African American History Month at the LOC!

At the Library of Congress, African American History Month is a chance to highlight selections of the vast collection of Civil Rights materials and papers held by the federal government. The site includes biographies on leading individuals such as Carter G. Woodson, or Congressman Major Owens, as well as online exhibitions of primary documents and cultural artifacts that particularly exemplify African American history.

The LOC holdings that relate to the Civil Rights struggle and African American history in general cannot be fully explored in one section of its website. The Library's holdings, after all, include over 134 million items. The site does offer, however, "a representative sampling of the best of the Library's assets," and simultaneously fulfills three different and important functions that highlight the many uses of the Library of Congress collections.

First, and most importantly to researchers, it's an online archive. Several of the Library's holdings most relevant to African American history are linked on the collections page. Listed by category, many of these materials are part of the larger American Memory digital collection at the LOC. Some of these collections are of cultural artifacts, such as sheet music, sound recordings, and event posters, while others are manuscripts and letters or papers from prominent Americans. For instance, the papers of Frederick Douglass relating to Emancipation, housed in the macuscript room at the LOC, are available through the site, as well as artifacts from the Underground Railroad.

While most of the LOC's holdings are not online, access to the most relevant documents is often possible through one or more of the Library's Online Exhibitions. The African American Mosaic Exhibition serves as an online resource guide to major events, personalities, and themes in African American history and culture. The Mosaic is broken chronologically from the Colonization period up through the Works Progress Administration interviews with former slaves in the 1930's. Though one cannot conduct exhaustive research on such a site, it nonetheless serves as a point of entry to understand the basics and parameters of African American history, and offers plenty of opportunities for further inquiry.

Finally, the site also includes a guide for teachers, that includes both internal and external links for teachers and students to follow up on questions they might have. Many of the links in this list lead to LOC exhibitions, but others lead to other resources, interpretations, and examples of online history that complement the information found at the Library of Congress.

While the African American History Month online Exhibit is a special for the month of February, the collection as it is presented is drawn from many areas of the Library, and reflect only a portion of its permanent holdings and long-term, ongoing efforts. The Veteran's History Project for example, has been online since March of 2004, and it still collecting and transcribing testimony.

The Library of Congress African American History Month site is easy to explore and navigate, with minimal ocular distractions, advertisements, or bright and flashing colors. One must exercise caution, however, to not get lost in the deluge of information readily available. The opportunity to view primary source material and documents, as exciting as it can be, can also, without the proper context, a very time consuming and confusing process.