Books are weapons Read about... The negro in national defense [and] Negro history and culture" at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library / J.P." – Vintage Print
![Books are weapons Read about... The negro in national defense [and] Negro history and culture" at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library / J.P.", [New York] : NYC WPA War Services, [between 1941 and 1943] — vintage poster](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/da/da0d56661606-L.webp)
(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: Books are weapons Read about... The negro in national defense [and] Negro history and culture" at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library / J.P.", preserved in this vintage poster. Drawn from the Snapshots of the Past archive, it is an authentic piece of documented history.
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Books are weapons Read about... The negro in national defense [and] Negro history and culture" at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library / J.P."
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The slogan "Books are weapons" makes an unusual case for reading in wartime. This poster pairs it with two titles on Black history, one on the Negro in national defense and one on Negro history and culture, both held at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library. Produced by NYC WPA War Services between 1941 and 1943, it reflects the Works Progress Administration's wartime poster work. The idea of books as weapons gained added meaning from the Nazi book burnings, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum later included the poster in a 2003 exhibition on American responses to those burnings.
| Created / published | [New York] : NYC WPA War Services, [between 1941 and 1943] |
|---|---|
| Medium | POS - WPA - NY .P06, no. 2 (B size) [P&P] |
| Genre | Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress). Posters of the WPA / Christopher DeNoon. Los Angeles : Wheatly Press, c1987, no. 272 Exhibited in: American Responses to Nazi Book Burning, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 2003. |
| Subjects | 1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen, color. |
| Original scan | 1,500 × 2,397 px · prints to 5 × 8 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-173416 |
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