Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
The Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division (MIRS, pronounced “meers”) collects and preserves audio and moving image (AMI) materials related to the experiences of people of African descent. The division has amassed nearly 400 collections, approximately 5,000 square feet, in a variety of formats, which captures the gestures and sounds of major historical, artistic and cultural moments and influencers. While the strength is the Black American holdings there is considerable Caribbean and African representation in the collection.
Collections
- Destination freedom : Truth goes to Washington. (Radio program)Call Number: Sc Audio C-390 Side 1Publication Date: 1948A radio dramatization based on the life of Sojourner Truth, a mystic, fighter for women's suffrage, and outstanding abolitionist; script by Richard Durham.
- Emancipation Day celebration : songs of freedom and words of Black EmancipationCall Number: Sc Visual DVD-302 Disc 1-4Publication Date: 1998A 135th anniversary commemoration of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862. Features readings from pertinent historical documents, slave petitions and editorials, along with choral and instrumental performances.
- Hang a thousand trees with ribbons : the story of Phillis WheatleyCall Number: Sc Audio C-712 [Cassette]Sophie Okonedo reads an abridged version of Anne Rinaldi's "Hang a thousand trees with ribbons, the story of Phillis Wheatley."
- Poetry of slavery and freedom byCall Number: Sc Audio C-551 (Side 2, no. 3, counter no. 40) Originals in Sc Audio TC-77Publication Date: 1956Etta Moten Barnett discusses the poetry and literature of James Weldon Johnson, Caribbean poet Claude McKay, Phillis Wheatley, James Russell Lowell, and Du Bose Heyward. Their lives and styles of poetry are discussed, along with the predominant themes of slavery and freedom, love and the longing for home featured in their work.
- Sojourner Truth tribute byCall Number: Sc Audio C-554 (Side 2, no. 1, counter no. 00) Original in Sc Audio TC-85Publication Date: 1956Etta Moten Barnett profiles the life of abolitionist Sojourner Truth with Canada Lee presenting a narration of "Her Name is Truth" with the Silvertone Chorus.
Hang a Thousand Trees With Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley by Ann Rinaldi
A fictionalized biography of the eighteenth-century African woman who, as a child, was brought to New England to be a slave, and after publishing her first poem when a teenager, gained renown throughout the colonies as an important Black American poet.