Booker T Washington Memorial – 1946 -1951

The 1946-1951 Booker T. Washington Commemorative

With the success of the 1946 Iowa Centennial Commemorative half dollar, the Booker T. Washington Memorial Commission tried to get a commemorative coin honoring this great American. The Commission wanted to have a commemorative half-dollar struck bearing his likeness due to his importance in both American and African-American history. The funds raised would purchase and maintain the “slave cabin” in which Washington was born, located in Franklin County, Virginia.

Successful support was received from the Virginia legislators in Washington and the bill passed through both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Harry Truman on August 7, 1946. The authorizing legislation permitted up to five million coins to be struck and no consideration was included to have them all be minted at any one mint.  

The Commission now needed a designer. Sculptor Charles Keck, with three previous commemorative coins under his belt, submitted designs but in the interim, an African-American artist and sculptor, Isaac Scott Hathaway, learned of the coin program and submitted his own design for free. Hathaway used a life mask of Booker T. Washington for his portrait on the obverse. The Commission felt compelled to use Hathaway’s designs.

Hathaway’s obverse design is a portrait of Booker T. Washington, facing right. In front of his face is “E PLURIBUS UNUM” and behind his head are the date “1946” and the denomination “HALF DOLLAR.” Around the periphery of the coin are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “BOOKER T WASHINGTON.”

The reverse depicts the “slave cabin” in which Washington was born and above it is the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, in which Washington is enshrined as the central vignette. Between the two are the words “FROM SLAVE CABIN TO HALL OF FAME.” To the right of the cabin is “FRANKLIN COUNTY VA” and to the left is “IN GOD WE TRUST.” Around the reverse peripheries are “BOOKER T. WASHINGTON BIRTHPLACE MEMORIAL” and “LIBERTY.”

The 1946-dated coins were sold by the Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial at the price of $1.00 each. They were sold both singly and in 3-coin PDS sets. At first, 200,000 sets were issued and all sold fairly quickly. They were housed in 3-coin leatherette holders.

A variety of other coin holders was developed between 1946 and 1951 when the series ended. In 1951 as the Cold War was just beginning, America was feeling the threat of Communism and the coin was issued in an envelope with the phrase “Minted to Fight Communism!”

The Commission was ingenious in all of the ways that they tried to market this commemorative coin to both Black and White audiences. One of the scarcest original holders was to use it as a promotion for a game of chance. So 10 of the coins were offered in a punchboard here for $.10, you would select an untouched “punch” and slide it out. If the message was a winner, you would win one of the ten prize coins.

The coins ordered through the Commission were shipped in their paper or leatherette holders and shipped to those who ordered them through the mail in Birthplace inscriber envelopes.

Despite the hundreds of thousands of BTW coins being sold during their 6-year run (1946 – 1951), a large number of coins were returned to the Mint and melted and a fair number were released into circulation. But by that late date, interest in this issue and in commemorative half dollars was waning. The commission tried many different approaches – fighting Communism, promoting patriotism, imploring school children to buy coins, and repeatedly asking the African-American community to purchase these coins for the future.

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