Henry Proctor Slaughter

Henry Proctor Slaughter (September 17, 1871 – February 14, 1958) was an American journalist, printer, and bibliographer. Slaughter collected resources that documented African American history, with a special focus on the subjects of slavery, the abolitionist movement, and correspondence from African American leaders throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His collection of over 10,000 books and other materials now forms the Henry P. Slaughter collection at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Early life and education

Henry Proctor Slaughter was born September 17, 1871, in Louisville, Kentucky. His mother was a former slave who instilled a sense of pride in Henry by pointing out falsehoods in stories of slave life in textbooks and telling stories of the rebellions of enslaved people. His father died when Slaughter was six, and Henry sold newspapers to support his family. He graduated as salutatorian from Central High School.

He studied at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, in the 1890s. He was the only African-American elected as a chairman of a section of the Typographical Union of the Government Printing Office, and was honored as the "Sixty-Year Man" by the union at age 86. He was also a religious man and served in a handful of church roles, including as a vestryman of St. Luke's Episcopal Church and superintendent of its Sunday school.

Personal life and death

Slaughter married twice: in 1904 to Ella M. Russell, who died in 1914, and again in 1925 to Alma R. Level. He died in Washington, D.C., on February 14, 1958.