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Category: Intern Spotlight

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Intern Spotlight: Uncovering African American Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Manuscript Division

Posted by: Josh Levy

This is a guest post by Onur Ayaz, formerly a Junior Fellow in the Manuscript Division. When does entrepreneurship become innovative, and when does innovation become invention? Are activists, educators, scientists, and laborers also innovators? Are they entrepreneurs? In 1918 Carter G. Woodson, an African American historian who also collected manuscripts, ephemera, and other materials …

Men and women seated and standing around a table, with one man standing and pointing at something unseen at left, frescoes and heavy curtains in background

Intern Spotlight: The Shifting Reputation of Christopher Columbus as Seen in the Christopher Columbus Collection at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Julie Miller

The Christopher Columbus collection at the Library of Congress includes a rare and valuable copy from 1502 of a group of documents known collectively as the “Book of Privileges,” purchased by the Library in 1901. The larger collection also contains additional copies in various formats the Library acquired from the 1890s through the 1940s. Junior Fellow Molly Williams explores the history of these documents.

Monochrome portrait of Evers in suit and tie

Intern Spotlight: The Legacy of Medgar Evers through the NAACP Records

Posted by: Josh Levy

Recently acquired primary sources within the NAACP Records reveal the devotion and courage of Mississippi field secretary Medgar Evers and his work to eliminate racial violence, desegregate higher education and services, and secure voting rights. His tragic murder led Evers’s wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, to build a legacy of civil rights and social justice activism of her own.

Photograph of Virginia Matthews in black and white, at a podium with a white screen behind her. Virginia Mathews speaking during the 1978 White House Pre-conference on Indian Library and Information Services on or near Reservations. Box 83, Virginia H. Mathews Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Intern Spotlight: Libraries, Self-Determination, and Collaboration: Virginia Mathews and the 1978 White House Preconference on Indian Library & Information Services

Posted by: Ryan Reft

In 1978, Native American library professionals from across the country gathered for the first time to hash out their visions for tribal libraries. The papers of Osage literacy advocate Virginia H. Mathews document the significance of that meeting in the history of Native librarianship.