Collection highlights, acquisition news, events, exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
For this year’s Halloween post, a trio of 19th century works has been conjured, all haunting and haggard in their settings.
We begin our venture with a quintessentially Gothic poet, Edgar Allan Poe, and his 1839 poem, “The Haunted Palace,” plucked from the second volume of The works of the late Edgar Allan Poe: with notices of his life and genius (1850). Initially written six years prior to his more famous supernatural jaunt, “The Raven” (1845), Poe’s palace utilizes the image of splendor lost to time and decay to depict the effects of a discordant mind:
“But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate. (Ah, let us mourn !—for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate !) And round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.” (29-30)
Written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and initially published in The Lyrical Ballads (1798), this nautical-gothic poem was featured in the genre-defining work compiled in collaboration with fellow Romantic poet, William Wordsworth.
The poem opens with the mariner telling the story of this fateful journey through the waters of the Antarctic told to a young man before his wedding.
Initially, all things seemed to be at ease with only an albatross flying overhead for countless days, its presence carrying a particular sign of good luck for their voyage. This peace is eventually extinguished when the then disillusioned mariner needlessly kills the bird, acting as the catalyst for a ghostly presence to descend upon the ship.
In the 1889 edition pictured above, Gustave Doré’s accompanying illustrations present the two spectres, Death and “The Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH” playing for the lives of the entire crew, and with the roll of the dice, the Nightmare announces:
“The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!” Quoth she, and whistles thrice.” (197-198)
And so, the crew is sentenced to death with the ancient mariner left to venture home alone; taking this time to soak in the beauty of the pulsing sea after the curse is seemingly lifted.
Still haunted by this event, the mariner continues to recount the day:
“And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach.” (584 – 590)
And like the mariner by the end of his rhyme, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862) emerges from the wild wood with a fanciful tale of temptation. Depicting a pair of sisters, Laura and Lizzie, wrestling with the allure and devastating effects of supernatural fruits touted by troops of Goblin men bustling about the glen. Pictured here with the 1893 edition, illustrated by Laurence Housmen, the Goblins curl and twist around one another, intermeshed and nearly hidden within the surrounding pastoral scene.
“Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: ‘Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy…’ ” (1)
To close with an echo of the words of Rossetti’s Goblin men, come by, come by…to our haunted archive!
Happy Halloween to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!
Thursday, November 5, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm | Join us for a day-long pop-up exhibit exploring the fascinating world of Latin American culinary history, art, and research. Spanish students from the “From Text to Table” course invite you to discover four rare historical cookbooks from the Rare Books & Special Collections.
“Life springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.” — P.H. Pearse, August 1915
In 1803, Robert Emmet led a failed rebellion to overthrow British rule in Ireland. In 1848, a group called Young Ireland staged a brief revolt that was hastily crushed. The Fenian Brotherhood invaded British North America in 1866, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood organized a series of unsuccessful raids in Ireland the following year. On Easter Monday, 1916, a small group of Irish insurgents launched a rebellion in Dublin that was quashed in under a week. While these four attempts to create an independent Ireland may have failed, they each gave rise to a powerful romantic narrative that captivated the spirits of the Irish at home and abroad. Out of sacrifice and tragedy sprang patriotic verse, defiant journalism, cultural revival, and eventually, Irish freedom from British rule.
This exhibit features items from Rare Books and Special Collections and the University Archives that document the heroes, martyrs, and idealistic men and women who forged modern Ireland.
This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame Thanksgiving Break, November 26 – 27.
“Life springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.” — P.H. Pearse, August 1915
In 1803, Robert Emmet led a failed rebellion to overthrow British rule in Ireland. In 1848, a group called Young Ireland staged a brief revolt that was hastily crushed. The Fenian Brotherhood invaded British North America in 1866, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood organized a series of unsuccessful raids in Ireland the following year. On Easter Monday, 1916, a small group of Irish insurgents launched a rebellion in Dublin that was quashed in under a week. While these four attempts to create an independent Ireland may have failed, they each gave rise to a powerful romantic narrative that captivated the spirits of the Irish at home and abroad. Out of sacrifice and tragedy sprang patriotic verse, defiant journalism, cultural revival, and eventually, Irish freedom from British rule.
This exhibit features items from Rare Books and Special Collections and the University Archives that document the heroes, martyrs, and idealistic men and women who forged modern Ireland.
This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
RBSC will be open regular hours during the University of Notre Dame Fall Break, October 17 – 25.
In 1803, Robert Emmet led a failed rebellion to overthrow British rule in Ireland. In 1848, a group called Young Ireland staged a brief revolt that was hastily crushed. The Fenian Brotherhood invaded British North America in 1866, and the IRB organized a series of unsuccessful raids in Ireland the following year. On Easter Monday, 1916, a small group of Irish insurgents launched a rebellion in Dublin that was quashed in under a week. While these four attempts to create an independent Ireland may have failed, they each gave rise to a powerful romantic narrative that captivated the spirits of the Irish at home and abroad. Out of sacrifice and tragedy sprang patriotic verse, defiant journalism, cultural revival, and eventually, Irish freedom from British rule.
This exhibit features items from Rare Books and Special Collections and the University Archives that document the heroes, martyrs, and idealistic men and women who forged modern Ireland.
The exhibit is curated by Matthew Knight (Irish Studies Librarian and Curator).
Related Events
September 24-7, 2026 | The ACIS Midwest + South Regional Conference will be hosted by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and held on the University of Notre Dame campus. The theme of the meeting will be “Irish Studies On The Ground: Place, Presence and Community.” Please visit the conference website to view details.
October 2026 | Special Collections will host a lecture by curator Matt Knight, exact date and time TBD. Check back for more information.
Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting rarebook@nd.edu.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.This and other exhibits within the library are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Fall 2026! We want to let you know about a variety of things to watch for in the coming semester.
“Life springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.” — P.H. Pearse, August 1915
In 1803, Robert Emmet led a failed rebellion to overthrow British rule in Ireland. In 1848, a group called Young Ireland staged a brief revolt that was hastily crushed. The Fenian Brotherhood invaded British North America in 1866, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood organized a series of unsuccessful raids in Ireland the following year. On Easter Monday, 1916, a small group of Irish insurgents launched a rebellion in Dublin that was quashed in under a week. While these four attempts to create an independent Ireland may have failed, they each gave rise to a powerful romantic narrative that captivated the spirits of the Irish at home and abroad. Out of sacrifice and tragedy sprang patriotic verse, defiant journalism, cultural revival, and eventually, Irish freedom from British rule.
This exhibit features items from Rare Books and Special Collections and the University Archives that document the heroes, martyrs, and idealistic men and women who forged modern Ireland.
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
Special Collections’ Classes & Workshops
Throughout the semester, curators will lead instructional sessions related to our holdings for undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Curators may also be available to show special collections materials to visiting classes, from preschool through adults. If you would like to arrange a group visit and class with a curator, please contact Special Collections.
Some of the recent acquisitions highlighted on the blog in the past year.
Anticipated Closures
Rare Books and Special Collections is regularly open 9:30am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. The department will be closed for the following holidays and events:
August 20, closing early at 1:45 pm for a Library event (Thursday)
September 7, for Labor Day (Monday)
November 26–27, for Thanksgiving (Thursday and Friday)
Our last day open before the campus closure for Christmas Celebration will be Wednesday, December 23. We will reopen on Monday, January 4, 2027.
Hesburgh Libraries has recently acquired Giacomo Castellani’s Tractatus Nouus de Canonizatione Sanctorum (M. Silber, 1521), an extremely rare and early work by an Italian canon lawyer on the process of canonization in the Catholic Church. Introduced in the early Middle Ages as the formal procedure to add new saints, the process continues to be used today with its essential elements largely unchanged.
The author divides the subject into various chapters, such as how to investigate the authenticity of miracles attributed to the candidate and the role of the Pope in declaring new saints. Although in recent times works on this subject have become more prolific, it is unusual to find any this early and this one is of special interest because it effectively coincides with the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. The preface is addressed to the Pope at the time of publication, Leo X, whose pontificate spanned the years 1513-1521.
We have identified only one other North American library holding this title.
As fans around the world watch the 23rd World Cup this summer hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, RBSC recently browsed the stacks for World Cup history. We are pleased to highlight these sources from the collection documenting the first two World Cup tournaments in 1930 and 1934.
The inaugural World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930, and the host nation ended up winning the championship. After the tournament, the Uruguayan Football Association published an illustrated history of the event, Primer Campeonato Mundial de Football = La Coupe du monde : Montevideo, julio de 1930(The First World Football Championships – The World Cup: Montevideo, July 1930). This oversized book commemorates and documents the tournament in more than 120 pages and hundreds of photographs.
Printed in both Spanish and French, the book contains plentiful information about the teams, players, and games. This page devoted to the runner-up Argentinian team is typical of the coverage of the participating countries (page 26). The book also includes images and descriptions of every tournament match, like this two-page spread about the United States’ 3-0 opening round victory over Belgium (pages 42-43).
The book gave extensive coverage to the semifinals and the finals, intricately documenting each goal in the championship game. Here we see a description of Uruguay’s third goal by Santos Iriarte in the 68th minute that gave Uruguay the lead for good en route to its 4-2 victory (page 96).
Four years later, Italy, under dictator Benito Mussolini, hosted the second World Cup, and, again the home team came away victorious. In advance of the tournament, the Italian National Tourism Board published this 26-page English-language pamphlet, See Italy and the World’s Football Championship, to entice visitors to come to Italy despite the continuing Great Depression.
The competition took place in eight different locations, which, as the pamphlet pointed out, “are most attractive, as only Italian cities can be” (page 6). The finals were held in Rome, which the Tourism Board declared, “embraces every attraction in Italy and is unsurpassed by any other city in the world” (page 20).
Mussolini Stadium of Turin (left) and San Siro Stadium of Milan (right).
The booklet featured photographs, descriptions, and simple maps of each of the host cities and stadiums, including the Mussolini Stadium of Turin and the San Siro Stadium of Milan. The championship game, which would see Italy defeat Czechoslovakia 2-1, was held in the Stadium of the National Fascist Party at Rome.
Rome and the Stadium of the National Fascist Party.
Title page of Lo Sport in Regime Fascista featuring Mussolini.
The following year, the Italian Olympic Committee in collaboration with the popular magazine Lo Sport Fascista jointly published Lo sport in regime fascista : 28 ottobre 1922-I 28 ottobre 1935-XIII (Sport in the Fascist Regime: 28 October 1922 I – 28 October 1935 XIII). This book recounted and celebrated Italian athletic achievements across a myriad of sports, including Italy’s recent World Cup title. The book’s frontispiece, which included a large image of Mussolini, demonstrated the close relationship between Italian sports and the ruling Fascist regime.
Calcio—or soccer—was featured in the fifth chapter, and the book revelled in Italy’s 1934 World Cup success. “Only in Fascist Italy could one seriously think about organizing the Second World Cup tournament” the book contended. “Only Italy could have taken on such a massive amount of work and responsibility. And it was a magnificent, beautiful, unforgettable event. Our beautiful sports fields, modern and superbly equipped; endless streams of foreigners who enjoyed our intelligent and truly affectionate hospitality; the battles between great champions, fought in an ideal atmosphere of serenity, discipline, and understanding” (page 40).
Original Italian: “Solo nell’Italia Fascista si poteva seriamente pensare all’organizzazione del II Torneo per la disputa della Coppa del Mondo…. Solo l’Italia poteva accettare un simile cumulo di lavoro e di responsabilità. E fu una cosa grandiosa, bellissima, indimenticabile. I nostri bei campi sportivi, moderni e mirabilmente attrezzati; interminable carovane di stranieri che godettero la nostra intelligente e veramente affettuosa ospitalità; battaglie di grandi campioni combattute in un clima ideale di serenità, di disciplina, di comprensione.”
Commemorative Italian postage stamps printed for the World Cup, or the Campionato del Mondo (page 34).
The book celebrated the victorious Italian national team, writing that “great goals, in truth, still await our formidable army of footballers. They will be achieved in the name of Fascism and for the glory of a sport that has truly brought Italy unparalleled satisfaction. The path already traveled and the conquests achieved, give the march of Italian footballers the rhythm and air of the inevitable” (page 40).
Original Italian: “Grandi mète, in verità, ulteriormente attendono il formidabile esercito dei nostri calciatori. Saranno raggiunte, nel nome del fascismo e per la gloria di uno sport che veramente diede all’Italia impareggiabili soddisfazioni. Il cammino percorso, le conquiste fatte, danno alla marcia dei calciatori italiani il ritmo ed il significato dell’ineluttabile.”
The Italian National Team that won the 1934 World Cup (page 35).
World Cup soccer has always been influenced by contemporary politics, and, like the Italian Fascists, national leaders have often sought to co-opt sporting success and athletic achievements for their own partisan reasons.
But, for just as long, many fans, spectators, athletes, and other observers have believed that global sporting events like the World Cup could serve a larger purpose and help to bridge the differences and conflicts between people. In his speech at the welcoming banquet for the delegations at the inaugural 1930 World Cup, for example, Dr. Raoul Jude, President of the Uruguayan Football Association, expressed his hope that the tournament could be a unifying event:
“Welcome, you travelers who arrive from all points of the compass, bringing us the message of solidarity and cordiality from different peoples and races, united nevertheless, above all differences and all of life’s hardships, within the higher fellowship of a lofty purpose aimed at the betterment of all mankind.
We read the clear message you bring us; and though some parts are not written in a language familiar to us, we instantly grasp their meaning through the frank gestures and the serene, united gaze of those who bear them” (Primer Campeonato Mundial de Football, pages 33-34).
Original Spanish: Bien venidos vosotros, viajeros que llegáis de todos los puntos cardinales trayéndonos el mensaje solidario y cordial de pueblos y razas diferentes, hermanadas no obstante, por encima de todas las diferencias y de todas las miserias de la vida, en la comunidad superior de un alto designio en el sentido del mejoramiento de todos los hombres de la tierra.
Leemos el claro mensaje que nos traéis, y aunque algunos de ellos no están escritos en la lengua que nos es familiar, descubrimos en seguida su sentido en el gesto franco y en la mirada serena y unánime de sus portadores.”
Players from the Uruguayan National Team celebrate the 1930 World Cup title on the pitch after the game (Primer Campeonato Mundial de Football, page 98).
With the 2026 World Cup soon coming to a close, we hope all teams, players, and fans have experienced a taste of La alégria del triunfo—the joy of victory—like the jubilant 1930 Uruguayan team seen here.
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, Rare Books and Special Collections offers a look at a series of copies of the Declaration of Independence held in our collections. The process of creating the Declaration of Independence has been written about widely and even celebrated on Broadway (1776 [1969; revivals in 1997 and 2022]). But what happened after Congressional delegates agreed on the text and consented to sign the document? How did Congress disseminate the Declaration?
During the late eighteenth century, news was broadcast through broadsides (posters) and newspapers, as well as orally. The first copies of the Declaration of Independence were designed and printed by John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer and newspaper publisher. He typeset a large broadside version of the document on the night of July 4th and had printed at least several hundred copies by late morning on July 5th. Today, only 25 copies of Dunlap’s broadside exist.
It took time for the Declaration of Independence to reach all of the newly united states. RBSC holds a facsimile copy of one such later printing: the July 26, 1776 issue of the Virginia Gazette, which published the Declaration in full. The Virginia Gazette was published in Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg, and the paper published official news and business of the colony, and the state, of Virginia.
The same Virginia Gazette issue also reported on where the Declaration of Independence had been read publicly. Between early July and mid-August 1776 the document was printed and proclaimed across the United States, which was news in itself. The first public reading occurred on Monday, July 8th, in Philadelphia and other cities in Pennsylvania, and in New Jersey, using Dunlap’s broadside copy. In most places, the reading took on trappings of a ceremony. The local sheriff would read the Declaration on the steps of the courthouse, the gathered crowd would cheer, bells would ring, and soldiers would fire a salute. Coats of arms and other symbols of the British crown were also removed from buildings and burned.
By the middle of August 1776 the Declaration of Independence had reached London, where its text was changed by newspaper publishers worried about the document’s seditious content. Publishers excerpted, censored, and suppressed the text. These changes were reprinted in turn by printers and publishers beyond London to Europe, where the Declaration appeared in local newspapers by the end of August.
Rare Books and Special Collections holds a London printing of the Declaration of Independence. The Gentleman’s Magazine, a widely-read, general interest periodical, published the Declaration in its August issue. The magazine’s editor followed the pattern of some London newspapers, censoring words that criticised the monarch. As a result, “King,” “tyranny,” “Prince” and “tyrant” have been suppressed in this copy.
Some British editors altered the text of the Declaration to soften its criticism of George III. This might explain the marginal annotation in Hesburgh Library’s copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine. The handwritten note moderates Jefferson’s language to make the monarch appear less negligent. In referring to laws for which colonists petitioned the king, the annotator changed “he [the king] has utterly neglected to attend to them” to “he has utterly neglected to assent to them.” Did the editor believe that George III preferred to have denied rather than ignored his subjects?
Copies of the Declaration of Independence also circulated within the United States. As the United States expanded during the first decades of the nineteenth century, citizens needed to be informed about their government and the state of the nation; publishers and booksellers supplied. Hesburgh Libraries holds a number of these early nineteenth-century copies, including this 1811 copy published by Robert Harper, a printer in south central Pennsylvania. He published the nation’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—along with the constitutions of all 17 states. Among the purchasers was a bookseller in Pittsburgh that ordered 500 copies—a huge supply that the seller believed they could sell to newcomers to the frontier city.
Rare Books and Special Collections also holds a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was reprinted by the National Archives in 1952, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Published together as The Charters of Freedom and at the height of the Cold War, it celebrates the inauguration of the documents’ shared, permanent exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In this publication, the National Archives reproduced the Declaration of Independence in its most formal and famous form: the engrossed copy of the Declaration that was completed and signed on August 2, 1776. An engrossed copy is text written on parchment in a large hand.
All of these copies are different—in format and sometimes in content. Yet in aggregate they represent Americans’ adherence—for two and a half centuries–to the idea that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Happy Fourth of July!
Bibliography
Sneff, Emily. When the Declaration of Independence Was News. New York: Oxford University Press, 2026.
Students are typically surprised to learn that there is a long history of Spanish-language publishing in the United States. This history even includes cities, like New York and Philadelphia, that were never part of the vast geographies of the Spanish Empire or the Mexican Republic (which now constitute more than one third of the territory of the U.S.’s 48 contiguous states). Rather than being simply presented with this information, they are often prompted to make this “discovery” on their own through their examination of printed books: an opportunity, during a class visit or an appointment in the Reading Room, to thoughtfully explore not just the intellectual content but also the individual histories of books, as objects.
Special Collections has recently acquired, through both purchase and donation, a number of publications that serve this exercise well; texts that, like the Caribbean Sea, cross geopolitical boundaries, complicate national narratives, and question literary canons, all while connecting cultures, histories, and geographies in the process. One of those publications is highlighted here.
Lecciones orales sobre la Historia de Cuba, pronunciadas en el Ateneo Democrático Cubano de Nueva York, por Pedro Santacilia. Nueva-Orleans: Imprenta de Luis Eduardo del Cristo, 1859.
Cuba sits at the crossroads of the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Caribbean Sea; and the story of this book, like the story of the island, is shaped by those waters, and by the peoples and polities that those waters have touched. The title of the book provides its first lesson in the Americas’ interconnected geographies of empire and independence, slavery and freedom, exile and return: Lectures on the History of Cuba, Pronounced in the Cuban Democratic Society of New York, by Pedro Santacilia. At the time of its publication in 1859, Santacilia (1834, Santiago de Cuba – 1910, Mexico City) had twice lived in Spain in forced exile, once as a child, due to his father’s political activities, and once as an adult, due to his own; escaped Spain via Gibraltar and moved to New York, where these lectures were given, and where he wrote and published alongside other Cuban exiles; moved to New Orleans, which was another refuge for Latin American exiles, and where this book was published; and, finally, settled in Mexico.
Copyright page, from the District of New Orleans.
Santacilia was always a fierce proponent of Cuban independence, but his ideas about how independence should look, including how it should be achieved, evolved over time. He presented and published his Lectures during a period in which many Cubans, himself included, viewed U.S. military intervention, and even U.S. annexation of Cuba, as the most expeditious route to liberation from the Spanish empire. In fact, he dedicated this book to Domingo de Goucuría, and published it through the press of Luis Eduardo del Cristo, both of whom were prominent filibusteros: they supported and fought alongside Venezuelan-born Narciso López and Tennessee-born William Walker in their attempts to invade, colonize, and establish slave states in parts of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
However, it was also in New Orleans where Santacilia met Mexican President Benito Juárez, a staunch abolitionist who himself spent two stints in the city as an exile, first during the dictatorship of Antonio López de Santa Anna, and then during the War of Reform. Santacilia ended up following Juárez back to México, married one of his daughters, witnessed the Mexican Republic’s resistance to the Second French Empire, fostered Mexican support for Cuban independence, and ultimately rejected U.S. interventionism in favor of a fully sovereign Cuban state.
Bookstore stamp for “Librería Martí” in Habana, Cuba.
RBSC’s copy of Santacilia’s Lectures followed a trajectory befitting its history. Published in New Orleans, it eventually made its way to Cuba, the subject of its pages. While we don’t know how or when it arrived on the island, a stamp, and accompanying handwritten note, tell us that it was sold by the famous Habana bookshop, Librería Martí — which itself was named after the great Cuban politician, author, and anti-imperialist, José Martí, who Santacilia befriended in Mexico. The purchase had to have taken place at some point between the mid-1920s, when the shop opened, and 1960, when it closed in the wake of the Revolution. RBSC’s copy, however, was not acquired from any agent in Cuba, but rather from a second-hand bookseller in Mexico City, where Santacilia built his life and legacy, and where he died and was buried.
Scholar Rodolfo J. Cortina once asked, “Cuban literature, Cuban exile literature, Cuban-American literature: where does one end and the other begin?”1 In answering this question, he posited that Santacilia’s Lectures, like other 19th-century texts — poems, plays, newspapers, novels, etc. — published in the United States, by Cuban authors living and writing in the U.S., should absolutely be included in the Cuban-American literary canon, just as they should be included in the island’s own history of letters. The context and content of the Lectures, and the movement of RBSC’s particular copy through Caribbean and North American geographies, certainly supports this view.
1 See the Introduction to Cortina’s chapter, “Cuban Literature of the United States: 1824–1959,” in the openly accessible, digital volume, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, edited by Ramón Gutiérrez and Genaro Padilla, first published by Arte Público Press in 1993. https://artepublicopress.manifoldapp.org/projects/recovery-vol-1
To commemorate Memorial Day, RBSC honors the African American poet Charles Frederick White, who, over a century ago, wrote a sharply-worded poem that condemned racial discrimination against African American veterans.
Charles Frederick White (1876-1955) was a combat veteran of the Spanish-American War. He published his most famous poem, “Plea of the Negro Soldier,” in 1907 in the Springfield (MA) Republican; it appeared the next year in his only published collection of poems, Plea of the Negro Soldier and a Hundred Other Poems.
In “Plea of the Negro Soldier,” White expresses outrage at his and other African American veterans’ treatment after honorably serving their country. He places their reception into a larger historical context of white racism and violence, and seeks justice for Black veterans and all African Americans.
America, ungrateful land! Whose treacherous soil my blood has dyed, . . . who has denied Me right to live, to vote, to learn, Whose laws protect me not from wrong, Who will permit me not to earn An honest living, who in song Doth boast a land of freedom, but Whose flag waves o’er a land of crime,
Born in Tennessee to parents who had been enslaved, White’s earliest interests focused on attaining an education and discovering African American history. After working a series of low-paid jobs, he enlisted in the army. His hopes for economic and social mobility were dashed, however, when he realized that white Americans held his service in no regard.
But I, alas! have given all In answer to thy urgent call, Exposed my life to sword and ball, And now, as o’er me creeps the fall Of life, I find no recompense But base discharge, with no defense
Determined to achieve an education, White entered Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire where he could maintain himself by combining work and study. Although his tenure there was cut short by southern students who insisted on White’s expulsion, he found a more satisfactory academic experience at Williston Seminary in western Massachusetts, from which White graduated in 1909.
While at Williston White published Plea of the Negro Solider at his own expense, even typesetting the pages on the press of the local Easthampton (MA) Enterprise newspaper.
White eventually settled in Philadelphia, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and had a long career in real estate and politics.
Although White published no more serious poetry after Plea of the Negro Soldier, his work is an important expression of American ideals denied and a demand for justice.
Republic cannot long endure When autocrat can feel secure To heap injustice on the poor
Source:
Roger J. Bresnahan, “Charles Fred White: A Forgotten Black Poet,” Negro History Bulletin, Vol. 40, no. 1 (1977): 659-661.
