Skeletons!

Getting ready for Halloween? Here’s some images from the Library of Congress.

The first is by Dr. Alice S. Kandell, who donated her Collection of Sikkim Photographs to the Library of Congress and placed them in the public domain.

Deity and skeleton masks, Gangtok, Sikkim, by Alice Kandell. LC-KAN05- 0094.

 

Frances Benjamin Johnston shot this picture in the mid-1930s of an Indian burial ground near what was believed to be the site of the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida.

LC-DIG-csas-00429

 
Here’s a view of a corridor in the Cappuccino Catacombs, Rome, Italy, in August 1987.

LC-USZ62-54103

Why not some animal skeletons, starting with this interpretation of a dinosaur skeleton leashed to a man-like skelton somewhere near Murdo, South Dakota, photographed by Carol Highsmith in 2009?

LC-DIG-highsm-04579

 

This is just one in a series of pictures of horse skeletons in motion.

LC-USZC4-13861

Eadweard Muybridge created The attitudes of animals in motion : a series of photographs illustrating the consecutive positions assumed by animals in performing various movements in Palo Alto, California, in 1878 and 1879; the album was published in 1881.

Political Skeletons

My plan today was to search the Library of Congress for public domain Halloween theme images, but I was distracted by the number of political cartoons that surfaced with a search of the word “skeleton.” Some could easily have appeared in the editorial pages of  this morning’s paper, such as this one, published in 1873, 140 years ago: “The American juggernaut. Everything noble, patriotic, and progressive is crushed beneath the remorseless tread of that mammoth monster of corruption, cruelty, and fraud, the vampire rings of capital,”  by Matthew Morgan.

LC-USZ62-114825

The Justice Department is filing suit against several states over new restrictions on voting passed in 2013; Death at the polls, and free from “federal interference” by Thomas Nash for Harpers in 1879 is described by the Library of Congress as “Skeleton ‘solid Southern shot gun’ holding shotgun at polls, to prevent African Americans from voting.”

LC-USZ62-127750

Here’s one reminiscent of current controversies over immigration:

LC-USZC2-1043

Described by the Library of Congress as “Caricature showing Uncle Sam holding paper ‘Protest against Russian exclusion of Jewish Americans’ and looking in shock at Chinese skeleton ‘American exclusion of Chinese’ in closet,” this appeared in Puck in 1912.

Another “skeleton in the closet”: human rights abuses: A Skeleton of His Own by Udo Keppler was published in Puck in 1903. It “shows Uncle Sam holding a paper labeled ‘Protest against Russian Outrage’; he is standing with his back to a slightly open door revealing a skeleton labeled ‘Lynchings’ and holding a handgun and rope in his closet, he looks at the skeleton, realizing he is caught in a double-standard.”

LC-DIG-ppmsca-25763

Finally, food safety is the topic of this Puck illustration, Watch the Professor, published in 1906, presents  “an oversized man labeled ‘Beef Trust’, with skeleton face, performing a magic trick on a stage by taking ‘Diseased Livestock’ and pushing them through a tube labeled ‘Packingtown’ to produce packaged ‘Pure Meat Products’. A diminutive man, ‘The Prof’s Assistant’, wearing a cap labeled ‘Inspector’ is standing on the stage on the left.”

• 

  LC-DIG-ppmsca-26062

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

Carol Highsmith’s photo of the Wales window at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-highsm-05063]

I have a new blog: Long Time Coming at  http://longtimecoming1963.wordpress.com/.

I’ve been neglecting my other blogs lately because I have been helping a friend by putting his mother’s book up as a blog. This is the fiftieth anniversary of the turning point in the Civil Rights Era in the US, and his mother, Elizabeth H. Cobbs, risked her life in 1977 to testify against her uncle by marriage, Robert Chambliss, who largely through her testimony was the first bomber of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to be convicted. She cooperated fully with the FBI in 1963, and had this become known, the Ku Klux Klan would have killed her, but her efforts then were futile because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover decided to shelve the case indefinitely.

If you are unfamiliar with this event, briefly, on September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls, and seriously injuring a fifth. You may have heard of Spike Lee’s film, 4 Little Girls. 

This is what I wrote on the home page of Long Time Coming: 

This website presents in full the original text of Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing That Rocked The World written by Elizabeth H. Cobbs/Petric J. Smith and published by Crane Hill Publishers in 1994.

The author died in 1998.

Crane Hill Publishers is no longer operating, and Long Time Coming is out-of-print. The Estate of Petric J. Smith is making this digital edition available so that the story of the long journey to the conviction of Robert Chambliss for the death of Denise McNair in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, is accessible to a wider audience.  . . .

This digital edition takes advantage of its formatting by adding hyperlinks to the text. New pictures, which unless otherwise noted are in the public domain and available at the Library of Congress’s website, have also been included.

As I worked on the blog, I added public domain pictures to illustrate the story.

And as always with images of contemporary America, my best source was the The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Carol Highsmith has placed over 100,000 images in the public domain through her archive at the Library of Congress. She is now going state by state, capturing even more images of contemporary America.

For my purposes, I was fortunate that the first state she was able to cover was Alabama. You can read about that here.

I used a number of her photographs of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Civil Rights Institute, and Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham in Long Time Coming. Here are just a few examples: 

 

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama. The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-05091

 

Sculpture dedicated to the Foot Soldiers of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama. The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. LC-DIG-highsm-05100

Ku Klux Klan exhibit, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Alabama. Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIG-highsm-05074]

 

For historical photos, the Library of Congress was also my best source. Examples:

GENERAL PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF SOUTHEAST (FRONT) AND NORTHEAST SIDE FROM KELLY-INGRAM PARK – Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1530 Sixth Avenue North, Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL. Library of Congress, HABS ALA,37-BIRM,33–2.

Ku Klux Klan, between 1921 and 1922. Library of Congress. LC-DIG-npcc-30454

Bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, Birmingham, Alabama. Photo by Marion Trikoskco, 1963 Sept. 5. LC-DIG-ppmsca-03194

Federalized National Guard troops on the campus of the University of Alabama, June 11, 1963 when African Americans Vivian Malone and James Hood registered for classes. Photo by Warren Leffler. LC-DIG-ds-01108

Mugshots are in the public domain:

Mugshot of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bomber Robert Chambliss, arrested September 26, 1977 for murder.

Frankly, were it not for Carol Highsmith’s incredible generosity in placing her work in the public domain, and the U.S. News & World Report magazine photograph collection at the Library of Congress [Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on work taken by staff photographers. Other material may be restricted by copyright. For more inforamtion, see U.S. News … (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/078_usnw.html)], photographs for which permission need not be asked or licensing fees paid were hard to find.

—–

Note: On the Long Time Coming blog, you will also see photos with the note: Property of the Birmingham Public Library.  These are not in the public domain. I included these in that blog, but not in this one, because they also appear in the print version of Long Time Coming, meaning Elizabeth Cobbs/Petric J. Smith or Crane Hill Publishers secured permission for their use in 1994, and I am waiting to hear if that permission extends to digital editions. Meanwhile, I have included them there under Fair Use provisions, since the blog is not-for-profit but for educational purposes.

Taxes!

Interrupting the Flickr flow for a search of images related to tax time. From the Library of Congress:

"The free American citizen" / J. Norman Lynd. 1912. LC-DIG-ppmsca-27878

 

Thedmore sank into the chair, his face was hidden in his hands. LC-USZC2-1644

 

cai 2a1548

These are from the National Archives:

Christmas Lists and Tax Returns by Clifford Berryman, 1920. ARC Identifier 6011650 /

 

Calculating New Income Tax, 02/07/1919 by Clifford Berryman. ARC Identifier 6011549

ARC Identifier 516201

 

Happy New Year!

 

LC-DIG-highsm-11570

Mummer’s Parade on New Year’s Day, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By Carol Highsmith, 1/1/2011.

Last New Year’s Day, January 1, 2011, Carol Highsmith photographed the Mummers’ parade in Philadelphia, PA. This is just one of her gloriously colorful photos from that event in the Carol Highsmith Archive of the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Just follow the link above to her archive and enter “new year.”

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Same parade, 102 years before the one pictured above.

LC-USZC4-10654

LC-DIG-ppmsca-27906

LC-USZ62-58961. 1908

LC-DIG-ggbain-15029. ca. 1910 and ca. 1915

By Udo Keppler. LoC Summary: Illustration shows waiters Joseph G. Cannon and James S. Sherman turning away a man labeled “Average Citizen” and a woman at the “Hotel Prosperity” dining room because all the tables have been reserved; there are signs on the tables that read “Reserved for Wool Interests, Reserved for Coal Trust, Reserved for Steel Trust, Reserved for Senator Aldrich and Party, Reserved for Cold Storage Interests, Reserved for Sugar Trust, Reserved for Ice Trust, [and] Reserved for Franchise Grabbers”. Illus. in: Puck, v. 66, no. 1713 (1909 December 29)

 

Justice and Corruption

These are from the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Not much has changed in a hundred years — or, in the case of the Bruegel print at the end of the post — 500 years.

The first four images are by Udo Keppler and were published in Puck. I’ve copied the Library of Congress’s summaries for the illustrations. Although the actors may not be familiar to us, their behavior and values seem altogether too familiar.

The man highest up. LC-DIG-ppmsca-26345

By Udo Keppler.  LoC Summary: Illustration shows a large flaming hand labeled “Guilt” emerging from dark clouds pointing to a man’s downfall as the institutions labeled “Business Reputation, Financial Standing, Social Position, Respectability, [and] Church Membership” that he has worked to build up crumble as lightning bolts labeled “Public Enlightenment”, revealing his corrupt practices, strike them. Published in Puck, v. 65, no. 1665 (1909 January 27).

LC-DIG-ppmsca-25762

By Udo Keppler. LoC Summary: Illustration shows three men labeled “Riot, Lynching, [and] Violence” burning a female figure labeled “Law and Order” at the stake; she is bound to the stake with ribbons labeled “Prejudice” and “Defiance”. Puck, v. 53, no. 1377 (1903 July 22).

LC-DIG-ppmsca-27587

By Udo Keppler. LoC Summary:  Illustration shows Uncle Sam standing next to a cannon labeled “Dept. of Justice” that is shooting at a floating target labeled, from the outer rim to bull’s-eye, “Scapegoats and Dummies, Appraisers, Inspectors, and Weighers, Trust Supt. and Managers, Corrupt Civil Service Officials, Sugar Trust Directors, [and] High Govt. Officers”. The target has two holes on the bottom, Uncle Sam is telling the shooter to “aim higher”. Puck, v. 66, no. 1710 (1909 December 8)

Get after the substance, not the shadow. LC-DIG-ppmsca-27681

By Udo Keppler. LoC Summary: Illustration shows an oversized man labeled “The Individual” casting a shadow labeled “Incorporation” which is caused by a light, on the left, held by a “Corporation Lawyer” and a “Corporation Legislator”; on the right, a female figure labeled “Dept. of Justice” carrying a shield and a fasces, assails the shadow.

LC-USZ62-84128

By John Scott Clubb. Published 1906. 79 varieties. Depew: If I get out of these by the time I am 72 I will be able to do my real work in the Senate.

LoC Summary: Outside the U.S. Senate, New York Senator Chauncey Depew (1834-1928) holds open his topcoat, exposing several layers of coats labeled with various real estate, banking, insurance, railroad, and trust companies. . . . The cartoon relates to a 1905 congressional investigation exposing Depew as a member of the boards of dozens of major corporations while still carrying on his duties as a U.S. Senator. It also revealed that he received sizable retainer fees from many of these companies, transactions viewed as gross conflicts of interest by his critics.

LC-DIG-ppmsca-27871

By Will Crawford. Watching the tape or watching the wheel – what is the difference morally?

LoC Summary: Illustration shows a two panel cartoon, on the left, anxious businessmen are gathered around a ticker tape machine, reading the ticker tape; and on the right, anxious gamblers are gathered around a roulette wheel, awaiting the outcome. Illus. in: Puck, v. 72, no. 1852 (1912 August 28), centerfold.

Justicia. LC-USZ62-103251.

by Pieter Bruegel (1525-1569). LoC Summary: Justice stands blindfolded as people around her are being tortured.

Christmas Cats

Stumbled across while browsing at random in the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog: cats at Christmas and having a pillow fight. Why not?

Cats decorating Christmas tree. By Louis Wain. 1906. LC-D416-29198

A Christmas catastrophe : please, sir, the rat entree has escaped and eaten the turkey. By Louis Wain. 1906. LC-D416-29197

“May every cat grow sleek and fat on turkey this Christmas Day” on sign above cat standing near center of table.

Cats in the dormitory. By Louis Wain. 1906 LC-D416-29199

And sending you greetings:

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by John Scott Clubb. Published in the Rochester Herald, December 25, 1913.

And feasting and imbibing  and overdoing both:

LC-USZC2-3074

LC-USZC2-3073

By Currier and Ives,  c 1871.

Social Theory. Sort of. Public Domain Images from the Library of Congress.

A reader asked for help finding public domain images of the following:

• Milgram’s obedience research
• Asch’s conformity research
• Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies
• Sherif’s Robbers Cave Study

So far, I’ve had no luck. I did a bit of reading. These are pioneering studies in individual and group psychology. Although the researchers were associated with US universities that I’m sure receive Federal funding , it isn’t like with Federal employees whose photography is performed as part (or all) of their job. If my reader’s project is for educational purposes, his use might meet Fair Use criteria, but I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

Anyway, I’ve no background in psychology, but I found these studies intriguing (see Wikipedia). Milgram’s is one that I didn’t recognize my name, but it has been the basis for several films or TV show episodes. Subjects were told that they were to deliver increasingly intense (15-watt intervals) electric shocks to a person in the adjacent room whenever that person failed to answer a question correctly. No shocks were actually delivered, but the subject, who the researchers casually mentioned had a heart condition, would cry out and bang on the wall and then go silent. About 65% of participants didn’t stop until the very end, when they thought they had delivered three 450-watt jolts — a fatal level. A Dar Williams song, “Buzzer,” summarizes the experiment:

I’m feeling sorry for this guy that I pressed to shock

He gets the answers wrong I have to up the watts

And he begged me to stop but they told me to go

I pressed the buzzer.

Asch’s conformity research wasn’t dramatic, but it did show that people will go along with the majority, even when they know the majority opinion is wrong. Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies showed how young children will imitate the aggressive behavior of an adult model. Bandura showed a group of kids a film of an adult screaming at and smacking what I’d call a Bozo inflatable clown doll. Then when they had playtime, surprise, in the playroom were several Bozos, and the kids treated these toys as the adult had.
Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers’ Cave Experiment was sort of like a Survivor series. He divided boys into two groups, and made scarce or desirable resources available only to the group who won competitions. The groups became increasingly hostile toward one another.
Back to our subject, public domain images. Failing to find any using the researchers’ or experiments’ names, I started looking for ones that simply illustrated  observational learning, conformity, obedience, or aggression. All are from the Library of Congress. LoC Summary means a direct copying of the Library of Congress’s summary notes.

Here are a few on modeling or observational learning, which might fit in with the Bobo doll experiment.

The two paths–What will the girl become, LC-DIG-ppmsca-02926 (black) and LC-DIG-ppmsca-02925 (white, right).

LoC Summary: Image of an African American girl of seven years old [a seven year old white girl], flanked by two columns of illustrations showing on left: the girl reading bad literature, flirting, drinking with men, and as an outcast, and on right: the girl studying, in church, as a mother, and as a grandmother.

Illus. in: Golden thoughts on chastity and procreation / John William Gibson. Toronto, Ont., Naperville, Ill. : J. L. Nichols & co., [1903], between pp. 58 and 59.

LC-DIG-nclc-04935, By Lewis Hines. [1913 or 1914?]

Lynch mobs could illustrate conformity to a group even when at least some involved know that what they are doing is wrong.

Start the recall of judges with this one. By Will Crawford.Illus. in Puck, v. 71, no. 1825 (1912 February 21). LC-DIG-ppmsca-27817.LoC summary: Illustration shows the ghostly figure of a manic-looking man, labeled “Judge Lynch,” carrying a book labeled “Lynch Law,” and a lighted torch, hovering over a procession of people. The procession is led by three solid citizens followed by farmers, unruly elements, and finally a long line of regular citizens including women, who look back at a small column of smoke in the distance — presumably a lynching. One of the unruly men shoots a dog. “Judge Lynch” was the personification of the practice, frequently found in the South, of executing African Americans suspected of crimes, without the benefit of trial. In the second decade of the Twentieth Century, Progressives advocated various reforms designed to circumvent the state governments viewed as the tools of entrenched interests. The Recall was intended to allow the citizenry to directly vote officials out of office. The cartoonist suggests that this first be used to abolish the practice of lynching. (Source: LCCN 2005676912 and LJR).

This is tangentially related to Milgram’s experiment — at least it involves learning and shocks.LoC summary: Teachers shock students at George Washington U. Washington, D.C., Aug. 2. Public speaking students at G.W. U. are only too well acquainted with the shocking machine, invented by Dr. Willard Hayes Yeager, Head of the department, to take the “ahs” “ers” and “ums” out of their diction. He is shown putting on the shocker to Jane Hampton, 17. When the student makes a mistake the professor at the other end of the room, notifies her by a gentle electric shock, 8/2/38. LC-DIG-hec-25026

And in appreciation of its irony, I offer this final commentary.

                                           LC-USZC2-5627. Federal Art Project, between 1936 and 1941

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead

November 1 and 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, or in Mexico and other parts of the world, the Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos, are the inspiration for this post featuring images from the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

Gran bola de garbanceras que, por ser muy pretensiosas, se volverán calaveras podridas y apestosas. LC-DIG-ppmsc-04553

Calavera del drenaje. El mérito día de finados todos los que se restiraron por causa del drenaje. LC-DIG-ppmsc-04464

LC-DIG-ppmsc-04574

A Heap of bones in the cemetery [Necropolis Cristobal Colon], Havana. LC-D4-21573

Decorated gravemarker on All Saints’ Day, New Roads, Louisiana. Note the beaded ornament, which is made of wire and beads. Photo by Lee Russell, 1938. LC-USF33-011892-M4

Statue on grave in Cities of the Dead, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by Carol Highsmith.  LC-DIG-highsm-04806

Mexico, mummies in basement of church, Mexico City, between 1908 and 1919.  LC-DIG-npcc-19740

Football!

Fall football images from the Library of Congress, leading off with two by Carol Highsmith:

Head coach Gene Chizik leads the Auburn Tigers football team onto the football stadium for the 2010 Auburn-South Carolina game, Auburn, Alabama. LC-DIG-highsm-11541

And if I have a shot of Auburn University, I need one of the University of Alabama, as well:

University of Alabama football game, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. LC-DIG-highsm-06883

Football and cars seem to have always gone together. This picture was taken in 1939 by Marion Post Wolcott:

Cars parked along the highways on day of Duke-Carolina football game, near Duke University Stadium. LC-USF34-052649-D

Who would think this a picture taken in the stands at a football game?

Ethel Roosevelt, in stands at football game. LC-DIG-ggbain-03024

I can’t decide if this looks like fun or just stupid:

Washington Redskins start training. Washington, D.C. Aug. 28. He-man exercise took the place of calisthenics today as the Redskins, Washington's entry in National Professional Football League, started training. The boys "flying thru the air" are, left to right: Millner (Notre Dame), Rentner (Northwestern) and Peterson (West Virginia) Wesleyan) 8/28/37. LC-DIG-hec-23282

Nothing much has changed since Frank A. Nankivell drew this illustration for the cover of the November 14, 1906 Puck magazine of  “the sun wearing a football helmet, beaming rays onto a football shaped planet that shows a stadium with fans in the grandstands and a football game in progress; also shows, in the background, an outline of a young woman’s head.”

The college world. LC-DIG-ppmsca-26112