Negro Universities Press

{{short description|U.S. specialty/academic publisher, est. 1968}}

Negro Universities Press (NUP) was an American publishing house that "published many reprints and original works related to the Black experience."{{Cite web |title=Collections: Negro Universities Press |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=856006958 |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=HathiTrust Digital Library }} Per the company's 1969 catalog, NUP was an incorporated company that was designed to behave as a university press for the historically black colleges and universities 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."{{Cite web |title=Negro Universities Press 1969 catalog |url=https://fedora.dlib.indiana.edu/fedora/get/iudl:2717511/OVERVIEW |access-date=2023-07-24 |website=indiana.edu}}

The company was organized in 1968 and initially headquartered on 43rd Street in New York City.{{Cite news |date=1968-08-15 |title=Negro Universities Press Formed |pages=32 |work=The Minneapolis Star |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-minneapolis-star-negro-universities/128816690/ |access-date=2023-07-25}} In 1959, Marguerite Cartwright mentioned in her newspaper column that she had met with Alan Angoff about his proposal for a Negro Universities Press.{{Cite news |date=1959-08-01 |title=World Backdrop by Marguerite Cartwright |pages=12 |work=The Pittsburgh Courier |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-pittsburgh-courier-world-backdrop-by/128818138/ |access-date=2023-07-25}} Angoff wrote about the lack of a Negro university press.{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44328898 | jstor=44328898 | title=Negro Colleges and Scholarly Publishing | last1=Angoff | first1=Allan | journal=CLA Journal | date=1958 | volume=1 | issue=2 | pages=58–67 }}

Circa 1970, the Press had a partnership with New American Library.{{Cite news |date=1970-01-04 |title=History of Black Man's Place |pages=510 |work=The Los Angeles Times |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-history-of-black-m/128817798/ |access-date=2023-07-25}} NUP was a division or affiliate of Greenwood Press.{{Cite news |date=1969-11-14 |title=Publisher Revives Book on Negro Life |pages=25 |work=Winston-Salem Journal |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/winston-salem-journal-publisher-revives/128818337/ |access-date=2023-07-25}}{{Cite news |date=1983-12-27 |title=Ask the Globe |pages=30 |work=The Boston Globe |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe-ask-the-globe/128816928/ |access-date=2023-07-25}}

Among the company's publications was a 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.{{Cite news |date=2001-03-03 |title=Incident led to interest in history of slavery |pages=12 |work=The Iola Register |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-iola-register-incident-led-to-intere/128816411/ |access-date=2023-07-25}} They also reprinted whole runs of historical African-American periodicals, including the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840–1870), Colored American magazine (1900–1909), and the NAACP's Crisis, a Record of the Darker Races.{{Cite news |date=1969-04-11 |title=University of Delaware Libraries acquisitions |pages=19 |work=The Morning News |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-morning-news-university-of-delaware/128817331/ |access-date=2023-07-25}} 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."{{Cite news |date=1969-02-23 |title=Negro History Reprints on Market |pages=14 |work=Alexandria News Leader |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/alexandria-news-leader-negro-history-rep/128818545/ |access-date=2023-07-25}}