Essay About Publication Of The African-American Mosaic And Exhibit Covers

The African American Mosaic
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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 to
the institutions African- American collections. Covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Western
hemisphere, the Mosaic surveys the full range size, and variety of the Librarys collections, including books, periodicals, prints,
photographs, music, film, and recorded sound. Moreover, the African-American Mosaic represents the start of a new kind of
access to the Librarys African-American collections, and, the Library trusts, the beginning of reinvigorated research and
programming 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 Librarys collections. Many
of the exhibit items are featured in the Mosaic. Other exhibit materials, not specifically described in the publication, are also
included to illustrate that the Mosaic is an effective guide to the Librarys 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 Librarys black history
collections, 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 of
blacks to the North is documented by the writers and artists who participated in federal projects of the 1930s.
Also, to illustrate that the Mosaic