The collection features cookbooks by African Americans, which spans from the 1920s to the twenty-first century, has books that trace the history, heritage, and distinct flavors of African American cooking. The cookbooks strengthen the Peabody holdings in African American history and culture. Cookbooks have received scholarly attention and interpretation as literary texts making the collection a significant addition to the Library’s resources. Culinary texts yield far more than recipes when closely scrutinized. A Book of Recipes for the Cooking School written by Carrie Alberta Lyford, director of the Home Economics School at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and Carolyn Quick Tillery’s, A Taste of Freedom: a cookbook with recipes and remembrances from the Hampton Institute are culinary texts that are written from the point of view of a community and have much to say about ethnic identity, family and community life, social history, the roles of women and men, values, religion, and economics.
The 2008 Presidential election Collection, currently comprises some 1500 items. Barack Obama’s election to the U. S. Presidency in November 2008 inspired a flood of books for adult and juvenile readers alike. It continues to grow as both popular and scholarly publishing on Obama and the other candidates, their campaigns, and voting patterns shows no sign of abating. The materials are collected comprehensively and include monographs, serials, ephemera, artifacts, and media relating to all aspects of the historic campaigns for the White House.
An unsurpassed collection of slave literature from 1705 to the late 1880s, includes campaign literature, abolitionist literature, slave narratives, children’s literature, congressional speeches, sermons, letters, organizational proceedings, tracts, and previously published materials from journals and magazines. Authors of note include Wendell Phillips, W.E. B. Dubois, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, John Jam, and Andrew Johnson.
A 60s paperback collection donated to Hampton Institute by Lt. Col Jesse J. Johnson who graduated from the Hampton Institute in 1964.
The HU Clippings file contains 55,000 clippings from nearly 100 Black Newspapers. These clippings provide a unique journalistic record of black, political, economic and cultural life in the early twentieth century, particularly the rural south. The Clippings file was created from 500 scrapbooks spanning from 1880 to the 1920s.
Joe Jordan was a world-famous composer, musician, and real estate entrepreneur who, during the course of his long and productive life, helped to bring about several important changes in the entertainment world, and witnessed many more. The collection contains more than 600 items, including original manuscripts/private papers, sheet music, engraving plates, photographs and books. Gift made possible by Kimi Rabun, granddaughter of the late Joe Jordan and the mother of two HU graduates.
The late John Gunther, one of America’s most distinguished journalists, was famous for his series of Inside books, which detailed profiles of their respective countries and continents. His 1955 publication Inside Africa featured an in-depth look at the continent. Gunther used the 349 books, pamphlets, and maps donated for research to write this book. The collection was donated because Jane Gunther, the author’s widow, wanted to see the material preserved at a university that was interested in African history.
Dr. Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree from Hampton Institute and was a distinguished professor of African history. He attended segregated schools in Prince Edward County, where petitions by black families for equal education would eventually be included in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Jackson amassed an eclectic collection of art and books, memorabilia and mementos. To Hampton University he gave two gifts and one bequest of scholarly works (mostly about East African and African American topics, and rare fiction by African American authors).
Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded the Southern Workman in 1872. It contains reports from the African American and Native Americans populations, with picture of reservation and plantation life as well as information concerning the life and history of Hampton University, the City of Hampton, and African American life in the South. Additionally, the Southern Workman provided a forum for the discussion of the “race” problem.