Content Warning Note: The blog about this collection contains racial terminology and imagery typical for the time that contemporary viewers may find offensive. The purpose of this note is to give users the opportunity to decide whether they need or want to view these materials, or at least, to mentally or emotionally prepare themselves to view the materials.

This post by Manuscripts and Archives Processor Ellen Welch introduces a recent acquisition: a scrapbook labeled “Negro History” (MSS 16835) compiled by Bernard Proctor, a celebrated World War II captain in the Tuskegee Airmen and a descendant of the West Indies. (See this oral history video series by the Visionary Project for more about Proctor and his life.) The scrapbook consists of cartoons detailing historical vignettes about Black history from a weekly newspaper series—”Your History” published by the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper and edited by Robert L. Vann. The series was written by Jamaican American journalist Joel Augustus Rogers (1880-1966) and illustrated by Samuel Milai during the years 1940-1950 and then by George Lee from 1934-1937. Proctor collected, cut out, and pasted the cartoons on paper and placed them in a 3-ring binder. The series in this archive includes the dates 1948-1950; the newspaper ran the series from 1934-1966. 

While working as a Pullman porter in Chicago, Joel Augustus Rogers travelled across the country before he launched his career as one of the leading Black journalists of his generation. [1] He wrote regularly for many newspapers including the Pittsburgh Courier (1921-1966) and the New York Amsterdam News (1920-1935). Moving to New York in 1921, Rogers wrote and published at least sixteen different books and pamphlets, “a significant body of work that covered the global African community from ancient to modern times and the diaspora.” [2] 

Dr. William E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a scholar in American history, wrote, “No man living has revealed so many important facts about the Negro race as has Rogers. He traveled to sixty different nations, studying civilizations, highlighting achievements of ethnic Africans, and challenging prevailing ideas about the social construction of race.” [2, 3] 

The illustrations and descriptive texts in “Your History” span the history and achievements of Black figures in many key events, such as the birth of Buddha, the birth of Christ, the United States Civil War, Antebellum, and American Reconstruction. Rogers states that Black people were rulers of Africa and were revered as Gods (before the transatlantic slave trade began in the sixteenth century). His historical vignettes are mostly true facts, but some are embellished because he used extremes to counter the severe racism embedded in Western culture. The text of Rogers’s cartoons frequently begins with superlatives like “one of the most honored,” “one of the best known,” “one of the greatest,” or “one of the first.” Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. asserts, “J. A. Rogers was as serious a researcher as they come, as serious as W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson.” He explained that, even though Rogers embellished some of the stories, he raised questions that would stimulate other researchers to dig deeper into Black history. [3] Gates characterized Rogers’s work as an invaluable resource:

“[Rogers was] a major—in many cases the only—source for the ordinary Black person to learn of their history from the 1920s through the ’70s. They certainly did not get it in their schools and universities or find out about it in mainstream newspapers and books. Rogers brought the idea of Black history to the fore, maintaining that the conventional scholars had a blind spot…” [4] 

The series depicts Black men and women as leaders of every field: doctors, nurses, preachers, teachers, lawyers, property owners, politicians, planters, farmers, athletes (Olympians), artists, scientists, mathematicians, archeologists, dentists, musicians, and astronomers. The historical vignettes are patterned after Robert Ripley’s “Believe it Or Not” style of cartoons. They are brief, easy to read, and designed to capture attention. 

Included in the collection are articles from the Chicago Defender about Black people in history and another series written in the Pittsburgh Courier by James M. Rosbrow (also illustrated by Samuel Milai) titled “Negroes in the Halls of Congress.” This column is about Black men who were born into enslavement and became United States senators and congressmen in the Republican Party during Reconstruction (1865-1877). They championed legislation to further civil rights and improve conditions for Indigenous people until the southern white Democrats regained their political platforms and ousted them. However, their efforts greatly contributed to the civil rights movement by establishing racial equality and citizenship in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. 

This description of the Pittsburgh Courier characterizes the importance of this archive:

“Through thirty years of persistence, Vann’s paper ultimately helped change the moral tone of American race relations for future generations. Dozens of editorial campaigns and thousands of newspaper articles, features, and cartoons slowly chipped away at the edifice of white supremacy and affected the way people discussed race, rights, and human dignity. This collective effort pushed multiculturalism closer to the mainstream of American political culture outside the South and helped make possible the formation of powerful interracial coalitions during the civil rights years.” [5]

Explore some of Rogers’s cartoons in the collection below. There are hundreds more of the cartoons, too many to mention and yet too fascinating to omit. This archive is a must see! In the words of Dr. John Henrik Clarke (1915–1998), a prominent African American historian, professor, and pioneer in Afrocentrism and Pan-African studies, Rogers “looked at the history of people of African origin and showed how their history is an inseparable part of the history of mankind.” [2]

Keckley wrote a popular book about her experiences with Mary Todd Lincoln at the White House, featuring anecdotes such as the one below:

“In 1863 the Confederates were flushed with victory, and sometimes it looked as if the proud flag of the Union, the glorious old Stars and Stripes, must yield half its nationality to the tri-barred flag that floated grandly over long columns of gray. These were sad, anxious days to Mr. Lincoln, and those who saw the man in privacy only could tell how much he suffered. One day he came into the room where I was fitting a dress on Mrs. Lincoln. His step wasslow and heavy, and his face sad. Like a tired child he threw himself upon a sofa and shaded his eyes with his hands. He was a complete picture of dejection. Mrs. Lincoln, observing his troubled look, asked: 

“Where have you been, father!” 

“To the War Department,” was the brief, almost sullen answer, 

” Any news!” 

“Yes, plenty of news, but no good news. It is dark, dark everywhere.” 

— Excerpt from Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G.W. Carleton & Co, 1868). (A1868.K42)

Excerpt from Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color From the U. S. Military Academy (New York: Lee, 1878). (U410.P1 F6 1878):

CHAPTER X: TREATMENT 

“A brave and honorable and courteous man 
Will not insult me; and none other can.”—Cowper. 

        “How do they treat you?” “How do you get along?” and multitudes of analogous questions have been asked me over and over again. Many have asked them for mere curiosity’s sake, and to all such my answers have been as short and abrupt as was consistent with common politeness. I have observed that it is this class of people who start rumors, sometimes harmless, but more often the cause of needless trouble and ill-feeling. I have considered such a class dangerous, and have therefore avoided them as much as it was possible. I will mention a single instance where such danger has been made manifest. 

        A Democratic newspaper, published I know not where, in summing up the faults of the Republican party, took occasion to advert to West Point. It asserted in bold characters that I had stolen a number of articles from two cadets, had by them been detected in the very act, had been seen by several other cadets who had been summoned for the purpose that they might testify against me, had been reported to the proper authorities, the affair had been thoroughly investigated by them, my guilt established beyond the possibility of doubt, and yet my accusers had actually been dismissed while I was retained.^* This is cited as an example of Republican rule; and the writer had the effrontery to ask, “How long shall such things be?” I did not reply to it then, nor do I intend to do so now. Such assertions from such sources need no replies. I merely mention the incident to show how wholly given to party prejudices some men can be. They seem to have no thought of right and justice, but favor whatever promotes the aims and interests of their own party, a party not Democratic but hellish.