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Archive for March 2015 (7 posts)

Marching In Montgomery, 1965, Reconsidered

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Montgomery in March, 1965, Reconsidered:
The Perspective from the Other Side of the Lens

Marchers with "One Man, One Vote" signs & watchful police, 03/17-18/1965, Montgomery, AL; Glen Pearcy Collection (afc2012040_067_13.jpg)

Marchers with “One Man, One Vote” signs & watchful police, 03/17-18/1965, Montgomery, AL; Glen Pearcy Collection (afc2012040_067_13.jpg)

This week’s blog is a companion piece to my previous post on the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Campaign in Alabama. Both blogs have provided a great opportunity for the AFC to share examples of Glen Pearcy’s singular photo documentation from the front lines of the freedom struggle in Montgomery from March 15 to 19, 1965.  Glen’s reflections below on his experiences in Montgomery help draw a frame around the scenes he photographed during those dramatic days. He also offers an interesting self-critique of his fledgling documentary skills and approach to documentary photography.

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Ethnography, 21st century-style

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Today we celebrate the official release of StoryCorps.me, a global platform where anyone in the world can record and upload an oral history interview. This effort is a wish come true for StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, the 2015 recipient of the TED Prize. The prize comes with $1 million to invest in a powerful idea. Dave’s was to create […]

Two Veterans, Two Wars, Two Remarkable Women

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The month of March is designated as Women’s History Month–a time set aside to pay tribute to the contributions women have made to society from years past to contemporary times. Each year, the Library of Congress and many other national agencies offer special programming and exhibits, as well as feature collections and resources that are […]

Moving Day and a Major Anniversary

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This is a guest post by American Folklife Center’s Judith Gray, an ethnomusicologist who curates the largest body of early recordings of indigenous American songs and stories recorded in the United States. After all the identifying, rehousing, cataloging, labeling, barcoding, and databasing activity on the part of AFC staff over the past year, the actual […]

Marching in Montgomery, 1965

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Montgomery in March, 1965: Images from the front lines of the freedom struggle Selma has been much in public consciousness in recent months, owing to the release of the movie of the same name, the city’s historical place and symbolic importance in the (renewed) contention over voting rights in the nation and, of course, this […]

“I Wish I Was Back Painting–It Was Never As Bad As This”

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The following is a guest post by VHP Digital Conversion Specialist Matt McCrady, and is the fourth in a five-part series of blog posts related to correspondence in Veterans History Project collections. Like the soldiers discussed in the 1980s song about the Vietnam War, “19,” Corporal Robert Geisler was just 19 years old when he […]