These ABC Cards were originally produced in 1933 by Charles Clarence Dawson as “the ABC’s of Great Negroes” in book form. Noted painter, illustrator, activist, educator and Buffalo Soldier, he was born in Georgia in 1889. After being denied entry to his local library as a child because of his blackness, Dawson dedicated his life to the betterment of the Black race through education and artistic representation. When creating this book, he said: "…it was clear my aim would be reclaiming and recapturing, through my art, that Glorious Birthright…I undertook to execute a children's book in good portraiture, to be entitled 'The ABC's of Great Negroes’, which should be informative to all children but particularly for the inspiration of the Negro child. This array of distinguished achievers, one for each letter of the alphabet, covered all history’s past.”