daniel alexander payne murray (1852-1925), forgotten librarian, bibliographer, and historian

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925), Forgotten Librarian, Bibliographer, and HistorianAuthor(s): Billie E. WalkerSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter, 2005), pp. 25-37Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25541881 .

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Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852 1925), Forgotten Librarian, Bibliographer, and Historian

BillieE. Walker

Daniel Murray, well-known librarian, bibliographer, and historian, was

one of the first Afro-Americans to work as a librarian at the Library of

Congress in 1871.l Although not formally educated in the profession, he rose to the position of assistant librarian before he retired in 1923.

In 1899 Murray organized an exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition on

Negro authors. Under his direction his award-winning exhibit

became the core of the Library of Congress's Colored Author Collec

tion. Although Murray's attempt to publish

an encyclopedia of Afro

Americans' achievements was not successful, it laid the groundwork for others to

eventually publish multivolume encyclopedias about the

Negro race.

Murray was also a

prolific author and a frequent

con

tributor to Afro-American journals. This essay seeks to illustrate the

historical and sociopolitical contributions of Daniel Murray as

they reflect the path toward an Afrocentric consciousness.

Daniel Murray, noted librarian, bibliographer, and historian, was one of the best-known and most-respected African Americans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet except for a few

biographical entries and an article or two, he is absent from most

contemporary studies of African American leaders and intellectuals.

Quite possibly, if he had discussed his life and writings in an auto

biographical work, he would be more widely known to historians and librarians today. His popularity during his lifetime and the avail

ability of his manuscript collection at the Library of Congress should have afforded him a greater visibility in subsequent histories of African American life in the twentieth century.

During the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries life was

particularly harsh for American Negroes. It was characterized in many ways by a deterioration in Negroes' status both in the South and in the North. Although Negroes made some important gains, especially during the latter part of this period, the South's embrace of slavery

Libraries & Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter 2005 ?2005 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819



26 L&C/Daniel Alexander Payne Murray

and later of the "Jim Crow" code of discrimination affected them

until well into the Depression years.2 This crucial time period for

African Americans shaped the outlook of Daniel Murray, who lived

from 1852 to 1925.

By creating Negro bibliographies, writing articles, and attempting to publish a multivolume Negro encyclopedia, Murray was setting the

record straight and telling the story of a people ignored by historians.

Murray believed that a people's historical traditions built nationalism

and group pride. He wrote, "Every nation is estimated largely by its

literature, and justly so, since it is the only means by which distant

people can properly judge."3 In light of this statement, this article illus

trates the historical and social-political contributions of Daniel Murray as they reflect the path toward an Afrocentric consciousness.

The primary goal of an analysis of Murray's work will be to deter

mine whether his efforts served to empower and uplift the African

American community and society in general. An Afrocentric para

digm places Africa at the center of an analysis of African history and

culture, including the African American experience. According to

Tsehloane Keto, "The Africa-centered perspective of history rests on

the premise that it is valid to posit Africa as a geographical and cul

tural starting base in the study of peoples of African descent."4

Life Sketch

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was born on 3 March 1852 to

free parents, George and Eliza Murray, in Baltimore, Maryland. Not

much is known about his father, a Methodist preacher, or his mother, who was of Native American ancestry, except that they were able to

provide young Daniel with the advantage of an education in the

slaveholding state of Maryland. While attending both local public and private schools, Murray counted among his teachers some of the

most prominent Negro teachers in Baltimore, including Charles C.

Forte, Alfred Handy, W. H. Hunter, and James Lynch, who later be

came the first black secretary of state in Mississippi. Murray later

attended the Unitarian Seminary, from which he graduated in 1869.

He later studied modern languages, which proved useful while work

ing at the Library of Congress. In 1871, at the age of nineteen, Murray began working at the

Library of Congress. During this time there was little or no formal

professional training available. Melvil Dewey established the first

library school in 1887, sixteen years after Murray began at the

Library of Congress. While visiting his half-brother, a well-known

caterer for the United States Senate restaurant in Washington, D.C.,



27

Murray was selected by Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Con

gress, to be his personal assistant. At that time Murray received a

salary of $1,400 a year, suggesting that this was a professional rather

than a service position.

Murray, with Spofford as a brilliant mentor, gained an excellent

grounding in the field of librarianship, which he was able to put to use throughout his fifty-two-year career. Evidently, his training un

der Spofford was similar to the training of today's academic librar

ian in that professionalism, research, and service were emphasized.

Murray was promoted to assistant librarian in 1881 and gained the

reputation of having a remarkable memory, similar to that of his

mentor. He held this position until his retirement from the Library of Congress in 1923.

In 1879 Murray married Anna Evans, a teacher educated at Oberlin

College whose uncle Lewis Sheridan Leary and cousin John Anthony

Copeland participated in John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. Daniel and Anna, who were prominent in Washington's civil and

social life, were the parents of seven children.5

Murray's Social and Political Views

Daniel Murray's social and political viewpoints are expressed

throughout his writings. From 1899 to 1925 he was either actively publishing Negro bibliographies or writing articles about race, while at the same time working as editor-in-chief of his failed attempt to

publish his encyclopedia of the colored race.

During the nineteenth century African Americans' writings be

came a prominent part of both black protest culture and American

public life. Although denied a significant political voice in national

affairs, black authors produced a wide range of literature to project their views into the public sphere. Autobiographies and personal narratives told of the horrors of slavery; newspaper essays railed

against racism in its various forms; and poetry, novellas, reprinted sermons, and speeches preached an ethos of racial uplift and na

tional redemption.6 Pamphlets became one of the most important parts of this tradition.

In 1899, at the request of then president William McKinley, the American commissioner of the Paris Exposition asked Herbert Putnam to create a display of Negro literature. Putnam, who suc ceeded Spofford as Librarian of Congress, placed Murray in charge of creating the display.7 The result of this display was the work Pre

liminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors, published in 1900.

Murray wrote in the introduction:




The object in this effort is to secure a copy of every book and pam

phlet in existence, by a Negro Author, the same to be used in con

nection with the Exhibit of Negro Authorship at the Paris Exposition of 1900, and later placed in the Library of Congress. Any persons able to furnish books or pamphlets on this list, or having knowledge of such as are not on this list, will greatly aid this effort by interesting themselves to make certain that all books or pamphlets are duly rep resented in the collection.8

Murray's compilation consisted of a list of 270 titles, including works

by Rev. Richard Allen, Charles Chestnut, Frederick Douglass, W. E.

B. Du Bois, Paul L. Dunbar, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington,

Phyllis Wheatley, and many others and covering topics ranging from

African history, the African race, the history of blacks in America, slave narratives, sermons, the history of the Negro church, and po

etry. The titles included Christianity, Islam and the Negro, A Freeman

Yet a Slave, How to Teach History, The Negro and the White Man, Negro in

Spanish-American War, Noted Negro Women, The Birds of Aristophanes,

Liberia, The Americo-African Republic, Atlanta Souvenir Cookbook, and

many others.

Murray later found, with the help of others, over two thousand

titles by Negro authors. The Paris Exposition gave him an honorable

mention for his bibliography. Murray's work demonstrated that

Negroes had produced a large number of works, which up to this

time was not believed to be the case by many in the literary world.

While finding works by Negro authors was exhilarating for Murray, it was also frustrating work. In some cases Murray had to rely on

photographs to determine an author's ancestry. Sometimes this

worked; however, this proved difficult if a person was of mixed heri

tage.9 People in the Americas were sometimes racially designated as

mulattoes (half white, half black), quadroons (three-quarters white,

one-quarter black), and octoroons (seven-eighths white, one-eighth

black).10 To counter this limited method in attempting to identify

Negro authors, Murray researched the authors' lives. For Murray,

any person with a drop of black blood was considered to be Negro;

therefore, octoroons would be considered as Negro authors.11 Murray was using the one-drop rule, which held that individual states could

decide whether and how to classify citizens by race. States that were

so inclined could assert that any person with as little as one drop of

black blood in his or her heritage was to be considered black and

therefore subject to second-class citizenship.

Murray's effort to demonstrate that color did not determine

intellectual achievement should have been regarded as one of the



29

most substantial gains in Afro-American race progress during the

first half of the twentieth century. Even after he compiled a bibliog

raphy listing over two thousand titles by black writers, Murray and

his work were still not duly recognized due to the racial climate of

the time. His bibliography was one of the first of its kind in the United

States. (The French revolutionary Abbe Gregoire had compiled De

la litterature des negres in 1808, but it contained just fifteen titles by Negroes and mulattoes.)12

During this time Murray acquired an enthusiasm for collection

development and began collecting the titles listed in his bibliogra

phies. These titles later became the Library of Congress's Colored

Author Collection. After his death in 1925 the 1926 report of the

Librarian of Congress stated this about Murray: "Always an enthusi astic collector of works by colored authors, he had succeeded in bring ing together a collection which is in many ways unique."13

Another testament to his expertise in collection development is

that librarians across the country often solicited his advice. Ernestine

Rose, a New York public librarian, wrote this letter to Murray on 11

March 1921:

My dear Mr. Murray:

I am writing to ask if you will help me out in making as complete a

collection as possible of books by and about the Negro. This branch is situated in the midst of a very large colored population, and the

book collection has serious gaps, not so much in recent publica tions as literature on the historical developments and achievements of the race. I aim to have here eventually one of the best Negro libraries in America. In this purpose I am sure you can help me

both in suggesting titles, and perhaps means for procuring some of them. Many, I realize, are now out of print.14

In another testament to Murray's expertise, Joseph Blackburn, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, after making a speech made this confession: "Do you know how I gathered so much information on the subject?

Well I went over to Murray in the library and asked him to select for me some books on the subject, and it was not long till he brought me a wheelbarrow load, all marked and turned down so that I needed

only to open them to have before me just what I wanted. There has been some talk of getting rid of him as assistant librarian, but I'm

opposed to it; he's worth too much to me."15

Murray also had a reputation as an expert on black history and literature. He published several articles in two magazines, the Voice



30 L&C/'Daniel Alexander Payne Murray

of the Negro and the Colored American Magazine. His articles articu

lated concerns on the status of miscegenation and the unfairness of

Jim Crow laws. Murray, who was fair-skinned, openly defended the

miscegenation family tree. Rejecting the view that mulattoes were

weak hybrids, he insisted that they possessed exceptional intellec

tual powers and virility. The mulatto, Murray argued, was a "com

posite man possessing in full measure the best qualities" both of the

African and the Anglo-Saxon.16 Murray and other light-complexioned aristocrats believed their function was to serve as a "natural bridge" between the black and white worlds, as racial and cultural brokers

who spoke to blacks and for blacks to whites.17

In a two-part essay entitled "The Industrial Problem of the United

States and the Negro's Relation to It" Murray articulated strategies on how blacks could become an integral part of the rapidly expand

ing American industrial workforce. Murray, for the most part, viewed

industrial education in the same vein as Booker T. Washington. Wash

ington, despite severe criticism, viewed disfranchisement for Afro

American citizens as of secondary importance

in comparison to em

ployment discrimination in the industrial sector.18

Murray cited an instance in which labor unions went on strike in

July 1904 in the meatpacking plants of Chicago and Kansas City. To

counter this work stoppage, the employers began to hire colored men

and women to work and vowed never to hire union workers again.

Murray believed this action vindicated Washington by demonstrating that if Afro-Americans were ready and capable to work in industry, even if the opportunities were small, the opportunities would come to

them. Murray stated, "If the colored man expects to succeed, he must

be trained to take his place in the industries of the country. It does not

matter that opportunities are few; those few if embraced and a credit

able record made, will serve to open many others."19

Murray argued that this industrial emancipation would also help in the suffrage arena. He believed that an alliance between the

Negro labor force and the capitalists would solve their mutual prob lems because the capitalists, as the stronger of the two, would recog nize that they could rely on the Negro labor force versus organized labor and would, therefore, support the Negro right to vote. In addi

tion, he suggested that Negro workers organize, conduct work stop

pages, and engage in other peaceful demonstrations to stop racial

injustices such as Jim Crow laws and lynching. Some of Murray's

writings are distinctly polemical, suggesting that he was frustrated

by the attitudes that prevailed in white America. A case in point was

the story of a Maryland legislator who introduced the Jim Crow bill

in the state. As soon as the bill became a law, the legislator could not



31

find any Negro workers performing their normal duties. He could not find anyone to do his wash or give him a shave. This simple tale

demonstrated that if Negroes organized a simple work protest, they would have the potential to paralyze industries in which they were

the dominant workforce, therefore causing bills such as Jim Crow to

fade out because of a fear of their consequences to industry.20 Murray's essay "The Industrial Problem of the United States and the Negro's

Relation to It" was ahead of its time and adumbrated the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Murray's Encyclopedia of the Colored Race

Historical traditions have been associated with the building of nationalism and group pride. They have been the creators of ideals for many peoples. Whether oral or written or historically unsound,

they have influenced history. They are part of the informational sources that are transmitted from one generation to another. Worthy traditions have been translated from opinions, legends, and doctrines into symbols and have been used for the stimulation of group devel

opment. In the ancient world the glory that was Greece and the gran deur that was Rome grew out of traditions. Their traditions of

history and culture made them what they seemed to be. While doing research for his encyclopedia Murray was deeply bothered that most of the materials needed to vindicate blacks were written by whites.

With a nationalistic bent, he questioned the objectivity of these writ

ings as one would question Englishmen about an accurate history of France or Romans for the full story of Greece.21

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries books were sold by subscription. "Subscription publishing" meant producing

books that were sold directly to people through book agents rather than by bookstores or any other part of the retail trade. Sometimes the author himself became the publisher, agent, or both. For example,

Mark Twain and John Audubon used this method to sell their works.22 Afro-Americans encountered similar obstacles when trying to

pub lish their work in the United States. Among the many dilemmas for these authors in this period were finding a publisher willing to mar ket their work and securing a sizeable audience for their message.

Murray struggled with these dilemmas while trying to get his multivolume encyclopedia of colored people published.

Murray's purpose for wanting to publish the encyclopedia was based on allegations of racial inferiority and charges that blacks had not made a single contribution to science. Murray believed that an

encyclopedia written by blacks was the best means available to set




the record straight about his people and to inspire future genera tions.23 The six-volume set included contributions from major intel

lectuals of the times, among them John E. Bruce, John W. Cromwell, William S. Scarborough, Arthur Schomberg, and Richard Robert

Wright, Jr., and was to be titled Murray's Historical and Biographical

Encyclopedia of the Colored Race Throughout the World. According to the

prospectus for the encyclopedia, this work was conceived to chronicle the "race's progress and achievements from the earliest period down to the present time. There were to be over 25,000 biographical sketches, titles of 6,000 books and pamphlets and 5,000 musical com

positions by blacks, and plot synopses of 500 novels by white au

thors that dealt with the race question."24 However, as W. E. B. Du

Bois and later Carter G. Woodson discovered, there were insurmount

able obstacles involved in publishing a multivolume encyclopedia on black people. The problem that dogged Murray the most was

getting a publisher to finance the work.25

Since sets of subscription books were likely to be expensive, pub lishers often took a down payment and the balance in monthly pay

ments. Murray was either unable financially or unwilling to risk his

own money in such a venture without a guarantee to publish the

work. He was in contact with several publishing companies, each

making it clear that the money was needed up front. This is a por tion of a letter sent to Murray on 5 January 1914 from Lakeside Press

of R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company: "We are at a loss to know

exactly what you suggest, but think you probably have in mind our

helping you financially with the publishing of this job. In reply to

this, would say that we could hardly do this, as we have very reli

giously kept away from publishing propositions all the years we have

been in business."26 Although press releases were prepared for the

encyclopedia, prospective customers did not subscribe in sufficient

numbers. Murray, with a manuscript of about 153 pages supple mented by 250 biographical portraits, surely had enough material to

complete a single volume. He priced his set at twenty-four dollars

and created a payment plan whereby a client could make a down

payment of two dollars, paying the balance at one dollar per month.

In keeping with his philosophy, Murray worked out a plan to help

young Afro-Americans with their college education. For each set of

encyclopedias sold, the young salespeople would receive a two

dollar-and-forty-cent commission plus

a one-hundred-and-fifty

dollar bonus if they sold 150 sets. However, these tactics did not

work to increase the sales of the encyclopedia.27 In 1922 Murray received an offer from Du Bois to publish some

of the encyclopedia entries in Crisis magazine.



33

My Dear Sir:

I am not trying, by this letter, to change your decision and it calls

for no anwer [sic]. I do think, however, that these points ought to

be brought to your attention:

(1) It will not spoil your former work by publishing parts of it in

advance. On the contrary it will enhance it and heighten interest.

(2) Practically you have got to face these facts: you have reached the allotted span of human life in the ordinary course of events.

You cannot hope for much further time to work. If you should die

before the publication of any part of your work, what would be come of it? Is it in such shape that it could be published? Have you friends who would be sufficiently interested?

If you are certain your monumental labor could receive com

plete publication before or even after your death, you would be

perfectly justified in your present stand. If on the other hand, there is any possible, however remote, danger that your death would

mean the practical loss to the world of your long and arduous la

bors, this would be a calamity to the Negro race.

I trust you will think over these matters and that you will believe that I speak thus frankly from a deep appreciation of your hard work.28

Murray was apparently reluctant to reveal small pieces of the encyclo pedia because he assumed doing so might ruin the prospect for

publishing the larger project. Murray died in 1925, leaving his ency

clopedia unpublished. The Crisis, in its obituary notice, reported that his

encyclopedia in

manuscript still awaited publication.29 The manu

script, which is now in microfilm, consists of about 500 biographical essays plus between 35,000 and 40,000 handwritten Library of Con

gress catalog cards on additional Negro subjects. The topics of these

essays and note cards include biographies of Nat Turner, Peter Salem,

Benjamin Banneker, Paul Laurence Dunbar, African figures such as

Magda, the queen of Sheba, and Cetawayo, last king of the Zulus, and Latin American leaders such as Vicente Ramon Guerrero and Anto nio Jose de Sucre as well as articles on general subjects such as "Ethiopic Literature," "Lynchings," and "Education of Colored Race." Even

though Murray was considered a meticulous researcher, he apparently took notes on any information that might be of possible use in his

encyclopedia and later verified only a portion of these rumors, innu

endoes, and other leads. However, on a significant number of note cards he cited the published sources and page numbers.30

The encyclopedia may be seen as an important document that furnished evidence for others to follow in Murray's footsteps. Even




though Murray's encyclopedia was never published, more than two

dozen other encyclopedias with an African American focus have been

successfully published in the past century. However, none of the oth ers had the scope of Murray's encyclopedia, except for the Africana.

Kwame Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., coeditors of the Africana,

explored in their work topics on both the African continent and the

triumphs and tragedies of Africa's people and their descendents

around the globe.31

Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1917

Murray bequeathed to the Library of Congress his personal li

brary of works by blacks, including 1,448 volumes and pamphlets. Of these works, the Library of Congress has placed a group of

351 pamphlets online (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/

aaphome.html).

Pamphlets provided the Negroes a means to assert themselves in

the public sphere. Often denied the right to vote, blacks viewed public

protest as the central means of waging a liberation struggle. Public

protest took many forms, from petitioning governments to organiz

ing parades to giving speeches. Writing became one of the most im

portant of these protest tools.32

During the late 1800s and early 1900s print assumed dispropor tionate importance in black protest circles. As Henry Louis Gates,

Jr., explained in his seminal work, The Signifying Monkey, "the pro duction of literature was taken to be the central arena in which per sons of African descent could . . . establish and redefine their status

within the human community."33 Therefore, African Americans took

advantage of the explosion of inexpensive printed matter permitted

by the new technologies of a burgeoning industrial economy. Pam

phlets, defined as being between a broadside and a book in size, were

adaptable as

argumentative essays, short narratives of events,

or bare-bones sketches of an organization's proceedings.34

The 351 titles of the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection focus on Af

rican American history and culture spanning almost one hundred

years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centu

ries. The online collection includes sermons on racial pride and po litical activism, slave narratives, biographies, black college catalogs,

speeches by members of Congress, poetry, and playbills as well as

works on segregation, violence against Negroes, and colonization of

Africa by freed slaves. Researcher LaVerle B. Berry of the Library of

Congress has compiled an annotation of the pamphlets in the collec

tion. Berry noted that three recurring themes present themselves



35

throughout the collection: the desire to "uplift" the black race in the

United States and to "improve" the status of blacks, the struggle for

civil rights and equality, and the future of freed American slaves.35

The collection, which is indexed by author and subject, counts among its many authors Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, Ida B.

Wells-Barnett, and Alexander Crummel.

Conclusion

In his bibliographies, writings, and publication efforts Daniel

Murray promoted an Afrocentric view of black life, which requires one to examine an author's contribution to the elimination of chaos

by creating the possibility for harmony and balance.36 Murray was

inspired to change the perceptions that white America had of black

Americans. In doing so, he hoped to contribute to the development of a society based upon the principles of equality, harmony, justice, and peace.

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray sought to bring racial pride to Afro Americans. Even though his work, Murray's Historical and Biographical

Encyclopedia of the Colored Race Throughout the World, was not published,

Murray's achievement as a bibliographer and author had already es

tablished him as a pioneer in the black history movement. Murray's contributions as a librarian, bibliographer, and historian truly demon strate that he operated beyond the shadow of the Library of Congress.

Throughout Daniel Murray's public career, his writings centered on

the idea, and the ideal, that black people must know who they are.

Notes

This research was carried out with the assistance of a research development grant from Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College. Many thanks to Lonnie

Johnson, who led me to Daniel Murray. In addition, I would like to thank the

many persons connected with the preparation of this essay: Wilma L. Jones,

Nancy Dewald, Margie Kruppenbach, Joseph (Lee) Boyle, the entire library staff at the Penn State Berks Campus, and the outside reviewers of Libraries & Culture.

The original documents in the Daniel Murray Papers were discarded after mi

crofilming by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. In the notes the number

of the microfilm reel is given along with the page number(s). 1. The terms Afro-American, Negro, black, and colored will be used in this essay

because they were used during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to de

scribe people of African descent who lived in the Americas.

2. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, commemorative ed.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 102. 3. Daniel Murray, "A Bibliography of Negro Literature and Historical Sketch of

Negro Authors and Authorship," n.d., in Daniel Murray Papers, State Historical




Society of Wisconsin, Madison 1977 (hereafter referred to as Murray Papers), reel 24, 347-55.

4. Tsehloane C. Keto, Vision and Time: Historical Perspective of an

Africa Centered Paradigm (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001), 1.

5. Edwin A. Lee, "Daniel Murray: Bibliographer of Afro-American Litera

ture in the Library of Congress," Colored American Magazine 5 (1902): 432-40; Robert L. Harris, Jr., "Daniel Murray and the Encyclopedia of the Colored Race,"

Phylon37 (1976): 270-82. 6. Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapsansky, eds., Pamphlets of

Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature, 1790-1860 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 1.

7. Daniel Murray, "Bibliographia-Africania," Voice of the Negro 1 (1904): 187; "Work of the Black Race," New York Times-Paris Exposition Edition, 9 October

1900, Murray Papers, reel 24, 5.

8. Daniel Murray, Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors for Paris Exposition and Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1900).

9. Murray, "Bibliographia-Africania," 187.

10. Charles R. Wilson and William Ferris, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989). 11. Murray, "Bibliographia-Africania," 187.

12. Alyssa G. Sepinwall, "Eliminating Race, Eliminating Difference: Blacks,Jews, and the Abbe Gregoire," in Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds., The Color of Lib

erty: Histories of Race in France (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 31.

13. Mollie E. Dunlap, "Special Collections of Negro Literature in the United

States," Journal of Negro Education 4 (1935): 485. 14. Ernestine Rose to Daniel Murray, 11 March 1921, Murray Papers, reel 1, 626. 15. Untitled article in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, 10 March 1904,

Murray Papers, reel 24, 4.

16. Daniel Murray, "Color Problems in the United States," Colored American

Magazine 7 (1904): 719-24. 17. Ibid., 721.

18. Daniel Murray, "The Industrial Problem of the United States and the

Negro's Relation to It," Voice of the Negro 1 (1904): 403-8. 19. Ibid., 405.

20. Ibid., 405-8.

21. Untitled document, 15 June 1926, Murray Papers, reel 22, 335-400.

22. John William Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States (New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1972), 2:238-40.

23. Daniel Murray, "Murray's Historical and Biographical Encyclopedia of

the Colored Race Throughout the World," 1911, Murray Papers, reel 1, 424. 24. Jane Wolff and Eleanor McKay, The Papers of Daniel Murray: Guide to a

Microfilm Edition (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1977), 7. 25. Wolff and McKay, The Papers of Daniel Murray, 9. 26. Letter from R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company

to Daniel Murray, 5 Janu

ary 1914, Murray Papers, reel 1, 488.

27. Letter from World's Cyclopedia Company to Daniel Murray, n.d., Murray

Papers, reel 1, 374.

28. Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Daniel Murray, 15 November 1922, Murray

Papers, reel 1, 637-38.

29. "Daniel A. P. Murray Obituary," Crisis 32 (June 1926): 78. 30. Wolff and McKay, The Papers of Daniel Murray, 11.



37

31. Kwame A. Appiah and Henry L. Gates, eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the

African and African American Experience (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), xiv. 32. Newman, Rael, and Lapsansky, eds., Pamphlets of Protest, 3.

33. Henry L. Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

34. Newman, Rael, and Lapsansky, eds., Pamphlets of Protest, 2.

35. Library of Congress, "Daniel A. P. Murray Pamphlet Collection," http:// lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aapcoll.html.

36. Molefi K. Asante, The Acrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 83-95.



daniel alexander payne murray (1852-1925), forgotten librarian, bibliographer, and historian

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