African American & Black History Lots 253-283
254
253 ARMSTRONG, Louis (1901-1971). Photograph signed and inscribed in image (“Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong), to Jackie Mabley, N.p., [ca late 1940s]. Black and white photograph, (visible image 240 x 188 mm), SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY ARMSTRONG TO JACKIE MABLEY: “Best Wishes / To Jackie Mably [sic] / My very dear friend / From / Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong.” Comedian and entertainer Jackie “Moms” Mabley (1897-1975) began her career on the African American vaudeville circuit. In the mid-1920s, she made her Harlem debut at Connie’s Inn and quickly became a regular performer at Harlem Renaissance hotspots Cotton Club and Club Harlem where she developed her “Moms” character. It was here where she first met and performed alongside Armstrong, as well Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and other jazz greats. $800-1,200 254 BROOKS, Gwendolyn (1917-2000). 4 autograph draft poems or notes signed (“Gwendolyn Brooks”), with numerous corrections and emendations, December 1968 and May 19, 1994. Together 5 pages, 8vo and 12mo. Comprising three drafts for “The Beauty in the Forest” and a draft of “For Sara Miller, sculptor.” Both poems were posthumously published in In Montgomery: And Other Poems, (Chicago: Third World Press, 2003). Brooks examines the notion of the gaze in “The Beauty in the Forest”: “And even deep into the forest the beauty was where no one could see. / The Forest Beauties perfected themselves for no gaze.” One draft of the poem is written in a small pocket day timer for December 1968, which also includes a note about Carl Sandburg. Her heavily amended draft of “For Sara Miller, sculptor” includes early notes for a poem Brooks wrote to commemorate Sara Miller’s bronze bust of Brooks, which was publicly unveiled the Harold Washington Library Center on 6 June 1994. Brooks saw the sculpture prior to its unveiling, and writes: “Sara, thank you for...sending my life into bronze” and continues “You see me UNBLINKINGLY BLACK!” [crossed out]. She concludes: “You see beyond seeables, see beyond flesh...No longer walking through rooms I shall be gone and not gone.” $600-800
V I E W T H E C O M P L E T E C ATA L O G U E AT H I N D M A N A U C T I O N S . C O M 107
