MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

As you honor the memory of Martin Luther King this weekend,  please consider a visit to the Bullis Room.

Why?  There are no books in the collection written by or about Dr. King. However, there are over a dozen Bullis books that address the slavery issue as well as the lives of our country's great emancipators and liberators who came before Martin Luther King, Jr.

Therefore, in honor of Dr. King and observance of next month's Black History month, we will highlight these books for your reference -- and in hopes that you'll want to stop by the Bullis Room to study them further.

For this post, we chose the book:

History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880.

Negroes as slaves, as soldiers, and as citizens;

together with a preliminary consideration of the unity

of the human family, an historical sketch of Africa, and

an account of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

By George Washington Williams (1849-1891)

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons New York, 1883

The author, George Washington Williams, was "an American Civil War veteran, minister, politician, lawyer, journalist and a groundbreaking historian of African-American history."   His varied life experiences prepared and qualified him to write this book,  "... the first overall history of African Americans, showing their participation and contributions from the earliest days of the colonies." (Wikipedia, "George Washington Williams") 

Some of the other books we will highlight in the next six weeks are: The Galley Slave; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade Ancient and Modern; The Yankee Slave Driver: Or, The Black andWhite Rivals; The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation; and, The Future of the African Race in the United States.

Please "tune in" for more details.

PS: The Wikipedia article also mentions that George Washington Williams 

NATIONAL HANDWRITING DAY

National Handwriting Day is January 23. This special recognition of the lost art of penmanship and letter writing has been celebrated annually since it's establishment in 1977. (FYI: According to History.com the January 23 date was chosen, very appropriately, in honor of John Hancock's birthday.)

As Bullis volunteers, we marvel at the handwritten letters, notes, and documents in the collection. The idea that people used to devote an hour or more to write a letter to a friend seems almost foreign to us in these days of instant messaging, texting, and emailing. And yet, we get a sense that the writers of these missives enjoyed these writing sessions as much (or perhaps more than) the recipients enjoyed the final product.

And so we've been thinking - when is the last time we sat down to write a long, newsy letter to a friend or relative? Do we even remember how to do this activity? Well, if we need a few pointers on letter writing, we can always refer to Mary Owens Crowther's How to Write Letters that was highlighted in our post a few weeks ago.  Ms. Crowther's book was written over 90 years ago.  Is it relevant today? It must be--there's a 2015 paperback version of it for sale online.

So here's the deal - there are two weeks left before National Handwriting Day.  In this interim, let's find a quiet time, sit down, relax, pick up a pen, put it to paper, and write a letter.  If this seems a bit awkward at first, know that with practice the skill will come back.  Honest.

And also know that you are invited to stop by the Bullis Room and look at some perfect examples of this lost art.