(FREDERICK DOUGLASS.) National Equal Rights League. Citizenship Foundation Day / The Call of Douglass on his 105th Birthday. Printed handbill, 12 x 5¼ inches; mailing folds, light toning, minimal wear. With original stamped and postmarked mailing envelope addressed to the Rev. A.T. Stewart of Tyler, TX; the local postmaster has added to his address "(Colored) Baptist Church." Boston?, 1 February 1922
This handbill was issued as a circular letter "to our Pastors and Church Officers," urging the observance of the birthdays of Crispus Attucks and Frederick Douglass as holidays, in addition to Citizenship Foundation Day (the Battle of Bunker Hill) and the anniversary of the Battle of Fort Wagner, and promoting "the black man's fight for rights under the black man's auspices."
The National Equal Rights League was founded in 1864 with Frederick Douglass as a founding member. Their best-known officer in 1922 was Black newspaper editor and real estate investor William Monroe Trotter, who signs in type here as secretary.
Crispus Attucks Day had already been observed in Massachusetts since 1858, and was made a day of observance in New Jersey in 1949.
