Scarce first edition of the American Colonization Society’s Second Annual Report, detailing the results of a recent reconnaissance trip to West Africa. The focus of this report by the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour, also known as the American Colonization Society (ACS) is the “recent mission.....
An exceedingly rare Blind Tom biographical sketch, published in connection with his appearance in Philadelphia to give a series of concerts over the course of three weeks in September and early October of 1865. Newspaper notices appearing in The Philadelphia Inquirer trace his performances there. On September 4, the paper.....
First edition of this pioneering anthology of slave songs, collected and transcribed during the Civil War and published in order to elevate the musical genius of Black Americans and record “a state of society which has passed away.” The project was spearheaded by Lucy McKim Garrison, who at age nineteen.....
First edition. Consists of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s responses to inquiries from the British Anti-Slavery Society, including sections on the domestic slave trade, illicit importation of slaves, circumstances of the enslaved population, economic and legal conditions, abolitionist strategy, and slavery in Texas. REFERENCES: Blockson 10028.
The only insider account of the raid on Harpers Ferry, written and self-published by the only surviving Black member of John Brown’s raiding party. Osborne P. Anderson (1830–1872) was born free in West Fallow Field, Pennsylvania, and attended Oberlin College with another participant in the raid, John Anthony Copeland, Jr......
An important account of the New York City draft riots and the efforts by the Metropolitan Police to quell them, including a precinct-by-precinct description of the riots, and praising numerous bureaus and individuals of the Police Department. “One of the first studies to appear on the riots”—Nevins. Dedicated to the.....
A portfolio of plates picturing a selection of Richmond Barthé’s sculptures, including figures in African-American history, religious subjects, theater and dance celebrities, and more. This is one of a series of catalogs published by the Harmon Foundation in the 1940s showcasing the work of African American artists. The titles of the.....
First edition. The author was a Massachusetts abolitionist and educator who traveled in 1864, with the support of the New England Freedman’s Aid Society, to Beaufort, S.C., to be a teacher of freed slaves. Botume documents her journey, teaching experience, and abolitionist sentiments. REFERENCES: Afro-Americana 1404.
First edition. A comprehensive social-historical treatment of the place of African Americans within American society and the African diaspora. Includes sections on the origins of slavery, colonial period, Revolutionary War, relations with Native Americans, slave revolts, abolitionism, colonization and founding of Liberia, emancipation, (dis)enfranchisement, racial violence, education, migration, and contemporary.....
First edition of this “one-thousand-eighty-two-page anthology [that] not only defined the field of African American literature as a legitimate academic discipline for the first time but, by soberly assessing black authors ‘without sentimental allowances’ on an equal rather than separate basis, ‘ser[ved] notice that the Negro author has come of.....
First edition. African American abolitionist William Wells Brown’s account of his travels in Europe as a fugitive slave, undertaken while living in exile in the United Kingdom. Adapted from Brown’s 1853 work published in London and titled Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met.....
First edition. William Wells Brown’s firsthand account of his life as a slave, culminating in his successful escape to freedom at the age of nineteen. One of the most popular slave narratives, the work describes the psychological toll of enslavement, questions the hypocrisy of “Christian” slaveholders, and connects education to.....
An address given by future Lincoln cabinet-member and Supreme Court chief justice Salmon P. Chase at a national anti-slavery convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1845. Chase, the leader of the Ohio Liberty Party, argues that the abolition of slavery can be accomplished “peacefully, constitutionally, without real injury to any.....
A forceful appeal to the legislature of Massachusetts by an important abolitionist and feminist activist, urging noncompliance with the Fugitive Slave Act in the wake of several bitterly controversial arrests of escaped slaves in Boston. The “New Series” anti-slavery tracts were issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society between 1860 and.....
First edition. Child’s radical tract arguing not only for abolition, but also full equality and citizenship for African Americans, described by Thomas Wentworth Higginson as “the first anti-slavery work ever printed in America in book form.” With a frontispiece engraving of a kneeling African, after H. Thomson, as well as.....
A rare regimental history of the exploits of an African-American Civil War unit, composed largely of freedmen from Tennessee and commanded by officers mainly from Ohio. Initially, the name of the regiment was the First Tennessee Infantry (African Descent), but was changed to the 59th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry.....
First edition. An overview of the Gullah culture, history, and economy. Mason Crum (1887–1980) was born in the South Carolina coastal plain and grew up close to Gullah culture. Crum served as a faculty member in the Department of Religion at Duke University between 1930 and 1957, specializing in Christianity.....
![Item #10175 “Correct Profile of the Late Captain Paul Cuffee” [and] “The Late Captain Paul...](https://jamesarsenault.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/10175_1.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1787759822)
A striking profile portrait of Afro-Native American sea captain Paul Cuffee, one of the wealthiest Black Americans of his time and the first African American to lead an on-the-ground colonization effort in Sierra Leone, published five years after his death with a biographical sketch in an influential English weekly. This.....
![Item #10481 Frederick Douglass Lif och Samtid. [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.]. Frederick...](https://jamesarsenault.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/10481_1.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1787950022)
First Swedish edition of Douglass’s last book, exemplifying the author’s abiding international reputation long after the fight to end slavery in America had ended. It concludes with chapters mainly devoted to his role as Consul General to Haiti, and records his death on February 20th, 1895, the year this edition.....
The rare first Dublin edition—and first British Isles edition—of one of the most influential of all slave narratives, published in the same year as the first American edition, featuring an important new preface and illustrated with a frontispiece portrait that Douglass disliked, leading to its replacement in the second Dublin.....
The stated third English edition, but technically the first published in England (preceded in the British Isles only by the two Dublin editions of 1845 and 1846), signed and dated by Douglass when he spoke at the Corn Exchange in Wakefield, England in January of 1847 and further enhanced with.....
Rare third edition, second state, bound and issued by Douglass at his North Star Press in Rochester, consisting of sheets from the third edition (Boston, 1847), but issued without the frontispiece. Following the initial publication of his Narrative in Boston in 1845, which revealed much about his origins and received.....
First edition of Douglass's first published work, the most renowned and influential of all slave narratives, and a cornerstone of any collection of nineteenth-century African Americana. During his early years on the antislavery lecture circuit, Frederick Douglass spoke with extraordinary eloquence about the evils of slavery, while refraining from revealing.....
The first and only edition of this publication of the speeches made by Frederick Douglass and Robert Ingersoll at a mass meeting in Washington, D.C., where—exactly twenty years after the Emancipation Proclamation—the Supreme Court had just eviscerated the Civil Rights Acts of 1875 and hobbled the 13th and 14th Amendments.....
First and only edition. A scarce pictorial souvenir issued by Frederick Douglass’ Cedar Hill estate in Anacostia, D.C., one year after his death. Its photo-illustrations include a formal portrait of Douglass, a panoramic view of the property, an image showing Douglass in his library, and another of him standing on.....