Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 233

Price Realized: $ 500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(LABOR.) Charles H. Houston. Brief Record of Racial Hostility toward Negroes by Railway Labor Unions (wrapper title). [2], 11, [1] pages. 4to (12 x 9 inches), printed front wrapper, quite worn, lacking rear wrapper; vertical fold throughout, staining to final leaf, otherwise minor wear. Roanoke, VA, 22 July 1949

Additional Details

A timeline documenting dozens of instances of segregation and discrimination perpetrated by the white Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and related unions, spanning from 1863 through 1944. The rear page reproduces a 1914 letter from 4 union leaders, protesting the use of Black engineers and brakemen on the Panama Canal Railway, and making repeated use of the "n-word." The timeline's caption bears the expanded title "Brief Record of Some Major Acts of Racial Hostility toward Negroes by the Train, Engine and Yard Service National Railway Labor Unions," and explains that it was prepared by influential lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston for the Fisk Institute of Race Relations. It is prefaced with a cover circular letter by S.H. Clark of the Association of Colored Railway Trainmen.

None in OCLC, Blockson, or Afro-Americana. We can find only one other example, cited as part of the papers of Samuel H. Clark in private possession in Virginia (see McNeil, "Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights," page 283).