A New Exhibit at the State Library of Massachusetts

Visit the State Library to see an exhibit entitled Doll E Daze: Footprints of African Americans in Transportation presented by the National Black Doll Museum. The exhibit showcases sixteen expressive art dolls that examine the impact that various modes of transportation played in the transformation of enslaved Africans to freed African Americans. These dolls stand at 24 inches and are decorated with items that chronicle the arduous journey to freedom from the early national period through the twentieth century and tell the story of the African American experience gathered over two hundred years of its existence.

The exhibit runs through August 31, 2013 and can be viewed in the reading room of the State Library (room 341 of the State House). Library hours are Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.

Fredrick Douglass in the State Library

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was a passionate abolitionist, a forceful speaker, and a prolific writer. Douglass started a newspaper called The North Star and he also wrote three autobiographies. Frederick Douglass gave a speech on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY. The State Library has a copy of this speech titled: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” on page 379 in a book called The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay.

The State Library’s online catalog contains records for several of his publications, and the Library’s Flickr site has pictures of Frederick Douglass and other people involved in the emancipation of slaves and in the Civil War.

Naomi Allen

Reference Librarian