Joseph S COTTER / A White Song and a Black One 1909 African American Kentucky

A White Song and a Black One. Title: A White Song and a Black One Publication: Louisville, Kentucky: The Bradley & Gilbert Co, 1909 Edition: First Edition.

Description: Octavo, 7.25 x 5.25, red cloth with gilt titles to front cover, 64 pp, portrait frontispiece. Cotter's mother was a freed slave, and he grew up poor, working as a laborer.

In his early twenties, he attended night school in order to become a schoolteacher, working in Louisville schools for the rest of his career. He published nine volumes of poetry and fiction and is considered "one of Louisville's most accomplished and significant African American writers" (Kentucky African American Encyclopedia, 124).

He was a close friend and correspondent of Paul Laurence Dunbar, and founded a school named after Dunbar in Louisville. The collection includes numerous poems related to African Americans, such as "Uncle Remus to Massa Joel, " "The Confederate Veteran and the Old Time Darky", Dr. Washington to the National Negro Business League, " "Tuskegee, " "The Negro Child and the Story Book" "The Negro's Educational Creed, and more.

This title is well represented institutionally, but scarce in commerce. A very good copy with bit of staining to covers, bowing to covers, soiling to endpapers, mild toning to pages. Antiquarian and collectible books, primitives and antiques. This listing was created by Bibliopolis.

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