14,000 Free Images from the French Revolution Now Available Online

in Art, History | February 6th, 2014

droits de lhommeIt’s often said that the French Rev­o­lu­tion (1789–1799) cre­at­ed the “blue­print” for all rev­o­lu­tions to come. Unlike any event before it, the Rev­o­lu­tion drew its strength from ide­ol­o­gy — an ide­ol­o­gy that turned on the belief that France had cre­at­ed a rad­i­cal break with its monar­chi­cal past, and would now rad­i­cal­ly re-orga­nize itself along egal­i­tar­i­an and demo­c­ra­t­ic lines. To dri­ve this mes­sage home, the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies pro­duced thou­sands of pam­phlets and polit­i­cal works of art. What’s more, they cre­at­ed a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary cal­en­dar and a series of rev­o­lu­tion­ary fes­ti­vals that helped give cul­tur­al expres­sion to the idea that France had entered a new polit­i­cal age.

More than a cen­tu­ry lat­er, the Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies would use the French blue­print and all cul­tur­al tools at their dis­pos­al to pro­mote its Marx­ist ideals. You’ve seen the posters. You’ve watched the films. Maybe you’ve read their texts. But per­haps you’re not as famil­iar with where rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­pa­gan­da all began, in which case you’ll want to rum­mage through a new archive of 14,000 images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion, cre­at­ed by Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France (BnF). The new archive con­tains visu­al mate­ri­als that will intrigue schol­ars as much as his­to­ry buffs.

Above you can see one image cel­e­brat­ing a found­ing doc­u­ment of the Rev­o­lu­tion — 1789’s Les droits de l’homme et du citoyen (The Rights of Man and Cit­i­zen).  Imme­di­ate­ly below, you can see a depic­tion of Lib­er­ty (a mod­ern ver­sion of a Greek god­dess) tri­umph­ing over past polit­i­cal abus­es. And, at the bot­tom, we have a vivid dis­play of the Rev­o­lu­tion’s choice instru­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — the guil­lo­tine. Plus an image of an “aris­to­crat­ic hydre” in com­bat with the peo­ple.

liberty abuse

The images in the archive can be sort­ed by theme. If you find one you like, you can choose to down­load the image in a high-res­o­lu­tion for­mat, rang­ing from small to extra large. Schol­ars of the French Rev­o­lu­tion won’t want to miss anoth­er part of the new­ly-cre­at­ed archive. It con­tains the Archives par­lemen­taires, a series of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments that record the polit­i­cal events of the Rev­o­lu­tion. In the mid 1990s, I  spent long stretch­es of time read­ing those doc­u­ments in the great read­ing room of the old BN.

To explore more image archives, please see our recent post: Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums & Libraries.

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Note: Some lec­tures on the French Rev­o­lu­tion can be found in Yale’s course Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion, 1648–1945, which appears in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

frenchrevolutionarchive4

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

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Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules For Reading: Seek Enjoyment, Spurn Fads, Read What You Like

in Books, History | February 4th, 2014

Theodore_Roosevelt_circa_1902

Ted­dy Roo­sevelt seems to us a para­dox today, and did in his time as well: A man’s man hunter, cow­boy, and war hero, who sup­pos­ed­ly saved the game of foot­ball from extinc­tion (Roo­sevelt wor­ried that ban­ning the game would pro­duce “mol­ly­cod­dles instead of vig­or­ous men”); also, a Har­vard-edu­cat­ed New York pro­gres­sive and tree­hug­ging con­ser­va­tion­ist hero, who re-defined pres­i­den­tial style with Brooks Broth­ers three-piece suits and uni­forms. And for all of his pub­lic hero­ics, Roo­sevelt was also a dot­ing father who gave his nick­name to the most uni­ver­sal­ly cud­dly species of bear. Per­haps some of the best rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Roo­sevelt’s per­son­al ethos are pho­tographs of his com­bi­na­tion library and gun room, hung with hunt­ing tro­phies and skins in the home he built for his fam­i­ly in Oys­ter Bay, New York (below—see more at the appro­pri­ate­ly named “Art of Man­li­ness”).

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One sig­nif­i­cant rea­son Roo­sevelt could embody seem­ing­ly wide­ly diver­gent traits was that he was a devour­er of books, read­ing tens of thou­sands in his life­time, absorb­ing thou­sands of points of view from every pos­si­ble source. But Roo­sevelt did not read the way we do today—rapidly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion for its own sake, with auto­mat­ed ser­vices com­pil­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the meta­da­ta (a phe­nom­e­non Susan Jaco­by has indict­ed as part of our hyper-par­ti­san, group­think cul­ture). He read accord­ing to his whim, putting plea­sure ahead of prof­it and dis­dain­ing fads and rigid cul­tur­al norms. He was, lit­er­ary site Book Riot sup­pos­es, “prob­a­bly the most well-read pres­i­dent, and per­haps one of the most well-read men in all of his­to­ry.”

Book Riot points us toward a few pages of Roosevelt’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, in which—amidst picaresque chap­ters like “In Cow­boy Land” and heavy ones like “The Pres­i­den­cy; Mak­ing an Old Par­ty Progressive”—Roosevelt paus­es to detail his thoughts on read­ing in a par­tic­u­lar­ly prag­mat­ic chap­ter titled “Out­doors and Indoors.” Although Roo­sevelt does not present his con­tem­pla­tion as an eas­i­ly digestible list of rules, as is the fash­ion now, Book Riot has seen fit to con­dense his thought. Below see the first five of their list, “Ted­dy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Read­ing.” I’d be will­ing to bet that if every­one fol­lowed Teddy’s advice, we could up the woe­ful nation­al lit­er­a­cy quo­tient with­in a few short years.

1. “The room for choice is so lim­it­less that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make cat­a­logues which shall be sup­posed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er with writ­ing lists of the One Hun­dred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library [a ref­er­ence to the Har­vard Clas­sics]. It is all right for a man to amuse him­self by com­pos­ing a list of a hun­dred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hun­dred books that are best for all men, or for the major­i­ty of men, or for one man at all times.”

2. “A book must be inter­est­ing to the par­tic­u­lar read­er at that par­tic­u­lar time.”

3. “Per­son­al­ly, the books by which I have prof­it­ed infi­nite­ly more than by any oth­ers have been those in which prof­it was a by-prod­uct of the plea­sure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked read­ing them, and the prof­it came in as part of the enjoy­ment.”

4. “The read­er, the booklover, must meet his own needs with­out pay­ing too much atten­tion to what his neigh­bors say those needs should be.”

5. “He must not hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly pre­tend to like what he does not like.”

Head over to Book Riot for the remain­ing five of Roo­sevelt’s “rules,” along with some wit­ty com­men­tary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule’: Lis­ten to Theodore Roo­sevelt Speak­ing 100 Years Ago Today

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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New Carl Sagan Archive Features His Digitized Home Movies, Student Journalism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

in Archives, Astronomy, History, Science | February 3rd, 2014

Sev­er­al days ago, we brought you a rare Carl Sagan sketch, where the young sci­en­tist depict­ed an imag­ined his­to­ry of inter­stel­lar space flight. In that post, we made brief men­tion of the Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, which mer­its to be high­light­ed in its own right: its arrival means that the Inter­net now has access to a vast repos­i­to­ry of the emi­nent sci­ence educator’s orig­i­nal papers and per­son­al arti­facts.

His­to­ri­ans, biog­ra­phers, and die-hard Sagan devo­tees will inevitably want to vis­it the Library of Con­gress in per­son to view the full archive, which con­tains over 1700 box­es of mate­r­i­al. The lay read­er curi­ous about Sagan’s life, how­ev­er, won’t need to make the trek to the U.S. cap­i­tal to sam­ple the archive’s con­tents. That’s because the Library of Con­gress has uploaded a por­tion of the col­lec­tion online, includ­ing sundry fas­ci­nat­ing bio­graph­i­cal pieces. Above, you can view a dig­i­tized set of the Sagan fam­i­ly’s silent home movies, where young Carl shows off his boy­hood box­ing prowess, rides horse­back, and plays piano (pre­cious­ly, we pre­sume).

It was dur­ing high school that Sagan began to fill out intel­lec­tu­al­ly. His senior year­book is tes­ti­mo­ny to both his inter­est in sci­ence and the human­i­ties: not only was Sagan pres­i­dent of both the sci­ence and chem­istry clubs, he also led the French club, served as an edi­tor on his school’s news­pa­per, debat­ed, took part in the­atre pro­duc­tions, and was a mem­ber of the pho­tog­ra­phy club.

sagan archive

Indeed, Sagan dis­played his uncan­ny abil­i­ty to merge sci­ence with the human­i­ties in Wawawhack, his high school news­pa­per, writ­ing a piece enti­tled “Space, Time, and The Poet.” He begins by say­ing, “it is an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence to read poet­ry and observe its cor­re­la­tion with mod­ern sci­ence. Pro­found sci­en­tif­ic thought is hard­ly a rar­i­ty among the poets.” Through­out the piece, Sagan goes on to draw from vers­es by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, T. S. Eliot, John Mil­ton, and Robert Frost.

Mix­ing sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture would remain one of Sagan’s spe­cial­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly lead to his writ­ing The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of Human Future In Space (1994). The book dis­cuss­es humankind’s place in the uni­verse, past, present, and future, and a PDF ver­sion of the anno­tat­ed sec­ond draft, pic­tured below, is avail­able in the archive.

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For more of the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion, vis­it Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Free Mini Course: Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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The President of Northwestern University Predicts Online Learning … in 1934!

in History, MOOCs | January 31st, 2014

1934 predictions

One of our most pop­u­lar posts this year cen­tered around a pre­scient set of pre­dic­tions that Isaac Asi­mov made for 2014, way back in 1964. Asi­mov, how­ev­er, wasn’t the only one whose vision of the future seems to have been real­ized.

The web site Pale­o­fu­ture fea­tures a 1934 issue of Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics mag­a­zine, where North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Wal­ter Dill Scott made some far­sight­ed pro­nounce­ments of his own. Scott believed that the phys­i­cal col­lege cam­pus would no longer need to be a lynch­pin for edu­ca­tion, and that stu­dents could learn by way of radio and pic­tures. Fax machines and tele­vi­sions would allow stu­dents to access lec­ture mate­ri­als world­wide, and ensure that researchers could con­duct their research remote­ly. He also fig­ured that we’d all end up com­mut­ing by planes. Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics wrote:

The uni­ver­si­ty of twen­ty-five years from now will be a dif­fer­ent look­ing place, says Pres­i­dent Scott of North­west­ern. Instead of con­cen­trat­ing fac­ul­ty and stu­dents around a cam­pus, they will “com­mute” by air, and the uni­ver­si­ty will be sur­round­ed by air­ports and hangars. The course will be car­ried on, to a large extent, by radio and pic­tures. Fac­sim­i­le broad­cast­ing and tele­vi­sion will enlarge great­ly the range of a library; and research may be car­ried on by schol­ars at great dis­tances.

Air­ports and hangars aside, Scott’s con­jec­tures hit pret­ty close to home. While fax machines and radio may have been sup­plant­ed by the Inter­net, the essence of our edu­ca­tion­al advance­ments is the same: uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents can often lis­ten to lec­tures and com­plete assign­ments online, spend­ing only a few short face-to-face hours in the class­room. Oth­er times, class­es may be whol­ly avail­able online, and stu­dents may nev­er step foot on cam­pus alto­geth­er. Schol­ars, too, can trawl through data­bas­es like JSTOR and PsycIN­FO with­out get­ting out of bed, con­duct­ing research as they trav­el.

In fact, today almost any­one can have access to uni­ver­si­ty knowl­edge. Feel like tak­ing a Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship class offered by Stan­ford, or learn about Walt Whit­man, cour­tesy of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa? Noth­ing sim­pler! Mas­sive Open Online cours­es (MOOCs) are pro­lif­er­at­ing, and you can down­load audio & video lec­tures from top tier uni­ver­si­ties. Vis­it our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es to see what we mean.

In the end, it’s a good thing Scott was right. Oth­er­wise, there’d be no Open Cul­ture.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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New York’s Famous Chelsea Hotel and Its Creative Residents Revisited in a 1981 Documentary

in History, Television | January 31st, 2014

Last year, we fea­tured a clip of Nico singing “Chelsea Girls” at the Hotel Chelsea, the much-mythol­o­gized Man­hat­tan insti­tu­tion that, at one time or anoth­er, housed a range of cul­tur­al fig­ures includ­ing Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, Charles Bukows­ki, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Pat­ti Smith, Robert Map­plethor­pe, Allen Gins­berg, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, Iggy Pop, Gaby Hoff­mann, Sid Vicious, and Arthur Miller. “The Chelsea in the Six­ties seemed to com­bine two atmos­pheres,” writes Miller in a 1978 essay on his time there. “A scary opti­mistic chaos which pre­dict­ed the hip future, and at the same time the feel of a mas­sive, old-fash­ioned, shel­ter­ing fam­i­ly. That at least was the myth one nursed in one’s mind, but like all myths it did not alto­geth­er stand inspec­tion.” That era more than arguably marked the Chelsea’s social and cul­tur­al hey­day.

A few years lat­er, in 1981, BBC’s arts doc­u­men­tary series Are­na made its way to New York to inves­ti­gate the his­to­ry and then-cur­rent state of this ver­i­ta­ble coun­ter­cul­ture incu­ba­tor. The film spends time with cur­rent Chelsea res­i­dents, for­mer Chelsea res­i­dents, and Chelsea habitués notable, cre­ative, and oth­er­wise — the notably cre­ative Andy Warhol, William Bur­roughs, and Quentin Crisp all make appear­ances. It also talks to the hotel’s staff and fol­lows a tour guide as he leads a curi­ous group through its sto­ried cor­ri­dors. “With all my mis­giv­ings about the Chelsea,” Miller reflects, “I can nev­er enter it with­out a cer­tain quick­en­ing of my heart­beat. There is an inde­scrib­ably home­like atmos­phere which at the same time lacks a cer­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty. It is some kind of fic­tion­al place, I used to think. As in dreams things are out front that are con­cealed in oth­er hotels.”

For more, you might want to spend time with “An Oral His­to­ry of the Chelsea Hotel: Where the Walls Still Talk,” which appeared in Van­i­ty Fair last Octo­ber.

Find the doc­u­men­tary above list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Charles Bukows­ki Takes You on a Very Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of Hol­ly­wood

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch and Search Newly Digitized Conversations with 148 People Who Witnessed the Great Depression

in History | January 30th, 2014

Lange-MigrantMother02

In March of 1992, many years after pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dorothea Lange’s 1936 image of a migrant moth­er in Cal­i­for­nia (above) became one of the most icon­ic images from the Great Depres­sion, a cam­era crew sat down with two daugh­ters of the sub­ject of Lange’s pho­to. For about 40 min­utes, Nor­ma Rydlews­ki and Kather­ine McIn­tosh shared their sto­ries with Black­side, Inc., a com­pa­ny found­ed by award-win­ning film­mak­er Hen­ry Hamp­ton. In the footage and tran­script of that con­ver­sa­tion, acces­si­ble for the first time along with many more such inter­views through Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries, the family’s dai­ly chal­lenges come to life. The sis­ters describe not only their strong, beau­ti­ful moth­er but every­thing from field work and play­ing with dirt clods as chil­dren to ear­ly union meet­ings and the eco­nom­i­cal “sav­ing grace” that was World War II.

When The Great Depres­sion, Blackside’s sev­en-part doc­u­men­tary series, debuted on PBS in Octo­ber of 1993, the pro­gram wove togeth­er short seg­ments from exten­sive inter­views with 148 peo­ple who expe­ri­enced the Great Depres­sion, includ­ing Rydlews­ki and McIn­tosh. As illu­mi­nat­ing as the doc­u­men­tary is in its own right, the many addi­tion­al hours of oral his­to­ry that Black­side record­ed in the process of cre­at­ing it are a trea­sure trove of pri­ma­ry source material—all of it now view­able, brows­able, and search­able online through the efforts of WU Libraries’ Visu­al Media Research Lab and Dig­i­tal Library Ser­vices (DLS).

The diverse range of indi­vid­u­als whose reflec­tions on the 1930s are now eas­i­ly acces­si­ble include a grand­son of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roo­sevelt, cel­e­brat­ed authors Maya Angelou and Gore Vidal, long­time New York Times polit­i­cal reporter War­ren Moscow, actors Karen Mor­ley and Ossie Davis, Mor­ton New­man, who worked on the Upton Sin­clair cam­paign for gov­er­nor in Cal­i­for­nia, and many more from all walks of life. The mul­ti­cul­tur­al, mul­ti­re­gion­al approach brings need­ed depth and col­or to an era that is often remem­bered and depict­ed as a mono­lith­ic event drag­ging the nation down for a decade, says Spe­cial Col­lec­tions assis­tant Ali­son Car­rick, who man­aged the work­flow of the dig­i­ti­za­tion project.

“When we think about the Great Depres­sion, images of the dust bowl and bread­lines imme­di­ate­ly come to mind,” Car­rick says. “And that is part of the his­to­ry Black­side cov­ered with this series, but they also revealed com­plex and live­ly sto­ries that are often overlooked—from union strug­gles, to heat­ed polit­i­cal cam­paigns, Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion projects, the New Deal, and more. What Black­side man­aged to do with this series and these inter­views was to bring that peri­od of his­to­ry back to life in a vivid, engag­ing way.”

The intent behind The Great Depres­sion Inter­views project is to pro­vide a seam­less, pow­er­ful tool with much poten­tial for inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research.

“One of the best fea­tures of the site, thanks to DLS, is that it is text/keyword search­able,” Car­rick says. “This cre­ates a way for users to pin­point a sub­ject, name, or event and quick­ly look to see where it occurs in each tran­script. Our hope is that this fea­ture will lead users to oth­er tran­scripts they might not have thought con­tained sim­i­lar sub­ject mat­ter.”

This post was writ­ten by Evie Hemphill (@evhemphill), a writer and pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries in St. Louis.

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Pete Seeger Tells the Story Behind “We Shall Overcome”

in History, Music | January 28th, 2014

Pete_Seeger_NYWTS

Like near­ly all folk songs, “We Shall Over­come” has a con­vo­lut­ed, obscure his­to­ry that traces back to no sin­gle source. The Library of Con­gress locates the song’s ori­gins in “African Amer­i­can hymns from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry” and an arti­cle on About.com dates the melody to an ante­bel­lum song called “No More Auc­tion Block for Me” and the lyrics to a turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry hymn writ­ten by the Rev­erend Charles Tind­ley of Philadel­phia. The orig­i­nal lyric was one of per­son­al salvation—“I’ll Over­come Someday”—but at least by 1945, when the song was tak­en up by strik­ing tobac­co work­ers in Charleston, S.C., it was trans­mut­ed into a state­ment of sol­i­dar­i­ty as “We Will Over­come.” Need­less to say, in its final form, “We Shall Over­come” became the unof­fi­cial anthem of the labor and Civ­il Rights move­ments and even­tu­al­ly came to be sung “in North Korea, in Beirut, Tianan­men Square and in South Africa’s Sowe­to Town­ship.”

Pete Seeger—who passed away yes­ter­day at the age of 94—has long been cred­it­ed with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of “We Shall Over­come,” but he was always quick to cite his sources. Seeger heard the song in 1947 from folk­lorist Zil­phia Hor­ton, music direc­tor at Tennessee’s High­lander Folk Cen­ter who, Seeger said, “had a beau­ti­ful alto voice and sang it with no rhythm.” As he told NPR recent­ly, his touch­es were also those of oth­er singers:

I gave it kind of ump-chin­ka, ump-chin­ka, ump-chin­ka, ump-chin­ka, ump-chin­ka, ump. It was medi­um slow as I sang it, but the ban­jo kept a steady rhythm going. I remem­ber teach­ing it to a gang in Carnegie Hall that year, and the fol­low­ing year I put it in a lit­tle music mag­a­zine called Peo­ple’s Songs. Over the years, I remem­ber singing it two dif­fer­ent ways. I’m usu­al­ly cred­it­ed with chang­ing [‘Will’] to ‘Shall,’ but there was a black woman who taught at High­lander Cen­ter, a won­der­ful per­son named Sep­ti­ma Clark. And she always liked shall, too, I’m told.

Accord­ing to Seeger in the inter­view above—con­duct­ed by Josh Baron before a 2010 performance—the per­son most respon­si­ble for “mak­ing it the num­ber one song back in those days” was the Music Direc­tor of the High­lander Folk Cen­ter, Guy Carawan, who “sent mes­sages to the civ­il rights move­ment all through the South from Texas to Flori­da to Mary­land.” Carawan “intro­duced this song with a new rhythm that I had nev­er heard before.” Seeger goes on to describe the rhythm in detail, then says “it was the hit song of the week­end in Feb­ru­ary 1960…. It was not a song, it was the song all across the South. I’ve found out since then that the song start­ed off as a union song in the 19th cen­tu­ry.”

In this par­tic­u­lar inter­view, Seeger takes full cred­it for chang­ing the “will” to “shall.” Although it was “the only record [he] made which sold,” he did­n’t seek to cash in on his changes (Seeger shared the copy­right with Zil­phia Hor­ton, Carawan, and Frank Hamil­ton). As you can eas­i­ly see from the numer­ous eulo­gies and trib­utes pop­ping up all over (or a quick scan of the “Pete Seeger Appre­ci­a­tion Page”), Seeger deserves to be remem­bered for much more than his six­ties folk singing, but he per­haps did more than any­one to make “We Shall Over­come” a song sung by a nation. And as he tells it, it was song he hoped would res­onate world­wide:

I was singing for some young Luther­an church peo­ple in Sun­dance, Ida­ho, and there were some old­er peo­ple who were mis­trust­ful of my lefty pol­i­tics.  They said: ‘Who are you intend­ing to over­come?’ I said: ‘Well, in Sel­ma, Alaba­ma they’re prob­a­bly think­ing of Chief Pritch­ett.; they will over­come. And I am sure Dr. King is think­ing of the sys­tem of seg­re­ga­tion across the whole coun­try, not just the South. For me, it means the entire world. We’ll over­come our ten­den­cies to solve our prob­lems with killing and learn to work togeth­er to bring this world togeth­er.

Via Blank on Blank

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pete Seeger Dies at 94: Remem­ber the Amer­i­can Folk Leg­end with a Price­less Film from 1947

94-Year-Old Pete Seeger Sings “This Land is Your Land” at Farm Aid

Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occu­py Wall Street

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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See Carl Sagan’s Childhood Sketches of The Future of Space Travel

in Art, Astronomy, History | January 24th, 2014

Carl Sagan had his first reli­gious expe­ri­ence at the age of five. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it was root­ed in sci­ence. Sagan, then liv­ing in Brook­lyn, had start­ed pes­ter­ing every­one around him about what stars were, and had grown frus­trat­ed by his inabil­i­ty to get a straight answer. Like the resource­ful five-year-old that he was, the young Sagan took mat­ters into his own hands and pro­ceed­ed to the library:

“I went to the librar­i­an and asked for a book about stars … And the answer was stun­ning. It was that the Sun was a star but real­ly close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just lit­tle points of light … The scale of the uni­verse sud­den­ly opened up to me. It was a kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence. There was a mag­nif­i­cence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has nev­er left me. Nev­er ever left me.”

This sense of uni­ver­sal won­der would even­tu­al­ly lead Sagan to become a well-known astronomer and cos­mol­o­gist, as well as one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most beloved sci­ence edu­ca­tors. Although he passed away in 1996, aged 62, Sagan’s lega­cy remains alive and well. This March, a reboot of his famed 1980 PBS show, Comos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, will appear on Fox, with the equal­ly great sci­ence pop­u­lar­iz­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson tak­ing Sagan’s role as host. Mean­while, last Novem­ber saw the open­ing of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive at the Library of Con­gress.

Among the papers in the archive was this sketch, titled “The Evo­lu­tion of Inter­stel­lar Flight,” which Sagan drew between the ages of 10 and 13. In the cen­ter of the draw­ing Sagan pen­cilled the  logo of Inter­stel­lar Space­lines, which, Sagan imag­ined, was “Estab­lished [in] 1967 for the advance­ment of transpa­cial and intrau­ni­ver­sal sci­ence.” Its mot­to? “Dis­cov­ery –Explo­ration – Col­o­niza­tion.” Sur­round­ing the logo, Sagan drew assort­ed news­pa­per clip­pings that he imag­ined could her­ald the key tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in the space race. Impres­sive­ly drawn astro­nauts in the cor­ner aside, I most enjoyed the faux-clip­ping that read “LIFE FOUND ON VENUS: Pre­his­toric-like rep­tiles are…” Good luck con­tain­ing your sense of won­der on see­ing that.

via F, Yeah Man­u­scripts!

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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