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In belated celebration of the election of our first African American President, we are featuring signed autobiographies of some of the major figures of the struggle for civil rights in America.
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a major American writer of essays, novels, plays, and poetry. I well remember reading in 1960 his essay "Fifth Avenue, Uptown", in which he explained to the (largely White) readership of Esquire magazine the despair and rage of Blacks in the ghetto. It was, and still is, very powerful stuff. We have a signed mass-market paperback copy of Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin's first-published collection of essays.
Julian Bond (b. 1940) is a long-time prominent civil rights activist who served for 20 years in the Georgia legislature and has been Chairman of the NAACP since 1998. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he became the first African American to be proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States (which he declined), and has since been spoken of as a likely candidate for President. We have a signed first edition of his A Time to Speak, a Time to Act: The Movement in Politics.
Marie Brookter (1931–2009) grew up in Louisiana. When a beloved cousin was gunned down for attempting to register to vote, she decided to go North. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she worked in the Presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and George McGovern, became a television producer, and was a life-long political activist. Read her story in our signed first edition of Here I Am--Take My Hand.
Clara Luper (b. 1923) was a leader of the fight to end segregation in Oklahoma. She personally helped to integrate hundreds of drugstore lunch counters, restaurants, cafes, theaters, hotels, and churches in Oklahoma City; and was one of the first African American teachers to teach in the newly court-ordered desegrated schools in Oklahoma. She tells her story in Behold the Walls, of which we have a signed first edition.
Alex Haley (1921–1992) was an African American writer whose best-known novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family was based loosely on his own family history. Haley garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Roots, and became history's best-selling African-American author. In 1977, Roots was adapted into a television miniseries that reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Our copy is a signed mass-market paperback.
To purchase one of these items, select the link to the right. To see related items, browse by category: Liberation: Slavery, Race & Ethnicity. |
