Black History Month: Public Scholarship And Antislavery Literature

Image of fugitive slave from William Still, Underground Railroad (1872)

African American historian Carter G. Woodson established Black History Month in 1926.  He did so in order to create public awareness of the extent of African American history and its centrality in any concept of ‘American history.’  For Woodson, scholarship was a public endeavor.

Public scholarship remains a crucial undertaking.  In honor of Black History Month, this exhibition presents a selection from the books, tracts, and documents collected by the Antislavery Literature Project, housed in the ASU English department and working in cooperation with the EServer at Iowa State University’s English department.  Many of these original materials have been or will be digitized for the Project website; others are for research.  As a working collection, its purpose is to support new public scholarship and education on slavery, being made available through the Internet.

African American slavery was a defining feature of American history during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a span that also witnessed the rise of American print culture.  An extensive literature of slavery appeared during this period, amounting to several tens of thousands of titles by both black and white authors.  An entire new branch of American journalism arose with the publication of antislavery newspapers. Literally millions of tracts on slavery, an overwhelming majority by antislavery writers, spread throughout the United States beginning in greatest part from the early 1830s onwards.  This literature preceded the greatest conflict in US history, a Civil War caused by generations of African American slavery.

Exhibit notes by Prof. Joe Lockard, ASU English Department.
Acknowledgements to Karla Elling and Ginger Hanson for exhibit assistance,
and to Bruce Matsunaga for the online exhibit and poster [PDF].

Book and online exhibit, February 1-28, 2007
Languages and Literatures Building Lobby

For more events celebrating Black History Month in which the Department of English is participating, please visit the following sites:

African American Literature and the Development of Human Rights
Lecture, Memorial Union Pima Rm (MU 218) 10:00 a.m.
February 22, 2007

PUSHing Boundaries, PUSHing Art: A Symposium on the Works of Sapphire
Symposium, University Club (UCLUB) 8:15 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Lecture and Q&A, Lyceum Theatre (LYC) 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. February 28, 2007

For a Black History Month event sponsored by the African and African American Studies Program and the Herberger College of Fine Arts, please visit:

Dynamic Journey: Transformations of Slavery Era Spaces, Routes, and Sounds
Display, African & African American Studies Program, Wilson Hall (WILSN), MWF 10:00 a.m.-Noon
January 29-February 28, 2007