?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(BUSINESS.) Records of the Green Book-approved Eggleston Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Approximately 60 items (0.2 linear feet) in one box; generally moderate wear. Richmond, VA, 1954-1966
The Black-owned Eggleston Hotel & Motel in Richmond, Virginia was a mainstay in the highly segregated travel industry. It featured a dining room and dance hall as well as rooms for the weary traveler. Its proprietors were Neverette A. and Sally J. Eggleston from at least 1951 onward.
The hotel was of course featured in the famous Negro Motorist Green Book. It can be seen listed on page 72 of the 1949 edition, conveniently offered in this same auction as lot 157 (from a different consignor). Many anecdotes of the hotel are shared in a 26 February 2019 article on the WRIC.com website, "Hidden History: Jackson Ward Hotel Offered Safe Haven to Black Travelers During Segregation." Guests included Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Muhammad Ali. The owner's son recalled that "We fed Martin Luther King the day he was going to Washington. He stopped off, my dad fixed breakfast for him and his entourage." The hotel closed in the 1980s.
This lot features a file of approximately 47 typescript or manuscript documents relating to the hotel, 1954-1965. These include a checkbook; insurance documents; agreements to provide lodging for nearby military bases, including "lodgings to be furnished colored applicants for the U.S. Navy"; an inspection report; a vending machine agreement; receipts for linen service, kitchen and building supplies; and a room rate card.
The lot also includes ephemera which does not relate directly to the Eggleston Hotel: an employment packet for the Richmond Veterans Administration hospital; a circa 1960s "American Traveler's Guide to Negro History"; brochures for two similar segregated hotels, the University Motel in Atlanta and the Dunbar Hotel in Washington, DC; brochures for the 1965 and 1966 conferences of the all-Black Nationwide Hotel Association, both featuring President Ellis Marsalis Sr. (the grandfather of Wynton and his brothers); a small invitation to a 1962 meeting of the Crusade for Voters at Virginia Union University; a typescript 1964 information packet on "The Civil Rights Record of Lyndon B. Johnson"; and a typescript 1964 statement by the Commission on Civil Rights.
