Printed & Manuscript African Americana

Swann Galleries held the first sale dedicated to Printed & Manuscript African Americana in 1996 to establish a market for material from this rich history. The department has set auction records for figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, and, as the only major auction house with a department devoted to the field, has been instrumental in codifying the genre.

Our team of specialists oversee a wide range of material in this department, including abolitionist manuscripts, Civil Rights material, entertainment ephemera and advertisements spanning decades, archives, and works from prominent African American artists and literary figures. 

The most notable sale in the department was a previously unrecorded photograph of Harriet Tubman from a carte-de-visite album compiled in the 1860s, which reached $161,000 in March 2017. It has since become one of the most widely recognized images of the abolitionist hero. Additional highlights include the original artwork for A Night-Club Map of Harlem, by E. Simms Campbell for $100,000; an inscribed edition of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun for $30,000; the diary, photographs, and correspondence of modern dance legend Katherine Dunham for $52,500; a 1949 edition of The Negro Motorist Green Book at $50,000; an inscribed carte-de-visite portrait of early photographer James Presley Ball for $125,000, and Benjamin Banneker’s first almanac, Almanack and Ephemeris, for the Year of our Lord, 1792, for $75,000.