This week, thousands of people from around the country will gather in the vast Washington, D.C., Convention Center to take part in a decades’ old tradition: the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation. From September 20 to 24, participants will hear from approximately 100 hundred speakers, including many members of Congress, …
This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. In spring 1848, Congress appropriated $20,000 to buy the papers of Alexander Hamilton from his family, including his widow, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton, 91 years old and widowed since 1804, had moved to Washington that year to live with her …
This post is by Katherine Walden, a 2017 summer intern with the Junior Fellows Program. Walden is a Ph.D. candidate in American studies and sport studies at the University of Iowa, where she is also completing a master’s degree in library and information science with a focus on digital humanities and archives. She has a …
This is a guest post by Matthew Barton, the recorded sound curator in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Bob Wolff, the subject of the post, died on July 15 at age 96. In spring 2013, the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation of the Library of Congress was honored to add the personal collection …
A performer competes in a “dance battle” in the Coolidge Auditorium on February 22 during a Homegrown Concert Series event of the American Folklife Center. Dance battles are an urban dance tradition that celebrate individual talent while helping to keep diverse forms of urban musical and dance expressions alive. In the Coolidge, pairs of dancers …
We continue our Throwback Thursday #TBT celebration of Chronicling America, our free, online searchable database of historical U.S. newspapers, with interesting stories from the archives as selected by reference librarians in our Serials & Government Publications Division. Today we return to our historical newspaper archives to veer off from the normal journalistic endeavors and examine …
Nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards, “Hamilton” the musical swept the ceremony winning 11, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score and a handful of best actor/actresses. The show is based on the Ron Chernow biography on founding father Alexander Hamilton, which Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the musical, had picked up on a whim …
In celebration of the release of the 10 millionth page of Chronicling America, our free, online searchable database of historical U.S. newspapers, the reference librarians in our Serials & Government Publications Division have selected some interesting subjects and articles from the archives. We’ve been sharing them in a series of Throwback Thursday #TBT blog posts. …
My remembrances of Sadie Hawkins Day don’t stem from reading the well-known “Li’l Abner” comic strip by Al Capp, although it was his imagination that created the pseudo-holiday. Growing up in the early 90s, participating was a sort of rite of passage for the girls at my school, both junior high and high school. The …