We all know what the yellow ribbon symbolizes, but how did it become
a national folk symbol?
Many people believe the practice was started by Penne Laingen, wife of
Bruce Laingen, an ambassador who was held hostage in Iran beginning Nov.
4, 1979, with the rest of the U.S. embassy staff.
However, the story is much more complicated. You can read the full
account, researched extensively by former folklife specialist Gerald
Parsons.
Parsons begins, "During the last decade, no single form of expression
documented in the Archive of Folk Culture has stimulated more letters,
more phone calls, more in-person inquiries than the yellow ribbon. The
questions began in 1981 when the Library of Congress received a blizzard
of inquiries, particularly from the news media, about the history of yellow
ribbons then being displayed everywhere in America in support of Americans
being held hostage in Iran. The basic question that reporters had in mind
was how the symbol came into being. Many callers had ideas of their own
on the subject; some had interviewed the authors of relevant popular songs;
others had spoken to wives of hostages in Iran in 1980-81. Still others
had talked to historians of the Civil War. ..."
Parsons was a specialist in the Library's American
Folklife Center, which was created by Congress in 1976 and placed
at the Library of Congress to preserve and present American folklife through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference
service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The
center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established
in the Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic
material from the United States and around the world.
