LIFE SKETCHES OF REV. ALFRED COOKMAN.
Cincinnati, Ohio: The Freemen's Aid And Southern Education Society, [1900]. First Edition. A very scarce title. William Madison McDonald [1866–1950) was an American African-American politician, businessman, and banker in Texas during the late nineteenth century. Part of the Black and Tan faction, by 1892 McDonald was elected to the Republican Party of Texas's state executive committee, as temporary chairman in 1896, and as permanent state chairman in 1898. McDonald was also elected as top leader of two black fraternal organizations, serving as Grand Secretary of the state's black Masons for 50 years. In 1906 he founded Fort Worth's first African-American-owned bank as an enterprise of the state Masons; under his management, the bank survived the Great Depression. The black chapters of Masons banked with him, McDonald made loans to black businessmen, and he became probably the first black millionaire in Texas. The Freedmen's Aid Society was founded in 1859 during the American Civil War by the American Missionary Association (AMA), a group supported chiefly by the Congregational, Presbyterian and Methodist churches in the North. It organized a supply of teachers from the North and provided housing for them, to set up and teach in schools in the South for freedmen and their children. The AMA founded a total of more than 500 schools and colleges for freedmen in the South after the war, so that freedmen could be educated as teachers, nurses and other professionals. Scarce to locate any first edition copies. 32mo., dark-blue cloth, stamped in gilt; 239 pages. Item #58106
Very Good (covers nice & bright; contents clean & tight, small ink name on front endpaper).
Price: $250.00