Title: Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

Source/Sponsoring Agency: Cornell University. Library. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/mayantislavery/

Date Checked: 2/13/2002      Status: Active

Date Annotated: 2/15/2002

Topics: Civil Rights; Human Rights Law; Legal History; Property; Religion

Other keywords: Libraries; Slavery; Abolitionism; May, Samuel J.

Contents: The Reverend Samuel J. May was an American abolitionist and friend of one of the founders of Cornell University, who in 1870 donated his collection of anti-slavery materials to the Cornell University Library. Other abolitionists in the U.S. and Great Britain responded to the call to contribute to the collection, in order to document the movement. The collection now resides in Cornell's Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts and consists of over 10,000 pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides, newsletters of local and regional anti-slavery societies, sermons, essays, and arguments for and against slavery. Materials date from the 18th-19th centuries, and cover slavery in the United States and the West Indies, and the slave trade. The pamphlets have been digitized, and thus are searchable by keyword within the text. Accompanying the electronic documents is an assortment of links to similar anti-slavery collections, and a visual record of the conservation process each item went through.

Author of Annotation: A. Carson