1946 American BTW half-dollar

[villa66]

A 1946s Booker T. Washington half-dollar coined by the United States in San Francisco of .900 silver, 30.6mm in diameter and weighing 12.50g. American coins are some of the world’s wordiest, a distinction that is on full display in this Booker T. Washington half.

America’s commemorative coin program had gotten out of control during the 1930s—with too many coins and oftentimes too little reason for them—and so the coining of commemoratives was suspended in 1939. After the war the program was resumed with the issue of a 1946 half-dollar for the Iowa Centennial and this 1946 half-dollar celebrating the famous American educator, Booker Taliaferro Washington, president of what is now Tuskegee University until his death in 1915.

A few of the 1892-1954 “classic era” commemorative half-dollars can be reasonably considered to be circulation coins, this BTW half among them. The type (the first American coin to portray an African-American) was produced at all three mints from 1946-51, and while most of the mintages are small and confined within sets, a few of the dates were issued in large numbers as single coins. (This 1946s, for instance, had a distribution of some 500,279 pieces—and that in a year when Philadelphia had contributed another 700,546.)

BTW halves are plentiful in uncirculated and near-uncirculated condition, but I chose this particular coin precisely because of the amount of wear it has received. BTW halves did often circulate, but this coin—which I found 30+ years ago—has seen an unusual amount of contact.

A pocket-piece for one of the very many people whose lives were touched by Washington?

v.

[sigistenz]

Mark, I enjoy all your posts even if I don't have any comments to contribute. Please keep on . The above piece could have spent quite some years in an African American's pocket along with change - how else to explain the wear. That makes it outstanding.
Sigi

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[Mynter]

How where the BTW- Halfes received in the South ?

[villa66]

What sort of reception did the BTW half-dollar get in the American South? An interesting question, and not one I’ve really heard answered. (Or frankly, even heard asked.) My own answer, off-the-cuff:

American reaction to the coin was generally positive. BTW was and is seen as a uniting figure on that most difficult of American dramas: race. And as the ’46 BTW half was the first American coin to honor—or again, to even portray an African-American—we can assume that he would have been a safe choice for both blacks and whites.

He was a safe choice (he was also the first African-American to appear on a U.S. postage stamp—a 10-cent brown in the extremely popular “Famous Americans” series of 1940—and so I suppose we could say he had been “market-tested” before he was featured on the ’46 commem).

Thing is, and looking just a bit deeper, from everything I’ve ever seen, the BTW was a popular coin among American blacks—but perhaps counter-intuitively—my guess is that the coin was somewhat more popular among Southern blacks than it was Northern blacks. Washington was a strong believer in the power of education and of disciplined participation in American life—which he thought would bring increasing political power, and the eventual equality of African-Americans with Americans of every other ethnicity.

But Washington's "incremental" view had increasing competition as the years progressed. (The creation of the NAACP—“National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”—is in part a reaction to BTW.)

Which means that BTW was very much a conservative icon, held in especially high esteem by folks who believed in incremental change. Folks who wanted equality between the races now, however, found BTW a somewhat less persuasive figure. Northern blacks—generally speaking—would I think have been less inclined to the incremental approach than Southern blacks (and so might have been less welcoming to the BTW commem).

I think, though, for African-Americans this distinction was really only a marginal thing—the really important thing would have been that a black man was on an American coin, at last.

Where the “BTW incremental”/”NAACP immediate” distinction might actually have mattered was in the way the ’46 half-dollar was received among American whites.

We might even suspect that in the American South—where the incremental/immediate distinction was still very much an everyday question—that the BTW half might have had a generally favorable reception even among Southern whites.

But I have no doubt—and damn that fact of American life both then and now—that the Booker T. Washington half-dollars of 1946-51 (as well as the Carver/BTW halves of 1951-54) were sometimes treated with contempt and with a hate that had zero difficulty getting itself expressed.

I can see these coins being spent—sometimes by some very poor people who simply could not afford to keep a 50-cent piece, no matter its sentimental value—and I can see these coins being laid on shop counters and…well…not being respected.

I have occasionally read allusions to some of the nicknames that BTW's picked up, without hearing the nicknames themselves. But no matter. I can guess.

I’ve gone on much too long already, so I’ll close with two final thoughts:

1) Thanks for this excellent question. It’s exactly the reason—well, one of the reasons—that I joined this Forum.

2) BTW halves. One possibility that has repeatedly forced itself upon me over the years, thinking about these coins, is the imagined picture of African-Americans who—having kept a BTW half-dollar as a keepsake or a pocket-piece—had gotten so disgusted by the broken promises of the late-‘40s or early-‘50s that they themselves dismissed, or even discarded their coins.

v.

[Mynter]

Thank you very much,villa,for your most carefull explanation !