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The records that could be found didn’t reflect the importance of these
individual's lives or their work.
Modern literature was a little bit different in that most knowledgeable dealers
were familiar with major writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, et al.,
though many important texts and writers still didn’t get the attention they
deserved.
I am happy to say that this is no longer true. I am pleased that more people have
become aware of this rich resource. Our catalogues have helped codify the
genre.
Not only that, but as things often go in the auction world, the more material we
brought to market, the more successful we were in selling items that had previ-
ously been underappreciated. As these items gained more recognition, more
material surfaced for us to offer in subsequent auctions.
We are proud of the fact that over the years our sales have provided the opportu-
nity for the rediscovery of two very important manuscripts. Both have
changed history significantly.
The first was Lot 337 of our first catalogue in 1996, the manuscript
Narrative of
Omar Ibn Said
, a Fula slave from Senegal Omar, who was captured and brought
to North Carolina, where he was purchased by the Governor of the state. Omar's
narrative, written in 1831 in Arabic, remains the only known slave narrative writ-
ten by a slave in his native written language. This narrative, together with the
manuscript Qur’an, which we featured in the March 2015 sale, demonstrate the
thriving culture that existed in Africa south of the Sahara for centuries prior to
the Atlantic slave trade, contradicting the then widely-held belief that Black
Africa had no culture; a theory which helped rationalize the barbarous practice
for centuries.
The second manuscript was sold at Swann in 2001 in our sixth sale, titled
The
Bondswoman's Narrative By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Slave Recently Escaped
From North Carolina,
circa 1850s
.
It was found in a box among the papers of
Dorothy Porter, scholar and long-time librarian at Howard University. The narra-
tive was purchased by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who edited and published it with a
lengthy introduction the following year (Time Warner, 2002). It turned out to be
the first novel written by an African-American woman. Much has been written
about it since.
There are only a couple of examples of how our catalogues have coaxed impor-