Negro Universities Press was an American publishing house that "published many reprints and original works related to the Black experience." Per the company's 1969 catalog, NUP was an incorporated company that was designed to behave as a

university press A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. Most are nonprofit organizations and an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars ...

for the

historically black colleges and universities Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. ...

of the United States, and "to publish original books written by scholars and specialists affiliated with the more than one hundred American colleges and universities that are predominantly Negro in enrollment. Negro Universities Press also publishes a wide range of facsimile reprints of highly significant books and periodicals related to Negro history and culture." The company was organized in 1968 and initially headquartered on 43rd Street in New York City. In 1959, Marguerite Cartwright mentioned in her newspaper column that she had met with Alan Angoff about his proposal for a Negro Universities Press. Circa 1970, the Press had a partnership with

New American Library The New American Library (also known as NAL) is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishe ...

. NUP was a division or affiliate of

Greenwood Press Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Gr ...

. Among the company's publications was an 125-volume history of slavery in the U.S., composed primarily of 1000-copy reprints of books from the late 19th century to the 1930s. They also reprinted whole runs of historical African-American periodicals, including the ''

National Anti-Slavery Standard The ''National Anti-Slavery Standard'' was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society, established in 1840 under the editorship of Lydia Maria Child and David Lee Child. The paper published continuously until the ratifi ...

'' (1840–1870), ''Colored American'' magazine (1900–1909), and the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

's '' Crisis, a Record of the Darker Races''. The Reprints of Negro Periodicals series was "the first complete facsimile reproduction of any of these periodicals. Many of the titles are unavailable in complete form in any one library and have been completed only by drawing upon the holdings of several libraries. In some cases the only existing copy in the world has been used for reproduction purposes. These periodicals present a broad history of black culture and thought during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

References

{{Reflist 1968 establishments Historically black universities and colleges in the United States

See also

References