Scope and arrangement
These papers consist of correspondence, legal documents, and printed matter relating to Casimir's writing. They focus on social and political issues affecting the island of Dominica, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the Black nationalist movement worldwide, during the 1920s and 1930s. Significant correspondents include: Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA; Casely Hayford, Gold Coast (Ghana) editor and author of Ethiopia Unbound; Malaku Bayen, of the Ethiopian World Federation; Sylvia Pankhurst, editor of the New Times and Ethiopia News; John E. Bruce, African American journalist; Monroe Work, editor of the Negro Year Book; Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, and other staff of Crisis magazine; Thomas L. G. Oxley, editor of The Poets' Journal; Victor L. Gray of the Chicago Bee; and Cyril V. Briggs, founder of the African Blood Brotherhood. The dispute between the UNA, the African Blood Brotherhood, and The Emancipator" magazine in 1920 are well documented in the correspondence between Cyril V. Briggs, Casimir, and Anthony Crawford, president of the Inter-Colonial Steamship and Trading Company of New York. Other correspondence files relate to Casimir's activities as an agent of the Black Star Line and the Negro World. Rare publications include The Black Man, The Brownies' Book, The Challenge, The Comet, as well as scattered issues of The Messenger and a complete run of The Crusader, September 1918 to August 1921. Also in the collection are the membership register and certificates of the Dominica Division of the UNIA. Casimir's writings span from 1919 to 1981 and consist of typewritten and published poems, as well as several holograph poems written on the verso of letters.