The title was “Booker T. Washington: The Master Mind of A Child of Slavery” by Frederick E. Drinker, and the cover contained an embossed image of the noted educator and force behind the founding of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, Washington was a major black voice in the country.

Booker T. Washington with his wife Margaret and sons Ernest Davidson and Booker T. Jr.

Surprisingly, the cover of the book was intact, which is sometimes not the case in the many books I come across. I’m always on the hunt for books relating to African American history, and have been lucky enough to find a few (even some non-related books about my native South).

I flipped through the book, glancing first at the contents with chapters that told of Washington’s birth, his rise to prominence, his dining with President Theodore Roosevelt, his death and his legacy. As soon as I got past those, I came across one of the best features of the book – pages of photographs of him, his family and scenes from Tuskegee.

I was struck not only by the photos themselves but the types of photos that were chosen. Most were of Washington and Tuskegee students working in or harvesting the gardens and fields of the institute. They were testimony to his philosophy that industriousness and self-reliant were the key to African Africans’ digging a way out of the predicament they had been forced into at the time. He preached an attitude of subordination to whites, a “don’t upset the status quo” philosophy that endeared him to white philanthropists with money to finance his school along with some blacks, but riled scholars and others like W.E.B. DuBois.

Booker T. Washington hoeing potatoes and feeding chickens.

While Washington was preaching conciliation to whites, DuBois was demanding civil and political rights from the country. He sought those rights through his writings, speeches, the short-lived Niagara Movement, a predecessor to the NAACP, and Crisis magazine, the NAACP publication that he edited.

The book at auction was a memorial edition published in 1915, soon after Washington died at Tuskegee. It was a paean to the man, meant to show “what one man born in slavery and obscurity accomplished by perseverance and sheer force of personal effort, which shines forth as a Beacon Light for every Colored American and as a guide to further development.”

One of the first photos was of Washington, his wife Margaret and sons Ernest Davidson and Booker T. Jr. posing outside their home at Tuskegee. I realized that I knew little about the rest of Washington’s family. The caption didn’t mention Margaret’s name, but she was his third wife and helped raise his two sons, the children of his second wife who had died in 1889. Margaret was a graduate of Fisk University, a teacher at Tuskegee, and had founded schools for African American boys and girls. Booker T. Jr. became a real estate broker and Davidson was a fund-raiser at Tuskegee. The photo was taken by Underwood & Underwood, which I knew as a company that made stereoscope cards.

Here are some of the photos from the book:

Washington and his son Davidson picking greens in the garden.

The book by Drinker, and Washington’s body in a casket, surrounded by flowers.

Girls in a gym class at the college. Photo by Underwood & Underwood.

A physiology class and a geometry class. Photos by Underwood & Underwood.

Students in a canning class, and digging sweet potatoes in a field.

Students learning tile-setting, and harnessing and saddle-making.

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I was delighted to find a book and pamphlet published by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the first black Greek-letter sorority founded in 1908 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The AKAs celebrated their 100^th anniversary in 2008 with a huge convention/boule in the city. And Mattel even came out with a special AKA Barbie doll to commemorate the centennial.

I’m not an AKA (I pledged Sigma Gamma Rho in college and never got around to joining a graduate chapter). But I’m pleased with the good work that all four black sororities – including Delta Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi Beta – do through their community projects. As I perused the AKA book, it seemed that they’d been doing good the first 50 years, too. One chapter in the book focused on a health project begun in the 1930s that grew out of a project to upgrade the standards of rural teachers.

The auction book, a first edition from 1958, is a history of the organization by educator Marjorie H. Parker called “Alpha Kappa Alpha 1908-1958.” Parker went on to write four more editions of the book, the latest in 1999. Parker died in 2006. (Her photo at right is from the AKA website.)

Parker had been commissioned by the AKAs in December 1956 to write the history. She was an associate professor of education at the District of Columbia Teachers College and a visiting lecturer in history and philosophy at Howard. In August 1958, she became basileus/president of the sorority when the 50^th anniversary convention was held in Washington.

The book included all the boules, officers and chapters of the sorority.

The book was published by the sorority itself. It still had its pink dust jacket with the green ivy leaf (there were some tears at the top). The hardcover had some marks on the front and back, and the book itself was slightly warped. The owner had written her name on the outside edges of the pages: Ivy Barbara Inez McCray. She wrote on the pamphlet that was a member of the Zeta chapter.

The 24-page pamphlet appeared to be part of a Negro Heritage Series. This one was “Negro Women in the Judiciary,” produced by the AKAs in 1968. According to the introduction, this was the “first in a series of publications on the Negro heritage of individual achievement against great odds.” The pamphlets were distributed in schools and organizations as stories of inspiration.

Profiled were 10 black female judges, including Juanita Kidd Stout (Pennsylvania Supreme Court), the first black woman elected judge in the United States, and Constance Baker Motley (New York), a federal court judge who initially made her mark as a civil rights attorney in Brown v. Board of Education.

This was a good find, especially since a lot of our history has been lost or wasn’t written.

Also, read about Bernice Greene, one of the earliest members of the AKAs who was profiled as one of our Mighty Black Women.

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 As the auctioneer got around to the books, first asking buyers to choose the ones they wanted and clearing the table in the process, I spotted it. “It” was a small thick book, a little tattered, with a burgundy and beige cover. In gold script was the title: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

I picked it up and flipped through the pages. The paper inside the front cover had turned beige and three previous owners (apparently) had written their names: Beatrice G. Dyke in fountain-pin ink. E. Speers in pencil. Ida E. Allen, also in pin & ink.

The book was the Brunswick Edition, printed in 1893 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

I held onto the book, afraid to put it down, waiting to hand it to the auctioneer so I could bid on it. As I waited, a man standing to the right of me asked my auction buddy if I had bid on the book. She asked me; I said not yet. Darn. I had a competitor.

I handed the book to the auctioneer, he started with a $5 bid and asked for 7.50. My competitor took the 7.50 bid. Then the auctioneer motioned to me for $10 (I nodded yes), then him for $12.50 and then me for $15 and then him for 17.50 and then me for 20, and then him for 22.50. He did not nod. Instead, he backed off.

I got the book, but for $15 more than I expected. It’s a nice little book.  I don’t think I’ve ever read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” but I do know its history.

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