Bidding for history: Swann Galleries' auction of rare manuscripts and printed African Americana draws buyers who appreciate its importance.

WHEN WYATT HOUSTON DAY FIRST GOT THE IDEA IN 1994 FOR AN AUCTION OF "PRINTED and manuscript African Americana" at the venerable Swann Galleries auction house in New York City, he had an inkling that it was one whose time had come. Working as a cataloguer when he was given the green light to proceed with the event, he phoned everyone he knew to request consignments of manuscripts, books and other artifacts for the sale. "When I came up with this idea, they didn't think there was enough of a market for this", he recalls.

On the morning of the sale, the audience was about 50 percent African American and the nearly 200-seat room was full. "There had never been an auction with that many people standing up. We had people call from France, Great Britain, from all over the place. What was pleasing was the turnout. "These were people who were really not black-memorabilia sale devotees." People came to the previews, Day says, and brought their kids. "It was confirmation of what I believed was an enormous market waiting to see something that's theirs."

Now, 11 years later, Swann Galleries' annual Black History Month auction is perhaps the only one of its kind in the world and has become one of the most important auctions of African American books, works on paper and memorabilia. The sale draws scholars, museum and historical society administrators and collectors of every stripe. At auction is a wide range of African American material, including works about slavery and abolition, art, military history and music, civil rights, film, folk art, education, religion and sports, as well as photographs and posters. (This year's auction is February 26. For a catalogue and auction schedule, visit www.swanngalleries.com.)

"I enjoy being immersed in this and being able to find and bring to light pertinent information that helps to connect dots," says Day. "All of this is lost history. It's vital and necessary to keep looking, to be a cultural archaeologist, so to speak. I've been a book dealer for more than twenty years. I've always specialized in African American authors, writers and history, so I happened to start doing this at the right time."

Even from the beginning, Day says he has been able to acquire works of significant historical importance. "In the first year, I was able to amass a very rare manuscript. The only known slave narrative written by a slave in America in his own language--Arabic" Day says. "Omar ibn Said was a Muslim from Senegal, and his manuscript was written in 1831 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I was very proud." It sold for $21,850. Day says, "It's still one of the great and most important discoveries"

The auction's treasures have often caused a sensation, as in 2001 when Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. acquired The Bondwoman's Narrative, the fictionalized biography of the escaped Hannah Crafts for $8,500. It is considered the first known published book by a black woman. In 2003, the auction house received What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, the first verifiable cookbook by an African American.

Today, Day says the Swarm Galleries auction catalogue is received and read by every institution that has a black history or literature department, including Emory University, Duke University, Harvard University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the University of Virginia, as well as historical societies around the world.

Swann is the leading auction, with regard to African American books and manuscripts, says Philip Merrill, owner of Nanny Jack & Company, which specializes in black memorabilia. He is often seen as an appraiser on Antiques Roadshow on PBS.

"Wyatt Day does a good job of provenancing the items in the auction" Merrill says, "The auction catalogues are also a great reference. But there is room for other auction houses. It's niche marketing at its best. The Swann auction is dealing with a certain caliber and certain kind of African Americana; not a lot of it is traditional, stereotypical black memorabilia. A lot of other auctions are dealing with that."

The Memorabilia Dilemma

Day says he regularly gets calls about "fantastic black literature as well as the God--awful racist stuff."

"I have a real problem with memorabilia. I understand there are collectors for it. I just have a problem with it, and that is the one reason I conceived of this auction," says Day. "The negative images--the Aunt Jemima and other black people--were seen through the lenses of white people. That [characterization] has a place in history and there are plenty of other venues for it. It struck me years ago that for someone interested in history there wasn't a place for people to have access to Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The interest in the Swann Galleries auction has borne me out."

With its attention to discretion and privacy, the Swann can also be a great place to sell works of historical importance. "We are always looking for consignments," says Day. "Right now, the sale has its own momentum. If there is any single thing I marvel at, almost without exception, it is that one or two or three important things always emerge. I always worry about that. You want to have a star."

Prices have been rising, along with interest in black history. Last year, overall sales neared $600,000, compared to $200,000 in the first year. Day says collectors are buying more serious historical material than obvious iconic objects that might be hung on a wall for example. "The market has expanded," he says. "Collectors have become more sophisticated and the private market more involved."

One of the most important sales in 2005 was the Book of Mormon given by Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to his black servant, Isaac L. Manning. The book sold for $23,000. A 1771 Bible used by Revolutionary War patriot Samuel Townsend to catalogue births, deaths and marriages of his slaves was purchased for $10,350 and returned to the Townsend homestead, Raynham Hall, now a museum in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Other items at the 2005 auction included a July 1964, three-page, autographed, signed letter from Malcolm X to Alex Haley, which fetched $9,775. In the letter, Malcolm X wrote of the African Summit Conference he was attending in Cairo and of the upcoming presidential election. A trove of primary research material for Roots, Alex Haley's family story, sold for $39,100. A pamphlet of Frederick Douglass's famous 1852 Fifth of July speech to the Ladies of Rochester Antislavery Sewing Society fetched $9,000.

At the Bargain Level

Despite the high prices, there are gems for as little as $60, for a second-edition book called Crime and Criminals, published in 1897, which includes a scientific study or "racial profiling" of three African American criminals. "I try to put a few things in that will be within reach of anyone" Day says.

For the upcoming auction, Day says he already has for consignment a two-and-a-half page 1864 letter from Sojourner Truth to her dentist and a document signed by the first known African American lawyer, Macon Allen.

The gallery has been promised a first-edition copy of Phillis Wheatley poems written from London in 1773, in its original wrapper. Swann will also handle a rare 1867 allegorical novel The Rise and Progress of the Kingdoms of Lightness and Darkness by Lorenzo D. Blackson; an inscribed edition of Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry, signed to Williams Grant Still; a first-edition copy of Dunbar's first book Oak and Ivy; as well as Leonis Africanus, written by Ioannes Leonis Africanus and considered the first book on Africa by an African, which was published in Amsterdam in 1632.

"I think this sale has gotten to the point where it's the only event of its kind in the world" Day says. Other changes over the years include eBay auctions. "Like other auctions, we have our listing simultaneously on eBay with a live preview and five auction on eBay," Day says. "The power is amazing when you consider that it is expanding the market."

In addition to books and manuscripts, the Swann also receives a good amount of art and other memorabilia. For example, in 2004, a wonderful double portrait by Aaron Douglas, a premiere artist of the Harlem Renaissance, was sold. An 1812 slave-sale broadside from Richmond, Virginia, was also auctioned.

With new categories growing, Day says, "We don't know how deep the well is. We are going to run out of this supply no more than run out of American history. This lets people know this particular aspect of American history. The first blacks came over with Jamestown. They certainly have deeper roots than most people."

Ingrid Sturgis is the author of The Nubian Wedding Book (Crown, 1997) and Aunties: Thirty Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother (Ballantine, 2004).