Mar 21, 2013 - Sale 2308

Sale 2308 - Lot 387

Price Realized: $ 2,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
CREATED FOR RAILROAD PORTERS & HOTEL WORKERS (PERIODICALS.) The Gazetteer and Guide. An Illustrated Colored American Publication. Volume I, Number I. Copious illustrations from photographs etc.; 40 pages. Small, tall 4to, original pictorial wrappers; Library of Congress copyright accession stamp, 1944 de-accession stamp and publisher's "sample" stamp on front cover; archival paper repairs to front cover. Buffalo, New York, 1901
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volume I, number I, a possibly unique copy of this important magazine created for negro railroad porters and hotel workers, founded and edited by James Alexander Ross (1867-1949). Ross, lawyer, politician, real-estate broker, journalist and editor was born in Kentucky, and raised in Illinois. In the mid-1890's Ross moved to Buffalo New York where he became active in numerous endeavors, including taking charge of the Negro exhibit of the Pan-American Exhibition, held there. He was Vice President of the National Colored Democratic League, and turned down the position of Consul to Haiti in 1893. The "Monthly Gazetteer and Guide" was a very ambitious magazine, well laid out and sparing no expense in printing. It was well-illustrated with advertisements appealing to those who would be visiting the Exhibition. Since this inaugural issue coincided with the opening of the Pan American Exhibition, there is a long article "to be continued" about the Negro exhibit, titled "Advance of the Negro" chronicling the progress of the race since the end of the Civil War. A column titled "Railroad Porters' Notes," is quite detailed and presages the publications of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Not seen by Danky and no copies at all are located. But this might be for several reasons, one being that this magazine is cited in a couple of places with several different names, eventually evolving into a quarterly called "For You, Magazine and Gazetteer and Guide" that lasted at least until a year before Ross' death in 1949. Ross himself called it the "the oldest magazine published by a race with a new name." Between 1901 and 1948, it changed names at least four times. See Penelope Bulluck "The Afro-American Periodical Press 1838-1909," pages 179-182.