Exhibit in Special Collections Honors Frederick Douglass

An exhibit in Hodges Library honors America’s great abolitionist, educator, and statesman Frederick Douglass (c. 1817–1895). Members of the university community are invited to drop by the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, 121 Hodges Library, to view the exhibit, which is part of the university’s annual celebration of Frederick Douglass Day.

The campus celebration, February 9 through 13, includes a conversation with Robert Bland, author of the forthcoming book, Requiem for Reconstruction; a talk by Courtney Murray Ross on the role of Black writers of the nineteenth century; and a Transcribe-a-Thon, which engages students in primary source research. 

Items featured in the library’s exhibit include:

• Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical slave narrative, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855.

• 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.
   
• The Emancipator, 1932 (reprint of original 1820 copy). The Emancipator was an abolitionist newspaper founded by Elihu Embree in 1819 and published in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
   
• 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.

Stop by 121 Hodges Library to view these and other rare artifacts from our special collections.

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Images from the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, University of Tennessee Libraries