This Tuesday, teachers and school librarians will have an opportunity to ask Library of Congress experts about the Rosa Parks papers. A Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session from 9 to 12 a.m. (ET) in the AskHistorians subreddit will include education specialists from the Library, as well as staff who organized and described the papers of this civil rights legend.
To join in, you only need to create a Reddit account to join in; the session is free. If you’ve used the Rosa Parks papers, or any Library of Congress primary sources, to teach about the Civil Rights movement, we’d especially love to hear about what you and your students have discovered.
We look forward to hearing from you Tuesday morning!
Ask Us Anything: Reddit AMA on Rosa Parks Papers 3/29
The following is a guest post by Library of Congress Information Technology Specialist Michelle Rago:
Library experts involved in making the papers of Rosa Parks available online will answer your questions in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session beginning at 9 a.m. (ET) on March 29, 2016. Join us on the AskHistorians subreddit.
The collection contains some 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs. It is on loan to the Library for 10 years from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
Parks, an African American, made history on Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks’ arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a major event in the Civil Rights Movement. Parks died at age 92, in 2005.
The Rosa Parks collection brings forward many details of her life and personality, from her experiences as a child in the segregated South to her problems finding work after the Montgomery Bus Boycott and from her love for her husband to her activism on civil-rights issues.
During the Reddit AMA experts from the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, the Prints & Photographs Division, and Educational Outreach will take your questions about Rosa Parks and about how the Library cataloged, preserved, digitized, and made her papers available to the world.
To participate in the AMA you must have a Reddit account. If you can’t make it to the session you can always send questions through our Ask a Librarian service.