Radical members of the South Carolina Legislature

Attributed to J. G. Gibbes, Radical Members of the So. Ca. [South Carolina] Legislature, no date [1868?]. Albumen silver print. GA 2009.01025 and GA 2009.01024

After our recent election, did anyone ask if either house, any legislature, or other governing body now had a majority of Black members? On January 14, 1868, the South Carolina constitutional convention met in Charleston with a majority of Black delegates.

There are many images of this 1868 photo-montage on the internet. We digitized ours so researchers could enlarge and study each individual man. https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/10657586
As described by the Digital South Carolina Encyclopedia,

The 1868 constitution was revolutionary because it embodied many democratic principles absent from previous constitutions. The new document provided for population alone, rather than wealth or the combination of wealth and population, as the basis for House representation. It also continued popular election of the governor. Additionally, the 1868 constitution abolished debtors’ prison, provided for public education, abolished property ownership as a qualification for office holding, granted some rights to women, and created counties. Provisions [in schools] for the deaf and blind were also ordered. Race was abolished as a limit on male suffrage. The Black Codes that had flourished under the constitution of 1865 were overturned. There was no provision against interracial marriage, and all the public schools were open to all races.

This text accompanies the print:

“These are the Photographs of 63 members of the reconstruction South Carolina Legislature, 50 of whom are negros, or mulattoes and 13 white. 22 read and write (8 grammatically). The remainder (41) make their mark with the aide of an amanuensis. Nineteen (19) are tax-payers to an aggregate amount of $146.10 the rest (44) pay no taxes, and the body levies on the white people of the State for $4,000,000.”


Two of the images in the composite read: “President, Lieut. Gov. Booze 40 acres and a mule” and “Judas Moses who raised the Confederate flag on Fort Sumter”.

The men’s names are printed on some copies:
1-Dusenberry, McKinlay, Dickson, Wilder, Hoyt, Randolph, Harris
2-Myes, Jillson, Lomax, Jackson, Thomas, Webb, Bozeman, Tomlinson, Wright.
3-Demars, Brodie, Hayes, Cain, Maxwell, Martin, Cook, Miller.
4-Rivers, Duncan, BOOZER, Smythe, Wright, MOSES, Sancho, Sanders, Nuckles.
5-Miteford, White, Barton, Boston, Shrewsbury, Mickey, Henderson, Howell, Hayne, Mobley, Hudson, Nash, Carmand.
6-Smith, Pettengill, Hyde, Lee, Simonds, Chesnut, McDaniel, Williams, Gardner.
7-Swails, Perrin, James, Johnston, Wimbush, Hayes, Farr, Meade, Thompson, Rainey.

Thanks to Emily E. Vaughn, we know a little more:
http://emilyevaughn.com/SC1868LegislatureR1.htm
Row 1
Harris, David
McKinley, Whitfield J.
Randolph, Benjamin F.
Wilder, Charles M.

Row 2
Boseman, Benjamin A.
Lomax, Hutson J.
Mays, James P.
Thomas, William M.
Wright, Jonathan J.


Row 3
Brodie, William J.
Cain, Lawrence
Cooke, Wilson
Hayes, Eben
Maxwell, Henry J.

Row 4
Duncan, Hiram W.
Nuckles, Samuel
Rivers, Prince R.
Saunders, Sancho
Smythe, Powell
Wright, John B.

Row 5
Burton, Barney
Hayne, Henry E.
Henderson, James A.
Hutson, James
Mickey, Edward C.
Mobley, Junius S.
Nash, William B.
Shrewsbury, Henry L.
White, John Hannibal

Row 6
Chestnut, John A.
Gardner, John
Lee, Samuel J.
McDaniels, Harry
Simons, William M.
Smith, Abraham W.

Row 7
Farr, Simeon
James, Burrell
Johnson, William E.
Meade, James W.
Perrin, Wade
Rainey, Joseph H.
Swails, Stephen Atkins
Thompson, Benjamin A.
Wimbush, Lucius W.

Celebrate Virtual Diwali

With our local BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Robinsville NJ closed due to Covid 19, celebrate today’s Diwali online: https://www.baps.org/

Decoration and celebration from last year:

Princeton writes: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Princeton University has had to make the difficult decision to make its undergraduate program of education fully remote for Fall 2020. In addition, the university has amended its visitors’ policy; in order to safeguard everyone’s healthy and safety, public programing is no longer possible. As a result we will not be holding our Diwali at the Chapel celebration in 2020.

This year, we present DIVYA JYOTI: A Virtual Diwali Offering of the Princeton University Hindu Life Program on YouTube. We will premier DIVYA JYOTI on Saturday, November 14 at 6pm ET here.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXI_S3tzWojr218Ik-Q63iQ

See also: Ghānim, Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ. al-Mas’ūlīyah al-dawlīyah dirasah li-Ahkam al-Kanum al-Diwali walitatbikatuha allati tahum aldual al-Arabyia … (Alqahira (Cairo), Jama’t al-Dual al-Arabyia, Ma’had al-Dirasat al-Arabyia al-A’liah, [1962]) Near East Collections (NEC) KZ4080 .G436 1962

What is Diwali:

La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, and El Lio

La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, El Lio (Barcelona, March 1869 – March 1876). Complete with 256 weekly issues bound in 3 volumes, sophisticated copy. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Latin American Studies and the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a scarce complete run of this remarkably well-illustrated satirical weekly, which began life as La Flaca. Each issue is typically comprised of one bifolium with a full-page color lithograph in volume 1 and in volume 2 ans 3, a double-page lithograph. More digital images have been posted at: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Flaca&prev=search&pto=aue

Published in Barcelona, the Republican magazine faced intense government censorship and so, frequently changed its name, switching from La Flaca to La Carcajada, then La Madeja, La Madeja Política, and finally El Lio to avoid the censors. Biting criticism of the Spanish government and church was a staple while promoting freedom of the press.

The magazine’s chief illustrator was Tomás Padró y Pedret (1840-1877), who should be listed among the great caricaturist of the period. Born in Barcelona to a family of artists, he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. It has been noted that another student, Mariano Fortuny, introduced him to the drawings by Paul Gavarni, an obvious influence in his satirical work. it is interesting that many plates use the iconography of drawing or writing or printmaking in their satirical message.


“The title was an ironic allusion to the plight of the Spanish people: the rickety woman with a shield bearing the country’s coat of arms and laurel wreath, accompanied by an equally starving lion on the cover of the magazine was a satire allegory of the woman and the lion fomented by the authorities in the 19th century and supposed to embody the alliance between the monarchy and the people.”

The contents are as follows:
Volume 1: La Flaca, nos. 1-100 (3rd of April 1869-3rd of September 1871). NB: no. 1 not dated.

Volume 2: La Carcajada, nos. 1-37 (17th of January 1872-31st of October 1872); La Flaca, nos. 38-84 (7th of November 1872-4th of October 1873).

Volume 3: La Madeja Politica, nos. 1-14 (1st of November 1873 – 31st of January 1873); El Lio, nos. 1-7 (7th of February 1874-18th of April 1874); La Madeja, nos. 22-50 (2nd of May 1874-19th of December 1874); La Madeja, nos. 1-22 (2nd of January 1875-3rd of March 1876).

 

Marketing the Black Panther Party

Back cover   and   front cover


Black Panther Party National Distribution Brochure (San Francisco: [Black Panther Party], 1971). Single folded leaf [ca. 4 pp.] showing posters, pin-back buttons, LPs, and other Panthers’ ephemera, along with an order coupon. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

A scarce piece of Black Panther ephemera was recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection. The fold-out poster is also a sales catalogue for the various buttons, booklets, and other materials promoting the Black Panther Party. Primarily designed by the Party’s Minister of Information Emory Douglas (born 1943), these symbols helped to spread the organization’s message worldwide. The video below presents Douglas talking about the use of the panther icon and the development of other visual materials that were so important to the promotion of their organization:

This website offers an interesting page on the many women of the Black Panther movement, who are often overshadowed by the men: click here. Also on this site are many free downloads of Black Panther Party memorabilia. The material is useful for such diverse classes as “Global Algeria in the 20th Century: Beyond France and Fanon” or “Poetry in the Political & Sexual Revolution of the 1960s & 70s,” described here:

“What does artistic production look like during a time of cultural unrest? How did America’s poets help shape the political landscape of the American 60s and 70s, decades that saw the rise of the Black Panthers, ‘Flower Power,’ and Vietnam War protests? Through reading poetry, studying films and engaging with the music of the times we will think about art’s ability to move the cultural needle and pose important questions about race, gender, class, and sexuality.”

See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/03/13/the-black-panther-not-the-movie/

 

 

Comparing The Seasons 1794 and 1797

James Thomson (1700-1748), The Seasons (Parma, Bodoni, 1794). Printed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). In original orange boards. Graphic Arts Collection F-000132.

 

“Despite the general decline of the folio format in the second half of the century, it was revived for two editions of The Seasons, one of which was an elaborate subscription venture that took four years to complete; the other was commissioned and largely financed by Thomson enthusiast David Steuart, 11th Earl of Buchan. Catering to the upper end of the market, booksellers issued the lavishly illustrated 1797 folio edition, dedicated to the Queen, with engravings by Peltro William Tomkins and Francesco Bartolozzi.

In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni published another luxurious English-language folio edition for an elite clientele in Britain, using his superb type but no illustrations; he primarily targeted a Scottish market for the work because of the growing cult of Thomson that Steuart had fostered early in the 1790s, and aimed at book collectors to purchase his edition. –Brian Hillyard, “David Steuart and Giambattista Bodoni: On the Fringes of the British Book Trade,” in Worlds of Print: Diversity in the Book Trade, edited by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (2006), 113-25. 8.

To prepare for a virtual student visit this week, both folio editions of Thomson’s The Seasons were pulled and some pages photographed.

Warren E. Preece wrote a brief commentary on Bodoni, noting “In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni enthusiastically took up the principle of page design as worked out by Baskerville, though not his typefaces. Further modifying the Aldine roman of Garamond, he mechanically varied the difference between the thick and thin strokes of his letters to achieve the ultimate contrast possible in that direction. His letters are rather narrower than those of either Caslon or Baskerville. He exaggerated his thick lines and reduced the thin ones almost—it seems at times—to the point of disappearance. Like Baskerville, he used opulent papers and inks blended for special brilliance.

His pages were not easy to read, but he became, in the words of Stanley Morison, the typographical idol of the man of taste, and his “plain”—though deliberately and artfully contrived—designs were an important factor in the decline in importance of the édition de luxe and its replacement by works more austere in feeling, more modern even to today’s eyes. He set what was, in general, to be the standard book style of the world until the appearance of William Morris. Warren E. Preece, “Typography,” Encyclopædia Britannica

As is widely noted, William Morris considered Bodoni’s mechanical typography an example of “modern ugliness.”

Bodoni also set the standard for printing the alphabet with his Manuale tipografico (1818). The two-volume set features 142 sets of roman and italic typefaces, a wide selection of borders, ornaments, symbols, and flowers, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Phoenician, Armenian, Coptic, and Tibetan alphabets (Graphic Arts Collection Q-000122).

 

 

 

 

James Thomson (1700-1748), The Seasons. Illustrated with engravings by F. Bartolozzi, R.A. and P.W. Tomkins, historical engravers to Their Majesties; from original pictures painted for the work by W. Hamilton, R.A. (London: Printed for P.W. Tomkins, 1797). Rare Books Oversize 3960.2.38.16f

 

In contrast with Bodoni’s Seasons, a lavish edition of The Seasons was prepared by Peltro William Tomkins, who commissioned paintings by William Hamilton (1751-1801), which were translated to engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815) and Peltro William Tomkins (1759-1840). Targeted at the Scottish market, this edition was enthusiastically promoted and sold well into the early 19th century.

Burlesque actress Jennie Worrell dies penniless in Coney Island

Jennie, Sophie, and Irene Worrell. University of Nevada, Reno, Library. UNRS-P1348

 

Tom Taylor (1817-1880), Our Clerks, or, No. 3, Fig Tree Court, Temple: an original farce, in one act … (London (89 Strand): T.H. Lacy, [186-?]). Theatre collection TC23, 156a. Rehearsal script owned by Jennie Worrell (1850-1899), who played the character of Edward Sharpus, dated [August? 9th?] 1867 New York.

 

 

Buried in box 156a of the American playbill collection at Princeton is the script for Tom Taylor’s Our Clerks, or, No. 3, Fig Tree Court, Temple used by Jennie Worrell (1850-1899) during a 1867 production, in which she played the role of Edward Sharpus. Given this was a farce performed at the height of Victorian burlesque theater—think Saturday Night Live with more music—a female actress playing a male character is not surprising. The revelation comes with the personal story of this celebrated actress, director, producer, who died penniless, sleeping in the weeds on the outskirts of Coney Island.

Born in Cincinnati, the youngest of three sister, Jennie began performing at the age of eight. Her father was William Worrell (1823-1897), a successful circus clown, who developed a stage act with his daughters, first performed in San Francisco and then, toured throughout the United States.

They brought the act to New York City in 1866 when Jennie was 16 years old (recording her age as 14), Irene was around 18, and Sophie approximately 20. Given their notoriety and extensive background in the theater, the sisters leased the Church of the Messiah building at Broadway and Waverly Place, recently converted to a legitimate theater and renamed it the Worrell Sister’s New York Theater. Together the women managed the space and produced the plays, while also directing and acting in many of the productions.

It was at the Worrell’s theater that Augustin Daly (1838-1899) first presented Under the Gaslight, which included the now famous scene where a man is tied to the railroad tracks, only to be saved by the heroine. The play’s success led to a return engagement with the Worrell sisters playing the major roles and featuring Jennie, who stole the show when she grabbed an ax and saved the young man from an oncoming train.

Later versions switch the gender roles.

 

Performances at the Worrell Sister’s theater sold-out as their admirers multiplied. One review in the New-York Tribune, May 18, 1867, said:

“At the New-York Theater the Three Graces of Burlesque, Sophie, Jennie, and Irene Worrell, are attracting larger and still larger audiences as the season wears on. On Thursday evening the attendance was particularly good, and the performance particularly vivacious and pleasant. …These lively and talented young ladies—who originally made their appearance in this city last season … have grown steadily in favor with that portion of the public which craves dramatic merriment, until at last they have secured what, in religious parlance, may be termed a considerable following. They are pretty, and lively, and innocently mischievous; and they sing, and dance, and pleasantly prattle through the lightest of plays….”

Later that season, Jennie played the shrewdly hilarious role of Edward Sharpus in Tom Taylor’s Our Clerks, in which two barristers share an office and the love of the same woman, while always being outwitted by their clerks. Writing under a pseudonym, Tayler (1817-1880) penned many of the most successful plays of the period, including Our American Cousin (attended by Abraham Lincoln), and went on to edit Punch magazine.

Highlights of the 1868 season included The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein with Sophie as the Grand Duchess, Irene as Wanda and Jennie as Prince Paul, followed by a stage version of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, adapted by Augustin Daly. To advertise the production, the sisters circulated dollar bills that looked real until you read the fine print, announcing their play.

After a number of years, the sister gave up management of the theater and chiefly toured the most successful of their productions. One reviewer noted: “The beautiful and accomplished Worrell sisters in the early seventies created a veritable furor throughout the country. The “Johnnies” went fairly wild over their grace, their beauty and their symmetry of form. The younger of the three pretty burlesquers was Jennie, who had hazel eyes and rich brown hair. Jennie was the especial favorite of the trio.” Another commented, “The beautiful voluptuous Jennie Worrell supped late, drank champagne, owned fast horses, wore diamonds, squandered money to right and left [until] the public grew weary of burlesque art and another group of performers began to attract attention.”

Each of the sisters married. Jennie’s first husband was Mike Murray, an infamous gambling proprietor and friend to Boss Tweed, with whom she had a daughter in 1872 named Jennie (also called Laura). The 1880 census lists the entire Worrell family living on Union Street in Brooklyn, husbands included, although Jennie is listed as a border (probably staying there in between fights with her husband). Eventually Mike and Jennie divorced, at which time she married John Alexander Chatfield (also listed as Hatfield) and moved to Surrey, England, until his death.

When she returned, Mike turned their daughter against her mother, disappearing with the girl and leaving Jennie heart-broken (See “Daughter… Forsake Her Mother,” New York Tribune March 10, 1888). This was the beginning of her down-turn, intensified by her lack of funds as these and other husbands or lovers left her with diminishing finances.

By the 1890s, Jennie had lost her home and her family disowned her, due to her drinking and disreputable behavior. The New York Times reported one arrest and conviction in 1896, during which she told one reporter:

“I thought how joyfully I would welcome death for myself. Then I determined to end my life by poison. I was not strong enough to carry out my intention, however I stopped at a druggist’s on my way to the boat and had a drink of brandy. I had not been accustomed to drinking and in my weak state it immediately affected my head. I welcomed anything that would make me forget that would bring me release form my dreadful thoughts. I took two more drinks. Then I came to New York. This was Sunday night. I had no home to which to go. All night I wandered around the streets. When daylight was approaching I entered the police station on west forty seventh street and asked for lodging and care. Perhaps I was boisterous I don’t know.”

The Actors Fund of America was notified of her plight but took no action. When the same story was reported in her hometown Cincinnati newspaper, Jennie is described as spiteful and vindictive, grinning at the magistrate when he asked her name. “Jennie Worrell!” she said, “Hard to believe, isn’t it Judge?”

 

On August 10, 1899, Jennie was wandering in the marshes outside Coney Island, in the area where Luna Park would be built a few years later. Exhausted, she laid down to sleep. It is presumed that she lit a cigarette and threw the still-lit match into the weeds, which caught fire. Although several heard her screaming, she wasn’t found until much later when the fire department was called and extinguished the blaze. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, “Jennie Worrell, the most famous stage beauty of a quarter of a century ago, is to-day battling for life in the King’s County Hospital. The face and form, which were once the admiration of thousands, are misshapen and blistered. She was all but burned to death in a fire, which swept the flats at the west section of Coney Island. The doctors say she cannot live.” Jennie Worrell died in the hospital the following day, never having recovered consciousness.

 

 

Before Zoom. Save the Date

Pre-zoom, pre-cinema moving picture

 

Please join us at 2:00 EST on Friday, December 4, 2020, for a free webinar highlighting material in Princeton University Library’s Special Collections. This December we will offer you a captivating tour of our collection of pre-zoom, pre-cinema optical devices, rare artifacts designed for shared public entertainment or personal moments of wonder, leading up to the invention of the motion picture.



Through a series of live webcams (yikes, not prerecorded), we will attempt the phantasmagoria experienced in the past as we peer into 18th-century peepshows, twirl phenakistoscopes, open a gigantic megalethoscope and crank a miniature cinematograph. Feel the sense of wonder as still images come to life, turning day to night, causing volcanoes to erupt, and conjuring faces to rise from anamorphic chaos.

We will be joined by Christopher Collier, Executive Director, and Jesse Crooks, Operations Director and Head Projectionist for Renew Theaters, who will share some of the history and treasures of Princeton’s Garden Theater.

As always, this one hour session is free and open to the pubic but you need to register to get the invitation link: Register here.

 

Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, Un Film de William Klein

Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, Un Film de William Klein (Paris: Imprimerie Speciale Capital Films, n.d. [1970]). Photomechanical poster. Unknown designer. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2020- in process

Filmed nonstop for three days by director/cinematographer William Klein (born 1928) on site in Algeria, this low budget film follows Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) after leaving the United States. When it was released in London, the Guardian noted, “Cleaver, on film as in life, is a complex mixture of profound political insight, socially crystallized ghetto cultural patterns and a multifaceted human personality.”

“When in Algiers to film the Pan-African Cultural Festival in 1969, Klein met Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Information, in exile after being charged with murder in the United States and now invited by the Algerian authorities to take part officially in the Festival with his African-American Information Center. Klein is fascinated by this charismatic and controversial figure, openly advocating the use of violence by the Black Panthers as a legitimate revolutionary practice, and at the same time involved in humanitarian activities and an international solidarity network bringing together activists from Cuba to Africa to Vietnam. The documentary portrays Cleaver’s manifold personality against his daily life in Algiers, as he talks to Klein and to other Festival delegates about American society, the war in Vietnam and the ongoing struggles for independence and civil rights across the continents.”


A short selection from Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther by William Klein, Algeria / France 1970, 35mm transferred to digiBeta, 75 min, English and French with English subtitles

I Am Somebody!

Herb Bruce, I Am Somebody! ([Chicago]: Gráfica Studios / Charisma Chain Inc., 1970). Poster printed with fluorescent inks on coated paper. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Herb Bruce

The African American artist and illustrator Herbert “Herb” Bruce designed this Day-Glo poster, as well as “Free Angela [Davis]” and “Cosmic Lady [Janis Joplin]” for Grafica studio, a division of Charisma Chain inc., Chicago, Illinois. He was also a contributing artist at the Johnson Publishing Company, founded by the African-American businessman John H. Johnson, whose Chicago headquartered published Ebony and Black World magazines, with drawings by Bruce in both.

The text is by Reverend Dr. William Holmes Borders (1905-1993), who served as pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia, for over 50-years. Thanks to his radio addresses, he became a nationally known orator, writer, political activist, and preacher.

“Rev. Border utilized his platform to help African-Americans wherever he best could. For example, when four African-Americans were cruelly lynched in Monroe, Ga, he raised over $11,000 in community fundraising to go to cover their funeral expenses. Most notably, on January 10, 1957, near the beginning of Civil Rights era, Borders and five other protesters were arrested for violating bus segregation. Their protest directly led to the desegregation of buses in Atlanta.”

“During his time serving as a pastor, Rev. Dr. William Borders produced over 7 books of prayers and sermons, most famous is his poem, “I am Somebody” that was requested over 8,000 nationwide and was later used by Rev. Jesse Jackson during the Civil Rights era.” — https://www.sweetauburnworks.com/honoring-the-legacy-of-rev-william-holmes-borders-the-borders-family/

In 1970, a documentary film was released titled “I Am Somebody,” by Madeline Anderson, following black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina who went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase. Andrew Young, Charles Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King are included in the film, which was recently inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Archive and preserved by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. While the poster is not directly related to the film, Borders’ poem from the 1940s was revived in these several ways in 1970.

Afrikan Liberation Day

May 25, 2020 was the 62nd anniversary of Afrikan Liberation Day (ALD), which started out as Africa Freedom Day (AFD) in 1958 at the Conference of Independent Afrikan States in Accra, Ghana (thanks to Ajamu Nangwaya for these facts). “The anti-colonial and decolonization process progressed to such an extent that there were thirty-two independent states on May 25, 1963 when the Organization of Afrikan Unity (OAU) was created and it renamed Afrika Freedom Day as Afrikan Liberation Day.” The African Union (AU) replaced the OAU in 2002, under the leadership of the Assembly of the African Union, “a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states.”

Variously called African Unity Day, Afrikan Liberation Day, and Africa Day, the event is celebrated globally as a day of remembrance and acknowledgement to the liberation struggle, as well as a day to reaffirm African’s patriotic commitments towards the envisaged total liberation of their continent, politically and economically.

 

 

Milk Quarterly 9/10 (Yellow Press, 1976)

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired a series of posters promoting and celebrating ALD over several years in the 20th century. Here are a few examples.

 

 

Here is a presentation by AUC Chairperson H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat from this year.