News & Events

The library and campus will be closed on Monday January 20, 2025, to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   His leadership and oratory skills were grounded in a heritage of resistance to powerful economic and political forces.   Here are just a few recollections from leaders of their time.  Each quote is from a video.   Search by keyword Martin Luther King within the Films on Demand library for more content like this.  

"There's a great deal of difference between non-resistance to evil and non-violent resistance. Non-resistance leaves you in a state of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency, wherein non-violent resistance means that you do resist in a very strong and determined manner." - The WPA Film Library

 
“Each time that he was doing something important, there was an effort to discredit him.” - Testimony before the Church Committee Details FBI Plans to Intimidate Martin Luther King Jr. ca. 1975

 "Well, I don't think that Mr. Helms or the extreme right really speaks for the American people. Probably really speaks for the Republican Party on this issue. I believe that the filibuster will be broken and that we will commemorative Martin Luther King's birthday as it should be." – Edward Kennedy, Opposition to a Holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr.

“And we will be able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and this will be a great America. We will be the participants in making it so.”  – Last Speech at the Washington Cathedral, March 31 1968

In this month of holy religious holidays, here are a few great titles to study the major Abrahamic religions and their tenets.  

Christian Nativity

On this day in 1847, Frederick Douglass began publishing The North Star.  As one of the leading voices for abolition, this speaker became the preeminent African American speaker of his day.   Here, actor Fred Morsell recreates the great dramatic work of Frederick Douglass, “The Lesson of the Hour,” in the original church where it was first spoken.   For all those who celebrate freedoms shared and cherished during this time of year, the words and context of this great speech will resonate.

The library has wrapped up another great multicultural week with a training focus on implicit bias during a Lunch and Learn with Amy Waninger as well as the set up for ofrendas at multiple campuses to celebrate the Day of the Dead. 

''Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.'' - Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors (1892)

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice honors the victims of lynching.  It opened in 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama, with sculpture displays representing those individuals hung, tortured, and killed by extra-judicial mobs in post-Civil War America.  It would not have been possible without the pioneering work of Ida B. Wells, a late nineteenth century journalist who watched the post-Reconstruction era United States devolve into lawlessness and revenge against the newly freed people.  Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) campaigned for universal suffrage and the public acknowledgement of lynching as an extra-judicial way to exert  control over the population.   Her birthday is July 16.

Remembering Ida, Ida Remembering: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Black Political Culture in Reconstruction-Era Mississippi

Historicizing White Supremacist Terrorism with Ida B. Wells

We've updated the library's holdings for gender and sexuality.  For children's and young adult books, it's one of the most challenged topics in the nation.  As we welcome students from schools where they may not have been able to see themselves represented in their libraries, we say Happy Pride Month.

This Hindu festival celebrates spring, love and new life. Holi marks the end of winter and beginning of spring. It also celebrates the Hindu god Krishna and the legend of Holika and Prahlad.  The wicked Holika tried to kill Prahlad in flame, but Lord Krishna stepped in to save Prahlad, and Holika was left in the fire and burned to death. On the night before the festival, images of Holika are burned on huge bonfires, drums pound, horns blow, and people whoop.  Since Antiquity, to mark the spring equinox, the whole of India celebrates Holi, the festival of colors. During this celebration, Indians of all castes throw colored powder in the faces of those they meet.  It doesn't matter if you're lower caste, a widow, a person marked by society -- the powder makes everyone look the same. 

Covering in red is for love, green is happiness, orange is for prosperity, and gold is considered sacred. 

Restrictions of caste, sex, age, and personal differences are ignored.  The festival reminds the Hindi peoples that all discrimination disappears in the holiest gazes.

It's like 15 Days of joy -- the long build up to the celebration of the Lunar New Year is important in many cultural traditions.    Some cultures, such as the Chinese, have developed crafts around the Lunar New Year celebrations in a way that is known throughout their diaspora.   Lunar New Year in 2024 is celebrated on Saturday, February 10.  It begins the year of the dragon in the Chinese horoscope, specifically the Wood Dragon, which will bring evolution, improvement, and abundance.

In this language learning exercise, you can learn all about the Lunar New Year including how people give each other gifts, how they welcome the good luck for the new year, and what stresses young people face when they rejoin their larger family.

Craftspeople in San Francisco describe how they keep their paper Chinese lion costumes cared for during the annual parade routes and neighborhood celebrations.  

People in Beijing are shown celebrating the Lunar festival, and recent commercialization is noted for the modern celebrations.

For a full documentary, see Chinese New Year (BBC Learning)

Very few people in American history inspire so much creative thought as Martin Luther King Jr.   Only a handful of politicians, statesmen, philosophers, and creatives are able to generate a fire of mind in the thoughts of writers.  King joins the ranks of John F. Kennedy, Emily Dickinson, and Pocahontas as individuals who continually inspire writers across the globe.    Here are a few ideas surrounding Martin Luther King Jr., as the nation remembers his life and legacy, calling on future generations to emulate his thoughtful philosophy of American life.

Bearing the Cross by David J. Garrow

Journeying Toward the Promised Land

A complete chronological timeline of King's life and works.

Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Late Theory of Civil Disobedience

This article examines the early reception of King’s  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and the development of the liberal idea of civil disobedience it has become synonymous with to argue that its canonization coincided with, and displaced, the radicalization of King’s developing thinking about disobedience. It examines published and archival writings from 1965 through 1968 to reconstruct King’s power-oriented theory of “mass” civil disobedience as it developed in response to the dual challenges of white backlash and Black Power.

Critical Lessons About Leadership from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s brand of authentic leadership was disruptive. Disruptive leaders bring joy, hope, and a positive attitude to their companies and nations, primarily due to their ability to engender greater trust and engagement. Dr. King's innovative, groundbreaking leadership style disrupted civil inequity between the white majority and people of color. Nobody before Dr. King even fathomed the oxymoron of peaceful protest. He made white leaders look at their hypocrisy and ultimately agree to begin honoring the constitutional "all men are created equal."

"Where Do We Go From Here?": Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Workers' Rights

This article chronicles Dr. King's alliances with labor activists as well as the tensions between organized labor and civil rights activism. This article also highlights how Dr. King's emphasis on labor activism informed his approach to fighting against segregation and on behalf of voting rights for African Americans. For Dr. King, true racial equality was inseparable from economic empowerment. Dr. King's insight that racial discrimination was linked to the economic subordination of workers followed a great tradition of political activism within the United States on behalf of racial equality and the rights of workers. This article argues that advocates for workers' rights and racial equality have been most successful when they worked together because race discrimination has been integrally connected to the exploitation of workers throughout our country's history. 

Surveillance, Spatial Compression, and Scale: The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1976, the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, came to the conclusion that Martin Luther King Jr “was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ‘neutralize’ him as an effective civil rights leader”. This paper explores how the FBI surveilled Martin Luther King Jr between September 1957 and Dr King's death in 1968 and how such surveillance relates to both spatial compression and scale. First, using FBI internal memos, government documents, social movement archives, mass-media accounts, and other sources, this history looks at how state surveillance—operating through the social mechanism of intimidation—compressed both the physical and tactical space that Dr King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could comfortably inhabit. 

Known around the world as "the long night," the Winter Solstice brings cultural feasts, celebrations, and folklore about fending off the darkness and waiting for the light.  Because the earth rotates on an axis, the northern hemisphere drifts the farthest from the sun, lengthening the night and shortening the day, at the beginning of every winter. December 21 marks the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Check out these traditions from around the northern continents.  You just might find a new recipe or two to try to make your celebration brighter and your home's "hearth fires" more sustained.   

Christmas

Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ's birth.   In the United States, traditionally, turkey and ham are served.  In the earliest days of the country, the turkeys would have been freshly killed while the hog meat would have been taken from the larder after a few months of curing.  Both meats represent a scrumptious meal that celebrates the birth of the Lord.

Party Dishes for the Holidays

Sugar and Spice, including Cinnamon Pear Torte and Cranberry Apple Upside-Down Clove Cake

Yalda

In Persian countries, the longest night of the year (Yalda) was met with fear that evilness and bad deeds had time to spread.  Persians celebrate the longest night of the year known as Shabe Yalda (Yalda Night) or Shabe Chelle.   On the night of the Solstice, the entire family would make a large, lavish meal.  Families stayed up throughout the night, snacking and telling stories, then celebrating as the light spilled through the sky in the moment of dawn. 

Party with Pomegranate! 

Persian Quince Stew

Tien

The Chinese honor the god T'ien, and traditionally, the Emperor would offer sacrifices at the Forbidden City in the capitol. Today, people commemorate the longest night of the year by visiting temples and serving feasts in their homes to honor deceased family members.  It's also a traditional time to eat dumplings!

Chilled Chinese Dumplings with Creamy Dukkah Sauce

Rain Flower Pebble Dumplings

The Feast of Juul

Spreading as a pre-Christian festival observed in Scandinavia first, then to England and parts of Europe, the festival most commonly lit fires to celebrate the longest night and prayer to the gods to bring back the light.   The tradition of lighting a Yule log most likely originated from the Feast of Juul.  Orthodox Christians still maintain that ritual.  After it stopped burning,  the ashes were collected and either strewn on the fields as fertilizer every night or kept in the house to ward off thunder and lightening.  A traditional feast saw people coming together to eat, drink, and make sacrifices while watching the yule log burning. 

Roast Goose with Apples

Sweet Sensations, including Festive Fondant Mints; Nutty Caramel Popcorn; Chunky Black & White Chocolate Bark

   Day of the Dead   

  (Día de Muertos)  

On June 12, 1942, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis. For two years, her family and other families will be hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends.  Her words and thoughts form the basis of an on-the-ground cultural interpreter of a horrific historical event, a small red-and-white checked remembrance of war and bigotry, and of the courage of families who sought a way out of the Nazi regime.  

Her name was Anne Frank.   She received her diary 93 years ago.  

In her first entry, Anne wrote to her diary as if it was a personal friend; “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”  But she was also growing in maturity, and realizing that her parents' birthday present was a way to answer the call of the Dutch government-in-exile: tell us your stories.  For two years, the girl wrote in the diary, describing her most intimate thoughts and feelings, as well as documenting what it was like to live under German occupation and in hiding.  The adults around her and in far flung places begged their children to remember these times, and Anne wrote as a diarist with a mission: to preserve her thoughts and ideas as well as the actions of those around her.  Her hope was that she would survive to contribute the diary to a larger purpose.   Her horror is that she did not survive, but the diary did.   

Interpretations of the diary in the years after Otto Frank provided it as an example of Holocaust diarist writing abound.  Several plays completely dolled up his daughter into the perfect icongraphic dead Jewish girl whose death happens off-stage; at least one novel sexed her up, by speculating on her secret romance with a boy from another family.   Otto himself stands accused of tearing out pages that described unhappy marital relations with his wife.  It seems that Anne's writing changed perspective with the editors who were studying her life.  The runaway success of Anne Frank’s diary depended on playing down her Jewish identity: At least two direct references to Hanukkah were edited out of the diary when it was originally published.  As Dara Horn described it in her book People Love Dead Jews, her first entry in the original diary, for instance, begins with a long description of her birthday gifts (the blank diary being one of them), an entirely unself-conscious record by a 13-year-old girl.  Anne rewrote the diary; she edited and prepared it for revisions, a talented writer far from the public perception of a mindless girl documenting her life.   Horn writes:  "The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary—“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—is often called “inspiring,” by which we mean that it flatters us. It makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. "

Over time various cultures have interpreted the text in different ways.  What the reception of Frank's text in Cambodia and North Korea suggests is that the way in which an account travels primarily indicates the text's usefulness in the contexts in which it's received.  Much has been written about teaching and learning about the Holocaust in social studies classrooms.  The redemptive power of Anne's story is seen as neglible to school children exposed to her diary in 8th grade or thereabouts; while the work is relatable to them, containing both arguments with parents and melodramatic declarations they may be akin to understand, it also presents a somewhat sanitized version of "the Holocaust."   They do not get to see Anne dying slowly in Bergen-Belsen, rather seeing only the girl who took off her shoes to avoid heel clatter and whose story ends at the window rather than the grave.

The diary remains a substantial artefact from the German occupation, its talented author a quintessential unknown in a Holocaust of her Jewish heritage, a voice cut short but living on in our collective memory.   And there, as they say, may her memory be a blessing.

"It's a warning, I suppose, to people to be vigilant, not to be bystanders, but to speak out if they encounter bad things, or evil things."



"We've been working with a group called 3GNY. And it is the grandchildren of survivors who are being trained to tell their grandparents' stories. We did talk about, what does it mean to pass on your story? OK, because we're not on this world forever. So what do you leave behind?"



"People ask me, how do you feel that you survived and other members didn't? You know what I answer them? I say God needed a witness, someone who can tell the story."

November is National Native American Heritage Month.   In the history of the United States, those who were oppressed and subjugated often found themselves at the mercy of others who were equally as subjugated.   In the American expansionist history, white women became a leading driver of cultural influence of Indigenous affairs.  Here are three stories of how the image and power of the white woman influenced the history of Native American development.  

It's a statue in Edmond, Oklahoma full of life -- a woman in late nineteenth-century garb leaps from a train's front grill (the "cow catcher") with a flag in her hand.  The woman known as Nannita "Kentucky" Daisey -- she had taught school for brief time in Louisville -- became legendary during the land rush period of Oklahoma's history.  However, contemporary accounts of her own and a colleague's recollection pointed toward her actually lowering from the first car, calmly staking her claim, and then running to catch up with the train.  The state remembered it as Boomer Sooner --booms from the firing of guns and cannon as claims were made, and sooner folks who snuck secretly into the territory. Her admirers remembered the legend of Kentucky Daisey.  She land rushed three times in the "Unassigned Lands," once hiding a group of other white women in a low ravine waiting for their chance to drive their stakes into the ground.  But Kentucky Daisey's decades-old gendered stereotypes may seem at first blush unsurprising, yet the fact that it does so in the face of other decades-long efforts to make representations of the American West more multicultural in memory, including the 2007 push to create a statue of her in Edmond.   Rather than focusing on the culling of Native American lands promised to them in perpetuity, the town decided to erect a statue of one of the thousands of bloodthirsty people who claimed land in the "rush."  Edmond, Oklahoma citizens chose to elevate a woman who self admittedly didn't do the famous deed she was known for.   The statue's erection exposes issues of gender and commemoration in the American West.

"I have married a gentleman of Indian blood," writes one women in the Indian Service, and "I could help him."  The political ramifications of the "Indian problem" in the post-Civil War West were great, but a proposition by those who governed brought a possible solution to their needs: white women and Native men could form domestic relationships.   Much has been said of the white woman kidnapped and held in the Indigenous camp, but this proposal came from the newly emerged Indian Service: instead, remove the man from his homeland, educate him in white boarding schools, and allow him to form friendships, and eventually romances, with white women during their Indian Service work.  Thousands of white women were intentionally hired and paired with adult Indigenous men returning from eastern boarding schools.  Interracial relationships  "advocated amalgamation by marriage as a necessary and desirable part of the assimilation process" as noted by Richard Henry Platt, one of the Indian education proponents.  White women were historically seen as the moral centers of nineteenth century western civilization.  By harnessing the power of white domesticity, the government saw a way to assimilate the men who had been fighting the manifest expansion into their territories.

In 1910, the wealthy Gulicks ran an advertisement for the characteristics they intended to create at their girls' summer camp in Lake Sebago, Maine:  young white girls would experience the ideal out-of-doors Indian life, including jewelry making, storytelling, costuming, and learning myths and folklore.   By the 1920s, the "maidens" of Camp Fire Girls represented the twentieth century's answer to a toothless Indian: no longer a threat in the west, the Indian lifestyle became the picturesque and idyllic way to intone young white girls to become docile, beautiful, and servile.   Native women, as "mothers of the race," as seen by those who led the assimilation effort, served as the perfect role models for young women in another culture.   Camp Fire girls recorded their summer camp memories in a scrapbook called the "Hiawatha meter," created pageants with Pocahontas as the first American woman, and provided maiden feasts, where they would prepare and serve a meal.  They relinquished both markers for more masculine pursuits, such as the playing of lacrosse-style games that would have been common for native girls, and embraced white civilization's ideals, such as purity culture, as in rejecting fancy dress and keeping oneself as "pure as the mountain stream."  In doing so, they co-opted the colonial view of Native domesticity, scrubbing it of its domestic power in favor of a light wholesome version of cultures which had been destroyed.  By the 1930s, the Camp Fire Girls had also spread to the boarding schools that were further destroying culture, asking young Natives to bond with each other over a homogenized and bland representation of their peoples' history.

While many media outlets sensationalize and politicize issues surrounding transgender youth, this program looks at the issue from a truly medical perspective. Along with medical experts who specialize in working with families, Jennifer and Josselynn Surridge describe what it is like to come to terms with being a transgender person, and with being a mother of a transgender child. This story will help every viewer understand the issue in a way that is rarely explored elsewhere.  More segments available at Second Opinion - Transgender Health.

Juneteenth celebrates when slaves in Texas learned that they were, in actuality, free after the lifelong work of abolitionists, war heroes, presidents, and civil rights leaders.  General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to enforce Lincoln's proclamation more than two years after it was announced; that day, June 19, was remembered in slave narratives as a day when  "We all walked down the road singing and shouting to beat the band," recalled one Texas freedwoman, Molly Harrell, in The Slave Narratives of Texas, a book based on a thirties-era federal oral-history project. Said another, Lou Smith: "I ran off and hid in the plum orchard and said over `n' over, `I'se free, I'se free; I ain't never going back to Miss Jo.'" 

It arose from Texas.  At various times in the twentieth century, notably during both world wars, organized observances of Juneteenth were intermittent but always attracted throngs. In Dallas a 1936 gala at the state fairgrounds drew 200,000 visitors. Because segregation was a long-established policy, Juneteenth was often the only day blacks could enter many attractions; in Fort Worth, for example, they could visit the botanical gardens only on June 19. White merchants, however, cheerfully capitalized on the commercial opportunities. During the thirties, Foley's offered a special sale on "silk frocks" for the big day, Mrs. Baird's claimed its bread "goes mighty fine with barbecue," and railroads offered special rates for day trips.

Over time, the movement spread past the borders of Texas.  By the 1970s, politicians were making it a local and state-wide holiday in places like Atlanta and Charleston, SC.  But there was more to be done.  The "grandmother of the movement," Opal Lee, watched white rioters burn her home to the ground in 1939 while growing up in Marshall, Texas.   When she eventually made her home in Fort Worth, she watched a new generation take up the cause of the Juneteenth celebration as a way to celebrate the freedom so dearly won.   In 2016, she laced up her shoes and wrote a letter to then-President Obama: "You could save me a lot of shoe leather and a lot of wear and tear on an old body by saying how soon you can see me."  Then she began a 1,400 mile trek from her home to Washington DC.   Even though health concerns stopped her from completing the full journey, she continued to walk 2.5 miles -- symbolic of the 2.5 years when slaves in Texas were not told about the proclamation -- in every major city and at all major festivals.   When President Biden signed the national holiday into law, the grandmother of the movement was there -- shoes laced up and all.

Today, Juneteenth is celebrated with national and regional events, including

• a national music festival in Denver CO, a dynamic community event which annually attracts 50,000 people
• Affrilachian poetry at the Lyric Theater and Cultural Arts Center in Lexington, guest speakers Kentucky Poets Laureate Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X. Walker
• a cornbread competition in conjunction with the African American school and museum the Calfee Community Center and the Wilderness Road Museum, Pulaski, VA
• Juneteenth Jubilee Freedom Weekend, in Detroit MI, with a theme of economic development and empowerment

Some of the library's holdings illustrate ways in which we communicate and understand each other across genders, sexualities, and biology.    Happy Pride Month.

LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia by Jeff Mann (Editor); Julia Watts (Editor)

ISBN: 9781946684929

This collection, the first of its kind, gathers original and previously published fiction and poetry from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors from Appalachia. Like much Appalachian literature, these works are pervaded with an attachment to family and the mountain landscape, yet balancing queer and Appalachian identities is an undertaking fraught with conflict. This collection confronts the problematic and complex intersections of place, family, sexuality, gender, and religion with which LGBTQ Appalachians often grapple. With works by established writers such as Dorothy Allison, Silas House, Ann Pancake, Fenton Johnson, and Nickole Brown and emerging writers such as Savannah Sipple, Rahul Mehta, Mesha Maren, and Jonathan Corcoran, this collection celebrates a literary canon made up of writers who give voice to what it means to be Appalachian and LGBTQ.

 

 

Pray the Gay Away by Bernadette Barton

ISBN: 9780814786376

In the Bible Belt, it's common to see bumper stickers that claim One Man + One Woman = Marriage, church billboards that command one to "Get right with Jesus," letters to the editor comparing gay marriage to marrying one's dog, and nightly news about homophobic attacks from the Family Foundation. Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.

 

 

East Kentuckian Lige Clarke had a prominent role in early gay and lesbian journalism.  Born in Knott County, he was a religious youth beloved by his family. Always known by his family and friends as creative and a “free spirit” who as a child was theatrical, collected dolls, and created “fashions” that included skirts, Clarke was popular growing up in Hindman. The youngest of three and easily recognizable with long, nearly-white blond hair, he spent his early years dividing his time between a little white house on Cave Branch and a residence above his grandfather’s store at “the forks of Troublesome Creek,” as his older sister has recalled.  After he joined the army, he returned to visit frequently.   In 1964, while holding high security clearances as part of his job at the Pentagon in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clarke saw men get caught kissing in a closet only to be summarily dismissed.  Clarke nevertheless remained undetected and unscathed by the military’s homosexual witch hunts. And he knew why—“he was simply another Kentuckian. Homosexuals in the mountains of Kentucky, [the Pentagon] must have reasoned, are as rare as truffles.”  A small band of Washington D.C. Mattachine Society activists staged the first openly gay picket outside the Pentagon, including Clarke's own hand-lettered signs "Gay is Good."  During the late 1960s, a heterosexual psychotherapist, George Weinberg, coined the term “homophobia” to refer to individual anti-gay behaviors and attitudes. Herek, in an article titled “The Psychology of Sexual Prejudice,” maintained that Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke first used the term in print in their column on gay issues in the May 23, 1969, issue of Screw Magazine.  Their column "The Homosexual Citizen" was the first regular LGBT-interest column printed in a non-LGBT publication. One month later in New York City, a police raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn ignited an extended protest against the harassment of gay people and is celebrated around the world as the touchstone of the modern gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement.  Lige Clarke and his companion Jack Nichols were at the forefront, not only coining homophobia as an idea but also later publishing the first newspaper, Gay, targeted to gay men.  In a remarkable story, Clarke outed the idea of Fire Island. The small islet was a jealously guarded secret of homosexual New Yorkers when, in 1969, Clarke published an account of his sexy weekend along its beachfront. Lige Clarke, the island’s seasonal habitués complained, “blew their cover."  Years later Jack Nichols would publish a book about the island, proudly putting Clarke on the cover.   Clarke worked with Nichols on books such as I Have More Fun with You Than Anybody and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male-Male Relationships, before Clarke's untimely death in 1975, murdered mysteriously in Mexico.

 

 

The Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969.   The next year defiant protestors marched the streets of New York City in honor of those killed or wouded, and in that span, the American Pride movement was born.   Pride is celebrated each June in honor of the original protest movements.  In 1978 what is perhaps the most-recognized symbol of Gay Pride made its debut at the San Francisco event: the rainbow flag. The flag, with its eight colours (sexuality symbolized by hot pink, life by red, healing by orange, the Sun by yellow, nature by green, art by blue, harmony by indigo, and spirit by violet), was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker and has been adopted worldwide. The following year a six-colour flag, which is in common use today, appeared (with red, orange, yellow, green, blue [harmony replaced art as symbolized by blue in the flag], and purple/violet), partially because of the unavailability of some of the fabric colours. Although the flag's colors have been used in tacky, commercial ways--to decorate key chains and license plates, for example--its power has endured. Its popularity arises from the need for an oppressed people to have a unifying symbol of their own. In the words of Ann Northrop, a long-time activist: "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."

 

 

"As Long As You Can” offers a bright, colorful new picture of what queer in Appalachia really means. This documentary offers expansive interviews covering the lives of 6 LGBTQ+ folks -- all Appalachian, all “successful” in their own ways. When faced with the choice of leaving or staying, “As Long As You Can” hopes to answer young LGBTQ+ Appalachians who are faced with this decision every day. Produced by Nikole Lee and Ellie Mullins, 2021, Appalachian Media Institute

It's her birthday!  Coretta Scott King would have been 95 years old today.    She spent much of the final 38 years of her life advancing and enhancing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mission, but she was also an avid reader, with an intense interest in supporting childhood literacy through representation.  In 1970, the American Library Association began giving awards in her honor.   Here are the latest Big Sandy library holdings from those award-winning titles, as they truly express what Coretta Scott King sought in children's literature -- seeing oneself. 

The library database Black Life in America chronicles primary sources from colonial times to present day.    It also offers restriction by topic and by geography, two great tools for narrowing your search.    Here's a brief video on how to use this important database.

Librarian Robyn Williams hosts a watch party for Wind River, a 2017 film about the investigation of a young Indigenous woman's death in the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming.  Starring Marvel universe fan faves Elizabeth Olsen (The Avengers, Wandavision) and Jeremy Renner (The Avengers, Hawkeye), the film highlights the crisis of missing and endangered women of Native background.   It is presented as part of Native American Heritage Month.

Details about the online showing and the in-person showing are below.

• Wednesday November 17 - 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm on Teams - rsvp rwilliams0435@kctcs.edu
• Monday November 22 - 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Pikeville campus, ATC 201 

Diwali is the five-day Festival of Lights, celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world.  The word Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word deepavali, meaning "rows of lighted lamps". Houses, shops and public places are decorated with small oil lamps called diyas.   Here are some library articles about this year's Diwali Festival, which began November 2 and continues through November 6. (Because the festival is based on lunar cycles, this year the biggest day of the festival is today, November 4.)

For South Asian people across the world, Diwali marks new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil. While celebrations look different from family to family, one feature is constant: setting out small lights that represent how light guides the way amid dark times. Find out more about the history and customs of Diwali here.

For many, Diwali marks the beginning of the new year. It is observed by lighting rows of oil lamps and exchanging greeting cards, clothing and other gifts. Family bonds are strengthened and forgiveness sought.  Joyous festivities and parties abound. Melas, or fairs, are held in almost all Indian towns and villages. In the countryside, the mela includes a festive marketplace where farmers bring their produce to sell and clothing vendors have a heyday.

We have online children's books for Diwali. 

It's Diwali!

Diwali

New Year's Celebrations in Different Places

This Diwali season shoppers can bring a little extra light to the kids of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital while supporting South Asian-owned businesses. GYFTING, an online marketplace for curated gift boxes, is releasing a limited-edition Diwali gift box, part of whose proceeds will go toward St. Jude research and treatment of childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Shoppers will also have an option to donate to St. Jude when they make their purchase.

As we begin a new semester, the library has ordered over a dozen new books related to Appalachia.  Here are just a few of them.   Whether checking them out for school or for your own enjoyment, the Appalachian literature shown here will be a great way to improve your knowledge about this area.  Here's a sampling:

Fiction:

Nonfiction:

Ask any librarian about these books, and be sure that you request a new title if you know another great Appalachian themed title.  You can search the catalog from the search box at the top of this page to find them and others like them.