DOCUMENT SIGNED BY JOHN F. COOK, JR., CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND THE WEALTHIEST BLACK MAN IN WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Partly printed document completed in manuscript. Signed by John F. Cook, as Collector of Taxes, District of Columbia. Washington, D.C., 18 March 1885. 

1 page, folio. Embossed District of Columbia Collector's Office seal. Docketing slip with calculations affixed to verso. 

A land deed from 1885 is signed by Washington, D.C. tax collector John F. Cook, Jr. (1833-1910) the wealthiest African American in the city during that era.

Born in 1833, Cook was raised in a free middle-class Black family during the era of enslavement. During the Reconstruction period, Cook gained fame as a prominent businessman, educator, and civil rights activist. He worked with several philanthropic institutions, such as the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, and worked to oppose the Colonization Movement, the idea that Blacks should be sent to colonies in Africa or elsewhere, rather than live as freedmen in the United States. 

In 1868, he began a clerkship in the office of the District tax collector and was appointed by President Grant to be the Chief Tax Collector from 1874 to 1884. By 1895, Cook was worth over $200,000 (over $7 million in today's currency).

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