Books and Manuscripts

New York: The Dial Press, 1961. First edition. 8vo. xiv, 241 pp. Presentation copy, inscribed by Baldwin to civil rights advocate and entrepreneur Morris Milgram, on dedication page: "For Morris Milgram:/My ally & friend,/with the prayer that will/keep on fighting./Jimmy B./-& sooner or later, we'll win." Original quarter black cloth over red marbled boards, stamped in silver, lightly worn; in original price-clipped dust-jacket, short closed tear in top edge, wear to spine ends. Blockson 3641

A fascinating association copy between one of America's most incisive authors, James Baldwin (1924-87), and civil rights advocate and fair housing developer Morris Milgram (1916-97), who fought for integrated housing across the United States following World War II. In 1954, Milgram built the earliest racially integrated private housing community in the United States, Concord Park, in Trevose, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. The following year, in 1955, Milgram developed Greenbelt Knoll in the Holmesburg neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, the first planned racially integrated community in the city. Greenbelt Knoll was designated an historic district by the Philadelphia Historic Commission in 2006 upon its 60th anniversary. In 1968, Milgram became the first recipient of the National Human Rights Award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In his lifetime Milgram was instrumental in developing and managing housing for some 20,000 people in the Philadelphia area, as well as in Boston, Chicago, California, Texas, Virginia, and elsewhere.