Juan Latino, Ad Catholicum … Philippum Dei gratia Hispaniarum Regem …, epigrammatum liber (Granada, Spain: 1573)
We make one final post for Black History Month on this last day, and an exciting post it is. The University Library has just announced that its seven millionth volume—to be presented by the Hanes Foundation on March 20—is a copy of the first book by Renaissance humanist Juan Latino, widely considered to be the first person of sub-Saharan African ancestry to publish a book of poetry in a Western language. The rare and important 16th-century imprint will become a part of the Rare Book Collection. Read more about Latino and his book in the library news release. And join us for the viewing, presentation ceremony, and a lecture by Professor Michael A. Gómez at the FedEx Global Education Center.
We couldn’t let Black History Month pass without blogging about the Rare Book Collection’s outstanding resources for the study of the Black tradition. Here we highlight a recent acquisition and an extraordinary survival. This ephemeral broadside for the Sabbath School of the State Street M.E. Church is an African-American imprint, dateline Mobile, Alabama, March 17, 1865. There is only one other printing issued in the Confederate States of America known to be of African-American authorship.
This single sheet gives the rules, regulations, and by-laws for a school that appears to have became the first one for African-Americans in the state of Alabama. Sabbath schools were different from the Sunday schools of our era, offering non-religious instruction on the Sabbath, that day being the only one of the week that the laboring classes might have free. The creation of a school for African Americans was a bold move, and this document was produced on the very day that Union forces began their campaign to take the port city.
The State Street Methodist Church was founded in 1829 as a mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, later the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. It came to have a congregation of 500 full members by 1855, when an imposing Italianate structure had been erected as its home. The landmark building still exists in Mobile.
In Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890 (Baton Rouge, 2002), Michael W. Fitzgerald notes that “less than one month after the city fell, the ‘State Street M.E. Colored Church’ opened a school with the assistance of a northern aid society. Ten days later over five hundred students were in attendance, gathered from churches throughout the city.” The broadside now in the RBC would seem to relate to that school’s origins and history. It also elicits all kinds of queries: from the circumstances of access to a printing press to the identities and lives of the “Committee and Framers,” a few of whom can be found in the 1870 census for Mobile, with their “Color” listed variously as Mulatto or Black.
Other schools for African Americans rapidly opened in Mobile in the wake of State Street’s. Tragically, at least two were destroyed by arson. A true rarity, the RBC’s broadside provides material evidence of the Black quest for education in the United States and opens up new avenues for thought and research on Reconstruction and Black history in the American South.
A record-breaking number of people arrived at Wilson Library last night to view Rooms of Wonder: From Wunderkammer to Museum, 1565-1865 , an exhibition from the collection of alumna Florence Fearrington (A.B. 1958). The extraordinary assemblage of books, prints, and objects captivated an audience of over 200 students, faculty, and friends, who came from near and far. Exhibition goers had the opportunity to examine a range of important items that document the cabinets of curiosities phenomenon, from the first book to illustrate a specimen cabinet (1565) to a P. T. Barnum show bill advertising living wonders (1863).
Also on display were objects from the North Carolina Collection Gallery’s natural history holdings and the Rare Book Collection’s own Curiosities Cabinet (mostly non-codex examples from the history of the book), all of which recall the contents of Wunderkammers past and greatly enhanced the exhibition experience.
Looking at Mercati, Valentini, and a chicken skeletonHervey Martin enjoys the “Science & Specialization” sectionBlowfish
Florence Fearrington, in purple, second from right, with FOFs (Friends of Florence) outside Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Arthur MacGregor addresses the audience
The overflowing crowd was also accommodated in a room on the other side of Wilson’s lobby, where a live audio-video stream enabled those seated there to follow the speaker’s every word and projected image.
MacGregor gave a sweeping survey of cabinets of curiosities, analyzing the degree to which many of the arresting renderings of Wunderkammers matched—or failed to match—their textual descriptions. It was an expert exploration of the topic, and appreciated by all in attendance. UNC is grateful to Mr. MacGregor, and, of course, to Ms. Fearrington for such a special evening.
The show will be up for the next two months, and we suspect that we’ll see many of you in the Saltarelli Exhibit Room again and again, as this is an exhibition that repays revisiting. Also, mark your calendars for a future Rooms of Wonder lecture on Saturday, April 5, by Prof. Pamela Smith of Columbia University.
Wilson Library reopens tomorrow at 9 a.m. after two days closed due to the storm. We hope you had the chance to enjoy the snow and we look forward to welcoming you back.
Andrea Knowlton, UNC’s Assistant Conservator of Special Collections, at work
It takes a lot of hard work to make an exhibition happen. There are labels and graphics, and, of course, the mounting of the actual items. The Rare Book Collection is lucky to have great colleagues in the Wilson Library Conservation Lab. They’ve been busy fabricating cradles to display safely the marvelous books lent by alumna Florence Fearrington for Rooms of Wonder: From Wunderkammer to Museum, 1565-1865. The show opens next week on Thursday February 20 at 5 p.m., with a viewing in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room, followed by a lecture from the leading authority on cabinets of curiosities, former Ashmolean Museum curator Arthur MacGregor. It should be a great evening, and we look forward to seeing you!
