(BUSINESS) Advertising prospectus for the Afro American Buil

Sale 2503 - Lot 197

Price Realized: $ 875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(BUSINESS.) Advertising prospectus for the Afro American Building Loan and Real Estate Company. 3 pages, 5 x 3 1/2 inches, on one folding sheet; moderate wear and soiling, pencil calculations on final blank. [Alabama?], circa 1907

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The company's president and general manager was Arthur Wergs Mitchell (1883-1968), who had attended the Tuskegee Institute and later served as the only African-American in Congress from 1935 to 1943. The company's activities are discussed in a recent biography of Mitchell by Dennis Norden, pages 9-12. Based in Sumter County in western Alabama, they built a school to attract African American families who had no other formal access to education, then enlisted the students to work on clearing the surrounding land for sale. This prospectus boasts that "this is the only Building, Loan and Real Estate Company in the South organized and operated solely by Negroes. The chief object of this company is to fill a long felt need of our people"--to "sell you land on which to build you a home, furnish money and do your building for you." We trace no other material from this short-lived but significant company at auction or in OCLC.