Asian-owned businesses make up 10 percent of all businesses in United States and during the COVID-19 pandemic many have felt the effects of a new rise in anti-Asian sentiment.

Tape v. Hurley (1885) is one the most important civil rights decisions that you've likely never heard of. The parents of American-born Mamie Tape successfully challenged a principal's refusal to enroll their daughter and other children of Chinese heritage into the Spring Valley Primary School in San Francisco, California, seven decades before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.

The following is a guest post by Karen “Kara” Chittenden, Senior Cataloging Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division. On April 26, 1942, a U.S. War Relocation Authority photographer documented a young Japanese American woman who was waiting in line to receive a family registration number before being removed to the Tanforan Assembly Center four days later. […]

Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossom trees reached peak bloom at the end of March of this year, bringing springtime to the region. This week’s Pic of the Week is a close-up of one of these beautiful trees. On May 1, 2012, President Barack Obama’s proclamation for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month recognized two major […]

In May, we pay tribute to the generations of Asian or Pacific Islanders who have enriched America’s history. Primary sources can help us explore many facets of a community or ethnic group.

Why were Chinese immigrants in Deadwood, South Dakota, of all places, a town populated with colorful figures including, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Potato Creek Johnny, Seth Bullock, and Al Swearengen?

Japanese agricultural workers began immigrating to Hawai`i in 1868, primarily to work on sugar plantations. This immigration peaked in the late 19th century. At this time the population of Native Hawaiians was crashing. As Hawaiians had more contact with Europeans they contracted diseases that they had no immunity to. Sugar plantations, mainly owned by American […]

This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Jesse Hocking, who is part of a new cohort of archives staff across the Library who were hired to help bring collections out of the processing backlog. The American Folklife Center is excited to announce that the collection of Nancy Sweezy (1921-2010), noted folklorist, potter, […]

Earlier this week, the Veterans History Project (VHP) launched a new online exhibit to highlight the stories of veteran “changemakers.” You might be asking yourself, who or what is a changemaker, exactly, and why are we focusing on them? In early 2019, the Library of Congress launched a year-long initiative to explore the stories of […]

In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series with a concert and oral history with Soumya Chakraverty and Devapriya Nayak. This event was cosponsored with the Library of Congress Asian American Association […]