Portraits in Color.
Inscribed By The Founder Of The NAACP
Ovington, Mary White. Portraits in Color. New York: Viking, 1927.
8vo.; gold and purple patterned boards, stamped in gilt; spine lightly discolored, extremities rubbed.
First edition: Blockson 3775. A landmark presentation copy, inscribed: For W.E.B. DuBois, from Mary White Ovington, October 10, 1927. The only ‘Portrait’ written with furious energy after saturating myself in your writing.
Born in New York of abolitionist parents, Mary White Ovington—a white woman—dedicated her life to the social and political equality of black Americans and the elimination of racism. She is best known for her work with the NAACP, of which she was a primary founder in 1909. She served as the organization’s Executive Secretary in 1910-11; from 1919, Ovington served as Chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors. In addition to being a fine administrator, Ovington was an active fundraiser for the group: she was responsible for drawing to the fold a diverse group of philanthropic and political supporters, including Julius Rosenwald, Joel and Arthur Spingarn, Fanny Garrison Villard, Jane Addams, Ida Wells Barnett, Lillian Wald, and others (Black and White Sat Down Together: Reminiscences of an NAACP Founder, by Mary White Ovington, NY: The Feminist Press, 1995, 156).
Ovington’s friendship with W.E.B. DuBois began in 1903, when they met at a progressive lecture. The two became colleagues after 1910, when DuBois joined the NAACP as the Director of Publicity and Research; it was Ovington who came up with “The Crisis” as the working title for the NAACP’s cultural-literary magazine, which DuBois edited. Ovington’s Portraits in Color contains profiles of a score of black activists, including, predictably, DuBois. In a perhaps not entirely impartial review in The Crisis, DuBois commended Portraits in Color as “an honest and moving piece of work...with the deep sense of sympathy and understanding, the human and artistic touch.”
This copy, from DuBois’s library, bears his handwritten library number (“920”) on the spine and front pastedown; various sections of Chapter 7, on “W.E. Burghart DuBois,” have been lightly underscored in pencil, presumably by DuBois himself.
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