The Negro Handbook. [First Year Published]

“A Manual of Current Facts, Statistics and General Information Concerning the Negro in the United States”

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Scarce in dust jacket depicting Libyan Sybyl, war-time handbook of black America by this black female editor compiled “to give a picture of the status of the Negro in American life.” The placement of the chapters is interesting. The first chapter is devoted to business. The second and third are devoted to civil rights and crime (lynchings, prisoners, executions, crimes against blacks). The role of African-Americans in national defense during the Second World War (e.g., a proposed protest march on Washington, D.C. for equal opportunity in the armed forces and civil defense industries) is followed by chapters upon religious denominations, employments, blacks in American government and politics. Final chapters address black Americans in music and art (swing musicians), the radio, stage and screen, and sports (Joe Louis). The very final pages discuss the Proclamation of Emancipation and the Mason Dixon line. Editor Florence Murray was a Virginia-native, graduated by Howard University, schooled at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, and employed as a reporter for the bureau of the Afro-American newspapers.

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