"TO: LENA HORNE… FOR YOUR PERSONAL PRINCIPLES WHICH ADDED PAGES TO BLACK IMAGES IN AMERICAN THEATRE": FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, LEONARD C. ARCHER, TO LENA HORNE

(HORNE, Lena) ARCHER, Leonard C. Black Images in the American Theatre. NAACP Protest Campaigns—Stage, Screen, Radio & Television. Brooklyn, New York: Pageant-Poseidon, (1973). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $2500.

First edition, presentation copy, of this work on the NAACP protests that led to better roles for African American actors, inscribed to famous entertainer and civil rights activist Lena Horne: "To: Lena Horne with deep appreciation and admiration for your personal principles which added pages to Black Images in the American Theatre. Sincerely, Leonard C. Archer 1976."

Original written as a dissertation and subsequently expanded by Leonard C. Archer, a Tennessee State professor, "Black Images in the American Theatre is a well-researched and much needed review of NAACP protest campaigns which resulted in advanced and improved roles for Negro actors and actresses in the theater, motion pictures and television… In chapters devoted to the black experience, the American theater, the theater as social action, NAACP leaders and their championing of black performers, the black theater and the developing roles of Negroes in movies, radio and television, the author brings to public view much of the pathos and difficulties of black persons in the struggle for recognition in the amusement world… The author has given us a valuable compendium and a necessary evaluation of a too little known and too long neglected chapter of black progress in this nation" (The Crisis). The copy is inscribed to Lena Horne, the famous African American singer, actress, and civil rights activist. Archer mentions Lena Horne 11 times in this work—comprising over a dozen pages, as mentioned in the inscription. Horne, in spite of a career marred by her inclusion on the Hollywood blacklist, managed to make her mark in some of the first all-African American productions and to set a standard for the quality and character of productions in which she was willing to appear. Today, Horne is remembered as one of the most successful civil rights activists in the entertainment industry.

Book very nearly fine, dust jacket extremely good with slight soiling, light wear mainly to extremities, and a couple of tiny holes to rear panel. A desirable inscribed copy with wonderful provenance.