A HISTORIC 'GODSEND'

FOR CHARLES L. Blockson, founder of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, history is personal - especially the papers of 19th-century abolitionist William Still, who has ties to his family.

For more than 80 years, Still's papers were packed in boxes, passed from generation to generation, until 1984, when his family donated them to the Blockson Collection, at Temple University.

"It was providence that I would wind up with these letters," Blockson said this week.

The Blockson Collection recently received a grant of nearly $47,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to have Still's papers digitized, said Diane D. Turner, curator of the collection, housed at Temple's Sullivan Hall.

Now, Still's papers will be preserved forever.

"I'm ecstatic," Blockson said. "It's a godsend."

The Still collection "represents the strength and stability of the African-American family," he added.

The Still archives include about 140 personal letters that Still wrote to family members and business acquaintances, as well as 14 photographs. In addition, several antislavery tracts published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1860s will also be preserved.

The documents will be treated by the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, on 23rd Street near Locust, in Center City, said Aslaku Berhanu, librarian at the Blockson Collection.

When the work is completed, researchers and students from all over the world will be able to view them by going to the Temple University Library online.

Clarence Still, William Still's 81-year-old great-grand-nephew, who donated the papers, is pleased.

"This is something that we were working toward many years ago when Blockson first opened up that library," he said.

Recently, Blockson sat at a table at Temple and pointed to an 1883 edition of "The Underground Railroad," the book that William Still got published in 1872.

"Turn to page 488," he said.

On that page, under the heading, "Arrival from Sussex County, 1858," Still tells the story of a Jacob Blockson, "a stout and healthy looking man of 27 years of age" who fled Delaware with several companions.

Still wrote that Jacob said: "I made up my mind that I did not want to be sold like a horse."

Jacob and the others were sheltered by abolitionists in Philadelphia before being taken farther north to freedom in Canada.

Charles Blockson, 76, who was born in Norristown, is a descendant of one of Jacob's cousins. He said that some of his relatives remained in Canada while others made their way back to the Philadelphia area.

After William Still's death in 1902, boxes with his papers remained in his family. Over the years, many of the letters became discolored and began deteriorating.

"They were just sitting here in boxes stacked in the closet," said Clarence Still, who lives in Lawnside, N.J. "They weren't doing anyone any good just sitting here.

"The Underground Railroad" was among the first records written by an African-American of the network of individuals who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada.

Blockson said that Still, who also became a successful businessman who sold coal and stoves on Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia, kept meticulous records of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery's work.

He said that Still wanted to tell the story of the abolitionists because some accounts written by white authors portrayed escaped runaways as "helpless and passive."

"He wanted to show that not only were free black people key to the abolitionist movement, but that the people who were fleeing enslavement - I call them 'self-liberators' - were courageous and risked their lives for freedom," Blockson said.

Among the letters, written in William Still's large, beautiful handwriting, were several he wrote to his eldest daughter, Caroline.

In one letter, dated Sept. 7, 1876, Still wrote: "Dear Caddy: Your postal card came to hand yesterday with the demand for '50' and here it is."

In another letter dated Aug. 13, 1867, Still wrote Caroline telling her that "I am reading Macauley's 'History of England' with great interest."

He went on to say that he intended to write a history of the "U.G. R.R. [Underground Railroad]. I must do a good deal of reading this work to better able to write well," Still wrote.

Turner, the collection's curator, said the letters are important because they provide evidence "that [Still] was a devoted family man and a very concerned father," even though he was a very busy man.

"I believe," she said, "that these papers are American treasures and that if any [preservation] grant should be given, then this one was well-deserved."