Nora Holt Autograph Book

The Case:

Upon his mother's passing, a man inherits a garage full of African American memorabilia, a collection carefully assembled over a 40-year period.

This large private collection has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. Amid the artefacts is a curious small green leather autograph book that belonged to a woman named Nora Holt.

Holt was a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance and associated with author Theodore Dreiser and photographer Carl Van Vechten, among others.

Mysteriously, these artists’ names appear in the book alongside the signatures of Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, neither of whom was involved in the Harlem Renaissance.

History Detectives follows the path of a liberated woman who participated in one of the most significant artistic flowerings of the 20th century.

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