Before social media, before #BlackTwitter, there was nineteenth-century Black print. “We struggle against opinions. Our warfare lies in the field of thought,” proclaimed the 1847 National Convention of Colored People held in Troy, NY. Black Print draws on Cornell’s rich Africana Rare and Manuscript Collections to highlight the many ways Black Americans have used print and the press as spaces for artistic expression, communication and organizing, antislavery activism, humor, education, civil rights, and imagining new worlds. These items, ranging from poetry collections and autobiographies to novels and newspapers, showcase early African American literature and Black artistic expression, what Dorothy Porter described as the “beginnings of the Afro-American’s artistic consciousness.” Black Print offers a snapshot of a robust community of writers thinking actively about Black life and Black art—the beautiful and the sublime, politics and popular culture—primarily through periodicals, pamphlets, and other ephemeral forms.

Featured are works held 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 more.

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