Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916. Good. 9½" x 6¼". Green cloth over boards, t.e.g. Pp. xx, 331 + author frontispiece + 15 (of 15) unnumbered plates interspersed + laid in two page circular letter. Good: Julius Rosenwald gift bookplate on FFEP; hinges cracked; covers moderately soiled; a few leaves adhered together; scattered spotting, tears and edge wear. Owner signature in two spots.

This is a reasonably common book made special by its history of ownership and association.

The book, a biography of Booker T. Washington, was co-written by Emmett Jay Scott, Washington's personal secretary, key adviser and Secretary of the Tuskegee Institute, and Lyman Beecher Stowe, grandson and biographer of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It has a foreword by Robert Moton, Principal of Tuskegee Institute, and a preface by President Theodore Roosevelt.

This copy features two signatures of its owner, Mrs. Nellie Lee Elmore. Elmore, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, was a teacher and supervisor of a small school for Black children in Bay Minette, Alabama. She was an inspiration to her young student William E. Cox, who went on to become co-editor of Black Issues in Higher Education. Cox was also co-author of The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education (J. Wiley & Sons, 2004); Elmore was one of the book's dedicatees, and Cox thanked her in the book's introduction as well.

The bookplate to this copy reads, "Compliments of Julius Rosenwald, Chicago." There is also a laid-in circulatory letter from Samuel B. McCormick, Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, to Rosenwald, no doubt used as promotion for the book. The letter read in part, "All I can do is thank you for the book. The reading of it has given me pleasure as I said; but much more it has given me courage, hope, enduring patience and inspiration."

Reasonably well-represented in institutions. A unique copy of an important work.