Charles Blockson spent a lifetime collecting what the world was content to lose. The result — more than 500,000 items spanning four centuries — is one of the most significant archives of African American and African diaspora history in existence. Books, manuscripts, photographs, letters, playbills, sheet music, slave narratives, abolitionist pamphlets, and primary documents that tell the story of Black life in America with a completeness that no single museum could match.
The collection includes a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems (1773), the earliest known published work by an African American. It includes documents tracing the Underground Railroad through Philadelphia. It holds the personal papers of Paul Robeson.
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