Bess Lomax Hawes Collection
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Bess Lomax Hawes collection AFC 2014/008 Guides to the Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture American Folklife Center, Library of Congress Washington, D.C. December 2016 Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.contact Additional search options available at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af016012 LC Online Catalog record: http://lccn.loc.gov/2014655281 Prepared by Melissa Lindberg Collection Summary Title: Bess Lomax Hawes collection Inclusive Dates: circa 1890s-2009 Call No.: AFC 2014/008 Creator: Bess Lomax Hawes, 1921-2009 Extent: 13,480 items Extent: 45 containers Extent (Manuscripts): 394 folders in 31 boxes Extent (Sound Recordings): 33 sound tape reels : analog ; various sizes. Extent (Sound Recordings): 68 sound cassettes : analog. Extent (Sound Recordings): 1 sound disc (CD-R) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. Extent (Graphic Materials): circa 2,000 photographic prints : black and white, color ; various sizes. Extent (Graphic Materials): circa 500 photographs : film negatives. Extent (Graphic Materials): circa 200 drawings. Extent (Moving Images): 8 videocassettes (VHS) : color, sound ; 1/2 in. Extent (Moving Images): 2 video discs (DVD) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. Extent (Artifacts): approximately 20 items ; various sizes. Language: Collection material in English. Location: Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. http://hdl.loc.gov/ loc.afc/folklife.home Summary: Papers and audiovisual materials relating to the career and personal life of folk arts administrator, folklorist, filmmaker, musician, and teacher Bess Lomax Hawes, most from 1960-2001. Includes work produced by Hawes in her work as a professor at San Fernando Valley State College in Northridge, California, and as head of the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Program in Washington, DC. The collection includes writings, correspondence, business records, musical transcriptions and photographs. Also includes artwork produced by her husband, Baldwin "Butch" Hawes. Location: Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Selected Search Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein. People Bergey, Barry--Correspondence. Bulger, Peggy A.--Correspondence. Cohen, Ronald D., 1940- Dane, Barbara. Duggan, Shirley Lomax, 1905-1996--Correspondence. Dundes, Alan--Correspondence. Elder, J. D. (Jacob Delworth), 1913-2003--Correspondence. Hanks, Nancy, 1927-1983--Correspondence. Hawes, Bess Lomax, 1921-2009, collector, author. Hawes, Bess Lomax, 1921-2009--Correspondence. Hawes, Bess Lomax, 1921-2009--Ethnomusicological collections. Hawes, Butch, 1919-1971, artist. Hawes, Butch, 1919-1971--Correspondence. Hodsoll, Francis Samuel Monaise--Correspondence. Jabbour, Alan--Correspondence. Jones, Bessie, 1902-1984--Correspondence--Interviews. Leadbelly, 1885-1949. Lomax, Alan, 1915-2002--Correspondence. Lomax, Bess Brown, 1880-1931--Correspondence. Lomax, John A. (John Avery), 1867-1948--Correspondence. Bess Lomax Hawes collection 2 Lomax, John Avery, 1907-1974--Correspondence. Lomax, Ruby T. (Ruby Terrill)--Correspondence. McCann, Gordon, 1931- --Correspondence. Rinzler, Ralph--Correspondence. Seeger, Pete, 1919-2014--Correspondence. Seeger, Toshi--Correspondence. Willett, E. Henry, 1951- --Correspondence. Organizations Almanac Singers. American Folklife Center. American Folklore Society. Association for Cultural Equity. California Folklore Society. California State University, Northridge. Festival of American Folklife. Festival of Pacific Arts (6th : 1992 : Rarotonga, Cook Islands) National Endowment for the Arts. Folk Arts Program. National Endowment for the Arts. Folk Arts Program. National Endowment for the Arts. National Heritage Fellowship. Sea Island Singers. Subjects African Americans--Music. Arts administrators--United States--Biography. Children's songs. Ethnic arts. Ethnomusicology. Folk art. Folk dance--United States. Folk festivals. Folk music--United States. Folk songs, English. Folklore--California. Folklore--Study and teaching. Folklore--United States--Congresses. Folklorists' writings, American. Folklorists--United States--Correspondence. Indians of North America--California--Music. Music--Bermuda Islands. Music--Cook Islands. Music--Guam. Music--Hawaii. Music--Micronesia (Federated States) Music--Northern Mariana Islands. Music--Samoa. Music--Trinidad and Tobago. Music--United States. Music--West Indies. Public folklore--Washington (D.C.) Shape-note singing. Singing games--Antilles, Lesser. Singing games--Sea Islands. Women folklorists--United States. Bess Lomax Hawes collection 3 Form/Genre Clippings. Correspondence. Diaries. Documentary films. Drawings. Field notes. Interviews. Manuscripts. Oral histories. Photograph albums. Photographs. Scores. Scrapbooks. Songbooks. Sound recordings. Speeches. Videocassettes. Administrative Information Arrangement The collection is divided into the following series: I. Manuscripts; II. Sound recordings; III. Graphic materials; IV. Moving images; V. Artifacts. Acquisition Donated by Naomi Bishop, Corey Denos and Nicholas Hawes in 2014. Accruals No further accruals are expected. Related Material Bess Lomax Hawes Student Folklore Collection, 1958-1977 at the California State University, Northridge Processing History Melissa Lindberg processed the collection, beginning in 2015 and completing work in 2016. The collection was organized by family members before it was transferred to the American Folklife Center, and the processor maintained that order. In rare cases where original order was not apparent, the processor assigned an order. Most of the collection was rehoused. Unlabeled folders were assigned labels. Copyright Status Duplication of the recorded materials may be governed by copyright and other restrictions. Access and Restrictions The collection is open for research use. Access restrictions apply. Please contact the Folklife Reading Room before requesting materials: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.contact Preferred Citation Bess Lomax Hawes collection (AFC 2014/008), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Bess Lomax Hawes collection 4 Biographical Note Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) was a folklorist, teacher, musician, writer, filmmaker, and folk arts administrator. Named for her mother, Bess Brown Lomax, Jr. was exposed at a young age to folk music performance and fieldwork through her father, John A. Lomax, and brother, Alan Lomax. As a teenager she transcribed music from field recording sessions, and provided assistance to her father, brother Alan, and composer Ruth Crawford Seeger during their work on Our Singing Country (1941), a collection of American folk songs and ballads. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1941, she moved to New York City, where she performed with the Almanac Singers, including Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, her future husband, artist Butch Hawes, and others. She moved with her husband to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she taught guitar lessons, wrote music and cared for her young children. In 1952, Hawes moved with her family to California, where she taught guitar and courses in folklore and anthropology at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge). As professor, she wrote a number of academic papers and was an active participant in the California Folklore Society, which she served as president from 1971-1973. While on the faculty at San Fernando Valley State, Hawes completed her M.A. in Folklore from the University of California, Berkeley, studying under folklorist Alan Dundes. She made four films while working in California: Georgia Sea Island Singers (1964), Buckdancer (1965), Pizza Pizza Daddy-O (1967) and Say Old Man, Can You Play the Fiddle (1970). In 1977, Hawes moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as head of the Folk Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and stayed on for a fifteen-year tenure. At NEA she raised the public profile of the folk arts, establishing apprenticeship and other grant programs to support folk artists with skills as varied as music and dance, basketmaking, and pottery. A crowning achievement at the NEA was the establishment of the National Heritage Fellowship program to honor folk artists for lifetime achievement and contributions to traditional arts in the United States. Hawes traveled widely for her work at NEA, both nationally and internationally. She wrote several books: Step It Down (1972), co-authored with Bessie Jones; Brown Girl in the Ring (1997), co-authored with Alan Lomax and J.D. Elder; and Sing It Pretty (2008), a memoir. In 1993 Hawes received the National Medal of Arts from president Bill Clinton. Scope and Content Collection of manuscripts, sound recordings, graphic materials, moving images and artifacts representing the life work of folk arts administrator, folklorist, filmmaker, musician, and teacher Bess Lomax Hawes. The bulk of the collection materials date from 1960 through 2000 and document Hawes’s work as a professor in the anthropology department at San Fernando Valley State College, as a coordinator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife, and as the first head of the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Program. The collection also includes documentation of Hawes’s family life and work as a musician