First edition. Ten pages with half-tone illustrations. 8vo. Publisher's red printed wrappers. 107, [1]pp. Chicago, August, 1942.
A very rare copy of the first edition of this sporadically-published - yet extraordinary - almanac.
This powerful enterprise commences with a calendar listing an important event in history involving someone of African descent, or a facet of African American life, on each day of the year. It commences, obviously, with the Emancipation Proclamation for 1 January. The entry for 2 January reads: "1831 - JO. ANDERSON - a slave at Steels Tavern, Va., was co-inventor of the first mechanical reaper." February 8: "1938 - THE GUILTY SOUTH still bars the play, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" February 21: "1938 - ANTI-LYNCHING BILL set aside after southern democrats filibustered for four weeks." February 28: "GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON wrote complimentary letter to Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Poetess." Brown creates a kaleidoscopic effect showing how African life is integral to American life and cannot be separated.
This is followed by an A-Z of important people, including the likes of Benjamin Banneker, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Marcus Garvey. With Askia (Emperor of Songai), Cetshwayo, and Pedro I (first emperor of Brazil), there is a whole separate section of Kings and Queens of African descent. Along with Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable, and Toussaint Louverture, some under-celebrated names appear such as Chicago lawyers William E. King and Wendell E. Green, the cosmetics entrepreneur, Mrs C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove), as well as the Australian boxer, Peter Jackson.
There is an account of the historic all-Black community of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and then more ominous sections such as "Things they don't want us to know", "Things they don't want to teach us in School", "Things our Children Should Know", and "Things the Prejudiced Press Won't Print." This is followed by a list of over a hundred different crops and commodities reliant upon enslaved labour.
But this amounts to little more than a taster of this remarkable publication, which concludes with a pictorial supplement featuring portraits of Marian Anderson, Sojourner Truth, Claude Harvard, Elijah McCoy, Norbert Rillieux, Robert Pelham, Joan E. Metzlinger, Andrew Beard, Grantville Woods, Joe Louis, John C. Robinson and many others.
OCLC locates copies at Temple and Tuskegee only.
