George Foster Peabody Special Collection

The Peabody collection is a distinctive collection of books and other materials in all subject areas by and about African Americans and other people of African descent throughout the world. Special emphases are placed on African American history, civil rights movements in the United States, literature by African American authors and pamphlets by authors on slavery, emancipation and the African American experience in the United States. The collection contains more than 30,000 items by and about African Americans. This includes about 21,300 monographs, 1,200 anti-slavery pamphlets, vertical file materials, and other documents on slavery and the Reconstruction period in the United States. Some of these collections may not show their “specialness” for years to come, but the library is preserving them for future generations of researchers.

The Peabody Collection is one of the oldest African American library collections in the country. In 1905, George Foster Peabody obtained 1,400 books and pamphlets on the Negro and slavery from bibliophile Tucker A. Malone and lent them to the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Library, the former main university library. In 1908, this loan was converted into a gift. Six years later, the library of Dr. Phil Broome Brooks, a black physician in Washington, D. C., was purchased. In subsequent years, other collections were added, including materials on Native American culture. Many people have enriched the Peabody Collection through contributions throughout the years.