Did you know that “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” originally had extra stanzas beyond the ones we all know? When it was composed in 1908 by Albert Von Tilzer and lyricist Jack Norworth, it documented the story of Katie Casey, a baseball fan who wanted to go with her beau to the baseball game. Though there were certainly women who were knowledgeable about their favorite teams, it was expected that women would not want to go to the games and would prefer to be safe at home.
In the January/February 2017 issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article features items from the Rosa Parks Collection.
You and your students may know the names of Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, or Clare Boothe Luce. Fewer, however, will know the names of the photographers Helen Johns Kirtland or Toni Frissell, who documented wars, often from the front lines.
One hundred years ago next month, Alice Burke and Nell Richardson began a journey across the United States to promote women’s right to vote. Following their route can allow students to learn about them and their journey while also revealing more about the suffragist movement and women in the United States a century ago.
Starting today, the Library has made the Rosa Parks Papers available on its Web site. This collection contains thousands of unique artifacts that shed light on this courageous fighter for social justice. The letters, diaries, notes, photographs, and other documents in this collection, which is on loan to the Library for ten years from the Howard G. Buffet Foundation, provide invaluable insights into her life and thoughts.
Looking for resources and teaching ideas for Women's History Month? These posts from Teaching with the Library of Congress feature primary sources on various topics and easy to implement teaching ideas.
I am a senior archives specialist in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. My title usually draws blank stares from people, so I follow it quickly with the analogy that an archivist is like an archeologist who works with paper. That declaration gets nods of understanding and interest.
While I'm officially the Head of the Science Reference Section, I spend most of my time working with the collections, answering reference requests and creating webcasts, book displays, and bibliographies. I work with text-books, journals, diaries, cookbooks, reminiscences, biographies, magazines, pictures, electronic sources, manuscript materials, microforms, artifacts--everything you might expect to find in a Library. I especially like the 18th and 19th century materials and learning more about the daily lives of our forefathers--their foraging techniques, what they ate, how they cooked and cleaned, what they wore, and how they spent their time.
In the United States, Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May, this year, May 10th. But it is not just a day to celebrate our mothers, but also a time to think about all women who care for, support, and strengthen us. Below are a few suggestions for engaging students with primary sources related to Mother's Day from the collections of the Library of Congress.
