Journalist, photographer and activist Raúl Ruiz was a driving force at La Raza, the newspaper and magazine devoted to the Chicano movement in the 1960s and '70s. The Library announced today that it has acquired his collection, some 17,500 photos by Ruiz and original page layouts for La Raza. It also has nearly 10,000 pages of manuscripts, which include original correspondence, the unpublished draft of Ruiz’s book on Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar and handwritten minutes from the staff meetings of La Raza. It's a major addition to the Library's holdings in modern Hispanic culture.
Edgar Allan Poe died 175 years ago today, on Oct. 7, 1849. Here, we revisit the first publication of his poetic masterpiece, "The Raven" and the tragic circumstances (his dying young wife) that led to him writing it.
In 1812, Massachusetts Gov. Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a bill he didn't like, one the reordered some political districts into particularly odd shapes to favor one party. One contorted district looked like a huge salamander -- and the term "Gerrymander" was born. A political cartoon enshrined it into U.S. history.
After the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the delegates spread the word as quickly as possible by publishing it on a broadside sheet and delivering it throughout the Colonies. Copies of the Dunlap Broadside (named after the printer) are now extremely rare, with only about two dozen copies known to surive. The Library has two, one of which belonged to George Washington.
The Library recently acquired a rare surviving copy of the complete run of a Civil War regimental newspaper, the Soldier's Letter of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry of the American military. More than a hundred regiments on both sides of the conflict printed at least one edition of a camp newspaper, but few survive and a complete run of one paper is even harder fo find today. The four-page Soldier's Letter, staunchly against slavery and the Confederacy, ran for 50 editions between 1864 until after the war ended in 1865. Though mostly concerned with the regiment's history and daily details of camp life, the paper shows that soldiers were more concerned about warring Native American tribes than they were Confederate units, and they would eventually form a military bridge between the Civil War and the Indian Wars that followed.
The papers of Leonard Downie Jr., who started as an intern at The Washington Post in the 1960s concluded his career with a 17-year run as executive editor, are now available for researchers in the Library's Manuscript Division. They offer insight on the Post's inner workings on such stories as Watergate, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Valerie Plame affair, 9/11, the Unabomber and much more.
The military order that led to the federal holiday of Juneteenth was not regarded as important national news when it was issued in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.
The Allen Neuharth Papers in the Library's Manuscript Division provide an inside look at a changing industry, the rise of the only national newspaper established after World War II and the thoughts, practices and endeavors of a media mogul who helped defined the age.
