Black History from Alcuin Books, ABAA-ILAB

New York; (1914): G. Schirmer. Octavo. Fourth Edition. 176 pages, index, musical scores. A marvelous study of the range and uniqueness of African American music that arose in the slave period. In the chapter, Variations from the Major Scale, states the adjustments with the flat seven in the major and major seventh cannot be fully captured in standard musical… Read more about this item

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928. First Edition. Octavo. Frontispiece, 207 pages. Illustrated by Mahlon Blaine. This is the life of a man. The author had added nothing to the sparse records of old books and the fading memories that linger in the minds of men in his own country. Nor had he left anything out, except a few… Read more about this item

New York; (1941): Citadel Press. Thick Octavo. . xvi, 1082 pages, index. It covers the writings from Phyllis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass to Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and Chester Himes. This massive work is a classic including also the last fifty pages of the institutional racism in the American South; especially, on lychings. From the library of collector Noel… Read more about this item

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. First Edition. Octavo. 192 pages. Partially unopened. One of the the rarest works on the Scottsboro case. The author wrote the most powerful play of prison life that America has yet produced. The subject is generally regarded as a case so shocking and moving and so provocative of passion and fury that, in… Read more about this item

Cleveland and New York, (1956): World Publishing Company. First Edition. Octavo. 221 pages. Richard Wright's time in the 1955 Bandung Conference. This was the most important early conference for people of color who saw the world through non-Western eyes. He had left his membership in the Communist party in 1944. Here he sees both the failures of the West… Read more about this item

New York; (1948): Harper and Brothers. First Edition. `. Octavo. 256pp., Inscribed by the author. Here, the author describes the thirteen views of how the solvent of Christian practice may be applied to "America's number one problem" race relations. William Stuart Nelson (1895-1977) was an expert on nonviolence, a civil rights activist, and university president. In 1925 he… Read more about this item

New Bedfore, MA; (1932): Reynolds Press. First Edition. Small Octavo. 99pp., with a foreword by John Haynes Holmes. In this play, the author presents the problem of the American negro emancipated into a society which will not receive him. The background of the play is the long struggle of the Negro up from slavery. The setting is the arrival… Read more about this item

New York: The Viking Press, 1948. First Edition. Octavo. 382pp., Walter White was a light-skinned Black man whose ancestors had been enslaved. For years White risked his life investigating racial violence in the South. He later became assistant secretary of the National Association for the advancement of colored people and engaged vigorously in the fight to gain civil rights… Read more about this item

New York; (1941): Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill Book Co. First Edition. Octavo. . Portrait frontispiece. 270pp., Illustrated with photographic images following Anderson's rise to fame. In 1939, Anderson stood before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and, with the greatest voice of that generation, staged before an assemblage of 75,000 people. Cabinet members, senators, congressmen, and others attended. This brought her fame… Read more about this item

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. First Edition. Octavo. 307(1)pp. Author's first novel. Fisher was an American short-story writer and novelist associated with the Harlem Renaissance whose fiction realistically depicted Black urban life in the North, primarily Harlem. A near fine copy bound in a deep brown trimmed in red and green, centrally stamped in red and green with… Read more about this item

Mills College, CA: Eucalyptus Press, 1945. First Edition. Octavo. 39 pages. A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket of the scarce first edition of one of Howard Thurman's most important books. He shows the outlook of the slaves and how it was interpreted in preaching. His profound views here argued that the slaves from Africa took… Read more about this item

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959. First Edition. Octavo. Portrait frontispiece, 259pp., DuBois, among his many achievements, was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it was his voice which was for many years generally accepted in America as the voice of the NAACP. A very nice copy bound in green… Read more about this item

San Francisco, CA (1929): Pilot Publishing Co. First Edition. Octavo. 64(1) pp. Louis Baldwin was instrumental in bringing the first National Negro Businessmen's Convention to Boston in 1900, which was organized by Booker T. Washington. Baldwin was a member of the planning committee for the convention and was made member of the new National Negro Business League's executive committee.… Read more about this item

New York; (1938): Platt and Munk. First Edition. Octavo. 24 unnumbered pages, some in color. The story of a small African-American boy who became tired of the chores his grandparents assigned to him so he ran away. Bound in light blue cloth, color pictorial pasdown. color pictorial endpapers, some rubbing or soiling to covers, small stain to rear board… Read more about this item

An interesting connection between Ambrose Marechal, who served as the third Archbishop of Baltimore and the young French priest John Francis Moranville, the latter was sent to Cayenne [later French Guiana) for the education of the slaves Lafayette worked toward their emancipation and Father Moranville was quite outspoken and when his arrest was ordered, he sailed to the United… Read more about this item

Cleveland; (1964): World Publishing. First Edition. Octavo. 319 pages, signed by Harry Golden. Golden discusses the civil rights story from the 1890's to the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and the events that began to change toward true emancipation in the Kennedy White House. Some of the best accounts of the open racism just before the 1960's. The manuscript… Read more about this item

Altona-Bahrenfeld, (1936): Cigaretten-Bilderdienst. Quarto. 2 volume set. These album include black & white and colored mounted cigarette cards. Many of the cards are hand-colored. Volume I has 175 mounted cards, Volume 2 has 200 mounted cards. Number 13 and 14 show series, they are considered 1 and 2 by OCLC. Volume I has large folding map of the Olympic… Read more about this item

8 1/2" x 10 1/2" 4pp. in Spanish. Colonial Spain (Cuba) had continued slavery so when a black man stole a horse from the Ingenio Sugar Plantation. Here is a letter regarding his offence and his jailing.

(Johannesburg, 1991): Chameleon Press. First Edition. Quarto. Signed by the editor Neville Dubow and limited to 500 copies(no limitation noted except by editor) The present copy is numbered #68. 112 pages. Index, bibliography, chronology of her life. Irma Stern (1894-1966) is acknowledged as a major painter and one of South Africa's most important pioneer artists. Since… Read more about this item

Phoenix; (2015): A.W.O.L.. Octavo. xii, 535 pages, One of the outstanding civic and religious leaders in Phoenix, who led the fight against the racism of Gov. Evan Mecham. While thoughtful Arizonans were embarrassed by a ignorant man who referred to blacks as "pickaninnies", the legislature impeached him with only a handful of pro-Mecham dissidents including Jan Brewer who herself… Read more about this item