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Category: Women’s History

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

Bessie Jones Tells a Spooky Story: “Married to the Devil”

Posted by: Stephen Winick

With Halloween just around the corner, the Library of Congress is gearing up for an exhibition of our best spooky treasures. The event is called LOC Halloween: Chambers of Mystery, and it’s sure to add both cheer and chills to your All Hallows season. As part of the effort, I’ve been looking through AFC’s collections for …

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

“People Who Stood Up”: Mississippi Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Posted by: Guha Shankar

This guest blog post comes to us courtesy of Catherine Turner, a high school senior working at the American Folklife Center this Spring on her service project for Park School in Baltimore, MD. Catherine is entering Brown University in Fall 2017, and has spent the last six weeks diving into the collections at the Library …

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

Teaching the Japanese Tea Ceremony: Mine Somi Kubose

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism—Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts …