Friends,
Once again, America finds itself confronting difficult questions about race and inequality.
The struggle for freedom and equality dates back to our nation’s founding, and it is possible to find context and inspiration in the words of those who have fought for a more perfect union since the beginning.
But, libraries offer more than just historical context on today’s events. They offer safe spaces to have difficult conversations about the challenges facing our nation today. They are places of welcome and respite and community. They are collectors of the stories and experiences that have brought us to this place in our nation’s history and can inspire us to persevere in our efforts to pursue that more perfect union.
Last week, I hosted one such conversation with Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch to discuss the future of our cultural institutions and how we remain accessible and relevant during a period of global pandemic coupled with nationwide protests against injustice.
Lonnie Bunch reminded all of us that “there is hope in history.” So, I leave you with a quote of his from our conversation and invite you to watch it in its entirety at loc.gov/item/webcast-9194/.
"So there’s a kind of, hopefully, a tipping point where people come together and recognize that the past should give you some hope. If people could work together to found the NAACP or work together to end slavery then we can work together to begin to address this as well. So I find hope in history. Not always optimism, but I find hope in history.”
Below you will find links to information about the NAACP collection at the Library of Congress along with other examples of courage and hope that have transformed our nation.
Sincerely,
Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress
NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom
Originally mounted in 2009 and available online, this exhibition presents a retrospective of the major personalities, events, and achievements that shaped the NAACP’s history during its first 100 years.
Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Since 1964, the Library of Congress has served as its official repository, and the NAACP Records now consist of more than five million items dating from 1909 to the present. The records encompass a wide variety of materials, including manuscripts, photographs, prints, pamphlets, broadsides, audiotapes, phonograph records, films, and video recordings. Every phase of the NAACP's many activities can be found in this rich and diverse collection.
The NAACP Records are the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library and annually the most heavily used. These records are the cornerstone of the Library’s unparalleled resources for the study of the twentieth-century civil rights movement in the U.S. that also include the original records of the National Urban League, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, as well as the microfilmed records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/overview.html
Civil Rights History Project
On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle.
The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations and the video recordings of their recollections cover a wide range of topics within the freedom struggle, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the Freedom Rides (1961), the Albany Movement (1961), the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), the Poor People’s Campaign (1968), sit-ins, and voter registration drives in the South. The murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement, looms large in the memories of many movement veterans.
loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/about-this-collection/
Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words
Rosa Parks (1913–2005) is best known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement that ultimately led to the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation. Rosa Parks became an icon of the movement, celebrated for this single courageous act of civil disobedience, but she is often characterized by misconceptions. Contrary to popular belief, Parks was not a demure seamstress who chose not to stand because she was physically tired. Her calm demeanor hid a militant spirit forged over decades.
Exhibition: loc.gov/exhibitions/rosa-parks-in-her-own-words/about-this-exhibition/
Blog post - "A Protestor Who Changed America": blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/06/a-protester-who-changed-america-rosa-parks/
Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote
This exhibition tells the story of the seventy-two-year campaign for women’s suffrage. Considered the largest reform movement in American history, its participants believed that securing the vote was essential to achieving women’s economic, social, and political equality. For years, determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, picketed, and faced imprisonment. Their collective story is one of courage, perseverance, savvy, creativity, and hope that continues to inspire activists today.
loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/
June Is LGBTQ Pride Month
June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month and June 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of annual LGBTQ+ Pride traditions. The first Pride march in New York City was held on June 28, 1970 on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Primary sources available at the Library of Congress provide detailed information about how this first Pride march was planned, and the reasons why activists felt so strongly that it should exist.
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