ROGERS, Walter & Elizabeth

John Donar: Common Man. Dedicated to the Little Shots of American Labor

New Orleans: Victory Library, 1945. Quarto (28cm). Pictorial card wrappers; 192pp. Mild aging, with some toning to margins; still Very Good in the original wrappers. Laid in is a mimeographed copy of a review from Ammunition - CIO Auto Workers' Monthly for April, 1946. Cover illustration by Sylvia Braverman.

A down-in-the-trenches history of the American worker in the 20th century, personified in the character of John Donar, "immigrant's son, left home at 12 to find out why so many honest hardworking folks stayed poor...." Elizabeth Schlosser Cousins Rogers (1891-1983), and her husband, the IWW and CIO organizer, WW1 deserter and author Walter Rogers, were long-time fixtures in New Orleans' Jackson Square, where beginning as early as the 1950s the couple were known for their "Sunday Morning Peace Vigils" and their vocal espousal of radical leftist politics (they were both long-time members of the Communist Party) and for handing out copies of their myriad hand-produced political leaflets on subjects ranging from international politics to the lack of adequate city services in their adopted neighborhood, the majority African-American Lower 9th Ward. The Rogers remained active well into their eighties, producing their final published book ("Songs for the Sidewalk") in 1981, the year of Walter's death.

The current work, based largely on Walter Rogers' own experiences in the First World War and afterwards, is infrequent in commerce, and especially hard to find with the laid-in review.

Price: $250.00

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