(CIVIL RIGHTS) Willard Leake Twelve Reasons Why the Negro in

Sale 2631 - Lot 151

Price Realized: $ 625

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Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Willard Leake. Twelve Reasons Why the Negro in the South Should be Given His Right of Franchisement. Handbill, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches; two horizontal folds, toning on verso. Shreveport, LA, [1946]

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An argument for voting rights, a decade before this became a successful national crusade. It offers accommodationist assurances to the political leadership: "The Negro would not expect or seek Social Equality through it. . . . Most Negroes are now sufficiently intelligent to use their Franchisement correctly and constructively. . . . Franchisement would inspire love and loyalty to the Stars and Stripes." However, front and center is the most basic argument: "Because the Constitution of the United States entitles him to it."

Willard Leake (1906-1967) was a pastor in Shreveport from at least 1930 to 1956. The Jackson Advocate newspaper in Mississippi published the contents of this "widely circulated pamphlet" on the front page of their 8 June 1946 issue, calling Leake a "nationally famed A.M.E. church evangelist and recognized as among the twelve leading preachers in America." We can trace no other examples at auction, in OCLC, or anywhere else.