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259

Booker T. Washington Manuscript

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:0.00 USD
Booker T. Washington Manuscript
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Historically important autograph manuscript, unsigned, by Booker T. Washington, penned on verso of two sheets of stationery imprinted “Methodist Episcopal Church / Stamford, Conn.” No date, but June 1906. Entitled “Much Ado About Nothing,'' manuscript reads in part, ''A set of Afroamericans got a provision in the Rail Road rate bill providing that accommodations in the Rail Road should be eaquil [sic] for all races…Another set [of] Afroamericans got into their heads that there should be no such provision in the bill…there is no use for any hysteria or indulging in any the usual Boston crazy business in connection with the matter. [three diagonal lines are drawn through the concluding lines] In our opinion it matters little whether the provision is in our [sic, or] out, so far as its affecting our interest. For example there is a law in the District of Columbia, the old Civil Rights bill, which forbids discrimination in hotels restaurants, theatres but every body knows that these laws amount to nothing.” Manuscript concerns the 1906 Hepburn railway rate bill, and specifically the Warner-Foraker amendment guaranteeing equal railroad passenger facilities for blacks. Washington at first lobbied for the amendment and then, learning that a group of blacks were traveling from Boston to fight it, Washington reversed himself and lobbied against the amendment. The phraseology in “Much Ado About Nothing” seems to indicate that it was written between 3 June 1906 when the amendment was removed, and 29 June 1906 when, in Washington’s words, “the Rail Road rate bill” became the Railway Rate Act. Two page document measures 7.25” x 10” on separate sheets, with an overall framed size of 33.25” x 31.5”.
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