Heading: (African American, 1916)
Author: Gunner, Rev. Byron
Title: Letter from clergyman who headed an early Civil Rights organization
Place Published: Hillburn, New York
Publisher:
Date Published: 6156
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed as President, National Independent Equal Rights League. 2 pp. on League stationery with original mailing envelope. To Miss Jean Snowden [Snowden], Dayton, Ohio.

Gunner writes a young Black woman who had known the Gunners in New York before she earned a B.A. from Howard University and went to teach college at Tuskegee, Georgia State and Wilbeforce: "...you are still held in kind remembrance ... Byron is at Howard in the Dental College. Cicely has returned to Talladega College in Ala. Joseph is home with us, but I'm thinking of sending him to Storer College, at Harper's Ferry, W. Va. next year for his high school and college preparatory course...Frances is not in just now, but Mrs. Gunner joins me in love to you..."

Gunner, his family, friends and colleagues, represented what W.E.B. DuBois called the "talented tenth", the Black leadership elite at the start of the 20th century. A Congregational Minister, born in Alabama, descended from slaves, he was among the "Original 29", founding fathers of the Niagara movement which led eventually to formation of the NAACP. Gunner was not among its early adherents, instead joining DuBois' rival William Monroe Trotter in organizing the National Equal Rights League. Gunner became President of a splinter group of the League, competing with Trotter for national attention in the looming battle against segregation. Gunner's children attended the most prestigious Black colleges and went on to professional careers. Most notable of these was his daughter Mary Frances, who became a student leader of the NAACP and founder of a sorority for college-educated Black women. After completing a Master's degree at Columbia, she published a play that combined the stories of Black heroines Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Phillis Wheatley.

Good.