Charleston’s Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience
By Edmund L. Drago. Edited and revised by W. Marvin Dulaney

Edmund L. Drago tells the story of Avery Normal Institute, a school for African-American children in Charleston, South Carolina that educated 100s of students from 1865 to1954. This revised and updated version of Drago’s book includes an important account of how the school became a museum and archives to preserve African-American history and culture.

Cost $35.00

Ready From Within
Edited with Introduction by Cynthia Stokes Brown

Septima Clark played one of the most essential, but little recognized roles in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in 1898 in Charleston, South Carolina, she was a public school teacher until 1956, when she was dismissed for refusing to disavow her membership in the NAACP. During the 1960s she worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also, from 1978 to 1983, she served as the first black woman on the Charleston County School Board.

Cost $15.00

Brown v. Board of Education
Copyright by Mary Maruca
Published by Western National Parks Association

The 1954 United States Supreme Court decision legally ended segregation in public schools. This decision Brown vs. Board of Education forever changed the way Americans view equality. This book is the story of that groundbreaking Supreme Court decision.

Cost $5.00

The Road to Brown
By Sonny Dubose

“Sonny has written ‘THE ROAD TO BROWN’ with scholarly precision, intellectual integrity, and narrative verve. He’s done Civil Rights historiography a tremendous service by adding Reverend Delaine and the other brave Clarendon county citizens’ story to our collection of significant Civil Rights works.”
-Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, University of New Orleans.

Cost $23.00

Edwin Augustus Harleston: Artist and Activist in A Changing Era
Edited by Leila Potts-Campbell with essays by Mae Gentry, M. Akua McDaniel, and Susan V. Donaldson

This exhibition catalog was prepared in conjunction with the exhibition: Edwin Augustus Harleston: Artist and Activist in a Changing Era, at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, January 21, to June 30, 2006. In addition to the twenty-four, full color plates of Harleston’s works from the exhibition, the catalog documents the artist’s life and times.

Cost $25.00

Born to Serve: A History of the Woman’s
Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina

Edited by W. Marvin Dulaney with Damon Fordham and Muima Shinault-Small

This is the first comprehensive history of a state Woman’s Baptist Convention. It traces the history of South Carolina’s Baptist women’s organization from its founding in 1888 to the recent present. It documents the contributions that the women made to support and promote education, to address social and economic issues, and to improve the lives of South Carolina’s African Americans.   

Cost $15.00

Black Charlestonians A Social History, 1822-1885
By Bernard E. Powers

An excellent accounting of this inventive and industrious urban antebellum Charleston black community who managed to turn adversity to challenge. Powers uses census documents, manuscripts, photographs and contemporary newspapers to make this development of this community. Dr. Powers is currently a professor of history at the College of Charleston.

Cost $27.00

Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?
The People of Johns Island, South Carolina- Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs
By Guy and Candie Carawan

“Ain’t You Got The Right To The Tree Of Life? presents an oral, musical, and photographic record of the venerable Gullah culture in modern times. With roots stretching back to their slave forebears, the John Islanders and their folk traditions are a vital link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean ancestors.”
-The Knoxville News-Sentinel

Cost $25.00

Black America Series Charleston South Carolina
By John Meffert, Sherman Pyatt, and The Avery Research Center

In Arcadia Press’s Black America Series: Charleston, South Carolina, authors John Meffert and Sherman Pyatt, have compiled a historical visual exploration which chronicles the various aspects of the Charleston black community’s educational, political, and social growth. Featuring primary source material exclusively from the Avery Research Center’s archives, the reader is given a bird’s eye view of the African–American experience via Charleston, SC covering such areas as slavery, education, reconstruction, civil rights, business and culture and lifestyle. The visual history will be a resource and treasure for any library.

Cost $20.00

Slave Badges and the Slave Hire System in Charleston, South Carolina, 1783-1865
By Harlan Greene and Harry Hutchins, Jr. with Brian E. Hutchins

This work documents how the slave-hire system in Charleston came about, how it worked, who was in charge of it, and who enforced the law regarding slave badges. Numerous badge makers are identified, and photographs of badges, with commentary on what the data stamped on them mean, are included.

Cost $35.00

Down By The Riverside A South Carolina Slave Community
By Charles Joyner

“ The best of cultural history, historical ethnography, folklore and folk life, and American Studies come together… Joyner re-creates in careful and vivid detail the daily life of the slaves – what they wore and ate, how they celebrated and mourned, and the culture they created. And this he does in a eloquent manner, through his graceful style of writing.”
- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University

Cost $20.00

Black and Free The Free Negro in America 1830
Edited by Alan Abrams

Over 50,000 names of free Blacks are indexed in this valuable compilation. This publication contains a new commentary on African American historian Carter G. Woodson’s study of the Free Negro; updating it by including much new information unavailable to Woodson at the time he conducted his path finding original research.

Cost $30.00

Wadmalaw Island - Leaving Traditional Roots Behind

“This book is the first written about Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina from a Gullah perspective. The work provides fascinating details, and historical facts extracted from the dusty church records to the old tombstones. The author focuses upon the African, Indian, and European sociology of more than three hundred years on the Sea Island of Wadmalaw Island, and evolved into what we call Gullah.”

Irene West Smith
Sea Islands Researcher

Cost $13.00

Row Upon Row - Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Low country
By Dale Rosengarten

Enslaved Africans brought by white planters to the Lowcountry to cultivate rice, also brought basket making skills with them as well. The early history of basket making parallels the rise of the rice cultivation of the Southeastern coast of the United States. Coiled sea grass baskets were made for the use in plantation households as well as in rice cultivation. “ Row Upon Row” is an in-depth very visual study of this folk art form.

Cost $15.00

Ronald Daise documents the lifestyle, customs, superstitions and folklore of St. Helena Island, culled from the memories of a proud and aged group of Sea Island blacks. The history of these first freedmen and their descendants is a colorful, provocative story told to a great extent in their own words and illustrated with photographs taken on the island during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The old tales, spirituals and beliefs, many of which will soon be forgotten as third or fourth generation islanders cease to identify with their heritage, are preserved here by a native islander and presented with a dash of Sea Island flavor.

Cost $17.00