#white house
Hate and fear have no place in the United States. Join our #TrumpWatch BINGO during tonight’s State of the Union to ensure discriminatory rhetoric does not become policy. #SOTU
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President Trump will continue to spin his fake news and hateful rhetoric while visiting the US/Mexico border but Americans know the truth.
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It’s time to get loud. Call your Senator now to tell him/her to say no to the border wall. 1-844-305-9050 #NoBanNoWall #TrumpShutdown
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Rodney McMillan, White House II as part of the exhibition Our House: Selections from MOCA’s Collection at MOCA
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Chicago Public Library Awarded National Medal
First Lady Michelle Obama presented Chicago Public Library the National Medal for Museum and Library Service this morning. This is the highest honor that a Library can receive! Commissioner Brian Bannon accepted it on behalf of CPL, and it is awarded for excellent service to the community.
We are honored!
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White Interiors
KN-C29875. Fireworks Show at the White House
In her 1964 Oral History with colleague Pamela Turnure, the First Lady’s Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman described how the fireworks show at a state dinner honoring the King and Queen of Afghanistan (pictured above) came to be, and what President Kennedy’s reaction to it was.
Nancy Tuckerman: When the King and Queen of Afghanistan came, Mrs. Kennedy decided it would be appropriate to have a military review on the South Lawn of the White House. And then she decided something even more spectacular had to be done—because there had already been a military performance before. So she thought of fireworks, which they had never had at the White House, and the President, I remember, was very dubious and a little bit nervous about this because he thought it might be too much of an extravaganza and too much of a display to suddenly have fireworks bursting forth.
Mrs. Wayne Fredericks: Well, was he overruled on this or did he think about it?
Nancy Tuckerman: He thought about it a great deal. In fact, he thought about it so much that he called me constantly to find out if the fireworks came from Japan; how long they would last; and many other things: whether by law in Washington you could set them off other than the 4th of July—but we found out it was legal. He had a hundred questions which I had never thought about—and had no answers for—but found out.
…Also at the Afghanistan dinner, I remember, he suddenly got nervous again over the fireworks and about the day before the dinner he started into exactly the same routine that we had been through a few months ago. He said, “Well, I’ve decided now we must cut the fireworks in half.” So they went from ten minutes to five minutes, and the man who was setting off the fireworks didn’t quite understand or else he decided to make it more spectacular by putting the same amount of dynamite into five minutes because we’d paid for it… So suddenly when the fireworks went off it really was incredible. Do you remember? Oh, the noise! The switchboard in Washington, the police boards, everything was jammed up. People thought the end of the world had come.
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Emily Mathay and Stacey Chandler, Archives Reference
At 10 p.m. on February 14th, 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy brought millions of people into the country’s most famous house with her television special A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy. Hosted by the First Lady and CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood, the tour was the public’s first look at Jacqueline Kennedy’s famed White House restoration project. After the broadcast aired, thousands of people wrote to the White House with their opinions. Their letters are now in the archives at the JFK Library, where we’re working on preserving them.
A sampling of items archivists have removed from letters during preservation of the White House Public Opinion Mail.
By 1962, many Americans knew about Jacqueline Kennedy’s project to fill the White House with antiques from the time of its original construction; she had already helped create the White House Historical Association, the Fine Arts Committee, and the position of White House Curator. But her televised tour showcased the results of all that work for the first time, and invited the world to hear about the history she chose to preserve. The broadcast led many viewers to write to the White House with their own views about history – and the way political figures discussed it.
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Most of the letters noted Jacqueline Kennedy’s appearance in some way, offering praise or criticism of her style, expressions, and tone of voice.
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Some messages offered thoughts (positive and negative) about the content of the tour itself, including personal connections to the history and art the First Lady talked about.
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Others sent in clippings of positive reviews, requested for photographs of the First Family, or asked questions the tour hadn’t quite answered for them. A common question from kids who watched the black-and-white broadcast: are rooms like the Red Room really decorated in the colors they are named after?
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Throughout the boxes of letters, one unexpected figure pops up: Astronaut John Glenn, who blasted into space in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7 just six days after the First Lady’s tour. Letters to the White House often comment on both the White House Tour and Glenn’s success, creating a documentary record of public reaction to both the intimate and the (quite literally) ‘out of this world.’
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A month after the broadcast, a new Nielson report noted that the number of White House visitors in the first week of March had increased by over 5,000 from the previous year. Though we can’t be sure that the dramatic uptick was a result of the First Lady’s broadcast, letters from the public reflect an overwhelmingly positive response to the preservation of the nation’s past even as it began to explore the new frontiers of the future.
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Tune in at 4:30pm ET / 1:30pm PT for a historic moment for “the big B” in LGBTQIA!
WATCH LIVE:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/white-house-bisexual-community-briefing
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“My Body My Fucking Choice” - @bkcollage
Elizabeth Keckley was born enslaved and lived in Dinwiddie County and Petersburg as a young girl. She purchased her freedom working as a seamstress after moving to Missouri. With her freedom, she became the most sought after dress maker in Washington D.C. Her talents as a seamstress, both before and during the Civil War, led to her being chosen as the personal dressmaker of Mary Todd Lincoln. Over the years, both women became good friends and Mrs. Lincoln looked on Elizabeth as one of her closest confidantes during the White House years.
