Afternoon everyone….
I’ve been trying my best to organize my private security place vault box over the last year or so now…
I didn’t realize what a disaster it was until recently. It is stacked full of small unlabeled boxes of who knows what’s in them. Every time that I take one or two of them, I label them, log their contents and also number them.
I’m probably a little more then a quarter of the way through this project now, and have found some interesting pieces and some that I don’t remember buying at all.
This coin today fits the last of that. While it’s part of the United States commemorative half dollar series, it’s not one that was high on my list to obtain.
Why???
Because it’s an easy one to get and by far the cheapest one in a mint state grade to find. Second there are over two million of these in circulation so they are readily available. Most of the commemorative half dollars have less than 200,000 minted and some are under 70,000 minted.
Here is some info on the coin:
The Booker T. Washington Half Dollar was initially offered in 1946 to honor his place in American history. It was reissued annually through 1951.
Characteristics
The obverse features a portrait of Booker T. Washington.
The reverse design features the log cabin in which Booker T. Washington was born.
Obverse Inscriptions
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
1946
HALF DOLLAR
E PLURIBUS UNUM
Reverse Inscriptions
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON BIRTHPLACE MEMORIAL
LIBERTY
FROM SLAVE CABIN TO HALL OF FAME
IN GOD WE TRUST
FRANKLIN COUNTY VA
In case you don’t know who Booker T. Washington was here is a brief summary:
Born into slavery on April 5, 1856, in Hale's Ford, Virginia, Washington was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. As a young man, Booker T. Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college, enlisting students in construction of buildings. Work at the college was considered fundamental to students' larger education. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington wrote an autobiography, Up from Slaveryin 1901, which became a major text. In that year, he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, which was the first time a black person publicly met the president on equal terms. After an illness, he died in Tuskegee, Alabama on November 14, 1915.
Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with the goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by focusing on self-help and education. Washington had the ear of the powerful in the America of his day, including presidents. He used the nineteenth-century American political system to manipulate the media, raise money, develop strategy, network, distribute funds, and reward a cadre of supporters. Because of his influential leadership, the timespan of his activity, from 1880 to 1915, has been called the Age of Booker T. Washington. Washington called for Black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South. Furthermore, he supported racial uplift, but secretly also supported court challenges to segregation and to restrictions on voter registration. Black activists in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, disagreed with him and opted to set up the NAACP to work for political change.
Now the coin….
It’s in great shape, so now it’s a part of the series that I’ll probably never finish…