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[Civil Rights Movement]. Archive of Handwritten Hotel Room Registration Receipts and Room Keys, Including Martin Luther King, ... (Total: 2 Items)
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Description
Battleground of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Movements: A Comprehensive Civil Rights Archive from the Hotel Albert in Selma, Alabama in Early 1965, Including Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Room Receipt, Handwritten by the Leader Just Moments Before He Was Violently Assaulted
[Civil Rights Movement]. Archive of Handwritten Hotel Room
Registration Receipts and Room Keys, Including Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s Signed Name and Address, As Well As Other Civil Rights
Leaders, Advocates and Their Opponents. Housed in two
three-ring binders, amounting to over 300 individual receipts
printed with "Hotel Albert, Selma Alabama" and itemized with room
price rates, phone calls, meals, and other details. Each one
measures approximately 5.5 x 8 inches (140 x 203 mm).This magnificent archive spans roughly eighteen months, from November 1964 through June 1966, and represents a "who's who" of all the notable personages of the Civil Rights Movement, specifically centered around Selma, Alabama's campaign for voting rights. It provides a window into the events that led to Dr. King's jailing and his famous essay in defense of nonviolent protest, "A letter from a Selma, Alabama jail"; the horrifying "Bloody Sunday" that ended on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7; the subsequent "March to Montgomery" on March 17; and the crucial events that culminated in the Voting Rights Act of August 1965.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 6, 1964, which prohibited any segregation of public facilities, but despite this, many Jim Crow laws persisted throughout the south. In Selma, Alabama, the seat of Dallas County and part of the Alabama Black Belt, concerted efforts were made to prevent blacks from voting at the state and local levels. On the very day the Civil Rights Act was made law, John Lewis led 50 black citizens to the Selma courthouse to register to vote, but all were arrested by County Sherriff Jim Clark, whose posse of 200 deputies, some of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party, were segregationist hardliners who used violence and repression to enforce Jim Crow. A few days later, an injunction was issued that forbade more than two people at a time to talk about civil rights or voter registration in Selma, which resulted in the suppression of public civil and voter rights activity for the next six months.
It was against this backdrop that a request for assistance was made by a local group known as the "Courageous Eight" to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). On January 2, 1965, King addressed a large meeting held in Brown Chapel in Selma in defiance of the injunction, and preparations for mass voter registration commenced over the next two weeks. King called President Johnson on January 15, and the two men agreed on a massive voting rights registration which would aid in advancing anti-poverty legislation, supporting the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty." King returned to Selma on January 18, referred to as the first "Freedom Day" of the new campaign, and as he stood at the front desk and registered as the first African-American to ever check-in to the Hotel Albert, a hotel built the previous century by slave labor, he was assaulted by James George Robinson, member of the National States' Rights Party. John Lewis, then a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later remarked, "It was the closest I've ever come to laying down by non-violence. I found out that day, even I have limits."
This incredible archive features Martin Luther King, Jr.'s handwritten registration receipt on the day he checked into the hotel, "Martin Luther King, Jr., 563 Johnson Ave., Atlanta, Ga.", for room 202, and indicates he spent one night there for a $5 daily rate, and was billed for three local phone calls and breakfast. The room receipts also include other notable Civil Rights Movement leaders, such as SCLC members Ralph D. Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Dorothy Cotton, Charles A. Lingo, Jr., Andrew J. Young, and Hosea Williams, as well as a young John Lewis.
Other receipts are present for the virulent opponents of the Civil Rights Act, including American Nazi Party founder [George] Lincoln Rockwell, together with his associates, Robert Lloyd and Jerald Quillan Dutton, who were there for several days representing the National States' Rights Party. Rockwell and his party actively assisted the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations in their attempts to counter the Freedom Riders and the Marches on Washington.
The archive also includes a receipt for the office of staunch segregationist and Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, which kept a headquarters in the hotel's lobby for one month and accrued a bill totaling $250. Every major news outlet is represented, comprising over 20 newspapers and magazines including all three television networks, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and various British and French news agencies. A young 25-year-old journalist, Ted Koppel, is among the room receipts as well as novelist and civil rights activist, Gay Talese. A number of government agencies also had a presence here, including the State Department, Justice Department, Department of Commerce, and the F.B.I.
Construction of the Hotel Albert started in 1860, was halted by the outbreak of the Civil War, and resumed in 1867. Built on a grand scale and taking up most of an entire city block, it was modeled architecturally on the Doge's Palace in Venice, and during its heyday, it featured a skating rink on the first floor as well as numerous retail shops. By the 1960s, it was a shadow of its former glory, but, given the scope of the archive and the roll call of personages represented in the receipts, it still served as a vital location for accommodation in the city, and it is clear why it is considered ground zero for the monumental events that unfolded. Sadly, the hotel was razed just a few years later, in 1969.
Accompanied by a selection of eight room keys on Hotel Albert-branded leather or plastic fobs, a late-19th century brochure illustrating the hotel in its heyday, and an early-20th century photographic postcard of the hotel taken during a fire.
A fascinating glimpse into a tipping point of American history, with numerous important documents from the pivotal months leading up to the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Condition: Receipts showing general light wear along the edges, light stains, staple holes, small chips and tears. The key fobs exhibit light scuffs and scratches. Overall, good to very good.
Auction Info
2023 July 8 Historical Platinum Signature® Auction #6275 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
July, 2023
8th
Saturday
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