Preserving
Black Heritage
Historical Resources
Explore our curated collection of historically significant Black collectibles, featuring carefully researched and reviewed educational content.
Jackie Robinson: Baseball Hero (Fawcett, 1949)
Jackie Robinson Comics, released by Fawcett Publications in 1949, is a landmark Golden Age series celebrating the barrier-breaking achievements of Jackie Robinson, the first Black major leaguer and Brooklyn Dodgers star.The comic chronicles Robinson’s life from his Georgia childhood and Pasadena adolescence, through his college athletic stardom, Army service, and rise to baseball immortality. The series presented Robinson’s triumphs and character in a positive, dignified light, in stark contrast to the racial caricatures common in comics of the era. Stories included dramatic base-stealing feats and his role as an inspiring figure in the fight for equality.
Peter Jackson N174 Gypsy Queen (1887–1888)
This card is considered the rookie card of Peter Jackson, a pioneering Black heavyweight boxer often referred to as "The Black Prince." It originates from the N174 Gypsy Queen Old Judge Cigarettes series, produced by Goodwin & Co. in the late 1880s. While some catalogs note 1887 as the production year, several reputable hobby guides and auction listings cite 1888, reflecting common discrepancies in the dating of pre-1900 tobacco cards. The card was issued soon after Jackson's arrival in America and is admired for its antique photographic style and fragile cardboard stock. Each card is unnumbered, featuring a sepia-tone image of Jackson posed in classic boxing attire. The meticulous detail captured by the old photographic process gives each specimen a unique vintage elegance. Only a handful of authenticated copies are known to exist, making this one of the true grails of 19th-century sports memorabilia.
1948 Leaf Kenny Washington Rookie #17
The 1948 Leaf Kenny Washington rookie card (#17) commemorates the man widely regarded as the “Jackie Robinson of the NFL.” Washington famously broke the NFL’s modern-era color barrier when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946. This historic milestone came one year before Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball and three years before Wally Triplett became the first Black player drafted and to play in an NFL game in 1949. Washington’s NFL debut ended a 12-year league ban on Black players and helped usher in a new era of integration in professional football.
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Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — Rare Presentation Copy
This first-edition copy of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston, 1861) is an exceptional presentation copy given by Harriet Jacobs’s daughter, Louisa Jacobs, to Sarah R. May, wife of abolitionist Rev. Samuel May Jr., in 1886. Bound in the publisher’s original light brown beaded cloth with gilt spine, this near-fine copy remains unrestored and is accompanied by extraordinary provenance: two period obituaries for Harriet Jacobs mounted within the book, and a fourteen-page holograph letter describing Jacobs’s 1897 funeral service, including a handwritten copy of the eulogy delivered by Rev. Francis James Grimké, a leading African American minister of the era. The letter, written by Sarah Earle to Samuel May, is the only known surviving eyewitness account of Jacobs’s funeral. The Mays were close friends and supporters of the Jacobs School, a Freedmen’s school founded in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1863 by Harriet and Louisa Jacobs to educate formerly enslaved Black children—a project that embodied Harriet’s belief that Black educators were essential for community empowerment.
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