very nice letter,” he began, in keeping with the social graces of beginning a thank you note with — well — a thank you.

Then he politely addressed the elephant in the room.

“As you’ve probably been told, it took a lot of persuading by a number of people to get me to tackle the part. I was crazy about the story — but having never done anything like it, I was afraid to take a crack at it. Even after seeing the finished picture, I was sure I’d given an Academy performance — in underacting! But if you, the author, liked it — that’s good enuff for me!”

Excerpt of MacMurray’s note to Cain, with the intentional misspelling of “enuff” in the final line. Letter dated Feb. 9, 1944. Manuscript Division.

Here, we pause to note the aw-gee-shucks intentional misspelling of “enough,” and you can see that while Fred MacMurray was indeed a big-bucks Hollywood movie star, he had not forgotten his humble roots in dear old Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and wanted Cain to know that he was still a regular fella.

I happened across this letter a couple of years ago in Cain’s papers. It was unmarked, just another letter among his correspondence, in a folder headed “Miscellaneous — M.” It was so unexpected, so absolutely charming, such a valentine from one of the most famous movies in Hollywood history, that I was transfixed.

Then, wondering if lightning might have struck twice, I went to the folder of Cain’s letters marked “Miscellaneous — S” to see if there might be something from Stanwyck.

Bingo! On personalized stationery, even, a thing which serious people had back then.

“Dear Jim,” she began in her flowing penmanship, on Feb. 23, 1950, not only dispensing with the formality of a typewriter but also with the “Mr. Cain” business. Six years had passed since the movie had been a critical and commercial hit. She’d been nominated for an Oscar as best actress for her portrayal.

“Dear Jim, Thanks so much for your letter regarding our ‘Indemnity’ broadcast. Believe me, it’s my favorite and always a joy for me to do…” the first lines of Stanwyck’s letter to Cain, Feb. 23, 1950. Manuscript Division.

“Double” had proved such an enduring hit, in fact, that she had reprised her role in a nationally broadcast radio play of the tale in 1945 with MacMurray, and then again in 1950 opposite actor Robert Taylor. Cain, who had moved back to his native D.C. region, sent her a complimentary note after hearing this later version.

She responded quickly, writing him that playing the wicked Phyllis was “my favorite” and “always a joy.” She then noted that he’d promised to write a new book with a tailor-made role for her to perform on film; was that what he was working on now? “If not Jim — remember your promise before I get too bloody old. Good luck my friend and I hope to see you when you return here. Fondly, Barbara.”

Cain went on to write more than a dozen novels, but nothing ever matched his previous intensity and there was never another part for Stanwyck. He later said he should have never left Hollywood. He spent his last years in Hyattsville, Maryland, writing grandfatherly like columns for The Washington Post.

MacMurray, with the exception of “The Apartment,” returned mostly to playing Mr. Nice Guy roles, anchoring a series of Disney films in the ’60s (“The Absent-Minded Professor,” “The Happiest Millionaire,”) and as the cardigan-wearing, pipe-smoking dad on television’s “My Three Sons” for more than a decade.

Stanwyck worked in films until the late 1950s, then switched to television, becoming a small-screen star on “The Big Valley” in the ‘60s and in the ’80s nighttime soap, “Dynasty.”

But there’s no doubt the most enduring work of all three was in that hot, sexy, dangerous film of 1944, when they all stepped out of themselves to play mean little people doing mean little things — and then wrote each other such nice, polite letters about how fun it all had been.

“I hope I may sometime have another opportunity to do one of your very interesting characters — Thanks again — Fred MacMurray” The close of MacMurray’s thank-you note to Cain. Manuscript Division. 

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Madeleine Albright: A Life of Courage and Commitment



Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State, died today in Washington.

She was 84. The cause was cancer, her family said in a statement.

Albright, who donated her papers to the Library in 2014, was a key figure in the administration of Bill Clinton, serving first as ambassador to the United Nations and then as Secretary of State during his second term. Her no-nonsense foreign policy was informed by her childhood experiences as her family fled from her native Czechoslovakia, first running from the Nazi regime of Germany and then the Communists from Russia. Her family came to the U.S. in 1948.

After her trailblazing career as a public servant, she wrote several bestselling books, including “Madam Secretary: A Memoir,” “Fascism: A Warning,” and “Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st-Century Memoir.” She was at the National Book Festival in 2020. In an interview with David Rubenstein, she mused that she was irritated, if not angered, by women who did not support one another: “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t support each other,” she said.

She was never out of touch with world events, writing an op-ed in the New York Times in late February, warning about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s decision to mass troops on the border of Ukraine. The piece is vintage Albright, mixing her role in world affairs with her unapologetically blunt viewpoint.

“Should he invade,” she wrote, “it will be a historic error.”

She is remembered fondly at the Library, where she toured her collection in the Manuscript Division in 2020, chatting with the staff and posing for photographs.

“Madeleine Albright shined on the world stage as a symbol of peace & diplomacy,” Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said in a statement. “As the first female Secretary of State she was a trailblazer and role model. Her memory will live on at the Library of Congress where we are honored to be custodians of her papers.”

My Job: Elizabeth Novara, Historian of Women and Gender

Elizabeth Novaro. Photo: Pete Duvall.

Elizabeth Novara is the historian of women and gender in the Manuscript Division.

Tell us about your background.

I grew up in a rural area in western Maryland and have lived in various places around the state, so I’m a local to this region. I attended Saint Mary’s College of Maryland as an undergraduate, majoring in history and French. Then, I earned master’s degrees in history and in archives, records and information management through the history and library and information science programs at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park.

After getting married and becoming a mom, I decided to return to graduate school at UMD part time while continuing to work full time. I earned a graduate certificate in women’s studies, and I am now a Ph.D. candidate in American history focusing on women’s suffrage history.

Before arriving at the Library, I was a tenured faculty curator of historical manuscripts for UMD Special Collections for over 10 years, and I held other positions at the UMD Libraries. As a manuscripts curator, I was responsible for special collections materials relating to Maryland history and culture, historic preservation and women’s studies.

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

The amazing women’s history collections in the Manuscript Division and throughout the Library — and the fact that the Library is just amazing!

Early in my professional career, I became involved in the Women’s Collection Section of the Society of American Archivists. When I realized there were jobs in the archives field focused on my specific research and writing interests, a position concentrated on women’s history became a professional goal. I was also very fortunate to have a job at UMD that allowed me to work with women’s studies collections and to hone my scholarly pursuits on women’s history.

My position at the Library as a manuscript historian for women’s and gender history really is the perfect intersection of my expertise, training and interests. My major responsibilities include acquisitions, outreach and reference related to the Manuscript Division’s women’s history collections.

What are some of your standout projects?

When I first arrived at the Library, I was immediately immersed in the task of being a co-curator of the exhibition “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote” with Janice Ruth and Carroll Johnson-Welsh.  I was also involved in many outreach initiatives (exhibit tours, lectures, conferences, published works) related to the exhibition from 2019 through 2021.

I am also very proud to have been the Library’s main point of contact for the recent acquisition of a major addition to the National Woman’s Party (NWP) records.  The addition, dating from the 1860s to the 2020s, contains over 300,000 items and is currently being processed by Manuscript Division archivists and technicians.

An important scholarly resource, these materials document the efforts by the NWP to promote congressional passage of the federal women’s suffrage amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), as well as to ameliorate the legal, social and economic status of women in the U.S. and around the world.

Most recently, with Manuscript Division reference librarian Edie Sandler, I published a revised and updated version of American Women: Resources from the Manuscript Collections,  part of the Library’s larger American Women Guide Series.  The guide highlights many of the women’s history collections in the Manuscript Division. It was a pleasure to collaborate with Edie and division reference staff on its publication.

What do you enjoy doing outside work?

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with family; taking long walks or runs in Rock Creek Park; gardening; visiting museums and other cultural heritage institutions (especially ones that are local and off the beaten path); and, oh yeah, researching for my dissertation. When I have time, I also love baking pies with locally grown fruit.

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

As an undergraduate, I spent my junior year studying and living abroad in Paris and traveling as much as possible. This experience had a lasting impact on my life, opening my perspectives to other cultures and creating lifelong friendships.

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden’s Statement on Ukraine

We at the Library of Congress, in our role as the national library of the United States, are inspired and deeply moved by the role libraries and librarians are playing in Ukraine. We wholeheartedly support and admire their work.

Librarians across Ukraine are still working, when possible, to carry out their daily tasks of providing information, supporting community events, and providing children with books and programs. But they are also using their valued public spaces for life-saving bomb shelters. For first-aid training classes. For refugee meeting points. For protection of cultural treasures.

By their courage and commitment, Ukrainian librarians are proving their role as part of the national backbone. No nation exists without its culture, and no culture can long survive without keepers of that heritage. Those cultural attendants are often in libraries, they are the librarians.

With outposts around the world, the Library of Congress is proud to also work with more than 10 established partners in Ukraine as well as with our partners in the Ukrainian government. The Library has assisted national libraries in other nations after manmade and natural disasters, most recently in Afghanistan and Haiti.

Today, the Library will continue our ongoing work in and with our steadfast friends and partners as they strive to provide service in the most challenging circumstances. In the words of the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, in this time of trouble and grief, our hearts hurry to the twilit gardens of Ukraine.

Black Cowboys at “Home on the Range”

Nat Love, one of the most famous Black cowboys of the Old West. Photo: Unknown. Prints and Photographs Division.

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

Black men were among the first cowboys in the U.S. They roped, branded and saddled up for cattle drives. Some gained fame, such as Bill Pickett and Nat Love.

“I eventually brought up at Dodge City, Kansas, which at that time was a typical frontier city, with a great many saloons, dance halls, and gambling houses, and very little of anything else,” wrote Love, who was born enslaved in Tennessee, in his 1907 autobiography, “The Live and Adventures of Nat Love.”

Pickett, credited with creating the bulldogging technique of bringing a young steer to the ground in a rodeo, was featured in a silent film, “The Bull-Dogger” in 1921.

Bill Pickett in a detail from a poster for “The Bull-Dogger.” Print: Ritchie Lith. Corp. 1923. Prints and Photographs Division.

But mostly, as time passed, pop culture erased Black cowboys from the Western milieu, creating a misleading image of the Old West as peopled by white men on horseback, riding the lonely grasslands.

The Library’s collections help document a more accurate picture of what cowboy culture, and life in the Western U.S., actually looked like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the cowboy heyday. They include resource guides, newspaper archives, an American Folklife resource project, a 2020 concert of old Black cowboy songs, books, magazines, photographs and posters that document the role African Americans played, particularly in the 1870s, when many newly freed Black people headed west.

“The myth of the cowboy is only one of many myths that have shaped our view of the West in the late 19th century,” reads the Library’s introduction to “The American West, 1865-1900” resource timeline. “The stereotype of the heroic white cowboy is far from true, however.”

One quick example: The origins of “Home on the Range,” the unofficial anthem of the West, are famously muddled, but it’s not disputed that the first recording was by a Black saloon keeper and former cowboy in San Antonio, who performed it for folklorist John Lomax in 1908.

In fact, Lomax’s influential publication of 1910, “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads,” traced several standards to Black cowboys, including “Git Along Little Dogies.” (The Lomax Family Collection is housed at the Library as John and his son, Alan, worked directly with the Library for more than a decade in recording and archiving American folk songs.)

But, as much as film stars John Wayne, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry come to mind when “cowboy” is mentioned, the first actual cowboys in the Americas were Spanish vaqueros who introduced cattle to Mexico in the 1500s. Early Spanish missionaries played a major role in establishing cattle country in the West and training Native Americans as cattle herders.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 sent White settlers west of the Mississippi, driven by a sense of “continentalism,” later known as “manifest destiny,” the belief that white Americans should control a vast section of North America from coast to coast. The War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War in the 1840s were fueled by this belief, with settlers marching further west, warring with Native Americans.

In these vast swathes of open terrain, where law enforcement was most often nonexistent, cattle were a source of wealth. There was no adequate fencing to pen them in, however. This left cowhands to fend for themselves in open country, keep up with their cattle by horseback and protect themselves from rustlers and bandits.

Thus, the romantic legend of the cowboy was born: A quiet man, capable, tough, honest, respectful of ladies and possessed of a poetic respect for the land (and his horse). In the hugely popular Wild West shows of Buffalo Bill in the late 19th century, the cowboy novels of Zane Grey in the early 20th century, then the Western films and television shows in the midcentury, those cowboys were almost always white.

It was only part of the picture, though. No history of cowboy culture would be complete without contextualized narratives about the role that Native Americans, African Americans and Mexicans played.

No one knows exactly how many cowboys there were (or exactly how that title was defined). But a number of estimates by historians, including Kenneth Porter, estimate that of the 35,000 or so cowboys of the era, about 6,000 to 9,000 were Black. They worked as ropers, trail cooks, wranglers and bronco busters. Some hunted game, sang, played an instrument on the trail or performed other duties for white cattlemen. In Texas, where enslaved Black people had been more than a quarter of the population before the Civil War, as many as one in four cowhands was Black.

For Black cowboys, it wasn’t paradise, but it was often better than the harsh racism east of the Mississippi. Eleise Clark, a volunteer with the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center in Denver, said in a recent interview that the West was so vast and difficult that “racism took a backseat to survival sometimes. It’s hard to be prejudiced when you’re hungry and you’re thirsty.”

Even in film history, Black cowboys were around, if behind the scenes. James Arthur Walker invented the “Hollywood Hop,” where a rider jumps off to the side of a walking or running horse, lands on the ground and bounces back into the saddle.

A cowboy competing in the  Martin Luther King, Jr., African-American Heritage Rodeo in Colorado in 2016. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

Today, younger African Americans have been leading efforts to promote and protect the legacy of early Black cowboys in the American West by forming riding groups in many states, organizing parades or competing in national rodeos.

The Black Cowboy Parade has been a popular annual event in Oakland, California, for the last 74 years. New York Times reporter Walter Thompson-Hernandez wrote a book about cowboys in Los Angeles County last year, “The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland.”

The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, which celebrates African American men and women who are keeping the cowboy tradition alive, has entertained over 5, 5 million people since its launch in 1984.

Black cowboys, it would appear, didn’t disappear with the Old West

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Researcher Stories: Melissa Koch

Melissa Koch. Photo: Charlie Langton.

Melissa Koch writes nonfiction for children and young adults. Her picture book about Lucy Stone, the suffragist and abolitionist, will be published soon, followed by a children’s novel about Stone. She has researched both at the Library.

How did you get started writing nonfiction for young people?

Writing was always a big part of my career in educational technology and the learning sciences. I’ve led engineering and design teams to develop new learning technologies. As part of that development, I’ve written nonfiction for young learners, parents, teachers and funders. While I enjoy fiction, I like the challenge of nonfiction. There are so many amazing stories to tell. The trick is to tell them well.

About 10 years ago, I asked myself what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I don’t see myself as ever fully retiring, but I was in a position to semi-retire. Writing and publishing books was the answer: It gives me the alone creative time I crave plus the fun of interacting with readers and traveling to promote my books. Once I saw how my toddler son interacted with books, I was hooked. Add the fabulous children’s book writing community to the mix, and I feel like I’ve found a great home.

I published “3D Printing: The Revolution in Personalized Manufacturing” in 2017 and “Forest Talk: How Trees Communicate” in 2019.

How do you select topics?

I write because I see patterns in the world that I want to share. When I see a pattern in something that others may have overlooked, I want to spotlight it in a way that inspires people to see the world in a new way and then act in new ways. All of my nonfiction children’s books focus on making STEM and social justice personal and valuable to kids. When it’s personal and valuable, it becomes a part of you.

What drew you to Lucy Stone?

Lucy Stone is a big part of who I am, but for most of my life I didn’t know about her.

In third grade, everyone in my class had to choose a superhero. I chose Susan B. Anthony. She was all that I wanted to be: She stood up, she spoke out, she made people listen to the importance of women’s rights. She challenged societal norms and asked everyone to see how women’s rights benefited all of us: women, men, children.

But throughout my feminist-infused childhood and early adult life, I was unaware of the hero who awakened Anthony’s superpowers.

Anthony said it was Stone’s speech in 1850 at the National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, that convinced her to become a suffragist.

Stone’s words mattered. How do we not know her name? That’s what I wanted to find out when I started researching Stone. When I looked, I found an amazing nonfiction story. Or two.

What resources at the Library have you used?

I started using the Library in the late ‘80s during college summer internships. While I don’t remember all the fabulous resources I used back then, I do remember spending D.C.-hot summer days at the Library surrounded by the cool, welcoming interior of the archives. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, so spending time in such a beautiful old building with history at my fingertips inspired me.

During the pandemic, I have missed sitting in that space as I research Stone. I’ve spent most of my time reading letters in the Library’s online archives. The letters between Anthony and Stone are of particular interest. Witnessing Anthony’s deferential tone in her early letters to Stone and how the tone changed in their letters to each other over time is extremely helpful in my research.

I am also thankful for all the people transcribing the letters from cursive through the Library’s By the People project. I thought I would be much better at reading cursive. I deciphered the many letters my grandmother wrote to me in cursive that would not have won any penmanship awards. But it’s really exhausting reading letters in cursive when you don’t have a strong context or connection to the author.

Do you have any advice for other researchers trying to navigate the Library’s collections?

Ask a librarian for help. They are fantastic! Thank you, Liz Novara, for all your help.

What’s next for you?

Publication of my picture books! I have several on submission. Fingers crossed.

I will also continue to use the Library for my Stone novel research. Actually, I’m thinking of watching what new archives the Library has coming online to inspire some book ideas. And when I can, I’ll return to the Library to sit and read.

 

Lionel Richie Brings Back the Gershwin Prize

Lionel Richie accepts the Gershwin Prize for Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Lionel Richie smiled, the cameras flashed, the bass thumped, the music soared and the concert celebrating the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song popped back into life two years after COVID-19 shut down much of public life in the nation’s capital.

It was a misty, chilly night outside Constitution Hall, but the crowd warmed up as soon as the house lights dimmed, getting on their feet for Gloria Estefan’s show-opening version of “Dancing on the Ceiling,” and later raising hands above their heads and swaying to Boyz II Men’s cover of “Easy.”

“I don’t know about all of you, but I’m just glad to be out of the house,” emcee Anthony Anderson quipped in his opening monologue, drawing an enthusiastic round of applause. “We’re here. We’re wearing proper pants.”

It really did seem that easy, with two years of pandemic shutdown blahs melting away. It was the first Gershwin concert since 2020, when Garth Brooks and friends rocked the house.

“This is absolutely outrageous,” Richie said when Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden formally presented him with the Gershwin Prize onstage, flanked by members of Congress. He invoked his Alabama roots, adding, “As my grandmother would say, ‘This is about as high a cotton as you’re ever gonna get.’ ”

The show, taped before a mostly full house (pandemic restrictions still meant that masks were mandatory) will be broadcast on PBS stations at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, May 17,  and on PBS.org and the PBS Video App as part of the co-produced Emmy Award-winning music series.

The Gershwin Prize is named for George and Ira Gershwin, the brothers who wrote much of the American songbook in the early to mid-20th century and whose papers are preserved at the Library.

The prize honors a living musician’s work. The Librarian chooses the honoree after consulting with a panel of music specialists from across the industry. Previous recipients, in order, are Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, songwriting duo Burt Bacharach and the late Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, and the most recent honoree, Brooks.

“In so many ways, the Gershwin Prize was made for Lionel Richie,” Hayden said at the show.

Richie, born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1949, was a student at the town’s famed university when he joined the Commodores in 1968. The band hit its stride in the mid-’70s, with huge hits such as “Brick House,” “Three Times a Lady,” “Still,” and “Easy.” He then launched into his own career and another stratosphere of success, going on an 11-year run of writing No. 1 hits. His self-titled debut album sold four million copies; the follow-up, “Can’t Slow Down,” sold 20 million. His hits during that span included “Endless Love,” “Truly,” “All Night Long” and “Dancing on the Ceiling.” With Michael Jackson, he co-wrote “We Are the World,” a 1985 ballad by a group of all-star performers that raised more than $65 million for famine relief. The music video of the song became a cultural milestone of the 80s.

Richie’s career as a singer, songwriter and producer kept going. He’s won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, four Grammy Awards and sold 125 million albums. Since 2018, he’s known to a new generation of fans as a judge on “American Idol.”

The show capping that career had a fun vibe all night. At the red-carpet step and repeat before the concert started, fellow “Idol” judge Luke Bryan – no slouch himself, having sold more than 75 million albums — charmed the line of reporters and photographers with stories of growing up listening to Richie on the radio, then working alongside him.

“Anytime I have to sing Lionel Richie songs, I don’t have to do much homework,” he said. “I just have to go out there and karaoke.”

The show, as always, was part concert, part taped television show.

The stage setup was spare. There was a rhythm section to the audience’s left, with two keyboards and a pair of back-up singers to the right. The screen behind the stage showed clips from Richie’s career during the short breaks between performances. Richie and girlfriend Lisa Parigi sat in the honoree’s box to the audience’s left of the stage, next to Hayden.

Andra Day dazzled with her performance of Richie’s “Hello.” Photo: Shawn Miller.

Onstage, Andra Day dazzled, both in her baby-blue outfit and her rendition of “Hello.” Chris Stapleton – who also performed at the Gershwin concert for Brooks – came out in all black to sing Richie’s Oscar-winning ballad, “Say You, Say Me.” Bryan played a baby grand piano to sing “Lady.” Miguel did a smooth rendition of “You Are,” Yolanda Adams belted out gospel and before you knew it, Richie was closing the evening with two songs, “We Are the World” and, of course, “All Night Long.”

For Richie, his career of genre-crossing hits, popular with international audiences across the racial and economic spectrum, has always been about what unites people.

“Love is the only answer to everything we’re doing,” he said in his brief acceptance speech. “We may live in different places, but these songs are as popular on the other side of world as they are  here in D.C. …We’re a family, not a tribe. We’re a family, not a party.”

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Women’s History Month: Genealogy

Family of Antoinette Pothier and family, Lawrence, Massachusetts. September 1911. Antoinette stands in the back row next to her father. She grew up to work at a factory in town. Photo: Lewis Wickes Hine.

This is a guest post by Candice Buchanan, a reference librarian in the Local History and Genealogy Section.

His and her tombstones for L. D. Hunnell and Mrs. L. D. Hunnell. A young bride without a parent to sign permission for her to marry. A former slave registering to vote, paying her poll tax and standing vigil through weather’s worst in order to vote on Election Day in 1920.

These stories and so many more may be found in the records of just one rural county in southwestern Pennsylvania. They are poignant examples that range from outrageous circumstances to everyday realities for women in American history. The Library can help you track down their long-lost stories.

Finding these women in genealogical records can be difficult because throughout much of our history, women have held a secondary status to men. The traditions and laws of their societies limited their access to education, employment, citizenship and public roles. In the records, it’s often difficult to even discover something as foundational as a woman’s name. Her identity is often intertwined with the men in her life. She is her father’s daughter. Her husband’s wife.

Today, that means they are not equally represented in the records. However, every ancestor deserves honest, accurate and exhaustive research. As with any ancestor who poses a challenge, we must think creatively and broaden our perspective.

Library specialists in the Local History and Genealogy Section collaborate with researchers to find relevant records and then help decipher clues that might lead to more discoveries. What was happening when and where she lived? What laws impacted her rights to marry, divorce, maintain custody of her children, vote, speak publicly, own property, own a business or receive an education? Was she an abolitionist? A suffragist? What responsibilities did she take on during war? How did her community support or treat her if she were orphaned, widowed, single or rebellious?

In this video presentation, we delve into the past with the women from our local history and family trees. Through a series of case studies, we understand the challenges involved in uncovering their stories.

You can also use our Ask a Librarian service to reach out to the Library’s experts to discuss your research project and consider what resources and collections the Library offers to grow your family tree and better understand the women in your history.

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