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These efforts to record Black history have been ongoing for centuries, which Cynthia Greenlee highlights in a story about William Henry Dorsey, who used hundreds of scrapbooks to create an archive of Black life in 19th-century Philadelphia. Dorsey’s scrapbooks influenced the work of scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who drew from the collection when writing The Philadelphia Negro, and they continue to serve as an important archive today.
Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.
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What We’re Reading
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Stories of slavery, from those who survived it
“So much of Black history is underreported, misrepresented, or simply lost … So many stories that would give us a fuller picture of America are known by so few Americans.”
📚 Black Genealogy, by Charles L. Blockson
📚 Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives From the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938
“I never before saw children so eager to learn, although I had had several years’ experience in New-England schools. Coming to school is a constant delight and recreation to them. They come here as other children go to play.”
📚 “Life on the Sea Islands,” by Charlotte Forten
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A forgotten Black Founding Father
“I am deeply aware of how much historical treasure about Black America is hidden, and have been actively trying to seek it out.”
📚 Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry, a book in progress by Chernoh M. Sesay Jr.
The magazine that helped 1920s kids navigate racism
“The Brownies’ Book’s greatest power lay not in what it said but in what it showed. Its images celebrated Black beauty while telling a story of Black childhood as something ordinary and American.”
📚 The Brownies’ Book, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois
📚 A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies’ Book Magazine, forthcoming
A priceless archive of ordinary life
“To preserve Black history, a 19th-century Philadelphian filled hundreds of scrapbooks with newspaper clippings and other materials. But now underfunding and physical decay are putting archives like this one at risk.”
📚 The Philadelphia Negro, by W. E. B. Du Bois
📚 Writing With Scissors: American Scrapbooks From the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, by Ellen Gruber Garvey
📚 Our Nig, by Harriet E. Wilson
📚 The Myth of the Negro Past, by Melville J. Herskovits
📚 William Dorsey’s Philadelphia & Ours, by Roger Lane
About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she’s reading next is Deacon King Kong, by James McBride.
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