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Archive: February 2022 (9 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Researcher Stories: Walter Stahr

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

In this segment of a regular feature on authors who use the Library's collections, we interview Walter Stahr, a lawyer turned historian. His latest biography, published in 2022, is "Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival," a look at the influential treasury secretary and later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court during the mid 19th century.

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Haiti: The Liberation Connection

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Taylor Healey-Brooks, the Librarian-in-Residence in the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division, was the lead author on a remarkable new Library resource guide about the connections between Haiti and the United States. She talks about the project here.

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Unexpected (and Illustrated) Dante

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” had been an epic religious and literary work for 150 years when a publisher in Florence attempted to do something that had never been done — illustrate it in a printed book. The year was 1481. Gutenberg’s revolutionary printing press was just 26 years old. Nicolaus Laurentii took on the …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Free to Use and Reuse: Aircraft!

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The Library's Free to Use and Reuse copyright-free prints and photographs are among the most popular items in the Library's vast collections. Here, we explore free photos of aircraft -- a futuristic plane from 1910, barnstorming wing walker Lillian Boyer and a romantic Pan American poster advertising flights to the Caribbean.

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Case that “Gutted” Rosa Parks

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Rosa Parks, one of the most consequential Americans of the 20th century, was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her activism was galvanized decades before the Montgomery bus boycott by the sexualized violence of whites against Blacks in her native Alabama. This activism is featured in this short documentary by the Library of Congress, which holds her papers.