Hake's June 23rd Anti-Slavery to Civil Rights Auction featured rare historically-significant items

YORK, Pa. - June 30, 2026 - PRLog -- Eugene Warburg's Parian statue titled Uncle Tiff sold for $95,592; an original "I Am A Man" protest placard from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike brought $58,427; and a Frederick Douglass broadside from a circa-1872 Republican Party rally in Maine realized $25,486 at Hake's Anti-Slavery to Civil Rights Auction, which closed June 23. The sale totaled $472,118, including the buyer's premium.

The catalog was filled with rare, important and historically-significant items, with a timeline starting in the 1780s and advancing through the MLK era to the Obama presidency. The auction included the first installment of the Rex & Patti Stark Collection, one of the foremost private holdings of anti-slavery ceramics.

The auction also featured superb consignments from around the country compiled by Hake's Americana Director Scott Mussell, whose passion for documenting the African American experience was amply reflected in the sale's 366 lots. "We're thrilled by the response across the globe to this sale," Mussell said. "Strong bidding came in from institutions and individuals passionate about preserving this important history."

Eugene Warburg's (1825-1859) circa-1856 Copeland Staffordshire Parian porcelain statuette of "Uncle Tiff," a character from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Dred, was the overall top lot of the auction. The delicate, well-detailed 12-inch-tall sculpture blew past its $20,000 high estimate to realize a final selling price of $95,592, an auction record for the artist. Warburg was born enslaved in New Orleans and is among the earliest-known African American sculptors. Surviving works by his hand are extremely rare.

A cardboard placard measuring 13¾ inches by 21¼ inches, with just the four words, "I Am A Man" in bold black ink, nearly tripled the $20,000 high estimate by reaching $58,427. It was a new world auction record for one of the most iconic American civil-rights artifacts, while also being one of the simplest and most unassuming. The variant script corresponded to that seen on materials used at the Martin Luther King Memorial March for Union Justice and to End Racism, held April 8, 1968 in Memphis.

A circa-1872 thin, canary-yellow broadside advertising a Maine Republican Party rally announcing African American social abolitionist orator, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and former Maine governor and state Republican Party co-founder Israel Washburne (1813-1883) as guest speakers, topped the $20,000 high estimate with a selling price of $25,486. It rained that day in August 1872, thus greatly diminishing chances that the 29-inch by 21-inch broadside would survive, but it did.

To learn more, please visit Hake's online at https://hakes.com/.