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The First African American National Celebration

 

(LINCOLN). (BLACK HISTORY). [DAY, WILLIAM HOWARD.]. Celebration by the Colored People's Educational Monument Association in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, on the Fourth of July, 1865, in the Presidential Grounds, Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C: McGill & Witherow, 1865. 1st ed. 8vo. 33, [1] pp. Orig. blue printed wrappers (later whipstitching). $3,500.00

 

LCP/HSP Afro-Americana Catalogue, 6995. Recently reprinted by Cornell University Press.

Marks the first celebration of a national character organized and carried out by African Americans. It includes printed congratulatory letters from Frederick Douglass, William Kelley, Gerrit Smith, Salmon Chase, and Charles Sumner.

The chief addresses were by the minister-poet John Pierpont, who wrote a poem for the occasion, and William Howard Day, a forty year old black man, who wrote the Oration (pp. 10-18).

Day was an editor, orator, teacher and later minister. He is best known to us as the printer of John Brown's Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States, accomplished in 1858 in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada (the first book M & S Press reprinted).

In the Preface to this book, Boyd Stutler wrote: "...while at St. Catharines Brown met Wiliam Howard Day. Day, a colored printer, editor, and teacher, was working among refugee slaves at the St. Catharines terminus of the Underground Railroad. Brown had probably known Day in Ohio where the younger man, after his graduation from Oberlin College with the class of 1847, had for years been active in the anti-slavery cause.... With such a reputation as the Kansas leader then enjoyed it probably took little urging to enroll Day in the conspiracy and to get him to take over the job as organizer of the Canadian Negroes and to serve as official printer. The printer-teacher played an important role in the Canadian phase of the conspiracy, but he is a completely forgotten man in the John Brown story."

In The Rising Sun, William Wells Brown praises Day?��s professional demeanor: ?��As a speaker, Mr. Day may be regarded as one of the most effective of the present time; has great self- possession and gaiety of imagination; is rich in the selection of his illustrations, well versed in history, literature, science and philosophy, and can draw on his finely-stored memory at will.?��