Ethnographic Collections in the Classroom

Introduction: Archives and the Culturally Responsive Classroom Instructors of Language Arts, History, and Social Studies in the United States are tasked with helping their pupils compare perspectives across time and space. They must teach students how to locate and...

What About Delia?

Delia Zapata Olivella, daughter, mother, sister, friend, bruja…. She was an Afro-Colombian woman born in 1926 in Santa Cruz de Lorica and lived her childhood in Cartagena, Colombia. Delia Zapata Olivella was a renowned dancer, artist, teacher, activist,...

The Black Diaspora Quilt History Project

Numerous people have acknowledged the importance of quiltmaking within the African American experience. Zora Neale Hurston, who closely examined Black vernacular cultural traditions, included references to quilts in her folklore-infused writing. Alice Walker (1973)...

OurStoryBridge

For thousands of years tribal elders would sit down with the children and tell them stories. The stories were always the same, there was never a word out of place. It had to be that way, it had to be accurate.   Darren Parry, author of  “History and Perspective” and...

A Future from the Past

The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, houses the works of the ethnomusicologist Frances Theresa Densmore, including a collection of more than 2,500 American Indian songs she recorded between 1907 and 1941. Approximately 260 of Densmore’s cataloged...