William C. Nell
Pioneer of Black History
Born in Boston, MA, in 1816, William C. Nell was a pioneer in the study and writing of Black American history. Over his decades-long career, Nell studied law, founded multiple literary societies, served as publisher of The North Star newspaper, led the successful desegregation of Boston public schools in 1855, inaugurated the annual Crispus Attucks Day celebrations in Boston in 1858, and authored two books of history and many more essays on Black history and culture. Nell was also an avid researcher and documentarian, and his activism around Attucks following the 1857 Dred Scott decision brought Crispus Attucks back into the popular consciousness as the “First Martyr of the American Revolution.” This case features Nell’s two books of history along with samples from his newspaper collection, signed by him.
The Colored American. July 3, 1841.
Binding newspapers was a common practice in the nineteenth century for reading rooms and avid subscribers, like William C. Nell. This volume contains issues of the Colored American from 1840-1841, which Nell likely had bound. This issue features notes on the State Convention of the Colored Freemen of Pennsylvania, set to be held in Pittsburgh on August 23-25.
William C. Nell. Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. Boston: Prentiss & Sawyer, 1851.
Services of Colored Americans covers Black military service during the American Revolution. Nell focused on soldiers, because “a combination of circumstances [has] veiled from the public eye a narration of those military services which are generally conceded as passports to the honorable and lasting notice of Americans.” The inscription reads: “To William Lloyd Garrison with grateful regards of W.C.N.”
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.
William C. Nell. Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. Second Edition. Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1852.
William C. Nell. The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, with Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons. Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855.
Building on Services of Colored Americans (1851), in 1855 Nell published Colored Patriots, one of the earliest books on African American history. This image of Attucks is among the earliest and most prominent to depict him clearly as a Black man. The inscription reads: “To: Rev. Samuel May, Jr., with grateful esteem of William C. Nell. Boston. Nov. 7, 1855.”
Samuel J. May Collection.
William C. Nell. Property Qualification or No Property Qualification. New York: Thomas Hamilton, 1860.
New York State’s 1821 constitution granted franchise rights to all qualified white men, but not to any “man of colour,” unless he owned $250 in property “above all debts.” Nell wrote this piece to provide historical background during New York’s 1860 state constitutional convention. Thomas Hamilton published and sold the pamphlet out of the office of The Anglo-African.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.