A clutter bug saves the day! Mayme Clayton an African-American woman has collected, throughout many years what will come to be known as the greatest collection of African American history. She has amassed dozens of pre-civil war manuscripts, and writings, photographs, journals, cartoons, correspondence, playbills, and magazines. What I found most interesting was her collection of film archives, which she stored in a climate-controlled storage warehouse with more than 1700 titles of pre-1959 black film, including rare silent reels!
Did you know that back in the day there used to be 600 African-American theatres where “race movies” were featured for the black community? These movies had stars like Lena Horne, Duke Ellington (music), Katherine Dunham and Sammy Davis, Jr. This woman got her hands on the original prints of a silent film produced and directed by Oscar Micheaux titled “Body and Soul,” which gave us Paul Robeson. She also has Micheaux’s first talkie “The Exile.”
In her collection they found her to have 30, 000 rare, and out of print books. She was especially strong on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, obtaining first editions and correspondence from Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston. She even managed to get the first book ever published in America written by an American of African decent dated 1773. They also found first issues of Ebony, a “How To Box” manual by Joe Louis, and the original movie poster for “Porgy and Bess.”
Everything she collected was original and she didn’t get these items at a fancy auction–she did it “bargain basement” style—bookstores, flea markets, estate sales, and attics. She started her collection because “the universities didn’t seem that interested in African-American artifacts.” It’s a good thing Ms. Clayton thought differently.
Ms. Clayton is gone now, and her son has the task to preserve this history. He’ll have no problem thanks to the help of local and state officials that want this rich history “secured and in a safe environment.” What a treasure trove! This was a woman who wanted her race to know where they came from because like she said in an NPR interview: “Unless you know where you’ve been, you really don’t know where you’re going.”
Like a curator of literary manuscripts stated in an article in SouthCoastToday.com “This is probably the finest collection of African-American literature, manuscripts, film and ephemera in private hands. It is just staggering. It is just superior in every way.” I quite agree–this is one time it paid to be a clutter bug!
