ITHACA, N.Y. -- Margaret Washington, professor of history at Cornell University, will deliver the inaugural Gail Gifford Rudin ('56) and Stephen Rudin lecture, titled "'Price to Be Determined at the Close of the War': The Impacts of 'Slave' Trading on the Development of Black Culture in America."

The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place Wednesday, March 31, at 3:30 p.m. in Libe Café (first floor, Olin Library) on Cornell's campus and is followed by a reception in the Hirshland Gallery, level 2B of Kroch Library.

The Rudins created a foundation for an annual lecture on American culture through a gift to Cornell University Library in 2003. Washington's presentation highlights another significant gift of the Rudins -- an outstanding collection of manuscripts, rare books and other materials documenting the history of slavery in America. Developed by the Rudins for students and scholars of American history, the Rudin Slavery Collection is a stunningly varied archive that documents the history of slavery in America. The title of Washington's talk is a direct citation from a domestic slave trade announcement.

The Rudin collection includes Confederate currency engraved with scenes of slaves at work; an 1812 receipt for captured Africans from Sierra Leone and an 1846 record of slaves used as collateral for a debt; visual materials, such as newspaper illustrations, stereo views and broadsides; and documents from the Freedman's Bureau, including slave manumissions (formal records of emancipation). The collection also includes letters written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lewis George Clark discussing the origin of characterizations in Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, among numerous other materials.

Selected items from the Rudin collection are on display in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, level 2B of Kroch Library. For more information about the lecture or the Rudin Slavery Collection, call (607) 255-3530 or e-mail rareref@cornell.edu .