Signed Photographic Postcard of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, inscribed to John Wesley Cromwell, 1912

Photograph postcard of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, signed and inscribed by Gibbs on his 90th birthday to John Wesley Cromwell. 5.5" x 3.25". Little Rock, Arkansas. April 17, 1912.

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was an African American publisher, lawyer, judge, banker and diplomat. After moving to California during the gold rush and publishing Alta California, billed as the "state's only African-American newspaper," and the Mirror of the Times, Gibbs emigrated to British Columbia along with 600-800 other African-Americans in protest of the discriminatory laws of California. While in British Columbia he served as a city council member and as a delegate to the Yale Convention. He then returned to the United States, settling in Arkansas where he became the first African-American judge elected in the United States. He later became president of the National Convention of Colored Men at Nashville, Tennessee, served as a delegate to several Republican national conventions, and served as American consul to Madagascar, becoming the first African-American to have a full career as a diplomat in the United States.

John Wesley Cromwell, the recipient, was a highly accomplished scholar and historian of African-American history. A wonderful association between two highly influential and groundbreaking African American intellectual and public figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Inscription beneath portrait reads: "Though poor in thanks, yet, I thank you."

Verso inscriptions reads: "On the other side of this card, I am looking at you, and thanking you for your kind remembrance of this my 90th birth day - Truly yours M.W. Gibbs." Addressed to Mr and Mrs J.W. Cromwell, "Pierce Plow" Washington, DC." No evidence of mailing.