Sammelband of Anti-slavery Tracts.
Black Education and Women in the Jim Crow Era.

Single bound octavo volume containing more than a dozen tracts printed in American cities in the post-Civil War period, all on the subject of the state of Black citizens, many focusing on education, with several contributions associated with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with other papers on post-Reconstruction issues; including: Fannie Barrier Williams's Present Status and Intellectual Progress of Colored Women, Chicago: [no printer, printed for the] World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition, May, 1898; A.D. Mayo's Southern Women in the Recent Educational Movement in the South, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892; contemporary offprints of commencement addresses delivered at Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia and Claflin University in South Carolina from the 1880s and 1890s, and other rarities; the volume itself ex-library in a failing binding; some pamphlets taken from a periodical, and thus issued without a separate title page; some with acidic chipping and delicate paper; should be seen; a complete list is available on demand, 8 7/8 x 5 3/4 in.

Frances Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944) was a Black women's rights activist and educator who pushed to have people of African heritage represented on the Board of Control of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, the subject of this particular address. Born in Pennsylvania and raised in New York State, Barrier traveled to the South to teach school in Missouri as a young woman, ultimately leaving because of the endemic racist violence and segregation. She was also pushed out of a number of educational settings because of the racist attitudes directed at her. After marrying, she and her husband Samuel Laing Williams, a successful attorney, settled in Chicago, where they gained influence in activist circles as part of the Black 400.

"Williams spoke at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, where she voiced concern of the lack of representation of Blacks at the significant social and cultural event. Later that year she helped found the National League of Colored Women. [...] As a social activist and orator, Williams spoke out on the discrimination towards both Black men and women. She wrote extensively on the current position and potential progression of African Americans in education, religion, and employment." (Quoted from Candace Staten's biography of Barrier Williams published on blackpast.org: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/williams-fannie-barrier-1855-1944/)

Condition
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