[COMMUNIST PARTY - WISCONSIN] [BOOK TRADE] Anonymous Photographer

Original File Photo of 1966 Attack on a Milwaukee Communist Bookseller

[Milwaukee: Milwaukee Sentinel, 1966]. Original black and white photographic print, 8" x 10". Stamps and composition notes to recto below image; clipping glued to verso with brief ink caption; small loss to bottom right corner, well away from image. Very Good overall, with image area clean and unfaded.

Photo shows the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Fred Bassett Blair, at this time Chairman of the Wisconsin Communist Party. A year earlier, Blair had been singled out by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the proprietor of one of "eight major communist bookstores operating in the United States." The shooting was carried out by a 17-year-old boy with a handgun inside Mary's Books, a used bookshop owned and managed by Blair's wife (which indeed carried a small section of Marxist books). Blair was unharmed, but a bookseller colleague, Ralph Sacks, was injured by three bullets. Blair beat the assailant into submission with a toy baseball bat, and in this photo the unidentified youth is seen being carried out of the store on a stretcher.

Price: $60.00

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