Brown Americans.
[Roosevelt, Eleanor]. Embree, Edwin R. Brown Americans. The Story of a Tenth of the Nation. New York: The Viking Press, 1943.
8vo.; rust cloth, spine bumped; rust dust-jacket, lightly edgeworn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Embree’s sequel to his groundbreaking Brown America. Embree notes in the rear that: “this book is not merely a revision of Brown America, which was first published in 1931. While it brings facts and figures up to date, it is really a new writing about a fresh stage in the growth of America’s Negro minority” (p. 230). A presentation copy, inscribed: To Mrs. Roosevelt a friend indeed of Brown Americans and of all Americans from Edwin R. Embree/October-1943. Embree’s inscription pays testimony to Eleanor’s continued efforts to bring the problems of black Americans to her husband’s attention. President Roosevelt’s civil rights policies improved, due to her influence, after his 1935 refusal to support an anti-lynching bill. He garners praise from Embree for Executive Order #8802, “banning discrimination in defense industries and appointing a committee to make the order effective” (p. 118). The order was the consequence of a multi-racial conference called after a Washington march was threatened to protest the rampant prejudice in the defense industries.
Embree, president of the Julias Rosenwald Fund dedicated to the “betterment of the condition of the Negro in America,” was also a leading scholar in the theory of race relations. His book presents “the basic history of the Negro’s origin, development, culture, and courageous battle for liberty and self respect.”
(#3527)
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