I’ve been to many auctions where the simplest of African American ephemera has been snapped up by dealers. But I was not prepared for the prices on such items at a recent manuscript auction.
When did our written history – those paper artifacts that told a once-indifferent world of our accomplishments – become so important? I’m happy that it is finally being realized for its value, but I was a bit surprised.
It has not always been so. I was at a preview of the African American manuscript auction at Swann Auction Galleries in New York last month when I struck up a conversation with Wyatt H. Day, the house’s expert on this genre. He recalled the year 1995 when he tried to get New York’s venerable auction houses to consider offering such sales. There was no market for it, he was told.
Swann was interested, he said, and he recalled that it was initially difficult to find the products. “I was starting from scratch,” he said.
Since that time, he has managed to rescue some important historical documents either from dumpsters or hiding in homes of families who didn’t realize their value. The tales of his finds are fascinating:
There was the well-known New York abolitionist family – which was involved in the Underground Railroad and is the namesake of a street in Lower Manhattan – with a library of 5,000 books at their home on Staten Island. “They (abolitionist books, the Fireside Poets) went to the town dumpster,” he said, but they were saved.
There was the family in Richmond, VA, which had a log book for a patrol boat outside West Africa.
That family directed him to another that had a rare slave manuscript – the stuff is “always in a shoebox,” Day noted. It had been written in Arabic and translated by missionaries. It was the personal manuscript of an Islamic scholar named Omar ibn Said (1770-1864), who had been kidnapped from Senegal and brought to this country to be a slave. In 1831, he wrote a narrative of his life in Africa and America.
“It was a treasure,” Day said. “We had it translated.” The missionary translation was “off,” he said, adding that the man had not happily embraced Christianity as the translation had purported. “It was bought by an African American scholar,” said Day. “It went all around the world and was exhibited at the UN. This is the kind of thing this sale has accomplished.”
There was the manuscript found among papers in a Florida home with the title “The Bondswoman’s Narrative,” written by a black woman in the late 1850s and considered the first. A narrative of the life of Hannah Crafts, it was purchased and authenticated by scholar, historian and editor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and published in 2002.
“Once again, something got rescued,” Day said. “Now I don’t have to make the academic pitch. The monetary pitch works to get stuff out of dresser drawers and attics.”
He also tries to connect to people “viscerally,” he said, to get them beyond the dollars and cents to the meaning of the manuscripts and their historical value.
A collector who’s done his share of dumpster-diving, Day owns one of those works. He says he has one of only five copies of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. An American Slave. Written by Himself.” One was up for sale last month at Swann.
The copies apparently belonged to Douglass, and Day surmised that he may have taken several with him when he parted ways with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison around the mid-19th century. “It was him reclaiming himself,” Day said. The book was missing the frontspiece (or cover) portrait of Douglass, just like all the others, he said. The autobiography was first published in 1845 and this one had a publication date of 1848.
The starting bid on the Douglass book was $13,000, but there were no takers. Other Douglass memorabilia did sell, including several copies of the Douglass Monthly newspaper – from $1,500 to $4,400 (excluding the 15 percent auction-house premium) – and a carte-de-visite card with a photo for $6,000.
Many of the other manuscripts went for thousands of dollars. This was my first Swann manuscript sale (I have come in the past for the fine art auction), and it was an enlightening experience. Several of the works were purchased by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open in 2015. The museum is building its collection, and in January, it invited people to bring in their heirlooms for appraisal and possible donation.
Here’s a sample (minus the 15 percent premium) of the prices for other items:
Aaron Douglas stenciled placard for the Wallace Thurman play “Harlem” at the Apollo Theater in 1939. $15,000.
Huey P. Newton in a wicker chair with spear in one hand and gun in another. $16,000.
“Honor King: End Racism” placard from an April 8, 1968, march in Memphis days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. $17,000.
Transcript of the first trial of the Scottsboro Boys, April 6, 1931. The transcript was found in a dumpster in Huntsville, AL, about 30 years ago. $17,000.
Group photo of the Scottsboro Boys with attorneys Juanita E. Jackson and Laura Kellum of the NAACP. Jackson was the first African American woman to pass the bar in Maryland. Kellum was with the Birmingham NAACP youth council. The photo ran in Crisis Magazine in January 1937. $10,000
Marcus Garvey pen and ink portrait with a written statement by him, 1922. $26,000.
Poster from the first Malcolm X film in 1972. $14,000.
A Night-Club Map of Harlem by E. Simms Campbell. It was a centerfold in the Jan. 8, 1933, issue of Manhattan Magazine, its first issue. $14,000.
Large Father Divine handmade banner in purple and white felt, 54″ x 53″. $30,000.
