Join us for a gallery tour (4:30-5:30 p.m.) led by curator Derrick Spires, followed by an opening reception (5:30-7:00 p.m.) for Black Print: African American Writing, 1773-1910! Black Print features works in Cornell University Library’s Rare and Manuscript Collections by Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Frances E. W. Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sojourner Truth, and many others.

Before social media, before #BlackTwitter, there was nineteenth-century Black print. This exhibition draws on Cornell’s rich Africana Rare and Manuscript Collections to celebrate a robust community of writers thinking actively about Black life, Black art, and freedom through the press. It highlights the many ways Black Americans used print as a space for artistic expression, communication and organizing, antislavery activism, humor, education, civil rights, and more. 

This exhibition has been funded through the generous support of the Stephen E. and Evalyn Edwards Milman Fund for Exhibitions.