In 1871, 18-year-old Daniel Murray took a job as an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress. He was the second African American ever to work there, and he used his position to collect and document the writings, life stories, and photographs of black Americans in the decades surrounding the Civil War and Emancipation. His collection of African American literature, still held at the Library of Congress, contains hundreds of documents.
Murray was not just an archivist—he was also an outspoken voice in the tense political atmosphere of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow. Throughout his life, he remained an unwavering advocate for equality, justice, and recognition of African American achievements.
This lecture from the Library of Congress features author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, who wrote The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era. She not only tells the life story of Murray, but also follows the sudden rise and fall of African American rights in the wake of the Civil War. Murray lived through the brief flourishing of equality and opportunity during Reconstruction to the oppressive, violent decades of Jim Crow and segregation, as well as the Great Migration that saw millions of black families move from the rural South to industrial centers in more Northern states. Her talk provides a valuable insight into a pivotal period of American history.
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