Booker T. Washington Archive
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GUEST:
Aunt Lucy was born in Fredonia, New York, and her father was a surgeon in the Civil War. And she was very civic-minded. And after the Civil War, General Armstrong started Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Lucy was a teacher, and she went to teach at Hampton. And she actually taught Booker T. Washington and maintained a friendship with him throughout her life.
APPRAISER:
Aunt Lucy taught Booker T. Washington. That's amazing.
GUEST:
(chuckling) Yes. I think it was sometime around 1872 to 1875. I'm just starting to dig out some of these family things and find them and put them together.
APPRAISER:
You've brought just a few of the treasures of a much larger collection. Aunt Lucy and Booker T. Washington formed a relationship, a friendship that lasted until the end of his life, which would have been in 1915.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Booker T. Washington was one of the great 19th century African-American leaders. He was one of the last of the leaders that had been born into slavery. His much later published autobiography Up From Slavery in 1901 was a classic in African-American literature at that time. And I think that it's an extraordinary relationship that Aunt Lucy founded with him. He went on in his more mature years to be selected to be the first leader of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. It's an 1897 letter to Aunt Lucy from Booker T. Washington. We have an invitation for a commemoration at the institute. Here we have a first edition of a Booker T. Washington book. This particular copy is inscribed to Aunt Lucy from Booker T. Washington. These are just some real treasures. Just for the few items you brought here today, the photographs, the invitation, the letter, and the signed first edition book, I would put an estimate at retail of between $6,000 to $8,000 for the collection.
GUEST:
Nice. Yeah, wow. That's amazing.
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