This is a printed poster on stiff board, featuring a reproduction of Charles White’s Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass), (dimensions here). Its use to promote an ‘Afro-American Art Expo’ at Philadelphia’s October Gallery was very likely facilitated by the fact that the work (Pen and ink over pencil on illustration board, 1949. 508 x 762 mm; 20 x 30 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left) was in 1988 in a private collection in Philadelphia. The Art Expo was held October 14, 15, 16, 1988, at Philadelphia’s Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel and was an undertaking to benefit the United Negro College Fund, a philanthropic initiative established in 1944 to provide scholarships and financial aid to African Americans and subsequently others seeking to enrol in higher education. The United Negro College Fund (often known by its acronym, UNCF) grew out of the work of activists for the advancement of education among African Americans, one of the most well known of whom was Mary McLeod Bethune. 

Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass) changed ownership when it was auctioned by Swann auction house, New York, on October 7, 2008. From the auction catalogue:

An extraordinary example of Charles White's early drawing, Frederick Douglass Lives Again is one of a series of the pen and ink drawings recording the celebrated trials of African-Americans victimized during the Jim Crow era. White shows a mastery of cross-hatching in each expressive face of this dynamic composition. The towering figure of Douglass and the compressed space reflect techniques used in his mural painting, particularly his The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in American at Hampton University, 1933. White was also translating the African-American experience through the earlier model of the great Mexican muralists Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros.

In Frederick Douglass Lives Again, White continues his depiction of ordinary people on a heroic scale. Along with The Trenton Six, The Ingram Case and Open Gate (Liberation), White chronicled the legal plights of African-Americans, and the greater cause for justice and equality. White was particularly politically active at this point in his career. Reproductions of these drawings appeared in portfolios published by the Workshop for Graphic Art in New York, and in such progressive periodicals as The Daily Worker. White had his first exhibition at ACA Gallery in 1947, and was now regularly exhibiting in New York with other socially and politically conscious artists such as Philip Evergood, William Gropper and Robert Gwathmey.

In the Swann catalogue (October 7, 2008) Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass) was Lot 26 and was a magnificent double page fold out of the work.