Black Pharmaceutical Group Has Information That Will Startle, Amaze, Interest Members
Offering a one-page, 8 ½ x 11, April 8, 1939, New York, NY, TLS by OLIVIA TUCKER, an African American who ran her own pharmacy on 136th Street and later joined the staff of Harlem Hospital. She wrote this letter as Corresponding Secretary of the North Harlem Pharmaceutical Association, organized in 1923, as an association of black pharmacists, promising important information from members of the anti-discrimination league and proving that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal left much work to be done by Black Americans.
“You are invited to be present at our next meeting, Sunday April 16, 5 p.m., YMCA. This meeting will be addressed by Dr. O. Williams and Mr. Best of the anti-discrimination league. This bids fair to be one of our most important sessions as there have been many and varied happenings since last we met. The committee which we send to Albany has a very interesting and significant story to relate. New jobs have been obtained, while the jobs of others have been menaced. Outside pharmaceutical bodies have been in communication with us. What do they want of us? Something of course. What do you know concerning the medical convention, and the part that we are to play in it? Our executive board is in procession of information which will startle, amaze and interest you. Come early as our agenda is an extensive one.”
In 1933, Roosevelt’s New Deal provided more federal support to African Americans than at any other time since Reconstruction. But even New Deal legislation allowed considerable discrimination. By 1936, the majority of Black voters abandoned their traditional roots to the Republican Party and joined with labor unions, farmers, progressives and ethnic minorities in assuring Roosevelt’s landslide re-election. That election shifted the balance of power in the Democratic Party from its Southern bloc of white conservatives towards a new coalition. Discrimination still ran rampant requiring the attention of such groups as the North Harlem Pharmaceutical Association.
Typed on the organization’s letterhead. The letter is in very good condition with folds and toning.
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