– 18 – N e w A c q u i s i t i o n s “One Of The Fathers Of African Nationalism”: First Edition Of Alexander Crummell’s Relations And Duties Of Free Colored Men... To Africa, 1861, An Especially Rare Association Copy With The Owner Signature Of Black Scholar Dr. Adelaide Cromwell Hill, Granddaughter Of 19th-Century Black Historian John Wesley Cromwell 19. (CROMWELL HILL, ADELAIDE) CRUMMELL, Alexander. The Relations and Duties of Free Colored Men in America to Africa. A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar, M.D., Esq. of New York City. Hartford, 1861. Octavo, modern blue and red paper boards. $3200. First edition of a groundbreaking work by Crummell, an “intellectual idol of W.E.B. Du Bois,” pivotal in asserting all men “hold some relation to the land of their Fathers,” especially “the sons of Africa in America,” an exceptional association copy with the owner signature of 20th-century Black American scholar and activist Adelade Cromwell Hill. In the decades when America moved from the Revolution to a Civil War, Crummell initiated “some of the earliest and most powerful conceptions of Black people as a people… in essence an early form of Black nationalism” (Rael, 142-43). Asserting this is “not… a plea for Colonization,” Crummell bases Relations and Duties on his belief that all hold a “relation to the land of their Fathers,” including and particularly “the sons of Africa in America.” It was prompted by a letter from Black physician Charles Benjamin Dunbar, who had left his practice in New York for Liberia just before the outbreak of the Civil War. At his death there in 1878, Dr. Dunbar was honored by Liberia’s leaders for his loyalty to the country as a physician, citizen and agricultural leader. This major association copy carries an outstanding African American provenance. It possesses the owner signature of Adelaide Cromwell Hill, the prominent Black historian and sociologist who followed in the footsteps of her grandfather, John Wesley Cromwell, a pioneering 19th-century lawyer, author and civil rights activist. Dr. Cromwell Hill, an influential scholar and activist, was a distinguished professor at Boston University and co-founder of its African Studies Program—only the second in the country. A fine copy.
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