?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
NO OTHER COPY KNOWN GARVEY, MARCUS. All Thoughtful Negroes Who Desire to Prepare Against the Future and Who Seek Comfort and Happiness Will Invest in The Black Star Line Inc. Buy Your Shares Today. Large folio sheet, 14 x 25 inches, folded to form a double-sided 'accordion' style promotional prospectus, with six panels, each measuring 14 x 8-3/8 inches. With a full-length portrait of Garvey in one section, Captain Cockburn, First Commander of the Black Star Line in another, Jeremiah Curtain and George Tobias in another, a drawing of a proposed ship in yet another and two other officers of the Line in another; some wear at the folds, but still whole. New York, 1919
a rare survival, of which no other whole copy is known. The Black Star Line was to be Marcus Garvey's signal achievement in terms of offering the American Negro a chance at economic parity with whites. However it would prove to be the weapon used by his nemesis J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation to undo him. As early as 1917, Garvey and his allies advocating economic and social equality with whites had set off alarms within the U.S. Government. J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of a special unit devoted to rooting out 'seditious individuals or groups," and Marcus Garvey was high on Hoover's list. This elaborate brochure introduced Captain Cockburn, the Commander of the Frederick Douglass, the first ship of the Line, as well as the officers of the Line. The last page of the brochure is a subscription blank for ordering shares. An illustration of one panel of this piece appears the U.N.I.A Papers, edited by Robert Hill (University of California Press, 1983), vol. 1, page 136.
