Found 15 collections related to Slavery -- United States

The ancestors of the Polk Family, Jim and Amey, their daughter, Judah, and her husband, Kit, along with their children, upon reaching the age of twenty-one), were emancipated in 1840. This occurred one and one-half years after the death of their master, plantation owner Thomas Smelly, in Isle of Wight County, Virginia. The newly-freed Smelly family left Virginia that same year, according to the law prohibiting freed slaves to remain in the state more than one year, and migrated to New Jersey. At some point the family changed their name from Smelly to Smiley. In New Jersey, the Smiley family met another freed family from Maryland, the Polks, and the two families intermarried. By 1993, Amey and Jim Smiley had over one hundred descendants. The Smiley-Polk family documents consist of nine holograph 19th-century documents relating to the emancipation of the ancestors of the Smiley-Polk family of New Jersey, and other items concerning the genealogy of this family. less

Gideon Welles (1802-1878) was an American politician and editor. He served as Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869 under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson after having political positions in Connecticut as a member of the Democratic Party. He left the party over the slavery question and became a Republican supporter. He edited and wrote political commentary for several newspapers in Connecticut. Collection consists of correspondence, official papers and writings of Welles. Bulk of the collection is correspondence mainly related to his public life and duties. Topics include political issues, the Civil War, operations of the Navy Dept., his political and literary endeavors, and family matters. Official papers contain memoranda, charters, contracts, and lists of ships and officers. Writings are drafts of articles, congressional reports, and notes on politics and the Civil War. less

John Wolcott Phelps (1813-1885) was a graduate of West Point, Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, and the presidential candidate of the anti-Masonic American Party in 1880. The collection consists of his correspondence, writings on politics and anti-Masonry, diaries recording his experiences in the Seminole War, Mexican War, the expedition against the Mormons in Utah, and the Civil War, and commonplace books recording his views on slavery, emancipation, presidential elections and other political matters of the day. less

This collection consists of typescripts of novels, biographies, essays, and poems on historical, sociological, and educational issues, and conference papers. Some of the typescripts appear as final drafts, others as working drafts with author's annotations and corrections. Manuscripts included are "A Talk to Teachers: The Negro Child, His Self Image" by James Baldwin; "Slavery and Capitalism" by Eric Williams; "Life in a Haitian Valley" by Melville J. Herskovits; "American Dilemma" by Gunnar Myrdal; and poems by Waring Cuney, among others. Other authors represented are Arna Bontemps, Horace Mann Bond, Lloyd Brown, Helen Buckler, Henrietta Buckmaster, John H. Clark, Benjamin Davis, Ralph Ellison, Arthur Huff Fauset, and E. Franklin Frazier. Conference material includes Melville J. Herskovits and the Future of Africana Studies (Schomburg Center, May 1988); Marcus Garvey Centennial Conference (Jamaica, November 1987); and the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Nigeria, 1977). less

Mildred Stock was a writer and researcher, best known for the work, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian", which she co-authored with Herbert Marshall. The Mildred Stock research collection consists of research files concerning Stock's studies of African American and European stage actors, slavery, and other subjects. less

Members of the Bryant family were descended from Peter Bryant (1767-1820) and Sarah Snell Bryant (1766-1847) of Cummington, Mass., and included the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) and his brothers, who settled in or around Princeton, Ill. The brothers were primarily involved in farming in the area. The collection consists of correspondence and other personal papers of various members of the Bryant family. Correspondence is with family members, friends and business associates and concerns pioneering and farming in Illinois and Kansas, Cullen Bryant's life as a West Point cadet, family affairs and finances, and discussions of politics, particularly slavery and the Civil War. Also, diaries, manuscript poems of John H. Bryant, land papers, photographs and other family memorabilia, and printed matter. less

This ledger, most likely from the 19th century because of the dates listed, is possibly a city or county government's ledger used to assign personal, land, and property taxes to the members of the surrounding towns and/or communities. Among the "items" listed are enslaved people, who are denoted as property and assigned arbitrary values. Two dates can be found in the ledger, 1853 and 1865. The ledger mentions the areas of Polk Mill, Seaford Road, and Concord, and the name "Morgan". Items are listed mostly in alphabetical order by last name of free/white adult citizens. In some cases, a citizen is listed, but the only value listed is for "person" which could mean that the individual did not own property but was still taxed. less

The Middleton "Spike" Harris slavery and abolition collection consists of individual documents pertaining to slavery and abolition in the United States. Included are legal documents, indentures, manumission papers, bills of sale, agreements to hire slaves, other business records, deeds, letters, and indentures referencing specific slaves and their masters and detailing the situations for which the documents were produced. The states in which these documents were issued are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. There are also letters from the following abolitionists: Granville Sharp, Gerrit Smith, Charles Sumner, and Francis Jackson. less

The Slavery collection, compiled by staff of the Schomburg Center, consists primarily of photomechanical reproductions of illustrations, paintings, photographs, documents, artifacts and printed texts, relating to the enslavement of persons of African descent in the United States from the early 1800s to the mid-1860s. less

Jonathan Ned Katz (1938 - ) is an independent historian, author, LGBTQ rights advocate, teacher, and textile designer. His father, Bernard Katz (1901-1970), an artist and designer who worked in advertising, was an independent historian of African-American history and jazz music. Jonathan Katz's mother, Phyllis Brownstone Katz, was a magazine editor and co-founder of the Jane Street Community Garden. The Jonathan Ned Katz papers reflect his life and career as an historian, author, LGBTQ rights advocate, teacher, and textile designer. They most heavily document Katz's research and writings on LGBTQ history and activism, and encompass his personal life, family, friends, and the LGBTQ liberation movement. The collection also contains the papers of his parents, Bernard Katz and Phyllis Brownstone Katz. less