Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 278

Unsold
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(LITERATURE.) Thomas H.B. Walker. J. Johnson or "The Unknown Man." 5 plates including one duplicate used as a frontispiece. [6], 192 pages. Octavo, 6¼ x 5 inches, publisher's cloth, minor wear and dampstaining; moderate wear to contents, inked stamps erased from three leaves with tasteful repairs. DeLand, FL: E.O. Painter Printing Co., [1915]
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Additional Details

One of several books by the Rev. Thomas Hamilton Beb Walker, an A.M.E. minister in Daytona Beach, FL. This novel was written in response to an anti-miscegenation tract by the man behind "Birth of a Nation," as "an answer to Mr. Thos. Dixon's Sins of the Fathers." It was described in the 1919 Negro Year Book as "the story of a foundling boy left upon the doorstep of an old Negro woman. It was difficult to tell whether he was white or a quadroon. A novel based on the race problem."

The illustrations are by John Henry Adams, a Black artist from Atlanta who taught at Philadelphia's Drexel Institute. He illustrated several issues of The Crisis. Two of the plates bear his printed signature, and the others are clearly in the same style. None traced at auction.