Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Mrs John French with sincere appreciation Whitney M. Young Jr". Loosely inserted is a typed note from Young, "Dear Mrs. French: We all appreciated your joining us at Celanese House last Thursday. Please accept the enclosed copy of my new book". The book was published in May 1969. On 15 May the Urban League, of which Young was executive director, held an event in New York at the chemical giant Celanese, one of the large corporations supporting the Urban League's Street Academy programme for high-school drop-outs. Young was distinctive among the major civil-rights leaders for his cultivation of major corporations like Celanese, seeking to turn access to business leaders into employment, investment, and wider economic opportunities for African Americans. Indeed, he notes in Beyond Racism, which outlines the effect of racism in America and proposes how it can be overcome, "The Urban League is also the agency that has the strongest contacts with the Establishment" (p. 251). Young's successor as Urban League executive director, Vernon Jordan, later joined the Celanese board. The recipient is almost certainly Eleanor Clark French (1908-1990), a member of the Urban League, former women's editor of The New York Times, and member of the New York City Commission on Human Rights (as was her husband, John French, 1909-1984). Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in white. With dust jacket. Housed in a custom-made blue cloth solander box. Unclipped jacket with a hint of rubbing and creasing at extremities: a fine copy in very good jacket.…