Legacy
A historical marker commemorates his life at the site of his home at 823 South Street. [8]
Robert Mara Adger Jr. (1837 - June 10, 1910) was a businessman and bibliophile in Philadelphia. [1] His family owned a collectibles shop and lived adjacent. [2] He became a member of the Banneker Institute at the age of 17 and became its president in his mid twenties. [3] He amassed an important collection of books and periodicals by and about African Americans and donated it for posterity. The "Catalogue of rare books on slavery and negro authors on science, history, poetry, religion, biography, etc." was printed from the holdings in his private collection. [4] In 1981, Rare Afro-Americana: A Reconstruction of the Adger Library was published. [5]
Adger was born in Charleston, South Carolina to Mary Ann Morong, a Native American, and Robert Adger Sr. He had 12 siblings. In 1848 the family moved to Philadelphia and he studied at the Bird School. He worked at his store. He became a director of the Philadelphia Building and Loan Association, a mortgage company serving African-Americans and joined the Black Enlistment Committee help recruit black soldiers for the Union Army during the American Civil War. He founded a fraternal organization and was involved with civil rights groups including the Pennsylvania Equal Rights League. He helped found the Afro-American Historical Society that included his personal collection of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to African Americans and the antislavery movement.
He died of a heart attack on June 10, 1910 and his funeral was held at 1115 Lombard Street, his final place of residence. He is buried at the Merion Cemetery in Merion, Pennsylvania. [6] [7] [1]
In 1906 Robert Adger sold his books to Ella Smith Albert who was the second black student to graduate from Wellesley College. Ella donated Adger's book collection to Wellesley College in 1938 where it became scattered. There have been attempts to retrieve these volumes and those that are found are housed separately at the Wellesley College Rare Book Room. [3]
A historical marker commemorates his life at the site of his home at 823 South Street. [8]
Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet.
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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard between West 135th and 136th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it has, almost from its inception, been an integral part of the Harlem community. It is named for Afro-Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
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William Whipper was a businessman and abolitionist in the United States. Whipper, an African American, advocated nonviolence and co-founded the American Moral Reform Society, an early African-American abolitionist organization. He helped found one of the first black literary societies in the U.S known as the Reading Room Society whose constitution stated that its aim was the "mental improvement of the people of color in the neighborhood of Philadelphia." William Whipper epitomized the prosperity that Northern Blacks were able to attain in the mid-19th century.
Charles Harris Wesley was an American historian, educator, minister, and author. He published more than 15 books on African-American history, taught for decades at Howard University, and served as president of Wilberforce University, and founding president of Central State University, both in Ohio.
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John W. Mosley was a self-taught photojournalist who extensively documented the everyday activities of the African-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for more than 30 years, a period including both World War II and the civil rights movement. His work was published widely in newspapers and magazines including The Philadelphia Tribune, The Pittsburgh Courier and Jet magazine.
Charles Leroy Blockson was an American historian, author, bibliophile, and collector of books, historical documents, art, and other materials related to the history and culture of African Americans, continental Africans, and the African diaspora throughout the rest of the world. He curated two university collections related to the study of African-American history and culture: the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora at Pennsylvania State University and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University.
James G. Spady was an American Book Award-winning writer, historian, and journalist. Over his fifty-year career, Spady authored and edited numerous books, worked in radio, television, and film, wrote hundreds of newspaper articles for various print media, and received the National Newspaper Publishers Association's Meritorious Award.
Henry Proctor Slaughter was an American journalist, printer, and bibliographer. Slaughter collected resources that documented African American history, with a special focus on the subjects of slavery, the abolitionist movement, and correspondence from African American leaders throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His collection of over 10,000 books and other materials now forms the Henry P. Slaughter collection at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.
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Henry Laird Phillips was an American social reformer and rector of the Church of the Crucifixion, an African American Episcopal Church congregation in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected a commemorative marker outside the church in 1993. W. E. B. Du Bois praised Phillips as "one of the most valuable social reformers of the day."
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