Library of Congress's Blog, page 9

Native American Languages, Alive at the Library

This is a guest post by Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division. She most recently wrote about Ralph Ellison’s photography work.

Two important collections of Native American heritage have been digitized and placed on the Library’s website, enabling readers and researchers to dig into histories that are not widely known.  

The first, featuring portions of the papers of Indian agent and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, focuses on the culture and literature of famed 19th-century Ojibwe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Bamewawagezhikaquay) and bicultural collaborations and literary contributions of members of  her Johnston family of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan Territory.

The second, some of the papers of naturalist and ethnographer C. Hart Merriam, documents California Indian vocabularies collected from Indigenous language speakers from many different tribal heritages during the first three decades of the 20th century, mostly from California and the adjacent borderlands of Oregon and Nevada.

Both collections provide resources that tribal nations, libraries and cultural centers can use for language revitalization and tribal history documentation, part of the Library’s Native American Collections Working Group’s chief goals. They are housed in the Manuscript Division with other Native American holdings.

It’s fascinating material, taking readers back to a different era. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Ojibwe name translates to “Woman of the Sound That Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky.” Born in 1800, she was the daughter of Susan Johnston (Ozhaguscodaywayquay) and the granddaughter of Waubojeeg, the Ojibwe (Chippewa) leader, warrior and storyteller.

Jane began writing poetry as a girl. Her mother and siblings — especially her sister, Charlotte, and brothers William and George — were instrumental in providing English-Ojibwemowin translations and vocabulary  drawn from their multilingual, multicultural networks, including devotional materials and Native American tales and songs.

In the winter of 1826–27, family members helped contribute information for a manuscript magazine by Jane and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft called “The Muzzeniegun; or, Literary Voyager,” which also featured poetry by Jane, sometimes under pen names.

The 1826 handwritten volume #2 of “The Muzzeniegun; or, Literary Voyager,” in the Library’s archives. Manuscript Division.

Some of the material gathered, copied or translated by Johnston family members, including draft writings, transcriptions, stories and Anishinaabemowin grammar notes, were collected by Schoolcraft and used in his later publications, including ethnographies and anthologies of Indian tales.

In the last decades of his life, Merriam devoted much of his professional attention to speakers of Indigenous languages in California and the West, gathering information related to linguistic and religious/spiritual matters, material culture and natural history.

The Merriam collection includes over 200 vocabulary word lists documenting information accrued through interviews conducted between about 1902  and 1936.

A page from Merriam’s “Indian vocabularies.” Manuscript Division.

Merriam used phonetic spellings intended to help later readers to pronounce words that were conveyed orally. The names or spellings he used for Native American groups and words were sometimes subjective and may differ from modern renditions or officially recognized terms and tribal designations used today.

In addition to vocabulary lists, the Merriam collection includes over a hundred hand-colored and hand-labeled maps that approximate the location of linguistic groups in sections of California and nearby regions.

Just as he used standardized government-printed field check-lists for his word lists, adding to them by hand, Merriam reused maps of various kinds, including U.S. Forest Service, topographical and geological maps, adding layers of color wash and labeling indicating language-group information. Today, it reveals worlds long lost to new generations.

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The Woman Who Helped Put Thanksgiving on the Calendar

This is a guest post by Ryn Cole, who was an intern this summer in the Office of Communications. It appears in slightly different form in the November-December issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

The fourth Thursday in November today means family, food and giving thanks. The national holiday of Thanksgiving, however, did not come quickly or easily. The precedent for a national Thanksgiving holiday can be attributed, in part, to the determination of one woman: Sarah Josepha Hale.

Born in New Hampshire in 1788, she was educated far more than most young women of the era, thanks to parents who believed women should be educated the same as men. She grew to be activist, editor and writer, best known as creator of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Her husband, David Hale, an attorney, died young, leaving her with five children. She was socially conservative and did not support womens suffrage, believing that women should confine their influence to home and family. Still, as editor of the popular and influential Godey’s Lady’s Book, a magazine for women, she advocated for an end to slavery, women’s education and for their right to own property. She also very much wanted Thanksgiving, observed mostly in the Northeast, to become a national holiday. After years of advocating for the cause, during the Civil War she finally wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, urging him to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November.

“…the permanency and unity of our great American Festival of Thanksgiving would be forever secured.” An excerpt from Sarah Hale’s letter to Lincoln. Manuscript Division.

“You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States,” she wrote Lincoln in September 1863. With Lincoln’s help, Hale hoped “the permanency and unity of our Great American Festival of Thanksgiving would be forever secured.”

Lincoln agreed. On Oct. 3, he issued a proclamation urging his fellow citizens “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

The divided country was not all on board, as Confederate states didn’t consider themselves subject to Lincoln’s proclamation. Still, Hale’s persistent efforts helped set a precedent of celebrating Thanksgiving in late November. In 1870, congressional legislation officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday and, in 1941, set the day as the fourth Thursday of the month.

More than 160 years after Lincoln’s proclamation, Thanksgiving Day still fills Americans with a sense of community, love and gratitude, thanks in no small part to the determination of Sarah Hale.

An editors’ column in Godey’s Lady’s Book celebrates Thanksgiving as “The New National Holiday” as Hale’s Thanksgiving campaign was gaining momentum. Manuscripts Division.

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Historical Holiday Cookbooks … Did We Really Eat This Stuff? (Yes)

This is a guest post by Hannah Ostroff, a public affairs specialist in the Library Collections and Services Group. It appears in slightly different form in the November-December issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. 

When you sit down for a traditional holiday meal, does your cranberry sauce resemble the fruit or retain the outlines of the can’s ridges? Does the stuffing — or is it called dressing? — go inside the turkey? Who brings the black-eyed peas? Latkes with sour cream or applesauce? Do your family traditions include tamales?

Library collections hold some 40,000 cookbooks, plus thousands of recipe booklets, archival recipes and dietary therapy books, that reflect America’s holiday food traditions — a seasonal smorgasbord of ingredients, techniques, technology and culinary viewpoints.

Cookbooks devoted to the holidays didn’t become popular until after World War II, though festive recipes nevertheless had their place. The first cookbook added to the Library’s collections was at least holiday adjacent. Thomas Jefferson’s copy of “The compleat confectioner; or, The art of candying and preserving in its utmost perfection,” a 1742 volume written by Mary Eales.

Those early cookbooks were smaller and, obviously, lacked the lush photography we associate with modern publications. They didn’t contain specific measurements or instructions, assuming readers possessed a baseline level of culinary knowledge. Imagine a recipe, like one for stewed pears by Hannah Glasse in 1774, simply telling you “when they are enough take them off.”

Cookbooks as we know them today started around the turn of the 20th century.

The books then began including elements expected by the modern home cook, at first explaining methods and measurements at the front — what constitutes a “slow cook,” for example — and later integrating that information into recipes. Instructions were geared to an audience of wives who managed their households and turned to “tried and true” authoritative recipes.

The Library has multiple editions of classics, from Bon Appetit and Betty Crocker, that were mainstays in many homes. “There’s one for every generation,” said Clinton Drake, a reference librarian in the History and Genealogy Section. “People would receive one when they got married and set up a household.”

Drake and J.J. Harbster, a culinary specialist and the head of the Science Section, have pored over stacks and stacks of holiday cookbooks.

Holiday cookbooks reflect the start of convenience foods like cake mix, which became popular in the 1940s and changed Americans’ eating habits. The way to acquire ingredients was changing too, Harbster notes — one could just pop into the store for a can of pumpkin before preparing a pie.

“Back in the day, there were no canned pumpkins, so bakers would simply cut up fresh pumpkins and stew them themselves,” Harbster said.

The detailed cookbooks that started in the late 1800s really took off along with the advent of refrigeration. The means of storing food made a big impact on how cooks planned and dined for the holidays. Virginia Pasley’s 1949 “The Christmas Cookie Book” is organized into chapters based on “cookies that keep,” “cookies that keep a little while” and “cookies that won’t keep.”

Enter the midcentury gelatin era. “The ’50s and ’60s were fabulous,” Harbster said. “They were all about salad, but these salads were not the salads we know.”

If you were a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, you likely remember “salads” like the red gelatin. 

“McCall’s Book of Merry Eating,” published in 1965, offers multiple recipes for so-called salads, to be chilled in a mold and served over salad greens. One contains canned corn, a package of frozen peas and carrots and chicken bouillon.

The McCall’s cookbook also includes six (!) fruitcake recipes — plus another for fruitcake ice cream. “[T]o be mellow in time for the holidays,” the inside cover advises, “most of them should be baked shortly after Thanksgiving.” By 1982, “Betty Crocker’s Christmas Cookbook” was offering an “old-fashioned fruitcake” recipe to “evoke Christmas past.”

The rapid pace of technological development in the kitchen shaped innovations in holiday cookbooks. Cooks were eager to try out the promise of futuristic machines, like the microwave and slow cooker.

Barbara Methven describes the holiday season as the busiest time of the year in her 1980s cookbook, “Holiday Microwave Ideas.” Her book provides conventional and microwave directions. She recommends the microwave for a boneless turkey breast, not the entire bird, and while a goose is a no-go in the microwave, she has a recipe for a whole Cornish game hen heated on high for 12 to 17 minutes.

“I just love the optimism of the microwave cookbooks,” Drake said.

The Library’s collections show how regional and global representation have increased in cookbooks by major publishers. In recent decades, the industry has featured authors with diverse backgrounds sharing their own cuisines and traditions, like “Hawai’i’s Holiday Cookbook” by Muriel Miura and Betty Shimabukuro or Gwyneth Doland’s “Tantalizing Tamales.”

Kwanzaa, a holiday established in 1966, brought with it new food traditions. African American culinary historian Jessica B. Harris shares a mix of African diaspora recipes and African American cuisine in her 1995 book, “A Kwanzaa Keepsake.”

Home cooks today have greater access to ingredients than ever.

In the 1940s, Pasley wrote in her cookie book that “since the stuffs that cookies are made of come from the ends of the Seven Seas, you shouldn’t expect to be able to buy them all in one store.” She offered suggestions for where one could obtain more-challenging items. (The most unexpected ingredient in the holiday cookbook collection? The salty star of Prannie Rhatigan’s “Irish Seaweed Christmas Kitchen.”)

More contemporary cookbooks also trace a history of dietary concerns.

The Moosewood Collective, whose New York restaurant dates to the 1970s, focuses on vegetarian cooking. Its 30th-anniversary cookbook, “Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates Festive Meals for Holidays and Special Occasions,” offers menus for Diwali, Ramadan, Chinese New Year and a vegan Thanksgiving. Now, Harbster notes, “plant-based” cookbooks are widespread.

In the collection of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, braille holiday cookbooks bring recipes to users. NLS has multiple volumes, including the braille edition of Jeff Smith’s “The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas.”

No matter the specific recipe or format, there’s often a personal tie to holiday cookbooks.

“Every holiday, it would be tradition to bring out your family’s collection of cookbooks and recipes,” Harbster said.

The holidays help keep food traditions alive, writes Joan Nathan in the 25th anniversary edition of “Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook.”  Nathan names recipes for their authors: “Rose family potato kugel,” “Irene Yockelson’s sweet-and-sour cabbage soup” and “my mother’s brisket.” Harris’ Kwanzaa cookbook has blank pages for family members to record their own recipes and recollections.

Making food is an expression of love — especially if you’re not a year-round cook or baker.

“This is the time when you make all of your special recipes that take a lot of effort,” Drake said. “That’s a theme runs that throughout the collection.”

What’s next in holiday cooking? Given the cyclical nature of trends, Drake predicts those molded salads are due for a comeback.

There’s no accounting for taste.

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Scott Joplin & the Magical “Maple Leaf Rag”

In the final year of the 19th century, a little-known pianist and composer named Scott Joplin and a Missouri music publisher named John Stark sent a small package to the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library.

Tucked inside were two copies of sheet music for a highly syncopated, upbeat piano piece with intense flurries of notes — more than 2,000 in a song that took less than three minutes to perform. It was called “Maple Leaf Rag.”

It blew the doors off everything.

One of the two sheet music copies sent to the Library for copyright registration in 1899. Music Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

“Maple” sold 75,000 copies of sheet music in six months, went on to sell millions both as sheet music and in dozens of recordings. It changed the lives of both men and of American popular music. It became the signature piece of ragtime, which also itself lent its name to an era of American life and helped set the foundations for jazz.

“It was a wild success story of fairy-tale proportions,” wrote historian Edward A. Berlin in his definitive “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era.”

Joplin, who was born 156 years ago this week in northeast Texas (Nov. 24 to be exact), wrote dozens of ragtime pieces, a ballet and two operas and eventually became regarded as one of the nation’s most significant composers and cultural icons.

Decades after his death, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for “his contributions to American music” and honored with a U.S. postage stamp. The Library’s National Recording Registry included his work in its inaugural class of 2002 — a group that also included the first recording of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Thomas Edison’s landmark 1888 recordings. A St. Louis rowhouse Joplin rented for a year or two after 1900 (the only residence of his known to still exist) was named a National Historic Landmark and is maintained as a Missouri Historic Site.

But when Joplin died in 1917 in New York — of syphilis, at 48, after nearly a decade of illness — he was destitute and largely forgotten. There were only a few photographs of him known to survive. There were no recordings of his voice or of him playing the piano. The only echo of him at the keyboard are heavily edited player piano rolls, the ones preserved in the NRR, and even those were made late in life when his skills were vastly diminished.

“We have very few actual documents or artifacts directly associated with Scott Joplin,” wrote Larry Melton, founder of the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, in a Library article for Joplin’s induction into the NRR. “Only a few signatures and annotations bear his handwriting.”

Like the legendary New Orleans jazz trumpet player Buddy Bolden, who also died without a recording, Joplin seemed to fall into the long shadows of American history, a figure composed of equal parts man and myth.

So it’s quite the feeling today to walk into the Music Division and see, resting gently on a table, the two copies of “Maple” that Joplin and Stark had printed and mailed to the Library in 1899.

Now 125 years old, they’re a bit faded, sepia-toned and with the edges a little ragged. The cover features crudely drawn images of two well-dressed black couples out for a night on the town — common to the era, but seen as cartoonish and racist today — taken from a tobacco advertisement. Still, it credits Joplin as composer just below the title and blares his name out in bold type. It sold for 50 cents. Joplin got a penny from every sale. It made him moderately well off for several years. It’s possible the tune was named for the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, a black dance hall where he frequently played, but no one is certain.

“No original manuscript for the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ is known to survive,” says Raymond White, a senior music specialist in the Music Division, “so these two 19th-century copyright deposits of this iconic music are about as close as we can get to Joplin himself.”

A passage from the first edition of “Maple Leaf Rag.” Music Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

When you gently open the cover sheet — a sensation something like stepping back into the ragtime era — you see the cascade of musical notes running up and down and spilling over the staffs, showcasing the complicated, joyful, bouncing piece that so delighted audiences. The prevailing popular music of the time tended to be mawkish and sentimental; this had to land like a lightning bolt. It is so difficult to play that Joplin himself took time to rehearse before playing it in public, and later in life, as his illness took hold, he could scarcely play it at all.

Legendary stride pianist Eubie Blake, a generation younger than Joplin, remembered seeing him perform in Washington, D.C., around 1908 or so.

“He played at a party on Pennsylvania Avenue but he was very ill at the time,” Blake remembered in “Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era,” by Peter Gammond, the famed British music critic. “He played ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ but a child of five could have played it better. He was dead but he was breathing. I went to see him after but he could hardly speak he was so ill.”

Though much of Joplin’s life is lost to the era and the ambiguities of personal memories, the Library documents much of ragtime’s history and some of his. There are other early copies of “Maple” and his other sheet music; a 1907 copy of The American Musician and Art Journal that has one of only known photos of Joplin (seen at the top of this article); and the oldest known recording of “Maple,” in 1906 by the Marine Corps Band. There also are also interviews with ragtime musicians Max Morath and Joshua Rifkin and then another with Patricia Lamb Conn, whose father, composer Joseph Lamb, knew Joplin well.

“The Sting,” the 1973 film that renewed interest in Joplin’s music. Internet Movie Stills Database.

The Library also has the adaptations from Joplin’s work that Marvin Hamlisch turned into the Oscar-winning score for the hit 1973 film “The Sting.” (There is also the Oscar statuette itself.) The soundtrack, composed almost entirely of Joplin tunes, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five straight weeks in 1974, launching him back into pop culture 57 years after his death. That popularity led to the resurgence and recognition of his career.

Joplin’s prime years were in Missouri and the last decade of his life in New York City, but his music has seemed to capture something timeless in the American imagination.

Publishing at the Library, with Aimee Hess

Aimee Hess. Photo:Shawn Miller.

–Aimee Hess in the Publishing Office helps produce books highlighting the Library’s collections. This story also appears in the Nov.-Dec. issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

Describe your work at the Library.

I am the lead writer-editor in the Publishing Office, where we publish books about the Library and its collections. I oversee our editorial output, such as developing production schedules, ensuring we meet deadlines and reviewing all prepublication text. With just six staff members, we all contribute to get a project from the seed of an idea to something you can buy in the Library of Congress Store, online and in bookstores. This includes developing ideas, writing proposals, archival research, editing text, securing permissions, arranging scanning, working with designers and marketing.

How did you prepare for your position?

I grew up in Westchester County, New York, in the beautiful Hudson Valley. I had many interests: sports, dance, music, theater, nature — and I always had my head in a book. During high school, I studied classical voice in the precollege program at Juilliard and considered going to a conservatory. Instead, I went to Princeton University, where I majored in English with a certificate in African American studies. My education was well-rounded — including a memorable engineering course with David Billington, brother of the former Librarian of Congress — and I really appreciate that I can continue to explore a variety of interests here at the Library.

After graduating, I wanted to work in publishing, so I took an internship at a literary agency and looked for a full-time job. When I accepted the role of editorial assistant in the Publishing Office, I thought I’d stay for a year or two and then move back to New York, but I’ve been here ever since! Since then, I’ve earned a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins.

What are some of your standout projects at the Library?

So many come to mind. I’ve had the exciting opportunity to write two books for our Women Who Dare series. For “In Lincoln’s Hand,” the companion book to the 2009 exhibition, I spent time in the Manuscript Division checking transcriptions against Lincoln’s original papers; that was a thrill! I worked with staff in the American Folklife Center to design an interactive e-book, “Michigan-I-O,” that incorporated text, images and audio and video clips.

More recently, my colleague Hannah Freece and I developed the companion book to the 2019 suffrage exhibition, “Shall Not Be Denied,” and we co-wrote “The Joy of Looking,” about the Library’s photograph collections. A particularly fun ongoing project I oversee is our Crime Classics series, where we reprint obscure crime fiction titles, with annotations and other explanatory material.

What have been your favorite experiences at the Library?

My favorite thing about working here is when something amazing happens on an otherwise normal day. For example, one day I attended a meeting where Columbus’ Book of Privileges was sitting out on the table. Another time I tagged along to a display (for filmmaker Ava DuVernay) and got to see the original costume designs for “The Wiz” (and also saw Nancy Pelosi). But more than anything else, my favorite experiences have involved working with so many amazing staff members.

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Burt Bacharach: This Guy’s in the Library of Congress

In 1970, Burt Bacharach, whose papers have just been donated to the Library, could sit down at a piano and seem like the coolest cat in the room. Any room.

The once-upon-a-time quiet, skinny Jewish kid from Queens, New York — the one who graduated dear old Forest Hills High School ranked 360th out of 372 kids in his senior class, the one who hated taking piano lessons, the kid his parents called “Happy” — seemed like an L.A. natural by then.

The 42-year-old songwriter and composer was rich and famous, lived in Beverly Hills, owned a stable of racehorses and was married to Angie Dickinson, one of the most glamorous actresses on the planet. His music lived at the top of charts. He scored hit movies. He composed a smash Broadway musical. His television specials did great business. He was admired across the musical spectrum, from the Beatles’ Paul McCartney to Broadway legend Richard Rodgers. His concerts were sellouts, drawing everyone from kids to grandparents.

“Burt Bacharach is the prince of popular music,” Newsweek wrote in the summer of 1970, putting him on the cover.

The young Burt Bacharach didn’t like to practice piano. Later, he became obsessive about his craft, going over a song hundreds of times before releasing it. Music Division.

More than half a century after that glitzy zenith, Bacharach and his music seem fixed in the nation’s musical canon, for his musical writing, compositions and arrangements amounted to a Rolex watch of musical construction and complexity. They didn’t sound like anything else on the radio. He wrote catchy melodies marked by technically challenging arrangements, shifting time signatures and atypical chords. The songs walked and then ran, paused, swooped and bounced along with odd accentuations, retreated to a single instrument before pounding back in with a full orchestra.

The list of his hits (many written with lyricist partner Hal David) that have endured is stunning. “Walk on By,” “Alfie,” “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “This Guy’s in Love With You” and on and on.

He won three Academy Awards for his work in films; six Grammys for his pop music; two Tonys (for cast members) for that Broadway hit, “Promises, Promises”; a primetime Emmy for a television special; and a Drama Desk Award.

Bacharach sketched an early version of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” on this blank record sleeve along with airplane reservations, a hotel phone number and other notes. Music Division.

Bacharach was awarded the Library’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song (along with David) in 2012 and considered it the pinnacle of his career. “… it was incredible news,” he wrote in his memoir, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” “This award was for all of my work, and so for me, it was the best of all awards possible.”

He died in 2023, at 94. By then, he was considered one of the greatest writers, composers and arrangers of popular music in the nation’s history.

“Burt Bacharach’s timeless songs are legendary and are championed by artists across genres and generations,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “The Library is proud to be entrusted with ensuring his music and legacy will remain accessible for future generations.”

Newsweek, it has to be said, had him pegged way back in 1970. The magazine didn’t compare Bacharach to his contemporaries — the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson — but to the composers of the American songbook. “He’s the latest in a distinguished line of American popular composers which includes Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, a line that goes back to Stephen Foster and beyond,” they wrote.

Bacharach’s papers were donated by his wife, Jane Hansen Bacharach, earlier this year. The collection, still being processed, includes 28 boxes full of musical compositions, sketches and scores; nearly 200 photographs; correspondence and other personal papers.

“Burt poured his heart and soul into his music, and we are so proud that the Library will give others the opportunity to visit and enjoy his legacy,” the Bacharach family said in a statement.

Bacharach’s handwritten score for “The Look of Love” contains detailed notes. Photo: Shawn Miller. Music Division.

One of the many finds in the collection is Bacharach’s handwritten score for one of his most popular hits, “The Look of Love.” Composed for “Casino Royale,” a spoof James Bond film in 1967 and first recorded by Dusty Springfield, it since has become a seductive jazz standard. That vibe was intentional; one of Bacharach’s notes in the score was for the musicians to play a passage as “languid and sexy.”

His was an inspiring story about innate talent, hard work and perseverance rather than a tale of a born musical prodigy. His mother had great taste in the arts and played piano by ear; his father was in the men’s clothing business before becoming a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist.

Bacharach started piano lessons at 8 but didn’t really come alive musically until hearing jazz great Dizzy Gillespie as a teenager. He trained at the music conservatory at McGill University in Montreal, studied under Darius Milhaud and avant-garde composer Henry Cowell.

His real-life musical education? Touring with the legendary Marlene Dietrich as her accompanist while beginning his songwriting career in the Brill Building in Manhattan.

Then, after spotting eventual muse Dionne Warwick as a backup singer at a recording session and settling in with David as his songwriting partner, he went on a hit-making run for decades.

Bacharach’s personal copy of Newsweek with him on the cover, June 22, 1970.

He wrote or co-wrote six No. 1 Billboard pop hits and had dozens in the Top 40. He was enshrined in every relevant hall of fame, made delightful cameos in the three “Austin Powers” movies and saw more than 1,000 artists around the world record his songs. His work was so universal that country star Ronnie Milsap had one of the biggest hits with “Any Day Now,” while rhythm and blues crooner Luther Vandross made “A House is Not a Home” one of his signature pieces.

Linda Moran, president and CEO of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, likes to point out that Bacharach was given their Johnny Mercer Award — a further honor for hall of fame inductees who set “the gold standard.”

“Nothing better describes the magic Bacharach created with every song he wrote,” she said.

Several of his songs have been hits in multiple decades.

Consider “Walk on By,” an early collaboration with David.

Warwick had the first hit with it in 1964. Soul icon Isaac Hayes put it back on the charts in 1969. Several others had minor hits with it in the U.S., the U.K. or Europe over the decades, including the Average White Band, the Stranglers, Melissa Manchester, Sybil and Gabrielle. Then, in 2023, rapper Doja Cat took it to No. 1 in 19 countries by sampling it heavily in “Paint the Town Red,” which has been streamed more than 730 million times on Spotify and another 286 million on YouTube.

Burt Bacharach? It’s almost like he’s still the coolest cat in the room.

Bacharach at the Gershwin Awards in 2012.

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Veterans Day: Remembering World War I

This is a guest post by Cheryl Fox, an archives and history specialist in the Manuscript Division.

In September, the National Park Service unveiled the final element of a new national World War I memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Pershing Park. Titled “A Soldier’s Journey,” the bronze sculpture by Sabin Howard depicts the experience of a single soldier, from enlistment to homecoming, through 38 human figures.

Carved on its opposite side is an excerpt from a poem by former Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak,” which concludes with these famous lines, set in all capital letters:

“WHETHER OUR LIVES AND OUR DEATHS WERE FOR PEACE AND A NEW HOPE

OR FOR NOTHING WE CANNOT SAY; IT IS YOU WHO MUST SAY THIS.

THEY SAY: WE LEAVE YOU OUR DEATHS. GIVE THEM THEIR MEANING.

WE WERE YOUNG, THEY SAY. WE HAVE DIED. REMEMBER US.”

MacLeish wrote the poem in 1943 during his tenure as Librarian. Its universal message, calling on citizens to remember and honor fallen soldiers, resonates with MacLeish’s experiences during World Wars I and II.

He interrupted his undergraduate studies at Yale University in 1917 to join the Yale Unit, or Mobile Hospital No. 39, as an ambulance driver. He later joined the U.S. military and commanded an artillery battery at the second Battle of the Marne in France.

By the late 1930s, MacLeish was a well-known cultural figure and multiple prize-winning author closely allied with New Deal initiatives. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Librarian in 1939.

Throughout his five-year tenure, MacLeish worked with the Roosevelt administration as a speech writer and spokesman. When asked to contribute to the 1943 War Bond campaign, MacLeish wrote “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.”

It was published in newspapers on Sept. 16, 1943, and appeared in the October 1943 issue of the Library of Congress Information Bulletin. An accompanying note reported that MacLeish read it at a general meeting of Library employees on Sept. 10.

After the second World War, Librarian of Congress Luther Evans, who succeeded MacLeish in 1945, asked Congress to provide funds to commemorate Library staff members who died during the war. A white marble plaque with the names of those lost etched in gold resulted. It was dedicated on Dec. 7, 1948, and sits just outside the Librarian’s ceremonial office in the Jefferson Building. A commemorative booklet produced for the dedication included photos and details about fallen staff members — and “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.”

Archibald MacLeish in the late 1930s. Photo: Harris & Ewing. Prints and Photographs Division.

MacLeish was one of the nation’s most honored and respected poets and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes and an Academy Award, among other high profile honors.

The Library preserves his papers. Many of the public statements, publications and speeches he made during his time as the Librarian appear in the online presentation Freedom’s Fortress: Library of Congress, 1939–1953. The collection includes documents, photographs and printed material from the LC Archives collection and the papers of MacLeish, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Manuscript Division chief David C. Mearns.

You can listen to MacLeish reading some of his poems at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1963 and in 1976 (though “Soldiers” is not included.)

MacLeish is credited with greatly reorganizing the Library and helping turn it into the national institution it is today. In 1942, during World War II, he described its role in sweeping terms: “World events have made the Library of Congress more important now than it has ever been. Today it is, physiologically speaking, the nerve center of our national life.”

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Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovering of America”

Author and academic Ned Blackhawk has been studying Native American history for a long time, and he thinks there are reasons to be optimistic about the future. He says that groundwork laid over the past several decades, particularly in the 1970s protest movements, has established a growing recognition of Native American influence on the foundations of U.S. culture and society.

“We’re kind of living through this literary and cultural — and one might even say media — renaissance,” he said in a presentation called “American History Is Native History” at the Library’s 2024 National Book Festival. “It’s paralleling or connected to the larger political and economic and social revolution that has been occurring across Indian Country for the past two generations.”

Blackhawk, a member of the Western Shoshone nation, is the Howard R. Lamar professor of history at Yale University and a well-known scholar in the field. His latest book, “The Rediscovery of America,” won the National Book Award for nonfiction this year. At the NBF, he was in conversation with fellow historian Kathleen DuVal, whose “Native Nations: A Millennium in North was published in April. The conversation was moderated by Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo), chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

That growth in representation has been taking place across American society, from politics to scholarship to grassroots government on tribal reservations.

In politics, Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) became the first Native American to serve as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 2021, after rising to political prominence in her native New Mexico. In academics, the Native American Indigenous Studies Association has become one of the “growth fields” in academia over the past two decades, Blackhawk said, and is connecting with other indigenous studies associations across the globe.

Culturally, there are several examples. Joy Harjo of the Muscogee (Creek) nation became the first Native American to serve as the U.S. poet laureate when Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden named her to the position in 2019; she served for three years. Tommy Orange (Cheyenne/Arapaho) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019 for his novel “There There.” Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Oklahoma) took “Reservation Dogs,” a comedy set on an Oklahoma reservation, for a three-year run on FX, concluding last year. He is a 2024 MacArthur fellow (commonly called the “genius” grant). Actress Lily Gladstone, raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, has gained critical acclaim in several roles, including earning a 2024 Oscar nomination for best actress for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Meanwhile, tribal governments have gained more autonomy over the past decades, perhaps most notably in the gaming industry. These and other gains are a hard-won act of survival and determination, Blackhawk said, despite centuries of attempts by white settlers to erase them from the map.

“Native nations have had decades — in some cases, centuries — of powerful people and institutions trying to make them not exist,” he said. But, he notes, “There are still tribes all across the United States, often within a 50-mile radius of most large urban centers, who maintain governments, who have citizens, who have delegated budgets and economies, who run hospitals or health care initiatives for their families.”

But the progress isn’t easy or neat. For more than two centuries, Blackhawk and DuVal both said, American history has been taught from only the settlers’ point of view, often dismissing Native viewpoints entirely, leaving behind a misleading account of how the nation was cobbled together.

The result, they said, is that their students are often ignorant of the most basic history of Native American societies that shaped America’s formation. Contact, negotiations and wars went on for more than 200 years between white settlers and Native nations, from the East Coast to the West, in disputes involving hundreds of tribes and across geography ranging from the wooded Northeast to the desert-dry Southwest.

For example, Blackhawk writes, history tends to cast the Colonial struggle with Britain over taxes, exemplified by the Boston Tea Party. But much of the conflict settlers had with the British government was on the western frontier, where settlers wanted to push forward into French and Native territories. Further, in the early days of the nation, most of the first international law the young nation had to deal with was with Native nations in treaties, setting precedents that applied for decades.

“For so long, and really on purpose, the story of American history was told from one perspective,” DuVal said. “And now I think in our classrooms and our books, we’re trying to tell it from multiple perspectives.”

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The Multinational Traditions of Halloween and Día de los Muertos

The loss of a loved one brings grief, tears and heartache that often takes years to heal. Yet as the first of November rolls around each year, the air in many a Hispanic household fills with the sweet scent of pan de muerto, a soft, round bread infused with anise and orange zest. Home altars are filled with marigolds — their petals a fiery orange — candles and brightly painted sugar skulls.

These symbols of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Hispanic culture are far from mournful or somber. Instead, they’re a joyful tribute to departed loved ones, blending pre-Columbian traditions with modern expressions of love and remembrance.

Día de los Muertos, celebrated throughout Latin America and by Hispanic communities in the U.S., is a vibrant tapestry that weaves together past and present, allowing us to connect with our ancestors while grounding us in our own lives.

A romantic 2003 Día de los Muertos silkscreen print. Artist: Juan R. Fuentes. Prints and Photographs Division.

The holiday traces its roots to the rituals of Indigenous peoples of Mexico, where skulls were crafted in spectacular ways to honor deceased relatives. When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century, these traditions merged with Catholic observances, shifting to align with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. In Catholic traditions that go back for centuries, these have been celebrated on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, respectively. All Saints’ Day also has been long known as All Hallows’ Day — which, in Western Europe, long ago piggybacked onto the  Celtic holiday of Samhain. This was a festival in which people would, in the darkening of the year, light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Over time, the two holidays combined. The night before All Hallows’ Day became known as All Hallows’ Eve. Or, as we now call it, Halloween.

In the Americas, this blending of beliefs gave way to communal celebrations that view death as part of the life cycle.

So although the Día de los Muertos relates to Halloween, the two have distinct beliefs and practices that should not be confused.

“Just as Halloween’s pre-Christian roots are Celtic, the Día de los Muertos has roots in Indigenous Mexican and Central American cultures,” said Stephen Winick, a folklife specialist at the Library’s American Folklife Center. “It’s generally a more solemn and reflective holiday, with a greater focus on remembrance of ancestors and deceased loved ones.”

He continues: “In the modern context, Día de los Muertos is also an occasion for social gatherings, music and culture festivals, parades and costume contests.”

The Library holds a wealth of resources in multiple formats — books, films, photos, graphics, recorded performances and recipe books — that delve into this rich history.

The AFC released late last year a series of never-before-seen photos of a Día de los Muertos festival in Oakland, California, in 1999. The annual one-day street festival began in 1996 as part of a revitalization effort of the Fruitvale commercial area in a primarily low-income Latino community.

A dancer representing Aztec traditions at the Fruitvale Dia de los Muertos celebration in YEAR. Photographer unkown. American Folklife Center.

The Library’s Hispanic Reading Room displays an elaborate altar every year that evokes those found in Mexico and among Mexican American communities throughout the U.S. These altars typically include freshly cut marigolds or cempasúchil flowers whose vibrant colors and strong fragrances are said to guide the souls on their journey home. There are also candles, photographs of departed loved ones, some of their favorite albums, foods, drinks, spirits and sentimental trinkets.

The Hispanic Reading Room’s entryway features a Día de los Muertos altar. 

Mexican communities also organize parades and gatherings, complete with skeleton costumes, dancing and music. Playlists for the holiday would be lacking without a rendition of “La Llorona,” the weeping woman of Mexican and Latin American ghost lore.

It’s the tragic story of a woman who mourns her three children whom she killed in despair after her wealthy lover — and father of the children — abandoned her to marry another woman. Her anguished wails echo through lonely places as she seeks revenge on men for her heartbreak. There are multiple versions of this legendary character, surfacing as a ghost in some and as an immortal wanderer in others, but always weeping loudly at nightfall.

Other people in Latin America celebrate the holiday in a more subdued fashion, attending mass and visiting cemeteries to decorate burial sites with colorful wreaths. Fizzy drinks and savory meals are on the menu to dine with the dead, along with prayers and music. In Mexico and parts of Central America, tamales boiling on the stove and freshly baked pan de muerto are special treats for the occasion.

Papel picado (perforated paper), sugar skulls and other depictions of calaveras or skeleton figures, are also used to illustrate the symbolism of the legendary celebration. The Prints and Photographs Division houses one of the most extensive collections of works done by Mexican printmaker and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada in the U.S., including a treasure trove of prints, some featuring miniature Catrina calaveras — elegant female skull figures symbolizing death’s equality.

Spanish is rich with humorous phrases and sayings that celebrate life in the face of death. Some are used to mark someone’s passing, to mock death or for setting the tone for the holiday’s love-laughter-remembrance theme. People gather to share memories and stories and honor the legacy of loved ones because “to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

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Vivian Li, the Library’s New Innovator in Residence

The Library has appointed Seattle-based artist and developer Vivian Li as its 2025 innovator in residence.

For her project, “​​​​​​Anywhere Adventures,” Li will work with Library staff to highlight unique, amusing and awe-inspiring collection items that enable young researchers to discover the Library’s online resources about their own communities.

Through her popular social media series about the Seattle Fremont Bridge in 2023, Li found others who shared her enthusiasm for entertaining and informative stories about local history.

​​​“With the Library of Congress so far away, I thought it surely wouldn’t have anything for me — but when I started exploring the digital collections, I found so many stories about my town,” Li said.

She recounted searching for Macomb, Illinois, the town she grew up in, and finding a snippet from an Ohio newspaper about bootleggers on the run.

“This led to a string of research about what it was like during Prohibition,” she said.

She ended up learning about a 1921 scandal where a bootlegger in the nearby town of Colchester, Illinois, hired disgraced Chicago “Black Sox” players to play as ringers in a baseball game against Macomb.

“I didn’t even know Macomb used to have a baseball team!” Li said.

As innovator in residence, Li will delve into collections to and share stories on social media “so people might become curious to do some exploration on their own.”

“Anywhere Adventures” will spotlight histories from three U.S. cities to be selected in early 2025. The finished website will provide self-guided tours and activities for each location, all culminating in a personalized “zine” that participants can share with others.

Li is an illustrator, comics artist and web developer. Since graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in computer science, she has been creating projects that combine her visual artistry with her coding skills.

She previously served as an artist in residence creating digital data visualizations for ​Seattle’s historical Fremont Bridge​ in a partnership between the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Department of Transportation.

Li published the first volume of her comic cookbook on homemade Chinese cuisine, “ABC Cooking,” in 2023. She has contributed comics to Papeachu Review, Fogland Press and Portland Zine Symposium.

​​​The Innovator in Residence program is an initiative of the Library’s Digital Innovation Division, LC Labs. The program invites arts and technology practitioners to conduct research with Library staff members and demonstrate new ways to engage with archives in the cultural heritage sector.