Black-Belt Diamonds

SIGNED and inscribed on front paste-down by Booker T Washington in the year of publication. "It is only as the black man produces something that makes markets of the world dependent on him for something will he find his rightful place": RARE SIGNED FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL BINDING OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S BLACK-BELT DIAMONDS, 1898, INSCRIBED, AND DATED BY HIM. First edition of these highly celebrated singular excerpts of Washington's early lectures and writings, drawn extensively from his Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks, including passages from Democracy and Education (1896), Southern Lynch Law (1893) and other influential works. Compiled in print for the first time and edited by prominent African American journalist and activist, Victoria Earle Matthews, "an instrumental figure in the social reform to 'uplift' African Americans." Black-Belt Diamonds, published two years before Washington's first autobiography, Story of My Life and Work, is a core assembly of "gems" from his earlier influential addresses and essays, issued the same year he delivered his famous Madison Square Garden address. Intended primarily to a black audience, Black-Belt Diamonds additionally features his influential 1895 speech, often called the Atlanta Compromise, delivered before a primarily white audience, wherein he claimed that members of his race would content themselves with living "by the productions of our hands." With frontispiece portrait of Washington. Introduction by publisher T. Thomas Fortune. "Copyright, 1898, By Victoria Earle Matthews" on copyright page. Text fine, Re-backed, with original spine laid-down, small sections of cloth lacking. Toning to endpapers, perhaps from glue residue. Scattered thumbsoiling. No writings or markings of any kind. A very good copy, rare signed. Book # vP2152. $6000. We specialize in Rare and Signed Ayn Rand, and other legends and landmarks. 1.24