This exhibit marks the publication of The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. A noteworthy and singular publication, the Mosaic is the first Library-wide resource guide tothe institution's African- American collections. Covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Westernhemisphere, the Mosaic surveys the full range size, and variety of the Library's collections, including books, periodicals, prints,photographs, music, film, and recorded sound. Moreover, the African-American Mosaic represents the start of a new kind ofaccess to the Library's African-American collections, and, the Library trusts, the beginning of reinvigorated research andprogramming drawing on these, now systematically identified, collections. This exhibit is but a sampler of the kinds of materials and themes covered by the publication and the Library's collections. Manyof the exhibit items are featured in the Mosaic. Other exhibit materials, not specifically described in the publication, are alsoincluded to illustrate that the Mosaic is an effective guide to the Library's rich collections, not an exhaustive inventory. The exhibit covers only four areas --Colonization, Abolition, Migrations, and the WPA-- of the many covered by the Mosaic.These topics were selected not only because they illustrate well the depth, breadth, and richness of the Library's black historycollections, but also because of the significant and interesting interplay among them. For example, the "back-to-Africa"movement represented by the American Colonization Society is vigorously opposed by abolitionists, and the movement ofblacks to the North is documented by the writers and artists who participated in federal projects of the 1930s. Also, to illustrate that the Mosaic opens avenues for further research, several items are included which, though important forblack history, cannot have their full stories told unt...
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