Library of Congress Collections

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. The research arm of Congress, it also makes resources available to the American people. It is an agency of the legislative branch of the U.S. Government.

The library began in 1800 and is located in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. There are millions of items in the collections, including many items pertaining to Kentucky African Americans. The collections include, for example, the emancipation documents from Edmund Lyne, who freed his slaves in the late 1790s; "The two ways," an 1896 sermon by Rev. J. W. Mayes, pastor of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in McGowan, KY; photographs of students and buildings at Berea College, collected by W. E. B. Dubois and Thomas J. Calloway for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition; and the digital copy of the 1883 National Convention of Colored Men (held in Louisville, KY) program [available online].

Visit the Library of Congress and its website to find additional resources.