Black History Month Exhibit

UT Libraries’ annual pop-up exhibit for Frederick Douglass Day and Black History Month is now open in the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, 121 Hodges Library.

The exhibit is presented in collaboration with the Department of English and is part of a week-long series of events honoring the legacy of Frederick Douglass. This year, the popular transcrib-a-thon on February 14 will focus on the Library of Congress’ “African American Perspectives” Collection.

The exhibit in Special Collections looks at African American history from 1820 through the 1960s, highlighting local history in the fight for Civil Rights and the abolition of slavery.

It can be seen through the end of February in the Special Collections Reading Room during regular opening hours.

Items in the exhibit include:

• The Emancipator by Elihu Embree. 1932 (reprint of original 1820 copy). The Emancipator was an abolitionist newspaper founded by Elihu Embree in 1819, and published in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
   
• Petition to Abolish Slavery, circa 1830. The petition, signed by residents of Bedford County, asks the Tennessee Legislature to pass a law that will free the state’s enslaved peoples and their descendants.
   
• My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, 1855 (a signed copy from UT’s Rare Books collection). The second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, the narrative depicts in greater detail his transition from bondage to liberty.
   
• Jubilee Singers Pamphlet, 1876. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were an a capella group from Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, who toured throughout the US to raise money to preclude the university’s bankruptcy and closure.
   
• Photograph from the Dr. C.S. Boyd Photograph Collection. Photograph of Austin High School 8th grade class during the 1912–1913 school year. Austin High School was established in 1879 as the first public high school to educate the city’s African American youth.
   
• Bus desegregation announcement from the Carl and Anne Braden Papers.
   
• Claxton Correspondence Papers. Letter from the General Board of Education urging Claxton (a UT professor) to advocate for public education for the African American population of East Tennessee, 1910.
   
• Claxton Correspondence Papers. Information on the proposed new Austin School building in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The exhibit was curated by Leopold Larsen and Emily Homolka.