Despite Discrimination: Some Aspects of Negro Life in the United States of America.
[Wilberforce, Ohio]: Wilberforce, Ohio Branch of the American Association of University Women, 1949. 10” x 6¾”. Thin card wrappers. Pp. 88. Very good minus: wrappers gently chipped, worn, creased and soiled; damp stain and/or associated creasing to lower portion of all leaves; dogears to first third; penciled name to front.
This is a powerful treatise on racial discrimination produced by the Wilberforce branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) at the height of an AAUW integration battle being led by Mary Church Terrell. Importantly, this copy shows signs of ownership by African American activist, educator and journalist Ella Barksdale Brown.
AAUW was founded in 1882 as the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. By 1946, more than 90,000 members strong, it had become the largest women's educational organization in the country. Mary Church Terrell had been a member in the early 1900s and applied for reinstatement to the Washington, D.C. branch after a lapse in 1946. She was denied on the condition of her race, launching a three-year rift between the branch and the national group. At the 1949 national convention, AAUW bylaws were amended to mandate that any woman holding an approved degree from an accredited institution was entitled to membership in both the national association and its local branches; the D.C. group seceded to protest integration and Terrell was appointed at the national level.
Published the same year, this work of the Wilberforce, Ohio AAUW branch requested “all who read this little book of facts to consider it as a part of the Negro's passport to first class citizenship in the American way of life.” It aimed to “present objectively existing barriers that deter or prevent normal social development and progress for this group . . . offer recommendations for the solution of the problem and testify to a faith in the triumph of human brotherhood born of increased knowledge and understanding.”
The book touched upon the “general conditions,” economic and political status of the race, as well as roles, deeds, challenges and triumphs in education, the arts and national defense. It listed Black leaders of note along with “organizations in the interest of the Negro's social welfare” and offered a six-page reading list of pamphlets, periodicals, bulletins and books. While not explicitly stated, the author has been recognized as Mollie E. Dunlap, a founding member of the first African American library association, former instructor and university librarian at Wilberforce and driving force for civil rights within the American Library Association.
This copy's cover bears the penciled name of Ella Barksdale Brown, a member of the first graduating class of Spelman College in Atlanta and the educator credited with introducing African American studies into Jersey City public schools. She was the first woman appointed to the Hudson County Board of Elections, wrote for the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News and was instrumental in the designation of Crispus Attucks day in New Jersey in 1949.
An important work by Black women educators at a crucial juncture in discrimination in the field. OCLC shows 19 holdings. Very good -. Item #9521
Price: $675.00