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Category: African American History

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

The Sherman Holmes Project

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post by folklorist and blues scholar Barry Lee Pearson.  It introduces the Sherman Holmes Project, which will play in the Library’s Homegrown Concert Series on Wednesday, April 15.  More concert information is at this link! During the 1940s, job opportunities in Northern industrial centers attracted rural African Americans from throughout …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Marching In Montgomery, 1965, Reconsidered

Posted by: Guha Shankar

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

People marching, mostly young and African American

Marching in Montgomery, 1965

Posted by: Guha Shankar

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 …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Q & A with Journalist Vern Smith on the Voices of Civil Rights Project Collection

Posted by: Kate Stewart

Two weeks ago, Beth Domingo of AARP’s Life Reimagined Institute and journalist Vern Smith came to the American Folklife Center to talk with us about their work on the Voices of Civil Rights project (AFC 2005/015), sponsored by AARP and donated to the Library of Congress in 2005, and to hear about our recent work …