Consists of over 150 manuscript and printed documents related to the institution of slavery in America that were collected from various sources by Francis C. Brown (Class of 1958). Materials pertain to slavery in Louisiana and, to a lesser degree, in Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas, with a few documents relating to the Caribbean and West Africa. While many documents relate to enslaved persons from the perspective of plantation owners and traders, others depict resistance to slavery and the lives of free people of color. Included are testimonies and legal documents regarding escaped and recaptured enslaved persons; deeds of manumission; papers of freedmen and other free people of color, including labor contracts, receipts for services rendered, and documents pertaining to inheritance and property sales; auction and estate records of plantations concerning their products, animals, and enslaved persons; mortgages of property and enslaved persons; a Civil War army discharge for an African American sergeant; receipts for the medical care and board of enslaved laborers; manifests of enslaved persons transported by ship; and bills of sale for enslaved persons, including many sold to Andrew Hynes of Tennessee; among other documents. Also of note are several documents and letters pertaining to abolitionist and anti-abolitionist movements, as well as to emancipation, including a loyalty oath signed by a Southern plantation owner shortly after the American Civil War and a group of pamphlets concerning changes to France's Code Noir in the 1840s that affected French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. While the majority of documents are in English, many of the documents from Louisiana are in French.