Sable Fur Jacket

Between 1929 and 1979

This sable jacket’s label identifies it as made by Gartenhaus Furs of Bethesda, Maryland. The initials monogramed in yellow script on the hip-length jacket’s brown satin lining belong to Dorothy Burnett Porter (1905-1995). The scholar-librarian graduated from nearby Howard University in 1928 and became the first African American to earn a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1932. For over four decades, she worked to organize and develop an unparalleled collection rooted in African American history that would become the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC.