The Hospital de Jesús series in the Manuscript Division’s Spanish Foreign Copying Program Records hides a wealth of sources in plain sight due to its misleading title. Instead of medical documentation, the series consists of twenty-nine volumes on the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca, the title and estates granted to the conquistador Hernando Cortés in 1529, after the fall of Tenochtitlán.
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 …
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.
Manuscript Division intern Maureen S. Thompson describes the experience of locating African Americans in the Blair Family Papers, and highlights some of the notable documents she discovered.
Discover how former Library of Congress Asian Division chief Warren M. Tsuneishi built bonds across nationalities and languages through a shared love for books and knowledge.
Lindsay Musil discusses her work in the Manuscript Reading Room as the 2023 Elizabeth Brown Pryor intern and her participation in the Library of Congress Junior Fellows program.
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.
Kaila Brugger, a 2022 Archives History and Heritage Advanced Internship Program (AHHA) intern, explores diaries that speak to her from within the Manuscript Division's holdings.
