An illustrated broadside employing various racist tropes to explain local Republican election losses in Philadelphia in 1867, here characterized as the death of the "Great Negro Party." The broadside consists of a series of captioned wood-engravings, including the head of an African American man above a coffin accompanied by the.....
A pair of hastily composed yet fascinating illustrated advertising broadsides for patent medicines and other dodgy products aimed at African-Americans in Philadelphia. The advertiser, E. P. Read, offers a host of concoctions—“Women's Long Life Female Remedy,” “Young-Youth-Nerve and Body Tonic,” “Live Forever Tonic,” etc. Also promoted is a nascent fraternal.....
A fundraising circular for Mary McLeod Bethune’s all-black Bethune Cookman College in Florida. Celebrated African-American educator, stateswoman, philanthropist and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955)—fondly known as “The First Lady of The Struggle”—is best known for founding this private college for black students in Daytona Beach, Florida. Born to.....
A rare, jam-packed minstrel show playbill with blackface performances by Buckleys Serenaders in their Boston theater, brimming with ‘comic’ descriptions of three acts plus general information. Part I of this program includes melodies such as Darky Felicity and Farm Yard; Part II features variety acts such as the song and.....
The illustrated catalog for the Harmon Foundation’s 1935 exhibition of works by three contemporary black artists, held at the Delphic Studios. In addition to featuring the works and biographies of artists Malvin Gray Johnson, Richmond Barthé, and Sargent Johnson, the catalog is both a retrospective of the Harmon Foundation’s efforts.....
A broadside advertising Mack & Arnold’s minstrel show at the Windsor, Vermont town hall, with an original ticket to the show. The public is advised that “this Troupe is not composed of one or two legitimate performers and several amateurs but that each and every member is an Etheopian Artist.....
Second edition of Rockafield’s popular compilation of materials related to the “Manheim Tragedy,” a brutal double rape and murder committed in Manheim, Pennsylvania, by two men: one described as a “negro,” the other as a “mulatto speaking the German language.” The pair confessed to beating, “having to do with,” and.....
Scarce anti-Langston Hughes/Paul Robeson broadside published in the 1950s by far-right demagogue Gerald L. K. Smith, accusing both men of being anti-Christian, communist agitators. The immediate occasion for this attack was Hughes’s poem “Goodbye Christ,” which he wrote during a 1932 trip to the Soviet Union, which is reproduced in.....
The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 resulted in a virtual explosion of books, broadsides, sheet music, posters and other ephemera. Boston publisher John P. Jewett (1814–1884) published this song for voice and piano in the same year that he published the first edition of the novel. The price.....