Hello, Friends! Don't You Want to Go? Where? Sand Beach. How? On a Hay Ride...Given by National Fraternal Brothers and Sisters of America. A Colored Society...[caption title]

[Shreveport, La, 1930. Good.. Broadside, 11 x 8.5 inches. Old folds, some tenderness to folds, a few short fold separations, some creasing and edge wear, mild rubbing. Some pencil notations on the verso. With organizational leader's ink stamp at bottom right. Very likely a unique surviving letterpress broadside advertising a fundraising social event and membership drive for the National Fraternal Brothers and Sisters of America (NFBSA), a "charitable organization" and mutual aid society based in Shreveport, Louisiana in the first half of the 20th century. The text invites members and friends along for a hay ride leaving from the Shreveport neighborhood of Stoner Hill and bound for Sand Beach, at a cost of twenty-five cents for adults and fifteen cents per child. The event promises "Plenty Fun for Young and Old - Old Time Ring Plays." The bottom half of the broadside provides details of the NFBSA, listing its headquarters at 1600 Royal Street, referring to the group as a "Charitable Organization" with "Joining Fees" of $3.50 (or "Join now for $1.00"), open to both men and women between the ages of 15 and 50. The final portion of the broadside prints the "Offical [sic] Roll" with the names of the ten men and women who served as officers of the NFBSA, including the Honorable W.H. Howard, the National Grand Master of the organization. Just to the right of the roll is an ink stamp belonging to Howard, listing his name, position, and address in Shreveport.

In addition to its content, the broadside is interesting for its typography and design. The printer employed different sizes and types of fonts, sometimes mixing types within words or numbers, using numbers for letters and vice versa, and using random italic letters throughout. The broadside was quite obviously produced on a press with very limited supplies of type, but the printer made it work despite the challenges. The National Fraternal Brothers and Sisters of America incorporated in the state of Louisiana on January 25, 1926. We could locate no other information about the organization. According to the 1930 census, the organization's National Grand Master W.H. Howard was born in Texas in 1904 and was working as a trained nurse. Howard was also living near the NFBSA's headquarters on Royal Street. We could locate no items relating to the NFBSA in OCLC or elsewhere.