Mar 24, 2022 - Sale 2598

Sale 2598 - Lot 233

Price Realized: $ 2,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(EDUCATION.) Large collection of ephemera from Storer College in West Virginia. Approximately 70 items (0.4 linear feet) in one box; various sizes and conditions. Harpers Ferry, WV, 1907 and 1938-1950, plus two later items
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Additional Details

Storer College grew out of a humble school for freedmen in Harpers Ferry which was established in 1865. It was chartered in 1868, and became an important locus of the early civil rights movement, in part because of its proximity to the site of John Brown's raid. Frederick Douglass delivered an important speech on John Brown there in 1881, the NAACP was born there in 1906, and John Brown's Fort was relocated to the campus in 1909 (it has since been moved back to near its original location in downtown Harpers Ferry). The school closed in 1955, and the campus is now part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Offered here is a collection of ephemera from several different Storer students, including diplomas dated 1947 and 1950; commencement programs from 1907, 1945, and 1947; 7 other programs from 1943-1950 including a homecoming game and a 1945 conference on "facing the Aftermath of War" plus a 1999 reunion program; 6 college bulletins and catalog summaries from 1942-1950; a small paper pennant; a manuscript invitation to the 1946 Tornado Ball; an undated list of the college's 100 female students; 5 worn issues of The Tornado, the college newspaper, 1945-46; and a circa 1900 bookplate from the college library.

Finally, the lot includes 33 manuscript and ephemera items from a 1947 graduate: class schedules, letters regarding the sets for a school play, several increasingly testy cards from the college library regarding overdue books, her 2011 memorial program, and her pre-Storer College scrapbook circa 1938 titled "Negro History and Plenty of It," featuring clippings on everyone from Marian Anderson to Mary McLeod Bethune to Haile Selassie.