Library of Congress's Blog, page 96

New Online: Senate Watergate Hearings

This is a guest post by Amanda Reichenbach, a 2017 summer intern with the  Junior Fellows Program in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. She is a history major at Yale University. During her internship, she worked with newly digitized material from the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings and the 1974 House impeachment hearings, made available online last fall by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting , a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Boston public broadcaster WGBH.

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Amanda Reichenbach

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting recently published an online exhibit I curated last summer at the Library of Congress called “‘Gavel-to-Gavel’: The Watergate Scandal and Public Television.” For the project, I worked with over 250 hours of newly digitized material from the Senate Watergate hearings as well as coverage of the 1974 House impeachment hearings. My exhibit provides access to all the coverage, a highlights reel, an episode guide and an essay putting the coverage into historical perspective.

Longtime PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer called the Watergate hearings a “watershed event” for news and public affairs on public television when he spoke at an event at the Library in November celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Before Watergate, he explained, many questioned whether the young public television network should have news content at all. The bold decision to broadcast the hearings secured a place for news on public TV and set the tone for its coverage: straightforward, balanced and with minimal bells and whistles. It also paved the way for the PBS NewsHour, bringing together for the first time as co-anchors Lehrer and Robert MacNeil. Two years later, they worked together again on a daily half-hour news program on public television that would eventually develop into the NewsHour. It all began with Watergate.

For my exhibit, my goal was to provide context for the hearings not only for public broadcasting, but also for America as a whole. To do so, I drew on a number of excellent cartoons from the Herblock Collection in the Prints and Photographs Division. Herbert L. Block, or Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. I chose three particularly insightful cartoons to include in my exhibit, and I’m sharing them now with permission.

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“I’ll Tell You Everything You Need to Know,” 1972. © The Herb Block Foundation. Published with permission.

“I’ll Tell You Everything You Need to Know” was published on July 2, 1972, after President Richard Nixon vetoed a bill to provide long-term funding for public television; the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, did not include a plan for long-term funding that would protect against government interference. Nixon cited concerns that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), steward of the federal government’s public broadcasting investment, was becoming “the center of power and the focal point of control for the entire public broadcasting system,” overshadowing the autonomy of the local stations. While Nixon made an argument that many public broadcasters had themselves made, this cartoon indicates the extent to which contemporary observers suspected that Nixon wanted to silence bad press from public television’s news programs.

“Violence on Television,” was published on April 19, 1973, after the White House-controlled CPB board purged its most popular public affairs shows, including “Bill Moyers Journal,” Elizabeth Drew’s “Thirty Minutes With,” “Washington Week in Review,” “World Press Review,” and even William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.” In the following months, newspaper journalists began to take notice of the administration’s increasing hostility toward public television. Ron Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The Nixon Administration’s continuing efforts at lobotomizing this country’s broadcast media—to say nothing of the print media—constitute a horror story without end.”

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“Violence on Television,” 1973. © The Herb Block Foundation. Published with permission.

“Late Returns,” was published on May 18, 1973, the day after the Watergate hearings first aired on public television stations across America. It captures the extent to which Americans were glued to their televisions, watching the scandal unfold in prime time.

Given the administration’s hostility, and the novelty of rebroadcasting government proceedings in full during prime time, airing the hearings was something of a Hail Mary pass for public television. One imagines that Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer signed off that first night not knowing whether anyone had watched. As it turned out, they needn’t have worried. By the sixth broadcast, they had received over 70,000 letters from viewers, the vast majority of them favorable. Mrs. June Wilson of Atlanta wrote:

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“Late Returns,” 1973. © The Herb Block Foundation. Published with permission.

“Since the Watergate gavel-to-gavel rebroadcast began, I have not sewed on a button, taken up a hem, or put the yogurt on to make, since I work during the day I would be hard pressed to keep up with the testimony and the nuances which undeniably show themselves in such a hearing. Thus I arrive red-eyed and sleepy to work now and don’t care.”

Watergate has an important place in American history textbooks in its own right, but it was not until last summer that I discovered how important the hearings were to the history of public broadcasting.

To learn more about the topic, check out my exhibit on the American Archive for Public Broadcasting’s website!

New Acquisition: Art Buchwald Papers

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

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Art Buchwald with Katharine Graham of the Washington Post in 1962. Art Buchwald Papers.

In our era, when late-night satiric commentary on the day’s events from the likes of Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee or John Oliver constitutes a cutting-edge source of news for many Americans, or spoofs by the cast of “Saturday Night Live” influence elections and affect the reputations of presidents and their appointees, it is good to remember that political commentary in the United States has, for a long time, held sway in the form of a laugh.

Recent acquisition of the Art Buchwald Papers by the Library of Congress celebrates Buchwald (1925–2007), a master of the genre, whose columns in the Washington Post, syndicated in hometown newspapers across the nation, were first-stop reading for a generation of Americans.

Buchwald was a satirist, poet, columnist, writer, speech giver and friend to many, great and small. He takes his place in an echelon of funny men—from Mark Twain to Robin Williams—who also knew intimately the dark side of life. Buchwald entertained in part to be loved. And because he loved, he entertained. His biting sarcasm and comic send-ups were directed at presidents and members of Congress. He addressed many of the leading stories of his day, from impeachment crisis, to environmental concerns, gun control, drug addiction, depression, nuclear policies and civil rights.

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The “Blues Brothers”: From left, Mike Wallace, Buchwald and William Styron on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. All three had experience with clinical depression. Art Buchwald Papers.

Born in the United States to immigrant Jewish parents, Buchwald showed wit and intelligence, as well as angst, even while a little boy passing through the foster care system. He went on to the Marine Corps, spent time in college and then forged a career for himself as a journalist, first for the Herald Tribune in Paris, and then based in Washington, D.C., with the Post. In 1982, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary. His papers will soon grace Library of Congress shelves beside other Pulitzer winners and friends from the world of print journalism—including Katharine Graham, Meg Greenfield, Mary McGrory, Herbert Block and Jules Feiffer—as well as masters of broadcast comedy like Groucho Marx and Bob Hope.

Buchwald’s father, who spoke Yiddish, learned English from reading newspapers. During Buchwald’s youth, the star of radio, film and press was the Cherokee-American Will Rogers, famous for quipping, “All I know is just what I read in the papers,” and “It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.” Buchwald took up the comic mantle in this same politically focused journalistic tradition. He used public appearances, the periodical press and several books as his forum. Like Rogers, Jerry Lewis and others, he utilized his comic celebrity to bring notice to charitable causes and champion tolerance for the handicapped and the rights of the dying, the vulnerable and the disabled.

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Friends in high places: A January 20, 1975, letter from First Lady Betty Ford to Buchwald. Art Buchwald Papers.

What would Buchwald make of our world of Twitter? It was Buchwald who observed, “The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it,” and “Just when you think there’s nothing to write about, Nixon says ‘I am not a crook.’ Jimmy Carter says, ‘I have lusted after women in my heart.’ President Reagan says, ‘I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.’”

Buchwald knew a Who’s Who among the nation’s journalists, writers, publishers, broadcasters and entertainers. Carly Simon wrote a song for him when he was dying. Ethel Kennedy gave him a signed copy of the recording of Andy Williams singing at Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral mass. William Styron and Mike Wallace joked with him about being the “Blues Brothers,” all three having experienced clinical depression. And Carol Burnett for a time planned to be buried with Buchwald and other friends on Martha’s Vineyard. First ladies wrote to thank him for making them laugh, or to invite him over to the White House for cocktails. His friend Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) sent him a hand-edited copy of “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now,” with the main character’s name changed to Richard M. Nixon: “Richard M. Nixon will you please go now! . . . I don’t care how./ You can go by foot. / You can go by cow.”

The beloved columnist died in 2007. Edward Kennedy observed that “the special art of Art Buchwald was to make even the worst of times better.” Buchwald himself famously reminded us, “Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we’ve got.” The Library of Congress heralds Buchwald making the best of times, through this acquisition of his papers.

“Drawn to Purpose” Exhibition: What Viewers Are Saying

The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, curator of popular and applied graphic arts in the Prints and Photographs Division. The post was first published on the division’s blog, “Picture This.” It is about “Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists,” an exhibition on display at the Library of Congress for much of 2018. For those not planning a visit to Washington, D.C., this year, many of the display items are featured in an online version of the exhibit. A companion book will be published in March 2018.

The recently opened exhibition “Drawn to Purpose” features more than 30 works by North American women illustrators and cartoonists. It spans the late 1800s to the present and includes Golden Age illustration, early comics, magazine cover art and political cartoons. As exhibit curator, I was curious to learn: What kinds of images catch viewers’ eyes? What thoughts or conversations do the artworks spark? With no claim to scientific sampling, I share responses to the show that I’ve gathered from notes in the visitors’ comment book and observations I made on site.

Several written comments express thanks for mounting the exhibition, praising it as “fantastic,” “lovely,” “amazing,” “timely,” “timeless.” Two visitors conveyed specific thanks for “spotlighting the women” and “promoting the art of powerful women!” Another wrote: “Wonderful Illustrations, Delightful, Insightful, Cunning, Entertaining.” A very encouraging response came from a local, award-winning cartoonist, Barbara Dale, who framed her smiling self-caricature, with positive exclamations.

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Self-caricature. Barbara Dale, 2017, published with permission. Photo by Jan Grenci.

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Little Lulu. At the Barbershop. Marge Henderson Buell, 1942.

For those who might expect that the show appeals only to female visitors, consider the following: “Male artist who had no idea this exhibit was even here and am loving it.” He also expressed appreciation for the video loop showing additional artworks that couldn’t be displayed.

I found another observation—“Delightful to see (& hear) so many women’s voices!! Great work!”—gratifying because the exhibition aims to highlight the impressive variety of work by female illustrators and cartoonists in addition to celebrating their contributions to these art forms.

My firsthand observations of viewers’ responses thus far have come from giving tours, doing press walk-throughs and other visits to the exhibit. I noticed some visitors focused on examples by well-known creators, others appeared to look for childhood favorites and others sought political cartoons. Several people laughed out loud on viewing Signe Wilkinson’s cartoon for Ms. Magazine, Ann Telnaes’s holiday party scene, and Marge Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu comic.

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“For the New Year I’ve decided to give up smoking, drinking, and my civil rights.” Ann Telnaes, 2001.

A few younger visitors pleasantly surprised me by looking closely at such historical works as Alice Barber Stephens’s illustration of aspiring female artists, Jessie Gillespie’s spoof on fashion and Anne Mergen’s and Roberta MacDonald’s World War II era cartoons. These artists should be better known.

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Selma Threw Herself at Full Length on the Ground. Alice Barber Stephens, 1895.

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Panta-loons. Jessie Gillespie, 1914.

The exhibition design puts visual emphasis on the art in several ways. In place of labels for each artwork, section panels give historical context, highlight connections among pieces in each group and concisely identify each work. For those seeking more information, individual labels on printed sheets are available in the gallery. When asked, members of tour groups and two donors remarked that the visual organization of the exhibit works very well.

The first rotation of “Drawn to Purpose” runs through May 5, 2018. A second will begin on May 12 and run through October 20.

Please have a look at the exhibit, in person or online, and find a new favorite illustrator and cartoonist!

Learn More

See related online exhibits featuring images from the Golden Age of Illustration, additional cartoons by Ann Telnaes, illustrations by Elizabeth Shippen Green, and works by Jessie Willcox Smith.
View our Cartoon Drawings Collection.

World War I: American Jazz Delights the World

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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James Reese Europe’s band plays jazz tunes in the courtyard of a Paris hospital that is treating wounded American soldiers.

In the afterglow of the armistice in 1918 that ended World War I, Europe, and particularly the city of Paris, exhibited a wild exuberance. In mid-January 1919, future civil rights pioneer and American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) officer Charles Hamilton Houston encapsulated the mood and sounds of European joy: “Paris is taken away with [jazz] and our style of dancing,” he wrote in his diary. “The girls come after the boys in taxis and beg them to go to the dance. Colored boys are all the go.”

World War I brought many changes to the world, jazz not least among them. Some historians characterize it as America’s greatest cultural gift to the globe. It emerged not only as the favored soundtrack of the war, but also as a burgeoning cultural force for nascent, albeit halting and incomplete, integration.

The Library of Congress exhibition Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I demonstrates how African-American regimental outfits—such as E. E. Thompson’s 368th Regimental Band; George Dulf’s 370th Infantry “Old Eighth Illinois” Regiment Band; and, most famously, James Reese Europe’s 369th Regimental Band—came to define and spread the new musical form across continental Europe.

Europe’s band consisted of African-American jazz musicians such as Noble Sissle, but also over a dozen Puerto Rican players recruited by Europe himself from the Caribbean island. Some of its earliest performances overseas occurred at the health resort Aix-les-Bains. A world-famous destination frequented by the likes of J.P. Morgan, during the war it served as a site for recovering Allied soldiers, replete with hot springs, ancient Roman ruins and French and Italian architecture. Here Europe’s band regaled recovering troops with jazz compositions.

“From the very first afternoon concert, when they opened with ‘Over There’ and the war-weary American soldiers responded by climbing on tables, shouting, waving their caps, and demanding that it be played again and again, the band was a great hit,” writes historian Reid Badger in his biography of Europe.

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Sheet music for “All of No Man’s Land is Ours,” by James Reese Europe, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.

The band made waves with French citizens, too. On its way to Aix-les-Bains, it entertained a local town. The bandmaster’s baton “came down with a swoop that brought forth a soul-rousing crash,” recounted band member Noble Sissle. “[T]hen, it seemed, the whole audience began to sway. . . . The audience could stand it no longer; the ‘jazz germ’ hit them, and it seemed to find the vital spot, loosening all muscles.”

This scene played out across France, pulling in European and American audiences alike. Troop trains “carrying Allied soldiers from everywhere,” passing the 369th, took in the sounds as “every head came out the window when we struck up a good old Dixie tune,” remembered Sissle. Even German prisoners forgot their incarceration, abandoned their labor and began to “pat their feet to the stirring American tune.” Jazz bands like the 369th played at hospitals, rest camps and numerous other venues.

An August 1918 performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris by the 369th so impressed AEF General Tasker Bliss and his French counterparts that they asked the band to play in the French capital for eight more weeks. Another concert featuring the 369th at the Tuileries Gardens, along with some of the great bands from around Europe, drew 50,000 listeners. “Everywhere we gave a concert it was a riot,” Europe told an interviewer in 1919.

The magic of jazz played in France moved even the American segregationist Irvin S. Cobb. A southern humorist and Saturday Evening Post columnist, Cobb had made a name for himself with the American public in part from his frequent ridicule of black speech and people. He traveled to France with two other journalists to document the service of black troops in the French army—due to the U.S. military’s aversion to integration, and the Allies’ need for troops, Europe and others in the 369th were assigned to the French military. (They were the first African-American troops to encounter German troops in battle.)

Europe’s band knew of Cobb; many members disdained him, yet they understood the importance of a performing for the then-influential writer. “A full moon shone across the shell battered houses of the little town silhouetting the demolished steeples of a church nearby” as the sounds of artillery and machine gun fire echoed in the background, notes the historian Reid Badger of the 1918 performance.

Neither the scene nor the music was lost on Cobb, who wrote in the August 1918 edition of the Saturday Evening Post: “If I live to be 101, I shall never forget the second night which was a night of a splendid, flawless full moon. . . . [W]hen the band got to ‘Way Down Upon the Suwannee River’ I wanted to cry.” The villagers also responded with tears; one “heavily whiskered peasant,” noted Cobb, “threw his arms” around one of the band members, “kissing him.”

Tragically, Europe died not long afterward, following an attack in Boston in 1919 by a disgruntled band member.

Noble Sissle captures Europe and America’s cultural contribution best: “Who would have thought that [the] little U.S.A. would ever give to the world a rhythm and melodies that, in the midst of such universal sorrow, would cause all students of music to yearn to learn how to play it?“

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Inquiring Minds: Tracking the Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame

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Louise Arner Boyd. Courtesy Marin History Museum.

Louise Arner Boyd was born in 1887 to wealth. Her father was a mining magnate who made millions in California’s Gold Rush; her mother came from one of New York’s distinguished families. Louise grew up in San Rafael, California, and San Francisco immersed in the activities of her milieu: horseback riding, hunting, socializing, charitable endeavors.

When, still in her early thirties, she inherited her family’s fortune, she continued on as a philanthropist and a society woman—in 1925, she was presented at court to King George V and Queen Mary of England. Behind the scenes, however, she started to build a second life—as a rugged polar explorer. Between 1926 and 1955, Boyd financed, organized and photographically documented seven Arctic expeditions, achieving international notoriety for her work. But over ensuing decades, memory of her achievements faded; she died in 1972, having spent her entire fortune on exploration. Today, she is nearly unknown.

In “The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame: A Life of Louise Arner Boyd,” Canadian scholar Joanna Kafarowski aims to set the record straight. She traveled to libraries and archives in Canada, Europe and the United States, including the Library of Congress, to write a comprehensive biography of Boyd’s life and accomplishments, published in November 2017.

Here Kafarowski discusses her passion for Boyd and her research at the Library.

What drew you to the story of Louise Arner Boyd?

I was conducting fieldwork in Arctic Canada for my doctorate on gender, decision-making and environmental contaminants. In my spare time, I read about polar exploration and was intrigued by the mention of “Louise Arner Boyd,” a spirited American woman who had led expeditions to Greenland in the early 20th century. After I returned home, I tried to find out more about her but discovered that no biography existed. A chance family vacation to California took me to the Marin History Museum in San Rafael, which holds many Boyd documents and artifacts. She stayed in the back of my mind for a number of months; when I couldn’t ignore her voice any longer, I decided that the person who needed to write her biography was me.

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Joanna Kafarowski. Photo by Mike Zettel.

Tell us a little about how Boyd came to be an artic explorer.

Growing up in sun-kissed California, Boyd never saw ice and snow until she was an adult. As a child, she was a voracious reader and loved tales about daring polar explorers. She grew up learning about the tragic American explorer George Washington De Long on the ill-fated 1879 Jeannette expedition and the sensational rumors of cannibalism during the tragic Greely expedition of the early 1880s. Later, she was riveted by the controversy over who had conquered the North Pole—Robert Peary or Frederick Cook—that gripped the nation and the world.

After inheriting her family’s fortune, she hired a ship and traveled north of the Arctic Circle, where she developed a passion for the North. Following two pleasure cruises in 1924 and 1926, she hired another ship in 1928 and prepared to sail north once again. Shortly before her departure, she was stunned by the news that iconic Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had gone missing. She immediately put her hired ship, its crew and provisions and her own services at the disposal of the Norwegian government. In doing so, she joined a hazardous and ultimately unsuccessful international rescue mission that involved over 15 ships from many European nations. There was no looking back for Boyd after this expedition.

What are some of the highlights of Boyd’s accomplishments as an explorer?

Scientific work during her seven expeditions generated a vast body of data on East and West Greenland, Norway’s Jan Mayen Land and Russia’s Franz Josef Land in the fields of geology, geomorphology, oceanography, botany and glaciology. This work is still cited by contemporary scientists. Apart from organizing, financing and leading the expeditions, Boyd was also the photographer and produced thousands of detailed photographs and cinematic films that were used to produce maps of this remote region. She pioneered the use of the photogrammetrical equipment employed in exploratory survey work to make measurements from photographs; assisted in the development of a new deep-water recording echo-sounder used to measure ocean depths; discovered a new underwater bank between Jan Mayen Land and Bjǿrnǿya in the Barents Sea that became known as Louise A. Boyd Bank; identified a new geographical connection between the Jaette and the De Geer glaciers in East Greenland that was later known as Miss Boyd Land; and discovered dozens of botanical species previously unknown to science. Later, she was recognized as a Greenland expert and worked for American military intelligence during World War II. Thanks to these accomplishments, Boyd became a role model for other enterprising women explorers who came after her.

What research finds did you discover at the Library of Congress?

Because it is such an important repository, I visited the Library early in my research. I discovered an original head-and-shoulders portrait of Boyd taken by Pacific and Atlantic Photos, Inc. This was significant as it is dated 1928—the year that altered the trajectory of her life. Boyd’s steely determination is mirrored in this wonderful black-and-white portrait. Unfortunately, I was not able to definitively trace the copyright to it, so could not use it in my book. But it started me off on the right path.

Another find was the only recording of her voice I was able to locate during 10 years of research. Boyd spoke on many radio programs, but this is the only extant audio recording. It is part of the marvelous Joseph Nathan Kane Collection, 1938–1939, consisting of recordings of the radio program “Famous First Facts.” By the time Boyd was interviewed on this program, she was a seasoned explorer. I must say her voice did not sound as I expected it to, but it certainly gave dimension to my ongoing work.

Why do you think Boyd was forgotten?

There are several reasons. Although she was lauded by her male peers and showered with honors and awards from around the world, she was entirely self-financed and, in fact, spent her entire fortune in the cause of exploration. This meant that she was not required to undertake aggressive self-promotional tours touting her accomplishments in order to raise funds. Male explorers including Peary, Amundsen, Ernest Henry Shackleton and Vilhjalmur Stefansson criss-crossed their countries publicizing their accomplishments, and all of them wrote sensational accounts of their adventures. They needed cold hard cash and the attention of an adoring public who would await their next journey with bated breath. Boyd gave lectures at universities and geographical societies and wrote scientific books. Although there is evidence that she started writing a popular book, it was not completed, so she never generated the same media frenzy or garnered the public attention that her male counterparts did.

Secondly, the reputation of an explorer is based on accomplishments. While what we know about Boyd is sufficient to ensure her stellar reputation, there is much that remains hidden from us. Despite the fact that there is documented proof that she produced thousands upon thousands of films and photographs of the Greenland regions, only a small percentage of this valuable archive has ever been located. In addition, her personal logbooks and journals from each of her seven expeditions from 1926 to 1941 are missing. Until this valuable archive comes to light, we are unable to accurately assess her true contributions as an explorer.

Lastly, Boyd never married or had children. She was the last remaining survivor of her immediate family and thus had no descendants to champion her cause as Marie Peary Stafford did for Robert Peary or Helene Cook Vetter did for her father, Frederick Cook.

Can you comment on your experience working at the Library?

I had a splendid time! On a personal basis, the Library is a mecca for bibliophiles such as myself. As a writer, I could not have experienced more professional or helpful service.

My Job at the Library: Audio Engineer Helps to Preserve the Nation’s Sounds

Bryan Hoffa discusses his work at the Library’s Audio-Visual Conservation Center. This post was first published in LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine . “My Job” is a regular feature in the magazine, issues of which are available in their entirety online.

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Bryan Hoffa. Photo by Robert Friedrich.

How would you describe your work at the Library?

My job at the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, is to digitally preserve and archive the incredible recorded sound collections held by the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division and the American Folklife Center. For the vast majority of physical audio formats such as wax cylinders, grooved discs, magnetic tape and so on, this process is preservation reformatting—transferring audio from fragile or obsolete formats to more stable ones. In a real-time transfer process, I create high-resolution wave files at archival specifications. Getting the most audio information out of each format during transfer is crucial. I also collect descriptive metadata about the content of the recording as well as technical information carrying over from the original recording and information about the transfer process and equipment. I’m fortunate to be able to work with top-notch gear!

How did you prepare for your current position?

I first became interested in recording as a musician. I secured an internship at a very well-regarded studio and was mentored by some of the best in the business. I spent the next 10 years learning on the job as a full-time recording and mixing engineer. In early 2007, a fire in a connected building caused smoke and water damage that necessitated closing the business immediately. What happened next foreshadowed my current position.

First, I led a disaster-recovery effort at the studio to save analog master tapes from water damage. Then I landed a part-time position at the Library of Virginia. This was a grant-funded project to complete the ongoing digitization of a large radio collection, documenting the history and operations of historic WRVA radio. In 2008, I heard about an opening at the Library’s brand new state-of-the-art facility in Culpeper, Virginia. The rest is history!

How has technology changed the field of audio preservation?

Technology has always pushed the evolution of audio preservation from the earliest days, when Thomas Edison’s inventions enabled the preservation of the human voice. New technologies have brought improvements that were not thought possible. The biggest shift in audio preservation in my lifetime is file-based digital audio. Up to this point, you would take one object that has a known, limited lifespan and copy it to another object with other inherent problems. Files give us the ability to transcend physical limitations and make unlimited, “bit perfect” copies. This is a game-changer, especially for access. However, it’s not without its own challenges. So much more born-digital content is being created than ever before. Guaranteeing long-term preservation requires massive information technology architectures. Data must be verified and migrated to ensure its longevity and security. Metadata, which used to be handwritten on labels, now lives in databases. At the Library’s state-of-the art facility, we are addressing these issues on a large scale.

What are some of the most memorable audio collections you have worked on?

One collection that really stands out to me is the Universal Music Group’s 2011 donation of more than 200,000 historic recordings. They include master recordings on the Decca label of Bill Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to name just a few. They sound fantastic, as if they had just been cut yesterday.

I’ve also had the chance to work on the Les Paul Collection, preserving some of the master guitarist’s earliest multitrack recording experiments on disc. Some of these became his first singles for Capitol Records.

Inquiring Minds: Director Casts Girls as “Newsies,” Citing Library’s Historical Photos

Benny Seda-Galarza, a public affairs specialist in the Communications Office, is co-author of this post.

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The Maltz Jupiter Theatre production of “Disney Newsies: The Musical,” directed by Marcos Santana. Photo by Benjamin Rusnak.

For two long weeks in summer 1899, readers of the New York World and the New York Journal had to do without their daily papers. The reason: thousands of ragtag child newspaper sellers went on strike against the two largest newspapers in the country, shutting down distribution. They did so after publishing tycoons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raised wholesale prices of the newspapers by a dime, cutting into the newsies’ meager profits.

The strike is the subject of a 1992 Disney movie, “Newsies,” and a Tony Award-winning Disney musical that debuted on Broadway in 2012. This winter, “Newsies” premiered in South Florida at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre under the direction of Broadway veteran Marcos Santana—but with a twist. Santana cast several girl newsies in the play.

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Marcos Santana. Photo by Carlos Gonzalez.

Neither the movie nor the Broadway adaptation, by playwright Harvey Fierstein, includes a girl newsie. Santana added them to his production after researching child newspapers sellers at the turn of the 20th-century in the Library’s collections.

Santana is a choreographer, director, performer and theater arts educator. He began his career in his native Puerto Rico, training in contemporary, modern and Latin dance and ballet and jazz. He has performed in Broadway productions of “On Your Feet,” “Guys and Dolls” and “In the Heights” and has contributed as a choreographer to “Faust: The Concert,” “Rocky,” “Rock of Ages” and “Guys and Dolls.”

Here Santana answers a few questions about “Newsies,” his research in the Library’s collections and diversity in the performing arts.

What attracts you to the story of “Newsies”?

When you go to the theater, you are allowed to immerse yourself in the story and the experience, the fantasy. When you go to the theater to see a performance, and the performance is based on a true story or actual events, the fantasy becomes a reality. This is what attracted me to “Newsies.”

The newsies strike of 1899 was a turning point in history, not only for the newspaper industry, but also for child labor laws in all industries. These are the very laws that protect our children to this day.

Another important element that attracted me to the story is that the events from 1899 that are described in the play are still occurring nowadays with the current political, societal and humanitarian turmoil we are all living in. Newsies were primarily the sons and daughters of immigrants. They became newsies because they had to help their immigrant parents survive the oppression and disadvantage of being poor in this country.

What inspired you to add girls to the cast?

Even though in the original movie there was a female character, she was not a newsie. In the original Broadway production, they dressed the female ensemble as boy newsies. When we were originally casting the show, I asked the choreographer, and myself, “Can’t we just have them as girl newsies? Why do we have to dress them up as boys? There must have been female newsies at the time, right?”

After some online research, I found some pictures in the Library of Congress database confirming that there were female newsies. They were not as common, but they existed. Some immigrant families only had girls and, like boys in the other families, they had to help bring income to the house.

Which collections at the Library did you consult, and how did you access them?

I originally did a simple Google search for “female newsies” and “girl newsies,” and there weren’t many findings. Then I found an interesting article from The Atlantic that mentioned the work of Lewis Wickes Hine and included several pictures of newsies, including female newsies. The article gave a photo credit to the Library of Congress. So I went to the Library’s home page and searched the database of photos, prints and drawings, and there it was, the answer I was looking for.

Has the presence of the girl newsies affected the play’s impact?

Absolutely. The girl newsies are a highlight of the production and something I am very proud of. It has set a different tone to the production. It helped reshape the stereotypical, misogynistic behavior of the era by balancing it with the presence of equally able, committed, independent female figures.

Can you comment on diversity in the performing arts generally?

Malcolm Forbes described diversity as the “art of thinking independently together.” The key words in that quote are “art” and “together.” We currently live in a time where, finally, our eyes are slowly opening and we are seeing diversity the way it should be understood: as thinking independently together and not as a political or social agenda. When you go to an art gallery, you feel what you feel staring at a piece, without judging it by your gender, race, political, social or religious view. You simply feel.

Why should that be different in the performing arts? Why should seeing an actor of different gender or race affect the way we interpret the piece? Shakespeare had men dress as women to play the female parts and everyone (mostly) accepted this. Why it is so hard to do the same 400 years later?

As an immigrant, as a minority, I experience the narrowed-minded process constantly. Diversity is not a priority for most when it comes to building a show. It feels more like an obligation, something they have to do to “look good.” Thankfully, this archaic way of thinking is evolving, not as fast as I would like, but at least we are making strides forward. Diversity is what makes us evolve.

What, in your view, is the value of the Library’s collections to creators like you?

The Library of Congress to me is synonymous with authenticity, accuracy and reliability. It gives us artists assurance that we can rely on the information found at the Library to be true. It helps us enhance our vision with a more in-depth knowledge of a time period. It is impossible to completely understand the behavior, the atmosphere, the actual events that occurred in the past. But the Library of Congress database helps us acquire a more vivid knowledge of what it was like.

Calling All Photo Fans and History Detectives: Flickr Commons, 10th Anniversary

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the division’s blog.

It’s a remarkable achievement for any social media program to still be going strong after 10 years. But the most important part of the Flickr Commons is the opportunity to talk about pictures without the barriers of time and place.

A fantastic community of people who enjoy looking at old pictures has developed through the comments they exchange online. That communication can be as simple as flagging favorite photos, and a display of top favorites appears in a Flickr album and is also being featured on the Library of Congress home page this month.

Thank you for a rich and growing experience! You inspire the Prints and Photographs Division staff to keep diving deeper into our collections to share the pictures we love. Your subject expertise and impressive research skills also provide much-needed help to identify the many fascinating images that arrived at the Library with only one or two words of description.

New followers and history detectives are always welcome to take part in the Library’s Flickr photostream.

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A selection of the Library of Congress Flickr albums.

The albums selected above illustrate how successful “crowd sourcing” has been in adding descriptive information. You’ve sent us views of how places appear today for “then and now” comparisons of changing landscapes and cityscapes. You’ve provided dates for jazz performances. You’ve even identified photos that had no captions at all! More than 12,000 pictures now have improved, corrected and expanded descriptions. Please join us as 50 new photos flow out each week needing detectives to enrich the descriptions.

In 2008, George Oates at Flickr created the Flickr Commons with the Library of Congress and an ambitious vision: “Help us catalog the world’s public photo archives.” Now you have a chance to see images from 115 institutions all over the world—check them out! For example, in the National Library of Ireland’s photostream, delightful conversations develop as a group pieces together the story for each photograph.

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Our Flickr Commons 10th Anniversary Countdown Album began with “The Tenth Muse,” photographed by John White Alexander between 1900 and 1912.

Learn More:

Read about the Library’s Flickr project and explore our albums of pictures on Flickr.
View our pictorial countdown to our 10th anniversary of sharing images in the Flickr Commons in this album on Flickr.
Pursue your own favorite subject through a search of the Commons on Flickr.
Explore highlights in blog posts relating to Flickr anniversaries and revelations.
View institutions participating in the Flickr Commons.

Building Black History: Find Your Roots

This is a guest post by Bryonna Head, a public affairs assistant in the Communications Office. It is reprinted from the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online.

The Library’s local history and genealogy resources make it easier for African-Americans to explore their family histories.

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Reference librarian Ahmed Johnson helps Howard University student Carmen Crusoe research her family genealogy. Photo by Shawn Miller.

In the age of personal genetic testing and online genealogical research, Americans today are more interested than ever in discovering their own genesis, looking for a beginning that explains their now.

This awakening to family history is one the Library of Congress is well equipped to help, including for African-Americans seeking to better understand their roots.

For more than 200 years, the Library has amassed resources by and about African-Americans. In addition, the Library holds one of the foremost collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications in the world—more than 50,000 genealogies and 100,000 local histories. Many of those resources are available on the Library’s website. Others—including several free genealogical databases—can only be accessed on-site at the Library.

Genealogy is a journey, not a destination. A good place to begin that journey, of course, is interviewing older living relatives, then working backward through vital records, such as census records or birth, death and marriage certificates.

The Library is a starting point for names, dates, photographs and sometimes even addresses of ancestors—as students from Howard University learned this fall when they were invited to the Library for a discover-your-genealogy workshop.

Ahmed Johnson, who led the workshop, is a local history and genealogy reference librarian in the Library’s Main Reading Room and specializes in African-American history. He is the creator of “African-American Family Histories and Related Works in the Library of Congress,” a bibliography of printed and digital sources at the Library related to African-American genealogy.

Johnson, who began his own genealogy quest over 10 years ago, knows firsthand how challenging searching through black history can be. “It is more of a journey and not a quick trip,” Johnson said. “But when you find something and you get that ‘aha’ moment, it will be worth the frustrating weeks and seeming dead ends.”

As a case in point, the workshop took participants through the family history of Richard Slaughter, an African-American born into slavery on a plantation in Hampton, Virginia, in 1849. Slaughter’s autobiography was found in the slave narrative project, an initiative conducted by the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project to gather firsthand accounts of the experiences of former slaves.

Using plantation names, dates and locations, Johnson found images and layouts of the plantation on which Slaughter served in the Historic American Buildings Survey. The Prints and Photographs Division catalog held images of areas where Slaughter worked. Manuscript Division microfilm of the “Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations” revealed the plantation owner’s will in which Slaughter was bequeathed to relatives.

Those discoveries started with a name, then a date. Now, one branch of the Slaughter family tree is blossoming with leaves.

Among the students in attendance was 19-year-old Carmen Crusoe, a sophomore Africana studies and political science double major at Howard University. Crusoe’s father is Liberian, born and raised in Monrovia. Her mother is an African-American from Cleveland, where her maternal grandparents moved from Alabama and South Carolina during the Great Migration.

Crusoe is a direct descendant of Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first president of Liberia. Her genealogy journey may begin at the Library but, as she learned at the workshop, will branch into other avenues, such as record-keeping sources for Liberia.

“In my personal genealogy journey, I hope to find out more about the history of my Liberian people and the rich lineage from which I descend,” Crusoe said. “I hope to reconnect with my Southern roots. I do not know who or what awaits me, but here I come.”

The Library provides resources within its general collection but also via access to genealogy databases available to patrons at no cost. There, Crusoe was able to find her parents’ marriage license and the housing information for relatives she has never met. In-person orientations are held each week in the Main Reading Room, and online orientation videos are available specifically for African-American genealogy research.

Those services and resources help users, like Crusoe, get on the path to personal connections from the past.

“It is very tedious work, but oh so vital. I had no idea this was free at the Library of Congress, and I feel more people should know,” Crusoe said. “I am so grateful to have had this experience at the Library of Congress, and I’m so excited for the rest of my genealogy journey.”

Technology at the Library: Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. It is published today to coincide with the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s birth: He was born on January 11, 1757.

In the mid-19th century John Church Hamilton, a son of Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, published an edition of his father’s papers, including a letter (volume 1, page 169) his father wrote to his mother on September 6, 1780, two months before their marriage. According to John Hamilton the letter is entirely about a battle of the Revolutionary War and begins: “Most people here are groaning under a very disagreeable piece of intelligence just come from the southward, that Gates has had a total defeat near Camden, in South Carolina.”

In the mid-20th century, Columbia University history professor Harold C. Syrett published the Hamilton papers again. In Syrett’s edition the same letter begins: “I wrote you My Dear Betsey a long letter or rather two long letters by your father.” The “disagreeable piece of intelligence” from South Carolina starts at paragraph two. Syrett also includes the end of the letter, excluded by John Hamilton, where Hamilton apologizes: “Pardon me my love for talking politics to you. What have we to do with any thing but love?” In a footnote, Syrett reveals something else that John Hamilton failed to mention: 14 lines of the first paragraph are so heavily crossed-out that he was unable to read them. Now we can.

When the Library of Congress recently digitized the Alexander Hamilton Papers, that letter, unedited, with its 14 obliterated lines, became visible to all for the first time. However, the lines were still unreadable. To find out what lay beneath the scratchings-out, Fenella France, chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division, and preservation staff Meghan Wilson and Chris Bolser used hyperspectral imaging. A noninvasive analysis that employs light at different wavelengths to capture information not visible to the eye, hyperspectral imaging can determine the composition of inks and pigments, track changes in documents over time and reveal faded, erased or covered writing.

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An excerpt of scratched-out text that has been imaged, showing different stages of processing by the Preservation Research and Testing Division team to uncover the hidden writing.

Because the ink Hamilton used differs from that used to cross out his words, the imaging process was able to distinguish between the two, revealing the writing underneath. Here is what we were able to read (brackets indicate words that remain partly or totally obscured):

Do you know my sensations when I see the

sweet characters from your hand? Yes you do,

by comparing [them] with your [own]

for my Betsey [loves] me and is [acquainted]

with all the joys of fondness. [Would] you

[exchange] them my dear for any other worthy

blessings? Is there any thing you would put

in competition[,] with one glowing [kiss] of

[unreadable], anticipate the delights we [unreadable]

in the unrestrained intercourses of wedded love,

and bet your heart joins mine in [fervent]

[wishes] to heaven that [all obstacles] and [interruptions]

May [be] speedily [removed].

Who crossed out these lines? It seems likely, as Syrett believed, that John Hamilton did. Given their steaminess, this is not surprising: these were his parents, and he was embarrassed.

Born in 1914, more than a century after Alexander Hamilton’s death by duel, Syrett was a more dispassionate editor than the Hamiltons’ son could ever be. He brought to the task professional standards of documentary editing that had developed since the 19th century. Documentary editors locate, transcribe and publish selected or comprehensive editions of the papers of historically significant people. Their goal is to make primary documents available to the public, not to protect reputations. And when they exclude text, they tell readers.

John Hamilton probably left out the beginning and the end of the letter, along with the 14 lines, because he felt those sections, as documentation of the Hamiltons’ personal life, were just not as important as the part that described a Revolutionary War battle.

Tastes change. Today, Americans have demonstrated their interest in the Hamiltons’ personal life with their enthusiastic embrace of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, “Hamilton.” Also, historians now recognize the  significance of private life, including the lives of women, who in the Hamiltons’ time were excluded from public life.

What does this new information tell us that we didn’t know before? We already knew Hamilton was an ardent suitor, because his letters to Elizabeth from their courtship survive and have been published. Still, the September 6 letter is one of only a few from this period at the Library. Most remained in the Hamilton family until they were sold at an auction at Sotheby’s in January 2017.

The new details also tell us a little more about Elizabeth Schuyler. Her letters to Alexander are missing from the Hamilton papers. She was the custodian of her husband’s papers after his death, and she may have, as Martha Washington is alleged to have done, destroyed her letters to him. With this self-obliterating act, she did even more damage to the documentary record than her son did.

Each generation regards the past through the prism of its own interests and values. These are reflected in the way each generation treats primary sources and in the biographies, histories and documentary editions each produces. The job of libraries is to keep primary documents safe so that they will be there when new insights and technologies make it possible to answer questions we have not yet even thought to ask.

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The Library’s hyperspectral camera system.