Walsh's Columbia South Carolina City Directory for 1913

Charleston, S.C. Walker, Evans & Cogswell, Co, 1913. 9.75 x 6.75", beige cloth covers with red cloth spine, gilt spine lettering, variously paginated, several sections printed in variously colored paper. Front hinge cracked, pages toned, covers worn with front cover lettering rubbed. A rare Jim-Crow era directory for the city of Charleston, South Carolina that is itself segregated in that pages 393 to 487 print a discrete directory of the city's African American population. Headed "Colored Department Walsh's Columbia City Directory 1913," this section is printed on different colored paper (orange) than the rest of the book. The publisher, William H. Walsh, began this practice in his directory of 1904-1905, making a "self-proclaimed 'radical departure in the general arrangement of the work' intended to 'enable the directory user to ascertain the necessary information with much more rapidity.' Using different colored papers, the publisher denoted business listings from street listings and white residents from black residents...in dividing the races, Columbia further embraced the circumscribed black and white worlds assigned by Jim Crow laws..." (Sherrer III, "City Directories: Portals into the Past", Columbia Star, April 22, 2016). Item #10515

Price: $500.00