Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 226

Price Realized: $ 375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(HISTORY.) Famous People in Negro History. 9 pages on 8 sheets. 4to, 11 x 8 1/2 inches, stapled in upper corner; minor edge wear. No place: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, February 1955
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Additional Details

This packet consists mostly of reproductions of comic book-style art and profiles of a diverse cast of figures in Black history: Peter Salem, Ira Aldridge, Phyllis Wheatley, Maggie Lena Walker, Joseph Cinque, Jessie L. Brown, Denmark Vesey, John Brown, Jan Matzeliger, George Washington Carver, Lucy Craft Laney, and Harriet Tubman. The final leaf has the Bill of Rights printed in red and black, with a list of "Great Dates in the History of the American Negro" printed on back.

This was "issued as a community service" for Negro History Week by Local 428 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represented employees of the Sonotone Corporation, a hearing aid manufacturer in Elmsford, NY. The union was originally affiliated with the left-leaning Congress of Industrial Organizations--and was expelled by the CIO for being too far left in 1949. It was known in the 1950s for its advocacy of equal voting rights and for negotiating non-discrimination clauses into its contracts, unusual for the era. We trace no other copies in OCLC or elsewhere.