Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

Recent Artifacts Online, Spring 2022

Collections Search is blooming with springtime additions! They join the thousands of paintings, photos, and artifacts that are already available online.

Page School Graduation Ceremony Record (Parts 1 and 2)

This phonographic record is the first in a set of four discs that make up the complete recording of the Capitol Page School’s 1954 graduation exercises. This particular record begins with an invocation by Senate Chaplain Dr. Frederick Brown Harris. It’s followed by part of a speech by valedictorian Karl Derek Hawver, as well as comments by the vice president of the senior class—and future Member of Congress—Paul E. Kanjorski.

William Lacy Clay Sr.

In this undated photograph, snapped in Bill Clay Sr.’s office, framed works of art—including what appears to be a cartoon depicting Clay—decorate the walls. The art in the Missouri Representative’s office often drew notice. When guests arrived for a meeting, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter wrote in 1998, “as most first-time visitors do, they remark[ed] on the wall filled with tribal masks from Africa and elsewhere.”

Melissa A. Hart Lapel Pin

Melissa Hart won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000 as the first Republican woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress. This button is from one of her four subsequent campaigns. Voter frustration with the George W. Bush presidential administration fueled a surge in Democratic votes in 2006, and Hart lost her seat along with many others in her party.

Gallery Ticket

The holder of this 1929 gallery pass witnessed Ramsay MacDonald deliver an informal address to the House, the first time a British Prime Minister addressed either chamber of Congress. Another MacDonald sat in the Diplomatic Gallery. The Prime Minister’s daughter, Ishbel, chaperoned by several diplomats’ wives, accompanied her father on his U.S. trip and watched his speech.

James A. Johnson Jr. at the Capitol Page School

James Johnson Jr. attended the Capitol Page School from February 1959 to June 1961. Although the House retracted his official appointment as a House Page, likely because of racial discrimination, several Representatives found a workaround so that Johnson could still attend the school. Photographed here registering for class with the principal, the teenager won academic awards and scholarships at the Capitol Page School. “If you give me an opportunity, I’m not going to waste it,” Johnson explained in an oral history. “I’m going to find some way to succeed whatever the challenges or barriers are.”

Want to dive into even more new objects and their stories? Here are a few more additions:

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