Emancipation Proclamation Anniversary, Part IV

As part of our ongoing series of blog entries commemorating the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, we thought we'd do something a little different for April. Instead of highlighting one document from the collections, we are highlighting our entire exhibition!

Thanks to John Pope and Kathleen Flynn of The Times-Picayune | nola.com for the wonderful article and photo gallery. Thanks also to Alicia Jasmin for her article in Tulane University's New Wave.We hope you enjoy these informative articles, but don't be shy about visiting the Center to view the exhibition now through the end of June.

Posted by Christopher Harter

Upcoming Lecture by Historian Adam Fairclough

The Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce that historian Adam Fairclough will present a talk on Reconstruction era politics and race in northern Louisiana on Thursday, May 9th, in the Amistad's Reading Room. The talk is being held in conjunction with the Center's current exhibition commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation. Dr. Fairclough's talk is entitled "Raford Blunt and the Struggle for Emancipation in Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1865-1878."

Dr. Adam Fairclough is a Professor of American History at Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands. His areas of focus are on Reconstruction, race and politics in Louisiana, and the Civil Rights Movement. His publications include: To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr., Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow, and Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000.

Dr. Fairclough’s talk will focus on Raford Blunt, a teacher, Baptist minister, Prince Hall Mason, politician in northern Louisiana, and a member of the Republican Party in Natchitoches Parish. During Congressional Reconstruction, the Republican Party attempted to make emancipation real by giving full citizenship and voting rights to former (male) slaves. Ex-slaves in cotton parishes like Natchitoches dominated politics through the strength of their votes. Adored by blacks, Blunt was feared and hated by whites. When Democrats expelled him from Natchitoches Parish at the point of a gun, the Republican party collapsed. The promise of true equality gave way to the dark period of Jim Crow.

The evening will include a reception and guided tours of Amistad’s current exhibition commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation. Those interested in attending the talk and reception can RSVP to the Center at (504) 862-3222.

Detail of an 1876 Natchitoches Parish Republican ticket showing Raford Blunt
as a nominee for Louisiana State Senator.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Image from the Lewis Family Papers. May not be reproduced without permission.)

Amistad Collections Just Got Older!

Initial page of Arrest du
Conseil d'Estat du Roy...26
Mars 1722.

Thanks to a generous donation, the Amistad Research Center's collections just got a little older. The Center recently received a copy of a 1722 act concerning the taxation of slaves in French colonies. The four-page document, which represents the oldest dated item in Amistad's holdings, was donated by genealogist, author, and publisher Winston De Ville. Mr. De Ville made the donation in memory of Amistad's founding director, Dr. Clifton H. Johnson.

Dr. Johnson and Mr. De Ville worked together in the mid 1970s as officers in Friends of the Archives of Louisiana, the ad litem organization that spurred the state of Louisiana to construct the State Archives Building in Baton Rouge. "Cliff -- his ability and enthusiasm -- was exactly what we needed to bring Louisiana into the modern archival universe," De Ville remembers.

Amistad is pleased to not only accept this latest addition to our collections, but to acknowledge the longstanding friendship that led to its donation. Dr. Johnson, who passed away in 2008, would certainly be proud to add this document to Amistad's already outstanding collections.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Image from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.)

Exhibition Commemorates Anniversary of Emancipation Proclamation

Title page from the 1855 edition of
Frederick Douglass's My Bondage
and My Freedom.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all enslaved individuals in the rebellious Southern states were "thenceforward, and forever free." In honor of the the 150th anniversary of one of the most important documents in U.S. history, the Amistad Research Center is featuring the exhibition, "Am I Not a Brother, Am I Not a Sister?: An Exhibition to Commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation" from April 2 to June 28, 2013. The exhibition highlights documents from Amistad's many collections that provide personal narratives concerning the international slave trade, the abolitionist movement, and the eventual emancipation of enslaved persons in the United States.

An exhibition checklist is now online and Center staff are completing an online tour which will be linked from Amistad's website. Highlights include letters describing contemporary reactions by former slaves after the Proclamation was issued; photographs, correspondence, and printed works about abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Clarkson, and others; papers of a family of free people of color in Virginia and Boston; documents concerning the founding of the Freedmen's Bureau; as well as documents chronicling slavery and the continued struggles African Americans faced following emancipation.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during the Center's hours of 8:30-4:30, Monday-Friday. Groups interested in a tour of the exhibition should call 504.862.3222.

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Image from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.)

Emancipation Proclamation Anniversary, Part III

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Amistad will be hosting an exhibition related to slavery, abolition, and emancipation during its 2013 exhibition series. In addition, we will be featuring a series of blog posts from now through June 2013 highlighting items from our collections that speak to the topics of slavery and emancipation.  This entry focuses on the Freedmen's Bureau, which was founded 148 years ago this month.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands (more commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) was founded in March 1865 as a division of the War Department.  The Bureau supervised all relief and educational activities relating to refugees and freedmen and also assumed custody of all confiscated land in the Confederate States, border states, and Indian Territory.   In short, the Bureau was tasked to help Southern African Americans and Whites make the transition from slavery to freedom.  The Bureau settled labor disputes and enforced contracts between White landowners and Black laborers, but its primary and lasting achievement is in the area of education.  The Bureau oversaw some 3000 schools for freedpersons and founded institutions of higher learning such as Howard University.  Though the Freemen’s Bureau was only intended to last for the duration of the Civil War and one year thereafter, the Bureau did not cease its work until 1872, despite opposition from President Andrew Johnson and much of Congress. 

One of the documents featured in our upcoming exhibition is a small two page circular (shown below) that includes the text of An Act to Establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees. The act was ratified on March 3, 1865. The second page of this document describes a provision for the Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner to dedicate abandoned or otherwise confiscated tracts of land in “insurrectionary States” to be parceled out to freedmen in quantities up to forty acres.  Such parceling of land never materialized, however.

 

Posted by Christopher Harter

(Images from the American Missionary Association Archives. May not be reproduced without permission.)

 

Latest Addition to Comics/Graphic Novel Collection

Scholars and aficionados of comics often rank George Herriman's Krazy Kat as one of the most influential comic strips of all time. Produced by George Herriman, a New Orleans native and Creole of Color, the strip centered on the love triangle of the naive and carefree title character, Krazy Kat, a brick-throwing mouse named Ignatz Mouse, and the local police officer, Offisa Bull Pupp.Herriman's strip ran from 1913 to 1944 and has been cited by numerous cartoonists and artists, from Charles Schulz to Bill Watterson to Jules Feiffer as an influence on their work.

Amistad recently added the first collected edition of the strip to its Comics and Graphic Novels Collection to accompany other reprints of the strip. Published in 1946 by Henry Holt & Co., the book focused on daily and Sunday strips from the 1930s and 1940s. In his introduction to the book, poet e.e. cummings described Krazy Kat as a "meteoric burlesk melodrama, born of the immemorial adage love will find a way" and summed up the strip this way: "Dog hates mouse and worships cat, mouse despises cat and hates dog, cat hates no one and loves mouse." This not so simple formula has interested readers for decades and Amistad's growing collection of Krazy Kat reprints and compilations will help generations of fans to come continue to enjoy this American classic.

Front cover of the 1946 collected edition of Krazy Kat.

Posted by Christopher Harter

Image from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.

Access to Africa: The Addendum to the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) Records

The ACOA Records are on
the shelves and ready for
research.

The Amistad Research Center is pleased to announce that the addendum to the records of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) is now open for research. It is not often that the archivists in the Processing Department get to highlight their work, since many archival and preservation projects entail working on sizable collections that take many months to complete. The full archival arrangement of the American Committee on Africa’s records was completed over the course of twelve months, and the archival team has been privileged to work on such a significant and outstanding collection. This project, “Access to Africana Collections: The American Committee on Africa and The Africa Fund Records,” is designed to feature the records and activities of both organizations, which worked to educate Americans on the legitimacy of African liberation movements and to assist victims of colonial governments in Africa, as well as the emergence of independent African nations. With funding assistance from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Amistad has completed the first part of this three-year archival project.

The American Committee on Africa (ACOA) records addendum consists of 138 linear feet of primary source documentation, dating from 1949 to 2001 and covering the era of Africa’s liberation movements against British, Dutch, French, German, and Portuguese colonial powers and their imperialistic policies toward the continent. Researchers will find materials that focus on aspects of both settler and exploitation colonialism, mainly in the African countries of Angola, Guinea Bissau, Namibia, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and South Africa. The ACOA records are also very strong in documenting the relationship of the United States with these colonial powers, as well as the government’s policies toward the many minority regimes, political parties, and indigenous peoples in the region. The strengths of the records generated by ACOA’s many “campaigns” is the documentation not only collected from the continent, but also the reporting and testimony done by the organization on the conditions within Africa and its networking activities within the United States and at the United Nations as part of the anti-apartheid movement of the mid-to-late 20^th century.

Topics covered within the collection include: anti-apartheid sanctions; consumer and cultural boycotts, demonstrations, and protests; economic conditions and trade; detention, treatment, and release of African political prisoners; human rights violations throughout Africa; liberation movements and post-independence civil wars; and the United States’ policies and legislative actions. Many African political parties and organizations are represented in the records including, Angola’s MPLA (People’s Movement for Liberation of Angola), FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola); Mozambique’s FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique); Guinea Bissau’s PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde); Rhodesia’s ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union), ZAPU (Zimbabwe People’s Union), and UANC (United African National Council); and South Africa’s ANC (African National Congress) and PAC (Pan Africanist Congress).

Completion of the ACOA records addendum means that the entirety of the records for the American Committee on Africa are now fulling processed and available for research. The finding aids to the ACOA records can be found online in the Amistad Research Center’s archival finding aid database.

Posted by Laura Thomson

(Image from the Amistad Research Center. May not be reproduced without permission.)