Thread time! In the preface to The World and Africa, W.E.B. Du Bois laments not being able to use the classicist Frank M. Snowden Jr.'s research on black people in antiquity. The digitized collection of Du Bois's papers at UMass has letters between him and Snowden. In some (1/6)

they discuss Snowden's work and his efforts to publish it, and Du Bois expresses both eagerness and impatience to have the scholarship for his book. Others are administrative memos and notes from when Snowden and Du Bois were both working at Atlanta University (2/6)

(now Clark Atlanta U. Snowden left for Howard U in 1940). In total there's around a couple dozen letters and misc. notes that span the late 1930s to late 1940s. As a collection they form a fascinating set of documents. In one letter, Snowden details how his article (3/6)

"The Negro in Classical Italy" was deemed suitable for publication in a journal w/revision, but once revised accordingly, it had the "peculiar fate" of rejection. Du Bois is more blunt--in his book's preface he claims it was rejected since "it favored the Negro too much." (4/6)

Snowden was happy to share his work with Du Bois, but only in its finished, published form. Unluckily for Du Bois, "The Negro in Classical Italy" was finally published in 1947--the year after The World and Africa. "The Negro in Ancient Greece" followed in 1948. (5/6)

Snowden's own papers (some? all?) and artifact photographs reside at Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees. It would be great if those too are made available online! Link to the Snowden/Du Bois correspondence here:
https://credo.library.umass.edu/search?q=frank%20snowden&page=3&facets=ZnE9RmFjZXRDb2xsZWN0aW9uSUQ6Im11bXMzMTIiJg==
(6/6 End.)