I’m sharing this announcement of Bancroft’s new exhibit:
The Bancroft Library just opened its fall/winter exhibition, The Gift to Sing: Highlights of the Leon F. Litwack & Bancroft Library African American Collections. Leon Litwack is a historian and legendary professor who taught here from 1964 to 2007. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for his 1979 book Been In the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. He has been collecting books relating to African American history and culture since the 1940s and his collection is now perhaps the best in private hands. Ultimately, it will be coming to The Bancroft Library but highlights, along with related material from Bancroft’s collection, will be on display until February.
Highlights from Professor Litwack’s collection include Bobby Seale’s copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a copy of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave inscribed by William Lloyd Garrison and Ida B. Wells’ incredibly rare and important pamphlet on lynching, The Red Record.
Bancroft highlights include the first printing of Phillis Wheatley’s collection of poems from 1773 and early works printed in California.
The Bancroft Library Gallery is open from Monday to Friday, 10-4.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/current-exhibits
David Faulds
Curator of Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts