Tardy reply to Mac West re the curtailed Library of Congress exhibition: I have a clipping file on this incident because of my interest in issues of censorship, free speech, institutional cowardice, etc. Washington Post articles indicated that the ostensible reason LC staff objected to the exhibition was the content (including imagined content), but that the objections were exacerbated by poor management-staff relationships. One photograph reportedly upset an employee because it allegedly showed a white overseer with a rifle, guarding field workers: this reminded him of the way the Library's management treated the staff. However, no one else could FIND the armed overseer in the photograph! Although the general content and emotional force of the exhibition was at issue, not just one employee's overreaction to a single photograph, I was struck both by the trivialization of slavery by comparing it with LC employment (how bad could it be?), as well as the risk that imaginary, non-existent elements in a photograph could be used as rationale to close an exhibition! I predict that this incident will surface repeatedly in future discussions of controversial exhibitions. --David Haberstich