Joseph E. Roy scrapbook

This 153-page scrapbook is devoted primarily to the career and professional interests of Joseph Edwin Roy. Joseph Roy served as chairman of the World's Congress on Africa at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and also as Western District Secretary for the American Missionary Association, and the scrapbook documents his career in these two capacities.

Materials reflecting Joseph Roy's role as chairman of the 1893 World's Congress on Africa consist entirely of newspaper clippings, some with hand script annotations, many regarding Frederick Douglass and Momolu Massaquoi. Articles by and about Bishop Henry McNeal Turner's theory of a "Black Adam" are also included, as well as several articles with information about African American colleges and universities. Other articles include clippings regarding missionary work and daily life in Africa. Clippings about the World's Congress on Africa are primarily from The Daily Inter Ocean, the Chicago Tribune, and The African News, the latter of which, as described on its masthead, is "A Comprehensive Digest of the Principal Speeches Delivered and Papers read at its Sessions in Chicago last Month." The African News, which only exists here in segments, is ostensibly the official publication of the World's Congress on Africa.

The latter portion of the scrapbook chronicles Roy's work as Western District Secretary with the American Missionary Association (AMA), and this includes both articles and carbon copies of correspondence. This latter portion primarily consists of articles from Congregationalist publications throughout the western United States, including The Pilot Supplement, The Christian Way, The Pilgrim, The Seven Societies, and the English- and Dakota-language newspaper The Word Carrier (Iapi Oaye). These materials largely reflect the work of the Roy and the AMA with Native American and American Chinese missions. Articles also regard Frederick Douglass' address at the 1895 annual meeting of the American Missionary Association. Items of note include a July 1894 letter to President Grover Cleveland by Roy and other Congregationalist leaders, which applauds President Cleveland's "wisdom and patriotic tenacity in the matter of maintaining the sovereignty of our Nation in this time of disloyal uprising."