Philip J. Merrill
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Philip J. Merrill is a nationally recognized expert in African American memorabilia and history. His specialties include African American historical research, oral history and collecting and interpreting cultural artifacts. He was an appraiser with the PBS television show Antiques Roadshow from 1996-2001, where he created the category for Black Memorabilia. Merrill founded and is the owner of Nanny Jack & Co., Inc., a premier resource for education, information, images, artifacts and products related to Black history.

An author and frequent contributor to a variety of magazines, Merrill is also the owner of an extensive and eclectic collection of Black memorabilia comprised of over 30,000 items. He lectures extensively on African American history to a variety of audiences, using items from his collection to emphasize the accomplishments and positive contributions that African Americans have made to American society over the course of its history. He also has exhibited his collection widely, at museums, schools, national conferences and various other settings.

Merrill has authored two books, The Black America Series: Baltimore and The Art of Collecting Black Memorabilia, and edited a third, The Black Battalion That Built the Alcan Highway, by William E. Griggs, a WWII Army photographer. He also is a frequent contributor to a variety of publications, including Jubilee Magazine, Warman’s Today Collector, the Baltimore Sun and Antiques Roadshow Insider. He also has a list of film credits.

He has been a segment producer for the television show American Legacy (produced by noted TV actors Tim and Daphne Reid), which focuses on African-American history, and is a frequent guest on a number of TV and radio shows. He has consulted with the Discovery Channel, serving as an online expert resource for schoolchildren across the nation on the subject of slavery. He has also been a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, and to the Maryland Historical Society

In 2001, the Baltimore City Paper named Merrill Baltimore’s “Best Historian,” and in 2003, Towson University in Baltimore honored him as a Distinguished Black Marylander in African American History and Preservation. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Community Colleges of Baltimore County and Montgomery County, Maryland.

Peter Cook, former Executive Producer of PBS’ Antiques Roadshow, says that Merrill possesses not only “considerable experience in handling African American memorabilia, but apparently limitless enthusiasm for the material and the stories behind them.” Tim Reid, noted TV actor and Executive Producer of PBS’ American Legacy and President of Millennium Studios, says that Merrill brings “a wonderful look at not only spoken history, but the authenticity of what we’re looking at.” And Sonia Bontemps, daughter-in-law of famed Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps and member of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, says, “He is quite knowledgeable. So much of African American history has been lost. What Philip is doing gives me hope.”

Merrill graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore, where he majored in sociology.

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Lecture Topics:

• Who, What, Why, when and where of Collecting African American Memorabilia
• Underground Railroad/Slavery
• Historic Preservation's Connection to African American Tourism
• HBCU's and Education/Fraternities and Sororities
• The History of African American Lifestyles
• Juneteenth
• The African American Funerary Business
• The Impact of African Americans on Pop Culture