Homes of the Freed

New York: New Republic, 1926. First edition of Rossa Cooley’s account of domestic life among the Gullah islanders of St. Helena in the Carolina Lowcountry. Vassar-educated reformer Cooley was the longtime principal of St. Helena’s Penn School, founded in 1862 as one of the first schools for Black students in the South. Cooley arrived on the island in 1904, after seven years at the Hampton Institute, hoping to create the conditions for a sustainable farming community. She emphasized agricultural and industrial education: “the home acres of the islanders play as real a part in the curriculum as the class rooms themselves.” The subject of Homes of the Freed is the women of St. Helena, the descendants of the enslaved, as they develop into modern homeowners, caretakers, and craftswomen: “the home-makers and mothers, the cultural leaders and farm women for their own rural communities.” The Penn School survives today as Penn Center, a National Historic Landmark District dedicated to the preservation of Gullah Geechee culture. A very good copy of a scarce and fragile book, illustrated with striking woodcuts by J.J. Lankes. Single volume, measuring 7.5 x 5 inches: xiv, [2], 199, [1]. Original blue pictorial wrappers printed in green and brown. Illustrated with four woodcuts in text, uncut. Shallow chipping to wrappers with reinforcement to verso of upper wrapper, spine panel cracked, small hole to lower wrapper.