#PrograminAfricanAmericanHistory

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We’re #BugginOut! Each week this month we’ll be sharing all the bugs, insects, and various creeping critters we can find in our collection as part of the #BugginOut challenge hosted by Sutro Library.

This tiny, 7/8″ x 3/4″, decorative glass mosaic is from our Stevens-Cogdell / Sanders-Venning Collection, and depicts a beetle composed of gold, red, and green glass.

The Stevens-Cogdell / Sanders-Venning family was a middle-class African American family active in the Philadelphia political, social, educational, and cultural community from the 1850s to the 20th century. The family was involved in several prominent local African American institutions, including the St. Thomas P.E. Church, Church of the Crucifixion, Central Presbyterian Church, the Colored Institute of Youth, and the Citizens Republican Club.

Collection of objects from the Stevens - Cogdell - Sanders - Venning families.

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Canaan Kennedy is a rising senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and a recent participant in the Mellon Internship Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History. Read about Canaan’s experience in this program on the Library Company blog.

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One of the most visible symbols of the 15th Amendment, which granted African American men the federally protected right to vote, was the election or appointment of black men to the U.S. Congress for the first time. This commemorative print depicts these pioneering legislators. Pictured are Senator Hiram R. Revels (Mississippi), and Congressmen Robert C. De Large (South Carolina), Jefferson H. Long (Georgia), Benjamin S. Turner (Alabama), Josiah T. Walls (Florida), Joseph H. Rainey (South Carolina), and Robert Brown Elliott (South Carolina). #BlackHistoryMonth

Learn about fellowship opportunities in the Library Company’s Program in African American History – Applications due March 1, 2018!

“The First Colored Senator and Representatives, in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States,” (New York: Currier & Ives, 1872).

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DEADLINE TO APPLY IS MARCH 1, 2018

The Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History (PAAH), with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, offers an annual Mellon Scholars Program of fellowships, internships, and a professional development workshop.

These competitive programs are designed to increase the participation of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds and others in the field of African American history prior to 1900.

The African Americana Collection (over 13,000 titles and almost 1,000 graphics, and growing) includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics documenting the western discovery and exploitation of Africa, the rise of slavery in the new world along with the rise of movements against slavery, the development of racial thought and racism, descriptions of African American life, slave and free, throughout the Americas, slavery and race in fiction and drama, and the printed works of African American individuals and organizations.

For more information about the Mellon Scholars program view our website:

https://goo.gl/se9QM3

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Amanda Smith, a Methodist evangelist and missionary, was born enslaved on January 23,1837 in Maryland. She later became one of the first black women international evangelists, living and traveling in England, Ireland, Scotland, India, Liberia, and other countries. She detailed these experiences in her life story: An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist (Chicago, 1893). Smith’s portrait was beautifully rendered in gold leaf on the cover, a detail of which is shown here.

Learn about fellowship opportunities in the Library Company’s Program in African American History – Applications due March 1, 2018!

Smith, Amanda. An autobiography. Chicago : Meyer & Brother, 1893.

[librarycompany]

DEADLINE TO APPLY IS MARCH 1, 2018

The Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History (PAAH), with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, offers an annual Mellon Scholars Program of fellowships, internships, and a professional development workshop.

These competitive programs are designed to increase the participation of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds and others in the field of African American history prior to 1900.

The African Americana Collection (over 13,000 titles and almost 1,000 graphics, and growing) includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics documenting the western discovery and exploitation of Africa, the rise of slavery in the new world along with the rise of movements against slavery, the development of racial thought and racism, descriptions of African American life, slave and free, throughout the Americas, slavery and race in fiction and drama, and the printed works of African American individuals and organizations.

For more information about the Mellon Scholars program view our website:

http://librarycompany.org/academic-programs/paah/fellowships/

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Meet the 2016 Mellon Scholars!

As part of the Library Company’s African American History Program, directed by Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, the Mellon Scholars Fellowship Program aims to promote research in the collections of the Library Company and to enhance the production of scholarly work in African American history of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

You can keep up with the Mellon Scholars and more about African Americana at the Library Company by following our Curator of African American History, Krystal Appiah, on Twitter: @kaappiah, or by checking out the program site http://www.librarycompany.org/paah/fellowships.htm.  

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Congratulations to Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Director of the Library Company’s Program in African American History:

Dr. Dunbar has been named the Blue and Gold Professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. Her named professorship took effect March 1.

Read more about Dr. Dunbar’s work