09/07/2025
On May 23, 1951, Dorothy Porter Wesley sat for a portrait in the quiet light of Carl Van Vechten’s studio. At the time, she had already spent nearly two decades reshaping American scholarship. As the curator of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, she wasn’t just collecting books—she was building a legacy.
For 43 years, Dorothy Porter Wesley searched tirelessly for the stories history tried to forget. She brought together one of the world’s largest and most important collections of African-American literature, often traveling on her own dime to rescue overlooked manuscripts from attics, shops, and private sellers.
In 1948, at a used bookseller in New York, she found something strange: a hand-written manuscript said to be by a fugitive enslaved woman. She bought it for $85 and preserved it.
That manuscript—decades later—would become The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts. When it was finally published in 2002, edited by Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., it became a bestseller. And the story didn’t end there.
In 2013, Professor Gregg Hecimovich of Winthrop University uncovered the truth. The author’s real name was Hannah Bond—a woman enslaved on a North Carolina plantation who escaped by disguising herself as a man. She made her way to freedom and poured her story into fiction, hiding her identity to stay safe.
But it never would’ve been found—let alone read—without Dorothy Porter Wesley.
She never sought fame. She simply believed that every voice mattered, even the quiet ones in forgotten ink. And thanks to her belief, one woman’s daring escape, her pen, and her truth are now part of American history.
~Old Photo Club
