on this day & holidays

Declarations of Independence

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

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.

The National Archives, Charters of Freedom; the Declaration of Independence.

National Caribbean American Heritage Month 2026

by Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian and Curator

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.

Learn more about National Caribbean American Heritage Month and its history, as well as the many contributions of Notre Dame’s Caribbean American community members.

Footnotes

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

Studying the History of the Gay Games for Pride Month

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In observance of LGBTQ Pride Month and in conjunction with the upcoming Gay Games XII in Valencia, Spain, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight the current ongoing exhibition Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections. Cultivating Community features the section, “The Gay ~~Olympic~~ Games: Community Through Sport,” which recounts the dedicated community activism that led to the founding of the Gay Games in San Francisco in 1982.

“The Gay ~~Olympic~~ Games: Community Through Sport,” tells the early history of the Gay Games with material from the Gay Games Collection (MSSP 10070) a manuscript collection housed in RBSC. As the exhibit explains, organizers originally adopted the name “Gay Olympic Games.” But, weeks before the opening ceremonies, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) filed a lawsuit and received an injunction prohibiting use of the word “Olympic” in association with the event. Organizers hastily rebranded as the “Gay Games,” and the competitions continued as scheduled in the late summer of 1982 in San Francisco.

In addition to materials on display in the exhibit, the Gay Games Collection contains other items documenting this story and recording the dogged persistence of the LGBTQ community and allies in establishing and hosting the Gay Games. A recently acquired copy of the August 1982 Gay ~~Olympics~~ Newsletter, for example, visually demonstrates how organizers of the event responded to the USOC lawsuit. The newsletter editors explained in bold print: “We are not barred, however, from blocking out the world ‘OLYMPIC’ and continuing our efforts. THE GAMES WILL GO ON!!”

*Gay ~~Olympics~~ Newslette*r (MSSP10070-01-02)

The Games did, indeed, go on, and the Gay Games Collection in RBSC contains material documenting the first four Gay Games from 1982 through 1994. Gay Games II was also held in San Francisco, and, from the beginning, the Gay Games included and emphasized cultural and artistic activities that celebrated the accomplishments of LGBTQ people. A program for the Procession of the Arts, for example, detailed the “cultural events” associated with Gay Games II.

Front covers of the *Procession of the Arts* program (MSSP10070-02-03) and the *Official Program of Gay Games II* (MSSP10070-02-01) from 1986.

Throughout its existence, the Gay Games have been a welcoming, inclusive, and safe space for all athletes, spectators, fans, and allies. This flier from Gay Games III held in Vancouver in 1990 described the “Special Philosophy” of the event:

The Games are open to everyone who supports their philosophy of inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness. “Participation and doing one’s personal best are more important than winning,” said founder [Dr. Tom] Waddell. “Our friendly competitions have worked well to remove age, sex, and racial stereotypes.”

Since their founding, the Gay Games have been a popular participatory and spectator event for LGBTQ people and allies, and promoters of the games have created many different types of items to allow fans to demonstrate their support. For Gay Games I, the Gertrude Stein Philatelic Society produced a collectible cachet—or decorative commemorative envelope—celebrating “The First Gay Olympic Games.” Collectible pins have also proven popular. The colorful pins below advertised San Francisco’s “Gay Games II – Triumph in ‘86” and “Gay Games IV – Unity ‘94” held in New York City in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

Gay Games II pin (MSSP10070-02-07) and Gay Games IV pin (MSSP10070-04-06)

The exhibit Cultivating Community will be on display and open to the public during regular RBSC hours through July 17th. Now a major quadrennial international sporting event, Gay Games XII will run in Valencia from June 27th through July 4th.

The Gay Games Collection is available and open to researchers, and RBSC welcomes donations of new material about the history of the Gay Games.

Previous Pride Month Posts:

2025: Reading the Gay Rodeo Ephemera Collection for Pride Month
2024: Reading Gay Sports Magazine in Honor of Pride Month

“America, ungrateful land!” A Black Veteran and Poet Rebukes American Racism

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

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.

Congratulations to the 2026 Graduates!

Best wishes to the 2026 graduates of the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College, from all of us in Rare Books and Special Collections.

We would particularly like to congratulate the following students who worked for Special Collections during their time on campus:

Rocío Colón Cotto (ND ’26), Bachelor of Arts in Art History, Bachelor of Arts in Chinese

Ashley Estelle (ND ’26), Bachelor of Arts in History

José Hurtado (ND ’26), Bachelor of Architecture

Both images: MSE/EM 110-1B, Diploma, University of Padua, 1690

RBSC will be closed Monday, May 25, for Memorial Day.

Comic Books in Special Collections: Los Supermachos

By Emiliano Aguilar, PhD, Assistant Professor History, University of Notre Dame

The first Saturday every May is celebrated as Free Comic Book Day. Since 2002, this annual event by the North American comic book industry aims to attract new readers to independent comic bookstores and a variety of titles. Books dedicated to superheroes, adaptations of television shows, frightening tales, and more are made available for visitors to these shops. This year, we are highlighting one of the historically rich comics in Rare Books and Special Collections.

In June 1965, Eduardo del Río García (1934-2017), known by his pseudonym, Rius, released Los supermachos (published by Editorial Meridiano), which, at its height, reportedly sold 200,000 copies a week. The comic book served as a critical commentary on Mexico’s social problems from the perspectives of the fictional town, San Garabato de las Tunas, Cuc., and the eccentric inhabitants of the rural town. Over the issues, Rius introduced his readers to a wide array of characters, such as the central character, Juan Calzónzin. Often the guide for the reader, the indigenous Calzónzin possessed a rich understanding of Mexican and global affairs.

Some of the recurring characters in *Los Supermachos*, left to right: Arsenio (Don Perpetuo’s bodyguard or enforcer), Don Perpetuo Del Rosal (the local strongman), Chon Prieto (Calzonzin’s friend and the town drunkard), and Juan Calzónzin.

As a medium, comics served as a democratic equalizer for the Mexican public, as no one was barred by geography, class, occupation, or education – even literacy – from reading and sharing them. Another recurring figure in Los Supermachos, the mayor and jefe politico of San Garabato, Don Perpetuo Del Rosal, served as an icon to criticize one-party rule in Mexico. The local strongman, Don Perpetuo, is associated with the ruling party, the RIP, a mockery of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which dominated Mexico’s political landscape for seventy-one years (1929-2000). Throughout the series, Don Perpetuo served as a foil for Los supermachos as he personally organizes the elections — always sure to declare the ruling RIP the repeated winner, commands his own police force, and builds a collaborative relationship with the local landowners, all while claiming unconditional support from the people.

Ultimately, Rius would leave Los supermachos due to government censorship. During his time authoring the books, the publishing team at Editorial Meridiano often revised Rius’s work to avoid fines and bureaucratic burdens, such as the denial of subsidized paper or restrictions on postal service for distribution. When Rius left, the book kept the title and much of the cast of characters, but without crediting him.

The volumes in Rare Books and Special Collections are mainly from after Rius’s departure. However, each comic offers an opportunity to understand the medium as a form of commentary and education for the Mexican people in the 1970s.

Published August 20, 1970, issue 242, is perhaps one of the more critical forms of political commentary. Los Supermachos: LA CIA follows Calzónzin, detailing the CIA’s history after he and his friends encounter a Gringo, who had just taken a ten-dollar bill that Calzónzin hoped to claim. Responding to their shock of seeing of seeing a Gringo in their community, he said, “No lo duden que ese billete que se llevo el Gringo sirva de pilón pa controlar a medio mundo. [Make no mistake: that bill the Gringo took is being used as a lever to control half the world.]

Mixing pop cultural icons, such as the Road Runner and Mickey Mouse ears, alongside real figures, the comic gives a grassroots history of the Central Intelligence Agency from a Mexican perspective. The comic uses the visual of two figures tossing a blue ball, which symbolizes the world, back and forth over a wall, as Calzónzin remarks that “Además, de fuentes oficiales norteamericanas se ha afirmado más de una vez la existencia en Moscu de un organism official de lucha sicológica contra la CIA. O lo que es lo mismo orta CIA, nomás que sovietica.” [In fact, U.S. official sources have stated more than once that there is an official agency in Moscow engaged in psychological warfare against the CIA. Or, in other words, another CIA – only Soviet.]

The creator uses each frame as a method to unravel how the CIA asserts its power and U.S. imperialism abroad. A military figure, bookended by the U.S. flag, details how the network of influence relies on three forms of action: political, psychological, and paramilitary. Merging the visual and textual allowed Los supermachos to present their point about the slow creeping Americanization of the world, even in Mexico. In the comic, the cultural changes wrought by U.S. business and pop culture epitomize the CIA’s war for influence. The deliberate use of actual photos, such as for Allen W. Dulles, the former Deputy Director of the CIA, or a Mexican father walking his children who are dressed as U.S. superheroes became ways for the comic to complement the visual and textual critique of U.S. influence.

Los supermachos, even after Rius’ departure, remained a relatively popular comic for Mexico’s public. The book offered an opportunity to educate various aspects of society, such as a later issue on the importance of vaccinations. The comic remained a biting cultural critique of Mexico, authoritarian rule, the Americanization of the world, and much more. Through engaging simple visuals and colloquial Spanish, the indigenous Calzónzin made the complex political, economic, and social issues digestible for a broad audience.

This vibrant and engaging comic run offers not only a window into Mexico, but an entertaining view into the countercultural influence on generations of political cartoonists, such as Lalo Alcaraz, an award-winning contemporary cartoonist known for his comical takes on Latino History and issues, who credits Rius as a major influence on his career as a cartoonist.

Easter Cards from the Cuala Press

In honor of Easter, we are sharing two images from the Cuala Press Ephemera Collection (EPH 5002). The Cuala Press was founded in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats, sister of the poet W. B. Yeats and the artist Jack B. Yeats, who illustrated many of the books and broadsides published by the press. The press was operated in Dublin by Elizabeth and her sister Lily Yeats, and later by George Yeats (William’s wife), through the mid-1940s. In addition to their brother, the Yeats sisters employed various Irish women to create illustrations, including Beatrice Glenavy (Elvery), Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, Pamela Colman Smith, Dorothy Blackham, and Mary Cottenham Yeats.

Happy Easter to you and yours from all of us in Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame.

Left: *Easter*, text by Susan Langstaff Mitchell, undated (EPH 5002-120)
Right: *[On Easter Day]*, text by Temple Lane, undated (EPH 5002-122)

After being closed April 3 in observance of Good Friday, Rare Books and Special Collections will return to regular hours and is open on Monday, April 6, 2026.

Éire Óg / Young Ireland — a spotlight exhibit in Special Collections

by Matthew Knight, Irish Studies Librarian and Curator

This St. Patrick’s Day and in the March–April spotlight exhibit, Rare Books and Special Collections celebrates the youth of Ireland, who were seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the true soul of the Irish Nation. After all, if Irish independence were to be achieved, nationalists would first have to win the hearts and minds of the next generation.

In 1842, a group known as Young Ireland founded a newspaper called The Nation to advocate for a politically independent Ireland. The Nation envisioned an Irish identity undivided by race or religion; united by Irish language and culture; and forged from a romanticized version of Irish history. To achieve these ends, Young Ireland sought a legion more formidable than a thousand men clad in steel: The young intellect of the country.¹

One of our prized collections is a series of draft songs composed for The Nation newspaper by one of the founders of Young Ireland, Thomas Davis (Thomas Davis Collection, MSE/IR 1001). Although Davis tragically died of scarlet fever at age thirty, many of his compositions (“A Nation Once Again,” “The West’s Asleep,” and “Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill”), intended to inspire the Irish youth of his time, are still sung today.

Although the British banned the speaking of Irish and the teaching of Ireland’s history from the national school system, associations inspired by the Young Ireland Movement began to encourage children to study the Irish language, play Gaelic sports, and perform Irish drama and music. This alternative education included journals such as Young Ireland (1875-1891) and groups like the Irish Fireside Club (founded 1887), which helped foster a new national identity among the nation’s youth.

These activities served as training grounds for future nationalists and paved the way for the formation of Connradh na Gaedhilge (The Gaelic League) in 1893. This organization continued to solicit the support of Irish youth, and published numerous books, pamphlets, and broadsides intended to ensure children remained at the forefront of the revival of Irish language and culture.

Tadgh Ó Donnchadha, *An tÁilleán*. Dublin, 1924.
Rare Books Large PB 1399 .O42765 A5 1924

First published by Connradh na Gaedhilge in 1902, An tÁilleán was written by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (‘Torna’) with illustrations of the ideal country life by Seoirse Ua Fágáin.

‘Torna’ dedicated the book to the youth of Ireland, saying, “Cuimhnighidh air gur i nÉirinn do rugadh sibh, gur ceart dúinn ár ndícheall do dhéanamh ar son Éireann; maireamhaint agus bás d’fhágháil i nÉirinn; agus ó’s í an Gaedhilg ár dTeanga féin, í labhairt í comhnuidhe.” [Remember that you were born in Ireland, and we must do our best for Ireland; to live and die in Ireland; and since Irish is our own language, speak it always.]

Fuínn na Smól (Songs of the Thrushes) is a collection of Irish tunes drawn from manuscripts, oral tradition, and shorter printed works. An tAthair Pádruig Breathnach (1848–1930), a Catholic priest and member of the Gaelic League, collected Irish songs from his parishioners in his youth. He later published them in a series of works like this one, with each tune printed in the Gaelic typeface and set to a melody in tonic solfa.

Although dedicated to children learning Irish in school, these songbooks had much to offer adults committed to the de-anglicization program of the Gaelic League. Sales ran into the tens of thousands, and they had a lasting influence on the Irish oral tradition.²

When Gaelic revivalism became more political, groups like Na Fianna Éireann (Boy Scouts of Ireland), founded in 1909, emerged to support a future military insurrection. First published in 1914, the Fianna Handbook served as the official guide and training manual for Na Fianna Éireann. The Fianna Handbook was the Irish nationalist alternative to the Baden-Powell Boy Scout handbook, with the Fianna portrayed holding rifles, in contrast to the Baden-Powell Scouts, who carried walking sticks.

The guide featured training in signaling, first aid, camping, and military drill, but also contained chapters devoted to a cultural nationalist education. Patrick Pearse contributed a chapter on the legendary Fianna; Countess Markievicz, the group’s founder and ‘Chief,’ wrote an inspiring foreword and designed the cover; Roger Casement penned an essay on chivalry; and Douglas Hyde submitted a chapter in the Irish language.

Current and former Fianna participated in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the organization later worked alongside the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21).

Eighty years after Young Ireland founded The Nation newspaper, the Irish Free State was declared, and Irish Independence followed soon after. The Gaelic revival survived largely because it recognized that nobody was too young to serve their country, and the new Irish state found many former “Firesiders” and Fianna members serving in leadership roles. These once pint-sized radicals ensured that their dream of a free, Gaelic Ireland would pass to the next generation of Irish children.

Footnotes

1 The Nation, 14 October 1842.

2 See Nicholas Carolan, ‘Fr Pádruig Breathnach and Irish Traditional Song’, Béaloideas: the journal of the Folklore Society of Ireland, vol. 87 (2019), pp. 82–99.

Previous St. Patrick’s Day blog posts:

2025: Discovering Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland
2022: The Breastplate of Saint Patrick — Thomas Kinsella and the Dolmen Press
2021: Competing with Finian’s Rainbow
2020: St. Patrick’s Day Postcards
2019: St. Patrick and the Nun of Kenmare
2018: St. Patrick’s Day in America, 1872

Women’s History Month 2026

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history by celebrating Women’s History Month.

Two Perspectives on African American Women Workers during the Great Depression

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

This March, RBSC celebrates Women’s History Month by highlighting two recent acquisitions about African American women and their place in the labor market during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both sources recognize the double bind of race and gender discrimination experienced by African American women, but their similarities end there.

African American journalists and Communist Party members Eugene Gordon and Cyril Briggs produced The Position of Negro Women in 1935. It was published in pamphlet form by the Communist Party USA. The authors wasted no time in declaring on the third line, that “The Negro woman worker is double victimized. She suffers both from the general discrimination against women workers and from her identity as a member of a nationality singled out by the ruling class for special plundering, persecution and oppression.” (p. 2)

The authors described the precarious position African American women held in industrial jobs—largely in laundries, and food and clothing production—as well as in every other part of the labor market. They held up domestic service for special opprobrium, noting that day workers—those who didn’t live in—were the most exploited, making as little as $10 a month (for comparison, women factory workers made $14 a week). Gordon and Briggs also included professional workers in their survey, noting grimly that “The Negro professional woman worker finds it almost impossible to secure a job.” (p. 11) School teachers were the exception. Although African American teachers in the North were generally paid the same as their white peers, in southern states African American teachers earned less than half, or worse, than that of their white counterparts.

Gordon and Briggs called for African American and white worker unity through the Communist Party, for workers to rally together to fight discrimination, unemployment, and hunger.

Three years later, Jean Collier Brown, Public Information Assistant of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, published The Negro Woman Worker. Brown’s was the first report by the department (headed by Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a cabinet) to establish basic facts about where African American women were employed in the labor market, numbers employed, employment opportunities, hours, wages, and working conditions. Although not comprehensive, the report offers significant detail about wage discrimination and terrible working conditions of African American women workers.

Like Gordon and Briggs, Brown began by noting that “Though women in general have been discriminated against and exploited through limitation of their opportunities for employment, through long hours, low wages, and harmful working conditions, such hardships have fallen upon Negro women with double harshness.” (p. 1) From there, the report moved systematically through the major parts of the labor market in which African American women worked: domestic and personal service, agriculture, manufacturing and mechanical industries, and white-collar workers.

While Gordon and Briggs’ pamphlet aimed to organize workers and rally them to the Communist Party, Brown suggested a multi-pronged approach of social and labor legislation, better education and training opportunities, and trade union organization to address the critical status of African American women workers. Both reports brought much needed attention—for the first time but in quite different ways—to the crisis facing African American women workers during the Great Depression.

Post Script:

Jean Collier Brown later left the Department of Labor and by 1943 worked as an organizer for the United Domestic Workers Union of the CIO, Baltimore branch, a union of African American domestic laborers.

Other Women’s History Month posts on the RBSC blog:

2025: The First Women’s Political Party
2024: Second-Wave Feminist Articles from an Underground Newspaper
2023: Women for Peace and Disarmament
2022: The Feminine “Math-tique”
2021: Writing to Rehabilitate in the House of Detention for Women in New York City
2020: Mary Taussig Hall and Social Reform
2017: A Woman’s Sardonic Eye

Black History Month 2026

We join with The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

“Play Ball With Jackie”: Unboxing the Jackie Robinson Doll for Black History Month

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In recognition of Black History Month, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight its recent acquisition of the Jackie Robinson Doll, a 13-inch plastic composition doll of the baseball icon manufactured by the Allied-Grand Doll Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1950.

The moveable and posable doll was sold fully accessorized with Robinson’s complete Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, miniature baseball equipment, and other accompanying commemorative items. The Jackie Robinson Doll was one of the earliest realistic African American dolls aimed at the general mainstream toy market and was a testament to the popularity and importance of Robinson, who several years earlier had famously broken major league baseball’s long-standing color line against Black players.

Despite Robinson’s widespread celebrity, the Jackie Robinson Doll was unusual on toystore shelves in 1950. Although African American designers and companies had long made dolls specifically targeted at the Black community, most mainstream American toy manufacturers at the time did not create realistic dolls depicting African Americans. As historian Rob Goldberg explains in his book Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children’s Toys in 1960s and 1970s America for most of the early twentieth century there had “been a painful history of demeaning representations and unjust exclusions of African Americans by the nearly all-white producers of mass-market toys” (page 86).

The story of the Jackie Robinson Doll began after the 1949 season when Robinson had won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Over that winter, Robinson sought opportunities for extra income—especially during the off season—to support his growing family. He partnered with entertainment lawyer Martin Stone in hopes of capitalizing on his success and popularity to supplement his baseball salary. As later explained in a 1951 New York Herald Tribune article: “One day in 1949, Jackie Robinson walked into his [Martin Stone’s] penthouse office and wondered how he could make some money during the winter—up to then he’d been selling television sets in the off-season.”

Within the next couple of years, Robinson and Stone built a successful marketing campaign that produced the Hollywood motion picture The Jackie Robinson Story, a series of six Jackie Robinson comic books (featured in a previous RBSC blog post), the Jackie Robinson Radio Show broadcast on New York’s WNBC, t-shirts, and, in total, “about thirty franchises,” according to the Herald Tribune.

The Jackie Robinson Doll, which was sold individually or as a packaged set with the first issue of the recently published Jackie Robinson comic book, was another popular branded item that received considerable public attention. The doll was one of only a handful of items mentioned by name in a March 1950 newspaper article, “Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View.”

Advertisements from 1950 *Alabama Tribune* (left) and 1950 *Harrisburg Patriot-News* (right).

Toy dealers widely advertised the doll in newspapers around the country. An ad in the Alabama Tribune, an African American newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama, informed potential customers: “Here he is! Jackie Robinson in doll form dressed in his Dodger’s uniform. Doll comes boxed with ball bat, sweatshirt, baseball game, and the life story of the great hero!” Similarly, the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News daily newspaper ran an ad for the local Bill’s department store that described Robinson as “America’s Favorite Athlete.” The store declared, “First time in Harrisburg … everybody can have a doll of America’s Athletic hero.” In May 1950, the Associated Negro Press reported that the Jackie Robinson doll was even in stock at the famous Macy’s department store in New York City.

RBSC’s example of the Jackie Robinson doll apparently includes all of the original accessories that accompanied the doll. Housed in its original 15X15 inch square cardboard box, the doll wears a Brookyln Dodgers hat and jersey, uniform pants, socks, and shoes. The set also includes a wooden bat with a facsimile of Robinson’s signature, a promotional tag shaped like a glove, a plastic ball, a copy of the Jackie Robinson comic book, and a simple spinner-based Jackie Robinson baseball game.

The Jackie Robinson Doll is open and available to researchers during regular RBSC business hours. So stop by if you would like to “Play Ball with Jackie!”

Sources Cited

Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, “New York Up Close: Martin Stone, Lawyer in Show Business,” New York Herald Tribune 30 July, 1951, p. 7.

“Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View,” New York Herald Tribune 7 March 1950, p. 23.

“Jackie Robinson Doll and Life Story!” [advertisement], Alabama Tribune 15 December 1950, p. 6.

“Bill’s” [advertisement], Harrisburg Patriot News 2 July 1950, p. 44.

“Robinson Dolls at Macys,” [Lincoln, Nebraska] The Voice 6 May 1950, p. 3.

Previous Black History Month posts:

2025: Remembering the Harrisburg Trojans, Champion African American Football Team

2023: African American Women Activists and Athletes in 1970s Feminist Magazines

2022: Searching for Claude Monroe Paris, Unheralded African American Basketball Pioneer: Documenting Black History Using Notre Dame’s Joyce Sports Research Collection

2021: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s New Literary Tradition Packaged to Sell

2017: African Americans and Populism