Join us on November 30 for a “Live! at the Library” commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of home rule in Washington, D.C., with a panel discussion on the legacy of home rule moderated by Kojo Nnamdi and featuring journalist Tom Sherwood; The Drum and Spear Bookstore co-founder, Eyes on the Prize documentarian and civil rights activist Judy Richardson; and historians G. Derek Musgrove and Kyla Sommers. A performance by the D.C. Go-Go band Mambo Sauce will follow the panel discussion.
The author connects with the past by sewing a dress inspired by one worn by pageant director Hazel MacKaye, as seen in a photograph from the National Woman’s Party Records.
Join the Manuscript Division for a discussion of 1920s America with Nathan Masters at noon, August 23, as he discusses his new book: Crooked: The Roaring Twenties Tales of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal.
The Manuscript Division recently acquired more than twenty Barack Obama letters, postcards, notes, photographs, and campaign ephemera, most dating from the 1980s. The letters confirm historian Meg McAleer’s fascination with materials emanating from a person’s early professional life.
While much of the history of the Equal Rights Amendment is often focused on the 1970s, the discourse during the first few decades after the amendment’s introduction showcased the differing viewpoints held by labor feminists, African American women, and various women’s organizations at that time.
Join historian Georgetown University history professor and author, Mike Amezcua at noon (EDT) on Monday, June 26, as he discusses his new book, Making Mexican Chicago. The book explores the role Mexican Chicagoans, notably moderates and conservatives within the community, played in housing, politics, community development and urban culture while also highlighting their contributions to the larger conservative movement.
People with grievances often make the best preservers of the past – as in this 1801 letter from Pierre Charles L’Enfant to Alexander Hamilton, in which the architect and city planner complains that he was never paid for his work on New York’s Federal Hall in 1789.
This past February, U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) held his fifth Annual Dominicans on the Hill event featuring items from the Manuscript Division attesting to the Dominican Republic’s complex history with the United States.