In this post, historians from the Library and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture highlight how collection items shed light on the black experience. The post is reprinted from the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The entire issue is available online. Adrienne Cannon is the Afro-American history …
To celebrate African-American History Month and the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday—Feb. 12, 1809—we are sharing an article from “Building Black History,” the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, available in its entirety online. The Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln understood, was a wartime measure that wouldn’t ensure the freedom of …
St. Valentine’s Day is upon us, a “holiday” many people love to hate. Even if you shun forced commemoration, there is nothing wrong with a little romance, whether you express it on February 14 or—better still—all year round. Although little Cupid is technically the god of love in the romantic and erotic sense, I can …
One of our biggest challenges is letting you know about all of the content available at loc.gov. Another challenge we have is letting you know what you can do with it (in a nice way). We are working on several fronts to improve the visibility of public domain and rights-clear content. We moved one step …
A new book from Library of Congress historian John Y. Cole, “America’s Greatest Library: An Illustrated History of the Library of Congress,” tells the story of the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and how it came to be the world’s largest library. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden calls the Library “a place where you can …
Young readers, author Jacqueline Woodson says, need books that serve as both a window and a mirror—a window that allows them to see into other worlds, a mirror that might let, say, an African-American girl or Asian boy see some part of their own identity on the page. The books of such African-American children’s authors …
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass, and this month is African-American History Month. To celebrate, we are highlighting favorite items from the Library’s collections. This post is reprinted from “Building Black History,” the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, available in its entirety online. This …