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A collection concerned with the various phases of black life in America, containing clippings, pamphlets, photographs, pictures, extracts from periodicals, and a representative group of approximately 350 letters, signatures, manuscripts, and documents. Among the letters are several each from Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Dumas, fils, William Lloyd Garrison, Claude McKay, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Mencken, William Pickens, Albert A. Smith, and Booker T. Washington. Also, eighteen slavery documents.

Correspondence, manuscripts of poems, and manuscripts of lectures by Benjamin. The correspondence consists of original letters of Benjamin, typescript and photostatic copies of Benjamin letters in other libraries, and letters to Benjamin from some of his literary contemporaries including Paul Hamilton Hayne, Willis Gaylord Clark, John Lothrop Motley, and Fitz-Greene Halleck. Many of the letters relate to Park Benjamin's lecture tours. There are other family letters and many documents relating to the Benjamin family,and two letterbooks of John Lothrop Motley. Also, a large amount of genealogical material of the Benjamin family, and its related families from the 16th century to the present day. There are also financial records, monographs, clippings, and photographs.