Provincetown’s History Told Through Artifacts
by Steve Desroches
Provincetown and the people who live and visit here make a huge impact on the world often disproportionate to the tiny size of the town. And whether it be art, politics, or culture, Provincetown continually pops up in documentaries, news stories, and of course in the collections and archives of museums, libraries, and other institutions all around the globe. At the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library, in Washington, D.C., the mammoth federal cultural institution has a huge collection and runs many programs documenting American history and culture. Two such venerated collections are the National Film Registry and the National Recording Registry, which contain moving images and sounds selected for preservation for their “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance” to the nation’s heritage. The Film Registry was founded in 1988 and the Recording Registry in 2000, and ever since, 25 additions are made to each, every year. And of course there are connections to Provincetown.
The Film Registry added John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972) in 2021 and Hairspray (1988) in 2022, as well as the concert film The T.A.M.I. Show (1964) in 2006, which captures a show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium featuring The Supremes, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, and many more, including The Barbarians, a rock band made up of Provincetown natives. Frequent Provincetown visitor Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990), the classic documentary about ball room culture in New York City, was added in 2016.
As for the Recording Registry, Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” the almost 20-minute song about a hippie Thanksgiving gone wrong, cooked and hosted by the late, longtime Provincetown resident Alice Brock, was added in 2017. And the haunting Billie Holiday classic 1939 song “Strange Fruit,” a protest against the lynching of Black Americans, was added in 2002. While Holiday did indeed perform at the Atlantic House in 1955, the Outer Cape roots go deeper as the song was originally a poem written by Abel Meeropol, who wrote it in response to a 1930 photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Abel and his wife Anne adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after they were orphaned when their parents were executed in what is now largely thought of as a judicial farce. The Meeropols spent summers in Wellfleet, and later Truro, and their descendants still live on the Outer Cape.
The American public is invited to submit nominations for each registry every year. To do so visit loc.gov and search for National Film Registry and National Recording Registry to learn more about the nomination process and how you can participate.
