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The Gorgeous Jazz Age Photography of Alfred Cheney Johnston

04/25/2022 09:42 AM EDT from The Library of CongressThe court photographer for the Ziegfeld Follies, Alfred Cheney Johnston — who later donated more than 200 of his photographs to the Library — captured the era and helped create the modern celebrity glamour shot. He was one of the first celebrity photographers. 

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Q: Which U.S. presidents relied on enslaved labor at the White House? A: According to surviving documentation, at least nine presidents either brought with them or hired out enslaved individuals to work at the White House: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor. Q: Which U.S. presidents owned enslaved…

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September 9, 2021 by Neely Tucker (Library of Congress) Descendants of Venture Smith gather at his gravesite in East Haddam, Connecticut, during the town’s 2019 Venture Smith Day. Photo courtesy of Venture Smith Day Celebration Committee. Delighted to write this post with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. “I was born at Dukandarra,…

Read More Venture Smith: The First Slave Narrative

October 29, 2020 By Jessica Mendoza Multimedia reporter; Samantha Laine Perfas Story Team Leader [This is one of a series of articles/podcasts in the Christian Science Monitor.] As Tulsa, Oklahoma, gears up to commemorate the 1921 race massacre, a new generation of Tulsans are finding ways to make the story of Black Wall Street their own. What can the country…

Read More Tulsa’s Black Wall Street burned. These artists have a new vision (audio).

BY DAN C. GOLDBERG  MAY 19, 2020 3:00 PM A black man had graduated the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877 and the Army had its first black general in 1940. But when World War II began, African Americans were not even allowed to enlist in the Navy’s general service. […] 16 African American…

Read More How the U.S. Navy’s First Black Officers (The Golden Thirteen) Helped Reshape the American Military

“The Black Count,” by Tom Reiss: The true story of General Alex Dumas, the son of a Black slave who inspired “The Count of Monte Cristo” and other swashbuckling tales written by his son, Alexander Dumas. “Slave Nation,” by Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen: On the role of slavery in the drafting of the United States Constitution,…

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Britain and France conclude Sykes-Picot agreement On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reach an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire are to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I. The…

Read More This Day in History – May 19