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‘Mislike Me Not for My Complexion’

By on March 22, 2011 in New Acquisitions

In spring 2010, Julia Ellen Craft Davis and Vicki Lorraine Davis generously donated the Craft and Crum Family Papers to the Avery Research Center. Archivists and historians alike are delighted with the major highlight of the collection: a tribute book to William and Ellen Craft, enslaved people from Macon, Georgia who completed a daring escape and became internationally known celebrities.

'Mislike Me Not for My Complexion,' quoted by Ira Aldridge

Ira Aldridge quotes the Prince of Morocco from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Opening the slim volume for the first time, Avery staff members gasped at the handwriting of thespian Ira Aldridge, an African American from New York who graced the London stage in the 19th century. Though celebrated in England and the European continent, Aldridge also faced enormous prejudice due to his race. Invoking the sentiments of the Prince of Morocco in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Aldridge quoted, “Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun.” With these words, Aldridge welcomed American refugees William and Ellen Craft to England and issued a shared plea for equality.

Created upon the Crafts’ entrée into English abolitionist circles, this tribute book contains passages and quotations written by well-known supporters, including the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as Ira Aldridge and his wife, the Swedish countess Amanda Aldridge. A cartes-de-visite album of these figures, the Crafts, and other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison provides a rich visual counterpart to the volume and hints at the international importance of these materials.

Harriet Beecher Stowe writes to the Crafts.

Harriet Beecher Stowe quotes two biblical passages as she writes to the Crafts.

But just who were the Crafts and how did they emerge as public figures in the transatlantic abolitionist movement?
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Partners in Progress

By on March 20, 2011 in Current Events

As the College of Charleston moves towards an academic major in African American Studies, the Avery Research Center, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program (CLAW), and the African American Studies program have intentionally and thoughtfully enhanced cross-program collaboration. January ushered in a new form of partnership, as the programs cooperated to offer an artist-in-residence series.

Tracing History sought to share one man’s living history and memory with the South Carolina communities that have nurtured it. Roger Guenveur Smith, an Obie award‐winning teacher, performer, and artist, explored his past during a week‐long residency. This residency included tutorials and performances open to the public, a workshop with students from the College of Charleston, campus and community film screenings with ensuing discussion, and a public conversation with Smith related to his Charleston family history and genealogy.

In evening workshops, Smith worked with undergraduate participants to craft narrative and performance pieces. The students were encouraged to use archival and other historical materials to create new work for the stage. The workshop concluded with an open public rehearsal of the participant-created pieces at the Avery Research Center.

Deborah Wright, our Reference Archivist, recently found this video from Native Magazine featuring this innovative partnership between the arts, the archives, and public memory:

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The Art of Book Collecting

By on March 8, 2011 in Rare Book Collection

What drives someone to collect something?  An attempt to revive a faded memory?  The pride that comes from finding a rare piece no one else has?   A penchant for the history behind a set of stamps?  Or maybe the peculiar sound of engines from certain brands of cars?  The reasons why someone pursues a collection of things are many.

When it comes to the realm of books, the reasons for collecting a set can be just as varied. Some book collectors may want to acquire the writings of a certain group or movement. Others might desire all of the first editions of a specific author.

I recently had the pleasure to re-assemble the books that the collector William Stewart amassed over the course of many years.  When it comes to the Stewart Collection at the Avery Research Center, it was difficult for me to instantly find the bond that unites the various books that comprise it.  With some books dating to years as early as 1838 (Recollections of a Southern Matron by Carolina H. Gilman) and spanning nearly the entire 20th century (Gullah Night Before Christmas by Virginia M. Geraty), the time frame is as broad as the subjects covered.  I later learned of William Stewart’s professional life as a linguist and his specialization in Gullah, which explains many of the regional works.  But one aspect that literally draws ones eye to the collection, however, is the simple visual appeal.

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Lecture: Freedom’s Teacher, the Life of Septima Clark

By on February 15, 2011 in Special Events

Freedom's Teacher: the Life of Septima ClarkOut of the archives and into public discourse… For her biography of Civil Rights activist Septima Poinsette Clark, Katherine Mellen Charron drew significantly on the archival holdings of the Avery Research Center.  Please join us on Thursday, February 17 as Charron, assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University, lectures on Freedom’s Teacher: the Life of Septima Clark.

Charron’s work traces Clark’s life from her earliest years as a student, teacher, and community member in rural and urban South Carolina to her increasing radicalization as an activist following World War II, highlighting how Clark brought her life’s work to bear on the Civil Rights Movement.  Charron’s engaging portrait demonstrates Clark’s crucial role — and the role of many black women teachers — in making education a cornerstone of the twentieth-century freedom struggle.

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Lost and Found

By on February 14, 2011 in Guest Contributor

Today’s post was authored by a Guest Contributor, historian and sea grass basket scholar Dale Rosengarten.

Photo courtesy of Dale Rosengarten.

It amazes me when historic objects resurface after decades, even centuries, of lying hidden and unknown.  Occasionally, the objects are returned “home”—repatriated, as it were—and amazement turns to triumph and joy.  Such were my feelings last September when I gazed at a large bulrush wood basket, in near mint condition, on display at the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head Island.   The museum was hosting a traveling exhibition called “Grass Roots On-the-Road”—a small, low security version of a major exhibit I co-curated for the Museum for African Art in New York. Coastal Discovery’s Vice President of Programs, Natalie Hefter, had put out a call for local residents to lend Lowcountry baskets from their collections to the museum.  Beaufort resident Erik Stevens turned up with a Penn School basket, circa 1905, probably made by Penn’s first basketry instructor, Alfred Graham, and sporting its original Trademark Tag with Graham’s picture on it.

Where has the basket been all these years?  How was it rescued from obscurity?  Looking for photographs of an old house he was restoring in Beaufort, Erik Googled “Trask,” the name of the family that owned the property next door, and came up with an estate sale of the late Spencer Trask of Saratoga Springs, New York.  Among the items listed for auction was a “St. Helena basket.”  Erik bid $195—the minimum figure—and bought the orphaned object uncontested.

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Cainhoy Crossing: An Afternoon Tour of Cainhoy and Daniel Island

By on January 15, 2011 in Field Trips
Herb Frazier

Herb Frazier speaks to the Cainhoy Crossing tour group. Photo courtesy of Lisa Randle and LOHA.

On Sunday, October 17, 2010, the Lowcountry Oral History Alliance (LOHA) had its first official group outing, a bus tour of the Cainhoy peninsula guided by Herb Frazier.  We all knew that Herb would be a great tour guide, but the depth and scope of his talk was really impressive.  Living in Charleston for over half a decade, I am still constantly learning about the local history.  Daniel Island is a place I admittedly have known little about.  To me, it has always been what you first see when you take the exit from Interstate 526: new homes, a little urban shopping area with restaurants and medical offices, and the sports landmarks, the Family Circle Tennis Center and Blackbaud Soccer Stadium.  The area exudes modern upscale living and deceivingly looks like it has been inhabited for only the last fifteen years or so.

Behind this first impression of Daniel Island, however, is an incredibly deep history.  Concerned about development in the area and its possible contribution to the disappearance of the long-standing African American culture that exists there, the Coastal Community Foundation asked Herb Frazier to research and write on the area in 2004.  Herb began collecting oral histories from the area in 2005, and the result has been a much larger project than originally anticipated.  He has identified about 22 distinct African American communities in the area, while his talk only covered a few of these.

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Hutchinson Recounts Charleston Church History

By on December 21, 2010 in Oral Histories

If you have lived south of Broad Street, there is a great chance that you may remember a very agile, tiny man, Mr. Felder Hutchinson, serving you as a mail carrier for over thirty years until his retirement in 1985.  If you are a member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Thomas Street, you may have had the pleasure of encountering Hutchinson either as a dedicated Sunday school teacher, vestryman, warden, or lay reader — just to name a few of his numerous functions.

In 1985, Dr. Edmund L. Drago and Dr. Eugene Hunt conducted an interview with Felder Hutchinson as part of the Avery Normal Institute Oral History Project. In this oral history, Hutchinson provides great insight on Charleston history.  Although Hutchinson was not a historian by training, he clearly was an avid collector of memories and documents, especially pertaining to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

I remember a quote from the former director of the Avery Research Center, Dr. Marvin Dulaney, who asked my African American Studies class back in 2007: “Do you really believe we have left segregation behind us? Why is it then that our nation is so segregated on Sunday mornings at 11am?”  At that moment it wasn’t quite clear to me what he was trying to get at, but then this interview made it click for me: yes, why is it that white folks and black folks in the Holy City each flock to their churches separately every week?  Well, there are various reasons and multiple books and dissertations have been published on this issue; but as I listened to Hutchinson’s interview he gave a very interesting, personal account on the creation and founding of his beloved church: St. Mark’s Episcopal.

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