Nelson, David Fox

Abstract The collection consists of five scrapbooks assembled between 1869 and 1890 by David Fox Nelson, an African American man who escaped from slavery in North Carolina as a child and eventually arrived in New York, where he worked for the post office for several decades. The scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings covering a wide range of topics, especially subjects of particular significance to African Americans in the Reconstruction era. One scrapbook contains correspondence from Nelson’s...