I spied the bronze bust on a top shelf as I approached the stall in the antiques mall, but forgot it as soon as I entered and headed to see what was in the back…
Category: history
Promise of fair treatment made & broken at 1939 NY World’s Fair
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The newspaper pages were tucked behind a seemingly unrelated art print of a stone church. I was a bit interested in the artwork but was more intrigued by the newspaper. I assumed that it contained an…
For blacks, getting a home loan was tough in 1934 & still is
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, and Home
I read several articles last week on how African Americans and Latinos get turned down more often than whites for home-mortgage loans. The result is that many aren’t able to buy homes or lose the use…
Tuskegee Airmen 1943 “Buy War Bonds” poster
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, and Military
When the United States needed lots of cash to fund its role in World War II, it turned to its citizens to buy war bonds. Using propaganda posters, the country played on their patriotism, asking…
Inspecting an immigrant “girl” for work as domestic, 1870s style
Posted in Asian, Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The young woman stood hopefully, her eyes downcast, as a fashionable woman with a little girl looked her over. Behind the young woman were other women dourly etched in an illustration on the cover of…
Early 20th-century take on Wedgwood’s slave medallion
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The pencil drawing had all the hallmarks of the famous Wedgwood slave medallion from the 18th century. It showed an African American man, chains around his wrists and the words “Am I Not a Man…
I have no memories of the encyclopedia salesman. No one came to our door in rural Georgia trying to sell us encyclopedias that we could not afford. The only ones I ever saw were at…
Even a missing address couldn’t stop delivery of mail
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
How on earth did these letters ever make it to through the mail, both I and another auction-goer wondered as we thumbed through a stack of old letters in cardboard boxes on a table at…
The first time I saw Dick Gregory was during a speech he gave at Ohio State University where I was a graduate student in the 1970s. By then, he had given up his lean years as…