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Archive: 2025 (35 Posts)

Take a “Fast Car” to the 2025 National Recording Registry

Posted by: Brett Zongker

The 2025 class of the National Recording Registry is out today! Headliners include Elton John’s monumental album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Chicago’s debut “Chicago Transit Authority,” the original cast recording of Broadway’s “Hamilton,” Mary J. Blige’s “My Life,” Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Microsoft’s reboot chime and the soundtrack to the Minecraft video game.

Head shot of a smiling woman, in dress shirt and dark jacket, smiling and looking directly at the camera.

Catching up with … Eileen J. Manchester

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Eileen J. Manchester, manager of the Library's Lewis-Houghton Civics and Democracy Initiative, tells us about her international background -- born in Germany, English is her second language and she also speaks French. She tutored at her local library while growing up in North Carolina, then interned at the Freedom School Partners literacy program and went to South Africa to study its education system. She continued her studies of early modern women writers at the University of Oxford and came to the Library as a junior fellow in the summer of 2018.

George Washington and King George III — Exhibit Showcases Common Ties

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

A major new Library exhibition, “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” uses original documents such as letters, diaries, maps, newspapers and political cartoons to shed light on striking likenesses between men long supposed to be polar opposites -- George Washington and King George III. The two opposed one another during the Revolutionary War, but actually shared many personal and leadership traits. The exhibit, a joint project between the Library of Congress and the Royal Archives, runs at the Library through next March. It is also online via the Library's website and in a companion book.

Color photo of artist Maya Freelon standing in a room with tissue-paper figures.

Reimagining the Lives of Enslaved Children

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Maya Freelon’s immersive exhibition “Whippersnappers: Recapturing, Reviewing, and Reimagining the Lives of Enslaved Children in the United States” at Historic Stagville in Durham, North Carolina, drew on Library materials to a new lens on the lives of enslaved children at a former plantation.

Two head and shoulders photos of Arthur Singleton, one in his military uniform and the other in a suit and tie.

World War I: Two Soldiers’ Stories

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The Arthur Singleton and Jessie Lockett collections are the Veterans History Project’s first from African American veterans of World War I, and their letters, journals and photographs offer glimpses into the adversity and resilience that characterize the African American experience of that war. They are small time capsules into another era of American life.

Black and white photo, taken from back of stage looking back at audience, shows Elton John seated at a piano in the foreground, with a packed audience filling church pews.

Ryan White and Elton John: One Stunning Photo

Posted by: Neely Tucker

—This is a guest post by Adam M. Silvia, a curator in the Prints and Photographs Division. As a photojournalist, Taro Yamasaki photographed at-risk children in the United States and around the world — Nicaragua, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East. The Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three collections that document such work by the …

The Jefferson Building beneath a cloudless blue sky with yellow flowers across the foreground.

The Library Turns 225!

Posted by: April Slayton

When the Library of Congress began in 1800, it had 152 works in 740 volumes. Also, there were three maps. Today, as its 225th birthday arrives, the Library has amassed more than 181 million items from around the world, forming what is widely considered to be the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled. How did it happen? This story walks readers through the Library's fascinating history.

Black and white half-length portait of a smiling Josepine Baker, wearing a low-cut stop with spaghetti straps.

Josephine Baker at the Stork Club: A Night Gone Wrong

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The stormy affair of Josephine Baker and New York's splashy Stork Club in the fall of 1951 was a brief-but-infamous incident and a now fascinating part of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's online collection at the Library. Baker's claim of racial discrimination by the club was correct (they served her drinks but not dinner) but she overplayed her hand when she said influential newspaper and radio columnist Walter Winchell saw the entire event and did not come to her aid. Winchell's ensuing vindictive campaign badly damaged her reputation.