This post is by Eileen Manchester, Program Specialist and Manager of the Lewis-Houghton Initiative at the Library of Congress.
As part of the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources Partner Program, the Lewis-Houghton Civics and Democracy Initiative (LHI) awards grants to educational organizations to develop tools, programs, and pedagogical materials for history and civics instruction using arts-related primary sources from the Library’s collections. The first two years of the pilot program have supported six exciting projects using primary sources in arts disciplines such as music, theatre, poetry, literature, and visual arts teach lessons about civics.
To make it easier for teachers around the country to adopt these approaches, LHI hosted a Junior Fellow in 2025 to create a series of lesson plans demonstrating how Library of Congress musical primary sources could be used to support student learning about civics topics.
In the resulting StoryMap, Mariana Rogan highlights myriad primary sources, many of them from the American Folklife Center, and argues that analyzing musical primary sources creates rich opportunities to learn about cultures and traditions other than one’s own with empathy and respect.
The following activity is adapted from “Lesson #1: Florida Folklife” in the Teaching Civics with Musical Primary Sources StoryMap by LHI 2025 Junior Fellow Mariana Rogan.
Zora Neale Hurston’s approach to ethnographic fieldwork offers just one example of the many in the StoryMap. Introduce students to Hurston’s work by asking them to read an excerpt from her proposal to the Federal Writer’s Project. Ask students to identify her goal in selecting this part of Florida.
Next, play Halimuhfack to give students a sense of both the results of and Hurston’s approach to ethnographic research. Ask students:
- What is Hurston’s approach to learning new songs? (Her description starts at 1:25.) Have you ever learned a song this way? How do you typically learn a new song?
- What are the potential benefits of learning songs how Hurston describes? What are some potential drawbacks?
- How can engaging directly with someone else’s culture help us to understand them better?
If time allows, ask students to take turns imitating Hurston’s method (listen, then join in slowly, until they feel like they know the full verse, then the fieldworker should sing alone to get the singer’s approval). Prompt students to reflect on the experience, and how their answers to the previous questions may have changed after trying the method themselves. This can also serve as an exit ticket at the end of the class. Ask them:
- What did you like about learning a song this way? What did you not like?
- Do you think this is an effective way to learn music from someone else? Would you do anything differently?
- What can you learn about a culture by listening to its music? What can you learn about a culture by learning how to play or sing the music yourself?
If you liked this activity, consider exploring the whole StoryMap to find out more and search for your own musical primary sources on loc.gov.
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