Search Results: African American Studies from Antiquarian Book Shop

Washington: Government Printing Office. Very Good. 1854. First Edition Thus. Pamphlet. 33d Congress, 1st Session, Senate Mis. Doc. 72; 16 pages; Clean and complete in original self wrappers, stitched at left fold; small faint stain at lower outer corner of first two leaves; foredge curled on a few leaves (unevenly opened); two one word pencil notations in margin "veto" (p. 4) and "Kansas" (p. 8). A very nice example of this uncommon document. OCLC 78611368 OCLC 63889609 End of the document reads: "State Department, Washington, July 22, 1854. / A true copy, carefully collated with the original roll - W. Hunter, Chief Clerk." The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had outlawed slavery above the 36 30' latitude in the Louisiana territories and reopened the national struggle over slavery in the western territories. In January 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas introduced a bill that divided the land west of Missouri into… Read More

New York: Judge Company. Very Good. 1908. First Edition. Print. 1 pages; Image clean and clear, with bright white matting. Image measures 13 X 9.25 inches; matted measures 22 X 14 inches. Full page cover of JUDGE magazine for April 11, 1908 depicting William Jennings Bryan as a golliwog (African American caricature) with a basket of eggs representing electoral delegates, some of them dropping to the floor and cracking. Beyond the door is a sign pointing to Denver (site of the Democratic National Convention), and hiding in the dark is an image of Bryan's primary challenger Minnesota Governor John Albert Johnson with a threateningly raised hatchet labeled "Minnesota Delegates." The 1908 U.S. Presidential election occurred in the backdrop of the Progressive achievements of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's second term as well as against the U.S. recovery following the Panic of 1907. In this election, Roosevelt's chosen successor, Republican William Howard… Read More

New York: McClure, Phillips and Company. Near Fine. 1901. First Edition. Hardcover. 187 pages; Clean and secure in original navy blue cloth binding with stylized gilt lettering at spine and front board. Original owner's name stamped on ffep "H. Jennings." OCLC 868014826 A fascinating collection of articles on various aspects of race relations in America at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. Papers delivered include "The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites in the South" by W.E. Burghardt DuBois [Professor Atlanta University] ; "The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites" by George T. Winston; "The Causes of Race Superiority" by Edward A. Ross [noted eugenicist]; "The Natives of Hawaii" by Titus Munson Coan [son of early anglo missionaries/settlers in Hawaii; The Races of the Philippines - The Tagals" by Charles C. Pierce [Army chaplain]; "The Semi-Civilized Tribes of the Philippines" by Oliver C. Miller;… Read More

Boston: Ticknor and Fields. Very Good. 1856. First Edition. Pamphlet. 32 pages; Contents unmarked and complete, stitched at left edge, lacks original wrappers. OCLC 1031746793. Sabin 67196. Hubbard 1133. Josiah Quincy (1772-1864) was President of Harvard University from January 29, 1829 to August 27, 1845. He was also a politician, serving as a Federalist congressman, Boston mayor, Massachusetts municipal court judge, and Massachusetts state representative and state senator. After his retirement, Quincy became interested in politics once again. His son Edmund’s abolitionist politics drew Quincy into the antislavery movement. At the age of 82, Quincy began writing political pamphlets denouncing the “slave power” and the Fugitive Slave Law. He became a firm supporter of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and a Unionist after the beginning of the Civil War. .

Washington: American Colonization Society. Very Good-. 1872. First Edition. Hardcover. This book comprises all twelve issues of The African Repository for the year 1872 bound together in plain black cloth with marbled page edges. Cloth has a tear at base of spine, ex-libris but no markings. Contents clean and tight, unmarked, no foxing. Some of the articles include: The Diamond Fields of South Africa, The Bank of West Africa, The Caffres of South Africa, The Present African Slave Trade, Interesting Letter from Dr. Livingston, An African's Plantation, etc. In 1825 the American Colonization Society began this quarterly publication, The African Repository and Colonial Journal, edited by Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797-1872). The journal promoted both colonization and Liberia. Among the items printed were articles about Africa, letters of praise, official dispatches stressing the prosperity and steady growth of the colony, information about emigrants, and lists of donors. Ralph Randolph… Read More

Cambridge: Issued by W.S.B.. Very Good. 1913. First Edition. Hardcover. 87 pages; Contents clean and secure in original binding of brown cloth spine with brown boards, printed paper titles label on front board. Some wear to cloth at spine ends, corners rounded. William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite (1878 – 1962) was an African-American writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist, and publisher. His work as a critic and anthologist was widely praised and important in the development of East Coast poetry styles in the early 20th century. Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1878. According to Jill Lepore, his father "came from a wealthy British Guiana family; his mother was the daughter of a North Carolina slave." The surveys that Braithwaite published in the Boston Evening Transcript led him to begin his most important life work: publishing an annual anthology of "Magazine Verse." These anthologies covered a wide range of poets, from the conservative… Read More

Washington DC: G.P.O. & House District of Columbia Committee. Very Good. 1941 & 2. Hardcover. Folio volume, maroon leather spine over black fabric covered boards, spine lettered in gilt,. The front free endpaper has the rubber stamp, in red ink, of the US House Committee on the District of Columbia. Above this is a clipped portion of an envelope with the (printed) Frank signature of Congressman John McMillan (long-time Chair of the Committee) - with a handwritten note in black ink: "Return to Permanent Committee Files." Above this is the Surplus-Duplicate stamp of the Library of Congress in blue ink. The volume's contents include four various draft House Bills intending to consolidate the DC Police Court and the Municipal Court into a combined "Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia." These printed draft Bills are in the "working" format, with large print, double-spaced lines and with line numbers in the left margins for each… Read More

Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1951. Hardcover. xiii, (3), 238 pages; Philadelphia: Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1951. Land of the Free Series; xiii, (3) , 238 pages; Contents clean and secure in original cloth binding (light brick) in very nice dustjacket (Not clipped) . This wonderful book by the noted Harlem Renaissance writer was issued in the Land of the Free Series. Caleb Willows, a 16-year-old slave, makes a break for freedom and later is a student at Fisk University in Tennessee. He becomes one of the Jubilee Singers, eleven young African Americans who tour the United States and England singing spirituals in order to raise money for the school. The author Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902 - 1973) was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Through his librarianship and bibliographic work, Bontemps became a leading figure in establishing African-American literature as a legitimate object of… Read More

New York: D. Appleton. Very Good. 1873. Engraving. from Picturesque America; Wood Engraving; 1 pages; A beautifully hand-colored engraving of East Hampton viewed from the Church Belfry, Long Island, New York, from Picturesque America. Image 8 7/8 x 6 3/16" (11" x 14" matted). Matted in white stock with clear mylar. Shows a young boy and an old man gazing out of the Church Belft looking across the town with the sea and cliffs in the background. There is another church spire as well as a windmill in the town. Engraved on wood after a drawing by Harry Fenn (1838-1911). From the text: "EAST HAMPTON, a township of Suffolk county, New York, in the extreme S.E. part of Long Island, occupying the peninsula of Montauk, and bounded on the S. and E. by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the N. by Block Island Sound, Gardiners Bay and Peconic Bay. The township, 25 m. long and 8 m. at its greatest width from north to south, has an irregular north coast-line and a very regular south… Read More

Paris: Bibliothéque Charpentier. Very Good. 1913. Later Printing. Hardcover. 3 p.l., 420 pages; Contemporary dark blue ribbed cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Minor toning to the text leaves, tiny (3 mm.) tear at the top of the spine -- several leaves have minor marks apparently left by pressed flowers (no longer present). The first of two volumes of travels in America by the noted French journalist and critic Jules Huret, -- [1863-1915]. In these pieces, originally written for 'Le Figaro,' it is natural that Huret should travel to New Orleans to examine life there a century after the Louisiana Purchase. The final four pieces in Huret's book pertain to African Americans, including a well-known trip to the Tuskegee Institute. Text in French. The book edition was first published in 1904; Huret's friend Octave Mirbeau proposed Huret's series of reports from America for the prix Goncourt. Huret also passed through Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, made a visit to Smith… Read More

New York: Harper's Weekly. Very Good. 1876. Engraving. Wood Engraving; 1 pages; A wonderful hand-colored wood engraving depicting Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Matted in white stock with clear mylar. Image measures 7" by 9" (11" x 14" matted) From Harper's Weekly, January 1876. This wonderful architectural print of the University includes several figures in the foreground including African American students. Fisk University is a private, historically African American university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee. The 40-acre campus is an historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1930, Fisk was the first African-American institution to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, who made unused barracks available to the school, as well as establishing the first free schools for white and… Read More

Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph and William Kite, 50 N. Fourth Street. Very Good. 1845. First Edition. Paperback. 64 pages; Seven individual issues from 1845 and one from 1847 of this American Quaker weekly journal edited by Robert Smith and printed by Joseph and William Kite, 50 N. Fourth Street, Philadelphia. Each issue is a single sheet folded into 8 printed pages (uncut); then folded into quarters horizontally, as originally mailed. Each issue bears the original owner's name signed at one edge -- "Elisha Roberts" or "E. Roberts." ELISHA ROBERTS (1818 - 1905) was a prominent Pennsylvania Quaker, the son of David and Rachel H. Roberts, who were superintendent and matron at Westtown Quaker school. Elisha too was a successful teacher for some years. In 1842, Elisha Roberts married Elizabeth W. Hooton, and settled on a farm near Moorestown. Being mechanically-minded, he was the first to introduce labor-saving mowing and reaping machines into his… Read More

New York: D. Appleton. Very Good. 1873. Engraving. from Picturesque America; Wood Engraving; 1 pages; A beautifully hand-colored engraving of the French Broad River (N.C. and Tenn.) from Picturesque America. Image size 6" x 9" (11" x 14" matted). Matted in white stock with clear mylar. Engraved on wood by John Karst (1836-1922) after a drawing by Harry Fenn (1838-1911) The engraving shows the ferry crossing the river with several passengers, including one on horseback; tree covered mountains in the background and several African American children on the shore in the foreground along with other travelers/observers. From the text: "The ferry itself was antique, and innocent of any but the rudest invention. It was cheap in construction, and the perfection of a simplicity that, so far as any improvement is considered, might have originated among the antediluvians. A rope extending to some convenient tree on either bank; a flat-bottomed boat and a stout… Read More

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Very Good. 1919. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. ix, 318 pages; Publisher's putty-colored cloth, decoratively stamped in green and lettered in white. Minor rubbing and wear at the tips of the spine ends and the points of the corners, browning to the endpapers (a transfer from glue used in the binding), faint pencil signature (see below). A decorative cover, with some rubbing affecting some areas of the foliage-inspired frame to the front cover -- (there are no designer's initials or monogram for this binding). First edition of an interesting example of Southern literature, and a specimen of the early collecting of African American folk song. The author, Dorothy Scarborough, was born in Mount Carmel, Texas; her father was John Bledsoe Scarborough, a Confederate veteran from Louisiana and successful Texas lawyer. At the age of four her family moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother's health, and then on to Waco, in pursuit of… Read More

Washington: Congressional Globe Office. Very Good. 1858. First Edition. Pamphlet. 7, (1) pages; Very good condition in original self wrappers; pages unopened. Original owner's name signed in pencil on front wrapper -- "J. Whitcomb". Text printed in two columns. OCLC 83113204 (listing mistakenly labels as printed in 1857). This report presents the Views of the Minority of the Committee on Territories on the Kansas Question, particularly their opinion on the Lecompton Constitution which would admit Kansas as a slave-holding state. The report presents the historical context of the Kansas Question along with the evidence undermining the validity of the Lecompton Constitution, based on the voter fraud afflicting its initial ratification in late 1857 and its clear defeat by more than 10,000 votes in the second referendum held in January 1858. Jacob Collamer (1791 – 1865) was an American politician from Vermont, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as… Read More

n.p.: General Assembly of South Carolina. Very Good. 1835. First Edition. Hard Cover. (3), 4-87 pages; Booklet in original self wrappers, contents clean and secure in a modern binding of red polished buckram with gilt lettering at spine; cream endpapers; minor ex-libris markings - small bookplate and LC surplus duplicate release stamp on rear ep; faint tide mark at lower corner of first third of leaves. Rare and interesting Carolina document - includes Governor George McDuffie's hostile response to the abolition of slavery in the United Kingdom and the British West Indies. In December of 1835 the South Carolina Assembly asserted that the non-slaveholding states should make Abolitionist Societies illegal. George McDuffie (1790 – 1851) was the 55th Governor of South Carolina and a member of the United States Senate. Graduating from South Carolina College in 1813, he was admitted to the bar in 1814.He served in the South Carolina General Assembly 1818–1821, and in the… Read More

Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Zell. Very Good. 1867. First Edition. Hardcover. 274 pages; Contents clean and secure in original brown cloth binding with gilt lettering at spine; gilt faded at spine, cloth rippled on boards, old owner's name erased from front endpaper. OCLC: 768863 (v)-vii, (1), 9-274 As the Civil War raged during its worst years, Rachel Moore and her husband left cold New York for the Caribbean in an attempt to restore her failing health. At times it seemed the voyage itself was going to kill her. But she survived and kept a journal of her keen observations of life in the islands. What shocked her the most was the state of Caribbean slavery; worse, in her mind, than what she had seen traveling through the American south. A Quaker and an abolitionist, slavery was an absolute evil to her. Her descriptions of slave life, the islands, the people, and what she loved about her time there are all fascinating to read. Contents include: Nassau, Havana, Slaves and… Read More

Washington: Government Printing Office. Very Good. 1856. First Edition. Removed Document. 34th Congress, 1st session, House Mis. Doc. No. 120; 2 pages; Removed document, clean and complete. OCLC 80248143 Excerpt: "Resolved, That as the intrigues to thrust slavery upon Kansas have been growing more desperate ever since the repeal of the Missouri prohibition, until the question of free or slave Territory is become a prominent and vital issue before the country, and threatens to drive the nation into a civil war, we hold that the speedy admission of Kansas into the Union as a free State, with her present constitution, is a measure of first importance to the welfare of thet Territory, and to the tranquillity and honor of the United States, and that our senators and representatives in Congress are earnestly requested to use every exertion to bring about this result." .

Washington: Buell & Blanchard, Printers. Very Good. 1858. First Edition. Pamphlet. 16 pages; Very good condition in original self wrappers; pages unopened, small stain at upper right corner of front wrapper. OCLC 43906948 This Minority Report of the Select Committee of Fifteen on the Kansas Question, particularly their opinion on the Lecompton Constitution which would admit Kansas as a slave-holding state and President Buchanan's aggressive support of it. The report presents the historical context of the Kansas Question along with the evidence undermining the validity of the Lecompton Constitution, based on the voter fraud afflicting its initial ratification in late 1857 and its clear defeat by more than 10,000 votes in the second referendum held in January 1858. "That the President has been misinformed and badly afvided 'in relation to the condition of parties in Kansas.' Thou he says 'a great delusion seems to pervade the public mind,' it is quite… Read More

Washington: Government Printing Office. Very Good. 1856. First Edition. Removed Document. 34th Congress, 1st session, House Mis. Doc. No. 100; 3 pages; Removed document, clean and complete. OCLC 1065564008 Excerpt: "Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be further instructed, and our representatives requested, to use their best endeavors to secure the passage of laws prohibiting slavery in the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and all territory embraced in the Missouri Compromise, and re-establishing the original American policy as declared in the regulation proposed by Thomas Jefferson, in 1784, for the exclusionof slavery from all territory ceded, or to be ceded, and of such other laws as shall best fulfil the high duty repeatedly acknowledged by the people of Ohio, of using all power clearly given by the terms of the national compact, to prevent the increase, to mitigate, and finally eradicate the evil of slavery ..." .