Library of Congress's Blog, page 66
October 23, 2019
Kluge Center: Dazzling Finds from the Maya
This is a guest post by Giselle Aviles, research assistant in the Kluge Center.
In September, the John W. Kluge Center welcomed Simon Martin, anthropologist and specialist in Maya hieroglyphic writing, as the second Jay I. Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas. He is working on a project called “Articulations of Power Among the Classic Maya.”
We’ve created a resource guide, highlighting information about Martin, the Kislak Chair position, and the Jay I. Kislak collection, which contains incredible treasures from the early Americas. It is an especially exciting time to launch this resource guide as we honor National Hispanic Heritage Month.
The resource guide will help you learn more about the Kislak Chair and The John W. Kluge Center. In the future, we will be publishing more resources on other scholars!
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October 22, 2019
Rare Film: Washington Senators Win the 1924 World Series
The Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros will play Game One of the World Series tonight in Houston. Check out this rare footage, found in a garage, of the Washington Senators winning the 1924 World Series over the New York Giants in a Game Seven that went 12 innings!
This film is now part of the Library’s collections. Remember, the Library of Congress is the Nation’s Library, but blog authors do have opinions. Go Nats! Stay in the fight! Here’s hoping for a great Series.
October 21, 2019
How “The Postman Always Rings Twice” Got Its “Sort of Crazy” Name
This story is adapted from an upcoming issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.
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The first page of Cain’s “Bar-B-Q” manuscript, with its famous opening line. Manuscript Division.
In the early fall of 1933, first-time novelist James M. Cain and his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, had a problem. Cain, 41, a hard-drinking journalist from Baltimore trying to hang on in Hollywood, had written a crackerjack crime novel about a California drifter and his married lover.
It was short, mean and scandalously sexy. It had a brilliant opening: “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”
The problem: The title, “Bar-B-Q,” was a limp noodle.
“Dear Mr. Cain,” Knopf wrote in a three-line letter on Aug. 22, shortly after acquiring the 30,000-word novel for $500, “BAR-B-Q is not a good title and I think we must devise something better.”
The ensuing struggle to find a title – which would become one of the most famous in 20th-century American literature – is one of many captivating episodes in Cain’s papers, which reside in the Manuscript Division. Correspondence with film stars such as Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck – all of whom starred in film adaptations of his books – and journalism legends, such as H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann, fill dozens of boxes.
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Cain and Lana Turner, who starred in the film version of “Postman.” 1944. Photo: Gus Gale. Prints and Photographs Division.
But, in 1933, Cain was going nowhere fast. He’d gotten canned from his last screenwriting gig and was scraping by on freelance magazine features. He and his second wife (there would be a total of four) were living in a little house in Burbank, at $45 per month. Knopf wanted to get the book out in January of 1934, and Cain needed the money. So he churned out a flurry of new titles. How about “Black Puma”? “The Devil’s Checkbook”? “Western Story”?
Pffft, said Knopf. He didn’t like any of them. As September turned to October, and the first galleys still had “Bar-B-Q” on them, Knopf began to get anxious. “We really must christen the book soon,” he wrote. He came up his own title – “For Love or Money” – and pushed Cain to take it. “It’s good,” he wrote on Oct. 6, underlining “good” four times.
Pffft, Cain scoffed back. Sounds like a musical.
He was a large, burly man, and nobody ever accused him of being demure. Back home, his father had been an English professor and president of Washington College on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His mother had been an opera singer. Cain himself was a lover of opera, smart company and fine food. He spoke impeccable English. He had briefly worked, just prior to coming to Hollywood, as managing editor of the New Yorker, under co-founder Harold Ross. But he had a love for roughnecks and the little guys in life, an affection he had honed as a writer at the Baltimore Sun, where he was buddies with Mencken. He was such close friends with Lippmann – today considered the father of modern journalism – that Lippmann had, in fact, negotiated the sale of “Bar-B-Q” to Knopf for him.
“There is only one rule I know on a title,” Cain would later blare. “It must sound like the author and not like some sure-fire product of the title factory.”
Besides, he often chatted with a friend and playwright named Vincent Lawrence. The two liked to discuss story structure, so much so that Lawrence had helped him come up with the plot outline for this first novel. In one gab session, Lawrence mentioned that when he was stuck at his house, nervously awaiting correspondence from producers, that he’d noticed that the postman, when he finally arrived, always rang…twice.
Bingo! said Cain. What a title! “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” He excitedly wrote Knopf on Oct. 2.
Knopf was not amused. This debut author was telling him – the founder of one of New York’s most prestigious publishing houses – to scrap his title for something this bizarre? “I don’t think THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE anything like as good a title as FOR LOVE OR MONEY and I hope you will agree. For one thing, it’s awfully long.”
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Cain did not, in fact, agree. This was remarkable, particularly considering his dire economic and professional circumstances. Things were so tight, biographer Roy Hoopes later noted, that Cain had borrowed $1,000 from Lawrence just to stay afloat – the 2019 equivalent of $20,000. For two solid weeks, with publication deadlines crashing down on them, he stuck to his title. Knopf –no doubt to his own later great relief – backed off.
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“Turn about is fair play,” Knopf wrote on Oct. 23. “Since you were good enough to drop a title (‘Bar-B-Q’) at our suggestion, we will abandon FOR LOVE OR MONEY at your request. Let us accept the one you seem to like best, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. It’s a sort of crazy title but I like it…I think we’ll be happy with it.”
Yes, yes, they most certainly were. “Postman” was an immediate sensation, selling millions of copies and establishing Cain, along with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, as one of the founders of American noir and hardboiled crime fiction. Cain sold the movie rights to MGM for $25,000, nearly $500,000 today. Along with “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” it made Cain a lasting name. A decent sort, Cain dedicated “Postman” to Lawrence, and never failed to credit him, as the years passed and his fame grew, as the person who was the key to his success.
Still, readers were mystified – there is no postman in the book. Nobody rings anything. What the heck does it mean?
In later interviews and letters, like one to reader Clara T. King on May 21, 1936, Cain claimed this identifying double ring by letter carriers was an old British or Irish tradition and that it doubled as a metaphor for the delayed justice meted out to Frank and Cora, the killers, with “postman” standing in for “justice.”
“They had to answer the second ring,” he wrote.
It was hooey, but it was Hollywood. It worked.
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October 16, 2019
“Ad Astra” and Former Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith
This guest post, explaining the connnection between former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and the latest Brad Pitt film, “Ad Astra,” is by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer for the Center for the Book.
If you have seen the space film “Ad Astra” — Latin for “to the stars” — you likely marveled at its extraordinary special effects. As any fan of effects-laden films knows, these feats of grand spectacle require hundreds, if not thousands, of technical wizards to pull them off. You almost forget that what you are seeing could not happen in reality but only in a film studio.
Thus, if you are one of those people like me who stays to watch all a film’s credits, you know that Ad Astra’s credit stream seems to go on almost endlessly. My wife and I were sitting there in the IMAX theater, eyes nearly glazed over by the monotony of seeing so many unfamiliar names. Until one near the very end somehow jarred us into taking notice: Tracy K. Smith.
The director, James Gray, had thanked the former U.S. poet laureate. Smith served in the position for two years, from 2017 to 2019. I asked my wife, “Is it really that Tracy K. Smith?” Then she reminded me that Smith’s father had worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. And then I remembered that Smith had written the Pulitzer-winning poetry collection “Life on Mars.”
I was fortunate to travel with Smith during her “American Conversations“ tour of rural America. We were driving in the car and started talking about musical artists we like. Smith mentioned that she loves David Bowie (as do I). Knowing that “Life on Mars” shares a title with one of Bowie’s early songs, I asked her what the song meant to her. She said she thought he was writing about a “girl with the mousy hair” who is so turned off by the craziness of life on Earth that she is asking, “Is there life on Mars?” She is looking for a place where she can escape.
Alissa Williamson, writing for “Vox” about “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” one of the poems in the “Life on Mars,” suggests what may have inspired Gray:
“Smith invokes a variety of myths and stories, from the legend of the lost city of Atlantis to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ It concludes with the perfect description of how history, humanity and space interact in an ultimate search for meaning.”
Here’s an excerpt, reprinted with Smith’s permission:
My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise
As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.
We learned new words for things. The decade changed.
The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—
So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.
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October 14, 2019
Free to Use and Reuse: Genealogy
“Six Generations,” R.W. Harrison, Selma, Alabama. 1893. Prints and Photographs Division.
It’s time once again to dip into our Free to Use and Reuse sets of pictures, culled from the Library’s millions of copyright-free photographs, prints, maps and so on. This month, we’re featuring things that relate to ever-popular genealogy searches, as people look to uncover the secrets of their past by identifying their ancestors and the lives they led. The Library is great for this, offering ways to identify your ancestors, and then help document how and where they lived.
First up is this remarkable photograph of five women and a toddler, taken in Selma, Alabama, in 1893, in the studios of R.W. Harrison. It’s titled “Six Generations,” but there are no names or other identifying information. This prompts a number of questions. Namely, what is the order of birth, and is this all one family? Let’s presume the latter is true. Certainly in that era, when photographs were formal occasions, a family portrait was more likely than not; and, besides, the women certainly appear to be related.
As to order of birth: The toddler is the youngest; it’s reasonable to think that the matriarch is the seated woman in the middle, just to the left of the child. I’d venture that second oldest is the woman seated on the right, in the patterned dress, followed by the woman seated at the far left, in the white dress. In turn, her daughter would be standing, in the black dress at right. The child’s mother, then, would be in the white dress, center. In sum, that’s everyone from the baby of the family to her great-great-great grandmother!
If we assume 20 years between each generation, that would make the eldest somewhere around 100, but it’s certainly possible she could be in her late 80s. Now, putting a historical filter over the image: In 1893, the Civil War was just 28 years in the past. That almost certainly means the oldest four women in the picture were born into slavery, with the eldest born no later than the administration of Thomas Jefferson.
If the toddler remains in Selma (not at all assured, given that the Great Migration began drawing African Americans to northern cities when she will be a teenager), she will be in her mid 60s when Rosa Parks electrifies the nation by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, setting off the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement. A decade later, when she is in her mid 70s, the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches will jolt her hometown into history and will lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Of such photographs, books are written.
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Topographical map of Atlantic County, New Jersey, 1872. Beers, Comstock & Cline, New York. Geography and Map Division.
Perhaps your roots are in Atlantic City, New Jersey, or thereabouts? This 1872 topographical map of Atlantic County is detailed down to the block, with property owners names listed in most places. Atlantic City had a population of 1,043. Not only would this show you where your ancestor lived, it would let you know who lived next door and down the street.
And, finally, an urbane photo from D.C. in 1907. It’s titled “Mr. Chow and Family in Auto,” and pictures a family out for what looks to be a Sunday drive — one child is seated next to Mr. Chow, another in the back with two women. The picture was donated — and possibly taken by— one Barnett McFee Clindist. It is included in a set of 21 small prints that “Includes portraits of government officials and socialites; photo montage of President Wilson and his family… group portrait of automobile manufacturers in automobiles at the White House … montage portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court justices” according the cataloguing data.
It would seem, then, that Mr. Chow is a socialite of some note, possibly, given the political nature of other photos in the set, a diplomat. He’s wearing a spiffy bowler, the car top is down and the dirt road is dry, so it looks like a fine day for a jaunt. Perhaps this is Rock Creek Park? Has one of the children asked, “Are we there yet?” Was that a thing, then? The automobile was such a newfangled invention that the destination may have been immaterial; the point of the afternoon was just the grand experience of your dad puttering you about in his grand motorcar. You could wave to the lesser mortals as you passed. That would likely do just fine.
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“Mr. Chow and His Family in Auto.” 1907. Washington, D.C. Donated by Barnett McFee Clinedinst. Prints and Photographs Divison.
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Free to Use and Reuse: Geneaology
“Six Generations,” R.W. Harrison, Selma, Alabama. 1893. Prints and Photographs Division.
It’s time once again to dip into our Free to Use and Reuse sets of pictures, culled from the Library’s millions of copyright-free photographs, prints, maps and so on. This month, we’re featuring things that relate to ever-popular genealogy searches, as people look to uncover the secrets of their past by identifying their ancestors and the lives they led. The Library is great for this, offering ways to identify your ancestors, and then help document how and where they lived.
First up is this remarkable photograph of five women and a toddler, taken in Selma, Alabama, in 1893, in the studios of R.W. Harrison. It’s titled “Six Generations,” but there are no names or other identifying information. This prompts a number of questions. Namely, what is the order of birth, and is this all one family? Let’s presume the latter is true. Certainly in that era, when photographs were formal occasions, a family portrait was more likely than not; and, besides, the women certainly appear to be related.
As to order of birth: The toddler is the youngest; it’s reasonable to think that the matriarch is the seated woman in the middle, just to the left of the child. I’d venture that second oldest is the woman seated on the right, in the patterned dress, followed by the woman seated at the far left, in the white dress. In turn, her daughter would be standing, in the black dress at right. The child’s mother, then, would be in the white dress, center. In sum, that’s everyone from the baby of the family to her great-great-great grandmother!
If we assume 20 years between each generation, that would make the eldest somewhere around 100, but it’s certainly possible she could be in her late 80s. Now, putting a historical filter over the image: In 1893, the Civil War was just 28 years in the past. That almost certainly means the oldest four women in the picture were born into slavery, with the eldest born no later than the administration of Thomas Jefferson.
If the toddler remains in Selma (not at all assured, given that the Great Migration began drawing African Americans to northern cities when she will be a teenager), she will be in her mid 60s when Rosa Parks electrifies the nation by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man in Montgomery, setting off the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement. A decade later, when she is in her mid 70s, the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches will jolt her hometown into history and will lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Of such photographs, books are written.
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Topographical map of Atlantic County, New Jersey, 1872. Beers, Comstock & Cline, New York. Geography and Map Division.
Perhaps your roots are in Atlantic City, New Jersey, or thereabouts? This 1872 topographical map of Atlantic County is detailed down to the block, with property owners names listed in most places. Atlantic City had a population of 1,043. Not only would this show you where your ancestor lived, it would let you know who lived next door and down the street.
And, finally, an urbane photo from D.C. in 1907. It’s titled “Mr. Chow and Family in Auto,” and pictures a family out for what looks to be a Sunday drive — one child is seated next to Mr. Chow, another in the back with two women. The picture was donated — and possibly taken by— one Barnett McFee Clindist. It is included in a set of 21 small prints that “Includes portraits of government officials and socialites; photo montage of President Wilson and his family… group portrait of automobile manufacturers in automobiles at the White House … montage portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court justices” according the cataloguing data.
It would seem, then, that Mr. Chow is a socialite of some note, possibly, given the political nature of other photos in the set, a diplomat. He’s wearing a spiffy bowler, the car top is down and the dirt road is dry, so it looks like a fine day for a jaunt. Perhaps this is Rock Creek Park? Has one of the children asked, “Are we there yet?” Was that a thing, then? The automobile was such a newfangled invention that the destination may have been immaterial; the point of the afternoon was just the grand experience of your dad puttering you about in his grand motorcar. You could wave to the lesser mortals as you passed. That would likely do just fine.
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“Mr. Chow and His Family in Auto.” 1907. Washington, D.C. Donated by Barnett McFee Clinedinst. Prints and Photographs Divison.
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October 9, 2019
RUNAWAY! How George Washington, Other Slave Owners Used Newspapers to Hunt Escaped Slaves
Enslaved people ran away from bondage so often that slave owners placed some 200,000 “runaway slave” ads in newspapers across the country in the decades before slavery ended following the Civil War. One of these slave owners was George Washington, who conducted one of the era’s most well-documented hunts for a runaway slave, while he was still in office. Arlene Balkansky, reference librarian in the Serial and Government Publications Division, goes through the Library’s newspaper holdings to document Washington’s search for a young woman who defied the father of the country, and then documents the long history of such ads. Balkansky recently published this piece on the Headlines and Heroes blog and we are pleased to post a slightly longer version here.
Fugitive slave ads abounded in American newspapers until the end of the Civil War. These abhorrent descriptions – penned by slave-owners who viewed people as property – still bear witness to the bravery and unique characteristics of the people who escaped slavery, albeit sometimes temporarily, and defied a massively powerful system allied against them.
An important part of that system was the Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, who owned more than 100 slaves himself, in February 1793. The act made it a federal crime to assist those who had escaped slavery or to interfere with their capture. It allowed the pursuit of “persons escaping from…their masters” everywhere in the United States, North and South.
“Thursday, Feb. 14,” Gazette of the United-States (New York), Feb. 16, 1793, p. 298 [p. 2]
Three years later, in the spring of 1796, George and Martha Washington were living in Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the young nation. The president – then 64 and in his next to last year in office – and his wife kept a number of slaves with them, rotating their captives back to their Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia every few months so that they would maintain their slave status under the laws of the day. One of these enslaved people was Ona “Oney” Judge, a slender young woman of about 20, who was a skilled seamstress and served as Martha Washington’s “lady’s maid.” Judge was the property of the Custis family from Martha Washington’s first husband.When Judge learned that Martha Washington intended, upon her death, to make a wedding present of her to the Washington granddaughter Elizabeth Park Custis Law, she took matters into her own hands. On the evening of May 21, 1796, she waited until the Washingtons sat down to dinner, then walked out of the President’s House in Philadelphia. She was gone.
Washington set out to recover his wife’s property. He had ads placed and rewards posted, leading to this remarkable sentence in The Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser on May 24: “Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair.” The First Family was caught completely off guard. According to the ad: “there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her design is.” Shortly after, another Philadelphia newspaper ran a similar ad.
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“Ten Dollars Reward,” Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia, PA), May 27, 1796, p. 2.
We know where Judge went and the ways in which she was pursued largely through newspaper interviews she gave in the 1840s, when she was in her 70s and technically still a “runaway slave.” She had sailed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to escape. One of Washington’s aides found her there and tried to convince her to return to Mount Vernon. After she rejected his offers, the aide left, but eventually returned to bring her and her infant daughter back by force. That attempt was thwarted, however, and no further attempts followed. While George Washington made provisions to free his slaves in his will, this did not free those enslaved by the Custis family, including Judge. She remained free through her own actions, living until 1848.
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“Washington’s Runaway Slave,” Anti-Slavery Bugle (New-Lisbon, Ohio), August 22, 1845, p. 4.
“She wanted to be free,” reported the Anti-Slavery Bugle in 1845, citing an interview with Judge herself. The story appears on the same page as a review of Frederick Douglass’s memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Quickly becoming a bestseller, the memoir is an early example of the famous abolitionist’s eloquent and effective writing, in this case documenting his time enslaved and his escape.
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“Frederick Douglass—Horrors of Slavery,” Anti-Slavery Bugle (New-Lisbon, Ohio), August 22, 1845, p. 4.
The vast majority of those who escaped or attempted to escape enslavement in America were never well-known, though. The only record we have for many are fugitive slave ads, some 200,000 of which were published. Chronicling America provides this Topics Page and a window to finding thousands more ads.
One of the most detailed, humanizing and chilling runaway slave ads that I found in a search of Chronicling America is for Peter (as was common, no last name given). Humanizing in its favorable description of Peter’s appearance and intelligence. Chilling in its reference to his being “easily frightened by the whip.” Peter’s description also makes reference to a scar, as do many of the descriptions in the ads.
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”TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD. RAN AWAY,” Southern Telegraph (Rodney, MS), August 9, 1836, p. 6.
The same ad ran in the Southern Telegraph, a newspaper in Rodney, Miss. It ran from May 27 to September 27, 1836, sometimes twice within an issue. It also ran in the Natchez Courier, according to the ad.
Another type of fugitive slave ad was for runaways who had been captured and jailed. I cannot claim a thorough search, but I did not find an ad for Peter “in Jail,” so we have some reason to hope that Peter eluded capture and was able to remain free, although it is possible he was returned directly to the owner. Tragically, many of those who escaped were captured. If they were not claimed, they were sold at auction.
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Southern Sentinel (Plaquemine, LA), December 19, 1849, p. 1.
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Southern Planter (Woodville, MS), August 11, 1832, p. 4.
On Sept. 18, 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, as amended and strengthened by Congress, was signed by President Millard Fillmore, as part of the controversial Compromise of 1850.
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“The New Slave-Catching Law,” The Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, OH), Oct. 5, 1850, p. 1.
Runaway slave ads continued to be published in newspapers during the Civil War, but they no longer had the full power of the federal government behind them with the passage of the Confiscation Acts and with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, both applying only to those enslaved within the Confederacy. Slavery as an institution in the United States finally ended with the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865.
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“Slavery Forever Dead,” The New York Herald, Dec. 7, 1865, p. 1.
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October 7, 2019
Inquiring Minds: Alan Gephardt, Garfield Expert
Alan Gephardt is a ranger at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site of the U.S. National Park Service in Mentor, Ohio. He has drawn extensively on the James A. Garfield papers at the Library to interpret the 20th U.S. president’s legacy.
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Alan Gephardt holds a reproduction of one of President Garfield’s scapbooks. Photo courtesy of the Garfield National Historic Site.
What does your job entail?
My principal duty is to explain the life and career of James A. Garfield to the public. This involves giving tours of the Garfield home, giving talks at the local library and other nearby venues and writing blog articles relating to Garfield and his times. These duties require reading and research.
What is your background?
I have always been interested in U.S. history and presidential history in particular, so working at the Garfield site has been very gratifying. I am a native of Maryland and have a bachelor’s degree from Towson University and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. I have worked in the museum field since 1990, mostly in Baltimore. In 2007, I became an employee of the National Park Service. I have worked at the Hampton National Historic Site in Towson and the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore. I started at the Garfield National Historic Site in 2009.
Tell us about your research at the Library.
My most recent Library project was creating facsimiles of the leather-bound volumes of the president’s papers, now held in the Library’s Manuscript Division. They originally resided in a fireproof vault in the memorial library at the Garfield home in Mentor, Ohio. Mrs. Garfield built the library onto the house in 1885 and called the vault the Memory Room. She had the papers organized topically and chronologically and bound in red, green, black and brown leather with gilded lettering and designs. The collection consisted of more than 200 volumes of letters, scrapbooks, bound newspapers, diaries, plus military and academic records. In 1931, the Garfield children began to donate the collection to the Library.
Recently, I started a project to re-create the bindings for display at the Garfield site. Facsimiles of the originals, I thought, would give visitors a better sense of the extent of Mrs. Garfield’s effort to lovingly preserve her husband’s papers.
I contacted Michelle Krowl of the Manuscript Division for permission to measure a selection of 70 of the volumes, making notations on the wording and designs on each spine. Initially, I had the privilege of performing this task in the Manuscript Reading Room over several visits, but then Michelle and I worked together one day and knocked out the task of measuring and transcribing. With all of this information in hand, I worked with the Cleveland-based Esper Bindery to make the facsimiles that now fill two full shelves in the Memory Room, with a little spillover onto another shelf. Everyone who has seen them has been well pleased with the result.
How else have you used the Garfield papers?
I first began visiting the Library in 2014 to use of the papers of Lucretia Garfield, President Garfield’s wife. I was particularly interested in the many condolence letters that she received in the wake of her husband’s death by assassination — hundreds from people from all walks of life in the U.S. and overseas. I drew on the letters and Mrs. Garfield’s papers for public presentations. But the papers also led me to an unexpected discovery. About two years ago, I stumbled on correspondence with the Wooton Desk Company of Indianapolis that revealed the origins of the secretary desk in the memorial library of the Garfield home. The correspondence made it clear that Mrs. Garfield had the desk made in 1882. Nothing much had been known about it before then. Without the opportunity to consult Mrs. Garfield’s papers, this intriguing, though admittedly minor, bit of the Garfield story would not be known.
How would you describe the value of the Garfield papers generally?
Obviously, the papers of President Garfield, and those of his wife and children, also preserved at the Library, are a resource of immense value to those of us who work at the Garfield National Historic Site and, by extension, to our visitors. They provide so many insights into Garfield’s personal and professional relationships, the issues with which he contended, the cultural currents of his day and the lives of his wife and children after his tragic death. Since the Library made the papers available online this summer, I have looked at reminiscences of Garfield’s older brother, Thomas, about Garfield; the correspondence of one of Garfield’s secretaries, George Rose; and some of the diaries of Garfield’s mother. In every case, something has been revealed that adds context to my understanding of Garfield’s life. The entirety of the Garfield papers is an invaluable asset to the National Historic Site and to the American public.
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October 1, 2019
Library’s Service for the Blind: New Name, New Look
The Library’s National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) is changing its name as of today, Oct. 1, to the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, but all of its services are staying the same.
The newly-minted NLS will still provide free books, magazines, and music materials in braille and audio formats for people who are blind, visually impaired, or unable to use printed work. In conjunction with the name change, NLS is introducing a new logo, in keeping with the Library’s new identity system implemented in 2018.
NLS and the Library made the change after consulting with a number of interested groups, in keeping with the Library’s plan to be more user friendly.
“We are very pleased to share our new name and graphic identity with the public,” NLS Director Karen Keninger said. “We’ve been considering a change for some time, so we’re happy to see this day arrive. The new name, as with all of NLS’s work, puts the emphasis on the people we serve.”
You can find out more about the NLS at their website or the NLS Facebook page.
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September 30, 2019
Jessye Norman, Opera Legend, Dies at 74; Her Papers at Library of Congress
Jessye Norman, announcing the donation of her papers to the Library, on May 16, 2019. Photo: Shawn Miller.
This article was co-written by Sheryl Cannady.
Jessye Norman, the operatic soprano whose presence and voice helped define the art form for half a century, died in a New York hospital Monday. She was 74.
The cause, her family said in a statement released to the Associated Press, was septic stock and organ failure. Both stemmed from a 2015 spinal injury. In May, Norman came to the Library to announce – in an onstage conversation with Librarian Carla Hayden in the Coolidge Auditorium — that she was donating her papers to the Library’s vast performing arts collection. She was scheduled to appear in her native Augusta, Ga., next week for a ceremony renaming a downtown street for her, according to the Jessye Norman School of the Arts website.
“I’m saddened by the news about legendary opera singer Jessye Norman,” Hayden said in a statement. “The Library is the home of her papers, where they will be preserved to inspire future generations. Tonight heaven has a new angel whose voice will echo through the clouds.”
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Norman on stage with Librarian Carla Hayden. Photo: Shawn Miller.
Norman, one of the most iconic figures in the international world of music from the time she burst onto the scene in the late 1960s, received five Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award. She also was presented with the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, the Glenn Gould Prize for Music, and more than 40 honorary doctorates. Born into harsh racial oppression in the Deep South in 1945 at a time when segregationist laws blocked black people from participation in most areas of life, she nonetheless became a blazing American icon of talent, personal will and a majestic stage presence. She performed at all of the world’s premiere opera houses, but was perhaps most identified with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She sang the leads in any number of major operatic and classical works, as well those by Duke Ellington – the latter fitting, perhaps, for a young woman who studied at Howard University, not far from Ellington’s D.C. birthplace.
“When a freshman at Howard University, having found my way to the Library of Congress and the vast, wonderfully welcoming reading room where it was possible to study in peace,” she said in her May 16 appearance at the Coolidge, “I could never have imagined that years later this august building would store papers from my professional life — which at that time, was not imaginable either. I am honored beyond words to express my depth of feeling, so I will simply thank you.”
Her collection, which is being processed for proper cataloguing and research, consists of about 29,000 items. It includes musical arrangements written specifically for her, including orchestrations of songs by George and Ira Gershwin and the sacred music of Ellington. There are recordings, professional and amateur photographs, mockups of album art work, and business papers related to her opera and concert performances.
The collection also contains correspondence, schedules and itineraries dating from Norman’s early career in Europe, through her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, to her unforgettable performance at the 1996 Olympic Summer Games and recent advocacy work with young people. Rarely seen materials include correspondence regarding projects that were never fully developed.
The papers add to the Library’s collections of legendary classical artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Jascha Heifetz and Beverly Sills. The collection will be available to researchers, scholars and opera enthusiasts in the Library’s Performing Arts Reading Room.
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Jessye Norman. Photo: Shawn Miller.
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