We are very much enchanted with this painted vellum binding (and those block printed pastedowns!)

Binding on: Neu-vermehrt-und vollstandiges Gesang-buch. Marburg; Frankfurt: Bey Henrich Ludwig Bronner,1785

By the late 19th century, many African Americans had been elected to public offices in the United States and become community activists. This print commemorates the prominent men who were representatives of the advancement of African American civil rights, including Frederick Douglass, senators Blance Kelso Bruce and Hiram Revels from Mississippi, John Brown, and Charles Edmund Nash.

-Jasmine Smith, African American History Subject Specialist. 

Image: Heroes of the colored race [graphic]. Philadelphia: Published by J. Hoover, c1881. Chromolithograph, hand-colored; 56 x 77 cm.

Happy Mardi Gras! All this festive scene is missing is some king cake! 

[Academy of Music trade card] (Philadelphia: 1881). Chromolithograph. 

Image depicts several men, a woman, a cherub, and two butterflies celebrating Mardi Gras. 

#OnThisDay in 1840, John Quincy Adams began to argue the case of the Amistad in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Amistad was a Spanish slave ship bound for Cuba which experienced a mutiny at the hands of the kidnapped Africans who were on board. The rebellion led to a series of trials, during which the fate of those who were doomed to be sold into slavery was in question. Quincy eventually convinced the Court to rule in favor of sending the captives back to Mende (which is present-day Sierra Leone).  

Pictured here is a bust-length portrait of Sarah Margru Kinson Green. Green, a child captive onboard the Amistad slave ship and eventually returned to the United States to study at Oberlin College. 

Green, Sarah Margru Kinson (New York, ca. 1850). Engraving. 

Happy #FinisFriday from this garlanded ram. #27daysuntilSpring 

From: Wisdom in Miniature. Worcester: Thomas, Son and Thomas, 1796.

Last week our friends over at the American Antiquarian Society posted about their love of variants, so we thought we would, too. We think this clutch of binding variants (all embossed leather!) for the 1842 Rose of Sharon is *chef  kiss* 

The ratification of the 15th Amendment gave African American men the right to vote. However, several southern states took extreme measures to legalize poll taxes and literacy tests to discourage them from doing so. In response, broadsides such as this one were published to express the importance of exercising the right to vote.  

This broadside from L. W. West reassures African American men that their votes matter and that voting will help them gain respect in the United States and abroad:

“Colored voters of Savannah; the time has come when we as voters and property owners must assert our manhood, if we have any, if not close your mouths and stop clamoring about your Rights…Go and perform that important duty at once and then don’t allow yourselves to be bought and sold as cattle or as you were once when under the yoke of bondage.”

-Jasmine Smith, African American History Subject Specialist

Image: West, L. W. Address to the colored men! of Savannah, Georgia. Savannah: Savannah Echo Print, [1880?]. 1 sheet; 23 x 15 cm.

How we’re charging into the week!

O.E. Kirchhoff, photographer (Philadelphia, ca. 1880). Chromolithograph.

Image depicts a child riding on the back of a rabbit and holding up a sign reading “Lead, but never follow”.  

Happy Presidents’ Day! The Library Company is closed but will reopen to the public tomorrow, February 18th.

Mason Lange, Columbia’s Noblest Sons (New York: Kimmel and Forster, 1865). Lithograph.

Image depicts portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln surrounded by scenes from their respective presidencies. The allegorical figure, Columbia, stands in the center of the image.    

Thomas Peterson-Mundy became the first African American to cast a ballot in the United States, one day after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, in Perth Amboy, N.J. 

On May 30, 1884, he received a medal in commemoration of his courage to exercise his right of suffrage. The two-sided medal had an image of Abraham Lincoln and an inscription that read: 

“Presented by citizens of Perth Amboy, N. J., to Thomas Peterson, the first colored voter in the United States under the Fifteenth Amendment, at an Election held in that city, March 31st, 1870.” 

- Jasmine Smith, African American History Subject Specialist

History and proceedings attending the presentation of a medal to Thomas Peterson-Mundy, Decoration Day, May 30th, 1884, in the city of Perth Amboy, N.J.: in commemoration of his having been the first colored citizen in the United States to cast a vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. Perth Amboy, N.J.: The Middlesex County Democrat Print., 1884.