Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -
/

Sale 2697 - Lot 328

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(POLITICS.) Scrapbook on the career of Congressman Arthur Wergs Mitchell. 53 scrapbook pages. Quarto, 12¼ x 9 inches, original string-bound boards; mostly disbound, leaves worn especially at edges, minor dampstaining, many clippings captioned in manuscript, a few paper clip stains. Various places, 1934-1937
Request Condition Report Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The first wave of African-Americans in Congress during reconstruction were all Republicans. Arthur Wergs Mitchell (1883-1964), who represented the 1st District of Illinois in Congress from 1935 to 1943, was the first Democrat. This scrapbook of his achievements was apparently kept by a niece in his native Alabama, with clippings from major Black newspapers such as the Chicago World, Washington Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier; white newspapers in Birmingham, AL; and some of his speeches published in the Congressional Record. They date from early in his first Congressional race through 1937.

Other ephemera includes: a photostat of a letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Mitchell, 7 March 1935; two of Mitchell's Congressional bills (supporting Pennsylvania's militia of "colored troops," and memorializing Arctic explorer Matthew Hensen). A worn campaign flier from 1935, "DePriest and the Negro Gold Star Mother's," attacks Mitchell's opponent for allowing an insult to mothers of Black World War One casualties (none in OCLC). A clipping about his attendance at Chicago's Jackson Day dinner is accompanied by a manuscript note: "I paid $50.00 for this dinner. A.W.M." Among the many illustrated newspaper clippings, Mitchell can be seen riding a burro in Tijuana and throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game. A series of May 1937 clippings detail how he was removed from a segregated Pullman car in Arkansas--and his ensuing lawsuit.

Laid in is an 8 x 10-inch photograph of Mitchell, dressed casually in front of an elegant home, with his arms draped over a fence. It is signed by noted Black photographer Addison N. Scurlock of Washington, and has moderate foxing and wear, and rubber cement remnants on verso.

The volume was apparently kept by the congressman's niece Harriette Beecher Mitchell (1919-2007), whose name is written at the head of one of the documents. She was the daughter of John W. Mitchell (born 1881), who appears frequently as a correspondent in the Arthur W. Mitchell Papers at the Chicago History Museum.

Also in This Catalogue