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Printing and Publishing Trades

To highlight the stories of black and women printers, we’ve added a tag for blacks in the printing and publishing trades and women in the printing and publishing trades. These are the same genre terms used in the AAS catalog.

The black printers we identified on the list are:

                R. L. Pendleton (Robert Lewis)

                Industrial Student Printers of Wilberforce University

                John J. Zuille

                Daniel Laing, Jr.

                Thomas Hamilton

In the one case where Thomas Hamilton, a black printer and publisher, is listed in the imprint along with the author, the tag “printing and publishing” maintains the ambiguity over whether Hamilton was the printer or co-publisher with the author.

For African American printers at a newspaper office, see Items Printed at an African-American Newspaper Office

We also used “printing and publishing” rather than simply printing to highlight when a female family member of the author is listed in the imprint, such as with William Wells Brown, where his wife A.G. Brown is listed as the press owner, and with Paschal Beverly Randolph, where his wives Kate Corson and Mary Jane Randolph are listed as publishers of his work. The tag “family publishing” is also used to highlight the ambiguity over whether Randolph and Brown’s work can be called self-publishing.