rganization, the NAACP, believed that she would do particularly well in court. As a result of the bus boycott, Parks, Montgomery, and a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., all became prominent symbols of civil rights.

The American Folklife Center is engaged in an important effort to document and preserve stories of the American Civil Rights Movement. Find out more at the link:

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/

The photo showing Parks and King is from our colleagues at the National Archive; it is a work of the United States Government and therefore in the Public Domain.

recordings of folk songs are on cylinders, beginning with the very first ethnographic field recordings, made by Jesse Walter Fewkes with Passamaquoddy singers in Maine. Later that year in Boston, Fewkes recorded the following clip, "Mr. Phonograph," to demonstrate the use of his machine to a visiting Passamaquoddy man.

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guide/audio/5-MrPhonograph.mp3

The photo is cropped from a digital scan of a picture in the Library of Congress's Brady-Handy collection. It shows Edison and his second phonograph machine in 1878. LC P&P Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-cwpbh-04044

g" as that term was understood by the Separatist and Anglican settlers.

Two better candidates for the "First American Thanksgiving" both occurred on November 26. On this day in 1789, George Washington declared the first national day of Thanksgiving following the Revolutionary War and the establishment of our national government. Although it failed to become an annual holiday, Abraham Lincoln chose the same date to establish Thanksgiving in 1863, with the additional announcement that Thanksgiving would occur annually on the final Thursday of November. The holiday has been observed annually since Lincoln's proclamation, but in 1941 we changed the date to the fourth Thursday in November.

At the link below, hear a New Mexico hymn of thanks from the AFC's Juan Rael collection:

http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.afc.afcrael.3913b1/default.html

This engraving shows head-and-shoulders portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln beneath an eagle and a star.

LC Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-90641 (b&w film copy neg.)

erformances on film were recorded by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop in August 1978. These films are part of the Alan Lomax Collection, acquired by AFC in 2004. Burnside continued to perform and record into the 1990s, and became well-known for several recordings with Jon Spencer, which brought him to the attention of celebrity musicians such as Bono of U2 and Iggy Pop, both of whom were influenced by Burnside's music.

At the first link, read more about the Lomax collection. At the second link, see one of the performances from the collection.

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meC4pmw5u84

This photo is by Phil Wight of Eskbank, Dalkeith, Scotland, and is used under a creative commons license.

picture of "Thanksgiving Maskers" from the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. Thanksgiving Maskers, like Trick-Or-Treaters, used to go door to door, begging for handouts, but they also had other ritual begging activities, including a "scramble for pennies" in the streets. While we're being thankful for what we have, let's also give a thought to those less fortunate--no one should have to scramble for a penny!

You can see more LC photos at the following link:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Thanksgiving+Maskers

You can read an account of Thanksgiving Masquerading in a New York Times article from 1899, here:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=940DE1D7133DE633A25752C0A9649D94689ED7CF

We will be closed on Thursday, but the Folklife Reading Room reopens on Friday at 8:30 a.m.

e and music. Todd showed Tolbert some of AFC's Big Bill Broonzy materials, including correspondence, manuscripts, concert recordings, and films. Broonzy was one of the foremost blues performers from the mid 1920s until his death in 1958.

, when he scored the ballet "Rodeo" for Agnes DeMille. He based the "Hoedown" section on a distinctive version of the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," collected for the Archive by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax from William Hamilton Stepp in 1937. Most traditional renditions of this tune are 4/ 4 marches, but Stepp almost doubled the usual tempo, converting the tune into a breakdown. John and Alan Lomax published Ruth Crawford Seeger's transcription of the tune in the book "Our Singing Country" (1941). When Copland was composing "Hoedown," his eye was caught by the version in the Lomax book, and he adopted it almost note for note as the principal theme of the section. At the link above, hear Copland's adaptation. At the link below, view the AFC catalog card for Stepp's performance.

http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.afc.afc9999005.6215/enlarge.html?from=default