Knowledge. Truth. Inspiration.
 

www.BlackHistoryMatters.com

Rescuing, Preserving, Documenting and Exhibiting the
Courage of African Americans over the Past Four Centuries.

SPECIFIC TOPICS AND HISTORIC ITEMS:

    Europe's contact with Africa and the genesis of the Triangular Slave Trade is represented by a very early hand-colored map of Africa by the noted Dutch cartographer Willem Blaeu, circa 1640. Maps such as this were vital to the European slave traders who depended on the mapmaker's representation of the West African coast for the purpose of navigation.

Master / Slave Agreement
Revolutionary War

    The Mitchell Collection houses the nation’s largest archive in existence of pay vouchers, muster rolls, and other papers clearly documenting  the role of Black Soldiers in the American Revolution – included is a priceless artifact – a superbly preserved powder horn used by an African American infantryman in the war. The great liberator of Haiti, Toussaint L'Ouverture, is well-represented by original signed letters and documents from that island nation. The collection also contains such early pieces as the actual signature of mathematician/scientist Benjamin Banneker, who helped lay out the District of Columbia in 1791, and one of the two Paul Cuffe historic 1780 voting rights petitions.

    There is a preliminary proof copy of the first printing of the diabolical 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, and an 1858 letter from John Brown to his wife, written at the home of Frederick Douglass with a half page added by Douglass himself.  Had the authorities who seized John Brown and his followers following the Harper's Ferry insurrection been aware of this letter -- and Douglass's close connection to Brown -- it most certainly would have cost Frederick Douglass his life.
 

    Slavery in America is extremely well-documented, with handwritten letters from notorious slave dealers, rare slave sale and runaway slave broadsides, and even an extraordinary glimpse into the day-to-day operations of a Louisiana plantation. Meticulously written down in a sixty-page diary/logbook kept by a slave overseer are chilling entries regarding the chase and capture of runaway slaves, daily duties performed, rations served, and extraordinary documentation of the actual amount of cotton each individual slave picked per week! Documents relating to slave revolts in America include the 1802 Easter Slave Plot, the Denmark Vesey planned insurrection in 1822, and the noted 1831 Nat Turner Revolt in Virginia. However, a number of American slaves were freed by their masters and allowed to emigrate to Liberia – there are pieces documenting the American Colonization Society’s efforts, and the first “Back to Africa” Americans transported by Daniel Coker. A letter from a liberated slave to his former master’s family describes his new freedom and the conditions in West Africa.
 

    Mr. Mitchell covers the critical Civil War Period in detailed fashion. The first Northern Black regiment, the now-famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteers (“GLORY”) is shown assaulting Ft. Wagner in an original 1863 Currier & Ives color lithograph–the archive also contains the first newspaper report of the brave but failed attack in the Charleston (SC) Daily Courier including an interview with a captured black sergeant from Bermuda, Robert John Simmons. There is an extraordinary 1861 letter from a female Missouri slaveholder asking for help in reclaiming slaves who had escaped to the Union lines in that state. The New York Herald newspaper prints the complete text of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. There is a graphic hand-drawn battlefield sketch of a Black Civil War soldier preparing for battle near Petersburg, Virginia.

   While the Mitchell Collection richly depicts the period of The Middle Passage, slavery and abolition, from the mid seventeenth century to the end of the Civil War, the period of 1865 until the present is equally well-represented, forming roughly half of the collection. Reconstruction is covered with the elections of Black senators and congressmen such as Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce and Congressman Joseph Hayne Rainey, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, Lt. Henry O. Flipper’s West Point graduation and story, the Freedman’s Bank and Trust troubles, Black migration from the South, the thoughts and accomplishments of Frederick Douglass in original handwritten letters, and the intrepid Buffalo Soldiers in the Southwest and the Spanish-American War.
 

    The Harlem Renaissance period is represented in part by letters of Langston Hughes, a famous  poem of Countee Cullen, Paul Robeson’s original notarized application to the American Society of Recording Artists, a vintage signed photograph [view] of contralto Marian Anderson, and a 78 rpm record signed by bandleader/composer Duke Ellington in 1930. The highlight of this portion of the collection is noted sculptor Richmond Barthe’s original book of autographs that includes signatures and inscriptions by such notables as Alberta Hunter, Claude McKay, Alain Locke, Joe Louis, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, James Weldon Johnson, and Walter White. The book also contains Zora Neale Hurston’s original handwritten poem “To Richmond Barthe” dated and signed by Hurston herself on January  7, 1935 [view].

    The truly American art form of jazz is a specialty of Mr. Mitchell’s. He has collected and preserved letters,  contracts, and signed photographs of Louis Armstrong, W.C. Handy, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Lunceford, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, and Nancy Wilson to name but a few.  Sports figures include Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Arthur Ashe, Jesse Owens, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Althea Gibson, and Henry Aaron. 

    Civil Rights and political personages and events are covered extensively, and include a handwritten note of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [view], written from his Jefferson County (Alabama) jail cell in 1967, an original New York Times containing the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision, and important letters penned or typed by Malcolm X dating from 1950-1964–these provide an unexpurgated look into the mind of the Black activist and leader.
 

    The long runs of influential anti-slavery newspapers, such as The Liberator (1496 issues), National Anti-Slavery Standard (1022 issues), and others provide a rich prime source for research. A consecutive run of 18 issues of Frederick Douglass's legendary North Star (Volume I, nos. 19-37 for 1848), includes an account of the famous Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention, as well as the first publication of Douglass' famous letter "To My Old Master."  This run alone would be virtually impossible to duplicate.  Douglass' post-emancipation New National Era, published in Washington DC, and running from only 1870 to 1874 is well represented with some 88 issues,  many more than most institutional holdings. Mitchell also has what is believed to be the only issue of  the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal (1827), still in private hands.

    “The Mitchell Collection deserves our attention. It should be preserved, kept in one piece, added to and cherished for the extraordinary story that it tells.  And it is my hope that it will find a home where it may be seen, and thus help to better understand the long journey of Africa in America.”

  MEDGAR EVERS - letter to Gloster Current, the last man to see Evers alive.