Happy 35th Birthday, Black Book!

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A chart outlining the translations and different dialects of African words.

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Read Felicia Pride’s tribute to The Black Book.

Joseph Cinque, a leader of the Amistad revolt that eventually became a legal case tried in the U.S. Supreme Court.

An 1851 notice cautioning black people who lived in Boston to avoid police officers because they had the authority to act as slave catchers.

A map illustrating parts of the underground railroad around Pennsylvania.

An advertisement for a slave sale in Charleston, S.C., of “mostly house servants, some for field work.”

News clipping from a Pennsylvania newspaper about the violent punishment of a married woman who allegedly committed “adultery with a negro man” in 1885.

Abolitionist John Brown as he’s escorted by police to his hanging in 1859.

A news roundup of “disturbances” in the south including the lynching of six “Negroes,” published in an 1874 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune.

An advertisement for soap that promises to turn dirty items “so clean and white.”

A 1933 photo of white actress Tess Gardella in blackface as Aunt Jemima.

Sheet music for a “coon song” that allegedly sold 3 million copies.

An assortment of cosmetics featuring skin whiteners, bleach creams and pomades.

A patent for “new and useful improvements” to the telephone by black inventor Granville T. Woods, a contemporary of Thomas Edison.

Sheet music for “I’m Just Wild about Harry,” a song written by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake for the 1921 groundbreaking Broadway musical Shuffle Along.

A quote by writer Henry Dumas.

Straight From The Root

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