[African Americana]. [Michigan]

Little Known History of...the Negro [caption title]

Detroit: 1956. Large-format pictorial wall calendar on twelve sheets, each sheet measuring 19.5 x 13.5 inches, bound at top with a strip of black plastic. Minor wrinkling and staining, small hole in the last leaf costing a bit of one illustration. Very good. Item #3463

An interesting and ephemeral wall calendar created in 1956 as a promotional for the Detroit Metropolitan Mutual Assurance Company, an African-American-owned life insurance company. The copyright notice is dated in that year and claimed by Charles C. Diggs, Sr., the founder and president of DMMAC. The calendar features notable African descendants from America and around the world. The first month repeats the old Southern white claim that Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first Vice President, was an African American. Hamlin is identified here as “Negro Vice-President of the United States.” Other months are devoted to a variety of subjects such as Ida Wells Barnett, Reverend Patrick Francis Healy, two local civil rights leaders in Detroit - Francis M. Dent and Willis M. Graves, Fulgencio Batista (“Cuba’s Negro President”), “Three African Popes,” and Queen Charlotte Sophia of England (“Negro Ancestor of Present Day Royalty"), among others. The individual days of the calendar throughout the year are populated with facts regarding major moments in the history of the African American experience, i.e., January 1 - "New Year's Day - 863, Negro slavery abolished by law." January 5 reads, "1943, Dr. George W. Carver, scientist died at Tuskegee Institute. Carver Day, established by act of Congress."

Charles C. Diggs was an important African American political and business leader in greater Detroit. Over the course of his career, he operated a funeral home, helped found a cemetery for Black people, and created the DMMAC to provide life insurance to African Americans shut out of traditional insurance opportunities through discrimination. Diggs became active politically, as well, becoming the first African American Democrat elected to the Michigan Senate in 1936. He worked for civil rights from within the system, passing his signature legislation in 1937, known as the "Diggs Law," which punished discrimination based on race, color, or creed as a misdemeanor. Diggs' son, Charles, Jr. became the first Black man from Michigan to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. No copies of the present version in OCLC, with only one copy of the previous year's calendar at the University of Kansas.

Price: $850.00