Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 195

Price Realized: $ 875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(ENTERTAINMENT--MUSIC.) Slave Songs of the South, by the Hampton Colored Students. 4 printed pages, 9½ x 6¼ inches, on one folding sheet; moderate wear and wrinkling, moderate foxing, mailing folds. No place, [1873]

Additional Details

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were launched in 1871, and proved to be successful fundraisers for their cash-strapped university. Soon after, the Hampton Institute followed suit with their own touring group of singers. The first page is a program for the performance listing 12 songs. The center pages are headed by a note explaining that "The Hampton Students were nearly all born in slavery, and their music is a faithful rendering of the songs peculiar to slave life," over a facsimile manuscript endorsement of the group signed by 26 prominent clergymen dated 1873--most notably Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe). The rear page features a large engraving of the Hampton Institute's Virginia Hall, "now being erected"--it was completed in 1873.