Dallas: Don Gilbert / Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce, 1948.
Price: $4,500.00
Hardcover. First edition. Small quarto. 356pp. Profusely illustrated from photographs. Red cloth printed in black. Modest fraying at the extremities of the cloth, front hinge a touch tender, about very good, and internally near fine. A rare and highly informative city guide for the African-American citizens of Dallas in the post-War years. Edited and published by Don Gilbert, who also published *Applause*, a Dallas-based African-American magazine beginning in 1933, this was the second and last Dallas directory, and the only one published by Gilbert who herein thanks the "zealous citizens who made this initial effort possible."
The directory is copiously illustrated with photographic advertisements featuring local businesses and business people, most of them full-page efforts touting restaurants, schools, banks, insurance companies, beauty shops, hotels, theaters ("Star Theatre - South's Finest New Colored Movie House"), mortuaries, a local baseball team, the Dallas Rebels who thanks their "Colored Fans who deserve the best in sports entertainment" and "Negro Achievement Days" at the Texas State Fair. Also includes advertisements from national and regional companies such as Pepsi, 7-Eleven, Oak Farms Dairy, and Mobil Oil, and features local business owners, pastors, policemen, attorneys, college officials. Also includes a national roster of "Negro Chambers of Congress" and a city-by-city listing of all the municipal branches in Texas.
Also includes an "Introduction to Dallas" and a history of race relations in the city, and extensive illustrated ads for traditionally black colleges: Jarvis Christian College, Prairie View A&M, Wiley College, Paul Quinn College, and Langston University. The majority of the directory is a listing of black citizens of the city with home addresses, occupations, and phone numbers where applicable.
One of the best-executed African-American city guides of the 20th Century, composed in a southern municipality known for its history of racial division. Exceptionally uncommon.
Item #443192
