Library of Congress's Blog, page 48

On This Date: A “Monumental” Day for Women

Women’s groups at the “Portrait Monument” dedication, 1921. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest blog by Elizabeth A. Novara, a historian in the Library’s Manuscript Division.

One hundred years ago, on Feb. 15, 1921, over 70 women’s organizations gathered in the U.S. Capitol rotunda for the unveiling of the statue “Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.”

The National Woman’s Party (NWP), one of the leading women’s suffrage organizations, had officially presented the statue as a gift from the women of the nation to Congress’ Joint Committee on the Library several days earlier. The dedication ceremony marked both the 101st anniversary of the birth of Susan B. Anthony and the ratification of the 19th Amendment the previous summer. The latter capped more than 70 years of activism for women’s suffrage.

Millions of women voted in their first presidential election in November 1920 and they were filled with hope and excitement for changes yet to come.

“Portrait Monument” also represented a high point in sculptor Adelaide Johnson’s career. In 1893, Johnson exhibited several portrait busts of well-known suffragists, including Anthony, Stanton and Mott, as well as pioneer physician Caroline B. Winslow, at the Woman’s Pavilion of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1896, she married English businessman Alexander Frederick Jenkins. It was a unique event, held not in a church but in her Washington, D.C., studio. She regarded the statues as her bridesmaids. Jenkins took his wife’s last name. The ceremony was presided over by a woman.

A month later, Susan B. Anthony wrote to Johnson, supporting her innovative wedding, noting that “he and you have a perfect right to make your arrangements, as to name, residence, and mode of living, to please yourselves.” Anthony also expressed her wish that Congress would purchase the busts exhibited in Chicago for installation in the new Library of Congress building, then under construction and slated to open in November 1897. She wrote, “their busts ought to stand in some of the niches in that mammoth building, the taxes to build which have been wrung from the hard earnings of the women of this nation as well as from those of the men.” Johnson’s marriage did not endure (she divorced in 1908) and her portrait busts were not placed in the Library. But she did use them as the basis for the larger “Portrait Monument.”

Adelaide Johnson, Dora Lewis and Jane Addams, Feb, 1921. NWP Records, Manuscript Division.

The unveiling of “Portrait Monument” was part of the 1921 NWP convention, at which members charted the organization’s future after the achievement of the 19th Amendment. Some of the women’s groups that attended the unveiling ceremony included the National Council of Women, the National Consumers’ League, the National Women’s Trade Union League, the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the National League of Women Voters and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. While these organizations may not have all agreed on the NWP’s tactics and policies, they attended to demonstrate a spirit of cooperation. The notable exception was the absence of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a competing national suffrage organization.

The convention also made clear that the NWP was the only women’s organization at the time that supported a federal equal rights amendment, later known as the ERA. Women’s social service and labor organizations saw such an amendment as having the potential to undo protective labor legislation for women. In addition, the NWP’s focus on achieving equal rights for women continued to take precedence over racial equality. African American women in attendance at the convention objected that they and their issues were overlooked in favor of well-known white speakers. After the successes of the suffrage movement, the women’s movement struggled to redefine itself without the single issue of suffrage that had bound various women’s groups together.

Soon after the dedication ceremony, “Portrait Monument” was moved to a less prominent location in the Capitol’s crypt, removed from display in the rotunda until 1997. Much like the statue’s overdue reemergence in the rotunda, it would take decades for women’s rights to again gain prominence in the nation’s discourse. It would also take years for women’s organizations to support the goal of equality for all. Slowly but surely, the struggle continues.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Lincoln’s Birthday … And First Inauguration

{mediaObjectId:'BAEDD11EC047D58DE053CAE7938CDFC2',playerSize:'mediumWide'}
February 12 is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, who is routinely voted by historians to be the best — or, at worst, the second-best — president in American history, depending on how George Washington is polling.

The Library has Lincoln’s papers as well as any number of things the president and Mary Todd Lincoln possessed, including the pearl necklace and bracelets that the first lady wore to their first inaugural ball. Log-splitting Abe was a man of such modest means that he had to buy them on layaway from Tiffany’s in New York. Also, one of the most requested things to see in the Library (it’s a single collection) is the contents of his pockets when he was assassinated.

There are also stunning documents in his hand, including the Gettysburg Address, as well as the working drafts and final copies of his memorable inaugural speeches. Both contributed lines that still resonate in the national consciousness. In the second, given during the waning weeks of the Civil War, there was “with malice toward none,” a call towards national healing.

In the first inauguration, some states were already seceding when Lincoln took office. In this speech, trying to hold a fragmenting nation together, he concluded with a passage about the shared bonds of all Americans: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

As you’ll see in the short video above, the Library holds these and other documents of the Lincoln administration, in its faults and glories. It’s a highlight reel of one of the Library’s most important collections and a cornerstone of American history. It’s something worth thinking about on the birthday of one of the nation’s most important citizens.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Douglass Day Transcribe-a-Thon!

Frederick Douglass. Photo: John Andrew and Son. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by Lauren Algee, community manager for the Library’s By the People program.

We are delighted to announce that our online transcription campaign the Library’s Mary Church Terrell Papers is the 2021 Douglass Day service project chosen by the Colored Conventions Project – and you can take part!

Starting at noon tomorrow (Feb. 12), this project is an excellent way to spend a few hours of Black History Month — helping preserve and digitize the papers of Terrell, the legendary activist and educator who was co-founder and president of the National Association of Colored Women and who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Each year, during the celebration of Douglass’ birthday,  the non-profit Colored Conventions Project selects an online transcription project to promote as part of a day of service in his honor.

This year, they selected the Library’s By the People crowdsourcing transcription effort, in which volunteers have already transcribed more than 20,000 pages of Terrell’s papers. At noon on Feb. 12, we will release the final section of the collection for a weekend-long Douglass Day transcribe-a-thon. These 4,607 pages, constituting the “Miscellaneous Series” of the Terrell Papers, include documents from all phases of her public activities and provide glimpses of her private life. 

Sign-up is free and easy. Along with transcribing, the Douglass Day celebration will feature readings, a virtual panel including Adrienne Cannon, the Library’s African American History and Culture Specialist, and a birthday cake bake-off.

As the CCP website says, “Our collective efforts—what we create on 2/14—helps to remind us that African American history is American history.”

Mary Church Terrell. Photo: Addison N. Scurlock. Prints and Photographs Division.

Combining the legacies of Douglass and Terrell is a reflection of the pair’s long friendship. Terrell met Douglass as a college student when she was invited to President James A. Garfield’s inauguration. Their friendship lasted decades.

Together, they visited the White House and attended the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Terrell even saw Douglass on the day of his death in 1895. Her papers include reminiscences of Douglass in which she writes, “No matter how poor in this world’s goods I might become, if one should promise to give me a fortune to sell him the honor and the pleasure which being Frederick Douglass’ friend afforded and thereby deprive myself of that blessed, rich experience I should reject his offer and remain in poverty the rest of my life.”

After Douglass’ death, Terrell founded Douglass Day as a member of the Washington, D.C. school board. (She was the first African American woman to serve in that capacity in a major city.) The commemoration of Douglass’ legacy took place on his chosen birthday of February 14, selected because his mother called him her “little Valentine.”

Terrell wrote that the establishment of Douglass Day was her proudest accomplishment.

“I am prouder of having made it possible for future generations of Colored children to learn what a great member of their own race accomplished, in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles and to afford them an opportunity of honoring his memory in the public schools than of anything I have ever done.”

Douglass Day was adopted by schools across the country. In the 1920s. Carter G. Woodson proposed to connect Douglass Day and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday into a full week of celebration in the middle of February. By the 1960s, student activists turned that week into a full month of Black History recognition.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Free to Use and Reuse Pictures and Prints: Black Women Changemakers

This month, our Free to Use and Reuse set of copyright-free images and prints features African American Women changemakers. It’s always difficult picking just three from these collections, but this month was particularly so — there are great images of Billie Holiday, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Ella Fitzgerald and so many others.

But here are three remarkable women, two from my home state of Mississippi, who made the lives of so many millions of Americans so much better at great personal sacrifice to themselves.

Ida B. Wells in 1891. Prints and Photographs Division.

Ida B. Wells is a towering figure, one of the most consequential journalists in American history, a key figure in the women’s suffrage movement and an absolutely fearless human being. Her work on lynching continues to be a historical record that scholars draw on, illuminating one of the darkest periods of American history. She was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for “her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching,” in the words of the Pulitzer committee.

Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, she was the child of parents who became strong advocates of Reconstruction in the brutal realm of the post-Civil War South. Both parents died of yellow fever when she was a teenager. She attended segregated colleges, became a journalist and soon was working as a teacher in Memphis to support her siblings. At 22, she sued a train company for discrimination in a case that resembled the later case of Plessy v. Ferguson. (She won, but it was overturned.)

She soon became editor of The Memphis Free Speech, using her platform to decry the rampant lynching of black people. She investigated these crimes and in 1895 published a blistering book, “The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States,” destroying the myths that had been given as justification for the killings. The real reason, she wrote, was that “Negroes were whipped, scourged, exiled, shot and hung whenever and wherever it pleased the white man.”

Frederick Douglass revered her for it, but a white mob soon destroyed her printing presses and threatened to kill her, forcing her to move to Chicago, where she continued her anti-lynching research and writing.

In 1895, when she married Ferdinand Barnett, a famed civil rights advocate, she became one of  the first married women in the nation to keep her maiden name. She then took on the women’s suffrage movement, demanding black women be included.

She died of kidney disease in Chicago in 1931, one of the great — and greatly underrecognized — Americans of the age.

Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Aug, 1964. Photo: Warren K. Leffler.

I grew up in rural north Mississippi in the 1960s and 1970s, and Fannie Lou Hamer was an astonishing figure. She was born into mind-numbing poverty in the Delta in 1917, the last of 20 children to parents trapped in the vice of Jim Crow-era sharecropping. She had to start picking cotton as a child and dropped out of school at 12 to work for the family. She married young and worked in near-feudal conditions for decades. In her late 30s, she underwent surgery for a uterine tumor and the white doctor removed her uterus as well, without her consent. This was not uncommon in the time and place.

In the early 1960s, when she in her 40s, she became a fierce civil rights activist, registering herself and others to vote and taking part in sit-ins to protest segregation. She was fired from her job, kicked out of her home and beaten so badly that it left life-along injuries.

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she said, memorably. And, of the deadly violence she faced: “If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.”

And still, in 1964, she helped organize Freedom Summer, a national campaign that brought college students to Mississippi to help Blacks fight through state-sponsored barriers to be eligible to vote. She founded the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party in protest of the all-white Democratic delegation, and created a national moment at the Democratic national convention when she rose to speak. President Lyndon Johnson was so fearful of her impact that he hastily called a press conference so that television cameras would cover him, not her. She later founded a cooperative for Black farmers and helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Her health was failing, though, and the political, social and economic violence she faced never truly abated. She died, still in poverty, of breast cancer in 1977. She was just 59.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, 1975. Photo: Bernard Gotfryd.

Lastly, journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a living connection to this history and a prominent name in television and radio news. She worked on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS starting in 1978, later worked in South Africa for National Public Radio and then CNN. Her work won two Emmys and two Peabody Awards.

She’d made history of her own just to get there, of course. Born in Jim Crow-era segregation in South Carolina in 1942, she and fellow student Hamilton Holmes won a protracted legal battle to become the first African Americans to enroll in the University of Georgia in 1961. While there, she married a fellow student who was white, in contravention of the state’s law forbidding interracial marriages. The state’s governor called them “a shame and a disgrace.” She and Holmes persisted through graduation — she became a journalist and he became an orthopedic surgeon. (Today, the school’s academic center is named for them.)

She started her writing career at the New Yorker, then moved to the New York Times for just over a decade before moving into television. As it happens, we were both roving correspondents in Africa during the late 1990s, and I worked alongside her on several big-picture stories. She was terrific, and I was always self-conscious that I was talking to a woman who had helped change American history, particularly in our native Deep South. It was special.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Rubén Darío: Latin Poet Still an Icon a Century After His Death

Ruben Dario, as pictured in a New York Tribune story on Feb. 8, 1915.

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

Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío has been dead for over a century, but on the cobblestoned streets of his hometown, renamed Ciudad Darío in his honor, and throughout Spain and Latin America, his poetry and prose continue to inspire generations of writers.

His given name was Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, but he was known to all as Rubén Darío. During his career, spanning the late 19th and early 2oth centuries, he became one of Latin America’s greatest poets, eventually known as the father of modernism.

He died 105 years ago this Saturday at age 49, from complications to alcoholism. But his work has proven timeless, as his name is today emblazoned everywhere in the Spanish-speaking world — metro stations, street signs, statues, schools, parks and squares. The National Library of Nicaragua is named for him. The Library of  Congress holds more than 500 volumes by or about Darío, including the 1905 edition of his masterpiece, “Cantos de vida y esperanza” (“Songs of Life and Hope.”)

I recently interviewed Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez about Darío’s life and legacy. In 2016, Ramírez published “A la mesa con Rubén Darío,” a book about the poet’s little-known life as a foodie.

The interview, originally in Spanish, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How relevant is Rubén Darío’s body of work today?

Sergio Ramírez. Photo: Margarita Montealegre.

Rubén Darío´s poetry is undoubtedly relevant in the Spanish language. As (Argentine writer) Jorge Luis Borges once said, “Everything changed with Darío.”

Borges called him the “liberator of language” because he transformed it. Modernism as such did not remain a mere pyrotechnic game with the novelties it brought.

Darío led a current that revolutionized language and breathed life into it. His legacy lives on not only in the poets that came after – like (Nobel Prize laureate) Juan Ramón Jiménez, who was his disciple — but also in others he influenced, like César Vallejo and Pablo Neruda.

He was called “the Prince of Castilian letters” and he continues to be read. “Cantos de vida y esperanza” is considered his masterpiece because it reflects his full maturity as a poet.

He was a prodigy. He learned to read when he was three and published his first poems as a teenager.

He had a gifted memory from a very young age. He was only 17 when he traveled to Chile but already he had a vast cultural knowledge.

In his autobiography, Darío fondly remembers the house he grew up in in León with his aunt and uncle, surrounded by books like Cervantes´ “Don Quixote,” and how he´d climb up the branches of a jícaro tree to read undisturbed.

When Darío moved to Managua to work at the first national library, he´d spend hours reading the Spanish classics. And that was very significant, in a country so rural and poor, so small and underpopulated, so ravaged by years of civil wars and pandemics.

How did that experience inform his work and his world view?

 There are two things worth noting here: Like a sponge, he absorbed everything from his readings, the landscapes, his understanding of people, the very essence of Nicaraguan identity. There´s a beautiful poem he wrote about Nicaragua bearing fruits “from a small womb,” so he was aware of living in a small, poor country.

The other big influence is his messy family life, because his parents had an unhappy marriage and his mom ultimately went to live with her lover in Honduras. This really affected him, and I believe it greatly shaped his later addiction to alcohol.

Yet he was very eclectic: a poet, journalist and a diplomat.

Well, those were facets borne out of necessity, because a poet couldn´t survive on his craft alone. Journalism was his main source of income and he was truly an innovative journalist.

Darío was part of a crop of poets — Amado Nervo, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Julio Herrera y Reissig among them – who were also great journalists and chroniclers of their time. He made good money working for La Nación (Argentina), because he couldn´t rely only on publishing his poetry books.

I don´t think he had great diplomatic qualities, even though he went on to have several diplomatic postings.

Was poetry a refuge for Darío?

Darío had problems with alcoholism, but he was a very disciplined writer. If he didn´t file stories he wouldn´t get paid to support his family. And he continued writing poetry.

Darío was an essential poet; he couldn´t have been anything else in life. His poems show a deep understanding of classical Greek, Latin and Spanish culture. Salvadoran writer Arturo Ambrogi once visited him in his Paris studio and found his table full of dictionaries and reference books on Greek mythology and other topics. He approached his work with diligence.

The world knows Darío as this gifted modernist writer, but you wrote about him being a “foodie” before the term existed.

He loved fine dining, but he wasn´t dining at fancy restaurants every night, drinking champagne or eating quail or pheasant. Food was something Darío was interested in as a core cultural topic and wrote about French and Spanish cuisines. He also loved Nicaraguan dishes, and he taught Francisca Sánchez (his Spanish mistress) how to prepare them.

In an era of tweets, emojis and short attention spans, how do you entice young people to read Darío and other great poets?

Some would argue social media is an enemy of culture, but I think it’s a powerful tool for teaching profound subjects. Look at how this pandemic has moved learning online. Social networks have created opportunities to democratize culture and mass communication.

I´m not concerned about the silly things people share, because there´s lots of learning that can happen, too. I believe Nicaragua has the most poets per kilometer squared. People enjoy writing and publishing poetry not because they want to be recognized as great poets, but more for spiritual relief.

What is the best way to remember Darío and honor his legacy?

I believe the best way to do so is by reading his works and teaching them. There´s Darío and his musical poems, and Darío the storyteller in verses like “Margarita está linda la mar,” but there´s also his existential poetry.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Mystery Photo, February Edition!

Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry runs our Mystery Photo Contest. He most recently wrote about five solved photos that readers identified from our Thanksgiving edition. 

Hey kids, we’re back with another Mystery Photo Contest!

As careful readers of this space know, we’re down to our final 25 mystery photos. Remarkable. We started out with more than 800 unidentified people in a cache of show-biz stills that we obtained several years ago. When we posted our most recent batch in November, you guys stepped up and solved five of them.

So, buoyed by that performance, we’re posting these dozen to see if the eagle-eyed among you can help us put a name to a few more unidentified faces.

Ready?

1.) Yes, we have identified Mary Martin. (Clever, I know.) But who’s the gent in front of the poster? Your clue: This was taken in Boston in 1958, when Martin was appearing at the city’s Symphony Hall. The photos we obtained in this huge cache are people both in performance and in production, so this could be almost anyone involved with the show. A stage manager? Musician? Producer? The guy who designed the poster? Just a fan?

2.) No, this isn’t an outtake from the shoot of the Rolling Stones’ “Tattoo You” album cover. We have a clue for you on this one, too: The photographer was from Ashley & Associates in New York. (They are now out of business.) But we don’t know the woman or what the deal is with her unique 3-D make-up. This could be from an ad campaign, a theater production or movie still, almost anything. Look familiar?

3.) We assume this lady is from New York, given the very subtle clue that she’s holding a huge plaque of the state. Ditto on a guess for a time period of late ’60s to mid ’70s, given the bandana and short dress. She’s not a former Miss New York; we checked. Maybe she’s an athlete who won a state title that came with a weird trophy? And that plaque — is that a reflection in the middle? Or is it highlighting the Finger Lakes region, thus giving us a clue to her identity?

4.) This sepia-toned photo is credited on the back to Katherine Russell Bleecker, one of film’s very first female camera operators. But is this from one of her films? She was active in the silent era, so it’s possible. And who are the men seen here? We’re guessing actors, given the poses, but no way to know for sure.

5.) Does this lady not know the proper way to wear a necklace? Was this a hippie-era headband? The bird symbol at the center might or might not have some Native American significance, as it appears to resemble some Native designs. Does it matter that the heart has a band across the middle? The beads, the halter top, the hair — it all suggests the flower-power days of the late ’60s to mid ’70s. In any event, we’d like to know who she is.

6.) This is a tough one, as there are no clues on the back to give us a start. The gentlemen are in tuxedos, so we’re guessing this is an evening event of some type, but it doesn’t look like it’s on a huge stage. The singer is wearing a nice gown, but it doesn’t really place a specific era.

7.) This is brutal. It really could be just a shot of someone’s dad showing off his vintage radio. But it was in a huge collection of show biz photos — maybe he was a broadcaster? A radio executive? Maybe he was being featured on a broadcast?

8.) Finally, another one with a clue, and this is a good one. In the center is actress Ann Carter, who was just 8 years old when she appeared in “The Curse of the Cat People” in 1944.  That was an RKO horror flick and the sequel to “Cat People,” which was remade in 1982 with Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski, but you already knew all of that. What we want do want to know is the identity of the the little girls on each side of Carter. They might just be school chums—or were they, too, one-time young stars?

9 .) Quite possibly, this is a production of the Slavic folktale “Baba Yaga.” It’s a cheerful story about a female ogre who kills, cooks and eats people, usually children. (Just like the cannibalistic witch in “Hansel and Gretel” from “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”) Baba Yaga, though, can fly and eat dead souls. The fence around her hut is lined with human skulls. You get the idea. But can you give a clue as to the production of the show? Or, if we’re way off, a definitive idea about what we’re looking at here?

10.) This baby robot illustration almost certainly was inspired by the work of Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama. But it is not by him. (Again, we checked.)  Was this in a film? An ad?

11.) This shot—according to what’s on the back—is from the vicinity of Cincinnati. The cartoon behind the man is by Herb Gardner, but that’s not Gardner in the foreground.  Several people have suggested that there is something “I’m Not Rappaport” about the man’s look—might this be from a local theater production of that play?

12.) How else could we close but with a mystery woman from yesteryear? This is pretty much the Girl Next Door of your dad’s generation — the nice-but-not-flashy pearls, the high-neck sweater and neatly done ‘do. The info on the back of the picture tells us this young model was represented by the Bradford Agency at 515 Madison Ave. in New York. We’re pretty sure she’s wearing sensible shoes and won’t stay out too late but….who is she?

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Jason Reynolds: Grab the Mic Newsletter, Black History Month Edition

Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is back from his mid-winter break with a February newsletter.

First things first: Happy Black History Month!

Second things second: I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday full of rest and … more rest. And maybe some laughter. But mostly rest. Me? Well, I’ve done my best. But we’re not here to talk about me, right? No, there are far more important things to talk about, like …

Black History Month!

I’m not going to give you the usual spiel about how important Black History Month is as a way to shine light on the accomplishments and contributions of Black people over the course of the history of this country. You know that. I’m not going to mention Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, slavery, Black inventors, or even the new heroes of our day like Amanda Gorman. You know them as well. Instead, I figured we could take a moment to drill down on the word “history.”

What does it mean? When I was young it pretty much meant “boring.” It meant time to sleep in class, or doodle, or pass notes (Do y’all still pass notes? Is that a thing?) or daydream about french fries, or … you get the point. Just the word “history” could send me on a distant voyage into the imagination, far from any classroom or teacher trying to convince me that it was important. Of course, history is important. But it almost felt too important to be interesting, like the 5 o’clock news. Or the 6 o’clock news. Or the 7 o’clock news.

But when I started digging into the word, when I decided to do a little research on my own about the meaning of “history” and where that word came from, I discovered something important and interesting. “History,” by most definitions, is a story outlining past events. I guess that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I mean, the word “story” literally makes up 80 percent of the word. But I found a few other old definitions, other meanings attached to the inception of this word, the most interesting coming from the Greeks. The way they defined “history” was all about learning. A knowing by inquiry. What this means is, history is all about documenting the questions you ask. Which would mean … according to my calculations … to make history would be to ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

A-ha!

So, as we celebrate Black History Month this year, let’s not just give presentations on the great people who have shaped our country and our world; let’s also work to figure out what questions they may have asked to do so, and what questions we should be asking now—right now—to make history ourselves, every day.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Library Enriches America’s Story by Connecting with Minority Communities, Funded by $15M Mellon Grant

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith (second from right), meeting with Santa Clara Pueblo community members during her American Conversations tour in 2018, the type of program the Mellon Foundation grant will promote. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The Library today announced a new, multiyear initiative to connect more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other minority communities by expanding its collections, using technology to enable storytelling and offering more internship and fellowship opportunities, supported by a $15 million investment from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The new initiative, Of the People: Widening the Path, creates new opportunities for more people to engage with the Library, thus weaving a more inclusive American story. This work will expand the Library’s efforts to ensure that a diversity of experiences is reflected in our historical record and inform how we use those materials to understand our past.

The initiative will be accomplished through three programs: investing in community-based documentarians who will expand the Library’s collections with new perspectives; funding paid internships and fellowships to benefit from the wisdom of students and engage the next generation of diverse librarians; and creating a range of digital engagements to connect with underserved communities and institutions.

“The Mellon Foundation’s generous grant will enhance the Library’s efforts to develop deeper and mutually empowering relationships with those who are too often left out of the American story,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “By inviting communities of color and other underrepresented groups to partner on a wider, more inclusive path for connection to the Library of Congress, we invest in an enduring legacy of the multifaceted American story that truly is ‘Of the People.’”

The new initiative is part of a larger vision at the Library to connect with all Americans by inviting new generations to participate in creating, preserving and sharing the nation’s cultural treasures and building on the Library’s commitment to collect and preserve more underrepresented perspectives and experiences.

The $15 million invested by the Mellon Foundation in the Of the People initiative represents the largest grant from a private foundation in the Library’s history and is among the largest grants that the foundation awarded in its 2020 cycle.

“We are proud to support Carla Hayden and the Of the People initiative as the Library of Congress envisions and implements new ways to connect all Americans with its unparalleled resources,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “The Library of Congress is the people’s public library, and we are delighted that it will engage diverse and inclusive public participation in expanding our country’s historical and creative records.”

News, stories and opportunities related to the initiative will be shared on a new blog related to this new initiative in the months and years ahead. Subscribe for updates at blogs.loc.gov/OfThePeople.

The Of the People initiative accomplishes these objectives through three programs: community documentarians working with the American Folklife Center; internships and fellowships for students from minority-serving institutions; and a digital futures program that combines the power of technology with the Library’s digital collections to help communities engage with the Library in ways that have never before been possible.

These are the grant’s main programs:

Community Documentarians with the American Folklife Center

The American Folklife Center  will expand its collection by funding and supporting individuals and organizations in collecting and archiving contemporary community-driven cultural expressions and traditions. The Library will offer fellowships to individuals to work within their communities to produce ethnographic cultural documentation, such as oral history interviews and audio-visual recordings of cultural activity, from the community perspective. The center will archive and showcase this fieldwork.

Internship and Fellowships for Students from Minority-Serving Institutions.

The Library will expand internship opportunities and enhance outreach to students attending historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribal colleges and universities and institutions that serve Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The internship and fellowship programs offered will provide experiential learning opportunities to develop a new generation of diverse talent for cultural heritage organizations. The Library has begun work in this area by creating new training opportunities through a pilot program with Howard University.

The Black, Indigenous and Minority Americans Digital Futures Program

A digital strategy program will encourage creators in minority communities to combine Library materials with technology to connect Americans with a more expansive understanding of our past and future. Grants to cultural heritage institutions, community colleges and minority-serving institutions will support engagement with the Library’s collections in communities exploring their own histories. Through the program, creative people making content like videos, photo collages, new music and digital exhibits will bring to the foreground the experiences of Black, Indigenous and Americans from other racial and ethnic minority communities in the documents that comprise the story of our national identity. A scholar-in-residence program will connect experts with the richness of the collection and Library expertise. Projects funded through this program will serve as inspiration for those who want to use the Library’s collections to tell their own story. Together, these and other elements of the program will work to strengthen the Library’s connection to communities of color and help the Library engage with all Americans.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

When Rebecca the Raccoon Ruled the White House

{mediaObjectId:'B948FA46ABDC8458E053CAE7938C4193',playerSize:'mediumWide'}

Calvin Coolidge, 1925. Prints and Photographs Division.

Since we have new presidential pets, Champ and Major, a pair of German Shepherds, we take a quick look back at one of the nation’s most famous four-legged White House inhabitants.

Calvin Coolidge does not exactly enjoy a historical reputation for being a freewheeling sort of guy. He was a staid, serious president; gray flannel might have been a daring sartorial choice. But it has to be said that not even the boisterous Teddy Roosevelt — who let his kids bring snakes into government meetings — had a pet raccoon that ran around the White House knocking over plants, unscrewing jar lids, cavorting in the bathtub and generally living la vida loca.

That would be Coolidge.

As Library historian Margaret McAleer explains in the video above, some Coolidge supporters in Mississippi sent the man a live raccoon in November 1926, so that the first family could kill and eat it for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, you may read that sentence again.

But perhaps led by first lady Grace Coolidge, the family decided to make it a pet instead, to the delight of small children and the White House press corps, if that’s not redundant (we kid because we love!). The raccoon, quickly named Rebecca, became a fixture at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The Coolidge family, who also kept dogs and canaries, were kind pet owners and quickly built her a little house of her own. They let her roam the trees on the White House property. Her adventures were routinely reported in newspapers and she gained quite a bit of fame, making a star appearance at the 1927 Easter Egg Roll at the White House, for example.

Otherwise, she often wandered around the White House at will. Her favorite activity, the first lady reported, was playing in a half-filled bath with a bar of soap. When Rebecca went out on the town with the first lady, she sported bling –  an embroidered collar identifying her as the “White House Raccoon.” She vacationed with the first family, escaped often, and pretty much ruled in the way she saw fit until heading off to a graceful retirement at the Rock Creek Zoo (now the National Zoo) when Coolidge left office in 1929.

Rebecca, living the life at the 1927 White House Easter Egg Roll, with first lady Grace Coolidge. Prints and Photographs Division.

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Inauguration Stories: George Washington’s Surprising Speech

{mediaObjectId:'B948FA66C58E8461E053CAE7938CAAEE',playerSize:'mediumWide'}

George Washington really didn’t want to be president.

Sure, he might have led the rag-tag American forces to victory on the battlefield over Britain in the American Revolution, but taking political leadership over the new nation filled him with dread. When a messenger arrived at Mount Vernon with the news that he’d been elected, he all but said he’d rather not.

Obviously, he bit his lip and accepted the job, but this was not a feeling that soon passed. After a trip by horseback to New York, then the seat of the national government, he decided to give an inaugural speech — no one was expecting him too — and he reiterated that “no event could have filled me with greater anxieties” than becoming president.

In the video above, Julie Miller, the Library’s historian on early America, explains Washington’s trip to New York, the reception he got and that unexpected speech, which contains the famous phrase, “the sacred fire of liberty.”

Subscribe  to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.