Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 69

Price Realized: $ 3,360
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
WRITTEN BY A NOTED BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.)--HAITI.TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. STRAKER, D. AUGUSTUS. Reflections on the Life and Times of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Negro Haytien. (sic). Frontispiece portrait of Toussaint after the noted Delpech portrait commissioned by William C. Nell. 48 pages.Tall 8vo, original printed pale blue-green stiff wrappers; small archival paper repair at the gutter between the title-page and portrait, otherwise a fine copy in a custom-made 1/4 morocco clamshell case. Columbia, South Carolina: For Augustus Straker, Esq, 1886
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first and only edition. oclc locates only seven copies, most in Southern institutions. A biography of Toussaint, the first by a black man, written from a most assuredly "black pride" point of view. Straker was born in Bridgetown, Barbados. His family immigrated to the U.S. when he was quite young. He attended Howard, where he obtained a degree in law. After working for the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury, Straker was elected to the South Carolina legislature in 1876, and was twice re-elected. He later became dean of law at a small African-American college in Columbia, S.C. Straker is best known for his involvement in one of the earliest civil rights cases. He was the first African-American attorney to appear before the Michigan Supreme Court (Ferguson v Gies 82 Mich 358 [1890]), arguing successfully that the "Separate but Equal" doctrine was in fact unconstitutional. The unanimous decision was used three years later in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v Ferguson (163 US 537 (1893).The ownership signature in this booklet is that of Charles James McDonald Forman (1863-1904), noted South Carolina collector and antiquary.