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

AFC to Host Symposium on Native American Civil Rights

Posted by: Stephen Winick

To launch the annual International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries and Museums, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (AFC) and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM) present a symposium. Titled Civil Rights, Identity and Sovereignty: Native American Perspectives on History, Law, and the Path Ahead, it will take place …

Ola Belle Reed and Alex Campbell on WCOJ radio. They broadcasted from Campbells' Corner, a store they owned that catered to transplanted Southerners in Oxford, Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Douglas Dowling Peach.

On Ola Belle Reed

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: This blog was updated on July 26, 2024 to add the event videos and make it part of the Homegrown Plus series. At that time the language about these public events was recast into the past tense. Doug Peach, who wrote this is a guest scholar in 2015, is now an AFC staff member …

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

Tracking Tricksters in Washington, DC

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post by Dr Emily Marshall, who specializes in Postcolonial and migrant literatures and cultures at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. In April I visited the incredible folklore archives at the American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C., supported by Leeds Beckett University Early Career Researcher funding.  The Center is housed …

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

Moving Day and a Major Anniversary

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

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 …

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

Farewell to the Holidays

Posted by: Stephen Winick

On this snowy January day, I’d like to wish the readers of Folklife Today a happy end to the holiday season.  Many people take down their Christmas decorations immediately after the day itself, and others use New Year’s Day as the end of their holiday. But among many communities, the Christmas season culminates after Twelfth …