Mordecai P. Montgomery collection

1957--[ca. 1988]

Mordecai Philip Montgomery was a long-time member of the Socialist Party of New York. Montgomery was born in 1880 in Fayette, Alabama, and worked as a Pullman porter, then for the Works Progress Administration, and in his later years, was a messenger in the Wall Street area of Manhattan. He died in 1956 in New York City. The Mordecai P. Montgomery Collection consists principally of an unpublished manuscript, "Shining in Death," authored by Montgomery, about a Canadian black man and his struggle to become an actor in New York; the time period is from the second half of the nineteenth century until the Depression. The collection also includes a folder of letters and a reminiscence by Edward P. Gottlieb, the donor, regarding Montgomery. The letters are from Gottlieb to a publisher/editor, and to author Toni Morrison, seeking to get the manuscript read and published following Montgomery's death.