Reflecting on the depth and significance of Black history and culture, James Cummins Bookseller is proud to offer a selection from our fine inventory of African Americana, including important 18th and 19th century abolitionist works and iconography of the movement, to material relating to 20th century politics and entertainment. Highlights include the first American edition of the influential slave ship engraving, Clara Barton's autograph manuscript memorial to Congress to assist freedmen, Armistead's classic Abolitionist work in a deluxe issue with provenance to a freed slave, and more.
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New York: Negro Labor News Service, P.O. Box #66 College Station, Nov. 30, 1929. An early newsletter issued by Crosswaith (1892-1965), an African American political activist and socialist (sometimes referred to as the "Negro Debs"), beginning: "The question of Negro labor and its place in the official labor movement of..... Read More about Negro Labor News Service ... When Will it End?
Price: $450
Manchester: William Irwin, 1848. First edition, one of an unknown number of special copies in publishers morocco binding and with two extra plates. A Key Abolitionist Work in the Publisher’s Special Binding with Provenance to a Freed Slave. First edition, and one of an unknown number of special copies in..... Read More about A Tribute for the Negro: being a Vindication of the Moral, Intellectual, and Religious...
Price: $5,250
"Moms" Mabley (1894-1975) was the preeminent African American female comedian from the mid-20th century, and opened for Louis Armstrong on several occasions. A fabulous association between two of the most important African-American performers of the period. Read More about Photograph signed and inscribed in the image ("Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong), to Jackie...
Price: $2,500
London: Grant Richards, 1899. First edition. First edition of one of the most celebrated titles in children’s literature, a work whose small illustrated format heralded a change in children's publishing, and a book that has achieved classic status while remaining explosively controversial. Read More about The Story of Little Black Sambo
Price: $6,000
n.p. [likely Philadelphia]: March 27, 1782. Rare autograph of the early prominent Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet (1713-1784). Benezet taught at a Quaker day school and tutored slaves and free blacks at night. His efforts to educate Philadelphia's black population led to the establishment of a Quaker school for free blacks..... Read More about Autograph Document Signed twice ("Anth'y Benezet"), a bill to Jeremiah Warder for...
Price: $2,000
[New York]: 1923. Original Huck Finn Illustration by Worth Brehm. A poignant and surperbly drawn depiction of the scene when Huck, out hunting on Jackson's Island, meets the runaway slave, Jim. Huck stands at the left of the drawing, while Jim, at the foot of a large tree, kneels in supplication..... Read More about Illustration for Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Price: $7,500
Jefferson, Ashtabula Co. Ohio: August 6, 1861. John Brown, Jr., writes to one of the Secret Six. John Brown, Jr. (1825-1895), the eldest son the abolitionist John Brown, writes to Gerrit Smith, one of the "Secret Six" who helped finance the raid on Harper's Ferry. Brown writes to renege on..... Read More about Autograph letter signed ("John Brown, Jr.") to Gerrit Smith, with autograph document...
Price: $2,500
np: ca. 1916-1917. First edition of one of only 2 publications of the author during his lifetime. George Washington Carver, who was known for experiments in crop diversification, offers advice and recipes on how to use the year's unusually large sweet potato crop to make flour, bread, and even biscuits..... Read More about Broadsheet: "The Sweet Potato as a Flour Substitute"
Price: $750
Los Angeles, Calif: February 15, 1955. Dorothy Dandridge in Hollywood. A complex contract with the legendary Dandridge and the studio, coming on the heels of her triumph in Carmen Jones, for which she won an Academy Award nomination for best actress — the first Afro-American woman to be so honored..... Read More about Typed Contract signed between Dorothy Dandridge and Twentieth-Century Fox, to "render...
Price: $4,000
Paris: Dubroca et Bonneville, An X - 1802. First edition. First edition of one of the first biographies of the Haitian revolutionary general Toussaint-Louverture (1743-1803), published in the year before his death. A profoundly anti-revolutionary and colonialist work, which portrays Toussaint-Louverture as violent, duplicitous and tyrannical: "Au moment où le..... Read More about La Vie de Toussaint-Louverture, chef des noirs insurgés de Saint-Domingue …
Price: $2,500
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881. First edition, first state, with "presumptive" for "presumptuous" in the last line, p. 9, and with no mention of this book in the ads at the back of the book. Attractive copy of this American classic. "The instant success of this first Uncle..... Read More about Uncle Remus His Songs and His Sayings The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation
Price: $2,500
[New York: March 23, 1949]. Van Vechten, Carl. A dramatic portrait of Billie Holiday in full-throated song. Read More about Portrait photograph of Billie Holiday
Price: $3,500
Washington, D.C: Cornelius Wendell, 1857. First edition. In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in Illinois, a free state, from 1834 to 1838 and in the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. While the decision did not directly lead..... Read More about Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Opinions of the Judges...
Price: $1,600
Boston: Published at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1848. First edition. COPY IN WRAPPERS — ABOLITION FOR YOUNG ADULTS. “Mother, he asked me if I were an abolitionist. What did he mean? What is an abolitionist?” A didactic novel for children about a Northern white family and their experiences with slavery and the..... Read More about The Young Abolitionists; or Conversations on Slavery
Price: $3,250
New York: Oct. 1887. Kemble, E. W. Edward Windsor Kemble (1861-1933) is best-known for his superb illustrations of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Puddin’ Head Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and several of Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories. He was a self-taught artist, whose work “reveals a...... Read More about Pen and Ink Drawing: 2 vignette scenes of black men and women for "Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom at...
Price: $650
Auburn: Derby and Miller. Buffalo: Derby, Orton and Mulligan. London: Sampson Low, Son & Company, 1854. Later printing ("Twentieth Thousand"). Abolitionist George M. Stroud’s Copy. Northup’s account of his kidnapping and enslavement. Northup (1808-1863?), a free man living in New York with his family, was promised employment by two con..... Read More about Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in...
Price: $3,500
Philadelphia: stereotyped by L. Johnson, 1842. First edition. First edition of this report of this monumental Supreme Court decision regarding escaped slaves, preceding by 15 years and rivaling in importance the Dred Scott case of 1857. "In Prigg, the Court identified slavery as a core constitutional commitment with which states..... Read More about Report of the Case of Edward Prigg against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Argued and Adjudged...
Price: $1,250
Ca.1750-1800. A set of shackles of the type used in the Middle Passage slave route from Africa to the Americas in the 18th century. An illustration of this type of shackle appears on page 16 of Lydia Maria Child's Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans Called Africans (Boston..... Read More about "Middle Passage" slave shackles
Price: $2,500
[Philadelphia]: [Mathew Carey], [May 1789]. The earliest American publication of this provoking symbol of the abolitionist movement, depicting the horrors of the Middle Passage. First published in Plymouth, England in late 1788 to accompany a 4-page abolitionist essay by William Elford and the Plymouth chapter of the Society for Effecting..... Read More about Plan of an African Ship's Lower Deck, with Negroes in the Proportion of Not Quite One to a Ton
Price: $9,500
![Harvard Class of 1866 Photographic Yearbook]. George Kendall Warren, photographer](/pictures/thumb/320278.jpg?v=1610638709)
[Cambridge: 1866]. George Kendall Warren (1824-1884) was a distinguished northeastern landscape photographer and the most highly-regarded collegiate yearbook photographer to elite northeastern institutions: Dartmouth, Williams, Brown, Weslyan, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, West Point, Union, and Harvard. Notable portraits include Gov. Andrew, President Hill, Professers Louis Agassiz, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Evangelinus..... Read More about Harvard Class of 1866 Photographic Yearbook
Price: $4,500
1939. Inscribed photograph of African-American television, theater, and film pioneer, Ethel Waters (1896-1977), depicting her in one of her most famous roles, and inscribed: "To Alice with the same devotion Hagar has for Lissa and you have for Natalie, I have for you Ethel Waters." The photograph shows Waters as..... Read More about Photograph signed ("Ethel Waters") and inscribed, from the Broadway production of...
Price: $2,500
New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839. First edition. First edition of this detailed catalogue of the thousands of cruelties and indignities of slavery in the United States, complied by Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké and sister-in-law Sarah Grimké. The work draws from eyewitness accounts and narratives, interviews, slaveholder..... Read More about American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses
Price: $1,500
Amesbury, [Mass.]: [December 19, 1863]. On Emancipation Proclamation. A Fine letter from John Greenleaf Whittier to fellow poet Lucy Larcom, praising President Lincoln's commitment to the Emancipation Proclamation through his recently delivered State of the Union address (December 8, 1863), also known as the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. After..... Read More about Autograph letter signed to Lucy Larcom
Price: $1,750
