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[Sheet music] James A. Bland, words and Samuel Butler, music, De. Slav’ry Chains Am Broke At Last / [De Golden Wedding] (John F. Perry & Co., Boston, c.1880) Original decorative wrappers, with two small “slave” engravings on front cover and large engravings for other songs on Page 2 and the rear cover. 11 x 14”, 6pp. including covers. While the front cover cites another song, “De Golden Wedding”, this imprint is apparently complete as issued, being identical to the Library of Congress copy displayed online. Rare. WorldCat shows only one other institutional holding, at Brown University.

Bland was the first famous African-American song-writer, though few of those Southerners delighted by that Dixie favorite, “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny” (1878), as well as his “Oh! Dem Golden Slippers” (1879) and “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane” (1880),  were aware that he was Black.  This song, dedicated to the leader of the all-Black minstrel group that gave him his musical start in life, may be the only one he wrote which celebrated Emancipation and the end of Slavery.  After that, he performed with minstrel groups in Europe and America, but never wrote another successful song and died in penniless obscurity in 1911.