Bond, U[lysses] S[impson]. [Ashtray for U.S. Bond's Motel]

Madison, Arkansas, 1964. Very good. Metal ashtray with a diameter of 5½” at its widest. Very good with moderate wear and light staining.

This is a marketing ashtray for U.S. Bond's Motel which was located in Madison, Arkansas. The owner of the motel, Ulysses Simpson Bond attended what became Morehouse College and then Oberlin Business College, and then returned home to Madison. In addition to the hotel, he managed the family gravel business, and manufactured funeral supplies. He was named one of the ten leading Black Arkansans in 1953.

This ashtray lists the motel's location as “40 miles west of Memphis, Tenn. For Colored.” The motel first appeared in the Negro Travelers Green Book in 1954 and their 1955 advertisement in the Green Book stated that the motel was “The South's finest and one of America's best Motels for Colored.”

A fine artifact of both African American entrepreneurship and the challenges faced by Black travelers in the segregated South. (Inventory #: 7444)