AFC Collections to explore

This project seeks to record Americans' reactions to the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 through photographs, interviews (both of those in the World Trade Center/Pentagon and others who witnessed the attacks), and written/graphic materials. The Library of Congress had previously undertaken a similar project to document national sentiment in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. Using materials from Americans of all ages, from children to adults, both of these collections reveal a mix of shock, anger, fear, and patriotic fervor - perhaps a testament to the effect of such cataclysmic events on the whole country. (Justin Oei)

It is surprising how the word folk can be interpreted. As we learned from the lecture, and from online dictionary definitions, 'Folk' is something related to culture, creation, community, and society. It is a term that intertwines with different aspects of our lives. It is the crystal of collective intelligence. Thus, it needs to be well preserved. Through the American Folklife Center, there are numerous amazing online exhibitions. For example, the one I explored is called the "Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection". From the opening page, the audiences can deeply engage with the context and explore the significance of the project. The Chicago Ethnic Arts Project mainly focuses on the 1970s and on different ethnic groups' art traditions. It invites audiences to explore how the different ethnic groups bring their traditions and affect American society. Also, the audience can see how these traditions evolve over time. (Maybe to do with the generational difference? Young people may be less culturally related to their home country. Their cultural identities are more American-based.) (George Shi)

As a celebration of the Library of Congress' Bicentennial a new project was introduced to showcase grassroots traditions and activities across a diverse nation. Members of Congress were invited to nominate projects for their area. In the end approximately thirteen hundred projects were nominated, and just over a thousand became part of the library. Each local legacies project is made available online through the Library of congress at the Local Legacies Homepage along with a sample image and description.

I chose to look into my home state of New York and came across some very interesting information about an area not to far from my hometown in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Coming from a family with a deep appreciation for oysters, it is cool to see how oystering has deep roots in the region and can give me a new appreciation of the tradition behind one of my favorite delicacies from my area. (Jill Preston)

In 2018, independent scholar and documentarian Candacy Taylor received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to document contemporary business owners and employees who work for more than a dozen still-active businesses that were listed in The Green Book, a historically significant travel guide published between 1937 and 1967. The Green Book listed businesses—e.g., restaurants, hotels, barbershops, taverns, drug stores, and garages—that welcomed African American customers.

The interviews explore the histories of these ongoing establishments, their strategies for staying in business, and the business’s current relationships with their changing communities. There's also a movie in 2018 named Green Book tells a story in this periods that a African American pianoist hired a white driver to his tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

These two pictures are selected from Jerry Markowitz interview conducted by Candacy A. Taylor, 2018-12-28. (Xiwen Liu)

This collection contains 181 segments from recorded interviews with quiltmakers and 410 graphic images (prints, positive transparencies, and negatives) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection. The images of the quilts convey the range of contemporary quiltmaking styles in the United States, while the recorded interview segments provide information on the quiltmakers and their work within the context of their lives and region and a more in-depth portrait of quiltmaking in daily life. I found this collections striking as both a sewing enthusiast and an Appalachian native, and it think it is a wonderful example of American folk art. (Abby Riemer)