Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern

Georgia Douglas Johnson Bronze. Boston: B.J. Brimmer, 1922 FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, small 8vo, original cloth, lacking dust-jacket (but with rear flap and rear panel laid in), a very good copy First edition of the second collection of poems by this important figure in the Harlem Renaissance—one of the first African-American female playwrights. Inscribed by the author: "Dec. 27 - '22. To Mr. Roscoe C. Simmons shall we not dedicate this page to this day which we record happy & signal. Read page 15 from The Heart of a Woman & thank every God for your exclusion. Sincerely Georgia Douglas Johnson." The recipient was the African-American orator, journalist, and politician, active from the 1920s to the '50s. With an introduction by W.E.B. Du Bois. Rare—there have only been two copies at auction since 1974.

View 1 of Lot 324: Georgia Douglas Johnson | Bronze, Boston, 1922, first edition, inscribed by the author

georgia douglas johnson | bronze, boston, 1922, first edition, inscribed by the author

Fine Manuscript and Printed Americana

DU BOIS, WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT TYPED LETTER SIGNED ("W. E. B. DU BOIS") TO MISS HELEN BUCKMILLER, DISCUSSING "THE ENORMITY OF THE LYNCHING PROBLEM," THE GREAT MIGRATION, AND LIBERIA 1½ pages (8½ x 5½ in.; 216 x 140 mm) on his personalized The Crisis letterhead, New York, New York, 17 November 1920, with the original typed envelope; folds, light handling wear. "The basic difficulty is that this is a nation of murderers, that human life is cheap and that it is difficult to arouse the conscience of the nation on the subject. Writing to a Miss Helen Buckmiller of Dayton, Ohio, as the editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, W.E.B. Du Bois devotes much of this letter to the organizations' efforts to draw attention to the "enormity of the lynching problem." The NAACP had been founded in 1909 by a diverse group of advocates that included Du Bois. In addition advocating for federal anti-lynching legislation, the organization concentrated its efforts on fighting Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. This activism came at a time of great urgency, with some 4,000 African Americans murdered between 1877 and 1950 in the south alone. In response to the economic and social conditions that bred such violence, some six million people relocated from the rural south between 1916 and 1970, in a movement that would come to be known as the "Great Migration" or "Great Black Migration." Writing to Miss Buckmiller about this phenomenon, Du Bois says: "Migration from parts of the south where lynching prevails is going on all the time ... If we had more funds and organization a spectacular depopulation at any locality where a lynching takes place would be excellent. But here we would have to contend against the whole police force of the state and county and would probably be arrested for promoting migration without a license." This appears to have been part of a larger exchange with Buckmiller, and Du Bois would publish a letter of hers in his January 1921 issue where she echoes the idea of migration and economic deprivation as strategic response to lynchings. Turning his attention to a discussion of Pan-Africanism generally, using Liberia as a specific example, Du Bois writes: "There is today practically no place where a small and weak band of people could take refuge and be safe from the aggressions of the militant white world... There are plenty of places where the colored people of United States could and gradually would go, the Highlands of East Africa, Haiti, etc., but each place of such sort is dominated and threatened by some white imperialism which seeks colored slaves." A powerful letter from one of the founders of the NAACP, underscoring the life and death stakes of the civil rights movement.

du bois,w. e. burghardt. typed letter signed to miss helen buckmiller, 17 november 1920

Fine Books and Manuscripts

A group of 6 autographs of a prominent African and several African-Americans and civil rights activists, all matted, glazed and framed, comprising: Marian Anderson. Autographed concert program signed ("Marian Anderson"), at the Teatro Odeon, Rosario, Argentina, 11 August 1937; signature quite faded. — Wa. E. B. DuBois. Typed letter signed ("W.E.B. DuBois") on the stationery The Crisis, New York, 20 November 1930, to Forrest Bailey demonstrating interest in a study of the "Negro problem" by a writer named Spivak; paper age-toned. Matted, glazed and framed with a black-and-white photograph of DuBois. — Paul Laurence Dunbar. Autograph poem signed ("Paul Laurence Dunbar"), 8 lines ("They please me not — the solemn songs | That hint of sermons covered up ... "), n.p.,  7 January 1901, matted and glazed with a black-and-white photograph of Dunbar. — William Lloyd Garrison. Autograph sentiment signed ("Wm. Lloyd Garrison") on a slip of paper, dated Boston, 20 December 1864, the sentiment being "Liberty for each, for all, and for ever!). The sentiment and engraved portrait of Garrison embedded within a copy of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator which Garrison founded, dated 21 March 1864. — Rosa Parks. First day issue envelope with a 15-cent stamp bearing the likeness of Martin Luther King, signed "Rosa Parks," dated-stamped Atlanta, 13 January 1979. Together with a black-and-white photograph of Rosa Parks inscribed "March 23, 1994 | Rosa Parks | To Harry Belafonte | With my best wishes." The two autographs matted, glazed an framed together.  — Ahmed Sekou Toure, liberator and first president of Guinea, the first French colony to declare independence from France. Color photograph inscribed at the bottom caption: "A notre frère et ami Harry Belafonte | Ahmed Sekou Toure | ce 6 Mai 1964"; photograph slightly faded.

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