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Size | 0.5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1 items) |
Abstract | A 191-page typed manuscript called "Tales of One Time I'shman Told by Southern Negroes," collected by Lawrence Gellert and apparently prepared for publication by the Hours Press, New York. The manuscript contains about seventy folk-tales told by African-Americans in the South about Irish immigrants to the area. Included are thirty-six pen and ink illustrations by Gellert. |
Creator | Gellert, Lawrence, 1898-1979, collector. |
Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
Language | English |
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Very little information on Lawrence Gellert is available. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 14 September 1898, came to the United States when he was seven, and grew up in New York City. For health reasons, he moved to Tryon, N.C., probably in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
From 1933 to 1937, Gellert traveled through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, collecting folksongs of black Americans. He compiled and published two anthologies of these songs in the 1950s, including "Negro Songs of Protest," which was re-released on Rounder Records in the late 1980s.
Gellert, along with his brother Hugo, was a frequent contributor to the magazine Masses (later New Masses) from 1930 to 1947, writing mainly about traditional black American music.
Lawrence Gellert died in 1979.
Back to TopThis volume consists of about seventy folk tales told by Southern blacks about Irish immigrants, and compiled and illustrated by Gellert, with an afterword by William Fay.
Because of the fragile condition of many of the pages, the tales were removed from the volume. The pages were numbered in square brackets and placed in folders in their original order as shown in the table of contents. In cases where the captions to some illustrations could not be removed, photocopies were made (see Folder 10).
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