Sale 2503 - Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 28, 2019

301 300 c   (LAW.) Johnson, Grant. Document signed by one of the very few Deputy U.S. Marshals in the American West. Partly printed document signed by Johnson as deputy and by two clerks. One page, 14 x 8 1 / 4 inches, with blank docketing form on verso; separations at folds, tape repair on verso, two chips on edges not affecting text. Fort Smith, AR, 6 August 1895 [200/300] Grant Johnson (1858-1929) was of Creek, Chickasaw, and African ancestry, and spent much of his youth with the Creek nation in Oklahoma. His fluency in Creek and other languages helped gain him an appointment as a deputy marshal in 1893, and he served through 1906, then was a police officer in Eufaula, OK. This document summarizes his activities on one case, the prosecution of Walter Taylor for “violating intercourse laws” (trading with Indians without a license). Deputy Johnson traveled 65 miles from Eufaula to Wewoka, OK to deliver subpoena notices to three witnesses, serve the warrant on Taylor, and bring the prisoner back to Fort Smith. 301 c   (LAW.) Autographed photograph of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Color photograph, 10 x 8 inches, with inked stamp of the National Geographic Society on verso; taped on top edge verso into a 16 x 11-inch mat signed and inscribed by Marshall. Np, circa 1980s? [1,500/2,500] The inscription is a quote from one of Marshall’s most famous opinions from 1969: “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man sitting alone in his own house, what he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving governments the power to control man’s minds. Thurgood Marshall, Stanley v Georgia.”