Circular pinback, metal button - "Equality" with black-and-white graphic image of Theodore Roosevelt (left) and Booker T. Washington (right) dining at a circular table. A piece of blue-lined white paper is attached to the very underside of the button, underneath the pinback. Handwritten on it, in cursive-written blue ink, is "Property of Horace S. Merrill 10327 (Parkman?) Rd., Silver Spring, MD".
The button references the 1901 event where President Teddy Roosevelt invited the black educator (and former slave) Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House - during a time of legal segregation. It was a controversial sensation and a scandal for many at the time. According to an accompanying note and an the an essay referencing the letters of Roosevelt, this was a campaign button created in 1903 by Arthur Pue Gorman, a Democrat Senator from Maryland, to attack Roosevelt in the South.
Horace Merrill was a professor of history at the University of Maryland and the husband of the donor, Marion G. Merrill. Marion was not only his wife but also his scholarly partner. From a Washington Post obituary: The two were active in the 1950s in protesting against racial segregation in Maryland, they participated in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March in Alabama and were active in the Giles-Johnson Defense Committee, formed to defend 3 African Americans of a racially-instigated charge of rape in Montgomery County in 1961.
Accompanying, fragile old note in a small, fragile envelope: "Booker T. Washington - T.R. campaign button used to try to defeat Teddy Roosevelt in the South. Should be given to the Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C., c/o Mr. Herbert Collins, over / See acknowledgement in front of our book "The Republican Command" (a book written by the Merrills). To Mr. Collins for his help with photographs, campaign buttons, etc. - Marrion G. Merrill". Herbert Collins became a curator of political history in 1960 at the Smithsonian’s Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History (NMAH)