A hardcover book (2023.30.2a) with a dust jacket (2023.30.2b), “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’” is a nonfiction book written by Zora Neale Hurston on the life of Oluale Kossola, or Cudjo Lewis, the third to last survivor of the Atlantic…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2023.30.2ab
Basil Biggs (c. 1819–1906) was a free African-American laborer and veterinarian. He lived near Gettysburg and was reportedly involved with the Underground Railroad.
Basil Dorsey (c. 1808 – February 15, 1872) was a self-emancipated slave born in Libertytown, Maryland. He fled to Bristol, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Florence, Massachusetts, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
A large, woven, wooden basket for carrying cotton. This basket has been constructed using a basic under-and-over-weaving pattern with flat, wide basket strands made from strips of medium toned wood. Throughout the body of the basket, weavers and spokes…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2012.134.2
A wooden four poster bed frame with head board and foot board. The side rails screw into the frame providing greater strength and limited hiding places for vermin. This type of frame is known as the "Boyd Bedstead."
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2012.113.1a-m
A brass bed warmer. The bed warmer has an elongated handle and a round container covered with a finely decorated and perforated lid. The shaft of the handle is square straight and at the top is an ornate brass handle with a ball tip and a drilled hole at…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2017.108.24.13
A reverse cotton and wool coverlet in the Catalpa Flower weave pattern made by an enslaved woman on the Singleton Family Plantation in Hawkinsville, Georgia. The cream and indigo dyed blue coverlet has a stylized flower motif of blue circles set amid cream…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2017.108.4
An archival pigment print photograph of collaged images. At center is a cut out black-and-white photographicimage of several children standing in a line, from tallest to smallest. The second child from the left holds an infant. This image is set against…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2013.77.8
A square, metal cowbell with a metal clapper and handle. The clapper is connected to the inside of the bell with a metal rod. The bell was made by an unidentified enslaved person and used on the Holloway Plantation in the Port Royal area of Virginia.
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2017.108.25.2
"This image is Sapelo Island, described as a "time capsule adrift on the Atlantic." It encapsulates centuries of Gullah Geechee culture, preserving a rich heritage. As a child whose parents are from South Georgia and who had an Uncle who practiced his MD…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2024.91.8
Benjamin Arthur Quarles (January 23, 1904 – November 16, 1996) was an American historian, administrator, educator, and writer, whose scholarship centered on Black American social and political history. Major books by Quarles include The Negro in the Civil…
Reel 1 of a two-reel historical film with the title Benjamin Banneker: The Man Who Loved Stars. It consists of a single reel of color 16mm acetate film with optical sound. The film opens with a young man, Greenbury Morton (Leon Pinkney), and his mother,…
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureCatalog 2017.55.7.1a
Benjamin Chiles (June 22, 1825 – March 20, 1911) was a state legislator in Mississippi. He represented Oktibbeha County from 1874 to 1878. He was born a slave in South Carolina and relocated to Mississippi in 1837, with John M. Chiles.
Benjamin Franklin Roberts (September 4, 1815 – September 6, 1881) was an African-American printer, writer, activist and abolitionist in Boston, Massachusetts, whose famous case on behalf of his daughter, Sarah Roberts v. Boston, resulted in a verdict that…
Benjamin F. Royal was a state senator in Alabama during the Reconstruction era. He was elected to the state senate in 1868, and was the first African American to serve in the chamber. He represented Bullock County and served for nine years. He served as a…
Benjamin Franklin Williams (1819–1886) was a Methodist minister and Republican politician who served three terms in the Texas Legislature, served as a delegate to two Texas Constitutional Conventions, and helped found the freedmen's community of Kendleton.
Benjamin "Pap" Singleton (August 15, 1809 – February 17, 1900) was an American activist and businessman best known for his role in establishing African American settlements in Kansas. A former slave from Tennessee who escaped to freedom in Ontario in 1846,…
