In a National Book Festival Presents conversation that premieres tonight (June 5), Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch discuss the national protests that have roiled the nation after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Jesse Holland wears a lot of different hats: he’s an award-winning political journalist, he’s a television host, he’s a professor and he’s a comics aficionado — he wrote the first novel about the Black Panther for Marvel in 2018. African American history is yet another of his passions — in particular documenting long-overlooked contributions of […]
Ida B. Wells, one of the most influential investigative journalists in American history, is remembered in this post as a fearless truth-teller.
The Rosa Parks Papers are the subject of a major exhibit at the Library of Congress.
The writings and social activism of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, as read and remembered by Bryan Stevenson, Condoleezza Rice, Ken Burns, Jacqueline Woodson, Sharon Robinson and others in this short documentary.
In a March 25 ceremony, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and National Museum of African American History and Culture Director Lonnie Bunch unveiled the photo album of abolionist Emily Howland, featuring a previously unknown portrait of Harriet Tubman. The portrait, taken around 1868, captures Tubman in her mid 40s, years younger than most surviving photographs that show her late in life
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was a 19th Century African-American feminist, lawyer, anti-slavery crusader and newspaper publisher.
This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division. It coincides with the centenary this month of the first Pan-African Congress. The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, author and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois famously wrote in “To the Nations of the World,” […]
This is a guest post by Lavonda Kay Broadnax, digital reference specialist in the Library’s Researcher and Reference Services Division. A few weeks ago, we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his work as an activist. Some 100 years before King’s powerful entry into the civil rights movement, however, the fight for civil rights […]
This is a guest post by Lavonda Kay Broadnax, digital reference specialist in the Library’s Research and Reference Services Division. December is a month of holidays and festivities that bring families and friends together to celebrate their good fortune and look forward to the year ahead. For the enslaved couple William and Ellen Craft, the […]