Between the Covers

Hardcover. First edition. Thin octavo. 27pp. Illustrated with half-tone photographs. Illustrated brown cloth. Slight rubbing at the edges of the upper board, else near fine. Directory of prominent African-American citizens mostly from Essex County, New Jersey. The volume includes addresses, brief biographies, and portraits of 30 business owners, merchants, craftspersons, clergypersons, teachers, physicians, educators, etc.

Compiled by Sanford Bell Powell of Montclair in Essex County. A native of Virginia, Powell was educated at Hampton Institute and worked as a tailor and a Pullman porter before embarking on a successful career in insurance and as a traveling representative for a tailoring company. The "76 mile posts" in the title is a reference to the passing of 76 years since the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery. In the introduction, Powell writes:

"We have spent the greater part of our last seventy six years of freedom thinking of the past. Let us spend the next seventy six years thinking and preparing for the future. Where have we come from since 1865? We have starred in the five major walks of life: – Religious, Industrial, Professional, Social and Military. Yet, the world has been made poorer because there has not been available in book form an authentic biography of the 12 or more millions of colored citizens of the United States of America. This group of travelers found the elevator to success crowded and are using the stairway—the hard way. We have not been properly informed of the majority of our leading characters."

Powell addresses the problem by creating a directory of prominent black citizens. Powell describes his efforts in this way: "We shall attempt to turn the searchlight on all the worthy people of our race. If they be lifted up, may they draw all future generations upward to the highest goal that any race of people can attain." Appropriately, the front cover of the book depicts an amateurish illustration of a young woman and man ascending a stairway, guided by a flashlight from above.

Powell, who was well-traveled in the United States, may have had ambitions to create other local directories of leading African-American citizens. Beneath the cover illustration, within a box, are the words “Compiled by | Sanford Bell Powell | The State of | [blank space] | Blue Book,” perhaps he was hoping to finish a directory of the entire state of New Jersey. Black directories, especially those with a focus on business and professional people, are scarce from before the Second World War. *OCLC* locates seven copies (under the title “Colored American biography post register” [sic]), all, for some reason, located in Alabama and North Carolina.

Item #443786