New York: Edward O. Jenkins Sons, 1886.
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Hardcover. First edition. Octavo. 107pp., illustrations. Bound in modern quarter calf and gray paper over boards with black morocco spine label gilt. The very edge of the front fly has been archivally strengthened, affecting one letter in the inscription, a light dampstain in the bottom corner of the text block, still a handsome, very good copy of a rare book. Inscribed by the author to the wife of African-American journalist T. Thomas Fortune: "To Mrs. Carrie Fortune, Yours very truly, T. McCants Stewar[t]. Feb. 13th, '86." Thomas McCants Stewart (also known as T. McCants), born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1853, was an exceptional 19th Century African-American. As a lawyer, minister, emigrationist, writer, and lecturer, his life intersected with many of the best-known figures of antebellum and Reconstruction America: Booker T. Washington, T. Thomas Fortune, and Francis J. Grimké, to name a few. His biography was bound up with the history of black life in Charleston, the early years of Howard University, immigrationist ventures in Liberia, and the development of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in New York City. His portrait appeared in the landmark book meant to illustrate the progress of the race: *Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising* by Rev. William J. Simmons (Cleveland, Ohio: George M. Rewell & Company 1887). He has been the subject of a fairly recent biography: *African-American Odyssey: The Stewarts, 1853-1963* by Albert S. Broussard (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 1998). T. Thomas Fortune was the foremost African-American journalist of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Using his editorial position at a series of black newspapers in New York City, Fortune established himself as a leading spokesman and defender of the rights of African-Americans in both the South and the North. He married Carrie C. Smiley in the late 1870s, but the marriage dissolved in the early 1900s (two children, Jessica and Frederick, survived to adulthood). An exceptionally uncommon title, inscribed copies are rare. We've had one other, inscribed to a relative the day before this copy was inscribed.
Item #343684
