On Saturday, June 21, 2025, we celebrate the themes of “family” and “home” during our monthly Family Day. Visitors to the Library of Congress will enjoy an action-packed day featuring creative activities, collection displays, and talks with staff experts and two guest speakers to honor the Juneteenth federal holiday. Activities during the drop-in program (10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) are primarily designed for kids and their families but all ages are welcome—so please join us however old you are! The event is free of charge, although you will need free building tickets to enter the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. A limited number of tickets are available on the day, but registering in advance is the best way to guarantee entry at your preferred time. Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at 202-707-6363 or by emailing [email protected].
This Family Day’s featured hands-on activity celebrates the role that quilting has long played for families and in the home. Design and create your own fabric quilt square, which you can take home or leave at the Library to be included in a Family Day commemorative quilt. If you choose to donate your piece, you’ll be able to help us experiment with laying out the quilt design. Find out more about quilting resources at the Library from American Folklife Center staff members who will display a selection of their extensive collections on the topic. For historical context about the holiday, learn about the Emancipation Proclamation and the events preceding Juneteenth by talking to a Manuscript Division staff expert and exploring facsimiles from the Library’s Abraham Lincoln Papers.
Two guest speakers expand on the day’s central themes:
- 11:30 a.m., room LJ119: Join local quilter Sandra Smith to hear about her work, the processes and fabric she uses, and where she finds inspiration for her beautiful quilts.
- 2:00 p.m., room LJ119: Award-winning and best-selling author Jewell Parker Rhodes discusses her new middle grade novel, “Will’s Race for Home,” a thrilling 1889 adventure story about a boy and his father who set out to claim land during the Oklahoma Land Rush—if they can survive the journey.
Join In from Home
If you’re not able to attend Family Day, here’s a selection of Library resources on the day’s themes for you to explore from home. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorating the date of June 19, 1865, when African Americans still enslaved at the end of the Civil War were finally freed. To learn more about this event, and the history surrounding it, take a look at the following:
- The momentous events of June 19, 1865 are described in this blog post about the birth of Juneteenth.
- Read about remembrances and recipes related to the holiday.
- The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, freed all enslaved people in Confederate states. What’s less widely known are the complicated events that led President Abraham Lincoln to issue this decree during the Civil War. The Library of Congress website has a wealth of digitized information available:
- The full story is available online in the Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation section of the Abraham Lincoln Papers.
- The Library holds Lincoln’s handwritten, draft Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation from July 22, 1862.
- Several published versions of the Final Emancipation Proclamation are in the collections, such as these ones from 1864, 1865, and 1888, along with some imaginative renderings showing Lincoln writing or reading the document.
Moving from historical context to this Family Day’s featured activity, quilting is well represented in the Library’s collections. From a domestic necessity and family-centered craft that began centuries ago as a thrifty way to stay warm and reuse fabric, it has developed into an art form with elaborate designs that can command high prices. Quilting is also an important means of cultural expression and storytelling, and a skill that’s passed down in families from one generation to another. You might like to explore these resources:
- Quilts and Quilting: Piecing Together Family History is full of information about different Library collections. These include some fascinating excerpts from interviews in which quilters talk about their craft and how they learned it from older relatives.
- African American quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama are renowned for their work and their community’s quilting traditions that go back to the early 1800s. Read about these artisans and how they learned to register their works for copyright in this post.
- The American Folklife Collection on Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996, contains dozens of interviews and hundreds of images representing quilters from around the country.
- Historical newspapers offer interesting (if dated) perspectives on American quilting traditions. A 1907 column mentions two “quilter boys” from Kansas who paid for college by assembling 500 unfinished quilts—a rare example of men’s involvement in what was a predominantly female occupation. An article from 1938 outlines American colonial practices and this one from 1953 talks of quilts as “an expression of the people’s soul.”
If you can join us in person at the Library on June 21, we look forward to seeing your quilt square creations and to having you enjoy our guest speakers and collections display. If you’re exploring resources from home, we hope these suggestions provide inspiration for your own projects or for ways to observe the Juneteenth holiday.
