Civil Rights/Slavery

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Two Fact cards produced in 1993 by Atlas Editions about the US Constitution on Slavery and Black Codes. By 1804 most Northern states, finding that slavery was not profitable for them, had effectively abolished the institution. In the South, however, especially after the 1793 invention of the cotton gin, the institution grew. The continuance of slavery was clearly sanctioned in the US Constitution, although the word slave or slavery are not found anywhere in the document. The years between the American Revolution and the Civil War saw the enactment of many state laws – later referred to as Black Codes - that not only regulated the institution of slavery but also free blacks as well. Because slaves were dependent upon their white owners, laws were also enacted for the protection of the slaves themselves. Since white colonial Americans considered the existence of free blacks to exert a harmful influence on their enslaved kinsmen, they enacted laws that discouraged manumission (the freeing of slaves). Much detail on back. B 

Price: $60.00

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Five Fact cards produced in 1993 by Atlas Editions about US slavery. They cover the issues of the African slave trade, the economics of slavery, slave life, slave uprisings and the biblical defense of slavery. With slavery within Africa adult males were generally killed. This changed with the advent of slavery in the New World. The slaves picked up along 300 points along the African coast between Senegal an Mozambique were from different nationalities, languages and customs. Slave traders and their customers perceived certain ethnic traits and origins as more valuable. For instance, slaves from Gambia and the Gold Coast were always in demand, Coromantes and Whydahs were especially desirable as field hands, whereas Ibos, Congos and Angolas, allegedly weaker, were said to be more effective as house servants. In 1781 a slave ship captain threw 132 of his African captives overboard. His ship was short on water, and his insurance did not cover starvation, CA 223CA 223but it did cover death by drowning. Virginia, with a large number of unneeded slaves because of the exhaustion of the soil was a major supplier of slaves to the states south, to the point that it became known as the “breeder state” for the Deep South. Between 1790 and 1860 about 1 million slaves – more than twice as many as were imported from Africa – departed Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas for new homes. Slave children were sometimes sold by weight or height, at an agree-upon rate per pound or inch. The most common punishment for slaves was whipping; however many endured branding, nose slitting, amputation of toes, fingers or ears, and castration. Virginia law decreed that no more than 39 lashes could be administered at one time, so over days several hundred lashes might be inflicted on a single slave. Some owners, too squeamish to discipline their slaves, would turn their job over to professional slave whippers. These people were generally shunned by society and lived alone. The lacerated backs of punished slaves were usually treated with “Negro plaster”, a concoction of grease, salt, mustard, pepper, and vinegar that was rubbed into the wounds and was reported to heal without leaving scars. Many slaves reported that the concoction was more painful than the whipping. It is interesting to note that for much of the 17th century, the blacks that trickled into the colonies were treated as indentured servants and in 1668 at least 29% of American blacks were free and 13% were landowners. CA 223Initially it was the indentured servitude of white Europeans that provided the vast majority of the labor force required to tame the eastern wilderness, but the flow of indentured servants decreased with better political and economic conditions in England. Even though slaves cost more than indentured servants and were harder to train, slavery was economical (the price of a slave was equal to the cost of a white indentured servant for 7 years) – no only did the master receive a lifetime of servitude, but the resource was renewable through the inherited slave status of the children of female slave. That colonial America, even in the South, had a high proportion of non-slaveholding whites was significant in two ways. First, slave owners may have dominated Southern politics, but they owed their position to, and were thereby controlled by, non-slaveholders. Further, the large number of non-slaveholders jealously guarded their various skilled jobs from slave competition, relegating slaves to hard labor and helping to harden racial lines. Much more detail. B 

Price: $150.00

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Four Fact cards produced in 1993 by Atlas Editions about the Abolition movement in America. A number of subjects are covered in detail: the American Anti-Slavery Society, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the birth of the Republican Party, abolition by state. Details of the murder of antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837 while defending his presses from an angry proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Discussion of how Frederick Douglas changed his non-violence stance after the Compromise of 1850. There is a state by state review of the development of abolitionist laws.  The origin of the “Black Republicans”, the first political party positioned squarely against slavery. Much detail on reverse. B 

Price: $120.00

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Two Fact cards produced in 1993 by Atlas Editions about  the Nat Turner Rebellion and Denmark Vesey and the attempted slave uprising of 1822. Fascinating details on the life of Denmark Vesey, how he educated himself and purchased his own freedom and, influenced by the slave revolt in Haiti, planned to attack the Charleston arsenal and arm the local slaves. His plan was reported to the authorities by a loyal house servant and he, along with 35 others, were hanged. An interesting note is that four white men were charged with encouraging the insurrection. They were fined and imprisoned. Text on reverse. B 

Price: $60.00

CA 220Early French chromo card of Victor Schoelcher. B

Price: $30.00

Note: Victor Schoelcher (1804-1893), was a French abolitionist writer, politician and journalist, best known for his work towards and leading role in the abolition of slavery in France in 1848. In 1828, he was sent to America by his father as a business representative of the family's enterprise. While on the continent he visited Mexico, Cuba, and the southern United States. On this trip he learned a lot about slavery and began his career as an abolitionist writer, and returning to France in 1830 he published his first writing in the Revue de Paris, an article titled Des noirs ("Of the blacks"), in which he proposed a gradual abolition of slavery. Schœlcher elaborated on social, economic, and political reforms he believed would be necessary to the Caribbean colonies after the abolition of slavery. He thought that the production of sugar could continue, though it should be rationalized with the construction of large central factories, and defended the reduction of concentration of land. Schœlcher was the first European abolitionist to visit Haiti after its independence, and had a large influence on the abolitionist movements in all of the French West Indies. He was actively against the debt collected from the Haitians as French slave owners sought reparations for their property lost in the Haitian Revolution. In February, 1848 he was appointed under-secretary of State for the colonies, as well as president of a new commission charged with drafting the immediate abolition of slavery. In his capacity as under-secretary of state and president of the commission, Schœlcher prepared and wrote the decree that was issued on 27 April 1848, in which the French government announced the immediate abolition of slavery in all of its colonies and granted citizenship to the emancipated slaves.

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Fact card produced in 1993 about the massacre at Fort Pillow, wherein the black soldiers suffered 64% killed and the white units 33%. B 

Price: $30.00

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1953 magazine advertising the Harlem Globetrotters. M

Price: $80.00

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1859 French illustration of a slave auction in Richmond, Virginia. From Le Monde Illustre. M

Price: $90.00

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French press photos of Lionel Hampton (1984), Andrew Young (1974-1979), Jesse Jackson (1983), Cory Moore (1977), Bobby Kennedy (1964), 1968 Nixon – Rockefeller campaigning, the funeral of Maurice Williams (1977). M

Price: $150.00

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CA 2121983 menu autographed by Senator Strom Thurmond and his wife, given to Elaine Whitelaw, who was the chief fundraiser for the March of Dimes. B

Price: $90.00

Note: James Strom Thurmond Sr. (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American military officer, attorney, judge and politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator from South Carolina. He ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate on a states' rights platform supporting racial segregation. Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Southern Democrat and then, from 1964 onwards, as a Republican.

A magnet for controversy during his nearly half-century Senate career, Thurmond switched parties in 1964, primarily because of his vehement opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and endorsed Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In the months before switching, he had "been critical of the Democratic Administration for ... enactment of the Civil Rights Law", while Goldwater "boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform."

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest speaking filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the constitutional rights of African-American citizens, including basic suffrage. Despite being a pro-segregation Dixiecrat, he insisted he was not a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority, which he attributed to Communist agitators.

Starting in the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time. He never fully renounced his earlier positions.

Six months after Thurmond died, his mixed-race daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams (1925–2013) revealed he was her father. Her mother Carrie Butler (1909–1948) had been working as his family's maid, and was either 15 or 16 years old when 22-year-old Thurmond impregnated her in early 1925. Although Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Essie Mae Washington, he paid for her education at a historically black college and passed other money to her for some time. She said she kept silent out of respect for her father and denied the two had agreed she would not reveal her connection to Thurmond. His children by his marriage eventually acknowledged her. Her name has since been added as one of his children to his memorial at the state capitol.