December 14 ,2006

The Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory has acquired the papers of one of the leading African American intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Miller was born in South Carolina in 1863, just a few months after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the South.  A precocious child with a penchant for mathematics, he was sent for special education in a Presbyterian-sponsored school and then received a scholarship to study at Howard University.  He graduated from Howard in 1886 and was admitted as the first African American student to enroll at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  There he studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy.  Although unable to complete his education due to financial constraints, he taught mathematics in high school and then became professor of mathematics at Howard University.

Miller was among the most distinguished African American intellectuals of his day.  He was a leading educator and administrator, an eloquent commentator on race in America, and a noted journalist.  He is recognized as the foremost African American pamphleteer, producing dozens of essays published by him or by other African American publishers. He edited Kelly Miller’s Monographic Magazine (a complete set of which is included in the collection), and he wrote a half dozen books. 

Miller served Howard University in multiple capacities from 1890-1934, teaching both mathematics and sociology.  He was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for more than a dozen years, during a period of dramatic expansion of the University.  He played a critical role in the decision of bibliophile and collector Jesse E. Moorland to donate his extensive library of rare African American history to Howard.  That collection forms the basis of one of the most important collections of rare books and manuscripts related to African American life and history.

 The Kelly Miller papers contain approximately thirty-three linear feet of papers, correspondence, typed drafts and final manuscripts of Miller's articles and other writings, printed copies of his pamphlets, numerous editorials and articles, several scrapbooks, approximately forty photographs and a few pieces of ephemera.  It also includes several hundred books, many exceedingly rare and a number of which are inscribed to him.  Correspondents include Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Carter G. Woodson, Emmett Scott, and A. Philip Randolph. 

Among the rare books in Miller’s library are two copies of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s second book, Major and Minors, one of two known copies of the book Questions and Answers on Public International Law by African American author Nelson Mason (1902), an inscribed copy of poet Joseph S. Cotter’s A White Song and a Black One (1909), and a first edition of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s novel Iola Leroy (1892). The collection also includes rare periodicals such as The Negro Woman’s World (1935), edited by luminaries such as Georgia Douglas Johnson, Lois M. Jones, and Gertrude Parthenia McBrown.