Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited...
Contributor:
Federal Writers' Project - Library of Congress. Manuscript Division - Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1862-1912
This digital collection integrates two collections from the holdings of the Nebraska State Historical Society, the Solomon D. Butcher photographs and the letters of the Uriah W. Oblinger family. Together they illustrate the story of settlement on the Great Plains. Approximately 3,000 glass plate negatives crafted by Butcher record the process of settlement in Nebraska between 1886 and 1912. Butcher photographed actively in central...
Contributor:
Butcher, Solomon D. (Solomon Devore) - Nebraska State Historical Society - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections combines sound recordings and manuscript materials from four discrete archival collections made by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers from the Joint Committee on Folk Arts, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Federal Music Project from 1937-42. This online presentation provides access to 376 sound recordings and 106 accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcripts, correspondence between Florida WPA workers...
Contributor:
Kennedy, Stetson - American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
2007 marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's rookie season for the Brooklyn Dodgers. When he stepped onto Ebbets field on April 15th, 1947, Robinson became the first African American in the twentieth century to play baseball in the major leagues -- breaking the "color line," a segregation practice dating to the nineteenth century. Jackie Robinson was an extremely talented multi-sport athlete and a...
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division - Library of Congress. Manuscript Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929, assembles a broad array of Library of Congress source materials documenting the prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass-consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. Many new technologies and the new concept of scientific management in the work place had evolved during the first two decades...
Contributor:
Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875
Beginning with the Continental Congress in 1774, America's national legislative bodies have kept records of their proceedings. The records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress make up a rich documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government and its role in the national life. These documents record American history in the...
Contributor:
Law Library of Congress (U.S.) - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
This recording trip is an ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. Beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939, John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of...
Contributor:
Lomax, John A. (John Avery) - Lomax, Alan - Lomax, Ruby T. (Ruby Terrill) - Archive of American Folk Song
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell
This online presentation, California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties, comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in 12 languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians. It includes sound recordings, still photographs of the performers, drawings of folk instruments, and written documentation from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in northern California in the 1930s. This New...
Contributor:
Cowell, Sidney Robertson - American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Leonard Bernstein
About the Leonard Bernstein Collection The Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress is as exceptional as its name would suggest. Bernstein, arguably the most prominent figure in American classical music of the twentieth century, made his impact as a conductor, as a composer of classical and theater music, and as an educator through books, conducting students at Tanglewood, and especially through various...
Contributor:
Bernstein, Leonard - Coates, Helen - Gottlieb, Jack - Harmon, Charlie
Aaron Copland Collection
The first release of the online collection contains approximately 1,000 items that yield a total of about 5,000 images. These items date from 1899 to 1981, with most from the 1920s through the 1950s, and were selected from Copland's music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs. Celebrating the centennial of the birth of the American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), the multi-format Aaron Copland Collection, from...
Martha Graham at the Library of Congress
(clockwise from top left) The Dance: Washington Festival [review]; "Graham Presents Copland's Ballet" [clipping] by Oscar Thompson; A unique dance by Martha Graham [clipping], 1926; [Tangara], photograph of Martha Graham. Dancer, choreographer, and company director Martha Graham (1894-1991) is considered one of the pioneering founders of American modern dance. In a career spanning over seven decades, Graham developed her own innovative technique and produced...
Contributor:
Graham, Martha - Barber, Samuel - Copland, Aaron - Dello Joio, Norman - El-Dabh, Halim - Emmons, Beverly - Hindemith, Paul - Horst, Louis - Hovhaness, Alan - Karan, Donna ...
Graham, Martha - Barber, Samuel - Copland, Aaron - Dello Joio, Norman - El-Dabh, Halim - Emmons, Beverly - Hindemith, Paul - Horst, Louis - Hovhaness, Alan - Karan, Donna - Lester, Eugene - Menotti, Gian Carlo - Noguchi, Isamu - Riegger, Wallingford - Rosenthal, Jean - Schuman, William - Skelton, Thomas R. - Starer, Robert - Ter-Arutunian, Rouben - Tipton, Jennifer - Weissberger, L. Arnold - Martha Graham Dance Company - Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance - Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance - Graham (Martha) Collection (Library of Congress)
The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection
Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine in London American actor, singer and comedian Danny Kaye arrives with his wife, Sylvia Fine, for an appearance in London. November 1948. Following the professional lives of the husband-wife artistic duo, this presentation features a wide variety of materials, including manuscripts, scores, scripts, photographs, sound recordings and video clips from the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection. Kaye, a...
Contributor:
Kaye, Danny - Fine, Sylvia - Halsman, Philippe - McDowall, Roddy - Dena Pictures, Inc - Kaye (Danny)/Fine (Sylvia) Collection (Library of Congress)
Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant and Hymnody
With its roots in Ancient Egyptian music, Coptic Christian chant is one of the oldest liturgical genres still performed today. Drawing on the Ragheb Moftah Collection, this presentation explores some of the earliest music transcriptions by explorers, missionaries, and scholars in Egypt, highlighting Moftah's efforts to notate, record, and preserve all Coptic Orthodox hymns. Learn more about current scholarship and what is happening in...
Contributor:
Wilson, Marian Robertson - Moftah, Raghe
The Moldenhauer Archives - The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial
The Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress contain approximately 3,500 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era and is the richest composite gift of musical documents ever received by the Library. Before his death, Hans Moldenhauer (1906-1987) established a directive and provided funds for the Library of Congress to publish The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music...
The Roger Reynolds Collection
Roger Reynolds' compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video, and real-time computer spatialization, in a signature multidimensionality of engagement. This Web site provides a glimpse into the process of this Pulitzer prizewinning American composer.
Contributor:
Reynolds, Roger - Daniel, Oliver - Druckman, Jacob - Eaton, John - Gaburo, Kenneth - Ichiyanagi, Toshi - Kraft, William - Lockwood, Lewis - Luening, Otto - Subotnick, Morton - Tilbury, John - Zukofsky, Paul
The March King: John Philip Sousa
Painting of Sousa during US Marine Band era, [n.d.]. Performing Arts Reading Room. An online presentation of selected music manuscripts, photographs, printed music, historical recordings of the Sousa Band, copies of programs and press clippings, and more from the Sousa Collection at the Library of Congress. About the John Philip Sousa Collection at the Library of Congress John Philip Sousa began donating his music...
Roman Totenberg Papers
The violinist Roman Totenberg enjoyed an extraordinarily long and varied career. Born on January 1, 1911 in Łódź, Poland, he moved as a child with his family to Moscow where he first studied the violin and witnessed the Russian Revolution firsthand. He continued his studies in Warsaw as a teen, followed by study with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Georges Enescu in Paris. Having...
Omaha Indian Music
Presented here are selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions. The sound recordings include 44 wax cylinder recordings made in the 1890s (first published on a 1985 LP entitled Omaha Indian Music: Historical Recordings from the Fletcher/La Flesche Collection), 323 songs and spoken-word segments from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, 24 spoken-word segments from an interview with an Omaha...
Contributor:
American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950 highlights letters between Woody Guthrie and staff of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the American Folklife Center archive) at the Library of Congress. The letters were written primarily in the early 1940s, shortly after Guthrie had moved to New York City and met the Archive's assistant in charge, Alan Lomax. In...
Contributor:
Archive of American Folk Song - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
The renowned Eastern Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai was constructed by the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I, in the late sixth century AD over the relics of the martyred saint and the place of the biblical burning bush as identified by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. It is home to reputedly the oldest continuously run library in existence...
Contributor:
Saint Catherine (Monastery : Mount Sinai) - Clark, Kenneth Willis
American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920
This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini. Groups of theater posters and additional sound recordings will be added to this anthology...
Contributor:
Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates in Jerusalem
As Jerusalem, the location of Christ’s Passion, has been central to the Christian religion since its inception, all the early churches sought a presence in that storied and holy city. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, for example, both maintain ancient patriarchates in Jerusalem and both have created renowned libraries in them. In 1949 Kenneth W. Clark arrived in Jerusalem to...
Freedom's Fortress: The Library of Congress, 1939-1953
Freedom’s Fortress: The Library of Congress, 1939-1953, contains a selection of 209 letters, memoranda, photographs, and publications (1,176 images) documenting a momentous period in the history of the Library of Congress when the institution underwent a myriad of changes that established it as one of America’s foremost citadels of intellectual freedom. During and shortly after World War II, Librarians of Congress Archibald MacLeish and...
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Manuscript Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Lewis Carroll Scrapbooks
An original scrapbook that was kept by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Better known as Lewis Carroll, the Victorian-era children’s author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Dodgson was a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Oxford. The scrapbook contains approximately 130 items, including newspaper clippings, photographs, and a limited number of manuscript materials, collected between 1855-72. A timeline, authored...
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage, through books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and motion picture footage drawn from the collections of the Library of Congress. The collection consists of 62 books and pamphlets, 140 Federal statutes and Congressional resolutions, 34 additional legislative documents, excerpts...
