Black History Month and our Rare Books Collection

For Black History Month last year we found a real gem of a book in our Rare Books Collection by the artist Paul Peter Piech (1920-1996). Piech started out his artistic career working in advertising and found his style worked well in communicating a message.  Piech used bold colour, typesets and graphics to highlight social, political and racial injustices.  His work is at times deliberately provocative, demanding us to take notice and take action. His linocuts often include phrases and snippets of speeches from key figures in society as is seen in our pamphlet ‘Words and Wisdom of Martin Luther King’, which is a signed limited edition – number 243/300.

This year we have used the pamphlet again firstly as it is still so relevant and as I cannot lie, it’s actually very hard to find items in the Archives and Rare Books that offer a diverse and culturally different point of view.  This is something we are working on though.

Our Rare Books collection is constantly being added to and we are actively working to decolonize the entire library collection to reflect diversity. It is important for you as students to have a multitude of viewpoints and an understanding of historical contexts.

As part of the Rare Books Collection this pamphlet cannot be borrowed, but you can see it in the Display area on the first floor of the library

 

 

 

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