Welcome to #LovecraftCountry

This exhibition – inspired by HBO’s Lovecraft Country and Lovecraft Country Radio – highlights historical, literary, and cultural events presented in the show with published and primary source materials from Penn State’s Special Collections Library.

We center #LovecraftCountry : primary sources and published materials at Penn State as a guide to American history, in the spirit of the Ida B. Wells Education Project and following the guidance of the Langston League #LovecraftCountry syllabi. This exhibition expands on those existing projects by referencing rare materials and community and research centers unique to Penn State, including the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, the Center for Black Digital Research, and the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African Americana and the African Diaspora. The Penn State University Libraries also provide a Guide to Black Lives Matter.

This site takes visitors through the show episode by episode. Each post focuses Black and LGBTQIA+ creators and experiences, connecting the episode’s major themes to materials in the Libraries’ collections and our Collection Development Plan. We’ve also created a one-page list of works referenced in the exhibit, which you can bookmark and use for future research. For more information about this exhibition, please see our About page.

“It’s about heroes who get to go on adventures, defeat the monsters, and save the day. A little boy from the South side of Chicago don’t notoriously get to do that.” – Atticus Freeman, “Sundown”

Sundown Towns and Black Travelers

The first episode of Lovecraft Country, “Sundown,” introduces the many dangers faced by Black travelers and the methods the community developed to protect themselves. Towns across the country were officially or unofficially sundown towns, requiring Black locals and travelers to leave before sundown or face anything from violence to murder. The show’s main characters are involved in the research, writing, and publication of the Safe Negro Travel Guide which provides information on which restaurants serve Black customers and other details necessary to minimize racist encounters and violence. In the real world, Victor Green and others published specialized guides to support safe Black travel, including the famous Green Book.¹

Wondering what the real Green Book had to say about Pennsylvania during the time of Lovecraft Country? We’ve scanned the Pennsylvania entry from the 1954 edition which covers Abington to York. While Williamsport has an entry, there’s nothing for State College.

Want to read more? The New York Public Library has many editions of The Green Book digitized on their website. They’ve also digitized the 1930 Hackley & Harrison’s Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers (a similar guide created specifically for accommodations).

 

Some Lovecraft Country viewers might be surprised by the existence of a sundown town or county as far north as Massachusetts. However, in his book Sundown Towns : a Hidden Dimension of American Racism, James W. Loewen shares the pervasiveness from Maine to California. These towns and restrictions on travel existed from long before the Civil War until well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Even if they could safely be in town during the day, a Black local or traveler might encounter refusal of service or violence if they attempted to sit in a restaurant or use a library. Loewen encourages others to look into their own town’s history and collects ongoing information about research, arts, and news on the subject on the companion website to his book Sundown Towns. For more information on the history of Black travel in America, read Traveling Black by Mia Bay.

The Civil Rights Movement and Photojournalism

“Just going over another bridge named after another dead slave owner.” – Atticus Freeman, “Sundown”

Explore the Jack Rabin digital collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists for interviews and photographs related to the Black freedom struggle, including several taken just before the “Bloody Sunday” attack on Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

The Jerry Doyle papers contain an original pen and ink editorial cartoon honoring the 1965 events at Selma and the resulting Voting Rights Act.²

Lovecraft Country incorporates elements of both 20th and 21st century culture, figures, and history to draw out elements of the story. These range from anachronistic music and speeches to extremely timely ones. While Atticus, George Freeman, and Letitia Lewis are driving, James Baldwin debating William F. Buckley plays over the radio. You can listen to the full speech here on YouTube.

Many of the scenes in this episode recreate photographs by Gordon Parks and Margaret Bourke-White. Gordon Parks : Segregation story is based on a collection of his photo negatives found after his death and labeled “Segregation Series.” Our Special Collections’ African American artists exhibit announcements includes a flier from a show of Parks’ work at the Oklahoma Arts Center.

Science Fiction

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library holds a collection of notable works of science fiction from the 19th to 21st century. This includes several works by H. P. Lovecraft, whose work on Weird and science fiction has inspired many branches of modern science fiction and horror. Lovecraft’s worlds inspired the show’s name and many elements of its worldbuilding, from monsters to racism. Read how Lovecraft’s racist poem set the tone for the HBO series.

Our copy of The Outsider and Others, used by the show to introduce H. P. Lovecraft’s works, is one of the 1,268 copies ever printed. The Outsider and Others was the first collection of Lovecraft’s fiction, the first book published by weird fiction publisher Arkham House and was never reprinted.³ The Special Collections Library also owns an original printing of The Shunned House, a 58-page self-published story printed in 1928 by Lovecraft with W. Paul Cook. Although 300 copies were printed, 150 of them were destroyed. Penn State’s copy is one of the original lot of 50 copies sold directly by Arkham House.

During the first episode of Lovecraft Country, as the main trio find themselves hiding from monsters, George quotes from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula. One of our most interesting copies of Dracula was illustrated by Edward Gorey, an American artist known for his morbid, cartoonish style. Penn State has a large collection of works by Gorey.

Interested in a horror story about rural vampires in a sundown town? Listen to Sundown Town [includes racist violence], written by Zig Zag Claybourne and available on NIGHTLIGHT – a #BlackHorror podcast. @NightlightPod also features a related interview with @ZZClaybourne.

Although our science fiction collection does not include an original printing of A Princess of Mars, read by Atticus Freeman in “Sundown’s” opening scene, we do have a 1918 printing of The Gods of Mars and many of the 1960s Ballantine paperback reprints of the John Carter stories.

Continue reading about Episode 2 : Whitey’s on the Moon

Footnotes

1. Evidence indicates Charles L. Blockson also wrote for the Green Book. The inventory for the Charles L. Blockson personal and literary papers, (09409_Box 01_Folder 13), references his Green Book contract .^back

2. More than 1300 of Doyle’s editorial cartoons were contributed to the Digital Public Library of America and are searchable by subject, including: African Americans – Suffrage; Civil rights workers; Communism; Courts and crime; Discrimination in housing; Emigration and immigration, quota systems; Health and social policy; Human rights; Ku Klux Klan; Labor unions and employees; and Race relations, among others.^back

3. Citation of S. T. Joshi’s work on the Wikipedia page about The Outsider.^back