The Veterans History Project (VHP) is proud to offer a new online exhibit, part of our vast array of curated thematic presentations collectively known as Serving: Our Voices. Previously known as Experiencing War, these exhibits are part of VHP’s new website, which debuted Veterans Day 2022. These presentations provide users with a specially selected set of collections centered on a particular theme, offering immediate access to content-rich oral histories and other original primary-source materials. The newest installment of Serving: Our Voices focuses on the experiences of African American wo ..read more

The following is a guest blog post by Candace Milburn, a liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project (VHP). You might ask, “What’s the meaning behind a ‘Go Box?’” To answer your question, the story began when former VHP Director Karen Lloyd shared that during her service in the Army, each service member was given a “Go Bag.” The contents included survival essentials packed in advance to easily grab and keep on hand if needed for an extended amount of time. In comparison, she thought it would be a great idea to gather a preselected group of VHP collection surrogates, placards and backgr ..read more

In commemoration of Black History Month, my post today (number 999 in AFC blog history!) reaches into the Civil Rights History Project collection to illuminate one of the many facets of the civil rights era as recollected by veteran activists. Today I focus on Rock Hill, South Carolina and how some courageous young people, the Friendship Nine (also known as the Rock Hill Nine), waged battle against seemingly overwhelming odds in that town in the early days of the Movement. Activists in the fight for freedom and equality during the civil rights era of the late twentieth century employed a ..read more

The following is a guest blog post by Nathan Cross, an archivist for the American Folklife Center. This African American History Month, the Veterans History Project (VHP) is pleased to announce a new resource designed to introduce VHP’s holdings related to the veterans of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-African American, all-female unit of the Women’s Army Corps that deployed to Europe in 1945 to process the large backlog of undelivered mail that had accumulated in the European Theater of Operations. VHP is proud to be the repository of these firsthand recollections, and ..read more

Jake Blount. Photo by Tadin Brown. The American Folklife Center is happy to announce that we’ll be kicking off the 2023 Homegrown concert series with a solo performance by the banjo player, fiddler, and singer Jake Blount, an award-winning musician and a scholar of African American musical traditions. Blount’s performance will be part of Live! at the Library, the special series featuring extended visiting hours and special programming every Thursday night. It will also be part of the Black History Month celebrations at the Library of Congress and is presented in cooperation with the Fol ..read more

Karen Abdul-Malik documenting a dance event. Photo courtesy of Driven by Design Creative Agency, LLC. Used by permission. Below is an excerpt from a post on the Library’s Of the People blog highlighting artist, documentarian, and AFC Community Collections Grant recipient Karen Abdul-Malik, also known professionally as Queen Nur. It is part of an “Of the People blog” series featuring the 2022 awardees of the American Folklife Center’s Community Collections Grants program. Abdul-Malik’s project focuses on cultural documentation of urban line dancing practices and gatherings associate ..read more

  This portrait of John Jackson is by Tom Pich and is included in AFC’s National Endowment for the Arts, Folk Arts Program collection. (We also have a framed copy on the wall in our office!) Pich spoke about his portraits of NEA National Heritage Fellows with folklorist Barry Bergey at the Library of Congress in 2018. Find the video at this link. John Jackson (1924-2002) was a fantastic singer and guitarist; he was one of the most significant Black Appalachian musicians to begin his professional career in the 1960s. You can read all about his blues career on numerous websites including ..read more

“In the case of American Negroes, their labor founded the nation and was prime cause of the industrial revolution and the capitalist system of the modern world:  their slavery, revolt, escape, protest and emancipation is a central thread of our history: and without their music and laughter American art and literature would never have attained its present stature.  This is the reason we celebrate Negro History Week. It is not merely a matter of entertainment or information; it is part of our necessary spiritual equipment for making this country worth living in.” W. E. B. Du Bois, Negr ..read more

Samite plays the litungu, a Kenyan lyre. Courtesy of Samite. In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both videos together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) In 2021, we were very proud to present Samite, a singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter who was born in Uganda and has lived in upstate New York since the 1980s. Samite was born and raised in Uganda, but left as a political refugee in 1982. He spent the following few years in Kenya where he studied African traditional musical i ..read more

Hubby Jenkins at the Carrboro Music Festival in 2018. Photo by Tom Barta, shared to Flickr with a Creative Commons License. It’s time for another great Homegrown Plus blog! As you may know by now, in this series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both videos together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the run with Hubby Jenkins, who is an old-time and blues musician living in New York. Hubby Jenkins is a singer and multi-instrumentalist who plays guitars, banjos, mandolins, and bones. He has bee ..read more