Sidney Kaplan art and printing archive

Sidney Kaplan (1913-1993) was born in Queens, NYC, and graduated from City College in 1942. Following WWII, Kaplan recieved an MA in History from Boston University (1948), and a PhD in American Civilization from Harvard in 1960. Kaplan joined the English Department at the University of Massachusetts in 1946, gaining recognition as a prominent scholar in African American history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and in the local community. Kaplan founded the Department of Afro-American Studies, the University of Massachusetts Press, and was the founder and editor of The Massachusetts Review. Kaplan was also the editor of Leonard Baskin's The Gehenna Press. Kaplan and his wife, Emma Nogrady, who was a librarian at Smith College, worked on extensive projects in history, literature, and the arts for over thirty years in the Pioneer Valley. Kaplan and Nogrady co-authored The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (1973), which was the first comprehensive study of depictions of African Americans in the visual arts. In 1991 the University of Massachusetts Press published a series of Kaplan's essays, American Studies in Black and White. Kaplan was also a recipient of the Bancroft Award from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History due to an article he published in the Journal of Negro History. In 1979, Kaplan also recieved the University of Massachusetts Amherst Chancellor's Medal. Kaplan passed away in 1993 at the age of 80.