Nov 07, 2017 - Sale 2461

Sale 2461 - Lot 85

Price Realized: $ 325
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 80 - $ 120
THOMAS, NORMAN. Three items: Autograph Letter Signed * Autograph Manuscript, unsigned * Lengthy Letter Signed. The ALS, with a postscript additionally Signed, "NT," to labor author John Herling, requesting that he come north to manage a relief fund. 2 1/2 pages, small 8vo, written on a folded sheet. With the original envelope. The manuscript, draft of an article for the Timely Topics column published in the March 3, 1934 issue of the New Leader newspaper, beginning "If these code hearings at Washington are honest they will bring out these facts which I have learned first hand." 3 pages, 4to, written on rectos of separate sheets; folds. The TLS, to "Dear Jack," providing instructions for organizing against Arkansas planters, responding to accusations concerning his appearance at a Howard University conference, and soliciting research for a book concerning modern warfare. 4 1/4 pages, 4to, written on rectos of separate sheets; small hole at upper left throughout, horizontal folds. New York, [20 August 1929: from postscript]; Chicago, 27 February [1934]; Peoria, 15 May 1935
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Additional Details

1929: ". . . The situation seems serious. Nonetheless it may still be necessary to have you up north to push relief. In the mean time you will of course remember that from the standpoint of . . . our public the Emergency Com. directly and through its agents cannot afford to take responsibility for the conduct of the strike. That must be up to the leaders. And that's true for better or worse. Your position will require discretion. Keep in close touch with Hoffman & Ross. You are in charge of relief funds which by the terms of our appeal must go only for relief. . . ." The postscript: "Keep out of jail if possible. You'll do us no special good there!"
1935: ". . . The Arkansas situation. . . . As I see it the delegation should make a double drive: (a) for clothing and money, and (b) for action from Congress and the Administration. Both drives should be colorful for the sake of getting publicity and I think you have already planned for placards, slogans, etc. I am quite sure that a formal application should be made for the reception of a committee by the President and that there should be no picketing of the White House until such permission has been refused . . . .
"What the Union wants most of all is to organize. This right is not to be abridged, denied, or rendered futile, by any insistence that there must be no mingling of the races in organization. There can be no effective organization which is not bi-racial on a basis of the equality of the members of the union. Anything else means slavery for white men as well as for colored. . . . The N.A.A.C.P. and other colored organizations might help bring pressure on congressmen from certain districts along this line. . . ."