Collection of print and manuscript items relating to African and African American history assembled over a number of decades by the staff of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Collection contains approximately 600 items documenting the sales, escapes, and emancipations of slaves from colonial times through the Civil War, the civil rights era from 1950-1970, and to a lesser extent, the period in between the 1870s and the 1950s. The documents bring to light details of the lives and deaths of enslaved and free Africans and African Americans in the Southern United States, especially in North Carolina and Virginia, and of economic factors in the trade, sale, and exchange of slaves and other individuals.
