A scarce “official souvenir program” for an African American exhibition basketball team whose repertoire included trick-shots and trick-dribbling, imitations, “comedy at its finest,” “classy ball handling,” and more. This work opens with a word from the team’s owners, addressed to the basketball team’s many fans throughout America and Canada. Introducing.....
A small lot comprising two circulars, a printed letter, and a sample ballot, urging voters to reject a specious elimination of the poll tax and representing a milestone in the state’s battle over voter suppression laws. This lot of voter outreach material urges voters to “Vote Against!” a series of.....
Three general orders issued by officers of the Department of Virginia, Army of the James addressing “matters relating to Negro Affairs,” particularly employment, in the wake of emancipation. The first two of these orders make substantial revisions and reversals to an extensive landmark order (No. 46) issued by Major General.....
A scarce handbook published by the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) outlining its course of action for African Liberation Month in May 1974, which included both local demonstrations as well as a national conference and demonstration in Washington, D.C. The contents include an Introduction, Program for the Month, Issues for.....
An unrecorded anti-slavery broadside responding to a local newspaper’s fearmongering by eloquently explaining the real “object and motives of the Anti-Slavery Society.” Abolitionism, as this broadside explains, is motivated by “humanity and justice,” and the aims of the Anti-Slavery Society are not, as the Rochester Gazette article evidently suggested, “to.....
A compelling chart graphically comparing the cultural, economic, material, and human resources of the Free and Slave States, issued shortly after the Battle of Fort Sumter and seeking to bolster Union spirit. Consisting of twenty-eight bar graphs and drawing on the most recent information (most of which dates from 1850.....
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.....
In addition to regular “Departments”—DuBois’s editorial, “The Outer Pocket,” “Men of the Month,” and so on—this issue of The Crisis contains the first publication of Waverly T. Carmichael’s dialect poem “‘Taint No Need O’ Women Worrin’” and photographically-illustrated coverage of the congressional investigation into the Massacre of East St. Louis.....
A ‘negro uplift’ recruiting poster appealing to the Black community and countering the racist trope of African Americans being lazy. This poster features an African American serviceman tenderly saying good-bye to his wife or girlfriend. The couple stands in a walkway in front of a residence while in the background.....
A scarce ‘negro uplift’ recruiting poster depicting members of a historic Black regiment battling German soldiers, and invoking the Civil War and emancipation through the inclusion of a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Paying tribute to the contributions made by African Americans during World War I, this poster directly references the.....
An unrecorded prospectus for an anti-slavery newspaper co-organized by newspaperman T. C. Connolly and “the most prominent Quaker in antebellum Virginia,” Samuel McPherson Janney, after Janney’s previous editorial collaborator was killed in a duel. Samuel Janney devoted much of his life to advancing the cause of anti-slavery in his home.....
An exceedingly scarce playbill advertising the very first performances of Henry J. Conway’s stage adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the earliest to appear in the city in which the novel was first published. Dramatizations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel began in 1852, the year of its publication by Boston.....
This “Soldiers Number” of The Crisis, published just a few months before the end of first world war, contains the first publication of Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.’s “A Sonnet to Negro Soliders.” Printed above DuBois’s editorial is a letter addressed to him by Secretary of War Newton T. Baker commending.....
An unrecorded poster promoting a convention held by African American workers in Cincinnati, Ohio that led to the establishment of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. The motto of this poster—“take every struggle at the point of production to the community, take every struggle in the community to the point.....
![Item #7825 UNIVERSAL RACES CONGRESS [caption title]. W. E. B. Du Bois](https://jamesarsenault.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/7825_1.jpg?width=320&height=427&fit=bounds&auto=webp&v=1674576524)
An unrecorded notice advertising a speech delivered by W.E.B. Du Bois at the City Liberal Club (later National Liberal Club) in London in advance of the first Universal Races Congress of 1911. The Congress met the following month at the University of London and featured many prominent humanists from numerous.....
This issue of The Crisis features Jessie Fauset’s “Douce Souvenance,” as well as richly illustrated articles on “The Negro Church,” “The Baptists,” “The Negro and the Roman Catholic Church,” and “The union of White Methodism.” A review of Du Bois’s recently published Darkwater by white journalist and activist Charles Edward.....
This issue of The Crisis contains the first printing of Jessie Fauset’s “Oriflamme” as well as two discussions of the Great Migration, in an article by Walter F. White (who would be president of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955) and an “Opinion” by W. E. B. Du Bois. The.....
This Easter issue of The Crisis features the first installments of Jessie Fauset’s “There Was One Time! A Story of Spring,” the tale of Anna, a young African American French teacher and just Fauset’s second short story. Fauset (1882–1961), who would shortly become the literary editor for The Crisis, was.....
This September, 1917 issue of The Crisis is focused on the Massacre of East St. Louis, in which a white mob attacked and murdered Black residents, burning their homes and businesses between July 2nd and July 5th and causing over half the city’s African American residents to flee. Reporting by.....
A general order exempting from the draft African American men already employed by the Union Army, issued by a Union General most famous for attempting to abolish slavery in several southern states prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Issued by Major General David Hunter just under two weeks after his order.....
A pamphlet comprising a series of articles on “the Negro and War” that C. L. R. James originally published in the Socialist Appeal (a newspaper published by American Trotskyists from 1935 to 1941). These writings were informed by James’s 1939 conversations with Leon Trotsky in Mexico. C. L. R. James.....
This issue of The Crisis, published the same month that New York passed a women’s suffrage amendment, includes brief articles by Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna Howard Shaw, and Mary Garrett Hay, as well as a powerful editorial by W. E. B. DuBois addressing the importance of the Black vote and.....
Scarce and striking broadside for a Philadelphia civil rights rally in solidarity with Cairo, Illinois, which, although a small town, became a focal point of northern racist violence and civil rights activism in the 1960s and ‘70s. The “Cairo Solidarity Rally” was advertised for June 17, 1971 at Philadelphia’s long-standing.....
An unrecorded souvenir program for the church television show of Black evangelist Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, who covertly worked with the FBI to discredit Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The program for the service appears on page one and describes a procession, opening hymn, prayer, introductory remarks, sermon (”Have you.....