MEMORABILIA

RECEIPT (1796)
This receipt was for the sale of a one-year-old enslaved female named Tabb who was sold on February 25, 1796, by Isaac Holman of Rowan County, North Carolina, to Jacob Holman, also of Rowan County. [Notation on the back of original document certifies that the bill of sale was registered, October 19, 1796.]

NEWSPAPER (1857)
The front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper from June 27, 1857, depicts illustrations of three images: “Eliza and Lizzie, Children of Dred Scott,” “His Wife, Harriet” and finally “Dred Scott” himself, and is one of the more desired issues of this title of its 65 years of publication. The newspaper contains valuable history from one of the landmark cases in American jurisprudence regarding slavery, now known as the “Dred Scott Decision.”

SLAVE MANIFEST (1860)
This item is the slave manifest of the S.S. Texas, which sailed from La Salle and arrived in New Orleans on March 5, 1860. Slaves were not recognized as passengers (who were listed on a separate form) but, rather, cargo “held to service and labor.” The Slave Manifest was for all enslaved persons (and occasionally free persons of color) onboard with a list of each person’s name, sex, age, height, color, and owner.

PHOTOGRAPH (1916)
One of the early negro league baseball teams was known as the St. Louis Giants, from 1906–21 (shown here in 1916, before Negro League Baseball was officially organized in 1920), who later became the St. Louis Stars in 1922. “Father of the Negro Leagues” Rube Foster sits front and center.

MARCH TO FREEDOM FLIER (1955)
This poster is an announcement of a meeting sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (N.A.A.C.P.), called to address issues seen as corollaries to school segregation decisions.

FINGERPRINTS (1956)
Fingerprint Card of Rosa Parks for Civil Case 1147 Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al. Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress whose refusal to move to the back of a bus, was a lead player in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER PAMPHLET (1964)
Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to expand black voting in the South.

FBI POSTER (1964)
Missing persons poster created by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1964, signed by Director J. Edgar Hoover, showing images of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner who had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign, encouraging African American citizens to vote. They were abducted and murdered, in June 1964. Forty-one years later, Edgar Ray Killen was charged and convicted of three counts of manslaughter, in 2005. On June 20, 2016, authorities officially closed the case. Killen died in prison in January 2018.

TELEGRAM (1965)
Baseball player and activist Jackie Robinson was sickened by events in Selma, Alabama, where marchers were assaulted, resulting in several deaths and many injuries. He sent this telegram to the White House as a call to action, on March 9, 1965.

BLACK PANTHER PARTY POSTER (1969)
The poster shows four women demonstrating for release of six members of the Black Panther Party from the Niantic State Women’s Farm in Connecticut. By the early 1970s, women would make up the majority of members in the Black Panther Party.