Aslaku Berhanu, a reference librarian and cataloger for the Blockson Collection will succeed Charles Blockson as interim curator of the collection upon Blockson’s retirement Dec. 31.The Blockson Collection includes African American historical items dating back to 1581. Some materials in the collection include an edition of Dale Carnegie’s “Lincoln Unknown” - an autobiography of President [...]

He turned down the Library of Congress.To the former President of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe, he politely declined. Even his alma mater, Pennsylvania State University, couldn’t persuade Charles L. Blockson to donate his storied collection of African American historical items dating back to 1581.But in 1982, one institution persuadedBlockson.That institution? Temple University.Blockson agreed 24 years ago [...]

Most who have visited this treasured collection recognize it by the young man holding a lantern near the entrance. Or they remember feeling the cover of the 1932 edition of “Lincoln the Unkown” by Dale Carnegie, which was made from the skin of a black man who was lynched.Yet that treasure, the Charles L. Blockson [...]

One of the nation’s largest private collections of black history is housed at Temple University’s Main Campus. The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection consists of over 150,000 African, African-American, and African-Caribbean items that date back as far as 1557.
Charles Blockson, the collection’s curator donated his collection to Temple in 1984. He felt that Philadelphia was [...]