Virginia Cononie
On Easter Sunday, April 20, the USC Upstate Library will begin its overnight and extended hours schedule for the end of spring term and final exams. The library will be open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, to accommodate your study, research, and computing needs. The library will also have extended hours on select Friday evenings and will be open its regular hours on Saturdays as well.
Here’s the end-of-semester schedule:
This schedule is based on available staffing and therefore is subject to change.
When the library is closed, students can get research help through the Ask a Librarian chat service. This service is staffed by real people (not bots!) and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
For more information about library hours, including schedule changes, visit the Library Calendar; the library’s website; or check out the library’s social media presence on Facebook and Instagram.
Now on view in the library's 1st floor gallery space (past the library café and adjacent to the study rooms) is the poster exhibit, Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964. This bilingual exhibit (Spanish-English) examines the experiences of Mexican guest workers and their families during World War II and in the post-war era. Then some 2 million Mexican men came to the U.S. on short-term labor contracts in what became the largest guest worker program in American history, the Emergency Farm Labor Program, also known as the Bracero Program. ("Bracero" is a Spanish word indicating "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms.")
The posters feature images and interviews by documentary photographer Leonard Nadel (1916-1990), who chronicled the experiences of Braceros. Because of World War II labor shortages, the U.S. initiated a series of agreements with the government of Mexico to recruit guest workers for American farms and railroads. Although the work was grueling and the Braceros experienced exploitation, discrimination, segregation, family separation, and other ills, the laborers made a significant impact on the political, economic, and social climate of both the United States and Mexico.
The exhibit is bookended by two posters from the Mr. Johnson Paints portrait series, one of César Estrada Chávez (1927-1993) and the second of Dolores Fernández Huerta (1930- ). Chávez was an Arizona-born Mexican American farm laborer, who later became a labor leader and civil rights activist. Huerta is a New Mexico-born, California-based Mexican American labor leader and civil rights activist. Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which evolved into the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Through the activism of Chávez, Huerta, and others, the Bracero Program ended in 1964.
The exhibit was organized by the National Museum of American History in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) and received support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. The photographs featured in the exhibit are by Leonard Nadel.
At USC Upstate, the exhibit is presented by the library in collaboration with the South Carolina Centro Latino.
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Image credit: "The first Braceros arriving in Los Angeles by train in 1942" by Dorothea Lange, working for the US Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
