Frederick Douglass Gets A Raise, From $1.00 To $31,200

by Stephen J. Gertz

One of only five extant copies.

In 1847, Frederick Douglass, discontent with his fee for the popular articles he wrote for William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, asked for a raise, from $1.00 to $2.50 per piece.

Edmund Quincy, editor of The Liberator in Garrison's absence, wrote of Douglass's request,  "Talking of unconscionable niggers, I wrote to Douglass to ask him what he should consider a fair compensation for the letters [articles] that he proposed he sh'd write for the Standard [The Anti-Slavery Standard]. In due time I rec'd and answer saying he should think two dollars and a half about right. I consulted Wendell [Phillips] about it & he thought we had better not beat him down; but tell him that $1.00 was as much as we could afford." (McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass, page 147).

It was clear to Douglass that there were white abolitionists who placed their own position as the self-appointed standard-bearers of social justice above the interests of the famed African-American fighting for social justice.

And so that fall Douglass moved to upstate New York to publish his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star. Before leaving his home in Boston, however, Douglass took with him an unknown number of copies of the sheets for the Boston Anti-Slavery Society's 1847 printing of his Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (first edition 1845). Once established in Rochester, he had them bound up with the North Star imprint, as seen above.

Only five copies of Douglass's Narrative with The North Star imprint are known to have survived: two in private collections, a defective copy found in a dealer catalog,  one located at the New York Historical Society, and the present copy recently offered at Swann Galleries Printed & Manuscript African-Americana sale where it was estimated to sell for $18K-$22K.

It sold for $31,200, including premium.

Douglass earned this bonus albeit too late to take to the bank and enjoy it.

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DOUGLASS, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Boston: at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1847 - Rochester: Published at the North Star Office, 1848. Demi-8vo. xii, [xiii]-xvi, [1]-125 pp.  Original roan-backed printed paper-covered boards; some discoloration and a few abrasions to the front board tips; considerable foxing throughout; early ownership in pencil of "John H. Jones, 1848" and a few repetitions. Lacking the frontispiece portrait of Douglass, as do all other copies examined.

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Image courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.

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Astonishing Gandhi Archive Estimated $622,000-$870,000 At Sotheby's

By Stephen J. Gertz

A highly important and revealing archive of letters, papers, and photographs of M.K. Gandhi, one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, comes to auction on July 10, 2012 at Sotheby's -London. The trove is estimated to sell for €500.000 - €700,000.($622,000 - $870,000).

The archive was the possession of Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945), a German Jew and successful architect originally from East Prussia who had settled in Johannesburg and was Gandhi's constant companion during the great man's last decade in South Africa. They met in 1904.

"He used to say to me often that when I was deserted by the whole world I would find him to be a true friend going with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth in search of Truth..." (M.K. Gandhi, March 25, 1945).

The years that followed the initiation of their friendship saw Gandhi's political maturation and spiritual growth, the period that prepared him for his future return to and activism in India. Kallenbach played a key role in Gandhi's life not only as someone who arguably knew him better than anyone else  but who played a unique role in Gandhi's transformation from lawyer to Mahatma.

This was not a friendship of equals. Kallenbach became one of the first believers in Gandhi's philosophy and struggled to follow his strict and exacting regime. Kallenbach became deeply involved in the struggle for Indian rights in South Africa, was imprisoned in 1913 for doing so, followed Gandhi from vegetarianism to increasingly restricted diets, practiced sexual abstinence, and adopted a simple, communal lifestyle.

In 1910 he bought a 1,100 farm twenty miles from Johannesburg and turned it over to Gandhi. The two were closely involved in managing the farm. The archive documents the farm's purchase and the friends' acquisition of fruit trees, as well as arguments with neighbors over grazing rights.

It was Gandhi's aim to have Kallenbach return with him to India via Britain in 1914 but the declaration of war between Britain and Germany occurred while they were at sea. Upon their arrival in England Kallenback was declared an enemy alien and was interned for the duration of hostilities, afterward returning to Johannesburg. Gandhi had made his way to India but the two friends never lost contact.

In poignant letters the archive reveals Kallenbach's deep intimacy with Gandhi's family; he was something of a surrogate father to Gandhi's four sons, two of whom had remained in South Africa. Their letters, along with those from other family members to Kallenbach, provide the richest source yet for insight in Gandhi's personal life in India.

Kallenbach would not see Gandhi again until 1937 when he visited his friend and remained in India for two years.

This extraordinarily rich archive stands alongside the main group of Gandhi's letters to Kallenbach (sold at Sotheby's in December 1986) as a testament to this hugely significant figure in Gandhi's life and important member of his inner circle. It is a key and crucial biographical source for Gandhi.

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Images courtesy of Sotheby's, with our thanks.
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The First Novel On Free Blacks And Race Relations In The North (1857)

By Stephen J. Gertz

The book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.--Are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress?

The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of Philadelphia...

Being one of the nearest free cities of any considerable size to the slave territory, it has naturally been a resort of escaping fugitives, or of emancipated slaves...

The author takes pleasure in recommending this simple and truthfully-told story to the attention and interest of the friends of progress and humanity in England.

                                                                                     - H.B. Stowe.
                                                                           

The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb, the second novel by an African-American (preceded by Clotel; or, The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown, 1853) and the first to consider the lives of free African Americans in the pre-Civil War North was issued in 1857 - but not in the United States. Published in London, it required an ocean to separate it from its home.

Perhaps the sympathetic mixed-race marriage that forms the center of the book had something to do with it. Or, the violent racism and riots that free Blacks experienced  in the City of Brotherly Love, one of the most racially integrated cities in the nation  but intensely so. Maybe it was the author's satire of benevolent yet patronizing white Philadelphian abolitionists who preferred sentimental tear-jerkers ala Uncle Tom's Cabin and didn't appreciate criticism. Possibly, light-skinned blacks passing as whites inspired the heebie-jeebies in fair-skinned citizens. Perchance the idea that black Americans should become capitalists and gain wealth was too much,  the final Whoa, Nelly!

This was not subject matter that comfortable whites found palatable. Though sentimental in its own right, the novel was not an uplifting experience. It provoked anxiety. It was not a great beach read on American shores; it left too much sand in the shorts.

Moreover, it didn't dwell on slavery and its horrors; it was not an abolitionist tract condemning the moral stain. And it raised questions about whether emancipation would succeed. The novel was, for the most part, given short shrift in America, if noticed at all.

It wasn't published in the U.S. until 112 years after its original appearance, in 1969.

Author Frank J. Webb (1828–1894) was an African-American poet, and essayist. The Garies and Their Friends was his first and only novel.

He was born in Philadelphia and grew to become an active member of the city’s free African American community. He married in 1845, and his wife, Mary, gained admiration for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Longfellow. Her work attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Stowe was so impressed by Mary’s readings that she adapted scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressly for her to perform.

HBS helped to arrange a transatlantic tour for Mary, and, armed with letters of introduction from Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Frank and Mary traveled to England in 1856. Mary’s readings gained critical acclaim, and the two received a warm welcome from many British nobles, including Lady Noel Byron (Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron) to whom Frank dedicated The Garies..., and from Henry, Lord Brougham (1st Baron Brougham and Vaux), who wrote a brief though  enthusiastic introduction for the book.

"According to its many critics...The Garies and Their Friends seems to share [Harriet Beccher Stowe's] doubts concerning the capability of 'the race at present held as slaves" to govern themselves. At least that's one way to read an African American author's frustrating decision to write a novel in 1857 that spends little time detailing the horrors of slavery - a subject that contemporary black writers took pains to elaborate.

"The year that the novel was published, a London Sunday Times reviewer chided Webb for leaving 'untouched' the problem of how emancipation 'is to be effected, without as much injury to slave as slaveowner.' For the most part, time did not change critical attitudes toward the text...More recently, critics...have argued persuasively that the text deserves analysis, not only as the second novel written by an African American, but also as one of the first to deal with volatile questions of identity and loyalty within the black community.

"Yet Webb's text still continues to languish from a general lack of scholarly attention" (Duane, Anna Mae. Remaking Black Motherhood in Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends. African American Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 [Summer 2004], pp. 201-212).

The first edition is scarce, particularly in the original cloth. OCLC notes only a handful of copies in institutional libraries, and no copies of the book, in cloth or its simultaneous issue in wrappers, have come to auction within the last twenty-five years.

The Garies and Their Friends is an extremely important American novel, if for no other reason than it illustrates the question unresolved since Webb  first broached it in fiction: Can American blacks successfully assimilate into the American mainstream without losing themselves and their culture in the quest for the American Dream?

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WEBB, Frank J. The Garies and Their Friends. With an Introductory Preface by Harrier Beecher Stowe. London and New York: G. Routledge & Co., 1857. First edition (issued simultaneously in wrappers as a "yellowback"). Octavo. vi, [2], 392 pp. Publisher's original dark blue cloth.

BAL 19392.
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Images courtesy of Between The Covers, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Vile Rarities From the Archives of the American Right-Wing

by Stephen J. Gertz

WARNING: This post contains highly disturbing images containing commensurate text. 

Once upon a time (for this truly seems like a fairy tale), the Right and Left wings in the United States had homes in both the main political parties. While the Republican Party teemed with rabid, ugly, and bigoted anti-Communists, the Democratic Party was host to rabid, ugly, bigoted segregationists. And then there were the Right-Wingers who'd flown so far to the Right that they flew out of the mainstream and into fringe parties of particular nastiness.

The campaign brochure above heralds the contentious 1930 Alabama elections, in which a number of Ku Klux Klan-funded Democrats broke away from the party to run as Independents. The Independents lost, and the event marked a pivotal moment in the consolidation of old-line Democratic power in the state, which would go unchallenged until the Civil Rights conflicts of the Sixties.

This illustrated brochure, produced by  main-line Democrats, was intended to show that, despite rejection of KKK backing, the Party remained staunch in its support of the principle of White Supremacy. Page one provides brief text and lists members of the Party’s Executive Committee and Honorary Vice Chairmen (among whom was future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black). The remaining three pages reproduce ten captioned political caricatures lampooning the campaign tactics of the apostate Democrats and the Republicans. An unusual item; not located in OCLC.

The Democratic Party Is Calling You! [Birmingham]: Democratic State Campaign Committee, [1930]. Quarto (28cm). Single sheet, folded to four newsprint pages. 

Marilyn R. Allen's Caucasian quo vadis, White Man! What of the Night? (1959) is an anti-integration tract by the author best-known for her 1949 inspirational, spiritually uplifting  opus, Alien Races and Mongrelization: “...since the Warren Court’s communistic race-mixing decision was admittedly NOT based in and on the Constitution (nor on precedent), but on alien socialistic doctrine and Organized Minority pressure, it is therefore null and void.” Not located in OCLC.

ALLEN, Marilyn R. White Man! What of the Night? Salt Lake City: By the author, [1959]. Gate-fold leaflet, 15cm x 14cm. Single sheet folded to six newsprint pages.

It wouldn't be a party without the American Nazi Party spiking the punch with their  brand of poison. Here, the National Socialist White People’s Party,  successor to George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, descries Special Rights for Black Savages. Insert homosexual, feminist, Jewish, etc. for the full Party platform. This recruiting broadside for the NSWPP states its headquarters address as 2507 North Franklin Road, Arlington, VA, where the group moved following the assassination of Rockwell.

Special Rights For Black Savages? Arlington, VA: National Socialist White People’s Party, N.d. [post- 1968]. Broadside, 11” x 8.5”, printed recto only on newsprint. 

 

This broadside from the good ol' folks of the Fighting American Nationalists simulates a typical “Wanted” poster, depicting an African-American in caricature; the subject here is identified as “Levi Coon.” Alias “Jigaboo, Baboon, Ape....he has been known to be led by communist Jews in a conspiracy to destroy America and the White race. He is believed to be armed with a razor, a gas bomb, a Star of David, and a bottle of Sweet Lucy wine.” The Manischevitz winery was surely relieved by their exclusion from this arsenal imagined by the malignantly asinine.

This is one of the more horrific pieces of racist propaganda you'll ever encounter. The “Fighting American Nationalists” was a  hate group reputedly established by George Lincoln Rockwell in the mid-1960s as a front for the American Nazi Party.

WHITE, C. Wanted Dead Or Alive. Hendersonville, NC: Fighting American Nationalists, 1975. Broadside, 11” x 8-1/2” (ca. 28 x 22cm). Printed recto-only on a single sheet of standard xerographic paper.

If the recto headline above doesn't get you right here, the verso headline will: “Scientists Say Negro Still In Ape Stage - Races Positively Not Equal.”

Edward R. Fields' scurrilous junk science screed was issued by The Thunderbolt, the official organ of the National States Rights Party, a neo-Nazi group active in the mid-1960s. This organ desperately needs a transplant; it is diseased, a thunderbolt that Zeus rejected and speared into the garbage can, only to be retrieved by ignorant, bottom-feeding mortals and thrust into the soul of America.

Here, the standard pseudo-scientific tropes are proffered regarding Negro inferiority (reduced brain size; prognathous jaw; prehensile toes, etc). It concludes: “As the black genes of the Negro are more powerful than white genes - the Negro has thereby destroyed every white civilization that he has come in contact with or has left that civilization stagnant and rotting and dependent upon the last drop of white blood from outside to keep it going. Mongrelization of the Races Would Destroy White Christian Civilization.” It also includes a brief discourse on the “Two-toed Vadoma Tribe,” whose members can “run like the wind, scale trees.” Not located in OCLC (this screed, not the Vadoma tribe, which lives in the western region of Zimbabwe and whose members, indeed, have a congenital foot disfigurement).

There's a silver lining to this toxic cloud.  Black-Americans can take cold comfort in knowing that, by its own statement, the National States Rights Party believed that Negroes were biologically superior to Whites, with super-duper DNA that overwhelms all others. Curiously, the National States Right Party appears to have accepted evolution and Darwin's The Descent of Man. At the time, however, anti-science had yet to be added to the far-Right's anti-everything list.

Given the caliber of white people addressed here Black-Americans would surely prefer to be related to apes. I'm white and proud to be descended from apes; they have more dignity. I'll take King Kong over King Cotton's DNA anytime.

FIELDS, Edward R. The Negro Is Related to Apes -- Not White People. Marietta, GA: The Thunderbolt, Inc., N.d. [ca 1964-5]. Quarto broadside (36cm), printed in black ink on both sides of a standard ledger-sized sheet. With four illustrations.

The National States Rights Party's Most Important Program  planned for the deportation of American Blacks to the African continent, noting that “...African nations could receive the entire Negro population of the United States within twenty years, without disproportionate strain on any one nation...” Also includes a draft “Back To Africa Law,” calling for stripping all Negroes of American citizenship; cash bonuses for those volunteering to emigrate; and forcible deportation of those unwilling to volunteer. The National States Rights Party was a neo-Nazi group founded in 1958 and active through the early Seventies. Theirs  was a very short-sighted scheme. Who'd they think was going to perform all the low-class menial labor that poor white trash felt was beneath them?  C'mon, people! Geesh!

SMITH, Drew L. How To Ship Negroes Back To Africa. Marietta, GA: National States Rights Party, N.d. [ca 1964-65].  Printed folio circular (ca 36cm x 22cm). Single sheet folded to four pages.

When racism and rabid anti-Communism get together the results are always a joyful expression of self-realization for the zealously righteous, revealing a breathtaking psychopathology usually associated with  the anti-Christ in Jesus' robe. The above graphic reproduces a photograph of Martin Luther King, Abner W. Berry, Aubrey Williams, and Myles Horton in a classroom of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The text identifies these subjects, calling them the “four horsemen of racial agitation...[who] have brought tension, disturbance, strife and violence in the advancement of the Communist doctrine of ‘racial nationalism.’”

The Highlander Folk School was founded by Don West and Myles Horton in 1953 as a training facility for southern civil rights workers; it was the frequent and favorite subject of attacks from anti-integrationists. The present broadside, issued under the auspices of the Georgia Commission on Education, is similar to another, larger broadside of the same ilk print-signed by Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin. OCLC notes only two locations (CSU Sacramento & Historic New Orleans Collection).

Martin Luther King...At Communist Training School. [Athens, GA]: Georgia Commission on Education. N.d. (ca 1957). Broadside, printed recto-only on a single legal-size sheet (ca 36cm x 22cm). Thirteen lines of text and central graphic.

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A funny thing happened to Right-wing Democrats on their way to the lynching. Before the ink was dry on President Johnson's signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they mentally bolted from the Party and, in 1968, with Presidential candidate Richard M.. Nixon taking advantage of their profound discontent, ran into the Republican Party's open arms and warm embrace where they and their heirs have remained  cozy and  happy ever after though perpetually disgruntled; chronic lip-service, from  wiser Party leaders who seduce for the Presidential nomination, abandon for the election  and then pragmatically lead the country from only center-right, has been their bitter reward for loyalty. Now, fed-up and having driven traditional mainstream Republicans out of the Party to become the new Republican base, they, along with what was once the Republican far-Right fringe, are the true RINOs,  Republicans In Name Only.  It's a another great, albeit strange and deeply ironic, Only in America story.

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All images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks. Mr. Bair is a specialist in the history, literature, and art of American social movements including the radical politics of both poles; the Left-wing falls under his purview, as well. Bair is one of the go-to rare booksellers for students, collectors, and curators interested in this subject.
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Has the American Left-wing  published odious agitprop? Of course. But though stinky, it is rarely, if ever, as blatantly and shamelessly hateful. And it is almost always designed better.

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