Beschreibung:

GIBBS, M.W. (1823-1915). Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Centuries. Washington DC: Privately Printed, 1902. 8vo (143 x 201 mm). With an introduction by Booker T. Washington. Frontispiece portrait and illustrated throughout with photographic portraits. (Pages evenly toned). Publisher’s original blue ribbed cloth with gilt titles (very good, new endpapers, mild wear to edges, binding very slightly cocked). FIRST EDITION. Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was an important author, politician, lawyer, diplomat, and pioneer moving to California during the Gold Rush. He owned several businesses and published both the Alta California, billed as the “state’s only African-American newspaper,” and the Mirror of the Times. Opposing discriminatory laws passed by the California State Legislature in 1858, he led the migration of 600-800 African Americans from California to British Columbia, forming a large portion of the early frontier community. After the Civil War, Gibbs returned to the United States where he passed the bar examination in 1870 and became the first black judge elected in the United States in 1873. He continued to be involved in politics and in 1897 was appointed the American consul to Madagascar. He published this autobiography in 1902 in Washington DC, where he had purchased a property where his daughter Harriet Gibbs Marshall (1868-1941) ran the Washington Conservatory of Music, one of the most successful female-owned businesses at the time. Quite scarce, OCLC locates two copies. Condition: Very good, new endpapers, mild wear to edges, binding very slightly cocked, pages evenly toned.