In the Land of Jim Crow

by Ray Sprigle 

First edition.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1949 

Hardback is overall in VERY GOOD+ condition, with a GOOD DJ under Mylar.

• Red cloth covers are mostly clean, with black ink titles.  Boards show a little edgewear.  Corners are sharp. 
• Spine has black text and is bright with firm ends.
• Binding is strong. 
• Pastedowns and feps show a little toning. 
• Interior is gently age-toned, more so at margins; corner of pg. 51 turned down.  See photos.  
• Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• Text block edges have ink at head. 
• DJ looks nice behind Mylar and is backed with archival paper.
• Close examination of DJ reveals scuffing, edgewear and bumping at head and foot with small chips, closed tears, chipped corners, some staining to back cover.  See photos. 
• PS2024.0731

215 pages. 5.5 x 8 inches

A very good first edition, in the original dust jacket, of the book length version of Ray Sprigle's journalistic accounts from May 1948.  Covers and binding are straight and true, text block is a little age toned.

Ray Sprigle (1886-1957) was a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  In May 1948, at age 61 and using the name "James Crawford," Sprigle began a thirty-day, four-thousand-mile undercover mission through the Deep South.  Passing as a black man, he was supported by the NAACP and accompanied by John Wesley Dobbs, a prominent political leader and early civil rights activist from Atlanta.  Dobbs took Sprigle into many black communities and introduced him to people he otherwise would never have been able to meet or interview.

When Sprigle returned to Pittsburgh he wrote 21 powerful and passionate first-person articles that exposed white readers to the oppression, discrimination and humiliation that 10 million black Americans were being subjected to every day by the South's system of legal segregation.  The series was featured on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under the title I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days.  Sprigle's series was nationally syndicated and carried by about 15 other newspapers, before being published in book form. 

First edition.

Please see photos. More photos available upon request.

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