Gift to Spelman Is Largest of Books to HBCU

Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, has donated more than 14,000 volumes to Spelman College in what is believed to be the largest donation of books to a historically black college. The volumes include an autographed first edition of James Baldwin’s second play, Blues for Mister Charlie, and an autographed first edition of Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters, originally published in 1965. Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.