Prologue: Pieces of History

It was a long, hard journey to the United States in the early 20th century, but even a successful voyage did not guarantee that the immigrant would be able to enter or stay. Deportation was a threat. When immigrants were deported, it could be because of serious crime like murder or petty crime like theft. [...]

It gets harder to find worthy examples of bearded and mustachioed Americans in our holdings after the first decades of the 20th century, when facial hair went out of fashion. Fortunately for us, we can look into a decade known for groovy facial hair: the 1970s. This is one of our most popular images, though [...]

Oh, President Taft. It was your birthday yesterday, and I just had to feature you here on Facial Hair Friday. You were one of the few Presidents that seemed to stick my brain when I was studying for the AP History exam. Important dates, key battles, our founding documents—I could barely keep those facts stuck to my [...]

What can you say about a man, his accordion, a clock, and a bottle? We went to guest judge and social media coordinator Jeannie Chen, who once featured a infant President Ford holding a tiny accordion on the Presidential Libraries tumblr blog. Congratulations to Mickey! Your caption won Jeannie’s heart and got that Croce tune stuck in [...]

If this Friday’s facial hair star lived in present times, he would be so very easy to Google. Yes, “Bezaleel Armstrong” would be pretty easy to find on Facebook and the Internet. In fact, even now a quick name-check in the Google search box pulls up plenty of hits on his unique name. He would also be pretty [...]