February 11, 2021, 2:22pm
Exciting news! The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is currently in the process of digitizing the Walter O. Evans Collection of Frederick Douglass and Douglass Family Papers. The collection will be fully digitized for public access by the end of February. The Yale Daily News advises that once the collection is available on the Yale University Library Digital Collections website, the quickest way to access it will be via call number JWJ MSS 240.
The extensive collection contains Douglass’s correspondence, as well as correspondence between his family members; Douglass’s personal papers; Douglass’s published writings; and scrapbooks compiled by Douglass’s sons. Among the long list of scholars whose research has been furthered by these documents is Yale history professor David Blight, who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History for his biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
Said Beinecke acccessioning archivist Rosemary Davis to the Yale Daily News, “Seeing these photos and seeing the photos of his family—and especially just the ones of his family together and the children together—I think is just such a wonderful moment to see them just existing in life together,” Davis said. “Just seeing something beyond the sheen of the history book . . . I think that’s something that’s always so amazing.”
[via Yale Daily News]