Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia (2 volume Set)

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Black America

Black America A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia Volume 1: A–M

Alton Hornsby, Jr., Editor

Copyright 2011 by Alton Hornsby, Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Black America : a state-by-state historical encyclopedia / edited by Alton Hornsby, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–34112–0 (hardcopy (set) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–976–7 (ebook (set)) — ISBN 978–0–313–34113–7 (hardcopy (vol. 1) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–977–4 (ebook (vol. 1)) — ISBN 978–0–313–34114–4 (hardcopy (vol. 2) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–978–1 (ebook (vol. 2)) 1. African Americans—History—Encyclopedias. 2. African Americans—Biography—Encyclopedias. I. Hornsby, Alton. E185.B537 2011 2010045519 9730 .0496073—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–34112–0 EISBN: 978–1–57356–976–7 15 14 13 12 11

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

To Family and Friends Thanks for always being there!

Contents

ix xi xiii

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction

VOLUME 1 Alabama

1

Alaska Arizona

25 35

Arkansas

57

California Colorado

75 95

Connecticut Delaware

113 131

District of Columbia

149

Florida Georgia

169 187

Hawaii Idaho

213 227

Illinois Indiana

239 255

Iowa

271

Kansas Kentucky

285 305

Louisiana Maine

327 347

Maryland

359

Massachusetts Michigan

381 395

Minnesota Mississippi

411 425

Missouri

447

Montana

467

vii

viii Contents

VOLUME 2 Nebraska

481

Nevada

497

New Hampshire

517

New Jersey

529

New Mexico

545

New York

565

North Carolina

595

North Dakota

619

Ohio

631

Oklahoma

665

Oregon

679

Pennsylvania

711

Rhode Island

737

South Carolina

745

South Dakota

765

Tennessee

777

Texas

817

Utah

841

Vermont

861

Virginia

871

Washington

893

West Virginia

913

Wisconsin

931

Wyoming

949

Bibliography About the Editor and Contributors Index

959 963 967

Preface

In its two volumes, Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia provides a concise reference of African American history from the origins of slavery in the American colonies to present times. It begins with an introduction that traces the historiography, or writing, of African American history from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the current debates on the meanings of the black experience. Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia has a separate chapter written by contributors with expertise in African American history. Each chapter includes the following sections: 

Chronology—showing at a glance the major events and figures in African American history in the state



Historical Overview—tracing in more detail the history of African Americans in the state from settlement to the present day



Notable African Americans—providing brief biographical sketches of important African Americans in many fields who were born or were active in the state



Cultural Contributions—describing cultural events and activities in the state that contributed to the black experience in America



Bibliography—offering a select list of print and electronic information resources on the black history of the state

The encyclopedia shows the similarities of experiences, values, and cultural heritage and outlook of African Americans regardless of the state in which they live. For example, African Americans, North and South, East and West, have lived with racial discrimination, both overt and subtle. Fundamental to their values has been a messianic Christianity and a zeal for education as a pathway to success. Yet within these commonalities there have been exceptions. In some of the smaller states, such as Vermont in New England, it has been difficult to establish black churches in which to worship in the evangelistic expressive style (involving active emotional participation whether through shouting or call and response) that characterizes most black services elsewhere. The evolution of the value of education among African Americans began in bondage when, even though education of slaves was prohibited by the southern states, clandestine schools were established. In other parts of the country, there was little or no segregation in schools—although some states resegregated from time to time—while in the South the schools were born segregated, with the exception of parts of Louisiana, which experienced a pattern of resegregation like some of the northern states. The separate schooling in the South led to the founding of unique institutions of higher education that would have a monumental and fundamental impact on African American culture while, with few exceptions, these schools did not exist elsewhere. Hence, blacks outside the South who sought a unique cultural experience would have to attend southern black colleges.

ix

x Preface Much like religion, music became a basic feature of African American culture. Black musical expression has had both commonalities and differences in different states, from the spirituals dating from the period of enslavement to the Mississippi Delta or St. Louis or Memphis blues, and from New Orleans or Chicago jazz to gospel and to rap—either northern style or “Dirty South” style. While racism and legalized or de facto segregation and discrimination have existed everywhere, all the northern states ended slavery before the beginning of the Civil War, while it took that war to end it in most of the South. Similarly, de jure or legal racial discrimination persisted in the South until well into the twentieth century. Once it was ended, southern African Americans, for the most part, entered into a de facto pattern of race relations like that which has prevailed in other parts of the country. Yet even the dismantling of de jure segregation and discrimination took different courses in different states and even within different cities within a state. Because of the style of race relations that had been established in Atlanta after blacks became a political force there, the desegregation process was much smoother than in Birmingham or for that matter in all of Alabama. Desegregation in Oklahoma occurred earlier and with less overt strife than in many other places; still there were race riots in Oklahoma’s history as there were in Georgia’s. These volumes, then, using a mosaic compiled in the separate histories in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, capture the totality of the black experience in the United States. In content and perspectives as well as readability, this encyclopedia will appeal to students and scholars at all levels as well as to a general audience.

Acknowledgments

Several individuals have assisted in the preparation of this encyclopedia and I hereby wish to express my deep appreciation. They include, of course, the contributors who made this an outstanding work; archivists and librarians at the Robert W. Woodruff Atlanta University Center Library, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American History and Culture, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University. Also my research assistants Jason Ruiz and Augustus Wood III; Nyla Dixon and Bettye Spicer who typed various parts of the manuscript; and Lindsay Claire, John Wagner, and Wendi Schnaufer, my editors at Greenwood ABC-CLIO.

xi

Introduction

The earliest writers of African American history were black men who wanted to tell of the achievements and contributions of people of African descent to the world generally, and to the making of the United States specifically. These writers, known as contributionists because of their emphasis on black contributions to both world and American history, believed deeply in the fundamental American Creed of Christianity and Democracy. Indeed, historian Dickson Bruce Jr. asserts that they were more faithful to it than much of white America. Thus he writes of an ironic conception of American history (Bruce, 53–62). By the end of the nineteenth century, African American historians, while still not scientifically trained in historical method, were better educated than their predecessors. The most educated of this group were William Wells Brown, who was also a novelist, and George Washington Williams, who had been a soldier in the Civil War. Despite being better educated than previous chroniclers of African American history, this new group still adhered to contributionism and hoped to reach white as well as black audiences. But they were either ignored or ridiculed by the white intellectual establishment and were irrelevant to the majority of other white Americans. Because he was academically trained, W. E. B. Du Bois was a major exception among African American historians of the early twentieth century. In 1896, Du Bois was just beginning his academic career after publishing his dissertation, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to America 1638–1870.” Although Du Bois’s writings represented a real breakthrough in African American historiography, his socialistic or Marxist analyses “tainted” his work in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, both black and white. It was then left to Carter G. Woodson, also a scientifically trained African American historian, to return to the basics of contributionism. Woodson believed it was critical that African and African American stories be researched in a scholarly manner and then told to the world. Failure to do so would leave the African race as “a negligible factor” in the history of mankind (Hornsby, “Changing Vicissitudes,” 1–11). Woodson and his adherents set up an organizational structure, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), and established two major publications, the Journal of Negro History and the Negro History Bulletin, to carry out their agenda. The Journal of Negro History was to be a scholarly periodical, while the Negro History Bulletin was to appeal to a more popular audience. They also established a Negro History Week to fall between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in February of each year. All people, from grade-school children to elderly men and women, in or out of school, could participate in these observances of the achievements and contributions of African Americans. There developed around Woodson and the ASNLH a group of young, university-trained scholars, including Lorenzo Johnson Greene of Missouri, Luther Porter Jackson of Virginia, Earle E. Thorpe and Helen Edmonds of North Carolina, and Clarence Bacote of Georgia, who published extensively in articles, essays, and books the results of their original research. A few white scholars also wrote African American history, including Melville J. Herskovitz, Herbert Aptheker, August Meier, and Elliott

xiii

xiv Introduction Rudwick, all Jews, and Richard Hofstadter and the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal. Some of these scholars had been interested in the black experience for some time, but they had had difficulty getting their works accepted by the mainstream profession. Aptheker also bore the double burden of being a Marxist. Although the outpourings of scholarship from the Woodson school reached some readers, particularly in the nation’s black colleges, even in some of these schools, and certainly in the larger world, most people got little more of the African American experience than what they heard or read during Negro History Week in February. A major breakthrough in the evolving academic acceptance of black history occurred in 1947 when John Hope Franklin published the first edition of From Slavery to Freedom. Both the scholarly world and many general readers were impressed with the thoroughness of his research, the clarity of his writing, and the rather dispassionate way in which he approached painful subjects, such as slavery and racial violence, in his analyses. He soon became the preeminent African American historian. But it took the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s to usher in a New Black History—an enterprise that would win wide acceptance by white academia and lead to new schools of historiography among blacks. The New Black History Movement was a part of the Civil Rights Movement for inclusion of the Black Power Movement programs of separation and self-sufficiency. Adherents of both philosophies embraced the demand for a Black Studies curriculum in all of the nation’s institutions of higher education. The Civil Righters wanted Black Studies infused into the whole of the university while the Black Powerites wanted black control of black institutions and black control of black studies programs at white institutions. At the core of the matter, for both groups, was a new black history. All seemed to agree that heretofore black history had not been written or taught well, if at all, by whites as well as by many blacks. The Black Powerites went one step further and accused the contributionists of teaching a white man’s black history. They contended that the contributionists were assimilationists who were slaves to the American Creed. Their philosophy deemed the American Creed corrupt, racist, and imperialist; they believed that African American history should begin with the history, cultures, and values of Africa rather than that of the English colonists in America and “the founding fathers.” They called themselves Afro-centrists, since Africa was at the heart of their writings and teachings. While some white scholars like Herbert Aptheker, Melville Hervozitz, and Howard Zinn felt comfortable with Afrocentrism, the majority of white academia was ill at ease or downright opposed. Nevertheless, in the mode of traditional American historiography, many more white scholars began to teach and write African American history. The more vocal opponents of Afro-centrism pointed to what they called “sugar coating”—embellishments and exaggerations in the work of the Afro-centrists. Scholars, including Arthur Schlesinger, who compared Afro-centrism to the Ku Klux Klan, Mary Lefkowitz, and Clarence E. Walker, ridiculed the Afro-centrists’ exclusivism. That exclusivism seemed to suggest that Westerners were ethically bankrupt and that Africa was the origin and center of world culture and its most humane values, while Europe and the West were backward except for what they borrowed or stole from Africa. Despite the prevalence of these warring schools of thought, the New Black History became the most attractive field of study in the profession, and it soon led to a New Women’s History as well as to new treatments of the experiences of other groups, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. Indeed, in the women’s history movement, the distinct experiences of black women, including the double burdens of racism and sexism, became one of the most attractive fields. The demand for distinct

Introduction

xv

portrayals of racial, ethnic, and gender groups has led some scholars to characterize the developments as “every group its own historian.” While the New Black History, even Afro-centrism, borrowed from the contributionists in emphasizing black achievements and contributions, it is more complex, going far beyond a few great men and women to explore the daily lives and circumstances of ordinary men and women and “forgotten communities.” In that exploration, it has found that even in the most tragic and oppressive eras of black life and history, African Americans have shown aggressiveness and independence and have built parallel institutions to the larger society where social formation could occur, where they could make a living, and where they could participate in political action. This approach also supplemented African American religiosity by making spirituals and the blues sources of psychological solace during times of oppression. In a larger sense, the New Black History was part of an emerging New Social History where laborers assumed an importance besides kings and presidents—studying and writing and teaching history from the bottom up. Marxists and other nontraditional scholars, such as Eugene Genovese, gained prominence for the new social history by emphasizing issues of a class struggle. African American historians, such as Nell Painter and Robin Kelley, while not Marxists, added African American communists, socialists, and workingclass radicals to the historical matrix. And new data and interpretations came forward on the origins and meanings of whiteness and ethnicity. Even before the emergence of the New Black History, historians and other scholars had begun to find decreasing favor with wide, sweeping narratives of a nation’s or a group’s history. Thus, case studies appeared that examined smaller or micro bits of the story to better explain larger or macro developments and trends. Such is the approach of this two-volume Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, which shows how the black experience in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia renders many similarities on the one hand, but several differences on the other. These volumes also demonstrate what most scholars now agree on—the strength of the black family, although many dysfunctions persist into present times. Yet each state illustrates certain unique experiences—for example, the Creole and Voodoo cultures and the jazz scene of Louisiana and the effects of the world’s largest center of African American higher education and the eminence of Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia. The sea has been an important contributor to the economic life of blacks in New England and the soil to African Americans in the South and Midwest. White resistance to black civil and political rights in parts of the South and to economic opportunities in the North have been important influences on the development of black communities. And recent occurrences, including the election of President Barack Obama, the first African American to hold the office, and a deep economic recession in which African Americans are hardest hit, show that much of black America, state by state, still has some steep hills to climb socially and economically.

Bibliography Asante, Molefi Kente. Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990. Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Culture. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. “The Ironic Conception of American History: The Early Black Historians, 1883–1915.” Journal of Negro History 69, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 53–62.

xvi Introduction Hornsby, Alton, Jr. “The Black Revolution, Black History and Professor Franklin.” In Alton Hornsby Jr. Essays in African American Historiography and Methodology. Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group, 2004, 71–78. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. “The Changing Vicissitudes of Black Historiography.” In Alton Hornsby Jr. Southerners Too: Essays on the Black South, 1733–1990. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004, 1–11. Lefkowitz, Mary. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: Norton, 1991. Walker, Clarence E. We Can’t Go Home Again. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

ALABAMA Lisa N. Nealy

1

2

Black America

Chronology 1721

The ship African sails into Mobile harbor with a cargo of over 100 slaves.

1724

The French Code Noir (Black Code), which regulates slavery in the French West Indies, is extended to France’s North American colonies and thus institutionalizes slavery among the settlers in the Mobile area.

1763

France cedes present-day Alabama to Great Britain.

1780

Spain seizes Mobile from Great Britain.

1783

Great Britain gives the northern and central regions of present-day Alabama to the United States and the Mobile region to Spain.

1798

The Mississippi Territory, which includes present-day Alabama, is organized.

1813

The United States seizes control of the Mobile area from Spain.

1817

(March 3) The U.S. Congress establishes the Alabama Territory.

1819

(December 14) Alabama enters the Union as the 22nd state.

1820

Over 47,000 black slaves and 633 free blacks live in Alabama.

1830

Over 117,000 black slaves and 1,572 free blacks live in Alabama; the state’s slave population has more than doubled in a decade.

1854

Alabama establishes its public school system.

1861

(January 11) Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union.

1861

(February–May) Montgomery serves as the capital of the Confederate States of America.

1861

(February 4) Representatives from Alabama and the five other states that had seceded from the Union meet in Montgomery to form the Confederate States of America.

1861

(February 18) Jefferson Davis of Mississippi is sworn in as president of the Confederacy on the portico of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery.

1864

Union forces win the Battle of Mobile Bay.

1865

(December 2) Alabama ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

Lincoln Normal School, a private educational institution for African Americans, is founded at Marion; the school relocates to Montgomery in 1887 and eventually becomes Alabama State University.

1868

(July 13) Alabama ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extends citizenship to African Americans.

Alabama

3

1868

( July 13) Alabama rejoins the Union after the state adopts a constitution that allows African Americans to vote.

1869

(November 16) Alabama ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extends the vote to African Americans.

1870

African Americans make up nearly 48 percent of Alabama’s population.

1870

Benjamin S. Turner, a Republican, is the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama.

1871

The city of Birmingham is founded.

1872

James T. Rapier of Lauderdale County, a black Republican, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama during Reconstruction.

1874

Jeremiah Haralson, who was born a slave on a plantation near Columbus, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama.

1880

The African American National Baptist Convention is organized in Montgomery.

1881

(February 10) The Alabama legislature establishes Tuskegee Institute as a normal school for the education of African American teachers; graduates must agree to teach for two years in Alabama.

1881

( June) Booker T. Washington arrives in Alabama to become superintendent of the Tuskegee Institute.

1896

(October 8) George Washington Carver arrives in Alabama to direct the Agricultural School of Tuskegee Institute.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court affirms the constitutionality of the “separate but equal” doctrine in regard to race relations in its Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

1900

The Federal Census records 827,307 blacks living in Alabama, about 45 percent of the state’s population.

1901

Alabama adopts a new state constitution, which disfranchises substantial numbers of black voters.

1913

The first Alabama chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established.

1931

Nine black youths are arrested in Paint Rock and accused of raping two white women on a freight train. Held in the Jackson County jail in Scottsboro, the nine are soon known as the “Scottsboro Boys.” Eight of the nine are convicted by all-white juries and sentenced to death, but the questionable evidence presented at the trials causes widespread outrage and the U.S. Supreme Court twice overturns the convictions.

1933

The federal government creates the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

4

Black America

1936

(August 3) Alabama native Jesse Owens wins the first of his four gold medals at the Olympics in Berlin.

1941

A squadron of African American fighter pilots, which later distinguishes itself in air combat during World War II, begins training at Tuskegee and at Maxwell Army Airfield in Montgomery, eventually becoming famous as the “Tuskegee Airmen.” Four hundred fifty of the airmen served overseas in World War II and were cited for outstanding combat service.

1954

(October 31) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. becomes pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

1955

(December 1) Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger as required by a Montgomery ordinance and thereby sparks a bus boycott in Montgomery.

1955–1956

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1956

(January 30) Segregationists bomb the Montgomery home of bus boycott spokesman Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; the home is damaged, but no one is hurt.

1956

(December 21) The U.S. Supreme Court orders the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1956

Autherine Lucy tries unsuccessfully to desegregate the University of Alabama.

1958

(June 30) In its decision in the case of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ends the state’s attempt to prevent the NAACP from conducting business in Alabama.

1961

(May 1) Harper Lee of Monroeville wins the Pulitzer Prize for her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which portrays race relations in 1930s' Alabama.

1961

(May 20) The “Freedom Riders” bus is attacked by an angry mob when it arrives in Montgomery; attempting to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision desegregating bus and train terminals, the Freedom Riders had earlier experienced similar hostile receptions at Anniston and Birmingham.

1963

Alabama Governor George Wallace fails to stop racial integration at the University of Alabama.

1963

(May 19) Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he was being held for participation in Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, is issued, becoming a seminal text of the Civil Rights Movement.

1963

(September 15) Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed, killing four African American girls—11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins.

1963

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) offices in Birmingham and the Birmingham home of A.D. King, Martin Luther King’s brother, are bombed by segregationists.

Alabama

5

1965

(March 7) Civil rights demonstrators attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery to demand the end of voting restrictions on blacks are attacked by state and local law enforcement officers as they cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge; the scene is broadcast on national television, winning the demonstrators much support.

1965

(March 21) Martin Luther King Jr. leads over 3,200 civil rights demonstrators on a march from Selma to Montgomery after two previous attempts had failed.

1970

The Alabama Space and Rocket Center opens in Huntsville.

1982

(November) Oscar Adams wins election to the Alabama Supreme Court, becoming the first African American elected to statewide constitutional office in the state.

1987

Guy Hunt becomes the first Republican governor of Alabama since 1874.

1992

Astronaut Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman in space.

1992

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opens.

1995

Alabama celebrates the 30th anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

1998

Dr. David Satcher of Anniston is appointed surgeon general of the United States by President Bill Clinton.

2000

The 2000 Census puts the number of African Americans living in Alabama at over 1.1 million persons, approximately a quarter of the state’s population.

2000

(August) Rosa Parks is inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

2002

Vonetta Flowers of Birmingham wins a gold medal in bobsledding at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, thus becoming the first African American to win gold at a Winter Olympics.

2002

(May 22) Bobby Frank Cherry, the last surviving suspect, is convicted of murder in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which killed four black girls.

2002

Alabama ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolishes the poll tax; the amendment had gone into effect 38 years earlier in 1964.

2005

(January) Condoleezza Rice, an Alabama native, is appointed secretary of state by President George W. Bush, becoming the first African American woman to hold the office.

2005

(October) Death of Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

2006

(January) Death of Coretta Scott King, an Alabama native and widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 1950s.

6

Black America

Historical Overview The Nineteenth Century In the early part of the nineteenth century, Mobile became a principal slave trading post. As a result Alabama’s black population increased from about 42,000 in 1820 to more than 342,000 by 1850. The Alabama Constitution of 1819 had, for the times, a liberal provision protecting slaves from abuse. But slaves could not enter into contracts, lend money, rent housing, own horses or dogs, buy liquor, or leave the plantation without a pass. They could not be taught to read or write. Inciting slaves to rebel was considered the most serious crime. Rape of black women by white men or black men was not considered a crime. During early statehood and until antebellum times, African American slaves worked principally on cotton plantations and as domestic servants. Semiskilled and skilled blacks were employed as blacksmiths, carpenters, and brick masons. The other class of African Americans in early Alabama were the so-called free blacks. This group was always small, yet they were viewed as a dangerous segment of the population. Thus, steps were taken to keep them away from slaves as much as possible. They were denied the right to vote. Mobile County had the largest number of free blacks before the Civil War. Many of them were mulattos with French and Spanish heritage. These Creoles, as they were called, were often well educated and prosperous, owning their own businesses and working as barbers, blacksmiths, carpenters, coach-draymen, and draymen. Prominent free blacks during this period included Pierre Chestang, who ferried supplies for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, Solmon Perteal, a merchant, and Horace King, a contractor who helped construct the state capitol in Montgomery in 1850–1851. Both free blacks and slaves, while being Americanized, continued to retain and practice significant elements of their African culture.

Between 1830 and 1860, the enslaved population in Alabama increased by more than 270 percent, while the white population grew by only 171 percent. On the eve of the Civil War, 33,700 enslavers held more than 430,000 bondspersons. Meanwhile, the issue of the expansion or the restriction of slavery in the western territories of the United States was being debated in the nation’s capital at Washington. By the end of 1860, tensions had reached a boiling point. South Carolina seceded from the Union and attacked the U.S. arsenal at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. On January 11, 1861, by a vote of 61 to 39, Alabama voted to secede. Soon 11 southern states had seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. President Abraham Lincoln had earlier called for 75,000 volunteers to “defend the Union.” The Civil War had begun. As the war progressed, Union armies occupied north Alabama. More than 10,000 slaves left the plantations and joined the Union forces. On the other hand, many slaves were ordered to assist the Confederacy as warriors in servant and supply positions and in construction and repair of bridges and railroads. At the close of the Civil War, after the Republican-controlled Congress finally reached agreement on a Reconstruction plan, the rebellious South was subjected to military rule, pending the organizations of new governments. At the same time the federal government sought to provide, in connection with northern-based missionary groups, basic necessities and a rudimentary education to the freedpersons. But continuing their prewar opposition to black education, whites attacked and burned many of the early schools. The history of black higher education in Alabama dates back to 1867, when two former bondspersons, with the help of the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen’s Bureau, founded Talladega College. Then in 1908, Miles College was founded in Birmingham by the Alabama Conference of the Colored

Alabama Methodist Episcopal Church. But the premier African American college in the state, and indeed one of the best known in the nation, was the Tuskegee Institute. Tuskegee was a product of biracial efforts on the part of black and white citizens and the state of Alabama. Its early mission was to educate teachers for Alabama’s black schools. But under its first principal, Booker T. Washington, who arrived in 1881, the school became known for its agricultural-industrial focus. Nevertheless, it continued to produce more teachers than mechanics. With both northern and southern philanthropic and governmental assistance, the campus grew in acreage, buildings, students, and faculty to become one of the larger black colleges. Among the early faculty was George Washington Carver, who arrived on the campus in 1896 as director of the Agricultural School. He added to the institution’s reputation by establishing a scientific laboratory, where he helped to revolutionize agricultural production and the variety of products that could be offshoots of produce, including peanuts and potatoes. Under the new constitution adopted under military or “radical reconstruction,” African Americans were allowed to vote and to hold office. Among those elected were Congressman Benjamin S. Turner (1871–1873), James T. Rapier (1873–1875), who had also been nominated for secretary of state, and Jeremiah Haralson (1875–1877). No other African Americans were elected to the Congress until 1993, when Earl Hilliard took office. He served until 2003. In that year Arthur Davis, who still serves, was also elected. In 2010, Davis became a candidate for governor of Alabama. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, hundreds of blacks have been elected to state, county, and municipal offices in Alabama. But black participation in Alabama government was to be short-lived. Almost immediately white

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extremists, centered in the notorious Ku Klux Klan, set out to intimidate, frighten, and even murder black voters and their white Republican allies. As these campaigns of terror continued, white Democrats were maneuvering to retake the state government. In 1875, they won approval for a new constitutional convention and in short order restored the old, white Democratic leadership to power in Alabama. The new government moved quickly to mandate racial segregation in the schools. Then, once radical reconstruction was ended throughout the South in 1877, Alabama joined the rest of the southern states in passing laws segregating the races in almost all spheres of public life. The state also enacted measures to disfranchise most black voters. It would take considerable bloodshed and the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to restore black voting rights in Alabama.

The Twentieth Century As to segregated public facilities and public accommodations, African Americans, as they did in the case of voting rights, took the lead in dismantling Jim Crow. A year and a half after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Montgomery blacks began the first direct action protests in the state. On December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks refused a traditional order on southern buses to give up her seat to a white passenger. After her arrest for violating state and local segregation laws, blacks organized a boycott of the city’s buses. An organizational structure was established under the name of the Montgomery Improvement Association. A young African American minister, who had recently arrived in the city from doctoral studies in theology at Boston University, Martin Luther King Jr. was elected president of the association.

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Rosa Parks is fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1, 1955, inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a prolonged action against the segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus system by African American riders and their white supporters. (Library of Congress)

The King-led boycott, marked by bombings and other forms of intimidation and police harassment, lasted until December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation on Montgomery buses unconstitutional. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is generally regarded as the beginning of the direct action phase of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Seven years later, in response to an appeal from local civil rights leaders, King, now president of a regional civil rights organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), led nonviolent demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. The demonstrations virtually paralyzed much of downtown Birmingham during the spring

and summer of 1963. At one point during the protest, young school children walked out of classrooms and joined the demonstrations. The city officials in Birmingham, led by police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, took a hard line against the demonstrators. Hundreds, including Martin Luther King Jr. and his chief assistant, Ralph David Abernathy, were arrested. High-powered water hoses were turned on the protesters and vicious dogs were ordered to snarl and bite them. The pictures of the attempted repression of the demonstrators through the violent means employed by the police provoked a negative backlash in public opinion across the nation. The presidential administration of John F. Kennedy

Alabama

The scene outside of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963, after members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the building. Four young African American girls were killed in the racist attack. (Bettmann/Corbis)

condemned the tactics in a speech the president made in June 1963. He concluded by announcing that he would now push for a civil rights bill. With the boycotts, demonstrations, and violence seriously hurting white businesses in the city, and the negative press which the city was facing, Birmingham’s white leaders finally agreed to the desegregation of public accommodations in the fall of 1963. Another major result of the Birmingham protest was a letter that King wrote while incarcerated to ministers who had felt that the demonstration was unwise. King’s letter justifying the demonstrations, “A Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” has become a literary classic. The civil rights victories in Birmingham were tempered in September 1963 when a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church on

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Sunday, the 15th. Four little black girls in a Sunday school class were killed. The church was allegedly targeted because it had been a major meeting site for civil rights leaders and their followers. The child murders were a serious test of the King philosophy of nonviolent resistance. But he persisted in persuading his followers not to retaliate but to continue to practice nonviolence. In later times, three Ku Klux Klansmen were charged with the murders. Two years after Birmingham, the focus of the movement shifted to Selma and away from public accommodations to voting rights. At this time, Selma had acquired a notorious reputation for denying African Americans the right to vote. In January 1965, civil rights forces led by Martin Luther King Jr. opened a voter registration drive in Selma. Dr. King was attacked as he registered at a formerly all-white Selma hotel but was not seriously injured. On January 19, Dallas County law enforcement officers began arresting blacks who wanted to register to vote. On January 23, a federal judge issued an order prohibiting interference with those seeking to register to vote. By February 1, the drive to register black voters in Selma had developed into a nationwide protest movement as local whites in Dallas County stiffened their resistance and civil rights leaders intensified their efforts. More than 700 blacks, including Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested on February 1. On February 26, a black demonstrator, Jimmie L. Johnson, was killed by state police in Marion, Alabama. Three white men killed a white protester, the Reverend James Reeb, near Selma on March 11. On March 7, state police routed several hundred protesters attempting to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma en route to the state capitol in Montgomery. The police used billy clubs and cattle prods to break up the march. Several blacks, including future Congressman John Lewis, were severely beaten. On March 17, a federal judge prohibited Alabama officials from

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interfering with the proposed march from Selma to Montgomery. President Lyndon B. Johnson then ordered federal troops to protect the protesters on their 50-mile trek to Montgomery. The march occurred from March 21 to 25. Fifty thousand people met the marchers on March 25 at the state capitol in Montgomery, where Martin Luther King Jr. and others denounced Alabama leaders, including Governor George C. Wallace, for attempting to deny blacks their constitutional right to vote. That night, a white demonstrator, Viola Liuzzo, was murdered. Meanwhile, on February 3, 1956, Governor Wallace’s defiance of a school desegregation order ended when a black coed, Autherine Lucy, enrolled at the University of Alabama under court order. It should be stressed that even in the eras of segregation, blatant discrimination, and disfranchisement, blacks developed significant parallel institutions for their spiritual and social welfare and for a total community life. Foremost among these institutions were churches and schools. In the post-emancipation period, crudely constructed churches were established in rural communities. By the twentieth century, as the black population became largely an urban one, huge mega churches were constructed throughout the state. The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery—whose pastors included a fiery leader of the pre–civil rights era, the Reverend Vernon Johns, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.—and the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham are among the state’s oldest and most historic black churches. Up until about 1920, most black schools in Alabama were poorly constructed one- or two-room structures with poor ventilation. Then, from the 1920s through the pre– civil rights era, attractive school buildings appeared. The Fairfield High School outside of Birmingham and the Parker High School in Birmingham were among the oldest and most important of these structures.

During the transition from slavery to freedom, black Alabamians were generally poor, ill housed, poorly educated, and ill cared for physically and mentally. They worked in the most menial jobs—unskilled labor and domestic service. But there were always notable exceptions. Blue-collar blacks who worked in coal mills, iron works, and steel mills earned good wages and lived comfortable middle-class lives. Then there were business and professional people—doctors, lawyers, teachers— and property owners. Some, like A. G. Gaston of Birmingham, became millionaires. As the Civil Rights Movement expanded economic opportunities, the black middle class grew significantly.

Notable African Americans Aaron, Henry Louis (Hank) (1934–) Henry Louis Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934. Aaron is a retired African American baseball player and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1974, he broke the major league record for home runs previously held by Babe Ruth; he finished his career with 755 home runs and held the record until 2007. Aaron holds the major league record in each of the following categories: career runs batted in (2,297); career extra hits (1,477); and career total bases (6,856). He is the only player to have 17 seasons with more than 150 hits. He won one World Series ring with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and the National League Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award the same year. He also earned three Gold Glove Awards and made 24 All-Star appearances. On August 1, 1982, Aaron was inducted into the Hall of Fame and received votes on 97.8 percent of the ballots, second to only Ty Cobb, who received votes on 98.2 percent of the ballots in the inaugural 1936 Hall of Fame election. Aaron was then named the Braves’ vice president and director of player development. This made him one of the first minorities in major league baseball upper-level management.

Alabama

Abernathy, Ralph David (1926–1990) Ralph David Abernathy was an African American civil rights leader. Abernathy was born the son of a farmer in Linden, Alabama. After serving in the army during World War II, he enrolled at Alabama State University in Montgomery, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1950. His involvement in political activism began in college while he led demonstrations protesting the lack of heat and hot water in his dormitory and the dreadful food served in the cafeteria. In 1951, he earned a master of arts degree in sociology from Atlanta University (later ClarkAtlanta University). He became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. While living in Montgomery he formed a close and enduring partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Abernathy and King organized the bus boycott in Montgomery. After a year of the boycott it finally ended when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the U.S. District Court’s ruling that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Abernathy was King’s number two man in the SCLC, in which he held the official title of secretary-treasurer. Abernathy was with Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis when King was assassinated. Abernathy assumed the presidency of the SCLC after King’s death. Less than a week after the assassination, Abernathy led a march to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. In May 1968, Abernathy and others including the Reverend Jesse Jackson organized a Poor People’s Campaign march on Washington. The twoweek protest event included setting up a shantytown named “Resurrection City,” though Abernathy himself slept in a hotel during the campaign. On June 19, he delivered a speech at the Lincoln Memorial in front of tens of thousands of black and white citizens. However, the campaign ended in failure on June 24, when the federal government

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intervened, using force to disband the protesters. Abernathy was jailed for nearly three weeks following the collapse of the campaign. Abernathy was active in the American Freedom Coalition in the 1980s and served as vice president of the American Freedom Coalition until his death in 1990.

Adams, Oscar William, Jr. (1925–1997) Born in Birmingham, Oscar William Adams Jr. was the first African American to serve on the Alabama Supreme Court and the first African American elected to statewide office in Alabama. In 1967, he partnered with a white attorney to form the first integrated legal office in the state. Appointed as justice of the state Supreme Court by the governor in 1980, he won election to the office in 1982 and 1988 and retired in 1993.

Amerson, Lucius Davenport (1933–1994) In January 1967, Lucius Davenport Amerson became the first southern black sheriff in the twentieth century when he was elected as sheriff of Macon County, of which Tuskegee is the county seat.

Arrington, Richard, Jr. (1934–) Richard Arrington Jr. was the first African American elected as mayor of Birmingham, Alabama. He served four terms as mayor from 1980 to 1999.

Barkley, Charles Wade (1953–) Charles Barkley was a star player in the National Basketball Association from 1984 to 2000. He was named MVP in the 1991 and 1993 NBA All-Star Game and was a member of the U.S. team at the 1992 Olympics. After retiring from professional basketball, he became a sports commentator for network television.

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Barrow, Joe Louis (1914–1981) Born in Chambers County, Joe Louis Barrow, who fought under the name Joe Louis, began his boxing career in 1932. Known as “the Brown Bomber,” Louis became world heavyweight champion in 1937 and held the title until 1949, when he retired. He is famous for his two bouts with the German former champion Max Schmeling, to whom he suffered his first defeat in 1936 and whom he defeated easily in defense of his title in 1938. In 2005, the International Boxing Research Organization named Louis the greatest heavyweight fighter of all time.

Carver, George Washington (1864–1943) George Washington Carver became one of the world’s greatest scientists. He was an African American botanical researcher and agronomy educator who worked in the agricultural extension at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, teaching former slaves farming techniques for self sufficiency. Carver derived over 300 different products from various plants; from the sweet potato alone, he derived 118 products. Carver confronted an increasingly marginal southern economy devastated by war, poor family, malnutrition, and ignorance. Carver was able to improve the health and agricultural output of both black and white southern farmers, developing hundreds of uses for a monocrop economy. He was the first black to attend Iowa State University. He graduated in 1894 with a bachelor's degree in botany and agriculture. Additionally, he spent two more years at Iowa State to complete a master’s degree, studying agricultural chemistry, bacteriology, zoology, and entomology. Carver became passionate about botany and managed the university’s greenhouse, where he quietly conducted experiments on plants and taught other undergraduate students. In 1896, Washington invited Carver to head the agriculture department at the Tuskegee

Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. Carver transformed the department: Tuskegee’s first laboratory was built with bottles, old fruit jars, and other objects. Along with peanut butter, Carver made adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, shaving cream, shoe polish, and synthetic rubber. Carver helped the United Peanuts Growers Association persuade Congress to pass a bill calling for a protective tariff on imported peanuts in 1921. By 1938, one year after the film of his life called The Life of George Washington Carver opened in Hollywood, peanuts were a $200 million industry and the number one product in Alabama. Carver died in 1946. He donated his entire savings— $30,000—for the study of soil fertilizing and continued creation of useful products from waste materials. In his entire working life, Carver only patented three of his 500 agriculture-based inventions.

Clarke, John Henrik (1915–1998) Born in Union Springs, John Henrik Clarke was an author, educator, and historian. He became a respected authority in African and African American studies. Among his major works were Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (1969) and Dimensions of the Struggle Against Apartheid: A Tribute to Paul Robeson (1979).

Cole, Nat King (1919–1965) Nat King Cole was an African American jazz singer, pianist, and songwriter born Nathaniel Adam Coles in Montgomery, Alabama. His birth date, according to the World Almanac, was on St. Patrick’s Day in 1919. Other sources place his birthdate in 1917. His father was a butcher and a deacon in the Baptist Church. His family moved to Chicago while he was still a child. There, his father became a minister; Cole’s mother Perlina was the church organist. Cole

Alabama learned to play the organ from his mother. He learned not only jazz and gospel music, but also European classical music. When the family lived in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, Nat would sneak out of the house and hang around outside the clubs, listening to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatla” Hines, and Jimmie Noon. He participated in Walter Dyett’s renowned music program at Dusable High School. Inspired by the playing of Earl Hines, Cole began his performing career in the mid-1930s while he was still a teenager and adopted the name “Nat Cole.” His older brother, Eddie Coles, a bass player, soon joined Cole’s band, and they first recorded in 1936 under Eddie’s name. They also performed at clubs. Cole got his nickname “King” performing at one jazz club, a nickname presumably reinforced by the otherwise unrelated nursery rhyme about “Old King Cole.” He was also a pianist in a national touring revival of ragtime and Broadway theater legend Eubie Blake’s review, “Shuffle Along”; when the review ended suddenly in Long Beach, California, Cole decided to remain there. Cole and three other musicians formed the “King Cole Swingers” in Long Beach and played in a number of local bars before getting a gig on the Long Beach Pike for $90 per week. Cole married a dancer, Nadine Robinson, who was also with “Shuffle Along,” and moved to Los Angeles where he formed the Nat King Cole Trio. The trio consisted of Cole on piano, Oscar Moore on guitar, and Wesley Prince on double bass. The trio played in Los Angeles throughout the late 1930s and recorded many radio transcriptions. Cole did not achieve widespread popularity until “Sweet Lorraine” in 1940. Although he sang ballads with the trio, he was shy about his voice, though he prided himself on his diction. But he never considered himself a strong singer. His subdued style, however, contrasted well with the belting approach of most jazz singers.

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On August 23, 1956, Cole spoke at the Republican National Convention in the Cow Palace in San Francisco. He was also present at the Democratic National Convention in 1960, to throw his support behind presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. Cole was also among the dozens of entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the Kennedy Inaugural Gala in 1961. Cole frequently consulted with President Kennedy and later President Johnson on the issue of civil rights. Yet he was dogged by critics, who felt he shied away from controversy when it came to the civil rights issue. Among the most notable was Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was disappointed that Cole did not take stronger action after being attacked on stage by white supremacists. Cole’s first mainstream vocal hit was his 1943 recording of one of his compositions, “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” based on a black folktale that his father had used. Johnny Mercer invited him to record it for Capitol Records. It sold over 500,000 copies and proved that folk-based material could appeal to a wide audience. Although Cole would never be considered a rocker, the song can be seen as anticipating the first rock-and-roll records. Bo Diddley, who performed similar adaptations of folk material, was one influence on Cole. Cole learned and recorded songs in different languages. In 1958, Cole went to Havana, Cuba, to record Cole Espanol, an album sung in Spanish. The album was popular in Latin America as well as in the United States. In 1990, Cole was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He married singer Maria Hawkins Ellington— no relation to the famous Duke Ellington. They had five children, including singer Natalie Cole. Cole was a heavy smoker of Kool Menthol cigarettes, smoking three packs a day. He believed smoking kept his voice low. He smoked several cigarettes in quick succession before a recording for this very purpose.

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Davis, Angela Yvonne (1944–) Angela Yvonne Davis is an activist and scholar born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, during the midst of the Jim Crow laws. Davis’ father was a graduate of St. Augustine’s College, a historically black college in Raleigh, North Carolina, and taught history there. After leaving teaching due to its low salary, he owned and operated a service station in the black section of Birmingham. Davis’ mother, also college educated, was an elementary school teacher with a history of political activism. During her childhood, Davis experienced the humiliations of racial segregation. She was bright and begged to enter school early, attending Carrie A. Tuggle School, a black elementary school in dilapidated facilities, and later Parker Annex, a similarly dilapidated annex of Parker High School devoted to middle-school education. Davis read voraciously. By her junior year, at 14, she applied for and was accepted to a program of the American Friends Service Committee that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose to attend high school at Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, New York, a small private school favored by the radical community. Davis became acquainted with socialism and communism, and she was recruited to the communist youth group Advance. Davis also became familiar with children of the leaders of the Communist Party, including her lifelong friend Bettina Aptheker. Upon graduation from high school, Davis was awarded a full scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She was one of three black students in her freshman class. Davis majored in French and studied Sartre. She was accepted for the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. Nearing completion of her degree in French language, she realized her major interest was philosophy. Davis became interested in the ideas of Herbert Marcus.

Civil rights activist and communist Angela Davis addresses the press at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a standing ovation following her first class, October 6, 1969. University regents had banned her employment, but she had support from the school’s chancellor and faculty. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

Davis attended the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965, she graduated magna cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. And in 1969, she worked as an assistant acting professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was also a radical feminist, an active member of the Communist Party U.S.A., and associated with the Black Panther Party. In a controversial decision, the board of regents of the University of California urged then–California Governor Ronald Reagan to fire Davis in 1969 due to communist affiliation. Davis was later rehired after a community uproar over the decision.

Alabama Davis first achieved national attention in 1970 on August 18, when she was linked to the murder of Judge Harold Haley. During an attempted Black Panther prison break, Davis fled and was the subject of an intense manhunt. After 18 months as a fugitive, she was captured, arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. Davis later became professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California and chair of the department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She works for racial and gender equality and for prison reform. She is also the founder of Critical Resistance, a national organization opposed to the expansion of the prison-industrial complex.

Gaston, Arthur G. (A. G.) (1892–1996) Arthur G. Gaston was a wealthy businessman in Birmingham. His economic enterprises included a motel that housed civil rights leaders and was a place where the leaders planned strategies for the 1963 demonstrations in Birmingham.

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Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights organizations in Alabama as well as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. In 1970, he was elected to the Alabama legislature from Marion County.

Hall, Ethel (1928–) Ethel Hall was an educator and the first African American woman to sit on the Alabama State Board of Education.

Handy, William Christopher (W. C.) (1873–1958) Born in Florence, William Christopher Handy was an influential blues composer and musician who achieved success as a musician with such compositions as “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues.” Known as the “Father of the Blues,” he was deeply influenced by folk music, which he incorporated into his own blues compositions.

Herman, Alexis M. (1946–) Gomillion, Charles Goode (C. G.) (1900–1995) Charles Goode Gomillion was an educator and civil rights leader. A long-time teacher and administrator at Tuskegee Institute, he founded the Tuskegee Civic Association. He led the movement for black voting rights in Tuskegee and Marion County for more than 25 years. He was the lead plaintiff in the case of Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), in which the Supreme Court overturned an act by Alabama officials to gerrymander black citizens in Tuskegee, restricting their voting rights.

Gray, Fred D. (David) (1930–) Fred D. Gray was an attorney and civil rights leader in Montgomery and Tuskegee. He defended the National Association for the

Raised in Mobile, Alexis M. Herman founded A. M. Herman & Associates, a consulting firm, in 1981. Active in Democratic politics, Herman became vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and was responsible for organizing the 1992 Democratic National Convention. She became deputy director of President-Elect Bill Clinton’s Transition Office after the 1992 election and then was appointed head of the White House Office of Public Liaison, where she was responsible for the Clinton administration’s interactions with interest groups. She became secretary of labor in 1997, the first African American nominated to the position, which she held until 2001. In the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election, Herman was a member of the Gore transition team and a likely White House chief of staff in a Gore administration. With the election of George W. Bush, Herman left government service and

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became a member of the Democratic National Committee.

Holmes, Alvin A. (1939–) Alvin A. Holmes was an educator, civil rights leader, and member of the Alabama legislature. In the Alabama House he sponsored legislation to name a portion of Interstate Highway 85 in Alabama for Martin Luther King Jr. and to have the state declare an official holiday for King’s birthday. He is credited with securing more positions for blacks in Alabama government than any other legislator.

Jackson, Vincent Edward (“Bo”) (1962–) Vincent Edward “Bo” Jackson was a National Football League player with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders in the 1980s. He also played professional baseball for the Kansas City Royals. Before entering the pros, Jackson was a star running back at Auburn University, where he won a Heisman Trophy.

Jemison, Mae Carol (1956–) Dr. Mae Carol Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. Born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, Jemison was the youngest child of Dorothy Jemison, an elementary school teacher and Charlie Jemison, a roofer and carpenter. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three to take advantage of better educational opportunities there. She graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973 and entered Stanford University on a National Achievement Scholarship. Jemison graduated from Stanford in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and having fulfilled the requirements for a B.A. degree in African and

Afro-American studies. When she obtained her M.D. degree in 1981, she interned at Los Angeles County–USC Medical Center and later worked as a general practitioner. Her published works include Seeing the Future: Science, Engineering and Education (2000). She has also appeared in films, including Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993). Dr. Jemison has received numerous awards. Ebony magazines named her among the “50 Most Influential Women” in 1993.

King, Coretta Scott (1927–2006) Coretta Scott King, the wife of assassinated civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was born on April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, Alabama. King was the second of three children born to Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMury. She had an older sister, Edythe, born 1925, and a younger brother, Obadiah Leonard, usually called Obie, born in 1930. She attended Lincoln High School in Marion, which she described as a “unique educational institution.” She graduated at the top of her class in 1945 and went on to attend Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Coretta Scott followed her sister’s lead. As part of a racial integration program that Antioch College instituted in 1943, Edythe was admitted with a full scholarship. She studied music with Walter Anderson, the first black department chair in a college that was not historically black. While in college, she became politically active largely due to her experience of racial discrimination by the local school board. The board denied her request to perform two years of required practice teaching at Yellow Springs public schools for her teaching certificate (she completed the requirement at a private school run by Antioch College instead). She was very active in the Ohio Progressive Party and attended her first national political convention in 1948 as a student delegate. After matriculating from the college, Scott won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music to study vocal

Alabama performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr. She married King on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents’ house. The ceremony was performed by King’s father. The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine. Coretta King received honorary degrees from many institutions including Preston University, Duke University, and Bates College. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, an African American sorority. After her husband was assassinated in 1968, King attended commemorative services at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark her husband’s birth every January 15, and fought for years to make it a national holiday. King’s quest was realized in 1986, when the first Martin Luther King Day was celebrated. During the 1980s, King affirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. This prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies. In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela, while Mandela’s husband Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner on Robben Island. King was also a long-time advocate for world peace. In 1957, King was the founder of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. She was also vocal in her opposition to capital punishment and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. King was an advocate of women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights, and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Mays, Willie Howard (1931–) Willie Howard Mays was a National Baseball League player. He starred with the New York Giants, San Francisco Giants, and New York Mets from 1951 to 1973. In 1951, he was named National League Rookie of the year, and MVP in 1954 and 1965. The “Say Hey Kid,” as he was called, won accolades not only for his batting, but also for his acrobatic “basket” catches in the outfield.

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Moton, Robert Russa (1867–1940) Robert Russa Moton was Booker T. Washington’s successor at Tuskegee Institute. Moton continued both the educational and racial policies and practices of Washington, but fought for black participation in World War II. In recognition of his racial leadership he was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1931.

Nixon, Edgar Daniel (E. D.) (1889–1987) Edgar Daniel Nixon was a fearless civil and human rights leader in Montgomery and was instrumental in organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955–1956. Nixon bailed Rosa Parks out of jail after her arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, and he helped find an attorney to represent her. In February 1956, a bomb exploded outside Nixon’s Montgomery home. Nixon led the Montgomery branch of the Pullman Porters Union and was president of the local chapter of the NAACP, the Montgomery Welfare League, and the Montgomery Voters League.

Owens, James Cleveland (Jesse) Owens (1913–1980) Born in Oakville, James Cleveland Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where he embarrassed the German dictator Adolph Hitler, who had contended that his “Aryan race” was mentally and physically superior to all other races. Owens, who had attended Ohio State University, won medals for the 100-meter race, the 200-meter race, the long jump, and as part of the 100-meter relay team.

Paige, Leroy (Satchel) (1906–1982) Born in Mobile, Satchel Paige was a major league baseball player with a penchant for witticisms. A right-handed pitcher, Paige played professional baseball from 1926 to the 1960s, mostly in the

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Negro leagues. In 1948, at the age of 42, he made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians, becoming the oldest player ever to debut in the major leagues. He joined the St. Louis Browns in 1952 and played in the All-Star Game in 1952 and 1953. In 1971, he was elected to a separate division of the Baseball Hall of Fame for players from the old segregated Negro leagues.

Parks, Rosa (1913–2005) Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Parks entered school in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1924. She left school in 1929 to care for her grandmother. In 1932, Parks married Aarand Parks in Pine Level, Alabama. By 1934, Parks received her high-school diploma. In 1943, Parks became secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. During that year, Parks tried to register to vote and was denied. Also, in that same year, Parks was forced off the bus for not entering at the back door. In 1944, Parks was denied the opportunity to register to vote once again. However, in 1945, Parks finally received a certificate for voting. By 1949, Parks became an advisor to the NAACP Youth Council and met Martin Luther King Jr., in 1955. She was also arrested in the same year on December 1 for not yielding her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus, where Parks stood trial and was found guilty on December 5. And thus the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. In 1963, Parks attended the civil rights march on Washington. She also participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march and worked for Congressman John Conyers in Detroit. And in 1987, she cofounded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development with Elaine Steele. The institute helped Detroit youth pursue their education and create a promising future for themselves. A bust of Parks was unveiled at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 1991.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. This act of resistance set off a boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system, which in turn activated the larger movement against segregation throughout the country. (AP/Wide World Photos)

In 1992, Parks published her first book, Rosa Parks: My Story, with Jim Askins. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She was also awarded the Rosa Parks Peace Prize during a trip to Stockholm, Sweden.

Pitts, Lucius H. (1914–1974) Lucius H. Pitts was president of Miles College from 1960 to 1971. He helped build the academic reputation of the college. He showed unusual leadership and courage when he joined his students during the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s.

Alabama

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the media following a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, April 2006. Rice was secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration during 2005– 2009. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Reed, Thomas (1927–1997) Thomas Reed was an attorney, civil rights leader, and state legislator. As a lawyer and civil rights leader, he helped desegregate the Alabama state troopers.

Rice, Condoleezza (1954–) Condoleezza Rice became the first African American woman to be appointed as national security advisor (2001) and secretary of state (2005), serving in both capacities under President George W. Bush. Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 14, 1954. Her mother, a pianist and organist, named Condoleezza from an Italian term “con dolcozza” which instructs the performer to play “with sweetness.” Her parents, John and Angelena Rice, raised Condoleezza to pursue excellence in education.

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Rice was from a deeply religious family who stressed education. Condoleezza was her parents’ only child. She learned to read music before learning to read books. Rice came from four generations of college-educated family members (great-greatgrandparents, great-grandparents, her parents, and her aunt). She started playing the piano at the age of three, taught by her grandmother. In 1965, Rice became the first black student to attend music classes at Birmingham Southern Conservatory of Music. She moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1969 to attend an integrated school for the first time. By 1971, Rice had graduated from high school. In 1974, she graduated cum laude from the University of Denver and received an M.A. in government from Notre Dame University. In 1981, Rice received her Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Denver. Rice’s first book was The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983: Uncertain Allegiance. In 1986, she published her second book, The Gorbachev Era, in collaboration with Alexander Dallin. She was also appointed special assistant to the director of the joint chief of staff at the Pentagon through a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship. By 1987, Rice was promoted to associate professor of political science at Stanford University. Between 1989 and 1991, Rice served in President George Herbert Walker Bush’s administration as director of Soviet and East European affairs and special assistant to the president for national security affairs, and senior director for Soviet affairs at the National Security Council. By May 1993, Rice was promoted to full professor at Stanford and in the same year named provost of Stanford. In 1994, she was elected to the board of trustees at the University of Notre Dame and, by 1995, had published another book, entitled Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. Rice became policy advisor to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1999. Rice delivered an address at the Republican

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National Convention in 2000. She was named national security advisor by President-Elect George W. Bush and was sworn in on January 20, 2001. She succeeded Colin Powell as secretary of state in January 2005 and served until the end of the Bush administration in 2009.

Shores, Arthur D. (Davis) (1904–1996) Arthur D. Shores was an attorney and civil rights leader in Birmingham. He defended civil rights leaders and their followers during the 1963 racial protests in Birmingham. He also represented the first black students to enter the University of Alabama. Although his efforts led to two bombings of his home in the 1960s, in 1975 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Alabama.

Shuttlesworth, Fred L. (Lee) (1922–) Fred Shuttlesworth was a clergyman and civil rights leader in Birmingham. In the late 1950s he led attempts to desegregate schools in the city. After becoming pastor of Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church in 1963, Shuttlesworth was well established as the principal civil rights leader in the city. He cofounded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which became one of the foremost civil rights organizations in the state after the NAACP was banned. He was also a cofounder of the SCLC, which he served as secretary from 1958 to 1970 and president for a brief period in 2004. Although he was beaten and jailed several times and his home was bombed, Shuttlesworth continued to be a crusader against racial injustices. He led protests against discrimination in employment and public accommodations. As the latter demonstrations progressed, in 1963 he invited Martin Luther King Jr. and his leadership cadre to become directly involved in the Birmingham movement. The campaign that followed has been called the climactic struggle of the Civil Rights Movement.

Thomas, Louphena (1918–) Louphena Thomas was an educator and politician. In 1977, she became the first African American female to serve in the Alabama legislature.

Washington, Booker Taliaferro (1858–1915) Booker Taliaferro Washington was one of the most controversial African American leaders of the nineteenth century. He founded Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. Washington was born in 1856, seven years before the Emancipation Proclamation, on a slave plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. Washington had no schooling when he was a slave, but had a childhood hunger for education. After Washington was freed, he began teaching himself with a used copy of Noah Webster’s elementary spelling book. He attended a makeshift school, while laboring at a West Virginia salt furnace and later a coal mine. Washington left home in 1872 to attend Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, where he earned admittance by the vigor with which he cleaned classrooms. He paid his way primarily through janitorial work, and graduated with honors in 1895. In 1881, Washington was recommended by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong to start a school in Tuskegee, Alabama. The mission of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was to train school teachers and masters of various crafts and trades. Washington worked tirelessly, ceaselessly, and with great success to procure white patronage and protection for his school, becoming known as “the sage of Tuskegee.” Washington’s implicit and explicit advocacy of the social philosophy of “accommodation” earned him high praise from white Americans. On September 18, 1895, the opening day of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, before an interracial audience, Washington delivered the address

Alabama now known as the “Atlanta Compromise.” In this speech, Washington denounced the black emigration movement in general and the movement of blacks from the South in particular. He also angered many civil rights activists of the period by supporting segregation of the races. Washington went on to become the most prominent and powerful black man in pre–World War I America. Many urged Washington to write his autobiography, among them Walter Hines Page of the Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin. Many of the black intelligentsia deemed Up from Slavery a disservice to the race. Leading the vanguard among the black intelligentsia as an anti-Washington faction were William Monroe Trotter and W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois took Washington to task for soft-pedaling the horrors of slavery, for promoting stereotypes about blacks, and for being less than honest about the racism he had encountered. Washington dined at the White House with President Theodore Roosevelt six months after the publication of Up from Slavery, on October 16, 1901. This visit increased Washington’s fame and power that helped him expand his network, dubbed “the Tuskegee Machine” by Du Bois. Washington served as advisor to President William Howard Taft and secured political appointments for black men loyal to his philosophy, as well as determined the fate of a few white men seeking office. Washington served as a trustee of both Fisk and Howard universities and helped both connect with major philanthropists. Many activists were furious with Washington for not speaking out vociferously against white mob violence, Jim Crow, and other injustices.

Young, Coleman Alexander (1918–1997) Born in Tuscaloosa, Coleman Alexander Young moved with his family to Detroit in 1923. He was elected to the Michigan State Senate in 1964 and was elected as the first African American

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mayor of Detroit in 1973, narrowing defeating a white police commissioner. He was reelected four times by wide margins, serving as mayor for 20 years and retiring in 1993.

Cultural Contributions In addition to such world-renowned musicians and composers as Nat King Cole, Erskine Hawkins, Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores, Odetta, Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, Wilson Pickett, Martha Reeves, Joe Ligon, Percy Sledge, Willie “Big Mama” Thornton and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and literary and artistic figures like Albert Murray, Sonia Sanchez, and Bill Traylor, Alabama’s African American communities have contributed many exhibits, festivals, museums, and institutes to our nation’s cultural treasure. These include the Scottsboro Museum and Cultural Center, located in the Joyce Chapel, one of the oldest African American churches in the state (c. 1876). The museum focuses on the famous Scottsboro Boys case but also has exhibits on other aspects of black history. The Alabama Blues Project, in partnership with the University of Alabama, has historic markers and sponsors exhibits on Alabama bluesmen and blueswomen. The project has also promoted the Music City Blues Society Festival in Birmingham and the Freedom Creek Festival. Montgomery is home for the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture. Montgomery has a Civil Rights Trail, which includes the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture. In addition to its archives, the facility features artwork, sculptures, and artifacts. The six-block Civil Rights District in Birmingham honors the Civil Rights Movement and pays tribute to the clergy who contributed to the movement. Another site along the Civil Rights Trail is the Kelly Ingram Park, where civil rights demonstrators

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massed in 1963. The park contains sculptures which depict attacks on the protesters and jailed children. Also on the trail is the Fourth Avenue Business District, the major black business area in the city from the early 1900s to the 1960s. It was also a social and cultural center for Birmingham’s blacks. Tuxedo Junction, named for the street car crossing at Tuxedo Park, received national notoriety from the 1939 hit song by Erskine Hawkins called “Tuxedo Junction.” The Nixon Building Dance Hall (c. 1922) is also there. It was the social hall for black Birmingham in the 1920s and 1930s. Another historic cultural site is the marker noting the location of the Smithfield neighborhood. Smithfield was one of the oldest middle-class black subdivisions in the Birmingham area, dating from the early 1900s. The city’s first African American high school is also located there. The most visited cultural facility in Birmingham is the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Housed in a domelike structure, it features several galleries and has exhibits on both the Civil Rights Movement and global human rights movements. It sponsors lectures and other cultural programs throughout the year. Tuskegee boasts the George Washington Carver Museum, The Oaks (Booker T. Washington’s home), and the Daniel “Chappie” James Center for Aerospace Science and Health Education.

Bibliography Badger, R. Reid, and Lawrence A. Clayton, eds. Alabama and the Borderlands: From Prehistory to Statehood. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003. Bailey, Richard, They Too Call Alabama Home: Alabama Profiles, 1800–1999. Montgomery, AL: Pyramid Publishing, 1999.

Barnard, William D. Dixiecrats and Democrats: Alabama Politics, 1942–1950. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985. Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro. A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969. Davis, Angela. An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 1989. Dorman, Lewy. Party Politics in Alabama from 1850 through 1860. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995. Felix, Antonia. Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story. New York: New Publishers, 2000. Flynt, Wayne. “Alabama’s Shame: The Historical Origins of the 1901 Constitution.” Alabama Law Review 53 (2001): 67–76. Flynt, Wayne. Alabama in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 2004. Gregory, Read. Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation. Grand Rapids, MI: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. A Biographical History of African Americans. Montgomery: E- Book Time Books, 2005. Jackson, Harvey H. Inside Alabama: A Personal History of My State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. Lofton, J. Mack. Voices from Alabama: A Twentieth-Century Mosaic. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993. Marks, Henry S., and Marsha Marks. Alabama Past Leaders. Huntsville, AL: Strode, 1981. Novkov, Julie. Racial Union: Law, Intimacy, and the White State in Alabama, 1865–1954. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

Alabama Permaloff, Anne, and Carl Grafton. Political Power in Alabama: The More Things Change. . . . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Rogers, William Warren, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt. Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994.

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Van Der Veer Hamilton, Virginia. Alabama: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (New Edition). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1981. Originally published 1901.

ALASKA Anne Hornsby

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Chronology 1741

Russia lays claim to Alaska.

1867

The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.

1869

A few blacks begin to arrive in Alaska.

1886

African American Captain Michael Healy is given command of the Bear, the largest cutter in the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service in Alaskan waters.

1890s

The Alaskan gold rush brings many African American miners into the territory.

1896

Captain Michael Healey is found guilty of mistreating his crew.

1912

Alaska becomes a U.S. territory.

1941–1945

Largest migration of blacks into Alaska begins as blacks work on the ALCAN Highway and are assigned to military bases throughout Alaska and the Aleutians.

1942–1943

Over 10,000 U.S. soldiers build the ALCAN Highway; 3,695 of these soldiers are black.

1959

(January 3) Alaska enters the Union as the 49th state.

1963

(February 11) Alaska ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing poll taxes.

1970s

Construction of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline (completed in 1977) brings many African American works into the state.

1984

Maryline Blackburn, a European-born African American singer, represents Alaska in the Miss America pageant.

1991

James C. Hayes elected as the first black mayor of Fairbanks, and the first African American mayor in the state.

1993

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) investigates complaints of discrimination at Alaskan military bases.

1993

(March 26) The Alaska legislature votes to rename the bridge over the Gestle River as the “Black Veterans Recognition Bridge,” in commemoration of the service of the African Americans who helped build the ALCAN Highway.

1994

The African American Historical Society of Alaska is founded.

1995

The Blacks in Alaska History Project is incorporated.

2000

African Americans comprise 3.5 percent of Alaska’s population.

2007

Blacks comprise 3.8 percent of the state’s population.

Alaska

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2008

Controversy erupts in the state’s black community over Governor Sarah Palin’s failure to recognize the state’s Juneteenth celebration.

2008

Former Fairbanks Mayor James C. Hayes and his spouse are convicted of fraud.

2010

Census estimates put blacks at about 4 percent of the state’s population.

Historical Overview The Alaskan territory, rich in natural resources such as gold, salmon, copper, and, most recently, petroleum, was invaded by Russia in 1741 and subsequently purchased by the United States in 1867. The area became a territory of the United States in 1912 and gained statehood in January 1959. The territory experienced a colonial relationship with both Russia and the United States in which its natural resources were exploited by absentee capital investment. From the perspective of the United States, the Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 facilitated this exploitation because, among other provisions, they established purchasing rights to land in the northwest territory that would be advantageous to some groups. Thus land in the Alaskan territory was sold at favorable rates to white male citizens, while at the same time, citizenship was denied to the indigenous people of the area. The state of Alaska, though the largest state in terms of land area in the United States, is the fourth-smallest in population, with only North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming trailing behind. According to the 2005 Census, the racial and ethnic composition of the state is 67.6 percent white, 15.6 percent native, 4.1 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian, 3.5 percent black, and 5.4 percent mixed race. In 2010, the percentage of blacks had risen slightly to 4 percent. Of approximately 627,000 people living in the state, some 70 percent live in urban areas, with 265,000 or a quarter-million residing in Anchorage or its suburban environs. If one adds the 50,000 living in Matanuska Valley, a bedroom community of Anchorage, the population of the two areas comprises one-half the population of the state. In addition, some 80,000 live in

Fairbanks and surrounding areas. The African American population is centered in the cities of Fairbanks (11 percent) and Anchorage (6 percent). The African American presence in Alaska began shortly after the Civil War. In the post-bellum period, some black seamen who migrated to the North Pacific to work in the whaling and fur trade remained and took up residence in the area. The discovery of gold in 1880 on the coast along Gastineau Channel saw more African Americans moving to Alaska. However, the big influx of African Americans into the territory occurred during World War II, when blacks were stationed in various military bases and decided to stay and take up permanent residence. Most of the current black population of the state lives in Anchorage and Fairbanks, where military bases are established (Fort Richardson, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Fort Wainwright, and Eielson Air Force Base). There are also a smaller number of African Americans living in Big Delta (Delta Junction) near Fort Greely and in Juneau, Ketchikan, and Kodiak near sites of Coast Guard activity. In spite of enduring social and economic constraints imposed by the larger society, African Americans, with some occasional shortcomings, have made many significant contributions to the state. These range from the construction of the ALCAN Highway, holding political office, serving in the Revenue Cutter Service, winning the Miss Alaska Pageant, and operating an array of businesses.

The ALCAN Highway African American military regiments were instrumental in the construction of the ALCAN

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African American road workers march back to camp for a meal along a two-day-old section of the AlaskaCanada Defense Highway, 1942. The crew is helping to construct the Alaska Highway, which will stretch from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada, to Fairbanks, Alaska. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Highway (Alaska-Canada Highway), now known as the Alaska Highway. Though the immediate urgency of building this highway was as a security measure precipitated by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, talk of such construction began as early as 1929 between the United State and Canada. Prior to the construction of the ALCAN Highway, there were only some 2,500 miles of roads in Alaska and only one main highway, which was the Richardson between Valdez and Fairbanks. The territory’s link to the United States consisted of ship traffic from Pacific Northwest ports and a small number of Pan American Airways Clipper flights. Thus, there was a desire to build a highway through Canada that would connect Alaska with the lower 48 states to stimulate economic activity in the area.

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor led to American fears that sea routes to Alaska could be cut off, posing a threat to the security of the Pacific Northwest and the entire country. Thus, there was a need for an overland route to get people and military supplies to Alaska. The 1,500-milelong ALCAN Highway was constructed by U.S. Army engineers in 8 months and 12 days, from March to November 1942 (the harsh winter climate prompting the urgency). It covers the Canadian Yukon and Alaska and starts at Dawson Creek in British Columbia and ends in Fairbanks, Alaska. Among the regiments involved in the construction of the highway were the African American 93rd, 95th, and 97th Corps of Engineers. The 93rd General Service Regiment was deployed to Skagway, the 95th to Dawson Creek, and the 97th disembarked at Valdez and worked the northern interior. The African American regiments were joined by four white regiments of the 18th, 35th, 340th, and 341st. Because the military was segregated at the time, all the commanding officers of the regiments were white; only black chaplains and doctors were commissioned officers in the northwest military units. There was initial disagreement among military commands about the advisability of deploying black troops to work on the highway because of preconceived notions about blacks. Some army commanders thought blacks did not possess the necessary skills to operate the equipment and that they were unable to function efficiently in extreme cold environments. The U.S. Army commander for Alaska, General Simon Buckner Jr., was concerned that black soldiers would cohabit with indigenous Alaskans and produce a “mongrel race.” However, due to the shortage of troops, the army deployed 3,695 black men of the 93rd, 95th, and 97th regiments to help with the construction. The number of black engineers represented one-third of the total 10,607 engineers who worked on the highway.

Alaska Though all troops endured the harsh climate, the 97th labored in the interior, northern region and worked under the most extreme conditions of any of the regiments. These troops encountered the largest snowfall and widest swings in temperature of -80 degrees F to +90 degrees F and have been said to have carved the most miles in the final stretch. Upon completion of the ALCAN Highway, little if any local or public recognition was bestowed upon the black regiments for their contribution to the project. However, Brigadier General James A. O’Connor stated: “Some day the accomplishment of these colored soldiers’ achievements accomplished far from their homes will occupy a major place in the lore of the North country.” Froelich Rainey, a reporter for the National Geographic magazine, wrote the following in 1943: “If I were asked to design a monument commemorating the construction of the Alcan [Alaska-Canada] Highway, . . . I would model a 20-ton caterpillar tractor driven by two soldiers, one negro and one white, but so greasy and grimy that the difference in color would be practically imperceptible.” Today, the work of these black troops has received more widespread acclaim. In 1993, the State of Alaska passed a bill, signed by Governor Walter Hickel, renaming the bridge over the Gerstle River the Black Veterans Recognition Bridge, and in 2002, Governor Fran Ulmer recognized the efforts of the black soldiers of the 93rd, 95th, and 97th as being instrumental in building the Alaska Highway by stating: “If you’ve ever driven the Alaska Highway, you might remember a bridge just south of Delta on the way to Tok, that spans the Gerstle River. There’s a sign on both ends displaying its name—Black Veterans Memorial Bridge. It is a small gesture to name a bridge, but I hope that by doing so we will be reminded of the significance of the contributions of the regiments and of every black soldier since . . . without the black soldiers, the Alcan would likely never have been built in such a short time.”

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Captain Michael Healy Michael Healy was an African American who served the state and won great acclaim in his career, but left in disrepute. Healy was captain of Alaska’s Revenue Cutter Service, which was reorganized in 1915 as the Coast Guard. Michael Healy was born in 1893 on a Georgia plantation to the white owner, Michael Morris Healy, and former domestic slave, Mary Eliza Clark. Michael Morris purchased Mary Eliza in 1829 and took her as his commonlaw wife, since, at the time, state law would not recognize a civil marital union between whites and blacks. The couple had 10 children who were light in complexion and identified themselves as white. Michael Healy married a white woman, Mary Jane Roach. The children were sent north for their education, some to a Quaker school in New York and some to Holy Cross College in Massachusetts. Michael attended Holy Cross and, in 1854, was sent to school in France to quell his high spirits. However, he soon left the school to become a seaman, sailing to Calcutta on a British ship in July 1855. He later joined the Revenue Cutter Service and quickly rose through the ranks, being commissioned as third lieutenant in 1865 and promoted to captain in March 1883. In 1886, Michael was given command of the largest cutter in the Arctic, the Bear. The Bear has been described as the “prime symbol of American sovereignty in Alaska.” The New York Sun referred to the powers given to Captain Healy for his various patrols as those which made him “a good deal more distinguished person in the waters of the far Northwest than any President of the United States, or any potentate in Europe . . . ask anyone in the arctic, ‘Who is the greatest man in America?’ and the reply would invariably be ‘Why, Mike Healy.’ ” Starting his service on the East Coast, by the mid-1870s, Michael was based in San Francisco Bay, where the cutters traveled north each spring and patrolled the Alaskan coast and Bering Sea from a base at Unalaska. Initially, the main duties of

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the cutters involved the protection of seals from poachers (their numbers were becoming extinct) and providing assistance to the whaling fleet. Not only were the seals in danger of extinction, but the onrush of white settlers to the state, disrupting the traditional, stable economic and social patterns of the natives whose economic way of life was that of herders, resulted in depletion of the stocks of wildlife in general. This situation wreaked havoc for the native inhabitants of the state in the various villages as the food supply declined. There was need of a reliable source of food. Michael joined ranks with Dr. Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian minister from New York, to solve the food supply problem. On one of his voyages to the Siberian coast, Captain Healy observed the Chukchi people sustaining themselves by raising reindeer. With this knowledge and the fundraising ability of Dr. Jackson, the two began to import reindeer to Alaska. There were enough lichens and tundra vegetation in the interior of Alaska to serve as food for the reindeer. In addition, reindeer reproduced quickly, and the native herders could use their meat for food and their skins for clothing. The project was a success, if for a short time, due to lack of congressional support in later years. Captain Healy’s aggressive personality and quick and violent temper, both traits exacerbated by his weakness for alcohol, led to his decline in the Revenue Cutter Service. He was known as a strict disciplinarian and meted out harsh treatment for perceived misdeeds of his crew. Captain Healy stood trial for court-martial twice, in 1890 and 1895–1896, for mistreatment of his crew. He was acquitted in the 1890 trial. Of the 19 counts against him in the trial beginning in January 1896, Captain Healy was found guilty of 16, not guilty on two, and one not proven. Captain Healy’s sentence was light when the judges took into consideration his “creditable and valuable service.” Therefore, he was suspended from active duty for four years and placed in the indeterminate status of “waiting orders.” He was placed on the bottom

of the captains list of the Revenue Cutter Service and “his condemnation would be read out at a full muster on every ship in the fleet.” The sentence was carried out and the case closed in June 1896. In 1900, Michael was given command of a new ship, the McCulloch, which he sailed to Alaska in the summer. However, he soon became depressed and was diagnosed with “melancholia with suicidal tendency.” Toward the end of his career, he supervised repairs in dry dock and sailed twice to Alaska in 1902 and 1903, after which he retired after 40 years in the service. In honor of his service, the Coast Guard named a Polar-Class icebreaker after him. This 420-foot, 16,300-ton Healy is one of three other icebreakers in the Coast Guard fleet. The Healy is designed to carry a crew of 75, with accommodation and facilities for 50 scientists.

Modern Alaska The easing of racial relationships in the state in modern times was exemplified by the election of a fiscally conservative and socially moderate Democrat, James C. Hayes, as the first black mayor of Fairbanks in 1991. His victory occurred in a city where the black population was only 12 percent, many of whom were stationed in the local military bases. Hayes, who rose through the political ranks from a seat on the local school board and city council, served three terms as mayor (1992–2001). Though Hayes, who initially ran unopposed, admitted that there were still undercurrents of racial tension in the city as evidenced by the local chapter of the NAACP investigating civilian black complaints of racial discrimination and harassment at Fort Wainwright Army and Elison Air Force bases, he also said that in Fairbanks “people tend to accept you as you are . . . they just want to hear your platform and hear what you believe in, and then see you go out and work really hard. That’s been the key to my success.” In addition to his duties as mayor, Hayes was also associated with the Lily of the Valley Church

Alaska of God in Christ, where he served as assistant pastor and eventually pastor. (The church was founded by his in-laws, LeeRoy and Mazie Parham, where his father-in-law was pastor.) In 2000, just before leaving the mayor’s office, Hayes was involved in the establishment of Love Social Services Center, a tax-exempt organization that provided tutoring and social programs for lowincome and disadvantaged youth in the South Fairbanks area and at the state’s youth jail as well as operating a summer camp and a computer lab at the center. His wife, Chris Hayes, served as the center’s executive director and other officers of the organization included family members and Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ deacons and members. Since its inception, Love Social Services has received $2.9 million in federal grants through the efforts of Republican U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. However, in 2008, Hayes and his wife were found guilty of 16 counts of conspiracy, theft from a program receiving federal funds, money laundering, and filing false tax returns. They were also found guilty of using government funds earmarked for Love Social Services for their personal use and to help pay for construction and furnishing of a new Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ building. Hayes was also accused of using the federal funds to pay for personal expenditures such as a plasma television, a family wedding reception, and credit card bills. Chris Hayes was accused of writing checks to cash on Love Social Services Center’s account and converting the cash to money orders and cashier’s checks to pay for personal items. According to the indictment, over $450,000 of federal funds were illegally diverted or used. Hayes was sentenced to 5½ years in prison and his wife, Chris, was sentenced to 3 years. Though Jim Hayes is appealing his case, they both reported to prison on June 11, 2008. In the area of entertainment, in 1984, Maryline Blackburn, who grew up in Fairbanks, became the first African American representative

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to the Miss America pageant from Alaska. First runner-up in the Alaska pageant was Sarah Palin, nee Heath, who later became governor of the state and the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. Blackburn, now in the music and entertainment business, recalls a note Sarah Palin wrote her saying, “I do love you. You’re more admired than even you know. And please keep God number One. He’s got great things for you, baby. Love, Sarah Heath.” African Americans, small in number in a thinly populated state, have made notable contributions to the state of Alaska. Beginning shortly after the Civil War until the present, blacks began to infiltrate the state, where they were involved in working in the maritime trade, seeking their fortune in the gold rush, serving with segregated military regiments that helped build the ALCAN Highway during World War II, serving in the military, constructing the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and building businesses and careers throughout the state. During the 2008 presidential campaign, African Americans showed little enthusiasm for the vice presidential campaign of their governor Sarah Palin. Earlier that year, controversies had arisen over the exclusion of black businesspeople from the Alaskan oil and gas pipeline board, the lack of minorities on the governor’s staff, and the governor’s failure to issue a proclamation recognizing the Juneteenth celebration, a holiday recognizing the arrival of news of emancipation of slaves in Texas and the Southwest.

Notable African Americans Alexander, Gwendolyn (dates unknown) Gwendolyn Alexander is president of the African American Historical Society of Alaska. In 2008, she strongly criticized Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for her failure to participate in or support

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the state’s Juneteenth celebrations as previous governors had done.

Davis, Bettye (1938–) Born in Louisiana, Bettye Davis was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1990 as a Democrat from Anchorage. She was reelected in 1992 and 1994, but defeated in 1996. In 2000, Davis was elected to the Alaska State Senate. She is a member of the League of Woman Voters and of the Anchorage chapter of the NAACP, and a former treasurer of the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative (NOBEL) Women.

Harper, George T. (1930–2004) Born in Atlanta, George Harper served in the U.S. Navy in the late 1940s and then earned a B.S. degree from Chase College in 1960. He first visited Alaska in 1980, and moved to Anchorage in 1981. He worked as a computer programmer for the Bureau of Land Management until 1992. He also taught computer classes at the University of Alaska–Anchorage. In 1992, Harper created a Black History Month exhibit honoring black U.S. Army engineers who constructed the Alaska Highway during World War II. Harper was also a cofounder of the Blacks in Alaska History Project, which was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1995. The purpose of the project is to build and maintain a collection of information and historical photographs documenting the presence and contributions of African Americans in Alaska. The project also produces exhibits and lectures publicizing these historical resources.

Cultural Contributions

Democratic Senator Bettye Davis rises in support of a bill on the Senate floor, in Juneau, Alaska, April 10, 2008. (AP/Wide World Photos)

The major cultural activities in Alaska, other than those sponsored by the church, are centered around the African American Historical Society. This group, founded in 1994, specializes in the history of slavery and the history of Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. teaching tolerance to youth, African Americans and the ALCAN Highway, the Million Father March, and various youth events and activities. Its major communitywide festival is the Juneteenth celebration. This festival began as a loosely organized event in the 1980s. In 1994, the historical society assumed sponsorship of the event. It receives financial support from the Alaskan African American Business Council and other organizations. During the festival various foods, African American photographs, and other items are sold.

Alaska

Bibliography Alaska History and Cultural www.akhistorycourse.org.

Studies.

Borneman, Walter R. Alaska: A Narrative History. New York: Harper-Collins, 2003. Ebony, October 1998. Haycock, Stephen. Alaska: An American Colony. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

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Juneteenth Celebration in Alaska. www.juneteen thalaska.com. Lundberg, Murray. “Captain Michael Healy, Revenue Cutter Service.” http://polarcircle .tripod.com. Naske, Claus-M., and Herman E. Slotnick. Alaska: A History of the 49th State. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. O’Toole, James M. Passing for White. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

ARIZONA Jamane Yeager

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Chronology 1539

Estevanico, a Moroccan slave, leads the expedition of Fray Marcos De Niza in search of the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola; the expedition crosses the region that will become Arizona.

1752

Four soldiers of African descent are stationed at the newly established Tubac presidio, the first Spanish colonial garrison and first European community in what will become Arizona.

1776

A Spanish presidio is established at Tucson in south-central Arizona.

1821

Mexico, of which the Arizona region is a part, gains its independence from Spain.

1824

African American mountain men enter Arizona, including Jim Beckwourth, Edward Rose, and Moses “Black” Harris.

1848

(February) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War; Arizona is part of a vast stretch of Mexican territory ceded to the United States.

1850

The Compromise of 1850 establishes the Territory of New Mexico, which includes Arizona.

1850

The daughter of Wiley Box, a stagecoach driver, marries a black Indian named Curly Neale, who owns a hotel in Oracle, near Tucson.

1858

The Butterfield Stage Company employs African American women as cooks at stage stops across Arizona.

1860

The 1860 Census records a black man named Charley Embers as living near the Vulture Mine near Wickenburg; other blacks include Charles Cooper and the Isaiah Bell family, residents of Tucson.

1863

The Territory of Arizona is established.

1863

Ben McClendon, a runaway slave, finds gold deposits near Wickenburg.

1866

Charley Embers begins working as a cook in a mining camp at Ajo, south of Tucson.

1868

A domestic named Mary Green and her two children become the first African American residents of Phoenix.

1870

Moses Green becomes the first African American born in Arizona.

1870

Harvey Merchant, a black cowboy, is rescued from Indians by soldiers.

1876

The Southern Pacific Railroad enters Arizona from California.

1876

Nat Love, a black cowboy and writer known as “Deadwood Dick,” resides in Arizona; William Curly Neal works as a freight driver in Oracle, Arizona.

1877

Silver is discovered near Tombstone.

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1880

The Census shows 155 African Americans living in the Arizona Territory.

1881

The city of Phoenix incorporates; the Southern Pacific Railroad crosses Arizona.

1881

Henry Ransom, former 10th Cavalryman, becomes the first driver for the Tucson Transfer Company.

1881

The Gunfight at O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone in southeastern Arizona.

1883

The Atlantic & Pacific (Santa Fe) Railroad crosses northern Arizona.

1884

Jim Young, “The Giant,” fights with the well-known boxer John L. Sullivan in Tucson.

1885

The black “buffalo soldiers” of the 10th Cavalry are dispatched to Arizona to fight the Apache leaders Marqus and Geronimo.

1886

Geronimo surrenders to General Nelson Miles; the Indian fighting in Arizona ends.

1889

Frank Shirley opens a barber shop in Phoenix.

1891

Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, lives in Nogales and Tucson; Charley Williams, popularly known as “Banjo Dick,” moves to Nogales after the failure of the “Banjo Dick Mine,” the first all-black mining company in Arizona.

1892

The 24th Regiment of all-black soldiers is sent to Fort Huachuca to help guard the Mexican border.

1892

Julia Thomas opens an oyster parlor and confectionary in Phoenix.

1893

1,357 African Americans reside in the Arizona Territory; Richard Rosser and his family arrive in Phoenix to operate a truck farm.

1897

William Powaton Crump comes to Arizona from West Virginia and runs a statewide fruit-and-produce business.

1899

A black fraternal lodge, Alpha Lodge No. 17, is formed in Tucson with 14 Master Masons present; Tanner Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is founded in Phoenix.

1900

Compass Lodge No. 18 opens in Clifton, and Maricopa Lodge No. 16 is formed with 20 Master Masons in Phoenix.

1900

Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church is founded in Tucson.

1902

Cotton cultivation is introduced into Arizona.

1905

Arizona Territory is the top copper producer in the United States.

1905

Henry O. Flipper works for the Col. Green Mining Company in southern Arizona; the Prince Chapel AME Church is founded in Tucson.

1909

Segregation is made legal in the Arizona Territory and Arizona school districts are segregated.

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1912

(February) Arizona becomes the 48th state.

1912

Arizona grants women the right to vote but forbids racially mixed marriages.

1912

J.W. Miller’s Afro Mining Company fails.

1913

More all-black units are stationed at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona.

1919

The Phoenix Advancement League is formed.

1921

Booker T. Washington Memorial Hospital is founded in Phoenix.

1921

Death of the well-known African American cowboy of Tombstone, “Old Bat” Baptiste.

1926

Phoenix Union Colored High School opens, becoming the first segregated high school in Arizona.

1931

The Gleam, a black-owned newspaper, is founded.

1933

Walter Yancy of Waco, Texas, attends the University of Arizona and begins recording local history.

1933

The black-owned Phoenix Tribune is founded; another black-owned newspaper, the Phoenix Index, is founded in 1936.

1938

An African American cowboy named Nathan Hall works at the 3C (Old Hugget) Ranch in Oracle, near Tucson.

1942

Three African American soldiers are killed in Phoenix during the Thanksgiving Day Riot.

1942

14,000 African American soldiers of the 93rd Infantry Division and 32nd and 33rd companies of the Woman’s Auxiliary Army Corps are stationed at Fort Huachuca for training.

1942–1962

The Arizona Sun newspaper is edited by Doc Benson.

1945

Phoenix Union Colored High School is renamed George Washington Carver High School.

1947

The Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity formed.

1950

The Leader newspaper is operated by David Solomon.

1950

Hayzel B. Daniels and Carl Sims become the first African American legislators in Arizona.

1953

Segregation ends in the Phoenix Union High School District, a year before legal segregation ends nationally.

1960

The Phoenix National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council stages sit-ins in four downtown coffee shops and lunch counters.

Arizona

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1964

The Phoenix City Council adopts a public accommodations ordinance.

1966

Dr. Morrison F. Warren is the first African American appointed to the Phoenix City Council.

1971

The Arizona Informant newspaper is founded by brothers Cloves C. Campbell Sr. and Dr. Charles R. Campbell.

1972

Cloves Campbell Sr. becomes the first African American elected to the Arizona State Senate.

1972

Calvin Goode becomes the second African American to serve on the Phoenix City Council; he serves for 22 years.

1992

Establishment of a Martin Luther King Jr./Civil Rights Day passes the Arizona legislature.

1998

Leah Landrum Taylor, an African American woman, is elected to the Arizona House of Representatives as a Democrat.

2000

Roosevelt Elementary School District is renamed in honor of Cloves C. Campbell Sr.

2006

The Arizona Commission on African American Affairs (ACAAA) is created to establish more effective communication between the Arizona legislature and the state’s African American community.

2006

Leah Landrum Taylor is elected to the Arizona State Senate.

2006

Cloves Campbell Jr. wins a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives.

2008

Vernon Parker, a Republican, is sworn in as the first African American mayor of Paradise Valley.

2009

Mayor Vernon Parker of Paradise Valley announces his candidacy for the 3rd District U.S. House seat in Arizona.

Historical Overview Prehistory to Territorial Status in 1863 Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in Arizona during the sixteenth century, the land was occupied by natives that the former called Indians. It was a black Moroccan slave, Esteban (variously known as Esteven, Estevanico, or Little Stephen), who led the Spaniards from Mexico through Arizona and into New Mexico in 1539 as they searched for illusive cities of gold. Esteban became the guide to Fray Marcos de Niza and, upon

discovering the cities of Cibola in Zuni, New Mexico, was killed by Indians. He is believed to be the first non-Native American to set foot in Arizona. The next significant encounter with Arizona occurred in the 1690s when the Jesuit, Padre Francisco Kino, began establishing missions in southern Arizona. These missions were followed with the building of presidios to protect missionaries and explorers. The first presidio was located at Tubac in 1752 and was moved to Tucson in 1776. According to Dobyns (1976), four soldiers with varying degrees of African ancestry and shades of hue transferred

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to Tucson with the presidio. It was difficult to identify blacks during the Spanish period because of the rigid caste classification system that the Spanish had, with whites coming from Spain being at the top of the hierarchy, Africans at the bottom, and numerous designations in between. Although probably many more blacks accompanied every expeditionary force following de Niza’s return, all but Esteban have been lost to posterity. The only evidence of a prolonged stay by any black is found in the reports of Jaramillo, a lieutenant under the command of Coronado. He reports that two black families were constantly in touch with Friar Louis de Escalon. From 1542 to about 1650, the Sebastian and Melchor Perey families and their descendants were settled somewhere between the Arizona and New Mexico border near present-day Greenlee. After 1650, there is no further mention of the two families. The arrival of African Americans in Arizona from other parts of the United States in significant numbers did not occur until after 1850. After the conclusion of the Mexican War, African Americans came in increasing numbers. In 1850, there were only 21 known blacks in the entire territory, which included New Mexico and Arizona. In 1860, 85 “free” blacks were known to have been in the territory, with 21 residing in the future territory of Arizona. By 1870, the number had climbed to 26. Mining was a chief motivation behind most immigration to Arizona prior to the Civil War. Not only were the hillsides and mountains of Arizona thought to be filled with gold, but the rich fields of California’s north were said to contain “enough gold to make every man in this country rich.” Since the major southern routes leading to California passed through Arizona, from 1848 to the end of the California rush, the future territory became spotted with settlements involved in on way or another with gold. Gila, Tubac, and Tucson became leading communities almost overnight. John, an African American

from Kentucky, was among those black pioneers who ventured into Arizona because of his white employer, as well as the California gold rush. He was a member of the famous Duval party, which crossed through Arizona on the way to California in 1849. John had been employed as a barber and cook in El Paso, Texas, and when the family decided to move west, he accompanied them since he was the sole servant. The Butterfield stage company employed a number of African American women as cooks at various stage stops across Arizona. Mining in Arizona began in earnest after the Gadsden Purchase was completed in 1854. The Arivac Mining Company employed a number of blacks as miners, cooks, and teamsters. In 1856, Charles D. Poston purchased the Arivac works, retaining all the black employees. Poston became fond of one of the African American cooks at the Arivac site, a Jim Berry, and a warm friendship between the two men developed. As the Civil War became a reality, Poston and his close friend, Professor Raphael Pumpbelly, decided to leave the territory. Berry volunteered to accompany the two men, acting as scout, cook, and protector. Upon reaching the Colorado River, however, the black man left the two men for reasons that have not been explained, returned to his wife and home in Sonora, Mexico, and was never heard of again.

From Territory to Statehood (1863–1912) On June 25, 1863, Pauline or Paulino Weaver, Henry Wickenburg, Charles Genung, another famous explorer, and two Mexicans formed the Weaver Mining District as the result of a large discovery of gold deposits near the town site by their companion Ben McClendon. McClendon was the first African American to reside in Wickenburg. He came by way of Yuma in 1861, admitted to being a runaway slave, and was accepted by the community. The party of six soon discovered an extensive gold mine they called

Arizona “Rich Hill,” north of the town of Wickenburg. According to accounts, the claimed yielded $2,765 worth of gold daily. Despite the presence of African American miners in the territory, the largest numbers of blacks employed in the mining companies were hired as common laborers, cooks, servants, and teamsters. Mining interests played an indirect role in motivating many African Americans to move to the territory; the newspaper campaign waged by Arizona’s journalists influenced both whites and blacks to make the journey. Charley Embers came to Arizona in 1866. He worked as a cook at the Ajo Mining Camp for 10 years. In 1876, Embers was hired as a surveyor by A. W. Maxten and made his home in Tucson, where he lived until 1933. A few adventurous black men established their own mining works. Charley Williams, popularly known as “Banjo Dick,” came to Arizona in 1871 and worked for L.A. Smith and his family as a cook and general housekeeper. In the mid1880s. Banjo Dick obtained loans from Mrs. Wiley Box and William Neal to open a small mining operation near Tucson, known as the Banjo Dick Mine. This was the first all-black mining company to be established in Arizona. It was owned, financed, operated, and worked exclusively by African Americans for African Americans. The Banjo Dick Mine existed for only a few years. In 1891 the ore ran out and Banjo Dick reluctantly moved to Nogales, where he earned a living by shining shoes and playing his banjo for private parties and community events. The failure of Banjo Dick did not end black capitalism. Mrs. Wiley Box continued to finance mining companies and staked a few claims of her own. One claim which blossomed into an extremely profitable project was the Afro Mining Company, which was owned and operated by J.W. Miller. Miller came to Tucson in the early 1900s and worked for two years as a cook. Around 1910 or 1912, he staked a claim in the Camobabi Mountains near Tucson. After securing capital investments from

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Mrs. Box and William Neal, he opened the mine for operation and extracted several thousand dollars’ worth of gold. In 1923 the company faced bankruptcy; finally in 1928 the mine was closed for lack of ore, not money. Not only did African Americans finance mining enterprises with their own capital as well as that obtained from other sources, but a few inherited mines and mining claims. Elize A. Allen and “Minnie J.” inherited the claims of Milton B. Duffield, Arizona’s first U.S. marshal. Cattle raising and the ranching industry also imported or influenced African Americans to come to Arizona. Like the mines, Arizona’s cattle industry was backed heavily by outside investment. Most of the ranchers and investors were white, but there is at least one exception. C. B. Martin, an African American, owned and operated a cattle ranch near Dos Cabezas. Many African Americans were employed by ranchers as cooks, laborers, and cowboys. From 1850 to the end of the frontier era, several hundred African American cowboys found their way into the territory. Some were hired to make the trek, some were brought by whites, and still others came on their own in pursuit of personal ambitions. Three such individuals, Jim Younger, John “Old Bat” Baptists, and “Nigger John” were employed by one of Tombstone’s more famous lawmen, John Slaughter. All three men had worked for Slaughter in Texas and accompanied him on his journey to Arizona. “Nigger John” was originally one of Slaughter’s “hundred slaves.” He rode with Slaughter and his hired hands on numerous cattle drives, serving the entire caravan as cook, barber, laundryman, and body servant. John remained in Slaughter’s service for almost 25 years before retiring. Jim Younger worked for Slaughter in Texas, and during that time became an accomplished cowboy and gunman. After reaching Arizona, Jim continued working for Slaughter and eventually saved enough money to purchase several mining claims. In the 1880s, Jim received momentary

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recognition when he fought the famous John L. Sullivan. Jim lost the fight but won the $500 prize money offered because he knocked Sullivan down in the first round. Perhaps the most famous of Slaughter’s black cowboys was “Old Bat.” He had been one of Slaughter’s slaves, but after coming to Arizona Slaughter added him to the payroll, primarily because Old Bat saved the wagons from total destruction as the Slaughters crossed the Rio Grande en route to Arizona. He knew a great deal about mining and was also the chief accountant and bookkeeper for the many Slaughter enterprises. He worked for Slaughter for 74 years. There were other black cowboys who also rode across Arizona’s rangeland: Harvey Merchant, who hired out to the ranchers of Tucson and the surrounding area; William C. Phillips, who was involved in the first fatal shooting in the town of Williams; and the renowned Nat Love, also known as “Deadwood Dick,” who not only was a cowboy but was an accomplished writer as well. Besides the military, mining, and cattle industries, the lumber industry also played an important role in the growth of Arizona, including the importation of African Americans to the territory. Lumbering in Arizona was slower in developing than either mining or ranching; nevertheless it was an essential element in Arizona’s economic growth. Unlike the mining and cattle businesses, however, lumber companies are known to have imported African Americans to the territory through direct and formal channels. Most, if not all of the African Americans who were employed by Arizona’s lumber industry came to the territory by “signing up” with representatives of the various companies. A majority of those who were brought to Arizona were imported as a cheap, but highly skilled, labor supply. The main employers of African American lumbermen in Arizona were the Ayer Lumber Company (later known as Arizona Lumber and Timber Company) located in northern Arizona at Flagstaff, and the Camps Up Canyon Timber Company of southern Arizona. Little is known about the “Camps Up” operation except that

in 1880 two African Americans, Carter Crone and Samuel Moor, had at some previous point been brought to the camp from Arkansas. According to Joseph C. Dolan, owner of the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company after 1933, E. E. Ayer, a prominent Chicago lumberman, was responsible for establishing the first extensive sawmill operation in northern Arizona, and transported 10 or 20 blacks from Louisiana and Arkansas to the Flagstaff area during the late 1880s to work at various skilled jobs for the Ayer Lumber Company. After 1890, and continuing throughout the twentieth century, more African Americans were brought in, usually a dozen at a time. Cady Lumber Company brought African Americans to Arizona from McNary, Louisiana, in 1924. A special fleet of trains transporting approximately 700 lumbermill hands and their families arrived in a town in northern Arizona, which the company would call McNary. Those black lumbermill families were beholden to Cady Lumber Company, whose lands were denuded of trees after years of being overworked. It was said that the company owner, A. Cady, had too much respect and faith in his black employees to leave them suffering in the barren southern site. The families brought all their possessions, including fowl, pigs, cattle, and pets. Housed in segregated, framed houses and having virtually all their needs available, nonetheless some were unable to get acclimated to the harsh mountain winters. As some left for warmer climates, they were quickly replaced by other workers from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, thankful to escape oppression as well as the coming Depression. The company had built and owned its own vegetable and produce stores, health facilities, and schools—the latter separate. During the Depression, no one had to rely on welfare aid, which was the case of millions across the country. Afterwards, as some families managed to improve their financial status, they migrated to Phoenix, Tucson, and other urban towns. The military, by necessity, was also an important element in this early period of American

Arizona

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Two African American workers pole logs onto the bull chain, a hooked conveyor that carries the logs into the sawmill for processing into lumber, Flagstaff, Arizona, 1957. (AP/Wide World Photos)

settlement. The United States had inherited the Indian problem from the Mexicans following the war of 1848. To increase the population of Arizona, in 1863, Congress passed an act creating the Territory of Arizona. Despite earlier failures, the presence of the military helped to further populate and settle the territory. Businessmen, traders, farmers, and ranchers followed, if not accompanied the military as they established posts near Tucson, Tubac, Gila, Yuma, and a number of other advantageous sites throughout Arizona. Accompanying the military on their journeys to and through the territory were a number of African American cooks, servants, and teamsters. Captain R. S. Ewell, the commander of Fort Buchanan, employed a black woman named Nancy, who had been with his

family for years. She served the captain as cook, servant, and housekeeper and was “famous throughout Arizona for her cooking and humanness.” Jim Young came west with the regular army as a cook. Before joining up with the army, Jim led a harsh life as a Mississippi slave, but had somehow escaped the plantation and the South shortly before 1840. His life with the army was not an easy one and was filled with more hazards than even those of his white comrades, since African Americans were not allowed to handle weapons prior to 1863. African Americans are also known to have been attached to the garrison at Fort Defiance, in the northern region of the territory. Besides protecting the territory’s population from hostile Indians, the military was also responsible for furthering scientific exploration of the territory.

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Ab Reading, a native of Chester, Pennsylvania, was a cook and body servant to three civilians with the famous Beale and Ives expedition of 1857. By emphasizing the territory’s natural beauty and resources, and with the help of the federal government and the territory’s leading newspapers campaigning for easterners to invest capital in Arizona’s leading industries, cattle and mining, the population began to increase. When the Civil War ended in 1865, African American soldiers more than adequately had shown their courage in battle. In the years following the Civil War, although there was no longer any question about their courage, prejudice against African American soldiers remained strong. In spite of the insults, the men still wanted to serve in the army. The military life, even with its inequities, was better than the life they had previously known; it provided a measure of dignity, education, and opportunity to exercise leadership. In 1866, the U.S. government turned its attention to preventing conflicts that arose in the western territories between Native Americans and settlers and among the settlers themselves. In the same year Congress authorized the establishment of African American regiments. To forestall objections of white citizens to having black soldiers stationed nearby in the developed communities, the army sent the men to remote sites. These were places that were considered undesirable because of the rugged, undeveloped land or because the climate routinely was freezing cold or miserably hot. This is the climate that the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, also known as “buffalo soldiers,” were sent to establish order on the frontier. They were to guard telegraph and supply lines and to protect settlers in sparsely settled territories. Upon learning of the “buffalo soldiers,” General George Crook, commander of the Arizona theater of operations, petitioned Washington for use of the 9th and 10th cavalries in Arizona. Finally in March 1885, the 10th was dispatched

to Arizona with orders to capture Geronimo and other marauding Apache war chiefs. Buffalo soldiers were sent to Arizona, where Fort Huachuca had been built to provide protection against Apache Indians. After Geronimo’s surrender in 1886 and after the battles with Native Americans diminished in intensity, the fort remained to provide protection from bandits who frequented the territory and who freely crossed the borders between the United States and Mexico. In this tense situation, all-black divisions stationed at Fort Huachuca guarded the U.S.-Mexico border from the late 1890s through 1931. From 1870 to 1910, the 9th and 10th were commended for their excellence in physical fitness, marksmanship, battle tactics, bravery, and sacrifice. Despite the existence of outspoken antagonism against African American military men, many soldiers remained in Arizona after their discharge from the army. Regardless of the reasons, the fact remains that many African American soldiers became residents of the territory and attempted to find their “pots of gold” somewhere within the boundaries of Arizona. Two men who remained were William Neal and Emmet “Dick” Woodly. Neal came to Arizona in 1878 with a detachment of the 9th Cavalry. After his discharge he returned to Tucson, where he worked as a cook for the owner of the Maison Dore. Upon receiving his discharge from the army in 1869, Emmet “Dick” Woodly came to Tucson and began working for M. E. N. Fish as a common laborer at his flour mill. He later worked for Fish at his home as a cook, housekeeper, and general handyman around the house. He married a Mexican girl and lived in Tucson until the late 1880s. Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper, West Point’s first black graduate, spent much of the 1890s in southern Arizona after being discharged from the military, where he surveyed the Nogales townsite, briefly edited a local newspaper, and defended the community in an important land grant case.

Arizona

From Statehood through World War II (1912–1950) Arizona gained statehood on February 14, 1912, and with the adoption of the new state constitution Arizona’s African American population faced total segregation. Consequently African Americans had to restructure their existence and organize to meet their own needs and aspirations. For example, the “Colored Pioneers Association” with branches in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Safford, and Fort Huachuca was organized in response to the white Pioneers Association sponsored by the Phoenix newspaper for citizens born in the territory prior to 1890. (Records show that Moses Green born in 1879 was the first African American born in Arizona.) At that time many African Americans were property owners, but they had to depend on businesses operated by Anglos. The church had traditionally served both as places of worship and community togetherness, so through these networks of race-controlled institutions, they sought to strengthen race pride. In Tucson, the Prince Chapel AME Church was organized in 1906, Mount Cavalry Baptist Church was established in 1907, and Phillips Chapel Colored AME Church was organized in 1925. In Phoenix, Tanner Chapel AME Church and the First Colored Baptist Church were centers of vitality in the African American community. In 1915, the “Phoenix Colored Director” listed the following enterprises: shoemaker, printer, blacksmith, embalmer, two hotel-owners, beauticians, a hospital, and barbers. Many black barbers had all-white clientele, including the exclusive Hotel Adams, which always maintained an African American–operated shop. Even though many services were available within the African American community, jobs were not. After 1910, the African American population had quadrupled from the previous 10-year period. Most migrants came mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

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The most prideful institution of Arizona blacks at the time was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Hospital, organized by Dr. Winston C. Hackett in 1921. It served all races, including patients from Tucson. Almost simultaneously in Tucson, Creed Taylor, an engineer from Chicago, began services at the private Desert Sanitarium. By 1920, the population had increased 76 percent, many spreading out to smaller towns—Flagstaff, Clifton, Douglas, Prescott, Yuma, and Globe. Wages were low and living conditions were deplorable. While African Americans were organizing on various fronts to defend their human rights, the Ku Klux Klan was beginning to infiltrate Arizona around 1916–1917. Chapters sprung up in Phoenix, Glendale, Flagstaff, and some rural areas. In 1919, the Phoenix Advancement League was formed in opposition to segregation in Phoenix. Its purpose was to fight segregation and bigotry perpetuated by state laws. Headed by Samuel Bayless and C. Credille, both merchants, this organization was forerunner to the local NAACP branch. By 1922, other branches were active in Tucson, Flagstaff, Bisbee and Yuma. The African American population growth slowed in the 1920–1930 decade (8,000 to 10,749), yet business activities continued to thrive. Black-owned newspapers appeared during this decade. The Gleam, founded and edited by Mrs. Winston Hackett; the Phoenix Tribune, published by Arthur R. Smith, a Texasborn English teacher; and the Index, locally edited by Reverend W. Gray; all kept the community informed of what their contemporaries were doing nationally. In the 1930s when the Depression struck Arizona, African Americans were seriously affected. Many moved from the rural areas into the urban cities, such as Phoenix and Tucson, seeking relief and shelter. In Phoenix the city established the Community Welfare Council, a conglomerate of 22 agencies; African Americans were ignored in the handouts. In an effort to circumvent these tactics, African American leaders in Tucson and Phoenix formed the Colored Businessmen’s Association, so the business and employment needs of the people

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would be met by the group raising and appropriating funds. The black Masons, the black Elks, and members of other black fraternal lodges made an effort to take care of their own jobless members and friends. All of these organizations demanded and succeeded in getting an “all Negro Division” of the Phoenix Community Chest during the 1930s, and they also welcomed the arrival of federal funds and programs designed to help all Phoenicians in need of aid. Black voters, like the majority of white voters, were grateful, and throughout the decade, they supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. The 1940s pre- and post-war were times of influx and ferment. Jobs were generally plentiful, the national Federal Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) made it possible for African Americans to work in places where they previously had been barred, except in menial positions. The Air Force bases—Luke and Williams near Phoenix; Davis-Monthan at Tucson; and Yuma Proving Grounds—were a few examples where hiring had to be nondiscriminatory, according to Executive Order 8802, which inserted a nondiscrimination clause into government defense contracts. As a result more jobs became available to African Americans, and they came out of World War II determined to achieve first-class citizenship. African American veterans, like others, benefited from the G.I. Bill and other postwar opportunities. Winston Hackett, Wade Hammond, Augustus Shaw, Lincoln Ragsdale, and other black leaders joined with Father McLaughlin and other white supporters to reorganize the Phoenix Urban League in 1945. The League grew increasingly concerned with racial discrimination in employment, housing, and education, as did the local branch of the NAACP. The Urban League, the NAACP, and other groups worked hard to facilitate change, but it was always a struggle.

1950 to the Present During the 1950s civic leadership concerns swung back to schools, plus a growing interest in local

politics. As for the school system, it was historically nonpolitical, with its board members making policy decisions independent of municipal or county governments. Since African Americans accounted for 2 to 3 percent of any school district, it was all but impossible to elect one of its own to the policy-setting body. African Americans were unable to exert any political muscle to push for any sort of reforms. However, neither did Mexican Americans or American Indians, the other “minority” groups who accounted for approximately 40 percent of Arizona residents in 1940. Not until the municipal and state elections for the 1950 term did African Americans become sufficiently organized to select and support visible candidates to represent their interests on governing bodies. Sylvanus “Breezy” Boyer, a contractor and popular fraternal leader, established a precedent by running for a seat on the Phoenix City Council. He was opposing, as an independent, the Charter Government ticket that included Barry Goldwater, the latter’s first try at public office. The Charter ticket candidate enjoyed the advantages of good coverage from the local daily newspapers, plus radio. Boyer had to appease himself to campaigning in lodge halls, churches, and at Eastlake Park. He did not win, but he tried anyway. Arizona’s first two African American legislators, Hayzel B. Daniels and Carl Sims, both representing predominantly African American Phoenix neighborhoods, “worked their hearts out” to help enlist the aid of white colleagues to rid the state of mandatory segregation. William P. Mahoney Jr. and other Phoenix liberals pressured influential legislators to obtain passage of the law. Tucson and several smaller communities soon desegregated their schools, but Phoenix refused. Clovis Campbell, a collegeeducated civic activist, was the first elected black state senator for the 1970–1972 term. By the 1960s, the antipoverty programs of President Johnson’s “Great Society” narrowed the breach between African Americans and Hispanics. Many of the

Arizona programs were designed towards community involvement and reforms in housing, health, education and youth, the two divergent ethnic groups generally worked cooperatively for the good of their communities, forgetting real or imagined differences. As promising “grassroots” leaders developed knowledge of how the political system operated, they appeared before authorities, unintimidated, to press their cases for community betterment. Many African Americans and Mexican Americans were elected to city councils of Tucson, Flagstaff, Parker, and Chandler, but the Phoenix council candidates were handpicked by Charter Government kingmakers. In 1966, the body tapped its first African American candidate, Dr. Morrison F. Warren. He was the director of the Payne Laboratory of Multicultural Education at Arizona State University. His credentials virtually assured citywide support in the election. At his own choosing he served only one term. In the 1971 elections, the Charter ticket tapped as its next African American candidate Calvin Goode, a Phoenix Union High counselor and an accountant. A hardworking, reliable lawmaker, he was always most accessible to African Americans and Hispanics, mainly because he was the only councilman from their jurisdiction. He consistently fought and voted for the interests of minority neighborhoods, and particularly that of youth. After two terms, the Charter people abandoned Goode, who decided to run as an independent, eventually coming off as the top vote-getter in the election. Goode served for 22 years. In 1962, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission listened to testimony in Phoenix from African American leaders that included representatives of the local Urban League, the NAACP, and other organizations. African American leaders testified that black unemployment and underemployment in the private and public sectors far exceeded that of whites. The socioeconomic system in Arizona remained basically the same as in the early days of statehood.

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The changes emphasized three main categories: employment, housing, and education. African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians were all being discriminated against in these areas. In the fall of 1963, a new faction of aggressive leadership sprang up in Phoenix. Lincoln Ragsdale and the Reverend George Brooks were not the basic firebrand radicals; they were mature, responsible citizens who could mesh with the younger activists straining at the leash for head-on confirmation with the establishment. Ragsdale, an ex-pilot in the famous all-black 99th Fighters Squadron in World War II, was now a successful businessman, owner of a mortuary and an insurance agency. Reverend Brooks was a Presbyterian minister with excellent communications among the white clergy. They challenged the power structure without fear of economic reprisal, a factor which—real or imagined—had in the past thrown fear in some African Americans who might have otherwise stepped forth. The two leaders of the reinvigorated Phoenix NAACP teamed up with the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and its leaders, Jim Williams and Austin Coleman. When Anglo churchmen joined in, the campaign for legalized civil rights for all was in high gear. In January 1965, Democratic governor Sam Goddard pledged the enactment of civil rights legislation during his inauguration address. Four months later, Arizona had its long-awaited equal rights law, even though it was not as strong as African Americans and their white allies would have desired. Out of the 1960s emerged a resurgence of African American benevolence and pride. The Urban League, NAACP, CORE, OIC, and other African American–led organizations provided leadership and inspiration and offered economic and legal assistance. Much-needed social services and cultural offering came into being. Prominent black artist Eugene Grigsby taught many Phoenix youth the beauty of African art, while members of the Richard H. Hamilton American Legion Post 65 (named after a Phoenix World War II black

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Daryl McCullick, left, Ivan Pena, center, and Tariq Sabur perform Capoeira Angola, an African Brazilian martial art, at the annual Juneteenth festival in Phoenix, June 17, 2006. Juneteenth is the traditional celebration of the announcement in Texas in 1865 that slavery was ended. (AP/Wide World Photos)

serviceman) taught them about the patriotism and valor of African American servicemen past and present. Civil rights advances and a new appreciation of black history gave new importance to Juneteenth and other traditional holidays. During the 1980s, the African American population remained at 5 percent of the total Phoenix population. The number of African Americans reached 51,053 in 1990, up from 37,672 in 1980 and 27,896 in 1970. At the same time, more African Americans, many of them professional and business people, moved into the middle class. The positive effects of civil rights awareness and of economic growth and prosperity made it easier for individual African Americans to benefit from new economic and political opportunities, but progress for them as a group within the larger Phoenix population was slow. Educational and employment gains for individuals were noted

during the decade, and structural changes in the city’s political system allowed for more minority group representation. Starting in 1982, legislation was repeatedly introduced to establish some form of official state observance in honor of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., but the Arizona legislature repeatedly defeated these efforts. Although the city of Phoenix quickly joined other cities, states, and the national government in establishing a paid King Holiday, Arizona in 1991 remained the only state without any form of such a holiday. In 1992, the Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day on the third Monday of January passed the Arizona legislature. Problems continued to persist into the 1990s, but concerned observers also continued to be hopeful that the African American experience in Phoenix and Arizona would remain largely an advancing one.

Arizona

Notable African Americans Banks, Laura Nobles (dates unknown) Dr. Laura Nobles Banks was an educator in the Tucson school district. Dr. Banks attended Dunbar School through junior high, where she was salutatorian for her ninth-grade class. In 1936, Banks advanced to partially segregated Tucson High. She found herself in an environment where all the teachers were white, just the opposite of Dunbar, where they were all African American. Unlike the caring, nurturing, and helpful teachers at Dunbar, the dispensers of knowledge and privilege at the high school were less giving; some were indifferent; and others openly showed discriminatory behavior. In 1939, Dr. Banks matriculated to Tucson High’s cousin, the University of Arizona. Here the students were mostly white with a few African Americans. Though the university has never been officially off limits to people of color, they felt unwelcome. Dr. Banks graduated from the university in 1943 and returned to her first school to teach fourth grade under Morgan Maxwell Sr. She remained there until school integration came in 1951. She completed her master’s degree at the University of Arizona in 1968 and she was the first to receive an education specialist degree in 1970. She returned to the university and was awarded her doctorate in 1980, and was elevated to assistant superintendent for Region Four in 1980. She retired 2 years later, after 39 years as a teacher and administrator. Dr. Banks did not just fight discrimination within Tucson Unified School District Number One. She did it as president of the NAACP (1960–62) and as board president of the Tucson Urban League (1974–75). She was the first female to be president of the League’s board. In 1950, Dr. Banks and her husband, Jack opened Jack’s Barbecue. By 1993, Jack’s Barbecue had become Tucson’s longest, continuously running African

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American business (43 years) and the largest black-owned restaurant. On February 1, 2003, several hundred well wishers gathered for the dedication of the Laura Nobles Banks Elementary School, a new school in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), which was only the fourth school named after an African American in the entire school district.

Crump, William P. (dates unknown) William P. Crump migrated to Phoenix from West Virginia in 1897. After a stint as a waiter at the Ford Hotel, he made a name for himself among both black and white communities by becoming the owner of a successful fruit and produce enterprise and actively supporting the Republican Party, as most blacks did at the time. He was one of the leaders who filed a legal challenge against the local school board in 1910. Crump took what he believed to be his responsibility to the less fortunate in the African American community seriously. He spoke out against injustices perpetrated against black Phoenicians and was thought of by many members of the white community as a leader in the African American community. Crump crusaded against the sale and consumption of alcohol on Sundays, and he believed it was his responsibility as one of the “chosen” to champion the masses while keeping them on the “straight and narrow.”

Daniels, Hayzel B. (1913–1992) Hayzel B. Daniels was the first African American to graduate from the University of Arizona Law School and be admitted to the Arizona State Bar in 1948. Daniels earned his B.S. in social sciences in 1939 and an M.A. in education in 1941 from the University of Arizona. He taught at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where his father was stationed with the 10th Cavalry. Daniels also served in the army during World War II. Daniels opened a law

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office in Phoenix and became involved in politics and the NAACP. In 1950, he and Carl Sims were the first African Americans elected to the Arizona legislature. As a lawmaker and an attorney, Daniels fought against school desegregation. In June 1952, he argued successfully against school segregation in Phillips et al. v. Phoenix Union High School District. In November 1953, Daniels argued successfully against segregation in the (Phoenix) Wilson Elementary School District in Heard et al. v. Davis et al. Judge Charles C. Bernstein ruled in this case that segregation in public schools was an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court used Bernstein’s ruling to inform its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Daniels went on to serve as the first African American assistant state attorney general and was appointed Phoenix City Court judge in 1965, becoming the first African American judge in Arizona. Daniels belonged to many organizations, including the Arizona Black Lawyers Association, which changed its name to the Hayzel B. Daniels Bar Association in 1993.

Goode, Calvin (1927–) Calvin Goode served 11 terms, or 22 years, as a Phoenix city councilman. Goode’s family came to Arizona to work in the agricultural fields when he was a baby. He graduated from eighth grade in Gila Bend, but he could not attend the high school there because he was of African descent. So the Goode family moved to Prescott, where their children were allowed to attend the schools. Goode attended high school in Prescott until his junior year when he became ill. The doctor thought he had a heart condition and that he would only live another year. His family decided to send him to Phoenix for his health. He enrolled at Carver High School, the only high school in Arizona built

exclusively for African American students. Goode graduated from Carver in 1945 and went to Phoenix College for two years. He earned both a business degree and an M.A. degree in education from Arizona State. In 1955, Goode returned to Carver High School as an accountant. He also began a tax accounting business, called Calvin Goode & Associates. When the schools were integrated in 1954, Carver High was closed and he worked other jobs in the Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD). In 1971, Goode was persuaded to run for a seat on the Phoenix City Council. He was elected and served for a total of 11 terms. Goode was often called the “conscience of the council” because he used his voice to raise questions and push for neglected parts of the community. To commemorate his years of service to the city, the Phoenix Municipal Building was named in his honor.

Grigsby, Jefferson Eugene (1918–) Jefferson Eugene Grigsby, celebrated artist, writer, and educator, was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. Grigsby discovered his love of art after his family moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when he was nine years old. He obtained his B.A. degree from Morehouse College, his M.A. degree in art from Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. from New York University. At Morehouse College he met his longtime mentor, Hale Woodruff. In 1942, Grigsby served in World War II as a master sergeant of the 573rd Ordinance Ammunition Company. In 1943, he married Rosalyn Thomasena Marshall, a high-school biology teacher and social activist. Three years later at the invitation of the school’s principal, W. A. Robinson, Grigsby began working at Carver High School as an art teacher. After the school closed in 1954, Grigsby worked at Phoenix Union High School until 1966. Grigsby began teaching at the university

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level in 1966, working at the School of Art at Arizona State University until 1988. During this time, Grigsby published Art and Ethics: Background for Teaching Youth in a Pluralistic Society, the first book ever written for art teachers by an African American artist and author.

and Lionel Hampton. He founded his own recording and publishing companies to protect the growing body of his original work. Mingus recorded over 100 albums, composed over 30 musical scores, and toured on four continents. A devotee of Duke Ellington, his musical compositions formed a bridge between the big band/swing and bebop eras; he had blues and gospel roots as well. During the early 1960s Mingus experimented with free form jazz and also wrote some of his most richly textured, rhythmically complex music, including such pieces as “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.” Mingus grappled with deep-seated psychological problems and dropped out of the music scene in the mid-1960s to concentrate on writing an autobiography. In 1968, he was evicted from his New York City apartment, and much of his written music was lost in that episode. When Mingus finally returned to music, and the bass, in June 1969, he was motivated by economic pressures. To his surprise he found himself accorded the status of an elder statesman. His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published in 1971, the same year he received a Guggenheim fellowship for composition. In 1974, Mingus organized what Leroy Ostransky, author of the Understanding Jazz, deemed the “greatest jam session since the expression was coined,” which was recorded and released as Mingus at Carnegie Hall. The Charles Mingus collection is in the Library of Congress.

Mingus, Charles (1922–1979)

Ragsdale, Eleanor (1926–1998)

Charles Mingus, also known as Charlie Mingus, was an American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, and occasional pianist. He was also known for his activism against racial injustice. Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona, where his father was stationed as a U.S. Army sergeant. He was raised largely in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California. In the 1950s Mingus settled in New York, after touring in the 1940s with the bands of Louis Armstrong

Eleanor Dickey Ragsdale was born in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. She graduated from high school in Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1943 and enrolled in Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, whose main mission was to cultivate African American teachers who would become leaders in their local communities. Eleanor graduated from Cheyney in 1947, and relocated to Phoenix, to pursue a career in teaching at Dunbar Elementary School.

A 1974 photo of jazz musician Charles Mingus. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

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In 1947 she met Lincoln Ragsdale and was married in 1949. She immediately became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Phoenix. She was a charter member of the local NAACP, Phoenix Urban League, and the Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity (GPCCU). By the second year of their marriage, Lincoln asked Eleanor to work with him in the mortuary and insurance businesses they had. She continued to teach until the end of 1950. She obtained her insurance license and became involved in every aspect of the Ragsdale Realty and Insurance Agency. Between 1951 and 1957, the Ragsdales had four children. In addition to working in the family businesses, she devoted a great deal of her time negotiating political partnerships with their clients and associates, black churches in Phoenix and across the country, and most importantly, black women’s clubs and voluntary associations. In 1953, Eleanor desegregated Phoenix’s all-white Encanto–Palm Croft residential neighborhood. When Eleanor and her husband were not permitted to purchase their home, they circumvented the restrictive covenant that barred them. Eleanor had a white friend purchase the house, and when the contract was still in escrow the friend transferred the title to the Ragsdales. Although they had acquired the house, their problems were far from over. One morning the family awoke to find the word “nigger” spraypainted on their white block home in “two-foothigh black letters.” The Ragsdales left the racial epithet on the wall for the neighbors to see.

Ragsdale, Lincoln (1926–1995) Lincoln Ragsdale was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and was reared in a family of morticians who owned several mortuaries throughout Oklahoma. After completing high school in 1944, Lincoln joined the Air Force and was relocated to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he became a cadet at the celebrated

Tuskegee Flying School. Tuskegee, a racially segregated institution, trained almost one thousand African American pilots for missions in Europe during World War II. After completing his training at Tuskegee, Ragsdale was stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Litchfield Park, Arizona. He was the first African American pilot to serve at the installation. After his military service ended, Lincoln settled in Phoenix. Like most African Americans who served in the military during World War II, Lincoln Ragsdale emerged from the war with a renewed determination to secure more socioeconomic opportunities and liberty for African Americans. He, with his wife, Eleanor, became members of the local chapter of the NAACP and the Phoenix Urban League. In 1953, Ragsdale and his wife helped desegregate the predominately white neighborhood near Phoenix’s Encanto Park. Ragsdale also helped desegregate Phoenix’s most influential corporations as early as 1962, including Motorola, General Electric, and Sperry Rand. In 1963, Ragsdale joined with six other local leaders to form the Phoenix Action Committee (ACT) political campaign. ACT sought the election of its members to the Phoenix City Council. They erected a platform calling for a public accommodations bill, open housing, and job opportunities for minorities. Although Lincoln was not elected, he helped bring the issue of minority political participation to the front pages of local news. He also brought these issues to the attention of local conservative political power brokers such as the Charter Government Committee. Between 1963 and 1992, he fought for diversity in Phoenix’s public and private sectors and for entrepreneurial opportunities for people of color in Arizona. Ragsdale played a major role in the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday movement in Arizona. Ragsdale and his fellow insurgents dealt racism and discrimination serious blows, and in the years that followed, they continued to fight racial inequality. Lincoln Ragsdale died June 9, 1995, in Phoenix.

Arizona

Rosser, Richard (dates unknown) Richard Rosser arrived in Phoenix from Georgia in 1893 with his family of 11. He bought a small farm on the city’s outskirts and soon owned a truck farm. He bought property and thrived financially. A religious man, Rosser bequeathed a portion of his family’s land bordering their home in 1905 to his congregation, in an effort to erect the Second Colored Baptist Church at Fifth and Jefferson Streets in 1908. Ultimately this church became the First Institutional Baptist, becoming the largest black congregation.

Shirley, Frank (dates unknown) Frank Shirley arrived in Phoenix in 1887. He opened the Fashion Square Barber Shop, which provided service to both black and white communities. Active in the community, Shirley founded the Afro-American Society, a leading social group, in 1893. Shirley and business partner John E. Lewis also led The Good Citizens League. The organization’s goal was to “better the conditions of the colored race in the city, both material and moral, and restrain influences for their undoing, whether fostered by whites or blacks.” The Good Citizens League was nonpolitical, unless the candidate appeared to be adverse to their material interests. The Good Citizens League also encouraged African American participation in parades, celebrations, and other community activities.

Cultural Contributions By 1910, African Americans in Phoenix had established and maintained a myriad of clubs, businesses, and religious associations. The Colored Masons, the Colored Odd Fellows, and the Colored Knights of the Pythias were but a few organizations that provided cultural camaraderie as well as civic activism. In addition, African Americans participated in the Colored Republican

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Club (CRC). It was one of the most desirable clubs to belong to, as many of the city’s leading black residents were members of the CRC, including Shirley, Rosser, Crump, and a host of others. Always nearby to capture many of the events in the African American community was the black press. In Phoenix, the Arizona Gleam, which was the first black newspaper in Arizona—followed by the Phoenix Index, the Arizona Leader, and the Arizona Tribune—preceded the current black periodical, the Black Informant, which was founded in 1971 by two brothers, Cloves C. Campbell Sr. and Dr. Charles R. Campbell. Many African Americans of the Southwest and elsewhere celebrate Kwanzaa. In the Southwest, the celebration involves commemorating ancestors, acknowledging deceased loved ones, participating in African naming ceremonies, communal feasting, the sharing of family mementos, and interfaith religious observances that include African and African American icons, foods, and beliefs. Juneteenth—contraction of June nineteenth—is a uniquely Southern holiday that commemorates the emancipation of African slaves on June 19, 1865. The festivities included athletic contests, gospel singing, barbecue feasts, and art exhibitions. The interest petered out sometime during the heightened migrations of blacks from the East and Midwest; however, the Phoenix revival of Juneteenth stemmed from the ghetto sections in 1968, especially around the Matthew Henson Housing Project, where the guiding spirit was Vernel Coleman, a lady highly respected by city officials and beloved in the black communities. Though severely crippled with arthritis, she helped pull in other neighborhoods and factions to spark the cultural renaissance. Juneteenth is celebrated in most communities in Arizona. This “Black-but-Proud” movement, demonstrating itself through drama, art, creative writing, and scholarship funding, eventually came under the sponsorship of various civic organizations, social agencies, churches, and private individuals.

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These activities continued year-round, rather than just on June 19 and Black History Month. The “Black Theatre Troupe,” the brainchild of Helen Mason, city Recreation Department supervisor, who was also the granddaughter of the city’s first black citizen, Mary Green, gained national recognition. In Tucson, the “Ododo Players” were brought together and directed by Bill Lewis, a Pima College instructor who later transferred to Cleveland’s illustrious Karamu House. One of the truly versatile precursors of the state cultural movements was none other than Eugene Grigsby, a distinguished artist of national acclaim. He was the founder of “Artists of the Black Community in Arizona” that gives encouragement and exposure to practitioners of the craft. African American history and tradition also inspired the development of an African American cultural center in Phoenix, housed in the former all-black Carver High School. The George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center archives the cultural heritage and experience of the early pioneers who made significant impacts on the development of the African American community. The Arizona African American Art Museum features rare artifacts from all over the African continent from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s. Begun as a community outreach program, it went to schools from primary to university level, introducing students to the variety of cultural artifacts that represent African culture. The African American Multicultural Museum opened in November 2005 in Scottsdale. The mission is “Fellowship through Education.”

Bibliography Allmendinger, Blake. Imagining the African American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Billington, Monroe Lee, and Roger D. Hardaway. African Americans on the Western Frontier. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1998.

Harris, Richard E. Black Heritage in Arizona. Phoenix: Phoenix Urban League, 1977. Harris, Richard E. The First Hundred Years: A History of Arizona Blacks. Arizona: Relmo Publishers, 1983. The HistoryMakers. PoliticalMakers: www .thehistorymakers.com/biography. Junne, George H. Blacks in the American West and Beyond—America, Canada, and Mexico: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Kenner, Charles L. Buffalo Soldiers and Officers of the Ninth Cavalry, 1867–1898, Black and White Together. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Lawson, Harry. The History of African Americans in Tucson: An Afrocentric Perspective. Tucson, AZ: Lawson’s Psychological Services, 1996. Long Island University. African Americans and the Old West: www.liunet.edu/cwis/CWP/ library/african/west/west.htm. Luckingham, Bradford. Minorities in Phoenix. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994. Nimmons, Robert Kim. Arizona’s Forgotten Past: The Negro in Arizona, 1539–1965. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 1971. Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997. Smith, Gloria L. Black Americans in Arizona. With 1992 Supplement: African-Americana in Arizona. Tucson: G. L. Smith, 1992. Smith, Gloria L. Black Heritage Trails and Tales of Tucson and Old Fort Huachuca Near Sierra Vista, Arizona. Tucson: G. L. Smith, 1985. Smith, Gloria L. African Americans and Arizona’s Three C’s: Cotton, Copper, Cattle. 1992 Supplement to Black Heritage Trails and Tales of Tucson and Old Fort Huachuca. Tucson: G. L. Smith, 1992.

Arizona University of Washington. BlackPast.org: www.blackpast.org. Whitaker, Matthew C. Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Whitaker, Matthew C. “Creative Conflict: Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale, Collaboration, and Community Activism in Phoenix, 1953– 1965.” Western Historical Quarterly 34 (2003): 165–191.

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Whitaker, Matthew C. “Shooting Down Racism: Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale and Residential Desegregation in Phoenix, 1947–1953. ” Journal of the West 44 (2005): 34–43. Yancy, James Walter. The Negro of Tucson, Past and Present. In the Steps of Esteban: Tucson’s African American Heritage: http://parentseyes .arizona.edu/esteban/specialtopics.html.

ARKANSAS Shirley Waters-White and Gladys L. Knight

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Chronology 1723

(February 18) A census conducted by French colonial officials finds six black slaves living in the French settlement near the mouth of the Arkansas River.

1798

A census conducted by Spanish colonial officials finds 56 black slaves, out of a total population of 393, living in the Arkansas region.

1803

Arkansas comes into the possession of the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase from France.

1819

(March 2) Congress organizes the Arkansas Territory.

1820

The population of Arkansas Territory is over 14,000, including 1,617 slaves and 59 free blacks.

1820

The passage of the Missouri Compromise ensures Arkansas Territory will become a slave state and greatly encourages slaveholders to bring their property into the territory.

1825

Arkansas Territory institutes slave patrols to prevent enslaved blacks from leaving their farms and plantations.

1836

(June 15) Arkansas enters the Union as the 25th state.

1837

The General Assembly enacts an Anti-Miscegenation law declaring all marriages between blacks and whites or between mulattos and whites to be “illegal and void.”

1842

The Arkansas General Assembly prohibits the immigration of free blacks into the state after March 1, 1843.

1859

The General Assembly expels from the state all free blacks over the age 21, with any remaining after January 1, 1860, subject to enslavement.

1860

The U.S. Census finds 111,115 slaves living in Arkansas, and, despite recent laws ordering their expulsion, 144 free blacks.

1861

(May 6) Arkansas secedes from the Union and joins the Confederacy.

1863

(May 1) The first regiment of black troops from Arkansas is mustered into service as the First Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent. The regiment is one of four African American regiments raised at Helena in Phillips County.

1863

General Patrick Cleburne, the Confederate commander in Arkansas, recommends that slaves be recruited in the army in return for freedom at the war’s end; however, strong opposition to arming slaves led to the rejection of this proposal and damage to Cleburne’s career.

1864

(May 11) The First Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent are designated as the 46th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops.

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1865

(April 14) Arkansas ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

The Kiblah School for free blacks is founded in Miller County.

1866

The new “Rebel legislature” refuses to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship to former slaves and attempts to enact a new Black Code limiting the rights of African Americans.

1868

(April 6) Arkansas ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending citizenship to African Americans.

1868

( June 22) Arkansas is readmitted to the Union.

1868

Eight black men serve as delegates to the convention charged with drafting a new state constitution.

1868

Under a new Reconstruction government, the Arkansas General Assembly passes a state law protecting the civil rights of African Americans.

1869

(March 15) Arkansas ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting voting rights to African Americans.

1872

William H. Grey, from Washington, D.C., becomes the first African American to hold a high state post in Arkansas when he becomes commissioner of immigration and state lands.

1873

Joseph C. Corbin becomes the state’s first black superintendant of public instruction.

1873

Under the Reconstruction government, 20 black men serve in the Arkansas General Assembly.

1873

A second state civil rights act is passed; under the new law, business owners providing public accommodation, transportation, or entertainment must give equal service to all.

1873

Branch Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, is established as the first state-supported institution of higher education for blacks.

1874

Eight African Americans attend a new constitutional convention, which results in a new state constitution that guarantees African Americans voting and other civil rights and sets up a new black school system.

Mid-1870s

The practice of creating “fusion tickets,” in which white Democrats and black Republicans divide up local offices and do not run against each other for the offices given to the other party, allows blacks to hold state and local offices and sit in the state legislature until the 1890s, when the fusion principle breaks down and Jim Crow laws severely restrict political participation by blacks.

1877

Philander Smith College is founded to provide higher education to blacks.

1882

The Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a black insurance and fraternal organization, is founded in Little Rock.

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1884

Arkansas Baptist College is founded in Little Rock by the Colored Baptists of the State of Arkansas.

1884

A new Anti-Miscegenation law reinforcing the still-valid 1837 statute is enacted.

1886

Shorter College is founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Little Rock.

Late 1880s– early 1890s

Arkansas Democratic Party officials, alarmed at defections from the party to independent agrarian third parties by white farmers angry over their declining economic fortunes, seek to distract white voters with more appeals to racism and more proposed Jim Crow legislation.

1891

The General Assembly passes a Jim Crow law requiring separation of the races on trains and in train station waiting rooms; 11 of the 12 African Americans in the Assembly vote against the measure.

1891

Arkansas enacts an annual poll tax of $1 per year and appoints officials to county boards who are empowered to prevent illiterate persons from voting. These two measures significantly reduce African American voting in the state.

1895

Elias Camp Morris, an African American minister from Helena, is elected president of the National Baptist Convention.

1900

African Americans comprise 38 percent of the population of Little Rock.

1903

The Streetcar Segregation Act establishes the “separate but equal” rule on streetcars and leads to a boycott in three cities, which causes a 90 percent drop in black ridership, but Jim Crow restrictions on public transit last another 60 years.

1905

John E. Bush, a cofounder of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), allies with white planters, who fear disruption of their black tenant labor force, to defeat a plan for black public education to be supported only by taxes collected from black taxpayers.

1906

(October) The Argenta Race Riot leads to lynching of black restaurateur Homer G. Blackman, who was not accused of any crime.

1906

Arkansas adopts a “white primary” rule preventing blacks from voting in the state’s Democratic Party primaries, where most state officials were then elected.

1919

A bloody race riot resulting from attempts by local black sharecroppers to unionize erupts in Elaine in Phillips County. The violence, which did not end until the arrival of federal troops, left 5 whites and over 200 blacks dead.

1921

The Arkansas legislature prohibits the cohabitation of blacks and whites.

1928

Dr. John Marshall Robinson, a black Little Rock physician, founds the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association to protest the Arkansas rule banning blacks from voting in Democratic primaries, which, given the weakness of the Republican Party in Arkansas since the end of Reconstruction, are the only meaningful elections in the state.

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1930

Arkansas spends twice as much per year to educate a white student as it does to educate a black student.

1937

The General Assembly mandates segregation for all race tracks and gambling establishments.

1944

In Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court declares “white primaries,” which Arkansas has had since 1906, to be unconstitutional.

1947

The General Assembly upholds and strengthens various Jim Crow statutes passed since the 1890s mandating separation of the races, including an outright ban on integrated schools.

1954

(July 27) The school board in Charleston, Arkansas, quietly votes to integrate all grade and high schools; it is the first school board in a former Confederate state to do so.

1955

One of the first chapters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is established in Little Rock.

1955

Segregationist groups, such as the White Citizens Council, initiate campaigns of “massive resistance” to implementation in Arkansas of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision calling for integration of public schools.

1955

The Hoxie School Board in Lawrence County admits black students, but the intimidation tactics of white supremacists lead the board to obtain a federal-court restraining order to allow integration of local schools to continue.

1956

Arkansas voters approve an “interposition” amendment to the state constitution and a pupil assignment measure, both of which are aimed at hampering school integration.

1957

The Arkansas General Assembly enacts four new segregation laws.

1957

(September 2) Governor Orval E. Faubus surrounds Central High School in Little Rock with units of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from integrating the school; the Little Rock Nine are finally admitted under the protection of federal troops sent by President Dwight Eisenhower.

1958–1959

Segregationists controlling the Little Rock School Board close Little Rock public schools during this academic year, known as the “Lost Year,” to prevent integration.

1959

(August) Organized by the newly formed Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), moderate white voters join with black voters to elect a new school board that reopens Little Rock schools and allows integration to move forward.

1961

Barbara Williams Dotson and Joe Ferguson become the first two black graduates of Charleston High School.

1964

( January 23) The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax takes effect; Arkansas has never ratified this amendment.

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1964

Arkansas voters accept an amendment to the state constitution replacing the poll tax with a voter registration system.

1970–2000

White student enrollment in Little Rock public schools declines by 53 percent, thus maintaining de facto segregation in many schools.

1978

Moderate Democrat Bill Clinton is elected governor of Arkansas.

1992

Former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton is elected president of the United States.

2000

Author E. Lynn Harris is inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

2000

About 48 percent of white K–12 students in Little Rock attend private schools, while only about 4 percent of black students attend such schools.

2000

According to the U.S. Census, African Americans comprise 15.7 percent of the Arkansas population and 23.3 percent of black households in Arkansas are single parent.

2006

The estimated median annual household income of African Americans in Arkansas is just over $23,000, while that for whites in the state is over $40,000.

2007

African American unemployment in Arkansas is 11.4 percent, while white unemployment in the state is only 4.4 percent.

Historical Overview Organized as a territory on March 2, 1819, Arkansas gets its name from a Quapaw Indian word. “The Natural State,” as it is nicknamed, entered the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. Its present constitution was adopted in 1874. The 2005 population of Arkansas was estimated at 2,779,154, of which approximately 15.7 percent, or 418,950, are African Americans. The 2005 figures represent a drop in the African American population of Arkansas, which accounted for 20 percent of the state’s total population in 1990. Arkansas has not been known as a leader in the fight for black equality in the United States. The state has always had a relatively small African American population, but as one of the former Confederate states, Arkansas has a long history of oppression and discrimination directed toward its black citizens. In the period leading up to the Civil War, only 3 percent of the black population was

free. The population of enslaved Africans at statehood was approximately 28,000. By 1860, there were over 111,000 black slaves in the state, but, thanks to the recent passage of laws expelling them from Arkansas, only 144 free blacks. In 1900, 35 years after emancipation, the first Jim Crow laws were established in Arkansas to mandate segregation. Arkansas was one of the 44 states in the Union in which dozens of its citizens were murdered by lynch mobs. Between 1889 and 1918, nearly 250 people were lynched by white mobs. Of that number, approximately 80 percent were African American. Conversely, however, Arkansas was one of Marcus Garvey’s greatest supporters—in 1924, there were 39 divisions of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Arkansas. In addition, one of the first SCLC chapters in the United States was established in Little Rock in the 1950s. Many Americans are probably most familiar with the capital of Arkansas, Little Rock; it was the site of the infamous school integration event at Central

Arkansas High School. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, nine black students enrolled at the formerly segregated Central High School. When they attempted to attend classes, however, they were barred from doing so by the governor of the state, who, armed with a weapon, actually stood in the doorway of the school to prevent their entering. It was only with the assistance—and protection—of federal troops sent by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the students were able to attend classes. Eight of the nine went on to complete the school year. Arkansas holds another claim to fame, as well. In July 1954, the school board of tiny Charleston, Arkansas, which is located about 20 miles east of Fort Smith in western Arkansas, quietly voted unanimously to integrate grades 1–12 in its schools. Although considered by some scholars to reflect an economic rather than a moral decision, nevertheless, in the fall of 1954, the “colored school” did not open, and all African American children were integrated into the elementary and high schools of Charleston. In recognition of this action, Charleston, Arkansas, was named a National Commemorative Site. School integration was an enormous gain for civil rights in the state. But the struggle did not end there. In the wake of the famous sit-in that was staged by five African American college students on February 1, 1960, at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, black youth and young adults launched a sit-in movement throughout the nation. (Sit-in demonstrators protested segregated lunch counters and white businesses that barred black patrons.) Activists in Little Rock staged the state’s first sit-in in March at a local Woolworth’s. Five demonstrators were jailed, and their bail was posted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Between 1961 and 1962, the local Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) conducted more demonstrations. Businesses struggled as a result

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of the negative attention and the loss of business. In 1963, businesses desegregated their lunch counters. However, the private club located inside the state capitol was not desegregated until 1965. Arkansas was the setting for other civil rights demonstrations. The Freedom Riders, a demonstration in which black and white activists challenged segregated public transportation and facilities, made stops in Arkansas en route to the Deep South. Freedom Riders did not experience violence in Arkansas. However, demonstrators were subjected to violence and intimidation at bus terminals in the Deep South in states including Alabama and Mississippi. Other civil rights demonstrations occurred in Pine Bluff. The Pine Bluff Movement consisted of college and highschool students who demonstrated at segregated hotels and theaters and discriminatory schools. Between 1960 and 1967, SNCC played an enormous role in civil rights activism in the state. For all the activism that took place in Arkansas, progress was slow in coming. In the 1970s and beyond, racism and discrimination were still evident. After the triumphant desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, numerous white parents took their children out of public schools and enrolled them in private schools. Arkansas public schools remain largely racially divided to this day. Among the other problems that persisted long after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the lack of black representation in leadership positions in the state. The election of Arkansas Governor William “Bill” Clinton in 1978, however, was meaningful for African Americans in the state. During Clinton’s terms, between 1978 and 1992, he addressed racial issues, poverty, and appointed blacks in key positions. After becoming President of the United States in 1992, Clinton appointed Rodney Slater, from Marianna, the secretary of transportation and Dr. Jocelyn Elders, from Little Rock, the surgeon general. Elders was the first African American U.S. surgeon general.

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African American students Elizabeth Eckford (l) and Jefferson Thomas and others walk away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, after class, 1959. (Library of Congress)

In the 1980s onward, black Arkansans have experienced highs and lows. Despite the growth of the black middle class throughout the nation, 36 percent of African Americans in the state were below the poverty line in 1980. Gang violence and crime were largely concentrated in impoverished black communities. Blacks were frequently subjected to racial discrimination and injustice in the judicial system. On a progressive note, the state made efforts, beginning in the 1990s, to address discrimination in the courts. In 1997, Arkansas paused to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the integration of Central High School. This time, the occasion was one of merriment for blacks and whites alike. In 2005, a civil rights monument, statues of the Little Rock Nine, was commemorated at the state capitol. Life for blacks has changed significantly since the desegregation of Arkansas schools and other public places. In the new millennium, more

institutions have become increasingly diversified. Younger generations of blacks have no recollection of what life was like when blacks were openly discriminated against. Nonetheless, challenges remain. In 2000, 23.3 percent of black households in the state were single-parent families. In 2006, the estimated median annual household income of African Americans in the state was just over $23,000, while whites made over $40,000. In 2007, African American unemployment was 11.4 percent, and white unemployment was 4.4 percent.

Notable African Americans Angelou, Maya (1928–) Poet, author, and performer Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1928. She made her home in Stamps, Arkansas, from the age of 3, when she

Arkansas was sent to live with her grandmother after her parents were divorced. Maya’s name came from the diminutive form used by her brother, who could not pronounce “Marguerite.” After being abused by her mother’s boyfriend some years later, Maya stopped talking, doing all her communicating by written word. This was the beginning of a prolific writing career, which continued even after she again found her physical voice. Her career has included a wide variety of endeavors, from nightclub singer to actor to dancer, singer, poet, and author. She has penned songs recorded by legendary blues singer B. B. King. In addition, Angelou has won the Tony Award for her performance in Look Away on Broadway and the Emmy for the television miniseries Roots. Maya Angelou was honored by PresidentElect William Jefferson Clinton when she was asked to write the inaugural poem in 1993. Her poem was titled “On the Pulse of the Morning.” The recurring theme of her writing is the individual’s struggle to exist and thrive in a hostile world. Maya Angelou was named the Reynolds Professor of American Studies Chair at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1981.

Bates, Daisy (1913–1999) Daisy Bates was born in 1913. After her mother was murdered by three white men and her father mysteriously disappeared, she was raised by foster parents in Arkansas. She became nationally famous as the primary counselor and mentor of the nine young people who became known as the Little Rock Nine, the group of nine African American students who were enrolled in segregated Little Rock High School in 1957. As a young married woman, Daisy and her husband, C. L. Bates, started the Arkansas State Press in 1941. She served as city editor for the newspaper beginning in 1954. The paper was forced to close in 1959 after continued intimidation by news

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distributors and an advertising boycott by white business owners, most likely in retaliation for Bates’ activism. Bates was active in the Little Rock NAACP, where she was chosen president of the Arkansas Conference of Branches in 1952. As such, she was the principal spokesperson for the integration case that gained national attention in 1957–1958. She remained active in the desegregation movement in Arkansas until 1960, when she moved to New York. She continued to work in the NAACP in New York, where she served on the National Board until 1970.

Beals, Melba Portillo (1941–) Melba Portillo Beals was the first of the Little Rock Nine who published a memoir of that traumatic time. She is the author of Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School (1995). Melba Portillo was born on December 7, 1941, in Little Rock. She came from a middle-class family: her mother was one of the first black graduates of the University of Arkansas and a high-school English teacher. Her brother worked as a U.S. Marshal in Little Rock. In her book, Beals recounts the daily harassment and intimidation and threats endured by the nine students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock. When Little Rock’s public schools were closed in 1958 to put an end to the desegregation attempt, she went to California to finish her senior year. The Little Rock Nine and Daisy Bates received the Springer Medal from the NAACP in 1958 in recognition of their singular contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1999, the group was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton. Melba Portillo Beals received her Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in New York, both in journalism. Her

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Eldridge Cleaver led a life of transformations: youthful years of crime and imprisonment; a decade as a famous African American activist and writer; a period of exile; and recent years as an outspoken and conservative Christian. (Library of Congress)

career included reporting for public television and employment at the NBC affiliate in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1999, a sequel to her memoirs titled White Is a State of Mind, which chronicles her senior year in California and her college and family life experiences, was published.

Cleaver, Leroy Eldridge (1935–1998) Born on August 31, 1935, Eldridge Cleaver was a native of Wabbaseka, Arkansas. The former Black Panther leader was raised in Los Angeles, California, beginning in 1946. A series of encounters with the law resulted in his serving several terms in the California penal system, including Soledad for

possession of marijuana, and San Quentin and Folsom for assault. Cleaver converted to Islam in the 1960s, only to denounce the faith after the assassination of Malcolm X. Nonetheless, he was determined to follow Malcolm’s dream of an Organization of African Unity. As a staff member of Ramparts Magazine, he met the leaders of the new Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and joined the organization soon thereafter. He rose to the position of minister of defense. When Huey Newton, leader of the Panthers, was arrested in Oakland in March 1967, Cleaver led a “free Huey” movement on his behalf. A year later, in April 1968, Cleaver was wounded in a shootout with police. Although arrested and convicted, he spent only two months behind bars before a judge ordered his release. Following this period, Cleaver became a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. He also became politically active within the system, running for president on the Peace and Freedom ticket. When he engaged in a verbal sparring match with Ronald Reagan, whom he accused of trying to prevent his speaking at Berkeley, Cleaver’s parole was revoked and he was ordered back to prison. To avoid being incarcerated once again, Cleaver and his wife Kathleen fled into exile in Cuba on November 24, 1968. The couple was granted asylum in Algeria, where they remained until 1972, when they moved to Paris. Eldridge Cleaver converted to Christianity while in Paris, and decided to return to the United States in 1975. He subsequently served eight months in jail plus community service in order to clear his legal debt from 1968. His dramatic turnabout extended to his joining the Republican Party in 1980, throwing his support to an endorsement of Ronald Reagan in 1984. Between 1984 and 1992, Cleaver, who had run for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1968, sought public office as a Republican. Cleaver’s publications include his iconic Soul on Ice (1968), Soul on Fire (1978), Eldridge Cleaver: Post-Prison Writings and

Arkansas

Jocelyn Elders was the first African American and only the second female to fill the position of surgeon general. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. (National Institutes of Health)

Speeches (1969), and Eldridge Cleaver’s Black Papers (1969).

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Throughout her political career, Elders was beset by criticism from the conservatives in government. Despite the fact that 20 percent of all births in Arkansas were to teen mothers by the 1980s, her recommended solution of contraceptives for public school students drew a firestorm of criticism and hostility as she was attacked by conservatives for her views. Her 1993 appointment as surgeon general of the United States also drew negative reactions and caused problems for the Clinton administration, but she was confirmed by the Senate on September 7, 1993. The conservative attacks continued, however, and her views on such issues as drugs and sex education continued to draw fire on an already-beleaguered Clinton. Under attack on nearly all his programs and policies, President Clinton finally asked for her resignation. In 1994, Elders joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as a faculty researcher. She retired from medicine in 1999 and returned to live in Little Rock. Her autobiography is titled Jocelyn Elders, M.D.: From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States (1996).

Green, Al (1946–) Elders, Jocelyn (1933–) Jocelyn Elders was named Minnie Lee Jones at her birth in Schaal, Arkansas, on August 13, 1933. She later changed her name to Jocelyn while in college. In 1949, Elders attended Philander Smith College in Little Rock on a scholarship. After graduation in 1952, she entered the U.S. Army’s Medical Specialist Corps and, in 1956, enrolled at the University of Arkansas Medical School on the G.I. Bill. During her residency in Little Rock, Dr. Elders was appointed chief pediatric resident. Her early public service employment was as director of the Arkansas Department of Health, appointed by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Elders became a black national icon when President Bill Clinton appointed her surgeon general of the United States.

Al Green was born on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City, Arkansas. He began singing as a youth; his group, Al Green and the Soul Mates, rose to number 5 on the R&B charts with “Back Up Train” in 1967. Green is possibly best known for his 1971 hit “I’m So Tired of Being Alone,” which hit number 11 on the R & B charts, and “Let’s Stay Together,” his number one hit later that year. Beginning in 1979, Al Green professed he “was saved” and began to record and perform only gospel music. In 1995, however, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and later released his first secular album in many years. In 2000, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Green returned to recording and performing popular music in 2001 and released “I Can’t Stop” in 2002 and “Everything’s OK” in

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Black America a popular author. He was awarded Novel of the Year by Blackboard African-American Bestsellers in 1997 and later won the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence. Harris was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2000.

John, William Edgar “Little Willie” (1937–1966)

Al Green discusses his new CD, I Can’t Stop, in Memphis, Tennessee, 2003. (AP/Wide World Photos)

2005. He has continued to record both secular and gospel music in recent years. The nine-time Grammy winner also pastors in Memphis, Tennessee.

Harris, E. Lynn (1957–) Novelist E. Lynn Harris was born on June 20, 1957, in Flint, Michigan. Like many other wellknown Arkansans, he moved to Arkansas, in this case to Little Rock, in his youth and was raised in Arkansas. He attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and graduated with honors in 1977, earning a bachelor of arts in journalism. Harris has become a well-known and popular writer with his focus on the fictional lives of gay and bisexual men. His first book, Invisible Life, was self-published. Its focus was on his personal struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. His subsequent novels, often dealing with men who experience what popular culture has come to know as “living on the down-low,” made him

Blues aficionados recognize the name given to William Edgar John, born on November 15, 1937, in Cullendale, Arkansas. John began his singing career as a member of a family gospel quartet in the 1940s. He gained public acclaim as a soloist at amateur shows while still in his teens, and received his first recording contract at the age of 17 in 1955. His debut record, “All around the World,” went to number five on the charts in 1955. His next two records debuted at number five and number six on the charts. Little Willie John died in Walla Walla State Penitentiary on July 6, 1966, while serving 8 to 20 years for manslaughter.

Johnson, ( Johnny) John H. (1918–2005) The publishing company started by John H. Johnson is the largest African American–owned and -operated company in the world. Born in Arkansas City on January 19, 1918, Johnson’s parents moved the family to Chicago to give the children a better educational opportunity. While a student at DuSable High School, Johnny changed his name to make it sound more “mature” on the advice of a teacher. He attended the University of Chicago while working at the Liberty Life Insurance Company. There he became editor of the company newsletter. His experience there led him to look at publishing as a career, and in 1942 he started Negro Digest, the first publication by Johnson Publishing Company. In 1945, Ebony magazine debuted, and in 1951, he began publication of Jet. Ebony magazine, with 2.5 million readers each month, is the number

Arkansas one African American magazine in the world; Jet magazine is the number two newsweekly magazine with a circulation of 9 million. Johnson and his wife Eunice also produced the Ebony Fashion Show, started in 1958, which has raised over $50 million for various charities and led to a cosmetics company aimed at producing products for women of color. John H. Johnson was one of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, served on the board of several Fortune 500 corporations, and was special U.S. ambassador for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. He accompanied Vice President Richard Nixon to Africa and Europe in 1957 and 1959. Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1996 on the 50th anniversary of Ebony magazine.

Joplin, Scott (c. 1867–1917) Known as the “Father of American Ragtime,” Scott Joplin was born near Marshall, Texas, to a formerly enslaved father and a free mother in about 1867. His family moved to Texarkana while he was very young. It was in Arkansas that young Joplin began to play piano, practicing in homes where there was a piano where his mother worked as a domestic. At the age of 17, Joplin left Texarkana, joining a ragtime competition in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1885. He later attended George R. Smith College in Sedalia, Arkansas, where he studied music theory. Among his early teachers was Julius Weiss, a German immigrant who taught Joplin piano technique and introduced him to the European operas that influenced his later work. Beginning in 1901, Joplin began to compose operas and ballets. By 1909, he had completed more than 40 piano ragtime pieces and published a sheet music booklet titled School of Ragtime. Unfortunately, he was unable to find support for his opera, Treemonisha, although he continued to have his ragtime (“Maple Leaf Rag” and other works) published by John Stark. Joplin himself mounted an unstaged version of Treemonisha

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without costumes or a full orchestra in 1915 at the Harlem Lincoln Theatre. He died two years later before seeing it fully staged. Joplin’s “The Entertainer” became one of his best-known songs when it was used in the film The Sting in 1973. Scott Joplin died on April 1, 1917. He was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American music.

Liston, Charles “Sonny” (c. 1932–1970) Sonny Liston was heavyweight boxing champion of the world from 1962 to 1964. Liston was born in rural St. Francis County in about 1932. His parents were sharecroppers and his family was large; Liston may have had as many as 20 siblings. At age 13, Liston ran away from home, joining his mother, who had earlier fled the family farm, in St. Louis. Liston then turned to a life of petty crime, committing various robberies and assaults. He was convicted of first-degree robbery and larceny in 1950 and sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary for five years. While in prison, Liston took up boxing, and upon his parole in 1952 he launched an amateur career that earned him several Golden Gloves championships. He turned professional in 1953 and had much success in the ring, but continued to get into trouble with the law. He was arrested 14 times between 1953 and 1958 and was convicted for assaulting a police officer in 1956. In 1958, he moved to Philadelphia and in 1960 was questioned by a congressional committee regarding possible mob connections. A series of impressive victories over top heavyweight contenders earned Liston a title shot. He knocked out heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson in the first round in Chicago on September 25, 1962. Because of his prison history, many in the African American community were unhappy with Liston being the heavyweight champ. In July 1963 in Las Vegas, Liston again defeated Patterson with a first-round knockout. On February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, a heavily favored Liston lost his title to Cassius Clay, when Liston, claiming injury, did

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not answer the bell in the seventh round. A second bout with Clay (now Muhammad Ali), in Lewiston, Maine, on May 25, 1965, resulted in another defeat and another controversy, when Liston went down on a questionable punch. Liston continued to box until 1970, but never got another shot at the title. He died under mysterious circumstances in Las Vegas in December 1970.

Pippen, Scottie (1965–) Scottie Pippen was born in Hamburg, Arkansas, on September 25, 1965. He attended the University of Central Arkansas, where he played basketball for all four years. The Seattle Supersonics selected him as the fifth overall pick in 1987, but then traded him to the Chicago Bulls. During his first stint with Chicago from 1987 to 1998, he played with Michael Jordan and was part of six NBA championship teams, including the 1995–1996 team that won an NBA-record 72 games. Pippen was traded to the Houston Rockets in 1998 and to the Portland Trailblazers in 1999 before returning to the Chicago Bulls in 2003. He retired from the NBA in 2004. Pippen played in seven NBA All-Star games (1990, 1992–1997) and was named the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player in 1994. He was a three-time NBA First Team selection (1994– 1996) and an eight-time NBA All-Defensive First Team selection (1992–1999). In 2005, the Bulls retired Pippen’s Number 33 jersey. Pippen was also a member of the original “Dream Team” that won a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

Still, William Grant (1895–1978) Pop and symphonic composer William Grant Still was born on May 11, 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi. He was raised from infancy in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still studied violin with William Price. Graduating as his high-school valedictorian, he went on to attend Wilberforce

University. Leaving Wilberforce in 1915 before earning his diploma, he chose to pursue music in bands and orchestras. Still worked as arranger and performer with W. C. Handy in 1916. In 1917, however, he returned to formal studies at the Oberlin Conservatory, but his studies there were interrupted by service in the U.S. Navy during World War I. In 1919, he moved to Harlem, where he continued his studies with George Whitefield Chadwick, the director of the New England Conservatory of Music, and Edward Varies, French modernist. Still’s best-known composition is the AfroAmerican Symphony, performed in 1931 by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Howard Hanson. It was the first African American symphony performed by a major orchestra. Hanson conducted many of Still’s compositions in the United States and Europe. Major orchestras in some of the great cities of the United States have performed his compositions, among them the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New York City Opera Company. Still was a prolific composer of operas, symphonies, ballets, chamber music, and works for solo instruments, writing over 200 pieces in his lifetime.

Cultural Contributions Although Arkansas is not identified with any particular music form or cultural movement, African American popular culture can be found wherever blacks live, and Arkansas is steeped in rich African American cultural traditions. Indeed, Arkansas produced many black Arkansans who attained fame by popularizing African American culture, music, art, and literature. Ragtime was one of the popular music forms that was created by blacks in the late nineteenth century. Scott Joplin, who was born near Texarkana and studied music in Arkansas, is one of the most celebrated ragtime players.

Arkansas William Grant Still, who grew up in Little Rock, melded the African American spiritual into mainstream classical music and helped spark a new appreciation for traditional black music. Inspired by the popular blues musicians and singers who traveled throughout the South, Arkansas-born William Edgar John pursued a career in the blues industry. Al Green, an Arkansas native and popular soul music entertainer and gospel singer, is a household name among African Americans. His music helped define the black consciousness era of the late 1960s and 1970s. Music was not the only cultural contribution made by African Americans. Arkansas natives Eldridge Cleaver and Maya Angelou popularized Afro-centric fashion and literature. John H. Johnson created a medium, Ebony magazine, from which black culture and traditions could be celebrated and shared. Cultural attractions in Arkansas offer locals an intimate way to appreciate and enjoy black culture. Such cultural attractions include the Ozark Folk Festival, which is the oldest folk festival west of the Mississippi. Arkansas also hosts the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, which is one of the largest festivals in the South. Fans travel to Arkansas from around the world for this event.

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CALIFORNIA Randal Beeman

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Chronology 1780s–1790s

The Pico and Tapia families, many members of whom have partial African ancestry, are among the founders of Los Angeles.

1830s–1840s

Spanish-speaking blacks or persons of mixed racial heritage are settlers and cowboys, or vaqueros, in Mexican California.

1848–1850

Many blacks are among those who come to Gold Rush California seeking to get rich in the mines, but often finding employment in other areas.

1850

(September 9) California enters the Union as the 31st state; it is admitted as a free state as part of the Compromise of 1850.

1855–1857

Black leaders in the state hold three “Colored Conventions” to seek equal rights and the right to testify in court cases for blacks.

1865

(December 19) California ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars slavery. California’s ratification comes two weeks after the amendment takes effect.

1870

(January 28) California rejects the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the vote to African Americans.

1879

Publication of the California Eagle (originally The Owl) begins in Los Angeles; it will become the leading black newspaper in the state of California.

1908

Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth founds the black farming colony of Allensworth in Tulare County.

1910s

California chapters of the Afro-American Protective Association are organized.

1910

California’s black population reaches approximately 22,000.

1913

California Afro-American Protective Association chapters host a visit by W. E. B. Du Bois to Los Angeles.

1918

Election of Frederick M. Roberts to the State Assembly; he is the first African American to hold office at the state level in California.

1920s

Restrictive housing covenants and Jim Crow–type laws are enacted in the state.

1920

California’s black population reaches approximately 39,000.

1928

Los Angeles elects a Ku Klux Klan member as mayor in 1928.

1930s

“Okie” migration from the Midwest and South to California includes many black migrants.

1930

California’s black population reaches approximately 81,000.

California

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1938

The election of Democrat Augustus Hawkins to the State Assembly over Frederick Roberts indicates the shifting of black political allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the state.

1940s

The number of African Americans coming to California to work in West Coast shipyards and other wartime industries surges.

1944

One-quarter of American blacks live west of the Mississippi River and California’s black population has more than doubled since the start of World War II.

1944

Discriminatory hiring practices in California are challenged by Tarea Hall Pittman, Charlotta Bass, and other black leaders in the state.

1948

W. Byron Rumford is elected to the State Assembly; several other African American legislators are later elected at the state level in the 1950s and early 1960s.

1959

California ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans; the state’s ratification comes 91 years after the amendment took effect.

1962

(April 3) California ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 92 years after the amendment took effect.

1962

Augustus Hawkins becomes the first African American elected to Congress from California.

1963

(February 7) California ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

The California legislature passes the Rumford Fair Housing Statute (originally introduced by Augustus Hawkins) outlawing racial discrimination in real estate transactions; the statute is repealed by the initiative process in 1964.

1964

African American politician Willie Brown is elected to the California State Assembly, eventually becoming one of the most powerful politicians in state history; he later serves two terms as the mayor of San Francisco.

1965

Race riots in Watts become the symbol of racial rioting in the 1960s with 34 people killed, 1,000 injured, and 4,000 arrested.

1966

A race riot erupts in San Francisco as a result of a police shooting.

1966

Founding of the militant Black Panther Party in Oakland.

1966

Kwanzaa first celebrated in California after being created by UCLA graduate Ron Maluana Karenga.

1973

Tom Bradley is elected mayor of Los Angeles, the first African American to hold the office; he serves until 1993.

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1982

Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles becomes the first African American to run for governor in California; although news organizations project Bradley as the winner, he loses narrowly to Republican George Deukmejian, giving rise to the term “Bradley effect” to describe the tendency of voters to tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate but then actually voting for his/her white opponent.

1986

Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles fails in his second attempt to become governor of California, losing to incumbent governor Deukmejian by a wide margin.

1991

Black motorist Rodney King is beaten by several members of the Los Angeles Police Department; the incident is caught on videotape and replayed frequently on television.

1992

Four police officers indicted in the Rodney King case are acquitted by an all-white jury; the verdict sparks six days of rioting in which 58 people are killed, 2,500 injured, and 16,000 arrested.

1995

Former USC and NFL football star O. J. Simpson is acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson; reaction to case reveals a continued racial divide in California.

1995

Willie Brown is elected the first African American mayor of San Francisco; he is reelected in 1999.

2008

Karen Bass is elected as speaker of the California State Assembly, the first African American woman to hold that position.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries California with about 61 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview From the commencement of non-Indian settlement in the late 1760s, there has been a continual presence of persons of African ancestry in the state. The experience of black California is incredibly variegated—with episodes of oppression interspersed with a general prosperity that has often been greater than what black people have experienced in the rest of the United States. African Americans have raised cattle, mined for gold, opened retail businesses and newspapers, designed buildings, and fought for civil rights and racial equality.

The Spanish and Mexican Period Though the first European explorers came to California in 1542, the Spanish claim to California

was not backed up with actual settlers until the first of 21 missions were established by the Franciscans beginning in 1769. Among the first towns, or pueblos, built in California was Los Angeles, whose 46 original settlers in 1781 included 26 persons of partial African descent. Mulatto Francisco Reyes became the first leader of the tiny pueblo, though many of the city’s top residents would eventually attempt to downplay their black heritage. Racial identity in Spanish and Mexican California was complex and often changing, but it is clear that a number of Californios, as the region’s residents became known, had varying degrees of African ancestry. Among these early part-black families to settle Los Angeles were the Picos and the Tapias, whose descendants would become prominent in the social and political life of Mexican-era California (1821–1846).

California Most of the Californios were involved in small-scale industry or in the raising of cattle for the hide and tallow trade, exporting beef hides and beef fat to merchants and manufacturers from England and the United States. Outsiders would frequently comment on the horsemanship skills of the vaqueros, some of whom were Spanish-speaking blacks. The first Americans to see California were sailors, primarily from New England, including free blacks such as Allen Light (1804–1850s?), whose ship the Pilgrim was involved in the hide and tallow trade. Like many Americans, Light abandoned ship and became an active participant in Californio society. Other Americans reached California via the system of trails developed by mountain men and explorers of the American West, whose ranks included the famous mulatto James Beckwourth (1798–1866), and the black trapper Peter Ranne, who came to California with the Jedediah Smith expedition of 1826.

An African American miner with a shovel in Auburn Ravine during the Gold Rush, California, 1852. (Hulton Archive/Getty)

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Beckwourth had a storied career living among the Indians, stealing horses from Mexican settlers, and leading ’49ers across the Sierra, where a pass through the mountains now bears his name.

The Gold Rush and Early Statehood Period Although a few black settlers came before the Gold Rush of 1848–1849, the gold strike quickly increased the black population of California. Free blacks came from the northeastern United States, the Caribbean, and from countries in the former Spanish empire, while others came as slaves from the American South. There were 2,000 African Americans in the state by 1852, and over 4,000 by 1860. Though some blacks worked the mines as both laborers and independent miners, discriminatory conditions kept many blacks out of the mines. Those excluded from mining often did well working as cooks and other service jobs at a time when common laborers were doing quite well in the inflated gold rush economy. Peter Lester (1814–188?) was a Gold Rush bootblack and shoe repairman who became a successful businessman in San Francisco, devoting his free time to fighting against proslavery forces in California. He also promoted desegregated educational facilities and opposed attempts to ban black immigration to the state. Slavery was still legal during the initial stages of the Gold Rush, and many slave owners from the American South brought their slaves to California. The prevailing doctrine of “free labor” in the gold fields meant that ’49ers viewed black slavery as an unacceptable institution, and slavery was banned in California in 1849. The Compromise of 1850 ensured that California would remain a free state, but the agreement that let California into the Union required the state to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Often considered the “Mother of Civil Rights in California,” Mary Ellen “Mammy” Pleasant (1814–1904) used her considerable financial resources to help operate the Underground Railroad in California. She

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later provided assistance to John Brown in the buildup to the Harper’s Ferry attack in 1859. Several important cases regarding the Fugitive Slave Act were fought over during the 1850s in California, including the cases of Bridget “Biddy” Mason (1818–1891) and Archy Lee (1840–1872). Mason was born into slavery in the Deep South, and her owner Robert Smith had moved to California to become part of the Mormon Colony in Riverside. When Smith attempted to leave California with his slaves in 1851 and remove them to Texas, Mason fought her removal in court with the help of family and friends such as the Robert Owens family. (Owens was a former slave who earned enough money in California to purchase his and his family’s freedom.) When Smith failed to show up in court, the judge granted Mason her freedom. She became well known as a nurse, midwife, and real estate investor after earning substantial wealth in the Los Angeles real estate market in the 1870s and 1880s. Through parsimonious living and her investments, Mason became a major property owner in the bustling city of Los Angeles. “Grandma Mason” ministered to the needy and used her financial clout to establish the Los Angeles branch of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church in 1872. She died in 1891, remembered for her business acumen and her philanthropic endeavors. In another case, Archy Lee, a slave from the South, claimed that his time in the Free State of California in the 1850s had made him a free man. When his master attempted to take Lee back to Mississippi with him in 1857, Lee looked to the courts for relief, even though blacks were not allowed to testify against whites in courts of law during this period. After an initial setback where a local judge ruled Lee would be returned to bondage, others testified on his behalf and Lee won his freedom in 1858. He soon moved to Canada to avoid any potential legal setback that would place him back into slavery. Throughout the 1850s, the Democratic Party in California was divided over

slavery and the prosecution of the Fugitive Slave Act. The proslavery Democrats (known as “Chivalry Democrats”) were eventually defeated by the antislavery factions, ensuring California’s support for the Union during the Civil War. Nonetheless, Lee and hundreds of other California blacks left California for places such as Canada in order to ensure their newly won freedom. During the 1850s, African American leaders, many of whom had been free blacks from New England, held three “Colored Conventions” in 1855, 1856, and 1857 to lobby for suffrage, citizenship rights, and expanded educational opportunities. Though blacks were not admitted to California’s public high schools until the 1890s (exceptions included San Francisco, which officially integrated its school system in 1875), the black community and white reformers such as John Swett established several parochial schools for blacks in this period in Sacramento, Stockton, and other cities. In addition to demands for suffrage and for the education of black youth, a major issue during this time was to establish the right of black people to testify in court cases against whites, which was prohibited by state law.

Black Migration to California, 1880s–1930s Prior to the 1880s, the majority of the African American population in California lived either in San Francisco or the Gold Rush counties. Many blacks became farmers and ranchers in the San Francisco Bay area, while others worked in the service industries as cooks, domestics, and common laborers. Eventually more blacks would move into Southern California due to the demand for agricultural labor, from the promotional appeals of real estate investors (including the appeal of a temperate climate), and for the purpose of establishing black colonies in the state. From 1860 to 1910, the black population of Los Angeles grew from approximately 4,000 to

California 21,000. By 1910, Los Angeles had the largest concentration of African Americans west of Texas. The most famous agricultural settlement in California was the community established by Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth (1842– 1914). A former self-educated slave and Civil War veteran, Allensworth enjoyed a long career as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. In 1908, he founded an agricultural colony north of Bakersfield. Prior to 1900, state law forbade blacks to homestead in California, and thus most of the higher-quality land in the region had been previously homesteaded by white farmers. Colonization schemes prior to Allensworth included attempts to form black farming colonies near Victorville, San Bernardino, and in Lucerne, northeast of Los Angeles. Allensworth was the most notable of the attempts to create black agricultural colonies in California. Allensworth envisioned the settlement as a place for retired black soldiers to homestead at the termination of their military careers. In the years around World War I, Allensworth briefly thrived, though the community met resistance from some urban blacks in the state who saw the idea of African Americans engaged in agriculture as a backwards step for blacks in a state where the black experience was, from the onset, an urban experience. Allensworth first settled in Los Angeles in 1906, where he cultivated his desire to build a community for black settlers that would allow them to escape the growing harshness of postReconstruction-period America. After establishing his settlement, hundreds of blacks moved to Allensworth to start farms and business enterprises along streets named for famous abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass. Social institutions such as a churches, clubs, and societies for community and self-improvement also emerged in the bustling town. Allensworth favored the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, and his new settlement borrowed heavily from black educational institutions such as

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the Tuskegee Institute and Fisk University. Problems with the harsh desert environment, the development of a safe and dependable water supply, and the untimely death of Allensworth in a car accident in 1914 led to the colony’s demise in the 1920s. Demand for agricultural labor was tremendous in California from the 1870s through the 1920s, and many blacks were lured to the state to work in the fields in places such as Fresno and the Imperial Valley along the Mexican border. Soon growers found that Mexican laborers and other nationalities were willing to work for less than blacks. Many African Americans left the agriculture industry and were caught up in the real estate–driven boom of Los Angeles after 1880. As mentioned earlier, Bridget “Biddy” Mason’s real estate holdings soon became the center of African American residential and cultural life in Los Angeles. Her grandson, Robert Owens, was hailed as one of the wealthiest black persons in the American West. As thousands of blacks migrated to the state, they extolled the virtues of California’s prosperity, its relative lack of severe Jim Crow conditions, and the wonder of the great weather to relatives back home, many of whom joined their exodus. Community boosters such as Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, an iconoclastic publisher and promoter, led the campaign for California that reached black communities all over the United States and the world. African Americans arrived in droves, and many formed chapters of the Colored Peoples’ League, the Urban League, the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and various fraternal organizations, literary societies, and women’s social clubs. They also created the San Francisco Drama Club and other progressive institutions, including the first California chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1913. Soon there were chapters in cities across the state. Some of the new Californians were acquiring lifestyles prosperous enough to garner the praise

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of W. E. B. Du Bois, who pronounced that Los Angeles was a haven for black people after his visit to the area in 1913. Golden State Mutual Life Insurance, headquartered in Los Angeles, was the most valuable black-owned business west of the Mississippi. In 1918, publisher and mortician Frederick Roberts, a Republican from Berkeley, was the first African American elected to the California State Assembly. Many middle-class and working-class blacks moved to the Watts area south of downtown Los Angeles (annexed by the city in 1926), while others gravitated to the area around Central Avenue and the area around Little Tokyo, particularly after thousands of black workers were brought to the area to break a railroad strike in 1903. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, blacks in the Bay Area tended to concentrate around the port city of Oakland, which offered more job opportunities and less expensive housing. While many blacks were relegated to service jobs and menial labor positions, others began to find a relative affluence in California that was rarely seen in the rest of the United States. During 1926, a number of prominent African American leaders in Orange County, south of Huntington Beach, broke ground for the Pacific Beach Club, intended to be the first all-black social club on the segregated beaches of Southern California. Plans called for an elaborate Egyptian Revival clubhouse and a large auditorium and dance hall, with the entire facility to be staffed by black workers. While some whites in the area supported the club, other local whites resisted its opening, and the club was eventually torched by arsonists before it could officially open in 1926. It soon fell into foreclosure. Even though many black people were finding new prosperity and new adventures in California, they also found the same discrimination that had plagued them “back home.” Even with a growing institutional racism in the 1920s, the African American community of California produced an assortment of talented

people in this period, including noted architect Paul Williams (1894–1980), editor and activist Charlotta Bass, scholar and activist Tarea Hall Pittman (1903–1991), diplomat and academician Ralph Bunche, and athlete turned civil rights icon Jackie Robinson. While most Americans are at least vaguely familiar with the mass migration of impoverished people to California in the 1930s due to the persistent popularity of the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, few are aware that this exodus also involved blacks from the Depression-ravaged South. Blacks came from Oklahoma, Texas, and other parts of the “Dust Bowl” to seek jobs in the fields of California. Settling primarily in the Central Valley, the “Black Okies” faced competition from poor whites and Mexicans, as well as more severe forms of racism. Many moved to the small cities and towns in areas dominated by agriculture, such as Arvin, Bakersfield, and Tulare. In time they often drifted away from agriculture to work in the construction industry or manufacturing during World War II. Depression conditions hit the poor the hardest, yet blacks in California had more success in joining various New Deal Relief agencies, such as the National Youth Administration and the Works Progress Administration, than their black counterparts in the American South.

World War II and Afterward World War II was an important catalyst for the growth of California, and the war brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to the state. This wave of black migrants from Texas, Louisiana, and other parts of the South mirrored the previous “great migration” of blacks to the Northern cities. Blacks represented only about 1.7 percent of the California population prior to 1940, but by 1950 they would comprise about 4.7 percent of the state’s citizens. Roughly 124,000 blacks lived in California in 1940, as compared to 462,000 in 1950. By 1944, Los Angeles

California alone would he home to over one-quarter of African Americans living west of the Mississippi River. By the early 1950s, over 1,000 blacks were moving to Los Angeles per month, and the flow of people would also dramatically change the Bay Area’s ethnic mix, with blacks primarily locating in Oakland and Richmond to work in the shipyards. The newly arrived would find poor housing prospects, vitriolic racism, and severe economic and social problems after the war years ended. Nonetheless, the lure of California seemed to overwhelm any difficulties that emerged. California had a small yet vibrant black presence prior to World War II, but from 1942 onward, a flood of African Americans came to the state, with tens of thousands of new arrivals per month in 1943. They came to work in the aircraft plants and the other emerging defense industries. Though many employers welcomed the new additions to the employment pool, especially after the displacement of many Japanese workers after the internment of Japanese began on the West Coast in 1942, other employers and unions attempted to relegate blacks to menial jobs and “auxiliary” unions that kept workers’ dues but did not enforce key working rights for blacks. Discrimination against African American workers met with national protests from leaders such as A. Phillip Randolph and his National Association of Sleeping Car Porters. African Americans in the state also participated in the noted “Double V” campaign that equated “Victory Overseas” with “Victory at Home” for black Americans during the conflict. Black leaders in California railed against blacks being denied union jobs, equal pay, and opportunities for advancement. Newspapers such as the California Eagle and the Los Angeles Sentinel decried unfair employment practices in the state’s war industries. Charlotta Bass, Tarea Hall Pittman, a graduate of UCLA and longtime advocate for minority rights, and a Howard and University of California– Berkeley graduate, Frances Albrier, worked with

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the League of Women Voters and an assortment of civil rights and left-wing organizations to demand better treatment of blacks in the California workplace. In the Bay Area, alliances between the Urban League, progressive union leaders, and groups such as the Committee against Segregation and Discrimination and the Congress of Industrial Organizations challenged employers and unions to give blacks equal access to jobs and contracts. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in June 1941 establishing a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to oversee and adjudicate discriminatory practices in the war industries. The FEPC banned any discrimination based on national origin, color, creed, or race, and it had the power to charge violators with misdemeanor and to restore workers to their jobs or lost promotions. Slowly yet imperfectly, blacks began to get hired in the shipyards and aircraft assembly plants. And though they would face continued slights and overt racism, the situation did get better as the war progressed. In the case of James v. Marinship (1944), Joseph James successfully sued his employer, Marinship, on behalf of over 100 other workers for the right to belong to the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, and Helpers as full members with the same rights and benefits of others in the union. During the war tens of thousands of black soldiers and sailors trained in the state and shipped out to overseas combat theaters from California. A lively music and nightlife scene catered to all service members, though blacks tended to have their own segregated and self-segregated entertainment haunts. Tensions between white service personnel and Mexican American youth in Los Angeles led to the bloody “Zoot Suit Riots” of June 1943, and evidence suggests that blacks passively (and sometimes openly) sided with the Mexican Americans in this struggle. Sadly, the Zoot Suit riots would be eclipsed in the American memory by future riots in Watts (1965) and

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Los Angeles (1992) that would have blacks at the center of the storm. The armed forces of the United States were officially segregated until 1948, and though black combat units would eventually take part in heavy fighting, blacks in the navy were primarily assigned below-deck jobs as stewards, laundrymen, and cooks, or as stevedores (dock loaders), while based on shore. On July 17, 1944, a ship named the Quintalt Victory exploded at Mare Island in the San Francisco Bay killing 320 people, including 202 black sailors. Later that month, black sailors from nearby Port Chicago were ordered to load additional ships, even though safety conditions had not improved from the time of the explosion. Over 250 sailors refused to load the ships until safety conditions were improved and other grievances addressed. (Few black sailors had been allowed to testify at the inquiry over the explosion, and survivors had not been granted the traditional leave expected in such cases.) Eventually 50 black sailors were charged with mutiny, convicted, and sentenced to long jail terms. Though they were let out of prison in 1946, the Port Chicago “mutineers” would not officially have their records cleared until the 1990s, when only a handful of the black sailors still survived. California State Assemblyman Augustus Hawkins (elected as a Democrat in 1934, after defeating Frederick Roberts for his seat) proposed a State Fair Employment Practices Commission in 1946, modeled after the federal agency of the same name. He met with resistance in the state legislature, and the California FEPC did not get passed into law until 1959. Hawkins understood that the law would only serve as a tool to fight discrimination, but it would not end the problems that seemed to worsen in the years after the war. Blacks moving to California in wartime found that the state had a series of restrictive housing laws that dated back to the 1910s and 1920s,

after the first major wave of black migration to the state. African Americans and those of Asian and Mexican ancestry found themselves locked out of vast areas of the California housing market by rules passed by various housing associations. Along with the migration of blacks to California, numerous whites from the Midwest and South came to the state in the first decades of the twentieth century. Previously held racial attitudes prevailed in the multicultural society of California. The Ku Klux Klan was active in the state in the 1920s, controlling the political apparatus in several counties. Indeed, some of the early black and Latino gangs in California were formed as defense mechanisms against marauding gangs of white toughs parading through minority neighborhoods hurling racial epithets and other taunts. Chester Himes (1900–1984) came to California to work in the war industries, and even though he found good pay and even some authority, the pervasive racism of California was more degrading than the racism he had encountered in other parts of the country. An educated person, Himes had struggled greatly before coming to California, and had once served a lengthy prison sentence. His experience in the California workplace inspired his highly regarded first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945). Though Himes would later move back East and write commercially successful detective stories, his somber assessment of racism in California seemed to be affirmed in the years after the war. As blacks arrived in a state where large swaths were inaccessible to them for housing (along with swimming pools, movie theaters, and the like), African Americans concentrated in segregated areas with subpar housing and other amenities. Though some of their communities were relatively nice (Watts would be described as a “palm tree ghetto”), restrictive housing covenants and economic setbacks challenged many blacks in California in the years after World War II.

California

The 1960s “Civil Rights Revolution” in California The civil rights revolution that occurred in the United States in the 1950s, and particularly the 1960s, was experienced in a dramatic fashion in California. Building upon the southern civil rights crusade in the late 1950s, there were several successful campaigns to limit segregation and increase opportunities for black and other ethnic groups in America’s most multicultural society. The anger and frustration that resulted in the politics of confrontation reached their utmost expression in California, as did some of the most intense expressions of the Black Power Movement of the period.

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After World War II, the major black communities of California, both in South Los Angeles and the Oakland area, experienced an economic stagnation. California’s economy grew rapidly after World War II, and many blacks would find steady work in government agencies such as the U.S. Post Office, or on military bases, as teachers, or in the service industries. However, upward mobility was not available to many African Americans in California due to the removal of manufacturing jobs to the suburbs, which were mostly off limits to blacks due to restrictive housing covenants barring blacks from the suburbs. Regional transportation systems built after World War II (such as the Bay Area Regional Transit system in the San Francisco area) often

African American demonstrators climb on a squad car after rioting erupted in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts on August 11, 1965. Triggered by the arrest and beating of a young African American man suspected of drunk driving, the riots lasted for more than a week, ending with 34 people killed and over 1,000 injured. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

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ran directly through black neighborhoods, which displaced many middle-class blacks while furthering economic decline in what became known as the “inner city.” As whites left what had been mixed-race neighborhoods, tax dollars and political attention went to the suburbs. New housing in the black neighborhoods often focused upon large public housing projects that would eventually become overcrowded and plagued by crime. By the middle of the 1950s, as many as one-third of Oakland’s black residents were unemployed. The fight against racially restrictive housing laws was a decades-old story in California in the 1950s. By the 1920s, it was a common practice to require whites to sign an agreement not to sell their homes to blacks, Latinos, and Asians. In a few cases black homeowners owned their right to live where they wished, including Booker T. Washington Jr., who successfully won his battle to live in the San Fernando Valley in the 1920s. Henry (187?–1967) and Texanna (1886–1987) Laws came to California from Texas in 1910, and saved enough money to buy property in Watts in the early 1920s. Watts was then a white community, but blacks were moving in on the edges of the community, and in the 1940s, the Laws family was finally able to build a small home on the property they had owned for years in an all-white neighborhood. In 1944, the Laws were thrown out of their home by local authorities for violating housing restrictions, even though two of their sons were fighting for the United States in the Pacific theater. The Superior Court judge ruled, as was the tradition, that the Laws could own the property yet not live there. Charlotta Bass, celebrities such as Paul Robeson and Lena Horne, the NAACP, and other civil rights groups all supported the Laws in their struggle. In May 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Shelley v. Kramer that restrictive racial covenants were unenforceable. The Laws were able to move back into their home, and within a few years blacks were the majority in Watts.

With their growing numbers in California, blacks were gaining ground in the electoral process in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Augustus Hawkins had introduced numerous bills intending to discard housing restrictions in the state in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1963, W. Byron Rumford (who had been elected to the State Assembly in 1948) was able to gather a coalition to finally pass what became known as the Rumford Fair Housing Statute. While Hawkins went on to become the first black U.S. Representative from California in 1962, F. Douglas Ferrell and Mervyn Dymally were also elected to the State Assembly that year, followed by the indefatigable Willie Brown’s election to the Assembly in 1964. Yet as swiftly as blacks seemed to be achieving political success in the state, an undercurrent of anger and neglect began to spill out of California’s black ghettos in 1964 and 1965. In 1964, California voters overturned the Rumford Fair Housing Statute via the ballot initiative process. Known as Proposition 18, and labeled the “Property Rights Initiative” by supporters, white voters followed the lead of the real estate industry and an aspiring politician named Ronald Reagan. White voters were, in effect, blatantly saying they had the right to sell their homes to whomever they pleased. Proposition 18 was overturned by the State Supreme Court in 1967. Though civil rights coalitions in the state were making gains in banning segregation and opening access to employment in the years after World War II (such as the victory to open San Francisco’s hotel to black workers in the early 1960s), political anger and economic frustration erupted in 1965 in Watts. Watts became the symbolic race riot site of the 1960s, which is in some ways ironic as African Americans in Watts were in some respects better off than many blacks in other areas of the United States. A major flash point between the black citizens of Los Angeles and their government was in the area of police-community relations.

California

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Buildings on fire along Avalon Boulevard during riots in Watts, California, 1965. (Library of Congress)

Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker was notorious for recruiting white police from the American South. Parker’s “law and order” image resulted in part from the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) strategy of cruising large geographic areas in police cars, and usually responding only to crisis situations more like an invading army than a protective force. Tensions between the police and the black community, which had been smoldering for decades, erupted on August 11, 1965, when motorist Marquette Frye was pulled over on Avalon Boulevard near 166th Street. Angry citizens surrounded the scene, and the ensuing six-day orgy of violence and destruction began. Watts was not the first, and certainly not the last, of the violent racial riot spots in the United States during the 1960s. It was the worst, and it caused people to ponder a new direction for

blacks in California. Some chose to work with the growing coalition of other minority group activists, such as the United Farm Workers Movement of César Chavez, as well as white-led groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, while others embraced the militant black nationalism of the 1960s. Los Angeles became a major power center for the Nation of Islam, and for Malcolm X when he broke away from the Black Muslims. Malcolm X inspired UCLA student Ronald McKinley Everett (1941–) to change his name to Ron Maulana Karenga. Karenga formed the radical group United Slaves (US) and preached a return to African values and principles in the black movement. Karenga is responsible for the introduction of Kwanzaa, an alternative holiday for American blacks, in 1966. Karenga was at the forefront of

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a Pan Africanism that harkened back to the days of Marcus Garvey, with the addition of the militant leftist politics of the 1960s. Karenga’s group was controversial, occasionally violent, and often at odds with other black organizations. Among Karenga’s enemies was the most widely known of the 1960s black nationalist organizations in California, the Black Panther Party for SelfDefense (BPP). Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale met at Oakland City College in the early 1960s, and by 1966 the events of the period spurred them to form the BPP. Seale and Newton drew up a 10-point platform that included higher concepts, such as not requiring blacks to register for the military draft, educational goals, and most notably, local concerns such as protecting the black community from police violence and police brutality. Schooled in the California Penal Code, the fledgling BPP made a name for itself by confronting police during car stops and arrests. BPP members carried guns, law books, tape recorders, and other (then legal) apparatus to “patrol the police.” In early 1967, the BPP even entered the state capitol building in Sacramento with their guns as a symbolic protest. The organization grew rapidly and soon had chapters across the United States and much interest from both local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who would openly war with BPP. While many historians dismiss the BPP as an exaggeration of the period’s militant nature, the BPP did instill a sense of pride and resistance among many young blacks nationally, and the BPP organizational efforts made it an effective force in Oakland and Bay Area politics through the 1970s. Though implicated in violent activities, radicals, such as Karenga, communist professor Angela Davis, and BPP member Eldridge Cleaver, all gained appointments to academic positions in the state. Black nationalism was a confrontational force in California life, but the movement hastened the end of overt racism in California and ushered in a plethora of black studies programs and other

curriculum changes at the universities and colleges in the state.

Since 1970—Tragedy and Triumph By the 1970s, California society was increasingly divided economically, and black California reflected this trend. More and more middle-class blacks sought jobs, educational opportunities, and freedom from inner-city decay in the decades after the 1960s. The flight of middle-class blacks from urban neighborhoods added to problems already inherent with lower tax bases and higher levels of crime and poverty. California’s black urban enclaves became notorious for gangrelated behaviors that most often victimized blacks and other minorities living in the inner cities. Job programs from the 1960s and 1970s, which often failed to bring any real long-term economic reform, dried up in the more conservative California of the 1980s and 1990s. Just as the gangs of California, such as the “Crips” and the “Bloods,” became household names around the country, the names of California’s prisons were also well known and associated with housing a disproportionate number of black inmates. In the 1980s, the national crack epidemic spread out from Los Angeles along with the region’s gang culture, replete with ugly stereotypes that were exacerbated by the popularity of West Coast “gangsta rap” music and Hollywood films that glorified the violence and pointlessness of criminal life. Citizens in the state demanded a “get tough” attitude in response to the bloody crack and gang epidemics, responding with tough laws to lengthen criminal sentences, limit parole opportunities, and require judges to sentence offenders to mandatory minimum terms. Politicians and judges expanded the power of police to enforce the laws, as many voters demanded harsher treatment of criminals. This crackdown often focused on minority neighborhoods, and these efforts often brought up old antagonisms

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Looters run with stolen shoes in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992. The worst riots in modern U.S. history began the day before when outnumbered police were faced down by a crowd angered by the acquittals of four white police officers accused in the videotaped beating of African American motorist Rodney King. (AP/Wide World Photos)

between the police and mostly black and (increasingly) Latino neighborhoods. In 1992, these tensions blew up once again over the fate of motorist Rodney King, who was pulled out of his car and savagely beaten by numerous LAPD officers. The incident, caught on videotape, was replayed countless times on the television news. The four officers on trial for the King beating had their trial moved to a predominantly white area in neighboring Ventura County, and the all-white jury found them not guilty of the charges. On April 29, 1992, spontaneous demonstrations broke out around the city, focused in the mostly black area of south-central Los Angeles. Over the next four days, at least 58 were killed, thousands more injured and arrested, with billions of dollars of damage resulting from looting and fires. Less than half of those arrested during the 1992 riots were African Americans,

yet the national media portrayed the event as a mostly black-versus-white confrontation. Since the 1960s, blacks have slipped to the third-largest “minority” in California, outnumbered by Latinos and Asians respectively. A number of female African American politicians earned power and respect in state and national politics, such as Karen Bass, Yvonne Bratwaithe Burke, and Maxine Waters. Other black political leaders such as Tom Bradley, Willie Brown, and Ron Dellums represented California at the city, state, and national levels, but black voting blocs in California’s cities often found them locked out or forced to assume secondary roles as newer ethnic groups took center stage on the political scene. Ethnic rivalries over such issues as college admissions created tensions between African Americans and Asians in the state, while black-Latino rivalries played out in the streets, high schools, and job sites

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of California. Reflecting a broader national trend, a nascent middle class emerged in the black community in California after the 1960s, and a substantial percentage of blacks in the state made their way to the suburbs such as Inglewood and Palmdale. Traditional black areas such as Compton and Watts are now majority Latino demographically. In the 1990s, California was the first state where whites were no longer a majority, and the state leads the nation in mixed-ethnicity marriages. In spite of these interethnic tensions, over the years numerous coalitions among ethnic groups fought against discrimination, gangs, poverty, and the disproportionate incarceration of minorities in California’s prison sprawling prison system.

Notable African Americans Allensworth, Allen (1842–1914) Allen Allensworth was the most notable of those who attempted to create black agricultural colonies in California. Formed in 1908, Colonel Allensworth envisioned the settlement as a place for retired black soldiers to homestead at the termination of their military careers. In the years around the First World War, Allensworth briefly thrived, though the community met resistance from some urban blacks in the state who saw the idea of African Americans engaged in agriculture as a backwards step for blacks in a state where the black experience was, from the onset, an urban experience. Allensworth first settled in Los Angeles in 1906, where he cultivated his desire to build a community for black settlers that would allow them to escape the growing harshness of post-Reconstructionperiod America. After establishing his settlement, hundreds of blacks moved to Allensworth to start farms and business enterprises along streets named for famous abolitionists such as Frederick Douglas. Social institutions such as a church, clubs, and societies for community and self-improvement also emerged in the bustling town.

Allensworth favored the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, and his new settlement borrowed heavily from black educational institutions such as the Tuskegee Institute and Fisk University. Problems with the harsh desert environment, the development of a safe and dependable water supply, and the untimely death of Allensworth in a car accident in 1914 led to the colony’s demise in the 1920s.

Bass, Charlotta (1874–1969) Charlotta Bass served as the managing editor for the California Eagle newspaper (founded 1879) from 1912 to 1951. Bass was an important and vocal civic leader who also was involved in politics. Born in South Carolina, Charlotta Spears came to California for health reasons like so many others at the time. She began to work at the newspaper, then called The Owl, and hired her eventual husband J. B. Bass to help her run the enterprise after the original owner passed away. The paper had a circulation of over 60,000 readers in the mid-1920s, making it the most widely read black newspaper on the West Coast. Bass worked for decades to end discriminatory hiring practices, and she also served as the co-president for the Los Angeles chapter of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA. Bass ran for several political offices and served as the Progressive Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1952.

Bradley, Tom (1917–1998) Tom Bradley was elected as the first African American mayor of Los Angeles in 1973, serving the nation’s second-largest city for 20 years until his retirement in 1993. Bradley was the grandson of slaves and the son of Texas sharecroppers who came to Los Angeles in 1924. Bradley’s parents divorced while he was young, and his mother struggled to raise the family. Bradley was highly successful academically and received a track-andfield scholarship at UCLA. Scoring high on the police exam, Bradley dropped out of UCLA and

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A 1973 photo of former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley campaigning. (AP/Wide World Photos)

joined the LAPD in 1940. He eventually became a lieutenant and earned a law degree, and he served on the Los Angeles City Council in the tumultuous 1960s. He first ran for mayor in 1969, and after his election in 1973 his tenure was generally characterized as innovative. He successfully hosted the 1984 Olympics, though he did face the turmoil of the 1992 race riot. Bradley made two unsuccessful campaigns for the governorship, and he spent his later years practicing law at a prestigious firm in downtown Los Angeles.

Bunche, Ralph (1903–1971) Ralph Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan, but was raised by his grandmother in Los Angeles. He attended Jefferson High School and then went on to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated with honors in

1927. Bunche then matriculated to Harvard University and would spend his academic career outside of California as a professor and administrator at both Howard University and at Harvard. He also worked for the State Department in World War II, and he eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his work with the United Nations over the Palestinian-Israeli question.

Burke, Yvonne Brathwaite (1932–) Yvonne Burke retired in 2008 after a long stint (1992–2008) as a powerful and connected Los Angeles City Supervisor. Educated at UCLA, Burke (originally Perle Yvonne Watson) attended law school at USC and begin working as an attorney in 1956. Active in political and social circles (her husband William Burke is a wealthy Los Angeleno), Burke was elected to the

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California State Assembly in 1967, serving until her election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1973, where she served until 1979.

War II, she led the fight in the Bay Area for equal pay, access to housing, and civil rights for the burgeoning black population during and after World War II.

Mason, Bridget “Biddy” (d. 1891) Bridget “Biddy” Mason was born into slavery in the Deep South, and her owner Robert Smith had moved to California to become part of the Mormon Colony in Riverside. When Smith attempted to leave California with his slaves in 1851 and remove them to Texas, Mason fought her removal in court with the help of family and friends such as the Robert Owens family. (Owens was a former slave who earned enough money in California to purchase his and his family’s freedom.) When Smith failed to show up in court the judge granted Mason her freedom. She became well known as a nurse, midwife, and real estate investor after earning substantial wealth in the Los Angeles real estate market in the 1870s and 1880s. Through parsimonious living and her investment in the Los Angeles real estate market, Mason became a major property owner in the bustling city of Los Angeles. “Grandma Mason” ministered to the needy and used her financial clout to establish the Los Angeles branch of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church in 1872. She died in 1891, and was known for her business acumen and for her philanthropic endeavors.

Pittman, Tarea Hall (d. 1991) Tarea Hall Pittman was born in Bakersfield, but eventually moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with her family in the 1930s. She graduated form USC in the 1920s and was married to Dr. William Pittman, a dentist forced into menial low-paying jobs during the Great Depression. Among other activities, Pittman served as the West Coast director of the NAACP and an organizer of the National Negro Congress of 1936. During World

Robinson, Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” (1919–1972) Jackie Robinson was raised by a single mother who had brought the one-year-old Jackie to Pasadena in 1920. Education and athletic prowess allowed Robinson to rise above his humble circumstances. In high school he was a star in multiple sports. He attended Pasadena City College, and then became a four-sport star at the University of California, Los Angeles. After serving in the U.S. Army, where he had protested discrimination to the point of being declared insubordinate, Robinson went on to play for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League, until the Brooklyn Dodgers made him the first black player in the major leagues in 1948. His stellar play and quiet dignity made him popular with fans, and his post-baseball career included service on the national board of the NAACP and numerous business ventures, including a construction firm dedicated to building low-income housing.

Williams, Paul (1894–1930) Paul Williams lost his parents at the tender age of four, yet he managed to obtain an education at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design, and later at the University of Southern California (USC). In 1921, he became the first certified black architect in the American West and soon began a productive career that would result in his being the first African American member of the American Architectural Institute. He served on numerous commissions, including the Los Angeles Planning Commission, wrote numerous texts, and designed some of the signature buildings of Los Angeles, including the Beverly Hills

California Hotel. He designed homes for movie stars, the local business elite, and for common people as well. He received numerous honorary doctorate degrees in his lifetime, and his reputation has continued to grow even after his death in 1980.

Cultural Contributions African Americans in California have enjoyed a rich cultural life, and their cultural contribution in a divergent range of areas has reached far beyond the borders of the state to influence American and world culture. Black California produced a strong literary tradition, a vibrant church culture, notable artists and architects, fabled actors and musicians, and champion athletes. Since publication of The Owl (later the California Eagle) began in 1879, black newspapers have helped cultivate African American culture in California. Black newspapers have served as community forums to address civil rights and other community concerns. Black churches have also enjoyed a sustained and powerful impact over black communities in the state as well as the larger community as a whole. The pulpits of California’s black churches have been used to attack racism, promote cultural strength, and minister to the religious sentiments of the communities they have served. As they have throughout American history, African Americans created lasting artistic expressions in California, from architects such as Paul Williams to popular hip-hop artists who help define cultural trends for the rest of the planet. African Americans began coming to Hollywood from 1910 onward, seeking fame and fortune in the film industry. Though blacks were often stereotyped into demeaning roles such as Hattie McDaniel’s noted portrayal of a Southern “mammy” in Gone with the Wind (1939), numerous black performers became wealthy, using their newly won power and money to fight for black rights in the state. Lighterskinned black actresses such as Dorothy Dandridge and Nellie Conley often portrayed seductresses,

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while black males in the early movies often played subservient and comical characters, sometimes in black face. Among the more noted actors in this genre were David “Pigmeat” Markham (1904– 1981) and Stepin Fechit, the stage name for Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (1902–1985). In roles often directed exclusively at black audiences, jazz musicians such as Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong often played themselves in movie roles. Their presence on the West Coast led to a thriving music scene in Los Angeles that was highly developed by the 1930s. Though music and dance clubs could be found in every black community of size throughout California, the center of the West Coast African American renaissance was Central Avenue in Los Angeles, which had been the heart of black Los Angeles for decades. Jazz clubs on Central Avenue were frequented by people of all races until downtown Los Angeles gradually declined as a cultural center after World War II. After World War II, black Californians continued to make rich contributions to the cultural life of the Golden State. The West Coast jazz scene became highly recognized and regarded around the world, and writers such as Chester Himes, Eldridge Cleaver, and prison author George Jackson continued to record the unpleasant side of race relations in California. Black musical artists continued to set national music and fashion styles well into the 1990s, with groups such as NWA and performers such as Too Short and Xhibit embodying the hardest (and most controversial) edges of black urban life. In the realm of athletics, African Americans in California continued to excel. UCLA graduate Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the integrated major leagues in 1947, a step that is now hailed as a major moment in the early Civil Rights Movement. Kingsburg resident Rafer Johnson won the Olympic decathlon in 1960, and other black athletes such as Florence Griffith Joyner continued this record of athletic achievement.

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Bibliography Allen, Robert. The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in U.S. Naval History. New York: Warner Books, 1989. Bunche, Lonnie G., III. Black Angelenos: The AfroAmerican in Los Angeles, 1850–1950. Los Angeles: California Afro-American Museum, 1988. De Graff, Lawrence B., Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, eds. Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California. Los Angeles: Autry Museum of Western History, 2001. Flamming, Douglas. Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Foner, Eri, ed. The Black Panthers Speak. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Hilliard, David. Huey: Spirit of the Panther. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2006. Hudson, Karen E. The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect. New York: Rizzoli, 1994. Johnson, Marilyn S. The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Margolies, Edward, and Michel Faber. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997.

Mungen, Donna. The Life and Times of Biddy Mason: From Slavery to Wealthy California Land Owner. Lewisville, TX: MC Printing, 1976. Radcliffe, Evelyn. Out of Darkness: The Story of Allen Allensworth. Menlo Park, CA: Inkling Press, 1998. Smith, R. J. The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African American Renaissance. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West 1580–1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Taylor, Quintard. African American Women Confront the West, 1600–2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Tolbert, Emory J. The UNIA and Black Los Angeles: Ideology and Community in the American Garvey Movement. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies, 1980. Urquart, Brian. Ralph Bunche: An American Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Wheeler, Gordon B. Black California: The History of African Americans in the Golden State. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993.

COLORADO Ronald J. Stephens

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Chronology 1859

Clara Brown, a former slave freed in 1856, arrives in Cherry Creek from Kansas as cook for a group of prospectors heading to Pike’s Peak. At Cherry Creek, she works as a nurse, cook, and laundress.

1860

Barney Lancelot Ford, an escaped slave, comes to Colorado, where he fights against statehood until African Americans are permitted the right to vote.

1864

Black Mountain Man James Beckwourth kills William Paine, who has terrorized Colorado residents, in a gunfight.

1865

Denver City becomes the territorial capital, and shortens its name to Denver.

1868

Shorter African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church of Denver is the first African American Church established in Colorado; its founder is Bishop Thomas M. D. Ward, a pioneer of African Methodism in the West, who fulfills multiple needs of African Americans of the Five Points area.

1876

(August 1) Colorado enters the Union as the 38th state.

1881

The Colorado Statesman and the Denver Weekly Star are founded; both Colorado black newspapers encouraged change and promoted civil rights issues. Joseph D. D. Rivers, editor of the Colorado Statesman and close friend of Booker T. Washington, encourages blacks to come west, invest in real estate, and establish businesses. J. R. Smith and Lewis Price use the Denver Weekly Star for similar purposes.

1890

Approximately 6,000 African Americans live in Colorado, with about 5,000 owning property. Of those 6,000, 3,254 live in Denver.

1893

Denver’s Fire Station Number 3, which is located in the heart of the Five Points Neighborhood, becomes the first all-black fire station in the city.

1896

The Bonita Silver and Gold Mining Company is founded and managed by two African American women: Mary E. Phelps, president, and Mrs. L. K. Daniels, secretary.

1900

Denver’s restrictive housing covenants and Jim Crow segregation force the majority of the city’s African Americans to live in the Five Points Neighborhood.

1904

The Scott Methodist congregation is established as Denver’s only United Methodist denomination to welcome African Americans.

1920

Five Points becomes the heart of the black community and plays an important role in the social, political, and economic history of Denver’s African Americans. This period is also marked by a number of changes and challenges for the Five Points Neighborhood as the black business sector of the community matures into a significant force.

1921

Racial segregation is pervasive in Denver, as is the Ku Klux Klan. Some Klan members even become elected officials, such as Colorado’s Governor Clarence Morley, who

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serves from 1925 to 1927, and Denver’s Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, who serves from 1923 to 1931. 1922

(May 23) Marcus Garvey arrives in Colorado Springs. After leaving Colorado Springs, he travels to Denver where he delivers two addresses on behalf of the Denver Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

1924

(October 5) Marcus Garvey speaks to the Denver Division of the UNIA at Fern Hall.

1924

(October 13) Amy Jacques speaks to the Colorado Springs Division of the UNIA at People’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

1925

Gilpin County’s Lincoln Hills is an African American mountain resort community. Parcels of land are sold to African Americans throughout the United States for $5 down and $5 a month until a total of $50 is accrued.

1925

Winks Lodge is purchased and restored by the James P. Beckwourth Mountain Club.

1935

Colorado passes a Civil Rights Statute on equality of privileges for all persons, stating that “all persons within the jurisdiction of said state shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, eating houses, barber shops, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and all other places of public accommodation and amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all citizens.”

1942

World War II brings wartime industry to Denver. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, issued in response to A. Philip Randolph’s threatened 1941 “March on Washington,” means that black men and women in Denver are hired in defense industry plants and other firms with defense contracts, such as Denver’s military installations. Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, Fort Logan, Lowry Air Base, and Buckley Naval Air Station all employed a sizeable number of civilian workers in the Remington Arms of Denver’s Ordinance Plant, Kaiser Company, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

1947

Denver’s first African American Rodeo is organized. The cowboy Willie “Smokey” Lornes sponsors the rodeo “to help some of the colored cowboys get a start and prove that the white people weren’t the only ones to be able to successfully put on a show.”

1950

Elvin R. Caldwell is elected to the Colorado state legislature. Caldwell is the first black Denver city councilman. He serves as council president three times. Charles Cousins and Caldwell open the historic Club 715 Restaurant and the Minute Spot. Caldwell later buys the Rossonian Hotel and Lounge.

1963

(February 21) Colorado ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1971

Paul W. Stewart founds the Black American West Museum (BAWM). The museum is dedicated to African American men, women, and children who ventured westward. BAWM’s

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1971 (cont.)

exhibitions cover photos, artifacts, black pioneers, buffalo soldiers, mountain men, homesteaders, cowboys, and military heroes.

1972

Wellington Webb is elected to the Colorado legislature.

1978

King Trimble, who was appointed to fill the unexpired seat of Wellington Webb in 1977, is elected to a full term in the Colorado legislature in his own right.

1980

Wilma Webb is appointed to the Colorado legislature to finish the unexpired term of Representative King Trimble.

1981

The Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs (NHACS) is founded as a nonprofit, tax=exempt organization. Its mission is to ensure that black people are included as an integral part of the history of the Pikes Peak region. One of the original organizers of the organization is Lu Lu Pollard.

1984

The Colorado legislature approves a bill making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a legal holiday in Colorado.

1985

NHACS is instrumental in having the site of Payne Chapel AME Church on the corner of Pueblo Avenue and Weber Street designated a historic site by the State of Colorado. The church was first built in 1884 for black people in Colorado Springs.

1991

Wellington Webb becomes the first African American mayor of Denver. During the campaign, Webb pledged to walk the entire city. He walked more than 300 miles across Denver, including during the city’s annual Juneteenth parade in northeast Denver. Over 39 consecutive days he walked more than 300 mile and lost 25 pounds, not once going home or getting into a car.

1998

Republican Joe Rodgers is elected as Colorado’s first black lieutenant governor.

1998

NHACS selects William Seymour as a suitable Colorado Springs resident to memorialize. A statute is unveiled in 2002 of Seymour on the grounds of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum as a symbol of a black pioneer.

2001

The first African American Republican Leadership Summit is held at the Keystone Resort in Colorado hosted by Colorado’s black Lieutenant Governor Joe Rodgers.

2003

The Blair Caldwell African American Research Library is dedicated to Omar Blair and Elvin Caldwell.

2003

The Denver Public Library’s Blair-Caldwell African American Library is dedicated at 14th and Welton Streets in the Five Points area of Denver.

2008

( January) Peter C. Groff becomes president of the Colorado State Senate, the first African American to lead either chamber of the Colorado legislature.

2008

The Democratic National Convention is held in Denver, when Barack Obama becomes the first African American to receive the presidential nomination of a major party.

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2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, carries Colorado with about 54 percent of the vote.

2009

(May) Peter C. Groff, president of the Colorado State Senate, is appointed by President Barack Obama to head the faith-based initiatives center in the U.S. Department of Education.

Historical Overview After the Civil War, many African Americans migrated to Colorado from the South to find work laying track for the railroads, the expansion of which made Denver one of the chief trade centers of the American West. Black workers and professionals, and their families, also relocated to the Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pikes Peak areas because Colorado was considered a place where they could escape the Jim Crow segregation and racial discrimination of the South. From the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction, the black migration to Kansas, World War I, and numerous other events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sprang a combination of social factors that influenced waves of former slave and free black families to migrate to Colorado. The first of these factors involves the southern black collective response to white supremacy to escape racial discrimination and Jim Crow segregation practices in the South. A second set of reasons concerns the black man and woman’s search for creative entrepreneurial and meaningful employment opportunities, and finally their search for better schools for their children and housing for their families influenced movement patterns. According to the Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs, in the decade before the Civil War, many pioneering black families originally bound for California found Colorado an ideal location to resettle. And during the years following the Civil War, many African American servants settled in Colorado with their masters.

Three decades before the turn of the century brought respectability and the wealth of the mountains poured revenues into Colorado parks, fountains, statues, tree-lined streets, and elaborate mansions, African American migrants had been rushing to Denver to find work or silver and gold. In 1858, Denver was founded during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in the Kansas Territory. On November 22, 1858, General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas, placed cottonwood logs to stake a claim on the hill overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, across the creek from the existing mining settlement of Auraria. Larimer named the town site Denver City after the Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. At first Denver was a mining settlement where prospectors panned gold from the sands of nearby Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. The prospectors discovered that the gold deposits in these streams were quickly exhausted. It appeared that Denver City might become an instant ghost town, but discoveries by George A. Jackson and John H. Gregory of rich gold deposits in the mountains west of Denver in early 1859 assured Denver’s future as a supply hub for the new mines in the mountains. Prior to arriving in Denver, black men during Reconstruction (1864–1896) made numerous attempts to vote and to hold office as though they lived in a democracy, even though the principles of democracy were severely limited for them. After Reconstruction, African Americans created and planted the seeds of growth well into the late 1890s and early twentieth century. Historian Nell Painter stated after the Civil War, the promise of black freedom and civil rights quickly ended after southern and border-states and localities

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enacted policies that effectively disfranchised them. As a consequence, newly freed African Americans rushed west to find their destiny. Gold, silver, land, and a chance of self-sufficiency drew all ethnic and economic backgrounds west. The post–Civil War era may have severely limited African Americans from initially taking advantage of opportunities due to racial laws and norms, but western territories placed fewer restrictions on African Americans and offered a chance of self-determination and a way out from the persecution. African Americans moved to Colorado as fur traders, mountain men, guides, miners, buffalo soldiers, pioneers, cowboys, farmers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople. They migrated west utilizing all forms of transportation such as wagon trains, railroad, stagecoaches, handcarts, and horseback, and many walked. Many lived in tents, sod houses, log cabins, caves, tarpaper shacks, and clapboard homes. In 1856, for example, Clara Brown, after a lifetime of servitude, was freed in her owner’s will, and made her way first to Kansas and by 1859 was hired by a group of prospectors heading to Pike’s Peak as a cook. Eight weeks later, she arrived at Cherry Creek, where she worked as a nurse, cook, and laundress. Another example was Frank Loper, a former slave born in Mississippi, on the plantation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Loper migrated to Colorado Springs in 1886 after his overseer left Mississippi. The African American population size in Colorado by the early 1920s increased, as a small, yet distinguished number of black professionals and their families discovered Denver, the site of the largest concentration of black Coloradans, and Colorado Springs, the site of the second-largest concentration of African Americans in the state. At first Denver’s African American community was scattered throughout the city, which included the Cherry Creek area. In the pursuit of achieving the American dream, they created

black colonies while working jobs in Denver during the week and farming their homesteads in towns like Dearfield on the weekends. They spent their holidays at Winks Lodge in Lincoln Hills and their summers at Camp Nizhone. Lincoln Hills was an all–African American mountain resort community that was founded by Windell “Wink” Hamlet in 1910. Parcels of land were sold to African Americans from all over Colorado, especially from Denver, for $5 down and $5 a month until a total of $50 was accrued. Windell built Winks Lodge at Lincoln Hills, where he hosted many African American celebrities vacationing in the mountains. Five Points residents would take the train from Moffat Depot in downtown Denver. The Five Points community offered easy access from the city via the railroad as well as a beautiful mountain view and a river running through the property. Denver City was across the South Platte River from the site of seasonal encampments of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Denver City was a frontier town, with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock, and goods trading. E. J. Sanderlin came to Colorado in 1859 and opened one of the first barbershops and restaurants in Denver. Barney Lancelot Ford, an escaped slave, arrived in Colorado in 1860. Barney Ford fought against Colorado statehood until African Americans were given the right to vote. In 1865, Denver City became the territorial capital, and shortened its name to just Denver. On August 1, 1876, Denver became the state capital as Colorado was admitted to the Union. The completion of the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific rail lines in 1870 facilitated the success of Denver becoming a major trade center for the West. This small dusty town along the Platte River rapidly became the third-largest city in the West. By 1890, Denver had a population of 106,713. The population was smaller than San Francisco and Omaha, but larger than Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix, or any town in Texas. In 1890, the U.S. Census

Colorado reported that about 6,000 African Americans lived in Colorado, with about 5,000 owning property. Of those 6,000, 3,254 lived in Denver. Curtis Park had been one of Denver’s first subdivided parcels. German, Irish, and Jewish immigrants and African Americans of wealth quickly moved outside the city. Many escaped the crowded congestion of Denver to the carefully manicured suburbs. By 1881, the area of Five Points was named for the five-way intersection of Welton Street, 27th Avenue, Washington Street, and 26th Street. During the late 1890s, Curtis Park was considered the most elegant streetcar suburb in Denver. As other suburbs were being built, the wealthy moved away to more prominent neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill. By the late 1890s, African Americans began to move in larger numbers to Five Points. In 1893, Fire Station Number 3, which was located in the heart of the Five Points neighborhood, became the first all–African American fire station in Denver. During the early 1900s, restrictive housing covenants and Jim Crow segregation forced the majority of Africans Americans to live in the Five Points neighborhood, while others settled in neighborhoods scattered throughout the Denver metropolitan area. The politics in Colorado during the Progressive Era left African Americans with no choice but to create internal opportunities, which resulted in a number of progressive black thinkers. The African American community in Denver thrived at the time. The pioneering efforts of Ernest McClain, who became Colorado’s first African American licensed dentist, and Lewis Douglass and Frederick Douglass Jr., sons of the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, served as several of the signers of the famous “100” Blacks Petition for the right to vote for African Americans. This helped in the creation of the first black school in the city. Walker Anderson’s family migrated to Denver in the 1870s, and he became a pioneer builder and miner, participating

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in the construction of the Central City Opera House, the Antler’s Building, the Denver Courthouse, Daniels and Fisher’s Tower, the state capitol, and the Rio Grande Building. And J. R. Smith and Lewis Price founded the all-black newspaper, the Denver Weekly Star, in 1881. Francis T. Bruce was listed on the Denver police roster in the 1890s, and helped to organize the Black Masonic Lodge. As Denver’s overall population continued to grow, the area identified as Five Points was quickly becoming the heart of the African American community. Denver’s small African American community continued to grow during the early part of the twentieth century, and the Five Points area played an important role in African American social, political, and economic history. The first two decades of the twentieth century represented a period of profound social, political, cultural, religious, and economic changes and challenges for African Americans in communities in Colorado. This ultimately fostered a sense of community and identity, as Five Points was quickly maturing into a significant black business sector of the city. What influenced these developments? In an editorial published in the Colorado Statesman on July 17, 1920, the editor, Joseph D. D. Rivers, encouraged black migration to Colorado, stating: We note with extreme satisfaction and pride that countless numbers of prominent, Wellto-do colored citizens in many of the Southern states are leaving the Southland and migrating to the North and West because of the vicious and inhuman conditions that prevail in the South. Under the present democratic administration the Negro in the South, regardless of his wealth and standing, has suffered untold barbarities and unspeakable, inhumane treatment. The proper school facilities and advantages have even been denied them, they are robbed of their reward for honest toil, and a scandalous systematic propaganda is carried on in the South against the Negro to create

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the impression generally that he is a rapist and a criminal as a justification in the eyes of the world for the wholesale lynchings, that take place in the South almost daily. No justice in the courts, poor housing conditions for the Negro labors, peonage, lack of protection to the Negro under the laws of the South—all these things and many more are breaking the back of the camel and he is becoming restless and dissatisfied, and hence the Great Exodus. Government statistics report that upwards of 300,000 Negroes have left the South in the past four years and settled in the North and West. These immigrants are composed of all classes—the poor, the well-to-do, the professional man, the common laborer and the bad, along with the good. Many excellent families have left, looking and hoping for better school advantages for their children and stronger protection for themselves and their families under the laws of the states wherever they may cast their lot. Yet in the face of this great exodus and the cry of alarm sent out by the white man of the South because of the exodus of thousands of Negroes, they do not pretend in the least to adjust or ameliorate the intolerable conditions that exist in the South in so far as the Negro is concerned. Can you blame the Negro for moving? No, not for one moment. Any other race of people would have gone long, long ago, rather than to live under such intolerable conditions and unjust laws. The editorial also outlined reasons why black families should consider Colorado as their new place of residence. These included wonderful climate and scenery; expanding mining, agricultural, and stock-raising industries; thousands of acres of vacant land for settlement; and laws that afford equal protection regardless of race. For established black farmers and professional men and women leaving the South, the Statesman’s

editorial essentially painted a picture of an oasis in the West, highlighting profitable advantages in acquiring land in Colorado and the beauty of the state. The editorial framed these advantages in comparative terms as a means to entice potential hard-working and respectable business leaders, workers, and homeowners to take notice of the profits they could earn from their investments. The present indications this year for the production of corn and wheat in Colorado show that the crops will be the greatest in the history of the state. The Colorado Crop Reporting Service estimates a crop of 24,498,000 bushels of wheat, compared with 17,645,000 last year; 15,203,000 bushels of corn, compared with 11,205,000 bushels last year. The production of potatoes for this year is estimated at 13,072,000 bushels, compared with 11,040,000 bushels last year. So we see that there is an increase each year both in crops and in the acreage. The Colorado Statesman advises and urges the settlement of honest, upright, sturdy and industrious farmers from the South into Colorado. In 1910, Oliver T. Jackson founded the African American farming community of Dearfield, Colorado. Jackson believed it was important for “all of our people to get back to the land, where we naturally belong, and to work out their own salvation from the land up.” Jackson was a messenger at the Colorado state capitol, serving five governors, including Govenor John Shafroth, who helped him realized his dream of Dearfield. The 1920 U.S. Census indicated a total of 6,075 African American residents in the Mile High City, an increase of 649, or 12 percent, from 1910. The Five Points area essentially played an important role in African American social, political, and economic history. The Five Points neighborhood matured into a significant black business

Colorado sector of the city during the 1920s. The 1920 Census had also indicated a total of 6,075 African American residents in Denver, an increase of 649, or 12 percent, from 1910. From all indications this black migration initiative created the political, economic, and cultural basis for a number of businesses in the Five Points area, which were operated by black attorneys, physicians, surgeons, and embalmers. The establishments of Douglass’ Undertaking, the Rossonian Hotel, and the only white-owned Atlas Drug Store, which was built in 1911, proved to be successful. Denver’s Five Points neighborhood was also home to two black-owned newspapers, both of which had been founded during the late nineteenth century. Both the Colorado Statesman and the Denver Star promoted civil rights, black migration, and black economic development. Joseph D. D. Rivers, editor of the Colorado Statesman and a close friend of Booker T. Washington, told blacks to settle in the West to find work and establish businesses. Welton Street, from 22nd to 29th Streets, was the “main street" of the African American community in Denver from the 1920s to the early 1970s. The Welton Street business district of Five Points during the 1920s not only attracted many kinds of businesses—for example, restaurants, bars, physicians, real estate agencies, and insurance companies—but also served as an important resource site for residents in the community. Successful businesses and businesspeople provided stability and leadership for local communities. Businesses became meeting places to discuss important local issues and business owners supplied credit and other financial assistance to help people when times were difficult. However, the most enduring institution that was responsible for gluing the community together was the black church. The churches in the Five Points neighborhood similarly played a pivotal role in the lives of community residents. Serving both social and charitable needs, black churches offered incoming migrants

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and permanent residents a place they could call home away from home. As in other states throughout the country, black churches functioned as houses of worship, providing both members and visitors opportunities for Christian fellowship, meaningful sermons from their distinguished pastors and invited guest speakers, and as first-rate sacred and secular sites for community networking. Shorter AME Church, for example, was the first African American Church organized in Denver in 1868 by Bishop Thomas M. D. Ward, a pioneer of African Methodism in the West. Shorter AME with its rich history in the Five Points community fulfilled multiple needs of black residents of the area. Scott Methodist Church, which traces its roots to 1904, was founded as Denver’s only United Methodist denomination to serve blacks at the time. Scott Methodist purchased the building that originally belonged to the Christ Church congregation on 22nd and Ogden Streets. Racial residential segregation was pervasive in Denver. So too was the Ku Klux Klan. Born alongside D. W. Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation, the Klan in Denver, which was organized during the early 1920s, sought not only to discriminate against African Americans, but also against Jews, Roman Catholics, and any other groups that were perceived as social or political threats to white, Protestant society. The fear of change and cultural difference were the driving force that inspired the Klan. The changing demographic face of residential life and to some extent employment dynamics in Denver accelerated racial and religious tensions in the city. The Klan used violence and harassment against African Americans and other groups. Car caravans of Klansmen honking horns and shouting insults drove through Jewish neighborhoods, the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) received numerous threats, and one black man was driven out of town for not following the Klan’s idea of proper contact between the races.

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Klan participation in Denver reached its peak during the 1920s, when over 50,000 Coloradans joined the organization, making the state second behind Indiana in Klan membership. Some Klan members were even elected officials such as Governor Clarence Morley, who served the state from 1925 to 1927, and Denver Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, who served the city from 1923 to 1931. Five Points witnessed the formation of neighborhood improvement associations in surrounding white communities. These associations drafted covenants that prevented residents from selling property to nonwhites. The political climate in Colorado during the Progressive Era left African Americans with no choice but to create internal opportunities, which developed as a result of a series of progressive New Negro thinkers such as Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson, who spoke to Five Points residents. Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), offered an abundance of hope to hundreds of black Coloradans. The two Colorado divisions of the UNIA illustrated how collective and individual confidence, faith, and pride can achieve African Redemption. Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey’s thundering voices during their visits to Denver and Colorado Springs were not only spellbinding, persuasive, and inspiring to residents, but also pragmatic in constructing and promoting a human civilization of racial equality. Garvey’s slogan “Africa for the Africans” at home and abroad situated the African predicament on the same continuum as other global liberation movements struggling in a white supremacist world. In effect Garvey rallied them to make the mental shift from a race of an inferior people to a race of superiority, a people who embraced their cultural dignity, identity, independence, and ethnic heritage. At the time the aims and objectives of the organization had not become widely known to the Colorado Springs and Denver African

American communities. This did not occur until shortly after the opening of the first International Convention of the UNIA-ACL on August 1, 1920. It was this UNIA convention that elected Garvey a world leader and Negro leader of 12,000,000 people of the United States, and as the provisional president of Africa. Convention delegates also drafted and adopted the UNIA’s constitution and bill of rights. World War II brought wartime industry to Denver. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, issued in response to A. Philip Randolph’s threatened “March on Washington” in 1941, meant that black men and women in Denver would be hired in defense industry plants and other firms with defense contracts. Denver’s military installations—Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, Fort Logan, Lowry Air Base, and Buckley Naval Air Station—employed a sizeable number of civilian workers, as did the Remington Arms Ordnance Plant in Denver, the Kaiser Company, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The events and circumstances later surrounding the Civil Rights Movement in Colorado also significantly influenced social change in the state. Rachel Bassette Noel, a local civil rights leader, activist, educator, and humanitarian, led the fight to achieve integration in the public school system in Denver. In 1965, Noel was elected the first African American to serve on the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. Noel, who had been exposed to civil rights and the fight for equality from observing her father, attorney A. W. E. Bassette Jr., authored the Noel Resolution in 1968, which called for desegregation in the Denver public school system. The Noel Resolution became the foundational guidelines for desegregation of Denver public schools, covering student ratio imbalances and racial balance of administrative employees and teachers. It was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court. At a time when racially bigoted action was the norm of society, the Noel Resolution served as a model to the entire country and helped to create

Colorado equal educational opportunities for all students. Other events and circumstances emanating out of the Civil Rights Movement in Colorado highlight the copious triumphs of the Denver chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was led by Lauren Watson. Watson searched for an improved life in Denver, having been convinced that African Americans, more often than not, would succeed despite poor community-police relations and charges of police brutality aimed at African Americans in the Five Points neighborhood and Denver public schools. Following the Black Power phase of the Civil Rights Movement, Wellington Webb became the first African American mayor of Denver, Colorado. Webb’s track record paved the way for his successful and historic mayoral bid in 1991. Webb pledged to walk the entire city and the Denver media followed. In his three terms as mayor of Denver, Webb focused on four major areas: parks and open space, public safety, economic development, and children. Webb was president of the Democratic Mayors and the past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and National Conference of Black Mayors. As Webb served Denver, the 2004 U.S. Census reported that the African American population in all of Colorado was composed of 178,731 persons residing primarily in eight counties along the Front Range. The largest concentration of African Americans live in two counties: Denver with 10.7 percent of the population, followed immediately by Arapahoe County with 10.2 percent. This represented a considerable shift from the 2000 U.S. Census, where 11.1 percent of African Americans resided in Denver and 7.7 percent in Arapahoe. Other counties with significant numbers of African Americans in the state include El Paso with 6.8 percent (2004); Adams with 3.2 percent (2004); Pueblo with 1.9 percent (2000); Boulder, 0.9 percent (2000); Fremont, 5.3 percent (2000); and Douglas with 1.0 percent (2000).

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With respect to health outcomes, African Americans suffer the greatest degree of health disparities both nationally and in Colorado. According to Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Colorado 2005, a report by the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment Office of Health Disparities, African Americans have the highest overall death rate and shortest life expectancy in the state. Additionally, the African American community has the highest mortality and morbidity rates when compared to other ethnic and racial groups, specifically in the areas of chronic disease, communicable disease, injury, maternal health, and child health. A 2002 Statewide Needs Assessment: Report on African American Populations in Colorado submitted by the Colorado Minority Health Forum and authored by Carla King & Associates, Inc., further detailed that in 2000, the median income for all African Americans in Colorado was $37,798, while for Colorado residents, the median income was $40,853. The report noted that for all Colorado residents, the poverty rate was 8 percent and for black Colorado residents it was 28 percent. In 2003, the high-school graduation rate was 49 percent. Poverty and low socioeconomic status have burdened the African American population with a historical disadvantage of unequally distributed risks and opportunities that largely contribute to health disparities.

Notable African Americans Ayers, Perry (dates unknown) Perry Ayers, his brother Oye Oginga, and a small contingent of artists and art lovers created and developed the Denver Black Arts Festival in 1986. The first festival occurred in 1987. It rained for two days straight. By 1990, the crowd reached 60,000. In 1991, more than 100,000 people attended. It is one of the premier festivals in the nation.

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Beckwourth, James (1798–1866)

Ford, Barney Lancelot (1822–1902)

Born in 1798, James Beckwourth was a mountain man, fur trapper, explorer, frontiersman, army scout, Crow chief, and cofounder of the city of Pueblo, Colorado. He discovered Beckwourth Pass in California, was a scout for the Union Army, and later a storekeeper in Denver. In 1864, Beckwourth was a guide for John M. Chivington during the Sand Creek Massacre and testified against him.

Barney Lancelot Ford was born in 1822. After escaping to Chicago via the Underground Railroad, Ford married Julia Lyoni, and the couple arrived in Colorado during the gold rush. In Denver, Ford set up a barbershop. He also fought against Colorado statehood until African Americans gained the right to vote, and served with William N. Byers and John Evans on the board of the Dime Savings Bank.

Brown, Clara (1803–1885) Groff, Peter C. (1963–) Born in Tennessee in 1803, Clara Brown was sold and separated from her family at age 35. Freed in 1859, Brown moved to Denver, then to Central City. By 1866, she had saved $10,000, and searched for her family. A stained-glass window in the capitol and a chair in the Central City Opera House commemorate Brown’s life.

Douglass, Frederick, Jr. (1842–1892) and Douglass, Lewis H. (1840–1908) Lewis H. Douglass and Frederick Douglass Jr., sons of the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, served as sergeant majors in the Civil War before migrating to Denver. The Douglass Undertaking Company, located at 2745 Welton Street, was known as “The Old Reliable.” The Douglass brothers also created the first black school in Denver and ran a restaurant on California Street.

Fard, Jeff S. (1965–) Jeff S. Fard, a.k.a. Brother Jeff, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, community organizer, and entrepreneur. In demand on the national lecture circuit, Brother Jeff speaks to youth, students, community organizations, and healthcare professionals about cultural identity, history, diversity, self-empowerment, community building, economic development, health disparities, and the arts.

Peter C. Groff is the first African American state Senate president in Colorado history and only the third in U.S. history. Senator Groff is the highest-ranking African American official in Colorado. He is the founder and executive director of the University of Denver Center for African American Policy. Groff became Colorado’s sixth African American state senator when he was appointed to the Colorado State Senate on February 10, 2003.

Hackley, Edwin H. (1859–1940) Edwin H. Hackley graduated law school at Michigan in 1883. After moving to Denver in 1884, he passed the Colorado Bar, becoming one of Colorado’s first lawyers. Hackley organized the Colorado Statesman but sold his interests to G. F. Franklin. His wife Azalia was the first African American graduate from the College of Music, University of Denver, in 1899. She was also a playwright, poet, and musician.

Harris, Rosalind “Bee” (1950–) Rosalind “Bee” Harris is the founder, publisher, owner, and art director of the Denver Urban Spectrum newspaper. In providing a voice for the community, the Urban Spectrum has been “spreading the news about people of color” for more than

Colorado 20 years, attracting 60,000 readers every month. Bee Harris is an active member in the community, with memberships and organizational affiliations.

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KOA. She was the first African American to win an Academy Award in 1939 for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind.

Jackson, Oliver Toussaint (1862–1948) Born in 1862 in Ohio, Oliver Toussaint Jackson, who was inspired by Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, founded and established the black town of Dearfield on May 5, 1910. The first winter in Dearfield, only two of the seven families had wooden houses and the suffering was intense.

Love, Nat (1854–1921) Cowboy Nat Love earned the title “Deadwood Dick” after winning a riding, roping, and shooting contest in Deadwood, South Dakota, on July 4, 1876. Love moved to Denver, marrying his second wife on August 22, 1889. One year later, he became a Pullman porter for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. In 1907, Love published his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love.

Noel, Rachel B. (1918–2008) Rachel B. Noel was the first African American woman to serve in public office in Colorado, elected to the seven-member school board of the Denver public schools. Noel introduced the Noel Resolution, requiring total integration by December 1968. Public opposition did not discourage her. Although the new school board overturned the resolution in 1969, the suit to integrate Denver schools was eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Noel was an associate professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver from 1969 to 1980, and the first female department chair of the African and African American

McClain, Thomas Ernest (1876–1949) Dr. Thomas Ernest McClain was Colorado’s first African American licensed dentist. After attending dental school at Meharry Medical College of Walden University in Nashville, Tennessee, he moved to Denver in 1907 with his wife Lafayette L. Stewart McClain. He was a member of Zion Baptist Church, Masons, and the Mountain Lodge No. 39 of Denver.

McDaniel, Hattie (1895–1952) Hattie McDaniel lived in Denver, attended East High School, and toured with her family’s traveling Baptist tent show. By the 1920s, she joined Morrison’s Orchestra, toured the Pantages and Orpheum vaudeville circuit, and performed with the Melony Hounds on Denver’s radio station

Actress Hattie McDaniel seated at a piano, 1952. (Library of Congress)

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Studies Department from 1971 to 1980, when she retired.

Robinson, Cleo Parker (c. 1948–) Cleo Parker Robinson, the executive artistic director of the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, is a Denver native and renowned choreographer. Overcoming nephritis, kidney failure, a heart attack, and ulcers in childhood, Robinson received formal dance training at Colorado Women’s College, performed with the Alvin Ailey Dance Center, Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, and established the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble in 1970.

Stewart, Paul W. (1925–) Paul W. Stewart founded the Black American West Museum. As a child, Paul W. Stewart loved to watch westerns and play cowboys and Indians, always playing the Indian because he was told, “There is no such thing as a Black cowboy.” It was not until the early 1960s while visiting a cousin in Colorado, that Stewart saw a black cowboy. Stewart moved to Denver and practiced his trade as a barber. His clients shared stories of their lives as African American miners, cowboys, homesteaders, fur traders, and pioneers as he cut their hair.

Vason, Lu (1937–)

Former Mayor Wellington E. Webb delivers his inauguration speech after being sworn in for his third term as Denver mayor, July 19, 1999, in Civic Center Park. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Lu Vason is president and producer of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the only traveling black rodeo in the country. After attending the Grand Daddy of Rodeos in Cheyenne, Vason thought rodeo “was exciting but lacked one thing, black cowboys.” He organized the first Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in 1984 in Denver. Today, nine rodeos are held in city arenas and fairgrounds across the country.

Department of Health and Human Services in 1977. In 1981, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm appointed Webb to his cabinet as executive director of the Department of Regulatory Agencies. By 1987, Webb was elected Denver city auditor, where his track record paved the way for his successful and historic mayoral bid in 1991.

Webb, Wellington E. (1941–)

Webb, Wilma (1943–)

President Jimmy Carter appointed Wellington E. Webb as Region Eight director for the U.S.

Wilma Webb was elected Democratic committeewoman in 1970. By 1980, she finished State

Colorado Representative King Trimble’s term in House District 8, introducing a controversial bill to establish a statewide holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which was approved in 1984. Wilma Webb coined the term “Marade” in 1986 after Governor Lamm signed House Bill 1201 making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a legal holiday in Colorado. The term “Marade” is composed of two words: March means demonstrate and Parade means celebrate. The Marade gathers at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream Monument in Denver’s City Park and ends at the capitol. Wilma Webb is married to former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. She is the mother of four, including Denver’s Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley.

Cultural Contributions The cultural character of black Colorado from the first arrival of African Americans to the present has always been embodied in the pioneering spirit and rich traditions of African American culture. In creating a unique cultural identity following the exodus to Nicodemus, Kansas, African Americans who migrated further west, particularly to Colorado, validated their culture as a response to oppression through creativity. This in turn helped to secure their place and participation in American history. These acts of empowering and reaffirming their cultural identity were manifested through their cultural contributions in the making of the West. The gold rush attracted a varied and experienced African American population. Northerners, southerners, easterners, free and enslaved men, women and children who migrated as janitors, porters, store clerks, barbers, drivers, intellectuals, hotel owners, barbers, cooks, cowboys, nurses, laundresses, and educated and uneducated made Denver their home and created self-help and cultural organizations. They often

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sought city jobs, since wages were high and the work was more dependable than prospecting. Although they were part of the mining rush to Colorado, most were employed in towns. Black men and women took whatever jobs were available. The Denver Horse Railroad Company, in 1871, for instance, was the first to make connection to the Five Points area, where the majority of African Americans resided. The neighborhood was Denver’s first streetcar suburb with connection from Auraria, through downtown, to the final destination of Five Points. By 1881, the Five Points name came to be used because the signs on the front of the streetcars were not big enough to hold all of the street names. The intersection brought together 27th Street, Washington Street, East 26th Avenue, and Welton Street. Welton Center was tried as an alternative name, but Five Points just seemed to stick. By 1886, Denver’s first electric rail line was opened. The 15th Street line, which was closed in 1888, ran in downtown Denver between Larimer and Tremont streets. Although short-lived, this line set the stage for a trolley system that would consist of 156 miles of electric track by 1900. African Americans played a pivotal role in the development of this project. In addition African Americans were lured by success stories, where few prospectors found instant wealth and the glamour of the gold fields. Early laws of the Colorado Territory dictated that African Americans would not be permitted to stake mining claims. However, African Americans would hire white lawyers to make their claims, usually for a 20 percent commission. This was later reversed after the area became a state in 1876. Adventurous African American frontier women emigrated to the West and helped “civilize” the Wild West by creating churches, social groups, and schools and providing community services. They also supplied the needed skills as cooks, nannies, housekeepers, nursemaids, laundresses, and shopkeepers. These skills helped to ensure that an African American culture was forming as

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African American women followed their husbands and fathers out west to work side by side with them as miners, farmers, and cowhands. A final set of cultural contributions made by African Americans of Colorado, in both Colorado Springs and Denver, unfolded through their religious and secular practices. A number of church organizations were founded by African Americans in both cities, as many of them expected to attend religious services, a fundamental belief system in African culture. The same holds true for African American entertainers who were either Colorado-born or who frequented and showcased their skills as cultural creators in many of the venues made available to them and/or they created.

Bibliography Abbott, Carl, Stephen Leonard, and David McComb. Colorado: A History of the Centennial State. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994. Armitage, Susan. “ ‘The Mountains Were Free and We Loved Them’: Dr. Ruth Flowers of Boulder, Colorado.” In Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, eds., African American Women Confront the West: 1600– 2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, pp. 165–177. Baker, Roger. Clara: An Ex-Slave in Gold Rush Colorado. Central City: Black Hawk Publishing, 2003. Ball, Wilbur. Black Pioneers of the Prairie. Eaton, CO: W. P. Ball, 1988. Barefield, Ollie Solomon. Negro Pioneers in Colorado. Greeley: Colorado State College, 1966. Beckwourth, James Pierson. The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth as Told to Thomas D. Bonner. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. Reprint of 1856 edition. Berwanger, Eugene H. “William J. Harding: Colorado Spokesman for Racial Justice,

1863–1873. “ Colorado Magazine 52, no. 1 (Winter 1975): 52–65. Berwanger, Eugene H. The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Billington, Monroe Lee, and Roger D. Hardaway, eds. African Americans on the Western Frontier. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998. Bond, Anne Wainstein. “Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Garland.” Colorado Heritage (Spring 1996): 28–29. Bruyn, Kathleen. “Aunt” Clara Brown: Story of a Black Pioneer. Boulder, CO: Pruett, 1970. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Health Statistics Section, Colorado Health Information Dataset: Leading Causes of Death, Death Rates and Age-Adjusted Death Rates, Colorado 2002. www.cdphe.state.co.us/ cohid/deathgeo.html. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Health Statistics Section, Colorado Vital Statistics Dataset: Life Expectancy by Race/Ethnicity and Gender, Colorado 2002. www.cdphe.state.co.us/cohid/deathgeo.html. Dickson, Lynda F. “Lifting as We Climb: African American Women’s Clubs in Denver, 1880– 1925.” Essays in Colorado History, no. 13 (1992): 69–98. Gwaltney, William W. “The Making of Buffalo Soldiers West.” Colorado Heritage (Spring 1996): 45–48. Gwaltney, William W., and Thomas Welle. “By Force of Arms: The Buffalo Soldiers of Colorado.” Colorado Heritage (Spring 1996): 30–34. Holley, John Stokes. The Invisible People of the Pikes Peak Region: An Afro-American Chronicle. Colorado Springs: The Friends of the Pikes Peak Library and the Friends of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, 1990.

Colorado How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis. A Report of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Katz, William Loren. The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States. New York: Harlem Moon, 2005. Leckie, William H. Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Lohse, J. B. Justina Ford: Medical Pioneer. Palmer Lake, CO: Filter Press, 2004. Love, Nat. The Life and Adventure of Nat Love. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Mauck, Laura. Five Points Neighborhood of Denver. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001. McGue, D. B. “John Taylor—Slave-Born Colorado Pioneer.” Colorado Magazine 18 (September 1941): 161–168. Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs. Black Settlers of the Pikes Peak Region, 1850–1999. Colorado Springs: Colorado Springs Historical Society, 2000. Noel, T. J. Denver Landmarks and Historic District: A Pictorial Guide. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1996. Painter, Nell. Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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Purdue, Fray Marcos, and Paul W. Stewart, eds. Westward Soul. Denver, CO: Black American West Museum, Inc., 1982. Simmons, R. Laurie, and Thomas H. Simmons. Denver Neighborhood History Project, 1993–94: Five Points Neighborhood. Denver, CO: Front Range Research Associates, 1995. Stephens, Ronald J., La Wanna M. Larson, and the Black American West Museum. Images of America, African Americans of Denver. Chicago: Arcadia, 2008. Stewart, Paul W., and Yvonne Ponce Wallace. Black Cowboys. Denver, CO: Phillips Publishing, 1986. Talmadge, Marian, and Iris Gilmore. Barney Ford, Black Baron. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973. Taylor, Quintard. “They Went West: AfricanAmerican Pioneers Made Their Way to the Western Frontier Lured by the Promise of Adventure, Opportunity, and Freedom.” American Legacy (Fall 2001): 41–54. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998. Wayne, George H. “Negro Migration and Colonization in Colorado, 1870–1920. “ Journal of the West 15, no. 1 (January 1976): 102–120. Wilson, Elinor. James Beckwourth: Black Mountain Man and War Chief of the Crows. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.

CONNECTICUT Gladys L. Knight

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Chronology 1629

The first enslaved Africans arrive in what is now Connecticut.

1633

The Dutch erect a fort, the “House of Hope,” near where the city of Hartford now stands. The first English settlers, Puritans from Massachusetts, settle in Windsor.

1636

Thomas Hooker and others establish the Connecticut Colony.

1639

Connecticut ratifies its first constitution.

1643

Connecticut joins the New England Confederation.

1650

The colony of Connecticut legalizes slavery.

1660

Connecticut enacts a law prohibiting blacks from serving in the colonial militia.

1662

John Winthrop obtains an English charter, and the New Haven Colony merges with the Connecticut Colony.

1678

The slave population of the colony numbers fewer than 30 people.

1686

Killing a slave is declared a capital offense in Connecticut.

1690

Blacks and Native Americans in Connecticut are prohibited from traveling beyond town borders without permission.

1703

Black slaves are prohibited from drinking in taverns and inns without permission from their masters.

1717

The colony declares that former slave owners are financially responsible for slaves they free.

1717

A Connecticut law prohibits blacks from owning property.

1717

Black slaves in Connecticut are regarded as “property” for the purposes of taxation and voting, but as “persons” in court, with the right to make contracts, to bring suit, and to trial by jury.

1723

A curfew of 9:00 p.m. is established for black and Native American slaves. Violation of the curfew is punishable by a whipping for the servant and a fine for the master.

1730

A law stipulates whippings for slaves convicted of slander. Slaves are allowed to defend themselves.

1740s

Connecticut experiences a religious revival known as the “Great Awakening.”

1749

A colonial survey estimates a population of 1,000 blacks in Connecticut.

1750

A comprehensive act reinforces laws governing enslaved and free blacks and Native Americans that severely restricts their freedoms.

1756

The black population of Connecticut, both slave and free, numbers 3,019 people, less than 3 percent of the total population of the colony.

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1762

The black population of Connecticut is 4,590.

1774

The importation of Native American and black slaves is banned. The black population of Connecticut is 5,085.

1775

General George Washington reverses an earlier decision to prevent free and enslaved blacks from serving in the Continental Army; Connecticut supplies the army with one predominantly black unit.

1781

Six blacks volunteer to serve in the Meigs Regiment during the Revolutionary War.

1784

Connecticut enacts a gradual emancipation law that declares that children of enslaved blacks born after March 1, 1784, be granted freedom at age 25.

1788

Connecticut ratifies the U.S. Constitution; the slave trade is outlawed in the state.

1790–1840

The Abolition Movement in Connecticut becomes increasingly active.

1790

The white population in the state is 232,374. The black slave population is 2,759. The free black population is 2,801.

1790

The Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first abolitionist organization in the state, is formed.

1792

Connecticut prohibits the transportation of slaves to other states for the purpose of selling them.

1797

The Gradual Emancipation Act is modified so that any black child born after August 1, 1797, is granted freedom at the age of 21. The laws enacted in 1750 concerning blacks are abolished; these laws concerned restricted travel, curfew, and harsh punishments for theft.

1800

The white population is 244,721. The black slave population is 951. The free black population is 5,330.

1810

The black slave population of Connecticut is 310.

1818

Connecticut’s new constitution denies blacks the right to vote.

1820

Due to Connecticut’s gradual emancipation law, the number of black slaves remaining in the state is 97; the free black population is 7,844.

1820

The African Ecclesiastical Society, the first black church in Connecticut, is established.

1828

The Cross Street AME Zion Church is founded in Middletown.

1830–1860

The Underground Railroad is active in Connecticut during this period.

1830

A law legalizes segregated schools in the state.

1833

Prudence Crandall opens her previously all-white girls’ school in Canterbury to African Americans, but white opposition eventually forces her to close the school.

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1839–1841

After being held in jail in Connecticut, Cinqué and other Africans who had been kidnapped from their homelands are returned to Africa in the aftermath of the Amistad trial, adjudicated by the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and then the U.S. Supreme Court. This case was a major victory for the Abolition Movement.

1840

The black slave population of Connecticut is 17. The free black population is 8,105.

1848

The black slave population in the state is only 12 when slavery is abolished.

1850

The free black population of Connecticut is 7,693.

1852

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Connecticut native, is published.

1859

John Brown, an abolitionist and a Connecticut native, leads the infamous antislavery revolt at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia.

1860

Abraham Lincoln, the Republican presidential candidate in 1860, visits several cities in the state.

1861–1865

55,000 men from Connecticut serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, including the 16th and 29th Connecticut Volunteers, two all-black regiments. Black Connecticut residents also join the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

1865

(May 4) Connecticut ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

(June 25) Connecticut becomes the first state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing equal protection to blacks.

1869

(May 19) Connecticut ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending the right to vote to blacks.

1869

The first of several all-black companies, the Wilkins Guard, is established.

1874

Edward Alexander Bouchet is the first African American to graduate from Yale University.

1876

(May) Edward Alexander Bouchet earns a Ph.D. from Yale University, becoming the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from an American university; he is also believed to be the first African American to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation is constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1900–1940

Whites comprise 98 percent of the state’s population. The black population is 2 percent.

1905

The State General Assembly adopts an act ordering full and equal service in all places of public accommodation.

1915–1930

The black population of the state is greatly increased by migrations from the South.

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1943

The State General Assembly establishes an Inter-Racial Commission, the nation’s first statutory civil rights agency.

1947

The Fair Employment Practices Act prohibits job discrimination.

1948

President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981, which desegregates the U.S. military.

1949

The Connecticut State Guard is desegregated.

1950

Blacks comprise 3 percent of the state’s population.

1954

In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation in U.S. schools is unconstitutional.

1955

John Clark becomes the first black member of the Hartford City Council.

1960

Blacks comprise 4 percent of the state’s population.

1962

Constitution Plaza in Hartford displaces black and Italian sections of the city.

1963

(March 20) Connecticut ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminates segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.

1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminates discriminatory practices that restrict black suffrage.

1966

266 African American students are transported to predominately white schools in Hartford.

1967–1969

Race riots erupt in Bridgeport, Hartford, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, and Waterbury.

1968–1969

Demonstrations and racial violence erupt at the University of Connecticut, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University.

1970

Blacks comprise 6 percent of Connecticut’s population.

1976

A monument commemorating African Americans who served in the Meigs Regiment is erected.

1980

Blacks comprise 7 percent of the state’s population.

1981

Thirman Milner becomes the first African American mayor of Hartford.

1981

The Manchester Interracial Council is established.

1989–1996

The Sheff v. O’Neill lawsuit challenges segregated conditions in Hartford public schools. The Connecticut Supreme Court rules that racially segregated schools in Hartford violate the state’s constitution.

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1990

Blacks comprise 8.3 percent of Connecticut’s population. The cities with the largest black populations are Hartford (54,338), Bridgeport (37,684), and New Haven (47,157). The cities with the smallest black populations are West Hartford (1,310), Bristol (1,263), and Greenwich (1,245).

1990

Gary Franks becomes the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut and the first black Republican in the House in 50 years.

1991

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson stages the “Connecticut March to Rebuild America.”

1997

The African-American Affairs Commission (AAAC) of Connecticut, a semiautonomous state agency, is established to promote the economic, political, and educational well-being of the state’s African American community.

1998

Gary Franks makes an unsuccessful bid for election to the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.

2000

According to the U.S. Census, blacks comprise 9 percent of the total population of Connecticut.

2008

A Comprehensive Management Plan to help integrate public schools in Hartford is established.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Connecticut with 61 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Colonial Period to the Start of the Twentieth Century The life and times of African Americans in Connecticut is well documented in fiction, scholarly works, and Web sites. Numerous monuments and historical buildings stand as lasting reminders of the interconnected history of the state’s African and European descendents. Indeed, though the black population has historically been (and continues to be) small compared to other states, Connecticut harbors a wealth of local black history. Blacks appeared in Connecticut as early as the first half of the seventeenth century. More than likely, slaves were employed by Dutch and English settlers after their arrival in Connecticut in 1633. It was not until 1662 (following the development and merger of three separate English

colonies—Saybrook, Connecticut, and New Haven) that Connecticut took its first steps as a colony incorporated by the English. Records show that six years later, there were fewer than 30 blacks in the region. By the eve of the American Revolution, the black population had increased to 5,085. In that same year, 1774, the importation of black slaves was banned. Although slaves were prohibited from owning and carrying weapons, numerous black slaves took up arms during the American Revolution. The call for black men to fight in the war was initiated by John Murray, royal governor of Virginia, who offered slaves their freedom in exchange for joining the royal forces. Shortly thereafter, the Connecticut colonists made the same offer to blacks. Black soldiers throughout the colony enlisted. The names of many of the men who served with distinction in the war are etched on memorials. The lives of black soldiers are explored in books

Connecticut such as Connecticut’s Black Soldiers 1775–1783 (1973). After the American Revolution, the slave population in the state decreased markedly. In addition to the fact that slaves who fought in the war were granted freedom, the passage of several pivotal pieces of legislation was a major contributing factor to the reduced slave population. Between 1774 and 1788, legislation banned slave importation, prevented the recapture of runaway slaves, and supported gradual emancipation. Although such legislation helped to gather momentum towards its abolition, slavery was still lawful in the state. Compared with most American states, the slave population in Connecticut was small. In 1790, only two states had slave populations under 1,000: New Hampshire with 157 slaves, and Rhode Island with 958. Although Connecticut’s slave population exceeded those figures with a total of 2,759 slaves, the slave populations in Delaware (8,887 slaves), New Jersey (11,423 slaves), and New York (21,193 slaves) put this figure into perspective. By comparison, southern states such as North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia had each enslaved over 100,000 blacks by that time, demonstrating that the South was much more dependent on the slave system than the North. Slavery did not take deep root in Connecticut for various reasons. Connecticut’s rocky soil was not conducive to producing commercial crops. Thus the agricultural sector was not extensive enough to sustain a large-scale system requiring a slave-labor force. However, Connecticut did profit from slavery in other ways, by forming ivory-finishing businesses, selling food to support slaves in the West Indies, and selling slaves to other states, where the demand for slaves was much higher. Over time, Connecticut’s inclination for industrialization increasingly made the slave system unpopular and unnecessary. However, slavery in Connecticut was no less turbulent because the slave population was lower

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than in most states. Any black person could be indiscriminately sold to anyone within or outside of the state, whether or not that meant being separated from family members. Black slaves were subject to numerous laws that controlled their lives. Slave laws, among other things, imposed curfews, restricted travel beyond the periphery of the slaveholder’s property and banned alcohol consumption (unless the slaveholder granted written permission), and established punishments such as whipping for myriad offenses. Generally, slaves were not allowed to own property or carry arms. Slave life was well documented in Connecticut. Former slaves Venture Smith and James Mars both wrote memoirs. Venture Smith, who was born in 1729 in Guinea, West Africa, was the son of an African chief. He was one of three African youths stolen from his homeland in the mid-eighteenth century and sold to Connecticut slaveholders. His book, ambitiously titled A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, but Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself, was first published in 1798. Mars never saw his ancestral homeland. He was born (in 1790) into slavery in Canaan, Connecticut. His book, The Life of James Mars, was published in 1864. After having obtained his freedom in 1815, he became a prominent member in black communities in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where he actively supported black suffrage and other causes. The slave narratives of Smith, Mars, and many others chronicle the details of black life in slavery and in freedom. They offer poignant accounts of otherwise untold tales and are a significant contribution to American literature. These narratives underscore the inhumanity of slavery and the ever-stalwart opposition to it. Slave narratives were frequently promoted by abolitionists during the antebellum years. The abolition movement in Connecticut did not pick up steam until the end of the century

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(previous efforts, waged in particular by Quakers between 1730 and 1750, were much smaller in scale). In 1790, the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage became the first abolitionist organization to be established in the state. The formation of this organization launched bigger and stronger efforts toward abolishing slavery. Fiery, outspoken abolitionists whittled away, bit by bit, at the slave system, primarily by speechmaking and lobbying. However, contrary to popular belief, the state was not unanimous in its support of the abolishment of slavery. Indeed, abolitionists risked intimidation and violence for their brazen opposition. Free blacks in Connecticut also supported the abolition movement. Some blacks joined predominately white organizations; many more opted to form separate institutions. During the early part of the nineteenth century, free African Americans in Connecticut exerted more—albeit still limited—autonomy in their lives. In 1800, the free black population was 5,330, greatly surpassing the slave population, which was 951. Whether compelled by the desire for racial solidarity or forced by social conventions and racism, free blacks in Connecticut tended to live in racially segregated communities. Though they were denied many privileges (for example, they were limited to elementary education and low-status, subservient jobs), within their own communities, black life thrived. Blacks founded their own churches, schools, and businesses. The African Ecclesiastical Society, established in 1820 in New Haven, was the first of numerous black churches to crop up during the first half of the century. One of the most flourishing black communities was in Stamford. Stamford’s black population was less than 200, but it included many entrepreneurs. African Americans owned and managed such businesses as a restaurant, dressmaking shop, and coal yard. But it was still a frustrating period, with many setbacks,

as the lives of free blacks in Connecticut were marred not only by discriminatory laws and practices in their own state, but by the pernicious growth of slavery elsewhere in the nation. As the slave population decreased in Connecticut and other northern states, the influx of slaves in the South rapidly climbed. The continuation and escalation of slavery confounded blacks and white abolitionists, who sought new, creative means to undermine the unjust but deeply entrenched system. Between 1830 and 1860, whites and blacks organized the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a clandestine operation that facilitated the escape of black slaves, particularly from the South, to the North. Myriad routes ran through Connecticut, leading to free black settlements within the state and further north to Canada. Many well-known abolitionists and lesser-known locals participated in the Underground Railroad in a number of ways: sheltering runaways, funding operations, providing food and clothes, and helping navigate slaves along their journey to freedom. In their own communities, blacks welcomed those fugitive slaves who opted to stay in Connecticut, helping them with the transition toward their new lives. One of the milestones in the history of abolitionism was the Amistad trial, which took place in Connecticut. The Amistad was a Spanish vessel, en route to the New World with a cargo of kidnapped West Africans in 1839. Sengbe Pieh (later known as Joseph Cinqué, or, simply, Cinqué) was a man from the Mende society who led a shipboard rebellion. Slaves and crew members were counted among those murdered in the aftermath of Cinqué’s revolt and subsequent takeover of the vessel. The surviving crew navigated the vessel to New York, rather than to Africa, where the slaves had wanted to return. The Amistad trial was brought to the attention of abolitionists, who responded with vigor. Abolitionists formed the Amistad Committee, which garnered publicity, support, and money to

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Africans aboard the Amistad kill Captain Ferrer. The captives that survived the revolt won their case in the U.S. Supreme Court and returned as free men to Africa. (John W. Barber, A History of the Amistad Captives, 1840)

fund the slaves’ defense. In 1841, the U.S. District Court of Connecticut ruled in favor of the slaves. For the abolitionists, this was an enormous triumph for their cause and an unprecedented win for justice for the slaves aboard the Amistad, who were returned to Africa. The trial has been commemorated by a statue of Cinqué, erected near the City Hall building in New Haven, Connecticut, several exhibits, and a blockbuster film, Amistad (1997). In the wake of this high-profile event, Connecticut experienced further progress in terms of the slave issue. By 1848, only 12 black slaves remained in the state. In that same year, Connecticut abolished slavery. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, added fuel to the blazing fire of the national abolition movement with the publication of her seminal book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This fictional work, which was based on the story of a black slave, underscored the immorality of slavery and promoted the abolitionist doctrine. The book enjoyed widespread popularity and increased antislavery support amid escalating tensions between the North and the South. In the South, the dominant white society vigorously defended its slave-based way of life. With no reconciliation

in sight, the North and South went to war in 1861. African Americans were counted among the soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the war. African Americans in Connecticut joined several Union troops. All-black regiments, such as the 16th and 29th Connecticut Volunteers, were headed by whites. Black Connecticuters also joined the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. The heroism of black soldiers changed the perception that many whites had of blacks. The valor of the 54th Regiment in particular spawned numerous memorials, including Saint-Gauden’s famous monument, a lithograph entitled “The Storming of Ft. Wagner,” and the gripping film Glory (1989). Glory cast headlining actors such as Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman. Washington won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Private Silas Trip. In the aftermath of the Union victory, the federal government launched monumental human rights legislation. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the nation. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection to blacks, and the Fifteenth Amendment provided voting rights to blacks.

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In the post-war era, African American Connecticuters experienced seemingly colossal progress. Veterans of the war joined the first ever—albeit short-lived—all-black military companies. In 1868, a law integrated public schools in the state. In 1874, Edward Bouchet became the first African American to graduate from Yale. And, in 1905, the General Assembly adopted a public accommodations act ordering full and equal service in all places of public accommodation. However, this act was not always enforced, and blacks in general were frequently subjected to contemptuous treatment. Amid the still-extant racial tensions and social oppression, black life proliferated. With greater access to education and other opportunities, some blacks in the state enjoyed middleclass status. They owned more businesses, attended black churches, and joined all-black social organizations. New London, Connecticut, offered at least a dozen social organizations, such as the Ambassadors Club, the Colored Men’s Democratic Club, the Colored Women’s Cultural Club, and the New London Sextet. These organizations demonstrated the commitment of African Americans to their individual and collective advancement, cultural heritage, and civic participation. A small segment of the black population in the state, particularly those whose ancestry could be traced to long-standing descendants of free blacks, constituted the black bourgeoisie. With social standing (among black circles), position, economic mobility, and access to more modern amenities, the burgeoning black bourgeoisie contrasted sharply with lower-class blacks. Lowerclass blacks lived largely in rural settings and retained more African traditions than their wealthier counterparts. With the inevitable urbanization of Connecticut, impoverished blacks would increasingly populate ghettoes in the cities, where they competed with immigrants for housing and employment.

World War I and World War II Major migrations of African Americans into Connecticut occurred during World War I and World War II, as the wartime economies increased the demand for workers in the manufacturing industries in the North, which lured blacks from the South. This period also saw the flowering of black culture and life in urban areas within the state. In northern states like Connecticut, the absence of abrasive laws and wanton racial violence made it easy for industrial companies seeking black workers. The Urban League, an organization established in 1910 in New York City by an interracial group of leaders, helped draw numerous blacks to Connecticut for employment. Some black workers stayed; others, such as college students, worked only during the summer months. Hartford was one of several cities that grew considerably as a result of black migration. At the start of the nineteenth century, the black population in Hartford was 1,887. By 1930, the population had grown to 6,510. The first half of the twentieth century saw an outgrowth of densely populated cities with large black communities, thus changing the cultural climate of previously white-dominated community centers. The cultural climate was greatly influenced by southern culture and national developments in urban African American popular culture. The aroma of southern delicacies wafted through black residential areas. Some restaurants offered foods that catered to the newly transplanted residents. Racially segregated social clubs offered popular black music, such as jazz and blues, and churches with all-black congregations grew. Folklore, fashion trends, hair styles, and vernacular reflected Connecticut’s own cultural renaissance. (Harlem, New York, was the home of the most well-known black renaissance, known as the Harlem Renaissance, which spanned the 1920s and 1930s.)

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A small jazz ensemble plays at Billy Gardner’s restaurant in Milford, Connecticut. (Library of Congress)

With the exception of a few towns, the African American experience in Connecticut was still far from troublefree. Rapidly growing black urban environments were hard hit by mounting social problems such as poverty, overcrowded tenements, unemployment, crime, and racial tensions and conflicts with whites and immigrants. Blacks faced discrimination in housing and employment. Many cities and towns in the state turned a blind eye to unlawful discriminatory practices in public facilities and accommodations. Blacks who lived in predominately white neighborhoods also contended with many trials. For example, black students in mostly white schools were frequently ostracized socially. Black residents in mostly white cities and towns were often excluded from civic involvement and social organizations.

The multifaceted experiences of blacks in the state during this period provided a fertile ground for the close examination and documentation of black life and the issues blacks faced. The Urban League and the Connecticut WPA Federal Writers’ Project sponsored surveys in cities such as Waterbury, Bridgeport, New Haven, and elsewhere. Nonfiction books as well as works of fiction, such as Ann Petry’s The Narrows (1953), shed further light on the black experience in Connecticut.

Civil Rights Movement to the Present Connecticut was already on the road to addressing many of its racial disparities when, in the 1950s and 1960s, demonstrators in the South

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made civil rights headline news. Connecticuters, blacks and whites, were numbered among the wave of young adults who went South to take part in sit-ins, marches, and other demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement. Their bravery in the face of vitriolic resistance and mob violence produced stark images, which captured the attention of both national and world media and played an enormous part in the eventual dismantling of Jim Crowism. Connecticut’s road to civil rights and socioeconomic progress began without the sensation that the Civil Rights Movement generated in the 1960s. In 1943, the Connecticut Interracial Commission was formed to help address and alleviate racial conflict and tension in local communities. The Fair Employment Practices Act, passed in 1947 by the Connecticut General Assembly, was a colossal step forward. For many years, blacks had had no legal protection against employers who discriminated against them. With this act, black Connecticuters now had a legal buttress to pursue jobs to support themselves and their families. Hartford benefited by the election of John Clark, the first black member of the Hartford City Council, in 1955. This was no small victory. African Americans in Connecticut were generally excluded from civic leadership; thus their issues, concerns, and needs were often overlooked or discounted. In the absence of relief and intervention, social problems in black communities persisted and worsened. Hartford’s growing black population and the extreme conditions blacks faced in that city necessitated, at the very least, civic representation. Housing and the public school system were two issues that were addressed to some extent in Connecticut during the mid-1960s. Although the black population in the state was only 4 percent in 1960, Connecticut could ill-afford to ignore escalating racial problems. In Hartford, city leaders made attempts to better race relations by integrating neighborhoods. But black communities remained

largely isolated and beset by social crises. In Farnam Courts, a development near New Haven, new housing projects did not include necessities such as safety barriers and play areas for children (not to mention that black neighborhoods were frequently situated in areas where local stores carried low-quality items at exorbitant prices). In New Haven, Fred Harris emerged as an African American leader by waging a protest movement in his community. Harris, with the support of the Hill Parents’ Association, a group consisting of concerned black parents that later merged with the Hill Neighborhood Union, frequently collaborated with the American Independent Movement. Harris and the Hill Parents’ Association took action in response to conditions at the Prince Street School, a predominately black school. At Prince Street, students were only provided rough paper for toilet paper and were required to share textbooks. The school principal was negligent in his duties and often incapacitated because of his alcohol abuse. In the wake of a two-day march in front of the school, conditions improved for black students and an African American principal was hired to replace the former principal. After more demonstrations, the city allotted funds to establish a program called Operation Breakthrough, which provided a summer camp for youth, adult education, and other programs. But African American communities in other Connecticut cities continued to plummet deeper into disrepair. The reports on several cities were alarming. In 1960, unemployment rates showed that 13.6 percent of black women were unemployed compared to 7.6 percent of white women; 10.1 percent of black men were unemployed compared to 5.2 percent white men. Unemployment was not the only problem. Broken families, crime, high dropout rates, and other socioeconomic programs defined many cities in Connecticut as well as in other states across the nation. One writer likened African American ghettoes to an “underdeveloped

Connecticut nation” (Stone, 238). Exacerbating the situation were rampant racism and sweltering racial tension. Stamford came up with what it thought was a solution to its urban crisis, one that involved urban renewal. The city developed four goals: “(1) Intensifying the core of the city and obviating incompatible land use, (2) Replacing dilapidated housing, (3) Bringing people back downtown by constructing a six lane traffic loop around the central business district, and, (4) Obtaining federal funding and grants that encourage private capital investment” (Stone, 238). This ambitious and heavily funded project resulted in the gentrification or restoration of Stamford, but this was achieved at the cost of displacing African Americans, who remained largely neglected. Frustrations smoldered within urban black communities in the late 1960s despite substantial gains. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 demolished segregation laws across the nation. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act brought forth stronger support for black suffrage. Specifically, it prohibited the practice of obstructing black suffrage, an issue that was endemic in the South. In 1966, Hartford undertook greater efforts at integrating predominately white schools. But, for urban blacks, problems had reached the breaking point. Race riots erupted in several cities outside of the South. Many race riots broke out in Connecticut. Between 1967 and 1969, race riots in the state occurred in Bridgeport, Hartford, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, and Waterbury. In response, federal and local governments established programs to directly address impoverished black communities. The 1970s and 1980s opened greater opportunities for the steadily growing population of African Americans in the state. By 1970, blacks comprised 6 percent of the population in Connecticut. By 1980, 7 percent of the population was black. Critical to the betterment of Connecticut’s black population were organizations

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such as the Greater Hartford Process and the Manchester Interracial Council, which were committed to improving race relations and the quality of life for blacks. The aims of the Greater Hartford Process included the promotion of better housing and educational opportunities and the creation of more opportunities for blacks to participate in the decision-making processes of the city. The council was formed in 1981. It aspired not only to help allay racial hostility in the community, but to diversify the workforce, especially in key leadership positions. Nationally, more doors were opening to blacks than ever before. As a result, more African Americans than ever gained admission to colleges and universities, including predominately white institutions. Employers sought out African Americans for positions and occupations in underrepresented fields. Myriad efforts to combat poverty and racial disparity brought forth positive developments in Connecticut, including a burgeoning black middle class and black leadership. Black leaders increasingly flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. John Daniels was elected mayor of New Haven, and Carrie Saxon Perry was elected mayor of Hartford. Lloyd Richards was hired as the artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre, which featured black players among its ensemble. The number of African American faculty members slowly increased in Connecticut colleges, universities, and schools. Black employment in law enforcement was also a slow going process. Conflict between police officers and black youth has long been a prevalent problem throughout the nation. Manchester hired its first black police officer in 1986. In 1990, the city employed only two African American police officers. The Sheff v. Wade lawsuit, begun in 1989, was named for the fourth-grader Milo Sheff, one of 17 plaintiffs (all Hartford students) who challenged the city’s de jure segregated public school system, in which the predominately white schools tended to provide greater opportunities,

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Milo Sheff speaks to the media at a news conference at Milner School in Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1996. Sheff, 17, was the lead plaintiff in the Sheff v. Wade school segregation case, which was filed when he was 10 years old. (AP/Wide World Photos)

resources, and privileges to their students. In 1996, the case finally ended when the Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated schools in Hartford violated the state constitution. In 1991, Jesse Jackson, a prominent civil rights activist, led a “Connecticut March to Rebuild America” to draw attention to the inner city and its unrelenting problems. In the new millennium, Hartford continues to struggle with the problem of diversifying its school system. In the new millennium, the African American population in the state is still polarized by economic class. While middle- and upper-class blacks access greater levels of material wealth and status and have integrated with more ease into predominately white neighborhoods and

environments, low-income blacks grapple with racial exclusion and a perpetual cycle of poverty. The gap between the haves and have-nots is punctuated by population growth. In 2000, African Americans in Connecticut totaled 9 percent of the population, augmented largely by the immigration of West Indians.

Notable African Americans Lawson, Ida Napier (1877–1965) Connecticut’s early history is filled with examples of generous African Americans like Ida Napier Lawson, who felt compelled to make great contributions to the well-being, health, and advancement

Connecticut of the African American community. Lawson, a native of Tennessee, became a member of Connecticut’s black elite. A graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, Lawson had performed with the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers. A longtime resident of Hartford, she rose to prominence as president of the Women’s League of Hartford, where she led middle-class black women in community-building and a variety of lively social activities. Lawson maintained an active schedule outside of the Women’s League, sitting on various boards, such as the local YWCA, the Greater Hartford Tuberculosis and Health Education Society, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Peters, James S. (1917–2008) James S. Peters, born in Arkansas and raised in Louisiana, resided in Connecticut for over 50 years. Peters was one of many newly transplanted African Americans from the South who would make Connecticut their home during the migrations of the 1940s. Peters, a Navy veteran, received his doctorate at Purdue University in 1954 and taught at several universities. Among his achievements, he was director of the State of Connecticut’s vocational rehabilitation program, commissioner of the Hartford Housing Authority, and actively involved in the Greater Hartford Urban League and fraternities. A prolific writer, Peters’ third memoir, Filling in the Gaps, was published in 2008. A psychologist and educator, Peters spent most of his long years challenging the racism he experienced in the North and sharing his rich life experiences, knowledge, and insight in numerous books, such as The Saga of Black Navy Veterans of World War II (1996), The Spirit of David Walker: The Obscure Hero (2002), and Getting Over While Living Black (2003).

Ruggles, David (1810–1849) David Ruggles, an entrepreneur and abolitionist, was born free on March 15, 1810, in Norwich,

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Connecticut. Although he did not attain the high-profile status of some white abolitionist leaders or famous African American leaders like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, his life was one of significant accomplishments. Norwich was populated by over 3,000 whites, 152 free blacks, and 12 slaves. Although Ruggles’ immediate family had eluded slavery, their opportunities and freedoms were limited. Ruggles, however, moved to New York, where he challenged the status quo by becoming an entrepreneur and launching a career in abolitionism. Ruggles, who owned and managed a grocery store and a bookstore, committed his life to abolition work, such as selling abolitionist newspaper subscriptions, actively participating in the Underground Railroad, and confronting whites who had unlawfully abducted slaves. Ruggles aided the return of many Africans. He also lectured, protesting slavery, racial inequalities, and the movement to return African Americans to Africa. African Americans had become distanced from their ancestral homeland over the generations. For better or worse, America was the only home known to them, and many, like Ruggles, would struggle to make it better for all.

Thomas, Rebecca Primus (1836–1932) In the aftermath of the Civil War, blacks and whites traveled to the South to lend help and support to former black slaves. Societal conventions generally designated women’s work as being at home, rearing children and keeping house. Rebecca Primus Thomas was one of many women, black and white, who defied tradition by becoming teachers, leaving home, and providing help to newly freed slaves in desperate need. A Hartford native, Rebecca Primus Thomas traveled to Royal Oak, Maryland, in 1865, where she started a school for children and adults in a church. Soon after, she built a school. The school was named Primus Institute in her honor.

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Yearwood, John (dates unknown) John Yearwood is an accomplished journalist. Born in Trinidad, Yearwood settled in Connecticut with his family in his youth. He attended Weaver High School in Connecticut and graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Connecticut in 1986. Since then, Yearwood has achieved many extraordinary accomplishments, interviewing high-profile political leaders in America and around the globe and reporting on world news. He has worked for the Dallas Morning News and the Associated Press in Connecticut and Oklahoma. He has also worked as a national correspondent for Focus magazine and was the news/public affairs director for WHUS Radio in Connecticut. He founded, published, and edited the IBIS magazine and was elected president of the San Juan Business Owners Association. He has served on the board of the National Association for Black Journalists and UNITY: Journalists of Color. He is currently the world editor of the Miami Herald.

through social networking and long-held African American traditions such as stepping or stomping (a percussive, foot-stomping and hand-clapping dance form) and scarification. Scarification, which originated in Africa, is a form of body modification that is sometimes considered an alternative to tattooing. Other strong influences in the black communities of Connecticut, rich or poor, are hip-hop music and West Indian culture. Milo Sheff, of the Sheff v. O’Neill case, is currently a rising hip-hop star. West Indians have made a definitive mark in Connecticut through their ethnic cuisine, vernacular, language, music, and fashion. West Indian communities have retained much of their traditional culture through the establishment of organizations and by living in tight-knit and secluded neighborhoods. Although African Americans in the state, in 2008, constituted only 10 percent of the national population, Connecticut’s small black population belies the strong sense of cultural heritage among African Americans and their influence in the state.

Cultural Contributions African American museums, historical societies, and historical markers play an important role in making sure the local history and contributions of African Americans remain at the forefront of everyday life. Renowned storyteller Tammy Denease Richardson makes numerous appearances throughout the year, retelling African folktales and performing impressions of great historical African American women, such as aviator Bessie Coleman and slave Elizabeth Keckly. Among the black elite, organizations play an important role in maintaining identity and expressing racial pride. Exclusive black institutions include Jack and Jill (for high-achieving black youths), sororities, and fraternities. These organizations blend middle-class ideals of economic and social mobility with African American culture. Black fraternities promote black uplift

Bibliography African American Population. Black Demographics. (March 2010). http://blackdemo graphics.com/. Amistad Trials. Famous American Trials. March 2010. www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/ projects/ftrials/amistad/Amistd.htm. Bontemps, Arna. Five Black Lives: The Autobiographies of Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, The Rev. G.’W. Offley, James L. Smith. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971. Citizen’s All: African Americans in Connecticut 1700–1850. February 2010. www.yale.edu/ glc/citizens/index.html. Connecticut Freedom Trail March 2010. www.ctfreedomtrail.ct.gov/site/tour_index .html.

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“Connecticut: Population by Race.” CensusScope, March 2010. www.censusscope.org/us/s9/ chart_race.html.

“New England: Connecticut: Freedom Trail.” Visit New England February 2010. www .visitconnecticut.com/freedom.html.

Cruson, Daniel. The Slaves of Central Fairfield County, Connecticut. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007.

Rose, James M., and Barbara Brown. Tapestry: A Living History of the Black Family in Southeastern Connecticut. New London, CT: New London County Historical Society, 1979.

Donahue, Barbara. Speaking for Ourselves: African American Life in Farmington, Connecticut. Farmington, CT: Farmington Historical Society, 1998. Gibson, Campbell, and Kay Jung. “Connecticut— Race and Hispanic Origin: 1790 to 1990.” Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1790 to 1990, For the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States March 2010. www.census.gov/population.

Roth, David A. Connecticut: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. Stone, Frank Andrews. African American Connecticut: The Black Scene in a New England State; Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century. Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2008.

Historical Firsts with Tammy Denease Richardson. March 2010. www.historicalfirsts.org.

Strother, Horatio T. The Underground Railroad in Connecticut. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1962.

Lee, Frank F. Negro and White in Connecticut Towns. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961.

Warner, Robert Austin. New Haven Negroes: A Social History. Reprint ed. New York: Arno Press, 1969 [1940].

Mead, Jeffrey B. Chains Unbound: Slave Emancipations in the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1995.

White, David O. Connecticut’s Black Soldiers 1775–1783. Chester, CT: Pequot Press, 1973.

DELAWARE Linda Williamson Nelson

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Chronology 1639

“Black Anthony,” the first black person to arrive in Delaware, is brought from the Caribbean to Fort Christiana aboard a vessel named the Grip.

1721

About 500 black slaves reside in Delaware.

1773

The General Assembly places restrictions on the numbers of blacks brought into the lower counties.

1775

Delaware Quakers begin to free their slaves.

1776

Three lower counties of Pennsylvania break away and adopt a constitution, becoming the state of Delaware.

1778

The Delaware Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery is established, largely by Quakers.

1787

New U.S. Constitution is ratified in Dover, making Delaware the first state to join the new Union.

1788–1789

Abolition societies are established in Dover and Wilmington.

1801

The Society of Friends (Quakers) establishes the earliest effort to educate blacks and people of color in the state.

1805

Establishment of Ezion Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington.

1813

Blacks reject white control of their worship services at Ezion Church in Wilmington and leave in large numbers to form the Union African Methodist Episcopal Church under the leadership of Reverend Peter Spencer and William Anderson; this is the first denomination in the nation controlled entirely by African Americans.

1814

The Big Quarterly or the August Quarterly, the first black religious festival, is started by the Reverend Peter Spenser; the festival continues in Delaware to this day.

1816

The African School Society opens a school for blacks in Delaware.

1831

A slave insurrection in Virginia led by Nat Turner results in stricter surveillance of free and enslaved blacks in most slave-holding states, including Delaware.

1847

An act to abolish slavery in Delaware is defeated in the state Senate by one vote.

1861

Delaware remains in the Union when most southern slave states secede.

1861–1865

During the Civil War, approximately 12,000 Delaware citizens fight for the Union, while a few hundred fight for the Confederacy.

1863

(January 1) President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation frees slaves in the Confederate states, but slaves in slave states that remained in the Union, such as Delaware, remain in bondage until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

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1865

(February 8) The Delaware legislature rejects ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

The Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of Colored People establishes schools throughout the state; taxes on the black citizenry for support of their education are levied in 1875.

1867

(February 7) Delaware refuses to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of all persons under the law.

1867

Howard High School for blacks is established in Wilmington.

1869

(March 18) Delaware refuses to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving blacks the vote.

1875

In response to the passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Act, Delaware legislators pass a “Jim Crow” law, relegating Delawareans to second-class citizenship; the law is not repealed until 1963.

1876

Edwina B. Kruse, who studied at the Hampton Institute, becomes the first black principal of Howard High School.

1880

A Supreme Court decision stating that blacks are not allowed to sit on the jury results in the acquittal of William Neal on rape and murder charges.

1890

Delaware State College for Colored Students is established by an act of Congress.

1892

Delaware State College officially opens with Wesley Webb, a white man, as president, along with two instructors.

1895

W. C. Jason becomes the first black president of Delaware State College

1900

William W. Coage, the son of a Delaware stage line operator, is appointed clerk in the U.S. Census Bureau with the assistance of Senator Henry A. DuPont; Coage is the first African American from Delaware to receive such a federal position.

1901

(February 12) The Delaware legislature ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, 35 years after the amendment took effect; the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship to African Americans, over 30 years after it took effect; and the Fifteenth Amendment ensuring blacks the right to vote, 30 years after it took effect.

1901

Thomas E. Postles is the first black to be seated on the Wilmington City Council.

1903

George White, a black man accused of rape and murder, is lynched by a white mob in Wilmington that was incited to violence by a sermon preached by a racist minister; the minister is later forced to leave town after being denounced in the local press.

1915

A chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established in Wilmington.

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1917–1919

An estimated 1,400 black citizens of Delaware serve in the armed forces during World War I.

1919

A white mob in Wilmington tries to lynch two black men accused of killing a police officer; when the mob is fired upon, it invades black neighborhoods and begins vandalizing homes and other property.

1928

Howard High School for blacks in Wilmington receives a grant from Pierre DuPont.

1929

Louis L. Redding becomes the first African American lawyer in the state.

1930

William Coage is appointed recorder of deeds in Washington, D.C.

1941

The Carver Vocational High School for Negro Trainees is rebuilt.

1942

The first basketball game between teams from white and black Delaware high schools occurs when Wilmington Friends School plays Howard High School.

1942–1945

Over 4,000 black citizens of Delaware serve in the armed forces during World War II.

1945

The Delaware State College is granted accreditation offering degrees in the arts, sciences, education, home economics, and industrial arts; there are 175 students in the college and another 145 in a high-school department.

1945

William J. Winchester, a Republican, becomes the first African American elected to the Delaware legislature.

1946

The Carver Vocational High School for Negro Trainees in Wilmington becomes part of Howard High School.

1948

The University of Delaware admits black students.

1950

Louis Redding files a suit on behalf of black children in Claymont and Hockessin for admission to white schools on the grounds that black schools were inferior; Chancellor Collins J. Seitz orders desegregation. Appeals to U.S. Supreme Court result in Delaware being one of the defendants in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case.

1952

Paul Livingstone becomes the second African American elected to the Delaware legislature.

1954

The Supreme Court, in its Brown v. Board of Education decision, orders desegregation of schools.

1963

(May 1) Delaware ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1968

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and general dissatisfaction with racism results in riots in Wilmington; the National Guard maintains a 10-month occupation in the city.

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1970

According to Census figures, African Americans comprise 40 percent of the population of Wilmington, a significant increase over 1960.

1975

William “Judy” Johnson, a former Negro League baseball player, becomes the state’s first player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1993

James Sills is elected the first black mayor of Wilmington.

1999

Jacqueline Jones, a native of Christiana, wins the MacArthur Genius Award; she is the author of many works, notably her 1986 study, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and Family from Slavery to the Present.

2008

Census estimates put African Americans at almost 21 percent of the population of Delaware.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American candidate for president of a major political party, carries Delaware with 62 percent of the vote; his running mate is Delaware Senator Joseph Biden.

Historical Overview The Early Years to the Civil War Writing in 1996, William H. Williams noted that his attempt to write a short history of Delaware 10 years earlier yielded few published materials. Moreover, as he embarked upon his recent study, Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639– 1865, the resources had not increased appreciably. His text, therefore, is intended to act as a corrective, as it chronicles the period from the first arrival of Africans in this country to the end of legal enslavement in 1865. Indeed, the greater success that recent writers have had in attempting a historical overview of African Americans in that border state is due in large measure to the work of scholars such as Williams, a great many from among the faculty of the University of Delaware in Newark, who have in recent years expended considerable effort to fill a void. Williams’ study provides us with a comprehensive overview of the passage of the antebellum years in this small territory “on the periphery of the old south.”1 Although the repercussions of slavery are still felt in race relations and in the status of

African Americans throughout this country, the aftermath of slavery has a peculiar form and substance in those states identified as the southern slave-holding states. This notwithstanding, the specific strength of the leaders, the unique forms of adaptation to dire circumstances, and the spirit of independence within black communities across the country have directed the course of history in this border state and have left their positive identifying marks. Hence we begin to shape our understanding of blacks in Delaware by outlining a historical trajectory beginning with the arrival of the first African. Historians concur that the first African brought to Delaware was a man known as “Black Anthony,” who arrived on a Swedish ship, the Vogel Grip, in 1639. After his purchase in the West Indies, we are told that he was brought to Fort Christiana, where he served as an assistant to Governor Printz. The earliest settlers were the Swedes, followed by the Dutch, who were subsequently forced out by the English, who were the primary colonists and slaveholders in the area from 1664 onward. In fact by the time the English took control, slavery was firmly rooted in Delaware soil. Nonetheless, mostly due to its size, Delaware did not have a large population of enslaved Africans. In his study of the

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period of enslavement in Delaware, Williams notes that even at the height of the importation, the population of Africans only reached 20 to 25 percent of the total population of the state. Although most of the enslaved as well as the free blacks worked the soil or served their masters as house servants, a shortage of white indentured servants from Europe resulted in the training of some blacks for more skilled jobs such as tanners, shoemakers, carpenters, and tailors. One Quaker slave owner, seeking to rent farming property, included in the posting that the renter might have the use of Africans, who had been trained as noted above, provided the prospective renter could agree to treat these blacks humanely. Yet blacks in Delaware did not receive more humane treatment than blacks in other slave states. In 1700, an act called For the Trial of Negroes more precisely codified the legal discrimination of blacks by solidifying their disfranchisement with regard to civil rights. Over the next 150 years, further discriminatory legislation was enacted in Delaware. Blacks were prohibited from carrying arms and from assembling in large groups and were subject to stiffer penalties for certain crimes and to special court procedures. Eventually, blacks in the state were banned from voting, holding office, testifying in court against whites, and marrying whites. By 1775, 136 years after the first black man set foot on Delaware soil, there were an estimated 2,000 blacks in the state. Among the whites, who feared the possibility of a slave uprising if the numbers of blacks increased, the presence of 2,000 slaves caused sufficient concern to prompt a governmental mandate. At that time, the General Assembly raised the duty to 20 pounds for bringing “an individual slave into the lower counties with the explanation that numerous plots and insurrections in mainland America had resulted in the murders of several inhabitants.”2 In addition, the General Assembly attempted to pass into legislation a prohibition on the import

and export of slaves. While that legislation failed, the Constitution of 1776 said, “No person hereafter imported into this state from Africa ought to be held in slavery under any pretense whatever and no Negro, Indian or Mulatto slave ought to be brought into this state for sale from any part of the world.”3 The war for independence against England further complicated the issue of slavery for what would seem to be obvious reasons. The influence of the Revolutionary War and the country’s subsequent independence actually challenged the very premises of slavery. When the colonists became more and more determined to protect their natural rights against the sovereignty of the British, the question of their enslavement of Africans was underscored in bold relief. The natural rights philosophy argued that the selfgovernance upon which the colonists insisted was a God-given right, which no person could withhold from them. This laid the groundwork, at least in part, for the abolitionist initiatives on the part of the Quakers and others. The work of Quakers who were moved by religious and ethical concerns to free their slaves in 1775 contributed significantly to the overall limitations on the growth of slavery in the first state of the Union. By 1787, when the U.S Constitution was completed, Delaware was the first state to ratify it. Official statehood also raised many issues related to slavery. Even the status of free blacks, as opposed to those enslaved, was tenuous at best, as the former still lived in risk of getting kidnapped and sold into slavery. Fighting against what must have been considerable resistance from other inhabitants of the state, groups of Quakers continuously struggled to lessen the vulnerability of blacks at that time; indeed, the Quakers were the leaders in forming the Delaware Society for Promoting Abolition of Slavery in 1788 and the Delaware Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, both growing forces in the move toward cleansing

Delaware Delaware of human servitude. Quakers believed that every person was guided by the “Inner Light,” a means of direct communication with God. Participation in the buying and selling of other humans would sever one’s connection to God’s grace and therefore preclude that individual’s salvation. Believing thus, Quakers encouraged the manumission of their slaves and went so far as to disassociate from those Quakers who refused to act accordingly. Moreover, changes in the economy related to the Revolutionary War contributed to the increasing difficulty slaveholders faced in their attempt to maintain slaves. Whitman notes that the war interfered with Delaware’s export economy of corn, wheat, and timber, resulting in a shift whereby holding slaves became a liability. Many slaveholders freed slaves informally. In addition, a law passed in 1787 removed the need for the posting of a bond to free a slave between 18 and 35 years old. At the same time, Delaware ended the sale of slaves to the West Indies, the Carolinas, or Georgia, where they would have “little or no chance of freedom.”4 Clearly the collective sentiments within the state at that time were increasingly concerned with the reduction of slave activity. This law restricting the sale of slaves was soon extended to forbid the sale of slaves to Maryland or Virginia. Both white and black abolitionists, such as Abraham Shadd, a black teacher in Wilmington, and Thomas Garrett, a white businessman and a Quaker, risked their own livelihood and safety to assist runaways. Between 1796 and 1820, the numbers of the enslaved decreased from about 9,000 to 1,798. Economic factors continued to encourage the reduction of slaves during this time. Since Delaware did not produce significant crops of cotton or tobacco, it had less need of slave labor, and Delaware farmers found hiring free black laborers to be more cost effective than keeping slaves. Also, because state law prohibited the sale of slaves outside Delaware, the state

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could not profit from the breeding and export of slaves to the Deep South as did Virginia. Nonetheless, those determined to maintain their stakes in the slave economy continued to stealthily remove the slaves from Delaware to Maryland, a practice that kept Quakers and other abolitionists vigilant in their fight to end slavery in Delaware. As both black and white abolitionists kept up their efforts, Delaware was slowly transforming from a slave state to a locale where slavery was clearly eroding. In 1860, slavery was no longer present in Wilmington, and it was continuously decreasing in lower New Castle County, while free blacks were achieving some measure of stability and an increasing presence. Wilmington seems to have been the focus of forward movement of free blacks. Moreover, in Wilmington, as opposed to other cities, free blacks were employed in occupations outside of domestic service or farming, and some were becoming property owners as well. By the early to mid-nineteenth century, the flourish of black churches was a substantial force in the uplifting of free blacks and the fight to put an end to slavery overall. To a large extent, progress in the black community was due to the active support of the black churches in the form of education as well as spiritual sustenance. In the foreword to B. Ben Pearce’s stunning collection of essays and photos documenting the history of the black church in Wilmington, Reverend Dr. Lawrence M. Livingston remarks that “these congregations radically changed the landscape of Wilmington’s population and culture. Without the congregations represented here,” he continues, “the City of Wilmington, the mid-Atlantic region, including Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and perhaps the nation would be quite different today.”5 For so many, as soon as they gained their freedom, they were drawn in large numbers to worship communities, wherein they found spiritual as well as intellectual sustenance that would assist them in garnering and maintaining the

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strength that was needed to build their lives as free men and women and to fight the ongoing battle against racial subjugation. Historian Peter T. Dalleo explains that the church was perhaps the “most visible and viable social institution of the Wilmington African American community.”6 Methodism, more than other denominations, seemed to attract large numbers of blacks. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these churches were more receptive to blacks even though blacks had no presence at the pulpit, nor could they hope to be ordained. While the church provided a consistently nurturing foundation for free blacks, particularly in Wilmington, there were a number of other institutions that sustained black families as well. Among the social and civic organizations were Masonic lodges and other African American lodges, such as the Unity 711 and the Star of Bethlehem 897. Their relevance to the community through uplift and fellowship could be added to the work of the churches. Even the barbershops served as meeting places for social as well as political business. Wilmington was distinctive for its preponderance of two-parent homes as opposed to the greater number of female-headed households elsewhere in the state. What emerges at this time is a picture of Wilmington’s free black society, with the numbers of freed men and women having increased from 444 in 1800 to 3,187 in 1857. Wilmington was clearly as a nascent, but thriving, free African American community, steadily gaining stability from considerable selfhelp organizations, both secular and religious. The growth of the African American church in Delaware is marked by its own history of struggle against white domination. The first church mentioned in Reverend Livingston’s foreword to B. Ben Pearce’s Historical Vignettes of African American Churches in Wilmington, Delaware (1998) is Ezion-Mt. Carmel, which he traces back to 1771 and the establishment of a Methodist church led by Francis Asbury and Harry Hoosier,

also known as Black Harry. This early experiment with an integrated congregation failed as Mr. Hoosier’s status was apparently undermined. The resulting schism led to the establishment of “ ‘the first African Society of any kind’ in the state of Delaware,” namely the African American Methodist congregation of Ezion-Mt. Carmel, which was the daring experiment of Peter Spenser. It is Spenser who must be credited with the eventual development of two African American denominations, Union Church of African Members and the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church. Both were known as “Spenser churches,” even though the latter was established after Peter Spenser’s death. The Union Methodist Episcopal Church (UAME) burgeoned under the leadership of Reverend Spenser, eventually reaching a membership of 1,200 scattered over several states. With the aid of free blacks, bolstered by church and community affiliations and white abolitionists, Delaware approached the Civil War with a total of 1,798 slaves, compared to 19,829 free blacks, with at least some of the latter, as noted earlier, employed in sustaining work outside of domestic labor and farming. The white population at the time numbered 90,589. Blacks, therefore, represented more than 25 percent of the population and by all appearances seemed to be moving steadily toward greater enfranchisement. Any mention of the numbers of free blacks at this time would be egregiously lacking without specific discussion of the work of the most famous Underground Railroad conductor, Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery in 1821 in Maryland. By 1849, she escaped and made it to Delaware, where she was aided by free blacks and Quakers. One of her closest friends and assistants among the conductors was a name that appears over and again in the history of Delaware. That is the Quaker, iron merchant, and Underground Railroad conductor, Thomas Garrett from Wilmington. In total, Tubman

Delaware made 19 trips back to the slaveholding areas and brought 100 people to freedom. Masterfully, she carved out a number of routes leading through a locus of cities and towns such as Dover, Blackbird, Middleton, New Castle, Laurel, Smyrna, Delaware City, Wilmington, and others.

Moving Forward after the Civil War In 1861, Delaware, like other border slave states such as Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, did not secede from the Union as did the slave states of the Deep South. Although several hundred Delaware citizens fought for the southern Confederacy, more than 12,000 fought for the Union. Slavery did not end in Delaware until the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, was ratified in December 1865. Once the Civil War was over, Delaware, like all the former slaveholding states, faced the task of educating the newly freed black men and women. The Association of Moral Improvement and Education of the Colored People, formed in 1866, gained a presence throughout Delaware in schools established for the education of black children. Nonetheless, only the most naively hopeful would believe at this point that blacks were on a clear path to full citizenry. Shortly after issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, white Delawareans expressed their resistance to full black citizenship by writing into law the practice of Jim Crow. A Delaware legislator was able to codify the subordinate status of blacks in the state by asserting at his inaugural address in 1863 that “the true position of the Negro was as a subordinate race, excluded from all political and social privilege.”7 In the 10 years following emancipation, Delaware Republicans faced formidable odds in their efforts to protect the freed men and women from rampant de facto subjugation. The Jim Crow law of 1875 was not repealed until 1963. However, with the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement

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and Education of Colored People, the availability of basic education gradually took hold. It was not until 1891, however, that serious attention to higher education came to fruition with the establishment of Delaware State College, now Delaware State University. In spite of widespread general education and the growth of the new black college, 70 percent of blacks remained in menial jobs. The overwhelming majority of blacks were effectively barred from white-collar jobs and subject to “arbitrary limitations placed on Negro employment.”8 In her The Negro of Delaware: Past and Present (1947), Pauline Young pointed out that “[a]fter V-J Day, the removal of Negroes from the war industries was faster and more complete in Delaware than in any of the other states.”9 Therefore, the figures from the earlier census were relied on. The black and white population figures and comparative employment figures in the 1940 Census clearly reflect the great disparity in the number of employment opportunities available to blacks as opposed to those available to whites. In proportion to their numbers, many more black men and women who were available for employment were unable to secure jobs. Two-thirds of the white women did not need employment, compared to half of the black women. Despite the country’s shift at the time toward a war economy, 14.3 percent of available black men were unemployed compared to 6.5 percent of white men. Similarly, the percentage of black women seeking work was 11.7 percent, as opposed to 6.3 percent of white women. There were a paltry number of blacks in professional or semiprofessional jobs as opposed to whites. Most disheartening was the reality that there was a wide range of jobs that blacks could not even approach. Among those were office workers, telephone solicitors, surveyors, street and rail car operators, and department store clerks. These jobs and many others were almost all those jobs for which blacks could have been trained or apprenticed for, if given the opportunity.

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Pauline Young’s invaluable study is clinical in its detailed discussion of the public service and governmental agencies with doors shut to the black men and women of the era in which she writes. Her discussion, however, like that of most historians of the era, returns to the broad range of civic and religious agencies that have sustained the black community since antebellum days and continues until today. Many, but not all of these, are strictly black organizations: The Young Men’s and Young Woman’s Christian Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Democratic and Republican organizations, and some of the historical black fraternities and sororities, notably Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and Phi Delta Kappa sorority. Many of these had wide participation; the Wilmington branch of the NAACP counted 2,500 members in the 1940s. Among the more mainstream organizations that sought to protect blacks and improve their status, the Wilmington Federation of Teachers exhibited “courageous opposition to racial segregation in its ranks.”10 Even in the face of overwhelming obstacles, there emerged a group of blacks who were identified both within and outside of their communities as the black middle class. In her study of the famous Redding family, Annette WoolardProvine reconstructs the complex development of this community through the experiences of one family, which brought forth more than its share of high achievers and leaders. It would be nearly impossible to provide even a brief historical overview of black Delaware without devoting a portion of that report, however small, to the Redding family. In her introduction to this study, Woolard-Provine situates this family in a historical context that is prefigured by the most widely cited work of the famous sociologist/literary artist/historian, W. E. B. Du Bois. It was he who coined the term, “The Talented Tenth,” in his incisive study of blacks in America, Souls of Black Folk (1903). The Talented Tenth were the upper

10 percent of African Americans who would use their considerable privilege, training, and talents (in comparison to the masses) to lead the masses through the delivery of various services, through education and through the supply to their communities of sorely needed teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other university-trained people, who had the resources and the preparation to wage the strongest battle against racial segregation and assault. The author appropriately reminds us that in large measure these elite had more than the material and intellectual accoutrements of the privileged. Among them were generally lighterskinned blacks whose color added considerably to their public currency: the closer to white, the more favorably judged by whites. However, in comparison to the white middle class, these families were generally not as well to do, but they were able to live comfortably, to educate their children in more exclusive settings, and to enjoy some of the luxuries, such as vacations and wellappointed homes, which eluded the less fortunate majority of blacks. Willard-Provine’s study, Integrating Delaware: The Reddings of Wilmington (2003), provides a richly textured portrait of this family, with special attention to the unusual number of high achievers—among them teachers, a famous writer, a lawyer—and the extraordinary service they brought to the black community overall. This discussion offers only a cursory mention of the Reddings, who left an indelible impression and occupy a central position in the history of Wilmington and the state of Delaware. Lewis Redding, identified by Woolard-Provine as “The Patriarch,” was one of the first postal workers in Wilmington. Because of his determination to live well and to provide a college education for his children, he worked tirelessly as a postal worker, with a number of side jobs. In this way, he was able to purchase a home in a quiet community where the Reddings were one of the first two families of color. Lest the family’s move be read as an escape from their own people, we

Delaware should be reminded that the father, Lewis, was ardently loyal to his community, and ever watchful of the white community which he had learned to distrust. Woolard-Provine reports that Redding and his family were members of Bethel AME, a rather staid congregation of other middle-class black professionals, many of whom, like Lewis Redding, took seriously their responsibility to the black community. Redding served as superintendent of the Sunday school for over 40 years. Added to this was Lewis’ work with others in founding the Wilmington branch of the NAACP in January 1915. It should come as no surprise that among the children of Lewis and Mary Ann Redding were the famous writer and college professor, Saunders Redding, and the great civil rights attorney Louis Redding, who was the second black person to earn a degree from Harvard Law School and the first black to practice law in Delaware. Both of these Redding children, as well as a daughter, spent all or some part of their undergraduate careers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Notwithstanding a visibly active black middle class, Delaware continued to be a border state in terms of geography and race relations. Indeed, the two are certainly not mutually exclusive, as Delaware had the uncertain distinction of being the northernmost slaveholding state. During the 1950s and 1960s, Wilmington blacks, like most blacks across the country in metropolitan areas, continued to fight segregation and were still mostly relegated to service jobs. Louis Redding, the young attorney, was in constant demand as black parents fought to get their children in white schools. A report, Delaware: Conflict in a Border State, produced by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (the Behring Center), tells how Ethel Louis Belton traveled two hours to the black high school, Howard High, from her home in Claymont. Her mother boldly fought this segregation. Ultimately, Louis Redding represented the black children of

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Claymont and Hockessin, arguing against the separate but equal policy that resulted from the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The black schools were anything but equal. While Chancellor Collins J. Seitz decided for the plaintiffs, the local school boards took the case to the Supreme Court, where these original two families were joined by seven other families, who were all among the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education case. Louis Redding of Wilmington had a hand in this landmark case, which turned the tide on school segregation. By the 1960s, Wilmington was clearly transforming into a black city. Wilmington, like so many other urban areas, erupted in violent protest when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, resulting in a National Guard presence for months afterwards. Since the 1970s, the progress of blacks in Delaware has been moderate. The 1993 election of James Sills as Wilmington’s first black mayor is a significant symbol of hope and a reminder of the wide-reaching contributions of blacks to the state of Delaware. The metropolitan Wilmington Urban League reported in 2002 on the “state of people of color in Delaware,” offering a comprehensive overview of current labor statistics. In addition to income statistics for a variety of occupations, the report measured the degree of integration or segregation in an area. There was also a study done by the University of Delaware, using 1990 Census data and a more recent study completed by the News Journal, whose researchers used the results of the year 2000 Census report. In the first study of census tracts in New Castle County, Delaware, the results are clearly mixed. While New Castle County showed gradual improvement from 1970 to 1990, 21 out of the 100 census tracts that were measured for dissimilarity or degree of integration/segregation revealed that they had become more segregated over that two-decade period. Some positive findings could be seen in the city of Wilmington. When Wilmington was

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compared to the rest of New Castle County, there was evidence of increased integration in suburban areas of New Castle. The results of the more recent News Journal’s report, however, demonstrate progress as well as stagnation. The findings indicate that according to the latest census, 65 percent of Delawareans live in areas that are considered integrated by dissimilarity measures. However, some areas, like Wilmington, are becoming more segregated, with an increase in the African American population from 37,446 in 1990 to 41,646 in 2000. The white population in the city declined from 30,134 to 25,811 during the same time period. This segment of the study concludes with the explanation of the consequences of segregation at this moment in history. When segregation was enforced, the segregated black communities at least had the benefit of the cohesion that accompanies an arrangement where black people from the range of professions and social classes live, eat, and worship together. In these settings there was inherent stability that came with the juxtaposition of those who could lend support to those who needed support. On the other hand, in today’s pattern of segregation, the poor are relegated to areas with lower property values, greater crime statistics, underfunded educational facilities, and greater risk overall to the well-being of the inhabitants. The evidence seems to suggest that where social class intersects with race, opportunities for advancement based upon education and overall living conditions are less in areas where the black citizens are isolated and economically marginalized.

Notable African Americans Cassells, Cyrus (1957–) Although a native of Dover, Cassells grew up in Southern California. The title poem in his volume of poetry, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, is dedicated to Elizabeth Eckford, a girl who fought against a hostile segregationist group in Little Rock,

Arkansas, to integrate a school. Cassells has published four highly acclaimed volumes of poetry, including a selection for the National Poetry Series. Cassells is also a professor and an accomplished actor.

Cornish, Sam (1795–1858) Sam Cornish was born into freedom in Delaware. He moved to Philadelphia and New York, eventually becoming a Presbyterian minister and the editor of the Freeman, which, some claim, was the first black newspaper in the United States.

Holland, Jerome (1916–1985) Dr. Jerome Holland served as the Head of Delaware State College in the 1940s and later became the president of Hampton Institute. He was a civil rights advocate and a statesman, having served as a representative to the United Nations and as an ambassador to Sweden. In 1985, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Jason, William C., Sr. (dates unknown) The second president of the Delaware State College for Colored Students, Dr. William C. Jason Sr. was a Methodist minister of the Delaware Methodist Episcopal Conference, where he served as president from 1895–1923. Dr. Jason is best remembered for his contribution to the black youth of Delaware, helping them to become aware of the potentials for them in higher education. Without adequate resources, Dr. Jason was expected to build both an academic and an agricultural curriculum at what was to become Delaware State College. While building the institution, he worked to encourage higher education among able black students and recruited extensively from Howard High School. Moreover, he is credited with overseeing the training of highly qualified teachers for most of the black schools in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware.

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Johnson, George Anderson (1889–?) George Anderson Johnson, the son of a former slave, was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, on April 22, 1889. He moved from Kentucky to Bloomington, Indiana, to live with his father. Like a number of Howard High teachers, he was born outside of Delaware. Yet he has earned his place among Delawareans of note for his dedication to extensive improvements at Howard High. He was hired as principal in 1924 and remained in that position until 1959, during which time he encouraged the endowment of Pierre S. DuPont, whose donation of almost one million dollars resulted in a new building and a great many other improvements, ultimately earning the school Middle States Accreditation in 1930. He has been called “the epitome of the learned scholar who is a leader, teacher and humanitarian.” 11 The legacy of Howard High and its role as a center of culture in the black community was due in large measure to this man’s contributions.

Jones, Absalom (1746–1818) Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex County, Delaware. He is best known for his leadership as a clergyman and his founding, along with Richard Allen, of the African Free Society. He was the founder and the pastor of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. He has been described as the more staid partner in his friendship and collaboration with Richard Allen, the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The two men worked selflessly to assist the victims of a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 and were praised by whites and blacks alike.

The Reverend Absalom Jones, Rector of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Absalom Jones was the first African American to be ordained to the Episcopal priesthood when he received the ordination of deacon in 1795 and of priest in 1804. He led St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. (Schomburg Center/Art Resource, NY)

Institute and is credited with developing Howard High into an academically advanced school, with a progressive curriculum. Graduates went to such prestigious schools as Drexel, the University of Pennsylvania, and Lincoln University. She was a teacher and later the principal at Howard High and established schools in the southern or lower two counties of the state.

Kruse, Edwina B. (1848–1930)

Lowery, Robert “Boysie” (1914–1996)

Edwina Kruse was born in Puerto Rico; her father was German and her mother Cuban. She was educated in Massachusetts and at Hampton

Robert Lowery taught jazz for over 50 years. At the time of his death, on September 10, 1996, the Washington Post reported that he was

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Black America administrator, a renowned poet, and a political activist. She was head of the English Department of the Howard High School for African Americans from 1902 to 1920. She served as editor of the Advocate, the AME Church Review. Also a well-known figure of the literary period the Harlem Renaissance, she was the author of Dunbar Speaks. In addition, she was a social activist who served as secretary of the Peace Committee of the American Friends Service Committee. Her commitment to activism ultimately cost her the teaching position at Howard High that she held for 18 years. She was dismissed due to her absence from her teaching duties to attend Social Justice Day in Ohio in September 1920.

Blues musician Robert Lowery performs on stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1998. (David Redfern/Getty Images)

inspired by his father who was a blacksmith, in addition to being a musician and a band leader. “Boysie” began to teach jazz improvisation in Wilmington in the 1940s. His early students included Clifford Brown, considered one of the best trumpet players of all time. After leaving North Carolina where he was born, he and his brother, Bud, founded the Duces of Rhythm on the Eastern Shore in the 1930s. He settled in Wilmington in the 1940s and began teaching after the Duces disbanded. Even as he continued to teach, he started a new band, the Aces of Rhythm. In 1995, he was honored with the Living Legacy Award.

Nelson, Alice Dunbar (1875–1935) Alice Dunbar Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore in 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She graduated from Straight College (now Dillard) and went on to earn a master’s degree at Cornell. In addition to being an educator, she was a school

Nutter, Jeanne (dates unknown) Dr. Jeanne Nutter has a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Cincinnati, and a Ph.D. from Howard University. She was the executive producer of the WHYY documentary, A Separate Place: Schools That P.S. DuPont Built. She is the author of the book Growing Up Black in New Castle County Delaware, a collection of oral histories of African American individuals who grew up in northern Delaware from the early 1900s through the late 1950s. She has been a college professor and an external affairs manager of the mayor’s office in Wilmington. She has also held positions with the Association of Junior Leagues International, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and WNBC-TV.

Redding, Louis L. (1901–1999) A graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Louis L. Redding was one of its commencement speakers in 1923. He was the first African American lawyer in the state and was considered the champion of civil rights in Delaware. Redding filed a suit on behalf of black children in Claymont and Hockessin, Delaware, on

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Louis L. Redding, left, and Thurgood Marshall, general counsel for the NAACP, conferring at the Supreme Court during a recess in the court’s hearing on racial integration in the public schools, 1955. (Library of Congress)

the grounds that the black schools were inferior. His actions led to Chancellor Collins J. Seitz ordering desegregation of Delaware schools; however, the state legislators blocked the desegregation, resulting in Redding joining the successful team of attorneys who argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court in 1954.

Redding, Saunders (1906–1988) Another illustrious member of the Redding family of Wilmington, Saunders Redding was the third of seven children. The author of eight books, Redding was a professor of English and a writer who was identified with the Harlem Renaissance period. Saunders Redding went to Howard High and

Brown University, and taught at a number of institutions, including Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Shadd, Mary Ann (1823–1893) Mary Ann Shadd was the daughter of Abraham D. Shadd, a free black shoemaker in Wilmington who was active in the Underground Railroad. Mary Ann attended a Quaker school in Wilmington and returned to teach black children in Quaker schools after her education in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She was thought to be the first black woman in the country to publish her own newspaper. She wrote a book, Hints to the Colored People of the North, in the hopes of helping blacks to lift themselves out of poverty. She distinguished

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herself by earning a law degree from Howard University at the age of 60, after which she continued to help protect the rights of blacks.

Shadd, Sallie (dates unknown) Sallie Shadd was the wife of a butcher named Jeremiah Shadd, who reportedly purchased his wife’s freedom. He was an independent businessman. His wife joined in the food business and was celebrated among Delaware blacks as the inventor of ice cream. Dolly Madison, the wife of President James Madison, is reported to have made this ice cream a part of her special White House dinners on a regular basis.

Wilmington, which she entered as a teacher and then took the post of librarian. Although born in Medford, Massachusetts, she moved to Delaware to live with her aunt after the death of her mother. After graduating from Howard High, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and then worked at Tuskegee Institute before returning to Wilmington to teach. She traveled to Berlin, the Soviet Union, and Egypt and was present with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Selma-to-Montgomery march. She was an ardent archivist of works on black history and added her own contribution, “The Negro of Delaware: Past and Present” (1947). Her home became a meeting place for scholars and Howard alumni.

Spenser, Peter (1782–1843)

Cultural Contributions

Peter Spenser was born in Maryland, but became a leader in the Delaware black community. Known as “Father Spenser,” he was a mechanic, an educator, a businessman, and a founder of the first independent black denomination, the African Union Methodist Protestant Church. Known as the Patriarch, he opposed the efforts of the American Colonization Society to return blacks to Africa. Before his death in 1843, he had founded 31 churches.

The contributions of African American Delaware natives could be easily overlooked, situated as the state is between New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. However, from at least the eighteenth century, African Americans of Delaware have made significant and ongoing contributions to the arts and letters. Arguably the most notable repository of art and cultural artifacts in Delaware can be found at the University of Delaware in Newark. The following list identifies some significant exhibits as well as a range of creative artists from Delaware, including Cyrus Cassells, Jacqueline Jones, Edwina B. Kruse, Robert “Boysie” Lowery, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Saunders Redding, Mary Ann Shadd, and Pauline A. Young. As reported in Issues in Science and Technology (2007), the exhibition of the work of Billy Colbert, “The First Taste of the Strange Fruit,” was described as “visual folklore.” His work is inclusive of multiple genres, including color, imagery, and literature. With a wide-reaching reputation since receiving his M.F.A. in painting in 2000 from the University of Delaware, he has had a number of solo and group exhibitions. His work was featured at the African American Museum

Waters, Eldridge (dates unknown) Eldridge Waters was the first African American man to assume the position of principal of a school in Wilmington in the 1940s. He was also the first basileus of the Upsilon Chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. In 1941, Waters established a committee that renamed a local school Benjamin Banneker Elementary School in honor of the distinguished African American scientist and mathematician.

Young, Pauline A. (d. 1991) Pauline A. Young was the niece of Alice Dunbar Nelson and followed her illustrious aunt as an educator of black youth at Howard High in

Delaware in Dallas, as well as the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington. He has taken part in a number of group exhibitions as well, including one entitled “Reasons to Riot,” at the Memphis College of Art in Memphis, Tennessee, from February to April 2007. Another, entitled “Jolly Cowboy,” was seen at the District of Columbia Art Center in Washington, D.C., from March to April 2007. In an article entitled “Erasing an Absence,” R. Roach reported on the opening of a historymaking exhibition of African American Art at the University of Delaware in Newark. One hundred and one African American artists are represented in this collection. When the exhibit was fully assembled, it totaled about 1,000 pieces of art from the collection of Paul R. Jones. This made it one of the largest exhibits of its kind. The University of Delaware is privileged to be the holder of this exclusive exhibit, “A Century of African American Art: The Paul R. Jones Collection.” Jones, at 76 years of age, is a treasure himself as the owner of this massive collection of works by a long list of celebrated artists. Among these are works by Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, James Van Der Zee, Hanry O. Tanner, Leo Twiggs, and Charles White. Although the exhibition has traveled to a number of historically black institutions, Jones chose the University of Delaware, Newark, for its capacity to exhibit the art on the scale of a full museum and to make it available for use in an extensive art curriculum.

Notes 1. William H. Williams, Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639–1865 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996), xii. 2. James E. Newton, “Black Americans in Delaware: An Overview,” in Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997), 12.

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3. Ibid., 12–13. 4. T. Stephen Whitman, Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake: Black and White Resistance to Human Bondage, 1775–1865 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2007), 52. 5. Newton, “Black Americans,” xi. 6. Ibid., 169. 7. Ibid., 18. 8. Pauline A. Young, “The Negro of Delaware: Past and Present,” in Henry Clay Reed, ed., Delaware: A History of the First State, 3 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1947), 544. 9. Ibid., 594. 10. Ibid., 601. 11. Judith Y. Gibson, “Mighty Oaks: Five Black Educators,” in Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997), 139.

Bibliography Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. Reprint ed. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 2007. Center for Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware. People Were Close. They Looked after One Another. Newark: University of Delaware and Raven Press, 2005. Dalleo, Peter. “The Growth of Delaware’s Antebellum Free African American Community.” In Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997. Fields, B. J. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Gibson, Judith Y. “Mighty Oaks: Five Black Educators.” In Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s

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Eastern Shore. Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997.

Nutter, Jeanne D. Black America Series: Delaware. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 2000.

Hancock, Harold B. “Mary Ann Shadd: Negro Editor, Educator, and Lawyer.” Delaware History 15, no. 3 (1973): 187–194.

Nutter, Jeanne D., comp. Growing Up Black in New Castle County, Delaware. Voices of America series. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 2001.

Hoffecker, Carol E. “The Politics of Exclusion: Blacks in Late Nineteenth-Century Wilmington, Delaware.” Delaware History 16, no. 1 (1974): 60–72.

Pacheco, J. F. The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Hoffecker, Carol, and A. Wollard. “Black Women in Delaware’s History.” In Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997. Hull, Gloria (1976) “Alice Dunbar-Nelson: Delaware Writer and Woman of Affairs.” Delaware History 17, no. 2 (1976): 87–103. Lewis, Ronald, L., ed. “Reverend T. G. Stewart and ‘Mixed’ Schools in Delaware, 1882." Delaware History 19, no. 1 (1980): 53–58. Marks, C., ed. A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1977.

Pearce, Ben. B. Historical Vignettes of African American Churches in Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington, DE: The Chaconia Press, 1998. Pippin, K. A. Families in Transition: A Smyrna History. Smyrna, DE: Prison Industries, 1995. Strickland, A. E., and J. R. Reich. The Black American Experience: From Slavery through Reconstruction. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1974. Whitman, T. Stephen. Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake: Black and White Resistance to Human Bondage, 1775–1865. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2007. Williams, William H. Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639–1865. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996.

Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. The Pace of Progress: A Report on the State of People of Color in Delaware. Newark, DE: Farley Printing Co, Inc., 2002.

Woolard-Provine, A. Integrating Delaware: The Reddings of Wilmington. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003.

Newton, James E. “Black Americans in Delaware: An Overview.” In Carole C. Marks, ed., A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Wilmington: Delaware Heritage Press, 1997.

Young, Pauline A. “The Negro of Delaware: Past and Present.” In Henry Clay Reed, ed., Delaware: A History of the First State. 3 vols. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1947.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Komanduri S. Murty and Carl H. Walker

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Chronology 1751

The Maryland Assembly appoints a commission to lay out a settlement—later known as Georgetown—on the Potomac River, near Rock Creek, on land purchased from George Gordon and George Beall.

1788

(June 21) The U.S. Constitution is ratified by the states, and gives Congress authority “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States. . . .”

1790

(July 16) Passage of the Residency Act, which gives the president power to choose a site for the national Capitol somewhere along a 70-mile stretch on the east bank of the Potomac River.

1791

(January 24) President George Washington selects a site for the new federal city that includes portions of Maryland and Virginia.

1791

(February) Benjamin Banneker, a free black man with knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, assists in the initial survey of the boundaries of the new federal district.

1792

The foundation is laid for the president’s mansion, later known as the “White House.”

1800

The Census indicates that the population of the new city of Washington comprises 10,066 whites, 793 free blacks, and 3,244 slaves.

1800

(November) President John Adams and his wife Abigail move into the unfinished president’s mansion in Washington City.

1800

(December 1) The Capitol of the United States is transferred from Philadelphia to the city of Washington, in the territory of Columbia; because the new federal district consists of lands ceded by Maryland and Virginia, the laws of those states, including those pertaining to slavery, remain in force within the District.

1802

(May 3) Congress grants Washington a municipal charter, which defines voters as white males who pay taxes and have lived in the city for at least a year; the president appoints the mayor of Washington.

1812

(May 4) Congress amends Washington’s charter to create an eight-member board of aldermen and a 12-member common council, which jointly elect the mayor.

1814

During the War of 1812, British troops capture the city and burn the Capitol, the president’s house, and other federal buildings.

1816

Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black congregation in the District, is established. Through its history, Mt. Zion not only served as a spiritual institution for its members, but also as an educational outpost (it housed the first black library) and social support organization. Mt. Zion is also later a stop on the Underground Railroad.

1820

Congress permits direct election of the mayor by the city’s voters.

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1834

Former slave John Francis Cook opens the first secondary school for blacks in Washington.

1846

(July 9) Congress returns the Virginia portion of the federal district—the city of Alexandria and Alexandria County—to Virginia.

1848

Congress adopts a new charter for the city of Washington and expands the number of elected offices to include a board of assessors, a surveyor, a collector, and a registrar.

1848

Construction of the Washington Monument begins. Because of sandy soil where L’Enfant had specified a monument, it is not built at the exact intersection of the axes. Work on the monument ceases in 1854 after the antiforeign Know-Nothing Party seizes the monument to protest the contribution of a memorial stone by Pope Pius IX. Rising sectionalism prevents the resumption of work.

1849

Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln introduces a bill providing for the gradual emancipation of all slaves in the federal district; the measure is opposed by southern members of Congress and defeated.

1850

(September 20) Congress abolishes the slave trade in the federal district of Columbia as part of the legislative package known as the Compromise of 1850.

1857

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that slaves are not citizens and have no constitutional rights.

1860

The Census of 1860 finds that 11,131 free blacks and 3,185 slaves are resident in the federal district of Columbia.

1860

By 1860, the Slave Code of the federal district, which is liberal by southern standards, contains provisions allowing slaves to hire out their services and live apart from their masters, while free blacks are permitted to live in the city and to operate private schools.

1862

(April 16) Congress abolishes slavery in the federal district of Columbia, five months prior to President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation; Congress provides for compensation for federal district slaveholders.

1865

(April 14) President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre, a Washington, D.C., landmark.

1866

(April 19) The African American citizens of Washington hold a parade celebrating the fourth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the federal district of Columbia; 5,000 people march up Pennsylvania Avenue led by two regiments of black Civil War veterans.

1867

(January 8) Congress grants black males the right to vote in local district elections.

1867

Howard University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges, is established in Washington.

1871

Congress abolishes the elected mayor and council of Washington City and replaces with a governor and council appointed by the president; in the same act, Congress merges the

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1871 (cont.)

governments of Georgetown and the city and county of Washington into a jurisdiction and territorial government now known as the District of Columbia.

1871

Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, lecturer, and author, takes up residence in Washington; he serves as marshal of the District of Columbia from 1877 to 1881 and as recorder of deeds for the District from 1881 to 1886.

1874

Father Patrick Healy becomes president of Georgetown University, the first black man to head a major white university; he serves until 1882.

1879

Calvin T. S. Brent, a black architect, designs St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Washington; almost a century later, in 1976, it is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

1883

(April 16) Frederick Douglass speaks in Washington to commemorate the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; in his speech, Douglass calls attention to the continuing struggle of black Americans for full civil rights.

1888

The Washington Monument opens to the public.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson establishes a “separate but equal” doctrine, which essentially makes segregation of blacks from whites legal in all aspects of society.

1908

Just one generation removed from slavery, nine African American college women form the first black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, at Howard University.

1914

The Lincoln Memorial is completed.

1919

(January) District Commissioner Brownlow establishes the city’s first all-black platoon of firefighters, thus ensuring opportunities for promotion for the department’s black veterans.

1919

(July) For five days, white mobs rampage through African American neighborhoods in Washington to avenge the alleged harassment of a white woman by two black men; four people are killed and more than 30 are injured.

1939

African American singer Marian Anderson is refused permission to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Upon learning this fact, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the DAR.

1940

LeDroit Park, formerly a whites-only neighborhood, becomes the residence for many prominent African Americans, including, Ralph J. Bunche (first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize), Benjamin O. Davis Sr. (first African American general in the U.S. armed forces), Paul Laurence Dunbar (black poet laureate), and jazz legend Duke Ellington.

1954

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, reverses the “separate but equal” doctrine and provides the basis for integration not only in public schools, but in the larger society as well.

1958

(May 17) The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom becomes the first large African American civil rights march in Washington.

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1961

(March 29) Ratification of the Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives District of Columbia residents the right to vote for president.

1963

(August 28) The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political rallies in American history, is highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

1967

Walter Washington, the great-grandson of a slave, is appointed mayor of Washington by President Lyndon B. Johnson, thus becoming one of three African American mayors of large U.S. cities.

1967

Edward Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first African American elected by popular vote to the U.S. Senate.

1967

Thurgood Marshall is nominated to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson and served as the first African American associate justice until his retirement in 1991.

1968

(April) The largest and most destructive riot sparked by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. occurs in Washington between April 4 and April 8; 12 people die in the rioting, almost 1,100 are injured, and property damage exceeds $27 million.

1973

(December 24) Congress approves the District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act, which establishes an elected mayor and a 13-member council.

1974

(November 5) Walter Washington becomes the first elected mayor and the first African American mayor of Washington; he and the city’s first elected council take office on January 2, 1975.

1978

(August 22) Congress approves the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, which would give district residents voting representation in Congress—the House and the Senate— but the proposed constitutional amendment fails to be ratified within the allotted seven-year time period.

1979

(January 2) Marion Barry takes office as the second African American mayor of Washington.

1983

(August) Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders speak at a 20th-anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

1991

(January 2) Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon, the first African American woman to serve as mayor of a major U.S. city, takes office as mayor of Washington.

1991

President George H. W. Bush appoints Clarence Thomas as the second African American to serve on the nation’s highest court.

1995

(January 2) Marion Barry takes office for an unprecedented fourth term as mayor of Washington.

1995

(October 16) Black men converge on Washington as part of the Million Man March organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to promote self-help and self-reliance as the method for easing the social ills plaguing the African American community.

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2001

Appointed by President George W. Bush, Colin Luther Powell becomes the first African American to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.

2003

Congress approves the plan for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. At an estimated cost of $500 million, the museum will feature a variety of exhibits and educational programs on topics such as slavery, post–Civil War Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement.

2005

(October 15) The Millions More March commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March.

2005

Condoleezza Rice is appointed by President George W. Bush as the first African American woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.

2008

Sojourner Truth becomes the first black woman honored with a bust in the U.S. Capitol.

2008

The Census estimates that African Americans comprise almost 55 percent of the population of the District of Columbia.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential candidate of a major political party, carries the District of Columbia with 93 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Establishment of the National Capital The establishment of a capital did not prove to be an easy task for the United States. The efforts to determine the permanent seat of the national government created continuous debate for seven years after the treaty of peace was signed with the British, ending the American Revolution in 1783. The Constitution adopted by the United States in 1789 authorized Congress to govern whatever site, not exceeding 10 square miles, which it might select. From its inception, the nation was faced with two issues that continuously threatened its unity; these were paramount in the many congressional debates on where to locate the capital. The first issue was slavery. Slaveowning southerners opposed keeping Philadelphia as the capital city because the Quakers there favored the abolition of slavery. Northerners were just as determined that the location would not be in a slaveholding area because it would be an indication to the rest of the world

that the United States approved of slavery. The second issue was a continuous battle for regional superiority between the agrarian states of the South and the mercantile/commercial interests of the North. The deep feelings concerning both issues were essentially the same ones that had dominated the initial days of the Continental Congress and they did not end with the ratification of the new U.S. Constitution. The location of the federal capital was such a contested matter that it encouraged both local areas and states as a whole to make offers to Congress during the early summer of 1783. Advocates for the agricultural-based economy of the South clamored to have the national capital within the sphere of their agrarian, low-tariff universe to better influence national representatives and policies. They wanted an environment free of the commercial and manufacturing bias of the northeastern cities. Likewise, the North wished to have the capital in their region of control because of slavery. A compromise was reached and the government decided to use land obtained from the border states of Maryland and Virginia.

District of Columbia Alexander Hamilton exercised a key role in creating an arrangement where southern money would be contributed to funding the national debt. In exchange for that money, the northern states would allow the capital to be located within a day’s horseback ride from Mount Vernon, Virginia, the home of George Washington. This compromise allowed the current site of Washington to be selected. The area initially selected was 100 square miles of land from Maryland and Virginia, but the Virginia portion of land south of the Potomac River was given back to that state in 1846. Pierre L’Enfant was originally appointed designer of the capital city, but his overly grandiose plan could not be carried out. In 1791, Benjamin Banneker, a free black man, was recruited to work on the surveying and mapping of the new Federal City. His inclusion in the project clashed with many congressmen’s prejudicial views that blacks were racially inferior and mentally inept. However, Banneker, a talented surveyor, mathematician, and astronomer, successfully surveyed the land designated to build the capital city in accordance with L’Enfant’s plan. In 1792, construction of the president’s mansion, later known as the White House, began, but the capital city of Washington, D.C., would not become the official seat of government until November 1, 1800, when President John Adams moved into the White House. Banneker’s work came to be a source of enormous pride for future generations of African Americans, as evidenced by the fact that several schools, museums, and streets are named in his honor. These include a high school in Atlanta, Georgia; a museum in Annapolis, Maryland; and a circle near L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C.

The Nineteenth Century It is difficult to identify the first black occupants of the geographical area that became the capital city. In the 1780s, the area selected for the

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national capital consisted largely of wilderness. When the survey lines of Washington, D.C., were drawn, only a small population of blacks lived there. Nonetheless, African American influence has been in the city since its inception. The Census of 1800 showed the new capital had a population of just over 10,000 whites, 793 free Negroes, and 3,244 slaves. By affirming that the laws of Virginia and Maryland, both slave states, should govern the commerce and liberties of African Americans in the District of Columbia, Congress opted to ignore the dilemma of slavery in the capital. Even after the constitutional provision prohibiting the importation of Africans into the United States from 1808 took effect, Washington, D.C., remained one of the principal slave markets in the nation. It was not until 1862 that black Americans in Washington were officially free, nine months before President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War of 1861–1865 is arguably the most defining moment in American history. While the South fought, in part, for the right of the states to maintain black slavery, the North fought first to preserve the Union and then to abolish slavery throughout the country. One of the differences between this American war and those preceding it was the significant number of black soldiers who fought. Although African Americans fought in all American wars, including the Revolutionary War, the number of blacks enlisted to fight in the Civil War for their freedom and the abolition of slavery was very important to the outcome. Over 180,000 African Americans served in the Union army alone, not counting the many thousands in the Union navy. There were many accolades given them in recognition of their valor and dedication. It was reported that a Union general said he had never seen such fighting as was done by a “Negro regiment” and he further indicated that the question whether blacks would fight was settled because they were better solders in every

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respect than any troops he ever had under his command. The lifeblood and vortex of the Civil War conflict was in Washington, D.C. The decision to engage the Confederate states, the policy establishing the inseparability of the states, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the terms by which the conflict would end were all either formulated or defined in Washington. Because of continuing racial discrimination in the South, Washington experienced a major influx of African Americans into the city from the end of the Civil War to 1900, causing the black population of Washington, D.C., to increase eightfold. With more newly freed blacks in the city, the Freedmen’s Bureau decided it was time to make education a priority for the mostly illiterate black population. Howard University (named in honor of General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedman’s Bureau) was created from an elementary school and social center for the teaching of reading, writing, and religion. Howard University was established in Washington, D.C., in 1866 and became one of the nation’s oldest black universities. The institution was the capstone of black American higher education and encouraged an environment of education and achievement throughout the surrounding area. The history and activities of Washington, D.C., at some points are synonymous with those of the United States itself. The Reconstruction era (1865–1877) is an excellent case in point. The federal government did not follow the emancipation of the slaves with a workable program of racial adjustment. The return of the seceded states to the Union turned the Reconstruction period into a time of bitterness and hatred. Yet many positive achievements emerged from Washington during Reconstruction, such as passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery (1865), of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing due process to all Americans (1868), and of the Fifteenth Amendment extending the vote to African Americans (1870). The

Reconstruction period also saw the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875; the creation of the Freedman’s Bureau by Congress; the emergence of black political leaders, like Frederick Douglass; and the election, between 1869 and 1875, of 16 blacks from seven southern states to the U.S. Congress, including six from South Carolina, three from Alabama, three from Mississippi, and one each from Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. By the end of 1876, the Reconstruction governments in the southern states had all but passed away. Not long after his inauguration in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered the removal of federal troops from public buildings in the South. The president’s decision began the closing of the door of freedom in all aspects of blacks’ lives in the South, a situation that would continue to some degree

Editor, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was the foremost African American leader of the nineteenth century in the United States. He was also an advocate for women’s suffrage. (National Archives)

District of Columbia until the end of the twentieth century. To make matters worse for black people, after 1877, the federal government declared itself powerless against lawlessness in an individual state.

The Twentieth Century At one point between 1880 and 1910, Washington, D.C., was reported to have the highest urban black population in the nation. White violence directed at blacks and the rise of white racist terror organizations were developments that reached their zenith during the post-Reconstruction era of 1877–1920. Blacks throughout the nation began to develop resistance to the violence. Washington, D.C., experienced its share of the turmoil. Even though the city did not adopt a segregation ordinance like other American cities in the early 1900s, white property owners made most areas available for white residence only. Washington blacks found it increasingly difficult to find suitable places to live. They often lived in small clusters near white neighborhoods, making them vulnerable to hateful attacks. It remained for the black citizens in the capital of the nation to show the real potential of black resistance to racial violence in the post-Reconstruction era. The only thing black Washingtonians could do that their counterparts in Richmond, Atlanta, or Birmingham could not was ride in the front of city buses within the city limits. The 1930s brought on an unforeseen political shift in Washington, D.C., with the “New Deal” programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although meant to combat the Great Depression that gripped the nation after 1929, the New Deal did make some headway with civil rights with the appointment of a black leader like Mary Bethune to a higher governmental position, thereby achieving a new visibility for African Americans on Capitol Hill. Three of the most repressive governmental political decisions foisted upon the black residents

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of Washington during the twentieth century were the following: 1.

A denial of the right to vote.

2.

Congressional governance of the District of Columbia.

3.

Urban renewal programs that displaced thousands of poor and low-income black citizens.

An act of Congress on May 15, 1820, allowed Washington City to popularly elect its mayor, its eight-member board of aldermen, and its 12member board of common council. Neither blacks nor women were allowed to vote. In February 1871, Congress repealed the city’s 69-year-old charter. Georgetown, Washington City, and Washington County were merged. Alexandria had been given back to Virginia in 1846. The loss of the charter also discontinued voting rights for D.C. citizens. It was not until November 3, 1964, that the residents of Washington, D.C., were allowed to vote for the president of the United States; the district’s three presidential electors cast their votes for Lyndon Baines Johnson. Perhaps the most significant thought in the minds of D.C. residents in the 1950s and 1960s was a desire to be able to elect their own local government. This was referred to as “home rule.” There was also an active movement known as the D.C. Statehood Party. For much of the twentieth century, Washington, D.C., has been governed by a congressional committee. Congressional committees have served as the primary instrument by which Congress managed its business for most of the past two centuries. When considering the issues of determining local rules and legal requirements for a major city like Washington, this was a unique and puzzling anomaly in a democracy. Both houses of Congress had committees for the District of Columbia, but the House committee was more repressive, apparently because it had

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control of the budget for the District. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 created an arrangement that lasted for over 50 years and vested a great deal of power in committee chairmen, collectively known as “cardinals.” The House committee also appeared to justify its repression because the population was black and the congressmen involved were mostly southern white men who behaved in the most racist manner possible. Many local blacks attributed their racist behavior to a psychological desire to “run a plantation.” The flexibility and arbitrary power of committee members derived largely from the realization that they were free to set their own model, since neither the Constitution, federal law, nor congressional rules established the “committee system” uniformly. In 1967, the Lyndon Johnson administration sought to move the home rule process along by consolidating the old three-man commission government into a single appointive mayorcommissioner and council-type government. Many residents saw this attempt as being cosmetic only. In November 1968, elections were held for the new 11-member board of education, which was the first time in 92 years that the citizens of the District of Columbia voted for local officials. In December 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the District of Columbia Self-Government and Reorganization Act, also known as the “Home Rule Act.” This law gave Washington the right to an elected mayor and a 13-member city council. The law also eliminated the three presidentially appointed positions created by Congress in 1874. The new act was limited, since D.C. residents did not get a voting representative in Congress. In addition, Congress kept control over the District’s court system and budget, as well as the right to override legislation passed by the D.C. city council. By 1977, the U.S. Senate had eliminated its District of Columbia Committee. During the middle 1990s, the House of Representatives dismantled the Committee on the District of Columbia and

made it a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Later, at the beginning of the 109th Congress in 2005, the House eliminated its District of Columbia subcommittee. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially restricting covenants were illegal. This enabled middle-class blacks and black professionals to purchase and own homes in several neighborhoods in Washington, such as Brookland, Sheppard Park, and Brightwood. However, the tragedy of Washington’s racism in housing for poor and disadvantaged blacks was illustrated by the sweeping plan of the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency for urban renewal in Southwest Washington. Nearly 23,500 persons (most of whom were blacks with a family income less than $2,500 per year) were moved out between 1954 and 1958. This move occurred despite the strong negative reaction of the black community’s religious and community leaders to the planned programs. The fate of these families caused by inadequate planning for their resettlement was quite obvious to the leaders. The evolution of such negative D.C. governmental actions against its black citizens was somewhat ironic since the removal measures were designed by the grandson of one of the most progressive leaders of the Reconstruction era—President Ulysses S. Grant. In the 1870s, President Grant’s administration had promoted some of the racial policies advocated by Washington resident Frederick Douglass, including the betterment of living conditions for blacks in the District of Columbia. Ulysses S. Grant III, as head of the National Capital Park Planning Commission, was the architect of a master plan of racial segregation. He was empowered to design a Washington free of slums. In 1947, General Grant III unveiled a proposal calling for the massive removal of the city’s black population away from Foggy Bottom, the southwest area, and Georgetown to the farthest regions of Anacostia. By 1960, most of the old southwest area disappeared.

District of Columbia Although many African Americans had fought for the United States during World War II and had come to expect that racial conditions in the country after the war would improve because of their service, racism still reigned supreme in the Deep South. However, the 1950s witnessed the start of a strong Civil Rights Movement in the South. Beginning with Rosa Parks’ refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955, and followed by sit-ins in diners in North Carolina and elsewhere in 1960, racial tension was mounting. Politicians and national leaders were forced to pay attention to African American demands for equality. In 1961, “freedom rides” from the North, including Washington, D.C., were initiated into the southern states to show the solidarity among those, black and white, fighting for the cause of racial justice. The freedom rides were journeys by activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ended segregation in bus and train terminals for passengers traveling between states. The freedom ride movement culminated in 1963. From 1966 to 2009, Washington, D.C., saw a quick progression of “firsts,” as African American leaders took their position in government. These firsts included Robert Weaver as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Lyndon Johnson; Patricia Harris as the first black female cabinet member as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Jimmy Carter in 1977; General Colin Powell as secretary of state from 2001 to 2004 and Condoleezza Rice as the first black female secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential campaign and was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in January 2009. As the seat of the national

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government, Washington, D.C., remains central for the establishment of equality for all Americans.

Notable African Americans Adams, Numa Pompilius Garfield (1885–1940) In 1929, Numa Adams became the first black dean of Howard University Medical School. He established the first residencies, including the surgical residency program in 1936, for doctors wishing to pursue specialties in medicine.

Augusta, Alexander Thomas (1825–1890) Alexander Thomas Augusta was in charge of Freedmen’s Hospital in the District of Columbia from 1863 to 1864. He was the first black person to head a hospital in the United States. He also taught anatomy at Howard University.

Bailey, Pearl (1918–1990) Pearl Bailey was a Washington resident who attained worldwide fame as a jazz singer and actress. Although born in Virginia, it was early in her career that she gained fame performing at two famous nightclubs on Washington, D.C.’s historic U Street.

Banneker, Benjamin (1731–1806) Benjamin Banneker was chosen to help survey the boundaries for what is now the District of Columbia. He also published an almanac using his own astronomical calculations.

Barry, Marion Shepilov (1936–) Marion Barry was mayor of Washington, D.C., from 1979 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1999. Between and following his terms as mayor, he served three terms on the D.C. City Council. Barry came to politics from the Civil Rights

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Benjamin Banneker was one of the country’s first and greatest intellectuals, and as an African American helped to dispel the notion that intelligence varies according to skin color. Banneker’s accomplishments ranged from self-taught astronomy and mathematics to writing influential essays and improving irrigation techniques. (National Archives)

Movement of the 1960s, where he served as the first president of SNCC. Barry remained a controversial figure throughout a large portion of his career, including an arrest for possession of crack cocaine in 1990.

Bell, George (c. 1761–1843) George Bell helped found the Bell School in 1807, which was the first district schoolhouse for black children. He dedicated his life to educating blacks in Washington, D.C.

Cardozo, Francis Louis (1837–1903) Francis Louis Cardozo helped organize and shape Preparatory (later M Street) High School into the country’s top educational institution for blacks. He taught Latin at Howard University from 1871 to 1872.

Cardozo, William Warrick (1905–1962) William Cardozo practiced medicine in Washington and was a pioneer in the research of sickle cell

District of Columbia anemia. He was a grandson of Francis L. Cardozo and was an instructor at Howard University College of Medicine.

Davis, Benjamin O., Sr. (1877–1970) In 1940, Benjamin O. Davis became the first African American to be promoted to the rank of General in the U.S. military. He was a native of Washington, D.C.

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Drew, Charles Richard (1904–1950) Charles Drew is known for his groundbreaking research in blood plasma. During World War II, he modified the technology for producing blood plasma so that it could be mass-produced for shipment. Drew was a professor of surgery and later became the head of the Howard University Medical School Department of Surgery.

Davis, Benjamin Oliver “Chappie,” Jr. (1912–2002)

Eckstine, William Clarence “Billy” (1914–1993)

“Chappie” Davis was the second African American to become a U.S. military general and the first black in the U.S. Air Force to become a lieutenant general. He became a four-star general in 1998. Chappie Davis was also a native of Washington, D.C.

Billy Eckstine was known as the greatest black crooner during the 1930s and 1940s. He attended Armstrong High School and began his professional singing career in Washington, D.C.

Civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. (Library of Congress)

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Ellington, Edward Kennedy “Duke” (1899–1974) Duke Ellington has been called the single most important figure in jazz history. He composed five film scores and ballet music for leading ballet dancers, and also recorded over 160 compositions between 1928 and 1931. He received 16 honorary doctorates, honors from two U.S. presidents, and many other awards. Duke Ellington was a native of Washington and a graduate of Armstrong High School.

Fauntroy, Walter (1933–) Walter Fauntroy was the first elected nonvoting delegate to represent Washington, D.C., in the U.S. Congress. A graduate of Yale University Divinity School, he was a civil rights activist. As a member of the staff of S.C.L.C., he helped coordinate the March on Washington in 1963. He was D.C.’s delegate to Congress from 1971 to 1990, and afterwards made an unsuccessful run for mayor of Washington.

Frazier, E. (Edward) Franklin (1894–1962) E. Franklin Frazier left a legacy of research and publications on race relations, family life, black youth, and the black middle class that has served scholars for generations. In 1942, he was appointed a Library of Congress Resident Fellow and he founded the District of Columbia Sociological Society. He was also a professor and chairman of Howard University’s Sociology Department.

Houston, Charles Hamilton (1895–1950) Charles Hamilton Houston was the first African American to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped to found the Washington Bar Association and was a Howard University Law School professor.

Johnson, Mordecai Wyatt (1890–1976) Mordecai Johnson was the 11th president of Howard University and the first president of African descent. He served as president from 1926 to 1960, when he retired.

Just, Ernest Everett (1883–1941) Ernest Just was a pioneer in experimental embryology, fertilization, and cellular physiology. His research opportunities were limited by his race, and after being denied admittance by white research institutions, he sought to concentrate on his research in Europe. In 1911, he and three others established Omega Psi Phi, the first fraternity to be founded at a historically black college or university. Dr. Just was an instructor of physiology and director of the Department of Zoology at Howard University from 1912 until 1941.

Locke, Alain Leroy (1886–1954) Alain Locke was a major proponent of the New Negro Movement, or the Harlem Renaissance. He was an editor and mentor to many young writers, artists, and scholars of the time. He was an early advocate of an African studies program, and from 1912 until 1925 he taught English and philosophy at Howard University.

Manuel, Charles (a.k.a. Daddy Grace) (1881–1960) Bishop Daddy Grace founded the United House of Prayer for All People in 1926. The church became famous for providing food for the hungry, particularly in the black community. The church was said to have more than three million members in more than 60 cities. In the 1920s, the national headquarters for the church was established in the nation’s capital.

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An aerial view of the Million Man March at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on October 16, 1995. Hundreds of thousands of African American men, the largest assemblage of African Americans since the 1963 March on Washington, took part in the rally. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Michaux, Elder Lightfoot Solomon (1885–1968) Elder Michaux founded the Church of God Movement and established the Church of God in 1928 in Washington. He staged massive baptisms in Griffith Stadium and the Potomac River and held other events, including community marches, around the city.

Norton, Eleanor Holmes (1937–) Eleanor Holmes Norton is a non-voting delegate to the U.S. Congress. A graduate of Yale University Law School, she was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, serving as an organizer for SNCC. She also participated in the Mississippi protests, known as the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1960. She was first elected to Congress in 1990.

Washington, Walter (1915–2003) Walter Washington was the first elected mayor of Washington, D.C. A native of Dawson, Georgia, he had served as chair of the New York City Housing Authority before becoming mayor of Washington. In 1968, he helped calm the city after rioting broke out in Washington following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Criticized by many for his low-key approach to governing, Washington finished third in the 1978 Democratic mayoral primary and left office in January 1979.

Williams, Daniel Hale (1856–1931) Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was one of the first physicians to perform open-heart surgery in the country. He became the surgeon-in-charge of Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington in 1894. At Freedmen’s,

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Martin Luther King Jr. waves to the crowd as he delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work in the area of human rights. (AP/Wide World Photos)

he organized the first program for interns, and established the Training School for Nurses.

Woodson, Carter Godwin (1875–1950) Carter G. Woodson is best known for his founding of the Association for the Study of Negro (now African American), the founding of the Journal of Negro (now African American) History, and the creation of Negro History Week in 1926. He spent a lifetime dedicated to research in black history and consequently became known as the “father of black history.” The headquarters of his association was in Washington and he was a longtime resident of the city. He was a professor of history and dean of liberal arts at Howard University.

Cultural Contributions African American culture has had a pervasive, transformative impact on many elements of

mainstream American culture, and Washington, D.C., remains an exemplar of this veracity. The African American culture is a multifaceted social phenomenon that became distinct because of slavery, segregation, and racial discrimination. The core of the culture is survival in a hostile land. The mechanisms for survival created a different language, a reliance upon various art forms for genuine expression and specific mannerisms in personal interactions. Those characteristics usually evolved to the point that they were visibly different than the European-based culture in the United States. Other aspects of the African American culture like religion, a standard of beauty for African Americans, and family life concepts were not so easily visible for white Americans until the twentieth century. Washington has been a center of cultural development for black Americans, especially after the Civil War. African Americans found out after

District of Columbia Reconstruction that they would have to rely on their own value and social systems. The newly freed slaves placed a high value on education and this was reflected throughout the nation and was especially true for Washington. In time, Howard University was thriving and producing notable scholars like Thurgood Marshall and Carter Woodson, among many others. African Americans have repeatedly met the challenges of racism by outstanding achievements in many fields such as medicine, law, the performing arts, religious leadership, and civic and political participation. Despite the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Washington blacks were among the many around the nation to pave the way to a bright future for African American culture. Washington, D.C., continues to serve as a major depository of historical contributions of African American culture in the United States. The following 10 institutions and points of interest suggest the width and depth of those cultural contributions while simultaneously recognizing both individual and collective accomplishments. This list of course does not enumerate all of the cultural resources and locations available in the capital city. 1.

The Anacostia Museum. This museum celebrates African American culture and history through the use of several media. The museum is located in what was once known as Uniontown, a community settled in the wake of the Civil War by freed slaves. It contains a black cultural gallery, and there are demonstrations of black music, art, and dance.

2.

The Bethune Museum and Archives. This Victorian townhouse served as headquarters for the National Council of Negro Women. It is now a center for black women’s history and a national historic site.

3.

The Carter G. Woodson Home. Dr. Woodson was a Washington historian who effectively promoted recognition of black American contributions to this country. His home at 1538

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Ninth Street, NW, is a national historic landmark. 4.

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site (also known as Cedar Hill). This was the suburban home of Frederick Douglass, who lived there from 1877 until his death in 1895. This home has been restored by the National Park Service and is now a National Historic Site and museum.

5.

Howard University. Howard University is one of the outstanding cultural and educational institutions, not only for Washington D.C., but for the United States as well. The Founders Library on the south side of the quadrangle contains black history exhibitions, and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center contains the nation’s largest collection of black literature.

6.

Lincoln Park. Two of the city’s finest and most moving statues are located in this park. The sculpture of educator Mary McCleod Bethune portrays her passing her legacy to her children. The other is a life-size statue of Abraham Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation.

7.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Library. The main branch of the D.C. public library system focuses on more than books. It sponsors a citywide arts program and houses a permanent collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and probably the largest collection of D.C.-related information in the world.

8.

Metropolitan AME Church. Members of the congregation once hid slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad behind the facade of the national church of African Methodism. Funeral services for Frederick Douglass were held here.

9.

The National Museum of African Art. The contents of this museum are rare in the United States since the museum is dedicated to the traditional arts of sub-Saharan Africa. The

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Black America collection demonstrates how the 900 distinct cultures of Africa weave art into daily life. They express religious beliefs and practices in masks and figures created for ceremonial purposes and also objects of everyday existence. The art works give an incomparable view of the cultures that shaped the African American, which, in time, transformed this country.

10. The Sumner School Museum and Archives. This historic red brick schoolhouse built in 1872 was the first school for black children in D.C. after the Civil War. During the period 1862 to 1900, the U Street Corridor, also known as “Washington’s Black Broadway,” was developed. This was a collection of shops, restaurants, nightclubs, galleries, and residences located along a nine-block stretch of U Street in northwest D.C. The dawn of the twentieth century proved to be a golden age for blacks in Washington, D.C., especially in entertainment. With the influence of the Harlem Renaissance, artists like Pearl Bailey and Louis Brown realized their talents with performances in the District and subsequently became known throughout the nation. African Americans throughout the nation consider restaurants and nightclubs with talented musicians and singers as being essential to the culture. Washington would be included in the top tier of cities having some of the best food, drink, and talent. The intersection of culture and race was never more vivid than the several experiences of black Americans exercising their right to the use of public-owned land like Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington for expression of both their culture and political power. The world beyond the District line did not often take notice of the city’s difficult race relations, but in 1939, it did so briefly. Many citizens made efforts to enjoy a concert in the District of Columbia by one of the greatest singers in the world, who happened to be black. The Daughters of the American

Marian Anderson singing from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at memorial service for Harold L. Ickes, 1952. (Library of Congress)

Revolution refused to allow the opera singer Marian Anderson to sing in their auditorium, Constitution Hall. The country and the world took notice of this situation. The Interior Department of the U.S. government suggested that the concert take place outdoors on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday 1939, people gathered along the Reflecting Pool and down the Mall to the Washington Monument. Marian Anderson performed before 75,000 citizens, black and white. This image was included in schoolbooks used across the nation for black children for many years.

Bibliography Bailey, Thomas. The American Pageant: A History of the Republic. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1975. Borchert, James. Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City,

District of Columbia

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1850–1970. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.

Perret, Geoffrey. Lincoln’s War. New York: Random House, 2004.

Brawley, Benjamin. A Social History of the American Negro. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001.

President Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley, Editor, New York Tribune, August 22, 1862. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/ lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm.

Brinkley, David. Washington Goes to War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Geschwender, James A. The Black Revolt. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. Glaab, Charles N., and Theodore A. Brown. A History of Urban America. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1976. Graham, Katharine. Katharine Graham’s Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Hosmer, John, and Joseph Fineman. “Black Congressmen in Reconstruction Historiography.” Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture 39, no. 2 (1978): 97–107. Lewis, David L. District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.

Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. The Black Washingtonians. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Thum, Marcella. Hippocrene USA Guide to Black America. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991. Untermayer, Louis. Library of Great American Writing Volume 1. Chicago: Britannica Press, 1960. U.S. Census Bureau: State and County Quick Facts. May 5, 2009. http://quickfacts.census .gov/qfd/states/11000.html. Whitney, David C., and Robin V. Whitney. The American Presidents. 8th ed. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1996.

FLORIDA Seth A. Weitz

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Chronology 1513

First known African, Juan Garrido, sets foot in Florida.

1565

Blacks help the Spanish found St. Augustine.

1738

Fort Mose is constructed by Spanish as accommodations for blacks in Florida.

1763

Black rights are stripped away when Great Britain assumes control of Florida.

1790

Spain officially suspends the practice of giving refuge in Florida to runaway slaves from the United States.

1816

American troops destroy Fort Negro and kill most of the “Black Seminoles” inside the fort.

1821

Florida becomes a U.S. territory and African American rights are once again stripped away.

1834

Seminole Indians sign the Treaty of Payne’s Landing and agree to hand over African Americans to “white” authorities.

1835–1842

African Americans fight alongside the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War.

1840

According to the 1840 Census, the population of Florida is almost 55,000 people, with nearly half being African American slaves.

1845

(March 3) Florida enters the Union as a slave state.

1861

(January 10) Florida secedes from the Union.

1862

U.S. General David Hunter issues General Order 11, which emancipates slaves in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina; the order is soon rescinded by President Abraham Lincoln.

1864

Colored regiments take part in the Battle of Olustee. After the battle, reports surface of atrocities committed by Confederate troops against African American soldiers.

1865

The Emancipation Proclamation is read in Tallahassee more than a month after General Robert E. Lee surrendered in Virginia.

1865

(December 28) Florida ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery several weeks after the amendment had taken effect.

1868

(June 9) Florida ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1868

Florida is readmitted to the Union; its new state constitution guarantees civil rights and gives African Americans the right to vote.

1868

Jonathan C. Gibbs is appointed as Florida’s secretary of state.

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1869

Josiah Walls is elected to the Florida legislature.

1869

(June 14) Florida ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote to blacks.

1869–1871

The Jackson County War claims the lives of close to 100 people, including many African Americans.

1871

Josiah Walls is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1885

Florida’s new constitution mandates a separation of the races in all public facilities, including schools.

1887

The State Normal College for Colored Students (today Florida A&M University) begins classes.

1897

James Weldon Johnson becomes the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar.

1909

The State Normal College for Colored Students changes its name to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes.

1920

Whites destroy black homes and churches and kill at least eight black residents of Ocoee in Orange County; later termed the “Ocoee Massacre” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the violence may have begun when several blacks attempted to vote.

1923

(January) Whites attack and largely destroy the African American community of Rosewood, Florida, killing many of the town’s residents after a local white woman accuses a black man of assaulting her.

1923

Mary McLeod Bethune helps found Bethune-Cookman Institute.

1951

Civil rights activist Harry T. Moore and his wife are murdered when a bomb explodes at their house.

1953

The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes changes its name to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU).

1956–1957

Tallahassee Bus Boycott leads to the integration of the city’s buses.

1963

(April 18) Florida ratifies the Twenty-fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads successful protests in St. Augustine.

1970

Gwendolyn Cherry becomes the first African American woman elected to the state legislature.

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1973

Racial tensions erupt at a northwest Florida high school when the school’s sports teams use Confederate imagery as their mascot.

1975

Five African American fishermen from the Pensacola area disappear under suspicious circumstances; while local authorities declare their deaths accidental drowning, many area blacks believe they were murdered by whites.

1975

Joseph W. Hatchett becomes the first African American to serve on the Florida Supreme Court.

1975

(December 22) When a white sheriff’s deputy in Escambia County shoots and kills Wendel Blackwell, a black motorist, local African American leaders hold demonstrations and rallies demanding a federal investigation of the incident.

1976

(February 24) A riot erupts in Pensacola when police use force to break up a demonstration protesting the recent killing by a police officer of black motorist Wendel Blackwell.

1978

Jesse J. McCrary Jr. is appointed Florida secretary of state, becoming the second African American to hold the office.

1980

(May 17) Miami is rocked by three days of rioting in the African American communities of Liberty City, Overton, and Coconut Grove, where black rioters rise up after white police officers are acquitted of the beating death of a black man; 17 people died in the riots and property damage was put at more than $100 million.

1982

A riot erupts in Miami after a Hispanic police officer shoots and kills a young black man.

1989

Riots erupt again in Miami after another Hispanic officers shoots and kills an African American; the officer is eventually convicted and sent to prison.

1990

Leander Shaw is selected to be the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

1992

After serving 17 years in the Florida legislature, Carrie Meek becomes the first African American woman elected to Congress from Florida as well as the first African American sent to Washington by the state since Reconstruction.

2002

Kendrick Meek is elected to Congress, succeeding his mother as representative of Florida’s 17th District.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major political party, carries Florida with about 51 percent of the vote.

2010

Kendrick Meek is defeated in his bid to become the first African American U.S. senator from Florida.

Florida

Historical Overview Early History to 1800 While Native Americans have been in Florida for more than 10,000 years, the first known African American in Florida was Juan Garrido, a conquistador who arrived in 1513 as part of Juan Ponce de Leon’s expedition. While there were other black conquistadors, one of the first blacks to permanently inhabit Florida was Estevanico, a slave from Morocco who was owned by one of the earliest Spanish explorers. Later in the sixteenth century, blacks, both slave and free, helped Pedro Menendez de Aviles found the city of St. Augustine in 1565 (the oldest settled city in what is today the United States). Aside from these events, and Estevanico’s time in Florida, African Americans were not a sizeable presence until the late seventeenth century, numbering only 27 out of a nonnative population of 491 in 1600. Despite their small numbers, blacks were still a vital cog in Spanish Florida’s economy as they were counted on to replace native labor as the natives died off, mostly due to contracting European diseases they had no immunity to combat. Most of the slaves initially came directly from Spain, but later most came to Florida from Cuba, where they were already acclimated to the tropical climate. Even though the labor system was rigid and set in place by the late sixteenth century, many slaves enjoyed higher levels of freedom and dignity (which they were not afforded later under English and American rule). Spain set up a system of laws and traditions centered on what they deemed morality and guided by the Catholic Church, which gave slaves more freedoms and a sense of identity. Unlike other institutions of slavery in the Americas, slaves in Florida could own and transfer property legally as well as use the judicial system when a crime was committed against them. Many slaves were also able to obtain their freedom through various methods,

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including purchasing it or through the generosity of their owners. Runaway slaves began to arrive in North Florida from the Carolinas in the 1680s, escaping their English colonial masters by seeking refuge in Spanish Florida. To accommodate the runaways, the Spanish constructed Fort Mose in 1738 outside of St. Augustine, and this soon became the first settlement of free blacks anywhere in North America. Fort Mose was also known as Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The free blacks not only lived in the settlement and worked on the land in the surrounding area, but also helped the Spanish defend St. Augustine and Florida from several British attacks. Over time the community expanded and free blacks worked and lived within the city of St. Augustine as well as within the walls of the fort. They performed numerous jobs such as working as blacksmiths, tailors, and carpenters along with more traditional agricultural duties. At the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, Florida was transferred from Spain to Great Britain and it was during this time that the African American population of Florida grew dramatically. One of the largest increases in population came during the Revolutionary War when English loyalists moved south from Georgia and the Carolinas as their plantations came under attack from patriot forces. It was also a time when Florida’s slaves lost the freedoms they had enjoyed under Spanish rule. English planters tried to recreate the plantations they had already established in other colonies in the Americas where the slaves worked under harsh conditions cultivating tobacco, cotton, indigo, and rice. The British in Florida copied the South Carolina Slave Code verbatim, which called for harsh punishments for the slave population. In spite of the fact that many of the slaves left with their masters when Florida once again became a Spanish possession after the American Revolution, Florida’s black population, both slave and free, was on the rise and this trend would continue through the

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American Civil War. From the time when Florida was transferred back to Spain, through the end of Spanish rule, the black population, both slave and free, increased from 27 percent to 54 percent of Florida’s total population. As the Spanish resumed control, they once again loosened the reins on the black population, and many slaves took advantage of this, and also of the confusion and chaos during the transfer, to run away from their masters and hide out in the Florida wilderness. Some did not even have to run away to gain their freedom as 251 slaves were freed, due to their claim that they were fleeing Anglican religious persecution. Under Spanish law, they were granted their freedom once they accepted Catholicism. One other avenue to freedom was service with the Spanish army, including the “black militia,” which had helped the Spanish repulse several British attacks against St. Augustine. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, African Americans had lived alongside the Spanish in Florida, but as the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, and began to expand in the early part of the nineteenth century, the status of the small free black population there was threatened. In the early years of the American republic, planters in neighboring Georgia began to vociferously protest the fact that slaves from their state were being given asylum in Spanish Florida. Feeling threatened by the United States, Spain, in 1790, agreed on paper to stop granting freedom and protection to runaway slaves, though they maintained that they would protect the freedom of those blacks who had already escaped to Florida. In fact, in spite of Spain’s compliance with American complaints, Florida remained a haven for runaways and also remained a thorn in the side of the United States.

Early Nineteenth Century After the conclusion of the War of 1812 and the defeat of the Creek Indians in the Creek War in

Alabama and Georgia, the United States looked south to Florida. The Spanish Empire was crumbling in the “New World” and Americans saw an opportunity to stake claim to a piece of this land. When the British left Florida, they maintained a presence in the region by funneling ammunition, money, and other supplies to the natives as well as blacks living in the area. They also left the natives and their black allies a well-armed fort, known to white Americans as Fort Negro or Negro Fort, located in present-day Franklin County on the Apalachicola River, not far from the Gulf of Mexico. While most of the natives left the area, some 300 blacks, mostly runaway slaves, stayed behind and set up a refugee camp at the fort, which was open to anyone seeking refuge from what they perceived to be white encroachment. Not only did the fort dominate the river, it alarmed white planters and settlers as far north as Georgia and Alabama. To deal with this problem, General Andrew Jackson offered the natives money if they would attack the fort, and when they refused he pressured the Spanish, who also refused. Finally, the Americans decided to attack the fort themselves in July 1816. Troops under the command of Colonel Duncan L. Clinch fired at the fort from the mouth of the river until a lucky shot hit the ammunition supply in the fort, causing an enormous explosion that killed 270 of the 344 defenders and also wounded all but three. Soon, seeing no point in trying to halt American expansion, Spain decided to cede Florida to the United States. When the United States took possession of Florida following the Adams-Onis Treaty, blacks saw their quality of life steadily decline. As the “Old South” was created in Florida, African Americans were seen as inferior, even those who were not slaves. In 1821, when Florida became a U.S. territory, the land held fewer than 8,000 people, including slaves. This soon changed as settlers flocked to Florida, seeking a new and better life. Florida was the nation’s and the South’s

Florida newest frontier and despite over 300 years of Spanish and British rule, Florida was largely a virgin land to whites in the 1820s. It was considered part of the “old Southwest,” which can account for why many felt Florida was a land of opportunity where white settlers could begin new lives. Most of the settlers came from the established plantation systems of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. When white Floridians called a convention to draw up a territorial constitution, the document produced was proslavery in every aspect. The new legislature was not allowed to ban the importation of slaves into the territory, it could not emancipate slaves for any reason, and it also banned blacks from entering Florida while maintaining that all free blacks present in Florida would have a grace period of 30 days to leave the territory or face enslavement. This was important because it affected the lives of close to half of Florida’s population by 1830. Not all free blacks left Florida, and many remained, living with the Seminole Indians in Central Florida. Some of the African Americans, or Black Seminoles as they were often called, were technically the property of the natives, but they not did suffer the same horrible fate of most slaves owned by white masters. In most cases they were slaves in name only, and lived comfortably within or on the peripheries of the Seminole settlements. When President Andrew Jackson decided that it was in the best interest of the United States to remove Native American tribes to land west of the Mississippi River, the Seminoles were one of the tribes that were targeted. When asked about their population, the Seminoles noted that they had 4,883 natives living on their land, but refused to make a distinction between pure-blooded natives and blacks. When the Seminoles signed a treaty with the U.S. government, it also called for the natives to hand over their slaves and free blacks living within their communities to white American authorities.

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In almost every case, the Seminoles did not abide by these stipulations and the blacks retreated further into the swamps away from the reach of white society. When they felt they could no longer peacefully resist the whites, the Seminoles took up arms. When the Second Seminole War broke out in 1835, blacks, both slave and free, aided the Seminole warriors who attacked Major Francis L. Dade and his 110 U.S. soldiers as they left Fort Brooke and marched towards Fort King in what is referred to as the Dade Massacre. The fact that the Seminoles killed over 100 American troops only heightened the resentment that whites felt towards free blacks, as well as runaway slaves, and in many cases provided slave owners with excuses to impose harsher punishments and restrictions on their slaves. Slavery soon became the most important economic institution in much of Florida, especially the area known as Middle Florida, in which the new capital of Tallahassee resided. Florida’s population when it entered the Union as a state in 1845 was estimated at 66,500, of which at least 27,181 were slaves. In 1845, slaves made up 48.7 percent of Florida’s population. Also, 47 percent of the population resided in Middle Florida, which was known as Florida’s “Black Belt” due to the soil as well as the large number of slaves. The counties in this region all had slaves make up more than 50 percent of their populations. By 1850, Florida had surpassed South Carolina and Georgia in the production of black seeded, long staple cotton, further proof of the importance of slavery. Slavery in Florida varied depending on the region of the state. In East and South Florida, planters normally employed the task system, which was favored by the slaves and in which the slaves were assigned different tasks or jobs. These slaves were often finished with their work by midday. In Middle Florida, which was home to the state’s larger plantations, the gang system

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was used. This system in which large numbers of slaves worked in groups for most of the day was despised by the slaves and most forms of resistance were aimed at this system. While there were no major slave revolts in Florida during the antebellum period, most slaves practiced day-today resistance such as feigning illnesses or breaking tools to sabotage work. Since Florida was sparsely populated, running away was an option, and more successful for slaves than in other Deep South states. From 1821 to 1860, 742 slaves were classified as runaways.

Civil War and Reconstruction When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Union troops occupied many of the forts along Florida’s coast as well as occupying several coastal cities such as Key West and Jacksonville. Jacksonville was occupied on four separate occasions and every occupation offered the opportunity for slaves to run away to what they felt was the safety of the Union lines. Even though Union troops did not stay in Jacksonville for long periods of time, naval gunboats remained on the St. Johns River and encouraged slaves to leave their masters. In early 1862, Union troops returned some of the runaways to their masters, but many went against the wishes of President Abraham Lincoln and refused, referring to the former slaves as contraband of war. In May 1862, General David Hunter, who was in charge of the Union troops in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, issued an order abolishing slavery. Lincoln overturned the edict, but by July 1862, Lincoln had changed his tune, and slaves were no longer returned to their masters in Florida. In response, many slave owners moved their slaves inland or sold their slaves to Georgia or other states that were not directly threatened by Union troops. Many of the adult male runaway slaves eventually entered into service in the Union army, composing large portions of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

South Carolina Volunteers, who were later consolidated into the 21st, 33rd, and 34th U.S. Colored Infantry. By 1865, more than 1,000 slaves and free blacks from the Jacksonville area alone served in these regiments. In November 1862, Company A of the South Carolina Volunteers was sent to Florida to engage in actions against the Confederate positions on the coast. The black troops were involved in several small raids and skirmishes in 1862 and 1863; but black troops did not play a major role in the Civil War in Florida until 1864, when 5,500 Union troops left Jacksonville and marched toward Tallahassee. On February 20, they met a force of about 5,000 Confederate troops at Ocean Pond, near presentday Lake City. The ensuing Battle of Olustee was the bloodiest and most important battle fought in Florida during the war. It was also important to African Americans since they made up a large percentage of the Union troops. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry, made famous by the movie Glory, participated in the battle along with the 35th U.S. Colored Infantry. While the battle was a victory for the Confederates, the black troops performed admirably under fire and also provided valuable cover for Union troops retreating toward Jacksonville. One controversy that emerged from the battle, and was directly linked to the high casualty rate, was the fact that many Union troops and newspapers claimed that Confederate troops refused to take black prisoners, killing many of those who tried to surrender or who were injured and left on the battlefield. While many slaves gained their freedom in Florida earlier than in other states because of the continual presence of Union troops in various parts of the state, the Emancipation Proclamation was not read in Tallahassee until May 1865, a month after General Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia. Because Tallahassee was the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi River never to fall into Union hands during the war, many slaves in Middle Florida were not

Florida aware of their freedom or even the end of the war until after the conclusion of hostilities. Even though blacks had now gained their freedom, many whites in Florida did not want them to be able to act on this freedom during the period of Reconstruction and the decades which followed. Following the end of the Civil War, federal troops occupied the South, including Florida. Many of the troops who occupied Florida were African Americans, some who had fought in Florida, and many who had once been slaves in the state. Most white Floridians resented any Northern army occupying their state, but were appalled at the fact that their former slaves made up a large portion of the force. At the outset of Reconstruction, numerous prominent white Floridians, who had either moved to the state from the North, or had been Union sympathizers during the war, organized Republican Party “Clubs,” which attracted many African Americans. In fact, in 1867, more African Americans were registered to vote than whites and 18 blacks were selected to represent various districts at the state’s constitutional convention in 1868. In the state’s first election after being readmitted to the Union, 18 African Americans were elected to the legislature and Governor Harrison Reed named Jonathan C. Gibbs, an African American, as Florida’s secretary of state. Encouraged by President Andrew Johnson’s seeming lack of interest in protecting the rights of African Americans in the South, southern states, including Florida, soon devised ways to bypass the “rights” afforded to the former slaves. These states passed what came to be known as the Black Codes, whose single purpose was to reduce blacks to a legal form of slavery or servitude by regulating every aspect of their lives. The laws in Florida resembled those of other southern states but in many cases were more severe. They stipulated that no African American was allowed to have any weapon of any kind without a license, could not join white religious

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congregations, could not use the same public facilities as whites, and could only do labor dictated by the law, which in most cases were the same jobs they performed as slaves. Punishment for not adhering to these laws was often whipping. While these codes were harsh, in many locations it was left to local officials to enforce them, and in some areas they were strictly enforced, while in other areas, African Americans were not subject to harsh punishments. In fact, Governor Reed deemed the section of the codes that made it illegal for blacks to own or possess firearms to be unconstitutional, and therefore this stipulation was largely ignored by officials, even though on a local level, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan confiscated firearms from African Americans. At the end of the decade, many whites turned to violence to oust Republicans from power, as well as to intimidate African Americans and keep them from voting. A major outbreak of violence occurred in 1869 in what is now known as the Jackson County War. Jackson County, west of Tallahassee, saw a rise in violence aimed first at Republicans, but later, mostly at African Americans. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations were responsible for a lot of the terror, which killed an estimated 168 civilians, both black and white, from 1869 to 1871. After federal troops left Florida, Reconstruction came to an end and the state was redeemed by “Bourbon” Democrats—they drafted a new constitution in 1885 that included provisions for poll taxes as a prerequisite for voter registration and voting, thus virtually eliminating black voters. As if this were not enough, literacy tests were issued along with property taxes. When these methods did not stop black voting, intimidation by white supremacist groups was commonplace. By 1890, African Americans accounted for 47 percent of Florida’s population of 269,000, but they had been virtually

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disfranchised, and would remain that way until the middle of the twentieth century.

Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries One aspect of African American life that prospered during the late nineteenth century was education. State-supported education for blacks began in 1883 when the legislature apportioned $4,000 annually for schools for both races, with the first schools opened for African Americans in Gainesville and Tallahassee in 1884. What is today Florida A&M University was founded in 1887 as the State Normal School for Negroes with 1,500 students and was the only black public university in the state at the time. Waters College was founded in 1883 and run by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Florida Memorial four years earlier in 1879 by the Southern Black Baptist Church. These advances in education also came with consequences as whites often resented gains made by African Americans, especially those in the field of education, and in many cases these advances were met with violent resistance. The 1920s also saw the growth of racial violence in Florida, largely traced back to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Two of the most horrific incidents in Florida’s history occurred at Ocoee in 1920 and Rosewood in 1923. At Ocoee, 250 members of the Ku Klux Klan attacked the black section of the town in an effort to prevent African Americans from voting, and over 50 African Americans were killed in the incident. Three years later, Rosewood, a self-sufficient black community located in Levy County, was also attacked. The “Massacre at Rosewood” began when a black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman. Whites from the neighboring town of Sumter retaliated by attacking, burning, and razing the entire town to the ground. The exact number of dead remains undetermined, estimates range from as few as 6 to as many as 40. African

Americans not killed in the massacre fled to the swamps, where most escaped with the help of a local white citizen. None of the survivors returned to the town, and Rosewood, along with the incident, remained largely unknown until the 1980s. Many African Americans felt their lives would improve with the outbreak of World War II, but many white Floridians did not feel they could trust the loyalty of the African American community. Governor Spessard Holland was concerned that African Americans were ripe for subversive activity, and in an effort to combat any “subversive” activity, Holland pushed for the creation of the Negro Defense Council led by Florida A&M President John Robert Edward Lee. African Americans were highly active in the Negro Defense Council as well as serving in the armed forces once the war broke out. Despite seemingly being able to prove critics wrong, African Americans remained after the war “outsiders” in Florida as well as throughout the South.

Civil Rights Era and Beyond Following the end of the Second World War, African Americans around Florida as well as the nation strove to tear down Jim Crow society, which legally kept them as second-class citizens. In Florida, Harry T. Moore led the charge for equality in education as well as registering African Americans to vote. Moore paid for his activism with his life when a bomb exploded in his house on Christmas Day 1951, killing Moore and his wife. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down school segregation in the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision, but in Florida, and many places throughout the South, the fight was just beginning. Most high schools in Florida did not integrate until the late 1960s and early 1970s. The University of Miami became the first major white university in the state to admit African Americans, doing so in 1961. In

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Florida A&M University student Ruby Powell thumbs a ride during the pro-integration Tallahassee Bus Boycott, June 1, 1956. It was the fifth day of the boycott. (AP/Wide World Photos)

May 1956 in Tallahassee, two female FAMU students directly challenged the city’s segregated bus laws, leading to the Tallahassee Bus Boycott, which was led by the Reverend C. K. Steele and the Inter Civic Council. As a result, Tallahassee’s buses were integrated in 1957. Activism continued to rise, and in 1960, Tallahassee was the scene of numerous sit-ins and other protests that helped to integrate public facilities, but the biggest civil rights battle in Florida took place in St. Augustine, where college students tried to integrate the city’s beaches and swimming pools through wade-ins. After local African American

activists were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther King Jr. temporarily moved his operations to the city in 1964 and was arrested and jailed in May. Throughout the summer of 1964, black and white protesters absorbed physical and verbal abuse from the Ku Klux Klan, until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. African American protesters in St. Augustine played an important role in highlighting the violence and discrimination that blacks faced throughout the nation. In spite of gains made by African Americans in Florida, in early 1980 Miami exploded with a

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series of riots in African American neighborhoods after four white police officers were acquitted by an all-white jury of killing a black insurance salesman during a traffic stop. Three people were killed and 23 wounded during the first day of the riots. In the end, 15 people died and close to 200 were wounded. Another series of riots broke out in 1982 when two Hispanic cops were acquitted in the shooting death of an African American in a bar, and a final riot broke out in Miami in 1989 after another shooting death of an African American by a Hispanic police officer. This time the officer was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. In spite of the violence, by the end of the twentieth century, African Americans made up close to 16 percent of the state’s population and three African Americans represented Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, while many more held positions in local and state politics. African Americans traveled an often tumultuous road throughout Florida’s history, but have persevered in spite of more than 500 years of oppression, and today play a vital role in every aspect of the state.

Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955) Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator credited with helping bring higher education to African American females. Bethune won a scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where she was the only African American student. After working with the poor in Chicago, Georgia, and South Carolina, she moved to Florida after marrying fellow teacher Albertus Bethune. After working as a teacher in Palatka, she opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in 1904. In 1923, she merged her school with a boys’ school in the area to form Bethune-Cookman Institute, today BethuneCookman University. She served as president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1947.

Notable African Americans Armwood, Blanche (1890–1939) Blanche Armwood was an educator as well as civil rights activist who grew up in Tampa. From 1922 to 1930, she was the supervisor of Negro schools for Hillsborough County and during her tenure worked to try and gain equality in education for African Americans. She was successful in helping to establish the first black high school in the county. She was also executive secretary of the Tampa Urban League and later graduated from Howard Law School. She also worked as a civil rights activist alongside Mary McLeod Bethune and others during the 1920s and 1930s.

Mary McLeod Bethune fought fiercely to achieve social, economic, and educational opportunities for African Americans, and particularly for African American women. (Library of Congress)

Florida In 1917, she was named president of the Florida chapter of the National Association of Colored Women, a title she held until 1925. In 1932, after working to help elect Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency, she became a member of his Federal Council of Negro Affairs or “Black Cabinet,” an unofficial group of advisors. In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women, and in 1938 was named director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration, one of Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies. Bethune was also a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and she helped to educate Roosevelt on lynchings and pushed to get an antilynching bill passed by Congress.

Charles, Ray (1930–2004) Ray Charles was a world-renowned singer and songwriter who was born in Albany, Georgia, but grew up poor in Greenville, Florida. Charles showed a love for music from an early age, but by the time he was seven was completely blind. In spite of this disability, as a teenager, Charles made money playing the piano in bars and clubs in various cities across Florida before moving to Seattle, at age 14.

Cherry, Gwendolyn Sawyer (1923–1979) Gwendolyn Cherry was born in Miami, attended Florida A&M University (FAMU) and later New York University before returning home to Miami, where she taught public school for 18 years before she became the first African American to attend the University of Miami Law School. She eventually graduated from FAMU’s law school, where she taught before running for the state legislature in 1970. Her victory made her the first African American woman elected to the state legislature.

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read and write at a school set up by former Union soldiers and eventually landed jobs writing for the Marianna Courier and the Jacksonville Daily-Times Union. He moved to Washington, D.C., to study law and eventually moved to New York, where he became the editor and owner of several newspapers including the New York Age. He also published a book, Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South, in 1884 and six years later helped to establish a civil rights organization, the National AfroAmerican League. He was instrumental in helping W. E. B. Du Bois found the Niagara Movement and later the NAACP and was one the earliest proponents of using the term “Afro-American.” Throughout his career he worked to combat lynching and, later in his life, became an editor of Negro World, the periodical published by Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Gibbs, Jonathan C. (1827–1874) Jonathan C. Gibbs was born in Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Dartmouth College. Following the conclusion of the Civil War, he moved to North Carolina, where he opened a school for former slaves, before moving to Florida to work with freedmen in that state. In 1868, he served as a delegate to the state’s constitutional convention before Governor Harrison Reed appointed Gibbs as his secretary of state, a position he held until 1872. Gibbs was next made state superintendent of public instruction by Governor Ossian Hart. Gibbs was instrumental in improving education for African Americans as well as whites and helping to significantly raise the literacy rate in the state. He died suddenly in 1874, leading some to believe that he was poisoned since he had accumulated numerous death threats from white supremacists.

Hastings, Alcee (1936–) Fortune, T. Thomas (1856–1928) T. Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna in 1856. After the Civil War, he learned how to

Alcee Hastings represents Florida’s 23rd district in the U.S. Congress. A native of Altamonte Springs, Florida, he was educated at Fisk and

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Howard Universities and received a law degree from Florida A&M University. Before being elected to Congress in 1993, he was appointed a U.S. District Court judge by then President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Ten years later, he was impeached, convicted, and removed from office on charges of corruption.

Hatchett, Joseph W. (1932–) Joseph W. Hatchett was the first African American to serve as a justice on the Florida Supreme Court as well being the first African American to sit on a Supreme Court in any Southern state. Before becoming a justice, Hatchett was a civil rights attorney, Assistant U.S. Attorney in Jacksonville, and U.S. Magistrate for the Middle District of Florida. He was appointed to the Florida State Supreme Court in 1975 by Governor Reubin Askew. Under Florida law, justices had to seek reelection and Hatchett was successful, making him the first African American elected to a statewide office since Reconstruction. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter named him as a federal circuit judge on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hawkins, Virgil (1906–1988) Virgil Hawkins became the focal point in the fight for African American equality in education when he tried to enter the University of Florida’s School of Law in 1949. Even though he met the entrance requirements, Hawkins was denied admission because he was black. Hawkins filed suit with the Florida Supreme Court and the state offered to pay for Hawkins’ tuition if he agreed to attend school outside of Florida, but Hawkins refused. The state tried a new tactic by agreeing to open a law school for African Americans in Tallahassee. Before the school was completed, the state agreed that Hawkins could take classes at Florida, but the Gainesville school now denied him admission based on merit. He again

went to court in 1952, but the state Supreme Court dismissed his case. In 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of Florida to admit Hawkins, but the school still refused, claiming there would be outbreaks of violence on their campus. In 1958, a federal district court judge ordered all Florida graduate schools open to all races, but Hawkins was again denied admission based on his credentials. Hawkins eventually attended an unaccredited law school in Boston but was not able to take Florida’s Bar exam since the school he had attended was not accredited. In 1975, at the age of 69, Hawkins asked to be allowed to take the state bar exam; a year later, he was allowed to become a lawyer without taking the exam and opened an office in Leesburg, Florida.

Hayes, Robert Lee (1942–2002) Bob Hayes was a world-class sprinter and professional football player who was nicknamed the “World’s Fastest Human” in 1963 after shattering the world record in the 100-yard dash. Hayes played football and ran track at Florida A&M in the early 1960s and in 1964 signed with the Dallas Cowboys. In 1964, Hayes also competed at the Tokyo Olympics, where he won two gold medals.

Hurston, Zora Neale (1891–1960) Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, a town that was completely governed and inhabited by African Americans. Hurston earned a scholarship to Barnard College, where she was the only African American student, graduating in 1927. Despite holding a degree in anthropology, she made a name for herself as a writer. She began writing plays and poems in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance before moving on to books in the 1930s. Her most

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Portrait of James Weldon Johnson, author and civil rights activist during the Harlem Renaissance. (National Archives) Zora Neale Hurston was an American novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, and prominent member of the circle of writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. (Library of Congress)

famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in 1937, and was met with criticism from whites and blacks alike at the time, but has since been recognized by Time as one of the best 100 novels written between 1923 and 2005.

Johnson, James Weldon (1871–1938) James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville during Reconstruction and would eventually become an author, composer, poet, scholar, civil rights activist, and even diplomat serving the United States in Venezuela and Nicaragua. He attended Atlanta University, and after graduation, became the principal of Stanton School in Jacksonville. In 1897, he became the first African

American admitted to the Florida Bar since Reconstruction. Johnson is most known for his role in the arts, especially music. In 1900, he wrote the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which has become recognized as the “Black National Anthem” after it was adopted in that capacity by the NAACP. Johnson was also a civil rights activist and helped to organize the NAACP in the 1910s, becoming the first black secretary of the organization in 1920. He used this position to try and secure the passage of a federal antilynching bill.

Lloyd, John Henry “Pop” (1884–1964) John Henry Lloyd was born in Palatka and made a name for himself as both a baseball player and manager in the Negro League. Lloyd was a shortstop and is considered to be one of the best to ever play that position regardless of race. He

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played for seven teams beginning in 1906. He went on to help found the Columbus Buckeyes and later managed several other teams. In 1977, he was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Meacham, Robert (1835–1902) Robert Meacham, who was born to a slave mother and a white father, became one of the leaders of Florida’s African American community during Reconstruction. He was also a minister who helped establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tallahassee in 1865 before moving to nearby Monticello where he worked in a church as well as a school educating former slaves. After Florida was readmitted to the Union, he helped frame the state’s 1868 Constitution and was later elected to the state Senate and also superintendent of schools in Monticello. He survived an assassination attempt in 1876 and later served as postmaster in Punta Gorda before retiring from public life.

Meek, Carrie (1926–) Carrie Meek was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, along with two other African Americans, Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown, making them the first African Americans elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction. After graduate school, Meek worked at Miami-Dade Community College, where she became the assistant to the president. After Gwendolyn Cherry’s untimely death, Meek decided to run for her seat and she defeated 13 other candidates to win the seat. She then ran for a seat in the state Senate, which she won in 1982, making her the first African American woman to hold that distinction. Meek won election to the U.S. Congress in a landslide in 1992 and retired when her term expired in 2003.

Meek, Kendrick (1966–) Kendrick Meek, the son of Carrie Meek, succeeded his mother in Congress. Meek first became interested in politics while he was a member of the Florida Highway Patrol, where he was assigned to Lieutenant Governor Buddy McKay’s security detail. In 1995, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and to the Florida Senate in 1998. In 2002, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives with 100 percent of the vote and subsequently reelected unopposed in 2004, 2006, and 2008. He was defeated in a Senate run in 2010.

Moore, Harry T. (1905–1951) Harry T. Moore was a civil rights leader who was known as the first NAACP activist to be murdered. Moore became a teacher in Brevard County in the 1920s and then became the principal of Titusville Colored School. In 1934, along with his wife Harriette, Moore founded the Brevard County Chapter of the NAACP. In 1937, he filed a lawsuit intended to equalize the salaries of black teachers, and in 1944, he took control of the Progressive Voters League, an organization that sought to end all-white primaries in the Deep South as well as register African Americans to vote. Because of their activism, the Moores were blacklisted from Florida’s public schools in 1946 and Moore began to work full time for the NAACP, becoming the executive director of the Florida chapter. On Christmas night 1951, the Moores’ house in Mims, Florida, was bombed by white supremacists. Moore died on the way to the hospital and his wife died nine days later. No one was charged with the crime in the 1950s but the case was reopened in 2005, and a year later Florida concluded that they were victims of a conspiracy by four members of the Ku Klux Klan, three whom had died within a year of the attack, and one in 1978.

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Randolph, Asa Philip (1889–1979) Asa Philip Randolph was a civil rights activist as well as a union organizer. He moved from Florida to New York when he was 22 and soon became known for his activism. In 1917, Randolph founded The Messenger, a magazine that campaigned against lynching, opposed U.S. participation in World War I, and urged African Americans to oppose the draft since the armed forces were segregated. In 1925 he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an attempt to earn rights for African Americans working as porters for the Pullman Company. In 1937, after more than a decade-long fight, the company awarded the porters more than $2 million in pay increases as well as other concessions. During World War II Randolph again urged African Americans to not answer the call when drafted and pressured President Roosevelt by creating the March on Washington Movement, which called for an end to segregation in the armed forces as well as defense industries. While the defense industries were integrated, the armed forces remained segregated until Randolph pressured President Harry S. Truman to issue an executive order in 1948. Randolph was also influential in helping Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Shaw, Leander (1930–) Leander Shaw became the first African American chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court in 1990. Shaw taught at Florida A&M University in the 1960s before practicing as a lawyer, representing African Americans in civil rights cases. In 1983, he was appointed to the state Supreme Court. He was reelected in 1984 and voted to become chief justice by his fellow justices in 1990.

Steele, Charles Kenzie (1914–1980) Reverend C. K. Steele was an influential civil rights leader in Florida and close associate of

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Steele moved to Tallahassee in 1951 and became minister of the Bethel Baptist Church. In 1956, he helped lead the Tallahassee Bus Boycott after two female African American students from Florida A&M University were arrested after refusing to give up their seats to white passengers. Steele helped to form and lead the Inter-Civic Council to protest the city’s segregation policies. Steele was arrested on several occasions and in spite of violent threats from the Ku Klux Klan, Tallahassee integrated its buses. Steele’s famous quote from the boycott was, “We would rather walk in dignity than ride in humiliation.” Steele was also vice president and a charter member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was led by Dr. King.

Walls, Josiah (1842–1905) Josiah Walls, originally from Virginia, was forced into service for the Confederacy before being captured by the Union and joining their ranks in 1863, eventually serving in Florida. After the war, Walls settled in Alachua County where he became a teacher and eventually a delegate to the state Republican Convention in 1867. In 1869, he was elected to the state legislature, and in 1871, he was elected to serve as Florida’s only representative in the U.S. Congress. In 1874, he won reelection, but his victory was challenged and he was unseated in 1876, ending his political career. In 1873, he bought a newspaper in Gainesville, making Walls the first African American to own a paper in Florida.

Cultural Contributions African Americans have played a key role in shaping Florida’s history and heritage and have made numerous cultural contributions to the Sunshine State, beginning during Spanish colonial rule, and moving through the antebellum period, when most of the state’s African Americans were slaves, to the present day.

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Besides the contributions made to the fields of music and literature by such native Floridians as Ray Charles and Zora Neale Hurston, African Americans have contributed to the culture of Florida in other ways and many are evidenced in neighborhoods across the state. One such neighborhood is the Smoky Hollow Historic District in Tallahassee. This black neighborhood was home to Wallace Amos, the founder of “Famous Amos” cookies. Another historically black neighborhood, whose history and culture add to Florida’s heritage, is the Lincolnville area of St. Augustine, which has been nicknamed “Africa,” and was where Ray Charles attended a school for the deaf and blind in order to learn how to read music. In South Florida, the neighborhood of Coconut Grove, inside Miami’s city limits, is home to a large Bahamian population, and these immigrants have added flair to Miami by holding an annual festival, the Goombay Festival, which just celebrated its 33rd year. What began as a small street festival in 1976 has grown to be one of the largest black heritage festivals in the United States. From their early days aiding Spanish conquistadors, through their time as slaves, until the present day, African Americans have helped to shape the culture and heritage of the Sunshine State. Among the other cultural contributions of blacks in Florida are the world-famous Florida A&M University Rattlers Marching Band, which has performed at major sports events, presidential inaugurations, and other national celebrations. Floridians also celebrate Black History Month, sometimes under state sponsorship. Among notable historical sites and museums are the African Heritage Project at the University of South Florida, which seeks to rediscover records of African American history; the African American Museum of the Arts in Fort Lauderdale; the African Americans in Florida Oral History Project at the University of South Florida in Tampa; the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Bradenton; the Pinellas County African

American History Museum in Clearwater; the African American Museum at Florida A&M University; and American Beach, formerly a luxurious oceanfront resort for African Americans on the south end of Amelia Island.

Bibliography Colburn, David. Racial Crisis and Community Conflict: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877–1980. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. Colburn, David R., and Jane L. Landers. The African American Heritage of Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995. D’Orso, Michael. Like Judgment Day: The Ruin and Redemption of a Town Called Rosewood. New York: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1996. Dunn, Marvin. Black Miami in the Twentieth Century. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1997. Dunn, Marvin, and Bruce Porter. The Miami Riots of Nineteen Eighty: Crossing the Bounds. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Gannon, Michael. Florida, a Short History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. Jones, Maxine D., and Kevin M. McCarthy. African-Americans in Florida. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1993. Newton, Michael. The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Porter, Bruce, and Marvin Dunn. The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1984. Stewart, Martina. “Meek Announces Senate Run.” (Online, January 2009). CNN Web site. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com /2009/01/13. Tebeau, Carlton W. A History of Florida. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971.

GEORGIA Alton Hornsby, Jr.

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Chronology 1730

(July) James Oglethorpe and his associates petition for a royal charter to establish a new colony south of Carolina.

1732

(April) George II signs the Georgia charter for Oglethorpe and his associates.

1733

Leading a group of English colonists, James Oglethorpe founds the town of Savannah.

1735

Slavery and rum are prohibited in the Georgia colony.

1749

(May 19) Georgia’s trustees ask the king to allow the repeal of the colony’s ban on slavery.

1749

(October 26) The king approves the trustees’ petition asking for the repeal of Georgia’s slavery prohibition.

1751

(January 1) African slavery is officially authorized in Georgia.

1758

To encourage the settlement of skilled white laborers in the colony, the Georgia Assembly bans African slaves from working in various trades, including carpentry, masonry, and bricklaying.

1773

First African Baptist, Georgia’s oldest African American church, is established

1788

(January 2) Georgia ratifies the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth state to enter the Union.

1793

(February 12) Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act.

1793

(June 20) Eli Whitney applies for a patent for his cotton gin, which he developed at the Georgia plantation of Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene.

1798

Georgia prohibits the further importation of slaves.

1847

Atlanta, formerly Marthasville, is incorporated.

1850

As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passes a new, stronger fugitive slave act, substituting federal for state jurisdiction over fugitive slaves.

1859

Georgia again prohibits the postmortem manumission of slaves by last will and testament and permits free blacks to be enslaved if they have been indicted for vagrancy.

1861

(January 19) Georgia votes to secede from the Union.

1861

(February 8) Georgia is admitted to the Confederate States of America.

1864

After the Battle of Atlanta, the city is occupied by Union forces; Union forces take Savannah.

1865

(January 16) General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Orders No. 15, which grants abandoned coastal lands in Georgia, southern South Carolina, and northern Florida to “negroes now made free by the acts of war.”

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1865

(December 6) Georgia ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery; Georgia’s ratification gives the amendment the 27 state approvals it needs to take effect.

1865

Atlanta University is founded.

1865

With the end of the Civil War, Georgia is placed under U.S. military control.

1866

(November 9) Georgia rejects the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1868

Blacks are elected to, then expelled from, the Georgia legislature.

1868

(July 21) Georgia ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment, almost two weeks after the amendment took effect.

1868

(July 21) Georgia is readmitted to the Union.

1869

Georgia is denied representation in Congress, and the U.S. Army reoccupies the state.

1870

(February 2) To have its representatives recognized by Congress, Georgia ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting blacks voting rights.

1870

African American representatives restored to seats in the Georgia legislature.

1870

(July 15) Georgia is again readmitted to the Union.

1871

African American Jefferson Long of Macon is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1871

U.S. military forces leave Georgia.

1877

Georgia institutes cumulative poll taxes for voting.

1882–1930

458 blacks are lynched in Georgia, more for the period than in any other state except Mississippi.

1883

The U.S. Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which opened public accommodations to blacks, unconstitutional.

1891

Various segregation laws are passed by the Georgia legislature.

1895

Booker T. Washington addresses the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, where he expresses a willingness to accept segregation in return for white help in advancing educational and economic opportunities for blacks, an idea later known as the “Atlanta Compromise.”

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholds the concept of separate but equal.

1900

Georgia Democrats institute all-white primaries.

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1906

A serious race riot erupts in Atlanta, leaving an estimated 25–40 blacks and two whites dead.

1908

Georgia institutes literacy tests for voting.

1910

Three blacks in Uvalda are killed in rioting following Jack Johnson’s defeat of James Jeffries, the so-called “great white hope.”

1912

White residents of Forsyth County drive African Americans out of the county.

1915

A new Ku Klux Klan is organized on Stone Mountain.

1917

The first Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1933

Blacks and whites in Georgia are to be educated in separate schools.

1935

A Georgia state law requires segregation on all public transportation.

1935

Separate mental health hospitals are required for blacks.

1936

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, a novel about Civil War Georgia, is published.

1945

(April) U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at his retreat in Warm Springs.

1945

A new Georgia constitution calls for separate schools for whites and blacks.

1946

Two black sharecroppers, one man and one woman, are lynched by a mob at Moore’s Ford Bridge, in one of the last mass lynchings in the United States.

1947

John Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson, a native of Cairo, becomes the first African American Major League Baseball player.

1949

WERD, the first black-owned radio station in the country, goes on the air in Atlanta; its founder is Atlanta businessman Jesse B. Blayton.

1955

Georgia repeals its poll tax.

1957

Georgia declares that no public funds are to be allocated for integrated schools.

1960

Martin Luther King Jr. returns to Atlanta, where he was born, to be copastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

1961

The University of Georgia and the Atlanta public schools are desegregated.

1961

Martin Luther King launches his first direct action campaign to end segregation and discrimination in Albany, Georgia, but the “Albany Movement” has little success due to divisions in the city’s black community.

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1966

Citing his opposition to the Vietnam War, the Georgia legislature denies Julian Bond his seat in the legislature by a vote of 184–12. Later in the year, the U.S. Supreme Court orders Bond seated.

1968

After her husband’s assassination, Coretta Scott King founds the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.

1972

Vernon Jordan, an Atlanta native and former president of the United Negro College Fund, is named president of the National Urban League.

1972

Andrew Young becomes the first black congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction, by winning election from a district with a white majority.

1973

Maynard Jackson is elected as the first black mayor of Atlanta.

1973

The Atlanta NAACP, headed by Lonnie King, agrees to a compromise plan whereby the Atlanta chapter ends its demands for busing to achieve school desegregation in return for black control of the Atlanta public schools administration. The national NAACP suspends King, a former leader of the Atlanta sit-in movement.

1974

(April) Henry (Hank) Aaron, a native of Alabama and a member of the Atlanta Braves, hits his 715th home run, breaking the record long held by legendary white player Babe Ruth.

1981

Ed McIntyre is elected as the first black mayor of Augusta.

1984

Ed McIntyre resigns as mayor of Augusta after being convicted on federal extortion charges.

1986

John Lewis, a Democrat, becomes the second African American elected to Congress from Georgia in the twentieth century.

1992

Cynthia McKinney becomes the first black woman elected to Congress from Georgia.

1993

William “Bill” Campbell is elected mayor of Atlanta.

1996

Atlanta hosts the Centennial Olympic Games, which former Atlanta mayors Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson were influential in bringing to the state.

2001

Shirley Clarke Franklin is elected mayor of Atlanta, becoming the first black woman to be mayor of a large southern city.

2002

(July 27) Savannah dedicates a bronze statue to Africans brought into Georgia as slaves through the port of Savannah.

2004

Denise Majette wins the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first woman to win a Senate nomination in Georgia; Majette loses the general election to Republican Johnny Isakson.

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2006

Former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell is sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $6,000 after being convicted of tax evasion. The jury had previously acquitted him of bribery charges.

2008

Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, defeats Hillary Clinton in the Georgia Democratic primary, winning about 66 percent of the vote; Obama loses Georgia to John McCain in the general election, winning about 47 percent of the vote.

2008

The 25th anniversary of the mayor’s Masked Ball is held in Atlanta. The ball, which raises money for the United Negro College Fund, was initiated by Billye Aaron, wife of baseball star Hank Aaron and former regional director of the UNCF.

2009

Kasim Reed, a former Georgia state senator, is elected mayor of Atlanta. The 59th mayor of the city, Reed continues a string of more than 35 years of consecutive black mayors; however, he defeated his white opponent, Mary Norwood, by fewer than 900 votes.

Historical Overview When the colony of Georgia was established in 1733, the intention of the charter was to provide a place for poor persons who were unable to support themselves in England and to establish a frontier for Carolina, which because of its small number of white inhabitants was very much exposed to hostile Native Americans and Spaniards. It was felt that it was unlikely that the poor people who would be sent from England as well as any poor person who would later enter the colony voluntarily to escape religious persecution or for other reasons would be able to purchase slaves or to maintain them if they were made available free of cost. At the time the average cost of a bondsperson was $150. The trustees’ desire to prohibit slavery in Georgia soon, however, came under strong attack. Faced with mounting expenses for military protection against the Spaniards and a decline in private contributions for the aid of the colony, the Georgians were, by 1738, short on military supplies and even food. On December 9, 1738, a group of 121 white males met at Savannah and drew up a petition to the trustees concerning the economic crisis. In the petition, they said that their poor conditions could partially be alleviated by the use of slaves

“with limitations.” The trustees, however, refused to allow slavery in the colony at this time. Some prominent voices continued to be raised, however, in support of black servile labor in the colony. Among these was evangelist George Whitefield. Whitefield had become convinced that the lack of slaves was one of the principal causes of the poor condition of the colony. Nevertheless, the trustees remained firm in their stand against slavery. In the face of the trustees’ opposition, some Georgians felt they had no other recourse other than to evade the law and move forward with their plans for black slaves. When news of these evasions and laxity of enforcement of the law reached the trustees, they told the local authorities to end the illegal activities. But the proslavery steamroller could not be stopped. In January 1749, a new petition was sent to the trustees asking for immediate authorization to use black slaves in Georgia. The trustees could resist no longer. They asked the king for approval of a repeal of the act prohibiting slavery. In 1751, African slavery was authorized in Georgia. In authorizing the bondage of Africans in Georgia, the trustees added certain provisions. Enslavers were encouraged to permit their bondspersons to attend church on Sundays and no work was to be required on that day. Penalties

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against a white person were all punishable by death. In the beginning, Georgia’s bondspersons raised rice and worked as domestic servants. Later as cotton became king in the area, most worked in the cotton fields. Aside from religious services, often in the company of whites and other times autonomous, the slaves’ social activities were limited to occasional recreation with the enslaver and their own late night, weekend, or holiday entertainment in the slave quarters.

Georgia Blacks in the American Revolution

The First African Baptist Church, in Franklin Square, Georgia, ca. 1940. (Library of Congress)

were ordered for any interracial sexual cohabitation, and interracial marriage was forbidden. Finally, the trustees declared that enslavers should not exercise unlimited powers over their slaves and that each slavetrader and slaveholder be required to pay a tax for each person held in bondage. When the first General Assembly of Georgia was held in 1775, a new slave code was adopted. It prescribed that all persons who were slaves at the time of the first colonial General Assembly in 1775 should be assigned to bondage forever. The statute prohibited cruel and unusual treatment of slaves but did not require murderers of slaves to face the full penalty for murder until a second offense. Slaves could not, without a permit, sell food products, own a horse or cattle, or any boat or canoe. They could not sell or purchase liquor. Bondspersons were to receive severe penalties for any crimes they committed: arson, malicious mischief, certain thefts, and homicide

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, it was general and official policy in most American colonies to exclude blacks from the colonial militias, but military necessities often made these rules invalid. By 1775, blacks were serving in the militias of several colonies. At the national level, General George Washington and the Continental Congress vacillated on the use of blacks as soldiers first approving, then disapproving, then approving again, but only free blacks. By 1778, manpower shortages and the worsening military situation on the American side suggested the recruitment of soldiers wherever they could be found. Several New England colonies and New York authorized the use of slaves. Most of these colonies promised the slaves their freedom after the war if they served faithfully. In the summer of 1780, Maryland took the lead among southern colonies in authorizing the use of slaves as soldiers. Georgia law prohibited slaves from carrying firearms for any purpose. At the national level, the Continental Congress had, since 1779, been recommending the employment of slaves as soldiers. After the British had occupied Savannah and opened a second campaign to subdue the South, the Congress sent a specific request to Georgia and South

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Carolina to enlist slaves. These were to be formed in separate battalions with white officers. Owners of the slaves were to be paid $1,000 for each ablebodied man under 35 years of age. They were not to receive any salary, but those who served “well and faithfully” to the end of the war were to be freed and given the sum of $59. Despite the perils and despite the pleas and offers of the Congress, both South Carolina and Georgia refused to employ slaves as soldiers. Although Georgia never authorized the use of slaves as soldiers, the colony at a very early stage in the war used blacks in noncombat roles. In November 1775, the authorities ordered that 100 blacks be pressed into service to help General Charles Lee enclose the military storehouse at Savannah. In June 1776, blacks were hired to build entrenchments at Sunbury. And in June 1778, blacks were hired to repair the roads between the Ogechee and the Altamaha Rivers. The Georgia officials ordered the use of blacks, even though in many cases their enslavers were opposed. The British, also like the Americans, employed a number of blacks as laborers, guides, scouts, and spies. In the fall of 1779, for example, the British commander General Augustine Prevost was trying to decide whether or not he should surrender to the Americans and their allies. During the 24-hour period in which he had to make up his mind, he was reenforced by a detachment under the command of Colonel John Maitland. Success in reaching Savannah for Prevost was attributed to his black guides. At the Dawfuskie River en route from Beaufort, South Carolina, Maitland was blocked by French forces. Some blacks in the area volunteered to lead him to the enemy. The British force used obscure, winding waterways, swamps, and marshes and the covering of a dense fog to reach Savannah undetected. The route had never been used before except by “bears, wolves, and runaway Negroes.” Georgia did not exhibit the same attitude toward free blacks as soldiers as it did toward

slaves. Free blacks were probably fighting in Georgia as early as 1775. But because of the very small number of free blacks, only about 300, living in the state during the Revolutionary War, this class was destined to be an almost negligible factor as combatants. The most notable black arms bearer for the patriots in Georgia was an artilleryman, Austin Dabney. Dabney’s enslaver, Richard Aycock, brought him to Wilkes County, Georgia, from North Carolina shortly after the beginning of the Revolutionary War. After Aycock was called to serve in the Georgia militia, he used the rule of substitution, where persons who could furnish able-bodied substitutes could be exempt from military service, to ask that young Dabney be permitted to take his place: Aycock swore that the young boy, allegedly the son of a Virginia white woman and a black father, was indeed a free person of color, since the law forbade slaves from bearing arms for any reason. As a soldier, Dabney was probably the only black person to participate in the fierce battle of Kettle Creek in 1779. Two years later, he was wounded in the thigh at Augusta. The wound crippled him for life and ended a brief, but distinguished military adventure.

Free Blacks in Antebellum Georgia The free blacks in antebellum Georgia never comprised more than 1 percent of the total population of the colony and state. Yet despite their small number, the white community sought to control them through social restrictions and legal enactments. The fear was that the existence of even this small number of persons had a disturbing influence on the larger system of slavery. The free black clearly demonstrated to the slave that there was an alternative condition for black people in Georgia. To keep the free black class small, the Georgia legislature in 1859 forbade the freeing of slaves by will and testament. The free blacks found almost all of their social associations within their own group, as they were

Georgia almost totally cut off from the slave community and interacted with the white community only under specified arrangements. Much of this interracial interaction was on the same basis as that of slaves and white persons as servants and laborers of one kind or another for whites. Nevertheless, in Georgia a number of free blacks, despite the caste system, achieved notable successes. The Revolutionary War hero Dabney, in later years, became a rather prosperous landowner and sportsman in Pike County, Georgia. Other affluent blacks in the pre–Civil War era included Andrew Marshall, a free black drayman of Savannah who was worth $5,000 in 1850, James Oliver of Savannah, and Jeffrey Moore of Augusta. All of these blacks owned either gigs and/or carriages. In the Revolutionary period, two blacks, George Leslie and Andrew Bryan, organized the First African Church at Savannah, Georgia, probably the first stable black Baptist Church in the American colonies. In 1773, the church, founded by the exslaves, opened its doors to a small congregation. Both men had only a modest amount of education and had begun preaching at very young ages. In addition to Austin Dabney, the Reverends Bryan and Leile, Marshall, Oliver, and Moore, the best known of Georgia’s free blacks were Anthony Odingsells and Solomon Humphries. Odingsells, who was perhaps the son of his enslaver, was freed in 1809. He soon came into possession of several items of property, including land and slaves. Even in 1860, he retained much of his valuable holdings. In an unusual circumstance as a black person, he owned property in the city and was a successful merchant and cotton broker.

Civil War By 1860, the conflict between the North and the South over whether slavery should be allowed to exist or be banned in the western territories had reached the boiling point. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, whom the South viewed as a

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radical abolitionist Republican, as president that year, the die was cast. South Carolina seceded and attacked the federal Fort Sumter. President Lincoln responded by calling for 75,000 volunteers to defend the Union. The Civil War had begun. The Georgia Secession Convention of 1861 met in Milledgeville from January 16 to March 23, 1861, and not only voted to secede the state from the Union but also created Georgia’s first new constitution since 1798. The vote for secession was 208 to 89. After the vote, celebrations were held all over the state.

Emancipation and Reconstruction On September 22, 1862, five days after the Union victory at Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation, which in effect declared that all slaves held in bondage in states still in rebellion against the United States as of January 1, 1863, would be free. Since the Union controlled only a small portion of southern territory on that date, real emancipation would come with military victory and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln—and after his assassination in 1865, his successor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee—had wanted to get the South back in the Union as soon as possible. Hence they favored lenient terms of reconstruction. They were ambivalent about the terms of African American citizenship. Another group in Congress were Republicans who wanted to punish the South and possibly achieve political dominance there by making blacks citizens and enfranchising them. In 1866, this group began to override Johnson’s intentions, instituted military or radical reconstruction of the South, made blacks citizens of the United States and of the states wherein they resided, and gave them civil and voting rights. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 called for new constitutions to be drawn up in the rebel

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states, new legislatures to be elected, and the Thirteenth Amendment ratified, among other things. When military reconstruction began in Georgia in 1867, there were 465,000 blacks and 591,000 whites residing in the state. After the registration of voters was completed it was found that 95,000 blacks and whites were eligible to cast ballots. In the ensuing elections to the constitutional convention, 33 blacks and 137 whites were elected. Clearly the blacks had not exercised a proportionate degree of their newly won political influence in the election of members of their own race to office. The explanation for the failure of black voters to vote black or not to vote at all lies in several areas. First, despite the presence of federal troops, antiblack violence continued. Much of this violence was directed at would-be voters. Second, since so many blacks were dependent upon southern whites for their livelihood, economic intimidation was always a real possibility. In the constitutional convention that met in Atlanta in 1867–1868, only 19 percent of the delegates were black. But some of them made their voices heard by introducing measures to enhance the economic, educational, and judicial status of the state. In the 1868 elections, four blacks were elected to the state Senate and 29 to the House of Representatives. Here, again, the black representatives introduced measures for education and to strengthen the executive branch. Meanwhile, many white Democrats devised a plot to unseat the black legislators. They contended that the new constitution of 1868 did not permit people of color to hold office. Finally in the late summer of 1868, by lopsided votes in the Senate and the House, all of the black legislators were removed. The ouster of the black legislators caused consternation among African Americans and some white Republican leaders in the state as well as Republicans in Congress. National attention was first attracted by a memorable oration delivered by black Senator Henry McNeal Turner

immediately following the dismissals in which he chastised the white lawmakers, and by inference the white race, for making war on defenseless blacks. In 1870, the blacks were ordered reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court. With the return of the black legislators, conservative white Georgians had suffered a setback, but not a defeat. Violence and intimidation still kept many black voters from the polls, and following the elections of 1870 and the new withdrawal of military rule, whites again reigned supreme. Only two blacks were elected to the Georgia Senate until Leroy Johnson accomplished the feat in 1964. The last black to serve in either house of the legislature prior to the election of Johnson was W. H. Rogers of McIntosh County, who left in 1907.

Jim Crow Georgia Booker T. Washington, a founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881, had become by the mid-1890s the preeminent African American leader in the United States. Thus he was asked to represent his people as a principal speaker at the Cotton States International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895. There he outlined what he hoped would be a formula for racial peace and African American advancement. He discouraged the seeking of political office on the part of blacks, discounted the importance of social equality, and asked that whites support blacks in their quest for economic opportunity. This speech, denounced by his critics as the Atlanta Compromise, won wide acceptance by whites, North and South, and many blacks. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, ruled that separate public facilities could be provided for blacks and whites as long as they were equal. After 1900, Georgia, like most southern states, passed a series of laws that separated the races in schools and in public accommodations.

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Coroner W. T. Brown places a sheet over the body of one of four African American mob victims in a funeral home at Monroe, Georgia. The four people, two men and two women, were seen while riding with a white farmer and were taken into the woods and shot. (Library of Congress)

Yet the facilities and the opportunities provided for blacks were not equal, and they were subjected to discrimination in every walk of life. At the same time acts were enacted that severely restricted black political participation through such extralegal devices as literacy and understanding tests, poll taxes, and whites-only primary elections. With these measures, added to violence and intimidation, blacks were destined to remain for nearly half a century a negligible factor in the political life of the state. Under the doctrine of white supremacy, some individuals and groups sought to aid and abet the government in “keeping blacks in their place.” In many instances they resorted to violence. Foremost among these was the Ku Klux Klan, which was revived in Georgia in the early 1900s. Also

there were disastrous race riots and lynchings, which further terrorized blacks. One of a series of riots that occurred in various parts of the nation during the 1900s was one at Atlanta in 1906. Spurred by inflamed newspaper reports of black men attacking white women, mobs of whites roamed through Atlanta and its suburbs killing and injuring blacks. The final toll left at least three dozen blacks and a handful of whites dead and scores, mostly black, injured. Also between 1882 and 1930, there were 450 lynchings in Georgia, a total only exceeded by Mississippi’s 538. From 1890 to 1900, Georgia lynchers killed more than one black person per month. The lynchings declined in the first decade of the twentieth century, but by 1911 rose again when 19 black Georgians were murdered.

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After 1919, there was another decrease, and between 1927 and the New Deal, there were few official reports of lynchings. However, in 1946, in what may have been the last mass lynching in the country, two young black sharecroppers, a man and a woman, were taken by a mob to the Moore’s Ford Bridge, on the Apalachee River at the border of Walton and Oconee counties, beaten, and shot several times. The lynching was reported in the national media and sparked mass protests in several places, including New York City and in Washington, D.C. Georgia governor Ellis Arnall, one of the first moderates to occupy the governor’s office in modern times, requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to seek out members of the lynch mob. The NAACP also asked President Harry S. Truman to investigate. Later, the FBI did investigate but no one was ever indicted in the murders. But the Moore’s Ford lynching did motivate civil rights groups to press anew for federal antilynching legislation in Congress, and helped stir Truman to create the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. In 1999, the Moore’s Ford Memorial Committee and the Georgia Historical Society erected a historical marker commemorating the 1946 lynching. It is the only known official marker for a lynching in Georgia. Following the Atlanta race riot of 1906, some African American leaders, especially in Atlanta, sought racial peace mainly through the type of accommodationism proposed by Booker T. Washington. Others, however, continued in the historic tradition of protest that preceded the riot and that was manifested by the blacks who resisted the white mobs. For example, in the 1890s, there had been boycotts of segregated street cars in Macon, Savannah, and Atlanta. But these efforts failed when leaders of the movement became divided over strategy. Other actions involved challenging segregation in Pullman railroad sleeping cars. W. E. B. Du Bois,

J. W. E. Bowen, Reverend H. H. Proctor, and Henry McNeal Turner filed actions, including an unsuccessful complaint to the Interstate Commerce Commission. During the disfranchisement debate of the early 1900s, several black leaders, including Du Bois and college president John Hope, signed a petition opposing the measure. And in 1912 there was a brief boycott of segregated cruise ships in Savannah. African American leaders were also, at least initially, very active in the defense of Angelo Herndon, a young African American communist who was convicted of insurrection for trying to organize black and white workers during the Great Depression. The conviction was subsequently overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet even in the throes of Jim Crow, African Americans in Georgia continued to live their lives through parallel institutions. The key to African American success in these years was the black church, which not only gave the race emotional solace, but became its principal social and often economic and political institution. At the close of the Civil War, African American churches were established throughout Georgia, in both rural and urban areas. Some of the oldest included the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, the Springfield Baptist Church and Walker’s Tabernacle Church in Augusta, and the Friendship Baptist Church and the Bethel AME Church in Atlanta. The early pastors of these churches also became some of the earliest African American political and civil rights leaders in the state—men such as Charles Walker of Walker Tabernacle in Augusta, E. K. Love of Savannah, Edward R. Carter of Friendship, and Wesley John Gaines and Henry McNeal Turner at Bethel in Atlanta. In addition to the major denominational churches, there were many storefront churches, some adhering to the traditional denominations,

Georgia others calling themselves evangelical or healing or free will and other such names. More recently, megachurches preaching an economically based gospel as well as black Muslim mosques and black Christian nationalist churches have also sprung up, especially in the major cities. Although there were clandestine black schools during the era of bondage, real systems of black education did not emerge until after the Civil War. Most of these were sponsored by the federal Freedmen’s Bureau and northern missionary societies. These first institutions were elementary schools, often housed in black churches. But many rapidly evolved into colleges and universities. Most of the latter were in Atlanta, starting with what became Atlanta University in 1865 and ending with Morris Brown College, the only one founded solely by African Americans, and Spelman College in 1881. By this time Atlanta had become the largest educational center for blacks in the world. Later another private school, Paine College, was founded at Augusta, and three state schools, Savannah State, Albany State, and Fort Valley State, the latter in a rural area, were also established. While a few free blacks owned land and acquired a degree of wealth in the slave era, the growth in black property owning and black entrepreneurship coincided with freedom and the attainment of education, particularly higher education. Since Atlanta had the largest number of black colleges, it also became a capital of black business, including insurance companies, banks, cemetery associations, hotels, and restaurants. Yet to a smaller extent, such enterprises also existed in Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Albany, and other places. Politically, although African Americans, especially in Atlanta, had been having sporadic influence on some local general and special elections since the early 1900s, the real breakthrough in electoral participation and office holding did not occur until after 1946. Two years earlier the

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U.S. Supreme Court had removed a major hurdle to African Americans’ exercise of the franchise by declaring, in Smith v. Allwright, the Democratic white primary (which had really been the only important election) unconstitutional. Following this decision, the Court sustained its opinion in a case brought from Columbus, Georgia—Chapman v. King. Atlanta’s black leaders, who had been protesting for full voting rights and urging their fellow blacks to register to vote, launched new voter registration initiatives. Within a few short months, they added thousands of new black voters to the polls. By 1949, they had become the balance of power in local elections. This had a profound impact on race relations in the city, as major white officeholders had to respect the black political influence. In 1953, a coalition of black voters and upper-income white voters elected Rufus Clement, the president of Atlanta University, to the Atlanta Board of Education—the first African American to occupy a political office in Georgia since the early 1900s.

An Era of Civil Rights The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ushered in the era of civil rights. This decision and several which followed it, together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, were supplemented by direct action campaigns beginning with bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama, and elsewhere in the 1950s and sit-ins, freedom rides, and other public demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s. In this new Civil Rights Movement, an Atlanta native, Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as the principal leader. School desegregation in Georgia began in 1961 with the desegregation of the University of Georgia and the Atlanta public schools. The former occurred after days of rioting; the latter occurred peacefully and won national commendation from President John F. Kennedy and the

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international media. The occurrences in Atlanta broke a cycle of violence that had accompanied much of school desegregation in the South since the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision. While the desegregation in Atlanta was comparatively peaceful, it was also token. Within a few years, the schools were mostly resegregated. Acknowledging the massive opposition to school desegregation, especially through busing across neighborhoods and jurisdictional lines, the Atlanta NAACP agreed to a compromise that involved the cessation of the pressures for busing in return for black administrative control of the predominantly black school system. Elsewhere, in the Atlanta suburbs and in smaller cities and in rural areas, over time, much more school desegregation was accomplished. Following the beginning of the sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960, the first major sit-ins in Georgia occurred the next month in Atlanta. They were followed by protests in Savannah, Albany, Augusta, Columbus, and other places. The Atlanta sit-ins, however, faced a major roadblock as Atlanta merchants refused to relent. A major breakthrough occurred in the fall of 1960 when Martin Luther King Jr. joined local college students in a sit-in, was arrested, and then sent to the state’s maximum-security prison for violating probation on a previous traffic charge in another county. This arrest caused the Atlanta mayor Bill Hartsfield to urge a truce in the sit-ins until he could try to get white merchants to seriously negotiate. Then when the campaign of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy expressed concern for King and was reportedly instrumental in obtaining his release on bail, the Atlanta sit-ins gained international attention. Some scholars contend that the switch of many black votes in the nation to Kennedy over Vice President Richard Nixon provided the margin of victory for the Massachusetts senator. Nevertheless, the Atlanta sit-

in stalemate persisted and public accommodations were not desegregated until the fall of 1961 following school desegregation. Another major battleground of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia was in Albany and it too involved a stalemate and the participation of Martin Luther King Jr. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) provided the first initiative for the Freedom Rides. In Georgia, the riders used Atlanta as a staging area as they moved throughout the region. Within the state, they also stopped at Savannah, Thomasville, and at Albany. The visits to Albany were to set the stage for one of the most famous mass movements of the era. In an attempt to avoid negative publicity that might aversely affect economic prosperity, the town fathers in Albany adopted a policy of “killing them [the demonstrators] with kindness.” The local strategy, combined with some miscommunication and division among Albany’s blacks, many scholars now contend, perplexed Martin Luther King Jr., and gave him one of his first major setbacks. Elsewhere in the state, from Savannah on the southeast coast to Rome in north Georgia, there were protests. Some, as in Savannah, were almost immediately successful; others were more protracted; some turned violent. Blacks in Augusta and Columbus, for example, often faced setbacks similar to those in Albany, but the police were more hostile, there was violent opposition from white racists, and sometimes editorial opposition from the white press. The achievement of desegregation, other than in schools, came much later and more grudgingly to Georgia’s smaller cities and towns. Nevertheless, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Charles Sherrod, a Virginian, did confront entrenched and violent white racism in the Georgia Black Belt, taking on such places as “Terrible” Terrell and “Bad” Baker counties in southwest Georgia. The

Georgia young SNCC volunteers lived in the area for several months attempting to convince local blacks to register and vote. Several were arrested, some were beaten and even shot. In 1963, some were charged with insurrection, a capital crime, by authorities in Americus. They were subsequently released, but such tactics made their work among local blacks much more difficult. Yet undeterred, some of them, like Sherrod, became residents of the area. Although civil rights protesters in Georgia, as in the rest of the South, most often followed the nonviolent principles and practices of Martin Luther King Jr., there were several instances of violence across racial lines during the civil rights era. In 1966 and 1967, riots in Atlanta, blamed on SNCC leaders but provoked by police shootings of blacks, were small and contained. But a larger riot occurred in Augusta in 1970, sparked by the torture and murder of a black teenager in a city jail. As late as 1987 civil rights leaders led a march in Forsyth County—a county that warned black visitors not to “let the sun go down on your head.” In 1972, the police chief in Darien, a small town on the Georgia coast, shot and seriously wounded a black garbage worker for allegedly disturbing the peace by drinking and arguing with his girlfriend. The incident so angered local blacks that they began the first Civil Rights Movement in McIntosh County. Among the major gains of the civil rights era was the election of African Americans to high political offices in the South. Although some blacks, especially in Atlanta, had been elected to local offices since the 1950s, the greater number took office during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. The biggest prize came in 1973 with the election of Maynard H. Jackson Jr., in Atlanta as the first African American mayor of a major southern city. In this period, African American mayors were also elected in Augusta, Macon, and Savannah, as well as in smaller towns

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like Keysville and Washington. The era also saw the election of many county commissioners, county sheriffs, state legislators, state department heads, and many other lesser offices. The civil rights era also witnessed new economic opportunities for Georgia blacks. Although wealthy blacks had existed in Atlanta and other Georgia cities since the early 1900s and there were substantial middle-income communities of professional and businesspeople, the removal of Jim Crow discriminations in the 1960s and 1970s expanded the African American middle class. Now blacks attained middlemanagement positions in manufacturing, commerce, and finance as well as in education, fastfood franchises, and technology. Many blacks became owners of auto dealerships and of computer and other technology facilities. Yet there were great disparities between urban areas and rural areas and even within urban Georgia. While the wealth of some blacks expanded into the Atlanta suburbs, African American poverty in the central city remained among the highest in the nation.

The Post–Civil Rights Era Even in the antebellum period, free blacks in Savannah and elsewhere had formed churches and other social organizations among themselves. After the Civil War, even exclusive social clubs were formed in Atlanta and elsewhere. Still, the African American middle and upper classes spent considerable energies taking care of the less fortunate members of the race. As in much of the nation, in addition to the churches, this work was done by fraternal groups, like the Prince Hall Masons, the Eastern Stars, the Odd Fellows, and college fraternities and sororities. Major self-help was also provided by orphanages, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Neighborhood Union, the Concerned Black Clergy, the 100 Black Men, the NAACP, and the Urban League—both of

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the latter had local offices in the major cities of the state and regional offices in Atlanta. The Concerned Black Clergy and the 100 Black Men, both founded in the 1980s, were unique organizations—the former bringing together representatives of more than 125 Atlanta-area churches to address not only social issues but civil rights matters as well, and the latter raising money through balls and an annual football classic to fund college scholarships for deserving black youth and to mentor disadvantaged youth. This social formation continued throughout the post–civil rights era, even as African Americans found increasing opportunities for biracial social activities and community service. In 2010, it was estimated that the African American population in Georgia, 30 percent of the total of 9,830,000, was the third largest in the nation after Mississippi and Louisiana. The major cities of the state, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Savannah, and Macon, contained most of that population. By 2010, metropolitan Atlanta had added more African American residents than any other city in the nation and had the second-largest black population in the country. It also had one of the two richest African American communities in the nation.

Notable African Americans Abernathy, Ralph David (1926–1999) Ralph David Abernathy, born in Alabama, was a minister and civil/human rights leader who spent much of his life in Atlanta as a chief associate of Martin Luther King Jr., and succeeded King as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) after his assassination in 1968.

Abbott, Robert Sengstacke (1870–1940) Robert S. Abbott was the founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender. He was born on

St. Simons Island and moved to Chicago in the early 1900s.

Barber, Jesse Max (1878–1919) Jesse Max Barber was a journalist and civil/ human rights activist. He published the Voice of the Negro, a militant periodical. He was highly critical of white and black leaders in the aftermath of the Atlanta Riot of 1906 and was ordered to leave the city by influential whites.

Bolden, Dorothy (1923–2005) Dorothy Bolden was a labor and womanist leader and community activist. She founded the Domestic Workers Union and served on the Georgia Commission for Women.

Borders, William Holmes (1905–1993) William Holmes Borders was a minister, civil/ human rights leader, and politician. He guided Atlanta’s Wheat Street Baptist Church into a position as one of the leading black churches in the United States in his 50 years as pastor there. He was the principal leader of a group of ministers who demonstrated against bus segregation in Atlanta in 1957 and became the chairman of an adult committee that advised students during the Atlanta sit-ins of the 1960s. He was one of the top leaders in the Atlanta black power structure, but failed on two occasions to be elected to public office.

Bowen, John Wesley Edward (J. W. E.) (1855–1933) J. W. E. Bowen was a Methodist minister who rose to be a bishop and college president He was born in New Orleans and moved to Atlanta in 1893. He was president of Gammon Theological

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Seminary when he was detained and assaulted by police during the Atlanta Riot of 1906.

Cummings, Mary Moss Young (1944–2010)

Butler, Selena Sloan (c. 1872–1964)

Mary Moss Young Cummings was a civil rights leader and politician. She began her civil rights activism as a teenager in Fitzgerald, Georgia, and continued in college and in the city of Albany. She was also a state representative from the Albany area in the Georgia House. She was the first female to be elected president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials (GABEO).

Selena Sloan Butler was an educator and community activist. She was the founder of the Georgia Colored Parent-Teacher Association in 1920 and the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers in 1926.

Carter, Edward R. (E. R.) (1858–1944) E. R. Carter was a minister and civil rights leader. As pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, he was instrumental in the founding of Spelman College in 1881. He wrote the first comprehensive history of black Atlanta, The Black Side, in 1894.

Dobbs, John Wesley (1882–1961) John Wesley Dobbs was the grand-master of the Prince Hall Masons of Georgia from 1932 until 1961. He was also a leader in efforts to attain voting rights for blacks in Georgia and to have blacks register and vote intelligently. He was also a national vice president of the NAACP.

Clayton, Xernona (1930–) Xernona Clayton was born in Oklahoma and moved to Atlanta in 1965 to work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the headquarters of the SCLC. She was one of the first African American women to host a television show in the Deep South. Later she became a vice president at Turner Broadcasting and established the Trumpet Awards, presented annually to African American achievers in various fields.

Crogman, William Henry (W. H.) (1841–1931) W. H. Crogman was an educator and community leader. He was born in the British West Indies and arrived in Atlanta in 1883 to attend Atlanta University. He became the first African American president of Clark University (later Clark Atlanta University) in 1903 and served for seven years before returning to teaching. He walked to most places in Atlanta rather than ride segregated street cars.

Finch, William (1832–1911) William Finch was a minister and the first black elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1870. He was a staunch advocate for public schools for African Americans.

Flipper, Henry Ossian (1856–1940) Henry Ossian Flipper, born in bondage, was West Point’s first African American graduate in 1878. In 1881, he was dismissed from the military for allegedly embezzling funds. Flipper vehemently denied the charges. He and others suggested that racism may have been involved. He was exonerated posthumously by the military in 1976.

Franklin, Shirley Clarke (1945–) Shirley Clarke Franklin was the first female mayor of Atlanta and the first African American woman to be elected mayor of a major southern city.

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Hamilton, Grace Towns (1907–1992) Grace Hamilton was the first African American woman elected to the Georgia legislature. She served in the state Senate from 1965 to 1984. Working as a moderate, she was able to have much influence with both the legislative and executive branches during her tenure. Prior to entering politics, she had been the first female executive director of the Atlanta Urban League from 1943 to 1961.

Harper, Charles Lincoln (C. L.) (1877–1955) C.L. Harper was an educator and civil rights leader. He was the first principal of the Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, which was opened in 1924. He was also a founder and president of the Atlanta NAACP.

Hayes, Roland (1887–1977) Roland Hayes was a world-renowned classical singer. He first performed in Europe in the 1920s, after facing little appreciation in America for an African American employing that style of music. When he returned to the United States in 1923, he won wide acceptance as one of the best classical musicians in the world. In 1924, he was awarded the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal.

Herndon, Alonzo Franklin (1858–1927) Alonzo Franklin Herndon was born in bondage, but became one of the wealthiest African Americans of his time after founding the Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1905.

philanthropist who supported churches, colleges, social service organizations, and the NAACP through a family foundation. Ebony magazine listed him as the richest African American in the United States in 1962.

Hill, Jesse (1926–) Jesse Hill, born in St. Louis, became a business and civil rights leader in Atlanta. As president of Atlanta Life Insurance Co., he helped found the Atlanta Inquirer, a leading organ of the civil rights movement in Atlanta in the 1960s. He was also the first African American president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. A street in Atlanta is named for him.

Holley, Joseph Winthrop (1874–1958) Joseph Winthrop Holley was born in South Carolina and moved to Georgia in 1902 where he planned to establish a school for black children. The school eventually evolved into Albany State College in 1943. Holley served as president of the institution from the time it started as an elementary school in 1903 until it became a four-year college in 1943. Holley was also a founder of the Georgia Teachers and Educators Association, the first professional organization of black educators in the state, in 1933.

Hollowell, Donald Lee (1917–2004) Donald Lee Hollowell was an attorney and civil rights leader. A native of Kansas, he moved to Atlanta in the 1940s. He was the principal attorney in most of the major civil rights cases in Georgia in the 1960s, including the desegregation of state universities and the Atlanta public schools. A street in Atlanta is named for him.

Herndon, Norris Bumstead (1897–1977) Norris Bumstead Herndon succeeded his father, Alonzo F. Herndon, as president of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1928. He was also a

Holsey, Lucius Henry (1842–1920) Lucius Henry Holsey was a clergyman and educator. In 1903, he became the senior bishop of the

Georgia Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church. He was a founder of two schools, Paine College in Augusta and Holsey Institute in Cordele.

Hope, John (1868–1936) John Hope was an educator and civil rights leader. In 1906, he became the first African American president of what became Morehouse College. He was also the first African American president of Atlanta University, which he led from 1929 to 1936. He early disagreed with Booker T. Washington’s educational and racial philosophies and was the only African American college president to attend the Niagara Conference called by W. E. B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, and others in 1906.

Hope, Lugenia Burns (1871–1947)

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1947. During his tenure as president he doubled the number of buildings on campus and recruited some of the most talented faculty in the country. He subscribed to the agricultural-industrial mode of black education promoted by Booker T. Washington. Hubert was also a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Negro Country Life and the Log Cabin Center in Hancock County in the 1930s.

Jackson, Maynard Holbrook, Jr. (1938–2003) Maynard Jackson, a native of Texas, moved to Atlanta with his family at an early age. He was elected vice mayor of the city of Atlanta in 1969 and in 1973 was elected mayor—the first African American ever to hold the office and the first African American to be elected mayor of a major southern city.

Lugenia Burns Hope was born in St. Louis and lived in Chicago and Nashville before moving to Atlanta with her husband John Hope in 1898. When John Hope became president of Morehouse College, Lugenia Burns Hope not only served as first lady for the students, she became a community activist, holding office in the local NAACP, leading voter registration drives, and founding the Neighborhood Union, a social service agency.

Georgia Johnson was one of the nation’s most successful literary figures. She was born in Atlanta and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1909. Her repertoire included poetry, drama, and short stories: Her better known works include The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918), “Blue Blood” (1927), and Share My World (1962).

Howard, David T. (1849–1934)

Johnson, Leroy (1928–)

David T. Howard was a businessman who achieved substantial wealth as an undertaker in Atlanta. He extended his business enterprises into real estate. He is believed to have smuggled weapons into Atlanta for blacks during the 1906 riot.

Leroy Johnson was the first black person elected to the Georgia legislature since 1907. In the state Senate he rose to be one of the most influential members of that body. He made an unsuccessful run for mayor of Atlanta in 1973.

Hubert, Benjamin Franklin (d. c. 1947)

King, Chevrone Bowers (C. B) (1924–1988)

Benjamin Franklin Hubert was an educator. He was president of Georgia State Industrial College (now Savannah State College) from 1926 to

Johnson, Georgia Douglas Camp (1886–1966)

C. B. King was an attorney, civil rights leader, and politician in Albany. He represented Martin Luther

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King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and other civil rights demonstrators in 1962. In 1969, he ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat, and the next year was an unsuccessful candidate for governor.

King, Coretta Scott (1927–2006) Coretta Scott King, a native of Alabama, was a civil rights leader and organization executive. Following the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and began a successful lobbying campaign to make his birthday a national holiday. A school for girls in Atlanta is named in her honor.

secretary of the Women’s Executive Committee of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church who had helped raise money for the school at a crucial time in the late 1880s. By the beginning of the First World War, the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute enrolled nearly 1,000 students and had a faculty of 30. Economic hardships forced the school to close in 1949. It was succeeded by the Lucy C. Laney High School. A portrait of Ms. Laney now hangs in the Georgia state capitol.

Law, Westley Wallace (W. W.) (1923–2002)

Martin Luther King Jr. was the principal leader of the American Civil Rights Movement from the late 1950s until his assassination in 1968. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

W. W. Law was a civil/human rights leader who spent his life in Savannah, but earned the title “Mr. Civil Rights of Georgia.” He led both the Savannah and the state NAACP and was active in all of the actions to attain improved civil rights, human rights, and living conditions in Savannah and Georgia for more than half a century. A community center and library in Savannah are named for him.

King, Martin Luther, Sr. (1899–1984)

Lewis, John R. (1940–)

Martin Luther King Sr. was a minister, investor, and civil/human rights leader. Born in poverty in rural Georgia, he married the daughter of the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and civil rights leader A. D. Williams and upon his death succeeded him as pastor of the Atlanta church. As early as the 1930s, King led a voting rights march in Atlanta and participated in demonstrations for black policemen in the city. He invested in Atlanta’s black banks and other businesses and became one of the city’s wealthiest African Americans.

John Lewis, born in Alabama, is a civil rights leader and activist. He achieved a certain amount of immortality after being severely beaten by police during a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. He is Georgia’s longestserving African American congressman.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929–1968)

Laney, Lucy Craft (1854–1933) Lucy Craft Laney was an educator. She was the founder of one of the first schools for African Americans in Augusta. Laney named the school in honor of Francine Haines, corresponding

Long, Jefferson Franklin (1836–1900) Jefferson Franklin Long was Georgia’s first African American congressman. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for about 15 months. Yet he was the first African American representative to speak on the floor of Congress. He made a speech arguing against a proposal to remove the laws restricting office holding by former Confederates.

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from Morehouse in 1967, he became president of the Atlanta Board of Education. He was a counseler to Martin Luther King Jr. while he was a student at Morehouse College and after he became the nation’s foremost civil rights leader.

McCown, John L. (1934–1976)

John Lewis was one of the most courageous leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and has served as Democratic U.S. representative for Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since 1986. (U.S. House of Representatives)

Lowery, Joseph Echols (1921–) Joseph Echols Lowery is a minister and civil rights leader. He was a close aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and has been president of the SCLC. In 2009, Lowery was asked to give the benediction at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The president awarded him the Medal of Freedom in August 2009. A street in Atlanta is named for him.

Mays, Benjamin E. (1894–1984) Benjamin E. Mays was a native of South Carolina, but spent most of his life in Atlanta. He was an educator and civil rights spokesman. In 1940, he became president of Morehouse College and helped enhance the school’s national reputation for academic excellence. After he retired

John L. McCown was born in South Carolina and moved to New York City. In the 1960s, he was in Georgia working with the Equal Opportunity Authority in Savannah. In 1966, he was accused of stirring up rioting blacks in Atlanta. During that same year, he went to Hancock County to work for an antipoverty agency. The next year, he became the executive director of the Georgia Council on Human Relations. He also established the East Central Committee for Economic Opportunity in Hancock County. A controversial figure, he became known as the “political boss” of Hancock County. He was under investigation for corruption when he died in a plane crash in 1976.

McKinney, Cynthia (1935–) Cynthia McKinney was the first African American female elected to Congress from Georgia. She served six terms between 1992 and 2006. In and out of the Congress she was a controversial figure as she vocally supported radical causes, including antiwar protests. In 2008, she was the Green Party’s candidate for president.

Paschal, James (1920–2008) James Paschal was a leading African American entrepreneur in Atlanta. He and his brother Robert opened Paschal’s restaurant in Atlanta in 1959. They later opened a nightclub and a hotel. In the 1970s, they began operating restaurants and lounges at the Atlanta airport. The Paschal’s hotel and restaurant was a favorite meeting place for Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders as they planned Civil Rights Movement strategies.

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Proctor, Henry Hugh (H. H.) (1868–1933) H. H. Proctor was a clergyman who was born in Tennessee and moved to Atlanta in 1894 to become the pastor of a small congregational church. Proctor solicited the goodwill of leading whites after the Atlanta riot of 1906 to help keep the peace and to help him build his church. First Congregational Church was able to make substantial improvements to its structure. Proctor also made it one of the first institutional churches—serving the spiritual as well as physical and social needs of the community—in the nation. Yet it acquired and continued to maintain a reputation as “a silk stocking church.”

Rucker, Henry A. (1852–1924) Henry A. Rucker was a politician and businessman who was born in bondage. When he reached adulthood he used his earnings from various jobs to buy a barber shop, which he leased out. The shop, which catered to whites, became prosperous and so did Rucker. A lifelong Republican, he attended several Republican National Conventions. He was a Republican appointee as a clerk in the Internal Revenue Service district office in Atlanta before being named head of that office by President William McKinley in 1897. At about the same time, Rucker began to expand his business enterprises into real estate. In 1904, he built the first professional office building for blacks in Atlanta. He died as one of the wealthiest blacks in the nation.

Russell, Herman, Sr. (1930–) Herman Russell Sr. is an Atlanta entrepreneur, civic leader, and philanthropist. He began his career as owner of an Atlanta construction company and branched out into other enterprises including hotels, restaurants, and the media in other parts of the country. He is one of the country’s wealthiest African Americans.

Scott, Cornelius Adolphus (C.A.) (1908–2000) C. A. Scott was a publisher, editor, and voting rights activist. He used the pages of the Atlanta Daily World, the longest continuously running black daily newspaper in the country, to campaign for black voting rights and to encourage black voter registration. He opposed direct action protests to end segregation, but vociferously opposed police brutality and waged a long, successful fight for African American policemen in Atlanta.

Sherrod, Charles (1937–) Charles Sherrod was a key civil rights leader in the SNCC and its efforts in Albany and southwest Georgia during the Civil Rights Movement. He was first field secretary and SNCC director of southwest Georgia. He also began an agricultural cooperative called New Communities Inc. In 1976, Sherrod was elected to the Albany City Council, serving until 1990. In 1996, he ran unsuccessfully for the Georgia State Senate.

Turner, Henry McNeal (1834–1915) Henry McNeal Turner, clergyman, politician, human rights leader, and Pan Africanist, was born in South Carolina and moved to Georgia in 1865 as an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Within a year he left this position to solicit for the AME church. In 1867, he was also assigned as an organizer among blacks for the Republican Party. His work with the church and the party led to his election to the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1867 and to the House of Representatives in 1868 and 1870. After having been dismissed from his legislative seat in 1870, he became increasingly bitter, denouncing the American flag as “a dirty rag” and advocating emigration to Africa.

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Walden, Austin Thomas (A. T.) (1885–1965) A. T. Walden was an attorney and civil rights leader. He defended Georgia blacks in hostile courtrooms and was lead or cooperating attorney on all of the major civil rights cases in Atlanta from the 1940s until the time of his death. He was president of the Atlanta NAACP and vice president of the national NAACP. As a cofounder of the Atlanta Negro Voters League, he became a principal broker with Atlanta’s white leaders for improved living condition for blacks and improved race relations. He has been called the most influential member of Atlanta’s “black power structure” from the 1940s to the 1960s.

White, Walter Francis (1893–1955) Walter White, a writer and civil rights leader, was born in Atlanta and moved to New York in 1918. He witnessed, as a boy, the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 and, although blonde of hair and blue of eyes, then decided to cast his lot with the African race. In Atlanta he was a member of the organizing committee for the local NAACP and a member of the black leadership group which was pressing for a black high school. In New York, he rose from an assistant secretary to acting secretary and to executive secretary of the national NAACP between 1918 and 1955. During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, he authored such works as Flight and Rope and Faggot.

Williams, Adam Daniel (A. D.) (1863–1931) A. D. Williams was a clergyman and civil rights leader. He helped build the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to one of the South’s largest black churches. He was an early president of the Atlanta NAACP, a leader in the campaigns

Walter White served the cause of African Americans as assistant and executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from the 1920s until the 1950s. He came to be the most devoted fighter in the effort to stamp out lynching in the United States after World War I. (Library of Congress)

for black voting rights and for a black high school.

Williams, Hosea Lorenzo (1926–2000) Hosea Lorenzo Williams was a civil/human rights leader. He became known as the ramrod of the Civil Rights Movement for his aggressive, although nonviolent, tactics in confronting white racism. He became a leader in the SCLC and directed its Operation Breadbasket in Georgia. He held elective office in the city of Atlanta and DeKalb County. He gained national attention when he began an annual “Feed the Hungry and Homeless” dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1970. Starting in a church in Atlanta, the dinners moved to larger quarters in gymnasiums and stadiums and drew thousands of people from all walks of life.

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Black America with developing Ware High School for blacks in Augusta, while editing a newspaper, the Augusta Weekly Sentinel. In 1890, he was named the first president of the Georgia Industrial College for Colored Youth (later Savannah State College). He retained this position for 30 years and became known as one of the most prominent African American educators in the nation. In the controversy among the black leadership of the time over educational and political goals, Wright straddled the fence between the Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois camps, and considered both men his friends.

Young, Andrew Jackson (1932–)

First as a civil rights activist, then as a congressmember, diplomat, and mayor, Andrew Young has devoted his life to improving the quality of life for African Americans and poor people both in the United States and around the world. (Library of Congress)

Williams, Samuel Woodrow (1912–1970) Samuel Woodrow Williams, a native of Arkansas, was a minister, an educator and one of Atlanta’s most vocal and active civil rights leaders in the 1960s. He was a principal advisor, as head of the Atlanta NAACP, to student sit-ins in Atlanta as well as to students who desegregated Georgia’s schools. He was one of the two plaintiffs in the suit that desegregated Atlanta buses in 1959.

Wright, Richard Robert, Sr. (1855–1947) Richard Robert Wright Sr. was an educator, businessman, and journalist. In 1880, he helped

Andrew Young was born in New Orleans and moved to Atlanta to work with Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC. After King’s assassination in 1968, Young entered politics. He was elected to Congress from the Atlanta area—becoming the first African American from Georgia to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives since Jefferson Long left in 1872. After being ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, he was elected mayor of Atlanta in 1981.

Cultural Contributions Black Georgians have made outstanding cultural contributions to the nation and to the world. The state has been home to internationally acclaimed classical musicians like Mattiwilda Dobbs, Roland Hayes, and Jessye Norman; rhythm-and-blues and soul singers James Brown, Ray Charles (whose rendition of “Georgia on My Mind” has become a modern-day classic), Little Richard, Otis Redding, and Gladys Knight; rappers Ludacris and Outkast; artist Benny Andrews; writers and playwrights Tina Ansa, Pearl Cleage, Jean Toomer, James McPherson, Alice Walker, and Frank Yerby; dramatist and

Georgia producer Kenny Leon; actress Jasmine Guy; and actor and producer Tyler Perry. The state’s African American colleges and universities have had a long history of outstanding choruses and orchestras such as the Morehouse College Glee Club, the Clark Atlanta University Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Morris Brown College Band. The Atlanta-Morehouse-Spelman Chorus has presented a series of Christmas carol concerts dating back to the 1920s, which attract biracial audiences from throughout the state. The Atlanta-Morehouse-Spelman Players have a long history of presenting outstanding dramatic performances. There are major festivals, some of them with international reputations, such as the National Black Arts Festival, which is held annually in Atlanta. Several areas of the state have annual jazz festivals and annual African and African American film festivals. Many black Georgians celebrate the Juneteenth holiday and the alternative Christmas observance known as Kwanzaa. Among the major African American art galleries and museums in the state are the Atlanta University Art Gallery, the Spelman College Art Gallery, the APEX Museum, and the Herndon House (the mansion once occupied the family of Alonzo Herndon, the founder of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company), all in Atlanta; the Harriett Tubman Museum in Macon; and the Lucy Craft Laney Museum in Augusta. The Martin Luther King Jr. birthplace and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change are in the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District in Atlanta. African American sites on the National Historic Register also include the “Sweet Auburn” Business District (site of an early major hub of black enterprise); Stone Hall at Morris Brown College, also in Atlanta; the Morton Building and Theatre in Athens; the Albany Civil Rights Institute; The Nicholsonville Baptist Church in Chatham County; the Lucy Laney Museum in Macon; The Zach Community Center

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Historic District in Hancock County; the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon; and the First African Baptist Church and Laurel Grove South Cemetery, both in Savannah. The Laurel Grove Cemetery, like the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, has separate burial areas for blacks and whites. Both are resting places for Confederate veterans as well as distinguished African Americans. However, in the case of Laurel Grove, the separate section for blacks was designated Laurel Grove South. There are many other historic African American cemeteries in Georgia, including some in churchyards, especially in rural areas. Two of the oldest established by African American cemetery associations are the Southview and Lincoln cemeteries in Atlanta. Martin Luther King Jr. was first interred at Southview, and his parents are interred there now. The crypts of King and his wife Coretta are now at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center on Auburn Avenue. Places providing important resources for the study of African American culture and history include the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African Americans, the Atlanta History Center, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University, all in Atlanta; the Albany Civil Rights Institute; and the National Park Service Research Study of the Gullah/Geeche culture on Georgia’s southeastern coast.

Bibliography Bartley, Numan V. The Creation of Modern Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Bayor, Ronald H. Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Cobb, James C. Georgia Odyssey. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997.

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Dittmer, John. Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980

Hornsby, Alton, Jr. Southerners Too? Essays on the Black South, 1733–1990. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004.

Georgia Encyclopedia. www.georgiaencyclo pedia.org.

Hunter, Tera. To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Grant, Donald L. The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1993. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. A Biographical History of African Americans. Montgomery, AL: E-Book Time Publishers, 2005. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. Black Power in Dixie: A Political History of African Americans in Atlanta. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. The Negro in Revolutionary Georgia. Atlanta: Georgia Commission for the Bicentennial Celebration, 1977. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. A Short History of Black Atlanta, 1847–1990. Richland, TX: Ivy Halls Publishers, 2005.

Inscoe, John. C., ed. Georgia in Black and White: Explorations in Race Relations, 1865–1950. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. Pomerantz, Gary M. Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: The Saga of Two Families and the Making of Atlanta. New York: Scribner, 1996. Thompson, C. Mildred. Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social, Political, 1865–1872. New York: Columbia University Press, 1915. Tuck, Stephen G. N. Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940– 1980. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

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Chronology 1778

The English explorer James Cook lands in Hawaii.

1798

Ebenezer Townsend, sailing in Hawaii waters on the Neptune, writes in his diary that he saw two Portuguese African men with three white men building a boat on Kauai.

1811

Anthony Allen, a former slave and the first fully documented African American in the islands, arrives in Hawaii.

1823

Betsy Stockton, a former slave and the first documented African American female in the islands, arrives in Hawaii.

1898

T. McCants Stewart, the first African American attorney and civil rights attorney in New York City, moves to Hawaii with his family.

1898

The United States annexes Hawaii, which becomes a U.S. territory.

1900

The federal Census records 233 blacks in Hawaii.

1901

The first group of African American contract laborers from Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana are recruited for work on sugar plantations on Maui and the island of Hawaii.

1901

William Lineas Maples, a physician and Howard University graduate, becomes the first African American medical doctor to practice in Hawaii.

1910

The U.S. Census records 695 blacks in Hawaii, a tripling of African American residents over the last decade.

1913

The all–African American 25th Infantry Regiment with 2,000 men is assigned to Schofield Barracks on Oahu. The U.S. Department of the Army moves the regiment in 1918 to Nogales and Yuma, Arizona.

1914

William F. Crockett, an African American attorney, is elected to the Hawaii territorial legislature.

1915

Alice Ball, an African American chemist at the University of Hawaii, begins research on a cure for leprosy.

1915

Nolle Smith, an African American engineer from Wyoming, establishes a construction firm in Hawaii.

1928

Nolle Smith is elected to the Hawaii territorial legislature and becomes an influential political leader in Hawaii.

1941

(December 7) The Japanese attack the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu. The attack leads next day to a U.S. declaration of war on Japan.

1941–1945

An estimated 30,000 African American military personnel and civilian war workers are stationed and living in Hawaii at various times during the war.

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1944

Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), visits military installations in Hawaii because of complaints by military personnel and civilians about discrimination on Oahu.

1945

A chapter of the NAACP is established in Hawaii.

1950

The U.S. Census counts 2,651 African Americans living in Hawaii, indicating that many of the blacks who went to Hawaii during the war did not stay once it was over.

1950

Wendell F. Crockett, an African American attorney, is elected to the Hawaii territorial legislature.

1959

(August 21) Hawaii enters the Union as the 50th state.

1968

African American educator Charles Campbell is elected to the Hawaii state legislature.

c. 1970

A chapter of Links, Inc., a national organization of African American women, is established in Hawaii.

1980

Sandra Simms becomes the first African American appointed to be judge of the first circuit court of Hawaii.

1985

The African American Heritage Foundation of Maui is founded to foster and preserve African American culture in Hawaii.

1991

The Hawaii legislature enacts a law making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a state holiday.

1991

Sandra Simms becomes the first African American woman appointed as judge of the state district court.

1995

The Dr. Martin Luther King Coalition of Hawaii is founded to promote the Martin Luther King holiday as a day of community service in the state.

1997

The African American Diversity Cultural Center of Hawaii is founded to document, archive, preserve, and maintain the documents and artifacts of African American history in the state.

2000

African American real estate broker Helene Hale is elected to the Hawaii legislature.

2000

The African American population reaches 44,000, including military personnel and their dependents, revealing that the population growth for African Americans in Hawaii is moderate in comparison to other groups.

2008

(November 4) Barack Obama, born and raised in Hawaii, is elected as the first African American president of the United States; Obama carries Hawaii with about 72 percent of the vote.

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Historical Overview The Hawaiian Islands, or Sandwich Islands as they were known in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, are located in the middle of the Pacific. When the Englishman Captain James Cook arrived in 1778, he met Polynesians who had inhabited the islands for at least eight centuries. After Cook’s visit, word soon spread to Europe and America about the opportunities that were waiting for the adventurous in the tropical islands of the Pacific. King Kamehameha I welcomed into the kingdom foreigners from all over the world and from all walks of life. Hawaii had become a major rest stop because of its central location in the Pacific. It was a convenient stop for whaling fleets and ships trading with countries in Asia. The ships stopped in Hawaii because of the natural harbor on Oahu, for fresh water, and replenishment of supplies. Among the crew members of many of the ships were men of African ancestry. Some were from Portugal’s African colonies, including the Cape Verde Islands and colonies on the African continent. Also among ship crews were freedmen or former slaves and runaway slaves from the United States and the Caribbean islands. Samuel Kamakau, a nineteenth-century Hawaiian writer, stated that “many races—the red, the black, and the white—came in the early days to Hawaii.” Kamehameha and other chiefs recruited from these newly arrived foreigners were men with many skills, including navigators, armorers, blacksmiths, sailmakers, and even musicians. Among the men who remained ashore, most found the Polynesian people hospitable and many found a niche that allowed them to earn a living. Anthony D. Allen, a former slave from Schenectady, New York, left his ship in 1811 and worked for a short while as steward to Kamehameha when he sailed to neighboring islands in the kingdom. Allen was awarded six acres of land by the high priest of Oahu, Hevaheva. By the time the first missionaries arrived in 1820, Allen had an established

farm with cattle, goats, and fresh vegetables; a boarding house; a saloon; and a small hospital that specialized in caring for sailors that had become ill while at sea. He married a Hawaiian woman and had three children, Peggy, Anthony Jr., and George. One missionary wrote that “Among the residents of this island is a Black man . . . named Allen. He has been our constant friend, has daily furnished us with milk and once or twice a week fresh vegetables.”1 Allen had an enclosure that consisted of 8–10 houses that served as sleeping, eating, storage, and cooking facilities. In 1835, he died, leaving a family that eventually became assimilated into Hawaii’s growing multiracial population. In 1823, Betsey Stockton, a former slave from Princeton, New Jersey, arrived in Honolulu with the Second Company of Missionaries. Stockton was assigned to Maui as a teacher, where she established the first school for Hawaiian commoners. Unfortunately, after two years she had to accompany one member of her missionary group who became ill back to New Jersey. In 1834, the crew members who came ashore could very well have been entertained by a musical group consisting of black men. David Shattuck and David Curtis were hired by Kamehameha III to organize a band. The king agreed to provide his musicians living quarters and free clothing for themselves and their wives. By 1845, a larger band was organized with George Wyatt as leader and Charles Johnson as captain. The remaining members were from other ethnic groups. The musicians were expected to entertain at special events. Several blacks became successful in the barbering business in Honolulu. Fredrick Bins not only cut hair, but gave shampoos in the “Chinese Fashion,” according to an advertisement in the local newspaper. There were enough blacks in Honolulu at various times to organize the “African Relief Society.” According to the journal of Stephen Reynolds, a missionary, the main work of the organization was to provide

Hawaii assistance to destitute African seamen and provide burial services to those who died while in Honolulu.

Hawaii and Slavery The Kingdom of Hawaii never experienced black slavery as practiced in the American colonies and states. However, Hawaii’s experience with slavery was largely through the sympathies of American missionaries who arrived in Hawaii as early as 1820. They came under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which had many of its members active in the antislavery, abolitionist movement. In fact, an antislavery society was formed in the kingdom in 1841 among the American missionaries, but they spoke out against slavery several years earlier. Thomas Lafon, a missionary in the Hawaii group, resigned from his post in 1841 when he learned that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had accepted money from southern slave owners.

Blacks and the Plantation Experience By the early 1870s, Hawaii’s ports no longer bustled with business brought by whaling ships that had, until recently, so frequently anchored in Hawaii’s harbors. The discovery of oil in Pennsylvania had rendered the use of whale oil obsolete in the United States. Although the declining whaling industry no longer provided Hawaii with the revenue it once did, a new sugar-based economy seemed promising to investors. In 1850, the Hawaiian government had passed laws allowing foreigners to buy land in fee simple, and consequently, huge tracts of land had been purchased by investors and set aside for the cultivation of sugar. Growing the sugarcane was one thing, harvesting it was yet another. The success of the sugar industry required increasingly large numbers of laborers, many more than the dwindling native Hawaiian population could provide,

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and so contract laborers came to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations. The first laborers to arrive were Chinese, and by the time the Hawaiian Kingdom had restricted Chinese immigration with regulations passed in 1884 and 1885, the population of Chinese in Hawaii had reached 18,000. These workers were followed by 148 Japanese laborers in 1868, but in 1870, further immigration of Japanese workers was also stopped, but for different reasons. The Hawaiian government had restricted Chinese immigration, but it was the Japanese government that refused to allow any more workers to settle in Hawaii. Because of negative reports about working conditions on Hawaii’s plantations, the Meiji government halted any further recruitment of Japanese workers. Emigration of Japanese laborers would not resume until 1885, when an agreement was signed between officials of both Hawaii and Japan; by 1900, over 60,000 Japanese laborers had arrived to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations. Plantation laborers had also been recruited from Italy, Germany, Norway, Spain, Russia, and Portugal. The Portuguese workers adapted very quickly and comfortably to island life, and by 1884, nearly 10,000 were in residence. Men of African ancestry from Cabo Verde, a group of islands off the coast of West Africa settled by the Portuguese, were already in residence in Hawaii as the sugar industry gained importance in Hawaii’s economy. These men had arrived earlier to the islands as whalers and when contract laborers for the plantations were needed, other Caboverdeanos, Africans, or Portuguese Africans continued to sail to Hawaii as contract laborers. Although some laborers also arrived from the South Pacific, including approximately 400 Melanesians from the New Hebrides, most South Sea Islanders did not stay but returned home at the end of their contracts; the Melanesians had also been recruited to work on Australia’s expanding sugar plantations in Queensland.

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As early as 1870, Walter Murray Gibson, an American adventurer, legislator, and confidant of King Kalakaua, investigated the possibility that southern blacks might work Hawaii’s plantations. While visiting the United States, Gibson proposed recruiting blacks with plantation experience, but nothing resulted from his initial investigations. In 1872, a few leaders of the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) reiterated Gibson’s notion that African Americans from the American South represented an experienced labor force comfortable with plantation life, but, once again, the suggestion of recruiting blacks as plantation workers was not well received by many planters, missionaries, and some Hawaiians. In 1879, further discussions were held by the Bureau of Immigration on this earlier HSPA proposal. The Bureau wrote for advice to Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of a prominent missionary family who had arrived in Hawaii with the Fifth Missionary Company. As a young man with family in Hawaii and also with important contacts in the American South, the bureau hoped that Armstrong might be able to give them both insight and real information. As a young man, Armstrong had traveled to study at Williams College, and when the Civil War erupted, he had volunteered for the Union Army and was given command of the 5th Infantry Regiment, an African American unit. He rose quickly through the ranks and by the war’s end had been promoted to brevet general. After the war, Armstrong worked with the Freedman’s Bureau and noted a great need for education and training programs for African American youth. Dedicated to the notion of resolving that need and supported by Northern philanthropy, he founded in 1868 the Hampton Institute in Virginia to educate African American youth in industrial trades. Unfortunately, although the dialogue of the HSPA with Armstrong may have been important, it was, ultimately, inconsequential. John E. Bush, a

part-Hawaiian and head of the Bureau, wrote Armstrong that: the last legislature was decidedly adverse to Negro immigrants, even to opposing New Hebrides people. There was a resolution passed opposing the immigration of blacks, and we do not deem it advisable to ignore the House and would therefore ask you to discontinue further investigation of that class of immigrants.2 Like the Chinese before them, blacks, it appeared, would be kept from entering Hawaiian society as workers. Without the support of the legislature, plantation owners would find it difficult to encourage black workers from the Southern United States to immigrate to Hawaii. Nonetheless, in 1882, following the discussion between the sugar planters and Armstrong, James E. Blaine, U.S. secretary of state, did propose another plan to recruit African Americans for work on Hawaii’s plantations, but this plan also received little support. Although it may be difficult to determine precisely why and how divisive racial attitudes prosper in any society and why the Hawaii legislature in particular would choose to exclude immigrants because of race alone, evidence of racial prejudice and discrimination in nineteenthcentury Hawaii civilian society is abundant. For example, the Reverend Sereno E. Bishop, editor of The Friend, had frequently expressed in print that any admixture of African would be disastrous for the people of Hawaii, writing derogatory editorials that referred to both those of African ancestry and other nonwhites as “low in mental culture.” Such attitudes expressed by influential community members might have easily influenced legislative decisions. After annexation and gaining territorial status, the new government with an American-appointed governor felt subtle pressure from the U.S. Department of Labor to consider

Hawaii recruiting African American contract laborers from the American South. The prospect of bringing African American families to Hawaii was beginning to seem reasonable to many plantation owners, and, as prosperous businessmen, their opinions were heard by legislators. An influx of black workers might provide field hands with much-needed plantation experience, and the women who accompanied them might also offer personal and household assistance for wives of plantation owners. An article printed in the magazine Paradise of the Pacific quotes one plantation manager as saying that his plantation would accept 25 families “and, furthermore, two Negroes can do the work of three Japanese. . . . The women will work as well as the men at about two-thirds the wages. Interest has also been awakened among housewives as to the desirability of Negroes as cooks, nurses, etc. and many think they may supplant the Japanese in household duties.” 3 James B. Castle of Alexander and Baldwin, sugar plantation owners, established recruiting agencies in Nashville, Tennessee, and Montgomery, Alabama. Agents for the HSPA began recruitment in the surrounding black communities during the fall of 1900. Flyers, newspapers, and pastors of Nashville and Montgomery churches announced opportunities in Hawaii for African Americans, emphasizing both the astounding beauty of these faraway islands in the middle of the Pacific and the ample salaries of $26 per month plus free housing, healthcare, and firewood. Black workers, however, did not need the lure of gentle tradewinds to convince them to leave Southern plantations. By the end of 1901, approximately 400 blacks were recruited to work and live on Maui and on Hawaii’s plantations.

Trouble at Wailuku Life on Hawaii’s plantations was not as idyllic as those early transplanted workers might have

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hoped. After working for a month, the Nashville laborers were told that their pay would be only 60 cents per day, considerably less than the salary recruiters had indicated they would be receiving. Many workers were handed only $3 for a month’s labor along with an explanation that deductions had been made for items provided by the plantation store, including bedding, food, utensils, and other necessary household items. Four single men, led by Will Aliston, protested and went on strike, stating that they had been misled and overcharged for household goods. Aliston tried to convince fellow workers to join the strike, but with little success. Plantation manager Wells ordered the four protesters off the plantation immediately; they were not allowed to return to their cabins to retrieve personal belongings. This brutal method of labor control was not a new practice; in past years, strikers and their families had been frequently evicted from plantation homes, often with the help of local police. Penniless and with only the clothes on their backs, Aliston and other protesters made their way to Kahului, hoping to find employment. Unfortunately, the manager of the Wailuku plantation had already informed potential employers in Kahului that Aliston and his group were troublemakers. Forced to acknowledge the impossibility of finding work on Maui, the group of strikers raised money for passage to Honolulu by singing and dancing for street crowds. The four men found employment in Honolulu. By December 1903, as contracts expired, many workers imported from the South found means and ways to leave the plantations and Hawaii. The African Americans who had imagined that Hawaii held possibility for a new life were bitterly disappointed, and many left the islands in search of places that would allow their dreams for freedom to be translated to reality. Between 1898 and 1915, Hawaii was seen as a new frontier by a small group of professional blacks from the continental United States. They

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Admiral Chester W. Nimitz pins the Navy Cross on Dorie Miller at a ceremony onboard a U.S. Navy warship in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 1942. (Library of Congress)

sought their fortunes in the islands as many others did from around the world. The black population, according to the U.S. Census, had increased to 695 by 1910. Perhaps more would have come after annexation, but the great distance of the islands from the mainland and the high cost of travel did not encourage very many blacks to migrate to Hawaii. Among the professionals represented in those early years who arrived in the islands were several lawyers, a physician, an engineer, several teachers, and others with technical skills who established themselves in the islands before 1915.

Black Military Presence The need for security for the United States’ new territory suggested a need to have permanent naval

and army bases on Oahu to protect American investments and citizens. In 1913, the 25th Infantry Regiment was assigned to Schofield Barracks located in central Oahu. This all-black unit had already made a name for itself in battles during the Spanish American War in 1898. The presence of 2,000 black soldiers made an impression on the local community because of their outstanding athletes and talented musicians. The local press covered the unit’s baseball games on a regular basis as they played local baseball teams and the unit’s band gave concerts in various communities. Many of Oahu’s rural residents had never had contact with such a variety of black males, but it did not take long for friendships to form. A few of the men whose enlistment ended in Hawaii chose to remain in the islands. In 1918, the unit was transferred to Yuma and Nogales, Arizona. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Dorie Miller, a U.S. Navy mess attendant assigned to the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, helped moved his mortally wounded commander to shelter and then manned a .50-caliber machine gun. With no previous combat or training on this particular weapon, Miller shot down four Japanese planes. On May 27, 1942, Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for his extraordinary heroism, the first African American to be recognized with this honor. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 black military and civilian war personnel were assigned to Hawaii between 1942 and 1945. They came from various parts of the country and most found Hawaii’s Polynesians and Asians to be welcoming. However, there was racial tension that existed between blacks and whites, military and civilian. Most of the interracial problems stemmed from mainland racial attitudes that were brought to Hawaii by many of the white southerners. The black civilian workers brought to Hawaii to work in the war effort were assigned segregated housing on military bases; all military

Hawaii units were segregated in Hawaii as they were throughout the nation. The racial problems were serious enough that an interracial committee was requested by the NAACP to investigate the patterns of discrimination on military installations and in the community. Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, visited Hawaii in 1944. His report was critical of federal and local racial practices and recommended that a chapter of the NAACP be established in Honolulu. The first year of the charter in 1946, there were 150 new members. Rumors spread in 1948 that at least 30 members of the Honolulu branch were members of the Communist Party. The national board of directors was fearful that communists and communist sympathizers were about to take over the Honolulu branch. White, who became NAACP executive secretary in 1955, recommended to the board that the branch’s charter be revoked. The board agreed at its November 1949 meeting. It was not until May 1960 that a new NAACP charter was granted. Today, there is an active branch of the organization on Oahu. Although Hawaii is free of most of the problems faced by blacks on the mainland, there still remains a need to have a civil rights organization such as the NAACP available in Hawaii.

Establishing Community Following World War II, most of the blacks connected with the war effort in Hawaii returned to the mainland. Nevertheless between 1950 and 1960, the black population nearly doubled from 2,651 to 4,943. By 2000, the U.S. Census estimated 33,000 blacks, including military, their dependents, and civilians, were residing in Hawaii. The 2007 U.S. Census update for Hawaii estimated that the total African American population was 44,000, with 60–65 percent connected to the military. Most blacks who migrated to Hawaii have always entered the existing social

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structure, especially in employment, according to their educational background, skills, and experience. Those who migrate are either professionals or skilled technicians, and some are retired from the military. The blacks who chose to move to Hawaii had undoubtedly been successful in their fields on the mainland. Martha Hansen, a sociologist, feels that because there is no separate spatial black community in Hawaii, there has evolved a socio/psychological community based on historical and common American experiences. Despite not having a spatial community, blacks in Hawaii have found each other. There are several predominantly black churches that worship in the traditional ways of the black church on the mainland. They have formed fraternal, social, and cultural organizations that allow them to come together for regular meetings. During the war years, the Bachelor’s Club was organized by single black civilians employed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Later, the Wai Wai Nui Club, a black women’s social and service group, was organized and was active in a variety of community activities that included service to hospitals and the mentoring of teenage girls. In 1979, Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority, first established at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1908, became the first allblack chapter of a “Greek letter” sorority to be established in Hawaii. Soon after other predominantly black “Greek letter” chapters were established and include Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Zeta Phi Beta sorority, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, and Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Some of the members in these societies are active-duty military officers who joined the organizations when they were undergraduate college students. In Honolulu, graduate chapters perform a variety of community services designed to strengthen community. AKA sorority, as an example, awards an average of $20,000 annually from its scholarship program for Hawaii highschool graduates.

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The Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Hawaii has been chartered in Hawaii since 2001. Prince Hall Masonry in Hawaii supports all principles necessary to build character, to render service to others, and to improve Hawaii’s social, cultural, and economic conditions. The Hawaii chapter of Links, Inc., was established in Honolulu in the 1980s and today sponsors African American educational and cultural programs on Oahu. In cooperation with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Honolulu chapter of Links, Inc., sponsors an annual program celebrating African American art, music, dance, and storytelling. This annual cultural program attracts many people from the community of various ethnic backgrounds, and provides an understanding of African American culture and the black presence in Hawaii.

Education Betsey Stockton was with the first group of missionary teachers who moved quickly to Maui in 1823 to assemble students and establish the first missionary schools. She was liked by the Hawaiians, mainly because she immediately began learning the Hawaiian language and was able to establish rapport with the parents of the students she taught. Carlotta Stewart arrived in Honolulu as a young woman in 1898. She was the oldest daughter of T. McCant Stewart, an attorney who moved his family to Honolulu. She completed the teacher-training program at Oahu College and started her teaching career at Sacred Hearts Convent. By the time she was 28, she was the principal of Koolau Elementary School earning $1,200 annually, a comfortable middle-class salary then. She spent 40 years on Kauai as a teacher and principal. In 1916, she married Yun Tim Lai, a Chinese businessman of Anahola, Kauai. He was killed in 1935 in an accident while visiting Hong

Kong. Lai never had children and did not remarry. Annie V. Crockett arrived on Maui in 1901 and was formerly a teacher in the public schools of Montgomery, Alabama, and Washington, D.C., before beginning her teaching career on Maui. Her daughter Grace also retired from the Maui school system. In 1980, the Hawaii Department of Education was criticized by the federal government and minority leaders in the state for the lack of adequate representation of some of Hawaii’s minorities. Much of the impetus for correcting the imbalance in minority representation on the teaching staff in the department was Dr. Donnis Thompson, an African American professor of education at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Thompson was appointed Hawaii’s superintendent of education in 1981. She was the first woman to head Hawaii’s public schools. During her three years in office she led the way in bringing more black, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Samoan teachers into the school system. There are four universities in Hawaii: The state-operated University of Hawaii has 10 campuses, including the community college system; Chaminade University; Brigham Young University–Hawaii; and Hawaii Pacific University. Black students are enrolled in all of the institutions of higher education in the state. The biggest challenge in attempts to diversify students, faculty, and staff at these institutions has been to increase the number of blacks attending and employed at these institutions. Approximately 2 percent of the students enrolled in the University of Hawaii system are black and fewer than 1 percent of the faculty is black.

The Church The first group of blacks who were recruited from the South arrived in 1901, and accompanying them were two preachers from Montgomery,

Hawaii Alabama, the Reverends James A. Henderson and Augustus Hutchinson. The Maui News noted that both men were leading their flocks of workers who “are as a class moral men and women and will prove to be a reliable class of labor.”4 Henderson was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and had served as pastor of the well-respected Mount Zion Church in Montgomery. Reverend Henderson and Mrs. M. E. Henderson were leaders in organizing the “Christian Endeavor Club” among workers at Alabama Camp, which had as its primary mission to encourage a Christian life among the several hundred workers and their families. The Sunday school was well supported and popular among the children and parents of the camp. The Evening Bulletin reported that the Alabama laborers were popular in Wailuku because of the Negro spirituals they sang in the evenings. The Hawaiians on the plantation were always delighted to hear their southern neighbors sing. Unfortunately, Reverend Henderson died of a stroke when he was 49 years old. His obituary that appeared in the local Maui newspaper said that he was “honest and upright in character as well as a sincere and zealous Christian. He rounded out a beautiful life, rich in love and esteem for all who knew him.” Reverend J. Nua of the Native Church officiated at his funeral service and his remains were interred in Wailuku. Reverend Hutchinson left the Pu’unene Plantation in mid1902 and opened a barber shop in the lobby of the Maui Hotel in Wailuku. Hutchinson died in late 1902 and his burial was handled by the local lodge of the Odd Fellows at the Wailuku cemetery. It was not until 1943 that another black church was established in Hawaii. The New Era Baptist Church was established at Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Today, there are several churches with predominantly black congregations on Oahu. The two largest are Trinity Baptist Church and City of Refuge Christian Church. The other churches are smaller and have

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congregations with fewer than 100 members. They meet in storefronts, homes, and public buildings (mostly schools), and even tents. The stated mission of all the churches is to meet the religious needs of local people and a few do have congregants from other ethnic groups. However, most of these churches minister primarily to the black congregations. The gospel choirs of Trinity Baptist Church and City of Refuge Christian Church are very popular and their concerts are well attended by people of all faiths in the community. Many blacks worship at churches with multiracial congregations.

Hawaii’s Multiracial Mix The blacks who settled in Hawaii during the nineteenth century selected Hawaiian wives. Broussard stated that “today most of the descendants of (Anthony D.) Allen and his fellow harbingers are unaware of the role their ancestors played in the Hawaiian Kingdom. In fact, many do not even know they are of African ancestry.” Dr. Romanzo Adams, professor emeritus of the University of Hawaii, more than 70 years ago predicted that Hawaii would probably be one big race in a couple of hundred years. No doubt Adams was thinking what is commonly referred to as “Hawaii’s Melting Pot.” According to the most recent U.S. Census, Hawaii’s interracialmarriage rate is one of the highest in the nation. In 1920, interracial marriages were about 10 percent of all Hawaii’s marriages. By 1950, interracial marriages had increased to 30 percent. In 2000, 65 percent of blacks marrying in Hawaii married outside of their own ethnic group. Similar patterns of interracial marriage exist among Hawaii’s other racial groups. Today, the racial issue by and large is not a sensitive one in Hawaii because so many people are of multiracial mix. Quite often they will identify with the predominant cultural practices they experience in the home and in growing up. There is evidence that

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Black America boarding house, a tavern, the first bowling alley in Hawaii, and selling food supplies to ships stopping in Honolulu.

Ball, Alice (1892–1916) Alice Ball was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Hawaii with a master’s degree in chemistry. As a young pharmaceutical chemist she was engaged in groundbreaking research on a cure for Hansen’s disease (leprosy). At the age of 24 she became seriously ill and died after a short illness. Her injectable ethyl ester of chaulmoogra oil to Hansen’s disease patients was recognized years later as a remarkable cure for this dreaded disease. Chemist Alice Ball. Ball was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Hawaii and was renowned for her work on Hansen’s disease. (Library of Congress)

as the rate of interracial marriages continue, distinct racial categories could blur even more and perhaps in the distant future disappear as Romanzo Adams predicted. In summary, it is likely the black population in Hawaii will continue to have only modest growth. Some observers view Hawaii’s black population and its assimilation into the multiracial mix in the islands as a possible model of what could happen as blacks are dispersed in urban areas to nonblack communities throughout the nation.

Notable African Americans Allen, Anthony D. (1774–1835) Anthony D. Allen was born on the German Flats of New York and was a slave in Schenectady. He arrived in Hawaii as a seaman in 1811. Allen became a friend of the early missionaries and of Hawaii’s royalty. He became a successful entrepreneur in several enterprises, which included a

Crockett, William F. (1861–1943) William F. Crockett arrived on Maui in 1901 with his wife, Annie V. Rider of Washington, D.C., and his two children, Wendell Francis and Grace. He first worked as a representative for the first black laborers to come to Maui from the South. A year or so after arrival, he established a successful law practice in Wailuku and became active in Republican politics, was elected to the Hawaii legislature, and was appointed to a judiciary post on Maui.

Hale, Helene (1916–) Helene Hale moved to Hawaii in 1947 where she taught school before entering politics. She is the first woman mayor of the island of Hawaii. Elected in 1962, she was instrumental in introducing the county system to Hawaii. In 2000, she was elected to the Hawaii legislature and served for two terms as a state representative.

Lai, Carlotta Stewart (1881–1952) Carlotta Stewart Lai arrived in Hawaii in 1898. She was a teacher and administrator in the

Hawaii Hawaii public school system for 40 years and was the oldest daughter of T. McCants Stewart. She married Yun Tim Lai, a Chinese businessman of Anahola, Kauai, in 1916. He died while on a business trip to Hong Kong.

Smith, Nolle (1888–1982) Nolle Smith was a popular political leader in Hawaiian local and state politics. He was an engineer and graduate of the University of Montana. He arrived in Honolulu in 1915 and was employed by local government as an engineer; eventually he established his own construction company. He became active in Republican politics and was elected to the territorial legislature in 1928. Smith is known as the key person who introduced a statewide civil service system in Hawaii.

Stewart, T. McCants (1854–1923) T. McCants Stewart was a well-respected attorney in New York before he moved to Honolulu in 1898. He established a law practice in Honolulu and became an active member in the local Republican Party. He practiced before the Hawaii Supreme Court and was successful in handling immigration cases for Chinese aliens. Stewart enjoyed popularity among the Hawaiians and settled land case disputes for Hawaiian families. He sensed an increase in racial animosity in Honolulu and decided to leave for the mainland and later Liberia. Carlotta, his daughter, remained in Hawaii.

Stockton, Betsey (1798–1865) Betsey Stockton was a missionary teacher in Hawaii. She was born in Princeton, New Jersey, as a slave, but was manumitted in 1817 by her owner. In 1823, she was accepted as a member of the Second Missionary Company by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign

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Missionaries to go to the Hawaiian Islands. On her way to Maui, she was a guest in the Anthony Allen home in Honolulu. She was assigned to establish the first school for children of Maui from nonroyal families. Her stay was cut short because she had to leave Hawaii due to the illness of her sponsor.

Cultural Contributions African Americans’ cultural contributions in Hawaii have been mainly in the arts. On December 11, 1889, a troupe from the 49th Regiment staged an extravaganza at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Honolulu. In port for only a short time, the black soldiers from the troopship Sherman, bound for the Philippines, presented an exhilarating performance. Since that date, blacks have continued to make substantial contributions to the arts in Hawaii. With their talents they have enriched the lives of Hawaii’s people. Jazz first arrived in the islands in 1920, when Hawaii’s musicians began to play new and unfamiliar music. Local musicians left the islands to play, study, and travel to the major cities on both coasts of the U.S. mainland. Many of the local musicians listened to and played with black jazz musicians. Hawaii’s musicians who could not leave the islands could listen to black jazz musicians and singers who stopped briefly in Honolulu on their way to and from major cities in Asia and the Pacific. During World War II, some of the top jazz performers entertained troops, but also local audiences. Later, top entertainers such as Billy Eckstein, Sarah Vaughn, Nat King Cole, and bands of Count Basie, Cab Callaway, and Duke Ellington played dates in Honolulu and these extraordinary musicians helped win the hearts of new local jazz enthusiasts. A few black musicians who settled in Hawaii, such as the late Trummy Young (trombonist), Azure McCall (vocalist), Chuck James (drummer), and M. Merrill Jackson (bassist), made an impact on the jazz scene in Hawaii.

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African Americans have played a role in introducing local theater audiences to black theater. The African American Theater, led by Gregg Harris, and the African American Repertory Theater, founded by Leonard Piggee, have been active in offering acting classes to the community, and several of August Wilson’s plays have been produced and played to Hawaii’s enthusiastic multiracial audiences. The poet Frank Marshall Davis moved his family to Hawaii in 1948. Before coming to the islands to live, he had published several volumes of poetry and had many anthologized during the Harlem Renaissance literary era. Davis died in 1987, the last of the black poets of the twilight years of the Depression. In contemporary Hawaii, the tradition of poetry continues. Kathryn Waddell Takara is a prolific poet with three volumes of poetry published since 2000. Takara’s work is recognized because it represents the blending of the African American and Hawaiian experiences. Ayin Adams, who resides on Maui, is a prolific writer and has had her poetry selected for national awards. Despite the small number of blacks in Hawaii, a thriving community exists and contributes decisively to the multicultural and multiethnic environment of the islands.

Notes 1. Sylbil Bingham, Journal, June 20, 1820, Hawaii Mission Children’s Society, Honolulu. 2. Charles T. Gulick, Report to the President of the Bureau of Immigration to the Legislative Assembly of 1886 (Honolulu: Kingdom of Hawaii, 1886), 143.

3. Paradise of the Pacific, September 1897, 10: 132. 4. Maui News, February 16, 1901, 3.

Bibliography Adams, Romanzo Colfax. “Census Notes on Negroes in Hawaii Prior to the War.” Social Process in Hawaii 9–10 (1945): 25–27. Broussard, Albert C. “Carlotta Stewart Lai, a Black Teacher in the Territory of Hawaii.” Hawaiian Journal of History 29 (1990): 129–154. Broussard, Albert C. “There Is One Black Man, Anthony Allen.” In Miles M. Jackson, ed., They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005, 24–55. Home, Gerald. The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Jackson, Miles M. And They Came: A Brief History of Blacks in Hawaii. Durham, NC: Four G. Publishers, 2001. Jackson, Miles M., ed. They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Kamakau, Samuel M. Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii. Honolulu, HI: Kamehameha Schools Press, 1961. Lee, Lloyd. “A Brief Analysis of the Role of the Negro in the Hawaiian Community.” American Sociological Review 13 (1948): 419–437.

IDAHO Margaret Blair Young

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Chronology 1804

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark are dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to explore uncharted territory, including what is now Idaho. With them is Clark’s slave, York, who is the first black man the Native Americans of the area have ever seen.

1832

Biracial trapper Jim Beckwourth attends a rendezvous with other trappers and Native Americans in Idaho (then called Oregon Country).

1860s–1870s

Miners of all ethnicities come to Idaho.

1863

President Abraham Lincoln signs an act creating Idaho Territory, combining parts of Washington Territory and Dakota Territory.

1866

Territorial law bans nonwhite students from attending public school until 1873.

1867

Elvina Moulton, a former slave, settles in Boise.

1879

Miner George Washington Blackman settles in Hailey; Blackman Peak in the White Cloud Mountains is named after him.

1880s

African American Mormons, who had been living in Utah, begin homesteading in the Idaho Falls/Milo area. Other African American homesteaders, trappers such as Dan Brockman (for whom Brockman’s Creek was named), and businessmen such as Francis Grice also come to Idaho during these years.

1886

Gobo Fango, an African who had come from England with Mormon pioneers, is murdered in Oakley; his murderer, who is known, is ultimately acquitted.

1890

Idaho enters the Union as the 43rd state; few African Americans live in the new state.

1892

African American soldiers from the 24th Infantry are sent to Coeur d’Alene to quell a mining dispute.

1896

Plessy v. Ferguson establishes “separate but equal,” validating the nation’s segregation. Idaho has had de facto segregation, but, with blacks being such a minority, has integrated its schools.

1899

The 24th Infantry, now stationed at Fort Douglas, Utah, returns to Coeur d’Alene when mining disputes reignite. Shortly thereafter, many of these soldiers fight in the Philippines.

1899

Jennie Hughes becomes the first black student to graduate from the University of Idaho.

1903

Green Flake, vanguard Mormon pioneer, dies in Gray’s Lake.

1903

The African American League and the Women’s Athenian Club, both working for equal rights, are founded in Boise.

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1909

St. Paul Baptist Church (African American) is established in Boise. It will later become the first home of Idaho’s Black History Museum.

1910

African American soldiers help fight fires in northern Idaho.

1919

The Treasure Valley (Idaho) Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organized.

1920

Ku Klux Klan activity begins in Idaho.

1924

Boise’s mayor demands that Klan members remove their masks before parading. A black policeman known as “Yellowstone Jack” prepares to defend the AME Church in Pocatello, but it is not attacked.

1930

Black cowboy Tracy Thompson (grandfather of the first black mayor of Pocatello, Thomas “Les” Purse) dies in a rodeo competition; the circumstances of his death are suspicious.

1933

Gene Harris, a jazz musician who will eventually establish Idaho roots, is born in Michigan.

1940

The famous singer Marian Anderson comes to sing in Boise. She is not permitted to stay at the Hotel Boise, but is permitted to stay in the Owyhee Hotel, provided she uses the back entrance.

1945

Vernon Baker fights heroically in a segregated unit during World War II, but is not recognized for his valor for another 50 years.

1948

President Harry S. Truman ends segregation in the military by executive order.

1968

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. Idaho Governor Don Samuelson does not order the statehouse flag to be flown at half-mast. Boise’s African Americans and other civil rights supporters protest. In Governor Samuelson’s absence, Lt. Governor Jack Murphy orders the flag lowered to half-mast.

1969

Idaho passes a civil rights bill. The Idaho Human Rights Commission is formed.

1970

White supremacists set up headquarters in Hayden Lake at a compound owned by Richard Butler, and eventually hold an annual World Congress of Aryan Nations there.

1972

Dr. Mamie Oliver becomes the first African American professor at Boise State University.

1973

Thomas “Les” Purce is the first African American elected to the city council in Pocatello; he goes on to become the state’s first black mayor.

1980s

There is a rise of some “survivalist” political groups in Idaho, including neo-Nazis. These groups are generally found in Idaho’s panhandle, and particularly around Coeur d’Alene (near Hayden Lake).

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1982

Mamie Oliver, Idaho’s first African American professor and a prominent historian, founds the Treasure Valley Council for Church and Social Action.

1985

The University of Idaho at Moscow names its jazz festival for musician Lionel Hampton, who had worked with the school since 1980 developing its jazz music program.

1990

Idaho enacts a law making the third Monday of January Martin Luther King Jr./ Idaho Human Rights Day.

1995

The Black History Museum is founded in Boise—the only African American museum in the Pacific Northwest.

1997

Idaho resident Vernon Baker accepts the Medal of Honor for previously unacknowledged valor shown during World War II.

1998

Musician Gene Harris founds a jazz festival at Boise State University.

2000

The Aryan Nations organization loses a $6.3 million lawsuit and is bankrupted. Its compound in Hayden Lake is confiscated. Government officials and other supporters of human rights soon commission a human rights memorial in a park with quotations about human rights—in Boise.

2001

The Idaho State Senate passes Resolution 4RC101, making Idaho the fifth state to recognize Juneteenth Day as a state holiday.

2003

African American Joe McNeal is elected mayor of Mountain Home.

2004

Richard Butler, who had headed the Hayden Lake Aryan Nations compound, dies. The compound is turned into a park dedicated to peace.

2006

The Lionel Hampton Center in Moscow is opened. It includes an archive of jazz materials starting with jazz donations from Hampton himself.

2007

Dr. Mamie Oliver is awarded the Idaho Bridge Award from the Idaho Black History Museum for her contributions in documenting African American history in Idaho.

2008

(February 5) Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, wins the Idaho Democratic caucuses, winning almost 80 percent of the vote to defeat Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. Obama fails to carry Idaho in the November general election.

Historical Overview Early Years The area we now call Idaho was for years part of an expanse referred to simply as the Northwest and later as Oregon Country. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Oregon Country from Napoleon Bonaparte, paying 3 3/5 cents per

acre. Shortly thereafter, Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore and map the new purchases of the United States, including Oregon Country. With William Clark came his slave, York—the first African American whom Native Americans of the area (mostly Shoshone [sometimes called Snake] Indians) had ever seen. Lewis’ journal notes that the Indians were fascinated by York’s

Idaho color and attempted to rub the blackness from his skin. For years after York’s appearance in Idaho, there was little African American presence there, other than a few mountain men and trappers, most notably James Beckwourth. Although Beckwourth’s presence in Idaho was fleeting, given the transient lifestyle of fur trappers and mountain men, he symbolizes the presence of other lesserknown African American mountain men who frequented the area. There was no permanent African American presence in Idaho until after the Civil War. In 1867, Elvina Moulton (“Aunt Viney”), a former slave from Kentucky, became the first African American woman to live in Boise. A few African American homesteaders ventured to Idaho after Elvina Moulton, but 20 years passed before there were any significant African American pockets in the territory. Francis and Mary Grice were among the settlers who joined the black community in Boise in the late 1880s. They had been living in Utah, but false accusations of poisoning a white man’s livestock prodded them to leave their restaurant business and home in Salt Lake City and move to Idaho. Grice’s Utah restaurant had been the scene of some tragic events in Utah in 1883, when a black man, a former soldier named Sam Joe Harvey, shot a white marshal and was subsequently lynched. The false accusations against the Grice family began soon after the lynching. The Grice home in Utah remained vacant for decades after their departure to Idaho, and was eventually torn down.

Homesteaders Starting around 1880, the first African Americans from the Mormon migration began relocating from Utah to Idaho, usually as homesteaders. Latter-day Saint converts from the South had often brought slaves with them to Utah. Of those emancipated blacks who remained in the Rocky Mountain area, several chose to settle around Idaho Falls. Other

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former slaves who had become Mormons during their enslavement came to Utah when they were free to do so after the Civil War ended. Prominent among this group was Green Flake. In 1838, Flake, age 10, had been given as a wedding gift to James Madison and Agnes Love Flake. He was 15 years old at the time he and the other Flake family members were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By then, he already weighed nearly 200 pounds. Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay, two half brothers, were also slaves of Mormon converts. These three men were hand-selected to be a part of the first company of Mormon pioneers. Their duties included building bridges across the Platte River, clearing trails, and repairing wagons. As was York, Green Flake was the first black man many Native Americans (Pawnee) had seen. In later years, when Green Flake was honored as a vanguard pioneer at a celebration near Gray’s Lake, Idaho, he described slavery in the following words: Slavery has been around a long time, and the colored folks got sold like they were a horse, a cow, or some other animal. They become the owner’s property, and they are to work long and hard for the master. Most everyone don’t want to be a slave and be in bondage to another, because you cannot have even your own thoughts and dreams. You cannot plan for the future when all decisions get made by someone else.1 After the 1885 death of his wife Martha (also a former slave who shared the same mother as Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby), Green moved to Idaho to be with his children, Lucinda and Abraham, who had settled in the Idaho Falls area. He died in Gray’s Lake in 1903. His body was then transported to the Union Cemetery in Salt Lake City, to be buried beside his wife. Green had already chosen his epitaph and reportedly helped carve it: “In my Father’s House are Many Mansions.”

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Around the time the Flake children moved to Idaho, Edward (Ned) and Susan Leggroan joined them. Once liberated from slavery, the Leggroans had come west with Ned’s sister, Amanda, and her husband Samuel Chambers, who had been baptized a Mormon at age 12 while still enslaved. Both Ned Leggroan and Samuel Chambers had lost their first wives, who had been sold off during slave times. The wives they brought west with them were considerably younger than either man. Lucinda Flake, daughter of Green and Martha Flake, and her part-Mexican husband George Stevens had 13 children, most of whom lived to maturity. Likewise, Ned and Susan Leggroan had a large posterity, most of their 10 children reaching maturity. Because the African American population was so small in Utah and Idaho, several marriages were formed between these two families, as well as between some Utah blacks—the children and grandchildren of black Mormon pioneers Jane Manning and Isaac James in addition to the posterity of former slaves, whose surnames included Perkins, Bankhead, Williams, Thomas, and Hooper. The families were so involved with each other that when Nettie James Leggroan died in her 20s, Martha Stevens Perkins (granddaughter of Green and Martha Flake) raised Nettie’s two daughters until their father remarried. Ned Leggroan’s 1926 obituary is significant given the year, since the Ku Klux Klan had become prominent throughout the nation—including in Idaho. White supremacist activity had surfaced there six years previously, with the Klan appearing in Twin Falls, Nampa, and Payette. As the following excerpt indicates, Ned Leggroan’s obituary provides a picture of the life of a homesteader in untamed Idaho and acknowledges his tenacity: Out there alone and completely surrounded by desert and sage brush, he had a hard struggle for the first few years, particularly against jack rabbits which was [sic] so thick that they used to eat the settlers out of house and home. . . .

He has lived to see the U.S. engaged in three big wars. There are few who have passed through as many historical stages as had Ned Leggroan. Born and reared in bondage he lived to become not only a highly respected citizen, but a voter and land owner as well. It took character, industry, and brains to accomplish what Ned Leggroan has accomplished during his life.2

Soldiers Though often mistreated and segregated from white soldiers, black troops have served in all wars the United States has fought. They have also been part of the peacekeeping military efforts within the nation and were so used in Idaho. African American soldiers in the old West were often referred to as buffalo soldiers, reportedly because some Native Americans compared their hair to a buffalo’s. Buffalo soldiers were sometimes assigned to fight Native Americans and were used in whatever internal or external conflicts in which the United States was engaged. As the century neared its end, black soldiers from the 24th Infantry were assigned as peacekeepers to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where mining conflicts had broken out. Though the soldiers were a temporary presence, they did impact the state, staying for four months during 1892. In 1899, when the 24th Infantry was stationed at Fort Douglas, Utah, some troops returned to Coeur d’Alene to quell a resurgence of the mining disputes. At this time, there were conflicts between the newly organized Western Federation of Miners and the Mine Owners’ Association. The miners and their union leaders were demanding higher pay, and their protests became literally explosive—with 200 pounds of dynamite blowing up the smelter building. Anticipating an escalation in violence, Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg requested that President McKinley send more troops. As the soldiers of the 24th

Idaho arrived (some having recently fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War), martial law was declared in Coeur d’Alene. Peace was eventually established, and the soldiers of the 24th returned to Fort Douglas. Shortly thereafter, some of these troops were sent to fight in the Philippines (part of the land won from Spain in the Spanish-American War), where President McKinley had determined that islanders were not ready for independence. There (as in Cuba) many of the soldiers contracted malaria, some succumbing to it. African American soldiers were segregated from their white counterparts until after World War II and were often unrecognized for their bravery. Idaho resident Vernon Baker, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997, was in one of the last segregated military units of the Second World War. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman officially ended segregation in the U.S. military through an executive order.

Cowboys After the Civil War, a large number of former slaves became cowboys, many in the West. The most famous, Nat Love, may have ventured into Idaho but did not stay long. Cowboys served as ranch hands and sometimes as rodeo performers. Idaho’s best-known cowboy was Tracy Thompson, who was a homesteader and railroad worker in the winter and a rodeo performer in the summer. He was killed in Bozeman, Montana, in 1930. His saddle strap was cut just before a horse-bucking competition, resulting in his fall from the horse and subsequent death.

White Supremacists African Americans populated the larger cities of Idaho sparsely in the years after homesteading and have remained a slim minority. Eventually, Idaho sustained a reputation for being a haven

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for white supremacists. This was largely due to the work of Richard Butler. Butler’s Aryan Nation compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, was regarded by many white supremacists as their international headquarters. Butler hosted summer festivals where attendees of all ages were indoctrinated in the white supremacist ideology. Youth conferences attracted skinheads to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. Though those attending Butler’s festivals were relatively few (200 at most), the very presence of the group and the compound tainted the outside perception of Idaho. Butler and his organization lost a lawsuit in 2001, brought by Native Americans Victoria Keenan and her son Jason. Security guards Jesse Warfield and John Yeager were already serving prison terms for attacking the Keenans in 1998. The Keenans had been chased by these guards, shot at, forced into a ditch, and then beaten with rifle butts. The Keenans’ lawsuit argued that Butler’s group had been negligent in training its security guards. Famous civil rights attorney Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which focuses on eradicating hate groups) represented the Keenans, with the trial held in Coeur d’Alene. A month after the jury announced its $6.3 million judgment against Butler’s organization and compound, he filed for bankruptcy. The compound was ultimately auctioned off, with the Keenans as the only bidders. They got not only the compound but its intellectual property, including the titles “Aryan Nations” and “Church of Jesus Christ Christian.” Richard Butler died in 2004. His white supremacist compound was turned into a park devoted to peace. Pockets of Aryan societies are still present in Idaho, but they are fragmented.

Modern-Day Idaho African Americans remain a slim minority in Idaho, but their presence has unquestionably impacted the

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state, from the Lewis and Clark expedition through the years of segregation, until more recent times, when Idaho has had two African American mayors: Thomas “Les” Purce in Pocatello and Joe J. McNeal in Mountain Home. Though born elsewhere, Gene Harris and Lionel Hampton established important centers for jazz in Idaho. Indeed, more and more blacks claim Idaho as their home and serve in important positions at universities, businesses, and government. The NAACP is well organized throughout the state and has strong branches supported by all ethnicities. Every major city in Idaho has some predominantly African American religious congregations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Church of God in Christ. Though Idaho still contends with a reputation for hosting white supremacist groups, it has responded to that reputation by establishing monuments to peace and civil rights. Most significant is the monument to Anne Frank erected in Boise in 2000, which includes the following words: May this memorial stand as a tribute to her memory, as a warning to any who would dare trespass upon the freedom of others, and as an inspiration to all whose lives are devoted to love, respect, understanding, peace, and good will among the totality and diversity of the human family. May this memorial inspire each of us to contemplate the moral implications of our civic responsibilities.3

Notable African Americans Baker, Vernon (1919–) A resident of northern Idaho, Vernon Baker has been the subject of a documentary and the author of a successful memoir about his military service in World War II. In April 1945, as a soldier in Viareggo, Italy, Baker single-handedly killed nine enemy soldiers and destroyed three machine gun positions as well as an observation deck. For

these and other actions, President Bill Clinton belatedly awarded Baker the Medal of Honor in 1997. Baker’s memoir, Lasting Valor, which describes his experiences as a black officer, was published in 1997.

Beckwourth, James (1798–1866) James Beckwourth was the son of Englishman Sir Jennings Beckwourth and one of his slaves. Though his father acknowledged him, Beckwourth was nonetheless enslaved. After moving to Missouri and apprenticing with a blacksmith in St. Louis, Beckwourth left home, eventually working for the American Fur Trading Company. He lived for eight years with the Crow tribe and in his autobiography claimed that he was named the head chief of the Crow Nation. Beckwourth was reputed to stretch his tales, so we cannot know if this claim was strictly true, but it is clear that he at least observed the most significant events of western development in the early nineteenth century. For example, he was present at one of the largest rendezvous with Native Americans and other traders, held in 1832 in what is now Idaho. The annual rendezvous included trading, dancing, drinking, and various competitions.

Buckner-Webb, Cherie (dates unknown) Cherie Buckner-Webb, a native of Idaho, is a motivational speaker and a vocalist in blues, gospel, and jazz. She is the founder and principal of Sojourner Coaching and is a featured inspirational keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant for public and private business, groups, and organizations.

Fango, Gobo (1854–1886) Gobo Fango was from a Bantu tribe in Africa. After some intertribal wars, he was adopted at age three as a servant to the Talbot family, British

Idaho converts to the Mormon religion. He settled in the Oakley area of Idaho around 1880 with the Talbots, who were part of a group of Mormon pioneers. Gobo Fango was three years old at the time of that journey. When threatened with discovery in pre–Civil War America, he had been hidden under the skirts of one of the pioneer women. As a young man in the West, Gobo stayed with the William and Mary Ann Hunter family as a sheepherder, but was not considered an equal to the Caucasians. He slept outside even in the dead of winter, which resulted in his feet being frozen and left him with a permanent limp. In 1886, conflicts over grazing rights between cattlemen and sheepherders were common in Idaho. In February 1886, Gobo, although not involved in any of the conflicts, was accosted and shot in the stomach by a man named Frank Bedke. Mortally wounded, he nonetheless managed to walk and crawl four miles to a ranch, covering his wound with his hands and some sagebrush. Three days later, he died. Although the assailant was known, he was never convicted. Bedke’s first trial ended in a mistrial; his second in acquittal. The jury found that Gobo’s murderer had shot and killed him in “self-defense,” although Gobo had been unarmed. The Gobo Fango case was thus the first case in Idaho where race clearly played a part in the jury’s verdict. Folklore circulated that Gobo wrote his will in his own blood, deeding all his money to the Hunter family and the Grantsville LDS Relief Society. In fact, he did not write his will in his own blood (he signed the will with an X), but did ask that some of his money be donated to the building of the Salt Lake Temple.

Flake, Green (1828–1903) Green Flake was born enslaved in Anson County, North Carolina, and given as a wedding gift to James and Agnes Love Flake, who moved to

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Mississippi shortly after their marriage. Green Flake was a baptized Mormon and became one of three “colored servants” (slaves) in the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers, which brought him some fame. Emancipated around 1849, he spent the last years of his life in the Gray’s Lake area of Idaho and died there, although he was buried in Utah. His two children both settled in the Idaho Falls area.

Harris, Gene (1933–2000) Gene Harris was a renowned jazz pianist. He was born in Benton Harbor, Maryland, and retired to Boise in 1977, but even after retirement joined the Ray Brown Trio and led his own groups as well. Prior to his death from kidney failure, he organized the Gene Harris Jazz Festival in Idaho, which continues to bring jazz aficionados into Idaho annually. He is perhaps best known for his “Ode to Billy Joe.”

Leggroan, Edward (c. 1840–1926) One of the early homesteaders in Idaho, Edward “Ned” Leggroan was honored for his tenacity in taming Idaho’s difficult terrain. He and his wife Susan had come west after the Civil War and were the parents of many children who, as they married other African Americans in the Idaho and Utah areas, formed the nucleus of the black community in these states. Although most of the Leggroan descendants eventually moved from Idaho, a few still remain.

McNeal, Joe J. (1936–) Joe J. McNeal became president of the Boise/ Ada/Elmore Branch of the NAACP in 1990. He also was a strong proponent of Idaho’s successful efforts to recognize Juneteenth Day as a state holiday. He became the first African American mayor of Mountain Home.

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Thomas “Les” Purce, right, answers questions during a news conference as part of the Higher Education Day, 2007. On the left is V. Lane Rawlins, president of Washington State University. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Moulton, Elvina (1837–1917) Elvina Moulton (Aunt Viney) was born enslaved in Kentucky. After the Civil War, she made her way west, settling in 1867 in Boise, where she worked as a laundress. She became a charter member of Boise’s First Presbyterian Church.

has been widely recognized for her contributions to public service and to the study of Idaho African American history. In 2005, she and her late husband, Dr. H. Lincoln Oliver, were both inducted in the Hall of Fame of the Treasure Valley chapter of the NAACP. In 2007, she received a Congressional Award for community service from Idaho Senator Mike Crapo.

Oliver, Mamie (dates unknown) Mamie Oliver became the first African American professor (Boise State University) in Idaho when she accepted a faculty position at Boise State University in 1972. She and her students conducted foundational research on the history of African Americans in Idaho and she is a principal creator of the museum exhibit titled “The Invisible Idahoan: 200 Years of Blacks in Idaho.” Dr. Oliver accepted a position of professor of social work at Northwest Nazarene University in 2001. She

Purce, Thomas “Les” (dates unknown) Thomas “Les” Purce was the first black mayor in Idaho (serving in Pocatello). Dr. Purce is currently president of Evergreen College in Washington state, a position he has held since July 2000. Before that he held various governmental positions in Idaho and also served as vice president of Extended University Affairs and dean of Extended Education Programs at Washington State University.

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Kimberly Moore, the new director for the Idaho Black History Museum, stands in the center of the museum, 2006, in Boise, Idaho. The museum is set in a tiny former black Baptist church, a space that Moore hopes to quadruple in size. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Thompson, Tracy (c. 1880–1930)

Cultural Contributions

Tracy Thompson, the most famous cowboy of Idaho, was a champion rodeo rider. He worked as a homesteader at Arimo, but moved to Pocatello in 1919. He worked on Idaho’s railroads in the winter months and spent summers on the rodeo circuit. He died after a suspicious rodeo accident in Bozeman, Montana, in 1930.

Black History Museum Though few African Americans have settled in Idaho, Boise sponsors a Black History Museum on Julia Davis Avenue, which chronicles the contributions of the African Americans in Idaho, ranging from York (William Clark’s enslaved companion on the Lewis and Clark expedition), to the buffalo soldiers, and up to current times.

York (1770–1832) York, a slave of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, was the first African American to set foot in what is now Idaho. Although he risked his life to save Clark in a flash flood and was a part of the exploration team in every way, he was returned to slavery after the expedition concluded.

Jazz Through the formidable contributions of Gene Harris and Lionel Hampton, Idaho attracted jazz musicians, who can study jazz at the wellendowed facilities in the University of Idaho at Moscow and can attend the annual Gene Harris Festival in Boise.

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Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial This educational park, located in Boise, contains over 60 quotes about human rights. Opened in 2002, the memorial is toured by thousands of schoolchildren each year. A world-class educational park, the memorial has been profiled in several national publications, including the book Etched in Stone: Enduring Words from Our Nation’s Monuments by National Geographic.

Notes 1. John Fretwell, “Miscellaneous Family Papers.” The quote is from the undated Millcreek, Idaho, Pioneer Appreciation Day, transcribed by Rachel Simmons. 2. The Times Register (later called the Post Register), February 2, 1926, from Idaho Falls, ID. 3. Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial (online, July 2007), www.idaho-human rights.org/Memorial.

Bibliography Baker, Vernon, and Ken Olsen. Lasting Valor. New York: Bantam/Dell, 1999. Burley, Idaho, Recorder’s Office. Letter of Kenneth Larson, September 15, 1951. (Reports events related to the life and death of Gobo Fango.) Burley, Idaho, Recorder’s Office. Letter of J. Newell Dayley. December 16, 1948. (Details the events

of Gobo Fango’s murder from firsthand accounts.) Carter, Kate. Negro Pioneer. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1964. Clark, Michael J. “Improbable Ambassadors: Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, 1896–99.” Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (1978): 282–301. Coleman, Ronald. “A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825–1910.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utah, 1980. Fretwell, John. “Miscellaneous Family Papers on Green Flake.” Unpublished. Katz, William Loren. The Black West. Seattle, WA: Open Hand Publishing, 1987. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

Web Sites Idaho Black History Museum. Online, July 2007. www.ibhm.org. Idaho Human Rights Education Center. Online, July 2007. www.idaho-humanrights.org. Idaho Public Television. Mountain Man Rendezvous—Yesterday and Today. Online, July 2007. http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/ shows/buckskinbrigade/rendezvous.cfm. PBS. “Stories of Valor: Vernon Baker.” Online, July 2007. www.pbs.org/weta/americanvalor/ stories/baker.html. University of Idaho. “Lionel Hampton: His Life and Legacy.” Online, July 2007. www.uidaho .edu/hampton/bio.html.

ILLINOIS Tiffany K. Wayne

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Chronology 1720

The first African slaves are brought by the French to the Illinois country to work in mines.

1724

The French government issues “Black Codes,” or the Code Noir, to regulate slavery in French colonies.

1779

Haitian-born trader Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable establishes a permanent settlement on the western shores of Lake Michigan that becomes Chicago.

1787

Under the Northwest Ordinance, the U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in the new western territories, including Illinois.

1800

The Indiana Territory, including Illinois, is established, and William Henry Harrison, a slaveholder, is appointed governor.

1809

Illinois becomes a separate territory, retaining the territorial law that requires blacks to be registered as long-term indentured servants and prohibiting free blacks from entering Illinois.

1818

(December 3) Illinois is admitted to the Union as the 21st state; its state constitution contains a provision that protects the rights of current slaveholders but prohibits slavery from this point forward.

1836

“Free” Frank McWorter, a former slaver from Kentucky, founds the town of New Philadelphia, Illinois.

1837

The Illinois legislature condemns abolitionist societies and activities, and supports the rights of slaveholders in southern states.

1837

Abolitionist newspaperman Elijah Lovejoy is killed by a proslavery mob in Alton.

1848

The Illinois state constitution ends slavery in the state, but includes an article requiring legislation to “prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state; and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this state for the purpose of setting them free.”

1848

Baptist minister Samuel S. Ball of Springfield travels to Liberia to report on conditions for Illinois African Americans interested in relocating to the region.

1857

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court denies the claim to freedom made by Scott, a slave from Missouri, who based his claim on his residency in the Wisconsin Territory and in the free state of Illinois.

1863

Slaves in Illinois are not freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which applies only to slaves in the rebel states.

1864

The 29th U.S. Colored Infantry is organized at Quincy, Illinois, and suffers severe losses in the Civil War.

1865

(February 1) Illinois becomes the first state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States.

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1867

(January 15) Illinois ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full citizenship to blacks.

1869

(March 5) Illinois becomes the third state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending voting rights to African Americans.

1874

Illinois outlaws segregation in public schools.

1876

John W. E. Thomas of Chicago is the first African American elected as a representative to the Illinois state legislature.

1878

The Chicago Conservator newspaper is founded by Ferdinand L. Barnett; he later sells the paper to his wife, antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

1885

The Illinois Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination in public facilities.

1886

Augustus Tolton is ordained as the first black Catholic priest in the United States; his first assignment is as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Quincy.

1893

National black leaders such as Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass protest the exclusion of African Americans from exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.

1905

The Chicago Defender, the largest black newspaper in Illinois, is founded by Robert S. Abbott.

1908

(August) Race riots in Springfield leave seven people dead and much black property destroyed.

1909

In part as a response to the race riots in Springfield, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1917

(July) Race riots break out in East St. Louis over job and housing tensions; dozens are killed and thousands of African Americans flee the city.

1919

(July and August) Several days of race riots in Chicago leave dozens dead. The riots begin as a dispute over separate black and white areas of the beach and the drowning death of a black boy.

1919

Chicago journalist and businessman Claude Barnett founds the Associated Negro Press, a service that eventually distributes stories to more than 200 black newspapers around the country.

1920

Violette N. Anderson becomes the first black woman lawyer in Illinois and later becomes the first black woman admitted to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1924

Adelbert H. Roberts of Chicago is the first African American to serve in the Illinois State Senate.

1928

Oscar Stanton DePriest of Chicago is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first African American elected since the Reconstruction era and the first black congressman from a northern state.

1933

The Illinois legislature outlaws racial discrimination in government contracts and employment.

1940

In Hansberry v. Lee, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes a blow against restrictive covenants in home sales, the practice of preventing African Americans from living in white neighborhoods.

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1940 (cont.)

The subject matter of the case, which referred to restrictions in a Chicago neighborhood, was later incorporated by the plaintiff’s daughter Lorraine Hansberry into her 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, in which the family moves into a white neighborhood.

1934

Arthur W. Mitchell is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, becoming the first black Democrat elected to Congress from any state.

1941

The Illinois legislature forbids racial discrimination in state defense contracts and employment.

1942

William L. Dawson, a black attorney from Chicago, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois.

1943

Governor Dwight H. Green establishes the Illinois Interracial Commission, the first publicly funded state committee on race, to address problems of racial tension and discrimination in areas such as housing and education.

1950

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago becomes the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1955

The body of 14-year-old Emmett Till, murdered in Mississippi, is viewed in Chicago.

1961

A Fair Employment Practices Commission is created in Illinois to investigate cases of employment discrimination.

1962

(November 14) Illinois becomes the first state to ratify the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1966

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads marches through all-white neighborhoods in Chicago to protest housing discrimination.

1967

(July) Three days of race riots and protests occur in Cairo after the suspicious death of a young black man who is found hanged in the town jail.

1968

(April) Riots erupt in Chicago and other cities across the nation after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. In Chicago, at least 11 African Americans are killed and hundreds of others are injured or arrested.

1969

George W. Collins, an African American attorney who had worked as a deputy sheriff of Cook County, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election held to fill the unexpired term of the late white Congressman Daniel J. Ronan; Collins is elected to a full term in 1970.

1969

(December) A police raid on the Chicago headquarters of the Black Panther Party results in the death of two members, Mark Clark and Fred Hampton.

1971

James E. Williams Sr. becomes the first black mayor of East St. Louis.

1971

Chicago civil rights activist Jesse Jackson founds the interracial organization Operation PUSH: People United to Serve Humanity.

1973

Cardiss Collins is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, filling the seat left vacant by the death of her husband George W. Collins.

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1979

African American attorney Roland Burris is elected as comptroller of Illinois.

1980

Chicago attorney and politician Harold Washington is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois.

1983

Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

1983

Chicago civil rights activist Charles A. Hayes is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Harold Washington upon his election as mayor of Chicago.

1991

Roland Burris is elected as Illinois attorney general.

1992

Carol Moseley-Braun of Chicago is elected the first black woman to the U.S. Senate.

1996

Civil rights activist and Chicago alderman Danny K. Davis is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois.

2004

Barack Obama, a Chicago community activist, becomes the first African American man elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois.

2008

Barack Obama, U.S. senator from Illinois, is elected as the first African American president of the United States; Obama carries Illinois in the election with about 62 percent of the vote.

2009

Roland Burris is sworn in to fill out Barack Obama’s unexpired term in the U.S. Senate.

Historical Overview

Africans in Early Illinois

With more than 12 million residents in 2000, Illinois is one of the most populous and diverse midwestern states. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, but Chicago and its surrounding suburbs is the state’s largest metropolis. Chicago, especially, has attracted large numbers of African Americans since the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. In 2000, African Americans made up 15 percent of the population of the state of Illinois, while the population of Chicago was more than 37 percent black. Since its admission as the 21st state in 1818, Illinois has been at the center of national politics and has often been considered a microcosm for issues affecting the entire nation. African Americans have been central to the history and political development of Illinois, from the slavery debates of the nineteenth century, to the civil rights movement of the midtwentieth century, to the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president.

What is now the state of Illinois was part of the larger Mississippi River Valley region explored by French trappers and traders beginning in the 1670s. The first Africans were brought into the region in 1720 to work in the mines. By 1732, a French census listed some 300 Africans in the Illinois settlement, a population that would have been subject to the French Code Noir (or Black Code) regulating the colonial slave workforce. The Code Noir allowed some rights for slaves and slave families, but also protected the rights of slaveholders to punish their slaves as they saw fit. The Code Noir also set a precedent in the Americas for severely limiting the rights of free blacks, a population that would be regulated, excluded, and discriminated against in Illinois through the nineteenth century. One of the first documented Africans in Illinois was Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, born in Haiti to a black slave mother and a French father.

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Du Sable was educated in France and then returned to North America as a trader and explorer. He traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then up the Mississippi River and into Michigan, where he married a Native American woman and was known as a “Black Chief.” Later deemed “the father of Chicago,” sometime before or around 1779, du Sable reached the western shores of Lake Michigan, where he established a permanent settlement and a centrally located trading post for fur and agricultural goods. The slave population slowly increased as more French settlers acquired agricultural and household laborers. The British gained control of Illinois in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years’ War; and after the American Revolution, the region was part of the Northwest Territory to be organized and regulated by the new United States. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the territory, but the territorial government allowed for settlers in the region to retain slaves and servants already owned before the United States had claimed the region. The Northwest Territory was eventually divided into separate regions; in 1800, Illinois became part of the Indiana Territory, and in 1809, the Illinois Territory was established. European Americans began settling in the region in greater numbers. Most were farmers coming to Illinois from northeastern states in search of opportunity. These were not wealthy settlers, and although there were still very few slaves in the Indiana Territory in the early decades of the nineteenth century, some had been brought by slave owners from nearby Kentucky or Missouri, or brought in from other regions to work on new industrial and mining projects. As slavery was officially prohibited in the territory, the territorial government enacted legislation to allow lengthy, even indefinite, terms of “indentured servitude,” making it possible to meet frontier labor needs while preventing African American workers from gaining their freedom.

Slavery and Statehood This conflicted history of slavery in the Illinois Territory, and the combination of slave and free populations, was still not resolved when Illinois sought admission as a state. As it was in the economic interest of the region to lure wealthier slaveholding whites from nearby Missouri, some politicians advocated for admitting Illinois as a slave state. After much debate, Illinois was added to the Union as a free state in 1818, although the new state constitution still allowed for existing slaves to remain slaves. In the coming years, the Illinois legislature enacted laws severely limiting the freedoms of free blacks and preventing the migration of free blacks into the state from other regions. In 1819, future Illinois Governor Edward Coles migrated from Virginia, specifically searching for a place to free his own inherited slaves. He ultimately freed 10 slaves and gave each family 160 acres of land when they reached Illinois. Coles was elected governor in 1822 and challenged the state’s slave laws; he was subsequently sued (unsuccessfully) for violating those laws himself by bringing his slaves to Illinois with the intention of freeing them. In 1829, a group of fugitive and former slaves from St. Louis, Missouri, fled across the Mississippi River, establishing an all-black community that thrived for years in Brooklyn, Illinois. Even after admission as an officially “free” state, the issue of slavery continued to dominate Illinois politics. Throughout the early 1820s, proposals were made to change the state constitution and allow slavery. The proslavery proposals were narrowly defeated, and not due to abolitionist sentiment but due to fear of the slaveholding class of whites gaining political control and fear of blacks themselves; in other words, while some wanted to lure wealthy slaveholding whites to the region, others feared the black slave population they would bring with them. The Illinois legislature eventually completely outlawed black

Illinois migration into the state, forbade intermarriage between blacks and whites, and enacted some of the harshest laws regarding free blacks already living in the state. Free blacks were denied any political or legal rights, and Illinois developed as a heavily segregated society. In 1837, the legislature went so far as to officially condemn the existence and activities of those who opposed slavery as abolitionists. That same year, Elijah Lovejoy, publisher of an abolitionist newspaper and founder of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, was killed by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Because of a rising abolitionist network and because of the proximity to several slave states, Illinois became an important route along the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing the South and heading to freedom in Canada. These factors also set the stage for the most famous freedom suit of the 1850s, that of Dred Scott, a Missouri slave who argued for his freedom because he had lived with his owner in the “free” areas of the Wisconsin Territory and Illinois. In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the U.S. Supreme Court not only denied Scott’s appeal for his freedom, but claimed that African Americans, slave or free, were not U.S. citizens and therefore could not even file such a lawsuit.

Civil War and Beyond The debate about slavery in Illinois was taken to the national stage when two Illinois politicians ended up on the presidential ticket in 1860. Two years earlier, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had engaged in a series of debates about slavery held across Illinois as part of their campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. Douglas won, and served as senator from Illinois before securing the Democratic nomination for president in 1860. Douglas, who had played a prominent role in the Kansas-Nebraska territorial slavery debates of 1854, united the interests of his southern and northern constituents by refusing to take a

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position on the moral question of slavery and running instead on a platform of popular sovereignty and free territorial elections to decide the question of slavery. Abraham Lincoln returned as Douglas’ opposition as the Republican presidential candidate in 1860 on the platform of free soil, free labor. The Republican party of Lincoln did not initially embrace or attract many Illinois abolitionists. Lincoln looked back to the original intent of the Northwest Ordinance prohibition on slavery to determine that the goal was not ending slavery as it already existed in the South, but merely preventing its further spread westward into free territories. With Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860, and the outbreak of Civil War just a few months later, Illinois was again at risk of being split over the question of slavery. Although some residents of southern Illinois considered joining the Confederacy, Illinois remained with the Union and more than 1,800 African Americans from Illinois ultimately joined the Union army. Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 freed slaves only in the rebel Confederate states, it angered northern Democrats and their white working-class constituency when the Union army began bringing freed slaves into Illinois from the South. After the war, whites in Illinois were still not eager to embrace an expanded free black population. Even Republicans who advocated for black civil rights focused their energies on “reconstructing” the South and providing opportunities for blacks there, not expecting or encouraging black migration to the North. Still, in February 1865, Illinois became the first state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ending slavery throughout the nation. Although Illinois had a smaller black population and therefore fewer blacks in political office than many other northern and midwestern states, the post– Civil War Illinois legislature went on to enact

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civil rights and antisegregation legislation in the 1870s and 1880s.

Black Migrations While the Jim Crow South has its own history of discrimination and horrors, the northern states were not exempt from the problems of segregation, racial tension, and violence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite these problems, however, the early decades of the twentieth century saw a “Great Migration” of African Americans fleeing poverty and discrimination in the South in search of education and employment opportunities in the North. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the black population of Illinois, and of the city of Chicago in particular, increased multiple times over. While many black men enlisted and served in both World War I and World War II, at home the wars brought increased demand for factory workers in cities such as Chicago. At the same time that military needs created demand for production, there were also fewer white workers available due to not only male military service, but a decrease in new European immigration during the wars. For every better-paying factory or railroad job, however, there were many more blacks who came to Chicago and other northern cities only to be segregated into low-paying service jobs. Between 1910 and 1940, the black population in Chicago alone increased from 40,000 to more than 270,000. This population found itself segregated into poor neighborhoods on the South Side, where urban poverty, segregated public schools, and housing discrimination would become the focus of a new Civil Right Movement. On the positive side, that movement would be sustained by this concentrated community and its networks of black churches and social and political organizations, newspapers, and cultural institutions.

The increase in the urban black population, and the increased politicization of that population, led to new forms of white resentment and, again, the North was not immune to some of the worst racial violence of the century. In 1908, rioting broke out and two black men were lynched in the capital city of Springfield. Several whites were also killed, others were injured, and many black homes and businesses were destroyed. The Springfield riots were so disruptive and shocking that white and black activists together were moved to create a national civil rights organization, and the NAACP was founded the following year. The violence did not end, however. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, wife of Chicago newspaperman Ferdinand L. Barnett, was the leading voice of the antilynching campaign. Race riots continued, including one of the worst in the history of Illinois and of the nation in Chicago in 1919. That summer, a week of protests, fires, and looting left several dead and hundreds more injured.

Depression and World War The 1930s and 1940s brought the beginning of dismantling the history of discrimination and segregation. Jobs were scarce for everyone during the Great Depression, and black workers protested and boycotted businesses that served their community but would not hire black workers. Black newspapers in Chicago and other cities advertised and encouraged the boycotts, putting pressure on white business owners that was then backed up by state and federal legislation against employment discrimination in the public and government sectors. Housing was another area in which the black community began to fight back. In the early twentieth century, restrictive covenants were used to prevent blacks from living in certain neighborhoods. These were legally binding contracts that allowed white homeowners to refuse to sell or rent to African Americans. In

Illinois 1940, a Chicago case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Hansberry v. Lee, the Court did not declare restrictive covenants unconstitutional, but it did set a precedent for questioning their legality and brought attention to this form of discrimination. Illinois blacks had answered the call to service in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, but an even greater number took on a variety of roles during World War II. Ellsworth Dansby of Decatur, Illinois, was part of the famous Tuskegee Airmen trained as the first black fighter pilots. Illinois was also the training ground for the first African American officers to serve in the U.S. Navy, known as the “Golden Thirteen.” Besides combat roles, African Americans worked behind the scenes for the war effort. Chemist Ralph Gardner-Chavis of Chicago was one of a small number of African American scientists involved in the U.S. government’s secret Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. Not all avenues were open to blacks or to women, however. Janet Bragg of Rockford and later Chicago purchased her own plane and started her own flying club in order to become a pilot in the 1930s. During World War II, she was one of a number of black women whose applications to fly for the Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots (WASPs) were denied.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond The war ended with the desegregation of the military and the beginning of intense civil rights campaigns to desegregate schools and public facilities. Such efforts again provoked a violent response from whites threatened by black attempts at social equality. One of the defining events of the new Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s involved a young boy from Chicago but took place in Mississippi, where 14-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in the summer of 1955 and was murdered after being accused

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of speaking to a white woman. Till’s family had his body put on display in Chicago in order to inspire outrage about the event and about race relations in the United States. In the 1960s, Chicago became a hotbed of civil rights activity, perhaps the most active northern city during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined with local activists to form the Chicago Freedom Movement, leading marches through all-white neighborhoods to protest housing discrimination and segregation. The crowd threw stones at King and the other marchers and, in a television interview, King said that he had experienced more racial hostility in Chicago than in many southern cities. The following years saw major race riots and protests in Cairo, Illinois, and again in Chicago following the news of King’s assassination in April 1968. King had inspired a new generation of Chicago and national civil rights leaders, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Millions of African Americans continued to migrate north through the 1960s. By 1970, blacks made up one-third of the Chicago population, and by the year 2000, Chicago had the secondgreatest urban population of African Americans, behind New York City. In Chicago, this meant the growth of the inner city, the poor and working population concentrated on the south and west sides of Chicago, but also the continued growth of a small black middle class. These factors have led to Illinois (and Chicago in particular) becoming an important proving ground for black politicians who began to take control of their South Side neighborhoods or wards beginning in the early 1900s and had moved into city, state, and national politics by the mid-twentieth century. Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago in 1983, and in 1992, Illinois sent the first African American woman, Carol Moseley-Braun, to the U.S. Senate. By 2010, there had been only six African American senators, but three of those were from the state

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in front of City Hall with hundreds of supporters and members of the Chicago Freedom Movement during a protest calling for the firing of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis by Mayor Daley over the former’s delays in integrating area schools, Chicago, Illinois, 1965. (Getty Images)

of Illinois (Moseley-Braun, Barack Obama, and Roland Burris, who in 1991 had been Illinois’ first black attorney general). In 2007, Barack Obama, U.S. senator and former Chicago community organizer, announced his bid for the presidency and in November 2008 was elected the first African American president of the United States. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, however, Illinois’ African American citizens continue to struggle with problems of discrimination and segregation, particularly in the battles over school desegregation and employment and housing discrimination.

moved to Chicago when she was just an infant. She published her first poem at the age of 13 and began submitting poetry to the black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, at age 17. Most of her poems deal with black urban life. Her first book, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), was critically acclaimed, but it was Annie Allen (1949) which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Brooks was named poet laureate for the state of Illinois in 1968, and in 1985 was appointed U.S. poet laureate. She received numerous other awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts in 1995.

Notable African Americans

Burnett, Chester Arthur “Howlin’ Wolf” (1910–1976)

Brooks, Gwendolyn (1917–2000) Poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks and her family

Chester Arthur “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett was a singer, guitarist, harmonica player, and composer who exemplified the new urban Chicago-style blues of the mid-twentieth century. Born and

Illinois raised in rural Mississippi, Burnett sang in local nightclubs before moving to Chicago after recording his first hit album, Moanin’ at Midnight, in 1951. Along with Muddy Waters and other Chicago blues artists, Burnett had a significant influence on the development of rock and roll in the 1960s and 1970s, and he recorded with artists such as the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. His 1956 recording, “Smokestack Lightning,” and other songs were later acknowledged by both the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an important early influences in rock music.

Davis, Miles (1926–1991) Miles Dewey Davis III was a trumpet player and composer and one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the twentieth century. Responsible for many new musical fusions, he helped spread the popularity of cool jazz and bebop, as well as playing with and launching the careers of many other musicians. Davis was born in Alton, Illinois, to a middle-class family who then moved to East St. Louis. He began trumpet lessons at age 13 and by age 17 had joined a blues band. He moved to New York in 1944 to study at Juilliard and to play with his idol, Charlie Parker. Davis first recorded as leader of the Miles Davis Sextet in 1946 and his most significant album, Kind of Blue, was recorded in 1959.

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and classical dance; and in 1968, she founded the Dunham Center for the Performing Arts (now the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities) at Southern Illinois University.

Gregory, Dick (1932–) Richard Claxton Gregory is a comedian and activist well known for his books and comedy routines on racism and the struggles of African Americans. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Gregory studied at Southern Illinois University before joining the army during World War II. After the war, he moved to Chicago where he performed at nightclubs and was soon discovered by television executives. He gained national exposure on the Tonight Show in the early 1960s but used his celebrity to turn attention to the civil rights and antiwar movements. He launched a political career at the same time that he published several books of racial and political humor and criticism based on his experiences.

Dunham, Katherine (1910–2006) Katherine Dunham was a choreographer and dancer known for bringing African and Caribbean influences into modern American dance. Born in Chicago and raised in Glen Ellyn and Joliet, Illinois, Dunham studied anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research on the culture of the African diaspora influenced her choreography and her formation of an all-black dance school and touring troupe; it also influenced her later political work on behalf of Haitian refugees. She opened the Dunham School of Dance in New York, where she taught both folk

Comedian and activist Dick Gregory being interviewed on the telephone, 1964. (Library of Congress)

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Jackson, Jesse (1941–) Jesse Jackson is a minister, civil rights activist, and politician, and one of the most prominent African American activists and leaders of his time. Born Jesse Louis Burns in South Carolina, Jackson attended the University of Illinois and later the Chicago Theological Seminary. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership conference (SCLC) in Chicago beginning in 1965 and was in Memphis, Tennessee, when King was assassinated in 1968. In 1971, Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), which later merged with his Rainbow Coalition. Jackson ran for president of the United States in 1984 and 1988. He failed to capture the Democratic nomination either time, although he won 29 percent of the popular vote in the 1988 primary.

Jackson, Mahalia (1911–1972) Mahalia Jackson was the most successful gospel singer of the twentieth century, recording more than 30 albums and selling more than 8 million copies of her 1946 recording of “Move On Up a Little Higher.” Born in New Orleans, Jackson moved to Chicago as a teenager, where she sang at church services, was invited to join a touring gospel choir, and began a lifelong collaboration with composer Thomas A. Dorsey. Jackson became an international star and sang at Carnegie Hall, the 1963 March on Washington, and the 1968 funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. When Jackson died in 1972, thousands came to Chicago to pay tribute. Mahalia Jackson was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an important early influence on rock music.

Metcalfe, Ralph (1910–1978) Ralph Harold Metcalfe was an Olympic sprinter once known as the “World’s Fastest Human.”

Born in Atlanta, Metcalfe was raised in Chicago and entered his first Olympic games while still a student at Marquette University. He earned a silver medal in the 100-meter dash and a bronze in the 200-meter at the Olympics held in Los Angeles in 1932. At the controversial 1936 games held in Berlin, he won his only gold medal, in the 4 × 100-meter relay, and a silver in the 100-meter. After graduating from college, Metcalfe was a university track and field coach and then joined the army during World War II. After the war he began a career in politics, serving on the Chicago City Council and representing Illinois in the U.S. Congress during the 1970s.

Motley, Archibald (1891–1981) Archibald Motley was an artist associated with the Harlem Renaissance black cultural movement, although he was trained and lived in Chicago. Motley is best known for his scenes of urban black night life, inspired by the “jazz culture” of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. Born in New Orleans, he was raised in Chicago and graduated from the School of the Art Institute in 1918. Raised in an all-white neighborhood, and later married to a German-American woman, Motley became known for destabilizing ideas about race and color through his depictions of African Americans of various skin tones. His celebratory scenes of city life were also in stark contrast to southern stereotypes of poor rural blacks.

Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) (1915–1983) Born McKinley Morganfield in Mississippi, Muddy Waters became known as one of the founders of the Chicago blues style in the 1950s. Waters played with Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf Burnett, Willie Dixon, and others in the Chicago blues movement. Recording at the famous Chess Record Studio in the late 1940s, Waters added a more amplified urban sound to the

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Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2009. Obama’s wife Michelle holds the Bible on which President Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office. (U.S. Department of Defense)

traditional folk blues with his use of the electric guitar, inspiring both American and British rock and roll artists of the 1960s and beyond. His 1950 song “Rollin’ Stone” inspired the Rolling Stones in their name, and his songs were recorded by or identified as the influence behind songs by Led Zeppelin (“Whole Lotta Love”), Foghat (“I Just Want to Make Love to You”), and AC/ DC (“You Shook Me All Night Long”).

Obama, Barack (1961–) Barack Hussein Obama II was elected the 44th president of the United States in 2008. He was born in Hawaii to a father who was an economist in Kenya and a mother who was a native of Kansas. He lived in Indonesia as a child before returning to live with his white grandparents in

Honolulu, Hawaii. He attended Columbia University in New York and graduated from Harvard Law School, where he became the first black to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review before moving to Chicago, where he worked as a community organizer on the South Side, and as a civil rights attorney and professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago before serving in the Illinois Senate. In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In 2008, he was named the Democratic nominee for president and was elected to office as the first black president in November 2008. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Obama authored two best-selling autobiographical books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father (2008).

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Pryor, Richard (1940–2005) Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III was a stand-up comedian and film actor known for his outrageous and controversial humor. Pryor translated his difficult childhood of poverty, abuse, and racism into comedy and entertainment, paving the way for many other black comedians who would later credit his influence. Born in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor dropped out of school and served in the U.S. Army for two years before returning home to perform in comedy clubs. He moved to New York in 1963, eventually taking his comedy routine on the road and gaining national exposure that led to television (Saturday Night Live, The Richard Pryor Show) and film deals ( Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, Superman III, Silver Streak, and others).

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1862–1931) Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was a journalist and activist who led the antilynching campaign at the turn of the twentieth century. Wells traveled throughout the United States and Europe and published several newspaper articles and pamphlets to expose the false accusations and lynchings of African Americans. Born in Mississippi during the Civil War, Wells later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she taught school and brought a lawsuit against a railroad company for segregated seating. She began speaking out on and recording incidents of lynching after three of her friends were murdered in Memphis. She encouraged blacks to leave the South and, under personal threat from the white community, she moved to Chicago in the 1890s, where she met and married newspaper editor Ferdinand L. Barnett and continued her civil rights campaigns.

Ida B. Wells was a civil rights activist, journalist, and crusader against lynching. During World War I, she campaigned for racial equality in the military. (Library of Congress)

twentieth-century America. His most famous novel, Native Son (1940), tells the story of a young black man growing up in the ghetto of Chicago’s South Side. Wright was born in Mississippi and raised in the South before moving to Chicago in 1927. He was associated with the Communist Party in the 1930s, but was disillusioned by racism within the party. His first novel, Cesspool, was published in 1935, but his second book, Native Son, became a bestseller and was produced on Broadway. It was followed in 1945 by the semi-autobiographical novel, Black Boy. Wright later moved to New York and then, hoping to escape American racism, to France.

Wright, Richard (1908–1960)

Cultural Contributions

Richard Nathaniel Wright was a writer whose works dealt with race relations and racism in

Illinois’ large, diverse, and politically active African American community has left an important legacy

Illinois in music, entertainment, sports, and literature that has impacted Illinois and the nation at large. Beginning with the Great Migration of African Americans in the early twentieth century, southern blacks developed new musical forms and traditions in their new home in the North, particularly with the blues and jazz music. The “Chicago blues” style developed when musicians from the Mississippi Delta, and from New Orleans, St. Louis, and other vibrant arts communities, came north to Chicago, where their music developed a more urban upbeat rhythm and white and black musicians began to influence and promote one another. Chicago was a thriving metropolis of black and white music during the jazz age of the 1920s and beyond. In the 1940s and 1950s, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Meade Lux Lewis, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf Burnett, and other Chicago musicians achieved mainstream success and had a direct influence on the emergence of rock and roll, soul, and rhythm-and-blues music. Besides the blues, Illinois nurtured some of the greatest black gospel voices of the century, such as Mahalia Jackson and Etta Moten Barnett, a Broadway singer who once sang for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After the 1960s, the next generation continued to develop the black urban sound with rap and hip-hop. Kanye West, raised in Chicago, is one of the most innovative of this generation. West has been a Grammy Award–winning artist as well as a producer of other major acts. The African American traditions and community in Illinois nurtured numerous black writers, artists, and entertainers as well. With midcentury writers such as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, Willard Motley, Archibald Motley, Frank Marshall Davis, and Gwendolyn Brooks, Chicago had its own literary and artistic renaissance to rival that of Harlem in New York in the early twentieth century. These writers and artists often focused on the

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celebrations and struggles of black urban life, providing an alternative tradition to chronicles of slavery and the southern experience. Other Illinois writers and entertainers went on to careers in film and television. William Attaway was born in Mississippi in 1911, but was raised and educated in Chicago. Attaway wrote novels and plays and was one of the first black writers for television and film. A true Renaissance figure, he also wrote more than 500 songs for artists such as Harry Belafonte. Oscar Brown Jr. was another early playwright, songwriter, and television personality. He was Chicago’s (and perhaps the nation’s) first African American newscaster, and he later recorded his own jazz albums, performed with Miles Davis, and wrote songs for popular artists such as Mahalia Jackson and Lena Horne. Brown is also credited with discovering the Jackson Five musical group in Indiana. Illinois has also produced its share of national and international sports stars, from Olympic athletes to major league players. In the early years of baseball, Andrew “Rube” Foster was responsible for founding the Negro National League and for managing the Chicago American Giants, founded in 1920. After integration, Ernie Banks was the first black player for the Chicago Cubs in the early 1950s. Black athletes from Illinois also achieved notoriety in basketball. The all-black Chicago basketball team, the Savoy Big Five, was owned and coached by a white coach, Abe Saperstein, who renamed them the Globetrotters. They played their first Globetrotters game in 1927 in Hinckley, Illinois, and the following year they changed their name to the Harlem Globetrotters, to identify with the mystique and culture of the more well-known African American community in New York. Soon touring all over the nation and then internationally, the Globetrotters are an incredibly long-lived team of athletes and performers. Perhaps Chicago is best known for basketball because it is the home team of one of the most

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popular players of all-time. Michael Jordan became one of the biggest sports celebrities of the 1980s and 1990s, playing with the Chicago Bulls, winning Most Valuable Player status multiple times, and taking the Bulls to six championships. Born in New York, Jordan grew up in North Carolina and played basketball in college before being drafted by the Bulls in 1984, retiring from the team in 1999. Olympic athletes from Illinois have included Jacqueline “Jackie” Joyner-Kersee, a world-record holder and Olympic medalist in the women’s heptathlon (a combined seven events) and long jump, considered one of the best female athletes of the twentieth century. She was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and set a state record for the long jump while still in high school. She went on to compete in four Summer Olympic games (1984–1996), earning three gold medals, a silver, and two bronze medals overall. In the Winter Olympic games, Chicago-born Shani Davis is a world champion speed skater, winning both gold and silver Olympic medals in 2006 and again a gold and silver in 2010.

Grossman, James. Land of Hope. Chicago, Black Southerners and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Bibliography

Pratt, Mildred. We the People Tell Our Story: Bloomington-Normal Black History Project. Normal, IL: Bloomington-Normal Black History Project, 1987.

Armfield, Felix L. Black Life in West Central Illinois. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001. Carrier, Lois. Illinois: Crossroads of a Continent. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Generations of Pride, African Americans in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. www.alplm.org/events/aa_history/AA_History_Timeline. Gove, Samuel Kimball. Illinois Politics and Government: The Expanding Metropolitan Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Hendricks, Wanda A. Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women in Illinois. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Jensen, Richard J. Illinois: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1978. Leonard, Gerald. The Invention of Party Politics: Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Meyer, Douglas K. Making the Heartland Quilt: A Geographical History of Settlement and Migration in Early-Nineteenth-Century Illinois. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Muirhead, John W. A History of AfricanAmericans in McLean County, Illinois, 1835– 1975. Bloomington, IL: Bloomington-Normal Black History Project, McLean County Historical Society, 1998. Petterchak, Janice A., ed. Illinois History: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995.

Sanders, Walter R. “The Negro in Montgomery County, Illinois.” Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 1978). Simeone, James. Democracy and Slavery in Frontier Illinois: The Bottomland Republic. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. Williams, Erma Brooks. Political Empowerment of Illinois’ African-American State Lawmakers, from 1877–2005. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008.

INDIANA Alton Hornsby, Jr.

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Chronology 1787

Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance, which bans slavery in the northwestern territories, an area that includes the present-day state of Indiana.

1800

(May 7) Congress organizes the Indiana Territory.

1816

(December 11) Indiana enters the Union as the 19th state.

1836

The Bethel AME Church is established in Indianapolis.

1850

As part of the Compromise of 1850, which seeks to resolve the question of the expansion of slavery in the western territories, Congress passes a new Fugitive Slave law.

1851

The new Indiana state constitution prohibits blacks from entering the state.

1851

(November 9) Marshals from Kentucky abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville and carry him to Kentucky to be tried for helping a slave escape.

1864

(March 31) The 28th Indiana Colored Infantry Regiment, the only black regiment formed in the state during the Civil War, is mustered in at Camp Fremont; the regiment sees action in Virginia, losing over 200 men.

1865

(February 13) Indiana ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

( January 23) Indiana ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1869

(May 14) Indiana ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights to African American men.

1874

The Sisters of Charity, an African American self-help organization, is founded in Indiana.

1879

The Indianapolis Leader, Indiana’s first black newspaper, is founded.

1898

Flanner House, a social service agency, opens in Indianapolis.

1912

A chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organized in Indiana.

1920s

The Ku Klux Klan, at its height, claims over 250,000 members in Indiana, amounting to over 30 percent of the state’s white male population.

1922

The Indiana legislature passes a bill creating Klan Day at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, though the bill is vetoed by the governor.

1926

Investigations reveal that over half the members of the Indiana General Assembly are also members of the Ku Klux Klan.

1927

Black entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker opens a theater in Indianapolis.

1930

Two blacks are lynched by a white mob in Marion.

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1958

(August 29) Michael Jackson, pop singer and entertainer, is born in Gary, the seventh of nine children.

1958

(December 12) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a speech in Indianapolis calling for racial harmony.

1961

(November 24) Death threats are made against Martin Luther King Jr. when he returns to Indianapolis to speak at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) fundraiser.

1963

(February 19) Indiana ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1967

Richard Hatcher is elected as the first black mayor of Gary.

1968

Bobby Kennedy speaks to a black audience in Indianapolis just after hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King. His speech registers the enormity of the event and begins the work of healing. Riots over the next few days hit 76 American cities, but Indianapolis remains quiet.

1969

( June 5–6) A riot erupts along Indiana Avenue in the heart of Indianapolis’ black district after police break up a fight; members of the local Black Panther Party seek to calm the crowds.

1969

( July 27) A three-day race riot begins in Gary. Policemen aim at snipers after the third night of racial unrest. Sixty-four people are taken into custody.

1971

( June 19) Debut of the Indiana Black Expo, a celebration of the cultural and educational contributors of blacks to Indiana history.

1980

In Fort Wayne, an attempt is made to assassinate Vernon Jordan Jr., the president of the National Urban League.

1982

A jury in South Bend acquits self-avowed racist Joseph Paul Franklin for the 1980 attempted assassination of Vernon Jordan Jr.

1991

(September 9) An Indiana grand jury indicts boxer Mike Tyson on three counts, including one for the rape of Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant. Tyson is convicted on February 10, 1992, and is imprisoned.

1996

Acquitted sniper Joseph Paul Franklin tells a newspaper that he did shoot and wound Vernon Jordan outside an Indiana hotel in 1980.

1997

Julia Carson is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.

2008

(November 4) Andre Carson is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.

2008

(November 4) Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party narrowly carries Indiana with about 50 percent of the vote; Obama’s victory marks the first time a Democrat has won Indiana since 1964.

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Historical Overview In the pre–Civil War era, hundreds of free blacks migrated to Indiana, mainly from North Carolina, as well as a number of escaped slaves. But these early black settlers experienced blatant racial discrimination, and they and their abolitionist supporters often faced violence, sometimes leading to deaths. They were denied political rights, could not testify in courts against whites, and could not serve on juries. Early on they were not afforded education in the public schools. Under an 1831 law, they had to post a $500 bond “as security for their good behavior.” Those who failed to post such bonds could be sold to the highest bidder for six months of work. The first African American residents first arrived in Indiana in the 1820s. They were brought in to the area by white men to work in domestic service. Among the earliest blacks in the state were John G. Britton and his wife Cheney Lively. Britton was a former bondsman from Ohio who became active in the national Negro Convention movement in the 1830s. Cheney Lively was the only black female head of household listed in the 1830 Census. Other early African American residents were Ephraim Ensaw and David Mallory, who was the first barber in Indianapolis. African Americans made up less than 10 percent of the state’s population in the antebellum period. Nevertheless, as of 1836, in Indianapolis and in rural areas, they were beginning to establish their own settlements. And on the eve of the Civil War, there were more than 60 such settlements carrying names such as “Colored Town,” “Colored Freedom,” “Lyles Station,” “Roberts settlement,” and “Lost Creek.” After the Civil War, most of the settlements gradually ceased to exist as blacks moved into their own neighborhoods in large central cities. As a result of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, some of the bondspersons left southern Indiana where they had originally stopped and headed for other parts of the state. At the time, there were

approximately 2,500 African Americans in Indiana. A large number of these were employed in skilled trades, menial labor, and domestic service. They were generally poorly housed and poorly clothed. In 1851, a new Indiana constitution prohibited blacks from entering the state. A provision of the law also called for fines to be levied on anyone who hired blacks who entered Indiana in violation of the act. Indiana voters approved the new proscriptions, disregarding the opposition of blacks and some white abolitionists, clergymen, and legislators. The antiblack provisions of the 1851 constitution seemed to accelerate the emigration of African Americans from Indiana. John G. Britton and other black leaders urged blacks to emigrate to Jamaica. Some urged a “Back to Africa” movement. But, despite the heavy burden of racial discrimination in Indiana, most of the state’s blacks were opposed to large-scale colonization or emigration outside of the country. They did, however, show a preference for urban life. The 1850 Census showed that there were 2,500 African Americans in the major cities of Indiana. The majority of these were laborers, but there were also a sizeable number of professional people, including barbers, physicians, and dentists. Although at first Indiana, like other northern states, thought that the enlistment of black soldiers in the Civil War would be a dangerous thing, as the war continued and manpower shortages increased, the state government changed its position. Some Indiana blacks had already shown their loyalty and their courage by going to Massachusetts to join the famous 54th Massachusetts all-black regiment (the outfit that was the subject of the popular movie Glory). In 1863, the 28th U.S. Colored Regiment of Indiana was formed. The regiment was first deployed to Virginia in 1864, where they performed admirably in combat, but suffered heavy casualties because of poor leadership from white officers.

Indiana During and immediately after the Civil War, the major institutions in black communities were the church and the school. While there were some blacks who worshipped in white churches, the overwhelming majority attended all-black churches. Like African Americans elsewhere they tended to be Baptists and Methodists, including African Methodists (AME). Unlike in other communities, particularly in the Deep South, it was the AME Church which became predominant in the state. The first AME Church in Indianapolis, Bethel church, dated from the 1830s. The Indiana Conference of the AME Church was approved in 1940. The AME Church also was a pioneer in supporting black schools throughout the state. One of the most important AME ministers in the post-emancipation era was the Reverend John Henry Clay. This Georgiaborn, ex-slave preacher served as minister of churches in west central Indiana from 1878 to 1881. After 1881, he pastored in Bloomington, New Albany, and Terre Haute before landing in Indianapolis, where he was minister to the largest black AME congregation in the state. He was a pivotal figure in building the AME Church in rural Indiana and in aiding the black migration from the South to the area in the late 1870s and early 1880s. While most of Indiana’s houses of worship have always been segregated, the state has always had a few racially mixed churches. One such structure was the Christ Temple Apostolic Church. The church, which dates from the early 1900s, began with fewer than 100 members. But by 1924, it had built a new building seating 1,500 members, which was called the finest edifice for black worship in Indianapolis. The church has had as many as 40 percent white worshippers. But not all whites have been receptive to its racially diverse membership. As early as 1908, a brick shattered the windows in the church. In post–Civil War Indiana, black education, except that supported by churches, was disorganized.

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In some places, because of the small black population, blacks were permitted to attend school with whites. In 1869, the state of Indiana authorized the admission of blacks into the state public school system. But most local systems interpreted the law to mean that blacks should be educated in separate elementary schools. As elsewhere, but certainly in the South, the prevailing educational philosophy was that blacks were incapable of learning beyond the elementary grades. But in 1877, the legislature stipulated that if there were no local schools for blacks in an area, they could attend white schools. Slowly, as in Gary, some black students began to receive secondary education, although sometimes in a racially discriminatory manner. For example in 1920, three Gary high schools— two of them technical schools—admitted blacks, but segregated them in the classroom and in extracurricular activities. In 1927, most whites boycotted Emerson High School, from which Oscar winner Karl Malden graduated. Then, in 1945, there was a boycott at the Froebel school, which lasted for several months. That boycott drew national attention as celebrities, including Edna Ferber, Carl Sandburg, and Frank Sinatra, went to Gary and denounced the racially inspired protests. As a result of the actions taken at the time, an additional 116 African American students were enrolled in all-white schools. A first major step toward changing Indianapolis’ segregated system came in 1949, when the state passed a desegregation law. The Indianapolis public schools then announced a plan of compliance and abolished separate elementary schools for blacks and whites. Yet where desegregation or partial desegregation existed, there was often strong opposition, not only from the growing Ku Klux Klan, but from white citizens across all social and economic lines and genders. In Indianapolis a virulent prosegregation group, the White Supremacy League, was largely composed of women. The segregationists were particularly concerned about racial mixing at the high-school level and mounted letter-writing campaigns and appeared at forums, often proclaiming white

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supremacy. Early on, blacks organized a massive counteroffensive against the segregationists. But soon divisions arose between those who demanded desegregation and those who would accept separate but equal schools. Thus in December, the local school board approved a separate high school for blacks. The school eventually became known as Crispus Attucks High School. The Indianapolis example was soon replicated in most of the urban areas of the state. In 1998, an agreement brought an end to the federal court busing order that began with a lawsuit in the 1960s. The agreement did not end busing immediately; instead it called for a phaseout over an 18-year period. Meanwhile, officials were to work on additional efforts to desegregate the schools in the area. As a result of the turmoil over desegregation, enrollment in the Indianapolis public schools dropped from 108,000 in 1971 to 47,000 by the early 1990s. Much of this was apparently the result of efforts of the Ku Klux Klan and other manifestations of white supremacy as demonstrated in the city’s anti-immigrant, antiblack, antiCatholic, antiforeigner attitudes at the time. While Indianapolis escaped the extreme violence that accompanied desegregation in other cities such as Boston, the city experienced a white flight to suburbs and an exodus from urban public schools. Antiblack violence continued in Indiana after the Civil War. In 1930, at least 10,000 whites stormed into the Grant County jail in Marion seeking three African American teenagers who had been charged with robbing and murdering a white man and raping his girlfriend. Two of the blacks were lynched. The incident has been called one of the last such lynchings ever to occur north of the Mason-Dixon line. Much of the racial violence was initiated by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1933, for example, the Klan demonstrated on the statehouse steps; then fighting broke out and several people were injured. Some 35 Klansmen showed up for the rally. They were countered by more than a thousand opponents.

The Klan had been a factor in Indiana political life since its first Indiana chapter was founded in Evansville in 1920. It soon established chapters in every county. D. D. Stephenson, a salesman, arrived in Evansville from Oklahoma and eventually was named grand dragon of Indiana and 22 other states. Membership in the Klan increased dramatically to about 250,000 statewide. In Indianapolis, as many as 40 percent of all native-born white men in the city paid their $10 fee and joined the hate group. The Klan became the largest social organization in Indianapolis and a dominant force in the city from 1921 to 1928. At some of the Klan rallies, as many as 50,000 people were in attendance. As elsewhere, the primary targets of the Klan’s vitriolic hate were blacks, Catholics, and Jews. But it was Catholics who drew the most attention. At the time there were about 32,000 Catholics in the city. The Klan charged that they were unAmerican as they owed their loyalties to Rome and not to American governments. Some believed that Catholics would one day revolt and claim the country for the Church of Rome. As to the Klan’s direct role in Indiana politics, this can be seen in the primary election of 1924. The Klan-backed candidates were elected. To celebrate, an estimated 25,000 Klansmen, women, and children gathered at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Later, some 6,500 Klansmen and their supporters paraded through downtown while a crowd of 75,000 to 100,000 lined the streets. A Klan newspaper was jubilant at the organization’s success, proclaiming; “Protestant Ticket Sweeps State” and “National Papal Machine Smashed.” Shortly thereafter, however, Stephenson was arrested and convicted of second-degree murder charges in the death of Madge Oberholtzer. She was a statehouse worker whom Stephenson had been dating in 1925. He was sentenced to a long prison term. The Klan’s involvement in bribery and corruption of government officials began to come out. Political scandals led to the ouster of Indianapolis’ mayor

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Bodies of Tom Shipp and Abe Smith, two victims of lynching in Indiana, 1930. (AP/Wide World Photos)

and the governor at the time, and interest in the Klan declined sharply. Black-initiated racial violence was rare in Indiana until recent times. Although Indianapolis and Gary African Americans were commended for remaining relatively calm following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Bobby Kennedy’s fervent appeal to them to remain so, racial tensions did lead to rioting in Indianapolis in the summer of 1969. For two nights, bottles were thrown, windows were smashed, and there were fires, shootings, and looting. The Indianapolis riot was sparked by rage at police handling of a fight between black men at a local apartment complex. When the violence was brought under control, there had been thousands of dollars in property damages, at least 20 arrests, and several injuries, but apparently no fatalities. Amid the violence, it was reported by local media

that a black youth and members of the local chapter of the Black Panther Party actively sought to ease the tensions and the disorder. Meanwhile, African Americans continued to go about their daily tasks, finding refuge in their own community activities. Black social life in Indiana, as elsewhere in black America, was often focused on church-related activities, but there were plenty of nonchurch activities to attract both saint and sinner. In Indianapolis, for example, there was the Walker Theatre. Founded by the daughter of wealthy black hair products manufacturer Madame C. J. Walker in 1927, the theater remained open until the late 1970s. In the words of its founder, it was built to serve as a cultural and social center for Indianapolis. In addition to the theater, the building housed a beauty shop, a coffee shop, and a drugstore, all owned by the Walkers, and a casino.

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The Walker Theatre featured major films mainly by white producers and featuring white actors and actresses. Later “blacksploitation” films were added, but by the time the theater closed in the late 1970s, African American public opinion had turned against such movies. In the major cities of the state, branches of the YMCA and YWCA were organized. Other activities designed to promote such social welfare and self-help included the Sisters of Charity, which was founded in 1874 to provide healthcare for the poor. This group and others did establish a few small hospitals for blacks in the periods when black access to healthcare was severely restricted, but they were shortlived. More lasting were the efforts of fraternal groups and women’s clubs. These latter groups, which could be traced back to the early nineteenth century, sought to tend to the morals, education, and social welfare of young women, including sponsoring lectures by womanist leaders and black intellectuals, both female and male. They also established reading clubs and fairs: notably African American women in Indianapolis founded the Alpha House for the Aged in Indiana as early as 1883. Another of the major self-help organizations was Flanner House. The current building at 2424 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street is not the original structure. The House is supported by a women’s group known as the Flanner House Guild, a 99-year-old social service group. Opened in 1898, Flanner House, the home, has been called “an open door, a passageway for people searching for better lives.” The home served African American migrants from the post–Civil War South. The first building was donated by Frank Flanner, a local mortician. As a social service agency, the Flanner House was, in many ways, ahead of its time. African American domestic workers left their children there while they went to serve affluent white families.

In recent times, the home has been supported by the United Way. The child-care center now serves about 150 families; a kindergarten is also on site; in-home services are offered for the elderly and disabled; and a prosecutor’s office offers child support assistance. In a new program with the Indianapolis Museum of Art, African artifacts are displayed in large cases in the lobby. A chapter of the NAACP was organized in Indianapolis three years after the founding of the national organization in 1909. Although there had been civil rights laws in Indiana as early as 1885, which, among other things, prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, the laws were rarely enforced. Suits were brought by the NAACP over these issues as well as school segregation, which ultimately brought relief in the 1940s. Educated black women played a major role in the struggle for civil rights in Indiana. For example, during the First World War, the Indiana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs adopted resolutions protesting lynchings and the treatment of blacks in the South and for the end of racial discrimination in Indiana. As in most states, gains in civil rights also led to new and greater progress in political rights and political opportunities. These gains were particularly significant for African American women. In 1964, Daisy Riley Lloyd became the first black woman elected for the Indiana legislature. In the 1970s, Julia Carson was elected first to the Indiana House and then, in 1976, as the first black woman to the state Senate. In 1997 she was elected to the U.S. Congress. Prior to Carson’s election to Congress, the major political achievement for African Americans in Indiana was the election of Richard Hatcher as mayor of Gary in 1967. Following the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, blacks began to be elected mayors in predominately black cities of the North. Hatcher was one of the first of those elected.

Indiana Gary had become a magnet city for African American migrants from the South during World War I. They were drawn there by the hope of a promised land free from racial oppression and offering economic opportunities. Though the city possessed all of the racial animosity of other places in Indiana at the time, labor shortages forced employers to extend a welcome hand to blacks. But the welcome was only intended for relatively cheap labor with little chance to advance into higher positions. And segregation in schools, places of recreation, and places of public accommodations persisted. In 1910, there had been only about 400 African American residents in Gary. Ten years later, they were 10 percent of the city’s population. In 1990, Gary was 85 percent black. Also by this time, although blacks had firm political control of the city, the economy declined as steel mills closed and the Sun Belt South became more industrialized. The beautiful city on Lake Michigan, as it was called, experienced white flight to the suburbs and inner-city decay, both structurally and socially. A major force in the quest for African American civil and political rights in Indiana has been the black press. The first black newspaper in Indiana was the Indianapolis Leader, founded in1879. Three years later, the Colored World (which later became the Indianapolis World) was launched. These pioneer organs were followed by the Freeman (1884), which had a national audience, and the Indianapolis Recorder (1885), the longestlasting black newspaper. The Recorder is also the third-oldest African American newspaper with continuous publication in the country. Two other black newspapers began publishing in the twentieth century, the Indiana Herald in 1959 and the Muncie Times in 1990. Newspapers such as the Evansville Argus and the Indianapolis Freeman have highlighted grievances and agitated for equal opportunity in education, employment, healthcare, housing, and public facilities. As these

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newspapers declined and often folded in the civil rights and post–civil rights eras, the African American communities lost an important voice of advocacy as well as an important economic enterprise.

Notable African Americans Carson, Julia May (1938–2007) U.S. Congresswoman Julia May Carson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but the family moved to Indianapolis when Julia was a child. Carson received her higher education from Martin University in Indianapolis and Indiana University in Bloomington. Before going to Congress, Carson served in the state House of Representatives (1973–1977) and the state Senate (1977–1990). Seven years later, she was sent to the U.S. House from a predominantly white district in Indianapolis. She was returned to her position in four subsequent elections. Carson, who had a history of serious health problems, died of cancer in 2007. She was succeeded by her grandson, André Carson.

Edmonds, Kenneth Brian “Babyface” (1958–) Born in Indianapolis, “Babyface” Edmonds is a rhythm-and-blues producer, singer, songwriter, and musician. A portion of Interstate 65 in Indiana has been named for him.

Fisher, Aaron Richard (dates unknown) Aaron Fisher was an African American in the allblack 366th Infantry during World War I. He is generally regarded as the most distinguished black soldier from the state of Indiana to serve in that war. This distinction was based upon his brave and courageous actions against German forces in France on September 3, 1918.

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Fox, Lillian Thomas (1866–1917) Lillian Fox was a journalist and community leader in Indianapolis. Born in Chicago, she came to Indiana in the early 1880s from Wisconsin. She became a writer for the Freeman, a prominent black newspaper in Indiana, and became active in the black women’s club movement. She also chided white newspapers for not covering black community activities.

Hall, Katie Beatrice (1938–) U.S. Congresswoman Katie Beatrice Hall was born in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. She was educated at Mississippi Valley State University and Indiana University at Bloomington. Before being elected to the U.S. Congress from Indiana in 1982, Hall served terms in the Indiana state House of Representatives and the state Senate (1974–1976; 1976–1982). After only one term in the U.S. House, Hall was defeated in the Democratic primary in 1984.

Hatcher, Richard G. (1933–) Richard G. Hatcher was the first African American mayor of Gary and a civil rights leader. He hosted black political and economic leadership summits in his city during his tenure as mayor between 1968 and 1987. He was also chairman of the Jesse Jackson for President Campaign in 1984.

philanthropist. In 1964 he joined with four of his brothers to form the rhythm-and-blues group the Jackson Five. A controversial figure because of his dress, his facial changes, and friendship with children, he died suddenly in 2009 and was celebrated as “the king of Pop.”

Lewis, Henry Jackson (c. 1837–1891) Henry Jackson Lewis was born in bondage in Mississippi. In freedom the family lived in Arkansas. Lewis moved to Indianapolis in 1889, where he joined the staff of the Freeman newspaper.

Montgomery, Wes (1923–1968) Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, called one of the best of the modern era and a successor to Charlie Christian.

Plato, Samuel M. (d. 1957) Samuel M. Plato was an architect. Born in Alabama, he studied in North Carolina and at Tuskegee Institute in his native state. He later moved to Marion, Indiana, in 1902. Among his more notable designs are schools, apartments, and houses that are listed on the national Register of Historic Places. He also designed the First Baptist Church of Marion.

Hayward, Garfield T. (d. 1931)

Scott, William Edouard (1884–1964)

Garfield T. Hayward was an African American minister. Known as a great orator, he once held office as presiding bishop of his denomination. A portion of a street in Indianapolis is named in his honor.

William Edouard Scott was a painter who studied at the Chicago Art Institute. He also studied in France, where he came under the tutelage of the famed black artist Henry O. Tanner at the Julian Academy. While there he had three of his works accepted at the prestigious Salon des Beaux Arts at Toquet. Among his more noted paintings, accepted by such galleries as the Salon at La Loque in France and the Royal Academy in London, is La Pauvre Voisine.

Jackson, Michael (1958–2009) Michael Jackson was an internationally acclaimed singer, actor, writer, record producer, and

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Pop artist Michael Jackson performs at opening night of his Victory Tour at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, December 1, 1984. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Sisslie, Noble (1889–1975)

Walker, Madame C. J. (1867–1919)

Noble Sisslie was a jazz composer, bandleader, singer, and playwright. He also was a filmmaker. He is perhaps best known for his collaboration with songwriter Eubie Blake. Among the duo’s best known productions are “Shuffle Along” and “The Chocolate Dandies.”

Although born in Louisiana, Madam C. J. Walker established several of her economic enterprises, including a theater, in Indiana.

Stewart, George P. (dates unknown) George P. Stewart was the founder of the Indianapolis Recorder newspaper in 1885. He was also a champion of civil rights, speaking out forcefully for desegregation of public accommodations and against those merchants who profited from black trade but who would not advertise in African American newspapers.

Cultural Contributions In addition to painter William Edouard Scott, architect Samuel M. Plato, actor Guinea “Blue” Fainsworth, and musicians “Babyface” Edmonds, Michael Jackson, and Noble Sissle, Indiana’s African American communities have produced Deotis Hardeman, a classical pianist. Indiana is also the home of the McArthur Conservatory, where musicians have been trained since the 1940s. McArthur, founded by an Indianapolis music teacher, Ruth McArthur, has a notable

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faculty including Jerry Daniels of the Ink Spots as well as members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The McArthur Marching Band, the McArthur Orchestra, and its vocal group the Choraliers have performed jazz and classical numbers, and Haitian and African American dance music at nightclubs as well as at the state fairgrounds. The Freetown Village is a community of artists who reenact life in post–Civil War Indiana. Founded in the 1980s by a former schoolteacher, Ophelia Umar Wellington, the story is told in acting, song, dance, and exhibits. It is presently housed in the Indiana State Museum. In the 1990s, Indiana’s black historians began developing a listing of African American historic sites. As of 1995, they had identified several places in Indianapolis, including the Crispus Attucks Middle School and several historic black churches. In the early part of this century, Indiana residents began the development of a “trail of freedom,” mapping out the state’s role in the Underground Railroad. “Indiana Freedom Trails” will show the routes of the many “stations” of the railroad—the network of abolitionist homes and other places where escaping slaves were housed en route to the North and to Canada. It is estimated that there were at least 300 such sites, mainly in southeastern Indiana. Culturally, Indiana is perhaps best known for Black Expo. The festival was begun in 1971 and held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Its goal was to highlight, through culture, education, and entertainment, the contributions of black Indiana. During the first exposition in 1971, an estimated 5,000 people, including civil rights leaders Ralph David Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and athletes John Mackey and Bill Russell, were in attendance. Abernathy’s and Jackson’s appearances reflected the cosponsorship by the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket of the event. Since 1971, the event has attracted more than 20,000 people annually from all over the country

and has featured exhibit booths, artists, markets, song, and dance. More than 50,000 people attended the twoday event in June 1971, which featured 75 exhibitor booths, a concert, and an ABA versus NBA basketball game. The success of the event depended on getting sponsors and exhibitors. White business leaders initially resisted invitations to participate, but changed their minds when Eugene S. Pulliam, publisher of the Indianapolis Star and the News, offered his support. By the late 1970s, Black Expo was in financial trouble again with a debt that had grown to over $100,000. One of those who tried to help was entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., who donated $10,000. In 1988, an Indianapolis Star investigation discovered management problems and little financial accountability. By the time Black Expo celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1990, it was out of debt and the celebration was expanded to a full week. That year, the first Founder’s Award was given to singer, songwriter, and producer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. The Expo also began presenting a Freedom Award. That award has gone to individuals like boxing promoter Don King and entertainer Stevie Wonder. More recently, the Expo has added conferences for businesspeople and jobs fairs, a children’s program, music festivals, a health fair, and a National Youth Summit. The event was hosting more than 800 exhibit booths. But the event has also had its share of troubles, including crime in a nearby neighborhood and a fatal shooting of men at the 1994 and 1998 Soulfests. This led to the canceling of the 1999 Soulfest. When the celebration resumed in 2000, it was relocated and renamed the Family Fun Fest. But new problems arose in 2002 when there were several complaints of racist behavior by the Indianapolis police. On the more positive side, a rejuvenated celebration was honored with a visit by President

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Jesse Jackson speaks into a microphone, surrounded by marchers at a demonstration in Indianapolis, Indiana, 1975. (Library of Congress)

George Bush in 2005. Bush spoke at the business luncheon and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Another growing cultural enterprise in Indiana is Indianapolis’ Asante Children’s Theatre. The group presents plays depicting phases of African American history. One of the popular presentations is “The Step and Stand Tall Blues” which uses the blues to interpret black history. A growing cultural site for tourists is the sixsquare-block neighborhood in Indianapolis called Ransom Place, which was once the center of black life and culture in Indianapolis. In the early 1900s on Indiana Avenue, there were many thriving local businesses, including Madam C. J. Walker’s beauty supply plant and the theater named for her. This main artery just west of downtown was also home to many churches, barber shops, funeral parlors, and local jazz clubs. The Ransom Place Historic District was named for Freeman B. Ransom (1882–1947), an attorney and general manager of the Walker

business enterprises. He lived on the 800 block of California Street. In the 1920s, this block of fashionable black homes was called the “Negro Meridian Street.” Today, Ransom Place remains the most intact neighborhood associated with Indianapolis’ early black history. The area is also home to the Heritage Learning Center Museum, an 1830 Queen Anne cottage that houses the history and artifacts of early Ransom Place residents. Another attraction is the “Museum Without Walls,” an open-air museum documenting the lives and homes of early Ransom Place residents. Signs along the streets in the neighborhood tell the addresses, family names, and occupations of the neighborhood’s earliest residents. For example, one sign marks the site where Senator Robert Lee Brokenburr lived. He was a two-term Indiana senator who also wrote the articles of incorporation for the Madame C. J. Walker Company. Ransom Place was entered on the National Register of Historic Sites in 1992.

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Freetown Village seeks to replicate black life in Indiana in the 1870s. It accomplishes this through living-history performances. The activities include an annual “Evening Dinner with Freetown Village.” The organization also collects and preserves artifacts and prepares exhibits for other programs. It is sponsored in part by the Arts Council of Indianapolis and produced in cooperation with the Tourism Division of the Indiana Department of Commerce.

Bibliography Baker, Ronald L., ed. Homeless, Friendless and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Bigham, Darrel E. We Ask Only a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Hamm, Thomas D, April Beckman, Marissa Florio, Kirsti Giles, and Marie Hopper. “ ‘A Great and Good People’: Midwestern Quakers and the Struggle Against Slavery.” Indiana Magazine of History 100, no. 1 (March 2004): 3–25. Hendrick, George, Willene Hendrick, Levi Coffin, and William Still. Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. Indiana’s African-American History. www2. indystar.com/library/factfiles/history/black_ history. Kotlowski, Dean J. “ ‘The Jordan Is a Hard Road to Travel’: Hoosier Responses to Fugitive Slave Cases, 1850–1860.” International Social Science Review 78, no. 3/4 (2003): 71–89. Lutholtz, M. William. Grand Dragon: D.C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991.

Black Soldiers in Civil War Indiana. http: civilwarindiana.com/black_soldiers.html.

Madison, James H. Indiana through Tradition and Change: A History of the Hoosier State and Its People, 1920–1945. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1982.

Bodenhamer, David J., and Robert G. Barrow, eds. The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Madison, James H. The Indiana Way: A State History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Carmony, Donald F. Indiana, 1816–1850: The Pioneer Era. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1998.

Nation, Richard F. “Violence and the Rights of African Americans in the Civil War Era.” Indiana Magazine of History 100, no. 3 (September 2004): 215–230.

Cayton, Andrew R. L. Frontier Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Nelson, Jacquelyn S. Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991.

Frantz, Edward. “A March of Triumph? Benjamin Harrison’s Southern Tour and the Limits of Racial and Regional Reconciliation.” Indiana Magazine of History 100, no. 4 (December 2004): 293–320.

Onuf, Peter S. Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Gibbs, Wilma L., ed. Indiana’s African American History: Essays from Black History News and Notes. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993.

Taylor, Robert M., Jr., and Connie A. McBirney, eds. Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996.

Indiana Thornbrough, Emma Lou, and Lana Ruegamer. Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Thornbrough, Emma Lou. The Negro in Indiana before 1900: A Study of a Minority. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

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Tucker, Todd. Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004. Vincent, Stephen A. Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

IOWA Lisa N. Nealy

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Chronology 1673

Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette are first Europeans to set foot on Iowa soil.

1803

Iowa becomes a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase, a vast tract of territory purchased from France by President Thomas Jefferson.

1804

Accompanied by a black slave named York, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark enter Iowa as they ascend the Missouri River during their exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.

1812

Congress organizes the Missouri Territory, which includes present-day Iowa.

1820

Passage of the Missouri Compromise, which proclaims all territory north of the southern border of Missouri to be free, ensures that Iowa will be a free state.

1832

The Black Hawk War ends with Indians ceding to the United States a strip of land west of the Missouri known as the Black Hawk Purchase; permanent white settlement of Iowa begins, and Fort Des Moines is eventually established at the confluence of the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers.

1834

Congress creates the Michigan Territory, which includes present-day Iowa.

1836

With Michigan statehood, Iowa is transferred to the Wisconsin Territory.

1838

(July 4) Congress establishes the Iowa Territory, the northern boundaries of which extend into present-day Minnesota and the Dakotas.

1839

The territorial legislature enacts a series of black codes to discourage black settlement in Iowa. This series of measures requires blacks to produce a certificate of freedom and post a $500 bond to enter the territory, and prohibits them from voting, joining the militia, serving in the legislature, testifying against whites in court, and attending public schools.

1840

The Iowa territorial legislature bans interracial marriages.

1840

The United States counts 188 African Americans living in Iowa.

1845

The slavery issue delays Iowa statehood when a debate erupts over the future state’s northern boundary. Iowa leaders propose a border that extends to modern Minneapolis, but northern leaders in Congress want a smaller Iowa to leave land for more future free states. The issue is settled by a compromise.

1846

(December 28) Iowa enters the Union as the 29th state.

1846

Mormons migrate across southern Iowa.

1847

The University of Iowa in Iowa City is chartered.

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1850s

Iowa abolitionists such as Josiah Grinnell, James Jordan, and the Reverend John Todd serve as conductors on Iowa’s Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves to freedom in Canada and the North.

1853

Alexander Clark, the African American owner of a barber shop in Muscatine, attends the National Colored Convention in Rochester, New York.

1857

Thirty-three African American delegates attend a convention in Muscatine that demands full citizenship for Iowa’s black residents.

1857

Iowa voters reject a proposal for black suffrage.

1858

The General Assembly requires all Iowa school boards to maintain separate schools for black students.

1859

Iowa abolitionist Josiah Grinnell provides shelter for John Brown, who is on the run after his acts of violence against proslavery settlers in Kansas.

1861–1865

Iowa sends 80,000 men to the Union army during the war.

1863

1,153 Iowa blacks are recruited into the 1st Iowa Volunteers of African Descent, a unit later designated as the 60th Regiment Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops.

1866

(January 15) Iowa ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolishes slavery in the United States; Iowa’s ratification comes several weeks after the amendment itself gained sufficient state approvals to take effect.

1868

(February) The Iowa State Colored Convention meets in Des Moines to discuss ways to work for full civil rights for African Americans in the state.

1868

(March 16) Iowa ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing African American citizenship.

1868

In Clark v. Board of Directors, the Iowa Supreme Court declares that requiring black children to attend separate schools violates the 1857 state constitution.

1868

Iowa becomes the first state outside New England to grant African American men the right to vote.

1870

(February 3) Iowa ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which secures the African American right to vote; Iowa’s ratification gives the amendment sufficient state approvals to take effect.

1871

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is founded in Cedar Rapids.

1874

Thanks to the 1868 Clark v. Board of Directors decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, all public schools in the state are now open to children of all races and religions.

1880s

More than 300 African American families own and run farms in Iowa.

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1880

The Iowa state constitution is amended to remove the words “free white” from the qualifications for serving in the state legislature.

1884

The state legislature passes a civil rights law guaranteeing full and equal access to public accommodations for anyone regardless or race, religion, or ethnic group.

1890

(August 16) President Benjamin Harrison appoints Iowa civil rights activist G. Alexander Clark as U.S. minister to Liberia.

1915

The first Iowa branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in Des Moines.

1917

Fort Des Moines becomes the site of the Colored Officers Training Camp; by bringing black military families to the city, the camp spurs an increase in Des Moines’ African American population.

1941

Lulu Johnson, a native of Gravity, Iowa, becomes the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and the first African American woman in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in history.

1946

The dormitories at the University of Iowa are integrated.

1948

( July 7) Accompanied by her daughter and two friends, Edna Griffin—who will later be known as the “Rosa Parks of Iowa”—stages a sit-in at Katz Drug Store in Des Moines when she is refused service at the lunch counter because she is black.

1949

The Iowa Supreme Count upholds the conviction of the Katz Drug Store manager under Iowa’s 1884 civil rights law in the landmark civil rights case State of Iowa v. Katz.

1949

(December 2) Civil rights attorneys for the local NAACP chapter negotiate an end to the discriminatory practices of Katz Drug Store in Des Moines.

1954

President Dwight Eisenhower appoints Archie Alexander, the first African American to play football for the University of Iowa, and owner of a successful Des Moines construction company, governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

1963

(April 24) Iowa ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

James H. Jackson of Waterloo and Willie Stevenson Glanton of Des Moines are elected as the first male and female African American state legislators in Iowa history.

1965

A new Iowa Civil Rights Act is passed; it creates the Iowa Civil Rights Commission to work for the ending of racial discrimination in the state.

1984

Only 54 African American families own and run farms in Iowa, down from an estimated 170 families in 1970.

1987

The Iowa legislature passes the state’s first hate crimes legislation.

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1988

The Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans is established to report on the status of African Americans in Iowa and to make recommendations as to programs, legislation, policies, and services that will improve the quality of life for African Americans in the state.

1989

Iowa begins celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday in January.

1992

Virginia Harper, one of the women who integrated the dormitories at the University of Iowa in 1946, is elected to the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame.

1993

Massive flooding of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries causes many deaths and widespread loss of homes in Iowa.

1998

(May 15) The mayor of Des Moines declares this day “Edna Griffin Day” in honor of the Iowa civil rights activist who helped end the discriminatory practices of Des Moines businesses in the late 1940s.

2000

The U.S. Census records 61,852 African Americans in Iowa, comprising 2.1 percent of the state’s population.

2003

(September 19) The African American Museum of Iowa opens in Cedar Rapids.

2006

African American Museum of Iowa chapters are opened in eight communities across the state.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Iowa in the presidential election with 54 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Because the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery north of the southern border of Missouri, Iowa was always a free territory and in 1846 became a free state. Slavery never existed there. In 1839, the African American presence in Iowa first became visible. Iowa’s territorial Supreme Court heard the case of an African American named Ralph, a slave from Missouri who had been sent by his master to work in the lead mines at Dubuque. After Ralph lived in Iowa for two years, Ralph’s master came from Missouri to take him home. But Ralph alleged that he was no longer a slave, since for the past two years he had been living on free soil. The court ruled in Ralph’s favor. Under Iowa law, he was a free man.

From its founding, Iowa had never permitted slavery within its borders. During the 1840s and 1850s, Iowans were gradually swept up in the nation’s passionate debate over the slave issue. Missouri, Iowa’s neighbor to the south, had entered the Union as a slave state. Frequently, runaway slaves from Missouri fled into Iowa. Many headed north to Canada on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses or “stations,” where fugitives could find food and shelter. “Conductors” on the railroad transported runaway slaves from one station to another, often hiding them in wagons beneath bales of wheat or rows of corn. To aid an escaping slave violated federal law. The conductors and their families risked imprisonment in order to live by their belief that slavery was morally wrong. One

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fugitive who made use of the Underground Railroad was not a runaway slave but an ardent white abolitionist: John Brown. Brown fled to Tabor, Iowa, and hid in the home of conductor John Todd because his antislavery activities in Kansas got him into trouble with the law. Brown dreamed of sparking an uprising among southern blacks that would end slavery forever. He and his followers stayed in Springdale, a Quaker settlement, for several months, making secret plans. They then marched into Missouri, killed a slaveholder, and brought 11 slaves to Iowa. With “still wanted” notices offering a reward for his capture, Brown finally left the Hawkeye State. Brown was hanged for treason along with several of his men, including Edwin and Barclay Coppoc, two brothers who were Quakers from Springdale. The Coppoc brothers joined Brown in seizing the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Indeed, the question of slavery had divided the nation, and in 1844, Iowa asked to be admitted to the Union as a state. Southern congressmen protested that if Iowa became a state, it would tip the balance in the U.S. Congress between slave and free states. In the final compromise, Iowa, the first free state west of the Mississippi River, entered the Union hand in hand with Florida, the last slave state east of the Mississippi. Slave and free states remained equally represented in Washington, D.C. On December 28, 1846, President James K. Polk signed the bill that made Iowa the 29th state to join the Union. Iowa became a leading state in passing civil rights legislation. Alexander Clark, an African American barber, was one of the Iowans at the forefront of activism in the state. He protested the state’s discriminatory laws, campaigned for black suffrage, and fought for the right for his daughter to attend an all-white school. The efforts of Clark and other Iowans did not go in vain. In 1868, an amendment to the state constitution extended the vote to African

American men. Another constitutional amendment, passed in 1880, permitted African Americans to serve in the Iowa General Assembly. Several court decisions eliminated segregation in public schools. Mississippi steamboats had to be integrated as they passed though Iowa waters. President Ulysses S. Grant once called Iowa “the nation’s one bright radical star.”1 Between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Iowa saw the emergence of an increasingly economically and socially mobile black population. African Americans worked on steamboats and railroads and in factories (though they often received less pay than their white counterparts). Many blacks also went into business for themselves. One of the thriving towns of the state was Buxton. Although many African Americans were drawn to the mining industry in Buxton, not everyone worked in the mines. Minnie B. London, who lived in Buxton, recalled that blacks were well represented in assorted professions, such as “doctors, lawyers, teachers, druggists, pharmacists, undertakers, postmaster, Justice of the Peace, constables, clerks, [and] members of the school board.”2 Indeed, African Americans in Buxton were among the most successful blacks in the state in that time. African Americans in Buxton also fared better than many blacks in the nation in terms of racial experiences. Racial hostility and conflict was virtually nonexistent in the town. Blacks enjoyed unprecedented levels of racial equality. African Americans in cities such as Keokuk and Des Moines also experienced less racism and discrimination than other cities in the United States. Elsewhere in the state, however, discrimination in restaurants, housing, and employment was prevalent. In ensuing years, black Iowans became more involved in mainstream society. Some “600 men earned commissions as captains and lieutenants at the World War I Black Officer Training Camp at Ft. Des Moines.” 3 Black women were

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Members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps standing in front of their commander, Captain Frank Stillman, at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, 1942. (Library of Congress)

employed in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. African Americans also participated in World War II and, during the postwar years, integrated more state institutions, such as the military and universities. Black Iowans experienced still more gains in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Blacks attained a number of firsts as judges, legislators, and other high-level positions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of blacks who achieved economic and social success continued to grow, resulting in a thriving black middle class. By the 1990s, racial discrimination decreased further. The luminous success stories of black Iowans and racial progress notwithstanding, blacks in the state faced challenges into the twenty-first century. White supremacist organizations have staged rallies in the state. These organizations and their messages of hate and intolerance pose challenges to growing populations of African Americans and immigrants. As many blacks prospered, many more have been inundated with

social problems and disparities. A report noted that “the median income of black families in 2008 was $27,000, compared with $61,663 for all Iowans”; the unemployment rate was 8.9 percent for blacks and 3.9 percent for all others, and more African Americans were imprisoned in the state than any other race.4 As blacks in the state grapple with challenges and celebrate successes in the new millennium, the world around them changes, becoming increasingly diverse.

Ethnic Communities Large numbers of blacks seeking job opportunities and refuge from crime have migrated to Iowa in recent years, bringing the percentage of blacks in the state up to 2.7 percent. This percentage is still far less than the national average of 12.4. Regardless, African Americans form one of the state’s largest minority groups. Almost 93 percent of the state population is described as nonHispanic Caucasians. The majority of Iowans are white and most have ancestors who came to

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America many generations ago. Approximately 35 percent of Iowans are descended from Germans, the largest of Iowa’s nineteenth-century immigrant groups. German-speaking communities exist today in what are known as the Amana colonies and among the state’s Amish villages in Washington and Johnsan counties. Some 98 percent of modern Iowans were born in the United States. A small but growing number of Asians live in the state. A small number of Native Americans, most of them belonging to the Mesquakie tribe, live near the Iowa River in Tama County. Nearly 90 percent of Iowa’s population identify with one of the Christian denominations. Roman Catholics, however, make up the largest single religious group in the state. Catholics are concentrated in the Mississippi River cities. Many religious denominations, such as Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodists, are represented in Iowa. Iowa’s Jewish population tends to be clustered in larger cities. A large Muslim community lives in Cedar Rapids. Amish and Mennonite people live in the farming areas.

Population Iowa ranks fourth in the nation in percentage of people over the age of 65. The state’s population declined during the 1980s because the number of deaths caught up with the number of births. Many senior citizens left Iowa for a warmer climate. In a phenomenon known as the “brain drain,” thousands of well-educated women and men in their 20s sought new jobs out of state. Although Iowa is one of the nation’s most productive farm states, the majority, 59 percent of the people, live in cities and towns. Until 1960, however, more than half of all Iowans lived in rural areas. The largest concentration of people in the Hawkeye State lives within the “Golden Triangle.” Five of the state’s six largest cities are located in the Golden Triangle region. Iowa has about 30 cities with populations greater than 10,000. In terms of population, the six largest

cities are Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, and Dubuque.

Politics The Republican Party has been the driving force in Iowa politics since the Civil War. But Iowa Republicanism swerves from the norm. While Republicans from other states often favor a strong national defense and a tough foreign policy, Iowa Republicans, reflecting the will of their people, tend to be “doves” (a political term for one who favors negotiation over war). Voters in the state were decidedly against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The state’s most influential newspaper, the Des Moines Register, regularly advocates policies that would lead to the reduction of world armaments. The Iowa caucus or primary is the nation’s first step in electing the president. During the caucus, voters gather in schools, public buildings, and even private homes to express their choice for a national leader. The Iowa caucus carries little weight in the actual nominating process, but it is the first test of a candidate’s popularity. During the 1988 caucus, Iowa’s white voters gave a surprising 9 percent of their votes to the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Notable African Americans Alexander, Archie (1888–1958) Archie Alexander became University of Iowa’s first African American football player after his family moved to Des Moines. Alexander refused to let racial barriers prevent him from becoming a successful engineer and presidential appointee. Alexander was born in Ottumwa, the son of a coachman. He was 12 years of age when his family moved to Iowa. He earned an engineering degree in 1912 and then worked for a bridgebuilding firm in Des Moines before launching

Iowa his own business in 1914 with a friend, George Higbie, who was white. Their company built freeways, apartments, airfields, sewage systems, and power plants. In 1944, he and his wife, Audra, broke the color barrier with the purchase of a home in the Chautaugoa Park neighborhood. In 1947, the University of Iowa named Alexander one of 100 outstanding alumni among 30,000 graduates. Alexander gained an international reputation when President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him governor of the Virgin Islands. He served from April 1954 until August 1955, resigning when islanders thwarted his plans to help empower impoverished communities. He continued his construction projects, with offices in Des Moines and Washington, D.C. Alexander was a trustee for Howard University, where he also lectured. Alexander died of a heart attack but left almost $200,000 in scholarship money to help others.

Clark, G. Alexander (1826–1891) G. Alexander Clark was an African American civil rights leader who became the first black to graduate from the University of Iowa. Clark was one of the most influential men of his time, who was tireless in his efforts to improve the lives of African Americans. He arguably did more for civil rights than anyone else in nineteenth-century Iowa. Clark is best remembered for refusing to accept segregated schools. In 1867, when the Muscatine School District prohibited Clark’s daughter, Susan, 12 years old, from attending the same public school that white students attended, he sued. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1868, declaring that all children could attend a common school. The decision was an important one, preceding the landmark 1954 ruling in a Topeka, Kansas, case. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, reversed the “separate but equal” education policy. Clark’s lawsuit made Iowa one of the first states to integrate its public school system.

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Clark was born on February 25, 1826, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, to John Clark, a former slave, and Rebecca Darnes Clark, of African descent. Clark’s main occupation was as a barber, where he began his career until 1868. On October 9, 1848, Clark married Catherine Griffin of Iowa, who had been freed from slavery in Virginia at age three. The Clarks had five children, two of whom died in infancy. During the Civil War, Clark organized the 1st Iowa volunteers of African Descent, later redesignated the 60th Regiment Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, a Union regiment of 1,100 black soldiers from Iowa and Missouri. Clark himself enlisted in 1863 and was appointed a sergeant major. A disability forced him to focus his energies on soldier recruitment. In 1869, a state convention appointed him a delegate to the Colored National Convention in Washington, D.C., where he had the opportunity to meet with President Grant. In 1873, Grant offered Clark an appointment as ambassador to Haiti. However, Clark turned down the position, because he felt the salary was too small. Active in both the Masonic Lodge and the Republican Party, Clark traveled extensively for both, and his speaking skills earned him the title “Colored Orator of the West.” Clark’s final achievement came when President Benjamin Harrison appointed him U.S. minister to Liberia on August 16, 1890. Clark died in Monrovia, Liberia, on June 3, 1891. He was buried with honors at Muscatine’s Greenwood Cemetery on February 16, 1892.

Estes, Simon (1938–) Simon Estes is an African American opera singer born on March 2, 1938, in Centerville. He was one of five children of Ruth Jeter Estes and Simon Estes. Estes’ father was a slave who worked a variety of jobs after toiling in coal mines. Estes first performed in church and school choirs.

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Opera singer Simon Estes at his home, 2000. (AP/Wide World Photos)

At age 13, his clear soprano voice won him first place when Bill Riley brought his “Talent Search” to town. Estes attended the University of Iowa from 1957 to 1963. He first majored in premed, then changed to theology and later social psychology. He finally settled on vocal music with encouragement from his teacher Charles Kellis. After Estes studied at Julliard School of Music for one year, he left for Germany, making his professional stage debut in 1965 in Berlin as Ramfis in “Aida.” He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1982. In his long career, Estes has performed throughout the world. He sponsors a youth choir in South Africa but returns to his home state frequently.

Farmer, Arthur Stewart (1928–1999) Arthur Stewart Farmer was a famous African American jazz musician born on August 21, 1928,

in Council Bluffs. His family moved away from Iowa four years later. As children, Farmer and his twin brother, Addison, took music lessons. Farmer began piano lessons at six. Later, he received instruction on the violin. When he wanted to participate in a school marching band, Farmer took up the bass tuba because that was the only instrument available. In the 1940s, Farmer joined a dance band and was introduced to the world of jazz. When big bands and swing bands came to town, the Farmer brothers often invited musicians to their home for jam sessions. From the moment Farmer heard a professional jazz band perform, his goal was to pursue a career in jazz music. He decided to learn how to play the trumpet. In 1952, Farmer toured Europe with Lionel Hampton. In the following year, he made New York City his home base, playing with Hampton alongside trumpeters Quincy Jones and Clifford Brown and saxophonist Gigi Gryce. In 1959,

Iowa Farmer and saxophonist Benny Gholson formed their hard-bop Jazztet, continuing the group until 1962. With musical tastes turned upside down in the 1960s and a turbulent political scene, Farmer decided to move to Europe, where jazz still had a strong following. He joined the Austrian Radio Orchestra in 1968, settling down in Vienna with his family. As a freelancer, Farmer traveled extensively to clubs and jazz festivals in London, Paris, Italy, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. After 1977, Farmer spent equal time in Vienna and New York. He enjoyed music and often practiced from five to seven hours a day. An inventive musician, Farmer believed in the “less is more” theory, conveying much in a few notes, eventually choosing the flugelhorn over the trumpet. He preferred a softer, more intimate lyrical sound. Farmer received recognition for his illustrious career. In 1994, Farmer was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal of Merit. In the same year, Lincoln Center held a concert to honor Farmer. Following his death in New York City on October 4, 1999, musical performances and jazz festivals were organized to celebrate his life and achievements. In 2001, Farmer was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame.

Griffin, Edna (1909–2000) Edna Griffin was a local civil rights leader. Born in Kentucky in 1909, Griffin grew up in New Hampshire as the daughter of a dairy-farm supervisor. Griffin graduated from Fisk University in 1933, married a doctor, Stacey Griffin, and became a schoolteacher. The couple moved to Des Moines in 1947. In 1948, Griffin sat down at a Des Moines lunch counter and ordered an ice cream soda and was refused service because of her skin color. Griffin led sit-ins and picketed the drugstore and sued owner Maurice Katz. The Iowa Supreme Court supported Griffin’s charge. Katz was found in violation of an 1884 Iowa statute making it a

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crime to discriminate in public accommodations. In a civil case, an all-white jury awarded Griffin a decisive ruling. Griffin founded the Iowa chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), and in 1963, she organized Iowans to attend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. At age 75, Griffin sat in the middle of a Nebraska highway in an attempt to prevent nuclear warheads from being shipped into the local SAC Army base. Griffin was inducted to the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame and the Iowa African American Hall of Fame. Des Moines Mayor Preston Daniels declared May 15 as Edna Griffin Day in 1998. In that same year, the Flynn building, where the Katz Drug Store was once located, was renamed to honor Griffin.

Redd, Ernest “Speck” (1914–1974) Ernest “Speck” Redd was the top African American jazz pianist in Des Moines, Iowa. He acquired his nickname because of his many freckles. Redd, one of seven children of a Baptist minister and his wife, was born in Huntsville and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1941. Redd became known with appearances on KRNT radio and television. His latest engagement was at the Best Western Inn in Ankeny. After Redd died, friends and fans gathered for a special party to exchange recordings and tapes of his music.

Winston, Ivory (1911–1996) Ivory Winston was named “Iowa’s First Lady of Song” and “Iowa’s Popular Concert Artist.” Winston was born in Ottumwa on August 11, 1911, the only child of E. P. Green, minister of the Second Baptist Church, and his wife Effie. The church provided the child’s foundation in music, and in her later career, she loved to share Negro spirituals with her audiences. As a child of 12, when she began studying piano, she dreamed of becoming a concert pianist like her

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idol, Inane Paderewski. Friends encouraged her to develop her talent. Winston began studying privately, working eight hours a week for her lessons. She earned enough money by ironing on Tuesdays and cleaning houses on Fridays to pay for two voice lessons per week. Winston later studied at Ottumwa Heights College, Parsons College, and Drake University. Acclaimed concert singer Marion Anderson was her role model. Winston made her recital debut at Ottumwa Heights College in May 1946. In 1948, Winston sang for President Harry Truman on his birthday when he made a campaign swing through the Midwest. In June 1950, Winston won a top ranking at the Des Moines Register and Tribune Cavalcade of Music festival. The event was held at the Drake University stadium, with 3,000 contestants entered from seven states. When Wilson was invited to sing at the state Republican Convention at Des Moines’ theater in July 1950, she wrote a special song for the occasion and performed before Republicans from every county, as well as Governor William Beardsley. She began her singing career at a time when few opportunities existed on the concert stage for African Americans. The coloratura soprano was in demand at colleges, high schools, community celebrations, conventions, clubs, churches, and civic groups.

Cultural Contributions African Americans in Iowa have made a wide variety of cultural contributions. Black Iowans, like Simon Estes, an opera singer, and Ivory Winston, a concert artist, have exhibited extraordinary talent in classical music forms that were historically dominated by whites. African Americans in Iowa were strongly influenced by the jazz and big band era of the 1940s and 1950s. Jazz, which was created by African Americans, was brilliantly performed by celebrated Iowans such as Ernest Redd and Arthur Farmer. Margaret Walter, born in Alabama, and Alice Walker,

from Georgia, attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to achieve literary success. Margaret Walker is well known for her poem “For My People,” which celebrates black life, culture, and triumph in spite of oppression. One of Alice Walker’s most seminal novels was The Color Purple (1982), which was adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg and a musical produced by Quincy Jones, Oprah Winfrey, and others. The Color Purple features songs, dance, religious traditions, and vernacular from the black experience in the 1930s. Since the 1990s, Iowan Tionne Tenese Watkins, otherwise known as T-Boz, has produced R&B and hip-hop music as a member of the massively popular group TLC. The prolific careers and talents of African Americans in Iowa have enriched the state and the world over.

Notes 1. Robert R. Dykstra, Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 227, 268. 2. Dorothy Schwieder, Thomas Morain, and Lynn Nielsen, Iowa Past to Present: The People and the Prairie (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991), 126. 3. “African-Americans in Iowa, 1838–2005,” www.iptv.org/iowapathways. 4. William Petroski, “New Report: Blacks Make Big Gains in Iowa Population,” www .desmoinesregister.com/article/20100403.

Bibliography “African-Americans in Iowa, 1838–2005.” (April 2010). www.iptv.org/iowapathways. Alex, Lynn M. Iowa’s Archeological Past. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. Carpenter, Allan, and Randy Lyon. Between Two Rivers: Iowa Year by Year, 1846–1996. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1997.

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Dykstra, Robert R. Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Petroski, William. “New Report: Blacks Make Big Gains in Iowa Population.” Des Moines Register, April 2010. www.desmoinesregister .com/article/20100403.

Fradin, Dennis B. From Sea to Shining Sea: Iowa. Connecticut: Grolier Publishing. 1993.

Riley, Glenda, ed. Prairie Voices: Iowa’s Pioneering Women. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1996.

Holmberg, James J. Exploring with Lewis and Clark: The 1804 Journal of Charles Floyd. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Sage, Leland L. A History of Iowa. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1974.

Kent, Deborah. America the Beautiful: Iowa. Chicago: Children Press, 1991.

Schwieder, Dorothy. Iowa: The Middle Land. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1996.

Landau, Diana. Iowa: Art of the State. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998. Longden, Tom. “DesMoines Registry.” www .FamousIowans.com. May 30, 2007.

Schwieder, Dorothy, Thomas Morain, and Lynn Nielsen. Iowa Past to Present: The People and the Prairie. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991.

Martin, Michael. E. World Almanac Library of the States: Iowa. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library. 2002.

Wall, Joseph Frazier. Iowa: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.

KANSAS William Gibbons and Gordon E. Thompson

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Chronology 1803

The United States acquires the Louisiana Territory from the French; the new territory, including Kansas, nearly doubles the size of the United States.

1804

Lewis and Clark explore Kansas on their way to the Pacific Coast. Accompanying the expedition is an African American, York, who plays a prominent role in the expedition.

1820

The first African Americans whose arrival can be documented come to Kansas. Some were free and others purchased their freedom, but most were enslaved and in the fur trade.

1852

Clement Shattio, a white farmer, and his free black wife, Ann Davis Shattio, are some of the first residents of Topeka in the Kansas Territory.

1854

(May 30) The Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed by Congress opening the territory to settlement and giving Kansas territorial status. The act repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and permits the admission of Kansas and Nebraska territories to the Union after their populations decide on slavery.

1854

“Bleeding Kansas” is an outgrowth of the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Between 1854 and 1858, armed groups of pro- and antislavery factions, often funded and sponsored by organizations in the North and South, compete for control of Kansas Territory, initiating waves of violence that kill 55 people. Bleeding Kansas becomes a preview of the Civil War.

1854

The Republican Party is formed in the summer in opposition to the extension of slavery into the western territories.

1855

Abolitionist John Brown arrives in Oswatomie to fight proslavery factions.

1855

(July 2) The first territorial legislature meets at Pawnee, and later at Shawnee it legalizes slavery in Kansas.

1856

(May 21) The Lawrence Massacre results in the deaths of 150 abolitionists when proslavery groups attack the antislavery town of Lawrence.

1856

(May 23) Abolitionist John Brown leads a group of abolitionist settlers in the so-called “Pottawatomie Massacre,” which results in the deaths of five proslavery settlers living near Pottawatomie Creek.

1858

(December 25) On Christmas night, John Brown leads a group of abolitionists into Missouri to rescue 11 enslaved Missourians. Before and after this Christmas Night Raid, fugitive black slaves make their way to freedom in Kansas Territory.

1860

Kansas adopts a constitution prohibiting slavery. African Americans in neighboring slave states immediately flee to Kansas to work as free people; the African American free population of Kansas increases to 625 from 192 in 1855.

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1861

(April 12) The Civil War begins with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1861

Kansas enters the Union as the 34th state.

1862

(February) The Kansas Emancipation League is founded by black and white abolitionists meeting at the First Colored Baptist Church in Leavenworth.

1862

(June) Congress abolishes slavery in the territories of the United States.

1862

(October 17) The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry is organized near Fort Lincoln in Bourbon County.

1863

(July 17) The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry arrives at Fort Scott, becoming the first African American unit to see action in the Civil War.

1863

(October) Twenty-three delegates representing approximately 7,000 black Kansans gather in Leavenworth for the first Kansas State Colored Convention demanding political equality and an end to racial discrimination.

1864

The Ladies’ Refugee Aid Society is established in Lawrence.

1865

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlaws slavery throughout the United States.

1865

Kansas’ African American population increases to 12,527; many African Americans find work as farm laborers, domestic servants, and soldiers.

1866

Congress authorizes the formation of two all-black cavalry regiments, the 9th and 10th, and two infantry, the 24th and 25th; the 10th Cavalry was stationed at Fort Leavenworth.

1867

(January 10) Congress passes the Territorial Suffrage Act, which allows African Americans in the western territories to vote. The act immediately enfranchises about 800 black male voters in those territories.

1867

(November) White male voters in Kansas overwhelmingly reject efforts by both African American males and all women to obtain the ballot. In a vote on both propositions, African American suffrage fails by 19,421 to 10,438, while women’s suffrage is defeated by 19,857 to 10,070.

1868

(July 21) The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

1869

(February 26) Congress sends the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the states for approval. The amendment guarantees African American males the right to vote.

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1870

Exodusters begin migrating from the South to the Midwest; between 1875 and 1881, an estimated 60,000 African Americans from the southern states head for Kansas with dreams of owning land on the western frontier.

1877

(July 30) African American settlers from Kentucky arrive to establish the town of Nicodemus, which is the first of hundreds of all or mostly black western towns; Nicodemus reaches its peak in 1910 when the federal Census reports 595 colored residents.

1878

Edwin McCabe arrives in Nicodemus advertising himself as an attorney and land agent. In April 1880, Kansas Governor John P. St. John appoints McCabe the first clerk of newly organized Graham County. In November 1881, McCabe is elected to a full term as county clerk.

1878

William L. Eagleson founds the Colored Citizen, the first black newspaper in Topeka.

1878

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton leads his first group of Tennessee emigrants to Kansas. The party of 200 settlers establishes the Dunlap Colony on the east bank of the Neosho River in Morris County.

1879

African American parents in Topeka begin a campaign to desegregate the local schools. They receive a setback in 1890 when the Kansas Supreme Court in Reynolds v. Board of Education of Topeka decides the state’s school segregation law is constitutional. Their multi-generational efforts at desegregation continue until Brown v. Board of Education strikes down school segregation in 1954.

1879–1880

Approximately 6,000 African Americans leave Louisiana and Mississippi counties along the Mississippi River for Kansas in what will be known as the Exodus. In response to the Exodus, Kansas Governor John P. St. John creates the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association (KFRA) to provide assistance for the mostly destitute refugees. The association receives nationwide support, including donations from pre– Civil War abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who leads fund-raising efforts in Boston, and from Philip D. Armour, the Chicago meatpacker.

1880

The African American population of Kansas exceeds 48,000.

1881

Western University is founded to provide professional training and services in Kansas City.

1882

Edwin McCabe of Nicodemus is elected the state auditor of Kansas at the age of 32. He is the first African American elected to a statewide office outside the South.

1885

Blanche K. Bruce becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Kansas.

1886

(May 13) The Western Cyclone newspaper is established by A. G. Tallman in the township of Nicodemus.

1886

Young George Washington Carver homesteads 160 acres in Ness County, Kansas, for two years before leaving the area to continue his education at Iowa State University.

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1887

(August 17) The Enterprise newspaper is established by H. K. Lightfoot in Nicodemus.

1889

Edwin McCabe creates the Oklahoma Immigrant Association, headquartered in Topeka, to encourage African American migration from the South to the new territory. McCabe and his wife Sarah arrive in Oklahoma in April 1890 and help found Langston City, which they name after Virginia Congressman John Mercer Langston.

1895

The Kansas Industrial and Education Institute is founded in Topeka as a kindergarten, sewing school, and reading room by Elizabeth Reddick and Edward Stephens, two African American elementary school teachers in Topeka. The institute will eventually become, after the endorsement of Booker T. Washington and a substantial donation from Andrew Carnegie, a major facility for the teaching of industrial arts and scientific agriculture to black Kansans. In 1919, the state of Kansas assumes control of the facility and renames it the Kansas Vocational Institute.

1895

Hattie McDaniel is born in Wichita; she is best known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, for which she won an Oscar. She was the first black to win an Oscar and the first black star to attend these ceremonies.

1897

The Kansas legislature gives cities with populations above 10,000 the authority to establish racially separate grade schools; Leavenworth and Topeka do so.

1899

Alfred Fairfax, a Republican from Chautauqua County, is the first African American state legislator.

1899

Nick Chiles founds and edits the Plain Dealer, a newspaper in Topeka that published until 1958.

1899

Aaron Douglas, an African American painter and major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, is born in Topeka.

1919

Lorenzo Fuller Jr. is born in Stockton; he is considered by some to be the first African American to host a national television show—a 15-minute show airing on NBC in 1947.

1925

Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas) becomes the center of a black jazz network that stretches throughout the West and eventually includes Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Manila.

1940

The African American population of Kansas reaches 65,138.

1940

(February 29) Hattie McDaniel receives an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in Gone with the Wind.

1941

( June 25) Executive Order 8802 desegregates war production plants throughout the West and creates the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC).

1948

( July 26) President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 directing the desegregation of the armed forces.

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1950

Four percent of African Americans earned their living in professional jobs.

1951

(February 28) Thirteen African American families in Topeka, Kansas, file a lawsuit against the local school board for its policies that permit racially segregated schools. The case will eventually be known as Brown v. Board of Education.

1954

(May 17) The U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education declares segregation in all public schools in the United States unconstitutional, nullifying the earlier judicial doctrine of “separate but equal.”

1955

Wilt Chamberlain attends the University of Kansas to play basketball.

1958

(July 19) Ronald Walters, a Wichita State College freshman and president of the Wichita National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council, leads the city’s first sit-in demonstration. The group protests Dockum Drugstore’s ban on black customers using the lunch counter. The protest ends a few days later when drugstore officials promise to end the discriminatory policy.

1958

James P. Davis, a Democrat from Wyandotte County, is elected to the Kansas House of Representatives.

1966

Billy Q. McCray, a Democrat from Sedgwick County, is elected to the Kansas House of Representatives.

1970

The University of Kansas’ Department of African American Studies is established.

1970

Nine percent of African Americans earn their living in professional jobs.

1974

The First National Black Historical Society is formed in Wichita to save the Old Calvary Baptist Church, which is placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

1975

(March) The Kansas Black Legislative Caucus is formed by seven African American members of the Kansas legislature.

1976

(January 7) The Nicodemus Historic District, commemorating Nicodemus, the first black settlement in Kansas in 1877, is designated a National Historic Landmark.

1990

Sixteen percent of African Americans earn their living in professional jobs.

1997

The Kansas legislature creates the Kansas African American Affairs commission (KAAAC) to serve as a conduit of information for groups and organizations addressing the affairs of the state’s African American community.

1999

The First National Black Historical society in Wichita becomes the Kansas African American Museum.

2000

Valdenia Winn, a professor at Kansas City Community College, is elected to the Kansas House of Representatives.

2000

African Americans comprise 0.5 percent of Kansas’ population, about 154,198 people.

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2004

The Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and Museum opens in the Monroe Elementary building, a formerly segregated school in Topeka.

2004

Melody McCray-Miller, a Wichita city commissioner, is elected to the Kansas House of Representatives.

2006

The U.S. Census documents 153,560 African Americans in the state of Kansas.

Historical Overview The history of Kansas contains some of the most extraordinary African American events and personalities in the United States. The list of famous blacks to emerge from Kansas is impressive, and includes the historic Reconstructionist U.S. Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, Bishop John A. Gregg, Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel of Gone with the Wind fame, the dynamic tenor sax player Coleman Hawkins, muralist extraordinaire Aaron Douglas of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Other notables include those who either moved to Kansas or made significant achievements there such as the landmark black scientist George Washington Carver, the black poet laureate James Langston Hughes, and the great Wilt Chamberlain of the Globetrotters and the Los Angeles Lakers. African American entry into Kansas differed from the emigration patterns of their white brethren, as was true in the western states overall. Unlike their white counterparts who arrived by wagon train, many blacks initially walked from Missouri and the border states of Kentucky and Tennessee, or traveled by railroad or steamboat from Virginia and the Deep South states such as Mississippi and Louisiana. Among the more dramatic events of this time was the flight from Mississippi of Henry Clay Bruce, the brother of Senator Blanche K. Bruce. Henry escaped with his fiancée from Missouri in 1863 with a pair of Colt 45s, and made the run, as he describes it in his autobiography, by crossing the Missouri River.

Early on, African Americans were drawn by knowledge of Kansas’ famous abolitionist tradition, associated with John Brown, but also James H. Lane, James Montgomery, and Charles Jennison. In fact, with the entry into the state of religious groups such as the Quakers, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists who proclaimed their devotion to the freedom and uplift of African Americans, African Americans got the impression that Kansas was a haven for freedom and fair play. Indeed, these are the very abolitionists who established the Kansan wing of the Underground Railroad.

Bleeding Kansas The state was known as “Bleeding Kansas” for its many internal wars over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that left the decision to the people living in each territory to determine whether or not their territory would enter the Union as a slave state. Yet, since such battles were not waged in the Deep South, they indicated that powerful forces in Kansas stood in opposition to slavery. As such, many blacks saw this battle-torn state as a refuge, the city of Lawrence in particular. Kansas, moreover, would become one of the first states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Abolitionists, known as Free Staters, descended on Kansas to influence the decision and to counteract slaveholders from the South who were beginning to settle in the region. Black Laws were passed making it illegal on pain of death to aid a fugitive slave or spread antislavery opinions. Upon repeal of the Black Laws, the Free Staters succeeded in creating Kansas as a free state.

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Kansas’ bloody warriors are exemplified by men like John Brown. A champion for the abolition of slavery, Brown was neither a nativeborn Kansan nor a black man. He came to Kansas in 1855 from Ohio, fought and killed for his cause, and died after having led a quixotic but spectacular raid on the U.S. Army arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Among his men was an ancestor of Langston Hughes. Brown was perhaps only the most colorful and violent of a large host of folks, slave and free, white and black, who, as actors on the Underground Railroad, led slaves from Missouri through Lawrence and Topeka on the way to Canada.

Statehood and a Growing Black Population When it declared in its constitution that it would be a free state, Kansas saw blacks make their way there in droves. The black population was about 192 in 1855, jumped to 655 in 1860, and by 1865 had increased to over 12,500. This large increase was the consequence, of course, of the Civil War, during and immediately after which blacks found their way to Kansas in skiffs, by swimming, or even walking across the ice floes of the Missouri River. Blacks, like their white counterparts, were also inspired to come to Kansas by what has been called “Kansas Exodus Fever,” a movement spurred by the advertising campaign of the railroads and other land speculators who hailed Kansas as a little Eden. The second great wave of blacks arrived in 1877, augmenting the size of the black population to more than 48,000 by 1880. The number of blacks in Kansas exploded with the Exodusters, black slaves who amazed their contemporaries as they fled in masses from Missouri and the Deep South to Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. From 1875 to 1881, 60,000 blacks headed for Kansas, led by Benjamin Singleton, called “Pap,” who was an important figure of the Exoduster movement. Credited

with bringing thousands of blacks from border and Deep South states, he organized colonies of black farmers in the settlements of Dunlap, Singleton, and Nicodemus. Having spearheaded the migrant Exodusters, Singleton also established the colony named after him and founded an emigration agency called the Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association. If these first blacks arrived as individuals or as isolated families, many later entered Kansas with the assistance of the Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association or similar emigration agencies. Putting aside racism, blacks felt encouraged to make this transition by the expectation of higher wages and the hope of becoming homesteaders. After all, the federal government, in the Homestead Acts of 1862, made cheap land on reasonable loan rates available to every man or woman, black or white, that agreed to live on the land for at least six months.

Towns Based on its proximity to Missouri, the eastern corner of Kansas developed more rapidly than the western portion of the state. It is no surprise, then, that the towns and cities with the heaviest population of blacks—propelled by the mass migration during the Exoduster phenomenon—were located in the east. Yet, while some of the Exodusters were also the founders of the first all-black settlement of Nicodemus, it resides, interestingly enough, in an isolated, western portion of the state, way out in western Kansas in that great expanse of prairie linking Kansas with Colorado. Founded by W. H. Smith, Nicodemus was named after a slave who was said to have been an African prince who predicted the coming of the Civil War and purchased his freedom. So far west is Nicodemus, this early black frontier settlement, from the other major settlements in Kansas that blacks attempting to homestead there seemed to have made every effort to flee slavery

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View of Washington Street in Nicodemus, Kansas, circa 1885. Nicodemus was an African American town settled by former slaves. (Library of Congress)

along with all forms of white oppression. From 30 colonists in 1877 to more than 480 in 1880, African Americans represented 11 percent of Graham County in which Nicodemus lies. Despite its typical high-plains topography and weather, settlers managed to grow wheat and corn on this flat terrain. The settlement developed from structures that were little more than dugouts to encompass a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, the St. Francis Hotel, newspapers, a twostory stone building erected in 1879, a general store, pharmacy, and a schoolhouse. Three churches—Baptist, Free Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal—thrived for a while. Despite Nicodemus’ national reputation as a symbol of black successful self-management, it quickly went into decline as a reflection of the poor

weather and unsuccessful dealings with the railroad companies that bypassed their township. But during its heyday, Nicodemus caught the attention of many migrants like George Washington Carver and one, Edwin P. McCabe, hailing from as far away as Troy, New York, who eventually was elected the auditor of the state. To this day, Nicodemus remains an unincorporated black town in Graham County, far from the railroad or any major highways. While blacks still reside in Nicodemus, Lawrence and Leavenworth are towns where blacks experienced their greatest successes and most promising early years. Later, the majority of blacks would eventually settle in Kansas City and Topeka. With the advent of the Civil War and in its wake, the population of black Kansans increased

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significantly. The towns of Leavenworth and Lawrence were among the most popular, with more than 72 percent of the black population of Kansas residing there alongside a larger population of white settlers. One great inducement for free blacks and slaves alike during the Civil War was the offer of work for freedom, in which slaves grew and harvested the wheat and other crops in place of white males who had enlisted in the army. In 1863, blacks distinguished themselves by producing one of Kansas’ best harvests of all time. Leavenworth had a large black community of about 2,455 in 1865, representing about 16 percent of its population. As the population increased, their destitution was such that the town fathers, white men, immediately set about to ameliorate the situation. For this purpose, the Kansas Emancipation League was founded with the combined efforts of men such as William Mathew, one of the first blacks to become an officer in the Union army; the town’s preacher, Reverend Robert Caldwell; the educator, Lewis Overton; and the druggist Dr. R. C. Anderson, who worked hand in hand with famous white citizens such as Susan B. Anthony’s brother, Colonel Daniel R. Anthony, and Richard J. Hinton, a well-known abolitionist. Prominent church leaders such as Jesse Mills and Moses White founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Leavenworth. Not only did the church operate to help end slavery, but it also worked to assist fugitive slaves entering the state. The Kansas Emancipation League was initiated at a meeting of the First Colored Baptist Church in 1862, and together with the Ladies Refugee Aid Society, it supported blacks fleeing Missouri and other slave states. Other self-help groups such as the Kansas Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, previously known as the Ladies Refugee Society, collected food and clothing and raised funds for the weary black migrants. For those who were gainfully employed, the choice of work consisted of porters and waiters, cooks, maids, and manual laborers such as teamsters.

Leavenworth was also the site in 1863 for the first Kansas State Colored Convention, which met to agitate for equal rights; for black male suffrage; for the right to serve on juries; to end discrimination, particularly in regard to public transportation; to gain wider access to public education; and to demand federal pay for soldiers, specifically the 1st Kansas Colored Regiment. They also argued in opposition to black American colonization efforts in Africa, urging more blacks to become homesteaders and farmers. Once Kansas became a state in 1861, blacks entered in large numbers. Lawrence was particularly popular as an antislavery town, and by 1862, a significant number of blacks had arrived in the town by way of the Underground Railroad. The “railroad” ran from western Missouri into Lawrence toward Topeka and from there into Nebraska Territory, Iowa, Chicago, and finally into Canada. In urban areas such as Lawrence, half of black workers were unskilled and lived in virtual poverty. Still, they attended public schools during the day and night, and in 1862, they founded the first black house of worship in Lawrence called Freedmen’s Church. By 1865, the black population of Lawrence had increased to 1,000. While blacks were self-supporting, most hovered very near the poverty line. Of the 1,000, only 369 were listed in the census as employed. The largest numbers were soldiers, followed by day laborers. Women were mostly domestics—washerwomen, housekeepers, servants, and cooks—decreasing in number respectively. Among the remaining unskilled laborers, approximately half were teamsters, blacksmiths, and barbers. The formal education of blacks was strongly encouraged by the white citizens who volunteered to teach the black children during the day and the adults at night. The preacher from the Freedmen’s Church together with the town’s tradesmen, such as the printer, the shoemaker, the carpenter, and

Kansas even a saloonkeeper, strengthened the civic infrastructure of the black community of Lawrence. Topeka was the site of the drafting of the state constitution that would have outlawed both slavery and black immigration into Kansas. It took a lot of work to eliminate such clauses from the early drafts of the constitution. As a stop on the Underground Railroad, Topeka also saw an early influx of blacks. Despite the rush in Topeka to form a state free of blacks, Topeka may have been the first racially integrated residential area in the United States. Yet its residents, though freestaters, disliked blacks almost as much as they disliked slavery. Neither the white population nor, strangely, the previously established black community welcomed the new arrivals. As a consequence, a color line was established in Topeka that lasted for over a century. Segregation was maintained in the churches; and the destitute Exodusters were sent to facilities at the edge of town, which became permanent black enclaves and, eventually, strong cohesive communities, with many Exodusters finding work as mechanics, teamsters, maids, and laborers. In addition, Topeka, with a population of over 10,000, was one of the cities that the Kansas legislature would allow to segregate its schools, which it did in 1879. Still, blacks were allowed to enroll in the state’s public colleges and universities. Yet they did not always receive equal treatment in the internal administration of these campuses: in some instances the cafeterias, swimming pools, various cultural events, and classrooms were segregated. Even though school segregation was authorized in 1879, many high schools in Kansas were mixed until 1905. In fact, blacks received a relatively good education in Kansas, raising the stakes all the more in face of another half century of educational inequality. Nevertheless, the Kansas Industrial and Educational Institute was established in homage to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute.

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The recalcitrance in a state with a moderately inclusive sentiment toward blacks is what led, in part, to the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit of 1954. Kansas and particularly Topeka were prime locations for the arguments presented in Brown v. Board of Education. Having established branches of the NAACP, Kansas would find its education system used as a test case by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Wichita was the site of the first sit-in in response to the high court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Several black high-school and college students refused to leave the lunch counter of the local drugstore when they were spat upon and verbally abused upon requesting service. After eight days, the owners of the lunch counter gave in, ending for all intents and purposes segregation in that city. This was a landmark event, of course, and its influence would spread throughout the South and across the country.

The Army Black Kansans, emboldened by Kansas’ joyous embrace of the Emancipation Proclamation, became the first to enlist as soldiers in the Union army, preceding many other blacks residing in this western region. A determined abolitionist, Senator James H. Lane, was crucial to the settlement of blacks in Kansas, but as a military man and a senator, he was mainly interested in fending off the Missouri secessionists. For this purpose he raised a 1,200-man fighting force and invaded southwest Missouri. Apparently a champion of black interests, Lane invited fugitive slaves into his command as early as August 1861 and provided safe passage for the women and children into Kansas. The blacks that sought out his camp joined him and became the first African American bluecoats in the Union army. In 1862, Brigadier General James G. Blunt— an ally of John Brown and a powerful abolitionist and friend to African Americans—authorized the

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War Department of Kansas to enlist African Americans. Later that year, Senator Lane announced that he would enlist any fit black who wanted to join the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment. In response, the state created two regiments of black soldiers who were eager to abolish slavery, to help free relatives and friends, and to establish themselves as Americans. These enlistees came to represent about one of every six African Americans in Kansas. The commanders of the western army, who had no problem leading black soldiers, further abetted their successful enlistment. The 1st Kansas Colored would, in fact, become the first black group to engage the Confederate army. Yet the creation of the regiment was callously done. Lane’s mustering of black men into the 1st was apparently overly harsh, with Lane declaring that he would draft them if they did not volunteer. In fact, it is said that Lane did indeed use unsavory practices to draft or dragoon blacks into his regiment. But by 1865, one-sixth of the African American population, over 2,000 men, had joined Kansas’ black regiments. These men would go on to fight Confederate guerrillas in the Battle of Honey Springs, the largest engagement in Indian Territory. Later, in the fall of 1864, while they again fought valorously at Honey Springs, they suffered a devastating defeat. As early as 1863, thousands of black Kansans staged the first Kansas State Colored Convention to celebrate these valiant men. Then, in 1883, the 1st Kansas Colored joined the U.S. Army of the Frontier, which consisted, remarkably, of Native Americans, whites, and blacks.

Twentieth Century Overall, while between 1885 and 1940, the black population moderated, it subsequently rose dramatically, reaching 65,000 by 1940. From then on, blacks would enter Kansas in increasingly large numbers, in anticipation of employment spurred

by the increased activity of the defense industry. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, another court decision called Baker v. Carr ordered legislative reapportionment in the state. The positive outcome of this order led to another surge in the black population in major Kansas cities. By 1990, the black population jumped in the state to 143,076, and by 2000, African Americans comprised 0.5 percent of the population, over 154,000 people. One black sat in the Kansas legislature in 1956 and, six would serve in it by 1976. Towns and cities such as Leavenworth, Coffeyville, and Abilene would elect black mayors for the first time in the 1980s. It is also significant that in 1994, the federal government officially recognized the African and African-American Studies Department at the University of Kansas as a national resource center.

Notable African Americans Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth (1917–2000) Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917. She began writing poetry when she was seven and had her first work published at the age of 13. David and Keziah Brooks on her mother’s side were fugitive slaves who fought for Kansas in the Civil War. Brooks grew up, for the most part, in Chicago. In 1945, her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, was an instant sensation. In 1949, her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first given to an African American. She went on to publish dozens of books of poetry, anthologies, and essays before her death on December 3, 2000, from complications due to cancer. In 1968 she was named poet laureate of Illinois, succeeding the late Carl Sandburg. President Bill Clinton awarded Brooks the National Medal of Art.

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Carver, George Washington (c. 1861–1943) Pioneer chemist and agriculturalist, George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Missouri, in the mid-1860s. An orphan, he moved to Fort Scott in 1878 to attend school. After finishing high school, Carver farmed for two years near Beeler in Ness County. He went on to Iowa State University, where he received his master’s degree in 1896 in the area of agricultural science. Carver soon joined the faculty of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he invented new uses for various crops, including making soybeans into plastic, sweet potatoes into cereal, and peanuts into more than 300 by-products such as milk, coffee, and shaving cream. Impressed with his work, Thomas Edison offered him $100,000 a year to come and work for him, but he thought he could do more good at Tuskegee. Although George Washington Carver received many awards for his work, he refused to accept any royalties from the sale of his products. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, holding a copy of her book, A Street in Bronzeville, published in 1945, was the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Library of Congress)

Bruce, Blanche Kelso (1841–1898) Educator and politician Blanche K. Bruce was the second African American U.S. senator from Mississippi. He was born into slavery in Virginia in 1841. He moved with his master to Missouri before the Civil War. By 1861, Bruce had escaped from slavery and made his way to Lawrence, Kansas, where he survived Quantrill’s raid. Blanche Bruce was credited with organizing the first school in the country for Negroes. Moving on to Mississippi by 1868, Bruce became the first black U.S. senator elected to a full term, 1875–1881 (Hiram R. Revels, the first from the state, served only from February 1870 to March 1871).

Chamberlain, Wilton Norman (1936–1999) Basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1936. When he entered Philadelphia’s Overbrook High School, he was already 6’ 11”, and when he left Overbrook in 1955, the basketball team’s record stood at 56–3. After this amazing high-school career, over 200 universities attempted to recruit him. Chamberlain decided to play college basketball at the University of Kansas. His astonishing success landed him on the pages of Time, Life, Look, and Newsweek magazines before he was 21 or had turned professional. In 1958, during a lull in this meteoric rise, he was offered $50,000 to join the Harlem Globetrotters. The amount was astounding for the times. The next year, he finally entered the professional ranks with the Philadelphia Warriors. He

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was league Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1960. When the team developed financial problems, Chamberlain was traded in 1965 to the Philadelphia 76ers. He was awarded a second MVP in 1966 when the 76ers posted a 55–25 record for the 1965–1966 NBA season. He was again league MVP in 1967 and 1968. In 1968, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain latter coached the Conquistadors, sponsored a professional volleyball and a track-andfield team, went into business, entertainment, real estate, reopened the popular club Small's Paradise in Harlem, and made money in advertising. He wrote and published several books before his death.

Douglas, Aaron (1899–1979) Aaron Douglas, painter and muralist extraordinaire, was born in 1899 in Topeka, Kansas. He graduated from Topeka High School in 1917 and received his B.A. degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1922 and the University of Kansas in 1923. In 1925, Douglas moved to Harlem, New York City, resigning his two-year post as teacher at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri. In Harlem, Douglas would develop into a great American painter and muralist of the Harlem Renaissance and earn a master’s in fine arts from Teacher’s College at Columbia University in New York in 1944. After founding the Art Department at Fisk University, Douglas taught there until his death on February 3, 1979. Art historian David Driskell dubbed Douglas the “father of Black American art,” an honor based greatly on Douglas’ mural series “Aspects of Negro Life,” completed in 1934 for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. The titles of the four murals are: “The Negro in an African Setting,” “An Idyll of the Deep South,” “From Slavery through Reconstruction,” and “Song of the Towers.”

McDaniel, Hattie (1895–1952) Actress Hattie McDaniel of Gone with the Wind fame was born on June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves and Civil War soldier Henry McDaniel and Susan Holbert. For best supporting actress as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), she was the first black actress to win an Academy Award. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in more than 300 films, receiving screen credits for about 80. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp.

Parks, Gordon (1912–2006) Photographer, film director, and novelist Gordon Parks was born on a small farm outside Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. He is known for his historic photographs, and his powerful essays and films. Born the youngest of 15 children, Parks’ success as photographer at Life magazine, where he spent 20 years, led to his autobiography, The Learning Tree (1963), about his youth in Kansas. Subsequently turned into a screenplay, The Learning Tree (1969) led in 1971 to a highly acclaimed motion picture, Shaft.

Thompson, Linda Brown (1943–) In 1951, Linda Brown Thompson was a third grade student at the all-black Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, when her father, Oliver L. Brown, brought a suit on her behalf to desegregate the city’s public schools. The eventual U.S. Supreme Court decision, which desegregated the nation’s schools in 1954, took the name of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In 1992, Monroe Elementary School was designated a national historic site.

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Cultural Contributions Fort Leavenworth After the Civil War, northerner antipathy for blacks was so deep and raw that despite their heroism during the war, blacks found that whites greatly resisted integrating them into the regular army. In great part this led to the construction of Fort Leavenworth, the oldest military base west of the Mississippi. Housed here were the 9th and 10th Calvary regiments, consigned to protect white settlers from Native Americans in the western territories. As such, these regiments fought battles from Kansas to Arizona, including parts of Texas and New Mexico. It is still an active military base, having attained additional fame when its men served alongside Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. They also engaged in the historic pursuit of Pancho Villa in 1916.

John Brown Memorial State Park John Brown Memorial State Park is where John Brown had executed five proslavery men in retaliation, it is said, for a raid on Lawrence, a town in support of Kansas becoming a free state. In return the proslavery forces attempted to burn down the nearby town of Osawatomie. One may find here a statue of Brown, a memorial to his men killed in the attack on Osawatomie, and a log cabin in which Brown lived and, it is believed, sheltered fugitive slaves. Whatever John Brown’s criminal actions may have been, ignoring his raid on Harper’s Ferry, an arsenal of the federal government, and the subsequent execution of him and his men, Osawatomie’s citizens, toward the end of June, regularly celebrate his memory with a John Brown Jamboree.

After John Brown attended his first abolitionist meeting in 1837, he dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery. Over the next 20 years, Brown grew increasingly violent as he fought for this cause, and after a failed attack on the town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (in present-day West Virginia), he was hanged by the U.S. government for murder, treason, and insurrection. (Library of Congress)

arrived in the state, like so many of his brethren, seeking to homestead in a region with far less racism than that found in Missouri where he was born. Carver, who predicted the location of oil in western Kansas, sold his 160-acre homestead long before oil was actually found. He raised corn and vegetables, and then left for college in Iowa, ensuring his illustrious career in education at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Fort Scott National Historic Site Carver Homestead Beeler is proud to be the “homestead of a genius”—George Washington Carver—who

The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was housed at Fort Scott. Built in 1843, it was slated to close in 1853, but remained open and later housed the

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Buffalo soldiers (late-nineteenth-century African American cavalry) in camp. Illustration by Frederic Remington. (Library of Congress)

Kansas Colored Volunteers and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Other African American historical sites in Kansas include the Richard Allen Cultural Center of Bethel AME Church, which commemorates contributions of African Americans to every phase of American life; the Buffalo Soldier Monument, which was begun at the behest of former Secretary of State Colin Powell at Fort Leavenworth; the Nicodemus Historic Site, reconstructing five historic structures in the allblack town of Nicodemus, including an AME and a Baptist church, a school, the Fletcher Hotel, and Township Hall; and the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita, housed in the Old Calvary Baptist Church (1917), presenting and preserving African American culture in visual arts, documents, exhibits, and special programs.

Bibliography Athearn, Robert G. “Black Exodus: The Migration of 1879.” The Prairie Scout 3 (1975): 86–97. Athearn, Robert G. In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–1880. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1978. Baigell, Matthew. “The Relevancy of Curry’s Paintings to Black Freedom.” Kansas Quarterly 2 (Fall 1970): 19–24. Berwanger, Eugene H. The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Berwanger, Eugene H. “Hardin and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of the Reconstruction Era.” Journal of Negro History 64 (Spring 1979): 101–115.

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Berwanger, Eugene H. The West and Reconstruction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Durham, Philip. “The Negro Cowboy.” American Quarterly 7 (Fall 1955): 291–301.

Boyer, James B. “A Voice from the Heart: Gospel Music in the African American Tradition.” Kansas Heritage 1 (Spring 1993): 11–13.

Fisher, Mike. “The First Kansas Colored Massacre at Poison Springs.” Kansas History 2 (Summer 1979): 121–128.

Burton, Art A. Black, Buckskin, and Blue: African American Scouts and Soldiers on the Western Frontier. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1999.

Fleming, Walter L. “ ‘Pap’ Singleton, The Moses of the Colored Exodus.” American Journal of Sociology 15 (July 1909): 61–68.

Carper, James C. “The Popular Ideology of Segregated Schooling: Attitudes toward the Education of Blacks in Kansas, 1854–1900.” Kansas History 1 (Winter 1978): 254.

Fowler, Arlen L. The Black Infantry in the West, 1869–1891. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971.

Carroll, John M., ed. The Black Military Experience in the American West. New York: Liveright, 1971. Chafe, William. “The Negro and Populism: A Kansas Case Study.” Journal of Southern History 34 (August 1968): 404–419. Chaudhuri, Nupur. “ ‘We All Seem Like Brothers and Sisters’: The African American Community in Manhattan, Kansas, 1865–1940.” Kansas History 14 (Winter 1991–1992): 270–288.

Frehill-Rowe, Lisa M. “Postbellum Race Relations and Rural Land Tenure: Migration of Blacks and Whites to Kansas and Nebraska, 1870–1890.” Social Forces 72 (September 1993): 77–92. Garvin, Roy. “Benjamin, or ‘Pap,’ Singleton and His Followers.” Journal of Negro History 33 (January 1948): 7–23. Gatewood, Willard B., Jr. “Kansas Negroes and the Spanish-American War.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 37 (Autumn 1971): 300.

Cooper, Arnold. “ ‘Protection to All, Discrimination to None’: The Parsons Weekly Blade, 1892–1900.” Kansas History 9 (Summer 1986): 58–71.

Gordon, Jacob U. Narratives of African Americans in Kansas, 1870–1992: Beyond the Exodust Movement. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993.

Cornish, Dudley Taylor. “Kansas Negro Regiments in the Civil War.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 20 (May 1953): 417.

Greenbaum, Susan D., et al. The Afro-American Community in Kansas City Kansas: A History. Kansas City: City of Kansas City, Kansas, 1982.

Cox, Thomas C. Blacks in Topeka, Kansas, 1865– 1915: A Social History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. Crockett, Norman I. The Black Towns. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. Dandridge, Deborah L., and William M. Tuttle. “Kansas.” Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Vol. 3. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966, 1519–1522. Dunham, Philip, and Everett L. Jones. The Negro Cowboys. Reprint ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

Grenz, Suzanna M. “The Exodusters of 1879: St. Louis and Kansas City Responses.” Missouri Historical Review 73 (October 1978): 54–70. Hamilton, Kenneth Marvin. Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1877–1915. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Hamilton, Kenneth Marvin. “The Origins and Early Promotion of Nicodemus: A PreExodus, All-Black Town.” Kansas History 5 (Winter 1982): 220.

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Haywood, C. Robert. “The Hodgeman County Colony.” Kansas History 12 (Winter 1989– 1990): 210–221. Haywood, C. Robert. “ ‘No Less a Man’: Blacks in Cow Town Dodge City, 1876–1886.” Western Historical Quarterly 19 (May 1988): 161–182. Hickey, Joseph V. “ ‘Pap’ Singleton’s Dunlap Colony: Relief Agencies and the Failure of a Black Settlement in Eastern Kansas.” Great Plains Quarterly 11 (Winter 1991): 23–36. Higgins, Billy D. “Negro Thought and the Exodus of 1879.” Phylon 32 (Spring 1971): 39–52. Hulston, Nancy J. “ ‘Our Schools Must Be Open to All Classes of Citizens’: The Desegregation of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, 1938.” Kansas History 19 (Summer 1996): 88–97. Kansas State Historical Society, Historic Sites Survey. Historic Preservation in Kansas. Black Historic Sites, A Beginning Point. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1977. Katz, Milton S., and Susan B. Tucker. “A Pioneer in Civil Rights: Esther Brown and the South Park Desegregation Case of 1948.” Kansas History 18 (Winter 1995–1996): 234–247.

Lewallen, Kenneth A. “ ‘Chief’ Alfred C. Sam: Black Nationalism on the Great Plains, 1913–1914.” Journal of the West 16 (January 1977): 49–56. Marshall, Marguerite Mitchell. An Account of Afro-Americans in Southeast Kansas, 1884– 1984. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, Wheatland Books, 1986. McCoy, Sondra Van Meter. “Black Resistance to Segregation in the Wichita Public Schools, 1870–1912.” Midwest Quarterly 20 (Autumn 1978): 64–77. McCusker, Kristine M. “ ‘The Forgotten Years’ of America’s Civil Rights Movement: Wartime Protests at the University of Kansas, 1939– 1945.” Kansas History 17 (Spring 1994): 26–37. McKenzie, Sandra Craig. “Paul Wilson: Kansas Lawyer.” University of Kansas Law Review 37 (Fall 1988): 1–59. Meltzer, Milton. Langston Hughes, a Biography. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969. Miller, Timothy. “Charles M. Sheldon and the Uplift of Tennesseetown.” Kansas History 9 (Autumn 1986): 125–137. Moore, Deedee. “Is There Anything Gordon Parks Can’t Do?” Smithsonian 20 (April 1989): 147–164.

Katz, William Loren. Black Pioneers: An Untold Story. New York: Athenaeum Books, 1999.

O’Connor, Patrick J. “The Black Experience and the Blues in 1950s Wichita.” Mid-America Folklore 21 (Spring 1993): 1–17.

Klassen, Teresa C., and Owen V. Johnson. “Sharpening the Blade: Black Consciousness in Kansas, 1892–1897.” Journalism Quarterly 63 (Summer 1986): 298–304.

Painter, Nell Irvin. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Leckie, William H. The Buffalo Soldier: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.

Pantle, Alberta, ed. “The Story of a Kansas Freedman.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 11 (November 1942): 341–369. Parks, Gordon. A Choice of Weapons. Reprint ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1986. Parks, Gordon. Gordon Parks: A Poet and His Camera. New York: Viking Press, 1968.

Kansas Parks, Gordon. “A Look Back.” Kansas Quarterly 7 (Summer 1975): 25–29. Parks, Gordon. Voices in the Mirror, an Autobiography. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Peoples, Morgan D. “Kansas Fever in North Louisiana.” Louisiana History 11 (Spring 1970): 121–135. Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. The Negro on the American Frontier. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1971. Quarles, Benjamin, ed. “John Brown Writes to Blacks.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 41 (Winter 1975): 454. Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997. Reese, Linda Williams. “ ‘Working in the Vineyard’: African-American Women In AllBlack Communities.” Kansas Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1994): 7–16.

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Sheridan, Richard B. “From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands into Kansas, 1854– 1865.” Kansas History 12 (Spring 1989): 28–47. Strickland, Arvarh E. “Toward the Promised Land: The Exodus to Kansas and Afterward.” Missouri Historical Review 69 (July 1975): 376–412. Suggs, Henry Lewis, ed. The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865–1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West. New York W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. Tidwell, John Edgar. “Frank Marshall Davis, ‘ Ad Astra, Per ’Aspera’.” Kansas History 18 (Winter 1995–1996): 270–283. Tillery, Tyrone. Claude McKay: A Black Poets Struggle for Identity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

Savage, W. Sherman. Blacks in the West. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.

Tuttle, William M., Jr., and Surenda Bhana. “Black Newspapers in Kansas.” American Studies 13 (Fall 1972): 119–124.

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Wilson, Paul E. A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Schwendemann, Glen. “St. Louis and the ‘Exodusters’ of 1879.” Journal of Negro History 46 (January 1961): 32–46.

Wintz, Cary D. “Langston Hughes: A Kansas Poet in the Harlem Renaissance.” Kansas Quarterly 8 (Spring 1976): 58–71.

Schwendemann, Glen. “Wyandotte and the First ‘Exodusters’ of 1879.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 26 (Autumn 1960): 233–249.

Woods, Randall B. “After the Exodus: John Lewis Waller and the Black Elite, 1878–1900.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 43 (Summer 1977): 172.

Scott, Mark. “Langston Hughes of Kansas.” Kansas History 3 (Spring 1980): 2–25.

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1878–1900. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1981. Woods, Randall B. “Integration, Exclusion, or Segregation? The Color Line in Kansas, 1878–1900.” Western Historical Quarterly 14 (April 1983): 181–198.

Woods, Randall B., and David A. Sloan. “Kansas Quakers and the ‘Great Exodus’: Conflicting Perceptions of Responsibility within a Nineteenth Century Reform Community.” Historian 48 (November 1985): 24–40.

KENTUCKY Dwayne Mack

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Chronology 1770s

First American settlers in Kentucky bring slaves with them.

1792

(June 1) Kentucky joins the Union as the 15th state; the first state constitution legalizes slavery.

1808

Carter Tarrant and David Barrow, both Baptist ministers, found the Kentucky Abolition Society.

1815

The Kentucky legislature enacts a law limiting the importation of black slaves into the state.

1820

Slaves comprise almost 26 percent of the population of Kentucky.

1822

The Kentucky Abolition Society begins publishing one of the first antislavery periodicals produced in the United States.

1833

Kentucky legislators implement the Non-Importation Act, outlawing the importation of slaves into the Commonwealth through sale.

1842

Henry Bibb, a slave on a plantation in Oldham County, escapes to Detroit; Bibb later becomes a noted abolitionist and author of a famous autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself.

1845

Cassius Marcellus Clay begins publishing an antislavery newspaper, the True American, in Lexington, but death threats and mob violence force him to move the paper to Cincinnati within a few months.

1847

The antislavery Louisville Examiner begins publication; the newspaper remains in business until 1849.

1848

(August) In the largest coordinated slave escape attempted in the United States, some 50–70 armed slaves from various Kentucky counties flee their masters, though most are soon caught by the state militia.

1849

The passage of Kentucky’s new proslavery constitution repeals the ban on the importation of slaves into the state.

1850s

With more that half of its white residents owning slaves, Louisville is a center of the slave trade, selling 3,000–4,000 blacks a year into slavery in the Deep South.

1855

Abolitionist John G. Fee opens Berea College to educate both blacks and whites.

1859

The racial backlash from John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, forces abolitionist John Fee to close Berea College and flee Kentucky.

1860

Slaves comprise less than 8 percent of the population of Kentucky, a sharp decrease since 1820. The decrease is due to the declining need for slave labor on Kentucky’s small farms, the movement of Kentucky slaveholders to Tennessee and Missouri, and the importation of Kentucky slaves to the Deep South.

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1861

(May 20) Kentucky officially declares its neutrality in the war between the states.

1861

(September) Kentucky’s neutrality breaks down and military forces from both sides operate in the state. The elected government of the state is Unionist, but proConfederate groups meet and enact an ordinance of secession in December; however, this act has little effect and Kentucky officially remains within the Union.

1861–1865

An estimated 75 percent of Kentucky’s slaves are freed or escape to Union forces during the Civil War.

1863

( January 1) President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, but his home state of Kentucky is excluded because the decree frees slaves only in those states that have seceded from the Union.

1864

Camp Nelson becomes an important Union recruiting post and training camp for African American soldiers; thousands of fugitive slaves seek refuge at the camp.

1865

(February 24) Kentucky refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.

1866

John G. Fee reopens Berea College to black and white students.

1867

( January 8) Kentucky rejects the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees due process to all Americans.

1869

(March 12) Kentucky refuses to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extends voting rights to African Americans.

1870

The congregation of Quinn Chapel AME Church in Louisville organizes the first protests against racial discrimination in the state by opposing segregation on city streetcars.

1892

The Kentucky General Assembly passes the Separate Coach Law, mandating separate interstate railroad cars for blacks and whites.

1896

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, a native of Boyle County, dissents in Plessy v. Ferguson, which rules that “separate but equal” treatment for blacks and whites is constitutional. Jim Crow laws are now legalized by the Supreme Court.

1904

The Day Law, aimed specifically at Berea College, segregates public and private schools in Kentucky.

1908

The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to overturn the Day Law.

1912

Lincoln Institute near Louisville opens as a primary and secondary school for blacks.

1914

In response to lynching and white mob violence against blacks, African Americans in Louisville establish a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); the chapter also challenges the new Louisville Residential Segregation Ordinance, a restrictive housing ordinance that prohibits blacks from moving into homes previously owned by whites.

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1917

In Buchanan v. Warley, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the 1914 Louisville Residential Segregation Ordinance is unconstitutional.

1935

Charles W. Anderson, a Louisville attorney, becomes the first black elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives since Reconstruction; he sponsors bills to pay out-of-state tuition for African American students refused admittance to Kentucky colleges and universities.

1941

Charles Eubanks sues the University of Kentucky to attend its College of Engineering.

1948

Lyman T. Johnson is a plaintiff in a lawsuit to admit African Americans to the University of Kentucky’s graduate school.

1949

The University of Kentucky allows blacks to attend its graduate and professional schools.

1950

The Day Law is amended to allow colleges and universities to admit black students.

1954

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, outlaws segregation in public schools. The University of Kentucky begins admitting black undergraduates.

1956

Louisville public schools begin the process of peaceful integration. Eight black students attempt to attend Sturgis High School, but a white mob stops them from entering the school.

1959

After the management of Louisville’s Brown Theater refuses to admit blacks into showings of the movie Porgy and Bess, the NAACP Youth Council demonstrates in front of the theater.

1960

A chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is established in Louisville. The organization initiates nonviolent protests at downtown businesses that discriminate against blacks.

1960

The general assembly launches the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, which is responsible for monitoring and prohibiting discrimination in employment.

1961

Civil rights activists boycott downtown Louisville clothing stores. The activists urge the community to purchase “nothing new for Easter” from stores that practiced discrimination. The campaign influences similar peaceful protests throughout the Commonwealth.

1961

Whitney Young Jr., a Kentucky native, is named executive director of the National Urban League.

1962

The Kentucky General Assembly directs cities to form their own commissions on human rights to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations and the hiring of teachers.

1963

( June 27) Kentucky ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

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1964

The federal government passes a Civil Right Act. In an effort to lobby Kentucky legislators to pass a strong statewide public accommodations bill, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses over 10,000 activists during the March on Frankfort.

1966

Kentucky becomes the first southern state to pass a Civil Rights Act. The law bans discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

1967

Mae Street Kidd, an African American, is elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives.

1968

(May 27) A riot erupts in Louisville’s Parkland neighborhood when civil rights demonstrations are upset by rumors that a scheduled speech by Stokely Carmichael has been delayed by officials.

1968

Georgia Powers, an African American, is elected to the Kentucky State Senate.

1969

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights establishes centers in Louisville and Lexington to assist African Americans in moving into white neighborhoods.

1969

African American students take control of an administration building at the University of Louisville to request that the campus add black studies courses.

1975

Court-enforced, cross-district busing to equalize the number of black and white public school students in Louisville causes two years of sporadic violent protests by whites.

1976

(March 18) Mae Street Kidd successfully lobbies the Kentucky General Assembly to ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

2000

Denise Clayton is the first black woman appointed to a circuit judgeship in Kentucky.

2000

According to the 2000 Census, African Americans comprise about 300,000 of Kentucky’s 3.6 million residents.

2001

Anthany Beatty becomes Lexington police chief.

2003

Robert C. White becomes Louisville chief of police.

2004

Elaine Farris becomes the first black superintendent of Shelby County Schools.

2004

Protests erupt after a white Louisville police officer shoots and kills Michael Newby, an African American teenager and the third black male to die at the hands of Louisville police in little more than a year.

2006

William E. McAnulty becomes the first African American justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court.

2007

The U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself and strikes down court-enforced school integration in Seattle and Louisville with a 5–4 vote.

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Black America Conservative Kentucky voters support Hillary Clinton nearly 2 to 1 over African American Senator Barack Obama in Kentucky’s Democratic presidential primary; during the general election, Obama does not campaign in Kentucky, which he loses to John McCain by winning only about 41 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Eighteenth Century to the Civil War Decades before Kentucky joined the Union in 1792, the black experience there began in slavery. In the 1750s, blacks came to this untamed, wild, Appalachian region of the United States, as servants and/or slaves of their white masters. They were brought there to clear dense forests, plant and harvest crops, construct forts, and build the plantation infrastructure. During Kentucky’s frontier years, whites also used their bondsmen to repel Indians who were trying to reclaim their land. In 1778, pioneer Daniel Boone relied on his slaves to protect his new settlement of Boonesborough from Indian attacks. When the Commonwealth of Kentucky was established, the fate of blacks was sealed that same year, as the state legalized slavery in Article IX of its constitution. According to historian George C. Wright in an article in the Oral History Review (1982, 76), slavery would become “the pillar of Kentucky’s antebellum society and economy.” As early as the 1780s, thousands of slaves began to arrive in the commonwealth with white settlers. During the early republic years, the first federal government census of Kentucky was carried out in 1790, recording 11,830 slaves, 16 percent of the state population. Ten years later, over 40,000 slaves lived in the state, by then making up 18 percent of the population. By 1830, that slave population had jumped to some 165,000, 24 percent of Kentucky’s population. Based on demographic profiles, the practice of slavery in Kentucky differed greatly from the way it was practiced in other Southern states. Unlike the large gang labor–driven plantations of the Lower South, most Kentucky slaves worked on farms

in small groups of about five where they often labored in close proximity to the master. At the peak of slavery, only 20 percent of bondsmen worked on big farms that had more than 20 slaves. On average, roughly 12 percent of slave owners had more than 20 bondsmen. In all, not more than 70 masters in the state at any one time held more than 50 slaves. Although Kentucky’s slave population only ranked ninth out of the 15 slave states in 1860, the commonwealth had the third-highest total of slaveholders. Despite the small black population, slavery was well entrenched in Kentucky, however. And free black labor was relied on in every single county. By 1860, the then sizable urban city of Louisville contained close to 5,000 slaves, the largest population of slaves in the state. Slaves also lived in counties that touched the banks of the Ohio River, including Oldham and Henderson, the tobacco-rich counties of Trigg and Todd in the south-central part of the Commonwealth. In the mountainous eastern and southeastern sections, a much smaller number of slaves lived on small farms. Kentucky had the most diverse agricultural economy and labor pool in the South. The climate and soil was not conducive to growing cotton as it was in Alabama and Mississippi, or sugarcane as in Louisiana or rice as in the Low Country of South Carolina. When it came to labor, most slaves worked more than 14 hours a day under brutal and dangerous conditions. The fields of Kentucky yielded bountiful crops; and male and female slaves of all ages cultivated corn, tobacco, and hemp. By the mid-1800s, for example, hemp was the largest and most lucrative crop in Kentucky. Slaves were involved in every aspect of the

Kentucky production of that herb, from tilling the soil, plowing the fields, and dispersing seeds. Once the plant was harvested, slaves worked in factories that processed hemp into manufactured goods like cordage, bale rope, durable bags to hold cotton, and canvas ship sails. The state eventually produced close to 18,000 tons of hemp; half of the total amount produced in the country. The number of hemp-producing plantations by the early 1850s totaled over 3,500. This profitable crop contributed to Fayette County having one of the largest slave populations and becoming the biggest hemp producer in Kentucky. Slaveholders maintained a sizable workforce in that county, an area where whites barely outnumbered blacks. In addition to the profitable hemp industry, Kentucky slaves also cultivated corn. In the 1840s, Kentucky was the second-largest corn producer in the country. In the 1850s, the large plantations of Robert Wilmot Scott of Franklin County and Merit Williams of Scott County produced thousands of bushels of corn. The plantation system used children as young as eight to work in the labor-intensive corn and hemp fields. Though slaveholders ran efficient, economically prosperous operations, they barely provided for their slaves. Blacks survived in squalid conditions. Two to three families often shared small, dark, poorly ventilated, windowless, dirt floor cabins. They slept on homemade mattresses of straw or corn shuck. Under such conditions, illness and disease often spread throughout the slave cabin and the entire slave quarters. When it came to apparel, most masters only purchased clothing or cloth once a year; slaves made their own clothes. As a result of the heavy wear-andtear on slave clothes from working in the fields, bondsmen wore tattered clothing, and the majority went without shoes. Their nutritiously (vitamins and calories) deficient diets consisted of only small weekly rations of fatty meat (typically pork fat: heads and feet), cornmeal, and molasses. Rarely did masters give slaves the independence

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to hunt animals or to grow nutritional vegetables near their cabins to supplement their meager diets. In addition to experiencing backbreaking field labor and poor living conditions, thousands of slaves worked in the large urban cities of Louisville and Lexington as carriage and wagon drivers, tailors, and washerwomen. Highly skilled slaves labored as cooks, carpenters, brick masons, shoemakers, coopers, and blacksmiths. By the time of the Civil War, approximately a quarter of the slaves in Louisville were hired workers. This system of hiring out their surplus of bondsmen for money allowed masters to earn more revenue during the harvesting off-season. Slaveholders earned over $200 by contracting out their skilled slaves. It also forced slaves to labor hard yearround without breaks between jobs. While some slaves worked in skilled trades, others worked as waiters, house servants, factory workers, stevedores, and on bridge and road construction crews. Even in this environment, children labored long, hard hours to fulfill production quotas in bagging, brick, nail, and leather tanning factories. In rural areas like Greenup County, slaves and free blacks worked alongside each other in the profitable distillery industry. In Madison County, the same group labored in a meatpacking plant that earned $216,000 annually. Slave labor also played a major role in producing and manufacturing raw materials for national consumption. In the eastern part of the state, slaves worked in the dangerous, but profitable, extractive industries at salt and iron works, coal mines, and in the lumber industry. For example, in Clay, Floyd, Greenup, Lewis, and Pulaski counties, slaves satisfied the statewide and national markets by mining and manufacturing hundreds of thousands of barrels of salt each year. In the early 1800s, Kentucky plantation owners found it profitable to export livestock, corn, and slaves to meet the demands of other southern markets and plantations. Historically, one of the most horrific aspects of slave trading was the

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permanent breakup of the black family. The agents of slave trading firms regularly scoured the countryside in search of slaves to purchase by circulating handbills and posters and/or by placing ads in newspapers like the Lexington Observer and Reporter or Frankfort’s Commonwealth. Both regularly announced slave market auctions in Lexington, Louisville, Winchester, and other cities. Advertised as “Bucks” and “Wenches,” slave fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and even children were auctioned off by the thousands. As part of the interstate trade process, slave coffles, jails, and holding pens, which contained heavily chained bondsmen, were a common sight throughout the Bluegrass State. Prices for individual slaves in Kentucky ranged from as low as $10 to as high as several thousand dollars. For example, women beyond the childbearing age were sold for only a couple of hundred dollars; whereas fertile “fancy girls” (beautiful, young mulatto women) were sometimes purchased for over $2,000 for the future as concubines or prostitutes. Moreover, Kentucky masters, like most other slave masters in other southern states, sexually assaulted black women. The sexual abuse often yielded progeny. These biracial offspring helped fulfill the master’s desire to increase the slave population for either trading or labor. For the purpose of breeding slaves, masters also often maintained more women than men on a plantation. With a firm grip on the interstate slave trade, Kentuckians between 1830 and 1860 exported some 77,000 blacks to other southern plantations. During that period, the state passed the Non-Importation Act of 1833, which prohibited bondsmen from entering Kentucky by purchase or to trade to other southern markets. The law slowed the rapid growth of slaves in Kentucky. Although the law was repealed in 1849 by proslavery legislators, on the eve of the Civil War, the slave population had only gradually increased to 225,483, or approximately 19 percent of the total population of the state.

Although no major slave revolts occurred in Kentucky, state legislators were fixated on preventing rebellion. Despite such a small slave population, commonwealth officials adopted stringent Slave Codes in 1792 in an effort to deny blacks an opportunity to gain their freedom. The codes were then intensified over time. Since slaves were not considered citizens, the repressive laws prohibited them from marrying, testifying in court against whites, traveling without a pass, challenging whites either verbally or physically, owning weapons, stealing, conspiring to revolt, violating curfew, and numerous other offenses. Those slaves accused of breaking these laws received swift and brutal punishment from the slaveholder, overseer, or trusted black driver. Masters used various inhumane methods to discipline slaves. Whipping a bondsman in public at a post in the town square or on a plantation was the most common way to punish blacks and deter other blacks from rebelling. For more serious offenses like running away or fighting with a white, slaves of both sexes experienced mutilation, including cropped ears and even a choppedoff foot or finger(s). The use of the hot iron to brand the face, buttock, breast, palm, leg, and/or arm of a slave was another cruel method that masters used to terrorize slaves. Similar to the repressive nature of slavery in the Deep South, Kentucky masters treated their slaves just as inhumanely. As a result, Kentucky slaves longed for their freedom and used various forms of resistance to register their discontent with what some scholars call the “peculiar institution.” To stop production, some feigned sickness, broke tools, or burned fields or barns. One of the most extreme forms of rebellion was poisoning a slaveholder or entire slaveholding family with arsenic. The most dramatic form of resistance was running away to free states or even to Canada. The free northern states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that bordered Kentucky were popular escape destinations for fugitive slaves traveling

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John Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio, home of the famed abolitionist and conductor, whose involvement in the Underground Railroad was truly a family affair. (Tom Calarco)

the Underground Railroad. Runaways followed the North Star and stopped at stations or checkpoints along the Ohio River where their white and/or black conductors would lead them to freedom. At the home and Underground Railroad stop of one white abolitionist, John Rankin, in Ripley, Ohio, slaves enjoyed temporary refuge once they crossed over the river before they continued northward on their quest for freedom. Some of the more successful runaway slaves included Lewis Clarke, Josiah Henson, and Henry Bibb. Once they gained their freedom, they all became ardent abolitionists. Despite the heavy shadow of slavery, a small free black population was able to coexist with

bondsmen. For example, in 1860, 10,600 blacks lived outside of bondage in Kentucky in close proximity to slaves. However, even this free black population endured repressive laws. Paying an annual fee, free blacks were required to register and carry their documentation at all times to prove their social status. If charged or even accused of a crime, such as assaulting whites, carrying an unconcealed weapon, selling alcohol, conspiring with slaves, hiding fugitive slaves, free blacks were punished by whipping, incarceration, enslavement, or death. The efforts of some whites opposed to slavery began as early as the 1790s. Although he never manumitted his slaves, David Rice, a Presbyterian preacher, in 1792 published

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Overlooking the Ohio River Valley from the John Rankin House in Ripley. (Tom Calarco)

the state’s first antislavery pamphlet, titled Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy. During sermons in Woodford County, Carter Tarrant, a Baptist minister, spoke out against slavery. His unpopular position caused his excommunication from the Baptist Church in 1806. He continued his advocacy, however, and the following year he founded an antislavery organization, the Baptized Licking-Locust Association, Friends of Humanity. Other antislavery organizations in the early 1800s, such as the Kentucky Abolition Society (KAS) and the Kentucky Colonization Society, intensified the call for an end to slavery. The KAS, for example, spread its antislavery message through its periodical, the Abolition Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine. As the states moved closer to war, individuals such as white Kentuckian lawyer James Speed passionately opposed

slavery. He worked to convince state officials that slavery was a sin. By 1864, he had become pessimistic about the commonwealth becoming an instrument to abolish slavery and instead called on the federal government to emancipate slaves.

Civil War and Reconstruction Although the Civil War brought a glimmer of hope, Kentucky slaves continued to face more challenges. In the early years of the war, Union soldiers returned slaves who had fled to their military camps to their masters by the thousands. In some cases soldiers even turned them away to starve and die. As the war progressed, Kentucky’s slaveholders remained committed to the Union and expected President Abraham Lincoln to preserve slavery in that state. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation,

Kentucky freeing slaves in those states at war with the Union (not including the commonwealth), thus keeping the institution intact in Kentucky. However, after the proclamation, Union soldiers at Camp Nelson in Kentucky and elsewhere ended the policy of returning fugitive slaves. Despite their mistreatment in the military, approximately 25,000 black Kentuckians fought to preserve the Union. Of the slave states, Kentucky ranked second highest in terms of the number of black soldiers serving the North. White Kentuckians after the Union victory in 1865 were slow to free their bondsmen. In early 1865, they voted against the Thirteenth Amendment, which freed slaves and made them citizens and equal to whites. The ratification of that amendment by other states in December finally emancipated all Kentucky blacks. Whites in Kentucky then challenged the legality of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Despite white opposition to black freedom, however, the former slaves made social, political, and economic progress during Reconstruction (1865–1877). The Freedmen’s Bureau, black churches, African American politicians, and northern philanthropists collaborated to establish and operate public schools, hospitals, orphanages, and nursing homes for former slaves. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, black Kentuckians began to experience major setbacks. Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, the federal government failed to stem violence against blacks or declare illegal state-implemented, repressive black codes. By the late nineteenth century, white racist attitudes appeared as Jim Crow laws. Such de jure segregation in Kentucky foreshadowed and paralleled ongoing segregation legislation. Four years before the groundbreaking Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 in which the U.S. Supreme Court supported “separate but equal,” the Kentucky General Assembly passed the separate coach law,

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mandating separate interstate railroad cars for black and white passengers. Despite strong opposition from the mostly black members of the Anti-Separate Coach Movement, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in 1900.

Early Twentieth Century At the beginning of the twentieth century, the black population of Kentucky totaled 285,000 out of 1.86 million whites. Blacks migrated during the new century in large numbers to northern states like Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan to earn better wages. Louisville and Lexington contained the largest black populations. These urban areas also received the largest number of blacks migrating from racially repressive rural areas. During the first half of the twentieth century, most African Americans worked in laborintensive positions. In rural Kentucky, some African Americans remained on former plantations, existing as sharecroppers. A small number of blacks became prosperous farmers. In urban Louisville, black men found positions as janitors, waiters, bartenders, store clerks, restaurant kitchen helpers, chauffeurs, bellhops, and busboys. Black women found corresponding types of work as cooks, hairdressers, manicurists, housekeepers, and waitresses. Most black women worked in private households as domestics. Some blacks became entrepreneurs during this time. They owned and operated their own restaurants, taverns, grocery stores, construction companies, junkyards, cab companies, drugstores, physician offices, beauty solons, and barbershops. In the small city of Henderson, the African American barbers, tailors, and shoemakers served both white and black clienteles. In the larger cities, as in most urban areas, some black-owned financial-service-oriented companies did emerge. For example, by the early twentieth century, the Louisville-based companies, Mammoth Life and

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Accident Insurance Company and the Domestic Insurance Company, sold insurance policies to blacks throughout the state, becoming one of the nation’s largest black-owned businesses. Before the collapse of most banks during the Great Depression, two black-owned Louisville banks, American Mutual Savings Bank and the First Standard Bank, also thrived. Besides the various occupations blacks worked in, the black church served as the foundation of the community. During periods of economic hardship—unemployment or bereavement— these churches became unofficial welfare agencies for African Americans who needed financial assistance. Kentucky churches maintained emergency funds to help with delinquent debt and served not only as meeting places for spiritual and social comfort, but also as schools. Black churches also contributed to the educational attainment of the black community. Some churches founded black colleges. In Louisville, Reverends Charles H. Parrish and William J. Simmons and other African American leaders solicited money from white philanthropists to open Eckstein Norton Institute in Cane Springs in 1890 (the school closed in 1911). Unfortunately, Kentucky still lagged far behind other southern states in providing blacks with primary, secondary, and postsecondary education. By 1916, only nine black public high schools existed in the commonwealth. Other than the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons (the school was renamed Kentucky State University in 1972), some of the only colleges and universities opened to African Americans from 1904 to 1948 were Simmons College, West Kentucky Industrial College for Colored Persons, and Louisville Municipal College for Negroes. In conjunction with some progress in educational attainment, black Kentuckians still faced similar racial discrimination to their counterparts in the lower South. In 1882, the federal circuit

court ordered in the case of Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Jesse Ellis that Kentucky legislators provide equal funding to black and white schools, but then Kentucky officials breached the decision by withholding adequate funds to black schools. As director of the Kentucky Commission on Interracial Cooperation, James Bond in 1924 conducted a survey of the public school system and reported that the state’s inadequate support of black schools cheated African American educational institutions. To increase funding for these schools, Bond traveled statewide, where he was successful in encouraging citizens to pass bond proposals to build black schools and lobbying school boards to raise the pay of black teachers. State officials also enforced segregation on the college level. In 1904, the general assembly passed the Day Law, aimed specifically at Berea College, a private, integrated college that since Reconstruction had enrolled an equal number of black and white students. The law prohibited integrated education in Kentucky and in 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court in Berea College v. Kentucky refused to overturn the state’s decision. Berea officials quickly responded by using part of its endowment to establish Lincoln Institute in 1912, a private primary and secondary school for blacks in Lincoln Ridge near Louisville. Kentucky’s government officials also utilized other legislative measures to limit black progress. Jim Crow laws outlawed interracial marriage and prohibited blacks from entering public accommodations, including hotels, restaurants, hospitals, libraries, public and private schools, and public parks. In housing, blacks were confined to impoverished neighborhoods. In the early twentieth century, African American Kentuckians reenergized their struggle for equality through new civil rights organizations. A few years after the founding of the NAACP in New York in 1909, concerned blacks in Kentucky created local chapters. For example, the Louisville NAACP branch vigorously worked with the national legal redress team to

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Students at Berea College, including both white and African American, 1899. (Library of Congress)

end housing discrimination in that city. In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court in Buchanan v. Warley reversed the Louisville residential segregation ordinance. Black Kentuckians also experienced lynching. In accordance with the general racist sentiment of the time, state legislators refused to outlaw lynching. Between 1885 and 1940, white lynch mobs murdered over 250 blacks in Kentucky alone. The “Red Summer” of 1919 produced 25 race riots in American cities, and racist mobs in Corbin, Kentucky, terrorized blacks, getting them to flee that small rural town. During the next decade, white mobs in Bell, Estill, and Mercer Counties would also try to physically force blacks from their lands. Despite such wholesale white violence, African Americans continued to persevere. During the Great Depression, African Americans still sought racial equality and financial relief. President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law in 1933 an economic stimulus program known as the New Deal that established government agencies and projects that created jobs and strengthened the economy. Most New Deal programs eluded black Kentuckians. However, some African Americans gained from Roosevelt’s initiatives. During the 1930s and early 1940s, three segregated African American Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps were established—Fort Knox in Hardin County, Russellville in Logan County, and Mammoth Cave in Edmonson—to attend to Kentucky’s neglected woodlands. At Mammoth Cave, black enrollees from Camp 510 fought fires, dug firebreaks, completed reforestation and soil erosion projects, constructed parks and recreational areas, strung telephone and electrical wires, laid roads, placed sewers and waterlines, and erected lookout towers. Camp 510 eventually transformed the area’s

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infrastructure into a popular national park by building cottages and cabins and paving a parking lot for visitors. The hard work of these African American enrollees enriched the quality of life for visitors to the longest cave system in the world. By World War II, African American Kentuckians were mounting major challenges to Jim Crow laws. Lyman T. Johnson, president of the Louisville Association of Teachers in Colored Schools from 1939 to 1941, succeeded in pressuring the state to end salary inequality for Louisville black teachers. Johnson’s activism intensified during the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. He served as a member of the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union and as president of the Louisville NAACP branch, where in 1948 he became a plaintiff in an important civil lawsuit that in 1949 gave black students the opportunity to attend law, pharmacy, engineering, and graduate schools at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

Civil Rights Era and Beyond In 1950, still some four years before the monumental Brown v. Board of Education case, Berea College reintegrated with the repeal of the Day Law. College officials slowly readmitted African Americans; approximately 10 black students attended Berea from 1950 to 1954. In 1954, Jessie Reasor Zander became the first African American student to earn a degree after Kentucky desegregation when she graduated from Berea with a degree in elementary education. After the Brown decision in 1954, the Kentucky public school system was slow to support the ruling, however. In 1955, only 200 black students integrated into white schools. In the western part of the state, whites were even more resistant to desegregation. In Sturgis, Kentucky, known as a Ku Klux Klan haven, 500 segregationists brandished pitchforks and shovels while screaming “go home nigger” as they blocked black students from entering Sturgis High School in 1956. The

protests that year forced black students to abandon their integration efforts, but the following academic year they were admitted to the high school. In that same decade, whites also protested school desegregation in Hopkins County and Henderson County. Fortunately, not all efforts to desegregate were met with virulent white opposition. Louisville became one of the first urban southern cities to desegregate its public school with slight white opposition. By 1960, Kentucky’s black population had increased to 216,000 compared to 2.82 million white residents. Despite this small African American population, the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum. Frank Stanley Jr., an African American community activist, led a series of demonstrations with African American youth. Some of the children were junior members of the CORE and the NAACP. Inspired by college students in the Deep South, Raoul Cunningham, an African American teenager and Louisville NAACP youth leader, mobilized his peers to participate in these nonviolent demonstrations under Stanley’s direction outside of Louisville’s segregated department stores. The activists, singing freedom songs, carried signs that urged people “Don’t buy here” and “nothing new for Easter” from stores that practiced discrimination. The campaign influenced similar direct-action protests throughout the commonwealth. After the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, segregation in the commonwealth still managed to continue. In 1964, African American activist Frank Stanley Jr. founded the Allied Organization for Civil Rights (AOCR) in Kentucky to lobby the state to pass a progressive public accommodations and fair employment law to reinforce the federal law. On March 5, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched with 10,000 activists at an AOCR co-organized protest in Frankfort. The marchers included hundreds of students from Kentucky State University, Berea College, the University of Kentucky,

Kentucky and the University of Louisville. On the steps of the state capitol, King, along with James Farmer, Wyatt T. Walker, Jackie Robinson, and other civil rights supporters, lobbied for strong civil rights legislation. A year later, both black and white Kentuckians displayed strong support for the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South. On March 25, 1965, hundreds of Kentuckians marched with King, this time in Montgomery, Alabama, during the last leg of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The participation of Kentucky students and other activists from around the world contributed to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This federal legislation would increase the number of black voters not only in the Black Belt states of the Deep South, but also in Kentucky. Later in the decade, the new voting bloc enabled more Bluegrass blacks to win political positions. Back in Kentucky, after two years of continued pressure, the state passed the Civil Rights Act on July 27, 1966. Blacks now had access to public accommodations, and the law empowered the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights (KCHR) to promote the law. In 1966, the KCHR was an 11-member board that included Frank L. Stanley Sr., the African American editor of the Louisville Defender, a black newspaper, and a staff of eight field investigators that included black young college graduates. They all had experience advocating social change as participants in the Civil Rights Movement. That first year, the KCHR investigated and mediated dozens of discrimination cases. In the late 1960s, black churches continued to contribute to civil rights. Even after passage of the Civil Rights Act, most African American Kentuckians still experienced housing discrimination. In 1966, African American churches in Louisville, including Plymouth Congregational and Broadway Temple African Methodist Episcopal Zion, mobilized behind the brother of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A. D. King, through open housing marches to challenge that form of racism. A combination of

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marches, newly elected state Senator Georgia Davis Powers urging colleagues in the Senate to support a fair housing bill, and black representatives Mae Street Kidd and Hughes McGill lobbying the House convinced the Kentucky General Assembly to pass the Fair Housing Law of 1968. It was a monumental law in the South. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many American cities, including some in Kentucky, erupted in racial violence. Blacks in urban areas like Louisville and Lexington and rural areas like Owensboro experienced their greatest race-related disturbances in years. In 1968, the Commission on Human Rights reported that the state had experienced seven racially motivated bombings. Black churches, an African American community center, and a black-owned pharmacy were destroyed. In late May 1968 in Louisville’s West End, two black teenagers were slain; 472 African Americans were arrested during violent protests. Over 1,400 National Guard troops restored order. Racial violence was not limited to urban areas. In September, a group of black Bereans challenged members of the National States’ Rights Party, a white supremacy group. At a public rally, the racist supremacy group provoked members of the small black community with inflammatory comments. When the African Americans confronted them, a gun battle ensued, leaving Elza Rucker, a white, and Lenoa Bogg, a black Madison County resident, both dead. With the passage of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, the decade of the ’60s concluded on a high note. Armed with solid legal authority, the KCHR reported that by the last year of the decade, private businesses and government agencies had hired hundred of blacks; hundreds of African Americans had graduated from colleges; whiteowned restaurants were serving blacks; and hundreds of homes in white neighborhoods and thousands of apartments in white complexes had became available to blacks.

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In no area did African Americans in the Bluegrass State achieve more success than in politics in the 1960s. By the close of the decade, African Americans filled city council and mayoral seats in both large and small cities. Jerry D. Sanders of Nicholasville and Joseph K. Hobbs of Versailles became council members in their respective cities. In Glasgow, Luska J. Tyman was elected mayor. Some 24 African Americans served as state, county, city, and school officials in cities such as Danville, Paducah, Russellville, Shelbyville, and Munfordville. As blacks gained politically, the Civil Rights Movement intensified further. Some African American Kentuckians joined the Black Power Movement. When colleges and universities in the commonwealth denied blacks adequate educational opportunities, they responded as their counterparts did at other schools such as Howard University and San Francisco State College. At the University of Louisville on May 1, 1969, members of the Black Student Union (BSU) seized control of the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences and successfully convinced the university to adopt a black studies program. In the next decade, the concerns of activists young and old shifted. In 1970, members of the University of Louisville’s BSU focused its energies on removing crime and drugs in the black community by founding Stop Dope Now. In the political arena, in the late 1970s, Lyman T. Johnson became a member of the Jefferson County Board of Education. During her Senate tenure, Dorothy Powers chaired two important committees. Kentucky finally, in 1976, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. In the 1980s, black Kentuckians also influenced national politics. In 1984 and again in 1988, Powers served as the state chairperson for Jesse Jackson’s presidential bids. In 2000, there were 300,000 African Americans in Kentucky compared to 3.64 million whites, and blacks continued to face new and

familiar economic, political, and social challenges. Compared to whites, a disproportionate number of African Americans have been stricken with HIV/AIDS. Poverty, high unemployment, inadequate education, drug and alcohol addiction, and crime continue to plague black communities in the commonwealth. In recent years, police brutality in urban areas, such as Louisville, has gained national attention. For example, in 2004, the city’s west end area experienced more racial controversy when during an arrest, a white officer, McKenzie Mattingly, fired three shots into the back of handcuffed suspect Michael Newby, an African American teenager, killing him. Newby’s death sparked emotional protests and marked the third time in 13 months that Louisville police had killed a black male. Despite these problems, some blacks in the Bluegrass State have experienced success. In the new millennium, the two largest urban cities in Kentucky selected African Americans to head their police forces. In 2001, Lexington hired Anthany Beatty as police chief, and two years later, Louisville hired Robert C. White as chief. In education, in 2004, Elaine Farris became the first black superintendent of Shelby County Schools. In 2000, Denise Clayton became the first black woman appointed to a circuit judgeship in Kentucky, and in 2006, William E. McAnulty became the first African American state Supreme Court justice. Kentucky blacks originally arrived in the commonwealth as slaves, and upon their emancipation, they faced invasive discrimination. After some reasonable social progress during Reconstruction, blacks again experienced intense racism in the form of Jim Crow laws that defined their subordinate status as less than that of full citizenship. Still, African Americans pushed forward, establishing their own churches, schools, and social and political organizations. These organizations served as major social and spiritual outlets to strengthen many blacks and sustain

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them well into the twentieth century. By the 1960s, African American Kentuckians were indeed well prepared to challenge racial discrimination in their state. They relied on the judicial process and direct action campaigns to gain their civil rights. The activism of the 1960s opened increased political, social, and economic opportunities for African Americans. Nonetheless, black Kentuckians continue today to encounter old and new challenges, and it is obvious their historical resiliency will continue to sustain them in the years ahead.

Notable African Americans Ali, Muhammad (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) (1942–) Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville in 1942. Under the guidance of Fred Stoner, an African American boxing coach in Louisville, Clay took up boxing and won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles before winning a gold medal in boxing at the 1960 Olympics. In February 1964, Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title, even though the fight was almost cancelled when the promoter discovered that Clay had been seen with controversial Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X. After the fight, Clay announced his conversion to Islam and the change of his name to Muhammad Ali. During the 1960s and 1970s, Ali evolved into an athlete activist during the height of the civil rights movement and the anti–Vietnam War movement. During the war, boxing officials stripped Ali of his heavyweight title for his refusal to serve in the military. When the boxing commission reinstated his license, Ali won his title back two more times, becoming the first boxer to win the heavyweight title three times. Today, although Ali suffers from Parkinson’s disease, the former champion has become a humanitarian and ambassador of good will.

Muhammad Ali wearing the 24-carat gold-plated championship belt, 1964. (Library of Congress)

Bibb, Henry (1815–1854) Henry Bibb, a fugitive slave, was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, on May 10, 1815. His father was the white state Senator James Bibb, and his mother was Mildred Jackson, a slave. As a child, Bibb witnessed his siblings sold to different slave owners. After several failed escape attempts, he successfully escaped in 1837. Bibb later returned to Kentucky to free his family but was captured. He eventually permanently escaped. In 1842 Bibb, along with other well-known black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, began a lecturing tour against slavery. Bibb also joined the antislavery Liberty Party. In 1849, in recognition of his activism, the AntiSlavery Society published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave. In 1851, in an effort to persuade runaways and free blacks to live in Canada, Bibb and fellow fugitive slave, Josiah Henson,

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founded the Refugees’ Home Colony in Canada. He also founded Canada’s first black newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive.

Hudson, J. Blaine (1949–) J. Blaine Hudson, African American civil rights leader and educator, is a native of Louisville, Kentucky. Hudson serves as a history professor and chairman of the Pan-African Studies Department and associate dean for retention and diversity in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville. He also serves as chairman of the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission. Hudson first experienced racial discrimination as a youngster in the late 1950s when he was denied entrance into a Louisville movie theater. While a student at the University of Louisville, he participated in a Black Student Union (BSU) demonstration at the dean’s office in Arts and Sciences, where he and other students demanded improvements in course offerings for African American students. The protesters were arrested and charged under the Kentucky AntiRiot Act, but the state eventually dropped the charges. The protest resulted in the university deciding to hire more black faculty and introduce black studies courses into the curriculum.

Kidd, Mae Street (1909–1999) Mae Street Kidd was an African American civil rights leader and politician. She served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1968 to 1984, representing Louisville’s 41st legislative district. She cosponsored legislation to make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a state holiday and also the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which provided accessible, low-income housing to all Kentucky residents. In the 1970s, Kidd continued her housing advocacy efforts, and following a two-year battle on the House floor, she introduced House Bill No. 27 to the House, and it

became law in 1972. The law established the Kentucky Housing Corporation, which promoted and financed low-income housing. In 1948, Kidd founded the Louisville Urban League Guild, and at one time served as president of the Lincoln Foundation. The NAACP honored Kidd with the Unsung Heroine Award, and she also earned the Louisville Mayor’s Citation for Outstanding Community Service. In 1976, after years of campaigning in the General Assembly to have Kentucky ratify the U.S. Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, that legislative body voted unanimously to ratify all three.

Powers, Georgia D. (1923–) Georgia D. Powers, civil rights leader and politician and also a native of Kentucky, was the first African American and first woman elected to the state Senate in 1967. In the early 1960s, Powers joined the Allied Organization for Civil Rights to advocate for a statewide public accommodations and fair employment law. That same year, she co-organized the March on Frankfort in which keynote speaker Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged Kentucky officials to support public accommodations legislation. As a result, the Kentucky legislature passed the 1966 Public Accommodations Act. During her five terms in the Senate, Powers introduced and witnessed passage of bills prohibiting housing, employment, age, and sex discrimination. She also successfully lobbied for improvements in education for the mentally and physically challenged. In the Senate, she chaired two legislative committees—Health and Welfare (in 1970 and again in 1976) and Labor and Industry (1978–1988). During her long, successful political career, Powers became a political force in the state by managing mayoral, gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential campaigns for other Democrats. In 1968, she addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Kentucky On the local scene, Powers became the first African American woman to serve on the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee. In 1989, she retired from political office.

Cultural Contributions Despite the various social, economic, and political struggles Kentucky blacks faced, they had managed to create a community structure. African Americans continued to form economic, social, cultural, and religious institutions similar to those in other parts of the country and forged alliances between residents to endure and combat racism. Several black churches, mostly Baptist, addressed the spiritual and social needs of African Americans and became the core of many Kentucky communities. The churches sponsored picnics, plays, fairs, athletic teams, and literary clubs—social outlets that sustained the African American community. Churches also created the social and political agenda for the black working class. In the 1890s, African American congregations from Louisville, Lexington, and Owensboro challenged the Separate Coach Law in their own cities. Around the turn of the century, secular black political clubs, fraternal organizations, cultural associations, social clubs, and literary societies evolved from the Kentucky black churches. These included the Prince Hall Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias. Often, those who did not belong to the same religious congregation became members of the same club or fraternal order or socialized together at barbecues, dances, and sporting events. Next to churches, black fraternal orders had the most diverse membership in the commonwealth. These strictly bourgeois organizations represented all social, economic, and religious categories. For example, in the early twentieth century, African Americans launched dozens of black Masonic lodges in Kentucky. The Louisville, Paducah, Rand Lexington Masons, and other Kentucky orders

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offered financial assistance to blacks enduring economic hardship. During the Great Depression, welfare agencies in Kentucky denied help to destitute black families. In response, black churches collaborated with African American fraternal organizations to help. The women’s auxiliary of the Masons, the Cecelia Dunlap Grand Chapter Order of the Eastern Star, was an organization of black women that adhered to a strict code of ethics, including a strong belief in God, honesty, and charity. In cities like Berea and Richmond, the Eastern Star was mostly a charitable agency that provided college scholarships, donated money to worthy causes, and distributed fruit baskets during the Christmas holiday. In Kentucky, and also nationally, the Eastern Star was one of the earliest supporters of the national civil rights struggle. Black women continued to be instrumental in improving social conditions in Kentucky. Women’s clubs contributed to the growth of Winchester, Bowling Green, Paducah, Owensboro, and other Kentucky communities. Many groups contained people who wanted to pursue recreational, cultural, political, and social interests with others of the same race. In 1904, the African-American Married Ladies Industrial Club of Owensboro was formed to fund the building of a nursing home, sturdy homes, and to educate children in the black community. African American women from four different church congregations in Berea’s black hamlets of Bobtown, Middletown, Farristown, and Peytontown socialized monthly as members of the Merry Workers’ Club. Besides religion and organizations serving as spiritual, social, and political outlets for blacks, some African Americans thrived in sports. In a state known for producing thoroughbred horses, African Americans in Kentucky excelled as horse trainers and jockeys. Abe Perry and Edward Brown both trained Kentucky Derby winners in the late 1800s. As jockeys, 15 blacks won the Kentucky Derby in the early years of the event’s

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existence. Oliver Lewis, William Walker, Isaac B. Murphy, Erskin Henderson, Babe Hurd, and Isaac Lewis all rode winners in the prestigious horse race. Perhaps the best-known sports figure from Kentucky is Muhammad Ali, who gained wide respect for his civil rights activism and his refusal to be inducted into the military for service in Vietnam.

Bibliography Baskin, Andrew. “Berea College and the Founding of Lincoln Institute.” The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies 13 (1994): 9–13. Cole, Jennifer. “For the Sake of the Songs of the Men Made Free: James Speed and the Emancipationists’ Dilemma in Nineteenth-century Kentucky.” Ohio Valley History 4 (2004): 27–48. Coleman, Winston J. Slavery Times in Kentucky. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940. Dunaway, Wilma A. The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Dunaway, Wilma A. Slavery in the American Mountain South. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hardin, John A. Fifty Years of Segregation: Black Higher Education in Kentucky, 1904–1954. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Howard, Victor B. Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Jones, Reinette F. Library Service to African Americans in Kentucky, from the Reconstruction Era to

the 1960s. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2002. Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. “The 1966 Kentucky Civil Rights Bill Becomes Law: Equal Opportunity in Employment and Accommodations.” Fifth Annual Report (1965–1966). Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. “The First Year of Kentucky’s Fair Housing Act.” Eighth Annual Report (1968–1969). Kentucky Educational Television (KET): “A Kentucky Civil Rights Timeline.” www.ket .org/civilrights/timeline. Kentucky Educational Television. An Online Reference Guide to Kentucky African American History. www.ket.org/civilrights. K’Meyer, Tracy E. “The Gateway to the South: Regional Identity and the Louisville Civil Rights Movement” Ohio Valley History 4 (Spring 2004): 43–60. Kurian, Thomas George, ed. Datapedia of the United States: American History in Numbers. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 2004. Lucas, Marion B. A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992. Lucas, Marion B. “Slave Life in Kentucky.” In James C. Klotter, ed., Our Kentucky: A Study of the Bluegrass State. 2nd ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000, 106–119. Mack, Dwayne A. “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Berea College’s Participation in the Selma to Montgomery March.” Ohio Valley History 5 (2005): 43–62. Schmitzer, Jeanne Canella. “CCC Camp 510: Black Participation in the Creation of Mammoth Cave National Park.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 93 (1995): 446–464.

Kentucky Wolfford, David L. “Resistance on the Border: School Desegregation in Western Kentucky 1954–1964.” Ohio Valley History 4 (2004): 41–62.

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Wright, George C. “Oral History and the Search for the Black Past in Kentucky.” Oral History Review 10 (1982): 73–91.

Wright, George C. A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890–1989. Vol. 2. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992.

Wright, George C. “Race Relations after 1865.” In James C. Klotter, ed., Our Kentucky: A Study of the Bluegrass State. 2nd ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000, 122–135.

Wright, George C. Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865–1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Wright, George C. Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

LOUISIANA Howard J. Jones

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Chronology 1662

Robert Cavalier Sieur de LaSalle claims Louisiana for France.

1716–1719

Importation of slaves into Louisiana from the West Indies begins.

1718

Official date for the founding of New Orleans.

1724

The French Edict in the Code Noir for Louisiana prohibits interracial marriage between blacks and whites.

1751

Sugarcane is introduced into Louisiana by Jesuits.

1795

A slave uprising occurs in Pointe Coupee Parish.

1800

James Dernham of New Orleans is recognized as the city’s first black physician.

1801

Louisiana is ceded to France by Spain in the secret treaty of San Ildefonso.

1802

The Spanish governor of Louisiana, Sebastián Nicolás de Bari Calvo de la Puerta, Marqués de Casa Calvo, issues a lengthy regulation governing black militiamen in Louisiana.

1803

The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France; the present-day state of Louisiana is only a small portion of the territory.

1804

The Louisiana Purchase is divided into two parts—the southern Territory of Orleans and the northern District of Louisiana.

1806

Inventor Norbert Rillieux, the son of a white father and free black mother, is born in New Orleans; Rillieux is best known as the inventor or an energy-efficient evaporator that helped the growth of the Louisiana sugar industry.

1811

( January 8–10) Charles Deslondes, a Louisiana slave, leads the German Coast Uprising, one of the largest slave rebellions in American history; the uprising involves several hundred slaves from St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes along the Mississippi River and results in the deaths of several plantation owners and 40–50 slaves, including Deslondes.

1812

(April 30) Louisiana enters the Union as the 18th state.

1814

Andrew Jackson issues a proclamation in New Orleans urging blacks to fight for the Americans against the British.

1815

( January 8) Several hundred free Negroes participate in the Battle of New Orleans.

1816

New Orleans adopts an ordinance officially segregating theaters and public exhibition areas.

1827

Louisiana passes an act stipulating that anyone who wants to emancipate a slave must provide the parish judge with a reason for doing so.

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1830

Suspicious fires, which are blamed on slaves, sweep New Orleans.

1861

( January 26) Louisiana secedes from the Union.

1861

(February 4) The Confederate States of America is formed.

1861

(February 8) Louisiana is admitted to the Confederate States of America.

1861

(April 12) The Civil War begins with the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1862

(May 1) New Orleans is officially occupied by U.S. forces under General Benjamin Butler.

1862

(May) Federal troops occupy the Louisiana state capital at Baton Rouge.

1863

( January 1) New Orleans and 13 neighboring parishes under federal control are excluded from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

1863

( June 7) Black Louisiana troops help repulse white Texas Confederate troops at the Battle of Milliken’s Bend.

1863

The Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons in Louisiana is organized.

1863

Black troops from Louisiana participate in the Port Hudson campaign.

1863

Major Andre Cailloux distinguishes himself when the African American 3rd Louisiana Native Guards make two unsuccessful attempts to capture Port Hudson.

1864

Union General N. P. Banks issues an order that establishes the second public school system for blacks in the United States in New Orleans.

1864

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention meets and abolishes slavery.

1864

Equal pay for black and white soldiers is authorized by Congress.

1864

The first issue of L’Union and La Tribune appears in New Orleans.

1864

The New Orleans Tribune begins publication, becoming the first daily black American newspaper.

1865

(February 17) Louisiana ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1865

The Confederacy sanctions the policy of arming slaves.

1865

The Newman Normal School is established in New Orleans.

1865

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) is created by Congress.

1865

The Black Codes of Louisiana are approved by Governor J. M. Wells.

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1866

Congress overrides the veto of President Andrew Johnson and extends the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

1866

A serious race riot erupts in New Orleans.

1867

(February 6) Louisiana rejects the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would guarantee full civil rights to African Americans.

1867

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention is convened.

1867

William Nichols tries to precipitate a test case by boarding a segregated streetcar in New Orleans.

1867

Blacks in New Orleans stage a streetcar ride-in to protest segregation in the city.

1867

New Orleans streetcars are unofficially desegregated.

1868

Louisiana adopts a new state constitution.

1868

A black man, Oscar J. Dunn, is elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana.

1868

An ordinance is passed that requires integrated schools in Louisiana.

1868

Antoine Dubuclet is elected Louisiana state treasurer.

1868

A racially mixed state legislature is convened in New Orleans.

1868

( July 9) Louisiana becomes the fifth state of the former Confederacy to be readmitted to the Union.

1868

( July 9) Louisiana ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1868

A race riot erupts in New Orleans.

1868

A massacre of blacks occurs at Brownlee in Bossier Parish.

1868

Race massacre occurs at Opelousas where, reportedly, two or three hundred blacks are killed.

1868

John Willis Menard becomes the first African American elected to Congress when he wins a special election in Louisiana’s 2nd District. When his opponent disputes the outcome, Menard becomes the first black to address the U.S. House of Representatives. When Congress decides for his opponent, Menard loses his seat.

1869

The governor of Louisiana signs a public accommodation bill barring discrimination.

1869

(March 5) Louisiana ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution guaranteeing black men the right to vote.

1870

Leland University is incorporated.

Louisiana

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1872–1873

(December 9, 1872–January 13, 1873) P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first black man to serve as governor of a state when, as lieutenant governor, he succeeds his impeached predecessor for a period of 35 days.

1874

Charles E. Nash, a black Republican, wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 6th District.

1881

Southern University is chartered in Baton Rouge.

1892

Homer Plessy boards a train for Covington and is arrested for sitting in the white section of a railroad car in Louisiana; the incident leads to the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the practice of racial discrimination.

1897

Homer Plessy is finally fined $25 in local court for his 1892 violation of the segregation laws.

1898

Louisiana enacts its first grandfather clause for voting purposes. It ties the rights of Louisiana blacks to vote to the rights enjoyed by their grandfathers, thus stripping many African Americans of the vote.

1900

( July) A race riot erupts in New Orleans after Robert Charles, a black laborer, shoots a white police officer, thus initiating a manhunt that results in the deaths of almost 30 people, including Charles and several New Orleans police officers.

1915

Xavier University is opened in New Orleans.

1916

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is incorporated in New Orleans.

1920

The first issue of The Shreveport Sun is published by founder M. L. Collins Sr.

1930

New Orleans University and Straight College merge to form Dillard University.

1938

W. C. Williams is lynched near Ruston; this is supposedly the last daytime lynching witnessed by nonlynchers in Louisiana.

1946

The Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute officially becomes Grambling College.

1946

War veteran John Jones is lynched at Minden.

1953

Reverend T. J. Jemison leads a bus boycott over racial discrimination in Baton Rouge.

1954

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education declares an end to legal racial segregation.

1954

Shreveport employs its first black policemen in modem times—William Hines and Joseph Johnson.

1955

Archbishop Rummel orders New Orleans parochial schools to desegregate at the upcoming term.

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1955

The modern Civil Rights Movement begins with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama.

1956

Federal Judge Skelly Wright orders the Orleans Parish schools to desegregate with all deliberate speed.

1956

Louisiana’s attorney general begins a campaign to suppress the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Louisiana.

1957

Judge Skelly Wright rules that all New Orleans bus segregation laws are unconstitutional.

1957

Attempts at bus desegregation begin in Shreveport.

1957

A Freedom March from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge ends on the state capitol steps.

1958

New Orleans bus and trolley cars are desegregated.

1958

Louisiana Governor Earl Long approves closing public schools threatened with integration.

1960

In Shreveport, Dr. C. O. Simpkins and five students from Grambling College and Southern University are arrested for trying to use library facilities.

1960

Members of the NAACP Youth Council are arrested for talking with a department store manager about the possibility of desegregating the store’s lunch counter.

1960

Ruby Bridges enters previously all-white William Frantz School in New-Orleans.

1963

The City of New Orleans agrees to remove racial signs from all public buildings.

1964

( January 23) The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax is ratified; Louisiana has not ratified the amendment as of 2010.

1965

Black pro football players boycott the AFL All-Star football game played in New Orleans.

1967

H. Rap Brown of Baton Rouge becomes the new chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

1969

The U.S. Supreme Court directs the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to order the immediate termination of dual schools in Louisiana.

1970

Governor John McKeithen urges Louisianians to defy court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation.

1971

Dorothy Maede Lavallade Taylor becomes the first black woman elected to the Louisiana state legislature.

1972

Alphonse Jackson from Shreveport becomes the first black person since Reconstruction to become a state legislator from North Louisiana.

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1974

Shreveport desegregates its fire department.

1974

Grambling College becomes Grambling State University.

1977

Ernest N. Morial is elected as the first African American mayor of New Orleans with 95 percent of the black vote and about 20 percent of the white vote.

1983

The Louisiana State Senate joins the Louisiana House of Representatives in repealing the Louisiana Racial Classification Law.

1985

Coach Eddie Robinson of Grambling becomes the winningest collegiate football coach with 324 victories.

1990

William J. Jefferson, a black Democrat, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 2nd District.

1992

Marc Morial, a black Democrat and son of the former mayor of New Orleans, is elected to the Louisiana State Senate.

1992

Cleo Fields is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 4th District.

1994

Marc Morial, the son of former mayor Ernest Morial, is elected mayor of New Orleans.

1995

Congressman Cleo Fields runs unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor of Louisiana.

2001

The New Orleans City Council approves a measure to rename the New Orleans International Airport in honor of Louis Armstrong.

2002

Ray Nagin is elected mayor of New Orleans.

2005

(August) Hurricane Katrina descends on New Orleans, devastating many black areas of the city.

2006

The “Jena 6,” a group of six black high-school students from Jena, Louisiana, are convicted of beating a white student after a series of racial incidents and confrontations at the school.

2007

Shelton J. Fabre, a Louisiana native, becomes the first black auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

2008

(February 9) Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, defeats Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in the Louisiana Democratic presidential primary by winning about 57 percent of the vote; Obama loses Louisiana to Republican John McCain in the November general election.

2008

Official designation by the state of the Louisiana African-American Heritage Trail.

2009

Five defendants plead “no contest” in the Jena 6 case, bringing the case to a close.

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Historical Overview Pre–Civil War From 1718 to 1750, thousands of Africans were transported to Louisiana from West Africa. Both free and enslaved populations increased rapidly during the years of Spanish rule, as new settlers and Creoles imported large numbers of slaves to work on plantations. Although some American settlers brought slaves with them who were native to Virginia or North Carolina, most slaves brought by traders came directly from Africa. In 1763, there were 3,654 free persons and 4,598 slaves. By the 1800 Census, which included West Florida, there were 19,852 free persons and 24,264 slaves in Lower Louisiana. Rice, indigo, and sugarcane made the French realize the importance of having the Africans in their midst. However, soon after their arrival, the French began setting them apart from the rest of the population. In 1724, the Code Noir for Louisiana was adopted. Among the initial prohibitions was interracial marriage. Being brought to Louisiana and being forced to serve others did not always set well with the people from Africa. A major slave revolt occurred in Pointe Coupee Parish in 1795. Almost simultaneously, people of African descent were proving that they could make lasting progress in spite of racial restrictions. In 1800, James Derham, in New Orleans, became recognized as the first black medical doctor in America. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as a result of his troubles in Haiti, the French Emperor Napoleon I decided to sell France’s American territories. In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. The United States then split the newly acquired region into two territories, with the southern Territory of Orleans becoming the state of Louisiana in 1812. The northern District of Louisiana became the basis for a series of later states, including all or parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa,

Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. In 1810, President James Madison issued a proclamation annexing what were to become the Florida Parishes of eastern Louisiana from the short-lived West Florida Republic. The Haitian Revolution of 1804 also caused a major emigration of refugees into Louisiana, particularly New Orleans. These Haitian immigrants included many free people of color, as well as whites and enslaved Africans. These immigrants enlarged Louisiana’s French-speaking community, and the free people of color who immigrated from Haiti substantially increased the number of Creoles of color in New Orleans. Periodically, Africans continued to show their disdain for their enslavement. In 1811, the German Coast Uprising, considered by some scholars the largest slave revolt in American history, erupted in Louisiana. Led by a slave named Charles Deslondes, a buggy driver from Haiti who worked in a plantation just above New Orleans, as many as 500 slaves from the plantations of the German Coast, about 40 miles from New Orleans, marched to within 20 miles of the city. The revolt, which took place on January 8 and 9, was bloodily suppressed by the Louisiana militia, who executed Deslondes without trial. Deslondes’ execution was brutal. First, his hands were cut off, then he was shot in each leg, shattering his bones. As he lay dying, he was wrapped in straw and set on fire. These harsh acts were meant as a warning to other bondspersons of the dire consequences of defying the slave system.

Statehood to Reconstruction Louisiana became a U.S. state on April 30, 1812. Nevertheless, African Americans could be counted on to serve the state and nation in time of war or other emergencies. During the War of 1812, at least 600 African American men, both free and enslaved, fought with Andrew Jackson

Louisiana in the Battle of New Orleans. Joseph Savary became one of the men of color who distinguished himself. He rose to the rank of second major. After the war, Jackson, at the behest of white New Orleanians, ordered Savary and all blacks who still possessed arms out of New Orleans. Savary ended up in Texas. By this time the Port of New Orleans had become a major port for the export of cotton and sugar. The city’s population grew and the region became quite wealthy. More than the rest of the Deep South, it attracted immigrants for the many jobs in the city. By 1840, New Orleans had the largest slave market in the United States, and it had also become one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the nation. Also by this time, the federal ban on the importation of slaves had increased demand in the internal market. It is estimated that in the antebellum period, more than one million enslaved African Americans were sent from the Upper South to the Deep South, two-thirds of them in the internal slave trade. Following the Louisiana Purchase, as more white southerners inhabited the state, racial lines grew tighter. In 1835, New Orleans cemeteries were segregated. The next year, black prisoners were given different duties than white ones— most of the menial work. Another setback to Louisianans of color came on June 8, 1816, when an ordinance was adopted that segregated theaters and public exhibitions. Twelve years later, New Orleans’ Mardi Gras balls were segregated. And in 1856, card playing in taverns was segregated. Again, in spite of restrictions, people of color continued to contribute to human progress. In 1846, Norbert Rillieux, a Louisiana-born Creole, invented a multiple-effect evaporator that revolutionized the sugar industry by enabling sugar to be produced more efficiently than the cumbersome system known as the Jamaica Train. Rillieux’s invention, which made sugar whiter and grainier, also was used in making soap and glue. Rillieux

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himself, however, faced discrimination in Louisiana and eventually left the state for France. While Rillieux and other Creoles were educated in France, others were educated in New Orleans—something that was not available to other African Americans. In 1847, for example, Madame Bernard Couvert provided for a Creole school in New Orleans. Also, on the eve of the Civil War, although Rillieux and others had left the state, there were still more than 18,000 free African Americans—one of the largest free black populations in the country. Many of these persons were of mixed racial heritage and were middle class, well educated, and property owners. At the same time, however, more than 300,000 African Americans remained enslaved, almost half of the state’s total population. The question of whether the United States would remain half slave and half free was not solved, as many had hoped the Compromise of 1850, which sought to maintain that delicate balance, would do. Within a short time, the issue of the expansion or restriction of slavery in the western territories had increased tensions between the North and the South to the boiling point. The election of Abraham Lincoln, viewed by the South as a radical abolitionist Republican, as president of the United States in 1860 led to the secession of South Carolina and an attack on the U.S. arsenal at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. When the war came, Louisiana became a major player. In 1861, Louisiana seceded from the United States and became a state in the Confederate States of America (CSA). In 1862, Union General Benjamin Butler formed the black Native Guards. In 1863, Major Andre Cailloux, a Creole, distinguished himself in the Battle of Port Hudson. Louisiana black troops also fought in the Battle of Miliken’s Bend. Also during this same period in New Orleans, General Banks ordered down all physical signs pointing to blacks as slaves. So when the Louisiana Constitutional Convention met in 1864, it abolished slavery. Education had become even more significant

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in the black community. Thus, in 1864, General Banks issued an order establishing a new public school system for African Americans. At the same time there were 5,200 freedmen enrolled in 49 schools in New Orleans. Greater literacy led to a push in the African American community for universal suffrage. Among the men leading this effort were Oscar J. Dunn, P. B. S. Pinchback, and P. B. Randolph. Louisiana was quickly defeated in the Civil War. The state’s defeat was a part of the Union’s strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing the Mississippi River. On April 9, 1865, the Civil War came to a close. A few months earlier, in desperation, the CSA had authorized the use of black troops. But few blacks served their cause before the end of the war. Then in December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery. Not until several years later did African American men become important players in the politics of Louisiana. Education and the ballot became exceedingly significant in the black world.

Reconstruction to World War II In early 1865, Newman Normal School was established in Louisiana. A year earlier, freedmen groups had 90 men and women teaching over 5,000 black students in over 40 schools in Louisiana. There followed Union Normal School, Thompson University, Leland University, Southern University, and others. Blacks also began a renewed attack on segregation with much of the activity aimed at streetcars in New Orleans. This led to an “unofficial” desegregation of the streetcars in 1867. Black students tried unsuccessfully to desegregate at least two schools in New Orleans. Several terrorist organizations sprang up in Louisiana during the Reconstruction era. They primarily aimed to intimidate Republican voters and officeholders of both races, obstruct

implementation of Radical Republican policies, and restore Louisiana to rule by native whites. The main instruments of white terror in Louisiana were the Knights of the White Camellia, formed in 1868, and their successor group, the White League, which had spread across the state by 1874. On the political front, during Reconstruction when blacks came to play a major role because of casting votes, Louisiana became a state with a different political climate. Starting with the 1868 Constitutional Convention, blacks were granted citizenship. Some historians have indicated that as many as half the delegates might have been black, and so were the members of the 1868 legislature. But it is certain that blacks never came to dominate Reconstruction in Louisiana. Blacks were more significant in the executive and legislative branches of government than in the judiciary. Three African American Creoles who served as lieutenant governor were Oscar J. Dunn, P. B. S. Pinchback, and C. C. Antoine. Robert H. Isabelle, who served as temporary chairman of the Louisiana House, introduced a bill abolishing all discrimination. Pinchback, after the impeachment of the sitting governor, Henry Clay Warmouth, served as governor of the state for 43 days. Three others held statewide offices—Antoine Dubuclet (1868–1878), state treasurer; W. G. Brown (1872–1876), state superintendent of public education; and P. G. Deslondes (1872–1876), secretary of state. In 1868, about half the members of both Houses of the 1868 state legislature were men of color. At the same time, J. W. Menard was elected to Congress from Louisiana’s second district. The Constitution of 1868, the first in Louisiana history to include a bill of rights, disfranchised former confederates. It also guaranteed full civil rights, including voting rights, to African Americans, created a free, integrated school system, and provided equal access for all citizens to public accommodations. At the time, Louisiana’s state constitution was one of the most progressive

Louisiana in the country. The Black Codes of 1865 were abolished, as were all property qualifications for holding office. However, the new constitution had little effect on racial discrimination. Despite black legal challenges, antidiscrimination laws were rarely enforced, and most African Americans in Louisiana could not afford to eat in restaurants, attend cultural events, or ride trains and steamboats. During Reconstruction, African American leaders in the state differed from the masses of former slaves they sought to lead. They tended to be literate and prosperous professional men who had been free before the Civil War. A few had even held slaves. Meanwhile, some whites, mainly Democrats, sought to use legal and extralegal means, including violence, to regain political power. On September 14, 1874, for example, the metropolitan police in New Orleans clashed with Democratic militants calling themselves the Crescent City White League, in a conflict known as the Battle of Liberty Place. The metropolitan police, numbering about 600, assisted by an additional 3,000 black militia, lost to the White Leaguers, who numbered about 8,400. Eleven policemen were killed and 60 wounded. The White Leaguers suffered 16 killed and 45 wounded. President Ulysses S. Grant called in federal troops from Mississippi to restore the Republican governor to office. He maintained his position until the end of Reconstruction. National political developments eventually determined the course of reconstruction in Louisiana and the rest of the South. The two major political parties disagreed over which presidential candidate, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden or Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, had truly won the election of 1876. A compromise worked out in February 1877 gave the disputed votes to Hayes, and Hayes agreed to let southern Democrats, also known as redeemers, take over governments in the three remaining militarily occupied states—Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

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Once the federal government agreed to pull its troops out of Louisiana, a mostly Democratic convention wrote a new constitution that voters ratified in 1879. White redeemist Democrats were now firmly back in control of the state government. During the Reconstruction era, one man of color, Charles E. Nash, served the state in the Congress. Another, P. B. S. Pinchback, was elected but was refused his seat as a U.S. senator. The issue was whether or not the legislature that elected him was legitimate; in 1876, the Senate said no. Amid these political successes, ugly racial violence raised its head. In 1868, there was a race riot in New Orleans and racial massacres at Opelousas and Brownlee. In 1873 and 1874, there was racial violence in Colfax and Coushatta, while white mobs continued to force African Americans out of white schools. Yet progress continued as can be seen by a public accommodations act barring discrimination in 1869, the chartering of New Orleans University in 1873, and the attempted desegregation of an all-white, all-girls school in New Orleans in 1874. After losing the right to hold political office with the end of Reconstruction, Louisiana’s blacks had to fight just to retain any civil rights at all. With Jim Crowism, the Mississippi Plan, and grandfather clauses, blacks had a real fight on their hands. The first Mississippi Plan of 1870 involved bands of armed whites intimidating prospective black voters. The second Mississippi Plan of 1890 required every citizen 21 to 60 years of age to display a poll tax receipt, and read and interpret the Constitution. This allowed all-white registration officials to deny the vote to black illiterates, while allowing whites, even though illiterate, to register to vote. Having no representation in the legislative or executive branches of government, blacks were segregated and discriminated in almost all areas of public life. Generally, their schools and other institutions and the public services provided for them were inadequate. They mostly worked

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in menial occupations such as unskilled labor and domestic service. After the election of 1876, following the victory of Francis T. Nicholls and the Democrats, and the withdrawal of Union troops the next year, the federal government seemed to have abandoned blacks. The 1879 state constitution reversed most of the equalities black people had fought for and gained, including the right to vote. Ironically, at about the same time, the state capitol was moved from New Orleans with its large African American population to Baton Rouge. Some black Louisiana residents became so disillusioned that they joined the Exodus Movement to Kansas and other places in the Southwest. In 1896, this oppression culminated in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was brought by Homer Plessy, a Louisiana Creole, who was seeking equal accommodations and equal treatment on railway cars. The Supreme Court rejected his plea and sanctioned the doctrine of “separate but equal.” But separate was not equal in Louisiana and the rest of the South before Plessy and was not equal after Plessy. In this period, the most favorable thing that blacks got from segregation was the establishment of Southern University at Baton Rouge in 1881. A few years later, a land purchase was made that eventually led to Grambling State University. In spite of these educational venues, the pattern of segregation continued to grow, as the Louisiana legislature required segregation in public accommodations in 1890.

1900 to Present There seemed to be some light ahead in the political situation when, in 1915, in the case of Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled the grandfather clause unconstitutional. Although the case arose from Oklahoma, it could be applied to all of the southern states, including Louisiana, which had the disfranchising clause. Not to be outdone, Louisiana legislators, like

their southern counterparts elsewhere, came up with new devices, including a literacy and understanding test, to keep blacks away from the polls and out of political offices. Since many blacks were semiliterate or illiterate, there was little chance that they could read and understand the passages that were handed to them. In any case, all-white registration officials would make the determination. Still, in tandem with much of the rest of the South, Louisiana erected a seemingly impregnable barrier to black voting by declaring that the Democratic Party was really a private club for whites only. The so-called white primary, once the Republican Party became negligible, was the only election that really counted. Under these conditions and with economic distress continuing or worsening, thousands of Louisiana blacks left the state for the North and Midwest in the Great Migration. Some even went west, as far as California, seeking relief from Jim Crow and seeking better jobs in industry. For those African Americans who remained in the state, the Great Depression furthered their financial woes, while New Deal measures for relief did not reach far enough. Louisiana’s governor at this time was the flamboyant Huey Long. Calling himself a populist, he appealed to and favored poorer whites. To further the political involvement of this group, Long removed the poll tax. Blacks, too, ostensibly would benefit from the end of the poll tax. But the white primary remained in effect. After the Supreme Court, in Smith v. Allwright, ruled the white primary unconstitutional in 1944, Louisiana erected new barriers to black voting. Meanwhile, African American voting strength plummeted in the state, going to less than 10 percent in the 1950s. But it was also during this time that the state prescribed only a citizenship test to register to vote. This encouraged black leaders in the NAACP and other organizations to launch voter registration drives. The campaign was successful in raising black voter registration to

Louisiana 20 percent. By 1934, 32 percent of eligible black citizens were voters—a significant increase in the decade, but still far short of the total number of eligible voters. It would take the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to clear the way for unfettered black voting and to give many blacks the confidence to actually register and vote. The fruits of this effort included the election of a series of black mayors in New Orleans, including Ernest “Dutch” Morial in 1972 and Ray Nagin in 2002. Black mayors were also elected in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Monroe.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond Meanwhile, African Americans were growing bolder in their quest for equality. In 1953, a year before Brown v. Board of Education and two years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a Baton Rouge minister, the Reverend T. J. Jemison, led a bus boycott in that city. Over the next several years from every corner of the state, north and south, there were freedom demonstrations by black Louisianians. There was also a bus desegregation demonstration in Shreveport in 1957, and New Orleans desegregated its buses and trolleys in 1958. But in 1960, baseball star Jackie Robinson was denied service at the cafeteria at the Shreveport airport. Also in Shreveport, members of the NAACP Youth Council were arrested just for talking with the manager of a department store about the possibility of desegregating his lunch counter, and black teenagers were arrested in Winnfield, Louisiana, for disturbing the peace after they tried to borrow books from the public library there. These incidents, however, were overshadowed by the tumultuous events in New Orleans that year. The city was under federal court order to begin school desegregation. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregation in its Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1956, Federal District Court Judge

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J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to devise plans to effectively desegregate public schools in New Orleans. Local opposition to the ruling was immediate and fierce, as parents and other whites sought state legislation to overturn the judge’s decision. The school board delayed complying with Wright’s order for four years, but in 1960, it finally implemented an integration plan for two schools in the impoverished Ninth Ward. Starting with the first grade, the plan called for one grade to be integrated per year. On November 14, 1960, armed U.S. Marshals protected Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gaile Etienne as they integrated McDonough 19 and Ruby Bridges as she entered William Frantz School. As a result of this action, riots led by segregationists erupted throughout the city and enrollments at McDonough 19 and William Frantz declined significantly, as many parents enrolled their children in local private schools. Integration in New Orleans drew national attention, with many outside the state condemning Louisiana’s segregationists for their hostile reaction. The disorders in New Orleans even prompted famed American painter Norman Rockwell to paint “The Problem We All Live With,” which depicted federal marshals escorting six-year-old Ruby Bridges to school. Over the years, much of the social, political, and economic life of black Louisiana was tied to the black press. Louisiana had the first African American newspaper in the South, L’Union, and with the New Orleans Tribune, the first African American daily newspaper in the nation. L’Union was founded in 1862 by Dr. Charles Roudanez, a wealthy financier, published bimonthly, then biweekly. Roudanez and his editor were also civil rights leaders. The newspaper mainly advocated for Louisiana’s free people of color. The newspaper folded in July 1864. The New Orleans Tribune was the successor to L’Union, with Paul Trenigne serving as editor. Unlike L’Union, the Tribune was published

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U.S. Navy air crewmen survey damage to a residential area from Hurricane Katrina as they fly over Mississippi on September 1, 2005, en route from Florida to provide relief to victims of the hurricane. The Navy’s assistance in relief operations was directed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (U.S. Department of Defense)

partially in French and partially in English and advocated for both free people of color and the recently freed blacks. This paper was published weekly, but was rather short-lived. But in 2005, it was not only the black media, but media from around the world which published and broadcast news that during a huge hurricane, the levees protecting the city were breached and flood waters engulfed much of the city and surrounding areas. Warnings of the hurricane had prompted the evacuation of New Orleans and other areas, but thousands of people, mostly African Americans, were left behind and stranded by the flood waters. Cut off in many cases from food, medicine, or water, or packed into public places like the Superdome and Convention Center, they were pictured by international television as refugees, as if from a Third World country. At least 1,500 people in

New Orleans died, as government at all levels failed to prepare for the emergency or to react quickly and adequately to it. When President George W. Bush and his administration as well as state and local authorities belatedly responded to the crisis, reconstruction in the mainly black areas of town remained painfully slow. Two years after Katrina, Louisiana again was thrust into the national spotlight over a racial matter. The previous year, six black youths were charged as adults for allegedly beating a white high-school classmate. This incident followed several instances of white students hanging nooses from a tree at Jena High School. To protest what many believed were harsh charges and sentencing against the black youths, more than 20,000 persons, mostly black, held a one-day demonstration in the small town of 3,000 people

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A crowd marches through Jena, Louisiana, in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of Justin Barker, a white classmate, 2007. (AP/Wide World Photos)

on September 20, 2006. Most of the charges were later reduced and the black youths pled guilty to the lesser offenses.

European and African tours and he became known as an unofficial goodwill ambassador.

Augustine, Israel Meyer, Jr. (1924–1994)

Notable African Americans Armstrong, Louis (1900–1971) Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans and moved to Chicago in 1922. He was an entertainer who revolutionized jazz with his improvisations on the trumpet and with his orchestra. The U.S. State Department sponsored several of his

Israel Meyer Augustine was the first African American district court judge in Louisiana. In 1971, he presided over the trial of a group of Black Panthers, a case that drew national attention.

Clark, Joseph Samuel (1871–1944) Joseph Samuel Clark was an educator who served as one of the first presidents of Southern University—his tenure was from 1913 to 1938.

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Black America Old Men, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. He has been the recipient of the National Book Critics Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and a National Humanities Medal.

Glapion, Roy E., Jr. (1935–1999) Roy E. Glapion Jr. was an educator and politician who was active in the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and became its president in 1976. In 1994, he was elected a member of the New Orleans City Council.

Haley, Oretha Castle (1939–1987) Louis Armstrong is one of the towering figures in the history of jazz. (Library of Congress)

Davis, Abraham Lincoln (1914–1978) Abraham Lincoln Davis was a minister and one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

Delile, Henriette (1813–1862) Henriette Delile was an educator, feminist, and social worker. She founded the Sisters of the Holy Family.

Oretha Castle Haley was born in Tennessee and moved to New Orleans in 1947. She was a civil rights activist who became head of the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She was also a deputy administrator of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital—the city’s large health facility for indigent patients.

Lafon, Thorny (1810–1893) Thorny Lafon was a businessman and philanthropist. He made substantial contributions to the Underground Railroad and to orphanages, homes for the elderly, universities, and Charity Hospital.

Landry, Lord Beaconsfield (1878–1934) Dent, Thomas Covington (1932–1998) Thomas Covington Dent was a dramatist and civil rights activist. In 1965, he was a cofounder of the Free Southern Theater, a collective of artists, intellectuals, and civil rights activists who used art to combat racism.

Gaines, Ernest James (1933–) Ernest James Gaines is a writer best known for his novels A Lesson before Dying, A Gathering of

Lord Beaconsfield Landry was a physician, soloist, and civic leader. He sang in the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers, directed the Osceola Five, and became the first black mayor of Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

Morial, Ernest Nathan “Dutch” (1929–1989) Ernest “Dutch” Morial was a lawyer, judge, state legislator, and the first African American mayor of New Orleans.

Louisiana

Morial, Marc Haydel Morial (1958–) Marc Morial, the son of Ernest “Dutch” Morial, succeeded his father as mayor of New Orleans and head of the National Urban League.

Nagin, Ray (1956–) Ray Nagin was mayor of New Orleans from 2002 to 2010. He received mixed reactions for his handling of the floods in his city following Hurricane Katrina. When he left office after serving a twoterm limit, he was succeeded by Mitchell “Mitch” Landrieu, the first white mayor in more than two decades.

Pinchback, P. B. S. (1837–1921) P. B. S. Pinchback was elected as a delegate to the 1867 Louisiana Constitutional Convention. After this, he was elected as a state senator. Upon the death of the elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana, Oscar J. Dunn, Pinchback was chosen to become the new lieutenant governor on December 6, 1871. On December 9, 1872, Louisiana Governor Henry Clay Warmoth was impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Pinchback then served as acting governor for 35 days (December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873). In the elections of 1874 and 1876, Pinchback was in “contested elections” chosen as a U.S. congressman from Louisiana and in the latter year, chosen as a U.S. senator from Louisiana, He lost both elections to Democrats who now controlled the state. While in Louisiana, he helped found Southern University, and earned a law degree at Straight University. He then moved to Washington, D.C.

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Court pronounced its separate but equal doctrine for race relations.

Robinson, Edward Gay (Eddie) (1919–2007) Eddie Robinson was a legendary football coach who spent his career at Grambling State University of Louisiana. Edward Gay Robinson began work at Grambling in 1941 and retired in 1997 with a record of 408 wins for Grambling. He also led the school to 17 SWAC (Southwestern Athletic Conference) titles. Under his leadership, Grambling won nine black football national championships. In his honor, the Football Writers Association has named the award presented to the best football coach in Division I the Eddie Robinson Award.

Spears, Mack Justin (d. 1988) Mack Spears was an educator who became the first African American to become president of the Louisiana Schools Board Association. He was also the first black to serve on the Orleans Parish School Board, where he was elected seven times during a period of 18 years.

Taylor, Dorothy Mae Delavallade (1928–2000) Dorothy Taylor was the first African American woman elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1971, and in 1984, she became the first African American woman to be appointed to head a state department—the Department of Urban and Community Affairs.

Thierry, Camille (1814–1875) Plessy, Homer (1863–1925) Homer Plessy was the plaintiff in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme

Camille Thierry was a prolific Francophone poet. He came from a wealthy New Orleans family and spent many years in France. His romantic poetry

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included “To the One I Love” and “The Corsair’s Sweet Heat.”

Walker, Madam C. J. (Sarah Breedlove) (1867–1919) Madam C. J. Walker was born in Louisiana and moved to St. Louis where she developed and revolutionized hair care products for black women. She became one of the wealthiest African American women in the country.

Cultural Contributions In addition to world-renowned jazz musician Louis Armstrong and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, Louisiana has had many other musicians who have contributed much to American culture. They include Afro-Creole jazzman Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory’s Original Creole Jazz Band, and the King Oliver Band. There have also been literary giants like Arna Bontemps, Camille Thierry, Ernest Gaines, and Thomas Dent, a founder of the Free Southern Theater (FTS). The FTS, founded in the 1960s, has used art and drama to depict the oppressive nature of racism, discrimination, and segregation and efforts to overcome them. Highlights of African culture in Louisiana are the Mardi Gras celebrations and the unique krewes of people of color. Although celebrations are held throughout the state, the larger ones are centered in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Original Illinois Club is one of the oldest black krewes. It was formed by Creole-of-Color community leaders in 1894. It sponsors a dance called “The Chicago Glide.” Although it has only about 50 members, their ball draws over 700 guests. The Zula Aid and Pleasure krewe held its first parade in 1914. It has about 400 members and is the only krewe where the king gets to choose his own queen. Louis Armstrong was the king in 1949. During the Mardi Gras festivities, any

friend of a member can pay a fee and ride in the parade. Louisiana has perhaps more African American theater companies than any other American state. They include the Vestage Theater Company in Baton Rouge and the Anthony Bean Community Theater, Arts for Life, Chakula Chua Jua Theater, Creative Artists, Striving Together, Curtain Call Theater, Dashik Theater, Ethiysian Theater, Junebug Productions, and Winfield Productions, all in New Orleans. Prominent African American museums include the Ama Bontemps African American Museum in the birth home of author Bontemps in Alexandria; the River Road African American Museum, which sponsors an annual Juneteenth Festival in Donaldsonville; and the Tangipoor African American Heritage Museum and Black Veterans Archives in Hammond. In New Orleans, there are many museums, several of which are along Louisiana’s African American heritage trail. The heritage trail begins at the famed French Market, designed by Joseph Abeilard, a free man of color in the early 1700s. The next stop is in the historic neighborhood of Tremé, just north of the French Quarter. From the early 1800s, this neighborhood was home to a large community of prosperous free people of color. Tremé is in the area once known as Congo Square, which is now a part of Louis Armstrong Square. Beginning in the era of bondage, enslaved blacks would gather on Sundays and conduct traditional African rituals, engage in conversations, and dance and sing. As the trail moves further up Governor Nicholls Street, one finds the African American Museum of Art, which features rotating exhibits and a collection of African arts and crafts. In the same area, one will find the St. Louis Cemeteries, which contain the gravesites of prominent Creoles, including Homer Plessy of the Plessy v. Ferguson case and Ernest “Dutch” Morial, New Orleans’ first African American mayor. Nearby is the Providence Park

Louisiana Cemetery, where the remains of legendary gospel singer Mahalia Jackson are interred. Louisiana, especially the New Orleans area, is famous for its jazz festivals each spring and summer. Other cities, such as Shreveport, sponsor black theater festivals and Juneteenth festivals.

Bibliography African American Heritage Museum, Louisiana. www.africanamericanheritagemuseum.com. Bell, Caryn Cossé. Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Davis, Edwin Adams. Louisiana: A Narrative History. Baton Rouge, LA: Claitor’s Books, 1965. Fairclough, Adam. Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

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Schafer, Judith Kelleher. Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. Shugg, Roger W. Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Laborers During Slavery and After, 1840–75. Reprint ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Taylor, Joe G. Louisiana: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1976. Taylor, Joe G. Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–77. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974. Taylor, Joe G. Negro Slavery in Louisiana. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Tregle, Joseph George. Louisiana in the Age of Jackson: A Clash of Cultures and Personalities. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.

Gentry, Judith F., and Janet Allured, eds. Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Vincent, Charles. The African American Experience in Louisiana: From Jim Crow to Civil Rights. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Hornsby, Alton, Jr. A Biographical History of African Americans. Montgomery, AL: E-Book Time, 2005.

Wall, Bennett. Louisiana: A History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Jackson, Joy. New Orleans in the Gilded Age: Politics and Urban Progress, 1880–96. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.

Winters, John D. The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

MAINE Demetrius Lamar

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Chronology 1600s

Africans assist in the settlement of the island of St. Croix, Maine, as servants to French colonist Pierre Du Gua Sieur de Monts.

1633

Oliver Weeks is possibly a servant of George Cleves on Richmond Island and in Falmouth (now Portland). A sailor, Weeks is a witness to a land-possession case in 1640.

1641

Massachusetts, which at this time includes Maine, legalizes slavery.

1671–1673

Antonius Lamy of York County is the first African American medical doctor in Maine.

1775–1783

The American Revolution is fought.

1775

Richard Earle of Machias participates in the first naval battle of the American Revolution, June 11, 1775, and is considered Maine’s first recorded black patriot and hero. Earle is one of many African Americans who served in the American Revolution in exchange for their freedom.

1783

Slavery is abolished in Massachusetts, which then included Maine. Due in part to the petitioning efforts of Captain Paul Cuffee, a black shipmaster and ship owner, voting rights for male blacks and Indians are granted in Massachusetts.

1820

(March 15) Maine enters the Union as the 23rd state.

1823

Christopher Christian Manuel (1781–1845) of Portland becomes a barber, band coordinator, business owner, and human rights leader.

1826

John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851) is the first black graduate from Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

1844

Macon Bolling Allen (1816–1894) is accepted as a member of the Maine Bar.

1851

Harriet Beecher Stowe begins writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the great antislavery novel of the antebellum period, in Brunswick.

1860

Dr. Thomas G. Brown (1805–1887) is listed as Bangor’s first black physician.

1865

(February 7) Maine ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

( January 19) Maine ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1869

(March 11) Maine ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote.

1875

James Augustine Healy (1830–1900) becomes the first black Roman Catholic priest and later the first black bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine and New Hampshire.

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1881

Maine repeals a state law against interracial marriage.

1909

Louis George Gregory (1874–1951) becomes a member of the Baha’i Faith and a champion of racial unity.

1920

A National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch is established in Bangor.

1937

Ted “Tiger” Lowry (1920–) begins his boxing career and fights the champion boxers of his day.

1940s

James A. Johnson (1901–1979), an inventor, educator, and author, helps to establish the vocational and technical schools in Augusta and South Portland.

1964

( January 16) Maine ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Maine; the National Civil Rights Act is passed.

1972

Gerald E. Talbot (1932–) becomes the first black elected to the Maine legislature.

1975

Dr. Stanley J. Evans starts the Alcohol Institute at Eastern Maine Medical Center, Bangor.

1977

Legislation to remove racially offensive place names in Maine is passed.

1978

Barbara Ware Nichols (1937–), originally of Portland, is elected president of the National American Nurses Association.

1988

William D. Burney Jr. (1951–) becomes the first black elected mayor of Augusta.

1990

Census figures show that African Americans comprise less than 0.5 percent of Maine’s population.

1996

Sallie Chandler becomes the first black woman to be elected to public office in Maine when she is elected as town clerk in Lebanon.

2000

Rick Lawrence becomes the first black judge in Maine.

2004

Jill Doson is elected the first black mayor of Portland.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Maine with about 58 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Although today black Mainers constitute less than 1 percent of the state’s population, they have been an integral part of Maine even before its conception. Perhaps as early as the sixteenth century, the first wave of Africans came to what is now

Maine as baiters for Portuguese fisherman, as servants for English settlers, and as co-explorers and discoverers as well as language translators for French and French Canadian colonists and explorers. Existing records show that the first Africans came to this part of North America in small numbers as bonded and freemen to

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contribute to the growing number of cultural and commercial enterprises that dominated the period, ranging from fishing and whale hunting to sugar refining and molasses production. Due to their limited number, black Mainers were found in only a few parts of Maine and obtained transient servitude status near the seaports. These African pioneers, however few, were occasionally connected with the South, but there are few existing family records of this. It appears that those black Mainers who had extended family beyond the shores of Maine seldom found their way back to the South or Canada, but the majority seem to have stayed in New England as contracted or indentured servants. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, British North America, being part of the British Empire’s continued epic push for geographical expansion and material conquest, would take on a life of its own, as African indentured servitude gradually eroded into institutionalized slavery. Slavery became America’s bedrock, giving it a headstart toward technical development by facilitating the birth of a much-needed leisure class whose restless energy would be used to create culture and to perpetuate unending innovation. During this period, there were also free Africans who continued to arrive in Maine and elsewhere, but in small numbers, for the vast majority of the newly arriving Africans were being shipped to the United States to partake in an enterprise of free labor. The New England slave traffic was led by Massachusetts (including Maine), particularly Boston, with Rhode Island and Connecticut close behind. Still part of Massachusetts and feeling the pressures of industrialization initiated by Old England, Maine became a major shipbuilding state and played no insignificant part in American black slavery. Despite the importance of ushering in a market economy and later the machine age, the social condition of this period was one of profound morbidity in which New England would

copy the Spaniards, who, up to the eighteenth century, often enslaved not only African but also Native American or Indian and white people. The New England merchants primarily sold Africans to the West Indies and to the southern colonies. The purpose of the slaves was to work the plantation fields of cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice—highly desired items by the leisure class. Thus, the slave trade in New England was comparatively limited and is said to have lacked the inhumane cruelty practiced in the antebellum South. It is estimated that fewer than 1,000 slaves existed in all of colonial New England in 1700. By 1790, this figure would reach 16,822 out of over one million inhabitants. The early history of Maine regarding blacks is well documented and is chronicled in the first permanent newspaper published in North America, the Boston News Letter. The colonial era—owing in part to one country’s exploitation of another country’s people and resources for its own benefit—produced some of the first measurable African migration into Maine. In untold ways this second stream of new arrivals, whose history was once veiled in near total obscurity, would greatly help Maine’s economy. Prior to the American Revolution, slavery was the capstone to economic stability and was justified spiritually as well as legally. The profits resulting from New England slavetrading stimulated American cultural development and philanthropy, but slave trading triggered a slow and catastrophic cultural decline on the African continent. In 1780, three years before the close of the American Revolution, Massachusetts emancipated its American slaves. The end of American slavery took many forms in New England and elsewhere. Slaves would achieve the status of freedmen by either purchasing their liberty or by being born legally free. For example, children of mixed racial parentage were born free. Some conscientious slave owners, convinced that slavery was wrong, set their slaves free. Others were

Maine liberated by earning their freedom as participants in the revolutionary armies. Some slaves, eager for their independence, “stole themselves” by running away. After the Revolution, former slaves in Maine who once held a broad array of employment now found work unavailable. Many African slaves held skilled positions in Maine’s flourishing maritime period, working in such vital areas as iron forgers, house carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, shipbuilders, and distillers, but these trades became limited after the colonial slave era. Before the Revolutionary War, 25 percent of mariners were black. Now these jobs were available only to American whites, sometimes even to former white indentured servants. In some respects this trend has continued to this day. Thus the inauguration of the post-Revolution period in Maine was a time of enormous difficulty both for the former slaves and their immediate descendants. Despite such obstacles, some of the ancestors of African slaves would start on the difficult road of avoiding bondage, making a living, establishing families and careers, and social integration. This process would take place in port towns, particularly Portland. From the middle of the eighteenth century forward, Portland merchants were engaged in coastal, regional, transatlantic, and global commerce and trade. Since Portland was a major New England port city, most blacks who found work there were employed as seamen. Some worked as career seamen and others as stewards and waiters. Even today, Portland has the largest overall population and the largest black population. In spite of these limitations and occupational handicaps, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries became an age of movement, growth, and assimilation for many Maine freedmen. The process of assimilation in a budding new nation-state that sought to imitate Old England by showing an appetite for industrialization (expansion and perpetual innovation), social hierarchy (class

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distinctions), and material acquisition (property accumulation) led many freedmen and women to bend to these pressures and pursue an economic society with a zeal equal to their white counterparts. When the maritime era came to a close, the railway industries were introduced. Blacks sought to take full advantage of these new jobs, working as coachmen, bootblacks, engineers, cooks, and porters, as well as trackmen and matrons on the railroad system. Essentially the railway in Maine, particularly in Portland, was dependent on black labor. In Maine, blacks played a key role throughout the railway age, all the way through World War II. Other occupations became rungs on the ladder of vertical mobility in which blacks made stellar cultural contributions to Maine. Some black Mainers bought property and became small business entrepreneurs, for property acquisition was a stepping-stone to wealth, stability, and independence. Others would inherit property from their progressive masters, allowing former slaves for the first time to own a home and to raise a family. Early black entrepreneurs also selected barbering, carpentry, clothes manufacturing, public accommodations, and farming as their means for making a living. Still others would seek new lives by immigrating to the British Empire, migrating to Canada, or marching west to pursue the open frontiers. In the early twentieth century class distinctions and race inequality in Maine played an important role in determining who got what. Those blacks with white ancestry had more opportunities, responsibilities, and freedoms than darker-skinned blacks because it was believed that darker-skinned blacks were pure-blooded Africans and therefore less culturally able than the mixed American black or mulatto. Nevertheless, the sprawling nature of this early American racial caste system would have a direct effect on how influence and opportunity would be distributed in every nook and cranny of Maine’s society.

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For a time the few blacks living in Maine were forced to confine themselves to servicing the black community. Maine’s aristocracy, once the primary class who owned slaves, now seldom hired them as wage laborers. This shift of status—from working with Maine’s white merchants, planters, and financiers to working within an isolated human-made social framework—would produce a group of American blacks who had high expectations for black progress. Borne out of a confluence of factors, this spirit of black uplift reached its high-point during Reconstruction, when society at large, but most particularly in the South, was facing immense social maladjustment. Some American blacks sought to adopt the cultural way of life of those with whom they worked, including high interactions with American whites. Others felt the pain of open oppression and discrimination and found refuge by matriculating into higher education and finding work in the professions. A third division recognized that true equality would not be achieved without civic action and sought political office. In the subsequent years of gradual erasure of legal bondage, Maine had the second-largest number of free blacks in New England (Massachusetts had the largest). The general footprint of this early post-colonial period can be seen from east to west, for today the posterity of early black Mainers now plays a crucial role in every aspect of the state, as inventors, civic leaders, barbers, prize-fighters, spiritual councilors, nurses, lawyers, physicians, legislators, and mayors.

Notable African Americans Allen, Macon Bolling (1816–1894) A native of Indiana, Macon Bolling Allen obtained a license to practice law in Maine in 1844, but never actually practiced in the state. According to the U.S. Census of the time, he was a mulatto or mixed heritage, being of Scottish,

Native American, and African descent. He migrated to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and then to Portland, Maine, where he changed his name from A. Macon Bolling to Macon Bolling Allen. Allen actually began his practice in Massachusetts. Although Maine was a state that strongly supported the antislavery cause, the black population was still very small and business was scarce for black litigators. Seeking to find a better life, Allen moved from Maine back to Massachusetts, becoming, in 1845, the first African American to be admitted to the Massachusetts Bar as well. After practicing for more than two decades there, he later became a justice of the peace in the Massachusetts commonwealth.

Burney, William D., Jr. (1951–) William Burney Jr. was born in Augusta and became the first black elected mayor in Maine, when he became mayor of Augusta in 1988. Burney comes from a rich line of dynamic and accomplished African Americans. His mother, Helen Nicholas Burney, and father, William D. Burney Sr., were from Poughkeepsie, New York, and Macon, Georgia, respectively. For more than half a century, both parents contributed to the papermaking industries and church missions, and Helen as an airplane rivet inspector during World War II. The Burneys were also charter members of the NAACP, with Burney Sr. consequently becoming one of the first presidents of the Central Maine chapter of the NAACP. Burney graduated from Cony High School in Augusta, where he played sports and earned membership in the National Honor Society. He earned a B.S. in public communications from Boston University in 1973 and a law degree from the University of Maine School of Law in 1977. Before becoming Maine’s first elected African American mayor, Burney served in a variety of civil and legal capacities, among them eight years

Maine on Augusta’s City Council and four years as chairman of Augusta’s Board of Education. He has spent nearly 20 years as a development officer and planner at the Maine State Housing Authority. Between 1988 and 1996, Burney was elected to four consecutive two-year terms as mayor of Augusta; his election was considered unusual because blacks made up only 1 percent of the population. He now works for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Geary, Roscoe, Sr. (1885–1964) A native of Pennsylvania, Roscoe Geary was the first known black to practice law in Maine. On the 50th anniversary of his practice, he was honored by the Maine Bar Association.

Healy, James Augustine (1830–1900) James A. Healy became the first black Roman Catholic priest and later the first black bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine and New Hampshire. Bishop Healy was born in Georgia of mixed ancestry. His mother, Mary Eliza, was a former slave of African origins, but most probably mixed. His father was an Irish American plantation owner, from Roscommon, Ireland. Bishop Healy graduated first in his class from Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1849, the year the college was established. He along with two of his siblings went to seminary school abroad. Ordained as a priest at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, France, in 1854, Bishop Healy worked for over two decades as secretary to Bishop James Bernard Fitzpatrick of Boston, Massachusetts, before leaving for Maine in 1875 to become bishop, a post he held until his death in 1900. During his lifetime Bishop Healy accomplished much. Working tirelessly, he not only brought enumerable religious orders to Maine, but he also increased the number of parishes and

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convents and was responsible for more than a dozen new schools in the diocese. Traveling throughout Maine, sometimes in a canoe, Bishop Healy would meet and confirm children, especially orphans. He anointed more than 4,000 children during his administration, giving him the namesake “Children’s Bishop.” Beyond having a zeal for organization, Bishop Healy had a talent for the French language, which would also improve his Catholic following. Being well versed in the French language was a requirement of his priests, for Maine had a large population of French Canadians. But Bishop Healy’s road to success was not an easy battle. He faced discrimination because of his skin color and, at the beginning of his tenure, a church was set afire in disapproval of his presence in Maine. There was also a history of medical neglect due to his African ancestry—nursing sisters found him too different to be tended to. Yet there is little to no documented history of Bishop Healy publicly condemning racism. Two months before he died, Bishop Healy was made an assistant to the papal throne and was honored for his nearly 50 years of service. He is interned at Calvary Cemetery in South Portland, as he requested.

Johnson, James A. (1901–1979) James A. Johnson, an inventor, educator, and author, helped to establish the vocational and technical schools in Augusta and South Portland, Maine. Johnson was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, but grew up in Portland. He went to the Franklin Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and later earned his B.S. from the University of Southern Maine (1976). Johnson was best known for being one of the founders of the Maine Vocational and Technical Institute (MVTI)—now called Southern Maine Community College. The institution came about when Johnson saw a need for World War II military veterans to learn a trade to gain employment.

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Thus, he decided to train veterans in automotive repair. This idea blossomed and Johnson was soon teaching thousands of students at MVTI. Johnson is also known for his inventions. In 1959, he invented the Trig Stato-DiNamic Wheel Balance for cars. In 1972, he authored a textbook, Automotive Tune-up and Diagnosis. He also invented the truck Trig Balancer in 1976. In 1968, after 20 long years, he fulfilled one of his personal dreams, to build his own automobile.

fight all over the country, often for very little financial reward. Lowry left the ring with a 64–65–9 record with 41 knockouts. Among his opponents were Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Joey Maxim, and Rusty Payne. He was knocked out only three times in his entire career. Lowry authored a book, God’s in My Corner (2007). On November 28, 2008, he at age 87 was inducted into the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame.

Lowry, Ted “Tiger” (1920–)

Manuel, Christopher Christian (1781–1845)

Ted “Tiger” Lowry is a boxer whose claim to fame is going the 10-round distance twice with the legendary power puncher Rocky Marciano, a boxing feat never before achieved. Lowry’s life started in austere circumstances. Although born in New Haven, Connecticut, he was raised by his mother Grace in Portland. Lowry attended Portland High School and participated in sports. Immediately following high school, he entered the ring to become a prize fighter. At 18, in his debut match, he knocked out three opponents in one night. Lowry received his boxing credentials in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There he would be trained to become a professional pugilist. Lowry’s 16-year boxing career was put on hold because of World War II. He distinguished himself as a member of an all-black 555th parachute battalion called the Triple Nickels. This crew put out forest fires created by Japanese-launched incendiary balloons in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Although not a true heavyweight, at age 23 Lowry volunteered to put on a three-round exhibition fight with the heavyweight Champion Joe “the Brown Bomber” Louis. After the match, Louis informed Lowry that he had a future in the sport of boxing. These comments coming from, in the minds of some, the greatest American professional boxer of all time made Lowry pursue his career unstintingly. Lowry would soon

Christopher C. Manuel of Portland became a barber, band coordinator, business owner, and human rights leader. A native of Cape Verde, Manuel is thought to have immigrated to the United States as a mariner. In 1820, he married Nancy Pier, a daughter of perhaps one of the leading black families in Portland, that of Peter and Elizabeth Pierre. Following his first wife’s death, Manuel married Sophia Ruby. Sophia Ruby was the sister of Reuben Ruby, an influential antislavery activist and Underground Railroad leader. As a barber, a highly regarded occupation at the time, Manuel was an important person in the black community, as many would congregate at his place of business for haircuts, humor, and serious dialogue. He was also a flutist who organized the first reported brass band in Maine. Manuel, along with several other contributors, would go on to help create the Abyssinian Religious Society and the Abyssinian Congregational Church, which still stands. On June 1, 1842, the Abyssinian Congregational Church would become the site for the founding of the Portland Union Anti-slavery Society, and Manuel would subsequently become its first elected president. His wife, Sophia, survived him by 30 years, and today their bodies rest at the Eastern Cemetery, recently discovered to be a popular grave site of Maine’s African American abolitionists.

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Nichols, Barbara Ware (1937–) Born in Gardiner, Barbara Ware Nichols became the first minority person to be elected president of the American Nurses Association in 1978. Born to Mildred Ware Rogers, Nichols was an only child. She attended Portland High School, where she was one of two blacks in her class (1956). Three years later, she earned her nursing credentials from Massachusetts Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Boston. She went on to earn her B.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 1966 and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973. Nichols has also been a consultant to ministries of health and nurses’ associations. She has written many articles and given over a thousand speeches. The rewards and citations she has received are endless, including four honorary degrees.

Russwurm, John Brown (1799–1851) John Brown Russwurm was the first black graduate from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. Born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, on October 1, 1799, Russwurm grew up in a wealthy family. Of German extraction, his father owned a sugar plantation and is said to have owned more than 50 slaves. Russwurm's maternal heritage is not entirely clear, but records show that his mother was a West Indian woman, perhaps even a slave mistress. After Russwurm’s mother’s death, his father moved his family to Back Cove, Maine (now Portland), and remarried. Russwurm’s stepmother, Susan Blanchard, was a widow who already had children of her own. After Russwurm’s father’s death in 1815, his stepmother married William Hawes, who co-owned a paper mill. With this upper-class background, Russwurm was known to attend leading schools of his time, starting with a boarding school in Quebec,

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Canada. He later went to Hebron Academy, a college preparatory school, owing to his stepparents’ desire to see him succeed. Later, while teaching in Boston, Massachusetts, Russwurm encountered racism and thereafter devoted his life fighting against racism and for the civil rights of black people. He returned to Maine in the 1820s and matriculated at Bowdoin College. There he studied, among other things, anatomy, medicine, and chemistry, but was also rather fond of politics and history. In 1826, he would become Bowdoin College’s first black graduate and only the third American black to graduate from college. Highly regarded by his classmates, he gave the commencement oration on “The Conditions and Prospects of Hayti,” a document that remains insightful and worthy of being read to this day (Price and Talbot, 227). Within the year, Russwurm moved to New York, where many thousands of free blacks lived, and became junior editor of Freedom’s Journal, the country’s first black newspaper. This short-lived publication not only disclosed the tragedies faced by blacks in America but it helped stimulate ideas of social progress and was the initial impetus to Russwurm’s relationship with the early “back to Africa” movement. Freedom’s Journal folded in 1829 (Meier and Rudwick, 107). Russwurm later emigrated to Liberia, West Africa, taking a position as editor of the Liberia Herald. He also became the governor of the Maryland colony of Liberia. As governor he played a critical role in uplifting the standard of living in Liberia, including encouraging agriculture, establishing a legal system, outlawing peonage, and instituting currency exchange. He died in Cape Palmas, Liberia, and his tombstone reads: “John Brown Russwurm: Able, Learned, Faithful, An Honor to His Race.” Today there are several buildings, a national journalism award, and a school honoring the work of John Brown Russwurm.

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Talbot, Gerald E. (1932–) Gerald E. Talbot is the first black elected to the Maine legislature. Deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement throughout New England, Talbot is a member of a family with a long history on the eastern ridge of North America. The Talbots have lived in Maine for more than eight generations. It is likely that Gerald E. Talbot’s ancestors either came to settle in Maine via Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, Canada, or from the South following the Revolutionary War. Gerald Talbot was born in 1932 in Bangor, Maine. Talbot graduated from Bangor High School where he was nicknamed “Timber” and later played on the Carver Club, a semipro basketball team. He joined the army in 1953 and served three years before marrying Anita Cummings. Talbot grew up in a time when racism, although often subtle. Still the Talbot family withstood those tough times, as did so many other black families. According to Talbot, by the 1940s, nearly 75 percent owned their own homes (Price and Talbot, 173). During Talbot’s time, the Bangor black community was closely connected and everyone knew intimately what everyone else was doing. In his now popular book, Maine’s Visible Black History, Talbot recounts the history of the Bangor black community, name by name, street by street, and brick by brick. For example, he documents how one of his high-school classmates went on to join the U.S. Army, earning a Purple Heart in the European theater. He also documents how another member of the community became a professional boxer; another a Boston Latin High School teacher for more than 40 years; another a major in the U.S. Army; another a cook; another a house keeper; and another a long-distance runner. Talbot himself directly faced racism in the housing rental market in Portland, Maine. Talbot, who has light-colored skin, tells of a horrific story of having secured housing due to his light skin hue, but once the landlord discovered

his friends (and he) were black, “a light went off in his head and racism took over” (Price and Talbot, 293). Talbot and his family had to move out before they moved in. They later found a home in the Munjoy Hill area, once the cradle of Portland’s black community. Talbot’s service to Maine and its black heritage is very impressive. In the 1960s, he was the president of the Portland NAACP branch, a position he would hold two more times before the end of the 1980s. In a joint effort with some engaged white activists and NAACP members, as branch president he played a critical role in establishing the Fair Housing bill into law, initiating public accommodations legislature, contesting Portland’s all-white police department’s hiring practices, providing clothes and improved textbooks to libraries and public schools, addressing unemployment challenges, as well as shelter for the homeless. In 1980, he formed BEACH: Black Education And Cultural History. This program was conceived to help reach out to the children of Maine who were seeking to further their educational prospects. Since then BEACH has created educational scholarships, sponsored conferences on racism, interracial marriage and adoption, and held tribute to the 10 outstanding black women throughout Maine. In 1972, Talbot became the first black to become a Maine state legislator, and during his tenure, he displayed black history in the legislative halls of the statehouse. He also introduced the first legislation to establish a state holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1973. The bill finally passed in 1986. Also in this capacity, he fought for and passed a bill to eliminate derogatory black place names in the state of Maine. In 1984, he became the first black to chair the Maine State Board of Education. He also served as a trustee to the Maine Vocational Technical Institute. In 1995, Mr. Talbot donated a world-class black history collection to the University of Southern Maine. He and his wife, Anita,

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have lived and worked in Portland for more than half a century.

Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. From Plantation to Ghetto. Rev. ed. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1970.

Cultural Contributions

Mladinich, Robert. “Tiger Ted Lowry by the Tale.” (Online January 2006.) The Sweet Science Web Site. www.thesweetscience.com.

Black Mainers’ cultural contributions cover the full gamut of life, and are only now beginning to be recognized. Although Maine has the third smallest black population among the states, black Mainers have contributed more than their small size might suggest. By the twentieth century, an automotive engineer, James A. Johnson, Sr., was recognized for his contributions in education, literature, and technology. He cofounded the Maine Vocational and Technical Institute, which is perhaps his greatest legacy. Bob Greene of South Portland, Maine, has given us a litany of informative articles, ranging from an interview with President Harry S. Truman to covering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral, while working as a journalist for the Associated Press for 45 years.

Bibliography Foley, Albert S. Bishop Healy: Beloved Outcaste. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954. Greene, Lorenzo. The Negro in Colonial New England. New York: Columbia University, 1942.

National Bahai Archives. Louis G. Gregory: Champion of Racial Harmony. (Pamphlet.) Wilmette, IL, 1995. Price, H. H., and Gerald E. Talbot. Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House Publishers, 2006. Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. Online, 2006. www.portlanddiocese.net. Sammons, Mark J., and Valerie Cunningham. Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2004. Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Blacks First: 2,000 Years of Extraordinary Achievement. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994. Smith, J. Clay, Jr. Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844–1944. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1993. The Louis G. Gregory Bahai Museum. (Online 2003.) www.louisgregorymuseum.org.

MARYLAND John A. Wagner

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Chronology 1634

Although it has a Protestant majority from the beginning, the settlement of St. Mary’s City is founded by Cecil Calvert, Lord of Baltimore, a Catholic who intends his new colony to be a haven for his co-religionists. Supposedly named for Charles I’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, the colony is really named for the Virgin Mary.

1634

A black man named Matthias De Sousa arrives in Maryland aboard the Ark as an indentured servant. He will be freed after seven years of servitude.

1634

Slavery is introduced into Maryland.

1642

As a member of the Maryland General Assembly, Matthias De Sousa becomes the first African American to sit and vote in an American colonial legislature.

1663

Maryland enacts a law enslaving all African Americans brought into the colony.

1664

Maryland considers drafting a law declaring that the baptism does not confer freedom on a child born to slaves.

1664

Maryland enacts a law declaring that any white woman who marries an African slave should serve her husband’s master for life.

1681

Maryland declares children born to white mothers and African American fathers and children born to free black mothers to be free.

1692

Maryland sentences white men who marry or have children with black women to seven years of servitude and also prohibits African American men from having sexual relations with white women.

1700

The number of slaves in British North America is about 28,000, with most living in the South.

1725

The number of slaves in the British colonies reaches 75,000.

1731

(November 9) Benjamin Banneker is born to free parents in Ellicott, Maryland.

1754

Benjamin Banneker constructs the first clock made entirely in America.

1760

There are over 325,000 slaves in the American colonies, with most residing in the South.

1767

Kunta Kinte, the ancestor of Alex Haley who was immortalized in Haley’s book Roots in the twentieth century, arrives in Annapolis as part of a cargo of slaves.

1784

The Methodist Church orders its members to free their slaves within a year, but the directive faces so much opposition in the South, including Maryland, that it has to be suspended.

1784

Blacks in Baltimore withdraw from the Methodist Church and form Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

1787

The U.S. Constitution provides for a male slave to count as three-fifths of a human being in determining representation in Congress.

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1787

One of Baltimore’s first African American congregations, the Sharp Street United Methodist Church, is established.

1788

(April 28) Maryland enters the Union as the seventh state.

1789

Josiah Henson, who is believed by some to have been the inspiration for “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is born in Charles County, Maryland.

1789

The Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Poor Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage is established in Baltimore.

1791

Benjamin Banneker publishes the first edition of his almanac and works on the survey laying out the District of Columbia for the nation’s new capital.

1793

Refugees from the Haitian slave uprising arrive in Baltimore.

1793

Congress passes the first fugitive slave law.

1796

Maryland forbids the importation of black slaves for sale and allows the voluntary emancipation of slaves.

1798

Joshua Johnston of Baltimore becomes the first African American portrait painter to receive widespread recognition for his work.

1800

According to the U.S. Census, more than one million black slaves reside in the United States, comprising almost 19 percent of the population.

1805

Maryland forbids free blacks from selling corn, wheat, or tobacco without a license.

1807

Congress bans the importation of slaves into the United States.

1809

James W. C. Pennington is born into slavery in Maryland; he will later become the only black member of the Hartford Central Association of Congressional Ministers.

1810

Maryland denies the vote to free blacks.

1815

Clergyman and abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet is born in Maryland.

1816

Daniel Payne Coker, pastor at Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, becomes the first African American Methodist Episcopal bishop.

1817

Black abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass is born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland.

1825

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a black novelist and poet, is born in Baltimore to free parents.

1825

Free blacks in Maryland cannot sell tobacco without a license from a justice of the peace witnessed by at least two white citizens.

1825

Josiah Henson leads a group of runaway slaves from Maryland to freedom.

1827

The Maryland Colonization Society is founded in Baltimore.

1829

The first boarding school for black girls, St. Frances Academy, opens in Baltimore.

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1832

Maryland reacts to Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia by enacting laws restricting free blacks in the state.

1836

Congress passes the “gag rule” to prohibit any antislavery bill or petition from being introduced, read, or discussed.

1838

Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery in Baltimore.

1842

A slaveholders’ convention meets in Annapolis.

1843

A native Marylander, James W. C. Pennington, represents Connecticut at the World AntiSlavery Convention in London.

1845

Frederick Douglass publishes The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave.

1847

Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his newspaper, The North Star.

1849

Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, to freedom in Pennsylvania.

1849

Escaped slave James W. C. Pennington publishes his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith.

1849

Josiah Henson, who escaped from slavery in Charles County, Maryland, publishes his autobiography.

1852

Frederick Douglass delivers perhaps his most famous speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro,” at the Independence Day celebrations in Rochester, New York.

1852

A convention of free blacks from across the state of Maryland meets in Baltimore.

1852

Reverend Harvey Johnson founds the Union Baptist Church in Baltimore; the church will become a center of the Civil Rights Movement in Baltimore in the twentieth century.

1857

In its decision in the Dred Scott case, the U.S. Supreme Court denies slaves citizenship and denies Congress the power to restrict slavery in federal territory.

1860

A bill calling for the enslavement of free blacks in Maryland is defeated by the General Assembly.

1861

(May) Federal troops occupy Baltimore, where secessionist mobs have caused disorder and attacked Union troops passing through the city.

1861

(September) Secessionist members of the Maryland General Assembly are placed under arrest.

1862

The enlistment of slaves and free blacks into the Union army is authorized by Congress.

1862

The Confiscation Act, which frees the slaves of any slave owner who helps the Confederacy, is passed by Congress.

1863

( January 1) President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ends slavery in areas in rebellion against the United States, but does not touch the institution in loyal states and areas, such as Maryland.

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1864

Slavery is abolished in Maryland via the state’s new constitution.

1864

For his bravery at Fort Gilmore, near Richmond, Virginia, Sergeant Major Christian A. Fleetwood of Maryland is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1865

(February 3) Maryland ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1865

Frederick Douglass dedicates the Douglass Institute in Baltimore.

1866

The Chesapeake Marine and Dry-dock Company, owned by the future founder of the Black Labor Union, Isaac Myers, opens in Baltimore.

1869

( July) Isaac Myers and black caulkers in Baltimore found the National Black Labor Union.

1870

(February 26) Maryland rejects the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights to African Americans.

1874

Frederick Douglass becomes president of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.

1877

Frederick Douglass becomes a U.S. Marshal.

1880

Frederick Douglass is appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.

1882

Colored High School is opened in Baltimore.

1885

African American leaders in Baltimore establish the Mutual Brotherhood of Liberty.

1889

Frederick Douglass becomes American consul-general to Haiti.

1890

Harry S. Cummings is elected to the Baltimore City Council, becoming the first black to win a major elective office in the state.

1892

The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper is founded by John H. Murphy, Sr.

1904

Maryland passes a Jim Crow public accommodations statue.

1905

The proposed Poe amendment to the Maryland constitution, which would have disfranchised blacks, is defeated.

1909

The proposed Straus amendment to the Maryland constitution, which would have limited voting by blacks, is defeated by voters.

1909

Maryland native Matthew Henson becomes the first person to reach the North Pole.

1911

The proposed Digges amendment to the Maryland state constitution, which would have used property qualifications to effectively disfranchise many black voters, is defeated.

1912

The Arch Social Club, Baltimore’s oldest African American social club, is founded.

1913

The Baltimore chapter of the NAACP is formed.

1922

Ku Klux Klan rallies are held in Baltimore and Frederick.

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1922

The Douglas Theater, one of the first theaters in the United States owned and operated by blacks, opens in Baltimore.

1926

Baltimore equalizes pay for the city’s black and white teachers.

1931

A white mob lynches a black man in Salisbury, Maryland.

1933

A white mob lynches a black prisoner at Princess Anne, Maryland.

1935

The University of Maryland Law School is opened to blacks after Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP, brings suit; Donald Gaines Murray becomes the first African American to enter the law school.

1938

A state court orders that equal pay be provided for black and white teachers throughout Maryland.

1942

African Americans in Baltimore protest police brutality and demand black representation on the local school board.

1946

The Maryland Congress against Discrimination meets in Baltimore.

1948

The Baltimore County Medical Society becomes the first American Medical Association affiliate in a southern state to open its membership to African Americans.

1948

( July 11) At Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, 24 black tennis players leave the Negro courts to play on the park’s whites-only courts and are arrested.

1950

The University of Maryland School of Nursing is opened to African Americans via a successful lawsuit.

1950

Juanita Jackson Mitchell becomes the first African American graduate of the University of Maryland Law School.

1951

The Maryland Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations is established.

1951

Baltimore city golf courses are opened to African Americans.

1952

Polytechnic High School in Baltimore is integrated.

1953

Maryland state parks are opened to African Americans.

1953

Nine black actors and actresses in Baltimore form the Arena Playhouse, Inc., which is now the oldest continuously operated black community theater in the United States.

1954

The University of Maryland is integrated, becoming the first major southern university to do so.

1955

The desegregation of Maryland public schools begins.

1955

Maryland National Guard units are integrated.

1956

Baltimore enacts an equal employment ordinance.

Maryland

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1958

Irma Dixon and Verda Freeman Welcome become the first African American women elected to the Maryland House of Delegates.

1959

Maryland ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans; the amendment took effect in 1868.

1962

Verda Freeman Welcome becomes the first African American woman elected to the Maryland State Senate.

1963

(February 6) Maryland ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

( June 14) Severe race riots erupt in Cambridge; the disorders resulted in the negotiation of a nonbinding agreement known as the “Treaty of Cambridge,” which listed a series of actions to be undertaken by the Cambridge City Council to improve conditions for the city’s black residents.

1963

( July) Clergymen of both races force the integration of Gwynn Oak Amusement Park just outside Baltimore.

1966

The Maryland legislature enacts a fair employment law.

1967

Frederick Douglass of Maryland becomes the first civil rights leader to be honored on a postage stamp.

1968

(April) Riots erupt in Baltimore following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1969

The Maryland Commission on Negro History and Culture is authorized.

1970

Parren James Mitchell is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, becoming the first African American elected to Congress from Maryland and the first elected from the South in the twentieth century.

1970

Milton B. Allen becomes the first African American elected state's attorney for the city of Baltimore.

1971

Roland Nathaniel Patterson is the first African American appointed superintendent of schools in Baltimore.

1973

(May 7) Maryland ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment, 103 years after the amendment took effect.

1976

Oprah Winfrey becomes coanchor and reporter for WJZ-TV in Baltimore, becoming the first African American woman in the country to hold such a position.

1977

Aris T. Allen becomes the first African American chairperson of the Maryland Republican Party.

1978

Harriet Tubman becomes the first African American woman honored on a postage stamp.

1978

Black Classic Press is founded in Baltimore to publish significant works by and about African Americans.

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1978

Aris T. Allen becomes the first African American to run for state office.

1984

Bishop Robinson becomes the first African American police commissioner of Baltimore.

1986

Kweisi Mfume of Baltimore is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, replacing the retiring Parren James Mitchell.

1986

The NAACP moves its national headquarters to Baltimore.

1987

Kurt Lidell Schmoke is elected the first African American mayor of Baltimore.

1991

Vera Hall becomes the first African American woman chairperson of the Democratic Party of Maryland.

1992

Albert R. Wynn, an African American member of the Maryland State Senate, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s Fourth District.

1995

Elijah E. Cummings is elected as the first black speaker pro tem of the Maryland House of Delegates.

1996

Kweisi Mfume resigns from the U.S. Congress to become president of the NAACP.

1996

Elijah E. Cummings, an African American member of the Maryland House of Delegates, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland to replace Kweisi Mfume after his resignation.

2008

Donna Edwards becomes the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Maryland.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Maryland with about 62 percent of the vote.

2009

Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards is arrested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., while protesting the genocide in Darfur.

Historical Overview Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries The Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano is thought to have explored the Chesapeake region in about 1524, but the first certain European exploration of the area was made by Pedro Menéndez Marqués, governor of Spanish Florida, in 1574. The first English explorers in the region were Bartholomew Gilbert, who visited in 1603, several years before the founding of Jamestown, and Captain John Smith, who explored the Chesapeake from Jamestown in 1608. Colonization of

the area comprising present-day Maryland began in the 1630s. In 1632, Charles I granted George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a former secretary of state and privy councilor, feudal rights to the land between the Potomac River and 40°N latitude, a boundary description that was vague enough to cause a series of border disputes between Maryland and the colony/state of Virginia down to 1930. A Catholic who was long interested in colonization, both for profit and as a refuge for his coreligionists, Baltimore died before the grant was finalized, but his son Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, then undertook the foundation of the colony. Although named Maryland

Maryland ostensibly in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, the French Catholic wife of Charles I, the colony in fact was named for the Virgin Mary. The first settlers arrived in 1634 aboard the ships Ark and Dove. Although Protestants comprised the majority of the population of St. Mary’s City, the first settlement, most of the colony’s officers under the first governor, Leonard Calvert, Lord Baltimore’s brother, were Catholics, a unique circumstance within the British colonial empire. Among the 1634 settlers was Matthias De Sousa, a black indentured servant. Freed after seven years of servitude, De Sousa by 1642 was a member of the Maryland General Assembly, thus becoming the first black man to sit in an American colonial legislature. De Sousa’s example illustrates the fluid nature of race relations in early Maryland. Although slavery existed in the colony almost from the beginning, many blacks, like many whites, came as indentured servants and were freed when their term of service ended. Black and white laborers lived and worked together and even many black slaves were able to gain their freedom—slavery before the 1660s was not necessarily a lifelong status. Many of Maryland’s later free black families originated in this period from marriages or relationships between free, indentured, or enslaved African men and free or indentured white women. As in the other English colonies, the late seventeenth century saw a hardening of racial lines within the colony. The development of tobacco agriculture, particularly in southern Maryland, increased demand for agricultural labor and led to the codification of the institution of slavery into Maryland law. In 1663, the General Assembly passed an act enslaving all Africans brought into the colony. Thus, black servants and their children were henceforth enslaved for life and considered the property of their masters, who could buy and sell them as they wished. In 1664, the Maryland General Assembly debated a bill declaring that Christian baptism did not

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confer freedom on the children of black slaves. Maryland also moved to discourage interracial marriages by enacting a law that forced all white women who married black slaves to serve their husband’s master for life. In 1692, laws were passed prohibiting any sexual relations between black men and white women and sentencing to seven years servitude any white men who married or had children with black women. Nevertheless, in 1681, children born to white mothers of black fathers or born to free black women were declared to be free. In the eighteenth century, slavery was an increasingly important component of the Maryland economy, especially in such southern counties as St. George’s, where slaves comprised almost 60 percent of the population by 1800. Many newly enslaved Africans came into the colonies through the ports of Annapolis and Baltimore, which developed into important commercial centers in the American colonies in the eighteenth century. Kunta Kinte, who was made famous in the twentieth century by his descendent Alex Haley, was brought into America in a cargo of slaves that landed in Annapolis in 1767. However, by the end of the century, during the decades following the Revolutionary War, profits from tobacco declined, causing an accompanying decline in the demand for black fieldhands. In 1783, the state of Maryland outlawed the further importation of slaves, and the state’s policy over the next decade shifted from acquiring more slaves to grow tobacco to seeking means to limit or reduce the state’s black population, both slave and free. Antislavery sentiment also developed in Maryland in the late eighteenth century. In 1784, the Methodist Church ordered its slaveholding members to free their slaves within a year, although resistance to the edict caused it to be suspended. In 1789, one year after Maryland entered the Union as the seventh state, the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Poor Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in

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Bondage was established in Baltimore. In 1793, a wave of black refugees from the Haitian slave rebellion arrived in Baltimore, enlarging that city’s black community. In 1796, the state allowed the voluntary manumission by owners of their slaves.

Nineteenth Century to the Civil War In the antebellum period, Maryland, like Virginia, became a source of new slaves for the cotton-growing states of the Deep South. As Maryland itself became less agricultural, many of the state’s slave owners sought to make profits from selling slaves or supported efforts to recolonize slaves in Africa. The Maryland chapter of the American Colonization Society was founded in 1827 and largely supported by slave owners who found slavery to be no longer economically viable, but who feared to free their slaves and have the state overrun by free blacks. In 1831, the Maryland General Assembly appropriated $10,000 to be made available to transport slaves and free blacks to Africa. The colony of Maryland in Africa was established in 1834, its population composed mainly of ex-slaves and free blacks from Maryland. In 1857, the Maryland colony was annexed by Liberia. To encourage free blacks to leave the state, Maryland in 1832 placed severe restrictions upon them. They were officially denied the vote, the right to hold office, or the ability to serve on juries. Free blacks had to carry proof of their free status or they risked being sold into slavery. In Prince George’s County, freed blacks had to prove that they were employed and had to obtain a license to sell any goods or commodities they produced upon pain of imprisonment or reenslavement. Any free blacks who visited from other states or areas had to leave within 10 days, and any free black who left the state without license for more than 30 days was not allowed to return. Any children born to a free black who married a slave were born slaves, and any child born to free parents had to be

apprenticed to a trade as soon as practical or their apprenticeship would by arranged by the state Orphan’s Court. Driven in part by fears arising from the violence of Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia in 1831, these Maryland measures were designed to encourage free blacks to emigrate and so limit their numbers within the state. Despite these measures, more than 25,000 free blacks, as well as 2,200 slaves, lived in Baltimore in 1860. According to the 1860 Census, the number of slaves in Maryland as a whole exceeded 87,000. Also in 1860, the Maryland legislature considered but did not enact a bill calling for the enslavement of all free blacks in the state. This bill was part of a trend seen throughout the South in the last years before the Civil War in which slave states tried to control or eliminate free blacks within their borders. Although a slave state, Maryland was an important conduit through which runaway slaves were funneled into the Underground Railroad. Many Maryland-born slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, Josiah Henson, and Harriet Tubman, escaped to freedom in the North, where they became leaders of the abolitionist movement or helped other slaves to escape the South or settle successfully in the North. Baltimore, with its large community of free blacks, was the center of a network of stations run by both black and white conductors. These conductors, the most famous of whom was the ex-slave Harriet Tubman, strove to get runaways across the Mason-Dixon line into free Pennsylvania, where more formal networks often run by northern abolitionists helped slaves into freedom in New England or Canada. But it was people like Tubman, or free black vendors on the streets of Baltimore or Washington, who actually aided runaways in escaping successfully from slave territory. Many escape routes emanated from Maryland, and particularly from Baltimore. Harriet Tubman often led runaways up Maryland’s Eastern Shore into Delaware, where a number of Underground Railroad stations were concentrated

Maryland around Wilmington. From there, the runaways made their way to Philadelphia, before setting out for places of settlement further north. Many other slaves boarded boats in Baltimore or elsewhere along the Chesapeake and then sailed north, aided by black ship pilots and black crewmen, both slave and free. The coming of the Civil War split the state. There was much sympathy for the southern cause, but most of the state’s commercial and business community opposed secession and there were fears that fighting would be centered in the state should it leave the Union. And once Virginia seceded in April 1861, the Lincoln administration was determined that Maryland should not secede as well and thus surround Washington by Confederate territory. On April 19, 1861, federal troops marching though Baltimore on their way to Washington were attacked by a secessionist mob. In the ensuing battle, 42 men of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment were killed or wounded, while a dozen of the attackers were slain and scores injured. A month later, federal troops were sent to occupy Baltimore. The incident inspired Baltimore native James Ryder Randall to write a poem that was soon set to music as “Maryland, My Maryland,” which became the unofficial anthem of Maryland secessionists, many of whom fought for the Confederacy. Maryland did not, however, leave the Union, and in 1864 its new constitution abolished slavery within the state.

Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Maryland ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in February 1865 and the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the voting rights of black men in February 1870. However, the state took no action on the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing black citizenship, which it did not ratify until 1959, which was

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91 years after the amendment took effect. In the postwar years, Maryland, like other border states, fully supported a policy of racial segregation. In 1870, the state declared that taxes paid by African Americans be set aside to support separate African American schools. In 1872, state schools for blacks were formally mandated, although no distract had to establish such a school unless the size of the local African American population warranted it. In 1884, the legislature passed an antimiscegenation statute that prohibited all marriages between whites and blacks or anyone of black descent within three generations. Violators faced up to 10 years in prison and ministers performing such marriages were fined $100. In 1904, Maryland railway and steamboat companies were required to provide separate cars or areas for white and black passengers, and public accommodations within the state were segregated. Any company refusing to comply risked fines of up to $1,000, and any passenger refusing to comply could face fines of up to $50, 30 days in jail, or both. In 1908, segregation was extended to streetcars, which now had to designate separate seats for white and black riders. In 1924, miscegenation was declared a felony and racially segregated schools were required throughout the state. Although laws requiring segregation in public accommodations were repealed in 1951, the antimiscegenation laws were strengthened in the 1950s. In 1955, any white woman who gave birth to a child fathered by a black or mulatto man was liable to up to five years’ imprisonment, and in 1957, it became a crime for a white woman to conceive a child with a black man, although the law was struck down as unconstitutional within the year. However, the state’s antimiscegenation laws were not fully repealed until 1967. Several attempts were also made to limit black voting. In 1905 and 1909, two proposed amendments to the Maryland constitution designed to disfranchise African Americans were defeated by voters. A third attempt, the Digges Amendment,

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This commemorative montage depicts the May 19, 1870, parade in Baltimore celebrating the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. One of three Reconstruction amendments enacted in the years immediately following the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted by the U.S. Congress on February 26, 1869, to protect the voting rights of African American men. (Library of Congress)

sought to use property qualifications for voting to achieve the same purpose, but it was also defeated in 1911. Meanwhile, this same period saw the rise of vibrant African American communities in and around Baltimore. African American leaders opened a black high school in the city in 1882 and established the Mutual Brotherhood of Liberty in 1885. John H. Murphy founded the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper in 1892, and the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP was formed in 1913. Many black-owned or directed businesses or organizations also appeared in the state in this period. Isaac Myers founded the national Black Labor Union in Baltimore in 1869, and the Arch Social Club, the oldest black social club

in Baltimore, was established in 1912. The Douglas Theater, one of the first black-owned theaters in the United States, opened in Baltimore in 1922. Nonetheless, racism became more overt in the state in the early twentieth century. In 1919, serious riots erupted in Baltimore as whites, unhappy that blacks were moving into previously all-white neighborhoods, harassed blacks with taunts and jeers. In one instance, blacks, who were frustrated by the failure of the police to respond to their complaints, confronted a mob of white youths and were then attacked with rocks, bottles, and bricks. In the 1920s, Ku Klux Klan rallies were held in Baltimore and other Maryland cities and the lynching of black citizens by white mobs occurred in the state as late as 1933.

Maryland

Ku Klux Klan members attend an initiation ceremony in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1923. The Klan was founded in the South after the Civil War for the purpose of intimidating the newly freed slaves and preventing them from taking advantage of their new rights. Klan members dressed in white robes and hoods to conceal their true identities. (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)

Civil Rights Era and Beyond In 1934, African Americans launched a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign along Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue, which concluded with the hiring by local merchants of several black employees. In 1935, a lawsuit by Thurgood Marshall, who had earlier been denied admittance to the school, opened the University of Maryland Law School to African Americans. In 1938, a state court ordered that equal pay be provided to Maryland’s black and white teachers. In 1942, African American civil rights activists staged the “March to Annapolis” to protest white

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police brutality against blacks. An interracial tennis match held at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore in 1948 led to the arrest of 34 people when police arrived to stop the match. When in the same year a court ruled that Baltimore’s municipal golf courses had to be opened to blacks, the parks board evaded the ruling by designating certain days on which the courses were open to blacks only. The Maryland Teachers Association was integrated in 1951 and blacks were hired for the first time by the Baltimore Fire Department in 1953. Although 500 white students refused to attend classes to protest school integration in the wake of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catholic and Quaker schools in Baltimore announced that they would integrate. The University of Maryland also integrated in 1954, and the desegregation of Maryland public schools began in earnest in 1955. In 1963, Gwynn Oak Amusement Park outside Baltimore was integrated after hundreds of antisegregation demonstrators were arrested at the park and then insulted by white patrons as they were led away. In June 1963, riots erupted in Cambridge with shootings by both blacks and whites, brick throwing, and numerous fires started by Molotov cocktails. The governor sent the National Guard to Cambridge to restore order, but on July 11, further violence erupted when two carloads of armed whites drove down Pine Street, the main black thoroughfare, firing guns in all directions. To end the disorder, local civil rights activist Gloria Richardson, a leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, met with city and Justice Department officials to negotiate the so-called Treaty of Cambridge, which listed a series of nonbinding initiatives the City Council could undertake to improve conditions for black residents. In April 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked riots in Baltimore that resulted in more than 5,000 arrests, 1,000 arson fires, and over 700 persons injured. The governor

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called in federal troops and the National Guard to restore order after three days of rioting. The year 1968 also saw the founding of the Baltimore branch of the Black Panther Party, which opened its “People’s Free Clothing Program” in the city. Since the 1950s, African Americans have made significant political gains in the state. In 1954, three African Americans were elected to the Maryland General Assembly—Emory Cole and Truly Hatchett to the House of Delegates and Henry Cole to the state Senate. In 1958, Verda Freeman Welcome and Irma Dixon became the first African American women elected to the Maryland House of Delegates, and in 1962 Welcome won election to the state Senate. In 1970, Maryland sent its first African American representative to the U.S. Congress in the person of Parren James Mitchell; he was the first African American elected to Congress from a southern state in the twentieth century. Mitchell retired in 1986 and was replaced in Congress by Kweisi Mfume, who served until his resignation in 1996 to become president of the NAACP. Kurt Schmoke became the first black mayor of Baltimore in 1987, and Albert R. Wynn, a member of the Maryland State Senate, was elected to Congress in 1992. Elijah E. Cummings, the first African American speaker pro tem of the Maryland House of Delegates, was elected to replace Mfume in Congress in 1996. Donna Edwards became the first black woman elected to Congress from Maryland in 2008, the same year Maryland gave over 60 percent of its popular vote for president to Barack Obama, the black Democratic senator from Illinois.

grandmother and by Peter Heinrichs, a Quaker farmer who established a school in the neighborhood, Banneker taught himself astronomy as an adult, using books and equipment lent to him by George Ellicott, a Quaker neighbor. In 1791, Banneker was hired by Ellicott to assist the survey team laying out the boundaries of the new federal district. Between 1792 and 1797, Banneker published a series of almanacs containing many astronomical calculations. He also kept a series of journals and a diary. In 1791, he sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson, criticizing Jefferson’s treatment of his slaves and calling for justice and equality for blacks.

Blake, James Hubert “Eubie” (1887–1983) Born in Baltimore to former slaves, Eubie Blake was one of the greatest American composers and performers of ragtime and jazz of the twentieth century. He started playing the organ at age 5, and by his early teens was performing on the piano at nightclubs, saloons, and brothels in Baltimore. In 1921, Blake and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Among Blake’s other well-known compositions are “Bandana Days,” “Charleston Rag,” “Love Will Find A Way,” “Memories of You,” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” In 1978, a musical entitled Eubie, which featured Blake’s music, opened on Broadway. Blake received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two years before his death.

Notable African Americans

Calloway, Cabell “Cab” III (1907–1994)

Banneker, Benjamin (1731–1806)

Born in Rochester, New York, but raised in Baltimore, Cab Calloway was a band leader, jazz singer, and master of scat, a style of singing that uses random syllables or no words at all to make the voice sound as if it were performing an instrument solo. Calloway briefly attended law school before achieving national fame as leader of one of the most

Benjamin Banneker was born free near Ellicott City. His father was an escaped slave and his mother was freeborn, the daughter of a white woman, Molly Welsh, and her former slave, Banneka, whom Molly freed and married. Taught to read by his

Maryland popular African American big bands in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1931, Calloway’s band, which included such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Doc Cheatham, performed at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, replacing Duke Ellington’s band while it was on tour. So popular was Calloway’s band that it began touring nationwide, appearing on Walter Winchell’s radio program and with Bing Crosby in New York. Through these performances, Calloway, along with Ellington, helped break the color barrier for black performers at major broadcast networks. Calloway’s most famous song was “Minnie the Moocher,” recorded in 1931. Calloway continued to perform up to his death in 1994.

Douglass, Frederick (1818–1895) Douglass was born into slavery in Tuckahoe in Talbot Country; his mother, Harriet Bailey, was a slave who died when Douglass was seven, and his father is obscure but may have been Harriet’s master. Taught the alphabet by the wife of his master, Douglass then secretly taught himself to read and write. Escaping from slavery in 1838, he settled in Massachusetts, where his great ability as a speaker and writer made him a leader of the abolitionist movement. In 1845, he published his influential autobiography Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. During the Civil War, he was an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln, and after the war, he worked for equal rights for African Americans. He was the first African American to hold high rank in the federal government, serving as U.S. minister and consul-general to Haiti. In 1888 at the Republican National Convention, he became the first black man to receive a vote for president.

Gaddy, Beatrice (1933–2001) Born in North Carolina, Beatrice Gaddy moved to Baltimore in 1964. In 1981, unemployed and on food stamps, she used $290 from a winning

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lottery ticket to feed herself and 39 neighbors at Thanksgiving, starting an annual Thanksgiving event that eventually fed thousands. Soliciting donations from grocers and other suppliers, Gaddy opened a food kitchen run by those in need. Her work led to the creation of the Bea Gaddy Foundation and caused her to become widely known throughout the city as the “Mother Teresa of Baltimore” and “Saint Bea.” She also directed a food pantry, a furniture bank, clothing drives, shelters for women and children, and a program to refurbish abandoned row houses. She was mentioned by President George H. W. Bush as one of his “thousand points of light.” The anniversary of her death, October 3, is known as Bea Gaddy Day in Baltimore.

Harper, Frances E. W. (1825–1911) Born free in Baltimore, Frances Harper was a poet, writer, and abolitionist leader. She published her first book of poetry, Forest Leaves, in 1845. She became a traveling lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853 and involved herself through speaking and writing in most of the important political and social issues of the nineteenth century, including abolition, antilynching campaigns, and women’s rights. In 1859, she published The Two Others, which is considered the first short story published by an African American in the United States Featuring a female protagonist, her most famous work is her novel Iola Leroy, which was published in 1892 when she was 67. In 1897, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women.

Henson, Josiah (1789–1883) Born a slave in Charles County, Henson escaped from bondage in 1830 and settled in Canada, where he founded a school and a community known as Dawn Settlement for other ex-slaves. In 1849, he published his autobiography The Life

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Black America educated himself and became a skilled navigator while sailing around the world as a merchant seaman. In 1887, he met the explorer Robert Peary, who, impressed by Henson’s navigational skills, recruited him for various voyages of exploration, including expeditions to Nicaragua and the Arctic. During the 1909 Arctic expedition, Henson appears to have been the first member of Peary’s team to reach the North Pole, where Henson planted the American flag. Although Peary was widely honored for the achievement, Henson was largely ignored, and Henson’s 1912 book, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, angered Peary, who saw it as an attempt to encroach on his fame. In 1944, Congress awarded Henson a duplicate of the silver medal given to Peary.

Holiday, Billie (1915–1959) Josiah Henson, 1876. Henson is believed by some to have been the inspiration for “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (Library of Congress)

of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself, which was later used by Harriet Beecher Stowe in writing her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Because of this, it is believed that Stowe’s character of Uncle Tom is based upon Henson. He also became a Methodist preacher and an abolitionist lecturer. In 1876, continuing interest in his life generated by his connection with Stowe’s novel led him to publish an updated version of his autobiography entitled Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson. He died at Dawn Settlement in 1883.

Henson, Matthew (1866–1955) Born on a form near Nanjemoy in Charles County, Henson went to sea as a cabin boy after his parents died when he was only 13. He

Born in Philadelphia with the name Eleanora Fagan, but raised in Baltimore largely by relatives and friends of her mother, who was a Baltimore native, Eleanora took the stage name Billie Holiday in about 1929 when she started singing in clubs, bars, and brothels in Harlem, where she had moved with her mother in 1928. She made her recording debut with Benny Goodman in 1933, after record producer John Hammond heard her singing at a local club. Holiday transformed the art of jazz singing with her distinct and deeply personal vocal style, which illustrated novel methods of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday, who later performed at Carnegie Hall and starred opposite Louis Armstrong in the 1947 film New Orleans, also cowrote a number of well-known jazz songs, including “God Bless the Child,” “Don’t Explain,” “Fine and Mellow,” and “Lady Sings the Blues.” Widely known by her nickname, “Lady Day,” Holiday was also famous for several of the jazz standards she performed, including “Easy Living” and “Strange Fruit,” which condemned the lynching of African Americans and which, in Holiday’s version, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978.

Maryland

Leonard, Ray Charles “Sugar Ray” (1956–) Born in North Carolina, Ray Leonard moved to Palmer Park in Prince George’s County when he was 11. Leonard stated boxing at the recreation center in Palmer Park in 1969. Named for his mother’s favorite singer, he got his nickname when a boxing coaching told his trainer that as a boxer Leonard was “sweet as sugar.” He won the national Golden Gloves lightweight championship in 1973 and won the gold medal as a light welterweight at the 1976 Olympics. He made his professional debut in 1977 and, before retiring in 1998, became the first boxer to win over $100 million in purses and championships in five weight divisions, defeating most of the top boxers of his era. Considered one of the best boxers of all time, he was named “Boxer of the Decade” for the 1980s. He has worked as a boxing analyst for various networks since his retirement.

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University in Pennsylvania in 1930. Denied entrance to the University of Maryland because of his race, he earned a law degree from Howard University and in 1935 successfully sued the University of Maryland in Pearson v. Murray, thereby ending segregation at the university’s law school. In 1940, he became chief counsel for the NAACP and thus became lead attorney for the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine and opened the door to integration of public education. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Marshall as the first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He died in 1993 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Mitchell, Clarence M., Jr. (1911–1984)

Born in Baltimore, Reginald Lewis earned a degree in economics from Virginia State College in 1965 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1968. In the early 1980s, he bought McCall Pattern Company, which he brought to great profitability and sold for $90 million. In 1987, he bought Beatrice International Foods, a snack foods, beverage, and grocery conglomerate that he renamed TLC Beatrice International. The company became the first African American–owned enterprise to achieve more than $1 billion in profits. In 1992, Forbes Magazine named Lewis one of the 400 richest Americans with a net worth of about $400 million.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Clarence Mitchell was educated at Old Douglass High School and then at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He saw the aftermath of a lynching in Cambridge while working for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, which spurred him to become active in the fight for civil rights. For almost 30 years, he was chief lobbyist for the NAACP, where his advocacy for a series of civil rights measures, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, won him the Spingarn Medal in 1969 and earned him the nickname of “the 101st U.S. Senator.” In 1980, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter. After his retirement, he wrote a Sunday editorial column on civil rights for the Baltimore Sun. After his death, Baltimore renamed its courthouse after him.

Marshall, Thurgood (1908–1993)

Pennington, James W. C. (1807–1870)

Born in Baltimore, the great-grandson of slaves, Marshall graduated from Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School in 1925 and from Lincoln

Born a slave in Washington County, James Pennington escaped to Pennsylvania and in 1828 moved to New York. Settling in New Haven,

Lewis, Reginald F. (1942–1993)

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Connecticut, where he plied his trade as a blacksmith, Pennington attended classes at Yale Divinity School, becoming the first African American student at Yale. He was later ordained a minister and in 1849 received an honorary doctorate of divinity from the University of Heidelberg. In 1841, he published The Origin and History of the Colored People, considered the first history of African Americans, and in 1850, he published his famous autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith. Self-taught, Pennington, through his speeches and writings, became a leader of the antebellum antislavery movement.

Richardson, Gloria (1922–) Born in Baltimore, the granddaughter of a city councilman, Gloria Richardson grew up in Cambridge, where she became a founder of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) and a leader of the Cambridge Movement, a campaign to win civil rights for the city’s black community. In June 1963, serious race riots erupted in Cambridge, leaving the city under martial law. Richardson was part of the negotiations conducted by a Department of Justice team that included Robert Kennedy and that led to the signing of the so-called Treaty of Cambridge, which listed various actions the Cambridge City Council could undertake to improve conditions for the city’s blacks. When a city charter amendment calling for desegregation of public accommodations was put up for a vote, Richardson broke with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders and called on blacks to stay away from the polls because a group’s basic civil rights should not be put up for vote. Richardson left Cambridge in 1964 and today works for New York City’s Department for the Aging.

considered free, although he grew up with slaves. Tindley moved to Philadelphia after the Civil War and taught himself Greek and Hebrew. He put himself through school while working as a church janitor, eventually earning a doctorate and achieving ordination as a Methodist minister. He founded one of the largest African American Methodist congregations in the country in Philadelphia. Tindley also made a name for himself as a composer of gospel hymns, and is often called the “Father of Gospel Music.” He composed almost 50 hymns and published a collection of hymns entitled New Songs of Paradise in 1916. Tindley’s two best-known compositions are “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” which is believed to be the basis for the later civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” and “Stand by Me,” which was later remade by Ben E. King.

Tubman, Harriet (1820–1913) Born a slave in Dorchester County, Harriet Tubman escaped from bondage in 1849 and immediately returned to Maryland to help members of her family to freedom. Over the next decade, she is believed to have made 19 trips into slave territory and to have helped over 300 slaves escape to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Known as “Moses,” she famously told an audience after the Civil War that she “never lost a single passenger” as a conductor on the railroad. During the war, Tubman worked for the Union army as a cook, nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. She led a military raid into South Carolina in 1863, which resulted in the liberation of almost 700 slaves. After the war, Tubman was active in the women’s rights movement.

Cultural Contributions Tindley, Charles Albert (1851–1933) Born in Berlin, the son of a free mother and a slave father, Charles Tindley was himself

There are numerous institutions and organizations that celebrate the African American history of Maryland. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of

Maryland

Portrait of Harriet Tubman, a leader of the Underground Railroad. (Library of Congress)

Maryland African American History and Culture opened in Baltimore in 2005. Dedicated to preserving Maryland’s black heritage, the museum is the second-largest African American museum in the world. The Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards, the home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, also opened in 2005. It contains many artifacts relating to the Negro Baseball Leagues and specifically to Baltimore’s two African American teams, the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Baltimore Black Sox. Elmer and Joanne Martin founded the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore in 1983. Today the museum contains over 100 wax figures of prominent African Americans, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Sojourner Truth, and a fullscale replica of a slave trading ship. In January, the museum offers a special exhibit commemorating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural

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Center in Baltimore contains permanent collections illustrating the lives of such Baltimore jazz legends as Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, and Chick Webb. The center also sponsors jazz concerts, cultural events, and performing arts classes. Maryland also offers a number of African American cultural festivals and programs. In February, the Black Heritage Art Show is held at the Baltimore Convention Center. The annual event brings together the works of African American artists from across the country, and also features workshops, seminars, and poetry readings. The African American Renaissance Grand Tour is held the last Friday of February; it features actors in period costumes reenacting important episodes from Baltimore’s African American history and black heritage sites throughout the city. During the summer, Baltimore offers the weekly Showcase of Nations Ethnic Festivals, which showcase African American and other ethnic foods, crafts, music, dance, and other entertainments. Jazzy Summer Nights is a free concert series featuring the best of local jazz bands and performers. The African American Heritage Festival is held in June at Camden Yards ballpark in Baltimore. The festival offers crafts, music, and artwork by local and national artists. Baltimore’s three-day Juneteenth Festival, commemorating the arrival of news of emancipation in Texas and the Southwest, offers jazz, blues, and gospel music; food and cooking contests; a celebrity basketball game; arts and crafts exhibitions; historical lectures; and storytelling. Baltimore also has a number of African American cultural and historical sites. The Frederick Douglass “Path of Freedom” walking tour covers numerous sites associated with Douglass’ life in Baltimore and Maryland. These sites include several eighteenth-century buildings associated with Douglass during his youth as a slave in Maryland, as well as houses where he lived, churches where he worshipped, and places where he was educated.

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Also on the tour are the five historic townhouses that he built in Baltimore after the Civil War. Baltimore’s Civil War walking tour also covers many important African American sites in the city, including some associated with slavery days and others with the black communities that developed around the city after the war. The Thurgood Marshall walking tour covers 12 sites in and around Baltimore associated with the country’s first black Supreme Court justice. Finally, the “Finding a Way to Freedom” tour covers sites in and around Cambridge that are associated with Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, including a Harriet Tubman museum and a country general store where she is said to have prevented the capture of a runaway slave.

Bibliography Argersinger, Jo Ann E. Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Bode, Carl. Maryland: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1978. Brackett, Jeffrey R. The Negro in Maryland: A Study of the Institution of Slavery. Reprint ed. Lenox, MA: HardPress, 2008. Browne, Gary Lawson. Baltimore in the Nation, 1789–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Brugger, Robert J. Maryland, A Middle Temperament: 1634–1980. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Callum, Agnes Kane. Colored Volunteers of Maryland, Civil War, 7th Regiment, United States Colored Troops, 1863–1866. Baltimore: Mullac Publishers, 1990. Callum, Agnes Kane. 9th Regiment United States Colored Troops, Volunteers of Maryland, Civil

War, 1863–1866. Baltimore: Mullac Publishers, 1999. Chapelle, Suzanne Ellery, and Glenn O. Phillips. African American Leaders of Maryland: A Portrait Gallery. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2003. Diggs, Louis S. From the Meadows to the Point: The Histories of the African American Community of Turner Station and What Was the African American Community in Sparrows Point. Baltimore: By the Author, 2003. Diggs, Louis S. Holding On to Their Heritage. Baltimore: Uptown Press, 1996. Diggs, Louis S. In Our Voices: A Folk History in Legacy (African American Community of Baltimore, Maryland). Baltimore: Uptown Press, 1998. Diggs, Louis S. It All Started on Winters Lane: A History of the Black Community in Catonsville, Maryland. Baltimore: By the Author, 1995. Diggs, Louis S. Since the Beginning: African American Communities in Towson. Baltimore: Uptown Press, 2000. Diggs, Louis S. Surviving in America: Histories of Seven Black Communities in Baltimore County, Maryland. Baltimore: Uptown Press, 2002. Dozer, Donald. Portrait of the Free State: A History of Maryland. Cambridge, MD: Tidewater, 1976. Durr, Kenneth D. Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940– 1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Farrar, Hayward. The Baltimore Afro-American: 1892–1950. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Fields, Barbara J. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.

Maryland Fuke, Richard Paul. Imperfect Equality: African Americans and the Confines of White Racial Attitudes in Post-Emancipation Maryland. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to 1810. Baltimore: Clearfield Company, 2000. Hoffman, Ronald. A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. McCormac, Eugene Irving. White Servitude in Maryland, 1634–1820. Westminster, MD: Willow Bend Books, 2002. Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

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Papenfuse, Edward C., et al. Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Phillips, Christopher. The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Poe, William A. African Americans of Calvert County. Mt. Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Risjord, Norman K. Chesapeake Politics, 1781– 1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004. Walsh, Richard, and William Lloyd Fox, eds. Maryland: A History. Baltimore: Maryland Hall of Records, 1983. Wennersten, John R. Maryland’s Eastern Shore: A Journey in Time and Place. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1992.

MASSACHUSETTS Fred Lindsey

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Chronology 1630

Massachusetts passes the first law protecting any slaves who flee brutal treatment by their masters.

1635

First African slaves in Massachusetts arrive in Salem in exchange for Native Americans sent in bondage to the West Indies.

1641

Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery for African Americans, Native Americans, and mulattos, but their natural rights include use of the legal system.

1652

Massachusetts enacts a law requiring all African American and Native American servants to undergo military training to enable them to help defend the colony.

1656

Fearing the potential for a slave uprising, the Massachusetts colonial legislature reverses the 1652 statute and prohibits African Americans from arming or training as militia.

1670

The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that enables its citizens to sell the children of enslaved Africans into bondage, thus separating them from their families.

1673

The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that forbids European Americans from engaging in any trade or commerce with African Americans.

1693

The Society of Negroes, a self-help organization, is founded in Boston.

1700

Massachusetts Chief Justice Samuel Sewall publishes The Selling of Joseph, a book that advances both economic and moral reasons for the abolition of the African slave trade.

1746

Lucy Terry (1724–1821) composes “Bars Fight,” the first known poem by an African American. A description of an Indian raid on Terry’s hometown, the poem is passed down orally and published in 1850.

1754

A Massachusetts Census counts the total population of enslaved blacks in the colony; 647 male slaves and 342 female slaves are counted in Boston.

1764

African Americans are granted the right to vote in Boston.

1770

(March 5) Crispus Attacks, a runaway slave, is killed in the Boston Massacre.

1770

(April 19) Free blacks fight alongside white Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord.

1773

Phillis Wheatley, a slave of the Wheatley family of Boston, authors the first book of poetry by an African American; it is published in London.

1773–1778

Prince Hall, spiritual leader, and other free blacks petition the Massachusetts legislature for the same rights and privileges as their white peers.

1774

(March 8) The Massachusetts General Assembly passes the first act forbidding the importation of black slaves. It was suspended by the royal governor the following day.

Massachusetts

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1775

( June 17) Two African Americans, Peter Salem and Salem Poor, are commended for their service on the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

1778

Phillis Wheatley is legally freed upon the death of her master.

1780–1783

The Massachusetts state constitution provides a Declaration of Rights, which includes equality for all men. Under the constitution, the first test cases of Quock Walker and Mumbet (Elizabeth) Freedom lead to the declaration that slavery is unconstitutional.

1783

Paul Cuffee and his brother John are leaders of a lawsuit that gives African Americans civil equality in the state by allowing them to vote.

1784

The first African Lodge of Free Masons in Massachusetts is formed with Prince Hall as master.

1787

Prince Hall petitions the Boston School Committee for a separate school for “colored” children.

1788

(February 6) Massachusetts enters the Union as the sixth state.

1788

After three Boston free black men are kidnapped and taken to the West Indies, Prince Hall and 21 associates petition to the legislature, and the kidnapped men are returned to Boston.

1796

Boston’s African Society is established.

1798–1800

A private school for “Africans” is established in the house of Prince Hall.

1808

( January 1) By an act of Congress, the transportation of enslaved Africans into the United States is outlawed.

1815

Abiel Smith, a wealthy white businessman, dies and leaves money to establish an African school in Boston.

1816

The American Colonization Society is formed to encourage the emigration of free blacks from the United States to West Africa. Paul Cuffee, a ship captain and wealthy Westport African American, leads an expedition to Sierra Leone in West Africa for settlement.

1822

After decades of absence, African Americans are linked to the whaling industry, as Abaslon Boston commands an historic voyage on the ship Industry, with an all-black crew.

1825

Under the leadership of David Walker, the Massachusetts General Colored Association is founded to abolish slavery and improve conditions for blacks.

1829

Jacob Perry is the first and only African American teacher in the African school in Nantucket.

1829

David Walker (1785–1830) publishes the Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (David Walker’s Appeal). The Appeal called for violence against slaveholders. Walker

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1829 (cont.)

is murdered in 1830, at his business on Beacon Hill. He was wanted “dead or alive” for $1,000.

1832

(February 22) A group of “females of color” in Salem form the first black women’s antislavery society in the United States. The abolitionist press documents the existence of a variety of women’s antislavery societies during this period. Freed black women actively participate in the racially mixed societies.

1841

John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, a former president of the United States, successfully defends black mutineers in the Amistad case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1844

Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard.

1845

The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that requires integrated schools.

1845

(May 3) Macon B. Allen (1816–1894) of Worcester becomes the first black formally admitted to the bar in any state. He had been allowed to practice in Maine two years earlier.

1847

Frederick Douglass begins editing The North Star newspaper.

1849

In Roberts v. Boston, a lawsuit seeking to end racial discrimination in Boston public schools, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules in favor of Boston, finding no constitutional cases for the suit.

1850

( June 27) Robert Morris becomes the first African American lawyer to pass the bar in Boston.

1850

John V. DeGrasse is the first black doctor admitted to the Massachusetts Medical Society. He graduated from Bowdoin Medical School (Maine) in 1849.

1851

Black abolitions rescue a fugitive slave from a Boston courtroom.

1853

Sarah Parker Remond is ejected from a Boston theater for refusing to sit in the section reserved for blacks. Injured during her ejection, she sues and recovers damages. The theater is later desegregated.

1855

A law is passed calling for the integration of all public schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

1859

Former slave and community activist Lewis Hayden becomes the first black political appointee in Boston, when he is made messenger to the Massachusetts secretary of state.

1860

The Census reports 2,260 African Americans (1.3 percent of the African American population of Massachusetts) live in Boston.

1863

The all-black Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment is formed in Boston. Eight hundred African Americans become part of the 54th Regiment, but more than 4,000 African Americans take up arms for the North in the Civil War.

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1865–1869

The Freedmen’s Bureau sponsors a program that relocates African Americans from the Tidewater region of Virginia to Boston; during the program, more than a thousand African Americans move to Boston and Cambridge.

1865

(February 7) Massachusetts ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

Charles Lewis Mitchell (1829–1912) and Edward Garrison Walker (1831–1910), the son of David Walker, are elected to the Massachusetts legislature, becoming the first African Americans elected to a state legislature. Mitchell also serves as the first African American inspector of customs in Boston, and Walker becomes a prominent Boston lawyer and a Democrat, a surprising switch of party for the time.

1867

(March 20) Massachusetts ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full citizenship rights to African Americans.

1868

(February 23) William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, one of the twentieth century’s greatest intellectuals and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is born in Great Barrington.

1869

(March 12) Massachusetts ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing blacks the right to vote.

1870

The official number of African Americans living in Boston reaches 3,445.

1890

The black population of Boston reaches 8,000.

1890

( June 25) W. E. B. Du Bois graduates, cum laude, from Harvard University, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard.

1899

In Cambridge, Maria Baldwin becomes the North’s first African American headmaster of a predominantly white school.

1915

When Massachusetts blacks object to the racist film Birth of a Nation, Governor Edward Walsh bans the film in Massachusetts outside Boston.

1938

Malcolm Little (later Malcolm X) moves to Boston to attend the eighth grade. He stays in the Boston area for the next eight years.

1951

(September) Martin Luther King Jr. arrives at Boston University to study for his Ph.D. While in Boston, King meets his future wife Coretta Scott, another southerner attending the Boston school.

1962

Edward Brooke is elected attorney general of Massachusetts, becoming the first African American to serve as an elected attorney general of a state.

1963

(March 28) Massachusetts ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

( June 18) 3,000 blacks boycott Boston’s segregated public schools.

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1966

Edward Brooke is elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, becoming the first black elected to the Senate by popular vote.

1973

Roxbury Community College is founded after Boston’s African American community pressures the state.

1974

The federal court orders the integration of Boston public schools.

1974

The Boston offices of the NAACP are firebombed to protest the busing of children to integrate public schools.

1985

Black Bostonians vote on a referendum to secede from Boston and form their own city with Roxbury and Dorchester. The new city, which was to be called Mandela, is voted down.

1992

Ralph Martin becomes the first African American elected as Suffolk County’s (Boston) District Attorney.

2004

Andrea J. Cabral, an African American, is elected the first female sheriff in the history of Suffolk County (Boston).

2006

Deval L. Patrick of Milton wins a landslide victory to become the first African American elected governor of Massachusetts.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Massachusetts with about 62 percent of the vote.

2009

( July) Henry Louis Gates, a prominent African American professor at Harvard, is arrested after a confrontation with a white police officer at his home. The officer had been called by a neighbor who thought Gates and his driver, who were working on a stuck door, were trying to break into the house. The resulting controversy involved President Obama, who invited both Gates and the officer to the White House to discuss the incident.

Historical Overview The Colonial Period to the Civil War The first African Americans came to Massachusetts and were taken to Noodles Island, in Boston Harbor, as slaves in 1638. They came to a Puritan colony that was already attempting to deal with the problem of how to relate to another group of people who were different from themselves, the Native Americans. In 1641, the Bay Colony’s leaders produced the document called the “Massachusetts Body of Liberties,” which,

among other things, paved the way for the possible future enslavement not only of Native Americans, but African Americans, as well, because it gave them the right to enslave “lawful captives taken in just wars,” meaning the Native Americans, in particular, but was broadened to include African Americans. In 1646, the Puritan leadership took a strong stand against the concept of “man stealing.” Although this did not prevent Massachusetts merchants from becoming actively involved in the slave trade, it kept the number of African

Massachusetts Americans in the colony very small. The rocky soil was not conducive to large-scale agriculture, and there was sufficient free or indentured white labor for most farming and artisanal tasks. Those African Americans who were brought in became either house servants or farm laborers, who lived with their masters. Massachusetts was similar to other colonies that passed laws to regulate the conduct of slaves. In 1656, the Bay Colony followed Virginia and Maryland’s lead, taking away from all blacks the right to bear arms. This was followed in 1705 by a strict law prohibiting racial intermarriage, but contrary to other states, African Americans could own property, serve as witnesses, and sue in court, which was a right of importance in the bringing of freedom suits. While African Americans never became more than 2 percent of the population, by 1720, there were 2,000 African Americans in the colony, most of whom were slaves. By 1776, the number of African Americans had increased to 5,250 based on a total Massachusetts population of 349,094. As sentiment in Massachusetts against slavery and the slave trade grew, the campaign by Samuel Sewall for an import duty on slaves, with the hope of ending the trade, was largely ineffective. When the rebellion against the English escalated, white Americans attacking British tyranny began to take action against slavery. James Otis was one of many who argued that there was no law permitting slavery in Massachusetts. A bill was passed banning the slave trade in 1771, but Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson vetoed it. At the same time, Massachusetts African Americans, led by Prince Hall, began to petition for the end of slavery in the colony. These petitions were ignored by legislators, who wished to maintain white unity against the British. Many Massachusetts African Americans actively supported the revolutionary cause, including Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770. Soldiers Salem Poor and Peter

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Salem and others distinguished themselves at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. In 1780, Massachusetts adopted a new state constitution, which included the declaration of natural rights. The next year, Quock Walker of Worcester County sued successfully for his freedom. When his former owner prosecuted him as a runaway in 1783, Massachusetts Chief Justice William Cushing ruled that Walker, and therefore every other African American in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was free. This initial decision went largely unnoticed and slaves continued to be sold. However, public opinion had formed solidly against slavery in Massachusetts and as blacks and white sympathizers began to press freedom suits based on Cushing’s precedent, owners began to manumit their slaves rather than lose them in legal challenges. And as a consequence, slavery came to an end in the state. The 1790 Massachusetts Census reported 5,369 free blacks and no slaves in the state. After African Americans were freed, they continued to face discrimination in Massachusetts and they were denied voting rights. In 1786, the law banning intermarriage was strengthened. In 1821, the state legislature appointed a committee to investigate methods of restricting free African Americans from entering Massachusetts. Education, where it existed for African Americans, remained segregated. Paul Cuffee, a wealthy black merchant and ship owner from the southeastern part of the state, vowed not to pay his taxes until granted voting rights. Eventually, he gave up hope of equal treatment and became involved in black colonization schemes in Sierra Leone. In 1825, African Americans led by William G. Nell established the Massachusetts General Colored Association, an abolitionist group which also defended the rights of free Massachusetts blacks. The organization was soon joined by David Walker, whose appeal to the colored citizens of the world, published in 1829, denounced slavery and urged slaves to resist the institution by any

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means possible. Walker questioned the exclusion of blacks from Massachusetts juries and government and attacked the law against intermarriage as a caste system. By 1830, Boston had become the center of America’s fledgling abolitionist movement. In 1833, black abolitionists such as Robert Purvis, James McCrummell, John B. Vashon, and Peter Williams worked with whites led by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan to form the interracial American AntiSlavery Society, based in Boston. It was crucial in the organizing of abolitionist newspapers and meetings. In 1841, Frederick Douglass started his career as an activist when he was hired as an agent by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. During the antislavery period, Massachusetts had a very active African American community. Black opponents of slavery were supported by white abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, in the years before the Civil War. The agitation centered on Boston, where nearly 25 percent of Massachusetts blacks lived, and where African Americans faced their harshest bigotry from white merchants, who had southern connections, and Irish immigrants, who were in competition with blacks for jobs. However, as a result of black and white pressure, racial intermarriage was legalized in 1843, and in the same year, state railroads stopped running Jim Crow cars. In 1885, following a 15-year struggle led by the militant integrationist William Cooper Nell, the state legislature passed a bill banning Boston’s Jim Crow schools, the state’s only segregated schools at the time. Still, in 1857, there were times when Boston blacks were refused permission to serve in the state militia despite repeated petitions, and after they had purchased their own uniforms and arms.

Civil War to Twentieth Century When the Civil War began, Massachusetts’ African Americans raised money for the Union’s cause. In 1863, blacks were recruited as soldiers

for the Union army. Blacks from across the state volunteered, although many of Boston’s black residents, who were bitter from the militia struggles and angry at being forced to serve in segregated units, refused to commit to service. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was one of the first black units formed, and the 54th distinguished itself by a courageous charge at Fort Wagner, Morris Island, South Carolina, in November, 1863. There is a memorial to the 54th on Beacon and Park Streets at the Boston Common. It is considered a landmark of civic black pride. In 1865, a year before the first federal Civil Rights Act, Massachusetts passed a comprehensive civil rights bill. African Americans were guaranteed the right to vote and to be admitted to all “licensed” public establishments. Unlicensed establishments were added in 1874 and other facilities in 1895. These laws were laxly enforced, and even Civil War hero Roberts Smalls had difficulty obtaining a hotel room when he visited Boston in 1880. The first blacks were elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1866. One of them, Edwin Garrison Walker of Charleston (the son of David Walker), continued serving until the turn of the century. During this period, African Americans voted the Republican Party ticket, but when Governor Benjamin Butler broke with the party in 1883, African Americans voted for him in large numbers, and he rewarded his supporters by appointing a black municipal judge in Charlestown. African Americans also served as customs collectors and held other political patronage positions. By the turn of the century, Massachusetts had largely abandoned its commitment to black equality, but even so, the state was one of the least difficult places to live for an African American. White sympathizers, including abolitionists and their descendants, fought along with blacks for civil rights. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Massachusetts blacks formed

Massachusetts a militia company to support it. When southern whites protested the inclusion of black troops, white Massachusetts supported the African American units. The soldiers went to Cuba and were the only black volunteer troops to see action in the conflict. In the decades following the Civil War, Massachusetts’ black population merged into two distinct and sometimes antagonistic groups. One was the small “colored elite,” led by such figures as Archibald Grimke, William Monroe Trotter, Maria Louise Baldwin, William H. Lewis, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, born in Great Barrington, was closely associated with the group during his years at Harvard University. The “colored elite,” as they loved to call themselves, were composed of native-born Massachusetts residents, most of whom were brought up in largely white towns and suburbs. They were Massachusetts college graduates (Harvard being their favored institution). Some white southerners refused to attend classes with them. And they usually worked in prestigious professions such as the law or higher education. They felt strongly the need to uplift African Americans and they defended blacks’ civil rights against white attacks. The elite spoke collectively in Monroe Trotter’s Boston newspaper, the Guardian, and they helped organize political groups, notably the Niagara Movement of 1906, to effect change. The other group of blacks in Massachusetts was composed of the masses who migrated north in the latter part of the nineteenth century and who settled mostly in Boston. These African Americans had been slaves or were children of slaves, and they were fleeing the hardships of the South. Most were poor, and very few of them had much education. Even in the North, they faced hardship and discrimination. Outnumbered by the large number of immigrants from Ireland and later from other places, they were excluded from unions, denied jobs in factories, victimized by de facto segregation and crowded into

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dilapidated, unhealthy housing and poor schools. As the state’s economy declined, at the turn of the century, black political and economic powers were further reduced. Although there were class tensions among Massachusetts’ African Americans, the two groups did unite for common objectives. One notable success they scored was the 1915 boycott of the racist film Birth of a Nation. While then–Boston Mayor Michael Curley only mildly objected to the movie, Governor Edward Walsh ordered the film banned in Massachusetts outside of Boston. A third group of African Americans in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Massachusetts was the community of immigrants—the only large group of voluntary African travelers to the New World—from the Cape Verde Islands, a group of Portuguese-owned islands off the coast of Africa, and their descendants. They may have come to Massachusetts as early as the 1780s to work on the whaling ships that sailed the Atlantic Ocean, as well as working in the maritime trades. Later, many Cape Verdeans migrated to Massachusetts as seasonal laborers, working in the cranberry bogs. Most settled in the old whaling towns such as New Bedford and Fall River. The Cape Verdeans were mainly Roman Catholic and spoke Creole (Kriolu), a mixture of Portuguese and African languages. They fit oddly into American racial patterns, since their dark skin caused them to suffer discrimination, yet their culture and history differed from that of black Americans. Many Cape Verdeans, who saw the stigma placed on blackness in the United States, tended to call themselves “Portuguese” rather than “black.” The experience of Cape Verdeans has been close to that of other immigrants. They had worked at heavy labor for low pay, socialized predominantly within their own communities, and struggled to educate their children and enable them to enter the middle class. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the majority of Cape

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Verdeans have since taken a new pride in their blackness. In the years since World War II, Massachusetts’ black population has increased several times, but blacks still represent a small percentage of the state’s population. Most African Americans still live in Boston and are trapped in poverty. Other African Americans have settled in Springfield, Worcester, and Williamstown, all of which were sites of racial conflict during the 1960s. At times, there appears to be a major contradiction in the state. While Boston carries the perception of being one of the most liberal cities in the United States, it has harbored many racial animosities. Still, in 1966, Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke became the first African American U.S. senator since Reconstruction. He won reelection in 1972, both times relying heavily on white votes. In 1980, African American leader Mel King came in a strong second in Boston’s mayoral election. The race forced a runoff with Raymond Flynn. Flynn was a moderate on many racial issues, which has helped set a statewide pattern that was slow to change. Nevertheless, there were still serious racial problems in Massachusetts. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the African American community’s demand for quality education led to courtordered school integration and forced the busing of schoolchildren. This resulted in white riots and violence, which inflamed racial tensions. It was the media coverage of this calamity that exposed a national audience to the racial problems of Massachusetts, much as the Charles Stuart affair, in which a community of African Americans were falsely suspected of murdering a white woman and were harassed by police, would do in the 1980s. Welfare and the greatly discussed debate over workfare in the early 1990s brought attention to the problems of African Americans finding suitable employment, even in a state as relatively wealthy as Massachusetts, but with the election in Suffolk (Boston) County of African American

Massachusetts Governor-Elect Deval Patrick speaks during an Associated Press interview, December 19, 2006, in Boston. Patrick was inaugurated into office on January 4, 2007. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Ralph Martin as district attorney, the election of an African American woman Andrea J. Cabral as the first female sheriff, and Deval L. Patrick as the first African American governor in the history of the state, things may be changing. The 2000 resident census population for Massachusetts was 6,349,097, with 5,367,286 whites (76%); 428,729 Hispanic/Latinos (6.8%); 343,454 African Americans (5.4%); 238,234 Asians (3.8%); 15,015 American Indians (0.2%); and 382,729 other combined races (6.0%). The five largest cities are Boston, its capital (589,141), Worcester (172,648), Springfield (152,082), New Bedford (93,768), and Fall River (91,983). The eastern half of this relatively small state is mostly urban and suburban. The west is primarily rural. Massachusetts is the most populous of the

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African descent in the U.S. Senate until 1993. After leaving the Senate, he returned to his law practice and led the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

Carney, William H. (1840–1908)

Crispus Attucks, an African American victim of the Boston Massacre, became a symbol of the American struggle for independence. (Library of Congress)

six New England states and ranks third in overall population density among the 50 states. Plymouth, Massachusetts, was the second permanent English settlement in North America.

William H. Carney was the first African American soldier to earn the Medal of Honor. He was a member of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, an all-black unit—with the exception of senior officers and a few senior noncommissioned sergeants—that proved by its Civil War service that black men could be good soldiers. Born a slave, February 24, 1840, in Norfolk, Virginia, Carney escaped slavery by way of the Underground Railroad and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the 1850s. In 1863, he became a member of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and had the opportunity to prove his mettle on July 18, 1863, at the Battle of Fort Wagner, outside of Charleston, South Carolina. His bravery earned him a promotion to sergeant and the U.S. military’s most prestigious award, the Medal of Honor.

Cuffee, Paul (1759–1817)

Notable African Americans Attucks, Crispus (1723–1770) Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave, was shot and killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Crispus Attucks Day was begun by African Americans in 1958 and is still celebrated.

Brooke, Edward William (1919–) In 1962, Brooke became the first African American in the United States to be elected as a state attorney general. In 1966, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was the first African American senator since 1881 and was the only person of

Paul Cuffee was born a free child, on Cuttyhunk Island near New Bedford of a Native American mother and a father from the Ashanti tribe of West Africa, who was captured and brought to America at the age of 10. Cuffee learned to be a carpenter. He and his brother, John, built their own boat and began their trading business, which included running British blockades with American supplies. This small business gradually became a large fleet of merchant vessels, including his own shipyard, which helped him to become one of America’s wealthiest men. He became a part of the Back to Africa Campaign. Cuffee, eventually, set sail for Sierra Leone, West Africa, with a group of free blacks, with the intent to end

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slavery in the colony by building a free and prosperous, industrial Africa. He became ill and died before his dream was realized.

worked for the legal end to the slave trade in Massachusetts, and sought to improve the education of African Americans.

Douglass, Frederick (1818–1895)

Nell, William Cooper (1816–1874)

After Frederick August Washington Bailey, a runaway slave from Maryland, and Anna Murray, a free black woman, were married in 1838, the year Bailey escaped from slavery, they moved to New Bedford, where he adopted the name Frederick Douglass. It was in New Bedford that this prominent American abolitionist lecturer and author wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845), which became an instant bestseller.

Nell is considered the first African American to publish a significant collection of African American biographies. He is also distinguished as the first black American to hold a federal civilian post. He worked as a U.S. postal clerk from 1861 until his death in 1874.

Wheatley, Phillis (c. 1753–1784) Born in Senegal, Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven to John and Susannah Wheatley

54th Massachusetts Regiment (1863–1865) The 54th was a Massachusetts infantry unit made up of African Americans that were active during the Civil War. The 54th Regiment was famous for its battlefield fighting prowess and for the great courage of its members. The African American infantry unit was immortalized in the 1989 film Glory.

Hall, Prince (1735–1807) Prince Hall was one of the most prominent free black citizens of Boston during and after the American Revolution. A former slave, Hall was freed by his master, William Hall of Boston, shortly after the Boston Massacre in 1770. Hall worked as a leather dresser and is considered the founder of black freemasonry. He helped establish the African Grand Lodge in Boston in 1791 and served as its grand master until his death. He was also involved in the African Society, another institution for the social, political, and economic improvement for African Americans. In addition, Hall had a defined role in the abolition of slavery,

Phillis Wheatley, born in Africa and brought to America as a slave, became an accomplished poet in Boston and traveled to London to publish her work. (Library of Congress)

Massachusetts of Boston on July 11, 1761. Her first name was derived from the ship that carried her to America, the Phillis. Wheatley was the author of Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral, the first book of poetry by an African American, published in London in 1773. At her young age, Wheatley was chosen to be a domestic servant and companion to Mrs. Wheatley. Speaking no English upon her arrival in this country, she proved to be a precocious learner and was tutored by Wheatley’s daughter Mary in English, Latin, history, geography, religion, and the Bible. She was treated more as a family member than a servant or slave and her education was that of a young woman in an elite Boston family. Wheatley was the first African woman to earn an income from her writings, as well as the first woman writer encouraged and financed by a group of women.

Cultural Contributions The Parting Ways Cemetery and the Royal House—both in Medford—are open from May to October. The latter features a pictorial study of African American families who have lived in the area since their arrival 300 years ago. Four African American families formed Parting Ways settlement on the town line between Kingston and Plymouth. The Museum of Afro-American History, Boston and Nantucket, is dedicated to preserving, conserving, and accurately interpreting the contributions of African Americans. The Museum of the National Center of African American Artists, in Boston, presents contemporary, historical, and expressive art from the global black world. The Boston African American National Historic Site—the largest such site in the United States—comprises two dozen pre–Civil War black-owned structures (homes, businesses, schools, churches) located in Boston in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. The oldest standing African American church in the country is part of the

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site, which is administered by the National Park Service. The structures are linked by the selfguiding Black Heritage Trail. The Frederick Douglass Memorial, New Bedford, commemorates the noted orator and abolitionist. After escaping slavery in Maryland, Douglass came to New Bedford via the Underground Railroad. It was in New Bedford where Mr. Douglass changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Douglass to avoid escaped slave catchers. He lived there from 1838 to 1841 and had two children, Rosetta and Lewis, born there. It was in New Bedford that he became a part of the abolitionist movement. Cambridge’s African American Heritage Trail is a collection of markers spread throughout the city at places where prominent African Americans lived or worked. African Americans have lived in Cambridge since 1630, but it was in the 1840s that the population doubled due to arrivals from the South and other areas.

Bibliography Brown, Richard D., and Jack Tager. Massachusetts: A Concise History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. Burchard, Peter. One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Duncan, Russell. Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Shaw Gould and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. Greene, Lorenzo. The Negro in Colonial New England. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942. Greenwood, Janette Thomas. First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862–1900. John Hope Franklin Series in

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African American History and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Minardi, Margot. Making Slavery History: Abolition and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.

Piersen, William D. Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth Century New England, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Lemire, Elise. Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Titcomb, Caldwell, Thomas Underwood, Randall Kennedy, and Werner Sollors. Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of AfricanAmerican Experience at Harvard and Ratcliffe. New York: New York University Press, 1993.

Logan, Rayford W. The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901. New York: Collier Books, 1965. Manegold, C. S. Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Yacovone, Donald. We Fight for Freedom: Massachusetts, African Americans, and the Civil War. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2001.

MICHIGAN Julius Thompson

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Chronology 1700–1814

Three colonial groups are active in the area that became known as Michigan: the French, between 1700 and 1760; the British from 1760 and 1776; and the Americans from 1814.

1701

Antoine de la Mothe Sieur (a French military officer and explorer) establishes Detroit as a French base in North America.

1736–1865

Slavery exists in Michigan.

1805

Congress creates the Michigan Territory, with William Hull as governor.

1837

Michigan enters the Union as the 26th state.

1839

An early black religious institution, the Second Baptist Church, is established in Detroit, with the Reverend William Monroe serving as its first pastor.

1845

The Colored Methodist Church (Bethel AME) is established in Detroit.

1861–1865

The 102nd Infantry Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops of Michigan, serves in the Civil War and sees duty in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina; 1,446 officers and men serve in this regiment, and 138 of them die during the war.

1865

(February 3) Michigan becomes one of the first states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.

1867

( January 16) Michigan ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1868

The Michigan state legislature outlaws school segregation.

1869

(March 5) Michigan ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights for African Americans.

1900

The city of Detroit has a population of 288,704 people, of which 4,111 are African Americans.

1911

The Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established and becomes one of the major black organizations in the city to seek solutions for problems facing the black community in Michigan and the nation.

1915

The Freedman’s Progress, a celebration of the black experience in Michigan from 1865 to 1815, is published with state funds.

1918

The Detroit branch of the National Urban League is organized; its community outreach programs have been successful in aiding the advancement of blacks in Detroit.

1920

The Detroit branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) is formed and soon has over 300 local members. An organization of working-class blacks, the group has a major impact on black pride consciousness in Detroit.

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1923

Elijah Poole (Elijah Muhammad) migrates to Detroit as the Great Black Migration to the North continues; he becomes an early associate of Wallace D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam.

1925

A local black dentist, Dr. Ossian H. Sweet, and his family are attacked by whites for seeking to buy a house in a white neighborhood. In the ensuing protests, one white person is killed. The Sweet family and friends are later cleared of the charge of murder; the case, however, does not improve race relations in Detroit.

1926

10,000 black men (out of 110,000 total employees) work for the Ford Motor Company in Michigan.

1930s–1940s

The area in Detroit known as Paradise Valley is noted as the central business and commercial district for African Americans in the city.

1936

The Michigan Chronicle is established in Detroit and becomes the leading black newspaper in the state.

1940

“The Brown Bomber,” Joe Louis, defeats Max Schmelling and wins the heavyweight championship of the world.

1943

( June 20–21) The Detroit Race Riot becomes one of the largest racial disturbances in the United States during World War II. Blacks in the city protested the conditions under which they lived and clashed over jobs and housing with white immigrants from Europe. Thirty-four people are killed, 25 of them African Americans; 85 percent of the people arrested during the riot are black, while property damage totals more than $2 million.

1950

Ralph Bunche, a native of Detroit, becomes the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to make peace between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East.

1950

Charline White (1920–1959) becomes the first African American woman to win a seat in the Michigan legislature.

1950

Charles C. Diggs Jr. becomes the first African American elected in the Michigan State Senate.

1952

Cora M. Brown (1914–1972) is the first African American woman (and the first woman of any race in the state) to win election to the Michigan State Senate.

1954

Charles C. Diggs Jr. is the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from Michigan; a Democrat from Detroit, Diggs represents the state’s 13th District.

1959

Berry Gordy, founds Motown Records in Detroit.

1960

Fifteen young people attempt to desegregate a chain store in Ann Arbor and are arrested by local authorities.

1960

Otis M. Smith (1922–) is elected auditor general of Michigan, the first black to win such a statewide position since Reconstruction.

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1960s–1970s

Detroit is a major center for the production and distribution of African American music in the forms of civil rights songs, soul music, soul jazz, and modern jazz avant garde.

1963

(February 20) Michigan ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

John Conyers Jr., a future founder of the Congressional Black Caucus (1971), is elected to Congress as a Democrat from Michigan’s 14th District.

1965

Viola Liuzzo, an American of Italian descent from Detroit, is assassinated when she travels to Alabama to participate in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march.

1965

Librarian and poet Dudley F. Randall founds Detroit’s Broadside Press, a company committed to promoting black poetry and other black literary works in the United States.

1967

( July) The Detroit Rebellion is noted by many activists and scholars as the most extensive urban rebellion in the last century of American history; 39 blacks are killed, plus 5 from other ethnic groups, 2,000 people are injured, 7,331 arrests are made, and 5,000 people are left homeless in the city.

1968

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, an organization intended to fight for improved working conditions, is formed by African American workers at a Dodge factory in Detroit.

1970

Richard H. Austin (1913–) becomes Michigan secretary of state, the first black person to hold the office.

1973

Naomi Long Madgett, educator and poet, creates Lotus Press, in Detroit, to aid the production and distribution of black literature (especially black poetry) in Michigan and other states.

1973

A study by the Office for Civil Rights notes that Michigan is home to 186 black physicians.

1973

Coleman Young is elected the first African American mayor of Detroit; he serves as mayor until 1993.

1978

Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick is elected to the Michigan House of Representatives and becomes the first African American woman to serve on the State House Appropriations Committee.

1979

Loren Eugene Monroe becomes the first African American state treasurer of Michigan.

1980

George William Crockett Jr., an attorney who defended civil rights workers during the Mississippi Freedom Summer project in 1964, is elected to succeed Charles Diggs as representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.

1981

Barbara-Rose Collins is elected to the Detroit City Council.

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1983

Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan introduces into Congress the legislation calling for the creation of a Dr. Martin Luther King national holiday.

1985

According to the Bureau of the Census, blacks in Detroit compose 63.1 percent of the city’s total population in the mid-1980s.

1990

Barbara-Rose Collins is elected to Congress from Michigan’s 13th District.

1993

Dennis W. Archer, a Democrat, is elected as the second black mayor in the history of Detroit.

1996

After defeating incumbent Barbara-Rose Collins in the Democratic primary, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick wins election to the U.S. Congress from Michigan’s 13th District; she is the first African American woman to serve on the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

2001

Kwame Kilpatrick, a Democrat, wins election as mayor of Detroit.

2007

Lotus Press publishes Pilgrim Journey: An Autobiography by Naomi Long Madgett, a leading black poet and educator.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Michigan with about 57 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview The earliest known history of the African American people in the state of Michigan extends from 1701 to 1837, during a period of slavery in this important area, known as the Wolverine State and the Great Lake State. Yet, an antislavery perspective developed early in the history of Michigan, which was greatly influenced by the Northwest Ordinance of 1778 prohibiting the institution of slavery in the territory. On January 26, 1837, Michigan became the 26th state of the United States, with its capital at Lansing, and with Detroit as its largest city. Geographically, Michigan covers 58,527 square miles and contains two large land areas, the Lower and Upper Peninsulas. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, small numbers of African Americans were attracted to Michigan because of its rich agriculture potential, fur trading, and lumber industries. However, many early black settlers suffered discrimination in Michigan, including a lack of political rights for voting, and economic and social

inequalities. Perhaps these issues had a bearing on the growth of the black population in Michigan. Table 1, “The Black Population in Michigan, 1820–1910,” notes this historically significant factor. The black population in Michigan increased very slowly in the nineteenth century, from 67 blacks in 1829 to 126 in 1830, from 138 in 1834 to 707 in 1840, and 2,583 in 1850, followed by a somewhat more rapid increase between 1860 and 1910, when 17,115 blacks lived in the state in the latter year. In the twentieth century, and especially Table 1 The Black Population in Michigan, 1820–1910 Year

Population

1820 1830 1834 1840 1850 1860 1880 1910

67 126 138 707 2,583 6,799 15,100 17,115

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during the era of World War I (1914–1919), a “Great Migration” of African Americans brought thousands of them to Michigan, and most settled in the city of Detroit. One important study notes that: “Michigan’s African-American population grew from 17,115 (6.1 percent) in 1910 to 208,345 (4 percent) in 1940 and to 1,289,012 in 1990 (13.9 percent).” Table 2, “The Black Population in Detroit, 1840–1960,” displays the growth of the black population in this important industrial center for over a century. Certainly the greatest concentration of blacks in Detroit took place between 1920 and 1960. The newer black migrants to Michigan came in search of political, social, and economic freedoms. They discovered some advantages in Michigan, such as factory positions at Ford Motor Company, where by 1920, 1,675 African Americans had secured employment. Yet, overall they suffered in terms of housing, mistreatment at the hands of police, and economic disadvantages. But, they were able to increase their representation in unions, improve their educational opportunities, and forge a way for more political activity in the years ahead. In the Lower Peninsula, where most blacks lived in Michigan by the twentieth century, they placed an emphasis on developing black social and economic institutions, such as the black church, the black press, private black schools, and small business establishments—including

Table 2 The Black Population in Detroit, 1840–1960 Year

Population

1840 1860 1900 1910 1920 1930 1950 1960

193 1,403 4,111 6,000 40,838 120,000 300,506 382,506

barbershops, restaurants, salons, nightclubs, funeral homes, insurance companies, and Michigan outlets of national civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the National Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and others, including local groups formed by concerned blacks in such cities as Detroit and Flint. Black churches have had a long history of service in Detroit. The Second Baptist Church was established in 1836 in Detroit and is recognized by some blacks as the oldest black congregation in the midwestern region of this country. Other churches followed this and include the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (1839) and St. Matthew’s Protestant Episcopal Church, created in 1846. Since this early period, hundreds of black churches have been found in Michigan, and many blacks also attend the services at historical white churches. By the 1920s, a new movement had emerged among black churches for spiritual associations. These black church groups were the National Colored Spiritualist Association (1922); Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church (1925); and the Spiritual Israel Church and its Army. In the 1930s, the Nation of Islam emerged in Detroit as a new religious group, headed by Wallace D. Fard, and, later, Elijah Muhammad. A small black professional middle class also served the healthcare, dental, legal, and other needs of the black community in Michigan. As late as 1973, the state contained 186 black physicians with a concentration of these in Detroit. One of the major challenges facing contemporary blacks has been a growth of racial tension in the state, an increase in white racism, police brutality, the impact of migration between World War I and II, and race riots in Michigan. In fact,

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Passengers climb from rear of streetcar stopped by mob during race riots in Detroit, Michigan, 1943. (Library of Congress)

during World War II, on June 20–21, 1943, Detroit experienced a major race riot that resulted in 34 deaths and over 700 injuries—a record for this historical period. Major riots also broke out during the 1960s, with the largest of these in Michigan occurring in Detroit on July 23, 1967, and ending with “forty deaths (thirty-two black), 2,250 injuries, and property losses estimated at $250 million.”1 Poverty, crime, white migration from Detroit, unemployment, and other social ills continued to create hardships for modern blacks in Michigan. These challenges are still before the community today. The black press in Michigan, consisting of newspaper, magazine, radio, and television, has been active for over 150 years in promoting the media needs of the African American people in the state. The early development of the state’s black press occurred in the period 1865–1920, when the Detroit Plaindealer, a weekly, served as the major newspaper for blacks. The paper was edited by W. H. Anderson, B. B. Pelham, W. H. Stowers, and R. Pelham Jr. By 1888, the

organ contained 20 pages and noted for the world that its outlook was as follows: To overcome mistrust; to [promote] the welfare of Afro-Americans; to set an example that there is no field of labor which cannot be successfully explored and cultivated by the AfroAmerican who is energetic and painstaking; to provide a medium for the encouragement of literacy work, for the creation of a distinctive and favorable Afro-American sentiment, for the dislodgment of prejudice and the encouragement of Patriotism.2 Yet the organization of the black press was also important, for this segment of the black press in Michigan began with: the establishment in 1911 of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, under the leadership of the executive secretary Gloster

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B. Currnet; and the city’s chapter of the National Urban League, created in 1916, and headed by John C. Dancy. Yet the influence of Booker T. Washington, the dominant national black leader form 1895 to 1915, was greatly felt in the black business and political community of Detroit. The influence of Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist perspective was also powerfully expressed in Detroit by 5,000 local black members and their leader Joseph A. Craigne, who served as executive secretary of the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s branch in the city, established in 1920.3 In the modern period from 1920 to the present, the Michigan Chronicle, published in Detroit since 1936, has been the major black newspaper in Michigan for blacks. Louis E. Martin served the organ as its major editor for many years, and by the 1940, he had developed a weekly circulation of 5,000 copies of this paper for the community. By 1952, the Michigan Chronicle had a circulation of 21,619. During the decade of the 1950s, four editors helped to guide the paper into the future. They were Russell Cowans, Longworth M. Quinn, William C. Matney Jr., and Charles J. Wartman. These editors took an activist perspective for the paper’s coverage of political, economic, and social news and commentary. By 1979, they published an average edition of 30,856 copies of the paper. On the mass communication front, blacks in Michigan as late as the 1970s promoted seven black-oriented radio stations in the state. Yet, only three of these stations, all in Detroit, were in fact owned by blacks—WCHB-AM, WCHD-FM, and WGPR-FM. Black ownership of television also remained a problem. One study observes that in 1975, "the black International Masons established the first black-owned television station in the United States, WGPR, Channel 62, a UHF station in Detroit.”4 Blacks in Michigan have been very active in the political history of the state. Their votes have

obtained leadership positions for blacks on the local, state, and national levels. Black political leaders from Michigan who have been especially recognized for their political contributions are: Ralph J. Bunche (1904–1971), a United Nations officer who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize; representatives in Congress Charles C. Diggs (D), and John Conyers Jr. (D); and Coleman Young (1918–1997), the first black elected major of Detroit in 1974 to 1994. The historical presence of blacks in Michigan, most notably form the nineteenth century to the present, has produced a rich legacy of political, economic, social and cultural contributions to advance the African American community in the state, and developments on the national scene in the United States. Michigan remains an important state, and although Detroit has suffered much in the last 40 years, it still remains an important symbol of the struggles of black people and others to promote equality, justice, and an open society for all of the people.

Notable African Americans Archer, Dennis W. (1942–) Dennis W. Archer was elected as the second black mayor in Detroit in 1993. A lawyer, Archer served on the Michigan Supreme Court for the period 1986–1991.

Boyd, Melba J. (1950–) Melba J. Boyd is a leading black intellectual, poet, and editor who became a major professor at Wayne State University in the 1990s. She is the author of Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (2003), among other books.

Boyer, Jill Witherspoon (1947–) Jill Witherspoon Boyer is a local Detroit poet who published Dream Farmer (1975) and edited

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The Broadside Annual (1972, 1973), a series of anthologies of poetry by black poets. She is the daughter of poet Naomi Long Madgett.

Bunche, Ralph Johnson (1904–1971) Ralph Bunche became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, for his efforts in helping to foster peace in the Middle East. He was also an outstanding scholar of political science and a noted author. Bunche wrote several books, including World View of Race (1936) and The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (1973).

Carson, Benjamin Solomon, Sr. (1951–) Dr. Benjamin Carson, who grew up as a poor youth in Detroit, is known around the world as a leading neurosurgeon and heads the Pediatric Neurosurgery unit at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He has worked on very difficult medical cases in the United States and in foreign countries, helping to save the lives of many children in his career. He has written three important books on his life work, including Gifted Hands (1992).

Cleage, Albert Buford (1911–2000) Albert Cleage was the creator of a new black church movement in 1952, which became known as the Shrine of the Black Madonna, the “Mother Church” of the Black Christian Nationalist Movement. Minister Cleage wrote two major books, The Black Messiah (1968) and Black Christian Nationalism (1972).

Conyers, John, Jr. (1929–) A Democrat, John Conyers was first elected to Congress to represent Detroit in 1964. He has been the powerful chairman of the Government Operations Committee and serves on other important congressional committees.

John Conyers Jr. has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1965. A Democrat and native of Detroit, Conyers represents Michigan’s 14th District. (U.S. House of Representatives)

Crockett, George W., Jr. (1909–1997) George Crockett was a prominent African American jurist who served on the Detroit Recorders Court, as a judge, in 1946–1966, 1972–78, and presiding judge, 1974–1978; he was also an important member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Detroit, in 1980–1990. Historically, he was the first black lawyer in the U.S. Department of Labor. Crockett was also a member of the African Resolution, which sought the release of Nelson Mandela and his thenwife, Winnie Mandela, from prison and banning in South Africa.

Dancy, John Campbell, Jr. (1888–1968) John C. Dancy served the National Urban League’s Detroit branch as director from 1918 to 1959. Under his leadership, the Detroit

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branch, located at 553 E. Columbia, near St. Antoine, was very effective in developing outreach programs in education, health, employment, and recreational needs (the Green Pastures Camp for children was established in 1931) to meet the needs of the local black community in Detroit. Dancy wrote Sands Against the Wind: The Memories of John Campbell Dancy, Jr. (1966).

Diggs, Charles C., Jr. (1922–1998) A Democrat, Charles Diggs was first elected to Congress to represent Detroit in 1954. While in Congress, he developed a special interest in civil rights and African affairs. Historically, he was the first African American member of Congress from Michigan and the founder and first chairperson of the Congressional Black Caucus. Diggs was a key member on the Committee on the District of Columbia for many years, and he helped to secure partial self-government status for the District, as chair of the committee, in 1972. In 1978, he was convicted on charges of mail fraud and falsifying payroll forms. After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision, Diggs resigned from Congress in 1980.

Dyson, Michael Eric (1958–) Michael Dyson is one of the leading black public intellectuals of the last 20 years in the United States. His books have had a profound influence on black thinking in this country and include a work of essays entitled Between God and Gangsta’ Rap (1994).

Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole) (1897–1975) Elijah Muhammad migrated to Detroit in 1923, and became an associate of Wallace D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. By 1926, Elijah Muhammad led the new movement.

Promotional poster of Aretha Franklin, 1971. (Library of Congress)

Franklin, Aretha (1942–) A major rhythm-and-blues singer who also has an interest in gospel music, Aretha Franklin grew up in Detroit and began her career singing in her father’s Baptist Church choirs. She is known today as the “Queen of Soul.”

Franklin, Clarence Lavaughn (C. L.) (1915–1984) Clarence Franklin was pastor of Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church in 1946, when he became a leading religious figure in the city and the state of Michigan. Because of his fame as a preacher, a number of other black ministers tried to imitate his religious style. He was also known for making effective use of radio religious broadcasts to reach his audience. In 1953, his radio broadcast

Michigan sermons were recorded, and he sold over a million copies of this work. In the 1960s, he was a major supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and of efforts to uplift the black community in this country. He also helped his daughter, Aretha Franklin, develop into a major musician in the United States.

Gordy, Berry, Jr. (1929–) Born in Detroit, Berry Gordy became an important record producer in the late 1950s to the present. In 1959, he created Motown Records, which became a leading producer of black music in the 1960s and 1970s. He worked with many important black singers and groups, such as Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson. By 1973, his company was the largest black-owned business in the United States, yet, he sold Motown to whites in 1998.

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Hayden, Robert (1913–1980) Born in Detroit, Robert Hayden was a leading black poet and teacher who taught for many years at Fisk University and the University of Michigan. In 1976–1978, he served as Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Hayden wrote or edited at least 10 books during his career.

Hood, Nicholas, Sr. (1923–) Nicholas Hood Sr. was a key senior black minister of Plymouth United Church of Christ in Detroit from the late 1950s. He created an outstanding outreach ministry in the 1960s to help people in the community. In 1965, he was elected to the Detroit City Council.

House, Gloria (Aneb Kgositsile) (dates unknown) Gloria House is a leading Detroit educator and intellectual, poet, and publisher of Broadside Press since 2002. Her career has included academic posts at such institutions as Wayne State University, Detroit.

Johnson, Earvin “Magic,” Jr. (1959–) A star on the 1979 Michigan State national champion basketball team, “Magic” Johnson became a major star with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s. He helped the Lakers win five National Basketball Association titles. Johnson ended his career in 1991 with an announcement that he was HIV positive. In recent years, he has worked hard to increase AIDS prevention and awareness in American society.

Kilpatrick, Kwame (1970–) Berry Gordy Jr. had enormous influence on American music in the 1960s as the founder and owner of the Motown Record Corporation. (AP/Wide World Photos)

In November 2001, Kwame Kilpatrick, then 31, was elected as the youngest mayor in Detroit’s history. He also served in the Michigan legislature as

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a state representative for the West Side of the City of Detroit. Because of his youth, he has been a very controversial mayor of the Motor City.

Madgett, Naomi Long (1923–) Naomi Madgett has served as publisher and editor of Lotus Press, Detroit, from 1973 to the present. She was also an outstanding professor at Eastern Michigan University and has published over 10 books in a career of 50 years. In 2001, she was appointed the Poet Laureate of the City of Detroit. Madgett is also the author of an outstanding autobiography—Pilgrim Journey (2006).

Martin, Louis (1912–1997) As editor of the Michigan Chronicle in the 1930s and 1940s, Louis Martin helped to develop the paper’s proactive positions on the New Deal policies of President Franklin Roosevelt and union sympathies among black workers, while maintaining its social outlook for black consciousness, pride, and self-help.

Massey, James Early (1929–) James E. Massey was a leading religious minister and scholar in the Church of God. In the period 1949–51, he served as an associate minister at the Church of God in Detroit; as a senior pastor at the Metro Church of God, 1954–1976; as an educator at Anderson College, School of Theology, 1969–1977 and 1981–1984; as Chapel and University Professor of Religion, Dean, 1984–1989; and as Professor of Preaching and Biblical Studies, dean emeritus and Professor at Large, during his retirement years.

Milner, Ron (1938–2004) Ron Milner was an outstanding theater writer and aided the development of Concept East Theatre, established in 1962 at Detroit. Milner is

considered one of the most important Black Arts Movement writers to come out of Detroit. In 1962–1963, he was awarded a John Hay Whitney Award; followed in 1965, by a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Such aid helped him to develop into a major African American playwright for the period of the 1960s to the turn of the century.

Parks, Rosa (1913–2005) Rosa Parks was a noted NAACP civil rights activist in Alabama who played a major role in the 1955– 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. She was also a dressmaker, life insurance agent, housekeeper, staff member for Congressman John Conyers of Detroit (1965– 1988), and youth worker in Detroit. She helped to create the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987. She co-authored, with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks, My Story (1992).

Quinn, Longworth (1907–1989) Longworth Quinn was an editor at the Michigan Chronicle during the period of the 1960s, when he served the paper as general manager, and promoted an editorial policy, during this decade, and in the 1970s, of a progressive and liberal nature for the historical era.

Randall, Dudley F. (1914–2000) Dudley Randall was a major black poet, who created Detroit’s Broadside Press, in 1965, to promote the publication of black poetry and other literacy works among African American writers. In 1981, Mayor Coleman A. Young, appointed Randall as the first Poet Laureate of Detroit. Randall published over 10 books in his career, including A Litany of Friends, New and Selected Poems (1981). He is widely known in history as the “Father of the Black Poetry Publishing Movement.”

Michigan

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Sweet, Henry Ossian (1895–1960)

Wright, Charles (1919–2002)

The H. O. Sweet case in 1925 represented an attempt by local Detroit whites from preventing the black doctor Henry Sweet and his family from a buying a house in a white neighborhood. One white protester was killed by a gunshot, which local authorities charged came from the black home, and several members of the Sweet family and their friends were alleged to have contributed to the killing. The NAACP took an active interest in the case, and all of the blacks were acquitted. The case is viewed as a setback overall for improved race relations in Michigan.

Charles Wright established the Museum of African American History in Detroit in 1965. The institution has developed into one of the largest black museums in the United States.

Truth, Sojourner (Isabella) (c. 1797–1883) Sojourner Truth was a leading antislavery activist and supporter of women’s rights in the United States during the nineteenth century. In 1857, she settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, and became associated with the Michigan Progressive Friends, a Spiritualist Movement of Americans at Harmonia, near Battle Creek.

Vest, Hilda (1933–) Hilda Vest was an important poet and publisher in Detroit. She was a teacher in the Detroit public schools from 1959 to 1988. On assuming ownership, with Don S. Vest Sr. of Broadside Press in 1985, she became the new publisher and editor of the company. She is the author of Sorrow’s End (1993).

Wonder, Stevie (Steveland Judkins) (1950–) A leading black musician of the last 40 years, Stevie Wonder was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He has had a tremendous influence on the field of music, human rights concerns, and securing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Young, Coleman (1918–1997) Coleman Young was elected as the first black major in Detroit’s history in 1973, and served five terms in office until 1993. He was also a professor of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, Detroit.

Cultural Contributions Motown Records Motown Records was created by record producer Berry Gordy Jr. (1929–), in 1959, in Detroit, Michigan. His early career had centered on writing songs as a young student in high school; he also worked in the automotive industry of Detroit and had a sports interest in boxing. In the 1950s, he wrote a series of popular black musical hits for record star Jackie Wilson, while working out of New York City. Working from Detroit in 1959, Gordy created the most important black music company in American history. He was able to promote the careers of dozens of new artists, especially in the area of rhythm and blues. Besides Jackie Wilson, his list of outstanding artists included Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and many others. In the 1970s, Black Enterprise magazine, recognized Motown Records as the largest black business enterprise in the United States. Gordy was thus a major factor in the lives and work of many black artists. Also in the 1970s, Gordy turned his attention to movie production. His most important production was headlined by star Diana Ross, Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

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By the early 1980s, Gordy relocated Motown Records to Los Angeles, California, a leading center of the music industry in the nation. Finally, after several decades of success, Gordy sold Motown Records in 1988 to white business interests in California. He continues to live and work in California. The older Motown Company, in Detroit, is now a national museum on “the Motown Sound” in modern American music.

Lotus Press Next to Broadside Press, Detroit has also been the home base of a second premier publisher of black poetry in the United States, Lotus Press. Poet Naomi Long Madgett, with the aid of local Detroit supporters, established this company in 1972. As the following excerpt indicates, Madgett viewed the work of Lotus Press as an aid in keeping the best of black poetry alive by making inexpensive, attractive paperbound volumes available to the bookstores and libraries of the world. To provide a worldwide audience to black poets of excellence, regardless of their ideology, subject matter, or style. Our goal is literary excellence. We are not interested in work that is political without being technically sound; nor are we interested in beginners who have not studied the fundamentals of their craft.5 Lotus Press published 18 books between 1972 and 1979, including titles by major black poets such as James A. Emanuel, May Miller, Naomi Long Madgett, Herbert Woodward Martin, Lance Jeffers, and Houston A. Baker. Most Lotus Press books were priced between $3 and $4. During its early history, Lotus Press also published 20 broadsides of poetry, with 11 of these by male poets, and 9 by women. This body of

work represented some of the best poetry written by African American poets, with contributions to the series by such poets as Michael S. Harper, Etheridge Knight, Pinkie Gordon Lane, Robert Hayden, Naomi Long Madgett, Gloria C. Oden, Dudley Randall, and Margaret Walker, among others. Lotus Press remains active at the turn of the new century in promoting and publishing at least two new books of poetry each year by outstanding black poets in America. Thus, Madgett at Lotus Press, and the staff at Broadside Press, have continued the special efforts required to bring more black poetry before the American public.

Notes 1. Wes Boruki, “Michigan,” in Waldo E. Martin Jr. and Patricia Sullivan, eds., Civil Rights in the United States, Vol. 2 (New York: McMillan Library Reference USA/an Imprint of the Gale Group, 2000), 4765. 2. I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (Springfield, MA: Wiley, 1891; reprint, New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 160. 3. Julius E. Thompson, “An Urban Voice of the People: The Black Press in Michigan, 1865–1985,” in Henry Lewis Suggs, ed., The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865–1985 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 137. 4. Ibid., 160. 5. Donald Franklin Joyce, “Reflecting on the Changing Publishing Objectives of Secular Black Book Publishers, 1900–1986,” in Cathy N. Davidson, ed., Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 234–235.

Bibliography Baer, Hans, and Merrill Singer. African-American Religion in the Twentieth Century: Varieties of

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Protest and Accommodation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Madgett, Naomi Long. Pilgrim Journey. Detroit, MI: Lotus Press, 2007.

Boykin, Ulysses. A Handbook on the Detroit Negro. Detroit, MI: The Minority Study Associates, 1943.

Martin, Waldo E., Jr., and Patricia Sullivan, eds. Civil Rights in the United States. Vol. 2. New York: McMillan Library Reference USA/An Imprint of the Gale Group, 2000.

Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2004. Byrd, Rudolph P., ed. Generations in Black and White: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. Carson, Clayborne, Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, and Gary B. Nash. African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom. New York: Pearson/ Longman, 2005. Ciment, James. Atlas of African-American History. New York: Facts On File, 2001. Clegg, Claude. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Dancy, John C., Jr. Sands against the Wind: The Memories of John C. Dancy, Jr. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1966. Detroit Chapter of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. Black Historic Sites in Detroit. Detroit, MI: Detroit Historical Department, 1989. Hinds, Patricia M., ed. 50 of the Most Inspiring African-Americans. New York: Essence Communications Partners and Time, Inc. Home Entertainment, 2005. Holt, Thomas C., and Elsa Barkley Brown, eds. Major Problems in Afro-American History, Volume II: From Freedom to “Freedom Now,” 1865–1890: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Katzman, David. Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973.

McMickle, Marvin A. An Encyclopedia of AfricanAmerican Christian Heritage. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2002. Penn, I. Garland. The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Springfield, MA: Wiley, 1891. Reprint, New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969. Reynolds, Barbara, ed. And Still We Rise: Interviews with 50 Black Role Models. Washington, DC: USA Today Books/Gannett Co., 1988. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the New York Public Library. African American Desk Reference. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999. Sisson, Richard, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, eds. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Black Firsts: 2000 Years of Extraordinary Achievement. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2003. Smith, Sande, ed. Who’s Who in AfricanAmerican History. Greenwich, CT: Brompton Books, 1994. Suggs, Henry Lewis, ed. The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865–1885. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. Thomas, Richard W. Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Thompson, Julius E. Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit,

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1960–1995. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 1999. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Availability Data on Minorities and Women. Washington, DC: Office for Civil Rights, 1973.

Ward, Jerry W., Jr., ed. Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry. New York: Mentor/Penguin Books, 1997. Writer’s Program of the WPA. Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.

MINNESOTA Tiffany K. Wayne

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Chronology 1787

The first recorded African slave in what is now Minnesota, Pierre Bonga, is freed.

1787

Eastern Minnesota is designated part of the Northwest Territory of the United States of America regulated by the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibits slavery in the region.

1803

The United States claims western Minnesota as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

1805

Lieutenant Zebulon Pike negotiates an agreement with the Dakota people for 100,000 acres of land in southern Minnesota, including the area that now includes the Twin Cities.

1818

The northern boundary of Minnesota is established at the 49th parallel.

1825

Fort Snelling is completed at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.

1836

The Wisconsin Territory (which includes Minnesota) is established.

1836

The slave Dred Scott is brought to Fort Snelling by his owner.

1848

Wisconsin becomes a state, and a separate Minnesota Territory is organized.

1855

The Minnesota Republican Party is formed on a platform of opposition to the western spread of slavery.

1857

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against Scott, a slave from Missouri who claimed a right to his freedom based on residency in the “free” territory of Minnesota.

1858

(May 11) Minnesota is admitted to the Union as the 32nd state and as a free state.

1862

An uprising of the Dakota Indians in Minnesota is suppressed.

1865

(February 23) Minnesota ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

( January 22) Minnesota ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending full citizenship rights to African Americans.

1868

The Minnesota legislature grants the vote to black men, as well as to some Native Americans.

1870

( January 13) Minnesota ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending the right to vote to black men.

1885

The Western Appeal (later the Appeal), a black newspaper, is founded in St. Paul.

1885

Frederick McGhee is the first black lawyer admitted to the bar in Minnesota.

1898

J. Frank Wheaton becomes the first African American elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

1905

Frederick McGhee is involved in the Niagara Movement, a precursor to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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1920

(June) Three black men are lynched in Duluth after being accused of raping a white teenage girl.

1921

Minnesota passes an antilynching law, requiring police offers to protect victims from mobs and making it possible for victims’ families to receive damages.

1921

Lena O. Smith becomes the first black woman lawyer admitted to the bar in Minnesota.

1934

The Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder is founded by Cecil E. Newman.

1948

Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey calls for an end to racial discrimination in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

1955

St. Paul civil rights leader Roy Wilkins is elected executive director of the NAACP.

1963

(February 27) Minnesota ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1993

Alan Page becomes the first African American elected to the Minnesota State Supreme Court.

1994

The Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota is established to coordinate services to new immigrants.

2006

Keith Ellison is elected as the first African American congressman from Minnesota and first Muslim in the U.S. Congress.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee of a major party, carries Minnesota in the general election, winning about 54 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Admitted as the 32nd state in 1858, Minnesota has historically had a very small black population. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, African Americans make up only 4.6 percent of the state’s population, while 85 percent of population is white. Most of the white population is of German and Scandinavian descent, as these are the European immigrant groups who began coming to the region in the mid-nineteenth century. There were few African slaves brought to Minnesota, which until the 1840s was the furthest western outpost of Anglo-American settlement. Minnesota is known for its prairies, forests, and lakes, and the region’s economy was historically based on logging, mining, and farming. It was not until the early twentieth century that

industrialization and wartime labor needs drew more African Americans from the South to the northern cities in search of employment opportunities. Throughout the twentieth century, most of the state’s overall population (60 percent in the year 2000)—and most of the black population— were concentrated in the urban areas of the capital city, St. Paul, and the state’s largest city, Minneapolis, which together are referred to as the “Twin Cities” metropolitan area.

Africans in Early Minnesota French fur traders began exploring the Minnesota territory in the late 1600s and the fur trade remained the primary economic interest in the region well into the 1800s. Minnesota was part of the imperial struggle for control of land and

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resources and was at various times controlled by the French, Spanish, or British. The British maintained outposts in the area through the time of the American Revolution, and it was a British officer who brought the first recorded African into what is now Minnesota. Pierre Bonga, born into slavery in the West Indies, was brought to Minnesota and subsequently freed around 1787, at about the same time that the new United States gained control of the area. Bonga (sometimes spelled Bungo) lived near Duluth and was an explorer, fur trapper, and trader who married an Ojibwe woman and was a skilled negotiator and translator between the British and native Americans. Pierre Bonga’s two sons, Stephen and George, were also traders, translators, and guides. George Bonga was born sometime around 1802 and was also able to achieve some success as a person of African descent in this sparsely populated outpost where diverse cultures mixed and traded. He became well known in the region and among U.S. officials, and several Minnesota landmarks, including Lake Bonga, are named for the contribution of the Bonga family. Once the new United States gained control of the region, Minnesota was part of the territory regulated by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in the territory. After Pierre Bonga was freed that same year, however, there were no other recorded African slaves in the far western and northern reaches of Minnesota until at least the 1820s. The western part of Minnesota was not acquired by the United States until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; in 1805, Zebulon Pike negotiated the agreement that resulted in the Dakota people ceding some 100,000 acres of southern Minnesota to the United States for military use. Construction on Fort Snelling began at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers in 1819 and the fort was completed in 1825. A sawmill town at St. Anthony Falls was built a few years later

in the area that now includes the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Slavery in Minnesota The military fort and mill activities drew greater numbers of government appointees, settlers, and migrants from the South, and some African slaves were brought to Fort Snelling by officers in the 1820s. U.S. Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro was one of these early slaveholders, having inherited several slaves from his Virginia father. One of Taliaferro’s slaves was Harriet Robinson, who later married Dred Scott in a ceremony officiated by Taliaferro himself. Scott (originally from Missouri) later used his residency in the free territory as the foundation of his appeal for his freedom, which was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857. Two decades before the infamous Scott case, another enslaved person, identified simply as Rachel, had also sued in the Missouri courts for her freedom based on time spent in the Wisconsin and Minnesota territories. The population of Minnesota expanded greatly after it was organized into a separate territory in 1849 and settlers came for the bountiful farmlands and timber. Throughout the 1850s, an era in which the nation was increasingly divided over the issue of slavery, most territorial migrants came from the Northeast and generally did not bring slaves with them. The Minnesota territorial census of 1850 showed only a small community of free blacks—about 40 persons— living mostly in the town of St. Paul. Among these blacks, most were themselves new migrants to Minnesota, having been born in Virginia, Kentucky, and other southern slave states. Even before the Dred Scott case, and despite the small number of blacks in Minnesota by the 1850s, the slavery debates throughout the United States raised concerns about attracting fugitive or freed slaves into the territory. An 1849 law prohibited African Americans from voting in local

Minnesota and territorial elections. After the KansasNebraska Act of 1854, white Democrats in the Minnesota Territory supported the idea of popular sovereignty, of white voters deciding whether to allow slavery in the territory. In opposition to this idea, the Minnesota Republican Party was formed in 1855 on a platform of preventing the western spread of slavery, also known as a free soil, free labor platform. The Republican Party gained strength in rural areas among white emigrants coming to settle and farm the vast western lands, while the Democratic numbers were stronger in the lumber mill towns. Slavery was thus an issue in Minnesota’s bid for statehood, including in the selection of delegates for and terms of the constitutional convention. Minnesota Democrats called their political rivals “Black Republicans” because of their support for free labor (if not outright abolition of slavery) and black suffrage. In 1857, the Democratic newspaper in St. Paul argued for “White Supremacy against Negro Equality.” After the Dred Scott case denied African Americans claims to citizenship, much less freedom, Minnesota Republicans debating the black suffrage provision decided the issue would too greatly risk the passage of the state constitution, and so they allowed the issue to go to voters, as Democrats had wanted. Reflective of such compromises, Minnesota was granted statehood in May 1858 as a free state with a Democratic governor.

Civil War and Reconstruction Minnesota was one of the last states admitted to the Union before the outbreak of Civil War. Minnesota had only 259 black residents in 1860, and yet more than 100 of those enlisted to fight. In the midst of the Civil War, Minnesota became involved in another battlefront against Native Americans in the Dakota War (also known as the Sioux Uprising) of 1862. Several “contraband” laborers (former slaves captured from the

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Confederate enemy) were sent to the Fort Snelling military outpost to assist in the conflict. With many whites leaving the state to join the Union army, Minnesota offered other opportunities for black migrants looking for work in the 1860s. Some companies even sent representatives to recruit thousands of black workers from St. Louis and other areas. Other African Americans made their way north to Minnesota as workers on steamboats who migrated up the Mississippi River to St. Paul. After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, the Union army helped facilitate the escape of enslaved people from the South, while others took it upon themselves to leave. In the spring of 1863, Robert Hickman led a group of some 75 African American refugees on a raft up the Mississippi River from Missouri. They were eventually towed by Union troops to St. Paul. Hickman went on to found the Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul, an important beacon in the Minnesota African American community. Other early black churches in Minnesota included an AME church founded in Minneapolis in 1860 and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in 1867. After the Civil War, Minnesota was one of the earliest states to adopt a suffrage law allowing black men (and Native Americans) the right to vote, two years before the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending that right across the nation. The Minnesota state government also passed its own civil rights legislation, outlawing segregation in the public schools in 1869. If Minnesota seemed to be a more egalitarian place for African Americans in the post–Civil War era, the number of blacks migrating into the state was still relatively small compared to other locations. Minnesota in general was experiencing tremendous population growth in the final decades of the nineteenth century, but the state census showed only 500 additional African American individuals living in the state in 1870 compared to 10 years earlier. By 1900, their numbers had

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increased significantly to more than 14,000 “colored” people living in Minnesota. Although this seemed like a phenomenal influx of African Americans into the state, they still made up less than 1 percent of the total population of Minnesota.

Racial Tensions and Politics in the Twentieth Century Although the numbers were small, and although blacks had been actively recruited into the state as laborers and Indian fighters during the Civil War, hostility toward African Americans increased in the new century. Conflicts arose between black and white communities in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and efforts were made by some whites to prevent more blacks from migrating into the state. Even with such tensions, and with the discrimination that left blacks relegated to low-paying service jobs, a steady stream of black migrants coming to the northern cities drew rural Minnesota blacks into urban areas. These migrants sought the promise of educational and employment opportunities, as well as an escape from the Jim Crow conditions of the South. Other European immigrants and migrants also moved to Minnesota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and ethnic neighborhoods developed in the cities. Blacks, like other groups, were drawn to existing communities for support and opportunity, but the black community’s growth and movement in St. Paul and Minneapolis were limited by de facto segregation, as they were unwelcome in surrounding German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Irish Catholic neighborhoods. Some blacks, however, moved into new RussianJewish neighborhoods in the early 1900s. The Rondo neighborhood, in particular, became a well-known black enclave. In these urban areas, blacks worked in skilled and building trades, in service industries, and for the railroad lines that were headquartered in St. Paul.

African Americans in cities such as St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth created vibrant communities centered around black businesses, churches, newspapers, benevolent organizations, and newspapers. The Western Appeal was founded in 1885 at a time when there were fewer than 1,500 black residents in the Twin Cities area, and the World newspaper was founded in Duluth in 1895. This period saw the rise of a small black middle class of doctors, lawyers, and ministers as community leaders. Fredrick McGhee received his law degree in Tennessee in 1885 and set up practice in St. Paul and Minneapolis. He was the first black lawyer admitted to the bar in Minnesota and later became an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement. The neighborhood organizations, churches, and newspapers provided institutional support for the black community as well as the foundations of black political life throughout the twentieth century. In 1889, an Afro-American League was founded with chapters in several Minnesota towns, and Minnesota delegates John Q. Adams (publisher of the Appeal newspaper) and lawyer Fredrick McGhee were central players in the national Afro-American League’s meeting in St. Paul in 1902. Three years later, in 1905, McGhee was among those national black leaders (along with W. E. B. Du Bois) who met and formed the Niagara Movement, a civil rights organization that opposed the accommodation strategy of Booker T. Washington. The Niagara Movement was short-lived as a group, but led to the formation of the NAACP in 1909. Nationally, many black men also moved into leadership positions in the Republican Party at the turn of the century. The St. Paul and Minneapolis black population was still relatively small compared to other northern cities, and was made up of primarily working-class and new migrants, so that black political representation and influence were rather limited. Again, Fredrick McGhee emerges as an example of limits for

Minnesota blacks in the Republican Party during this era; frustrated by white Republicans who protested his selection as a presidential elector in 1892 when the party’s national convention was held in Minneapolis, McGhee was among the first prominent black leaders to change their affiliation and join the Democratic Party.

Great Migrations Black migration continued into Minnesota during World War I and World War II as industrial labor needs, coupled with the decrease in new European immigrations, opened up job opportunities. By the 1920s, black neighborhoods had established community institutions to help the poor and new migrants. The Piyllis Wheatley House was one such organization founded in Minneapolis in 1924; the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center was founded in 1929. These and other church and neighborhood centers were not only available for meeting and entertainment space for blacks often barred from white-owned hotels and restaurants, but also offered services such as educational workshops, healthcare, housing assistance, and child care. By 1920, the majority of blacks living in Minnesota were still new migrants, having been born in other states. Their numbers, and the rate of increase, then, were still small compared to other midwestern cities which swelled during the Great Migration, such as Detroit, Chicago, or Cleveland. The Twin Cities remained segregated from the early decades of the twentieth century, well into the 1960s and 1970s, even after the establishment of government housing programs and efforts to end housing discrimination. Even the proud black enclave of the Rondo neighborhood had been separated along class lines, with middle and working-class residents living on different streets. Resident Evelyn Fairbanks later wrote an autobiographical account of growing up black in St. Paul in the 1930s and 1940s entitled

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Days of Rondo (published in 1990). The neighborhood was divided by a highway in the 1960s, but beginning in the 1980s, the African American community began organizing an annual Rondo Days Festival (held in July) to remember and celebrate this community. Still, the racial tensions underlying life in Minnesota exploded in one particularly jarring incident, the lynching of three black men in Duluth in the summer of 1920. Several black circus workers had been accused of raping a white teenage girl and, on June 15, 1920, three of the men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, were pulled from the jail by a mob, beaten, and hanged. Although thousands had participated in the mob, only a handful were indicted for rioting and 12 individuals were charged with murder. In the end, no one was ever convicted or held accountable for the murders of Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie. Two other men, Max Mason and William Miller, went on trial for the rape and were defended by black lawyers. While Miller was acquitted, Mason was found guilty and ultimately served four years of a prison sentence. In the aftermath of the lynchings, many African Americans left the city, disillusioned. Others stayed and a Duluth branch of the NAACP was founded in September 1920, with national leader W. E. B. Du Bois brought as a speaker in early 1921. Activists such as Nellie Francis and lawyer William T. Francis (who had represented Max Mason) of St. Paul began pressing for a state antilynching law, which was passed in April 1921.

Depression and World War II The Great Depression affected the African American community of Minneapolis and St. Paul just as in many other industrial cities. The railroad industry, in particular, was hard hit and by 1939, at the end of the Great Depression, 60 percent of blacks in the Twin Cities remained unemployed, compared to an unemployment rate

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of 25 percent among whites. As in many cities, the Communist Party appealed to many laboring and unemployed people during the Depression and several Minnesota blacks participated in city and statewide organizations. Other blacks sought to address their grievances through labor unions. The St. Paul chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was accepted into the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1934. Local activist Nellie Stone Johnson was a union leader who organized black workers and also helped found and became vice president of the Local 665 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union. The post–World War II era saw another large influx of blacks into the Twin Cities. Newly arrived residents continued to protest discriminatory practices that kept blacks confined to lowpaying service jobs. Black newspapers helped spread the word about employment opportunities and about boycotts of businesses that refused to hire blacks. When the war broke out, many industries were still reluctant to hire black workers, and blacks organized to protest exclusion from government defense work, which was finally outlawed at the federal level by President Roosevelt in June 1941. Tensions remained, however, and during the war, in the summer of 1943, race riots broke out in several cities across the nation, including Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York. The Minnesota governor was concerned about discrimination and economic inequality and preemptively organized a committee to report on the condition of black communities in Minnesota. The report of the Governor’s Interracial Commission—one of the first such state groups of its kind—was later published as The Negro Worker’s Progress in Minnesota. Still, Minnesota did not pass fair employment legislation until 1955 and housing discrimination continued, supported by state laws that allowed restrictive covenants and discrimination in home loan programs. The postwar housing

shortage was made even worse by urban renewal programs that broke up black neighborhoods, disrupting community institutions and fueling white resentment about black movement into other areas of the city.

Civil Rights and Beyond The next greatest influx of blacks into Minnesota was during the decade of the 1960s, as a new wave of migrants sought to escape the violence of the South during the civil rights struggles. These migrants were a younger and more politicized population and staged civil rights protests in Minnesota in scenes that were repeated around the country. Activists picketed the Woolworth’s lunch counter in St. Paul in 1960, and black students took over the admissions office of the University of Minnesota in 1969, leading to the establishment of an Afro-American Studies program and greater recruitment and retention efforts of black students. In the 1970s, the NAACP expanded beyond the Twin Cities with branches in areas such as Duluth and Rochester. White Minnesotans were also involved in the Civil Rights Movement against segregation and discrimination. Hubert H. Humphrey had been the mayor of Minneapolis during the 1940s and was committed to ending employment discrimination against blacks in his city. Soon to be a U.S. senator, Humphrey addressed the 1948 Democratic National Convention with a speech on the need for the party to commit to human rights and civil rights issues. As senator and then as vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, Humphrey was involved in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other important social programs of the era. Through and beyond the 1970s, Minnesota as a whole remained overwhelmingly white, with blacks concentrated in the urban areas of the Twin Cities and Duluth. In the 1980s and 1990s, a new wave of blacks to enter Minnesota

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Democratic Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2006, looks at his hands before placing them on the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. From left are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Ellison’s wife Kim Ellison, and their daughter Amirah. (AP/Wide World Photos)

came not from the southern states, but from Africa. Minnesota has welcomed political refugees from several war-torn African countries with economic and civil unrest, the greatest number of these (as many as 40,000) from Somalia. According to the 2000 Census, as many as 20 percent of Minnesota’s black population are foreign-born. These immigrants have different experiences than African Americans with ties and histories in the American South, as well as different access to educational and employment opportunities. New African immigrants are also more likely to be spread out across Minnesota, as opposed to African Americans who are concentrated in urban areas with long traditions of support through churches, newspapers, and local politics. In the late twentieth century, more African Americans were elected to political office in Minnesota. In 1994 the city of Minneapolis elected its first female and first black mayor, Sharon Sayles

Belton, and another black woman, Jean Harris, served as mayor of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, during the same years. Only a small number of African Americans have ever lived in rural Minnesota and, at the end of the twentieth century, African Americans in the Twin Cities, in particular, are among the most educated and most affluent black communities in the nation.

Notable African Americans Ellison, Keith (1963–) Keith Maurice Ellison was the first African American member of the U.S. Congress from Minnesota, and the nation’s first Muslim elected to Congress, representing his Minneapolis district as a Democrat in the House of Representatives. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Ellison attended Wayne State University and then

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earned a law degree from the University of Minnesota. He served in the Minnesota state legislature and was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2006 and reelected in 2008. Ellison has advocated for the rights of Muslims in the United States, especially in light of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which led to an increase in anti-Muslim sentiment. In 2007, Ellison took his oath of office using a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Jones, Frederick McKinley (1892–1961) Frederick McKinley Jones was an inventor who received more than 60 patents, most of these related to refrigeration systems he developed for trucks and railroad cars. Born in Ohio and raised in Kentucky, Jones served in World War I and was self-taught as a mechanic, engineer, and inventor. He moved to Minnesota in 1912 and worked in both the railroad and the emerging motion picture film industries. He invented his automatic cooling system in 1935, which not only allowed fresh produce to be shipped long distances, but also had later applications for the military and medical industry. In 1935, he and partner Joe Numero founded the Thermo-King Corporation in Minneapolis.

Marshall, Bobby (1880–1958) Robert “Bobby” Wells Marshall was a baseball and football player, one of the earliest and best athletes in Minnesota history. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, leading the college team to championship status in the early 1900s. Marshall earned a law degree in 1907 but played professional baseball for the St. Paul Colored Gophers, the Minneapolis Keystones, and Rube Foster’s Chicago Giants. In the 1920s, he was one of the first African Americans to play professional football in the NFL. He played for the Minneapolis Marines (Minnesota’s first

NFL team), the Duluth Kelleys, and the Rock Island Independents of Illinois.

McGhee, Fredrick (1861–1912) Fredrick L. McGhee was a civil rights pioneer and the first black lawyer admitted to the bar in Minnesota. McGhee was born to slave parents in Mississippi in October 1861, just months after the start of the Civil War. He earned his law degree in Tennessee and practiced law in Illinois before moving to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he had many white clients but also became involved in civil rights activism. McGhee was one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, working with W. E. B. Du Bois in an organization that led to the formation of the NAACP.

Newman, Cecil (1903–1976) Cecil E. Newman was a journalist, civil rights activist, and publisher of the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder, which he used as a forum for motivating and organizing the black community. Newman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for the Kansas City Call before moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota, around 1922. He worked as a bellhop and a Pullman porter before becoming a partner and reporter for the Twin Cities Herald. He began his own paper, the Spokesman-Recorder, in 1934, which he published until his death in 1976; the paper continues to be published by his granddaughter.

Page, Alan (1945–) Alan Cedric Page was a Hall of Fame football player with the Minnesota Vikings before having a distinguished career as a lawyer, activist, and Minnesota Supreme Court justice. Born in Canton, Ohio, Page studied political science in college before joining the Minnesota Vikings from 1967 to 1978, during which time the team made

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Undated photo of the rock star Prince. (AP/Wide World Photos) Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page. (Minnesota Supreme Court)

it to the Super Bowl four times; he went on to play with the Chicago Bears for three years. In 1978, he earned a law degree from the University of Minnesota. After retiring from football, he was assistant state attorney general and then became an associate justice on the Minnesota State Supreme Court in 1993, the first African American on that court. He was reelected in 1998 and 2004.

Prince (1958–) Musician and songwriter Prince introduced a new “Minneapolis sound” to pop music. Born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis to jazz musician parents, Prince started his own band in high school and recorded his first album by age 20. He was one of the most successful recording artists of the 1980s, earning seven Grammy Awards as well as an Academy Award for the title song of his 1984

film, Purple Rain. He has nurtured dozens of other acts and written hundreds of hit songs for other pop artists. In the 1990s, he gave up the name Prince and was known only by a copyrighted symbol and as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” In 2010, he wrote a song for the Minnesota Vikings football team, “Purple and Gold.”

Puckett, Kirby (1960–2006) Kirby Puckett was a Hall of Fame baseball player who played for the Minnesota Twins (1984– 1995) and is considered one of the best athletes in Minnesota sports history. Born in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of nine children, Puckett won AllAmerican honors in high-school baseball. He played college baseball in Chicago and in a California league before being drafted by the Twins in 1984. During his tenure, the Minnesota Twins won two World Series championships, in 1987 and again in 1991. Puckett developed glaucoma at the age of 35 and was forced to retire in 1995. He

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moved to Arizona where, in 2006, he suffered a stroke and died at the age of 45.

Smith, Lena O. (1885–1966) Lena Olive Smith was a pioneer civil rights activist and lawyer, the first black woman admitted to the bar in Minnesota. Smith was born in Kansas and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, around 1906. She graduated from Northwestern College of Law and was admitted to the Minnesota bar in 1921. Smith focused her Minneapolis law practice on civil rights and equality issues such as housing discrimination and the right of blacks to join labor unions. She was a founding member of the Minneapolis Urban League, and between 1935 and 1939, she served as the first female president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP.

Wigington, Clarence Wesley “Cap” (1883–1967) Clarence Wesley “Cap” Wigington was considered the first African American municipal architect, working on public projects and buildings. Born in Kansas, his family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, when he was just an infant. While still a teenager, he won several prizes for drawing at the Trans-Mississippi World’s Fair in 1899 and, after his high-school graduation, worked as a clerk for a local architect. Wigington eventually had important commissions in Omaha and in Wyoming before moving to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1913. In a career that spanned three decades, he designed more than 60 buildings and projects in the St. Paul area, including many which remain as Minnesota historical landmarks.

Wilkins, Roy (1901–1981) Roy Wilkins was one of the most important Minnesota and national civil rights leaders of the mid-twentieth century, serving as executive

director of the NAACP from 1955 to 1977. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Wilkins attended the University of Minnesota and began his career as a newspaper editor. He began working with the NAACP in the 1930s, serving as editor of the organization’s paper, The Crisis, and in a variety of administrative roles before becoming executive director in 1955. Under his tenure, the NAACP played a key role in every major civil rights victory, including the 1963 March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Wilson, August (1945–2005) August Wilson was a playwright who received two Pulitzer Prizes. Born Frederick August Kittel Jr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a young adult he began using his mother’s name, Wilson. He cofounded the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh in 1968. By 1978, Wilson had moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and was eventually affiliated with the Penumbra Theatre Company, which produced (and still produces) many of his plays. He is best known for The Pittsburgh Cycles, a 10-play series that chronicles the African American experience over the twentieth century. He earned Pulitzer Prizes for two of the plays in the series, Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990); he also won a Tony Award in 1985 for Fences.

Winfield, David (1951–) David Mark Winfield is one of Minnesota’s top all-time athletes, although he joined the baseball Hall of Fame as a player with the San Diego Padres. Winfield was born in St. Paul and attended the University of Minnesota on a full athletic scholarship. He led the Golden Gophers baseball team to the College World Series in 1973 and was subsequently recruited by teams in three different sports (baseball, basketball, and football), including the Minnesota Vikings, although he had not played college football.

Minnesota Winfield chose to play baseball with the San Diego Padres (1973–1980) and went on to play with the New York Yankees and several other teams, spending the 1993–1994 season on his hometown team, the Minnesota Twins.

Cultural Contributions Black athletes have had a prominent role in Minnesota sports history, especially in football and baseball. Bobby Marshall played both baseball and football and was one of the first African Americans to play for a National Football League team. He joined Minnesota’s first NFL team, the Minneapolis Marines, in 1908. Several generations later, Alan Page was a Hall of Fame football player with the Minnesota Vikings, leading the team to four Super Bowl competitions in the 1960s and 1970s. Black baseball in Minnesota began with the St. Paul Colored Gophers, a team that was founded in 1907 and led to the creation of the Negro League. Bobby Marshall played for the Colored Gophers and for the Minneapolis Keystones, another early black team. Walter Ball later played for teams in Chicago and New York, but he had been one of the founding players, a pitcher, for the Colored Gophers and the Keystones in the early twentieth century. In the next generation of integrated baseball, Roy Campanella was, along with Jackie Robinson, one of the first black players with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he had spent one season (1948) with the St. Paul Saints. Likewise, Willie Mays became a major league Hall of Fame player for New York and San Francisco teams, but early in his career he had played a season (1951) with a minor league team, the Minneapolis Millers. A Minnesota woman, Toni Stone of St. Paul, was the first of three black women who, barred from the whites-only women’s teams, played in the semipro and professional Negro Leagues with men; in the 1950s, she played second base for the Indianapolis Clowns and the Kansas City Monarchs.

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In the later twentieth century, Minnesota produced two of the best black baseball players of all time: Kirby Puckett, who spent his entire career with the Minnesota Twins, and Dave Winfield, who played for the San Diego Padres but spent a season with the Twins at the end of his career. As in many states, the black community in Minnesota, although small, nurtured a black musical tradition, beginning with the gospel and spirituals sung in black churches. Although other cities are considered the birthplaces of jazz, the blues, and rock and roll, Minneapolis also had a small role in the early days of jazz music. Musician and composer Wilbur Sweatman first recorded the ragtime records of Scott Joplin in Minneapolis. Sweatman later became wildly successful for his own Dixieland rag compositions and is considered one of the first black musicians to record the new jazz music in the 1910s. Young black musicians in the 1960s and 1970s drew on the ragtime, jazz, gospel, and blues traditions to celebrate African American musical contributions. The Sounds of Blackness, organized in St. Paul around 1971, are a Grammy Award–winning group of singers and musicians who incorporate a variety of African American musical styles, including historical traditions of slave songs and spirituals. In the 1990s, the Sounds of Blackness were invited to play at events such as President Bill Clinton’s inauguration and the 1996 Summer Olympics. Black Minnesotans made a unique contribution to popular music as well in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of the “Minneapolis sound,” pioneered by recording artist Prince. The Minneapolis sound combined the heavy guitar and dance rhythms of rock and roll and funk with elements of New Wave music such as synthesizers and electronic drums. This music was made hugely popular by Prince, and was adopted by other musical acts he nurtured and produced, including Morris Day (also a Minneapolis native and later leader of the band the Time), Sheila E., Vanity 6, and

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Apollonia 6. Prince’s style is evident as well in the hundreds of hit songs he wrote for other pop artists, including Sheila E. (“The Glamorous Life”), The Bangles (“Manic Monday”), and Sinead O’Connor (“Nothing Compares 2 U”).

Bibliography Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. Rev. ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2000.

Green, William D. A Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Early Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2007. Hoffbeck, Steven R. Swinging for the Fences: Black Baseball in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005. Lass, William E. Minnesota: A History. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Taylor, David Vassar. African Americans in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2002.

MISSISSIPPI Ben Wynne

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Chronology 1717

The French begin importing African slaves into the Louisiana Colony.

1724

Jean Baptist de Bienville, a French governor, develops the Bienville Code, or the Black Code, to govern slaves.

1763

The British begin settlements in Mississippi, bringing slave laborers with them.

1806

Improvements in the cotton plant and growing use of the cotton gin increase the demand for slaves in Mississippi.

1817

Mississippi joins the Union as the 20th state.

1823

The Mississippi State legislature severely restricts grounds for freeing of slaves.

1830

Rose Hill Baptist Church, the state’s oldest African American Baptist church, is founded in Natchez

1857

The Mississippi State legislature outlaws emancipation of slaves.

1861

( January 9) Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union.

1861

(July) Federal forces capture Ship Island, which gives the Union control of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.

1862

(May) Corinth, in northern Mississippi, falls to Union forces; with the arrival of federal troops, an estimated 17,000 blacks slaves eventually join their ranks.

1863

( January 1) President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation takes effect, freeing all slaves in territory then in rebellion against the federal government.

1863

( July 4) After weeks of siege, Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, falls to Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant.

1864

Mississippi’s first African Methodist Episcopal church, Bethel AME, is established in Vicksburg.

1865

(December 5) Mississippi rejects the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.

1866

Rust College is established in Holly Springs as Shaw College, the first private liberal arts institution for freed slaves.

1867

The U.S. Congress rejects the reconstructed government of Mississippi and replaces it with a military government.

1867

African Americans vote for the first time in Mississippi.

1868

The so-called "Black and Tan Convention," a biracial constitutional convention, drafts a new state constitution that protects the rights of African Americans; voters reject the proposed constitution.

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1869

Tougaloo College is founded north of Jackson.

1870

( January 17) Mississippi ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending citizenship to former slaves; the state’s ratification comes a year and a half after the amendment was adopted.

1870

( January 17) As a requirement for sending representatives to Congress, Mississippi ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right of African American men to vote.

1870

(February 23) Mississippi is readmitted to the Union.

1870

Upon entering the U.S. Senate, Hiram R. Revels of Natchez becomes the first African American to sit in either house of the U.S. Congress.

1871

(May 13) Alcorn State University is created by the Mississippi legislature as the first landgrant school for African Americans in the United States.

1872

John R. Lynch becomes speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives; Lynch is then elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi.

1873

Thomas W. Stringer founds the Stringer Grand Lodge in Vicksburg, the first and largest African American Masonic Lodge in the state.

1875

Blanche K. Bruce is the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate.

1875

The “Mississippi Plan” is instituted by the state government to deter African American political participation.

1877

The Natchez Seminary for Black Ministers is founded in Natchez by the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York.

1883

The Natchez Seminary for Black Ministers moves to Jackson and is renamed Jackson College, later becoming Jackson State University.

1887

Mound Bayou, the first Mississippi town founded by African Americans, is established.

1890

Isaiah Montgomery is the sole African American delegate at Mississippi’s constitutional convention.

1890

The Second Mississippi Plan is written into the revised state constitution to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment and thus constitutionally eliminate African Americans from state politics.

1894

Holy Family Catholic Church, the first African American Catholic church in the state, is built in Natchez.

1894

Smith Robertson opens as the first public African American school in Jackson, later becoming the Smith Robertson Museum.

1894

The Wechsler School becomes the first brick public school built for African Americans in Mississippi with funds from public school bonds.

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1903

The State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs is founded.

1907

Dr. L. T. Miller opens the first sanitarium in the state for African Americans.

1908

The Farish Street District in Jackson grows to prominence.

1908

Richard Wright, a renowned author of the African American experience, is born near Natchez.

1909

Piney Woods Country Life School is founded 21 miles southeast of Jackson by Dr. Laurence Jones; the school provides vocational and secondary education for African American students.

1909

Zachery Taylor Hubert becomes the first African American president of Jackson State University.

1917

Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer is born in Montgomery County.

1920

St. Augustine Church and Seminary, the oldest Roman Catholic Seminary in the state, is founded in Greenville.

1924

The Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a fraternal organization, is started by T. J. Huddleston Sr. in Yazoo City.

1925

(July 2) Medgar Wiley Evers, a leader in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement, is born in Decatur.

1925

(September 16) Bluesman B. B. King is born in Itta Bena.

1927

(February 10) Opera star Leontyne Price is born in Laurel.

1928

T. J. Huddleston Sr. builds and operates the first hospital in the state owned and managed by African Americans.

1954

(November 24) Medgar Evers is appointed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) field secretary for Mississippi.

1955

(August 28) Emmett Till, a black man from Chicago, is murdered in Money, a small town in the Delta region, supposedly for whistling at a white woman.

1960

The first African American protest in Mississippi in the civil rights era begins in Biloxi Beach, when blacks attempt to use a segregated beach.

1962

The desegregation of Mississippi schools and colleges begins when James Meredith becomes the first black registrant to be admitted to the University of Mississippi.

1962

(December 20) Mississippi rejects the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolishes the poll tax; Mississippi has never ratified this amendment, which took effect in January 1964.

1963

(June12) Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, is assassinated in the driveway of his Jackson home.

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1964

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is founded to challenge the control of the whitesonly regular Democratic Party in Mississippi.

1964

The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, abolishing the poll tax, a major obstacle to African American voting.

1964

The Freedom Summer Program brings black and white college students, recruited and organized by civil rights groups, to come to Mississippi to lead voter registration efforts, fight illiteracy, and start “Freedom Schools.”

1964

James Chaney, an African American man, and two white men, Michael Schwemer and Andrew Goodman, are murdered while investigating the burning of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

1965

The Voting Rights Act becomes law.

1967

State Representative Robert G. Clark becomes the first African American to serve in the Mississippi legislature in the twentieth century.

1977

The first annual Delta Blues Festival is held in Clarksdale.

1978

The Mississippi Cultural Crossroads opens in Port Gibson.

1979

The first annual Farish Street Festival is held in Jackson.

1980

Bennie Thompson is elected to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors.

1984

Ruben Anderson from Jackson is elected as the first African American justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

1984

The Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, focusing on the history of Mississippi’s African Americans, opens in Jackson.

1985

The first permanent civil rights exhibit in the United States opens at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson.

1986

Michael Espy is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming Mississippi’s first African American congressman since Reconstruction.

1991

The Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture opens.

1993

Michael Espy of Mississippi is appointed U.S. secretary of agriculture by President Bill Clinton.

1993

Bennie Thompson is elected to succeed Mike Espy as representative of Mississippi’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1994

Byron de la Beckwith is convicted, after 31 years, of the 1963 assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Wiley Evers.

1995

(March 16) Mississippi ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States, 130 years after the amendment took effect.

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1998

Sam Bowers, former head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, is convicted of the 1966 murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer.

2005

Eighty-year-old Edgar Ray Killen is convicted of manslaughter in connection with the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba County.

2005

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi becomes a leading Democrat on the new U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security.

Historical Overview The Nineteenth Century African Americans have lived on the land that is now the state of Mississippi for 300 years. The French were the first of the European powers to settle the region, establishing Fort Maurepas on the Gulf Coast in 1699 and Natchez on the Mississippi River in 1716. The French brought the first African slaves into Natchez in 1716 to serve as agricultural labor. For the rest of the eighteenth century, even as governance of the region passed from French into Spanish, British, and finally American hands, Natchez remained the center of economic activity in the area, and the highest concentration of slaves could be found along the Mississippi River in the Natchez vicinity. By the time the United States officially created the Mississippi Territory in 1798, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton engine, or “gin,” had made cotton profitable, and it quickly became the primary cash crop in the Natchez District. With statehood in 1817, Mississippi began to fill up with settlers and slaves, and while Natchez remained a center for the cotton trade in the state, the cotton kingdom began to expand into central Mississippi along the Pearl River and into the Yazoo and Tombigbee River valleys. As the cotton economy expanded in the state, so did the institution of slavery. When Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861, more than 436,000 slaves resided within its borders, making up 55 percent of the state’s total population.

During the course of the Civil War, around 17,000 former slaves from Mississippi served in the U.S. Army. Black soldiers in blue uniforms guarded federally-occupied cities and traversed Mississippi’s roads as battle-ready infantry, cavalry, and artillery. From the time that the Union army first came to Mississippi, slaves flocked to the lines seeking freedom, and the federals set up contraband camps to meet the needs of the freedmen population. Once the U.S. government decided to use black troops in 1862, these contraband camps provided a pool of eager recruits, as did the ongoing flow of runaways into the federal lines. Former slaves did guard duty in Vicksburg and Natchez, and distinguished themselves in a number of engagements around the state. Even though many former slaves enlisted in the Union army, and others were employed by the army to perform auxiliary functions, thousands were left with no means of support as U.S. forces occupied the state. After exploring a variety of options, federal authorities eventually organized “home farms” in some areas on which the freedmen could work for wages. These farms were located on plantations that had been seized by the army and leased, in many cases, to northern businessmen looking to make profits from cotton production. The system was ripe for abuse, and some northerners made large profits from the enterprise at the expense of the freedmen. Federal authorities also began distributing some lands to the freedmen themselves, though some of the land claims would be disputed in years to come.

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Freedom Riders en route to Washington, D.C., from New York City hang signs from their bus windows to protest segregation. During the summer of 1961, hundreds of Freedom Riders rode in interstate buses into the prosegregationist South to test a U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned segregation of interstate transportation facilities. (Library of Congress)

At the end of the war, times were especially difficult for Mississippi’s newly freed slaves. The war’s outcome had given them their freedom but little else. Permanent equality for the former slaves never fully materialized and eventually gave way to social turmoil that would not be dealt with effectively for another century. Mississippi’s freedmen owned no property and had few personal possessions, and slavery had scattered many of their families. After the war, many former slaves as quickly as possible tried to establish some sort of family life, and many freedmen wandered the roads of the state for months searching for lost relatives. Hundreds of slave marriages took place in the months immediately following the war, legally sanctioning unions that had not

been recognized during the antebellum period. The federal government created the Freedmen’s Bureau to distribute supplies to the needy and settle other issues, but the agency was never large enough in scope to provide a long-range solution to Mississippi’s (and the South’s) many problems. Even before the war ended Abraham Lincoln put in place a lenient plan for reconstructing both the southern states and the nation. His plan involved little more than most white southerners taking a loyalty oath to the Union and accepting emancipation. Upon Lincoln’s death, the presidency passed to Andrew Johnson, who also advocated a lenient plan. While both plans were designed to bring the Union back together as quickly as possible, neither made any concrete

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provisions for civil rights for the newly freed slaves. Johnson, in fact, was at times openly hostile to the African American community. As a result, white political leaders in Mississippi, many of whom were Democrats and former Confederates, quickly began putting together state governments under what they considered favorable terms. Andrew Johnson appointed a provisional governor in Mississippi who immediately called a constitutional convention that met in Jackson in August 1865. The convention produced a new constitution and elections were scheduled for state and local officials. Former Confederate General Benjamin G. Humphreys won the governor’s seat and the elections also produced a state legislature firmly dedicated to turning back the clock and reestablishing white supremacy and the old social order. Once in office the newly elected legislature passed a series of laws collectively known as the Black Code. They were designed to regulate the activities of the newly freed slaves and keep the freedmen subordinate. Under the new laws freedmen could not rent or lease some rural land, they could not own firearms, and they had to have a special license to hold many jobs. The legislature also passed vagrancy laws under which former slaves could be arrested and, if they could not pay the required fine, farmed out to work for their former masters or other whites for no pay. During this initial phase of Reconstruction, federal troops were ordered to look out for the physical safety of the former slaves, but they were also told not to interfere to any great degree with Mississippi’s civilian authorities. As a result, federal officials in Mississippi did little to counter the laws restricting freedmen. Once Congress seized control of the Reconstruction process in 1868, the situation in Mississippi changed. Former Confederates were restricted from taking part in the formation of new state governments, and adult male freedmen were given the right to vote and hold office. As a result, the Republican Party governed Mississippi for several

years, with the African American community constituting the party’s largest voting bloc in the state. A new constitutional convention that included 16 African American delegates and 88 whites convened in Mississippi in January 1868. Despite the fact that there were relatively few African Americans at the convention, some conservative Democratic newspapers later disparaged the meeting as the “Black and Tan Convention” and downplayed its accomplishments. The 1868 Mississippi constitution that the convention produced was patterned after state constitutions in the North. Among other things, it declared that all persons residing in Mississippi who were citizens of the United States were citizens of the state and had equal civil and political rights. The constitution also provided for a system of free public education and for no discrimination in the use of public facilities. These provisions provoked bitter opposition from conservatives, and from many whites who soon regained their right to vote. Regardless, the constitution was ratified, new elections were held, and Mississippi officially reentered the Union in 1870 under Republican control. The Republicans controlled Mississippi for about five years, during which time they repaired or rebuilt railroads, bridges, levees, and public buildings. The School Law of 1870 established Mississippi’s first public school system and the legislature passed a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places and on public conveyances. While African American voters had influence, African Americans never dominated Mississippi’s government during the period as some would later claim. No African American was ever elected governor, nor were African Americans ever a majority in the legislature. At the local level where the county sheriff was the most important elected office, only 12 of 74 counties ever had a black sheriff, this in a state where African Americans represented roughly half of the population and 70 to 80 percent of the population in some counties. Even though Mississippi’s congressional delegation

Mississippi was always predominantly white, three African Americans briefly represented Mississippi in Washington during Reconstruction, Hiram R. Revels and Blanch K. Bruce in the U.S. Senate and John R. Lynch in the House of Representatives. During the early 1870s, a significant backlash against Reconstruction policies in Mississippi developed among conservative whites whose goal was to reclaim the state for the Democratic Party and to put in place, in one form or another, the social structure of the antebellum period. Conservatives formed political “White Men’s Clubs” to appeal to the white masses and “Taxpayer Leagues” to protest the Republicans’ fiscal policies. These groups served two purposes. They unified many white voters based on race and they successfully circulated anti-Republican propaganda throughout the state. During the period, terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the Sons of Midnight harassed and sometimes killed black and white Republicans alike. During local elections in 1874 and the statewide legislative elections of 1875, violence prevailed as the Democrats implemented the “Mississippi Plan,” which generally involved racebased appeals to white voters, stuffed ballot boxes, falsified election returns, and violence and intimidation designed to keep African Americans and white Republicans away from the polls. During the 1875 political season, serious race riots broke out at Water Valley, Louisville, Macon, Columbus, Vicksburg, and other places. In Clinton, more than 20 African Americans died during several days of rioting and many others were forced to flee the town. The statewide elections of 1875 represented a triumph for the Mississippi Plan. Widespread voter fraud and intimidation resulted in legislative victories for the Democrats in 62 of the state’s 74 counties. Once seated, the new legislature impeached the Republican governor Adelbert Ames and forced other Republican politicians to give up their offices. Although the

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disputed presidential election of 1876 and subsequent Compromise of 1877 that gave Rutherford Hayes the presidency marked the official end of Reconstruction in the South, the 1875 elections marked the end of Reconstruction in Mississippi and the beginning of a hundred years of Democratic dominance of the state. The race-based Mississippi Plan became the blueprint used by other southern states to rid themselves of Republican rule. Meanwhile, the federal government did nothing to combat the abuses. By the mid-1870s, much of the northern public had grown tired of the Reconstruction debate, which, in turn, caused many northern politicians to lose interest. Civil rights for African Americans was not an issue that excited the northern electorate, and a financial panic in 1873 made economic concerns a priority in many circles. After four years of war, and several years of Reconstruction, the North was tired of fighting and gave the South back to the Democratic Party at the expense of the African American population. Soon African Americans in Mississippi, and in the rest of the South, would be excluded from the political system and legally segregated into a “separate but equal” world of their own. Once national Reconstruction ended, the political leaders in the southern states were suddenly free to reconstruct their governments as they saw fit, which is exactly what happened in Mississippi. The Democratic Party, with a commitment to white supremacy as one of its central tenets, regained control of the state government and took steps to permanently keep the races separated. Without federal protection, African Americans in Mississippi were left at the mercy of the white establishment, and in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the state’s leaders took steps to deny members of the black community their rights as citizens. Mississippi, along with other southern states, began implementing so-called Jim Crow laws, the goals of which were to keep the races separate, and to keep the African American

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population subordinate. These laws barred African Americans from most public accommodations frequented by whites such as hotels, theaters, restaurants, and public parks. They also called for separate railroad cars for whites and blacks, and for segregated schools. In 1890, Mississippi produced a new constitution that included Jim Crow laws as well as voting provisions that disfranchised many African Americans. A two-dollar poll tax was put in place, as was a literacy clause that required potential voters to read and interpret a section of the new constitution before they were allowed to cast their ballots. In 1892, less than 10,000 of the state’s 186,000 eligible African American men were registered to vote. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld these constitutional provisions in 1898 in William v. Mississippi just two years after the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case upheld the South’s Jim Crow laws. In the decades after Reconstruction, most of Mississippi’s African American population made their living on small farms, and regardless of how hard they worked, most remained poor. The sharecropping system that developed during the period was ripe for abuse by the relatively small group of major landowners in the state. It kept African Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder and was also used as a means of social control that effectively recreated the conditions of slavery in many parts of the state.

Civil Rights Era and Beyond On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1896 Plessy decision that had legalized segregation. In Brown v. Board of Education, a case dealing with the inequities of segregated schools, the justices ruled unanimously that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. The ruling marked the beginning of the end of legal segregation in the South and was a bombshell in Mississippi. The state’s stunned political establishment scrambled for a strategy to fight the decision and the editor of Mississippi’s most influential

newspaper predicted bloodshed. The state’s senior U.S. senator, James O. Eastland, publically declared that Mississippi and the rest of the South would never obey the ruling. Even the state’s more moderate white voices pledged to fight desegregation by every means available. Among the first steps taken by the Mississippi legislature were bills abolishing compulsory school attendance and passage of a variety of resolutions lauding states' rights and condemning federal interference in state affairs. Throughout the state, threats increased against African Americans who were viewed as too outspoken on the issue of desegregation. After the Brown decision, the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest, as did a period of turbulence in Mississippi the likes of which had not been seen since the Civil War. Mississippi’s political and economic leaders pledged “massive resistance” to the movement, echoing the sentiments of their counterparts in other southern states. Several organizations, some private and others state-sponsored, were created to fight desegregation. In the Delta town of Indianola, farmer Robert Patterson organized local white business and community leaders into the state’s first Citizens Council, a segregationist group. By November 1954, just six months after the Brown decision, over 100 council chapters were operating in the state and the movement claimed to have over 20,000 members. The Citizens Councils were made up primarily of upper- and middleclass whites who had the means to exert economic pressure on any African Americans who involved themselves in the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks who signed petitions supporting the Brown decision and calling for immediate school desegregation found themselves out of work, or unable to get credit at local banks. Those involved with the increasingly vocal National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) might not have been able to purchase the necessities of life at white-owned stores. This

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Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till Mobley. The 14-year-old Till was murdered by vigilantes in Mississippi in 1955. (Library of Congress)

type of pressure had an effect, successfully stifling the movement in many places, at least for a time. In 1956, the Mississippi legislature created the State Sovereignty Commission ostensibly to prevent encroachment upon the rights of the state by the federal government. The commission included state political and civic leaders, and employed private detectives to secretly investigate anyone associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the commission’s activities were coordinated with the Citizens Council. Of course not all pressure was economic. The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi also led to a great deal of violence. In some parts of the state, the Ku Klux Klan was revived to terrorize African Americans and harass any whites perceived as having sympathy for the movement. In Belzoni, Reverend George Lee, an NAACP leader, died in a car accident after his automobile

was fired on. Lee’s friend and fellow NAACP worker Gus Courts was shot and almost killed as he tended his grocery store. No one was ever charged in either crime. In Poplarville, Mack Charles Parker, an African American accused of assaulting a white woman, was dragged from a local jail and lynched by a group of white men, none of whom were ever held accountable for their actions. Several race-related murders in Mississippi received major national attention during the Civil Rights era. In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, came south from Chicago to visit relatives in Money, a small town in the predominantly black Delta region of the state. Till disappeared shortly after supposedly whistling at a white woman. His battered body, wrapped in barbed wire and weighted down, was later recovered from the Tallahatchie River.

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Thousands attend a street rally in New York City on October 11, 1955, to protest the slaying of Emmett Till. The rally was jointly sponsored by the NAACP and District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union. (Library of Congress)

Two men were acquitted of the murder but their trial focused major national attention on Mississippi’s racial problems. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, World War II veteran Medgar Evers was Mississippi’s NAACP field secretary, and as such was heavily involved in voter registration and various educational programs for African Americans in the state. On June 12, 1963, a sniper killed Evers with a single shot in the back from a high-powered rifle. The NAACP’s chief representative in Mississippi fell in his driveway, having just arrived home after watching a televised address by President John F. Kennedy on racial justice. Evers’ killer would not be forced to pay for his crime for more than a quarter century. A year after Evers’ death, three civil rights

workers disappeared in Neshoba County as they drove back from investigating reports of an African American church burning. Their disappearance touched off a massive search and several weeks of national publicity before their bodies were finally found buried in an earthen dam. Several men with Ku Klux Klan ties, including local law enforcement officers, were implicated in their deaths. Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were participating in a large project sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a sometimes uneasy alliance of various civil rights groups including the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee

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Medgar Evers, 1963. Evers was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People field secretary for Mississippi. (AP/Wide World Photos)

(SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The effort, dubbed the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, brought into the state hundreds of volunteers, both white and black, from around the country. Volunteers organized “freedom schools” to educate the African American community with regard to their rights as citizens, and lead voter registration drives. As a result, Klan activity increased and violence escalated. In addition to the Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman murders, other civil rights workers—dubbed “outside agitators” by some Mississippi whites—were beaten, shot, or arrested, and dozens of churches and other buildings were bombed. In 1962, one of the watershed events of the civil rights era in Mississippi took place as James Meredith, a 29-year-old African American Air Force veteran, prepared to enter the University of

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Mississippi (Ole Miss). Meredith had applied for admission the previous year, but he was rejected after the registrar’s office discovered that he was not white. After a protracted legal battle, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the university had engaged in a carefully calculated campaign of delay and harassment based of Meredith’s race. The court also ordered Ole Miss to admit Meredith immediately. In response, Mississippi’s segregationist governor Ross Barnett went on statewide television and vowed to resist the ruling. On the afternoon of September 30, 1962, a crowd opposing Meredith’s admission to the university gathered on campus and began harassing U.S. Marshals who had been brought in to keep order. Some members of the mob were from Mississippi, while many others were segregationists from neighboring states. They began throwing rocks and bottles, and overturning nearby cars and trucks and setting them on fire. As the sun set, events spiraled out of control and Marshals fired tear gas into the crowd. Bullets began to fly and a full-scale riot ensued, during which two people were killed and many others were hurt. One hundred and sixty Marshals were injured, including 28 who were shot during the fracas. Order was restored only after President John F. Kennedy nationalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent in an additional 20,000 federal troops. At 8:00 a.m., the morning after the riot, James Meredith officially broke the color barrier at the University of Mississippi by completing the registration process. During the period, COFO workers also set up a political organization, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), to challenge Mississippi’s political establishment. In August 1964, as the national Democratic Convention approached, traditional Mississippi Democrats made plans to send their all-white delegation to the gathering. In response, the MFDP protested and petitioned the credentials committee of the national Democratic Party, claiming that the

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On October 8, 1962, James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, leaves class during his second week at the school. An angry mob had tried to stop his entrance into the school, and federal troops were called in to stop the riot that ultimately left two dead, 28 wounded, and over 200 arrested. (Library of Congress)

delegation chosen by Mississippi Democrats did not accurately represent the people of the state because it did not include any African Americans. They argued that instead of seating the all-white group, the convention should seat a biracial coalition of MFDP members. The credentials committee refused to seat the integrated delegation but the national press covered the struggle, giving even more publicity to the state of political affairs in Mississippi, and in the South in general. As the 1960s ended, the state of Mississippi began to achieve racial stability. The perseverance of those involved in the Civil Rights Movement, along with evolving attitudes among many whites, brought about change that would have seemed impossible to achieve just two decades earlier. Business leaders began to realize that racial strife retarded Mississippi’s economic growth, and that it was difficult to attract industry to a state filled with so much turmoil. Most Mississippians, black

and white, tired of conflict and an era of violence and uncertainty, gave way to an era of transition and relative peace. In 1967, two years after the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, Robert G. Clark of Holmes County became the first African American of the modern era to serve in the state legislature, with other African Americans soon following him. Beginning with the 1969–1970 academic year, school desegregation took place across Mississippi with few incidents. While private all-white academies were established in some areas to circumvent desegregation, the vast majority of Mississippi’s children began attending integrated public schools. At the university level James Meredith opened the door for other African Americans, and soon all of the state’s institutions of higher learning were integrated. In 1976, popular Ole Miss football star Ben Williams, an African American, was elected by his fellow students as “Colonel Rebel,” the most coveted social honor

Mississippi on the Ole Miss campus. Since then, African American students have served as president of the university’s student body. In 1984, Ruben Anderson was elected as Mississippi’s first African American Supreme Court justice, and two years later, Michael Espy became the first African American Mississippian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since Reconstruction. In 1985, the first permanent civil rights exhibit opened at the state Mississippi History Museum in Jackson. By the end of the twentieth century, the state of Mississippi had also taken steps to correct past injustices through an ongoing effort to bring to trial criminals from the civil rights era who had gone unpunished for decades. In 1994, after a highly publicized trial that drew national attention, a Mississippi jury convicted Byron de la Beckwith of the murder of Medgar Evers. Beckwith was given a life sentence and died in custody several years later. In 1998, Sam Bowers, former head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, was convicted of ordering the 1966 murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer, who died from injuries sustained when his home was firebombed. Bowers also received a life sentence and died in prison. In 2005, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the 1964 deaths of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba County. Due to Killen’s advanced age and health, the 60-year sentence he received for the crime was effectively a life sentence.

Notable African Americans Alexander, Margaret Walker (1915–1998) The daughter of a minister and a teacher, author Margaret Walker was born in 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. She was encouraged by her parents to excel and as a child read a great deal of poetry and philosophy. In 1935, she graduated from

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Northwestern University in Chicago with a degree in English and the following year joined the Federal Writers’ Project, where she worked with other prominent writers, including Richard Wright, Frank Yerby, and Gwendolyn Brooks. In 1942, Walker earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa, and later earned a Ph.D. in English from the university. She won the Yale Younger Poets Competition for her volume of poetry titled For My People. After her marriage to Firnist James Alexander, Walker taught at Livingston College in North Carolina and at West Virginia State College before moving to Mississippi in 1949 to accept an English professorship at Jackson State College (later Jackson State University). In 1966, she completed her landmark novel Jubilee, which won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award and sparked renewed public interest in her work. In 1970 she produced Prophets for a New Day and, three years later, October Journey. Walker taught at Jackson State until 1979, after which she toured, lectured, and continued to write.

Hamer, Fannie Lou (1917–1977) Born in 1917 as the youngest of 20 children in a Montgomery County, Mississippi, sharecropping family, Fannie Lou Hamer gained national attention as a civil rights activist during the 1960s. Hamer married in 1944 and moved to Ruleville, where she worked as a field hand on a local plantation. She was later promoted to timekeeper when it was discovered that she could read and write. In 1962, the Civil Rights Movement arrived in Ruleville, and Hamer immediately became involved, registering to vote and losing her job as a result. She worked tirelessly for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was a founder of the Freedom Democratic Party. As the party challenged the state’s regular Democratic delegation at the 1964 Democratic

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Convention, Hamer went on television and told her story of the abuse she had suffered a year earlier at the hands of the police in Mississippi after she had tried to use a local bus station. In her community she was a larger-than-life character and a tireless worker to improve conditions for Mississippi’s impoverished. During the 1970s Ruleville held “Fannie Lou Hamer Day” in recognition of her work, and she also received honorary degrees from Tougaloo College, Shaw University, Morehouse College, Columbia College, and Howard University.

King, B. B. (1925–) Born Riley B. King near Indianola in the Mississippi Delta, bluesman B. B. King received his first guitar at the age of nine from a relative. As a youngster he sang in church and later worked as a disc jockey in Greenville, Mississippi. After World War II, King moved to Memphis, where he began his career as a professional musician. He was one of the first blues artists to record in the city and through radio station WDIA, “Blues Boy” B. B. King became well known in the region. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, where he produced hit after hit, including “Everyday,” “Sweet Little Angel,” and “Three O’clock Blues.” In 1969, he released one of his biggest commercial records, “The Thrill Is Gone.” One of the most popular and highprofile blues artists ever, King has performed all over the world, earning the title “Ambassador of the Blues.” He continues to make television and concert appearances and garner awards for his talent and body of work. He has received numerous honorary degrees from prestigious institutions such as Yale University and the Berkeley School of Music and has earned more than a dozen Grammy Awards, including an award for lifetime achievement. He received the Kennedy Center Honors

and was one of the first performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2006, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

Price, Leontyne (1927–) Born in Laurel, Mississippi, opera star Mary Violet Leontyne Price displayed her talents at an early age. Her formal music instruction began with piano lessons at age five, and she grew up using her extraordinary voice as part of her church choir. After graduating from Oak Park High School in 1944, and earning a B.A. at Wilberforce (Ohio) College in 1948, she attended Juilliard School of Music in New York on a full-tuition scholarship. While attending Juilliard, she appeared in a revival of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which toured the United States and Europe. In 1955, an appearance on the National Broadcasting Company’s Opera Theater marked her professional debut in grand opera, and her first appearance in a major opera house took place two years later in San Francisco. On January 27, 1961, Price made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore and later that year became the first African American to open a Metropolitan Opera season. These performances generated rave reviews and established her as a major star. Her reputation grew through the 1960s and 1970s as she played to packed houses and made recordings that earned her 18 Grammy Awards. Price also appeared on the cover of Time, was awarded the Presidential Freedom Award, and received numerous international accolades recognizing her talent. She retired after a final performance on January 3, 1985.

Revels, Hiram (1822–1901) Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, was born to free

Mississippi parents in North Carolina in 1822. As a young man he worked briefly as a barber before leaving North Carolina to pursue his education. Revels attended school in Indiana and Ohio before graduating from Knox College in Bloomington, Illinois. In 1845, Revels was ordained as a minister by the African Methodist Church and traveled extensively, ministering to African American congregations. He eventually settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he became pastor of a local church and principal of a school for African American students. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he helped organize Maryland’s first two African American regiments and eventually joined the Union army himself as a chaplain. After the war, Revels settled in Natchez, Mississippi, where he involved himself in Republican politics. Taking a conciliatory attitude toward former Confederates, he served as an alderman in Natchez and as a state senator before the Mississippi legislature chose him as a U.S. senator. He served in Washington for just over a year, returning home in 1871 to become president of Alcorn College, now Alcorn State University, the first state-supported school for African Americans in Mississippi. He served in that position until 1873, and then again from 1876 to 1882. He later taught theology at Rust College while continuing his religious work. Revels died in 1901 while attending a church conference. Praised by whites and blacks alike, Hiram Rhodes Revels was buried in Holly Springs.

Wells, Ida B. (1862–1931) Born to slave parents in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Ida B. Wells spent her adult life crusading for the rights of African Americans and women in the United States. After her parents died in a yellow fever epidemic, Wells raised her younger siblings while attending Rust College in Holly Springs. She later moved her family to Memphis where

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she became a teacher, and eventually co-owner of a local black newspaper. She began her career as a journalist writing editorials promoting equal rights for African Americans and crusading against lynching. Forced to leave Memphis after her life was threatened, she moved to Chicago where she married Ferdinand Barnett, an attorney and editor of one of Chicago's early African American newspapers. Always outspoken, she continued her antilynching crusade and also took up the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1906, she joined W. E. B. Du Bois as part of the Niagara Movement and three years later was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She remained one of the African American community's strongest voices until her death in 1931.

Wright, Richard (1908–1960) One of America’s finest authors, Richard Wright was also one of the first African American writers to achieve widespread literary fame. Wright was born in 1908 near Natchez, the son of an illiterate sharecropper and an educated school teacher. After his father abandoned the family, Wright moved with his mother to Arkansas, Tennessee, and back to Mississippi. He spent his early life in poverty, working at menial jobs in the segregated South. In hopes of escaping the racism and limited opportunities that his region afforded African Americans, Wright moved to Chicago, and then to New York, where he found employment with the Federal Writers’ Project. His first novel, Uncle Tom’s Children, was published in 1938, and the next year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to write Native Son (1940). The latter work was a great success and was translated into six languages. In 1945, Wright published an autobiographical novel, Black Boy, which further established his reputation in the literary world. The central theme of

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A sketch showing Union troops and contrabands constructing a canal near Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1863. (Library of Congress)

Wright’s early work was the struggle of an African American male against racial prejudice and the social environment that it spawned. Realizing that discrimination was not limited to the South, Wright became angry and disenchanted with the United States and subsequently moved to France in 1946. A year later he became a French citizen. Wright remained overseas for the rest of his life, dying in Paris in 1960.

Cultural Contributions African American artists in Mississippi have for generations made significant contributions to popular music in the United States and elsewhere, with the Mississippi Delta region in the northwestern part of the state being recognized worldwide as the “cradle of the blues.” The Delta stretches from Memphis, Tennessee, south to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and is framed by the

Mississippi River on the west and the Yazoo River on the east. After the Civil War and into the twentieth century, it was an area populated primarily by poverty-stricken African Americans who did agricultural labor, usually as tenants or sharecroppers on land owned by a minority of more affluent whites. The blues drew on a variety of influences including traditional work songs and “field hollers,” religious music, nineteenth-century minstrel shows and strains of music later more identified with white country artists. During the first decades of the twentieth century, roaming blues musicians traveled through the Mississippi Delta playing in juke joints and at house parties, drawing crowds and expanding blues music’s base in the region. In the neverending quest for profits, early recording companies sought to create new market niches after World War I based on performers’ regional appeal, ethnicity, or race. As a result,

Mississippi representatives from major labels as well as independent companies began scouring Mississippi and the rest of the South in search of inspired artists whose records could be marketed directly to African American audiences in northern cities and the southern countryside. One of the first, and most influential, Mississippi blues artists of the twentieth century was Charley Patton, who lived and performed in the Delta and made records for several years before his untimely death from heart disease in 1934 at the age of 42. Patton’s flamboyant performing style won him fans throughout the region and influenced the bluesmen who followed him. Blues music’s most legendary character, Robert Johnson, was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, but spent much of his life traveling from place to place, supporting himself by playing guitar and singing at parties and in juke joints. He is also the central figure in one of the most lasting myths of American popular culture. As the story goes, Johnson sold his soul to the devil one night at a dark Delta crossroads in exchange for extraordinary musical talent. In 1936 and 1937, he recorded 29 songs that would prove to be his legacy. While still in his 20s, Johnson died after supposedly being poisoned in a juke joint by a jealous husband. While Patton and Johnson died prematurely, other blues artists from Mississippi had much longer careers and cast their own long shadows over the history of American popular music. Born Chester Arthur Burnett near West Point, Mississippi, bluesman Howlin’ Wolf possessed one of the most powerful and distinct voices ever recorded. Though he was never completely proficient on the guitar and could barely count to keep formal time, he gained worldwide fame as a blues pioneer whose gruff, gravely sound made a lasting impression on all who heard it. Wolf’s early life was marked by poverty. In 1923 he moved with his family to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he worked on a large plantation for years. He moved

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to Memphis after World War II and found work as a disc jockey while also leading his own band at night. His radio show allowed him to acquire a significant following around the South, as did recordings he made for noted producer Sam Phillips in 1948. He eventually moved to Chicago after signing an exclusive contract to record with Chess Records, and he remained there for the rest of his life. Wolf continued making records until his death in 1976. Born McKinley Morganfield near Rolling Fork, Mississippi, Muddy Waters also went on to become a central figure in the history of blues music as one of the creators of the electric “Chicago” blues style. As a young man Waters drove a tractor on a cotton plantation during the day and played music at night in local clubs. He left the South in 1943, bound for Chicago, where his unique talent soon gained him a following in the city’s black nightclubs. Always the innovator, he used an electric guitar and bottleneck to produce a gritty sound that came to the attention of Chess Records. Waters made a number of records for Chess and put together a band that included many of the greatest blues artists of the period. Waters gained international acclaim during the 1960s when British rock groups like the Rolling Stones, who took their name from a Waters song, exposed the American masses to blues music. As a result, he achieved his greatest commercial success during the later years of his life. Waters continued to tour America and Europe until his death in 1983. Men like Patton, Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Waters remain cultural icons in the United States. Since the 1960s, blues music has been recognized around the globe as a uniquely American musical form that gave rise to other genres, most notably rock and roll. As a result, while the exact origins of the music remain shrouded in time, there is little doubt that the genesis of the blues as a worldwide phenomenon can be traced back to the Mississippi Delta.

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Bibliography Barnwell, Marion, ed. A Place Called Mississippi: Collected Narratives. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Barry, John M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Bolton, Charles C. The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870–1980. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Bond, Bradley G. Mississippi: A Documentary History. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. Burner, Eric R. And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Busby, Westley F., Jr. Mississippi: A History. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2006. Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray. We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi. New York: Nation Books, 2006. Clark, Thomas D., and John D. W. Guice. The Old Southwest, 1795–1830: Frontiers in Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Cohn, Lawrence. Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville, 1993.

Doyle, William. An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Hendrickson, Paul. Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Huie, William Bradford. Three Lives in Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Katagiri, Yasuhiro. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States’ Rights. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. Libby, David J. Slavery and Frontier Mississippi, 1720–1830. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. Loewen, James W., and Charles Sallis, eds. Mississippi: Conflict and Change. New York: Random House, Inc., 1974. Lomax, Alan. The Land Where the Blues Began. Reprint ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Mars, Florence. Witness in Philadelphia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Marsh, Charles. God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. McCord, William Maxwell. Mississippi: The Long Hot Summer. New York: Norton, 1965. McLemore, Richard Aubrey, ed. A History of Mississippi. 2 vols. Hattiesburg: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973. Minor, Bill. Eyes on Mississippi: A Fifty Year Chronicle of Change. Jackson, MS: J. Prichard Morris Books, 2001.

Cooper, William J., Jr. Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.

Moody, Anne, Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York: Dial Press, 1968.

Cresswell, Stephen. Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi after Reconstruction, 1877–1917. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006.

Nossiter, Adam. Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. New York: Da Capo Press, 2002.

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Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. Reprint ed. New York: Penguin, 1981.

Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Pritchard, James. In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Amistad, 2004.

Rhodes, Lelia G. Jackson State University: The First Hundred Years, 1877–1977. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1979.

Webb, Clive. Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

Sugarman, Tracy. Strangers at the Gates: A Summer in Mississippi. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966.

Willis, John C. Forgotten Time: The YazooMississippi Delta after the Civil War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.

Taylor, William Banks. Down on Parchman Farm: The Great Prison in the Mississippi Delta. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.

Wirt, Frederick M. We Ain’t What We Was: Civil Rights in the New South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Unser, Daniel H., Jr. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower

Wynne, Ben. Mississippi’s Civil War: A Narrative History. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006.

MISSOURI Tiffany K. Wayne

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Chronology 1720

The first African American slaves are brought by the French to work in the lead mines of colonial Missouri.

1724

King Louis XV of France issues an “Edict Concerning the Negro Slaves in Louisiana” as part of the Code Noir, or Black Code, regulating slavery in the French colonies.

1764

French fur traders establish a settlement at St. Louis, where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet.

1769

Spain outlaws Indian slavery in the Upper Louisiana region, making African slaves the preferred labor source.

1787

Under the Northwest Ordinance, the U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in the new western territories.

1803

The Louisiana Purchase doubles the geographic size of the United States and includes what is now Missouri and 13 other states.

1804

Black Codes are established to regulate slavery in the new Louisiana Territory (including Missouri).

1820

Under the Missouri Compromise, Missouri is to be admitted as a slave state and Maine is to be admitted as a free state in an effort to maintain a balance between northern and southern political representation. The Missouri Compromise also establishes the 36°300 line—the southern boundary of Missouri—as the dividing line between northern (free) and southern (slave) states.

1821

(August 10) Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state.

1824–29

In a series of cases, Missouri courts uphold the principle that blacks born or living in free territories remain free even if they later come to Missouri, thus following the Northwest Ordinance and establishing a “once free, always free” precedent for determining slave status.

1835

The Missouri General Assembly creates restrictions on free black citizens, including ordering that all free blacks have a “license” and that free blacks under the age of 21 be registered as apprentices or servants.

1846

Dred and Harriet Scott file a lawsuit in St. Louis claiming they are free citizens due to previous residence in a free territory; the state of Missouri denies their claim and the case eventually goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1847

The Missouri Legislature makes it illegal to teach any blacks, free or slave, to read or write.

1854

The Kansas-Nebraska Act allows slavery in the U.S. territories to be determined by the citizens through “popular sovereignty,” thus nullifying the earlier Missouri Compromise and leading many proslavery whites from Missouri to cross into Kansas to vote illegally on the issue.

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1857

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court denies Dred Scott’s claim to freedom based on state of residence; in addition to denying the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise by declaring that each state may have its own laws regarding slavery, the Court also denies Scott’s right to bring suit, declaring that no black person, slave or free, has the rights of U.S. citizenship.

1863

In St. Louis, more than 300 men volunteer for the First Regiment of Missouri Colored Infantry to fight in the Civil War.

1865

Slavery is abolished in the Missouri state Constitution, several months before the end of the Civil War and almost a year before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ending slavery throughout the nation.

1865

The Missouri Equal Rights League is founded to promote the legal and civil rights of black Missourians.

1865

(February 6) Missouri ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

The Missouri legislature orders that schools must be provided for black children, but allows separate schools for blacks and whites.

1866

The Lincoln Institute (later Lincoln University) is founded for African American students in Jefferson City.

1867

( January 25) Missouri ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending full citizenship rights to African Americans.

1870

( January 7) Missouri ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing African American men the right to vote.

1890

In Lehew v. Brummell, the Missouri Supreme Court upholds the legality of segregated schools.

1892

(May 31) Fifteen hundred people gather in St. Louis after black leaders call a national day of prayer and remembrance for victims of lynching in the United States.

1898

A black regiment of volunteers is raised in St. Louis for service in the Spanish-American War.

1906

Hundreds of African Americans flee Springfield after racial violence results in the lynching of three black men over Easter weekend.

1917

Hundreds of African Americans cross the Mississippi River into St. Louis to escape a race riot between black and white workers in East St. Louis, Illinois.

1920

Walthall Moore of St. Louis is the first African American elected to serve in the Missouri legislature.

1924

The Kansas City Monarchs beat the Hilldale Club of Pennsylvania in the first Negro World Series baseball game.

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1938

In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University, et al., the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the state violated equal protection laws by not admitting Lloyd Gaines to the University of Missouri Law School when no equal educational options existed for blacks within the state.

1941

In another challenge to segregation in higher education, the Missouri Supreme Court rules in State ex rel. Bluford v. Canada to allow the University of Missouri School of Journalism to deny admission to Lucile Bluford if another school is available for black students.

1942

The U.S. Department of Justice investigates the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, the first time the federal government intervenes in a local civil rights issue. Wright’s murder is the last known lynching of an African American in Missouri.

1943

The National Park Service dedicates the Diamond, Missouri, farm of scientist and inventor George Washington Carver as a national monument, making it the first national monument recognizing an African American.

1948

In Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns an earlier Missouri court decision allowing for state enforcement of racial covenants to prevent the sale or rental of real estate to African Americans.

1950

The first black students are admitted to the University of Missouri.

1957

The Missouri Commission on Human Rights is created as a state agency to address racial discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and housing.

1961

The Missouri State Legislature passes a Fair Employment Practices Act to outlaw employment discrimination.

1963

(May 13) Missouri ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes a protest against Jefferson Bank in St. Louis for refusing to hire black tellers, thus inspiring boycotts of other businesses practicing employment discrimination.

1965

The state legislature passes the Missouri Public Accommodations Act to outlaw segregation and discrimination in public facilities.

1968

William L. Clay Sr. is elected Missouri’s first African American U.S. congressman, representing the St. Louis district.

1969

The University of Missouri hires its first African American professor, historian Arvarh E. Strickland.

1972

The Missouri state legislature passes the Fair Housing Act.

1976

Twenty-four years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Missouri state constitution is amended to end segregation in Missouri’s schools.

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1991

Emanuel Cleaver II is elected the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.

1993

Freeman Bosley Jr. is elected as the first African American mayor of St. Louis.

1995

More than 40 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Missouri v. Jenkins that the state cannot be required to fund special programs to address de facto racial segregation of schools.

2005

Emanuel Cleaver II is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri.

2008

(February 5) Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, wins the Missouri Democratic primary, narrowly defeating Senator Hillary Clinton of New York; as the Democratic nominee, Obama narrowly loses Missouri to Republican John McCain in the general election in November.

Historical Overview Missouri is a midwestern state with 5.6 million residents according to the 2000 Census. The capital of Missouri is Jefferson City, but its largest cities are Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. African Americans make up nearly 12 percent of the entire population of Missouri and are concentrated in these urban areas. A combination of urban and rural economies, Missouri is known for its industry and mining of coal and lead, as well as for its agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, and livestock. At times under French and Spanish colonial control, Missouri was part of the Louisiana Territory purchased by the United States in 1803, and was admitted as the 24th state in 1821.

Africans in Early Missouri In the late 1600s, the French made their way to the Mississippi River valley via Canada. Unlike the English settlements with their plantation agriculture, the French were interested in fur trapping, trading, and silver and mineral mining. They also needed cheap labor, and like other Europeans, the French saw opportunity in the availability of African slaves. In 1719, the first black slaves were brought by the French into the Upper Lousiana area (which includes presentday Missouri). These slaves were most likely from

French-controlled Haiti; in 1720, Phillippe Francois Renault, the French head of mining operations in the region, brought 500 slaves to work in the lead and salt mines. The first permanent white European settlement in Missouri was established at Ste. Genevieve around 1750. After 1750, more slaves were brought for agricultural and household labor and to work in the Mississippi River boat trades. The French Code Noir (or Black Code) dated to 1685 and was the primary legal framework for the treatment of the colonial slave workforce in the Missouri region. The Code Noir protected slaves from enforced work on Sundays and stipulated that families could not be separated by sale; it even allowed for the recognition of slave marriages. But the laws also protected the rights of slave owners by allowing strict punishments, even death, for rebellious slaves. Although the Code Noir acknowledged that free black persons held “the same rights, privileges, and immunities” as white French citizens, this was contradicted by the fact that free blacks could be enslaved as punishment for crimes. As in other EuropeanAmerican colonial settlements, the existence of a free black population created anxiety among whites by undermining racial justifications for African slavery; and the colonial period saw increased regulation of the “free” black community, which remained small in Missouri before 1800.

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Throughout the eighteenth century, the area that is now Missouri was part of a long power struggle between the French, Spanish, and British empires. The French were defeated by the English in the Seven Years’ War (or French and Indian War, 1756–1763), and awarded the Louisiana Territory to their allies, the Spanish. To promote peace in the region, the Spanish abolished the use of Native Americans as slaves, making Africans the preferred source of unpaid labor. The Louisiana Territory reverted back to French rule in a treaty arranged by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800.

Missouri and the New United States After the French and Indian War, Britain sought to tax the colonists to pay for the war and also sought to restrict westward settlement in order to avoid further conflict with Native Americans and in order to keep colonial economic interests near the Atlantic coast. The colonists soon rebelled against British policy, declaring their independence in 1776. After defeating the British in the American Revolution, the 13 colonies formed a new United States. One of the first acts of the new Congress was to regulate settlement in the western territories, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. The United States, however, was on the verge of pushing settlement beyond the Mississippi River and, after the slave revolt in Haiti in 1803, Napoleon was losing interest in his vision of a North American empire dependent upon colonial slave labor. President Jefferson seized the opportunity to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase, removing French competition, doubling the size of the nation, and suddenly incorporating many French, Spanish, Native American, and African slaves under the control of the United States. The prohibition on slavery in the west under the Northwest Ordinance no longer applied and the new territorial government of Missouri drew

up its own Black Codes, similar to the French Code Noir, but incorporating many of the particularly American precedents from Virginia as well. The existence of slavery in the territories was far from settled, however, and continued to pose a problem as new states were added to the union. The U.S. Constitution itself did not directly address slavery, only to the extent of including slaves themselves as private property to be protected and allowing the South to count threefifths of the slave population for purposes of representation and taxation. When Missouri sought admission as a state in 1820, the territory included close to 10,000 African American slaves. The question of whether Missouri would be admitted as a slave state or a free state was a matter of great political significance since, at that time, there were an equal number of slave and free states in the Union and so there was a balance of power and representation in Congress. Sensing that the Missouri question was “like a fire bell in the night,” an elderly Thomas Jefferson feared that the very future of the nation was at stake. Congress settled the issue with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which established the admittance of Missouri as a slave state, balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state. It also established the 36°30 0 parallel of Missouri’s southern border as a line extending westward through the territories to solve future issues of slavery, with the prohibition of slavery in regions north of the line, and allowing slavery south of it. This compromise addressed the issue of slavery in Missouri, but it did not address the issue of slavery’s existence, which would continue to divide the nation. The new Missouri state constitution once again revised the laws regarding slavery and the status and movement of free blacks, including statutes restricting the rights of free blacks from other states from settling in Missouri. As the abolitionist movement grew in the 1830s and 1840s, new and stricter legislation regarding

Missouri runaway slaves was passed in Missouri, including offering rewards to white citizens who apprehended runaways and imposing strict fines on anyone harboring fugitive slaves. In 1837, the state assembly also passed an act prohibiting abolitionist literature or “doctrines” in the state, and, in 1847, made it illegal for anyone to teach any “negroes or mulattos,” slave or free, to read or write, and for African Americans to hold their own religious services or meetings. Several important “freedom” cases in nineteenthcentury Missouri involved African Americans who were either physically abused or were, in fact, legally free blacks who had been wrongfully enslaved. In 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott filed a suit in St. Louis claiming they had lived in free territory before being brought to Missouri. Dred

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Scott’s case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in 1857, not only denied him his freedom, striking down the precedent of slave status based on residency, but also denied Scott’s right to sue in the first place, declaring all blacks as noncitizens. Just a few years before the Dred Scott decision, another slave was in court in Missouri, fighting for her life, not her freedom. The case of State of Missouri v. Celia reveals the story of Celia, a young slave purchased as a domestic worker for a Missouri widower and his daughters. Celia was kept in a separate cabin from the owner’s house, where she was sexually exploited for years and eventually rebelled by murdering the owner one night. The state of Missouri found Celia, a 19-year-old mother of two, guilty, and had her executed in December 1855.

Missouri Blacks in the Civil War

Dred Scott, his daughters, and wife are depicted in this June 27, 1857, edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. (Library of Congress)

After the passage of the federal Fugitive Slave Law, Missouri (especially St. Louis) was an important stop on the Underground Railroad because it bordered several free states. Although slavery existed in Missouri, as a border state it was economically and socially tied to the North. When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Missouri did not secede from the Union as did several other southern states. Although the Confederacy eventually claimed Missouri, like the other border states, Kentucky and Virginia, the Missouri government and the population itself were split between Union and Confederate sympathies. Missouri developed two state governments and sent representatives to both the U.S. and Confederate Congresses. The question of whether Missouri’s blacks should serve in the Union army was another challenge to the question of slavery in the state. In 1863, President Lincoln began allowing black men to enlist in the Union army, and Missouri blacks were recruited to serve in black regiments in other states, such as the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer

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Infantry Regiment. In June 1863, the 1st Regiment of Missouri Colored Infantry was raised in St. Louis with more than 300 volunteers, and more troops were organized the following year. While thousands volunteered, some counties had to institute a draft of both white and black men to meet quotas. Many whites, slaveholding or not, resisted black enrollment for fear of arming blacks and inciting rebellion or encouraging fugitive slaves to join. Other whites, however, did not hide the fact that they were glad to have black men fill the armies and militia rather than sending their own brothers and sons to fight and die. Despite their service to the Union, Missouri’s slave population was not freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which applied only to slaves held in rebel states. However, the Missouri state constitutional convention freed the state’s slaves in January 1865, prompting celebrations of freedom throughout Missouri many months before the end of the war and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that ended slavery throughout the nation.

Reconstruction in Missouri The end of the Civil War, and the beginning of federal Reconstruction throughout the South, brought increased racial hostility, segregation, and attacks on the black community, but also the opportunity for Missouri’s black population to create its own schools, businesses, churches, banks, and cooperative, benevolent, and political organizations. Efforts at educating blacks in Missouri began before the Civil War. St. Louis had so many schools that a separate black board of education had been established and 600 students were enrolled before the end of the war in 1865. Lincoln Institute (later University) was founded in Jefferson City in 1866 as a black vocational training school, and in 1865, the Missouri Equal Rights League was established to lobby for the education of black children and the right of black men to vote

and hold office. These rights would not be secured at the state level, however, and only came through further amendments to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 and 1870. James Milton Turner was one of the most prominent black activists and political reformers in Missouri at this time, working with Radical Republicans in state government, with the federal Freedman’s Bureau, and appointed as minister to Liberia by President Grant in 1871. Throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, blacks in Missouri sought political representation, but were increasingly ignored by the Republican Party they had supported. In Kansas City and St. Louis, blacks were elected to city offices, but these were isolated victories in the era of segregation, lack of educational funding, and lynchings. Missouri had one of the worst lynching records in the nation. Between 1889 and 1918, 51 African Americans were lynched in Missouri, and in May 1892, black leaders called for a “lamentation day” in St. Louis to call attention to the mob violence against blacks that went unpunished. One of the greatest outbreaks of violence occurred in Springfield, where, not coincidentally, by the end of the century blacks had achieved some economic and political presence; in 1890, one-third of registered voters were black and three black men had served on the Springfield City Council. Before Easter in April 1906, a white woman claimed to have been raped by two black men in Springfield. Two suspects were arrested and a mob broke into the jail, removing not only the suspects but a third inmate in jail on unrelated charges. The men were killed, resulting in riots and many black families leaving the city for good. The mob leader was later acquitted of all charges.

Black Migrations By 1870, a majority of blacks throughout the South remained employed in agricultural labor, mostly as sharecroppers. The need for new economic opportunities, combined with a new

Missouri freedom of movement, led many blacks to leave the rural South in the decades after the Civil War. In the spring of 1879, thousands of southern blacks passed through St. Louis and Kansas City on a “great Exodus,” headed to Kansas and other destinations. These “Exodusters” were extremely poor and many were stranded in Missouri’s big cities, unable to finance their complete journeys. Whether they stayed or continued on, many were assisted by black churches and benevolent societies in St. Louis and Kansas City. Some found work in urban factories, others became entrepreneurs, and a small black urban middle class began to grow in the early decades of the twentieth century. Again, the white community responded to the influx of black workers, and the small successes of the black community, with violence and intimidation. White factory owners often refused to hire or fairly pay black workers, and their white coworkers locked blacks out of the labor union and broke their strikes. A 1908 white newspaper in St. Louis reported, “The Negro Must Go, Is Cry: West End Citizens Bitterly Resent Invasion of Blacks.” In July 1917, a violent riot broke out between black and white workers in East St. Louis, Illinois, forcing many black residents to flee to the Missouri side of the city.

Between the World Wars The outbreak of World War I was another impetus for black movement to cities and into the industrial workforce. Labor needs increased as white men not only left for war, but the influx of European immigrants that had characterized the previous decades suddenly stopped. Once again, blacks living in rural areas moved to cities such as Kansas City and St Louis in search of jobs. Just as they had in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War (which saw 1,000 men join a black regiment out of St. Louis), African American men also enlisted to fight in World War I, this time joining a cause to combat

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inequality on a global scale, even as they faced racism at home. During World War I, more than 9,000 black soldiers from Missouri joined the war effort. Some ended up on the battlefront in France and Germany, while other African Americans supported the war from the homefront through the Missouri Negro Industrial Commission, founded to help black farmers in Missouri, which helped sell war bonds and promote wartime conservation. This was at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (organized during the Civil War) was still on the rise throughout the South; between 1900 and 1931, another 17 black men were lynched by mobs in Missouri alone. The 1930s and 1940s brought continued economic and social struggles for blacks in Missouri, but also a flourishing of black culture and the beginning of efforts to strike the final blows against segregation. Two Missouri cases challenging segregation in higher education made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, although in both cases the University of Missouri (in Columbia) was able to avoid integration by the establishment of “separate but equal” institutions for black students. During World War II, the national effort behind the cause of fighting tyranny and oppression abroad focused attention on the injustices and violence at home. In 1942, a federal investigation followed the lynching of mill worker Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri. Wright had been beaten and shot by police and was dragged, unconscious, through the streets and murdered by a lynch mob. The federal grand jury did not prosecute any members of the mob, claiming that Wright died from his previous injuries. Although individual acts of racial violence continued throughout the South, Wright’s high-profile murder was the last lynching in Missouri. It is understandable, then, that African Americans who enlisted during World War II were said to be fighting a “Double-V” campaign, fighting for victory both at home and abroad. Once again, the 1940s were an era in which Missouri blacks joined the military and also migrated into

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cities to fill wartime industrial labor needs and opportunities.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond In 1950, the first African American students were admitted to the University of Missouri. The focus of the black Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s was on the integration of public facilities, transportation, and schools and colleges. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the “separate but equal” provisions were unconstitutional. Desegregation efforts in Missouri, however, would continue for decades, especially in urban areas such as Kansas City and St. Louis, with the large black population segregated into separate neighborhoods. Most neighborhood schools, therefore, were composed of all-black or allwhite children not because of discrimination by the schools, but because of the segregation of society at large. Many families did not want (or could not afford) their children to be bused into predominantly white schools, and many districts did not want to pay for such efforts. Desegregation efforts in Missouri, therefore, resulted in logistical and legal challenges that continued into the 1990s. The underlying problems of housing segregation, employment discrimination, and urban poverty also became the focus for black civil rights activists in Missouri in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1963, the St. Louis chapter of the national civil rights group, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), organized a protest and boycott of the Jefferson Bank for refusing to hire black tellers. Ivory Perry was among the more than 100 who gathered, many of them arrested and given punishments of jail sentences, up to one year, and large, unreasonable fines. The St. Louis CORE chapter went on to organize rallies and marches on city hall, and raised money to pay jail fines. In 1964, the bank hired its first black tellers, and other banks and businesses followed. In the coming

months, empowered by the CORE campaign as well as by the national efforts of Martin Luther King Jr., protesters and students in St. Louis and other cities challenged the segregation of restaurants, hotels, and other facilities, culminating in the federal civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. Despite legal and social gains at both the state and national levels, the Klan maintained a presence in Missouri through the 1970s and beyond. Black citizens worked independently, locally, and through state-level organizations such as the Missouri Commission on Human Rights to continue to challenge illegal segregation and the effects of racism in employment discrimination, unemployment, poverty, and substandard housing. The state government also created agencies and passed legislation to address these issues. Missouri sent its first black congressman to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968 and African Americans increased their presence in city and state positions throughout the 1970s. By the 1980s and 1990s, poverty and discrimination and the segregation of neighborhoods continued to plague black communities, with the resulting problems of crime, gangs, poverty, health concerns, and access to services for black citizens. Missouri’s urban population saw new hope, however, in the appointment of the first black police chief in St. Louis in 1991, Clarence Harmon, who in 1997 became the mayor of St. Louis. St. Louis had elected its first black mayor in 1993, and Kansas City’s first black mayor was elected in 1991. In the twenty-first century, St. Louis and Kansas City remain among the most racially segregated cities in the United States.

Notable African Americans Angelou, Maya (1928–) Maya Angelou is an acclaimed writer and civil rights activist and one of the nation’s most beloved poets. She is perhaps best known for her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” delivered at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993. Born

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as part of La Revue Nègre, where her risqué act launched her as one of the most popular and wellpaid celebrities of the era. She never achieved the same level of success and recognition in the racially segregated United States as she did throughout Europe.

Basie, William “Count”(1904–1984)

Maya Angelou is one of the premier U.S. poets of the twentieth century. (National Archives)

William “Count” Basie was a jazz musician who is credited with creating the famous Kansas City style of big band jazz known as “swing.” Born in New Jersey, Basie had practiced piano with “Fats” Waller in New York before moving to Kansas City in 1927. He played in local bands and clubs and was dubbed the “Count” by a local Kansas City radio announcer. The exposure led to a record contract and a move to New York City. In 1961, Basie performed for President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural ball. The Count Basie Orchestra continues to perform today.

Bass, Tom (1859–1934) Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, her childhood was split between living in Arkansas with her grandmother and living back in Missouri with her mother. Beginning with her 1970 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou’s books and poetry have chronicled the struggles and spirit of black life in the south. Beginning in the 1960s, she became active in the Civil Rights Movement as a coordinator in Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Baker, Josephine (1906–1975) Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald) was an internationally acclaimed singer, dancer, and entertainer. She was born into a poor family in St. Louis, Missouri. When she was just 13, she joined a touring vaudeville group and eventually moved to New York to dance in the musical review, Shuffle Along. In 1925, she traveled to France

Tom Bass was a famous equestrian who earned acclaim for training and riding show horses. Born a slave in Boone County, he later moved to the town of Mexico, Missouri, and then was invited to Kansas City to train horses of the city’s elites. His skills earned him invitations to appear in parades, to compete in riding championships, and to represent Missouri at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He was involved in establishing the American Royal Horse Show, which is held in Kansas City, and he invented the “Bass bit” to protect horses’ mouths during training.

Beckwourth, James (1798–1866) James Pierson Beckwourth (sometimes Beckwith) was a black fur trapper and explorer. He was born a slave in Virginia, the son of a white Revolutionary War veteran. His family moved

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Josephine Baker, a young dancer from New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, was the star attraction in the 1920s at the Folies Bergères in Paris. (Library of Congress)

to the Louisiana Territory in 1809. His father sent him to St. Louis to be educated and later emancipated him so that he could learn a trade. In the 1820s, Beckwourth joined a fur-trapping expedition into the Rocky Mountains, where he lived with the Crow Indians. He led an expedition through the Sierra Nevada Mountains on

what became known as the Beckwourth Pass, a popular trail for settlers into California.

Berry, Chuck (1926–) Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry is a legendary rock-and-roll musician and songwriter.

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Chuck Berry performing in 1965. (Library of Congress)

With his signature guitar style and showmanship, Berry is credited as one of the founders of rockand-roll music in the 1950s with his hit songs such as “Roll over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode,” and “Maybellene,” which sold more than one million copies. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was heavily influenced by both rhythm and blues and white country-and-western music, both elements of which he incorporated into his new rock-and-roll style. In 1986, Berry was one of the first inductees into the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bluford, Lucile (1911–2003) Lucile H. Bluford was a journalist who fought to desegregate higher education in Missouri. Born in North Carolina, she moved to Kansas City as a young child and graduated from the University of Kansas. In 1939, Bluford was denied admission to

the University of Missouri’s graduate program in journalism. She sued the university but the court upheld the school’s position, citing Lincoln University as a separate but equal educational facility available to blacks in the state. Bluford spent her entire career at the Kansas City paper, the Call, first as a journalist and then taking over as editor after the death of founder Chester Arthur Franklin in 1955.

Boone, John “Blind” (1864–1927) John William “Blind” Boone was one of the most well-known ragtime musicians of the early twentieth century. Born in Miami, Missouri, to a contraband slave mother and a white cavalry bugler during the Civil War, his eyes were removed due to an illness when he was just an infant. He grew up in the town of Warrensburg, where friends and family recognized his musical talent and sponsored him to

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study piano at the St. Louis School for the Blind. He left school to return home and began playing with local musicians, launching his own career in ragtime and jazz music.

crop that could also serve as food, as a chemist he also developed a variety of peanut-related products for household and farming use. Born in Diamond, Missouri, at the end of the Civil War, he later moved to Kansas in search of an education.

Brown, William Wells (c. 1814–1884) William Wells Brown was an author who is credited with publication of both the first novel by an African American, Clotel, or, the President’s Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), and the first play by an African American, The Escape; Or, a Leap for Freedom (1858). Born a slave in Kentucky, Brown was moved to Missouri as a young child. He was sold many times before escaping to freedom in Ohio and becoming a prominent abolitionist, assisting many fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Bruce, Blanche K. (1841–1898) Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American, and the only former slave, to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate, as a Republican representing Mississippi between 1875 and 1881. Born a slave in Virginia, Bruce spent most of his childhood in Missouri and was educated and eventually freed by his white father. After the Civil War he attended Oberlin College in Ohio before settling in Mississippi during the Reconstruction era. He held several county political positions before being elected to the state legislature and then U.S. Senate.

Carver, George Washington (c. 1865–1943) George Washington Carver is one of the most renowned African American scientists and inventors. His discoveries helped improve crop production in the South, in particular by developing peanut farming as an alternative to cotton in the early twentieth century. Although his concern was that poor farmers grow a successful commercial

Cedric the Entertainer (1964–) Cedric Antonio Kyles (stage name Cedric the Entertainer) is a comedian and actor who has appeared on The Steve Harvey Show and was one of four black comedians featured in Spike Lee’s film, The Original Kings of Comedy. Born in Jefferson City, Missouri, Cedric attended Southeast Missouri State University and taught high school before turning to comedy full time. He broke out with his 1992 appearance on It's Showtime at the Apollo, and soon appeared in other national cable stand-up comedy shows. He was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 2008 and provides scholarships to his former high school in Berkeley, Missouri.

Cheadle, Donald Frank (1964–) Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. is an actor, film producer, and humanitarian well known for his television and film appearances. He received an Academy Award nomination for his role in the 2004 film, Hotel Rwanda. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was educated in Colorado and California, graduating from the California Institute of the Arts. His acting career began in the 1980s; he appeared in films such as Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven, and was coproducer of Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. Cheadle has focused attention on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, Africa, and has coauthored a book entitled Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond.

Foxx, Redd (1922–1991) Redd Foxx was a comedian and actor best known for his character, Fred Sanford, in the

Missouri 1970s television show Sanford and Son. Born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, he was raised in Chicago and later moved to New York City, where he worked as a dishwasher and performed as a comedian in nightclubs. Nicknamed “Chicago Red” due to his hair color, Sanford adopted the stage name of Redd Foxx after a favorite baseball player, Jimmie Foxx. He gained notoriety through recorded albums of his sometimes risqué comedy acts and appeared in a film, Cotton Comes to Harlem, before being offered the Sanford and Son sitcom, which ran between 1972 and 1977.

Franklin, Chester Arthur (1880–1955) Chester Arthur Franklin founded and edited The Call, an African American newspaper in Kansas City. Franklin published the first issue in May 1919 and served as editor until his death in 1955. He focused the paper on serious political and social issues of concern to the African American community and hired many black journalists, including Lucile Bluford. Born in Texas, Franklin and his parents left the South in search of opportunities. He attended the University of Nebraska and lived in Denver, Colorado, where he published the newspaper, the Star, before moving to Kansas City in search of a larger black population and audience.

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Hughes, Langston (1902–1967) James Mercer Langston Hughes was one of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance black literary movement of the 1920s. In works such as his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, and the article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (both 1926), and his many novels, stories, and plays, Hughes captured the struggles and creative spirit of African Americans of his generation. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, but moved throughout his childhood to Kansas, Illinois, and Ohio. In high school he was named class poet and later attended Columbia University in New York.

Joplin, Scott (1868–1917) Scott Joplin was a musician and composer, considered the “King of Ragtime” music. He published dozens of songs, a ballet, and two operas, and his “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) and “The Entertainer” (1902) are some of the most popular ragtime hits of all time. Born in Texas, Joplin attended college in Sedalia, Missouri, where he worked as a pianist at local clubs, and where the annual Scott Joplin Festival is still held. He also lived in St. Louis, where he performed at the 1904 World’s Fair and collaborated with several other ragtime musicians of the era, such as Arthur Marshall.

Giles, Gwen B. (1932–1986) Gwen B. Giles was the first African American woman to serve in the Missouri State Senate, elected in 1977. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Giles moved to St. Louis as a young child and attended St. Louis University. She held a variety of city positions and worked with the mayor of St. Louis on passage of a 1976 city civil rights bill. She later became the first black and first female city assessor of St. Louis, focusing on housing issues. As state senator, she supported the federal Equal Rights Amendment for gender equality and served on a federal women’s task force under President Carter.

Keckley, Elizabeth (1818–1907) Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (sometimes Keckly) was a former slave who served as dressmaker and personal assistant to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, experiences recounted in Keckley’s 1868 autobiography, Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Born a slave in Virginia, Keckley spent several years in St. Louis, Missouri, before moving to Washington, D.C., where she marketed her seamstress services to an elite government clientele that eventually included Mrs. Lincoln.

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Malone, Annie (1869–1957)

Paige, Satchel (1906–1982)

Annie Malone was a successful entrepreneur who developed and sold hair care products for black women at the same time as her more wellknown colleague and former salesperson, Madam C. J. Walker. Born in Illinois, Malone moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she sold her “Poro” brand products door to door and used new sales and marketing techniques to build her empire. In 1917, Malone founded a beauty training school for African American women, Poro College in St. Louis. Malone was a philanthropist who gave much of her money to black schools and organizations.

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (formerly Page) was a renowned baseball player and was considered the best pitcher in the Negro Leagues. A contemporary of Jackie Robinson, Paige became the first black pitcher to play in the major leagues when he was signed by the Cleveland Indians in 1948. Born in Mobile, Alabama, he played for several minor and major league teams, including the St. Louis Browns and the Kansas City Athletics toward the end of his career in 1965. He eventually made his permanent home in Kansas City, Missouri.

Meachum, John Berry (1789–1854)

Parker, Charlie “Bird” (1920–1955)

John Berry Meachum was a minister who founded the First African Baptist Church of St. Louis in 1825, one of the first all-black Protestant congregations. Born a slave in Virginia, he eventually purchased his own freedom and followed his enslaved wife’s owner to St. Louis. He secretly taught black children to read and write at his church and opened a floating “freedom school” on a boat in the Mississippi River.

Charles Christopher Parker Jr. was creator of the “bebop” style of quick, improvised jazz. He was born in Kansas City, Kansas, but his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he played saxophone in his school band. Largely self-taught, he played in local clubs before moving to New York City in 1939, joining with other beboppers such as Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk to create an alternative style to the big band jazz of fellow Kansas City bandleader Count Basie and others. Parker achieved immense mainstream popularity by the 1950s but, unfortunately, died at a young age after years of alcohol and drug addiction.

Nelly (1974–) Cornell Haynes Jr. (stage name Nelly) is a Grammy Award–winning rapper and actor, considered one of the top musical artists of the early 2000s. Born in Austin, Texas, Nelly moved to University City, Missouri, as a teenager. In 1993, he joined the St. Louis hip-hop group, the St. Lunatics, and signed a record contract with Universal Records in 1999. In 2000, Nelly released his first solo album and has sold more than 20 million copies of his records, including Country Grammar (2000), Nellyville (2002), Sweat (2004), and Suit (2004). He has also had success as a businessman, developing clothing lines, and as an actor, starring with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock in the 2005 film The Longest Yard.

Perry, Ivory (1930–1989) Ivory Perry was a prominent civil rights activist in St. Louis during the 1950s and 1960s. He participated in a number of boycotts and demonstrations against segregation and employment discrimination, including as a major figure in the Jefferson Bank boycotts of 1963 to protest the refusal of banks to hire black tellers. Born in Arkansas, he served in an all-black military unit during the Korean War and moved to St. Louis in 1954. Perry was the subject of a 2006

Missouri award-winning documentary on his campaign to raise awareness about lead poisoning in housing units in poor neighborhoods where African Americans predominated, resulting in anti-lead legislation in St. Louis in 1970.

Pruitt, Wendell (1920–1945) Wendell Oliver Pruitt was a decorated World War II fighter pilot trained as one of the Tuskegee Airmen group of black pilots at a time when the U.S. military was still racially segregated. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Pruitt attended Lincoln University before enlisting in the army and training in Tuskegee, Alabama. During the war he flew dozens of missions in Italy and received medals of honor for downing several enemy planes and a destroyer. He was killed in a training flight crash back in Alabama in 1945.

Smith, Ozzie (1954–) Osborne Earl “Ozzie” Smith is a retired baseball player who played in three World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals. Born in Alabama, Smith grew up in California. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he was recruited as a shortstop for the San Diego Padres. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982, taking the team to a World Series win that year. The Cardinals made it to the World Series again in 1987, losing to the Minnesota Twins. In 1987, the record-breaking Smith had a $2 million contract with the Cardinals, the largest for any player in the National League. Smith retired in 1996 but remains a national hero and prominent public figure in St. Louis.

Troupe, Quincy (1943–) Quincy Thomas Troupe Jr. is an acclaimed poet and writer who wrote a biography of jazz musician Miles Davis and cowrote The Pursuit of Happyness, the 2006 memoir that inspired the film starring Will Smith. Born in St. Louis, the

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son of a Negro League catcher, Troupe attended Grambling State University in Louisiana intending to play baseball, but left school to join the army. He then pursued writing and held several teaching positions before joining the faculty at the University of California, San Diego. Troupe was named California’s first poet laureate in 2002 but was forced to retire from UCSD when it was discovered that he had never earned a college degree as claimed.

Turner, Ike (1931–2007) Ike Turner was a Grammy award–winning singer, musician, and record producer best known for his collaboration with Tina Turner in the 1960s and 1970s. Ike Turner is considered one of the pioneers of rock-and-roll music and was the first artist to record a guitar distortion effect. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Turner worked at a local radio station before moving to St. Louis, where he met Anna Mae Bullock, who became a backup singer for his band. After their marriage in 1962, she changed her name and they formed the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Both performers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Turner, Tina (1939–) Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock) is a singer and actress who had a long collaboration with her former husband, Ike Turner, producing hit songs such as “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Proud Mary” in the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Tennessee, as a teenager Turner moved to St. Louis, where she met Ike Turner in a nightclub and joined his band as a backup vocalist. After their 15-year marriage ended, Tina Turner launched a solo career that included the Grammy Award–winning album Private Dancer (1984) and the popular single, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” She and Ike Turner were both inducted

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into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Walker, Madam C. J. (1867–1919) Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Davis Walker was the creator of a line of hair care and beauty products for black women and the most successful female entrepreneur of her time. She was born in Louisiana to former slaves, and later lived in Mississippi and then St. Louis, Missouri, where she worked as a laundress and then selling beauty products for Annie Malone. Sarah moved to Colorado where, going by her married name, she created Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. She established company headquarters, and a training college, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before moving to an even larger factory in Indianapolis.

Wilson, Margaret Bush (1919–2009) Margaret Bush Wilson was a civil rights activist and only the second woman to graduate from Lincoln University Law School, which had been established as a result of the Lloyd Gaines case requiring Missouri to offer legal education to blacks. A native of St. Louis, Wilson in 1943 became one of the state’s first black lawyers. She fought for desegregated housing for black Missourians and was involved in a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case, Shelley v. Kraemer, challenging racial covenants in real estate transactions. In 1962, she became president of the Missouri branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served many years as the first female national chair.

Yates, Josephine (1852–1912) Josephine Silone Yates was an educator and activist who taught at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, and served as president

of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) between 1901 and 1906. Born in Long Island, New York, Yates was educated at a school for black children in Philadelphia and was the only black graduate in her high school class in Newport, Rhode Island. She moved to Missouri to teach science at Lincoln University and was active in local and national organizations for racial and social equality.

Young, Hiram (c. 1812–1882) Hiram Young was a free black wagon maker in Independence, Missouri, who supplied many of the pioneers moving westward on the Santa Fe Trail through the Missouri-Kansas border. Born a slave in Tennessee, Young moved to Missouri where, after purchasing his freedom, he started a wagon-building business. By 1860, Young was one of the most successful black entrepreneurs in Missouri. He moved to Kansas during the Civil War to avoid local hostility against blacks in Missouri, finding his business destroyed upon his return and the peak of pioneer activity passed. He founded a school for black children in Independence.

Cultural Contributions The contributions of black Missourians to music and literature have had an enormous impact on the cultural development of the region and on the nation. Out of the violent postslavery years of the late nineteenth century, a new generation of African American musicians and composers emerged who would bring ragtime piano music, the blues, and then jazz to audiences first in the nightclubs of St. Louis and Kansas City, and then to the nation as a whole, creating enduring American musical traditions that influenced later genres of rock and roll and hip-hop. John “Blind” Boone was one of the founders of ragtime piano music and a trio of popularizers of ragtime came

Missouri out of Sedalia, Missouri, at the turn of the century: Scott Joplin, Scott Hayden, and Arthur Marshall. Kansas City is considered the birthplace of the blues, but W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blue” (1914) became one of the most popular blues songs of all time. Female blues singers such as Mary Johnson and Alice Moore also made their mark on the St. Louis music scene in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s New York was the center of black cultural life with the Harlem Renaissance, but two of the era’s biggest stars were born in Missouri, singer and dancer Josephine Baker and poet Langston Hughes. Missouri also remained at the forefront of musical experimentation, especially with the development of jazz. The most famous jazz musician of the era was “Count” Basie, who created a unique Kansas City style of bebop jazz. In the 1940s, Miles Davis got his start just across the border from St. Louis in East St. Louis, Illinois. Davis played with his idol, Charlie “Bird” Parker, before moving to New York and achieving immense success as one of the greatest jazz musicians of the twentieth century. Black Missourians have also had a prominent role in the history of baseball, adding the Kansas City Monarchs and the St. Louis Stars to the Negro Leagues in the 1920s. The Kansas City Monarchs won the first Negro World Series game held in 1924, and both Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson later played for the Monarchs

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before moving on to the major leagues. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is housed in Kansas City. The major league team the St. Louis Cardinals did not have black players until 1954; in 1982, Ozzie Smith led the Cardinals to victory in the World Series. In 1981, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) named its first black president, James Frank, a graduate of and former president of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Bibliography Greene, Lorenzo, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland. Missouri’s Black Heritage. Revised ed. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. Jack, Bryan M. The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. McLaurin, Melton. Celia, a Slave. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991. “Missouri’s African American History,” Missouri State Archives. www.sos.mo.gov/archives/ resources/africanamerican. Nolen, Rose M. Hoecakes, Hambone, and All That Jazz: African American Traditions in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.

MONTANA William Gibbons and Gordon E. Thompson

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Chronology 1803

The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from the French; the new territory, which includes Montana, nearly doubles the size of the country.

1804–1806

The Lewis and Clark expedition explores newly purchased Louisiana Territory and the Pacific Northwest; an African American, York, is prominent in the expedition.

1806

Edward Rose travels up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains to become the first of dozens of African American fur trappers and traders in the region.

1825

James Beckwourth, an African American fur trapper and mountaineer, enters the Rocky Mountains as a wrangler of William Henry Ashley’s fur-trapping expedition. Based in Montana, Beckwourth operates throughout much of the West.

1834

James Beckwourth achieves an unheard-of honor for any non-Indian, becoming “chief of chiefs” of the Crow Indian nation.

1856

James Beckwourth publishes his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, as told to Thomas Bonner, in which he recounted his experiences as a mountain man, trapper, scout, and honorary member of the Crow tribe. His autobiography was the first work in American literature to relay the story of an African American on the western frontier.

1861

(April 12) The Civil War begins with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1862

(June) Congress abolishes slavery in the western territories of the United States.

1862

African Americans are among the first settlers of Helena, which is established after a gold discovery.

1864

(May 26) Congress creates the Montana Territory.

1865

(February 1) President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which, upon its ratification in December, outlaws slavery throughout the United States.

1866

After the Civil War, Congress authorizes the creation of the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry, which are led mostly by white officers. These men, eventually called buffalo soldiers, initiate the first period in U.S. history when African American soldiers are a permanent component of the U.S. military.

1866

Riding to Fort C. F. Smith in what is today Montana, James Beckwourth complains of headaches and nosebleeds. While in the camp of his old friends, the Crow, Beckwourth suffers symptoms of a stroke and dies at 67 or 68 years of age. He was buried on Crow land in what is today Montana near the present Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

1867

(January 10) Congress passes the Territorial Suffrage Act, which allows African Americans in the western territories to vote. The act immediately enfranchises about 800

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black male voters in those territories; 200 African American men cast ballots in the election of 1867, although not without challenge. 1867

Sammy Hays is killed by a gang of Irishmen in a violent post election riot in Helena.

1868

(July 21) The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

1868

(Summer) Beginning with the cattle drive of William G. Butler, African American cowboys will participate for the next two decades in cattle drives through the Montana territory.

1869

James Pratt, a former Union soldier, stakes a successful mining claim in Marysville until 1886, when he sells the mine and moves to Helena to operate a saloon.

1870

(March 30) The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African American males the right to vote.

1870

The U.S. Census documents 183 African Americans in the state, 71 of them residing in Helena.

1871

Joe Clark is a hunter assigned to the crew of the Ferdinand Hayden expedition that received funds from Congress to explore the Yellowstone area. Other nameless African Americans of the expedition supplied and maintained tents and firearms, tended to horses and livestock, and provided fresh meat.

1872

The Montana territorial legislature passes a law segregating African American children in public schools.

1876

(June 25) Isaiah Dorman, a guide, translator, and hero, perishes in a battle with Sioux Indians on the same day famed General George Armstrong Custer is killed at the Little Bighorn River.

1879

An African American fraternal order, the Lodge of the Good Templars, is organized in Helena by 20 African Americans.

1882

Protests, dwindling enrollment, and the increasing cost of maintaining segregated schools result in a successful referendum vote to prohibit racial segregation in Montana schools.

1885

Charles Porter Grove, a former slave, discovers gold in Broadwater County.

1885

Mary Fields arrives in Cascade to become a successful business owner, running a restaurant and laundry; she is also the second African American U.S. postal worker in Montana, driving a mail coach from Cascade to Fort Shaw and Simms until she is almost 70.

1888

Reverend James Hubbard establishes the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Helena.

1888

The 25th Infantry—one of four African American regiments created after the Civil War—arrives at Fort Missoula.

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1888

William C. Irvin is Helena’s first African American policeman.

1889

(November 8) Montana enters the Union as the 41st state.

1890

Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is founded in Great Falls.

1892

George Williams is the first African American police officer in Great Falls.

1894

(September 3) Montana’s first black newspaper, the Helena Colored Citizen, is founded by Ohio-born photographer J. P. Ball Jr.

1894

The 10th Cavalry transfers to Fort Assinniboine from Arizona, before being deployed to Cuba in 1898 to fight in the Spanish-American War.

1896

The James A. Moss group of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps from Fort Missoula, Montana, in Yellowstone National Park is assigned the task of testing bicycles as a means of military transportation; for a year, several groups start from the northern Rockies in Montana and tour southward, crossing Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The experiment is a failure but leaves intriguing photographs of African American troops.

1902

The Manhattan Social Club, a social organization in Helena, is founded; it boasts a reading room, billard parlor, and ping-pong room, private dining facilities, and a bar.

1902

(May 2) The Butte New Age, Montana’s second African American newspaper, is published.

1906

(March 16) The first issue of the Montana Plaindealer, edited in Helena by Joseph B. Bass, is published and circulates until 1911.

1907

Joseph B. Bass helps organize a Helena chapter of Booker T. Washington’s National Negro Business League, which includes dozens of businesses.

1908

The Afro-Amercan Building Association is established, a self-help group of African American real estate owners in Montana.

1909

Henry J. Baker, J. E. W. Clark, Joseph B. Bass, and others spearhead the Afro-American Protective League, an ambitious statewide organization that defends African Americans in Montana from racism.

1909

A miscegenation bill passes outlawing marriage between blacks and whites in Montana.

1920

(August 26) The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, giving all women the right to vote. Black women already have the right to vote in Wyoming, Washington, Colorado, California, and other western states.

1921

(August 3) The first meeting of the Montana Federation of Negro Women’s Club is held.

1922

The Great Falls chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established, but is defunct by 1930.

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1948

(July 26) President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 directing the desegregation of the armed forces.

1949

Arcella Hayes of Missoula initiates a successful campaign to repeal discriminatory statues and enact the Fair Employment Practices Law.

1957

Alma Jacobs of Lewistown becomes the first African American to be elected president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association.

1963

(January 28) Montana ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1965

Black and white residents of Missoula and Billings hold marches and prayer services in reaction to the beating of black civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama.

1968

Professor Ulysses Doss establishes a black studies program at the University of Montana; it is only the third such program in the country.

1969

Ophelia Fenter, who teaches home economics, becomes the first African American teacher at Butte High School.

1970

The U.S. Census counts 1,995 African Americans resident in Montana.

1972

Montana adopts a new state constitution with a strong civil rights statement.

1973

Alma Jacobs of Lewistown is appointed Montana state librarian.

1974

Great Falls librarian Geraldine Travis becomes the first African American elected to the Montana State Legislature.

1980

The U.S. Census counts 1,786 African Americans resident in Montana.

1990

The U.S. Census counts 2,381 African Americans resident in Montana.

1991

Montana declares the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a holiday, becoming the 48th state to do so.

1992

The Great Falls chapter of the reestablished NAACP holds a rally protesting the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King.

2000

The U.S. Census documents 2,692 African Americans residing in the state, constituting just over 0.3 percent of the state’s population.

2006

African Americans comprise 0.5 percent of Montana’s total population.

2007

Johnnie Lockett Thomas of Miles City receives the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his research and presentations on the history of African Americans in the state.

2009

(November 1) A Diversity March is held in Bozeman to protest attempts by a white supremacist group to establish a base of operations in the community.

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Historical Overview African American history has had its colorful moments in the thinly populated state of Montana. In 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition brought Montana into the American consciousness. York, a slave, manservant, and guide, accompanied Lewis and Clark and befriended the natives who were fascinated by his black skin. This famous encounter has been painted by Russell Lewis and hangs in the Montana State House of Representatives. Among the early explorers to the area were a group of blacks who became fur trappers. In the 1860s, gold miners followed, among whom were the first permanent black settlers. Montana became a state in 1889, but black males won the right to vote as early as 1867, after a tense challenge in Helena by pro-Democratic gangs said to be responsible for the death of Sammy Hays, a black male. Helena, the capital, once had the largest black community in Montana, though today many African Americans reside in

Billings, Butte, and Great Falls. These cities, except Billings, lie in the most populated region of Montana, along or close to Highway 15, running from the south central city of Butte northward toward Helena, Cascade, and Great Falls.

Fort Shaw Among Montana’s more significant landmarks is Fort Shaw, an outpost on the Montana frontier just outside Great Falls. It was one of three posts Congress authorized to be built in 1865 and was completed in 1868. Opened in 1867, it was used by military personnel until 1891. The fort is located west of Great Falls in the Sun River Valley and was built of adobe and lumber by the 13th Infantry. It had a parade ground that was 400 feet long, and consisted of barracks for officers, a hospital, and a trading post and housing for 450 soldiers. The all-black 25th Infantry Regiment, posted there, named the fort after Robert Gould Shaw to honor his leadership of the all-black 54th Infantry Regiment, one of the first all–African American

Buffalo soldiers of the 25th Infantry, some wearing the buffalo robes for which they were named, Fort Keogh, Montana. (Library of Congress)

Montana regiments serving during the American Civil War, although it is doubtful Shaw ever stood on this site. The town of Missoula, west of Helena, was populated with soldiers from the nearby fort alongside blacks who worked as servants in hotels, restaurants, homes, and clubs. Not to be forgotten were cowboys such as Bob Leavitt and Newt Clendennon, who worked the cattle ranches.

Fort Missoula Fort Missoula was the true home of the 25th Infantry. Built in 1877, the 25th saw the uprising of Chief Joseph and his men and experimented with using bicycles in place of horses. The infantry also saw activity in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The other two posts in the Montana Territory were Camp Cooke on the Judith River and Fort C. F. Smith on the Bozeman Trail in south central Montana Territory.

Helena The growth and development of Helena parallels the growth and development of the state and of the black community of Montana in general. In 1864, four prospectors found gold near Helena, calling this site Last Chance Gulch. It was later renamed Helena and became the state capital. While blacks resided in Helena’s Prickly Pear Valley before it became a city, its small African American community peaked in 1910, reaching 420 inhabitants. As early as 1870, 71 blacks were reported to reside in Helena, among whom where black cowboys and soldiers. These men and some women worked as cooks, servants, and cowboys, but they also came as soldiers and as gold miners. From these beginnings, thriving businesses would develop that included everything from a beauty parlor to a laundry. While Montana was still a territory, the area legislature passed a statute segregating the schools of Montana. As a consequence, the black community opened a separate school; but with no more

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than 20 students, it was not financially sustainable and closed its doors in 1882. Despite the segregated school, most residential neighborhoods were modestly integrated as a factor of the relatively small size of the black population, offering an explanation, in addition, for relatively low levels of racial conflict in this city. But the growth of a black church and a lodge, the Good Templars, reflected Helena’s otherwise segregated black community. The most prominent black church in the area, St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, grew out of a small religious society. In 1888, Reverend James Hubbard arrived from Kansas to launch a full-blown black congregation. As with black communities in the East, the black church was dynamic and central to community cohesion. Everyone of note associated with St. James Church to the extent that it was truly integral to the development of black Helena’s social and political stability. As a consequence, the African American community was able to build an imposing frame structure in 1888 that supported a Sunday school, benevolent associations, a literary society, and other recreational and artistic groups. As a complement to the church, the St. James Literary Society, founded in 1906, had a large membership devoted to sponsoring poets, playwrights, writers and other artists and entertainers.

Personalities Among the many black notables of Montana’s past, one may include the ex-slave gold miners, Charles Porter Grove and Millie Ringgold, a woman who single-handedly opened a hotel and restaurant; another woman, Sara Bickford, constructed a reservoir and provided water for Virginia City residents; and William Bairpaugh became a rare African American homesteader who later operated one of Montana’s largest farms dedicated to growing wheat. William C. Irvin became a successful businessman, owned his own home, and served proudly as a police

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officer in Helena though he started out as little more than a porter. Arriving from Missouri in 1891, Walter Dorsey rose from the position of steward at the Montana Club to become the proprietor of his own grocery and later the owner of an entire building. Prominent men and women such as these presented an imposing face of black Montanans to the outside world. One of Montana’s most colorful characters, however, was Mary Fields, known for her 200pound weight, her pistol, and her charitable disposition. She resided in Cascade, Montana, and went by the cognomen of “Black Mary.” Born a slave in Hickman County, Tennessee, about 1832, she made her way in part by steamboat to Toledo, Ohio, arriving in Cascade as the maid and friend of a nun, Mother Amadeus, who had taken ill. Widely admired, Mary Fields wore the hat and boots and other clothing associated with men, including a revolver stashed under her apron for good measure. She was said to drink and smoke cigars with men in the town’s saloon. As tough as any man, she handled a stagecoach by herself, ferrying passengers from the town and the train station to the convent, giving her a second cognomen, “Stagecoach Mary.” The sisters relied on her, in addition, to wash their clothes, tend to a large brood of chickens, and do subsistence gardening. Once, they attempted to do her work for her while Fields was away. The sisters discovered how much they relied on her when some cartridges accidentally went off, luckily not wounding anyone. They were much relieved when Fields returned. While she lived at the convent of St. Peters, she continued to drink, smoke, swear, and tell tall tales with her male bar mates. She also engaged in gun duels. This lasted for 10 years until someone alerted the bishop of Montana, who decided Fields could no longer live or work at the convent. As a result, Fields, newly housed in Cascade, was enlisted to take mail back and forth between the town and the convent, becoming only the second woman in the country, it is said, to serve in this capacity.

A while later, Mother Amadeus left for another post in Alaska, and Fields gave up her mail route, supporting herself by taking in the town’s laundry, but she also attempted to open an eating establishment; it failed twice. As she moved further up in age, she took up babysitting and was wildly popular at this. Near death, she hid in the grass to avoid becoming a burden to the town. She was nursed by townspeople and given a heartfelt funeral by the entire town when she died a few days later. The white population of Montana grew faster than the African American community so that the black population today is approximately 0.5 percent of a total population of 902,125, corresponding to about 4,470 residents. While Arcella Hayes spearheaded a successful effort to repeal the ban on interracial marriage enacted in 1909, by the 1940s, African Americans were still fighting for their civil rights. Today, while black incomes average somewhat less than the average income of the total population, blacks in Montana do not appear to fare any less well than other Montanans overall. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 2,692 African Americans were residing in the state, constituting just over 0.3 percent of the state’s population. Estimates for the 2010 Census put African Americans at about 0.5 percent of Montana’s total population.

Notable African Americans Beckwourth, James P. (1798–1866) Mountaineer, scout, trapper, interpreter, and Indian Chief, James Beckwourth was a legend of the western frontier. A skilled outdoorsmen, he established trading posts, befriended and became a member of the Crow Indians, pioneered the Oregon Trail, and discovered a pass that bears his name in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Beckwourth was born into slavery on April 26, 1798, in Frederick County, Virginia. His father Jennings Beckwourth was a slave owner and officer in the

Montana

475

almost seven years. In 1834, Beckwourth became a chief of chiefs of the Crow Indian nation, an almost unheard-of honor for any non-Indian. In 1850, Beckwourth discovered a pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that allowed wagons and horses relatively easy access to the west, becoming known as the Beckwourth Pass. In later years, he opened a bar and other businesses in a small village that would become Denver, Colorado. His life’s exploits are recorded in his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of James Beckwourth, as told to Thomas Bonner in 1856. Beckwourth died in Montana at the Bighorn River among the Crow Indians in 1866.

Dorman, Isaiah (c. 1820–1876)

James Beckwourth, African American Indian explorer, trapper, and trader (1798–1866). (Courtesy Mercaldo Archives)

Revolutionary War. Beckwourth’s mother was a mulatto slave on the Beckwourth plantation. Relocating his family to St. Louis, Missouri, Jennings sent James to school at the age of 10 and later apprenticed him as a blacksmith. Drawn to the outdoor life, young Beckwourth abandoned the idea of becoming a blacksmith and joined General William H. Ashley’s Rocky Mountains Fur Trading Company in 1825 as a wrangler and body servant. As a trapper, Beckwourth established himself among many of his contemporaries such as Jim Bridger, Edward Rose, and Hugh Glass. Adventurous, Beckwourth roamed throughout the Great Plains and Northwest as an independent trapper, first visiting Montana in 1825. He lived twice with the Crow Indians in Montana and during that time took two Native American wives. In 1828, he was made a member of the Crow tribe. He lived with the Crow for

Frontiersman, guide, interpreter, and soldier, Isaiah Dorman, a former slave who served as an interpreter and guide on various private military expeditions on the western frontier for the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars, was the only African American known to have been present during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Dorman perished in a battle with the Sioux Indians the same day General George Armstrong Custer was killed at the Little Bighorn River just three miles away. Known for his diligence, dependability, and courage, Dorman’s early life is a mystery. There are no photographs of him known to exist. What little is known is derived from military records. Records suggest that he was probably born in slavery around the 1820s in Louisiana to the D’Orman family, and like others, he escaped and went out West. By 1850, he was living with the Lakota tribe as a trapper and trader. He eventually settled near Fort Rice in the Dakota Territory, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, and married a woman of Inkpaduta’s band of the Santee Sioux. There he supported himself by cutting wood. In the early fall of 1865, he was hired by the trading firm of Durkee & Peck to cut wood. Written records indicate

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that he was so strong that he could cut a cord of wood faster than his helper could stack it. There is also a story that his wife was a goddaughter of Sitting Bull and that the two were friends. When military officers discovered Dorman’s relationship with the Sioux and his vast knowledge of the land, he was hired as a guide and interpreter. On November 11, 1865, Dorman was hired as a courier to carry mail between Fort Wadsworth and Fort Rice, Dakota Territory, a distance of 360 miles. It is said that he had no horse and walked the entire distance with his sleeping bag over his shoulder and the mail in a waterproof pouch. He did this for about two years. He was rehired in 1867 to do the same job because it was too dangerous for soldiers to carry the mail. At the time, his income averaged $50 to $60 per month, which was comparable to a lieutenant in the army. As he established himself on the frontier, he served in various capacities for the army. In September 1871, he served as a guide and interpreter for a party of engineers making the Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. For his service he was paid $100 per month. A month later, in October 1871, Dorman was hired as an interpreter at Fort Rice. He was paid $75 per month for his service. With a well-established reputation and ability to speak the Sioux language, Dorman was hired by General George Armstrong Custer as an interpreter for his expedition to the Little Bighorn country in the late spring of 1876. Custer himself issued a special order that Isaiah should be brought along as an interpreter. On June 25, 1876, he accompanied the detachment of Major Marcus Reno’s battalion that Custer ordered to cross the Little Bighorn River and attack the Indian encampment from the south. This attack exposed the battalion to concentrated fire from the Indians forcing Major Reno’s retreat, but not before Dorman received a fatal wound to the chest. Pinned under his horse and left behind when Major Reno retired across the river to high

bluffs, Dorman’s body was found stripped of all clothing. There are two accounts of how his body was deposed. One account suggests that upon discovery of his body by the Sioux women, Sitting Bull intervened to prevent the customary ritual of mutilation—a custom designed to prevent the victim from passing into the spirit world as a “whole man.” Sitting Bull, then, buried his friend Isaiah Dorman with honor. At the time of Dorman’s death, $102.50 was due to him for services rendered during the months of May and June. The money was never claimed. The irony in the story of Isaiah Dorman is the fact that he would have remained unknown if not for the accidental or incidental identification of Dorman by Major Reno in his report. Another account has his body being recovered and buried on the Reno battlefield and subsequently removed in 1877 and taken to the Little Bighorn National Cemetery.

Rose, Edward (c. 1780–c. 1834) Mountaineer, guide, interpreter, and fur trapper, African American Ed Rose, one of the first trappers involved in the early ventures on the western frontier and chief of the Crow Indians, was a trailblazer during the early nineteenth century. Traveling with some of the most well-known trappers, Rose went up the Missouri River in 1807 with Manuel Lisa in the first large-scale trapping expedition. He traveled along the Yellowstone River in 1809 with Ezekiel Williams. He was an interpreter and guide at Fort Wilson with Price Hunt, who led the Astorians westward in 1811. In 1823, he joined the famous William Ashley Expedition. It is unknown where Rose was born or precisely when, where, or how he died. It was said he was born around 1780, a slave to a mixed blood Cherokee trapper and AfricanCherokee women. No written word of Rose is preserved. The earliest record of Rose is in 1806 in the company of other trappers on the Osage River.

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Supposedly, Rose was raised near Louisville, Kentucky. His first biographer was Lieutenant Reuben Holmes, who was with the Atkinson-O’Fallon expedition of 1825. His work was published in 1828 in the St. Louis Beacon. Washington Irving wrote of Rose in Astoria and in the Adventures of Captain Bonneville. David H. Coyner wrote of him in The Lost Trappers, published in 1859. It is said that sometime around 1834, Rose was scalped and killed by a group of Arikara Indians. He was ambushed along with friend Hugh Glass traveling on foot along the Yellowstone River.

York (1770–1832) Slave and manservant, York was a valuable member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. During the 28-month journey, York had been treated as an equal. He hunted on his own, carried a gun, and voted. York’s contributions were invaluable to the expedition. On one occasion, York risked his own life to save William Clark in a flood on the Missouri River near Great Falls in present-day Montana. York, the son of slaves Rose and Old York, was born in Caroline County, Virginia, and raised on a Kentucky plantation near Louisville with Clark, who inherited York in 1799 as part of his father’s estate. York’s display of skills, strength, and popularity made him a valuable member of the expedition. Standing well over six feet and weighing more than 200 pounds, with dark skin and kinky hair, York was a source of fascination for the Native American people. The tribes had never seen a man of his dark complexion before, and all flocked around York and examined him. On one occasion while traveling through Montana in 1805, York’s color intrigued and occupied the attention of a band of Shoshone Indians. After the Corps of Discovery returned, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good services during the expedition. Clark, who had settled in St. Louis, refused York’s request, claiming financial difficulties,

A painting of York, only identified as York, the only African American member of the Lewis and Clark expedition and William Clark’s personal slave. (AP/ Wide World Photos)

although he allowed York to return temporarily to Louisville to rejoin his wife. Clark may have set York free sometime after 1816 and set him up with a business in Tennessee and Kentucky. There are, however, some doubts about this story. At least one other account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier. While some historians believe York was eventually freed, it has never been documented. He died of cholera sometime between 1822 and 1832 in Tennessee.

Cultural Contributions Montana’s Black Newspapers The Colored Citizen and the Montana Plaindealer, out of Helena, and the New Age, published in Butte, were the most influential newspapers in Montana from 1894 to 1911 at the height of the black population. The demise of these papers

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probably had as much to do with politics as with demographics. Helena’s black newspapermen were among its best-known civic personalities. Joseph B. Bass and J. P. Ball Jr. founded their respective papers, the Montana Plaindealer and the Colored Citizen, in 1894. Bass and Ball edited these civic organizations until the papers went out of business. Ball also served as his own photographer. J. P. Ball Jr. is remembered for his effort to urge black voters to weigh in on the issue of whether Anaconda or Helena would be designated as the state capital. It is arguable whether the black population of Helena actually tilted the scales in Helena’s favor, but Ball is credited as having played a notable role in this decision, even though his paper lasted a scant two months. Just as life went out of the Colored Citizen as a result of its successful campaign—along with the rest of Helena—against the Anaconda Copper Company and its bid to make its town the capital of the state, so did Butte’s New Age lose purpose in its connection with the copper company’s campaign. In fact, it is precisely because of the support by New Age for the Anaconda Copper Company, later known as the Amalgamated Copper Company, that it too went out of business when Amalgamated won the license to mine the mineral fields around Butte. But unlike the Colored Citizen, New Age supported the Democratic Party, evidence that at some point it became less an organ of the black community and little more than the handmaiden of Amalgamated, since blacks otherwise had almost nothing to do with the Democratic Party at that time. As for Helena’s second black paper, the Montana Plaindealer, the most successful black news organ, its editor, Joseph B. Bass, identified with the Republicans, the party of Lincoln. Hailing from Topeka, Kansas, Bass started the Plaindealer in 1894, and it became the main organ of the African American community. Besides Bass’s progressive-sounding editorials, his paper

published news of note alongside a gossip column that played a major part in sustaining a cohesive black community. Bass’ progressivism promoted Booker T. Washington–style self-help projects in Helena, featuring in the newspaper Washington’s speeches and ideas. Bass is also instrumental in forming a branch of the Booker T. Washington National Negro Business League. The Plaindealer’s view on racial matters, however, upset some of its black and white readers when Bass’ paper took up the issue of gambling dens owned by blacks in the city of Helena and miscegenation. The gambling issue was associated with the Zanzibar Saloon. Black businessman Lloyd V. Graye, while he owned stock in reputable businesses such as a cleaners and a shoe repair shop, also owned the notorious Zanzibar. The issue of the Zanzibar became known as the “tempest on Clore Street.” Owned jointly by Graye and David Gordon, the Zanzibar Club was more than a saloon: it was also a gambling establishment and meeting place for prostitutes and their johns. It had been popular among the black soldiers housed at Fort Harrison, but it also attracted white and black civilians. Matters not directly related to it brought down the Zanzibar, however. While Helena’s mayor wanted to run on a platform of cleaning up his town, two murders, one associated with the club, the other not, fueled the ill feelings of the citizens and made them strongly disposed to closing the establishment. The controversy over the political and legal issues associated with Lewis and Clark County Attorney Leon LaCroix’s attempt to close the Zanzibar brought Bass’ paper considerable debate. In his attempt to put an end to this business, LaCroix raised the ire of Bass, who felt that LaCroix’s actions were racially tinged. Since LaCroix was also running for reelection against a Republican candidate, Bass was urged on by the Republican establishment to cross LaCroix. Bass also had hopes, consequently, for a patronage job, but it was not given to him, wounding Bass’ sense of party loyalty

Montana tremendously. He felt he had been used to exploit the black voters of Helena. Yet he placed his hope in the Republicans again when a miscegenation bill came up in the Republican-dominated state Senate on February 6, 1909, and subsequently passed, outlawing marriage between blacks and whites. With bitter closure achieved on this controversy, the Plaindealer declined, going out of business two years later. It is also true that the black population of Helena declined precipitously between 1912 and 1920. In fact, in 1912, the last black soldiers to be housed at the nearby fort left, seriously eroding the newspaper’s readership.

Bibliography Burton, Art A. Black, Buckskin, and Blue: African American Scouts and Soldiers on the Western Frontier. Austin: Texas Eakin Press, 1999. Felton, Harold W. Edward Rose: Negro Trail Blazer. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1967. Felton, Harold W. Jim Beckwourth: Negro Mountain Man. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1966. Katz, William Loren. Black Pioneers: An Untold Story. New York: Atheneum Books, 1999.

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Lang, William L. “The Nearly Forgotten Negroes on the Last Chance Gulch.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 70 (1979). Lang, William L. “Tempest on Clore Street: Race and Politics in Helena, Montana, 1906.” Scratchgravel Hills 3 (1980). McConnell, Roland C. “Isaiah Dorman and the Custer Expedition.” Journal of Negro History 33, no. 3 (1948). Myers, Rex C. “Montana’s Negro Newspapers, 1894–1911.” Montana Journalism Review 16 (1973). Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1997. Taylor, Quintard. “The Emergence of AfroAmerican Communities in the Pacific Northwest 1865–1910.” Journal of Negro History 64 (1979). Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. Taylor, Quintard. “Montana.” The African American Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, 1838–1840.

Black America A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia Volume 2: N–W

Alton Hornsby, Jr., Editor

Copyright 2011 by Alton Hornsby, Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Black America : a state-by-state historical encyclopedia / edited by Alton Hornsby, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–34112–0 (hardcopy (set) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–976–7 (ebook (set)) — ISBN 978–0–313–34113–7 (hardcopy (vol. 1) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–977–4 (ebook (vol. 1)) — ISBN 978–0–313–34114–4 (hardcopy (vol. 2) : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978–1–57356–978–1 (ebook (vol. 2)) 1. African Americans—History—Encyclopedias. 2. African Americans—Biography—Encyclopedias. I. Hornsby, Alton. E185.B537 2011 2010045519 9730 .0496073—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–34112–0 EISBN: 978–1–57356–976–7 15 14 13 12 11

1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

ix xi xiii

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction

VOLUME 1 Alabama Alaska

1 25

Arizona Arkansas

35 57

California

75

Colorado Connecticut

95 113

Delaware District of Columbia

131 149

Florida

169

Georgia Hawaii

187 213

Idaho Illinois

227 239

Indiana

255

Iowa Kansas

271 285

Kentucky Louisiana

305 327

Maine Maryland

347 359

Massachusetts

381

Michigan Minnesota

395 411

Mississippi Missouri

425 447

Montana

467

iii

iv Contents

VOLUME 2 Nebraska

481

Nevada

497

New Hampshire

517

New Jersey

529

New Mexico

545

New York

565

North Carolina

595

North Dakota

619

Ohio

631

Oklahoma

665

Oregon

679

Pennsylvania

711

Rhode Island

737

South Carolina

745

South Dakota

765

Tennessee

777

Texas

817

Utah

841

Vermont

861

Virginia

871

Washington

893

West Virginia

913

Wisconsin

931

Wyoming

949

Bibliography About the Editor and Contributors Index

959 963 967

NEBRASKA Gladys L. Knight

481

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Chronology 1541

Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado claims parts of the Great Plains region, including Nebraska, for Spain.

1682

Rene Robert Cavelier (known as Sieur de La Salle), a French explorer, explores the area of present-day Nebraska. The French establish the Louisiana Territory, which encompasses the area now made up of 14 U.S. states, including Nebraska.

1724

Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont claims the Nebraska region for France.

1763

Spain acquires the lands of the Louisiana Territory that lay west of the Mississippi River.

1800

The Spanish return the Louisiana Territory to France.

1803

The United States acquires Nebraska as part of the Louisiana Purchase from France.

1804

York, a black man accompanying the Lewis and Clark expedition, is the first documented African American to visit the region that will become Nebraska.

1819

The U.S. Army establishes Fort Atkinson as Nebraska’s first military post.

1820

Bellevue becomes the first permanent settlement in the territory.

1854

The Kansas-Nebraska Act establishes Kansas and Nebraska as territories and allows the residents of each territory to decide whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The act repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery in the western territories.

1855

There are 13 black slaves in the Nebraska Territory.

1855–1861

The territorial legislature debates the slavery issue, but nothing is decided. Although the presence of slavery was never formally approved by voters, some slaveholders kept slaves in the territory. The governor vetoes two antislavery bills, declaring that a final decision on slavery can only be made by the people when they draft a state constitution. Many legislators argue that no law on slavery is needed since the territory had no significant slave presence.

1856

The cabin of Allen and Barbara Mayhew outside Nebraska City becomes a stop on the Underground Railroad through the efforts of Mrs. Mayhew‘s brother, John H. Kagi, who is an associate of abolitionist John Brown.

1858

Two black slaves escape from their owner in Nebraska City.

1859

An ultimately unsuccessful proposal to abolish slavery in the territory is introduced into the Omaha City Council.

1860

There are 82 blacks resident in the territory, 10 of whom are slaves.

1860

( June) Six black slaves escape from their owner in Nebraska City.

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483

1860

(December 5) Hercules and Martha, two slaves, are unlawfully auctioned off in Nebraska City.

1861

The territorial legislature overrides the governor’s veto and enacts a bill prohibiting slavery in Nebraska.

1862

The Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Acts are passed.

1865

(December 6) The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified abolishing slavery in the United States.

1866

A clause in the proposed Nebraska state constitution limiting voting rights to “free white males” delays statehood for almost a year.

1866

The territorial legislature passes a law prohibiting interracial marriages.

1867

(March 1) Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the Union.

1867

( June 15) Nebraska ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing equal protection to blacks.

1867

St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African American church in Nebraska, is founded in Omaha.

1869

The Union Pacific Railroad is completed, with its terminus at Omaha.

1870

(February 17) Nebraska ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending voting rights to blacks; the state’s ratification comes two weeks after the amendment had taken effect.

1870

The total population of Nebraska is 122,993; the black population of the state is 789.

1873

The Nebraska Supreme Court rules that blacks cannot be excluded from serving on juries in the state.

1879

The Kansas Exodus refers to a large migration of southern blacks (known as Exodusters) to Kansas. A small number of Exodusters settle in Nebraska.

1880s

African American communities begin to thrive in the state.

1880s–1890s

African Americans in the state establish several black newspapers, such as the Progress, the Afro-American Sentinel, and the Enterprise.

1880s–1930s

African Americans in Omaha experience a cultural renaissance.

1884

Matthew Ricketts of Omaha becomes the first African American to graduate from a Nebraska college or university, when he earns a degree from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine.

1887–1906

The 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry are stationed at Fort Robinson.

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1888

Arthur Warwick, an African American, sues a white barber who refuses him service.

1890

The total population of the state is 1,062,656. The black population is 8,913.

1891

Joe Coe, an African American man, is lynched for raping a white woman in Omaha.

1892

Dr. Matthew O. Ricketts is the first African American elected to the Nebraska Legislature.

1894

(July) The first African American fair held in the United States occurs in Omaha.

1895

Silas Robbins is the first African American admitted to the Nebraska State Bar Association.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation is constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1899

J. A. Smith, a local African American singer, who is arrested in Omaha for “loud talking” on a public street, dies while in custody after a scuffle with a white police officer.

1899

“A Colored Man’s Experience on a Nebraska Homestead,” an article written by John Speece, is published in the Omaha World-Herald.

1900

The black population of the state is 6,269.

1902–1906

African Americans in the 25th Infantry are stationed at Fort Niobrara. African Americans are subjected to housing discrimination in Omaha.

1910

An “Old Colored Folks” home opens in North Omaha.

1910

The total population of the state is 1,192,214. The black population is 7,689.

1914

A branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established in Omaha.

1917

George Wells Parker establishes the Hamitic League of the World, an organization dedicated to fostering Negro race pride, in Omaha.

1919

(September 28) Will Brown, an African American accused of raping a white woman, is lynched by a mob in South Omaha. The white mob then surges through town, attacking blacks and destroying property until federal troops arrive to halt the disorders.

1920s

Discriminatory housing practices in Omaha restrict blacks largely to neighborhoods in North Omaha.

1920

The Colored Commercial Club is organized in Omaha to promote black business ownership and black employment.

1921

Earl Little, the father of Malcolm X, founds the Omaha chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Nebraska

485

1921

The first Ku Klux Klan group in Nebraska is organized in Omaha.

1928

The Urban League of Nebraska is founded in Omaha.

1928

The Ku Klux Klan stages a demonstration in Neligh.

1930

The total population of Nebraska is 1,377,963. The black population of the state is 13,242.

1932

An Urban League chapter is established in Lincoln.

1938

Founded by Mildred Brown and her husband, the Omaha Star becomes the only African American newspaper operating in Nebraska.

1947

The DePorres Club is established in Omaha to fight racial discrimination in housing and employment.

1948

After being expelled from the campus of Creighton University, the DePorres Club begins to meet in the offices of the Omaha Star.

1948

President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981, which desegregates the U.S. military.

1950s

Most cafes in Omaha enforce racial segregation, displaying signs that blacks will not be served.

1950

The total population of Nebraska is 1,326,000. The black population of the state is 19,000.

1954

In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation in schools is unconstitutional.

1955

When an Omaha amusement park prevents blacks from participating in a swim meet, African American demonstrators picket the park, which is later found guilty by the Nebraska Supreme Court of violating the state’s desegregation laws and fined $50.

1958

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preaches at Salem Baptist Church in North Omaha.

1962

The Negro History Society is formed in North Omaha by Bertha Calloway.

1963

(April 4) Nebraska ratifies the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

The Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties (known as 4CL) is formed in Omaha to demand full civil rights for the city’s black residents.

1963

The Omaha Human Rights Commission is created in response to the demonstrations and protests of 4CL.

1964

Omaha native Malcolm X speaks in the city.

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1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminates segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.

1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminates discriminatory practices that restrict black suffrage.

1966

( July) The National Guard is called into North Omaha to restore order after two days of race rioting.

1966

A Time for Burning, an Oscar-nominated documentary on the racial problems of North Omaha, is released.

1968

(April) Riots sparked by news of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. erupt in North Omaha; the National Guard is called in to restore order.

1969

(June) Race riots erupt in Omaha after a white city police officer kills a black teen in the North Omaha housing projects.

1969

Black students stage a sit-in at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, demanding courses in African American history.

1970

The total population of the state is 1,483,000. The black population is 40,000.

1970

Ernie Chambers, one of the state’s most outspoken African American leaders, is elected to the Nebraska State Senate for North Omaha‘s 11th District.

1971

The University of Nebraska, Omaha, establishes a black studies department.

1976

Omaha public schools begin court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration.

1976

Bertha Calloway founds the Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha to celebrate African American contributions to the city and the state.

1977

JoAnn Strickland Maxey becomes the first African American woman elected to the state legislature.

1979

Reverend James Cleveland, Dorothea Wade, and the Inspirational Choir receive a Grammy Award nomination for I Don’t Feel No Way Tired.

1980

The total population of Omaha is 311,681. The black population of the city is 37,852. The total population of Lincoln is 171,932. The black population of Lincoln is 3,444.

1981

Arsonists destroy an East Omaha duplex after an African American family signs a rental agreement to live there.

1988

The Mad Dads, a biracial group, hold a march to protest gang violence in Omaha.

1990

The total population of the state is 1,578,385; the black population is 57,404. The total population of Omaha is 335,795; the black population is 43,989. The total population of Lincoln is 191,972; the black population is 4,515.

1996

Omaha public schools end court-ordered busing.

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1997

A professor and university students commemorate the 78th anniversary of the lynching of Will Brown.

1997

Marvin Ammons, an African American Persian Gulf War veteran, is shot dead by police officers in Omaha. His controversial death underscores the problematic race relations between blacks and police officers in Nebraska.

1998

A play dealing with the lynching of Will Brown is performed at the Blue Barn Theater in Omaha.

2000

George Bibbins, an African American motorist, leads Omaha police officers on a high-speed chase that ends with Bibbins being shot and killed by the police.

2000

Nebraskans approve legislative term limits that some in the black community believe are aimed at removing controversial and long-serving African American legislator Ernie Chambers from the state legislature.

2002

A Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial is set up in Omaha.

2007

(February) A grocery store in East Omaha owned by an Ethiopian immigrant is robbed, fire bombed, and spray-painted with racial epithets.

2008

(February 9) Barack Obama, the African American senator from Illinois, wins the Nebraska Democratic caucuses by a 2–1 margin over Hillary Clinton.

2008

(November 4) Although Barack Obama loses Nebraska to his Republican opponent, John McCain, he wins sufficient votes to claim one of the state’s electoral votes under Nebraska‘s proportional allocation system.

2010

The total population of Nebraska is 1,806,000; the black population of the state is 88,000.

Historical Overview Frontier History to Statehood Historically, African Americans did not settle heavily in the western half of the United States. Still, some of the most riveting narratives of the black experience have been set in places that, like Nebraska, have a relatively small black population compared to other states. Black life in Nebraska was far from mundane, and though the state was far removed from the horrors of slavery that existed in the original colonies, black Nebraskans were subjected to racism, discrimination, and racial violence. Although the majority of blacks in Nebraska during the state’s early history were

free, the first known blacks to arrive in the region included slaves. Scholars contend that when the first known Europeans, the Spanish and French, arrived in Nebraska, they brought black slaves along with them. In 1541, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado from Spain became the first explorer to arrive in Nebraska. Like parts of Spain, Nebraska featured expansive plains, vibrant grasslands, and endless cloud-studded blue skies. Unlike Spain, Nebraska was home to numerous indigenous inhabitants who would become increasingly marginalized with the passage of time. In 1682, the French established the vast territory known as Louisiana, which extended from

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the northern to the southern borders of the present-day United States. The territory comprised part or all of the following present-day states: Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota. After the Seven Years War, Spain claimed the sparsely populated region, and retained nominal control for nearly 40 years. In 1800, Spain returned the region to France. In 1803, the United States acquired Nebraska and all the other present-day states that comprised the Louisiana Purchase. More blacks appeared in Nebraska following the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. York, a slave owned by Clark of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition, passed through Nebraska during the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1819, African American pioneers and slaves, who were brought along to attend to their white masters, explored Nebraska. In 1846, Jane Manning James, a prominent African American Mormon, was among a group of Mormons who established a temporary camp in Nebraska while en route to Utah. When, in 1854, Nebraska became a territory of the United States, slavery was officially outlawed within its borders. The majority of whites in Nebraska were in agreement with the prohibition of slavery, but not everyone’s reasons for this attitude were noble. A number of whites in Nebraska were Free Soilers, who opposed the extension of slavery but did not endorse racial equality. Generally, overt racism and intolerance was the rule in Nebraska. Many times, white Nebraskans ignored the antislavery law altogether, such as when two slaves were brazenly auctioned off in Nebraska City in 1860. This combination of antiblack attitudes and sizeable freedoms set the tone for a bittersweet beginning to African American history in the territory. Following the Civil War, Nebraska became a state (1867). Many whites and immigrants

migrated in droves to Nebraska and other states in the Midwest and West. Even after Nebraska achieved statehood, it remained to some degree a nostalgic region of the western frontier. Local lore was frequently based on reality and was not limited to European descendents. The frontier, with its promise of illimitable opportunity, freedom, and adventure, was called home by many of the iconic archetypes of American frontier lore, including stout-hearted frontiersmen, rugged individualists, stoic cowboys, and lawless rebels. African Americans embodied these archetypes with as much zeal as did their white counterparts. Many blacks took to the open range as cowboys. Men such as Amos Harris, a ranch owner, and Robert Anderson, a homesteader, acquired wealth unknown to the majority of African Americans in the United States between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. James Kelly was a notorious African American outlaw who was a member of the Print Olive Gang. To be sure, black Nebraskans also took myriad conventional jobs, such as railroad workers, laborers, construction workers, and soldiers in the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry, which were stationed at Fort Robinson for several years. Although for blacks, a job in the military was considered unconventional, the majority of blacks in the United States, still reeling from the effects of slavery, would be prohibited from such careers for many years.

The Late Nineteenth Century to World War I Between the mid-1880s and the mid-1900s, African Americans settled throughout Nebraska, enjoying many freedoms and generally living without fear of racial violence. This was in marked contrast with life in the South, where blacks were subjected to racial oppression through discriminatory Jim Crow laws and racial violence. White mobs attacked black communities in states such as Louisiana, Oklahoma,

Nebraska Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia. Lynching was a horrific epidemic. But black homesteaders flourished in the rural regions of Nebraska. Each homestead consisted of a family that often included grandparents or other extended family. Houses were made from sod or wood. African Americans frequently clustered together. Life on the homestead was exacting. The trials of harsh weather, drought, and everyday tasks such as hunting, farming, cleaning, gathering water, and other chores were relieved by shared pastimes within the close-knit families and by social relations with others in the community. Picnics, athletic games, church events, storytelling, and homemade music lightened the strain of daily life. By 1940, however, black homesteads were fast becoming extinct. Opportunities for marriage for single black men and women were limited, especially considering that interracial marriages were outlawed in the state. As a result, black families did not renew themselves at a high enough rate to sustain black farms. Moreover, the land that blacks were allowed to claim was generally poorer than the land managed by white homesteaders. Black Nebraskans were increasingly lured to urban areas such as Omaha, or to small towns like Lincoln. While the number of black homesteads was diminishing, the city of Omaha saw the growth of progressive black communities. More black Nebraskans lived in Omaha than in any other city. While African Americans throughout the nation, especially in the South, were frequently barred from pursuing key professions, many blacks in Omaha carved out successful careers including newspaper owners, business owners and managers, and political and community leaders. In 1892, Dr. Matthew O. Ricketts was the first African American elected to the Nebraska legislature. In 1895, Silas Robbins was the first African American admitted to the Nebraska State Bar Association. Popular black newspapers included the Progress, the Afro-American Sentinel,

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the Enterprise, and many others. Indeed, the black newspaper industry proliferated in Nebraska, whereas in other states, such as New Jersey, the black press at the turn of the century was either nonexistent or insignificant. The black community in Omaha established churches, women’s clubs, and social clubs. Despite such achievements, blacks in Omaha did not live in a conflict-free environment. Blacks continued to be subjected to discrimination, racial hostility, and violence. Advertisements for housing openly discriminated. Racial discrimination in employment and other areas as well as overt racism were regular occurrences. Whites challenged the civil rights that blacks had been granted in the state. In 1866, a law was enacted prohibiting interracial marriages. In 1891, an African American man named Joe Coe, in jail for an alleged assault on a young white girl, was abducted by a mob and lynched. The fact that the whites involved in his murder were never convicted, charged, or punished for their crime is indicative of the hostile racial climate in the state and throughout the nation. In the South, conditions were worse. Shortly after the Civil War, white mobs ravaged black communities and attacked and murdered individuals mercilessly. These attacks were frequently motivated by racism. A real or imagined affront to a white woman by a black man was often the biggest factor in racially motivated lynching, which often preceded indiscriminate attacks on black males in the area or nearby black communities. Southern states such as Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas experienced some of the most notorious race riots in the nation. To Nebraska’s credit, the state legislature did make efforts to keep racial violence at bay, but Nebraska’s racial climate was often antagonistic towards African Americans. During the late nineteenth century, blacks in Lincoln faced far fewer racial issues than did Omaha blacks. Historians

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contend that one reason blacks were treated better in Lincoln was that the black population was smaller. In Lincoln, integration was more successful. Integrated neighborhoods were not unusual. Until the 1940s, the University of Nebraska supported integrated sports. Blacks faced considerably less harassment, but there were incidents, such as in 1880, when a white barber refused to serve Arthur Warwick, and in 1902, when Robert Haynes was told that he could not use an elevator in a local hotel. Both African Americans sued to uphold their civil rights; both suits were ultimately denied by the state Supreme Court.

World War I and World War II Black communities in Nebraska, though never large, began to grow steadily in the twentieth century. In 1890, the black population was 0.8 percent of the total population; in 1910, it was 0.6 percent. It was not until 1930 that the black population rose to 1 percent. Isolated either by choice or societal pressures, blacks in Nebraska found solace, support, and solidarity through the establishment of social and activist organizations and a burgeoning musical renaissance. Fraternities and women’s clubs promoted uplift and esteem. Black churches provided outlets for emotional release and encouragement as well as the expression of distinct black worship styles and singing traditions. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League were formed in such cities as Omaha and Lincoln. The fact that such civil rights organizations also opened chapters in Lincoln demonstrates that racial tensions and discrimination in the state had taken a turn for the worse. In 1919, the Omaha Monitor featured a promotional advertisement to attract new members to the local NAACP. Inscribed on the advertisement was an urgent message: “Join now in Fight for Justice.” Below that line

was a short list of some of the ominous issues blacks faced in the nation: lynching, Jim Crowism and denial of civil rights. The president of the Omaha branch was Reverend John Albert Williams (in the early part of the century, spiritual work and secular activism were not divided). In that same year, W. E. B. Du Bois, the esteemed scholar, prominent activist, and well-known editor of the Crisis (the organ of the NAACP), spoke at the Omaha City Auditorium. Du Bois’ more radical counterpart, William Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, spoke at the Zion Baptist Church in Omaha. Activism was warranted in Nebraska. African Americans were a long way from enjoying full civil rights and equality. Blacks in the state who participated in World War I were forced to enlist in segregated units. Despite their demonstrations of bravery, patriotism, and service, black soldiers in the state were not recognized. African American men were not the only ones to participate in the war effort; African American women joined the Colored Red Cross and provided indispensable support. In 1919, white police officers shot and killed an African American bellboy named Eugene Scott. The cops insisted that the young man ran when they commanded him to stop during a morals squad raid. Witnesses alleged that Scott’s death was needless. In 1919, newspapers in Omaha headlined news about an alleged assault on a white woman. The accused, Will Brown, an African American, was forcibly taken by a white mob from jail and hanged in front of the Douglas County Courthouse. His body was then mutilated by gunshots, dragged by car, and burned. The mob, beaming proudly, was photographed with Brown’s mutilated and burned body in the forefront after the gruesome crime was committed. Amid the challenges, African Americans in Nebraska found respite in a lively era of music and dance. Music, dance, and song are elements of African American culture that are heavily

Nebraska influenced by African traditions. During slavery times, ancestral traditions and new experiences in the New World were melded to create new music forms, such as spirituals (the forerunner of gospel music) and work songs. At the turn of the century, blues music emerged from the black communities of the South. Because of ongoing migrations, as well as traveling vaudeville acts and performers, African American Nebraskans stayed current on new trends in African American popular culture. Coinciding with the popular jazz and big band music that was all the rage in such major cities as Harlem, New York, and Chicago, Illinois, Nebraska’s renaissance of black music was a high point in the history of blacks in the state. In the 1920s and 1930s, all-black social clubs, such as the Beau Brummel Club, the Dreamland Ballroom, the Quack Club, and other venues featured all-black entertainment. These clubs attracted prominent musicians like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. The Omaha Night Owls featured saxophones, clarinets, drums, piano, and other instruments performed by dapper men in bowties. Nat Towles and his orchestra regularly went on tour. Black youth dressed in their finery while performing popular dances like the swing at the Omaha Cotton Club. The years from the 1920s to the 1940s saw an increased interest in activism in Nebraska. In the 1920s, A. Philip Randolph, a prominent labor union advocate and civil rights activist leader, spoke to captivated audiences in the state. Malcolm X, the well-known activist of the 1960s, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His father, Earl Little, was a leader of UNIA, which was founded by Marcus Garvey, a Pan-Africanist. Garvey attracted numerous members with his ideology of black selfempowerment, black nationalism, and black pride. The local Urban League was heavily involved in the community, developing programs such as adult education classes and a Federal Sewing Project for

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women. Members of the organization protested housing discrimination and a segregated public pool, but to no avail. In 1942, the Urban League hosted a Nebraska Conference on Interracial Social Action and Negro Participation in War and Post War Programs. An enormous civil rights victory for blacks in the state occurred in 1940 when Eugene Skinner became the first fulltime African American employed with the Omaha public schools. Although segregation in schools was not supported by law, the majority of students and teachers in Omaha schools were racially divided. Although blacks participated in World War II, the armed forces were still segregated (through the courageous activism of leaders like A. Philip Randolph, America‘s military would finally be desegregated in 1948). Captain Alfonza Davis, born in Omaha, was one of the Nebraskans to serve as a Tuskegee airman. The Tuskegee Airmen started out as an experiment to see if blacks could learn to fly and then be utilized during the war. The airmen were trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, and performed with extraordinary distinction during the war. The war was also a milestone for many women who were hired on to work in wartime industries.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond The events of the celebrated Civil Rights Movement in America began in the late 1940s with the often-overlooked campaign to end segregation in the armed forces. The general public is more aware of the high-profile struggles of the mid1950s and mid-1960s. Nebraska’s local civil rights movement began in the early twentieth century and was followed by hard-line protests and demonstrations in the late 1940s. The DePorres Club and the local Urban League were at the forefront of civil rights protests in Omaha. The DePorres Club was founded in 1947. St. Martin DePorres was a black Catholic priest and

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abolitionist. The club comprised Father John Markoe, a white priest, and an interracial group of young activists. Among the many activities implemented by the DePorres Club were demonstrations to end segregation and discrimination in the state. Between 1950 and 1953, civil rights leader Whitney Young served as the president of the Omaha affiliation of the Urban League, providing support to the DePorres Club. Other demonstrations included a gathering at the City Hall building in 1963, a protest against segregated swimming at Peony Park, and a march staged by the NAACP Youth Council in 1965. The Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties, founded in 1963, was another civil rights organization that staged demonstrations in Nebraska. Community activists such as La Fern Williams, Charlotte Shropshire, and others participated in grassroots work to better housing and educational opportunities for blacks in the state. Following the landmark enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment, advocates of what quickly became known as the Black Power Movement sprang up across the nation. Whereas civil rights leaders advocated integration and nonviolence, the Black Power Movement promoted an assortment of ideologies that advocated militancy, selfdetermination, black pride, and separatism. Civil rights activists tended to emerge from conservative middle-class backgrounds; black power proponents generally came from urban environments in the North, where Jim Crow, though illegal, was practiced unlawfully. Other problems endemic to heavily black-populated cities in the North were poverty, unemployment, crime, over crowded and dilapidated housing developments, and racial conflict. Like many other cities outside of the South, Nebraska cities experienced rapidly growing black urbanized areas where racism, unemployment,

poor housing, and crime were rampant. Black youth in the state embraced the black power ideology. A local Black Panther Party was established in Nebraska. In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. One of the organization’s objectives was to monitor police interaction with blacks in the community. The fact that the Black Panthers were armed sparked controversy. Black Panthers defended their actions by pointing at the historical conflict between racist white cops and defenseless blacks in their community. Black Panther groups rapidly spread throughout the nation as young African Americans pursued ways to channel their frustrations with inner-city life, racism, and poverty. Many black youth found other ways, such as race riots, to vent their anger during the black power era. These youth were not necessarily affiliated with black power organizations; however, some black power leaders did support and encourage race riots. Some sympathizers called the race riots revolts or rebellions. In the summers of the mid-to-late 1960s, race riots were pervasive, erupting in states such as California, New Jersey, and New York. Omaha, Nebraska, had several disturbances. In 1966, youth rioted after a hostile confrontation with police. In 1968, a black teen was shot during a civil disturbance, following a confrontation with police. In 1969, a riot erupted following the shooting death of a black teen by a white police officer. In the wake of the volatile 1960s, progress, achievement, and inclusion into American society steadily increased for blacks, including black Nebraskans. By 1970, the black population in the state was 40,000, which was 2.7 percent of the total population. Social programs for the poor helped alleviate chronic problems in poor black neighborhoods. Black Nebraskans who were killed in action in the Vietnam War were recognized on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

Nebraska Economic and social mobility was evidenced by the growing black middle class and the increasing number of black leaders in the community and in the state. In 1971, Rowena Moore founded the Malcolm X Foundation, and Judge Elizabeth Pittman became the first African American and first woman in the state to be appointed to a court bench when she was appointed to the Omaha Municipal Court. In 1977, JoAnn Strickland Maxey was the first African American woman in the state elected to the state legislature. Reverend James Cleveland, Dorothea Wade, and the Inspirational Choir received a Grammy Award nomination for I Don’t Feel No Way Tired. Ernest Chambers served as a Nebraska state legislator from 1971– 2008. He comes from a long line of African American Nebraska state legislators, including Dr. John Singleton (1927–1929), Dr. A. M. McMillan (1929–1931), John Owen (1933– 1935), John Adams Jr. (1935–1943), John Adams (1949–1963), Edward Danner (1966– 1970), and George Althouse (1970–1971). Since the 1980s, black Nebraskans have continued to support black causes, face adversity with activism, and attain remarkable achievements. In 1988, African Americans came out in support of Jesse Jackson as he campaigned for the U.S. presidency and participated in the Mad Dads March against gang violence. Brenda Warren Council exerted extraordinary efforts in her campaigns to become mayor of Omaha in 1994 and 1997, losing both times by close margins. She is currently a Nebraska state senator. In the new millennium, black progress is often offset by the ongoing bleak social, economic, and academic problems that plague many black residents in the state. In a 2008 report, blacks were more than likely to rent homes, while a larger percentage of whites owned homes. The median income of black households was $28,400; white households made $47,100. Disparities between whites and blacks in economic status, education,

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and other areas is indicative of a history of oppression, racism, and exclusion. However, local community leaders remain at the forefront in the effort to address and resolve the disparities in black Nebraska.

Notable African Americans Anderson, Robert (c. 1840–c. 1900) Robert Anderson was a famous Nebraska frontiersman. The narrative of his life follows a series of triumphs over multiple adversities. With teeth-gritting endurance and perseverance against all odds, he established wealth and prominence in his community. Anderson‘s life began in slavery. After the onset of the Civil War, he joined a black regiment in Kansas. He toiled for several years in Iowa until he had enough money to purchase a homestead in Butler County, Nebraska, though he lost his farm after several misfortunes. In 1881, Anderson returned to Kansas, where he worked and went to school to learn how to read and write. In 1884, he purchased what proved this time to be a prosperous homestead in Box Butte County and married.

Chambers, Ernest W. “Ernie” (1937– ) Born and raised in Omaha, Ernie Chambers is a civil rights leader and the longest-serving member of the Nebraska legislature, of which he was a member from 1971 to 2008. Chambers graduated from Omaha Central High School and the Creighton University School of Law, but was never admitted to the bar, nor did he practice law. His political activism began in 1963, when he single-handedly picketed the Omaha Post Office after being fired as a postal clerk for objecting to management’s frequent reference to black members of the postal staff as “boys.” During the North Omaha race riots of 1966, he successfully negotiated with the city on

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behalf of the black community for various concessions that eased the disorders. In 1970, he was elected to Nebraska’s unicameral legislature as an independent representing North Omaha’s 11th District. His liberal political positions, including strong opposition to the death penalty and an attempt to end the practice of beginning legislative sessions with a prayer by a state-supported chaplain, often caused friction with his generally more conservative colleagues, as did his frequent use of filibusters and legislative rules to block proposals that he opposed. In the Nebraska media, he was called the “Defender of the Downtrodden,” the “Maverick of Omaha,” and the “Angriest Black Man in Nebraska.” In 1988, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as the New Alliance Party candidate, and, in 1994, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Nebraska. He left office in 2008 as the result of a legislative term-limits amendment approved in 2000, which his supporters charged had been proposed largely to remove him from the legislature.

died at a young age) and settled on several acres of land in Nebraska.

Harris, Amos (c. 1846–1911)

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha. One of the most wellknown activists in American history, Malcolm X was strongly influenced by his father, Earl Little, who was a UNIA leader in the city. Little advocated self-improvement and black pride and openly challenged white racism. Because the local Ku Klux Klan harassed him regularly, he moved his family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some time later, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where they were targeted by racist whites. The family house was burned and the father killed under suspicious circumstances. Blacks in the community believed the Black Legion, a white supremacist organization, was responsible for Little’s death. Life became increasingly hard for the Little family, which at that time included seven children and a distraught mother, Louise. Louise eventually succumbed to a nervous breakdown

In film, television, and even history books, cowboys are generally portrayed as white men. But minorities, such as Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans also played important roles on the frontier. Amos Harris was considered the first black cowboy in Nebraska. Harris, who towered at 6 0 3 00 and nearly 300 pounds, was known as Big Amos. Born sometime in the 1840s near Galveston, Texas, Harris was the son of freed slaves. It is believed that he started his career as a cowboy as an adolescent and quickly attained a reputation for his extraordinary ability of driving herds of cattle from state to state. While living in Nebraska, he worked for several ranchers who respected his work and his good reputation. During his adult years, Harris married twice (both wives

Love, Preston (1921–2004) Born on April 26, 1921, in Omaha, Preston Love started performing jazz during the heyday of the big-band era, making his debut at the Airplane Inn in Honey Creek, Iowa. Love enjoyed a prolific career as a saxophone player, performing with many local Nebraska musicians as well as bigname celebrities such as Count Basie, Lena Horne, and Billie Holliday. Beginning in the 1950s, Love also performed with his own orchestra. In the following decade, he worked as the West Coast music director for Motown Records, the largest black-owned-and-managed record company of its time. In the 1970s, Love taught African American music at the University of Nebraska. He appeared on radio and TV shows and hosted a radio program.

Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) (1925–1965)

Nebraska

Malcolm X was important in shaping a Black Muslim and Black Power Movement that challenged the nonviolent and integrationist struggle for African American equality favored by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement. (Library of Congress)

and was committed to a mental hospital. The children were separated; Malcolm lived in foster homes, where he experienced racism in white homes and in predominately white schools. In 1941, Malcolm Little moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to live with his half-sister. Not long after, he immersed himself in the city’s underworld and animated night life. Malcolm was charged with burglary and sent to jail in 1946. From that time until he was released in 1952, he read voraciously and converted to the Nation of Islam. Following his release, Malcolm changed his surname to X to represent his first major life transformation. The name change also reflected his newfound racial awakening; from his studies, Malcolm X learned that blacks in America, with no record of their ancestral names, had taken on the surnames of their masters

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following emancipation. The “X” thus also signified Malcolm X’s growing resistance to white society. Malcolm X’s influence in America grew rapidly. During the 1950s, he spent most of his time in urban cities, such as Detroit, Boston, and Harlem, establishing Nation of Islam temples and building the organization’s membership. He often lectured to black audiences in the temples and on street corners. His speeches were notoriously blunt and ultra radical, as he excoriated white racism and “Uncle Toms” (conservative black leaders who endorsed integration into white society) and encouraged armed defense. He garnered numerous admirers throughout the nation and the world (Malcolm X was concerned with oppressed African descendents both in America and abroad). In the 1960s, Malcolm X’s reputation was augmented by extensive media coverage. As an outspoken advocate of black separatism, he represented the opposite end of the spectrum from conservative civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). His controversial stance and remarks sparked a media frenzy. His appearances on television and in print made him a household name. Following a trip to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X distanced himself from the Nation of Islam and his own notorious reputation; witnessing a culture where men and women of all colors worshiped together changed Malcolm X’s perspectives on race and racism. Conflict within the Nation of Islam, as well as the metamorphosis of Malcolm X’s ideology, prompted him to establish new organizations, Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. In this final phase of his life, Malcolm X was open to collaborating with whites and conservative black leaders. But he was assassinated on February 21, 1965, one of a series of high-profile murders of the decade that included President John Kennedy,

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Senator Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Cultural Contributions As previously mentioned, Nebraska‘s black communities experienced a flourishing big band and jazz resurgence during the first half of the twentieth century. African Americans in the state have made many other cultural contributions. For example, the black power era ushered in Afrocentric fashions and hair styles, black vernacular, and music. In 1976, Bertha Calloway, a prominent Nebraskan who had participated in civil rights activities in the state, founded the Great Plains Black History Museum. In the 1980s, Nebraskan Houston Alexander established the Scribble Crew, which produced graffiti artwork. Alexander is also a hip-hop artist. In Omaha and elsewhere in the nation, hip-hop music originated in black communities before permeating mainstream society. Black Nebraskans also support the Afro Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Center State Theatre, which has presented such important works as the musical Dream Girls. Black actors like John Beasley and Gabrielle Union took on roles that reflect African American culture and perspectives, as well as relevant issues and themes. Beasley, who was once employed with the Union Pacific Railroad, made several appearances on the television series Brewster Place in 1990. Brewster Place was based on The Women of Brewster’s Place (1982), a novel by African American writer Gloria Naylor that explores black urban life. Beasley later founded the John Beasley Theater and Workshop in Nebraska. Union was born and raised in Nebraska and attended the University of Nebraska (she received her degree from University of California, Los Angeles). Union’s appearance in Bring it On (2000), playing the leader of a cheerleading squad in an inner-city

high school, underscored racial, economic, and cultural differences. Union is one of the few black actors who has received top-billing in a predominately white industry. Her career includes films with predominately black casts and mainstream films with or without black protagonists, including Deliver Us from Eva (2003), Bad Boys II (2003), The Honeymooners (2005), and Daddy’s Little Girls (2007). Union has also appeared in television series such as Ugly Betty and Life.

Bibliography Allmendinger, Blake. Imagining the African American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Calloway, Bertha W., and Alonzo Nelson Smith. Visions of Freedom on the Great Plains: An Illustrated History of African Americans in Nebraska. Virginia Beach, VA: Donny Company, 1998. Durham, Philip, and Jones, Everett L. The Negro Cowboys. New York: Bison Books, 1983. Katz, William Lorenz. The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States. New York: Random House, 2005. Malcolm X Foundation. March 2010. www .malcolmxfoundation.org. Nankivell, John. Buffalo Soldier Regiment: History of the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry, 1869–1926. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. “The Socioeconomic Status of Nebraska Blacks or African Americans.” March 2010. www.hhs.state.ne.us/minorityhealth/docs/ SESofBlacks.pdf.

NEVADA Claytee White

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Chronology 1859

The Comstock Lode, a major find of silver and gold ore found under Virginia City, Nevada, is made public.

1864

W. H. C. Stephenson is the first black doctor and civil rights activist in Nevada.

1864

William Brown, a black man, becomes the owner of the Boston Saloon, an elegant eatery in Virginia City.

1864

(October 31) Nevada enters the Union as the 36th state.

1865

(February 16) Nevada ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

( January 22) Nevada ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1868

Reno is founded.

1869

(March 1) Nevada becomes the first state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights for African Americans.

1889

John Howell becomes the first black to settle and own property in the Las Vegas Valley.

1905

Las Vegas is founded.

1910

Black boxer Jack Johnson beats James Jefferies (the “great white hope”) in Reno for the heavyweight title in what is called “the Fight of the Century.”

1910

Bethel AME Church, the oldest black institution in the state, is established in Reno.

1926

The Las Vegas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established.

1931

Construction begins on Hoover Dam/Boulder Dam.

1931

Gambling is legalized in Las Vegas.

1931

The original Las Vegas post office/courthouse is constructed in an area of the first black Las Vegas neighborhood; the building is currently being redesigned as a museum.

1932

The first blacks are hired to work on the Hoover Dam project.

1942

Beginning of the World War II migration of blacks to Nevada from small towns in the South, especially Fordyce, Arkansas, and Tallulah, Louisiana.

1945

The Reno-Sparks branch of the NAACP is established.

1947

Segregation is introduced in Las Vegas to placate the city’s growing white tourist clientele.

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1954

The state’s first licensed black doctor, Charles I. West, arrives in Las Vegas.

1955

The Moulin Rouge, the first integrated hotel casino, is erected.

1955

The state’s first black dentist, James B. McMillan, arrives in Las Vegas.

1955

The first local black television show debuts—Talk of the Town, with Alice Key and Bob Bailey.

1960

The Las Vegas Strip and downtown Las Vegas are integrated as a result of the verbal Moulin Rouge Agreement, which was worked out at a meeting at the Moulin Rouge arranged by the governor between local and state officials, casino owners, and black leaders.

1963

(March 19) Nevada ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1971

A consent decree is issued mandating jobs for blacks in the casino industry at all levels.

1972–1973

The Clark County School District adopts the Sixth Grade Center Plan. Schools in the black community became centers for sixth graders to which white students were bused for that grade only. Black students were bused all other years. The system operated for 20 years.

1973

The Welfare Rights Movement, led by Ruby Duncan, Mary Wesley, Alversa Beals, and others, is initiated; many of its activities are financed by Maya Miller.

1992

The Moulin Rouge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, carries Nevada in the general election with about 55 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Nineteenth Century As a territory, Nevada’s laws did not ensure justice for all. Among the enactments in the 1861 first legislative session were listed the crimes of miscegenation and that those of a certain amount of “colored blood” could not appear as witnesses in cases where white men were parties. “Colored blood” could be found in not just Negroes but Indians and Chinese as well. Among the three recognizable minority groups, only blacks raised public objections. They demanded to serve on juries, give testimony in court, send their children to public schools, and be able to exercise the right

to vote. Miscegenation did not enter the protest as a concern at that time. The territorial ranking for Nevada was short-lived, but the laws and the tone of the legislation continued under the first constitution. In 1864, as the Civil War neared its end, Nevada joined the Union as the 36th state. The new state was appealing not just for the possibly needed electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln, but as a source of gold and silver to assist the Union with the war. In that same year, the Comstock Lode located in Virginia City, Nevada, proved to be the richest find in mining history. Virginia City grew rapidly, fueled by migrants from all over the country including approximately a hundred blacks.

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Among those were the first black doctor, W. H. C. Stephenson, and successful businessmen William Brown and George Cottle. Dr. Stephenson, born in Washington, D.C., trained at one of the Eclectic Medical Institutes in Philadelphia, and practiced in Nevada from 1863 through 1870. He moved to Nevada where he registered to vote as soon as the Fifteenth Amendment passed and urged fellow black men in Virginia City to do the same. Stephenson began the fight for political inclusion of blacks as early as 1865 when he helped to organize the Nevada Executive Committee designed to press for legal equality. The committee united blacks not just in Virginia City, but Silver City and Gold Hill as well. This larger group agitated effectively to seek equal representation in small events such as participation in city parades to the more significant issue of making it possible for blacks to serve on juries. His goal, which he asserted boldly, was full rights for every citizen to include social, economic, educational, and legal justice. He believed that the promises of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and Gettysburg Address applied to everyone equally. In 1867, Stephenson wrote a compelling letter to the Territorial Enterprise when the bill to apply the 1866 Civil Rights Act to Nevada was not passed by Congress. He asserted that by not having civil rights, he could not collect debts due to him for professional services rendered and reminded congressional leaders of all the taxes he paid to local, state, and federal governments. Before his disappearance from historical records in 1875, he had petitioned for blacks to have access to public schools, even segregated ones, and helped establish the Lincoln Union Club for united political action throughout the state. Public schools were integrated in Virginia City after 1872. George D. Cottle’s name appeared in historical accounts that sometimes involved W. H. C. Stephenson. He owned the successful Virginia

City Union Hotel and engaged in activities to promote the civil rights of black residents. When in a dispute with a white person over the legal ownership of a piece of property, Cottle helped to form a committee that was successful in having the constable judging the case, Patrick Lanman, arrested when he refused to allow Cottle’s black witness the opportunity to testify. Another proprietor referred to by historians as “the owner of a saloon” was identified in 2003 when archaeologists conducted an excavation in Virginia City. William Brown owned the Boston Saloon where mostly black patrons drank from crystal goblets, played dominoes by the light of newly patented gas lamps, and ate the finest food off of china plates. Brown, a free-born black from Boston, began his entrepreneurial pursuits polishing shoes on the streets above the Comstock Lode when he arrived in the early 1860s. In 1864, he opened the famed eatery in the heart of the business district across the street from Piper’s Opera House. In Mark Twain’s column of the Territorial Enterprise, the saloon was described as a “popular resort for the colored population.” Brown operated the business until 1875 and probably remained in the vicinity until 1880. The Boston Saloon was an important meeting place for the black Comstock community, and Brown probably served not just as a host, but as an agent for change in the treatment of blacks in Nevada. The strides for equality waged by early settlers such as W. H. C. Stephenson and William Brown were probably spurred by California blacks who migrated to Nevada to mine silver and gold. These blacks led the way not just with mining skills, but with a legacy of militancy fostered by gold-seeking abolitionists, free blacks and runaway slaves, some who had lived free for many years. Even when the national Civil Rights Bill of 1866 passed, Nevada did not see the necessity of adhering to those rulings within the state. Conversely, the legislators supported efforts to

Nevada ease the burden of freemen favoring the tenets of the Reconstruction governments in the South. No governor mentioned removing the racial bar to voting from the state’s constitution until 1879 after the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been ratified. However, the amendment to Nevada’s constitution made it clear that the rights of naturalization, suffrage, and office holding would not be extended to the Chinese population. Racial conflict diminished as the Comstock exhausted its supply of precious metals that caused prosperity traceable to Carson City, San Francisco, and international locations. The next 20 years, from 1881 to 1900, brought an economic depression and a loss of approximately one-third of the state’s population; a drop from 62,266 to 42,335. The economy improved at the turn of the century when silver mining boomed in the Tonopah-Goldfield strikes. Ranching and railroads added to the new prosperity. John Howell, a black rancher, journeyed into the southern portion of Nevada in 1872, partnered with James B. Wilson, and founded the Spring Ranch near the Las Vegas Springs. These springs had welcomed explorers since 1826, and caravans of travelers headed to California since 1841. Soon after Howell and Wilson, Octavio Decatur Gass started the Las Vegas Ranch that he later lost to Archibald and Helen J. Stewart, who eventually sold it to the railroad. The Las Vegas ranch is present-day downtown Las Vegas. By 1890, Howell had moved north to the Oasis Valley becoming the first known black person in the Beatty area, 117 miles northwest of Las Vegas. With the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad came workers as Las Vegas became a watering stop between Southern California and Salt Lake City, Utah. Workers who migrated to Las Vegas in 1905 included African Americans. They were denied the use of the town’s early brothels, not allowed to sit freely in theaters, and housing was apart from that of

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whites. At the beginning, this semi-integrated setting seemed different from small xenophobic towns throughout the country; nevertheless, a closer look positions Las Vegas in the same category.

Early Twentieth Century The black population grew slowly as did racism. Walter Bracken, land agent for the railroad, suggested that colored people and other foreigners should live and purchase property solely in Block 17, adjacent to Block 16 that was reserved for saloons and houses of prostitution. The 1920 census listed 52 African Americans, of which 12, or 23 percent, owned property in the downtown area—Harris, Levi Irvin, J. R. Johnson, Henry Kelly, Julia Lowe, A. B. Mitchell, Vance and Grace Moore, Sam and Mary Nettles, Lucretia Stevens, Ike Pullam, Henry Wilson, Maria Wilson, and Zion Mission. Bracken was a man of his time; a nativist in the era that hailed the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was not only antiblack, but against Roman Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. This hatred and fear allowed racism to triumph as evidenced by riots, anti-immigrant legislation, and cross burnings that accompanied lynching statistics that remained in the double digits. The West provided fertile ground for these activities. Nevada’s vast rural areas prevented their statewide concentration seen in some areas of the country, but their presence was felt nonetheless. Reno was the stronghold of the Klan that radiated out into smaller cities including Sparks, Elko, Ely, and Fallon. Nevada’s south was not spared. Las Vegas hosted a parade in full regalia in 1924. Local historians are currently attempting to identify the community leaders who participated in Klan activities. Walter Bracken served even more actively as the agent of the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, a subsidiary set up by the railroad to develop

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its land holdings. Regrettably, in 1930, new management of the railroad gave him the authority everybody thought he had all along. Thus, as the Great Depression began, a difficult watershed period for the entire country, conditions were even more harsh for blacks, probably the beginning of actions that prompted the name for Nevada, “Mississippi of the West.” In 1931, gambling was legalized, and the residency requirement for a divorce was reduced to six weeks. In Las Vegas, construction began on the Boulder Dam, a new post office was erected, and Ernie Cragin won election as mayor of Las Vegas. Cragin and Bracken espoused the same pseudoscientific racist philosophy of the period. Additionally, in 1932, the federally created town, Boulder City, hired Sims Ely as manager. He joined Frank Crowe, the engineer for Six Companies, builder of the dam, as a controlling force of workers employed on the project. Blacks were not allowed in the town and at first, not hired as workers. While news about the dam surfaced, in 1928, fortuitous members of the black community had organized a branch of the NAACP two years earlier. Clarence Ray, Arthur McCants, Mary Nettles, Bill Jones, and Zimmie Turner gathered the necessary money and initiated the work of the civil rights organization. Once the founders learned that the dam workers did not include any blacks, they acted immediately in two distinct ways. First, community activists formed a Colored Citizens’ Labor and Protective Association to locate and prepare the proper candidates for jobs on dam work crews. Many blacks had migrated to the Las Vegas area along with the stampede of whites. Secondly, the group contacted the regional NAACP representatives Leland Hawkins and William Pickens, known as the troubleshooters. Hawkins was summoned to the city on several occasions, and finally Pickens arrived, was welcomed by Mayor Ernie Cragin, and delivered a speech in the Majestic Theatre building. He reminded the audience, composed

of the combined community, that “this is taxpayer money that you’re spending.” Historian Eugene Moehring told the other side of the story: Mayor Cragin, under pressure from the NAACP, contacted Nevada Senator Tasker Oddie, who persuaded Interior Secretary Ray Wilbur to change the contractor’s hiring policy. Ten black men were hired immediately. However, only 44 African Americans out of 20,000 workers were employed over the entire three- to four-year dam construction period. Six Companies, formed when six individual companies merged to build the dam, managed the project. Daniel W. Mead, member of the Colorado River Board, and Interior Secretary Wilbur took the position that the government could not force the companies to hire blacks because such a requirement was not in their contracts. Mead noted the difficulties of housing and feeding “colored labor” and the cost of providing separated facilities for them since he feared serious disruption if they were integrated in the dormitories and eating halls. This justification was simply the law of the land mandated by the “separate but equal” policy established in the Plessy v. Ferguson lawsuit. This first encounter of the black community and the white power structure resulted in not just a minimal number of jobs, but an expanded NAACP branch. Even the increased number of activists could not stop the new post office/ courthouse that was erected downtown on Stewart Street in the midst of the black neighborhood. Therefore, blacks began to relocate homes and businesses to the “Westside.” This was also a time of expansion; thus many downtown residents, black and white, were being crowded out of the town’s core by new business ventures. Restrictive covenants forced black movement to the Westside, as well as the action of city fathers led by Mayor Cragin and Walter Bracken. This action went hand in hand with management and workers on the Boulder Dam, who blanketed

Nevada Las Vegas with a cloud of racism. They transported their prejudices into the Las Vegas valley and the local white community accepted the workers’ bigotry along with their much-needed and ample spending money. Sims Ely ensured that gambling, liquor, and prostitution were not permitted in Boulder City. The Westside was the area of Las Vegas that was across the railroad tracks, to the west of downtown, but it was the older of the two town sites. In 1904, when Helen J. Stewart sold the Las Vegas ranch to the railroad, she engaged surveyor John Thomas McWilliams to measure her property. He bought the 80 acres just west of the tracks near the Las Vegas Creek and laid out a townsite with wide avenues speculating that a city to support the railroad would begin there. Between 2,000 and 3,000 lots sold. Nevertheless, the railroad company established the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, laid out the Las Vegas townsite east of the tracks, and held an auction to sell lots in May 1905. Many of McWilliams’ residents and businesses moved across the tracks, leaving that original townsite with a small group of permanent dwellers. That group of people still lived there when blacks began to move into the Westside in the 1930s. These new neighbors were not welcomed. Established Westside residents put together a zoning petition that would prevent blacks from living in certain sections of the McWilliams townsite. Blacks, with no place to turn, fought back. According to a letter written to the city commissioners under the name of the Las Vegas Colored Progressive Club, blacks defiantly requested denial of the zoning petition. The letter signed by R. L. Christensen, the group’s president, reminded city officials that blacks were true American citizens who had fought and died for the country. Blacks won the round. The local paper reported that the city considered the zoning a violation of the U.S. Constitution. As the decade of the 1930s ended, blacks had seen

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success and failure but proceeded, along with the African American community in the northern part of the state, to launch a fight for a civil rights bill. On February 6, 1939, a statewide group of citizens introduced Assembly Bill 88. On February 14, Henry S. Coleman, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Social Welfare, recommended that assembly members “not pass [it] because. . . the same is not properly constructed and by reason of such faulty construction it would be inoperable and impractical.” The bill called for equal rights for all persons within the state of Nevada and imposed penalties up to $1,000 in fines and a maximum of six months of jail time for violations of these rights. The effort failed. The disappointing results of the race and color bill led Las Vegas community leaders to try one more attempt at human rights. Arthur McCants, first president of the Las Vegas NAACP, submitted a petition to the City Commission appealing for an ordinance that would give all residents equal privileges to all property owned or leased by the city for amusement. Full civil rights were no longer the request. Instead, the NAACP wanted to use city swimming pools, playground equipment, and other leisure facilities that became important to the urban lifestyle at the turn of the century. The city rejected the request by declining to act on the proposal. Consequently, the decade ended with blacks losing ground in their efforts to attain equal rights of any sort in the state of Nevada. Additionally, in Las Vegas the physical relocation of blacks had ensued, resulting in positioning the community to a less desirable area, away from the political and economic power center of the city. World War II spurred a black migration into Nevada as a result of the largesse of the war industry. North Las Vegas hosted an Army Gunnery School. Las Vegas acquired a military installation at present-day Nellis Air Force Base, Camp Silbert military base near Boulder Dam,

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and Basic Magnesium Inc. about 15 miles from downtown in what later became the city of Henderson. Hawthorne, Nevada, located 70 miles southeast of Reno, became the busiest war boomtown with an ammunition depot that grew the population of the small town from 1,000 in 1940 to 13,000 before 1944. Reno housed the Army Air Force Base and Fallon, the Naval Air Station. Blacks were among those who migrated to these Nevada centers of employment and throughout the Southwest as both members of the military and civilian workers. Basic Magnesium Inc. (BMI) processed magnesium for bombs, airplanes, and other war materials and fueled the largest influx of blacks to Nevada. This migration pushed the number of blacks in Las Vegas from 178 to 3,000. Among this group, a new leadership coalition emerged. Woodrow Wilson and Sarann Knight Preddy arrived in 1942, followed by Lubertha Johnson in 1943. In 1945, J. David Hoggard came for a one-year military assignment, loved the atmosphere, the people, and the weather, and returned to live in 1949. Jimmy and Hazel Gay migrated from Fordyce, Arkansas, in 1946. Other leaders who joined the community at this time included Joe Neal, Reverend Donald Clark, Jim and Helen Anderson, Reverend Prentiss Walker, and Reverend Henry Cooke. Wilson was the first black elected to the state assembly in 1969, Preddy moved to Hawthorne and became the first black woman to hold a full gaming license, and Lubertha Johnson served as a social worker, nurse, teacher, and community activist. J. David Hoggard ran the Economic Opportunity Board (EOB) that implemented various job training and social programs in the Westside community, and his wife Mabel taught in the Clark County School District as the first black person to be hired. Helen Anderson was one of the first principals from a minority group, and Jim served as a labor leader who assisted workers at BMI. Joe Neal was elected to the state senate and served

for 32 years. Black ministers such as Clark and Cooke served in the NAACP, assisted the community in a spiritual capacity, and as dynamic lobbying forces. Jimmy Gay moved the black human rights agenda by leaps and bounds with the sheer force of his personality by working in the gaming industry in management positions at the Sands and the Union Plaza. With renewed energy, the Westside tackled the issues of public infrastructure improvements, attaining a swimming pool, eliminating police harassment, and acquiring a federal housing complex. When the population soared, the Westside could only accommodate the growth with tents and shacks as housing units. Las Vegas tightened race-based restrictions, excluding blacks as the numbers of migrants grew. When entertainer Pearl Bailey came to Las Vegas in 1941 to play at the military base, she remembered getting off the train onto the main street and playing slot machines in the casinos. When she returned in the late 1940s and played the Flamingo, she lived at Mrs. Harrison’s boarding house on the Westside because blacks were excluded from all gaming areas, could not stay in Strip and downtown hotels, and could not eat in most restaurants. It is ironic that the local NAACP branch that formulated plans to combat these abuses operated with an integrated executive board of directors. The core leadership group of the black population lived on the Westside where there were no paved streets, substandard housing, no sewage system, and no sidewalks. When the city was approached for these much-needed public improvements, the strategy was gradual. First, Reverend Cooke requested the paving of “E” Street. Mayor Cragin declined the appeal because of the low assessed property values. That refusal did not stop the cry for a better neighborhood. In the following year, 1946, Reverend Cooke approached the mayor again. This time, the list increased, adding a demand for fireplugs and street lighting. Using the same reasoning

Nevada that low property values could not justify the expenditure, the mayor again rejected the community’s needs. In 1944, the city began a community improvement project of its own, quite different from the requests issued by Reverend Cooke. Mayor Cragin bulldozed 75 residential structures that did not meet the minimum building and fire codes. In 1945, 300 additional homes were razed. The city fathers expected a reverse migration as jobs ended at BMI but blacks stayed. First, the black community had been uprooted and relocated, then denied necessary improvement for the safety and aesthetics of the Westside area, and finally, homes, though pitiable, were destroyed. When the Westside community flowed over its capacity to hold the migrants, the government built a housing complex at BMI as it had done during the Boulder Dam construction, except this time, two communities were erected—Carver Park for black workers and Victory Village for whites. Carver Park was designed by black architect Paul Williams from Los Angeles. Lubertha Johnson worked as the recreational director of the segregated village. At her tenant council meetings, the men would discuss discriminatory conditions at the plant. Their work was the dirtiest and bathrooms were inferior compared to those of white employees. In October 1943, 200 black men walked off the job at BMI. The strike was short-lived but effective. Carver Park never filled to capacity because blacks preferred the social, political, and spiritual life offered on the Westside. The better housing at Carver Park could not draw enough people so eventually blacks had to move to the rear of their development to make room for whites on the waiting list at Victory Village. African Americans preferred the Westside because of Jackson Street, the business and entertainment corridor. Since the newly-formed Strip and downtown were off limits except for backof-the-house workers, blacks created their own restaurants, gaming establishments, barber shops,

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beauty parlors, markets, churches of many denominations, and other entities that made the Westside a viable community. The night life was as lively as the Strip with jam sessions that lasted until the wee hours of the morning, dancing, great food, and revelers sprinkled with world-renowned stars that could not mingle in the white hotels where they were performing. Sammy Davis Jr. Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, and many other Strip headliners lived among Westside residents. These temporary but constant inhabitants added pressure to the crusade for public accommodations. The first hotels on the Strip began to appear in the early 1940s; the El Rancho opened in 1941 and the Last Frontier in 1942. The El Cortez opened in downtown in 1941 as well. The Westside Strip sprang up at this same time with the Harlem Club and the Ebony Club followed in 1943 by the Brown Derby.

Postwar Period Gradually, the town’s political leadership changed courses and began to make some concessions to black citizens. In 1946, the Clark County School District contracted with its first teacher of color, Mabel Welch Wims (Hoggard). In the following year, a swimming pool opened on the historic Westside. By 1947, many black entertainers were common on the Strip, including Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Billy Eskstine, Hazel Scott, the Mills Brothers, Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, and the Inkspots. In the final year of the decade, needy children received milk, plans were underway to establish a nursery school, install a public pay phone, and complete a sewer system. In 1950, the community temporarily lost one of its business and social leaders when Sarann Knight Preddy left Las Vegas and moved to Hawthorne, Nevada, when her husband took a position at the ammunition depot. Preddy’s entrepreneurial skills led her to open

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a small gaming establishment and her political acumen directed her to organize a branch of the NAACP. Thus Preddy became the inaugural president of the civil rights group and the first black women to hold a gaming license in the state—probably in the country. The above accomplishments signaled to whites that blacks had created a community and did not plan to leave. Hence the well-established middleclass leadership group made one additional try at gaining equal rights. Las Vegas combined with blacks from northern Nevada and opened negotiations for a state civil rights law. For the first time, they based their argument on economics while simultaneously engaging the help of the national NAACP. Regional Director Lester B. Bailey told members of the judiciary committee in Carson City that, “Nevada business was suffering by discrimination against certain races and minorities among tourist groups who must pass through the state without stopping.” The act was authored by George Rudiak, a Las Vegas assemblyman who was a white member of the local NAACP branch. It was believed that the bold stand by Rudiak for black equal rights ruined his political aspirations. The Assembly refused to pass the bill. The possibility of attaining equality through legislation had failed again. The community faced yet another setback, but over the next two years, the migratory process infused the core leadership group with additional political acumen. In 1954, Berkley Square, a middle-class housing development, was built on 22 acres of property adjoining the Westside. Again, architect Paul Williams was engaged to design the space that would provide community for blacks. Interestingly, portions of the funding were supplied by a black man, Thomas Berkley of Oakland, California. Berkley was an attorney, media owner, developer, and civil rights advocate. The new neighborhood featured 148 homes that were soon occupied by the growing middle class composed of workers at

the Nevada Test Site, valets on the Strip, school district employees, business owners, and pastors of the growing concentration of churches. Two of the homes were purchased by the first medical doctor, Charles I. West. The year 1954 marked additional changes as well. Charles I. West had decided to move his practice to Las Vegas after the urgings of Count Basie who wanted to see more black professionals on the Westside. Dr. West single-handedly stimulated another migration segment. He and his wife Dotty were directly responsible for the moves to Las Vegas by Dr. James B. McMillan, first black dentist, Alice Key, Carita Harbert, Avanelle Harris, and Gene Lewis, and responsible for Bob and Anna Bailey staying at the end of their entertainment engagement. These new arrivals brought in an elevated level of activism from their interactions with people around the country and in Europe. They were all semiindependent if not completely so, and they strategically embarked upon ways to mobilize the community politically and economically. Dr. West helped to revitalize the Las Vegas Voter’s League, promoted a group of deputy registrars, and bought a small newspaper, the Missile, which was published by the NAACP branch and turned it into the first black newspaper in the state, the Voice. The intention was to allow the black community to be heard. Dr. James B. McMillan became the president of the local NAACP branch. Under his administration, branch members sought and attained integration of the Las Vegas Strip and downtown. Bob Bailey was appointed to the board of the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, and later Alice Key was appointed the deputy commissioner of labor. Simultaneously, in 1955, the Moulin Rouge, the first posh integrated hotel casino, opened for business on the dividing line between white and black Las Vegas. This new casino meant that the sizeable number of African American entertainers would no longer have to stay in small

Nevada boarding houses on the Westside. Ironically, at about this time, Strip hotels began to relent in their discriminatory practices. Construction of the Rouge commenced in 1954 and prospective employees started to migrate to the Westside from across the country. It was a showplace that could rival any hotel on the Strip in style, quality of food and wine, elegance and service. Waiters were hired from among the best across the country and served a gourmet international cuisine while wearing tuxedos and white gloves in the Deauville Room. The dress shop operated by Hazel Gay was stocked to capacity with the finest clothes. The mahogany bar was huge and highly polished. The audience was peppered with politicians, celebrities and high-rollers every night. And the entertainment was the best in the city because after the paid acts completed their performance, other entertainers who were there as customers would entertain in impromptu sessions. The dancers were the crowning glory of the Rouge. They were the first black house line in the city and were hand-picked for their beauty and talent. The opening night performance of the Watusi was pictured on the cover of Life magazine in May 1955. Suddenly, in November 1955, the Moulin Rouge closed to standing-room-only crowds. Historians can prove that many bills went unpaid, but the reasons for that are still being debated. During the six-month run of the Moulin Rouge, Alice Key and Bob Bailey started the first black television show at Channel 8, owned at that time by Hank Greenspun. Key contacted Greenspun, negotiated all arrangements for the show, gathered sponsors and partnered with Bob Bailey who produced and directed “Talk of the Town.” She served as host, interviewing black stars who were performing on the Strip and at the Moulin Rouge. There was never a lack for guests. The Cold War era of the 1950s played a major role in the continued prosperity of the black community because again, the Las Vegas area was needed by the federal government to

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keep the country safe. The Nevada Test Site, about 90 miles northwest of downtown, needed workers for the backbreaking labor necessary to prepare the ground before and after atomic tests, both above and underground. Many men stayed at the Test Site location and others traveled back and forth to Las Vegas daily. The work was dirty and possibly filled with radioactive particles, but black men could support their families and afford to move into Berkley Square. As the black leadership expanded, the national NAACP stepped up the pressure to achieve full civil rights across the country. The African American population in Las Vegas increased from 4,302 in 1950 to 13,484 a decade later, claiming a 5 percent share of the total population. In 1959, the new mayor, Oran Gragson, was the first to hire blacks in significant numbers, beginning with Herman Moody as the first policeman and followed by Larry Bolden and Charles Wyatt. In that same year, the NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner committee invited Tersa Hall Pittman to give the keynote address. The speech, “Now Is the Time,” ignited the collective consciousness of the community, and within a few months, NAACP national headquarters urged local branches to smash segregation. On March 11, 1960, Dr. James McMillan, local NAACP president, wrote a letter to Mayor Gragson threatening a massive street protest if the gaming industry did not end discriminatory practices by March 26. The community began to meet at various churches. McMillan was never sure whether the march would be successful. Lubertha Johnson, unlike McMillan, remembered this period with greater confidence, and believed that the march would have materialized. Bob Bailey recalled that McMillan was bombarded with harassing and threatening phone calls, so he and other men from the community guarded McMillan’s home during the two-week period. On the morning of Saturday, March 26, 1960, Mayor Oran Gragson, Governor Grant Sawyer,

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Hank Greenspun, owner of Channel 8, the Sun Newspaper, and life member of the NAACP, and black community leaders including Lubertha Johnson as the sole female, met at the Moulin Rouge to hash out a verbal agreement. Greenspun conducted the meeting, which resulted in an accord that mandated blacks as equal citizens in the enjoyment of hotel casino gaming, entertainment, and living space. When tested that evening, blacks were welcomed in all casinos except a few, including the Sal Sagev. It was now time for the political, economic, educational, and housing battles to begin. The closing of the Moulin Rouge coupled with integration proved detrimental to the Westside business corridor. Soon many establishments closed permanently.

1960s and Beyond The 1960s showcased the initial stages of progressive black political strides. Charles I. West, as president of the Las Vegas Voter’s League, acquired the title of vice-chair of the state Democratic Party based on the respected reputation of the organization. In 1961, Governor Grant Sawyer’s administration established the Nevada Equal Rights Commission to pinpoint injustices throughout the state, with Bob Bailey as one of the members; and later, chairman. Jimmy Gay became a member of the State Athletic Commission, Dr. West was appointed to the Governor’s Committee on Aging, Dr. McMillan was chosen to serve on the State Democratic Rules and Order Committee, and Woodrow Wilson was appointed to the President’s Civil Rights Committee. Monroe Williams and James Walker joined the Las Vegas fire department, and in 1965, Helen Anderson became the first black female school principal. A year later, Nevada witnessed the swearing in of the first black state assemblyman, Woodrow Wilson. Economic strides surfaced, prior to improved job prospects, through the efforts from within

the community in the formation of the Economic Opportunity Board (EOB). This nonprofit, federally funded initiative poured thousands of dollars into the Westside for a myriad of job training programs, Head Start, and operational monies that brought professional employment to the marginalized section of the city. The EOB existed under the Economic Opportunity Act, a part of the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty. Active operation ensued in 1965 and lasted until funds began to dry up in the early 1970s. During this time, the Clark County Economic Opportunity Board distributed to a variety of community action programs that provided services to the poor and underprivileged in an effort to break the cycle of poverty. J. David Hoggard successfully ran the day-to-day operations of EOB under a board that included members of the black, white, and Latino communities. In the 1960s, in adjunct to the emigrational westward movement, black attorneys moved to Las Vegas. In 1963, the first to receive license before the Nevada bar, Earle W. White Jr. accepted the appointment as justice of the peace for Clark County, and the second attorney, Robert Reed, became a judge. But it was the story of Charles Kellar that proved the need for black attorneys in the city. Kellar caused quite a stir in Las Vegas when he arrived from New York. He had been urged to migrate to Las Vegas by Thurgood Marshall when he served as head of the NAACP’s legal division. Part of Marshall’s efforts in his roles at the NAACP Bar Representation Program was to send black lawyers to states that had no blacks serving in the legal profession. Nevada fit that description. Unfortunately, after the one-year waiting period, Kellar passed the state bar examination but was not issued a license to practice for another four years. It was rumored that the unusually high score indicated to the authorities that it was not an honest test. Kellar’s quest for justice led to his active role in the fight for civil rights in Las Vegas.

Nevada The state positions acquired by blacks through gubernatorial appointment were excellent advancements but the largest employer, the gaming industry, had not yet begun to hire blacks except as maids, porters, kitchen helpers and linen room attendants. Dealers, cocktail waitresses, restaurant wait staff, reservation desk clerks, and chefs remained all white, highly visible and earning superior wages. In the early 1970s, the NAACP branch led by attorney Charles Kellar instituted legal action to secure jobs for blacks. This resulted in a consent decree issued in June 1971 by the Circuit Court that stated blacks would receive 12 percent of all job positions in 16 named hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip and several labor unions. Those listed were the Culinary Union Local 226, Teamsters Union, Aladdin, Castaways, Caesars Palace, Desert Inn, Dunes, Flamingo, Frontier, Hacienda, International, Landmark, Riviera, Sahara, Silver Slipper, Stardust, Thunderbird, and the Tropicana. The NAACP staff, led by Executive Director Alice Key, performed watchdog functions that included visiting hotel casinos to conduct headcounts to record the number of blacks working in positions that had excluded nonwhites in the past. School desegregation efforts became necessary in Las Vegas, as in many cities, because of housing patterns that caused all neighborhood schools to be segregated, reflecting the individual area. Integration was mandated by the federal government, and Las Vegas sought a method of complying. Interestingly, the League of Women Voters led the campaign forcing court actions and developing integration strategies. In 1971, the Las Vegas plan adopted for school desegregation resulted in Sixth Grade Centers. Schools in the black community were turned into centers for sixth graders that white students would be bused to for that grade only. Black students were bused all other years. White parents were angered, though the burden fell primarily upon blacks. This system remained in place for 20 years.

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The greatest battles fought in the 1970s were to institute welfare rights statewide. Though the news media concentrated on activities in Las Vegas, lobbying in Carson City included women from the northern portion of the state as well. Maya Miller, the major financier of Ruby Duncan, leader of the movement, lived on a ranch near Reno. Duncan worked with a group of women and astute attorneys to bring the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children’s Program to Nevada (WIC), and food stamps. The movement then morphed into Operation Life that established the first library in the Westside community, jobs programs, and a medical clinic among other accomplishments. She and the movement are best remembered for leading the march on the Las Vegas Strip as a way of making the movement more visible. On March 7, 1971, welfare mothers marched along with Ralph Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Jane Fonda, and George Wiley, National Welfare Rights Organization chief, into Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. Earlier in the campaign they targeted the Stardust Hotel Casino with an eat-in. Maya Miller’s role was unique in that it brought together gender and class. Poor women on welfare found assistance from the daughter of a Shell Oil executive. The profits from oil stocks she inherited afforded her a comfortable life. For a long time, Miller was involved with the League of Women Voters but resigned when the League failed to oppose the Vietnam War. When she aligned with welfare rights, she found herself in disfavor with the Nevada legislature. Once while attending a legislators’ meeting with the welfare group, the elected officials had lunch delivered and ate it in front of the welfare mothers, offering them their leavings. Maya grabbed the leftover hamburgers and fries and threw them on the floor. Legislators forced her to apologize or lose her lobbying privileges. Maya went on to become

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a leader of the national women’s movement, traveled the world working for peace in places like Guatemala and Iraq, supported Emily’s List in its infancy, and provided seed money for dozens of Nevada election campaigns by women. In 1991, she was among several women who broke a U.S. embargo and trucked thousands of dollars worth of medicine and food to Iraqi women and children. Maya drove one of the trucks from Jordan into Baghdad. But Nevada was the place of her greatest known activism, where her participation included causes that spanned social, political, women’s rights, and environmental efforts such as helping to create Lake Tahoe State Park. Human rights activists like Maya Miller, those of the NAACP, and black community leaders coupled with the average black citizen gradually changed Nevada. The consent decree of 1971 brought the beginnings of economic parity, and migration and the university system produced more and more black professionals, but the drug culture continued the deterioration of the Westside community. The “weekend” is the latest phenomenon that helps to keep the community alive and vibrant. Blacks that moved away from the Westside neighborhood return on Saturdays to visit barber shops and beauty parlors that specialize in black hair care and on Sundays to worship. Their tithes, offerings, and purchases sustain the area with beautiful edifices and financial support of specialized local businesses, those that are non existent in the majority community. But as true integration spreads, these specialties are becoming more widely available. In Las Vegas, progress is encroaching upon the Westside. The old railroad yard that joined the McWilliams townsite and the townsite started by the railroad is being developed with a Performing Arts Center, condominiums, and an Alzheimer’s Research Center. Nearby is the World Trade Center’s complex that showcases millions of square feet of display space. Downtown is undergoing extensive renovations, portions to resemble Bourbon

Street in New Orleans. African American oriented art galleries pepper the city and county, spreading the black identity throughout along with the outgrowth of the black family.

Notable African Americans Fox, Abe (1914–2004) Abe Fox owned Foxy’s Deli at what is now Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue. This restaurant was one of only a few that served blacks during the Jim Crow era in Las Vegas. He hired Nat King Cole as his spokesman when trying to persuade state officials to change the name of Pahrump, a small town 60 miles west of Las Vegas, to Palm Springs. The deli closed in 1975.

Hoggard, Mabel (1905–1989) Mabel Hoggard is recognized for her contributions to the black community in education and in her work with the Westside Credit Union. During the summers of her teaching career, she served as program director of the Operation Independence Day Care Center. Working with a coalition of Westside elementary schools, she was instrumental in influencing the Clark County School District to establish a districtwide lunch program. She founded Project Savings at the Westside Federal Credit Union to help children learn the value of a savings account. At the University of Nevada–Las Vegas commencement exercises in 1977, she was honored with a distinguished Nevadan Award.

Johnson, Lubertha (1906–1996) Lubertha Johnson conducted a housing survey of the Westside, making it possible for the first federally funded housing project—Marble Manor—that assisted with the deplorable housing situation in the black community. She worked

Nevada as the recreational director of the World War II black housing area, Carver Park, at Basic Magnesium Inc. that spurred the migration of blacks to Las Vegas for jobs. She was the operator of Operation Independence’s Day Care Center under the Head Start Program.

Kellar, Charles (1909–2002) Charles Kellar moved to Las Vegas to sit for the state bar examination as the first black to do so upon the suggestion of Thurgood Marshall from his position in the national office of the NAACP. Kellar’s 1960 successful test results were not honored until May 1965. He was instrumental in legal battles that included the consent decree that challenged the discriminatory practices of employment in Las Vegas hotels and desegregation of the Clark County School District.

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Key, Alice (1911–) Alice Key is a journalist, community activist, and dancer, and in the late 1960s embarked on a career in public service. She was instrumental in arranging and producing the first black television show in Las Vegas, The Talk of the Town; and served several years as executive director of the NAACP; spent a memorable year working with the Nevada Committee for the Rights of Women, which educated women about birth control and fought for abortion law reform in Nevada; and spent a decade as deputy labor commissioner for the state of Nevada.

McMillan, James B. (1917–1999) Dr. James B. McMillan served as the first black dentist in Las Vegas beginning in 1955. In early March 1960, as president of the local branch of

The Moulin Rouge Hotel-Casino near downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. The Moulin Rouge opened in May 1955 as a refuge for black entertainers who headlined at the city’s resorts but were barred from staying in them because of segregationist policies. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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the NAACP, he wrote a letter to the mayor threatening a massive march on the Strip if the hotels throughout the city were not integrated by March 26. On that Saturday morning, the governor, mayor, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, and black leaders met at the Moulin Rouge Hotel and verbally agreed that integration would take place at 6:00 p.m. that evening.

Preddy, Sarann Knight (1920–) Sarann Preddy was the first black woman to receive a Nevada gaming license, probably the first in the country to do so. She owned and operated the Tango Club in Hawthorne, Nevada, and two venues in Las Vegas: Peoples’ Choice and the Moulin Rouge. She actively participated in the Nevada Voter’s League, ran for a position on the City Council, served on the executive board of the NAACP, became a founding member of the Las Vegas Barbara Jordan Democratic Club, and played a leadership role in a business sorority, Gamma Phi Delta.

Stephenson, W. H. C. (1825–c. 1873) W. H. C. Stephenson was northern Nevada’s most prominent African American during the Comstock years in Virginia City and probably the first black doctor in the state. He served in a leadership role for the community and was appointed as chairman of the Nevada Executive Committee, an organization designed to lobby the legislature for suffrage and equal rights for all Nevada citizens.

West, Charles I. (1908–1984) Charles West served as the first black medical doctor licensed in the state of Nevada, was the first black surgeon on the staff of Southern Nevada Medical Center, and was team physician at Rancho High School for 10 years. He revitalized

the Nevada Voters’ League, purchased and operated the black newspaper, the Voice, organized a “get out the vote” campaign, and served for many years on the Executive Board of the NAACP.

Cultural Contributions Blacks in both the north and south of Nevada enjoyed a rich spiritual life and formed organizations that promoted cultural events. Black restaurants transported food traditions from locales around the country to Nevada dating back to the heyday of Virginia City in the 1850s; twentieth-century migration brought flavors from the American South. Music and dance were important in Las Vegas, with rhythms and sounds that flowed back and forth from the Strip into the black Westside community. Churches served as spiritual and political pulpits for the community. Early Reno, Nevada, bore witness to this. Bethel AME Church provided religious, social, and political solace to blacks as early as 1910, and in the 1960s held meetings for civil rights activists as well as a direct pipeline to the NAACP. The building itself reflects the struggles for equality as the location of many NAACP meetings and as a site for organized meetings to plan strategies for civil rights protests. In the 1940s, the congregation decided to move to a different location and found the perfect site in downtown Reno near the University of Nevada Reno (UNR). Protests arose from UNR and the school board because the new location would have been close to Reno High School and to a campus sorority. The black membership of Bethel AME decided to improve the current facility and not relocate. The congregants proceeded by using the remodeled sanctuary to draw attention to the discriminatory practicing of Reno’s businesses and government. The NAACP branch led protests from the now sound structure that included picketing the local Woolworth store and housing meetings with the Las Vegas NAACP branch to

Nevada plan statewide strategies. Bethel AME Church is currently listed on the National Registry of Historic Places as the oldest black spiritual center in the state but also as a place of protest for equal rights of African Americans. Zion United Methodist ranked as the first church established for blacks in Las Vegas. As blacks began to move out of downtown into the Westside in the early 1930s, this church made the physical move as well. As the Westside developed, over 50 churches crowded into the small community west of the railroad tracks. Religions represented included Apostolic, Baptist, Catholic, Christian Fellowship, Church of God in Christ, Methodist, Interdenominational, Non-Denominational, and Seventh Day Adventist. The Baptist denomination churches number 32 out of the 52 churches in the historic black community. It is obvious from the numbers alone that religion is an important facet of the Westside. And like Reno, churches in Las Vegas housed vacation Bible classes; sponsored local excursions to surrounding mountain retreats and lakes for families; operated day care centers; provided space for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; and held protest meetings to organize several marches on the Las Vegas Strip. Entertainment is one of the engines that has driven Las Vegas from the inception of the Strip. Blacks claimed a huge stage presence even when African Americans were not allowed in the audiences. Though omitted from mingling on the Strip, Pearl Bailey, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Joe Williams, and many other famed entertainers found a home on the Westside, where they performed on the city’s second strip for the fun of it. The Town Tavern, Brown Derby, Louisiana Club, and the Green Lantern were some of the nightclubs that peppered Jackson Street providing after-hours jam sessions. These locations allowed local blacks to dance, gamble, and converse with stars who spent Strip-earned dollars in the black community. Some of the locales even

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had house entertainment that included dancers. Both D. D. Cotton and Katherine Joseph danced in local Westside showrooms. Norma Miller, the Lindy Hopper, danced in Las Vegas along with Josephine Baker. Baker’s stay on the Strip was controversial because in 1954, she stayed at the Last Frontier where she headlined. That same exception had been made earlier for Lena Horne at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino. Horne was one of the first major black stars who gave up the big money paid by Las Vegas establishments because of the severe racism. The dance tradition is still maintained in the black community today partially through the work of Marcia Robinson at the West Las Vegas Arts Center, where local students are trained in the classical movements along with hip-hop. When the Alvin Ailey Dance Company graces Las Vegas, it is at Robinson’s venue. Cultural traditions are maintained there as well. Young men and women participate in all art forms and rites of passage workshops. The center’s theatrical presentations directed by Walter Mason acquaint black students with film, dramatic performances, and musicals. Mason always includes dance. Oral histories collected at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas depict the history of local black Las Vegas dancers who performed on the Strip beginning in the 1970s when blacks began to move into positions other than those in the back of the house. Many nightclubs that operated in the Westside community sold food along with independent restaurants on Jackson and D Streets. But the custom of good food to feed the soul began in Nevada on the Comstock in the 1850s, where archaeological digs in 2000 discovered remains of the Boston Saloon owned by William A. G. Brown, a free black from Massachusetts. Brown’s eating establishment served the best cuts of beef and used crystal serving pieces. Most interesting was the discovery of a tabasco bottle that dates the establishment in the Comstock period. Professionals at the dig site linked African American

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cuisine with refinement in dining and surmised that diversity played an important role in building Virginia City. One of the first African American restaurants in Las Vegas served exquisite fried chicken and catered to blacks and whites. The pull of soul food and great black entertainment drew whites into the Westside community when the town was segregated. The Westside was not just economically integrated, allowing in the flow of white dollars, but socially integrated, with whites enjoying black music and dance. And even today, as blacks with means have relocated to the suburbs, whites and middle-class African Americans still marginally support the historic black community by including Westside soul food in their diets. Blacks who moved out also return to attend church services on Sundays, secure hair care on Saturdays, and sometimes support the NAACP by attending meetings. The Westside is still fighting for equality. It is sustained by schools, churches, and a paucity of businesses. The Westside School that opened in 1922, the Berkeley Square neighborhood constructed in the mid-1950s and the Moulin Rouge Hotel Casino built in 1955 are all on the National Registry of Historic Places. Recently constructed federal, state, and city buildings dot the area and provide employment, allowing a few new restaurants like Gritz Café to boast a good business even on Sundays. Some portions of the townsite flourish while others are seedy and unkempt. But music is everywhere, providing the beat that goes on and on.

Bibliography Bailey, Bob. Interview with Bob Bailey by Claytee D. White. The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project, edited by Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries, 1997. Bailey, Pearl. The Raw Pearl. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968.

“Colored Residents Win Legal Battle.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 17, 1939. Coughtry, Jamie. Lubertha Johnson: Civil Rights Efforts in Las Vegas, 1940s–1960s. Reno: University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1988. “Court Integration Rule Awaited.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 25, 1971. Earl, Phillip I. “Nevada’s Miscegenation Laws and the Marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Bridges.” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 37 (Spring 1994): 3. “15,000 Skip School in Las Vegas.” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1971. Hoggard, J. David, Sr. Interview with by Claytee D. White. Hulse, James W. The Nevada Adventure: A History. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1965. Journal of the Assembly of the 39th Session of the Legislature of the State of Nevada, Carson City, NV, 1939. Assembly Bill 88 of 1939, 39th Assembly, Carson City, Nevada. Kaufman, Perry Bruce. “The Best City of Them All: A History of Las Vegas, 1930–1960.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1974. Kluger, James Robert. “Elwood Mead: Irrigation Engineer and Social Planner.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 1970. Lapp, Rudolph M. Blacks in Gold Rush California. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Mack, Effie Mona. Nevada: A History of the State from the Earliest Times through the Civil War. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1936. McMillan, James B. Fighting Back: A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights. Reno: University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1997. Moehring, Eugene. Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas 1930–2000. 2nd ed. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000.

Nevada “Nevada Negroes Seeking Civil Rights Law.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 4, 1953. “$1.5 Million Clark County School Integration Budget Okayed.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 26, 1972.

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“School Desegregation in Clark County, Nevada.” Governmental Research Newsletter 12, no. 4 (December 1973).

“Racial Unrest Rips Schools in Las Vegas.” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1970.

Undated letter to the Mayor and City Commission by Las Vegas Progressive Club. H. L. Wilson, Corresponding Secretary. Located in city clerk files, Las Vegas City Hall.

“Report Progress in Solving Some of Westside Problems.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 22, 1949.

Walker, Gwen, and Juanita Walker. “From the Kitchen to the Boardroom: Nevada’s Black Women.” North Las Vegas, 2001.

Rusco, Elmer R. “Good Time Coming?” Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975.

“Westside Swimming Pool Opens Friday.” Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 31, 1949.

NEW HAMPSHIRE Alton Hornsby, Jr. and Anne Hornsby

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Chronology 1629

John Mason receives a grant of that portion of the Province of Maine lying between the Merrimac and Piscataqua Rivers under the name of New Hampshire.

1642

Massachusetts colony gains control of New Hampshire.

1645

First recorded black slave arrives in Portsmouth.

1779

The New Hampshire legislature ignores a petition from Prince Whipple, the slave of a Continental army officer, and 18 other blacks seeking emancipation.

1788

(June 21) New Hampshire enters the Union as the ninth state.

1789

Slaves are removed from the New Hampshire tax rolls as taxable property.

1790

The Census counts 158 black slaves in New Hampshire.

1796

(October) Public sentiment in Portsmouth prevents the return of a fugitive slave to President George Washington.

1800

The census lists only eight slaves resident in New Hampshire.

1822

Black poet James N. Whitfield is born in Exeter.

1835

Twenty-eight white students and 14 black students commence classes at newly established Noyes Academy in Canaan.

1835

White residents of Canaan, with the help of neighboring towns and “nearly one hundred yoke of oxen,” forcibly remove integrated Noyes Academy from its foundation.

1857

The New Hampshire Legislature enacts a law forbidding that any person be denied citizenship because of their “descent”; this law is interpreted by some as outlawing slavery in the state.

1860

New Hampshire is one of only five states that allows blacks to vote.

1865

(July 1) New Hampshire ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

(July 6) New Hampshire becomes the second state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1869

(July 1) New Hampshire ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote.

1873

The first black Baptist mission is started in Portsmouth.

1920

The Knights of Pythias are founded in New Hampshire.

1924

The Ku Klux Klan burns a cross in a Portsmouth neighborhood.

1926

Elizabeth Virgil is the first African American woman to graduate from the University of New Hampshire.

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1943

The People’s Baptist Church in Portsmouth celebrates its 50th anniversary.

1963

(June 12) New Hampshire ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

Wentworth-by-the-Sea hotel and restaurant in Newcastle is desegregated.

1979

A bill for a Martin Luther King holiday is rejected by the New Hampshire legislature.

1995

The Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail is incorporated to identify and mark sites important in the African American history of the state.

1999

A Martin Luther King Jr. holiday bill is passed by the New Hampshire legislature.

2000

The first Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is observed in New Hampshire.

2000

The U.S. Census puts New Hampshire’s black population at 1.2 percent out of 1,324,500 people.

2008

Black students at St. Paul’s School in Concord receive hate mail.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries New Hampshire with about 54 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview The earliest known African Americans in New Hampshire were brought from West Africa in 1645 and sold as slaves. By 1708, there were 70 slaves in the state. This was a rather large number for such a tiny colony. New Hampshire ships also became involved in the slave trade, carrying Africans to Virginia and the Caribbean. By 1750, some Portsmouth merchants were reaping substantial profits from the slave trade. New Hampshire slavers generally favored younger blacks. This, according to scholar Valerie Cunningham, was, perhaps, because they could be easily trained in the ways of the enslavers. New Hampshire bondspersons worked as craftsmen, unskilled laborers, mariners, gardeners, and domestic servants. In most colonial New Hampshire households, there were no bondspersons. New Hampshire bondspeople consistently petitioned for certain rights and protections. For example, they sought the right to visit relatives or close friends, to work a small garden and sell

its products, and to take a voyage at sea. Some negotiated with their enslavers to purchase their own freedom with money earned on their “free time.” On the eve of the Revolutionary War, there were approximately 650 African Americans, mostly enslaved persons, who inhabited the area in the southeastern part of the state along the coast. After the war, when several of the New England and northeastern colonies began emancipating bondspersons, the number of black slaves in New Hampshire was fewer than 40. Although New Hampshire bondspersons may have had the right to petition for certain things, brutality was not absent. For example, in 1695, a slaveholder beat a female slave to death. He was charged with reckless indifference to life, as quite often charges of murder involving a slave were reduced. But by 1781, the New Hampshire legislature was forbidding inhumane treatment and prescribing the death penalty for murderers. Still the enslaved were left with few actual liberties. New laws were passed, for example, after a

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As seen in this famous painting by Emanuel Leutze, George Washington crossed the Delaware River in December 1776. Prince Whipple was allegedly at the front of the boat. (National Archives)

slave uprising in New York in 1712. Two years later, New Hampshire passed measures for the additional control of slaves. One of the laws prohibited concealing or transporting fugitive slaves. Later, the legislature prohibited the further importation of slaves into the colony and placed a tax on bondspersons, adults as well as children. But about the same time, it ordered a 9:00 p.m. curfew for Native Americans and African Americans because it was alleged that they were largely responsible for repeated disorders, burglaries, and “insolences.” Free blacks were required to register with local justices of the peace and keep copies of their freedom papers on them as exemptions from the curfews and lest they be mistaken as fugitive slaves. While enforcement of the curfews varied, they did serve as a reminder of the inferior status of African Americans. Additionally, this caste system extended further to the free black population in terms of discrimination in employment. They faced difficulties in getting steady jobs and, when without work, any public

welfare assistance. As in other parts of the country, some free blacks, however, were prosperous enough to purchase slaves, usually in order to set them free. In some cases the free black would then marry the freedwoman. At the time of the Revolutionary War, both bondspersons and free blacks had been prohibited from service in the colony’s militia. Some enslavers did carry their servants into battle. This was the case with Prince Whipple, once believed to be the legendary black character in the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River in 1776. While the New Hampshire black population remained small after the United States gained its independence, the state’s African Americans, both men and women, participated in the nation’s subsequent wars. Although New Hampshire blacks were small in numbers, even in comparison to other New England states like Massachusetts and Connecticut, religion was no less a part of the fabric of the state’s African American communities. In

New Hampshire 1873, a Baptist mission was started in Portsmouth, but was short-lived. Then, in 1879, Elder John Tate, who had originally served the congregation, returned and resumed services in one of his worshippers’ homes. This effort, however, also met with little success. The next major effort to establish a functioning African American church in Portsmouth came in 1890, when James F. Slaughter, a recent arrival in the city, organized a new Bible study group consisting of 17 nondenominational members. They became known as the People’s Mission. Two years later, the mission evolved into the People’s Baptist Church. In 1943, People’s Baptist celebrated its 50th anniversary. In 1952, Martin Luther King Jr., then a graduate student at Boston University, preached at the church, and on the church’s 59th anniversary, a guest choir from Malden, Massachusetts, which included Coretta Scott, sang. Into the twentieth century, other black churches appeared in New Hampshire. These included the New Hope Baptist Church, the largest African American church in the Portsmouth area; Emmanuel Church of Christ, an evangelical fundamentalist church, which has had white pastors; and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches. Several of the state’s white churches also have had black members. Next to religion in African American society, education has been a fundamental value. In early New Hampshire, where schools existed, they were segregated. But during the nineteenth century, blacks began to enroll in white schools. These students, however, were probably seated according to race. By the 1950s, there was full desegregation and African American teachers and administrators were employed since the 1970s. African American social activities have been included in the overall programs of black churches and in a number of other places in New Hampshire. Among the major fraternal groups have been the Pythians and the Masons.

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In addition to their self-help and relief activities the Knights of Pythias, founded in Portsmouth in 1920, have adopted a code of chivalry and “personal kindness.” In the 1940s, beginning with the name Octagon Club, after one of their geometric symbols, black Masons appeared in the state. In the tradition of the Prince Hall Masons, chartered in Boston in 1784, the Octagon Club was devoted to community service. Both the Pythians and the Masons had female units—the Pythian Sisters of Harmony Court and the Eastern Stars, respectively. Other prominent African American social organizations in New Hampshire have included the “Colored Fraternities,” the Our Boys Comfort Club (later the Lincoln American Community Club) and the Kwanzaa Club. The Comfort Club, which dates from 1919, was established to entertain black sailors assigned to the Portsmouth navy yard and other servicemen. The club later expanded its activities to include an observance of the Lincoln Day with games, singing, dancing, and food for service personnel, the black community, Puerto Ricans, and “other darker” racial groups. The Kwanzaa club was organized by a group of black women in 1974. They took their name from the Kwanzaa holiday, which many African Americans celebrate in lieu of Christmas. The Kwanzaas eventually extended their functions beyond socializing to include support for scholarships for African American students in the area and various cultural activities, including art exhibitions and poetry readings. Although the African American population of New Hampshire—concentrated largely in the Manchester, Nashua, and Portsmouth areas— has remained small since the colonial era, racial distinctions have continued into recent times. In 1835, future African American abolitionist Alexander Crummell and future Pan-African leader Henry Highland Garnet delivered antislavery speeches at the Noyes Academy in Canaan. In response to these speeches, a white mob drove out

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the 14 students of the biracial school, which they burned. Noyes Academy, founded by abolitionists, had been one of the first schools in the state to enroll both blacks and women. Racial tensions and animosities have been aggravated from time to time by the presence of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was reported in the Portsmouth area as early as 1924 when a cross was burned in the Atlantic Heights Neighborhood. The next year, the group began running promotional ads in New Hampshire newspapers. During that era, the Klan continued to burn crosses periodically and to conduct parades and rallies. Although it was always rather small in numbers, the Klan continued to have a presence in the state through the 1990s. Yet it apparently did not succeed in intimidating African Americans or in provoking them into counter demonstrations. There were other incidents of racism in the state in recent years that did not involve the Klan. For example, in 2005, a black junior high school student in Nashua reported to school authorities that a white boy called her a “nigger.” In February 2008, most of the African American students at St. Paul’s, an elite preparatory school in Concord, received threatening hate mail. At the time, St. Paul’s enrolled about 40 black students, 8 percent of the total enrollment of 524. The hate mail included the words “bang bang get out of here.” Local police patrolled the campus for several weeks, but there were no further overt events. And in April 2010, a controversy arose as to whether or not the race of a murder suspect in Manchester should be revealed. During the civil rights era of the 1950s through the 1970s, while racial protests became commonplace in the South, black New Hampshire, under the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups as well as black and white individuals, tackled two major issues—segregation and discrimination in public accommodations, and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The major target in the public accommodations protest was the Wentworth-by-the-Sea Hotel in Newcastle. The luxury hotel's original proprietors were members of a prominent pioneer New Hampshire family. Historically, the hotel discriminated in both service and employment against Greeks, Jews, African Americans, and other minorities. In the 1960s, its ownership had passed to James Baker Smith, who also owned another exclusive property, the Rockingham Hotel in Portsmouth. On July 4, 1964, a biracial group made reservations at the Wentworth. But when they appeared, they were told that they could not be served because of the presence of the blacks. After other tests of the policies and amid unfavorable publicity, Smith conceded and dropped the racial bars at both of his hotels. Subsequently the local NAACP began holding regular meetings at the Rockingham. The Wentworth-by-the-Sea also employed African Americans on its staff. While it took only a few weeks for the desegregation of the Rockingham and the Wentworth, the efforts to have the state declare a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. was to be lengthier and more contentious. A Martin Luther King Jr. holiday bill was first introduced in the New Hampshire legislature in 1979. It was not approved. Similar bills were also rejected between 1981 and 1989. Meanwhile, a biracial group called the Seacoast Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition continued a public relations campaign to build support for the holiday both inside and outside of the legislature. In 1991, with more and more states, even some southern ones, recognizing the King holiday and the state facing accusations of racism, the New Hampshire legislature approved a Civil Rights Day holiday. This observance was to replace an existing state holiday known as Fast Day, which was held in April. But the Civil Rights Day was scheduled for the third Monday in January, the same date as the federal Martin

New Hampshire Luther King Jr. Day. The next year, Arizona adopted a Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day. In effect, then, New Hampshire now stood alone among the states in not having a holiday bearing the name of Martin Luther King Jr. Thus the following year, New Hampshire’s newly elected governor Steve Merrill proposed a compromise Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day, based on the Arizona model. The measure was defeated in the New Hampshire legislature. For the next four years, the legislature either rejected or failed to consider the King holiday bills. The governor’s attempts to temporarily observe the holiday by executive order proved unsatisfactory to all sides. Meanwhile, opponents of the King holiday won the unsolicited support of a group of Mississippi white supremacists in 1996. Proponents garnered the support of the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association, the AFL-CIO, and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Alliance. In the face of this support, backed by petitions and public rallies, the legislature approved the holiday in 1999. In January 2000, the first Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed in New Hampshire. Outside of the Wentworth hotel, black New Hampshire residents, whether bondspersons or free, had faced discrimination in employment. They had worked largely on the waterfront, on ships, as skilled and unskilled laborers, and as domestic servants. During World War II especially, some African Americans were drawn from these occupations for better jobs in the shipyard and at Pease Air Force Base, as were newly employed persons—both natives and migrants. But with the ending of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, work at the shipyard declined and the air force base was closed. The result was the loss of hundreds of jobs. Portsmouth alone then lost almost a fifth of its population through outmigrations for jobs and better low-rent housing. In 2002, blacks owned only 0.4 percent of the businesses in New Hampshire.

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In 2009, New Hampshire had an estimated population of 1,324,500—1.2 percent of this total was African American. Most of the African American population was concentrated in urban areas, the cities of Concord, Hanover, Nashua, and Portsmouth.

Notable African Americans Cooper, Rosary (1913–1997) Rosary Cooper was a businesswoman, humanitarian, and philanthropist. During World War II, she became known as “Rosary the Crane Operator” as she laid submarine keels at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Cunningham, Clarence W. (1913–) Clarence Cunningham was a founder of the black Masons club in New Hampshire. He migrated to Portsmouth in 1936 from North Carolina.

Reed, Emerson K. (1921–) Emerson K. Reed, a veteran of World War II, was the first black general foreman at the Portsmouth Naval Ship Yard. He was also a president of the Portsmouth NAACP and a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Advisory Committee for New Hampshire.

Slaughter, James (d. 1921) James Slaughter, originally from Virginia, was considered the founder of the People’s Baptist Church in Portsmouth. Although never a pastor himself, he served the church for most of his life as a deacon and treasurer.

Whipple, Dinah (c. 1760–1846) Dinah Whipple was a pioneer teacher of African American children in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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She was the wife of the legendary Prince Whipple, the bondsperson of William Whipple, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

wrote such antislavery pieces as “How Long” and “America.”

Cultural Contributions Whipple, Prince (1750–1796) Prince Whipple was a bondsman of William Whipple, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Prince Whipple, himself, while still in bondage, served in the Revolutionary War. At one time, it was widely believed that he was the African pictured in the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River on Christmas Eve 1776, but scholars have not been able to document this and now tend to discount it.

Whitfield, James Monroe (1822–1871) James Monroe Whitfield was one of the most forceful and talented African American poets of the nineteenth century. A barber by trade, he left New Hampshire in his youth for New York. He

New Hampshire born James Whitfield has been called one of the most talented African American poets of the nineteenth century. The state has also produced notable musicians and other artists, including Richard Haynes. His works and those of others as well as musicians are a part of the annual Seacoast Black Heritage Festival. This activity has been sponsored since 1964 by the Blues Bank Collective, a collaborative effort of churches and community groups to raise awareness through an emphasis on the blues that black history is for all peoples. By 1985, the blues festival had become biracial. Since 1980, Valerie Cunningham, who was a prime mover behind the blues festival, has spearheaded an African American Resource Center to provide historical and cultural information on the area’s African American population.

Valerie Cunningham walks through North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2006. She founded and leads the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, which has put up 20 historical markers around the city. (AP/Wide World Photos)

New Hampshire Patterning itself after African American history trails in Boston, Providence, and other places, the Portsmouth Black History Trail is sponsored by the Portsmouth Black History Trail, Inc. The mission of the trail is to preserve the history and culture of African Americans in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, area and to promote awareness and appreciation of that heritage through education and public programs. It offers public symposia, workshops, educational programs, and cultural events. It is funded entirely from private donations and foundation grants. The Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail consists of 24 sites, including Sherburne House. The white Sherburnes built this steep roofed house in two phases in 1695 and 1702. Its owner, Joseph Sherburne, was a mariner, merchant, and farmer. Another site on the trail is William Pitt Tavern, a three-story tavern built in 1766 and most remembered for the visits of Revolutionary era patriots. Enslaved people were a recurrent part of tavern owner John Stavers’ life. Other sites on the Black Heritage Trail, as described on the Web site http://seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/ trailOb.html, include the following:

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slaves to church. Some pious whites, however, took their enslaved people to church. 

Town Pump. In colonial Portsmouth, as throughout the Americas, a coronation or election of black leaders was held each June.



Negro Burial Ground. In colonial Portsmouth, segregation applied in death as in life. By 1705, the Portsmouth government had created a separate “Negro burial ground” outside of the town. (In 2003, the cemetery was thought to be located at a construction site at the corner of Chestnut and Court Streets.)



Moffatt-Ladd House. The Moffatt-Ladd house is remembered as the home of Declaration of Independence signer and Revolutionary War General William Whipple and his wife. It was also the home of their slaves.



Whipple House in the mid-1700s. Two African boys were sent by their wealthy royal family from Amabou on the Gold Coast of West Africa to be educated abroad. “A deceitful sea captain” instead carried them into slavery.



New Hampshire Gazette Office. Primus, a printer, was one of a group of skilled slaves who worked in colonial Portsmouth. He was enslaved in the household of Daniel Fowle, owner of the New Hampshire Gazette, founded in 1756 in a small wooden house that stood on this site.



Penhallow House. There were a few free black people in colonial Portsmouth, and increasing numbers were freed after the Revolution. To certify their status and prove their exemption from slave curfew laws, free black people secured freedom papers from their former enslavers.



Warner House. Among the white colonial occupants of this 1716 house was Jonathan Warner. But it was also home to at least eight slaves.





St John’s Church. Its records identify many black people in early Portsmouth.

John Langdon House. Cyrus Bruce was emancipated by John Langdon, after which he worked for him as a paid servant. This arrangement was underway by 1783, when Langdon built this mansion on Pleasant Street.



North Church. In the colonial era, some white people objected to the Christianization of enslaved Africans and did not take their



Portsmouth Waterfront. Enslaved mariners were part of the Portsmouth port by 1727. They worked mostly in the Atlantic

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Black America coastal and West Indies trades, and some sailed during the Revolution.













Temple (now the Music Hall). Frederick Douglass and other black abolitionists spoke at a 1,000-seat public lecture hall called the Temple, which opened in 1844 at the corner of Chestnut and Porter Streets. South Church. The earliest recorded black family in Portsmouth appears in the South Church records of baptism in 1717. One hundred fifty years later, South Church’s Unitarian women were reputed to have been part of the pre–Civil War “Underground Railroad,” violating federal law by helping fugitive slaves out of the country. Baptist Church. This 1866 Victorian election hall was the site of two major nineteenth-century institutions in the lives of Portsmouth’s black citizens. Starting on New Year’s Day in 1881, many annual celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation were held here. The first was attended by most of the black people of the city and over 100 invited white guests. The celebrations included speeches, music, and food. They occurred for at least 80 years. People’s Baptist Church. In 1908, the black People’s Baptist Church became independent from Middle Street Baptist Church, and in 1915, under the leadership of Reverend John L. Davis, purchased this former Free Will Baptist church, which was built in 1851. Market Square. In the early twentieth century, several of Portsmouth’s black social clubs met in second-floor meeting rooms on the corner of Pleasant and Daniels Streets. In 1919, Our Boys Comfort Club (soon renamed the Lincoln American Community Club) offered social affairs here. Navy Yard. Blacks, sailors and civilians, worked here, especially in World War II.



Rosary’s Beauty Shop. Rosary Broxay Cooper came to Portsmouth from Florida as a children’s nurse to the Merrill family who owned a hotel in Ogunquit. In 1938, she married Portsmouth native Owen Finnegan Cooper.



Rockingham Hotel. In 1948, New Hampshire resident Louis DeRochemont, famous for his March of Time newsreels, made a controversial film in the Seacoast area, Lost Boundaries. It was loosely based on the biography of black physician Albert C. Johnston.



St. John’s Chapel. A biracial group of Portsmouth citizens who were alarmed by media images of violent racial confrontations during the civil rights era gathered in 1963 at St. John’s to discuss and educate themselves on matters of race and religion. Their group quickly grew and diversified to include black and white citizens of many faiths.

Bibliography Belman, Felice, and Mike Pride, eds. The New Hampshire Century. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. Biography of Dinah Whipple. www.blackpast.org/ ?q=aah/whipple-dinah-c-1760-1846. Biography of Prince Whipple. www.blackpast.org/ ?q=aah/whipple-prince-1750-1796. Cunningham, Valerie. “The First Blacks of Portsmouth.” Historical New Hampshire 44 (1989): 181–201. Harris, Patricia. New Hampshire: The Spirit of America. New York: H. N. Abrams, 2000. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. A Biographical History of African Americans. Montgomery, AL: E-Book Time Books, 2005. Knoblock, Glenn A. “Strong and Brave Fellows”: New Hampshire’s Black Soldiers and Sailors of

New Hampshire the American Revolution, 1775–1784. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003. Morison, Elizabeth Forbes, and Elting E. Morison. New Hampshire: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1976. New Hampshire: African American Percentage of Population. www.idcide.com/lists/nh/on -population-african-american-percentage.htm.

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Sammons, Mark, and Valerie Cunningham. Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of AfricanAmerican Heritage. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 1998. Stacker, Ann P., and Nancy C. Hefferman. Short History of New Hampshire. Grantham, NH: Thompson and Rutter, 1985.

New Hampshire Sea Coast, Black History. http:// seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/parl.html.

Taylor, William L., ed. Readings in New Hampshire and New England History. New York: Irvington, 1981.

New Hampshire Sea Coast, First Blacks. www.seacoastnh.com/Black_History_of_the -Seacoast/First-Blacks.

U.S. Census Bureau, New Hampshire, Quick Facts. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/ states/33000.html.

NEW JERSEY Gladys L. Knight

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Chronology Prehistory

The Lenape People inhabit the area now known as the states of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

1524

Giovanni de Verrazano, an Italian explorer, is the first known European to explore the east coast of North America, including present-day New Jersey.

1609

English explorer Henry Hudson explores Newark Bay in northeastern New Jersey.

1624

The Dutch establish New Netherland, a settlement comprising parts of New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey. The Dutch use enslaved, indentured, and free blacks as labor sources.

1638

The Swedes establish the colony of New Sweden in the region now known as the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Swedish colonists use black slaves for labor.

1655

The Dutch take control of the Swedish colony.

1664

England takes control of the Dutch colony in New Jersey. Some 1,000 whites and at least 100 blacks live in New Jersey. England offers individuals 60 acres of land per slave.

1676

The colony is divided into East Jersey and West Jersey

1680

The total population of the colony is 5,200; the black population is 200.

1702

East and West Jersey become one colony.

1715

The total population of the colony is 22,500; the black population is 1,500.

1726

The total population of New Jersey is 32,442; the black population is 2,581.

1745

The total population of the colony is 61,383; the black population is 4,606.

1775–1783

Over 100 battles occur in New Jersey during the American Revolution. Black slaves who served in the Continental army and the New Jersey Militia are promised freedom.

1776

New Jersey’s new state constitution grants enslaved and free black men and women the right to vote.

1786

An act is passed making it easier for New Jersey slaves to attain freedom.

1790

According to the U.S. Census, the total population of New Jersey is 184,139. The free black population is 2,762 and the black slave population is 11,423.

1793

The New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery is founded.

1793

New Jersey supports passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

1794

The National Abolitionist Movement begins.

New Jersey

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1800

According to the U.S. Census, the total population of New Jersey is 211,149. The free black population is 4,402 and the black slave population is 12,422.

1804

An state act initiates steps toward the gradual abolition of slavery.

1807

A New Jersey law disfranchises blacks.

1810

The total population of New Jersey is 245,555. The free black population is 7,843 and the black slave population is 10,851.

1817

Robert Finley, a Presbyterian minister, plays an instrumental role in the formation of the American Colonization Society. The majority of black New Jerseyans do not support the efforts of the American Colonization Society to return blacks to Africa.

1820

The total population of New Jersey is 277,575. The free black population is 12,455 and the black slave population is 7,557.

1830–1864

Black New Jerseyans participate in the national convention movement and form abolitionist organizations.

1830

The total population of New Jersey is 320,823. The free black population is 18,303 and the black slave population is 2,254.

1840

The total population of New Jersey is 373,306. The free black population is 21,034 and the black slave population is 684.

1849

Black New Jerseyans hold the first of two state conventions.

1850

The total population of New Jersey is 489,555. The free black population is 23,810 and the black slave population is 236.

1860

The total population of New Jersey is 672,035. The free black population is 25,318 and the black slave population is 18.

1861–1865

88,000 New Jerseyans serve in the Civil War, including 2,872 blacks.

1865

(March 16) The New Jersey legislature refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolishes slavery.

1866

( January 23) New Jersey ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, over a month after the amendment takes effect.

1866

(September 11) New Jersey becomes the fourth state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing equal protection to blacks.

1868

(February 20) The New Jersey legislature rescinds its ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment over the governor’s veto; the amendment takes effect in July.

1870

(February 7) The New Jersey Legislature rejects the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing voting rights for blacks.

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1871

(February 15) The New Jersey legislature ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment, over a year after the amendment takes effect.

1872

William Still publishes The Underground Railroad.

1880

The total population of New Jersey is 1,131,116. The black population is 38,853.

1881

A state law prohibits the exclusion of children from public schools because of race, religion, or nationality.

1884

Reverend Jeremiah H. Pierce wins his suit against Burlington City for refusing to integrate its public schools.

1884

A state law is enacted guaranteeing blacks equal access to public accommodations; however, New Jersey remains racially segregated.

1886–1955

Reverend Walter A. Rice establishes Ironsides School (later known as the New Jersey Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth). This school was dubbed the “Tuskegee of the North,” referring to Tuskegee Institute, a famous institution founded in Alabama by Booker T. Washington.

1887

Segregated baseball is initiated when two black baseball players on the Newark Little Giants team are excluded from a game against the Chicago White Stockings in Newark.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation is constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1900

The total population of New Jersey is 1,883,669. The black population ias 69,844.

1917–1918

The United States emerges as a world power during World War I.

1920

The total population of New Jersey is 3,155,900. The black population is 117,132.

1920

Black ghettoes emerge in New Jersey cities.

1920

Walter G. Alexander becomes the first African American elected to the state legislature.

1941–1945

More than 500,000 New Jerseyans participate in World War II, with nearly 25,000 black New Jerseyans serving in the armed forces.

1940

The total population of New Jersey is 4,160,165. The black population is 326,973.

1945

A New Jersey act prohibits racial discrimination in employment.

1946

Jackie Robinson is the first African American to integrate baseball in the twentieth century when he becomes a member of the Montreal Royals in Jersey City.

1947

A New Jersey act prohibits segregation in public schools and in the state militia.

1948

President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981, which desegregates the military.

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1949

The Freeman Act prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations and other public places.

1950s–1960s

The Civil Rights Movement uses litigation and nonviolent demonstrations to challenge segregation and discrimination.

1954

In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation in schools is unconstitutional.

1960

The total population of New Jersey is 6,066,782. The black population is 514,875.

1962

(December 3) New Jersey becomes the second state to ratify the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminates segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.

1964

(August) One of the first race riots to occur after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 erupts in Jersey City.

1965

The Voting Rights Act eliminates discriminatory practices that restricted black suffrage.

1966

Hutchins F. Inge becomes the first African American elected to the New Jersey Senate.

1967

( July) A race riot erupts in Newark and grows into one of the most severe and destructive race riots of the 1960s.

1967

The National Black Power Conference is held in Newark.

1968

The Black Political Convention is held in Newark, which is also visited by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1969

The Black and Puerto Rican Political Convention is held in Newark.

1970

The total population of New Jersey is 7,168,164. The black population is 770,292.

1970

Kenneth Gibson is the first African American mayor of Newark.

1970

( July) A race riot erupts in Asbury Park, where a lack of jobs, adequate housing, and recreational facilities spark unrest.

1971

A race riot erupts in Camden.

1974

The African Women Unite Conference is held in Newark.

1974

S. Howard Woodson is the first African American elected as Speaker of the New Jersey State Assembly.

1984

Suzette Charles, representing New Jersey, becomes the first African American to win the Miss America contest.

1984

James Usry becomes the first African American mayor of Atlantic City.

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1984

The Afro-American Historical Society Museum moves to a permanent location in the Greenville Public Library in Jersey City.

1988

Donald Payne is New Jersey’s first African American congressman.

1990

The total population of New Jersey is 7,730,188. The black population is 1,036,825.

1990

Douglas Palmer becomes the first African American mayor of Trenton.

2000

The total population of New Jersey is 8,414,350. The black population is 1,141,821.

2003

The New Jersey legislature ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the state’s 1866 ratification of the amendment having been rescinded in 1868.

2003

The African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey is founded by Ralph E. Hunter.

2007

Charles Tyson is the first African American mayor of South Harrison Township.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential candidate of a major political party, wins New Jersey with about 57 percent of the vote.

2009

Wendell Pritchett becomes the first African American chancellor of Rutgers University.

2010

Sheila Oliver becomes the first African American female Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly.

Historical Overview Colonial Period to the Civil War The first appearance of blacks in New Jersey, one of the original 13 American colonies, is believed to have coincided with or followed shortly after the arrival of the Dutch in 1624. The Dutch settled in the region known as New Netherland, which was located between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers and comprised parts of New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. This area was originally home to several thousand indigenous people referred to by the Europeans as the Lenape. As a result of disease, violence, and displacement, the Lenape population dwindled rapidly during the colonization of New Jersey. Some of those who did not join the migrations to such

regions as Delaware remained in New Amsterdam and toiled as indentured servants for the Dutch. Whites without privileged backgrounds, money, or property also worked as indentured servants. However, the Dutch relied most heavily on black slaves as a source of free labor. Indeed, the New Dutch West India Company, which was instrumental in establishing Dutch settlements in the New World, was a major slave trader. New Netherland was not the only colony dependent on black slaves, who were taken by force from their ancestral homes in Africa and sold, like property, in foreign, often hostile, lands. Initially, every colony in America participated in the malevolent business of slavery. Governments and authorities sanctioned, and often tacitly encouraged, slavery. Slavery was justified by, among other things, the prevalent belief that it was necessary and profitable.

New Jersey In New Jersey, the slave system established by the Dutch, as well as the Swedes, was not nearly as oppressive and hostile as it would become with the arrival of the English or as it would be in the southern colonies. Although Swedish colonists founded New Sweden, which included South Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania and Delaware, in 1638, they played a relatively brief role in New Jersey. In 1655, the Dutch took over the Swedish settlements and, subsequently, dominated the social, economic, and political life of the colony. Like the Swedes, the Dutch did not use large numbers of slaves during their proprietorship. In addition to black slaves, the Dutch West India Company utilized free blacks and European and Native American indentured servants. The Dutch granted concessions to their laborers. For example, blacks, free or enslaved, could marry and attend church. Free blacks received land on which to grow crops and raise animals, though the Dutch required that they turn over part of their yield. After 1664, when England seized New Jersey from the Dutch, the black population steadily grew, forming two discrete communities: slave and free. By and large, the total black population remained at less than 10 percent of that of the white population. Moreover, until 1820, the black slave population exceeded the population of free blacks. Under English proprietary rule, slavery was encouraged through incentives such as the tax breaks and large property grants that were offered in correlation with the number of slaves an individual owned. Another contributing factor to the increase in the number of slaves brought to New Jersey was the arrival of affluent planters from Barbados as well as Dutch immigrants who increasingly relied on black labor. Before the mid-eighteenth century, most of the slaves were imported from the West Indies, where African slavery had existed since the 1500s. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, most slaves were taken directly from Africa.

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During England’s proprietorship, New Jersey’s involvement in slavery increased considerably. Conditions for black slaves worsened. Slavery in New Jersey was harsher than in any other colony in the North. Of all the northern colonies, slave populations were highest in New Jersey and New York. During the 1700s, laws were established authorizing severe punishments for real or imagined crimes committed by black slaves. A 1704 law required 40 lashes and branding for stealing and castration for sexual misconduct against white women. Other laws imposed curfews and prohibited gatherings of five or more blacks, or made it more difficult for slaves to obtain freedom and regulated slave conduct and behavior. Slaves who, for example, did not behave obsequiously toward whites could be lawfully punished in any number of ways, such as whipping. Black slaves in New Jersey who were charged with killing whites, even in the case of self-defense, received the death penalty. Some scholars contend that the severity of the laws was due to the fear of slave revolts and the fact that many of the slave owners had come from the West Indies, where the slave system was well established and harsh. However, slavery was not condoned by everyone in New Jersey. The slaves themselves found ways to resist human bondage; some destroyed property that belonged to their masters, while others escaped to free black communities within the state and elsewhere. Although slave revolts took place in other colonies, such as the uprising in New York in 1712, there were no large-scale revolts in New Jersey during this period. Quakers, who mostly settled in southern New Jersey, were among the most strident and vocal opponents of slavery in New Jersey. Between 1720 and 1775, abolitionists such as John Woolman, David Cooper, and many others actively promoted the end of slavery, conducting meetings, galvanizing money and support, and putting pressure on the government.

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Freedom was not entirely out of the question. Blacks in New Jersey obtained their freedom in a variety of ways. Wills were one way in which masters commonly granted freedom to their slaves. Other slaves purchased their freedom or simply ran away. Many free blacks purchased the freedom of loved ones and family members. But even free blacks held a precarious place in eighteenth-century New Jersey society. Numerically, they were a minority. They were also denied full equality and excluded from mainstream life. Nevertheless, blacks found strength and dignity within the enclaves of their mostly segregated communities (some blacks did live in integrated communities), mostly in areas like southern New Jersey. Southern New Jersey was known as West Jersey until 1702, when East and West Jersey were merged into a single colony. During the American Revolution, a series of battles that occurred between 1775 and 1783 waged by the colonies to obtain independence from the English, blacks in New Jersey were presented with critical opportunities. For example, black slaves were offered freedom in exchange for service in the militias. Blacks served in militias for both Britain (the first to recruit blacks) and the colonies, making significant contributions to both sides. A slave named Titus was given command of a raiding party for Britain. Several hundred blacks played a critical role in the victory for the American colonists in the Battle of Red Bank. Free black civilians like Cyrus Bustill also made contributions. Bustill, who was born a slave in Burlington, New Jersey, became a baker after he obtained freedom at the age of 36. He famously helped provide baked goods to American troops during the American Revolution. More than 100 battles were fought in New Jersey alone, with blacks contributing in important ways as fighters, guides, and laborers, though they rarely received public commendation and their achievements were not well documented. Free and enslaved blacks were recipients of another opportunity that came with the writing

of New Jersey’s new constitution during the American Revolution. In 1776, New Jersey established, among other things, that black men and women, whether slave or free, should be granted suffrage. Although blacks thus gained the right to vote and many more were free, the majority of blacks were still in bondage. The years following the end of the American Revolution in 1783 were fraught with challenges and resistance, progress and setbacks, for blacks in New Jersey. White abolitionists strengthened their attack against slavery by forming two major organizations: the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1793 and the New Jersey Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. These organizations, which were instrumental in pressing for antislavery legislation, were predominately, if not exclusively, white. In 1804, a New Jersey act manumitted children who were born into slavery after July 4, 1804, after they reached a certain age. Males were freed at the age of 25; females at 21. However, three years later, New Jersey disfranchised blacks. In 1846, all children who were born after the enactment of a new law were emancipated. This law reduced slavery considerably; however, complete emancipation would not occur until 1865. New Jersey was the last state in the North to abolish slavery. As free black populations increased throughout the North, whites brainstormed possible solutions to what was referred to as the “race problem.” This referred to the volatile racial tension and conflict that was largely perpetrated by racist whites who resented the growing population of free blacks. One answer to this problem was the establishment, in 1817, of the American Colonization Society (ACS), an organization designed to establish black colonies in Africa. A New Jersey Presbyterian minister, Robert Finley, was instrumental in the creation of this society, which drew support and participation from liberal white northerners as well as southern slave owners. The New Jersey chapter of the ACS

New Jersey acquired 160,000 acres of land in Liberia, a colony founded by the ACS, and a ship to transport blacks. Although some blacks eagerly promoted black emigration to Africa, most black New Jerseyans did not. Only 24 blacks accepted the invitation to return to Africa. The greater population of free New Jersey blacks preferred to stay in America, forging thriving communities amid the ever-present adversity. Black New Jerseyans established several settlements, such as Skunk Hollow, Snow Hill, Springtown, Timbuctoo, Lawnside, and Gouldtown. A mixed community of Native American, African, and European ancestry known as the “Ramapough Mountain Indians,” or, offensively, as “Jackson Whites,” a term of unknown origin, also emerged (and continues to reside) in parts of New York and New Jersey. Within these settlements, blacks were able to sustain their cultural traditions and establish businesses and predominately black churches, such as the African Methodist Episcopal church. Social clubs, literary societies, fraternities, and mutual-aid organizations were popular. These healthy and supportive communities fostered black achievement, entrepreneurs, influential leaders, black pride, and activism. Free blacks mobilized to take action against slavery and their own marginalized status in New Jersey. Blacks as well as whites supported and actively participated in the Underground Railroad, a clandestine operation that facilitated the escape of fugitive slaves. Blacks and whites offered refuge to black fugitives in hidden locations in their homes or elsewhere on their property. Some worked as conductors for the Underground Railroad. Such men and women expertly navigated black slaves along numerous routes, with many narrow escapes, often while being hunted by slave catchers with guns and dogs. Mandates such as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which was vigorously supported by New Jersey, required states to return fugitive

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slaves to their masters. Despite the dangers, prominent New Jerseyans like William and James Still and the famous conductor Harriet Tubman, who resided in Cape May between 1849 and 1850, diligently worked to help runaway slaves. William Still was referred to as the “Father of the Underground Railroad,” and his brother, James, was one of the first black doctors in New Jersey. While living in New Jersey, Tubman worked and collected money for the Underground Railroad, establishing a headquarters there. New Jersey was a pivotal location; the state not only served as a destination for many fugitive slaves, but provided key passage to free black settlements to the north, all the way to Canada. Slavery was just one of the issues covered during the black convention movement that occurred between 1830 and 1864. National and state conventions took place in states such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. New Jersey sent representatives to all the national conventions and organized two state conventions in 1849 and 1865. One of their primary concerns was suffrage, as blacks in New Jersey had been disfranchised in 1807.

The Civil War Before African Americans could meet for the second state convention, President Abraham Lincoln launched a major attack against slavery with the advent of the Civil War in 1861. Although some 88,000 New Jerseyans participated in the war, the state was not a zealous advocate for blacks. For example, the government refused to create a state regiment for the nearly 3,000 blacks who eagerly desired to serve; they had to join other state regiments. At the close of the war in 1865, New Jersey, along with all remaining slave states, freed its slave population (though by 1860, there were only 18 slaves in New Jersey, thanks to legislation that had been enacted previously). However, attitudes after the

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Civil War remained largely antiblack; white New Jerseyans challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, the monumental federal legislation that eliminated slavery (Thirteenth Amendment), granted due process and equal protection (Fourteenth Amendment), and bestowed voting rights to blacks (Fifteenth Amendment).

Civil War to World War II In the century following the eradication of slavery, blacks across the country contended with new forms of racism and discrimination. Although the northern states are frequently depicted as havens for freedom- and opportunityseeking blacks, New Jersey blacks experienced struggles similar to those endured by southern blacks. As in the South, New Jersey permitted exclusionary practices and segregation. Between 1848 and 1945, no African American graduated from Princeton University. Blacks and whites attended racially segregated schools, despite a law that was enacted in 1881 that granted all children equal access to public schools. However, the fact that large numbers of blacks migrated from the South and settled in New Jersey demonstrates that New Jersey’s racial climate was less hostile. Racial violence against blacks was much more prominent in the South, and blacks did enjoy some basic rights, such as voting, in New Jersey. In 1884, Reverend Jeremiah H. Pierce successfully challenged segregation in public schools in Burlington City, though the practice of racial exclusion in public schools and elsewhere was not easily eliminated. Between 1887 and 1946, blacks and whites played in segregated baseball leagues. Until the 1940s, New Jersey provided little if any protection for blacks against laws and practices that violated their rights as equal citizens. Note also that in some contexts, such as school and church, many black New Jerseyans preferred racial separation. Black parents contended that separate schools sheltered black

children from racism and instilled black pride. Traditional black churches nurtured racial solidarity and provided leadership opportunities and an outlet for unique styles of cultural expression and worship. The first black ghettos in New Jersey emerged during World War I, as large black populations settled in cities such as Newark, Atlantic City, Camden, and Jersey City. As blacks moved into these urban areas, whites moved out into the suburbs. This housing pattern exacerbated racial tensions between blacks and working-class whites and immigrants, who lived in close proximity. Compounding the threat of racial violence was the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. In New Jersey alone, the Ku Klux Klan attracted some 60,000 members. It also reflected the racial and economic polarity in the state, wherein privilege and opportunity were equated with the white suburbs, and poverty, crime, and other social problems were associated with the black urban ghettos. Indeed, many social problems plagued black residents who lived in oftentimes overcrowded, dilapidated, and pest-infested buildings and suffered from the effects of racism, unemployment, and disproportionate disadvantages. These problems worsened during the Depression, World War II, and beyond. Black-led organizations such as the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the New Jersey Urban League helped to address the evermounting racial issues.

Civil Rights Era Despite the social problems that plagued the predominately black urban communities, African Americans in New Jersey achieved the first of several progressive legislative acts a full two decades before blacks in the South. This legislation was enacted in the shadow of significant black involvement in World War II, when blacks were forced

New Jersey to serve in segregated units. Nearly 25,000 black New Jerseyans served in the armed forces during the war. African American males, such as New Jersey native Calvin Spann, served with distinction as Tuskegee Airmen. They dispelled the prevalent racist belief that blacks were incompetent and intellectually inferior. African American women joined the Women’s Army Corps and worked in wartime factories. Following World War II, laws to combat discrimination began to crop up. The first major civil rights act of the twentieth century in New Jersey was passed in 1945. This act prohibited racial discrimination in employment. In 1947, a New Jersey act abolished segregation in public schools and state militia, and in 1949, the Freeman Act prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations and public places. As was so often the case with racial issues, these acts did not bring overnight change in New Jersey. But in the wake of these civil rights milestones in New Jersey, the Civil Rights Movement built momentum. The Civil Rights Movement brought forth enormous gains for blacks across the nation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education (1954), involving a lawsuit against a board of education in Kansas, a midwestern state, eradicated segregated schools in the United States. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 dealt a death blow to discrimination in schools, the workplace, public accommodations, and facilities, while the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory literary tests, poll taxes, and other methods designed to prevent blacks from voting.

Black Power Movement and Beyond When, in the summer of 1964, a race riot erupted in Jersey City, New Jersey, racial problems that had long been churning were exposed. Since the emergence of black ghettoes in cities in New

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Jersey and elsewhere in the North, African Americans had disproportionately contended with social and economic disparities, racism, and discrimination. Unemployment, poverty, broken families, overcrowded and dilapidated housing, drugs, crime, and other problems had become the hallmarks of urban ghettoes in New Jersey and elsewhere. Although the Civil Rights Movement had garnered worldwide attention to suffering blacks in the South, blacks in the North had continued to be neglected. As frustrations swelled, blacks reacted explosively, destroying property and local businesses, often looting and setting buildings on fire. The Jersey City riot lasted for three days in the smoldering heat of early August. The triggering event was the arrest of an African American for disorderly conduct. Other New Jersey riots occurred in Paterson, Elizabeth, Newark, Plainfield, Asbury Park, and Camden. Newark had one of the highest African American populations in the nation, and the blacks who resided there were among the most impoverished. The Newark riot lasted five days, starting on July 12, 1967, and was considered one of the nation’s worst disturbances. This riot was incited by preexisting social problems, compounded by racial tensions between black residents and racist police officers, and the beating of an African American cab driver who had been charged with a traffic violation. It took local police, state police, and the National Guard to quell the disturbance. In the course of the riot, 23 people died and more than 700 people were injured. Between 1965 and 1970, more than 500 urban riots broke out across the nation. Following the Newark riot of 1967, Amiri Baraka, born Everett LeRoi Jones, a New Jersey native and founder of the Black Arts Movement in New York, launched the second National Black Power Conference. (Congressman Adam Clayton Powell had inaugurated the first conference in Washington, D.C., in 1966.) Baraka’s conference drew 1,000 participants, including

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National Guardsmen search several persons arrested July 15, 1967, in Newark after curfew went into effect at 10:00 p.m. New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes declared martial law in the riot-torn city. (AP/Wide World Photos)

leaders of major black power organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. Though many of these organizations held disparate philosophies, all of them were considered relatively radical compared to the conservative organizations of the Civil Rights Movement. Some black power groups emphasized race pride and culture; others were primarily concerned with politics. At the meeting in Newark, African Americans discussed and debated a variety of issues concerning impoverished black communities, culture, politics, and coalitions.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, Baraka remained a leading figure within the national Black Power Movement, as well as the African American community in Newark. In Newark alone, Baraka founded or inspired a number of black political and cultural organizations including the African Free School, the Congress of African People, the Black Community Defense and Development organization, Spirit House, and United Brothers. One of Baraka’s most significant accomplishments was the coordination of the Black and Puerto Rican Political Convention in 1969, which was followed by a successful campaign to elect the first

New Jersey African American mayor in Newark, Kenneth Gibson, in 1970. In the ensuing decades, African Americans in New Jersey continued to experience progress. However, while the number of upwardly mobile African Americans increased, blacks still lagged considerably behind whites in terms of social and economic advancement. Higher percentages of blacks remained below the poverty line and resided in racially segregated inner-city areas. Issues such as racial profiling, unemployment, high-school dropout rates, drugs, and crime riddled predominately urban black neighborhoods. Nevertheless, more and more black New Jerseyans have nonetheless excelled in a variety of fields.

Notable African Americans Alexander, Walter (1880–1953) Born on December 3, 1880, in Lynchburg, Virginia, Walter Alexander, a son of former slaves, established a long and dynamic career as a physician and politician. Alexander attended Lincoln University, a historically black institution in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and Boston College of Physicians and Surgeons in Massachusetts. He practiced medicine in Virginia for one year before moving to Orange, New Jersey, where he lived until his death. Alexander achieved critical acclaim during the early twentieth century. While racism, racial violence, and discrimination abounded throughout the United States, Alexander accomplished numerous achievements as vice president of the New Jersey National Medical Association (an organization for black physicians), organizer of the North Jersey Medical Society, member of the National Medical Association, and cofounder of the Journal of the National Medical Association. In 1920, Alexander earned the distinction of being the first African American elected to the New Jersey Legislature. In 1921, Alexander became the first African American to serve as acting Speaker

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of the Assembly in Speaker George S. Hobart’s absence. Other achievements include cofounding the first New Jersey chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha, a black fraternity, and serving as the president of the New Jersey Tuberculosis League.

Basie, William (Count Basie) (1904–1984) Count Basie, who was born William Basie on August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey, played a significant role in the emergence of jazz music as a national obsession. Basie started out as a piano player on the popular all-black vaudeville circuit. Vaudeville shows launched the careers of a number of African American entertainers, particularly blues singers such as Bessie Smith. Basie’s career rocketed soon after he formed his band in the late 1920s. This band was among the headlining groups during the big band jazz era of the 1930s. Basie performed with such greats as Frank Sinatra and African American singers such as Sarah Vaughan, another New Jersey native, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Count Basie at his piano, 1958. (Library of Congress)

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Paul Robeson, world-famous stage and film performer, leads workers in singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the Moore shipyard in Oakland, California, in September 1942. Robeson entertained Allied forces during World War II. (National Archives)

Robeson, Paul (1898–1976) Paul Robeson, born on April 8, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, was a world-renowned civil rights activist and performer. He was the youngest of five children born to a runaway slave and a free black woman. Robeson’s father had escaped from slavery and graduated from Lincoln University; his mother was raised in a family of radical abolitionists. Robeson excelled academically and athletically at Rutgers University, despite the challenges of attending a predominately white institution and dealing with racism and physical harassment. Robeson also attended Columbia Law School; however, the racism he experienced in a law firm following his graduation deterred him from pursuing a career in that field. Instead, Robeson turned to music, and his sonorous baritone voice endeared him to audiences around the world. His commanding performances included

major roles in Othello, a play by William Shakespeare; Show Boat, a musical; All God’s Chillun Got Wings, a play; and a number of films. Robeson used his fame to speak out against the atrocities afflicting blacks in America as well as other oppressed peoples across the world. His activism and empathetic views towards communist countries made him a controversial figure in America. During the 1940s and 1950s, Robeson was banned from American media, and his passport was revoked until 1958.

Washington, Sarah Spencer (1889–1953) On June 6, 1889, Sarah Spencer Washington, New Jersey’s own “Madame C. J. Walker,” was born. Born Sarah Breedlove, she was the first female entrepreneur to become a millionaire. Walker achieved enormous success during the

New Jersey first two decades of the twentieth century, producing and selling hair care products for African American women. Washington, a Beckley, West Virginia, native, entered the black hair industry in 1913 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, filling a gaping need for black women. While managing a salon, Washington instructed students and developed her own unique products. Washington, who became known as “Madame Washington,” established the Apex News and Hair Company and opened beauty colleges in 12 states.

Cultural Contributions Black New Jerseyans have made countless cultural contributions, within and outside the state, in a variety of fields. In the early nineteenth century, African Americans largely relied upon their own efforts to explore cultural interests through such organizations as literary societies. Black history and achievements were remembered by being incorporated into the curriculum at segregated schools. Predominately black institutions such as the African American Methodist Episcopal and Baptist churches were also repositories of black culture and tradition. Since the 1830s, New Jersey has produced a number of African American women writers who explored black culture and life, slavery, and oppression—topics and themes that were largely neglected in mainstream literature. Amiri Baraka played a seminal role in popularizing African and African American literature and art and the African aesthetic during the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Baraka, a prolific poet, playwright, and essayist, established the Black Arts Movement in New York in 1965. In Newark, he founded all-black organizations that promoted political involvement and embraced cultural expressions such as African dance and Afrocentric fashion and hairstyles. Baraka’s black-consciousness ideology challenged centuries-old racist beliefs that blacks were inferior and abhorrent. The black-consciousness movement that swept out from Newark across

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the nation helped cultivate black cultural identity, esteem, and community solidarity. In the world of entertainment, New Jersey blacks have been among the most influential performers in the country. New Jersey natives such as Count Basie pioneered jazz music, a genre that originated in African American communities. Sarah Vaughan, a jazz singer, enjoyed a glittering career that lasted from the 1940s to the 1980s, and Dionne Warwick’s soulful voice set the tone for music in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s, as black sitcoms became increasingly popular on television, Flip Wilson debuted his distinctive comedy, The Flip Wilson Show, wherein he parodied a parade of black characters. During the late twentieth century and beyond, New Jersey has seen the emergence of cultural museums and organizations and has contributed to a new popular music style. African American

Queen Latifah during the taping of a show at the BET studios, 2010. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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museums and historical societies are fixtures in cities nationwide wherever African Americans, in large numbers or small, reside. New Jersey’s African American historical societies and museums, such as the Afro-American Historical Society Museum and the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey, document and preserve the history of local blacks, their African origins, and the greater African American experience in the United States. New Jersey blacks played a prominent role in the development of hip-hop music and culture. New Jersey produced many popular rappers, such as the members of the pioneering group Sugarhill Gang, the group Naughty by Nature, and Queen Latifah. Rap music and hip-hop culture, along with their distinct fashion trends, slang, and behavior, are largely a composite of the urban and ethnic influences that emerged from urban ethnic (African American and Hispanic) neighborhoods.

Bibliography African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey, Inc. (February 2010). www .aahmsnj.org. Fishman, George. The African American Struggle for Freedom and Equality: The Development of

a People’s Identity, New Jersey, 1624–1850. New York: Routledge, 1997. Jersey City History. (February 2010). www .cityofjerseycity.org. Lurie, Maxine N., and Marc Mappen, eds. Encyclopedia of New Jersey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Martin, Alfred M., and Alfred T. Martin. The Negro Leagues in New Jersey: A History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. Moses, Sibyl M. African American Women Writers in New Jersey, 1836–2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Price, Clement Alexander, ed. A Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of AfroAmericans in New Jersey. Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1980. Westergaard, Barbara. New Jersey: A Guide to the State. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Woodard, Komozi. A Nation within A Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Wright, Giles R. Afro-Americans in New Jersey: A Short History. Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1989.

NEW MEXICO Jamane Yeager

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Chronology 1536

The Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca, accompanied by the dark-skinned Estevan (also Esteban, Estevanico) the Moor and two others, reaches Culican, Mexico, after crossing southern New Mexico.

1539

Estevan the Moor is killed in a Zuni village.

1598

Juan de Oñate establishes the first Spanish capital of New Mexico at San Juan de los Caballeros at the Tewa village of Ohke north of present-day Espanola.

1598

Oñate’s colonizers include six blacks: two soldiers, three black female slaves, and one mulatto slave.

1821

Mexico declares its independence from Spain.

1821

The Santa Fe Trail opens from Independence, Missouri, to New Mexico, opening trade from New Mexico to the United States.

1821

The African American fur traders James Beckwourth and Edward Rose travel through New Mexico.

1828

The first major gold discovery in what will become the western United States is made in the Ortiz Mountains south of Santa Fe.

1828

Mexico bans slavery throughout its territories, including New Mexico.

1830

Moses “Black” Harris is engaged in the fur trade in Santa Fe with other furriers.

1836–1840

James Beckwourth supervises trading operations at Fort Vasquez.

1846

The U.S.-Mexican War begins. Stephen Watts Kearney annexes New Mexico to the United States.

1846

Jim Beckwourth opens a hotel in Santa Fe.

1848

(February 2) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the U.S.-Mexican War. New Mexico is part of a vast tract of Mexican territory ceded to the United States by the treaty.

1848

The discovery of gold in California begins the Gold Rush, bringing many people to the West in search of gold.

1850

Congress organizes the New Mexico Territory, which includes the present-day state of Arizona.

1850

James Beckwourth discovers Beckwourth Pass.

1856

The territorial legislature passes an act restricting entrance of free blacks into New Mexico.

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1859

The territorial legislature enacts a slave code for New Mexico.

1860

Forty black slaves are resident in New Mexico

1862

The Battles of Velarde and Glorieta Pass end the Confederate occupation of New Mexico.

1862

The territorial legislature repeals the New Mexico Slave Code. The U.S. Congress bans slavery in the western territories.

1863

The New Mexico Territory is partitioned, with the western portion becoming the Territory of Arizona with Prescott as its capital.

1865

Black cowboy Bose Ikard begins driving cattle into New Mexico with Charles Goodnight.

1866–1917

The black buffalo soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalry are assigned to forts in New Mexico

1870

Dora, in the Cimarron Valley, is settled by freed slaves from Texas.

1878

The railroad arrives in New Mexico, opening full-scale trade and migration.

1878

The Lincoln County War erupts in southeastern New Mexico; in the conflict, three black cowboys side with Alexander McSween and William Bonney (Billy the Kid).

1879

Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, serves in New Mexico with black troops.

1880

The black 9th Cavalry leads the parade commemorating the arrival of the first railroad in Albuquerque.

1881

Sheriff Pat Garrett shoots Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner.

1881

“Cherokee Jim” discovers silver in the Burros Mountains.

1883

The plot for the Coal Avenue Colored Methodist Church, presently the Grants Chapel AME Church, is donated by the New Mexico Township Corporation for the formation of “New Town” around the railroad.

1886

The Apache warrior Geronimo surrenders to the U.S. Army; Indian hostilities cease in the Southwest.

1896

John Collins owns an express company that transports settler families to the mountains of New Mexico.

1897

Blackdom settled by Francis Boyer and Daniel Keyes. The brothers Frank and Dock Oliver dig first tunnels in the Dawson Mountains.

1889

Fred Simms, an African American stenographer, helps found the University of New Mexico.

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1901

John Collins plants trees in front of the administration buildings in Albuquerque.

1906

The people of New Mexico and Arizona vote on the issue of joint statehood, with New Mexico voting in favor and Arizona against.

1906

Blacks are hired as miners at the Old Brilliant mining camp.

1907

The first three black girls scheduled for graduation from Albuquerque High School are not allowed to graduate with their class; instead they graduate with the University of New Mexico high school section.

1908

George McJunkins accidentally discovers the Folsom archeological site, a site indicating human habitation in North America during the Ice Age.

1910

A state constitution is drafted for New Mexico in preparation for statehood.

1910

The U.S. Census shows that black miners make up one of the largest groups of post– Civil War migrants to New Mexico.

1912

(January 6) New Mexico enters the Union as the 47th state.

1912

The Albuquerque Independent Society is formed; the Society is the forerunner of the NAACP in Albuquerque.

1913

The Albuquerque chapter of the NAACP is formed.

1913

The Dunbar Club, also known as the Little Forum, is formed in New Mexico schools to teach Negro history.

1914

The Home Circle Club, the oldest continuously active black social club in New Mexico, is chartered in Albuquerque.

1914

M. T. Malone becomes the first African American to pass the New Mexico bar exam and practice law in the state.

1914

Birdie Hardin is the first black graduate of Albuquerque High School.

1916

The Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raids Columbus, New Mexico.

1919

Owen Smaulding sets track records at Albuquerque High School.

1920

New Mexico ratifies the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

1920

Dr. James Lewis opens the People’s Sanatorium in Albuquerque.

1925

Separate schools for blacks are legalized in New Mexico.

1930s

During the Great Depression, federal New Deal funds provide employment for many in New Mexico and cause the construction of numerous public buildings in the state.

1930

Romeo Lewis is the first black medical graduate of the University of New Mexico.

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1938

Oliver LaGrone, a noted sculptor, poet, and teacher, is the first African American graduate of the University of New Mexico.

1948

Native Americans win the right to vote in New Mexico elections.

1950

Uranium is discovered near Grants.

1952

Howard LaGrone is instrumental in the drafting and passage of the state’s first Civil Rights Law.

1963

(March 5) New Mexico ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1968

Dr. Lenton Malry becomes the first African American to sit in the New Mexico Legislature.

1970

Albert Johnson becomes the first black mayor in the state with his election as mayor of Las Cruces.

1985

Governor Tony Anaya appoints James B. Lewis as New Mexico state treasurer.

1990

The Charlie Morrisey Research Hall is established at the University of New Mexico.

1999

The State Office of African American Affairs is created.

2003

Governor Bill Richardson names Alice Hoppes as director of the State Office of African American Affairs.

2004

The African American Pavilion at the New Mexico Expo Fairgrounds in Albuquerque is renamed the Alice Hoppes African American Pavilion.

2005

Representative Sheryl Williams Stapleton is elected majority whip in the New Mexico House of Representatives.

2006

James B. Lewis is elected New Mexico state treasurer.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries New Mexico with about 57 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Prehistory to Territorial Status, 1536–1848 The history of African Americans in New Mexico begins with Estevan, a black slave born in Azamor, Morocco. In 1539, Estevan became a guide for Fray Marcos de Niza’s expedition into

Northern New Spain in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition traveled across the Sonora desert with Estevan moving well ahead, dispatching regular reports to Fray Marcos while gathering around him a company of 300 Indian women and men, all of whom believed him a powerful healer and medicine man. Surviving Indian accounts of his journey describe the approach of a black man, large in

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stature, adorned with animal pelts, turquoise, and bells and feathers on his ankles and arms. When Estevan attempted to enter the Zuni town of Hawikuh, just east of the present-day Arizona– New Mexico border, which he mistakenly believed to be the first of the seven cities, he was killed by the townspeople. Estevan’s expedition strengthened Spanish claims to the region, sparked additional exploration, and opened the area to the subsequent settlement of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and other towns. It also initiated the tripartite meeting of Indian, Spanish, and Anglo cultures that would shape much of New Mexican history. Estevan’s travels constitute the best account of the early African presence, but the historical records reveal other examples of people of African ancestry who accompanied Spanish explorers in New Mexico. The Coronado Expedition of 1540–1542, which followed Estevan’s route to the northern frontier, included numerous individuals of African ancestry, several of whom deserted to remain in New Mexico. The Leyba de BenilloAntonio Gutierres de Humana Expedition of 1593, which attempted to establish a Spanish colony near Santa Fe, had black members, as did the Juan de Oñate party in 1598. Oñate’s colonizers included five blacks, two of whom were soldiers, as well as three black female slaves and one mulatto slave. The Juan Guerra de Resa relief expedition of 1600, organized to strengthen Oñate’s New Mexican colony, included several soldiers who illegally brought mulatto women and children with them. Isabel de Olvera joined the expedition as the servant for one of the Spanish women. Olvera was concerned about her safety and status on the northern frontier, so she had an affidavit drawn up that stated that she was a free woman, unmarried and the legitimate daughter of Hernando, a Negro, and an Indian named Magdalena. She also requested a signed copy of the affidavit be given to her to take with her on the expedition. Nearly a century later, in

1692, the Don Diego de Vargas expedition, which reconquered New Mexico following the Pueblo Revolt, included two native Africans, Sebastian Rodriguez Brito from Angola, and Francisco Rico, who was born in the Congo. As these examples show, black and mixed-race people settled in Spanish New Mexico and they were among the first permanent non-Indian inhabitants in 1598 as well as among subsequent Spanish-speaking settlers whose ranks grew slowly from 750 in 1630 to 2,900 in 1680. This diverse population prompted Fray Estevan de Perea to characterize the region’s colonists in 1631 as “mestizos, mulattos, and zanbohijos.” People of African ancestry joined the various competing political factions that emerged in the region. Black and mixed-race people moved to New Mexico to escape the social discrimination they faced in central Mexico. Historian Dedre McDonald argues that both free and enslaved people of African ancestry used the region’s isolation to gain economic and social opportunities.

Mountain Men Few blacks entered New Mexico between 1821 and 1848, and those who did were usually trappers and fur traders. Like their more numerous white counterparts, African American traders and trappers chose this solitary life in the western mountains primarily for the profits derived from trading or trapping. But the frontier also afforded freedom from racial restrictions typically imposed by “settled” communities. Edward Rose and James Beckwourth were two African American fur-trapping trailblazers who committed their lives to the Western frontier. They often adopted native dress, and they reinforced that decision by forging ties with the Native Americans and their customs and usually took Indian wives; although the motives for such marriages were political and economic as well as personal, since marriage into Indian communities assured military allies and a

New Mexico steady supply of furs. At least one African American trapper, Edward Rose, actually crossed the cultural frontier and was permanently accepted into Native American society. The most famous and controversial African American trapper was James Beckwourth, who lived and worked in the West for nearly 60 years. Beckwourth spent 1836 to 1840 at Fort Vasquez, New Mexico, where he supervised trading operations for Luis Vasquez. He married Louisa Sandoval, a “young Spanish girl” in Santa Fe in 1840, and in 1847, Beckwourth returned to New Mexico in time to join the American effort to defeat Mexican forces in the region. Beckwourth discovered what is now known as Beckwourth’s Pass in the spring of 1850, and immediately set about establishing a trail to Marysville. He worked on the trail in the summer and fall of 1850 and spring of 1851, and in the late summer of that year led the first wagon train of settlers along the trail into Marysville. Beckwourth’s Trail was used heavily until about 1855, when the railroad supplanted the wagon train as the preferred method of travelling to California. Other mountain men included Moses “Black” Harris, who was engaged in the fur trade in Santa Fe with other furriers in 1830, and Richard Green. In 1847, Green, a servant of Charles Bent, governor of New Mexico was murdered at Taos. After joining Colonel C. S. St. Vrain’s company of trappers and traders to fight a storming battle at Taos, New Mexico, Green was granted his freedom by Charles Bent’s brother William. In the 1840s, when Santa Fe was closed to Americans and beaver diminished in the central and northern Rockies, the day of the fur trader drew to a close. The mountain men had played their role. They found South Pass, and discovered such important highways as the Snake River route to Oregon, the Humboldt River trail to California, and the Gila River road to the Southwest. The traders opened the door to the West to settlers who soon followed their trails across the continent.

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New Mexico Territory to 1880 After years of debate, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, which brought California into the Union as a free state, while Texas’s 1845 admission allowed slavery. As for New Mexico— the vast area between Texas and California that included Arizona, as well as parts of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada—congressmen agreed to disagree. Slavery was not prohibited, but both sides believed that this arid, mountainous country could not support a plantation economy. Many politicians and historians believe New Mexico’s climate and topography, which preclude large-scale cotton plantations, saved it from slavery. But black slavery failed in New Mexico primarily because the landholding aristocracy had other sources of coerced labor—Mexican American peons and Indian slaves. On the eve of the Civil War, well over 3,000 Indians were enslaved in New Mexico, and thousands more impoverished Mexican workers were held in peonage. Nonetheless, a few blacks were held as slaves. Most of the 40 black slaves in New Mexico in 1860 accompanied southern-born territorial officials or military officers who were assigned there during the 1850s. The black man who arrived in 1851 with Mississippian Grafton Baker, the territory’s first chief justice, was typical of such slaves. When the territorial legislature passed an act restricting the entrance of free blacks into New Mexico in 1856, slavery became a political issue. An 1857 act, for instance, prohibited the residence of “free negroes or mulattoes in the territory,” adding that anyone who emancipated a person of African heritage had to transport him or her out of the territory within 30 days. Another law prohibited “the marriage of a negro or mulatto, free or slave, to white woman”— although a white man presumably was free to take a wife without regard to ancestry. Less than a decade later, the Civil War would end race-based slavery, but laws against interracial

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marriage would remain in force for many decades. This measure was primarily designed to prevent runaway Texas slaves from entering New Mexico or from being brought in by sympathetic groups such as the “Cumancharus” (Comancheros). Two free blacks, Harriet Brown in 1859 and John Winters in 1861, were expelled from the territory under its provisions. The law, however, was less effective than its proponents intended since the number of free blacks grew from 22 in 1850 to 64 in 1860. In 1859, Miguel Otero, the New Mexican delegate to Congress, persuaded the territorial legislature to enact a slave code that included provisions against slave movement and travel, prohibited their testifying in court, and restricted the owners’ right to arm slaves except when necessary in defending against Indian raids. Immediately after the Civil War began, the New Mexico Slave Code was repealed, and the following year, 1862, Congress banned slavery in the territories. The war brought freedom to the few African American slaves in New Mexico and initiated the liberation of the thousands of Indian slaves and Mexican American peons. Since the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, in 1867, Congress enacted legislation designed to end New Mexican peonage. Another three decades passed before this coerced labor system disappeared from New Mexico.

New Mexico Territory to Statehood, 1880–1912 When the Civil War ended slavery in 1865, more African Americans chose to venture west. Over 100,000 former black southerners homesteaded along a high-plains agricultural frontier that extended from the Oklahoma Territory north to Dakota Territory. Some of these African Americans made their way into New Mexico. In the 1870s, Dora, a town in the Cimarron Valley, was initially settled by freed people from Texas before being

supplanted by cattlemen. George McJunkins, a former Texas slave, first entered New Mexico in 1868 as a cowboy; he eventually homesteaded a ranch near Raton around the turn of the century. In 1900, the Jasper B. Williams family filed as homesteaders on 640 acres of land near Las Cruces. The following year, the Milton Sutton family homesteaded land near Clayton, New Mexico. The Sutton children, two daughters and two sons, also filed homestead claims in the area. Besides Dora in northeastern New Mexico, African Americans founded two all-black agricultural communities. The most famous was Blackdom, located near Roswell. Blackdom was settled by Francis Marion Boyer and Daniel Keyes, two former Georgians who arrived in 1897. Boyer, a former teacher, had founded towns in Georgia and Alabama before he established Blackdom. Boyer’s father, Henry Boyer, had been a civilian wagoneer with the U.S. Army during the Mexican War (1847) and told his son about the Great Plains and how he could get land under the Homestead Act. Impressed with his father’s description of New Mexico, the younger Boyer returned a half century later. After arriving in New Mexico in 1897, Francis Boyer began working as a cook on the Chisum Ranch. In 1898, he sent for his wife and children and soon afterward homesteaded 800 acres, one mile west of Dexter. Although the area was originally considered good only for cattle raising, Boyer discovered that, with adequate well water for irrigation, crops could be grown. After purchasing land, Boyer and Keyes made recruiting trips to Oklahoma and Texas and advertised in black newspapers for prospective settlers. The community grew slowly as blacks from Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas settled there and began growing cotton, cantaloupe, onions, alfalfa, and sugar beets. The town’s population peaked at 300 in 1929 and boasted a Baptist church, school, store, and post office surrounded by 50,000 acres of homesteaded land. Among the Blackdom residents was Mississippi-born W. T. Malone who, in 1914, became the first African

New Mexico American to pass the New Mexico bar exam and practice law in the state.

Statehood As in many black western agricultural communities, the homesteaders often supplemented their incomes by working on nearby ranches or in local communities. Blackdom’s decline began when the homesteaders were unable to finance artesian wells. Town founders Boyer and Keyes saw their own lands foreclosed when they could not raise the money to finance deep wells. The two families then moved to the Mesilla Valley, where Boyer founded a second town, El Vado. Boyer had heard of the Homestead Act, which permitted a person to homestead up to 160 acres of land. He claimed miles of desert land west of Dexter. The date Boyer started El Vado is unclear, but it is known that the community was established along the Rio Grande, near Las Cruces, 40 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Boyer followed the same pattern as in Blackdom, homesteading land, recruiting settlers from the South, and establishing irrigation systems. Boyer found that the land was supposed to be only good for grazing cattle, but soon it was discovered that flowing wells could be reached. People came in a land rush, bought the land, and made a farming section out of the area. The land was good for planting cotton, cantaloupe, onions, alfalfa, and sugar beets. Boyer called a meeting of all itinerant black farmers that he knew on one Sunday, and met with the owner and arranged a long-term agreement. The landless black farmers now had land and in time the subterranean streams were channeled into irrigation ditches. In time, the worthless land became wealth. The Ku Klux Klan resented the presence of blacks, and one night burned a cross in the center of the settlement. The settlers held their ground. The Klan threatened and burned more crosses, but Vado refused to budge. Finally,

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it was King Cotton that settled the dispute. The discovery that cotton would thrive near Vado, and the realization that the black farmers were the only ones in the area who knew how to cultivate it, caused the Klansmen and their backers to cease the assault. The Klan never rose again. By 1938, local African American farmers formed a cooperative, El Vado Corporation Store, to market their products. Unlike Blackdom, which eventually disappeared, El Vado continues as a small but thriving community. Black miners made up the largest group of post–Civil War migrants to the state. Lured by the mining boom of the 1880s, blacks concentrated in Grant County, which as late as 1910 had the four largest black populations in the territory and approximately 10 percent of its African American population. In Raton, an African American miner had to live in specified sections of the camp and was limited to certain jobs. The camps were divided into the Anglo-Saxon area (downtown), Germantown, Woptown, Mexicantown, Chinatown, and Coontown, located by the mine fan houses. Old Brilliant was one of the oldest mining camps where blacks were hired as far back as 1906. Many black miners were escaped slaves from the South and many black miners were brought to New Mexico and used as strikebreakers. Part of the reason for the strikes was the working hazards, low wages, and long hours in the sweaty underground tunnels. Squalid company housing added to the miner’s discontent. Often companies paid their workers in script instead of money, which could only be redeemed at the company store where prices to the consumer were high and profits to the management were higher. The miners wanted money to trade in Raton or Trinidad. Because of the money situation, many of the wives worked as maids and cooks at the Gardiner Hospital. Dawson was the largest mining settlement, and the first tunnels in the Dawson Mountains were dug in 1897 by two brothers, Frank and Dock Oliver. The mine

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was owned by Phelps Dodge Coal Company. There were two major explosions at the mine between 1913 and 1925, and because of the number of casualties and superstition, many miners moved away from Dawson. A black man from southwestern New Mexico named Bowman, better known as “Cherokee Jim,” discovered a rich silver float in the Bullard’s Peak District at the northern end of the Burro Mountains in 1881. John Black and his partner Sloan discovered a mine known as the Blue Bell, later known as Alhambra. Two other blacks owned and operated the Silver Dollar mine in Tijeras Canyon around Albuquerque (Richardson, 85). By the 1890s, the mining decline had begun. By 1910, two years before statehood, the United States census recorded 78 coal miners, who comprised (after 87 servants) the single largest occupational category in the state.

Cowboys New Mexico also had a small number of black cowboys. One of the most famous was a Mississippi-born slave, Bose Ikard. Ikard rode with cattlemen like Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, John Chisum, and John Slaughter as they broke out of Texas and drove thousands of cattle over deserts, through Apache, Sioux, and Comanche territory, on toward the New Mexico reservations and army posts. Ikard was born a slave in Mississippi in 1847 and was brought to Texas by his master’s family, the Ikards, when he was five years old. Growing up on the frontier near Weatherford, Texas, he learned to ride, rope, and fight, skills that were to make him a valuable hand later. After the end of the war, he was hired by Oliver Loving, who was rounding up cattle and hoping to find a market for them. Loving and Goodnight agreed to throw their two herds together—2,000 cattle in all—and begin their drive west. At Fort Sumner, New Mexico, they found a market for their steers, selling them to the general

contractor of the fort. They were able to sell all the steers, because the government was desperate for beef to feed the nearly starving Navajos it had crowded into a newly established reservation. Goodnight returned to Texas with Ikard to assemble another herd. When Oliver Loving died the next year, Bose became Goodnight’s man exclusively. From then until 1869, they rode together. The story has been masterfully told by J. Evetts Haley in Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman. According to Haley, Bose Ikard “added life, friendship, and color to the Goodnight Trail.” Bose was only one of the black cowboys Goodnight employed. Most of the others are nameless, as are most of the white cowboys who rode with Goodnight on the early trails up the Pecos River into New Mexico. Other black cowboys worked in New Mexico, including four who found themselves embroiled in the Lincoln County War of 1878 that introduced William Bonney (Billy the Kid) to the American public. Three cowboys, George Washington, George Robinson, and Zebrien Bates, sided with the supporters of Alexander McSween and Bonney, who styled themselves “Regulators,” while John Clark worked for businessman rancher Lawrence Murphy. George McJunkins a former Texas slave, first entered New Mexico in 1868 as a cowboy. He became a ranch foreman in Union County, but is remembered primarily for his 1908 accidental discovery of the Folsom archeological site that established the presence of humans on the North American continent during the Ice Age. Montgomery Bell, although never a cowboy, became successful in the territory’s sheep and cattle industry. Beginning his New Mexico days as a stable manager at the Montezuma Hotel in Las Vegas, Bell soon became the agent for the prominent Jewish merchant Charles Ilfeld in the 1880s. Eventually Bell acquired his own sheep and goat herds and became a moneylender throughout northeastern New Mexico. He built one of the first two-story houses in Las Vegas.

New Mexico

Buffalo Soldiers In the years following the Civil War, although there was no longer any question about their courage, prejudice against African American soldiers remained strong. In spite of the insults, the men still wanted to serve in the army. The military life, even with its inequities, was better than the life they had previously known; it provided a measure of dignity, education, and opportunity to exercise leadership. By 1866, the U.S.

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government had turned its attention to preventing conflicts that arose in the western territories between Native Americans and settlers and among the settlers themselves. In the same year, Congress authorized the establishment of the black regiments. In this climate, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry were sent to establish order on the frontier. They were to guard telegraph and supply lines and to protect settlers in the sparse territories, including New Mexico. In the 1800s, several companies of

Ninth Cavalry on horseback, ca. 1898. (Library of Congress)

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the all-black 9th Cavalry, approximately 1,000 African American soldiers were stationed at Fort Union in Watrous, New Mexico. Another 1,000 African American soldiers were stationed at Fort Seldon near Radium Spring, New Mexico, or passed through the site. In New Mexico the black soldiers were assigned to fight against the Apaches, and they helped to defeat Chief Victorio in the Victorio War. In spite of the unfortunate assignment of controlling Native Americans, the black soldiers performed well and even seemed to have gained a measure of respect from Native Americans. The Indians began to refer to them as buffalo soldiers, a name that may have symbolized recognition of strength and courage as well as an awareness of the common physical characteristic of short, dark hair. Twenty-five thousand black men served in the west as buffalo soldiers in four regiments, the 9th and 10th Cavalries and the 24th and 25th Infantries, between 1866 and 1917. All three nineteenth-century black West Point Academy graduates, Lieutenants Henry O. Flipper (1879), John Hanks Alexander (1887), and Charles Young (1889), served in New Mexico with black troops, as did Chaplain Allen Allensworth. While stationed in New Mexico, Chaplain Allensworth expanded the educational role of the army, by establishing an innovative program where enlisted men became teachers of other soldiers. Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, was court-martialed in 1882 at Fort Davis, Texas, for alleged irregularities in his account as a commissary officer. But after leaving the U.S. Army, Flipper worked 37 years as a mining engineer in New Mexico and Mexico and became the first African American to gain prominence in the profession. In 1913, Flipper was employed as a consultant to New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall’s Sierra Mining Company, where from El Paso he dispatched reports on the Mexican Revolution to federal officials in Washington.

From Statehood through World War II, 1912–1945 In 1910, Albuquerque’s black population was 244, and the city’s black residents worked as barbers, cooks, porters, and beauticians. There was segregation and discrimination in public accommodation, so there was a need for black boarding houses. There were restrictive covenants preventing blacks from purchasing property in certain neighborhoods. Theaters, restaurants, and drugstores either refused to serve blacks or forced them to wait until whites and Hispanics were served. With an influx of southern settlers, the Albuquerque Independent Society (forerunner to the NAACP) was formed in 1912 to cope with the discriminatory practices. Five men and one woman founded the Albuquerque NAACP chapter in 1915. One of its first activities that year was the chapter paying the tuition of Birdie Hardin in her unsuccessful attempt to enroll at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to challenge its racial exclusion policy. In 1921, UNM finally allowed open admission to all qualified students. Nine years later, Romero Lewis, son of a local physician, became the first black medical graduate of UNM. The NAACP also helped maintain integrated schools in Albuquerque, though other communities including Alamogordo, Tucumcari, Clovis, Roswell, Artesia, Hobbs, Las Cruces, and Carlsbad took advantage of a 1925 state law to establish segregated schools. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the organization fought discrimination in city and country employment, and in public accommodations such as restaurants, theaters, and hotels. The entire city doubled in population in the 1940s, but the African American population expanded more slowly, reaching 613 in 1950. African American newcomers to New Mexico, particularly at the University of New Mexico, chafed under the “traditional” racial restriction, and in the postwar period joined liberal whites and Hispanos to launch a campaign

New Mexico to end discrimination. The most important of those coalitions initiated a direct action campaign that predated by more than a decade the sit-in movement begun in Greensboro, North Carolina. Today, 92 percent of New Mexico’s African American population resides in the state’s cities. The origins of these contemporary urban communities can be found in the nineteenth-century New Mexico urban population. Between 1850 and 1870, virtually all of the territory’s black urbanites resided in Santa Fe. Indeed, in 1860, the capital was the home of 42 percent of the territory’s blacks; a decade later, 20 percent still lived there. The first English-speaking blacks began to trickle into Albuquerque in the 1870s and 1880s, at the beginning of the railroad era. These African Americans, most of whom were employed in the Santa Fe railroad shops, settled among Hispanos in the industrial suburb of San Jose, just south of the city. By the 1880s, a small number of black women and men moved into Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Columbus, Carlsbad, Gallup, Hobbs, Las Cruces, Raton, Clayton, Silver City, and other towns in the territory, anxious to assume the jobs available in the urban economy. By 1900, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Gallup, Las Vegas, Raton, and Silver City contained 35 percent of the territory’s African Americans. There are fewer African Americans in Las Vegas, Columbus, and Silver City today than in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Albuquerque, in contrast, has attracted most of the twentieth-century African American newcomers. Its community, with churches, fraternal organizations, and social clubs, emerged as the center of New Mexican black urban life.

Postwar and Contemporary Eras, 1945–Present In 1947, the university newspaper, the New Mexico Lobo, published an article describing how George Long, a university student, was denied service at a nearby café, Oklahoma Joe’s. University students

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boycotted the restaurant, forcing the management to change its policy. Three months later, university students initiated a similarly successful boycott against a downtown Walgreen’s drugstore. The widespread student support for challenging discrimination generated the first university NAACP chapter. After nearly two years of work by students George Long and Herbert Wright to perfect the Albuquerque Civil Rights Ordinance, it was passed on Lincoln’s birthday, 1952. Three years later, in 1955, the state legislature enacted a similar statute, nine years before the national Civil Rights Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. The new ordinance did not rapidly transform the lives of most black New Mexicans. The 8,400 African Americans in the state in 1950 comprised only 1.2 percent of the total population and were a distant fourth behind Anglos, Hispanos, and Indians. The NAACP remained the only black civil rights organization to include branches in Roswell, Hobbs, Clovis, Carlsbad, and Las Cruces as well as the college chapter on the University of New Mexico campus. Racial progress was measured slowly during these years, even though the state legislature enacted a Fair Employment Practices Act in 1949, Alamogordo integrated its teaching staff in 1953, Hobbs desegregated its school system in 1954, and in the same year, Albuquerque hired Lauretta Loftus as the city’s first black teacher in the public school system. By 1960, a growing number of African American professionals were attracted to New Mexico for employment opportunities with the federal and state governments as well as by the growing corporate presence in the area. Impoverished black New Mexicans, preoccupied with their own day-to-day problems of unemployment or underemployment and often devoid of the optimism that propelled the poor of earlier generations, increasingly retreated into apathy. Even though things did not look very good for African American New Mexico after 1965, a surge of political activity resulted in the first African

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American officeholders in the state’s history, usually elected with considerable Anglo and Hispano support. Dr. Lenton Malry of Albuquerque became the first black representative to sit in the state legislature in 1968. By the early 1970s, Albert Johnson, a former city councilman in Las Cruces, became the first African American mayor in the state when he was elevated to the city’s highest office. Carlsbad elected two city council members, Ray Harwick and A. E. Jackson, between 1968 and 1976. Other African Americans would hold important appointive positions in New Mexico government. Black business activity in the state continued to grow to unprecedented levels. By 1976, those business ranged from traditional operations such as restaurants and barbershops to private detective agencies and automobile dealerships. The African American population continues to grow. By 2000, 34,343 (1.9 percent) blacks resided in New Mexico. Albuquerque’s African American residents totaled 13,854, or 40 percent of the state’s black population. By 2005, the population of African Americans in New Mexico had increased to 47,000 residents.

Notable African Americans

as Kentucky’s only black delegate to the Republican National conventions of 1880 and 1884. After a two-year campaign, President Grover Cleveland appointed him chaplain of the 24th Infantry. He served in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Montana. While serving at Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, Chaplain Allensworth expanded the educational role of the army by establishing an innovative program, where enlisted men became teachers of other soldiers. Allensworth wrote Outline of Course Study, and the Rules Governing Post Schools of Ft. Bayard, N.M., which became the standard army manual on the education of enlisted personnel. Allensworth retired from the military after a successful career in 1906. At the time of his retirement, Allensworth held the rank of lieutenant colonel and was both the highest-ranking chaplain and the highest-ranking black officer at the time. Allensworth, California, was founded by Colonel Allensworth and Professor William Payne in 1908. It was the first town in California founded, financed, and governed by African Americans. Six years later, while on a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, Colonel Allensworth was hit by a speeding motorcyclist and died from the injuries.

Allensworth, Allen (1842–1914)

Becknell, Charles, Sr. (1941–)

Allen Allensworth was the second African American to be commissioned a chaplain in the regular army. Allensworth was born a slave in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 7, 1842. While the 44th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was camped in Louisville, Allensworth gained his freedom when he fled behind the Union lines. He worked as a civilian nursing aide. He later served a twoyear enlistment in the U.S. Navy. After being honorably discharged from the navy, Allensworth operated two restaurants with his brother William, taught in Freedman’s Bureau schools in Kentucky, was ordained as a minister, and served

Dr. Charles Becknell Sr. was one of the original Albuquerque Human Rights Board members. He is currently director of the Albuquerque Public Schools Equal Opportunity Services Office. Becknell was born in Levelland, Texas and grew up in Hobbs, New Mexico. He attended Booker T. Washington in Hobbs that housed elementary, junior high, and high school students. Becknell attended St. Joseph’s College that later became the College of Albuquerque, receiving his B.S. in science and education and a master’s degree in secondary education. He earned a doctorate in American studies from the University

New Mexico of New Mexico. His recent accomplishments include writing and self-publishing an autobiography entitled, “No Challenge”—No Change: Growing Up Black in New Mexico. Becknell says that his book is designed to open a window for others to look into and see what it was like growing up black in an atmosphere of racism and segregation in southeastern New Mexico.

Boyer, Ella (1873–1965) Blackdom cofounder Ella Louise McGruder was born in Louisville, Georgia. She completed her studies at Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, where she met Frank Boyer. In 1901, she joined Frank, her husband, in the New Mexico Territory to homestead land near Roswell. The spot later became Blackdom, a townsite incorporated in 1920. The Boyers left Blackdom at its demise and moved to Vado, New Mexico, in the Mesilla Valley near Las Cruces, to create another all-black community. She home-schooled her children, and was active in religious, fraternal, and civil affairs of the community and state.

Boyer, Francis (dates unknown) Francis Boyer and Daniel Keyes walked from Georgia to New Mexico, and founded a town called Blackdom in 1897. Blackdom was located about 16 miles from present-day Roswell, New Mexico. Boyer had started four black towns before coming into New Mexico. Boyer learned about the vast lands of New Mexico from his father, Henry Boyer who served in the Mexican-American War as a wagoneer. At the height of its development, Blackdom encompassed 15,000 acres and had 25 families with a population of 300 individuals.

Clayton, Anna J. Williams (1883–1976) Anna Williams moved to Fort Worth, Texas, from her birthplace, Monroe, Louisiana, to learn

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the millinery business. There she met and married Andrew Clayton. In 1910, they moved to Albuquerque and bought a house. Mr. Clayton worked as a barber for white patrons at the Savoy Hotel, while Anna stayed home to rear seven children and pursue civic and cultural projects. She belonged to the parent teacher associations and the NAACP in Albuquerque. In 1914, she was a charter member of the Home Circle Club, which is the oldest black continuously active social club in New Mexico. Twenty-four years later, Clayton organized the Colored Women Federated Clubs, an umbrella organization of black women’s clubs throughout the state, and served as its first president. She served as state president of the Mt. Olive State Baptist Convention. Clayton also formed the Winona Day Care Nursery in 1941 for underprivileged children.

Collins, John (1857–1923) John Collins was a buffalo soldier who homesteaded in Albuquerque after his release from the 24th Infantry. Collins was born on October 11, 1857, in Accimack County, Virginia, to the son of a slave. His father John was of Negro and Irish descent. His mother Margaret was Cherokee Indian. He left at an early age to join a crew of sailors on a freighter sailing around the world. Seven years later, he joined the U.S. 9th Cavalry for five years in 1879. He later joined the 24th U.S. Regiment and was assigned as an Indian scout because of his knowledge of Indian traits and signs. This knowledge led him west. Collins was stationed at Silver City and around Santa Fe. He married Melissa Lee of New York and moved to Albuquerque to rear his family. Collins was a self-made businessman. He had his own express company around 1896 and transported families in Albuquerque to the mountains for their vacations and fishing trips and kept them supplied with food supplies until they returned home. Since the trees were so beautiful in the

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mountains, Collins brought some cedar and pine back with him and planted them as small trees at the administration building in 1901. John and Melissa Collins were on the organizing committee for the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in 1896 and charter members when the church was incorporated on November 25, 1904. His second business was Collins’ Scavenger Yard in 1907. He remained there until his health failed; he then sold the business.

Hoppes, Alice Faye Kent (1939–2003) Alice Faye Kent Hoppes was a champion for human rights and a warrior for diversity in New Mexico. Hoppes was born in Tucumcari, New Mexico, on May 20, 1939, the second of four children. Hoppes’ parents instilled in their children the ideals of hard work, honesty, and independence. She was not afraid to challenge teachers who told tasteless jokes about her because of the color of her skin. She was the only African American in her high-school graduating class. Alice Hoppes and her family moved to Albuquerque in 1967, and Alice instantly became a leading voice for civil rights. Hoppes began work for the NAACP in 1975 as chairwoman of the youth committee. She was elected president of the New Mexico chapter in 1984 and served in this position for 12 years. She organized civil rights marches to protest unfair practices and spoke out about prison reform, biased media reporting, unfair labor practices, fair housing, and equal access. She was always on the front line fighting for justice. Hoppes led the effort to establish a Martin Luther King Jr. state holiday. She also served two terms as president of the Albuquerque chapter of the National Council of Negro Woman (NCNW). She was determined to create the Office of African American Affairs. When Bill Richardson became governor of New Mexico, his first appointment was to name Alice Faye

Kent Hoppes the second executive director of that office in 2002. In 2000, Hoppes received the Martin Luther King Jr. freedom award from the NAACP, the Albuquerque Human Rights Award, and Outstanding Black Women from the Commission on the Status of Women. Hoppes was instrumental in the creation of the African American village at the state fair, and the African American day at the state legislature. Hoppes died in 2003, while serving as director of the Office of African American affairs. In 2004, Governor Richardson renamed the African American Pavilion as the Alice Hoppes African American Pavilion in honor of Hoppes.

Lewis, James A., Sr. (1878–1947) Dr. James A. Lewis Sr. was the second African American doctor of medicine in Albuquerque. Lewis was born in Richmond, Virginia, in April 1878; he graduated from Linton Medical College (a part of Leonard Medical College) in Raleigh, North Carolina, and practiced in Richmond, Virginia, from 1904 to 1917. In 1918, Dr. Lewis came to Albuquerque for his health. In 1920 Dr. Lewis opened the People’s Sanatorium. Dr. Lewis homesteaded 120 acres and tried to persuade others to buy homestead land. Lewis had a vision that Albuquerque would extend to the mountains and that houses would be built in the mountains like in Hollywood. In 1924, Dr. Lewis, Henry Outley, and S. T. Richards were partners in the Booker T. Washington Sanatorium on South Arno Street. Dr. Lewis went to Santa Fe to fight segregated schools. He maintained the position that the state of New Mexico could not afford a dual educational system because the state was too poor. Because of this fight, Albuquerque was one of the only towns in the state (besides Raton, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas) to have an integrated school system, yet none of these schools would hire black

New Mexico teachers until 1954, when Lauretta Loftus was hired at APS. Dr. Lewis practiced medicine in Albuquerque until his death in 1947.

Lewis, James B. (1947–) James B. Lewis is the first African American state treasurer of New Mexico. Lewis was born in Roswell, New Mexico, graduated from Bishop College in Dallas, Texas, and served two years in the U.S. Army. When he returned to New Mexico, he worked for the State Personnel Office and the Public Service Career Office in minority recruitment. He then became director of the African American Studies Division under the Multicultural Enrichment Program. He received his master’s degree in public administration in 1977 from the University of New Mexico as well as a B.S./A.S. business degree from the National College of Business. He later worked for the District Attorney’s Office as a criminal investigator. Lewis was elected Bernalillo County treasurer in 1982, becoming the first African American to win a countywide election. He won reelection in 1984. In December 1985, Governor Tony Anaya appointed Lewis state treasurer. He completed that term and ran for a full term in 1986, becoming the first African American elected to a statewide office. Governor Bruce King then appointed him chief of staff in November 1990. In 1996, Lewis was appointed city administrator of Rio Rancho, that same year President Bill Clinton appointed Lewis director of the Office of Economic Development and Diversity in Washington, D.C. Lewis also worked for Bill Richardson at the U.S. Department of Energy as director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity. In 2001, Lewis returned to New Mexico and entered the race for mayor of the city of Albuquerque. Even though he lost to Martin Chávez, he appointed him the city’s chief operating officer, in charge of 11 city departments.

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Lewis also held the position of the city’s chief administrative officer, the highest ranking position held by an African American in the history of Albuquerque’s city government. He retired from that post at the end of 2005. In 2006, Lewis ran as a Democrat for the state treasurer and won. In October 2007, State Treasurer James B. Lewis was elected president of the Western State Treasurers Association by state treasurers of the region.

Lewis, John (1920–2001) John Aaron Lewis, pianist, composer, arranger, educator, was an influential member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, one of the best-known groups in jazz history. John Lewis grew up musically during the development of the bebop sound during the mid-to-late 1940s. It was in the modern Jazz Quartet that he was able to realize his unique vision, fusing blues, bebop, and European art music, while achieving an artful, elegant balance between the three components. John was reared by his grandmother, Edith English of Albuquerque, after his mother died of fever. Lewis studied piano from childhood; after high school he attended the University of New Mexico where he studied anthropology and music. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945. Among his army buddies was another musician with great jazz aspiration, drummer Kenny Clarke. It was Clarke who introduced Lewis to the trumpeter-bandleader and bop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie. Bebop in its earliest incarnations was small-group music that was in some respect a resistance against what many of its earliest practitioners felt were the restrictions and limitations of performing in big swing bands. After the war, Kenny Clarke and John Lewis joined Gillespie’s pioneer big band in 1946. The band provided a convenient canvas for Lewis to write compositions and craft arrangements, utilizing the talents of some of the finest young musicians in jazz.

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His restrained style, which was influenced by classical music, made him a highly sought-after sideman, and he worked with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and Illinois Jacquet. In 1952, Lewis became the leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet (known as the M.J.Q.), which featured vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Connie Kay. Lewis also composed for nonjazz settings and wrote musical scores for cinema, ballet, and theatre. “Dango” is the Lewis composition most frequently played by others. Among his solo recordings are Midnight in Paris (1988) and Evolution (1999), and he made several albums, including The Chess Game, Vol. 1–2, with his wife, Mirjana, a harpsichordist. Lewis was also noted for promoting jazz among younger performers. After receiving a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music in 1953, he taught at several institutions and helped establish the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts. In addition, he served as the musical director for the Monterey Jazz Festival in California (1958–1982) and for the American Jazz Orchestra (1985–1992).

Loftus, Lauretta (dates unknown) Lauretta Loftus moved to Albuquerque in 1946 after obtaining a B.A. in English with a minor in physical education from Kansas State Teacher College. She had completed 10 successful years of teaching in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, before moving to New Mexico. She did not immediately apply for employment with the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) because of their policy of not hiring black teachers. She held many jobs before being hired by the APS. Loftus made her first application in 1949, and each year thereafter she went back to renew her application. Since the possibility was poor that she would be hired, she applied and was employed as a teacher with Indian Services at Albuquerque Indian School in 1952. In 1954, Loftus started a dual assignment

at two elementary schools, East San Jose and John Marshall—as a remedial reading teacher. She continued in this dual assignment until 1957. She was transferred to John Marshall as a fulltime teacher in special education. In 1974, Loftus was transferred to Zia Elementary School teaching special education after completing 20 years at John Marshall.

Cultural Contributions The social club served as a source of funds for community improvement as well as a place to get together. Through most of the nineteenth century, these activities were centered in the churches or in individual’s homes. The women clubs were responsible for fund-raising for the community; by holding festivals or cultural events to attract whites, black women raised funds for education, the arts, and for individuals in distress. These woman’s clubs predated New Mexico’s statehood. Despite restrictions on their lives many black residents were determined to resist segregation and discrimination while strengthening their small community. One group formed the Little Forum, a club for young people that throughout the 1930s promoted educational achievement, etiquette knowledge of parliamentary procedures, and black history. Two black newspapers were founded in Albuquerque in 1924. S. W. Henry, a former teacher created the Southwest Review, while St. Timothy Richards, a porter, established the Southwest Plaindealer. The first black female social club, the Home Circle Club, was founded in the city by Anna Williams Clayton in 1914.

Bibliography Baton, Maisha, and Henry J. Walt. A History of Blackdom, N.M. in the Context of the African American Post Civil War Colonization

New Mexico Movement. Santa Fe, NM: Historic Preservation Division, Office of Cultural Affairs, 1997. Durham, Philip C., and Everett L. Jones. The Negro Cowboys. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. James Pierson Beckwourth. Online, August 2007. www.beckwourth.org. Lark, Thomas, ed. History of Hope: The African American Experience in New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: Albuquerque Museum, 1996. Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997. Richardson, Barbara J. Black Directory of New Mexico: Black Pioneers of New Mexico, a Documentary and Pictorial History. Rio Rancho, NM: Panorama Press, 1976.

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Rucobo, Bonnie, and Frank J. Miranda. Reflections on Black Heritage in New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: City of Albuquerque Human Rights Office, 2006. Statistical Abstracts of the United States 2007. Resident Population by Race, Hispanic or Latino Origin and State. Washington, D.C., 2005. Taylor, Quintard. “African American in the Enchanted State: Black History in New Mexico, 1539–1990.” In Thomas Lark, ed., History of Hope: The African American Experience in New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: Albuquerque Museum, 1996, 1–10. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1598–1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998, pp. 50–51.

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Chronology 1525

Estéban Gomez, a black Portuguese navigator commissioned by Spain, sails up the Hudson River. He is the first person of African descent to explore the lower Hudson Valley.

1611

The United Provinces of the Free Netherlands lay claim to the lands surrounding the Hudson, including Manhattan Island, as part of an expanding war against Spain. They name the region New Netherland.

1621

Juan Rodrigues, a sailor of African descent from Hispaniola, is abandoned on Manhattan Island by a Dutch ship—the Jonge Tobias. He eventually marries a Native American woman and becomes an important trader and middleman in early Native American–European commercial relations.

1624

The Dutch West India Company erects a trade post at New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

1625

A Dutch warship unloads a cargo of Africans, taken from a Portuguese ship on the Atlantic, in New Netherland.

1641

The earliest recorded marriage between two people of African descent, in the region that would become New York City, occurs at the Dutch Reformed Church on Pearl Street. Lucie D’Angola and Anthony van Angola are wed.

1643

Six persons of African descent are granted plots in an area known as “negro land” about one mile from New Amsterdam.

1635

The first slave ship arrives in New Netherland.

1630s

The African Burial Ground is established in New Amsterdam during this decade.

1644

The second slave ship, the Amandare, arrives in New Netherland.

1653

Slaves owned by the Dutch West India Company build a defensive barricade with 12-feet long wooden logs across Manhattan Island. This defensive wall was the origin of Wall Street.

1654

The Witte Paert arrives in New Amsterdam and disembarks 300 enslaved Africans.

1664

The Gideon arrives in New Amsterdam and disembarks 290 enslaved Africans.

1664

Following a brief naval blockade, the director general of the Dutch West India Company and governor of New Netherland cedes control of the colony to the English. New Netherland is renamed New York.

1664

Africans represent 10 percent of the population of New York City (formerly New Amsterdam).

1665

With passage of the Duke’s Laws, slavery is officially recognized in New York.

1684

The Ordinance of 1684 restricts the assembly of black or Native American inhabits of New York to no more than four and bans the possession of weapons.

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1697

Trinity Church in Manhattan prohibits the continued burial of Africans in its cemetery.

1703

Elias Neau, a Huguenot catechist at Trinity Church, opens a school for the Christian instruction of Africans and Native Americans.

1712

A group of 25 or 30 enslaved Africans ambush whites attempting to put out a fire in New York City. Nine whites are killed and seven others injured in the first known slave revolt in New York.

1718

The New York City legislature passes the African Duty Act. The act levies higher tariffs for “refuse” or rebellious slaves imported from the Caribbean and strongly favors the direct importation of slaves from Africa.

1737

Africans and their descendants represent 20 percent of the population of New York City.

1741

An alleged arson conspiracy is discovered in New York City involving dozens of enslaved and free blacks, Irish soldiers, and poor whites. Arrested are 150 slaves and 42 whites. After lengthy trials, four whites are executed, 13 blacks were burned alive, 16 are hanged, 2 gibbeted alive, and 70 banished from the colony.

1776

In the midst of the British occupation of New York City in September 1776, scores of fugitive slaves flock to the city to seek their freedom.

1777

The first state constitution for New York ignores the issue of slavery.

1783

General George Washington arrives in New York to reclaim runaways who escaped from his Virginia plantation during the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris guaranteed that American slave owners could reclaim their escaped slaves with the conclusion of the war.

1784

The African Society of New York City holds its first recorded meeting.

1784

Jupiter Hammon publishes “An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York” as a subtle attack against slavery.

1783

3,000 black men and women who supported the British during the American Revolution are transported from New York City to Nova Scotia.

1785

The New York Manumission Society is formed to address the continuing hypocrisy of slavery in the newly formed nation.

1787

The first African Free School is established in New York City by the New York Manumission Society.

1788

(July 26) New York becomes the 11th state to enter the Union.

1793

An arson in Albany is blamed on slaves inspired by the Haitian Revolution.

1794

City officials in New York terminate use of the African Burial Ground. No further interments occur in the area and the site is largely forgotten until 1991.

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1796

Prominent black Methodists in New York split with white Methodists and establish the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New York City.

1796

Another series of arsons in New York raise additional concerns about revolutionary influences from Haiti.

1797

Sojourner Truth is born on a Dutch farm in Esopus.

1799

The Gradual Emancipation Act passes. It stipulates that children born after July 4, 1799, are free but owe service to their owners until age 25 for females and age 28 for males.

1800

Prominent black Episcopalians in New York petition Trinity Church for a separate place of worship. This leads to the creation of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.

1808

To commemorate the end of the Atlantic slave trade to the United States black New Yorkers organize public celebrations between 1808 and 1815.

1808

Reverend Thomas Paul of Boston establishes the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City.

1808

The African Society for Mutual Relief is established.

1816

Patrick Henry Reason is born in New York City.

1817

Another Gradual Emancipation Act is passed that mandates the official end of slavery in New York by 1827.

1818

Prominent black New Yorkers, led by Peter Williams Jr., starts the Haytian Emigration Society of Coloured People. The society promotes emigration to Haiti and, by 1824, President Jean Pierre Boyer of the Haitian republic provides logistical support for their efforts.

1818

Charles Lewis Reason is born in New York City.

1821

The African Grove Theater opens with the intent to provide a social outlet for upwardly mobile African Americans in New York City.

1821

The New York state constitution severely limits black suffrage to those owning at least $200 in real estate.

1825

Seneca Village, an all-black enclave in New York City, is founded. A number of black New Yorkers purchase land sold by John Whitehead between present-day 85th and 88th Streets near Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.

1825

Henry Highland Garnet, along with his parents and sister, escape from bondage in Maryland and make it to New York City.

1826

Peter Williams Jr. becomes the first pastor of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.

1826

Sojourner Truth escapes from her owner a year ahead of the official abolition of slavery. This would be the first step of many she takes on the road to becoming a fierce advocate of abolition and women’s rights.

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1827

Slavery is officially abolished in New York. Several black benevolent societies organize marches and parades to celebrate the occasion.

1827

John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish cofound and coedit Freedom’s Journal.

1828

The African Dorcas Society is founded in New York City by prominent African American women.

1834

Anti-abolitionists loot St. Philip’s Episcopal Church and the home of Peter Williams Jr.

1834

The African Free Schools are incorporated into New York’s public school system. Among the most prominent graduates of the African Free Schools are Alexander Crummell, George Downing, Henry Highland Garnett, Charles L. Reason, and James McCune Smith.

1835

David Ruggles founds the New York Vigilance Committee to help protect black New Yorkers from slave catchers and to help fugitive slaves.

1835

David Ruggles serves as editor of the Mirror of Liberty, a paper that is published in New York until 1839.

1837

The Colored American Newspaper is launched.

1838

James McCune Smith returns to New York after enrolling in medical school at the University of Glasgow. He becomes the first African American to earn a medical degree.

1838

Frederick Douglass successfully escapes from slavery in Maryland and makes his way to New York.

1839

Several Africans on board the Spanish ship Amistad come ashore on Montauk Point, Long Island, seeking to trade for food and water.

1839

Black women in New York found the Abyssinian Benevolent Daughters of Esther Association.

1840

A series of state conventions of “Colored Inhabitants” of New York began, continuing until 1858, seek voting rights for black men without property qualifications.

1843

During the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, Henry Highland Garnet, a prominent abolitionist, delivers a speech entitled “Let Your Motto Be Resistance,” which calls for violence as a means to end slavery.

1843

William Wells Brown, a former fugitive slave from Kentucky, moves to Buffalo, where he becomes a lecturer for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society.

1847

Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star in Rochester. The North Star quickly becomes the paper of choice by many black New Yorkers.

1848

The last unfree blacks are manumitted in New York per the terms of the 1799 and 1817 Gradual Emancipation Acts.

1852

Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech “What to the American Slave is July 4th?” on July 4, 1852, in Rochester.

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1854

After being forcibly removed from a streetcar, Elizabeth Jennings sues the Third Avenue Railway Company and wins. In addition to other suits, Jennings’ case plays a role in the decision, by 1860, of some of New York City’s streetcar companies to desegregate their cars.

1855

Invoking eminent domain, Mayor Fernando Wood of New York City makes Seneca Village city property. This was the first step toward eliminating the all-black enclave and using the land black New Yorkers are forced to surrender for the creation of Central Park.

1857

Frederick Douglass successfully campaigns to end segregation in Rochester’s public school system.

1857

New York City officials pass an ordinance that forcibly removes the remaining black residents of Seneca Village.

1859

Henry Highland Garnet founds the African Civilization Society.

1860

The last known slave ship commissioned in New York, the Erie, is intercepted by the U.S. Navy off the coast of West Africa with 800 enslaved Africans on board.

1862

Nathaniel Gordon, a captured slave ship captain, is executed in New York.

1863

Draft riots disrupt New York City between July 13 and July 16, 1863. At least 120 are killed, thousands are injured, and the rioters damage more than $1 million in property.

1865

(February 3) New York ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

(January 10) New York ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing citizenship to African Americans.

1869

(April 14) New York ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote.

1870

(January 5) New York rescinds its ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1870

(March 30) New York rescinds its rescission of its ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.

1880

T. Thomas Fortune cofounds the New York Globe, a paper that is later known as the New York Age.

1895

The New York state legislature passes the Malby Law, which extends to all citizens full and equal accommodations, facilities, and access to restaurants, inns, and public conveyances.

1900

An antiblack riot erupts in New York City.

1902

James Weldon Johnson and his brother Rosamond settle in New York.

1905

A race riot breaks out in the San Juan Hill district of New York City, precipitated by allegations that white police officers purposefully beat a number of black men with clubs for no cause.

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1905

A group of black radicals, including W. E. B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, and John Hope, meet in Fort Erie, Canada, opposite Buffalo, New York, to launch the Niagara Movement. By 1911, members of the Niagara Movement join with white liberals to form the NAACP.

1908

Reverend Adam Clayton Powell moves to New York City to accept a commission to become the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

1913

The Apollo Theater in Harlem opens.

1914

Harlem’s black population is 50,000.

1916

Marcus Garvey relocates from Jamaica to Harlem, New York, in order to firmly establish the UNIA.

1917

Thousands attend and participate in New York’s Silent March, which is organized by the NAACP as a protest against lynching and antiblack riots.

1919

Claude McKay writes “If We Must Die” as a protest against the Red Summer Race Riots that convulse the nation in the summer of 1919. In many ways, this poem sparks the Harlem Renaissance.

1920

Paul Robeson moves to Harlem to attend Columbia Law School. During his three-year matriculation, Robeson also sings at Harlem’s Cotton Club, plays professional football for two teams, and stars in a number of plays.

1923

Abyssinian Baptist Church relocates to Harlem at the insistence of Reverend Adam Clayton Powell.

1924

James Baldwin, the great African American writer, is born in Harlem.

1930

Harlem’s black population is 165,000.

1935

Harlem witnesses its first race riot, which leaves three dead, hundreds wounded, and about $2 million in property damage.

1939

Billie Holiday sings “Strange Fruit” for the first time at New York’s only integrated nightclub, the Café Society.

1943

Riots break out in Harlem after a white police office shoots a black soldier. Five hundred are arrested after a full day of rioting and looting.

1945

The New York African Society for Mutual Relief disbands after 137 years of operations.

1949

Riots in Peekskill, New York, are sparked by a planned Paul Robeson concert.

1958

Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is stabbed in Harlem by Izola Ware Curry.

1963

(February 4) New York ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

Riots occur in Harlem, Rochester, and Brooklyn, all sparked by allegations of police brutality.

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1965

Malcolm X, formerly of the Nation of Islam, is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

1967

A riot breaks out in Buffalo resulting in 40 injuries and dozens of arrests.

1968

Shirley Chisholm is elected to the House of Representatives by New York’s 12th District. She becomes the first black woman elected to Congress and serves seven consecutive terms.

1969

Twenty-one members of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party are arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb several sites throughout New York City.

1971

More than 1,000 inmates at Attica State Prison near Buffalo—many of them black—engage in a mass riot, seizing 43 guards as hostages. After a four-day standoff, Governor Nelson Rockefeller orders 400 state police to end the takeover. In the aftermath, 39 of the hostages are killed and 80 inmates are wounded.

1972

Shirley Chisholm, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. She becomes the first major-party black candidate for the presidency and the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination.

1979

Assata Shakur, formerly of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, escapes from prison and eventually relocates to Cuba, where she still resides in exile.

1980

In what is called the “.22-Caliber Killer” shootings, six black men and women in Buffalo are murdered in a crime spree between September 1980 and January 1981. Joseph Christopher, a 26-year-old white army private, is charged and later found guilty of all of the murders.

1984

Bernhard Goetz shoots four African American men attempting to rob him. The shooting sparks a series of marches led by Reverend Al Sharpton.

1986

Three black men are beaten by a gang of whites in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens. One of the black men is killed during the assault.

1989

Yusef Hawkins, a 16-year-old African American, is killed in Bensonhurst by a group of white teenagers.

1990

David Dinkins is elected as the first African American mayor of New York. Since his departure from office in 1993, New York has not had another Democratic mayor through 2010.

1991

The African Burial Ground established during the 1630s is rediscovered by a construction crew erecting a new federal building.

1991

Riots and protests occur in Crown Heights after a Jewish motorist accidentally struck two black children with his car. Upon arrival of a private ambulance, the police instruct the ambulance to care for the uninjured Jewish motorists while one of the black children is still pinned under his car. The child later died.

1993

The African Burial Ground is placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is officially recognized as a National Historic Site.

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1999

Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, is shot to death by police officers in New York City.

2003

Ten thousand gather on October 4 as part of the “Rites of Ancestral Return” in which the remains of 419 men, women, and children excavated at the African Burial Ground are reinterred.

2006

Sean Bell is fired at 50 times and killed in the Jamaica section of New York City by plainclothes police officers.

2008

David Patterson becomes the first African American governor of New York. His appointment begins when Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns amid allegations of his alleged participation in a prostitution ring.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, is elected, carrying New York with about 63 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview The Dutch Era, 1613–1664 African American history in the region which became New York State had origins as early as the founding of the first Dutch and British colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, the first group of enslaved Africans arrived in New Netherland, the Dutch-controlled colony, which later became New York, in 1625—just six years after the first group of 20 Africans were disembarked in Jamestown, Virginia. Plundered from a Portuguese ship on the Atlantic by a Dutch warship, the first Africans to arrive in New Netherland shared an ambiguous status with those brought to the Virginia colony and with other so-called “Atlantic Creoles” who predominated the early trade in enslaved Atlantic Africans. Due to their language and occupational skills, as well as the more fluid nature of forced labor in early Dutch and British colonies, this early group would not be defined as permanent slaves initially. The status of the first Africans brought to both Dutch and British North America was not clear and, as a result of this early ambiguity, there existed a number of avenues forced African laborers could use to obtain freedom, which were open for at least a few decades in Dutch New Netherland. The idea of permanent and racialized slavery did

not develop in Dutch New Netherland until the mid-1660s. Thus, the first Africans arriving in both Dutch and British North America inhabited a fluid status between indentured servitude and slavery that would look quite alien from the limiting frame of later forms of plantation and chattel slavery. Initially it seemed that the imported Africans would have the same opportunities as their Dutch counterparts and would share the rewards and opportunities the New World seemingly offered. Established as a fur trading post by the Dutch West India Company, New Netherland and its early settlers struggled during the initial years of the colony’s founding. The constant search for sufficient sources of revenue and labor became vexing issues with no readily available solutions. Concentrating most of their efforts on major territorial claims in West Africa, South America, and the Caribbean, the directors of the Dutch West India Company had limited interest in investing the capital necessary to make New Netherland a profitable settler colony. Thus, the company proposed two separate plans to solve the problems faced by their principal North American colony. The first was the creation of landed estates granted to the wealthy. These landed estates, much like the headrights bestowed by the Virginia Company in the Chesapeake,

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were incentives meant to encourage Dutch immigration to New Netherland. Wealthy Dutch settlers receiving landed estates had the responsibility of attracting and paying the necessary transportation costs for up to 50 new settlers each. This plan met with only limited success and resulted in the establishment of only one estate during the entire period of Dutch rule in New Netherland. The company’s second and most successful plan was its shift toward the importation of Africans to be used primarily as agricultural laborers and as workers in the construction of public buildings and military fortifications. The names of some of the first Africans imported into New Netherland—Paul d’Angola, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese—denote their origin in regions of Atlantic Africa in direct contact with Portuguese commercial interests, namely the Kongo Kingdom, Angola, and other parts of west central Africa. As a result of this early and prolonged contact with Iberian merchants and missionaries, many west central Africans were at least familiar with Portuguese, quite a few were Catholic—or at least had significant exposure to the catechism—and could, with great skill and dexterity, navigate between European and African peoples and cultures. As so-called Atlantic Creoles, the early west central Africans imported into Dutch New Netherland were favored and respected by their Dutch owners in ways later generations of enslaved Africans and their descendants would not experience. In an attempt to fulfill their promise to provide the colonists with as many Africans as possible, the Dutch West India Company sought to become the primary conduit of Africans entering Dutch American colonies. The prior pattern of plundering Spanish or Portuguese slave ships proved an inefficient and dangerous enterprise. By the 1620s, the Dutch West India Company began to import Africans purchased from Brazil, Hispaniola, and other Iberian colonies in the

Americas into New Netherland. By 1627, a total of 14 transshipped Africans had arrived in Dutch New Netherland and, over the subsequent five decades, scores of Africans were disembarked in the colony each year from Dutch slave and merchant ships. The absence of cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, or rice did not slow the need for Atlantic African labor in Dutch North America. Africans were employed in shipbuilding, construction, and as domestic servants throughout the colony and, moreover, they were key to the successful peopling of this highly contested region. By 1652, direct trade with West Africa for slaves was opened to New Netherland and a slight reorientation of the slave trade began. In prior decades, the Dutch were satisfied with plundering Portuguese or Spanish slave ships or establishing direct trade relations with Brazil or Spanish America to procure African laborers. As a result, the majority of Africans entering New Netherland were from west central Africa. By allowing Africans to be directly imported into North America via Dutch West India Company–owned or commissioned ships, New Netherland soon began to receive a number of Gold Coast Akan- and Ga-speakers exported from Dutch-controlled trading outposts in West Africa to supplement the west central African imports.The dominant position in Africa and the Americas enjoyed by the Dutch came to an end in 1664. The Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1664–1667 helped create a major power shift throughout the Atlantic world. The English managed to capture most Dutch claims along West Africa’s Gold Coast and, in North America, they forced the surrender of New Netherland. Having already proven the military vulnerabilities of Dutch colonies during the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–1654, the English were able to peacefully capture New Netherland after a brief naval blockade. Peter Stuyvesant—director general of the Dutch West India Company and the

New York last Dutch governor of New Netherland— capitulated in September 1664, effectively ending four decades of control by the company over what would soon become British New York.

The British Era, 1664–1776 When this region was appropriated by the English, it was one of the most diverse regions in seventeenth-century North America. After James, the Duke of York, assumed control of New Netherland and renamed the area New York, sizable populations of Dutch, English, French, Germans, Scandinavians, and about 400 Africans lived on Manhattan Island. Importantly, of the 400 or so Africans in New York City, about 75 were free. This racial, cultural, and social diversity and the cosmopolitan society it fostered was due to the Dutch West India Company’s incessant, and at times desperate, need for European settlers and African laborers and the comparatively flexible ideas regarding forced labor. Thus a polyglot of Europeans from various nations as well as both free and enslaved Africans inhabited a diverse terrain when King Charles II of England claimed New Netherland in 1664. After the English claimed dominion over the former Dutch colony, slavery was almost instantly recognized as a legal institution. The passage of the “Duke’s Laws” a year after British rule was established included provisions that allowed the practice of service for life. While the Dutch had never codified slavery, the experiences of the Dutch West India Company in Atlantic Africa and Brazil gave its proprietors an understanding of the concept and some Africans were already serving lifelong labor contracts before 1664. With English control came a vast array of regulations governing the lives of slaves, which restricted the freedoms and latitude previously enjoyed by the black population in New York. In a tangible sense, the end of Dutch rule made slavery a real and lasting concept for its African inhabitants.

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The windows of opportunity opened to Africans to obtain their freedom, to own land, and to even have their own pool of dependent European or African laborers would be closed by the eighteenth century. As one of the largest population clusters, Africans were roughly 10 percent of New York City’s population at the time of the British conquest. The steady influx of labor from the Caribbean and Africa, initiated previously by the Dutch West India Company, would persist under British rule, especially after the Royal African Company was chartered in 1672. Though the Royal African Company concentrated primarily on the trade from West Africa to the Caribbean, they encouraged the reshipment trade in which private traders sold Caribbean slaves to New York and other British North American colonies. By the 1730s, New York City had the largest black population of any colonial city north of Baltimore. In fact, colonial New York City—with its 1,719 black inhabitants in 1737—was second only to Charleston, South Carolina, as the region with the highest concentration of Africans and their descendants in urban North America. After the Dutch capitulation and the transfer to British rule, slavery expanded in New York and black forced labor had two major manifestations— rural and urban. In the context of rural slavery, those who lived outside the urban metropoles of New York City and Albany served as agricultural labor in New York’s hinterland, which included the Hudson Valley, Long Island, and northern New Jersey. In these rural agricultural regions, most of the enslaved were African born and the vast majority were male. Urban slavery contrasted sharply in a number of ways. Female slaves were the majority in New York City and Albany, and their labor was limited to the domestic sphere. The black male minority in New York City worked in shipping—loading and unloading cargo, working in warehouses at the docks, serving on ships as cooks, or working

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in ship construction. The sexual imbalances in urban and rural New York meant that many of the enslaved would live their lives without the possibility of finding a mate. In this regard, the black population did not increase naturally and the growing demographic of African-descended peoples was due almost exclusively to the slave trade. Between 1700 and 1774, slave ships brought more than 7,000 enslaved Africans to the colony. Of that number, at least a third came directly from Africa on ships likely owned or captained by white New Yorkers. Ships disembarking slaves in New York City usually sold their cargos at the Meal Market, on the wharf, or on board the ship itself. After 1711, Meal Market, at the base of modern-day Wall Street, became the primary location to purchase enslaved Africans or hire them out at day rates. Slave purchasers valued women of childbearing age the highest, as they would account for 35–45 percent of the overall slave population of New York City between 1703 and 1735. Socially, most slaves in the urban regions were dispersed broadly, with no more than two or three living in individual households. This spatial displacement may explain why latenight gatherings at taverns became commonplace in New York City. Taverns, the “Negro Burial Ground,” and other spaces stitched together a widely dispersed population and, as such, became spaces of great concern for whites throughout the colony. As the African population grew steadily in New York City, Albany, and throughout the colony of New York, fears of servile insurrection took the tangible form of ever restrictive regulations on the mobility and behavior of the enslaved. Between 1702 and 1708, due to fears expressed by the Common Council, the Lords of Trade, and the governor of New York, a number of laws were passed for the suppression of slave insolence and rebellion. Despite these legislative measures, enslaved Africans—facing an ever

limiting and circumscribed position—took matters into their own hands. In 1712 and again in 1741, real and imagined acts of rebellion convulsed Manhattan Island. In the first incident, a group of enslaved Africans—both Akan- and Ewe-speaking—along with Spanish-speaking Native Americans burned an outhouse on the night of April 6, 1712, and killed about nine whites who sought to attend to the blaze. Thirty years later, an alleged conspiracy to overthrow British rule and establish a biracial regime was reported to have been the work of black street gangs, white fences and tavern owners, Catholics—both Irish- and Spanish-speaking— and Akan-speaking slaves. Both the 1712 revolt and the 1741 conspiracy demonstrated the inability of colonial officials to completely control the enslaved through the passage of restrictive laws. This may explain the public mutilations and executions those involved in these affairs suffered— to instill fear in the hearts of others so emboldened to strike out violently against slave owners. Among the restrictive laws passed in the aftermath of the 1712 and 1741 incidents were a number of regulations limiting avenues to manumission—perhaps in response to the fact that free blacks were involved in both affairs. While free blacks were always outnumbered by the enslaved in the colonial era, the measures passed in the 30-year period between 1712 and 1741 further thinned the free black population and led to far fewer manumissions under the English in comparison to the situation that existed under Dutch rule. Even in this climate, a handful of groups and individuals continually tried to manumit slaves with varying levels of success. Both free black slave owners and members of the Society of Friends (or Quakers) seemed more committed to manumitting and freeing slaves than other groups in New York. The work of religious organizations like the Society of Friends would eventually help nurture and support more strident calls for the abolition of slavery in the period

New York immediately preceding and following the American Revolution.

From the American Revolution to Emancipation, 1776–1827 The American Revolution represented an era of new possibilities to the enslaved populations throughout British North America. Nothing captured the collective imagination of African Americans in New York more than news of Lord Dunmore’s November 1775 proclamation offering freedom to Virginia slaves and indentured servants who joined in the effort to quash the rebellion. Lord Dunmore had previously served as governor of New York and his words certainly circulated throughout the colonies. When, in August 1776, the remnants of Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment—numbering about a hundred men—retreated to Staten Island after a harrowing battle and defeat in Norfolk, Virginia, scores of African American men from New York and New Jersey joined their ranks. With the new recruits, the regiment’s numbers swelled to over 800. Perhaps the decision of black men from New York and New Jersey to join the regiment was shaped by the actions of an angry mob in Long Island who burned Dunmore in effigy as a warning to those willing to ally with the British. Either way, the proclamation and the appearance of the Ethiopian Regiment at Staten Island increased hopes that slavery would soon come to an end. The means by which the war was conducted in New York helped create avenues for black New Yorkers to seek their freedom. From the time of the Battle of New York until the end of hostilities in 1783, New York was a site actively contested by the loyalist and patriot forces and—in effect—civil control and authority all but collapsed in the region. In the midst of this chaos, hundreds of enslaved people left the homes of their masters. In some cases, they had no other option, as their

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masters had left them behind in New York to fend for themselves. With British occupation of Manhattan Island in September 1776, New York City became a haven for escaping slaves. Few actions by the patriots would have induced black New Yorkers to support their cause. The first state constitution in 1777 avoided the issue of slavery and, despite affirmative recommendations, did not include clauses allowing for the future end to slavery. The inherent contradiction in the Declaration of Independence— in which all men were proclaimed to be equal in the context of racialized slavery—was never addressed. In addition, George Washington initially rejected black recruits, but changed his mind and policy only after Dunmore’s proclamation. Despite the collective hostility and ambivalence toward potential black recruits, African American men joined the patriot cause. Some served as “replacements” for their masters with the promise of freedom upon successful completion of their duties. Most black patriots in New York, however, served in support roles and very few actually saw combat duty. Whether as enlistees with the loyalists or patriots, or as escapees who used the war as a cover to facilitate their freedom, former slaves in New York made active and thoughtful decisions meant to help break the chains of slavery. Unfortunately, at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783, thousands of former slaves were left to be reclaimed by their owners who flooded New York City in search for absconded property. Only the British army stood between these owners and their escaped slaves. British commander in chief Guy Carleton decided that former slaves who responded to the various proclamations from British officials before 1782 were legally free and deserved some semblance of protection. This move further strained relations between Britain and the United States, as George Washington and others were angered by Carleton’s decision. Of the 4,000 to receive protection by the British, many would

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ultimately leave for Nova Scotia and later Sierra Leone in their continued quest to maintain their freedom. Some, however, were returned back to their American owners to serve a lifetime in slavery. The political ramifications of the loyalist defeat crystallized in 1784 with the founding of the African Society of New York City. In the midst of British proclamations, opportunities afforded by the war to earn freedom, and egalitarian rhetoric of the Revolutionary era, African Americans continued to actively challenge the legitimacy of human bondage in New York. At the inaugural meeting of the African Society, noted poet Jupiter Hammon called for moral improvement as a means to the end of emancipation and racial equality. The very next year, members of the Church of England and the Society of Friends formed the New York Manumission Society and, in effect, became the first group of whites openly challenging slavery in the new state. Members included prominent merchants, politicians, and professionals like John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and George Clinton. Initially, the New York Manumission Society sought to influence state legislators to support abolition. Eventually, the multipronged attack employed by the group included offering legal aide to slaves seeking manumission, pressuring slave owners to free their slaves, and using the influence of their more prominent members to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. Despite the efforts of the African Society and the New York Manumission Society, state lawmakers blocked a 1785 measure to grant freedom to every black person born since 1776. The political climate shifted decidedly in favor of abolition in 1795 with the election of John Jay—a member of the New York Manumission Society—as governor of New York. Eventually, with the passage of the Gradual Emancipation Law of 1799, the ideals that inspired the American Revolution finally reconciled—somewhat—the stark reality of human

bondage. Per the terms of this law, all black children born after July 4, 1799, were declared free, but only after a lengthy term of indenture to their mothers’ masters until their mid-to-late-20s. In allowing for a very slow and compensated end to slavery, this law created more problems than it solved. Within five years, the state would pay $20,000 in an effort to partially compensate owners for liberated property and the New York State Senate and Assembly revoked it. Despite its limited effectiveness, the 1799 law led to a 7,000-person increase in the free black population in New York City between 1800 and 1810. With this newfound freedom, however, black New Yorkers were met with poverty, housing discrimination, school segregation, and political disfranchisement, which necessitated the rise of a new generation of black leaders. Men like Peter Williams Sr., Peter Williams Jr., John Teasman, Joseph Sidney, William Hamilton, and Henry Sipkins, among others, spearheaded movements that called for moral uplift, emigration, or some combination of the two as responses to the dire needs of the growing free black population. With passage of the 1817 Gradual Emancipation Law, slavery in New York State was finally dealt a death blow. The state legislature decreed that as of July 4, 1827, all African Americans born before July 4, 1799, would become free. This closed the loophole in the 1799 law and effectively ended slavery in New York State. The 1817 law did not, however, end the system of apprenticeship for the children of enslaved mothers—though it did shorten the term of indenture to 21 years for both men and women. In the end this meant that, in the case of children born just before July 4, 1827, who would then be apprenticed until age 21, black unfree labor would not end until 1848 in New York. At the time of the 1830 census, New York State recorded just 75 total slaves in comparison to a free black population of 44,870. The 1850 Census would be the first Census in the history of the state to record

New York no slaves, except a handful who lived temporarily in the state with their southern masters. New York earned the distinction of being the last of the northern states, with the exception of New Jersey, to abolish slavery. Even though it was greatly delayed, abolition in New York meant that one major aspect of the American paradox—slavery in the land of freedom—had finally been reconciled for black New Yorkers.

Abolition to Enfranchisement, 1827–1870 Even before abolition became a reality in New York, a growing and influential black urban middle class helped create viable and self-sustaining communities; spearheaded campaigns for social justice; and became the voice of the free and enslaved in New York City and throughout the state. The growth and activism of this group was important in the hostile racial climate of New York. At the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1821, for example, delegates disfranchised black men by imposing a $250 property requirement for voting. The same convention, however, removed all property limitations for white men. Assaulted on all sides by newspaper editors, state lawmakers, slave catchers, and white gangs, black New Yorkers responded by creating self-help and mutual aid societies, newspapers, churches, and other institutions. In addition to institution building, black New Yorkers found another powerful tool through which they could articulate their ambitions and goals—the procession. Having been previously banned from participating in the July 4, 1800, Independence Day celebrations, black New Yorkers appropriated July 5 as their independence day and, by 1827, this was to be a highly politicized procession. The first Emancipation Day procession, orchestrated by the Freedom’s Journal—the nation’s first black newspaper founded in 1827—involved a parade in New York City, which drew African Americans from

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around the state. In New York City, more than 2,000 African Americans displayed banners and flags, sang, shouted, played music, and danced on July 5, 1827, from St. John’s Park to the African Zion Church to hear an oration and attend a public dinner at Wall Street. Emancipation Day processions occurred again on July 5, 1828, and July 5, 1829. By the 1830s, however, the concept of holding processions as an outward projection of political or social goals fell out of favor as advocates of moral uplift shifted political agitation from parades to more subtle and less public forms of persuasion. Excluded, mostly, from the political process, black New Yorkers participated in the National Black Convention movement beginning in 1831 as an organizational mechanism to address a range of sometimes conflicting issues including southern abolition, racial uplift, citizenship, Canadian or Haitian emigration, and opposition to the designs of the American Colonization Society. In 1834, the fourth annual National Black Convention held its conference in New York City. A year earlier, white abolitionists formed the New York Anti-Slavery Society, which advocated the twofold platform of immediate abolition and black citizenship. As both black and white New Yorkers began to articulate a set of coherent and concrete goals for the abolition of slavery, others responded with violence. In July 1834, New York City erupted in race war and mob attacks for five days as white abolitionists and black communities were targeted. The orgy of violence, arson, and looting would be mirrored 30 years later when, on July 13, 1863, white mobs would again target white progressives and African American communities in New York City in opposition to the opening of a conscription lottery for the Civil War. Between the anti-abolitionist riot of 1834 and the Draft Riots of 1863, New York became the center of the abolitionist movement. Membership in abolitionist organizations grew during the 1830s and 1840s, especially in New York City, Buffalo,

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and Rochester. Colorful figures like Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Samuel Cornish, James W. C. Pennington, and David Ruggles mounted vocal and concerted challenges to the 1850 Fugitive Act, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, the 1857 Dred Scott decision, and other federal and state concessions to slavery and racial injustice. In the 1840s and 1850s, the National Black Convention movement was revived after a brief lull and, once again, led the charge for African American political initiatives. At the 1843 meeting in Buffalo, Henry Highland Garnet made a call for slave rebellions as an antidote to human bondage in the South. This call for violence was a sharp break from the tone of previous conventions, and the fact that Garnet’s proposal was one vote short from being endorsed by the Buffalo convention marked an important moment in black abolitionism. The 1847 convention at Troy was dominated by black New Yorkers split between two ideological camps—those who wanted to employ political action and those who favored moral suasion. The Rochester convention in 1852 witnessed a sharp divide between Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney over emigration. Through the movements initiated and shaped by New York’s African American leadership cadre, the path toward Civil War was set. By 1860, most of the leadership core of the New York abolitionists had repudiated emigration. The engaged debates, which had previously occurred within the confines of the National Black Conventions, made it painfully clear that leaving the United States—or at least the Western Hemisphere—would undermine the fight against slavery and for citizenship and social justice. Even Frederick Douglass, discouraged by Congressional and Supreme Court decisions in the 1850s, momentarily entertained the idea of Haitian emigration. With the bombardment and siege of Fort Sumter beginning on April 12,

1861, Douglass regained his resolve and firmly believed—like many black New Yorkers—that the Civil War could finally bring an end to the American paradox. The Civil War itself convulsed New York and certainly gave pause to any optimism black New Yorkers had after Abraham Lincoln was elected. The Draft Riot, which began on July 13, 1863, epitomized the recalcitrance of more than a few white New Yorkers to the changing times. The white mobs who murdered and beat African American men, women, and children, set fire to black homes and churches—including an orphanage—and openly announced their support for southern secession and slavery proved the continuing sway of white supremacy and the most vile expressions of racism. It took 4,000 federal troops to quell four days of race war and chaos. In the end, more than a dozen burned, stabbed, beaten, and mutilated black bodies in New York’s streets in the aftermath of the Draft Riots served as terrifying reminders that the North was no “Promised Land” for African Americans. Despite this, black New Yorkers served in the Union army and navy and, fought with honor, and their efforts helped achieve decisive victories on several fronts. With the end of the Civil War, American slavery was put to a decisive death. With passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, black men in New York State finally gained the political franchise without property qualifications.

The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond The end of the Civil War ushered in a new age of struggle against racial oppression. When the African American population in New York City doubled during the 1870s, fears of black hordes migrating from the South led to growing racist and white supremacist sentiments in the city and state. With the Compromise of 1877 and the

New York end of Reconstruction, black Southerners faced a suffocating combination of political disfranchisement, social segregation, sharecropping and tenant farming, lynchings and other forms of racial violence, and antiblack propaganda. The socalled “Black Nadir,” or a low point in African American history, compelled small waves of northern migration from the South between the 1870s and early 1900s. In the 1870s, 70,000 African Americans relocated from the South to the North; 88,000 migrated in the 1890s, and during the first decade of the twentieth century, this number more than doubled to 194,000. By 1900, New York had more transplanted than native-born African Americans within the state. Each successive wave of black migrants brought with it more northern concerns about the impact southern blacks would have on labor markets, social mores, and northern culture. In New York, white concerns about southern migrants led to a resurgence of pro-Confederate sentiments, which were manifested in highly popular Civil War plays, racist minstrel shows and coon songs, and the creation of a wide variety of racist and stereotypical images of black New Yorkers. The South may have lost the Civil War in 1865, but prosouthern, racist sentiments defeated the North by 1900. Fittingly, perhaps, 1900 signaled yet another race riot in New York City. Precipitated by the killing of a white police officer by a black man defending his wife, white mobs severely beat dozens of black men and women on August 15, 1900. Police officers actively participated in the chaos, beating black New Yorkers seeking protection and arresting dozens of black men for carrying concealed weapons. The idea of African Americans as a menace was indelibly emblazoned in the consciousness of white New Yorkers through the persistent image of the razor-wielding brute produced in New York newspapers. Perhaps this dangerous stereotype explains why police officers and New York City court magistrates treated African Americans

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as perpetrators and not victims in the aftermath of the 1900 race riot. It certainly set the stage for the July 1905 conference held at Buffalo, New York, to inaugurate the beginning of the Niagara Movement. Organized by W. E. B. Du Bois, this group of black radicals began a campaign for human rights and social justice similar in scope and magnitude to the abolitionist movement of the 1830s. In the period after 1919, Du Bois would help orchestrate an artistic movement—the Harlem Renaissance—which articulated a more strident, militant, and resistant tone. Using art as a not-so-subtle propaganda campaign to literally redraw the black image and to put on display the expressive genius of African American musicians, writers, visual artists, and dancers, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s produced an army of talented black men and women to fight the collective battles of black New Yorkers and African Americans across the nation. The New Negro consciousness, epitomized in much of the work of Harlem Renaissance artists, aggressively reenvisioned and appropriated one of the key criticisms levied at black New Yorkers. Before the Renaissance, white New Yorkers evoked the “New Negro”—in the backdrop of growing pro-Confederate sentiments in the period between the 1880s and 1900—as unlike the imaged “old darkies” of the antebellum era. Instead of the kindly, passive, happy, and faithful mammies and Sambos of the venerated “good ole days,” New Negroes were seen as undisciplined, immoral, and violent coons and brutes. Alain Locke, the Harvard-trained theorist of the Harlem Renaissance, redefined and appropriated “New Negro” to mean men and women proud of their African heritage and black culture who embraced self-determination, racial solidarity, and resistance to white supremacy. Thus, the poetry of Claude McKay, the scholarly writings of Zora Neale Hurston, the murals and paintings of Aaron Douglass, and the novels of Arna Bontemps were

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outward manifestations of this new consciousness among African Americans, and their work helped inspire this consciousness in others. In many ways the presence of Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Paul Robeson, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Malcolm X in New York in the period between the 1920s and the 1950s epitomized the role the state continued to play as one of the most prominent epicenters for progressive and radical change in black America. New Yorkers played critical roles in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, just as they had previously led in the abolitionist crusade and the Harlem Renaissance. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Housing Act of 1968 paved the way for a more institutionalized form of black activism—participation in electoral politics. This new mode of activism began before the victories of the civil rights era with Adam Clayton Powell’s election to the U.S. Congress in 1945. Representing New York’s 22nd Congressional District, including Harlem, Powell served in Congress from 1945 to 1971, when he lost his reelection bid to Charles Rangel—who, ironically, faced an unsuccessful challenge to hold onto his congressional seat in 2010 by Adam Clayton Powell IV. In 1969, Shirley Chisholm became the first black congresswoman in U.S. history, representing New York’s 12th Congressional District until 1983. She was also the first major party African American candidate for president in 1972. In terms of state politics, David Dinkins was elected as the first black mayor of New York City in 1990, followed by Byron Brown’s election as the first black mayor of Buffalo in 2005. The ultimate political victory came in 2006 when David Patterson became the first black lieutenant governor of New York. After the elected governor—Eliot Spitzer—was forced to resign his seat due to his alleged involvement in soliciting prostitutes, Patterson became New York state’s first black governor on March 17, 2008—only the fourth black

governor in U.S. history. The same year, New York voters proved pivotal in the election of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president. Cast against the long history of slavery, white supremacy, and black disfranchisement in New York’s history, these tangible political victories in recent years are, perhaps, the final reconciliation of America’s long-standing paradox of debasement, racism, and social inequity in the land of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

Notable African Americans Aldridge, Ira (1807–1867) Ira Aldridge became the first African American actor to achieve international recognition performing his rendition of Shakespearean characters for royalty and public audiences throughout Europe. After attending the African Free School in New York, Aldridge’s love of the stage was stoked by the presence of the African Grove Theatre—the first African American theater founded in 1821. For a 40-year period, he became one of the most notable stage actors in the world and prefigured the fame of figures like Paul Robeson and Denzel Washington.

Baker, Ella (1903–1986) Ella Baker was one of the most significant figures of the Civil Rights Movement who played important roles in the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After graduating from Shaw University in 1927, she moved to New York City, where she became a community activist. In 1930, she cofounded the Young Negroes Cooperative League and, a year later, she began her decades-long association with the NAACP, which lasted until 1953. By 1957, Baker joined the SCLC as its first staff person, having already organized a fund-raising

New York

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campaign for the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. After widely publicized student sit-ins in the South, Baker coordinated a conference held at her alma mater, Shaw University, in April 1960, which became the basis for the formation of the SNCC. In helping to found SNCC and by serving a critical role in the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Baker mentored an array of cvil rights activists including Bob Moses, Julian Bond, Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bernice Johnson Reagon. Baker’s commitment to decentralized leadership and radical democratic ideals shaped the ideological framework of the organizations she helped found and the scores of activists she mentored.

Baldwin, James (1924–1987)

Civil rights activist Ella Baker, ca. 1942. (Library of Congress)

James Baldwin was a gifted and prolific writer and activist who was born and raised in Harlem during and after the Harlem Renaissance. Known for several of his books, including Go Tell It on the

James Baldwin, author of the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), wrote about the effects of race, religion, and sexuality on personal identity. (Library of Congress)

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Black America a major party’s nomination for president of the United States. She began her political career in 1964 when she became a member of the New York State legislature as an assemblyperson. By 1969, she became the representative of New York’s 12th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress, serving in that capacity until 1983 and working on a handful of powerful and coveted committees. Chisholm was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969. In 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for U.S. president and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

Fauset, Jessie (1882–1961)

Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955), Giovanni’s Room (1956), The Fire Next Time (1963), Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), Baldwin dealt with issues regarding race, sexuality, religion, and violence throughout his writing career.

Jessie Fauset was of signal importance in orchestrating and shaping the artistic explosion during the Harlem Renaissance. Living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, she made her mark in New York beginning with her appointment as literary editor of the Crisis, the official journal of the NAACP, by 1919. Previously, Fauset had earned a B.A. degree in classical languages from Cornell in 1909, and she was distinguished as just the second African American female inductee into Phi Beta Kappa. Fauset taught French and Latin at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., before moving to New York to accept the literary editorship for the Crisis. As literary editor, she discovered and published the works of Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Jean Toomer between 1919 and 1926. A recognized writer herself, Fauset was the most published Harlem Renaissance novelist and her works bore characteristic features of the strident and proud “New Negro” consciousness theorized and written about by Alain Locke.

Chisholm, Shirley (1924–2005)

Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940)

Shirley Chisholm, born in Brooklyn, became the first African American woman elected to Congress and the first African American to seek

Marcus Garvey, born in Jamaica, only spent six years in Harlem, New York, but he managed to create one of the largest and most electrifying mass

Shirley Chisholm was an important civil rights leader and the first African American woman to run for Congress in the United States, representing the 12th New York District from 1969 to 1983. Chisholm became the first African American to run for president, running for the Democratic Party nomination in 1972. She retired in 1982 but returned to public service as ambassador to Jamaica during the Clinton administration. (Library of Congress)

New York movements of African Americans in the world. Having been inspired after reading Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, Garvey set on the mission that would lead him to establish the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 and to relocate to Harlem in 1917. It was in Harlem, the nexus of the black world, that Garvey found a willing audience for his plan to lift Africans and their descendants. The UNIA became the organizational base for a Pan-Africanist movement that sought to create a cooperative network of black-owned businesses, to help unify the black world, and facilitate a mass return of Africandescended peoples to Africa. By 1923, the UNIA owned a newspaper—the Negro World—with a circulation of more than 200,000. In addition they owned factories, grocery stores, restaurants, and the Black Star Steamship Line, which had a fleet of three ships. After attracting the attention of federal authorities, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud, sentenced to five years in federal prison, and was deported in 1923.

Motley, Constance Baker (1921–2005) Constance Baker Motley was a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who became the first black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. After becoming the first African American woman accepted into Columbia Law School in 1944, Motley met Thurgood Marshall, who recruited this talented lawyer to work for the NAACP. Her work for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund included preparation work for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, serving as lead council in James Meredith’s bid for admission into the University of Mississippi, and defending Freedom Riders arrested during the early 1960s. Motley won 9 of 10 cases argued before the Supreme Court, and even the case she initially lost was later reversed in her favor. In her later career, she entered politics and served in the New York

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State Senate and was the first woman to become the Manhattan borough president. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her as a federal judge—the first African American woman to serve in that capacity.

Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr. (1908–1972) Adam Clayton Powell Jr. became a prominent minister, activist, and politician during the 1930s and 1940s and was notable as the first African American elected to Congress from New York. In 1937, he became pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, succeeding his father and namesake. Representing Harlem’s 22nd Congressional District, Powell was elected to serve in the House of Representatives in 1944. He served in that capacity from 1945 though 1971, when he was replaced by Charles Rangel. During his lengthy tenure in Congress, Powell became chair of the Labor and Education Committee in 1961 and spearheaded such reforms as public school lunches, increases in the minimum wage, and creating college student loans.

Rogers, J. A. (1880–1966) J. A. Rogers was a self-trained scholar who wrote extensively about race and history—including such vindicationist works as From “Superman” to Man (1917), World’s Greatest Men of African Descent (1931), and World’s Great Men of Color (1947). His work was primarily aimed at undermining the many pernicious myths about Africans and African Americans. Originally from Jamaica, Rogers came to Harlem in 1906 and lived there for most of the rest of his life. Rogers’ work can therefore be seen as part of a larger propaganda campaign, orchestrated by Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Jessie Fauset, to change the image of Africans and African Americans during the age of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Black America Africana World with more than 10 million items in its holding.

Sharpton, Al (1954–)

Ahmed Amadou Diallo, 22, seen here in an undated photo, was gunned down at his home in the Bronx borough of New York, 1999. Four white police officers fired 41 shots at Diallo, a black West African immigrant who had no police record and was unarmed. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Schomburg, Arthur (1874–1938) Arthur Schomburg was an important Harlem Renaissance writer, activist, and bibliophile. In 1891, Schomburg migrated from Puerto Rico to New York City, and by 1911, he founded the Negro Society for Historical Research. This was the beginning of his interest in collecting research materials on Africa and the African diaspora. By 1926, his collection of more than 10,000 primary-source documents became part of the New York Public Library. This archive, for which he served as curator from 1932 until his death in 1938, became the foundation for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—an institution that is the definitive research center on the

Al Sharpton of Brooklyn has become one of the more dynamic and controversial figures emerging out of black New York in recent decades. Originally ordained as a Pentecostal minister, he became a Baptist minister in the 1980s, and his leadership and involvement in the Tawanna Brawley case, the death of Yusef Hawkins, and the more recent murder of Amadou Diallo catapulted Sharpton to the international stage. In addition to his religious leadership and social activism, Sharpton has also flirted with politics including three unsuccessful bids for the U.S. Senate, a bid for mayor, and a 2004 attempt to become the Democratic Party nominee for president.

Smith, James McCune (1813–1865) James McCune Smith, a native of New York, was an abolitionist and the first African American to complete a degree in medicine. Having attended the African Free School in New York, McCune attended the University of Glasgow in Scotland after he was denied admission into a few institutions of higher learning in the United States. He completed his medical training in 1837, after earning a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a medical degree, and returned to New York City to open a medical practice. Smith also opened and operated the first African American pharmacy in the United States, located on West Broadway. In addition to his academic training and medical practice, Smith was a committed abolitionist orator and writer. Most famously, he penned the introduction to Frederick Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Smith’s organization memberships include the American

New York Anti-Slavery Society, the Committee of Thirteen, and the National Council of Colored People.

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, became a leading voice in both the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. After obtaining her freedom from bondage, Truth changed her name in 1843 and began her active campaign against slavery and other injustices. Her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, delivered in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, is her best known, though the emphasis on southern African American versions recorded by whites are a distortion. Truth, born and raised in Esopus, New York, on a Dutch farm, spoke only Dutch for the first nine years of her life and she never spoke in southern dialect.

Williams, Peter, Jr. (1786–1840) Peter Williams Jr. was a prominent abolitionist and advocate of emigration, the first African American to be ordained by the Episcopal Church, and the first African American Episcopal priest in the United States. He helped found, or became a leader of, a number of organizations in New York City, including the African Society for Mutual Relief, the African Institution, the New York Haytien Emigration Society, and the Wilberforce Colony Society.

Williams, Peter, Sr. (1749–1823) Peter Williams Sr. a former slave and a veteran of the American Revolution, helped found the African Methodist Zion Church in New York City in 1796. In September 1800, he laid the cornerstone for the first black church built in New York.

Wright, Theodore (1797–1847) Theodore Wright was an important abolitionist and noted religious leader, serving as pastor of

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the First Colored Presbyterian Church in New York City. After attending the African Free School in New York, Wright worked with the New England Anti-Slavery Society and delivered a number of abolitionist speeches during the 1830s. As a cofounder of the American AntiSlavery Society and a devout member of the clergy, Wright actively participated in the Underground Railroad and was involved in the fight against the disfranchisement of black voters in New York State.

Cultural Contributions Breakdancing Though its origins span beyond the geographic boundaries of New York, the expressive art form and dance known as breakdancing or, simply, breaking, was standardized and made popular in New York City during the late 1970s to early 1980s. Breaking, similar to previous generational dances of the past, like the cakewalk, the juba, the Lindy hop, and the twist, became a wildly popular cultural phenomenon. The form itself involves acrobatic movements, leg sweeps, body spins, and other complicated movements and techniques that emphasize finesse and precision. Due to its emphasis on leg sweeps and spins, many scholars have linked its expressive form to African-derived martial arts like Brazilian Capoeira, and there may be some validity to this claim. Moves such as top rocking, spins, and freezes are typically associated with breaking, and the form itself can take on a much more dynamic and seemingly unstructured mode. Its deep-seated roots in New York are embodied in the jargon of breaking. For instance, the term “B-Boy” originally meant Bronx Boy, but can also stand for Break Boy or Beat Boy, because breakers wait for the break beat in a song play to showcase their moves. After gaining much visibility through performances in public places, such as sidewalks, public

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parks, and subway platforms, breaking in New York City became commonplace by the 1980s. In a typical performance, a breaking crew will create a square floor pallet made of flattened cardboard boxes and will be accompanied by a beat box, fellow breakers, and onlookers—all of whom would form a circle around the performers. Soon after its introduction, breaking entered the American mainstream with the introduction of a handful of Hollywood films. The 1984 film Beat Street was also released and was met with commercial success and public interest. Soon after, a flood of other movies, including Breakin’ and Breaking’ 2: The Electric Boogaloo introduced an ever wider audience to this expressive dance form. Like other elements of hip-hop culture, breaking also became widely accepted and embraced abroad. In places like Japan, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil, breaking was probably the most widely adopted dance of American origin throughout the world in the late twentieth through the early twenty-first century.

Harlem Renaissance During the decade of the 1920s, an artistic explosion known as the Harlem Renaissance shaped black literary culture, visual arts, music, and the black aesthetic for decades to come. The Harlem Renaissance included visual artists, writers of prose and poetry, musicians, dancers, and scholars—all invested in promoting a positive, selfaffirming image of the black and African world. Against the backdrop of a concerted anti black propaganda campaign—including such pernicious stereotypes as the mammy, the zip coon, and the brute—artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance sought to redraw the collective and public image of peoples of African descent. Orchestrated by the likes of Jessie Fauset, Alain Locke, and the eminent W. E. B. Du Bois, the artists of the Harlem Renaissance were commissioned not to create art for the sake of art,

but to project positive and empowering images meant to repair the black image in the minds of all Americans and to serve as the foundation for a new consciousness of resistance. This was epitomized in the poem that, in many ways, initiated the movement—“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay. Written in direct response to the 1919 Chicago race riot, McKay evokes violent selfdefense as a justifiable reaction to white mobs. This defiant, strident, and resistive tone set the mood for much of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, a theme of cultural renewal and pride coursed through the movement. Harlem, New York—during the 1920s—was the Mecca of the black world and attracted migrants from the Deep South, the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. As one of many terminal points of the Great Migration, Harlem’s African American population grew tremendously by the early 1920s and thus, standing at the nexus of a larger, cosmopolitan black world during a time of abject racial oppression, Harlem had the critical mass of intellects, middle-class African Americans, recent migrants from the African diaspora, and social activists to shape and sustain this artistic explosion. Prominent among the many artists and intellects of the movement were visual artists Aaron Douglass, Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, Palmer Hayden, Norman Lewis, and Sargent Johnson; poets Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Anita Scott Coleman, Countee Cullen, Ruth Dixon, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, and Jean Toomer; novelists Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Carl Van Vechten, and George Schuyler; musicians and singers Paul Robeson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey, and Cab Calloway; intellectuals and academics Arthur Schomburg, Joel A. Rogers,

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Track-and-field star Jesse Owens and Mrs. Ruth Owens were on hand for the opening of a new nightclub, the Cotton Club, in New York, 1936. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Alain Locke, and W. E. B. Du Bois; and activists and organizational leaders Marcus Garvey, Walter White, Father Divine, and Daddy Grace. In addition to these individuals, Harlem was also home to iconic spaces such as the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theater, and the Savoy Ballroom.

Pinkster Festivals Pinkster, a celebration of the Pentecostal, is a reference to the seventh Sunday after Easter when the apostles received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through the sixteenth century, many Europeans recognized the day of Pentecost—Whit Sunday— and the season of its celebration, or Whitsuntide, as an important element of popular Christianity, and it was memorialized throughout Europe by a variety of festivities. In the context of New York, the Pinkster (Pentecostal) Festival was a celebration

initiated by the Dutch, which was quickly transformed by enslaved West and west central Africans into their own festivity. It included a three- or fourday holiday that allowed the enslaved population in New Netherland additional freedoms and time away from work. Though New York’s Pinkster Festival had distinctly Dutch origins, it was a bicultural celebration during its beginnings in seventeenth-century North America. It would eventually be entirely appropriated by enslaved Africans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when Pinkster was celebrated in New York City, Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and elsewhere in the region. In a 1737 description of a Pinkster Festival celebrated in New York City, a white observer noted that Africans divided themselves according to their nations at the outset of the festivities and would seemingly perform military drills. By the

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late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, another central element of Pinkster was the coronation of an African “king” who presided over the various activities. In addition to military drills and coronations, Pinkster Festivals from Albany to New York City included drumming, competitive dancing, singing in African languages, and displaying of colorful banners. Though Pinkster Festivals did not continue beyond the midnineteenth century in New York, these celebrations likely played a direct role in the longstanding tradition of black parading in New York, highlighted by Emancipation Parades and other similar processions. In addition, Pinkster joins other syncretic Africanized-Christian or AfricanEuropean celebrations and festivals throughout the Americas including Carnival, Mardi Gras, Jonkunnu, Election Day, and Big Drum.

Rap Music Founded in the South Bronx in the mid to late 1970s, Rap music was the rhetorical backlash to disco’s prominence in the national and urban music scene. Before the emergence of rap music onto the music scene in New York City, there was already a counterculture developing that encompassed a number of expressive outlets and forms. Various aspects of urban art, including unique styles of dance, poetry, music, and visual art (and graffiti) began to define the outlines of a new cultural form generally known as hip-hop. Rap, as a musical and vocal counter narrative, and hip-hop, as an all-encompassing culture, provided outlets and venues for otherwise marginalized black and Latino urban youth. What began as an underground, subversive, and subaltern form was transformed, by the 1980s and 1990s, into a multibillion-dollar industry shaping global urban cultures in modernizing cities throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The concept of “rap,” which is street slang for “talk,” was not new as of the mid-1970s, as

H. “Rap” Brown—a civil rights and black power activist beginning in the late 1960s—embodied the concept of employing rhymed verbal confrontations, jabs, social commentaries, and other expositions. Rap music as a genre, however, has its origins with performers like DJ Kool, Herc (and the Herculoids), and Grandmaster Flash (and the Furious Five) who created the characteristic idioms—the DJ, the MC, and even an entire lexicon —that made rap what it is today. By the late 1990s through the early portion of the twentyfirst century, rap has become one of the top-grossing music industries in the world, and New York rappers like the Notorious BIG, Nas, the WuTang Clan, Rakim, Mos Def, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Red Man, and many others have become cultural icons across the globe.

Bibliography Books and Articles Alexander, Leslie. African or American: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784–1861. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Berlin, Ira, and Leslie Harris, eds. Slavery in New York. New York: New Press, 2005. Biondi, Martha. To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Blakey, Michael. “The New York Burial Ground Project: An Examination of Enslaved Lives, A Construction of Ancestral Ties.” Transforming Archaeology: Journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists 7 (1998): 53–58. Boyd, Herb. The Harlem Reader: A Celebration of New York’s Most Famous Neighborhood, from the Renaissance Years to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. Capeci, Dominic J. The Harlem Riot of 1943. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977.

New York Corbould, Clare. Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919–1939. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Dallam, Marie W. Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Davis, Barbara Sheklin. Syracuse African Americans. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2005. Davis, Thomas J., ed. The New York Conspiracy by Daniel Horsmanden. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. DeSantis, John. For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst. New York: Pharos Books, 1991. Dodson, Howard, Christopher Moore, and Robert Yancy. The Black New Yorkers: The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000.

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1790–1965. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994. Hansen, Joyce, and Gary McGowan. Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence: The Story of New York’s African Burial Ground. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. Harris, Leslie. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Haygood, Wil. King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Farley, Ena. The Underside of Reconstruction New York: The Struggle over the Issue of Black Equality. New York: Garland, 1993.

Hutchinson, George. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995.

Field, Phyllis F. The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.

Hutchinson, George, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Foote, Thelma Wills. Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hynes, Charles J., and Bob Drury. Incident at Howard Beach: The Case for Murder. New York: Putnam, 1990.

Gellman, David Nathaniel, and David Quigley. Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777–1877. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Goodfriend, Joyce. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664– 1730. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. “Or Does It Explode?”: Black Harlem in the Great Depression. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Grover, Kathryn. Make a Way Somehow: AfricanAmerican Life in a Northern Community,

Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991. Johnson, Mat. The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007. Katz, William Loren. Black Legacy: A History of New York’s African Americans. New York: Athenaeum Books for Young Readers, 1997. Kaufman, Edward, ed. Reclaiming Our Past, Honoring Our Ancestors: New York’s 18th Century African Burial Ground and the Memorial Competition. New York: African Burial Ground Coalition, 1994.

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King, Roger A. The Underground Railroad in Orange County, N.Y.: The Silent Rebellion. Monroe, NY: Library Research Associates, 1999.

SenGupta, Gunja. From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840–1918. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002.

Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Shapiro, Edward S. Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006.

Martin, Tony. Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983.

Stamps, Spurgeon Martin David, and Miriam Burney Stamps. Salt City and Its Black Community: A Sociological Study of Syracuse, New York. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008.

McCague, James. The Second Rebellion: The Story of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. New York: Dial Press, 1968. Osofsky, Gilbert. Harlem, the Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Riis, Thomas Laurence. Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890–1915. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Rucker, Walter. “The River Flows On”: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Sacks, Marcy S. Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Sanjek, Roger. The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Schloss, Joseph Glenn. Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Stuckey, Sterling. “African Spirituality and Cultural Practice in Colonial New York, 1700– 1770.” In C. Pestana and Sharon Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999, 160–181. Taylor, Clarence. The Black Churches of Brooklyn. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Thabit, Walter. How East New York Became a Ghetto. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Watkins-Owens, Irma. Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920–1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995. Watts, Jill. God, Harlem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Weisenfeld, Judith. African American Women and Christian Activism New York’s Black

New York YWCA, 1905–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770–1810. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

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White, Shane. Stories of Freedom in Black New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

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Wilder, Craig Steven. In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Williams, Lillian Serece. Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900–1940. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Harlem Renaissance. www.csustan.edu/english/ reuben/pal/chap9/CHAP9.HTML. New York State Archives, Records Related to African Americans. archives.nysed.gov/a/ research/res_topics_pgc_afri_amer.shtml. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html. The Underground Railroad in New York State. www.nyhistory.com/ugrr.

NORTH CAROLINA Jamane Yeager

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Chronology 1619

A Dutch ship arrives at Jamestown carrying 20 captive African natives. They are treated as indentured servants and work in the tobacco fields.

1663

Slaves and perhaps a few free African Americans are among the settlers from Virginia who settle in the Albemarle Region on Colleton Island in Roanoke Sound.

1715

North Carolina adopts its first slave code, which tries to define the social, economic, and physical place of enslaved people.

1717

African American pirates plunder ships on the coastal waters of North Carolina; other African Americans serve on board Blackbeard’s pirate ships between 1717 and 1718.

1741

A law is enacted requiring newly freed slaves to leave North Carolina within six months.

1776

The Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) denounces slavery and appoints a committee to aid Friends in emancipating their slaves. Forty slaves are freed, but the courts declare them still enslaved and resell them.

1778

African American John Chavis from Halifax County joins the 5th Virginia Regiment of the Continental army; Chavis remains in the army for three years and goes on to become a prominent teacher and minister.

1793

Eli Whitney invents the first commercially successful cotton gin near Savannah, Georgia. The cotton gin eventually changes the agricultural face of North Carolina and the rest of the cotton-producing South by making cotton a profitable cash crop.

1808

John Chavis, a freeborn African American, opens a school in Raleigh. Chavis, who fought in the Revolutionary War, teaches white children by day and African American pupils at night.

1826

The North Carolina General Assembly passes a law forbidding the migration of free African Americans into the state.

1829

The General Assembly enacts “Black Codes” restricting the activities of free and enslaved African Americans.

1829

David Walker, an African American born free in Wilmington in 1785, publishes Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston. Appalled by slavery, Walker advocates open rebellion. The North Carolina General Assembly bans Walker’s writings as well as other “seditious” works that “might excite insurrection.” Walker dies in 1830 in Boston.

1831

Slave and preacher Nat Turner leads 20 followers in a bloody revolt through Southampton County, Virginia, just north of the North Carolina border. The North Carolina militia is called out to assist in stopping the rebellion.

1839

Stephen Slade, an enslaved African American, discovers a method of curing bright-leaf tobacco on the plantation of Abisha Slade in Caswell County.

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1842

Harriet Jacobs, an Edenton slave, is smuggled onto a ship to escape slavery after spending seven years hiding in a tiny attic room in her grandmother’s house. She escapes to New York, where she buys the freedom of her children. She later becomes an author and abolitionist and writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).

1849

Thomas Day, a free African American cabinetmaker, operates the state’s largest furnituremaking business in Milton, Caswell County.

1859

Abolitionist John Brown captures the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to incite a slave insurrection. Two free African Americans from North Carolina, Lew Sheridan Leary from Fayetteville and John Anthony Copeland from Raleigh, join Brown’s forces. Leary is killed by U.S. troops. Copeland, along with John Brown and his other followers, is tried and executed for treason.

1861

North Carolina lawmakers bar any African American person from owning or controlling a slave, making it impossible for a free person of color to buy freedom for a family member or friend.

1861

(May 20) A state convention at Raleigh votes to secede from the United States and join the Confederacy; North Carolina is the second-to-last state to adopt a secession ordinance.

1862

Mary Jane Patterson, a free African American from Raleigh, becomes the first African American woman to receive a bachelor of arts degree. She obtains it from Oberlin College in Ohio.

1863

The American Missionary Society opens its first school for African Americans in New Bern, North Carolina; other schools are opened in Morehead, Roanoke Island, and Beaufort by autumn.

1864

Under the leadership of James Walker Hood, AME Zion churches are established, making North Carolina the strongest state in Zion Methodism.

1865

Shaw University, the first African American institution of higher education in the United States, is founded in Raleigh by Baptists. The school’s original name was Raleigh Institute.

1865

Congress charters the Freedmen’s Savings Bank and Trust Company; branches are established in New Bern, Raleigh, and Wilmington.

1865

(December 4) North Carolina ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

North Carolina enacts Black Codes, which legalize the marriages of freedmen and safeguard their right to make contracts, but deny African Americans the right to vote.

1866

Nearly 10,000 ex-slaves are married in the state to legalize previous slave unions.

1866

African Americans meet in Raleigh during the state convention to adopt a set of moderate political and educational resolutions.

1866

(December 14) North Carolina rejects the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending citizenship to former slaves.

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1867

Congress passes the Reconstruction Act; North Carolina and other southern states are placed under military rule.

1867

State African Americans led by James Walker Hood, A. H. Galloway, Isham Sweat, and J. W. Ward hold a convention in Raleigh to ask for full rights and protection under the law.

1867

Howard Graded School is founded in Fayetteville; Biddle Memorial Institute (Johnson C. Smith University) is founded in Charlotte, by Presbyterians; and St. Augustine’s College is founded by Episcopalians in Raleigh.

1868

Fifteen African Americans are elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives as Republicans gain control of the state government; A. A. Galloway of New Hanover County and John A. Hyman of Warren County are elected to the North Carolina Senate.

1868

(June 25) North Carolina is readmitted to the Union.

1868

(July 4) North Carolina ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment.

1869

James Walker Hood becomes an agent of the Bureau of Education and reports that the state contains 257 African American schools with combined enrollments of 15,657 students.

1869

(March 5) North Carolina ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the vote to black men.

1870

Hiram R. Revels, born a free man in Fayetteville County, North Carolina, takes his seat in the U.S. Senate; Revels becomes the first African American U.S. senator, and the first African American in Congress.

1870

Ku Klux Klan activities intensify in many counties throughout North Carolina as Democrats seek to suppress African American participation in politics.

1874

John A. Hyman becomes the first African American U.S. representative from North Carolina.

1880

Richard Etheridge becomes the first African American appointed as keeper of a life saving station at Pea Island, which had the nation’s only all–African American lifesaving crew from 1880 to World War II. Etheridge’s crew received the Gold Lifesaving Medal posthumously in 1996 for a rescue operation in 1896.

1882

James O’Hara, an African American Republican, runs unopposed and is elected to the 48th Congress from North Carolina.

1885

Princeville is incorporated by freed slaves after the Civil War. Originally known as Freedom Hill, it is the oldest incorporated African American town in the United States.

1886

The North Carolina Teachers’ Association for Negroes presents demands for African Americans in higher education, federal aid to education, and the establishment of uniform requirements and salaries for African American and white teachers.

1888

Henry P. Cheatham is elected to the 51st Congress as a Republican representing North Carolina.

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1896

George H. White is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina and is reelected in 1898.

1898

The Wilmington Race Riot erupts when a white militia headed by local Democratic leaders terrorizes the African American community.

1902

Charlotte Hawkins Brown opens Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia.

1909

The National Religious Training School and Chautauqua (now North Carolina Central University) opens in Durham.

1911

The Greensboro City Council, like other southern city councils, passes an ordinance requiring separate white and black residential areas.

1913

Mercy Hospital, one of the first African American hospitals in the South, opens in Wilson.

1923

Annie Elizabeth (Bessie) Delaney of Raleigh becomes the second African American woman to practice dentistry in New York City.

1928

Annie Wealthy Holland of Gates County forms the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, the first such organization for African Americans in the state.

1938

African American students in Greensboro initiate a theater boycott that spreads to other cities.

1939

A law school for African American students is established at North Carolina Central College.

1942

The Durham Manifesto acknowledges that World War II is generating increased racial tensions. The statement demands complete voting rights for African Americans and an end to white primaries, to intimidation, and to evasion of the law, and insists on equal access to all jobs.

1947

Kenneth R. Williams becomes the first African American candidate in the twentieth-century South to defeat a white opponent in a municipal election; Williams wins a seat on the Winston-Salem Board of Aldermen.

1947

Elreta Alexander becomes the first African American woman licensed as a lawyer in North Carolina.

1951

A court order requires the University of North Carolina to admit African American students to its graduate and professional schools.

1955

The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill admits its first African American freshmen: Leroy Frasier, John Lewis Brandon, and Ralph Frasier, all of Durham.

1958

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visits North Carolina to deliver speeches in Raleigh and Greensboro.

1960

(February 1) Four students at North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro sit down at a whites-only lunch counter at the F. W. Woolworth store to protest the store’s discriminatory practices; the protest sparks other “sit-in” demonstrations throughout North Carolina and the South.

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1964

Samuel S. Mitchell becomes the first African American judge in North Carolina.

1966

Floyd B. McKissick of Asheville is named national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

1968

Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill.

1968

Elreta Alexander becomes the first African American woman elected judge in North Carolina.

1971

Reverend Ben Chavis and the “Wilmington 10” are charged with fire bombing a grocery store and with kidnapping.

1977

Howard Lee becomes the North Carolina state secretary of national and economic resources.

1979

The “Greensboro Massacre” occurs when Ku Klux Klansmen fire on members of an anti-Klan rally in Greensboro and kill five people.

1983

Henry Frye becomes the first African American to sit on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

1983

Harvey Gantt is elected the first African American mayor of Charlotte.

1986

Ronald McNair, a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and the nation’s second African American astronaut, is one of the seven victims of the Challenger space shuttle explosion.

1989

(May 3) North Carolina ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax; the state’s ratification comes 25 years after the amendment took effect.

1991

Dan Blue becomes the first African American to serve as Speaker of the House in the North Carolina General Assembly.

1990

Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt wins 47 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat incumbent U.S. Senator Jesse Helms.

1991

Eva Clayton becomes the first African American woman elected to Congress from North Carolina.

1993

Sadie and Bessie Delaney publish the book Having Our Say, The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. Their story becomes a successful Broadway play.

2000

Ten of the largest African American firms in the United States are headquartered in North Carolina.

2002

Frank Balance, a Democrat, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina’s 1st District.

2006

African Americans make up about 22 percent of the state’s population.

2008

Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major political party, carries North Carolina; he becomes the first Democrat to win the state since 1976.

North Carolina

Historical Overview Pre-Colonial to Colonial Era Even before Sir Walter Raleigh planted an English colony on Roanoke Island in the 1580s, Africans had visited North Carolina’s shores. In 1526, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a Spanish explorer and slave trader, led an expedition of 500 men and women from the West Indies to settle in the vicinity of Cape Fear. Among the adventurers were several African American slaves. The expedition ultimately ended in disease, starvation, and failure, but the short-lived Spanish colony on the banks of the Cape Fear River was a harbinger of future efforts. With the planting of the Raleigh colonies on the North American continent between 1584 and 1590, Sir Francis Drake inadvertently furnished North Carolina with its first permanent African American inhabitants. Drake raided the Spanish-held West Indies in 1585 and 1586 and acquired numerous prisoners, including Moorish galley slaves and soldiers, a group of Negro slaves (to whom he promised freedom), and approximately 300 South American Indians. The development of slavery and the increase in the African American population in North Carolina was tied to the push of settlers from Virginia into the northeastern portion of the colony or the Albemarle region. One inducement for increasing the slave population was offered by the Lords Proprietors in the Concession of 1665, which granted 50 acres of land to the master for each slave imported. Furthermore, the owner was given absolute power and authority over his slaves. North Carolina officials legalized slavery in 1705. Some free African Americans lived in North Carolina during the colonial period. A 1715 law held that slaves could be freed as a reward for honest and faithful service. Upon being granted freedom, however, African Americans had six months to leave the colony or they could be sold

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for five years to a person who would provide the means for their transportation. Only African Americans who had been freed for meritorious deeds could stay. Nonetheless, free African Americans moved into the North Carolina colony from other colonies, and the children conceived by white women who were fathered by African American men were free. There were 5,041 free African Americans in the colony when the 1790 Census was taken. By the American Revolution, the Great Dismal Swamp on the border between Virginia and North Carolina had become perhaps the largest sanctuary for runaway and fugitive slaves in the South. Thousands hid in relative safety and seclusion, living there for generations and establishing entire villages of maroons and mestizos, mixed groups of whites, Indians, and African Americans. So well known was the reputation of the swamp for harboring runaways that northern abolitionist poets and writers used it as a literary symbol to plead against “the evil institution.” Coastal towns such as Wilmington, Edenton, and New Bern attracted scores of runaways and free Africans. By 1770, African Americans, both slaves and free, made up more than half the population of Wilmington, which, despite passes and patrols, would become a focal point for runaways and fugitives after the Revolution.

Antebellum Period and Civil War The period prior to the Civil War was one of uneasiness in North Carolina. This climate was perpetuated by a number of factors, including the abolitionist movement and a general feeling among whites that both slaves and free African Americans would become uncontrollable. In 1861, the General Assembly enacted legislation that carried a mandatory death sentence for any persons bringing into the state, publishing, or causing to be circulated any publications that could cause slaves to become discontent with their status. There was a similar penalty for

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anyone convicted of instigating a rebellious spirit among the slaves and free African Americans. Local ordinances in cities across the state restricted the mobility of slaves and the practice that allowed slaves to hire themselves out. Special attention was given to the state’s 30,000 free African Americans, whose very presence continued to pose a threat to the status quo. Efforts were stepped up to reduce the number of free African Americans in the state, to eliminate their association with slaves, and to keep them under constant surveillance. Numerous petitions and bills sought to reenslave the population of free African Americans through legislation. Failing in this effort, the practice of jailing free African Americans for questionable crimes and hiring them out to work off their fines increased. North Carolina African Americans reacted differently to the Civil War. Many ran away to the Union lines and offered their assistance. Others volunteered money and lives to help the Confederate cause. However, it appears the vast majority stayed in place on the farms and plantations of their masters awaiting the outcome. In 1863, the Confederacy passed slave impressments legislation which sought to use slaves under state authority to build roads and otherwise work in the state’s defense effort. Throughout the Civil War, North Carolinians opposed the arming of African Americans for combat purposes. Nonetheless, their participation behind the lines in the defense and economic life of the state allowed the war effort to be sustained and thrust many African Americans into previously untried skilled and semiskilled occupations.

Reconstruction and the Late Nineteenth Century In 1865, a group led by James Harris and J. W. Hood met in Raleigh to discuss the fate of African Americans in the state. They were concerned not

with social equality as many whites suspected, but protection, schools, the right to serve on juries and testify in court, and their civil rights as citizens. In March 1865, the U.S. Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist former slaves in finding employment, establishing schools, buying or renting land, and combating the disease and poverty brought about by their displacement. This network operated in North Carolina for some three and one-half years, distributing food and clothes, establishing hospitals, and organizing schools. Following the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments by the U.S. Congress, African Americans became a reckoning force at the ballot box in North Carolina. While free African Americans held the power of the ballot from 1776 to 1835, their voting was a source of discomfort and friction. However with the momentum of their newfound freedom, some 73,000 registered and participated in the election of delegates to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868, which elected 107 Republicans, of whom 15 were African American. Thirteen Conservatives made up the 120 total delegates. Another development that had implications for the arrival of African Americans on the political scene was the organizing of the Republican Party in the state in 1867. The party was composed mainly of small farmers, northerners, and African Americans. African Americans constituted about half of the party’s membership. While many white voters stayed away from the polls in the 1868 election, the Republican Party carried 58 of the 89 counties in North Carolina owing to the voting strength of the freedmen. With the election came a Republican governor and legislature and ratification of the new North Carolina constitution, of which 15 African Americans participated in writing. This election sent a cadre of Republican senators and representatives to

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Washington. Of the members elected to the General Assembly, 3 of the 50 senators and 20 of the 120 representatives were African American. The period between 1868 and 1877 is often called the “Republican Era” or time of “Negro Rule” by southern historians. African Americans held local and legislative positions from 1868 to 1900 in a least 17 eastern North Carolina counties. As expected, officeholders came from the counties with large African American populations, such as Bertie, Northampton, Caswell, Halifax, Edgecombe, Craven, New Hanover, Warren, and Granville. The district became known as the “The Black Second.” Although some areas, Herford and Richmond, were more than 55 percent African American, they had no African American state representatives. Between 1875 and 1900, four African Americans from North Carolina served in the U.S. Congress. John A. Hyman was the first African American from the state to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served from 1875 to 1877. John O’Hara served in the same capacity from 1883 to 1887. During his tenure in Congress, he won Born a slave, Representative John Hyman served at the high tide of African American representation in Congress during the distinction for his stand for equal accomReconstruction Era, joining six other black men in the House. modations and equal justice. Henry P. Emancipated in 1865, Hyman became the first black Cheatham was elected to Congress in representative from North Carolina to be elected. (National 1889 and served two terms. George H. Archives) White served in the General Assembly from 1880 to 1886, four years as a representative While African Americans remained visible in and two as a senator, before being elected as the federal public offices until 1900, their political state solicitor for the Second District. In 1897, strength had begun to wane, beginning in 1876 he was elected to Congress and served two with the return of the Democratic Party to power terms; he was the last African American to serve in the state. Through a campaign designed to this body until 1928. He is considered one of instigate fear of African American political domithe most brilliant African Americans of his nation and to promote white supremacy, conservperiod. atives won the governorship and a majority in the

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General Assembly. This election coupled with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the already clandestine activity of the Ku Klux Klan marked the end of Reconstruction. This period began the dilution and virtual elimination of African American voting strength in the state until the 1960s. Conservative Democrats immediately began to institute laws to accomplish this end. First of all, county government was established, giving the General Assembly power to appoint justices of the peace who appointed the county commissioners who, in turn, set up the county courts. This move virtually eliminated African Americans from holding such powerful positions, even in counties where they were dominant. Second, they instituted voter qualification laws, which gave power to registrars and judges of elections. Judges were to be appointed by justices of the peace and given limitless power to determine the eligibility of voters. Finally, the legislature passed laws rearranging wards in the larger cities where African Americans were concentrated so that voting strength would be diluted. The culmination of these laws and other maneuvers by conservatives served to disillusion and frustrate all but the most persistent African American voters. African Americans began to leave the state, to other areas of the country or outside of the country. The intimidation, whippings, and other forms of mob violence resulted in widespread apprehension and the desire for southern African Americans to emigrate to the West. A small number of African Americans showed interest in emigrating to Liberia and turned to the American Colonization Society for assistance. African American leaders spoke out against the Liberian movement. The first large interstate migration from the South after Reconstruction occurred in 1879. Some African Americans migrated to Kansas. But the majority of African American North

Carolinians moved to Indiana. Over a 30-day period, Johnston and Wayne Counties reportedly lost 6,000 to Indiana. Samuel L. Perry, an African American, has been credited with masterminding this exodus from North Carolina. Perry was active in Greene, Lenoir, Wayne, Wilson, Edgecombe, and Halifax Counties. The continuing agricultural depression and economic exploitation of African American farm laborers served as s steady stimulant for either permanent or temporary migration. The second-largest exodus of African Americans from North Carolina occurred in 1889. Similar to its predecessor, it was motivated by the “oppressive” mortgage and lien bond system, the agricultural depression (of 1888 in this instance), the generally lower wages paid to agricultural workers, the county government law, and the enactment of harsh racial legislation by the General Assembly of North Carolina. The immediate cause of the 1889 exodus, however, was the passage of the 1889 election law by the General Assembly. It has been estimated that nearly 50,000 African Americans migrated from North Carolina in 1889. Emigrant laws were passed by the General Assembly to halt the tide of African Americans leaving the state. The emigrant statute remained on the books for two years; then in September 1893, the North Carolina Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and void. Aside from the progress and eventual frustration of African Americans in the political arena, African Americans were able to make significant strides in education. With the help of numerous benevolent associations and religious bodies (the Quakers, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians were most active) as well as the support of the Freedmen’s Bureau, efforts were made to stamp out illiteracy. Illiteracy decreased by 50 percent among African Americans between 1865 and 1900. Much of this progress was owed to the assistance of charitable groups and self-help

North Carolina

African American men fire handguns in the street during the Wilmington race riots of 1898. (Library of Congress)

among the African American population. Despite the inequalities that resulted from a segregated public education system, the development, upgrading, and maintenance of both private and public schools continued into the twentieth century. Ultimately, African Americans knew that the road to true liberation and selfdetermination was paved by advances in education. To receive education beyond the primaryschool level, African Americans generally had to attend one of the private African American schools, of which there were several before 1900. In fact, in 1902, the state had only two public high schools for African Americans, one in Durham and the other in Reidsville. Among the most noted private African American schools were Elizabeth City School (Elizabeth City), Howard Grade School (Fayetteville), Dudley School (Wayne County), and Gray High School (Hillsborough). This support was continued after the turn of the century by other philanthropic and educational foundations like the Peabody Education Fund, the Slater Fund, the Anna T. Jeanes

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Fund, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the General Education Board, and the Phelps-Stokes Fund. In spite of these benevolent gestures and the state’s responsibility to provide separate-but-equal facilities, African Americans had to take the education of their children into their own hands. Individuals as well as churches supported and operated African American schools across the state. African American community life came together in the churches, lodges, and fraternal organizations, all of which functioned as promoters of individual character and group progress. Economically, the associations that members formed were valuable, as the emerging class of artisans, businessmen, and professionals learned to identify and work with each other. The churches had their own organizations such as the Baptist Women’s Home Mission Convention or the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society. Between one-third and one-half of all African American North Carolinians during this period belonged to churches, with the number and percentage of communicants steadily rising. One common goal of all African American churches was the advancement of the race. While the ultimate concern was “winning souls for Jesus” as well as the comportment and well-being of the membership and the greeted community, much emphasis was placed on education. To this end, most of the private colleges founded in North Carolina have church affiliations, and a major focus on training young men and women for the ministry. African American churches also served as a focal point for many communities, providing a location and rallying point to ventilate and address social, civic, community, and cultural concerns. In the missionary posture, these memberships provided food, clothing, and shelter for the indigent and orphaned in their respective communities and comfort to the bereaved. And in a dignified and Christian way, churches instilled pride in their flocks, which caused members to

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extol their rights as human beings while fighting against injustices. Outside of the farm, African Americans found few opportunities for employment except in traditional “Negro jobs.” Those included lumbering, naval stores, and railroad construction and maintenance. Jobs in textile and furniture industries remained unavailable to African Americans, but tobacco was an exception. Unionization also hurt African American workers. The number of African American trainmen in the South actually declined from 41.3 percent to 33.1 percent between 1910 and 1930 because of union hostility toward African American workers. Progress could also be measured by African American entrepreneurship. The most obvious areas for African American entrepreneurs were those that provided necessary services to African American people, areas in which white entrepreneurs had shown little interest. Already some service occupations were stereotyped as African American and served a largely white clientele. This group included barbers, caterers, blacksmiths, bootblacks, and bricklayers. But there were also needs in the African American community for funeral parlors, life insurance companies, banks, restaurants, drugstores, saloons, and grocery stores. In 1880, there were some 80 African American businesses established across the state. Some 10 years later, there were approximately 175 merchants, manufacturers, and traders in North Carolina. Typically, most such businesses were in cities with sizable African American populations. Grocers, general store operators, liquor dealers, and blacksmiths constituted more than half of this group.

Early Twentieth Century In the 1920s, the decade of the so-called “New Negro,” assaults on segregation intensified. In 1929, the Durham African American newspaper, the Carolina Times, continued to agitate for the

freedoms that emancipation and Reconstruction had supposedly given African Americans. It is no coincidence that the candor evident in the Carolina Times emanated from the African American community in Durham. Durham occupies a special place in the lives of North Carolina’s African Americans. It was there that the self-assertive, successful, proud, and impatient “New Negro” flourished. Anchoring the African American middle-class in Durham was the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Established in 1898, the company began doing business in 1899 with three employees: John Merrick, Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore, and Charles Clinton Spaulding. Within a half century, it grew to be the largest African American–owned business in the United States. The success of North Carolina Mutual led to the growth of other middle-class enterprises. Durham became the home of a vibrant African American culture. “Christian music” and “blues” originated in the tobacco factories. To ease their toils, African American laborers often sang while at work. The steamy workrooms in Durham’s factories swayed with the rhythm of gospel music that soon developed into public performances. Between 1900 and 1930, Durham hosted a remarkable group of blues musicians. Unlike Christian music, the blues had a low-down, slightly disreputable air. Middle-class African Americans thought the blues sinful. Most blues musicians worked at unskilled jobs during the day and played music at night. The onset of the Great Depression and the sunny promises of the New Deal gave North Carolina African Americans fresh hope that the federal government would address their urgent needs. But the New Deal left at best a mixed legacy. While it raised African Americans’ expectations and provided some material benefits, it also hurt the state’s black workers, reinforced African Americans’ low status, and, in agriculture, accelerated the unrelenting departure of African American sharecroppers from the farm.

North Carolina In 1943, African American tobacco workers in Winston-Salem led a strike against the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The strikers sought union recognition, the right to collective bargaining, higher wages, and better working conditions. The African American middle-class spokesmen urged the strikers to resist the appeals of union organizers and to preserve “friendly” relations with white industrialists. But, with the help of the National Labor Relations Board, the Reynolds workers, represented by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), secured a contract in 1944. The CIO also conducted a voter registration drive that increased the number of African American voters tenfold. In 1947, Kenneth Williams, a minister, won a seat on the board of aldermen. In so doing, he became the first African American city official in the twentiethcentury South to defeat a white opponent. The African American middle class traditionally brokered small concessions from the white elite, but could not remain reticent in the face of such working-class ferment and the rapidly changing conditions brought on by the war. No matter how cordial personal relations between the races appeared, enormous anger and frustration boiled just beneath the surface. Working-class African Americans, such as the tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, challenged the African American middle class’s leadership and pushed insistently for change. It was African American laborers and respectable middle-class African Americans schooled in the ways of racial etiquette that were creating a climate for protest and upheaval, not “outside agitators,” as Governor Broughton remarked. On the eve of the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, few whites seemed to sense that a half century of segregation—customs, laws, and traditions their politicians promised would never end—teetered on the brink of destruction. Through a long and at times seemingly unbending process, desegregation of North

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Carolina’s public school system came closer to reality. Formal desegregation occurred through voluntary, court-ordered, or negotiated compliance and as result of class-action lawsuits. County school boards throughout the state drafted plans to integrate their facilities in voluntary compliance with the Brown decision. When private suits were successfully entered, courts ordered school boards to comply. The Office of Civil Rights intervened against those school districts that received federal funding and discriminated on the basis of race. Class action suits permitted one judicial ruling to apply to school districts in a multitude of jurisdictions. In the end, such landmark decisions as Brown and Swann v. CharlotteMecklenburg Board of Education made the desegregation of North Carolina’s public schools possible.

Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 1960s The fundamental impetus for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s extended from the institutionalization of slavery during antebellum days to the disfranchisement of African Americans that characterized the post-Reconstruction period to the “color line” of the Jim Crow era. The quest for full equality occurred as disfranchisement and racial segregation pushed African Americans into second-class citizenship during the Jim Crow era. Organized opposition to segregation took several forms in North Carolina. In 1932, African American ministers in Raleigh refused to take part in a ceremony to dedicate the new War Memorial Auditorium. They boycotted the ceremony because they were confined to a small section of the balcony of the new structure. In 1938, students in Greensboro initiated a theater boycott that spread to other cities. In the 1940s, the NAACP helped organize school boycotts against inferior segregated education. Students from Durham’s North Carolina College for Negroes picketed the state capitol in 1949 to demand improvements at that institution’s law

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On February 1, 1960, four young African American college students walked into the Woolworth Company, sat down at a whites-only lunch counter, and triggered the Civil Rights Movement that spread across the nation. Shown here on February 2, 1960, are (left to right) Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith, and Clarence Henderson. (Library of Congress)

school. And in Durham in 1957, a group of seven African American activists led by Reverend Douglas E. Moore, a Methodist minister, sought service in the white section of a local ice cream parlor. They were arrested and convicted of trespassing, but the sit-in presaged a decade of conflict and social revolution. African American life in the 1950s remained circumscribed by the laws of North Carolina and by city ordinances enacted after 1898. Those laws mandated the segregation of citizens by race or color in the realm of amusements, recreation, prisons, training schools, employment, restaurants, the National Guard, tax records, police, libraries, hospitals, travel, and housing. Although some of these laws and regulation had been repealed by the 1950s, African Americans still were forced to adhere to rigid practices that ensured de facto racial segregation. Many social problems faced North Carolina and America at midcentury. Perhaps the three most compelling ones were civil rights, poverty,

and economic inequality. Even allowing for the monumental Brown decision in 1954, the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, and the forced integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, the decade of the 1950s was a relatively placid period. But as the 1960s approached, the issues of civil rights, poverty, and urban decay swept across the South and the nation. African Americans were becoming tired of continued discrimination and impatient with the slowness of change. The emergence of a trained professional class of African American lawyers and the important role of African American churches and voluntary institutions created a base from which to attack Jim Crow and institutionalized inequality in America. In 1960 students began adopting civil disobedience as a means of challenging segregation in restaurants and other public facilities. On February 1, 1960, four students at North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro sat down

North Carolina at a lunch counter in the F. W. Woolworth fiveand-dime store in downtown Greensboro, a facility at which service was available only to whites. The students protested against being allowed to shop in the store but not being permitted to eat at the store’s lunch counter. Additional African American students at A&T College joined in the demonstrations, and soon white female students from Greensboro College and Guilford College, as well as African American female students from Greensboro’s Bennett College, began to participate in the protest: not only at Woolworth’s but also at S. H. Kress, another five-and-ten-cent store in downtown Greensboro. The “sit-ins,” as they came to be called, subsequently spread to Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Elizabeth City, and High Point. The desegregation of restaurants and public accommodations met with the same resistance that the desegregation of the public school system had encountered. The Civil Rights Movement gained momentum as students, assisted by various organizations, developed new forms of protest to take advantage of mass participation at the grass roots level. African American organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) spearheaded the sit-ins, picket lines, Freedom Rides, and economic boycotts. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the door of political power to all African American citizens. As registered voters, African Americans could participate in the question of whether southern congressmen who did not vote for significant civil rights legislation should return to Washington. Additional legislation in 1965, 1968, and 1970 in the area of voting rights lowered other barriers to African American voting in North Carolina. The “grandfather clause,” the poll tax,

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and the literacy test had been used to prevent African Americans from voting in the Tar Heel State. The Supreme Court of the United States declared the grandfather clause unconstitutional and overturned the poll tax. The Voting Rights Act ended the literacy test as requisite for African Americans to have the franchise. In many southern states African Americans were elected to political office as a result of the increase in the number of African American registrants. Statistics compiled by the North Carolina State Board of Elections in 1965 showed African American voter registration at 244,684; for 1966, the figure was 281,123. An apparent increase in the number of African American voters in the state contributed to the election of African Americans as city councilmen and councilwomen, mayors, county commissioner, judges, state legislators, and members of school boards. Beginning with the elections of 1968, an African American returned to the North Carolina General Assembly after an absence of seven decades.

Post–Civil Rights Era In the decades following the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, African American political power surged. Whereas a handful of African American legislators began appearing in the North Carolina General Assembly in the late 1960s and 1970s, by the 1990s African Americans had assumed positions of considerable power and influence in both state and local government. Between 1970 and 1997, a total of 506 African Americans won elective office in North Carolina. That figure included two representatives to Congress, Eva Clayton in the First District and Mel Watt in the Twelfth District, and more than 60 legislators. At the city and county levels of government, 354 African Americans were elected to office. An additional 29 African Americans in law enforcement and 96 in education likewise won election at the county and local levels. Henry E. Frye of

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Guilford County was the first African American elected to the General Assembly in the twentieth century, in 1968. Frye received appointment from Governor James B. Hunt Jr. to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1983. African Americans also received appointments to cabinet position under both Republican and Democratic administrations in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps most conspicuously in 1990 and again in 1996, Harvey Gantt, former mayor of Charlotte, mounted strong challenges to the reelection of Republican Jesse Helms, the incumbent U.S. senator first elected in 1972. Gantt lost both elections by nearly identical margins of 53 percent to 47 percent. Despite the election of Eva Clayton and Mel Watt to the U.S. Congress in 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000, African American voter participation in congressional elections was low. African American economic well-being continued to lag as well. Economic disparities remained wide. African American per capita income in 1990 ($7,926) was only 55 percent of white per capita income ($14,450). Regardless of economic indicators, African Americans exercised the greatest political power that they had ever known. At the same time, however, minority voting rights came under attack in the courts. North Carolina became a bellwether for minority voting rights throughout the nation as a series of legal cases, beginning with Shaw v. Reno (1993), made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2006, African Americans comprised about 22 percent of the North Carolina population. Economically, they have made impressive if erratic progress in the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries: although their per capita income remained well behind that of whites and their poverty level was significantly higher. Increasingly, African American youths have attended four-year colleges. The numbers of African Americans in all professions including medicine, dentistry, and law, have continued to rise, and successful African American businesses have grown in number.

According to the June 2000 issue of Black Enterprise, 10 of the nation’s largest African American firms were headquartered in North Carolina: 2 companies in the industrial/service category, 4 automobile dealers, 2 banks, an insurance company (North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company), and an affiliated asset management firm (NCM Capital Management Group, Inc.). Hundreds of other small African American enterprises existed among the approximately 2,000 businesses statewide.

Notable African Americans Baker, Ella (1903–1986) Ella Josephine Baker, civil rights organizer, was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1903. She grew up in rural North Carolina, where she experienced a strong sense of African American community. After graduating in 1927 from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Baker moved to New York City. She dreamed of doing graduate work in sociology at the University of Chicago, but it was 1929, and times were hard. The only jobs open to African American women were in teaching, which Baker refused to do. To survive, she waitressed and worked in a factory. She was an editorial staff member of the American West Indian News and in 1932 became an editorial assistant for George Schuyler’s Negro National News, for which she also worked as office manager. In 1932, she cofounded the Young Negros’ Cooperative League with George Schuyler, when she realized that by pooling resources and working together, people with very little could buy more. For 20 years, 1938 to 1958, Baker worked for the NAACP, serving as a field organizer, and president of the New York City NAACP chapter. In January 1958, Baker was persuaded to go to Atlanta to set up the office of the SCLC to organize the Crusade for Citizenship, a voter registration program in the South. She was named acting

North Carolina director of SCLC and began to open simultaneous offices in 21 cities. Baker directed SCLC from 1958 to 1960. After hundreds of students sat in at segregated lunch counters in early 1960, Baker persuaded the SCLC to invite them to the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference at Shaw University on Easter weekend. From this meeting the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was eventually formed. Baker discouraged the students in SNCC from becoming a student group of SCLC. She encouraged the SNCC to cooperate with other groups toward common ends, but to stay separate. She felt the students had the right to decide their own structure. Baker’s speech “More than a Hamburger” urged the students to broaden their social vision of discrimination to include more than integrating lunch counters.

Baker, Etta Reid (1913–2006) Etta Lucille Baker was a Piedmont blues guitarist and singer. She played both the 6-string and 12-string forms of the acoustic guitar as well as the banjo. Baker played the Piedmont blues for 90 years, starting at the age of 3. She was taught by her father Boone Reid, who was also a long time player of the Piedmont blues on several instruments. Her influential solo album One Dime Blues demonstrated a unique finger-picking style that won her a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991. Baker won the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1989, and the North Carolina Award in 2003. Along with her sister, Cora Phillips, Baker received the North Carolina Folklore Society’s BrownHudson Folklore Award in 1982. She died at the age of 93 in Fairfax, Virginia.

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north in 1914 to New York City. Their life centered on the intellectual, artistic, and political mainstream of the Harlem Renaissance. Bearden’s interest in art was sparked by experiences with a childhood friend in Pittsburgh and his early love of cartooning. Bearden studied art with George Grosz at the Art Students League, and graduated with a degree in education from New York University. He enlisted in the army in 1942, and was assigned to the all-black 372nd Infantry Division. In 1950, Bearden used the GI Bill to travel to France to study literature, philosophy, and Buddhism, and he spent many hours in museums, not only in France, but also in Italy and Spain. He joined the prestigious Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery in the early 1960s, where his work was represented for the rest of his life. Bearden’s oeuvre includes book and poster illustrations, and he designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and programs, sets, and costumes for Nanette Bearden’s Contemporary Dance Theatre. In addition to being an artist and writer, Bearden was an eloquent spokesman on artistic and social issues of the day. His participation in arts organizations included his role as a founding member of Spiral, an association of African American artists that came together in 1963 to support the Civil Rights Movement. He was also active in the founding of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Among Bearden’s many awards and honors were his election to the American Academy of Design and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1987, one year before he died, Romare Bearden received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan.

Brown, Charlotte Hawkins (1883–1961) Bearden, Romare (1911–1988) Romare Bearden, visual artist, was born in Charlotte. His family was part of the great migration

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was an educator and founder of the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs. Lottie Hawkins was born

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in 1883 in Henderson, North Carolina. In 1889, her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to escape the suffocating effects of Jim Crow laws and segregation. She changed her name to Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins, which she considered to be more dignified. A chance meeting and Charlotte’s accomplishments brought her to the attention of Alice Freeman Palmer, the president of Wellesley College, who sponsored Charlotte’s entrance into Salem’s State Normal School, where she studied to become a teacher. Charlotte had been attending Salem Normal School for two years when she met a field secretary for the American Missionary Association (AMA) on her commute home to Cambridge. The AMA representative explained that she was looking for a person to teach at a small rural school in Sedalia, North Carolina. By the end of their conversation, the woman offered Hawkins the position. Returning to North Carolina and running a school with little, if any, assistance did not deter 18-yearold Charlotte Hawkins. She wanted to teach. In 1901, the AMA revoked its funding and the school closed for lack of financial support. Sedalia’s Bethany Congregational Church donated an old blacksmith building and a 15-acre plot on which to establish a school. The town rallied behind Charlotte and donated time and materials to improve the structure and maintain the grounds, but the school still needed books, desks, writing tablets, and other essentials. Charlotte turned to the white women she had met in Cambridge for funds to help her realize her vision. She successfully solicited money from philanthropists, and with $200 in hand, she returned to Sedalia to open what would become the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, named after her benefactress. In 1907, she established the Sedalia Home Ownership Association to assist local African American farmers in the purchase of land, thereby helping to create a predominantly African American township free from the yoke of sharecropping and tenant farming. Charlotte met

and married Edward S. Brown in 1911 in Cambridge. Unfortunately the relationship was strained and their divorce was finalized in 1916. Brown brought the same political savvy to her associations with organizations such as the YWCA and North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Club. She became president of the North Carolina Federation in 1912, went on to hold that post for two decades, and was named as the African American representative on the national board of the YWCA in 1916. On March 10, 1940, Brown delivered an address on the “Negro and the Social Graces,” to a national audience via the CBS morning radio program Wings over Jordan. Not long after the broadcast, Brown began working on her second and final book, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, and to Wear; the book codified Brown’s advice on African American folks’ behavior. In 1961, she succumbed to diabetes in a small hospital in Greensboro at the age of 77. In 1971, after a fire had destroyed the central campus building, the Palmer Memorial Institute closed forever. In 1987, the grounds were reopened when the state established the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Memorial, becoming the first North Carolina state historic site honoring a woman and an African American.

Coltrane, John (1926–1967) John Coltrane, jazz saxophonist and composer, was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. His parents moved to High Point when John was a few months old. He received a clarinet when he was 12 years old, although he soon began to play the alto saxophone. After high school, he moved to Philadelphia until 1945, when he joined the navy. He played in the navy bands, where he was exposed to bebop and Charlie Parker. He performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and the Miles Davis Quintet. Coltrane, often called “Trane,” received critical acclaim for his

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John Coltrane (photographed in 1960) possessed astonishing technical mastery, spiritual tone, lengthy improvisations, and multicultural influences that stretched the boundaries of jazz and enriched its vocabulary. (Library of Congress)

distinctive saxophone play. His own quartet influenced jazz groups of the early 1960s, winning for him the Down the Beat Award, a Hall of Fame selection, and Jazzman of the Year. Coltrane died in 1967 in Long Island, New York.

Flack, Roberta (1939–) Roberta Flack, singer, songwriter, and musician, was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, but grew up in Virginia. When she turned nine, she began taking piano lessons and started to listen to a wide range of popular music, R&B, jazz, blues, and pop. In her teens, her listening gravitated toward classical music, and her piano playing developed rapidly. At the age of 15, she won a music scholarship to Howard University. She changed her major from piano to voice. She next changed her major to music education. By the time she graduated at 19, she had already directed a production of Aida, earning her a standing ovation

Roberta Flack performs on the Stravinski Hall stage during the 39th Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, 2005. (AP/Wide World Photos)

from the faculty after her final exam recital. She taught in Farmville, North Carolina, and schools in the Washington, D.C., area before her music career began to take shape on evenings and weekends in the D.C. night clubs. In 1969, Flack won a recording contract with Atlantic Records. She has won Grammy Awards for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” Today Flack is a shining inspiration to her fans, peers, and younger musicians in the music industry.

Lee, Mollie Huston (1907–1982) Mollie Huston Lee founded Raleigh’s first public library for African Americans. She also founded the North Carolina Negro Library Association.

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Mollie Lee received her undergraduate degree from Howard University and a B.L.S. from the Columbia University School of Library Service. She was the first African American to receive a scholarship to study at the School of Library Service. While studying at Howard University, Lee worked under the supervision of Edward Christopher Williams, pioneer Negro librarian. She worked in the Negro Collection as a student assistant, where she found the work in the Negro Collection both educational and rewarding. While she was a librarian at Shaw University in Raleigh, from 1930 to 1935, she saw the need among African Americans for a similar Negro Collection, a need that could only be met through the services of a public library. At that time there were no public library facilities or services available to African Americans in Raleigh. In 1935, Huston Lee and a group of citizens met in Christ Church to establish a library for African Americans. The first library was a storefront room, with big show windows. If patrons were unable to come to the library, she took library books to them. Called the Harrison Library, it was named in honor of Richard B. Harrison, a black actor. Just as Mollie Lee was inspired early to develop a program of library services in the South for African Americans, she also accepted the responsibility to train personnel to serve in African American libraries. As early as 1942, the library was used as a laboratory providing training experiences for students in library science. As opportunities for library training increased, Lee actively sought and obtained scholarship aid for students and counseled them into careers in the library profession. Mollie Lee was active in promoting black authors. Through extensive personal contacts she was able to bring them to the North Carolina Negro Library Association’s annual meetings. In 1934, Huston Lee thought there should be an organization to encourage and stimulate North Carolina’s African American librarians

professionally, and the North Carolina Negro Library Association was the result. In 1943, it became the first Negro Library Association admitted as a chapter of the American Library Association. The following year, the North Carolina legislature appointed Lee to be the first state Negro Library advisor. In this capacity she traveled throughout the state, establishing libraries and strengthening facilities for African Americans. The North Carolina Negro Library Association had an impressive run of 20 years. It gave the young African American librarian the privilege of participating fully in the program of the profession. The association held its last annual meeting in 1954. It was dissolved because two associations in a state could not hold chapter membership in the American Library Association, and the North Carolina Library Association had finally opened its membership to African American librarians. She was also the governor’s appointee on the State Library Board and the first African American woman elected “Tar Heel of the Week.” Mollie Huston Lee was active in ALA for many years. She received the Distinguished Service Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in 1986. Molly Huston retired in 1972.

Cultural Contributions Before the imposition of segregation and disfranchisement, there were three themes in the African American experience after 1877: organization, uplift, and increasing diversity. At both the state and local levels, African Americans formed many groups, large and small, for pleasure, selfimprovement, and mutual support. In North Carolina’s cities and towns—Raleigh, Charlotte, Wilmington and smaller communities—it was easier for people to come together, and consequently clubs flourished there, although they were never absent from the rural counties. The Charlotte Messenger, an African American

North Carolina newspaper, regularly reported the activities of numerous lodges and social groups through the 1880s. Their meetings and parties were an important part of the African American community’s social life. In addition to these purely social organizations, African American people formed a variety of fraternal, service-oriented, or benevolent organizations. A large number of African American men belonged to the Royal Knights of King David or to the United Order of True Reformers, lodges that were active throughout the state, as was a similar organization for women, the Household of Ruth. The Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Good Templars, and the Sons of Ham were all popular organizations that had a wide and loyal membership. At the state level, two other organizations achieved considerable notice. The first of these was the North Carolina Industrial Association (NCIA), founded by Charles N. Hunter, an educator and former slave, and his brother, Osborne. The Industrial Association focused on the promotion of economic progress, instead of political activity, among African American people. According to its charter, which Charles N. Hunter drafted and secured from the legislature in 1879, the purpose of the NCIA was to “encourage and promote the development of the industrial and educational resources of the colored people of North Carolina,” most notably by holding “annually an exhibition of the progress of their industry and education.” By the mid1880s, the fair had become, according to historian John H. Haley, “the most popular social event for African Americans in North Carolina.” From all over the state, African Americans came to Raleigh to mingle to compete for distinction, and to enjoy themselves. During the fair prominent African American men and women became better acquainted with each other, formed friendships, and discussed the status and future of the race. Outstanding African American leaders received invitations to address the fair, and by the 1890s,

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the North Carolina Industrial Association had become one of the most inclusive African American organizations in the state. In the Carolinas, African American musicians around the first decade of the twentieth century developed a style of music known as the Piedmont blues. An important form of traditional music in North Carolina, the Piedmont blues is characterized by a guitar style that contains a distinct bass line played on the lower strings of the guitar as well as a melody picked on the higher strings. Gospel music is a very popular and influential musical form in North Carolina. African American gospel gained a significant following beginning in the 1930s. North Carolina has produced some of the nation’s most successful artists in African American gospel music. Shirley Caesar, known as the “First Lady of Gospel,” was born in Durham in 1938. Her “rock gospel” sound, upbeat and rhythmic with large choral backups, helped propel gospel to the forefront of American music. A number of distinctly African American events are held in North Carolina throughout the year. Some, such as the statewide Kwanzaa celebrations of December and January and numerous church-sponsored festivals, combine cultural and religious features. Others, including African Americana Heritage Festivals, Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations, and African American theater festivals, presented by the North Carolina African American Culture Tour, have a greater political or historical focus. The African American Dance Ensemble (AADE) was founded in Durham in 1984 by Raleigh native Chuck Davis. The ensemble seeks to preserve and promote traditional African and American dance and music while entertaining and educating its audience. In addition to its mission of preserving African dance heritage, the AADE promotes cross-cultural understanding and respect for all peoples, carrying this message

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to audiences across North Carolina and the United States and abroad. The North Carolina African American Repertory Company (NCBRC) was the first professional African American theater company in the state when founded in 1979 by Larry Leon Hamlin. NCBRC is committed to exposing diverse audiences to African American classics, the development and production of new works, improving artistic quality, and sustaining African American theater internationally. Further, NCBRC was founded as a vehicle from which theater professionals can earn a living through their craft. Larry Leon Hamlin founded the National African American Theatre Festival (NBTF) in 1989. His goal was to unite African American theater companies in America and ensure the survival of the genre into the next millennium. With the support of Dr. Maya Angelou (who served as the festival’s first chairperson), the National African American Theatre Festival was born. The 1989 festival offered 30 performances by 17 of America’s best professional African American theater companies. It attracted national and international media coverage.

Bibliography Anderson, Eric. Race and Politics in North Carolina 1872–1901: The Black Second. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Brown, Leslie. Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Covington, Howard E., and Marion A. Ellis. The North Carolina Century: Tar Heels Who Made a Difference, 1900–2000. Charlotte, NC: Levine Museum of the New South, 2002.

Crowe, Jeffrey J., and Robert E. Winters Jr., eds. The African American Presence in North Carolina. Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of History, 1978. Crowe, Jeffrey J., Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley. A History of African Americans in North Carolina. Revised ed. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2002. Edmonds, Helen G. The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894–1901. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Grimes, Drew, Ryan Rowe, and Walt Wolfram. This Side of the River: Self-Determination and Survival in the Oldest African American Town in America. Raleigh: North Carolina Language & Life Project, North Carolina State University, 2006. DVD. Hornsby-Gutting, Angela. Black Manhood and Community Building in North Carolina, 1900– 1930. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009. Kenzer, Robert C. Enterprising Southerners: African American Economic Success in North Carolina, 1865–1915. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Logan, Frenise A. The Negro in North Carolina: 1876–1894. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964. Newkirk, Vann R. Lynching in North Carolina: A History, 1865–1941. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009. Powell, William S. Encyclopedia of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Prather, H. Leon. We Have Taken a City: Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898. Wilmington, NC: Dram Tree Books, 2006.

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Ready, Milton. The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.

Umfeet, LaRae. A Day of Blood: The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. Raleigh, NC: Office of Archives and History, 2009.

Simmons-Henry, Linda. The Heritage of Blacks in North Carolina. Edited by Philip N. Henry and Carol M. Speas. Charlotte: North Carolina African-American Heritage Foundation in cooperation with the Delmar Company, Charlotte, NC, 1990.

Waynick, Capus M., and North Carolina Mayors’ Co-operating Committee. North Carolina and the Negro. Raleigh: North Carolina Mayors’ Co-operating Committee, 1964.

NORTH DAKOTA William Gibbons and Gordon E. Thompson

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Chronology 1738

(December 3) Searching for water routes to the Pacific Ocean, French explorer Sieur de la Verendrye and his party arrive at a Mandan Indian village near Menoken (13 miles east of present-day Bismarck) to become the first white men known to enter the region that will become central North Dakota.

1801

Alexander Henry of the North West Fur Trading Company establishes what some consider the first permanent fur trading post at Pembina on the far eastern edge of present-day North Dakota. Accompanying Henry’s brigade is a black man, Pierre Bonga, who acts as an interpreter to the Indian tribes.

1802

(March 12) The first non-Indian child is born in what is now North Dakota to Pierre Bonga and his wife, black slaves of Alexander Henry Jr.

1803

(December 30) The United States acquires the Great Plains from France in the Louisiana Purchase, including the area that will become North Dakota.

1804

(October 24) The Corps of Discovery expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reaches the North Dakota area; an African American, York, William Clark’s slave, accompanies the expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest.

1806

The Lewis and Clark expedition returns down the Missouri River on its way back to St. Louis. Their journey marks the first major American penetration of the area and is characterized by amicable relationships with Native Americans.

1812

Fur company entrepreneur Manuel Lisa and a party of almost 75 men departs from St. Louis and ascends the Missouri River. The party includes three members of African American backgrounds: John Baptiste Point du Sable, a French–West Indian mulatto, reputed to have been the first settler of Chicago; Edward Rose, a mulatto; and an individual listed as George.

1818

North Dakota becomes part of the Missouri Territory.

1823

An exploratory expedition led by Major Stephen Long is sent to identify and establish the boundary between the United States and Canada at a point north of Pembina. The party consists of 27 men; half are civilian scientists and observers, and half are army officers and enlisted men. Among the civilians is Andrew Allison, an African American servant.

1823

The son of a white slave-owning father and a black mulatto slave woman, James Beckwourth, a prominent explorer and trader, joins the Smith Company, a trading enterprise headed by William H. Ashley.

1829

Fort Union fur trading post is established. John Brazo, a mulatto, works in and around Fort Union; a veteran trapper, Brazo speaks French and Sioux fluently and is employed by the American Fur Company.

1830s

Steamboats begin replacing keelboats and dozens of African Americans move through the Dakota region seeking employment.

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1830

James Beckwourth works at Fort Union and establishes a strong trading relationship with the Crow Indians; Beckwourth also stops at Fort Clark to purchase articles.

1832

Kenneth McKenzie successfully navigates the Yellowstone River, moving up from the Missouri River to introduce steamboat services in the area.

1837

A smallpox epidemic annihilates the Mandan Indians at their village near Fort Clark.

1851

The first post office is established in what is now North Dakota at Pembina, with Norman Kittson as postmaster.

1858

Military occupation of North Dakota begins with the establishment of Fort Abercrombie on the Red River.

1860

An unorganized U.S. Census in the Dakota Territory gives a population count of 4,837.

1860

White settlers in the North Dakota region use the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case to confiscate gold from African American miners.

1860

Regular steamboat service begins on the Missouri River.

1861

(March 2) Congress creates the Dakota Territory, including both North and South Dakota and most of Montana and Wyoming.

1861

William Jayne is appointed the first governor of North Dakota by President Abraham Lincoln.

1861

(April 12) The American Civil War begins with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1861

The Dakota territorial legislature bars African Americans from voting.

1862

Congress passes the Homestead Act, promising homesteaders 160 acres of free land.

1862

William Jayne delivers his first governor’s message to the legislature of the Dakota Territory; Jayne addresses the question of slavery and suggests that the members of the legislature pass a bill to prohibit it.

1862

( June) Congress abolishes slavery in the territories of the United States.

1863

Dakota Territory is opened for homesteading; free farmland attracts emancipated African Americans.

1863

General Sibley passes through North Dakota on a military expedition to push back the Sioux; several African Americans accompany the expedition, including an orderly and army physician.

1865

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery throughout the United States is ratified.

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1866

The 9th Regiment Cavalry, U.S. Colored Troops, organizes and serves in the Dakota Territory after the Civil War; its primary mission is to prevent Indian raids and assure that Native Americans remained on the reservations.

1866

African Americans from companies B, C, and E of the 25th Infantry and Companies H and D of the 10th Cavalry come to Fort Buford to police the boundaries of North Dakota and Montana.

1867

(January 10) Congress passes the Territorial Suffrage Act, which allows African Americans in the western territories to vote; the act immediately enfranchises about 800 black male voters in those territories.

1868

The territorial legislature ends discrimination against African Americans in public schools by changing the provision in the constitution to read “equally free and accessible to all children.”

1868

(July 21) The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

1869

(February 26) Congress sends the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the states for approval; the amendment guarantees African American males the right to vote.

1870

The U.S. Census documents 94 African Americans in the Dakota Territory out of a total population of fewer than 2,405. Most came during the gold rush and served in the military at Dakota forts.

1872

The Northern Pacific Railway is built from the Red River to Jamestown.

1873

The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in Bismarck reduces the role of steamboats in regional transportation matters.

1874

Colonel George A. Custer explores the Black Hills and verifies the existence of gold. An African American, Sarah Campbell, is the only woman who traveled with Custer’s expedition. She remained in the hills and cooked for miners. She died in 1888 on her ranch near Galena.

1878–1887

The railroads provide major incentive for settlement; thousands of African Americans work on the railroads as porters, cooks, and dining car attendants.

1879–1886

The Great Dakota land boom begins. An estimated 100,000 immigrants settle in the northern Dakota Territory during this period.

1880

The U.S. Census documents 113 African Americans in the northern Plains.

1882

Ranching is introduced into western Dakota Territory; African Americans work on the ranches as cowboys, cowhands, cooks, laundresses, and housekeepers.

1883

The territorial capital is moved from Yankton to Bismarck.

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1884

Seventeen African Americans leave Bismarck and settle in the Mouse River area near Pendroy, where each acquires 160 acres of land.

1885

The first meeting of the territorial legislature is held at Bismarck; the great “Dakota Boom” increases the territory’s population.

1889

The Dakota Territory is divided into North and South Dakota.

1889

(November 2) North Dakota enters the union as the 39th state; South Dakota enters the Union on the same day as the 40th state.

1893

The U.S. Army stations 272 enlisted African American men of the 25th Infantry Regiment at Fort Buford. Although no Indian trouble developed during this period, the African American units are busy traveling throughout western North Dakota and eastern Montana on various expeditions.

1900

The U.S. Census counts 286 African Americans in North Dakota.

1909

North Dakota passes an antimiscegenation law.

1910

The U.S. Census documents 617 African Americans residing in the state.

1930

The Great Depression and collapse of the stock market cause extreme economic adversity in the state, as African Americans abandon their farms. The U.S. Census documents only 201 African Americans in the state by 1940, the smallest number since 1880.

1948

(July 26) President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 directing the desegregation of the armed forces.

1950

The U.S. Census documents 257 African Americans in North Dakota.

1955

Eight African American veterinarians practice in Devils Lake, Gargo, Parshall, Powers Lake, Rolla, Minot, and Bismarck; these men were trained or are in some way associated with Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

1955

North Dakota’s antimiscegenation law is repealed.

1957

U.S. Air Force bases at Minot and Grand Forks bring a new surge of African American personnel and their families to North Dakota.

1963

(March 7) North Dakota ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1976

Era Bell Thompson, a farm girl from Driscoll who achieved fame as an author and international editor of Ebony magazine, is the recipient of the Roughrider Award, North Dakota’s most prestigious official honor.

1977

Era Bell Thompson’s portrait is hung in the North Dakota Hall of Fame.

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1980

The Census finds that 2,471 African Americans reside in North Dakota. Of that number, it is estimated that 2,000 are either associated with the various U.S. Air Force bases or are involved in some way with the state’s colleges and universities

1990

The U.S. Census documents 3,524 African Americans in North Dakota.

1990

Martin Luther King Day officially becomes a state holiday in North Dakota.

2000

African Americans comprise 0.06 percent of North Dakota’s population.

2006

The U.S. Census estimates 5,999 African Americans live in North Dakota.

Historical Overview Early History On November 2, 1889, North Dakota was admitted to the Union as the 39th state. It is one of the most rural states, with farms covering more than 90 percent of the land. At 642,200 people spread over 71,665 square miles, North Dakota has one of the lowest population densities per square mile in the United States. About 10,000 years ago, North Dakota’s original inhabitants were big game hunters. When the French and other European explorers discovered what is now North Dakota, distinctive Native American tribes were established in the region. Among those were the Mandan, the Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Assiniboine, and Cheyenne. Growing mostly squash, sunflowers, corn, and beans and hunting bison, Native Americans were the established inhabitants for two centuries. Today, the population of the state includes a white majority, then Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, and Asians. African Americans have been a vital part of North Dakota’s history since Lewis and Clark opened up the West over 200 years ago. Like their white counterparts, African Americans have made significant contributions throughout the northern Great Plains of North Dakota as interpreters, servants, mountain men, wood hawks, roustabouts, farmers, homesteaders, buffalo soldiers, ranchers and cattlemen, entrepreneurs,

and professionals in the U.S. Air Force and as employees at the various state colleges and universities. Among the most famous North Dakotans were mountain men Edward Rose and James Beckwourth and the author Era Bell Thompson. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, African Americans distinguished themselves in the northern Great Plains of North Dakota as servants and interpreters accompanying European explorers and fur traders as they searched for water routes to the Pacific Ocean. In 1801, the first documented African American in the region was Pierre Bonga. An interpreter and employee of Alexander Henry’s North West Fur Trading Company, Bonga helped establish what some consider the first permanent fur trading post on the far eastern edge of North Dakota on the Red River known as Pembina. On March 12, 1802, Bonga’s wife gave birth to the first non-Indian child born in the state and his offspring, a clan of Métis, live in Manitoba. Another African American that traversed the region was York, a slave belonging to the famous explorer William Clark. York accompanied the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition in 1804. Passing through North Dakota twice, York demonstrated his worth as a laborer and communicator. Traveling up the Missouri River “The Corps” reached North Dakota in October 1804, where they built Fort Mandan north of Bismarck and camped during the winter. Returning in 1806 to Fort Mandan as the party descended down the Missouri River on their way back to St. Louis, York befriended the native

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A detail of a photograph of K Troop, 9th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army, ca. 1890s. (Library of Congress)

inhabitants. Characterized as one of the heroes of the expedition, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good service during the expedition, but Clark, who had settled in St. Louis, refused, claiming financial difficulties, although he did allow York to return temporarily to Louisville to rejoin his wife. A statue of York commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition and his participation in it stands at Riverfront Plaza on the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky, and on Quality Hill in Kansas City, Missouri.

But the most prominent African Americans during the height of the fur trade were the mountain men and fur trappers Edward Rose and James Beckwourth. Rose, a mulatto, was in the region as early as 1809. He accompanied entrepreneur Manuel Lisa in 1812 to establish fur trading posts along the Missouri River. A decade later, he had become chief of a Crow tribe, distinguishing himself as an interpreter for various fur trading companies. Beckwourth, a fur trapper, interpreter, and explorer who first ventured to

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the Great Plains in 1823 and who thereafter was a frequent visitor to the Dakota portions of the Missouri regions, stayed at Fort Clark and Fort Union in the 1830s. Beckworth joined the Smith Company, headed by William H. Ashley, and established strong trading relationships with the Crow Indians. Other African Americans who traversed the state include John Brazo, a veteran trapper who spoke French and Sioux fluently and worked in and around Fort Union in the 1830s. Also traversing the state was Andrew Allison, who was listed as a servant on the exploratory expedition led by Major Stephen Long that helped identify and establish the boundary between the United States and Canada at a point north of Pembina. River jobs on the Missouri and Red Rivers attracted the first wave of African Americans to the state. In the 1830s, as steamboats replaced the smaller and less efficient keel boats, African Americans began to assemble up and down these rivers as deckhands and cooks. On wharves along the Missouri River at Bismarck, African Americans worked as roustabouts and dock workers while woodcutters and wood hawks cut timber and sold cordwood for fuel to passing vessels. Two notable wood hawks, James Fields and Phillip Wansley, made fortunes supplying steamboats with wood on the Missouri River until the 1870s. Also part of the river scene were African American women who worked seasonally and permanently on shore and aboard ships. Among those women were Mollie Myers, a cook on the steamboat Miner, and Aunt Sally, another cook who claimed to be part of an earlier crew that traversed the Missouri River with General Custer. Sally, who after her river days settled in Bismarck, accumulated property in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and established a restaurant that bears her name: “Aunt Sally’s Speakeasy.” After the fur trade and steamboat eras, whites and African Americans left jobs on the river and began to settle in prairies and towns. As land settlements boomed, the Northern Pacific Railroad

surveyed routes across the Dakota plains. To protect surveyors, military outposts throughout the Dakotas were established. To support the effort, enlisted African Americans of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments were transferred to the Dakota Territories from 1891 through 1893. Charting the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1864, new towns and cities continued to appear and an influx of population established African American enclaves. In Bismarck an African American neighborhood known locally as “under the hill” offered temporary housing to both African Americans and whites on construction crews laying tracks. In other urban areas, particularly in Fargo on Front Street, in Grand Forks on the south side of the railroad tracks, in Devils Lakes on Minnewaukan Avenue, and on Minot’s Third Street, African Americans established permanent residences working as porters, cooks, and dining car attendants on the railroads. In smaller towns such as Portal and Enderlin, other African American enclaves developed as work on the railroads continued to provide employment opportunities. While some African Americans looked for employment, others took risks starting new businesses. After Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, free and cheap land and good wages attracted African American settlers to the prairies. A majority homesteaded, some purchased land, and others were laborers on farms. Between 1870 and 1920, at least 95 African Americans homesteaded in the region. African Americans, enticed by economic opportunities and in search of a new start with new people in new surroundings, homesteaded for decades; while others abandoned their farms within a few years, attributing economic hardships and harsh winters as the reason for their decision. In the Red River Valley, William T. Montgomery, brother of the wellknown Isaiah Montgomery (the only African American elected treasurer of Warren County, Mississippi), purchased a thousand-acre farm and owned a successful grain elevator operator

North Dakota business from 1884 to 1897, employing African Americans as well as whites on his plantation. Among other notable African Americans who established businesses during the early decades of North Dakota’s land boom years was Andrew Slater, who, as operator of a ferry in the 1880s between Winona and Fort Yates, transported soldiers, civilians, and mail from port towns adjacent to the military posts. A pioneer barber such as William H. Comer, who made such a fortune cutting hair and giving shaves at Fort Sully in 1873, erected several blocks of commercial buildings in Bismarck and speculated in the futures of farms. Barber Julius F. Taylor in Fargo left the Dakotas in the 1880s to open a newspaper business in Utah and Chicago. Horse and cattle buyers George Pincott and Frank Taylor purchased farms in Central North Dakota. In Bismarck, Rhoda Riding operated a hotel in the late 1880s. In 1885, Warren Fousen owned a restaurant in Steele, North Dakota. Other café owners Eliza Kassey and Mammie Smith operated a café in Fargo in the early 1900s. And Tony Thompson, father of Era Bell Thompson, ran secondhand stores both in Bismarck and in Mandan during the 1920s.

The Twentieth Century and Beyond By the first decade of the twentieth century, North Dakota’s African American population sharply increased. The arrival of seasonal harvest workers boosted populations in parts of the state during the planting and harvest seasons. The influx, according to the Census, shows a considerable African American growth and then decline: 1900, 286; 1910, 617; and 1920, 467. Specialized farm machinery, the dry years of the 1930s, and World War II employment demands slowed seasonal laborers by the 1950s. In the late 1950s, the U.S. Air Force bases in Minot and Grand Forks established military personnel and their families in North Dakota as Census figures rose again: 1950, 257; 1960, 777; and 1970, 2,494. Contributing to sharp

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increases in the state was also the arrival of African American professionals. From teachers to agriculturalists, to workers at colleges and universities, an estimated 400 African Americans, according to the 1990 Census, were identified under this category. In 2000, similar census data revealed that African American North Dakotans remained well educated, with more than a third having received high-school diplomas and approximately 311 with advanced degrees. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, military personnel, college faculty, and students continue to make up the largest segment of the African American population in the state.

Notable African Americans Beckwourth, James (1798–1867) Adventurous, Beckwourth roamed the northern Great Plains as an independent trapper. He first visited North Dakota in 1823 and thereafter was a frequent visitor to the Dakota portions of the Missouri region though he stayed regularly at Fort Clark and Fort Union in the 1830s. Beckwourth later joined the Smith Company, headed by William H. Ashley and established strong trading relationships with the Crow Indians with whom he lived for almost seven years. In 1834, Beckwourth became a chief of chiefs of the Crow Indian nation, an almost unheard of honor for any non-Indian. He returned to work at Fort Union a few years later, where he earned the respect and built the trust of his commanders, convincing them to allow him to handle important matters like large sums of money for the U.S. government. In 1850, Beckwourth discovered a pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that allowed wagons and horses swifter access to the west. The passage became known as the Beckwourth Pass. In later years he opened a bar and other businesses in a small village that would become Denver, Colorado. His life’s exploits are recorded in his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of James Beckwourth as told to Thomas Bonner in 1856.

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Beckwourth died in Montana at the Bighorn River among the Crow Indians in 1866.

Thompson, Era Bell (1905–1986) Author, journalist, and former editor for Ebony magazine, Era Bell Thompson is one of North Dakota’s most accomplished journalists. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, to Stewart Calvin and Mary Thompson, with her family she relocated to North Dakota in 1914, at the age of nine. The Thompsons were drawn to North Dakota by the promise of a better life. Struggling to earn a living homesteading but not finding farming profitable, the Thompsons left Driscoll and moved to Bismarck in 1917, where her father worked as a private messenger to Governor Lyn J. Frazier, the first Nonpartisan League chief executive, until 1921. Thereafter Thompson operated a secondhand store in Bismarck while rearing Era alone after the death of her mother in 1918. Throughout her adolescence, Thompson overcame racism and discrimination. As a student in North Dakota in the 1920s, she was on many occasions the only African American in her class. Despite becoming the object of interest, she adjusted to her new environment with great understanding and awareness. In high school, she ran track and was on the girls’ basketball team. With the discovery of and passion for writing, she wrote for the high-school newspaper. After graduation in 1924 and taking a year off, Thompson enrolled at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. Excelling in academics and athletics, she established five women's track records. Thompson dropped out after completing two years of college because of her health and because she had to run her father’s secondhand store after his death in 1928. She eventually enrolled at and graduated from Morningside College, where she discovered her calling in journalism. She graduated in 1933 with a B.A. in social science and never looked back. After graduation, Thompson

moved to Chicago to embark on a writing career. Reaching Chicago during the Depression and finding very little opportunity for a good job, Thompson’s first job was as a domestic laborer. She continued to work at odd jobs until she found employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as an interviewer for the Illinois and United Sates Employment Service, while also copyediting for the Chicago Defender. Thompson received a Newberry Fellowship in 1945 to write a book on North Dakota, but was instead asked to write her autobiography: American Daughter, the story of Thompson’s life in North Dakota. It was published in 1946. Based on the recognition for the book, Thompson joined the staff of Johnson Publishing Company two years after the firm was launched. Steadily advancing, she became international editor for Ebony magazine, where she remained until her retirement. With a 20-plus-year career in journalism, Thompson gained multiple awards and decades of accomplishments. Besides her two books American Daughter (1946) and Africa, Land of My Fathers (1954), she has written many editorials and more than 40 articles during her years at Ebony. In addition, Thompson covered the 1963 March on Washington and interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis Armstrong, Adlai Stevenson, Mahalia Jackson, and Sammy Davis Jr. In 1969, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of North Dakota, had the campus’ Black Culture Center renamed in her honor, and was inducted into the University’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1976, she received the highest award given by the state when it honored her with the Roughrider Award. She was also inducted into the state’s Hall of Fame, and saw her official portrait exhibited in the state capitol building.

York (1770–c. 1823) Slave and manservant, York was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition that traveled from

North Dakota St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Northwest providing early information about the geography of the Dakota Plains. The son of slaves, he was born in Caroline County, Virginia, and raised on a Kentucky plantation near Louisville with William Clark, who inherited York in 1799 as part of his father’s estate. An important member of the first major survey party of the American West, York’s display of skills, strength, and popularity made him a valuable member of the expedition. Passing through North Dakota twice, York demonstrated his worth as a laborer and communicator. Traveling up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark’s “Corps” reached North Dakota in October 1804, where they camped during the winter and built Fort Mandan north of Bismarck. Fascinated with York’s dark skin, Native American middlemen in the fur-trading industry were persuaded by York to provide the expedition with supplies and food to sustain them during their five-and-a-half-month stay at Fort Mandan. Returning in 1806 to Fort Mandan as the party descended down the Missouri River on their way back to St. Louis, York befriended the native inhabitants again. Characterized as one of the heroes of the expedition, York supposedly was set free around 1816 and established a business hauling freight between Nashville and Richmond, Virginia. He died of cholera in Tennessee sometime between 1822 and 1823.

Cultural Contributions Life for North Dakotans was made immeasurably richer by the presence of African Americans who visited or settled in the state. This history begins with York, the well-traveled African American member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, who helped put North Dakota, then part of Dakota Territory, on the map. Later, blacks such as Edward Rose and James P. Beckwourth helped to establish major trading posts throughout the

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area. Yet it remained a characteristic of North Dakota that its celebrated African Americans hailed from outside the state and rarely settled there. In contrast to these earlier pioneers, however, Era Bell Thompson, though born in Iowa, is perhaps the most prominent African American to be raised and educated in North Dakota. Though she would eventually become a prizewinning editor with Ebony, Thompson was also a star athlete with her North Dakota college team. In fact, North Dakotans were well entertained by itinerant black athletes, a benefit of allowing, early on, North Dakota’s integration of their sports teams, especially baseball. In 1899, for instance, Walter Ball, an astounding pitcher born in Detroit, came to Grand Forks and helped win the North Dakota State Championship for the town of York’s Red River Valley League; and in 1902, he briefly played professional ball with the Northern League—brief in that racial animosity by his teammates forced him out. Thus was created a prologue to baseball’s integration in North Dakota, albeit exclusively for semiprofessional teams. Between 1915 and 1917, when Bill Drake pitched for Brinsmade, he turned its nondescript baseball team into a champion. He won every game, legend has it, whenever he was on the mound. Another small town electrified by its ball team was Enderlin, especially while Emory (only known name) played for them from 1926 to 1930. Relatively frictionless interracial teams continued to flourish in the 1930s, particularly when Freddy Simms and Chappie (Smokey) Gray integrated North Dakota’s semipro teams. Other notables include the versatile Quincy Trouppe, who once played all four infield positions with the Bismarck team, and Vernon “Moose” Johnson, who started with the Sioux City Cowboys in 1934 before batting a .469 average with Bismarck. The great Negro League pitcher, Satchel Paige— an inductee into Baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1971— is remembered for, among other firsts, being the first black pitcher to play for the Cleveland

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Indians and for his amazing performance with the St. Louis Browns. Although he did not hail from North Dakota, he began pitching for the Bismarck team against Minnesota in August 1933 to become the best-known name associated with sports in North Dakota. This was the first time Paige played on an integrated team, ending his first stint with Bismarck without losing a game. Paige’s celebrated pitching prowess—winning game after game and striking out batter after batter—was burnished by his entertaining stunts on the field. History records entire games he pitched and won for Bismarck while most of his team sat on the benches, nursing a bout of racism and professional jealousy. Paige’s career was additionally acclaimed by the fact that special arrangements had to be made to seat the large number of fans that came out to see him. It was, in fact, as a response to Bismarck’s success that other North Dakota towns began to recruit black players in earnest to integrate their teams. Considered among the greatest pitchers to have lived, Paige continued to wow audiences with his talent and

amazing longevity on the mound—pitching, it is said, 145 games in a row for two or three innings apiece as late as 1963.

Bibliography Anderson, Kathie Ryckman. “Era Bell Thompson: A North Dakota Daughter.” North Dakota Hisotry 49, no. 4 (1982). Lewis, Earl. “Pioneers of a Different Kind.” Red River Valley Historian, Winter 1978–1979. Newgard, Thomas P., and William C. Sherman. African Americans in North Dakota: Sources and Assessments. Bismarck, ND: University of Mary Press, 1994. Sherman, William C. “North Dakota.” The Encyclopedia of African Americna Culture and History. Vol. 4. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Sherman, William C., and Playford V. Thorson, eds. Plains Folk: North Dakota’s Ethnic History. Fargo: North Dakota State University, 1988.

OHIO Michele Valerie Ronnick

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Chronology 1787

Northwest Ordinance (formally known as An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio) prohibits the extension of slavery into the Northwest Territory, which includes the area that will become Ohio, but the prohibition is widely disregarded.

1803

(February 19) The U.S. Congress declares Ohio the 17th state, and the first state created from the Northwest Territory.

1803

(March 1) The first meeting of the General Assembly is held in Chillicothe, the first capital of Ohio, and the date enters into the official calendar as Statehood Day.

1804–1807

Black laws are passed by the Ohio legislature—free black people have to prove they are free, interracial marriages are prohibited, gun ownership for blacks is disallowed, and a bond of $500 is required from blacks as a guarantee of good behavior.

1809

George Peake (1722–1827) becomes Cleveland’s first permanent settler of African descent.

1813

( July) After winning the naval Battle of Lake Erie, which insured U.S. control of Lake Erie during the War of 1812, Commander Oliver Hazard Perry (1785–1819) says of his crew that “they seemed absolutely insensible to danger”—about 100 black men served under Perry’s command.

1815

John Stewart (1786–1823), a man of mixed ancestry, begins his Methodist mission to the Wyandotte Indians in Sandusky with help from his black interpreter Jonathan Pointer.

1818

The estate of Virginia slave owner Samuel Gists provides funds to settle his former slaves in Brown County; other slave owners (e.g., John Harper of North Carolina, John Randolph of Virginia, Noah Spears of Kentucky, and James Twyman of Virginia) will do the same in other parts of Ohio.

1825

Reverend John Rankin (1793–1886) buys a house in Ripley, which is a station on the Underground Railroad.

1826–1831

Antislavery societies are founded in Warren, Cleveland, Ravenna, and at Miami University.

1828

John Newton Templeton (c. 1804–1851) graduates from Ohio University, becoming the first black to earn a college degree in Ohio.

1830

The National Colored Convention supports the establishment of schools in Ohio.

1831

John Malvin (1795–1880), a Baptist preacher and activist, settles in Cleveland.

1831

Quakers Jesse and Elizabeth Harvey open the first free black school, the Harveysburg Free Black School in Harveysburg.

Ohio

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1831

The American Colonization Society founds a chapter at Xenia and advocates that blacks return to Africa.

1831

Runaway slave Tice Davids escapes from his Kentucky master by swimming across the Ohio River at Ripley.

1831

Ripley College, founded in 1827 in Ripley, admits its first black student, Benjamin F. Templeton. After Templeton is attacked by a townsman named Frank Show, Reverend John Rankin offers to educate him in his own home; Templeton later graduates from Lane Theological Seminary and is ordained a minister in 1838.

1832

Western Reserve College, founded in Cleveland in 1826 (and later known as Adelbert College of Western Reserve and now as Case Western Reserve University), admits a black student.

1832

Harriet Beecher (Stowe, 1811–1896) moves to Cincinnati with her father, Lyman Beecher (1775–1863), who is the first president of Lane Theological Seminary.

1833

Western Reserve College establishes the first abolitionist society in the former Connecticut Western Reserve.

1834

( January 1) William Wells Brown (c. 1814–1884), abolitionist and physician, escapes from slavery in Cincinnati.

1835

The Ohio Anti-Slavery Society is founded in Zanesville.

1835

Oberlin College admits its first black student, James Bradley, who begins study at Oberlin College’s affiliate, the Sheffield Institute.

1835

Quaker Augustus Wattles (1807–1876) founds a school in Carthagena named the Emlen Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in honor of Samuel Emlen Jr. (d. 1837), who leaves $20,000 to educate free male orphan children of African or Indian descent; it is the first of many schools Wattles will set up.

1840

Ohio Ladies’ Society for the Education of Free People of Color is founded at Massillon.

1844

(September) Land is purchased in September for the Union Seminary near Columbus.

1844

George B. Vashon (1824–1873) is the first black to graduate from Oberlin College.

1845

Reverend John Rankin founds the Free Presbyterian Church of America, which excludes slaveholders and opposes slavery.

1847

Efforts to repeal Black Laws fail despite Governor William Bebb’s (1802–1873) support.

1847

James Presley Ball (1825–1904), abolitionist and businessman, opens up the Ball and Thomas Gallery, a daguerrotype studio in Cincinnati, which operates until 1872.

1848

John Parker (1827–1900) inventor, army recruiter, and Underground Railroad conductor, marries Miranda Boulden of Cincinnati and settles in Ohio; in 1850, the couple moves to Ripley and helps escaped slaves journey northward.

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1848

The Free Labor Store is established at Mount Pleasant by the Quakers, who refuse to sell products made by slave labor.

1848

Geneva College is founded in Northfield (moved to Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in 1879) and helps runaway slaves.

1849

Black Laws are repealed in Ohio through an alliance between Democrats and the Free Soil Party.

1850

Peter Fossett (1815–1901), a former slave of Thomas Jefferson, settles in Cincinnati. He and his wife Sarah found the First Baptist Church in Cumminsville.

1850

Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911) becomes the first woman professor at Union Seminary in Columbus.

1853

Antioch College in Yellow Springs admits black students.

1853

Joseph Carter Corbin (1833–1911), a journalist and principal of Branch Normal College, which becomes the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1972, earns his B.A. and later, in 1856, his M.A. in art at Ohio University.

1853–54

Ohio enacts laws requiring separate schools for blacks.

1854

Otterbein College, founded in 1847 in Westerville by the United Brothers of the Christian Church, passes a resolution to admit black students. In 1859, after much debate, Otterbein admits William Hannibal Thomas, who attends for 10 weeks, but student protests drive him out. In 1893, William Henry Fouse (1868–1944) becomes Otterbein’s first black graduate.

1854

John Mercer Langston (1829–1897) becomes the first black admitted to the Ohio Bar.

1855

At Brownhelm, John Mercer Langston becomes the state’s first elected black official.

1856

The antislavery song “Darling Nelly Gray” is written in Westerville by Benjamin R. Hanby, who is said to have been inspired by the story of the escaped slave Joseph Selby, who hoped to earn enough money to purchase his sweetheart, but instead died in nearby Rushville.

1856

The Methodist Church founds the Ohio African University in Tawawa Springs; the university closes in June 1862.

1856

(December) Runaway slave Margaret Garner; her husband, Robert; their four children; and several other families cross from Covington, Kentucky, over the frozen Ohio River. As the slave catchers surround them, Margaret kills her two-year-old daughter and wounds her other children. She, her husband, and her youngest child, a nine-monthold daughter, are sent back to Kentucky to stand trial. In 1857, they will be sold to Judge Dewitt Clinton Bonham to work on his plantation in Tennessee Landing, Mississippi.

1862

Riots occur in Toledo and Cincinnati.

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1863

Reverend Daniel Alexander Payne (1811–1893) purchases the campus of the Ohio African University on behalf of the African Methodist Episcopal Church for $10,000. Union Seminary’s operations are moved and Wilberforce University, the oldest black-owned and black-operated college, is begun.

1864

(September 24) Ohio’s 5th Colored Troops suffer 236 casualties at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm in Virginia. Four noncommissioned officers receive the Medal of Honor for stepping in after the white officers were incapacitated.

1865

(February 10) Ohio ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.

1865

(April 14) On the day President Lincoln is assassinated, the main building on Wilberforce University’s campus is burned down by arsonists. Plans are made immediately to rebuild.

1865

Martin R. Delany (1812–1885) of Wilberforce meets with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss his strategy to end the Civil War. Delany proposes that an army of black men led by black officers be raised, which would march through the South, freeing the enslaved who would join their ranks and defeat the Confederates. Delany is appointed a major by Lincoln, making him the highest-ranking black officer in the U.S. Colored Troops.

1865

Fannie Jackson Coppin (1837–1913), principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, earns her B.A. at Oberlin College.

1866–1867

Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841–1898), later U.S. senator from Mississippi, studies at Oberlin College.

1867

( January 4) Ohio ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution broadening the definition of citizenship to include former slaves.

1867

(May 18) Mathew Brady’s wood engraving of Thomas Noble’s painting “The Modern Medea: The Story of Margaret Garner” appears in Harper’s Weekly.

1868

( January 15) Ohio rescinds its ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

1869

(April 30) Ohio rejects the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting voting rights to African Americans.

1869

John P. Green (1845–1940), attorney, Republican Party agent, and future member of the Ohio legislature, graduates from Cleveland Central High School.

1870

( January 27) Ohio ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment.

1872

John Patterson Green (1845–1940), attorney and civil servant, is elected justice of the peace of Cuyahoga County.

1872

Toledo’s black children are given equal access to schools.

1873

Hallie Quinn Brown (c. 1847–1949), educator, activist, and elocutionist, earns her B.A. at Wilberforce University.

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1874

The South School at Yellow Springs serves black students until 1887.

1876

Ohio’s House of Representatives elects its first black clerks: W. Scott Thomas (n.d.) and William Seneca Tyler (1837–1916).

1877

Sarah Cordelia Bierce (1851–1933), with a B.A. from Oswego Teaching Institute in New York, joins the faculty at Wilberforce University and will serve until her retirement in 1921. Of Caucasian descent, she will marry fellow faculty member and former slave William Sanders Scarborough (1852–1926) on August 2, 1881, in New York City.

1879

George Washington Williams (1849–1891) is elected to Ohio’s House of Representatives.

1880

Charles Young (1864–1922), the future third black graduate of West Point Military Academy, graduates from Ripley Colored High School.

1880

James P. Poindexter (1819–1907) becomes the first black man elected to the City Council of Columbus. His barbershop on High Street serves as a political entrepôt.

1881

William Sanders Scarborough (1852–1926) publishes First Lessons in Greek. It is the first ancient language textbook written by a person of African descent in the United States in an age when Greek and Latin are curriculum standards.

1881

John P. Green is elected to the Ohio House of Representatives.

1883

Harry C. Smith (1863–1941) founds the Cleveland Gazette, which remains in operation until 1945.

1884

The Toledo Blue Stockings baseball team join the American Association. Two of its players, Moses “Fleetwood” Walker and his brother Welday Wilberforce Walker, become the first blacks to play in what we today call “organized baseball.”

1884

Ohio’s Public Accommodation Law prohibits discrimination by race from access to public facilities, hotels, theaters, and government buildings.

1884

Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) earns her B.A. at Oberlin College. She will earn her M.A. in 1887 and a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in 1925.

1885

President Chester A. Arthur appoints George Washington Williams, a black member of Ohio’s House of Representatives, to be U.S. minister to Haiti.

1886

House Bill 71, sponsored by Benjamin W. Arnett (1838–1906) and Jeremiah A. Brown (1841–1913), declares no new segregated schools can be opened in the state.

1887

The Ohio General Assembly funds the Combined Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce University.

1887

John Hanks Alexander (1864–1894), who had attended Oberlin College for a time, becomes the second African American to graduate from West Point.

1888

George A. Myers (1859–1930), politician, race leader, and tonsor, opens his barbershop at the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, which he runs until his death in 1930.

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1888

Wayne Manzilla, (d. 1907) is the first African American student to graduate from Mount Union College, which was founded in Alliance in 1846.

1889

Harriet Gibbs Marshall (1869–1941) becomes the first African American woman to complete the course in piano at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

1889

E. W. B. Curry’s Normal and Industrial Institute opens in Urbana.

1892

Thomas W. Burton (1871–n.d.), surgeon and author, opens his practice in Springfield.

1893

Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), Mary Todd Lincoln’s stylist and confidante, prepares an exhibit with her students as head of the Sewing Department at Wilberforce University for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1894

Wilberforce University becomes the first African American institution of higher education to establish a military science department for its students. Lieutenant John Hanks Alexander is appointed the first African American Professor of Military Science and Tactics, but dies unexpectedly less than a month after his arrival.

1894–1896

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) teaches Greek at Wilberforce University and marries a Wilberforce student, Nina Gomer (d. 1950), on May 12, 1896, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

1896

The Ohio General Assembly passes the Smith Bill, which allows survivors and relatives of those who survive mob violence to sue for damages.

1896

Clarence Cameron White (1879–1960), composer and violinist, enters the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and studies there until 1901.

1897

(September 24) Members of the Negro Protective Party assemble in Columbus under the name National Negro Democratic League in a failed effort to nominate a black candidate for governor.

1898

Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865–1952), entrepeneur, composer, and race leader, serves as paymaster and then head paymaster of Cincinnati until 1923.

1903

Captain Charles Young becomes the first African American superintendent of a national park. Responsible for building roads to provide public access to Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, he also initiates conservation efforts.

1904

Charles Follis (1879–1910) of Wooster plays in the Ohio League for the Shelby Athletic Club (a.k.a. the Shelby Blues), becoming the first professional football player of African descent.

1904

Race riots occur in Springfield.

1913

The Reppert Bill outlawing mixed marriages in Ohio fails to pass.

1914

The estate of Mrs. S. J. McCall funds the establishment of the Colored Industrial School of Cincinnati.

1915

Karamu House, an interracial center for theater and the arts, is founded in Cleveland.

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1919

Virginia Proctor Powell (1903–1991), the first black woman to be professionally trained in library science at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1923), earns a B.A. in English literature at Oberlin College.

1921

Fritz Pollard (1894–1986) becomes the first African American quarterback and head coach in the NFL when he heads the Akron Pros.

1922

Garrett Augustus Morgan (1877–1963), businessman, inventor, and Cleveland resident from 1895 to 1963, files a patent for his new invention, the traffic signal.

1924

Henry Lee Moon (1901–1985), an activist and journalist who will later work for the Amsterdam News, the Crisis, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earns his M.A. degree in journalism from Ohio State University.

1927

Carl P. Anderson (n.d.) and Goodrich Giles (1846–1927) establish the Classic Theater, a black entertainment center, in response to the restrictions of segregation in Dayton. Considered the first of its kind in the United States, it remains open until 1959.

1933

Ruth E. Moore (1903–1994) earns a Ph.D. in bacteriology at Ohio State University.

1935

Ohio State University’s Jesse Owens (1913–1980) breaks three world records (broad jump, 220-yard, and 220-yard low hurdles) and ties the world record for the 100-yard dash at a Big Ten track meet in Michigan.

1936

At the Berlin Olympics, the black athlete Jesse Owens becomes the first American to win four gold medals.

1937

At the Lost Creek Country Club in Lima, Wilberforce University defeats Ohio Northern in the first interracial golf competition at the college level.

1937

Reverend Glenn T. Settle (1895–1952) of the Gethsemane Baptist Church in Cleveland founds Wings over Jordan, a gospel and spiritual group active from 1939 to 1965 and develops a radio show, The Negro Hour, with the program director of WGAR, Worth Kramer.

1942

Charity Adams Earley (1918–2002), a Wilberforce University alumna, is made company commander of the female Basic Training Company and becomes the first black woman commissioned in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

1946

The Cleveland Browns’ hire of William “Bill” Willis (1921–2007) of Columbus and Marion Motley (1920–1999), who grew up in Canton, helps remove the color line in professional football.

1946

William J. Powell (1916–) breaks ground for his Clearview Golf Club in East Canton. It is the first course designed, owned, and continually operated by African Americans.

1947

( June) The Combined Normal and Industrial Department is separated from Wilberforce University to become Central State College.

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1947

Carl T. Rowan (1925–2000), future syndicated columnist and U.S. ambassador to Finland (1963), earns his B.A. at Oberlin College.

1948

Future opera star Leontyne Price (1927–) graduates from Central State College with a B.A. in music education.

1948

The Dayton Renaissance basketball team becomes the first all-black team in major league sports replacing the Detroit Vagabond Kings in the National Basketball League.

1951

Coretta Scott (King, 1921–2006) graduates from Antioch College with a B.A. in music and education.

1959

Hallie Q. Brown Memorial Library opens at Central State College.

1959

The Ohio Civil Rights Act is enacted, replacing the Ohio Public Accommodations Law of 1884.

1961

(May and June) Two white students from Central State College, Charles David Myers and his future wife Winona, go to jail during a protest in Jackson, Mississippi. Refusing bail, Winona spends six months in jail, making her period of incarceration the longest served by any Freedom Rider, black or white.

1961

John McLendon (1915–1999) becomes the first black professional basketball coach of the Cleveland Pipers in the new American Basketball League.

1961

Ohio’s legislature changes the name of the Fair Employment Practices Commission established in 1959 to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

1961

Effie O’Neal Ellis (1913–1994) serves as director of Maternal and Child Health for the Ohio Department of Health from 1961 to 1965.

1962

The Association of Minority Architects and Engineers is founded in Cleveland by Robert P. Madison (1923–).

1963

(February 27) Ohio ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

After appointment by Governor James Rhodes, William O. Walker (1896–1981) becomes the first black cabinet member in Ohio.

1965

Central State College becomes Central State University.

1965

The Ohio General Assembly passes the Fair Housing Law, which is weakened by various exemptions and uneven enforcement.

1967

In Cleveland, Carl B. Stokes (1927–1996) becomes the first black mayor of a major U.S. city.

1968

Mayor Carl Stokes calls in the National Guard when black officers are unable to quell rioting after a gunfight in the Glenville area of Cleveland.

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1974

(April 3) A massive tornado destroys nearly 70 percent of Central State University’s campus and kills four employees.

1975

Frank Robinson is hired as player-manager of the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black manager in major league baseball.

1982

(November 23) A groundbreaking ceremony is held for the new National Afro–American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce.

1984

Yvonne Walker Taylor (1916–2006) becomes the first female president of Wilberforce University.

1984

Willa B. Player (1909–2003; B.A., Ohio Wesleyan College, 1929; M. A., Oberlin College, 1930; and Ph.D., Columbia University, 1948) is inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame in Columbus. Her presidency of Bennett College from 1955 to 1966 distinguishes her as the first black woman to hold such a position at any four-year woman’s college.

1991

Case of DeRolph v. State of Ohio is filed, charging that the school systems that rely on local property taxes are inherently unfair to Ohio’s children. In 1994, Judge Linton Lewis Jr. will rule that the state needs to find a more just system to finance the school system. The decision is appealed and in 1997, it is determined that the system for funding public education in Ohio is unconstitutional. The Ohio Supreme Court maintains this ruling from 2000 to 2002, but will vote to end further litigation in 2003.

1992

Ohio Democratic Representative Louis Stokes (Cleveland) and the Committee to Memorialize African Americans of the Civil War are successful in their efforts to refurbish and mark graves in the areas of Arlington National Cemetery known as Freedman’s Village and Section 27, which hold remains of U.S. Colored Troops.

2000

Ohio State University establishes “The Dr. Roy C. Darlington Legends of Pharmacy Graduate Endowed Fund” in honor of Roy Clifford Darlington (1908–1994), who received the first Ph.D. (1947) in pharmacy given to an African American at Ohio State University.

2001

Race riots occur in Cincinnati.

2003

Ohio officially ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment, having rescinded its earlier ratification in 1868.

2004

Presidential election results are contested in Ohio amid charges of widespread voter disfranchisement; Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) leads investigations into the matter.

2005

The opera Margaret Garner, with music by Richard Danielpour (1956–) and a libretto in English by Toni Morrison (1939–), makes its premiere in Cincinnati, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

2006

Under the auspices of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, the Martin Delany Monument is dedicated at Massie’s Creek Cemetery in Cedarville.

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2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American candidate of a major political party, carries Ohio with 51 percent of the vote.

2009

Toni Morrison dedicates a bench at Oberlin as part of her “A Bench by the Road Project,” which commemorates important places in African American history.

Historical Overview Ohio was the first state created out of the Northwest Territory, the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. The Northwest Territory was created in 1787 by the Northwest Ordinance, an act of the Confederation Congress that organized the first U.S. territory, thereby setting a precedent for U.S. expansion westward to be by the formation of new states rather than through expansion of existing states. The Northwest Ordinance also made the Ohio River the eventual dividing line between slave and free states by prohibiting slavery in the new territory, which eventually came to comprise, besides Ohio, the states of Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and northeastern Minnesota. When Ohio became a state in 1803, its 40,498 square miles were on the edge of the American frontier. Ohio is today the 34th state in terms of size. Its name, coming from either the Iroquois word “O-he-yo,” for “great or beautiful,” or the Miami tribe’s word “Ohui,” for “very,” as in “very white capped river,” reflects this early heritage. In Ohio’s frontier days, the number of African Americans was low, numbering fewer than 10,000 in 1830, but their names and activities were almost immediately noted, and their presence as citizens was felt all over the state. Among them were Ohioans like Arthur Boke, the first person of African descent to live in the Columbus area during the late 1790s; George Peake, who settled in Cleveland in 1809; John Malvin, who came to Cincinnati in the 1820s; John Stewart and Jonathan Pointer, Methodist missionaries who began proselytizing at Sandusky in 1815; John Newton Templeton, who earned his college

degree at Ohio University in 1828; and the dozens of black soldiers who fought with Commander Oliver Hazard Perry in the War of 1812. A large number of free blacks also settled in Hamilton County and in the city of Cincinnati in southern Ohio. In the same period, a descendent of Sally Hemings and possibly Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Woodson Sr. moved with his wife to Chillicothe and helped establish a mixedrace town in Jackson County in 1828. Some slave owners purchased land in Ohio for their former slaves. One of these was Charles Lambert Jr. from Bedford County, Virginia, who, after freeing his slaves in 1839, left funds and instructions in his will to help them relocate. One of those slaves named Frank Lambert bought close to 266 acres in Gallia County in southeastern Ohio in 1843 along with 29 other slaves. The property remained in the possession of their descendents for many years until it was sold for back taxes in 1969. The history of African American contributors to Ohio’s overall development begins with settlers like these. From 1830, growing national agitation over the problem of slavery spilled over Ohio’s southern border, causing the state to be split roughly into two sections. Many of the settlers in the northeastern corner of the state were “Yankees,” who had come from New England. They were living in the section of the state known as the Connecticut Western Reserve, which runs along the coast of Lake Erie to the Cuyahoga River Valley and includes the portions of 14 present-day counties: Ashland, Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Erie, Geauga, Huron, Lake, Lorain, Mahoning, Medina, Ottawa, Portage, Summit, and Trumbull. In the area to the west, from the counties of Sandusky to Defiance, the settlers

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Slaves escape by way of the Underground Railroad. An informal network of abolitionists, the Underground Railroad helped guide fugitive slaves to safety across the Canadian border or into free states during the years prior to the American Civil War. (Library of Congress)

were Quakers, Shakers, and Scottish Covenanters, most of whom were opposed to slavery. The southern section of the state, whose border follows the waters of the Ohio River from Cincinnati to Marietta, Martin’s Ferry, and beyond to the Ohio’s source in Pennsylvania, was closely connected to its southern neighbor, the proslavery state of Kentucky, and to other southern states in general, since the Ohio River was a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is hard to argue with Alexis de Tocqueville’s well-known observation that the Ohio River was a dividing line separating work, freedom, talentocracy, and democracy on the northern bank from idleness, slavery, and aristocracy on the southern shore. Thus divided by geography and disparate attitudes toward slave labor, the state’s inhabitants became furiously engaged in passing judgment on each other’s ideas concerning slavery, property rights, and the larger question of human freedom. Slavery had been prohibited in Ohio in 1787 by

the Northwest Ordinance, and this interdiction caused endless problems for slaveholders who were increasingly angered by the number of runaway slaves who sought safe haven in Ohio. Some of these runaways settled in the state and others continued their journey to points further north in Michigan or Canada. Ohio was one of the three main escape routes for the fugitives, and this traffic made Ohio an important station on the Underground Railroad. The first escape route was along the eastern seaboard, the second ran up the Mississippi River to St. Louis and Chicago, and the third followed the Ohio River Valley through Ohio and Indiana to Detroit or Buffalo and on to Canada. Ohio is quite possibly the place where the adjective “underground,” as used in the phrase “underground road” or “underground railroad,” originated. One of the earliest usages of the term has been traced back to an account from the Sandusky abolitionist Rush Sloane (1828–1908), who said

Ohio he had heard a slave master use the term in 1831 after the slave Tice Davids successfully escaped from Kentucky by swimming across the Ohio River near Ripley. When Davids seemed to have vanished into thin air, his owner is reported to have said that Davids must have “gone off on an underground road.” Although many of the runaway slaves escaped to start new lives, others did not, and tales of their tragic fates have haunted the American psyche ever since. Today their stories continue to stimulate the imaginative and creative faculties of artists, writers, and musicians across the United States and beyond. Well-known Ohio children’s author Virginia Hamilton, from Yellow Springs, published The Dies Drear Chronicles, a pair of books about a young family who moved into a house in Ohio once used by fugitive slaves. Toni Morrison based her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved on the life of the slave Margaret Garner, who killed her daughter on the banks of the Ohio River rather than turn her over to slave catchers from Kentucky. While the state’s laws never permitted slavery, the state did not readily extend the rights of full citizenship to its black inhabitants either. Thus, in the subsequent and yet ongoing struggle of African Americans to secure their rights and improve their treatment in Ohio, is found the larger story of America. Access to education was an integral part of the overall quest for equal rights for African Americans. Oberlin College’s liberal attitude toward the admission of black students, which dated back to 1835, two years after the college’s founding, was remarkable, but Oberlin could not serve the state’s entire population. Out of this need was created in southern Ohio one of the oldest black colleges in the country, Wilberforce University. Wilberforce began in 1856 under the aegis of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Tawawa Springs, located about 35 miles east of Dayton. Its founders named the school after the English abolitionist William Wilberforce. When the school failed during the

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early years of the Civil War, Daniel Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church purchased the property; when he took up the post as president of Wilberforce, he became the first person of African descent to lead a university in the United States. In 1887, with state funding, the university established a combined normal and industrial department, which split off in 1949 to become Central State University. In 1891, Wilberforce University’s theological department, with a mandate from the African Methodist Episcopal Church dating back to 1844, opened Payne Theological Seminary. All three institutions are in operation today. Other schools were built for the lower grades, such as the Black and White School House built in 1886 by African Americans in Kenton, which served all who wished to attend, both black and white, until 1928. From its earliest days, Ohio was protected by her black soldiers. During the Civil War, the brothers John Mercer Langston and Charles Langston, Orindatus S. B. Wall, and others mustered black soldiers for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments as well as the 5th Ohio. In 1863, black recruits reported for duty at Camp Delaware with the 127th Volunteer Regiment, (also known as the 5th U.S. Colored Troops) and served until 1865. Other Ohio regiments include the 27th U.S. Colored Troops and the 372nd Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Infantry Division, which fought in World War I. In July 1917, near Chillicothe, construction of Camp Sherman began, and in December 1918, four black nurses from the small number of black women who had recently been admitted to the Army Nurse Corps, including Clara Rollins and Aileen B. Cole, were assigned there. In 1943, Cleveland’s Republican congresswoman Frances Payne Bolton (1885–1977) introduced a bill barring the discrimination in the nurse corps that these women had suffered. During World War II, Lewis A. Jackson (1912–1994) became director of training at the

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Charles Young was the highest-ranking African American officer in the army when World War I started. He was also the first African American to reach that rank in the army. (Library of Congress)

Army Air Corps 66th Flight Training Detachment at Tuskegee, Alabama. After earning his M.A. at Miami University in 1948 and his Ph.D. at Ohio State University in 1950, Jackson served as president of Central State University from 1970 to 1972. Greene County’s regional airport is named for him. Ohio’s many military heroes also include a number of black airmen, such as Alex A. Boudreaux and H. M. “Don” Cummings, who were honored in March 2007 with a Congressional Gold Medal. Men like Columbus’ Samuel Tiding Simpson (1928–1952) and John W. Erby

(1940–2008) won Purple Hearts in Korea and Vietnam, respectively. The state’s most famous soldier, Colonel Charles Young, was once the highest-ranking black officer in the U.S. Army. His varied career took him from West Point, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1889, to missions in the Philippines, Haiti, Liberia, and Nigeria. The military department at Wilberforce University established by President Grover Cleveland in 1894 was the only such department with U.S. government support, and Young joined the faculty

Ohio as professor of military science and tactics at that time. In 1904, he married Ada Mills from nearby Xenia. Young mentored Benjamin O. Davis Sr., who was detailed to teach military tactics at Wilberforce University after his promotion to first lieutenant in 1905. In 1919, Davis married Sadie Overton (d. 1966), a professor of English at Wilberforce, and in October 1940, he became the first black general in the US. Army. Ohio’s African American population came to the state largely during three periods of migration. The first came during the mid-nineteenth century, the second during World War I (1914–1918), and the third during World War II (1939–1945). Slowly through each of these periods, people of African descent made significant contributions to American culture and society at large. Many advances were made as black Ohioans in the larger cities enjoyed new levels of prosperity created by the economic boom of World War II. Barriers to fair housing, equal pay, and vocational opportunity were lowered during this period, but as progress stalled in the late 1950s and early 1960s, growing unrest led to riots in 1968 in cities like Akron, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. However, the work of the Civil Rights Movement, which counted among its victories the establishment of the Civil Rights Commission and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1959 as well as enactment of the Ohio Fair Housing Act in 1965, brought significant changes to Ohio. Some civil rights activities within Ohio affected people in other states, such as the volunteers who were trained at the Western College for Women in Oxford during the Freedom Summer Project in June 1964 before going south to Mississippi to register black voters. The state’s overall population is estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau as of July 2008 to be 11.5 million. Of these millions, 84.9 percent are white and 12 percent are black. Faced with oppression as a race and exclusion as a minority group, black Ohioans have succeeded in teaching their

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fellow Ohioans and the nation at large about the importance of freedom, fairness, and the power of political activism. Since the 1970s, some of Ohio’s largest cities have been led by black mayors. Theodore M. Berry (1972–1975), John Kenneth Blackwell (1979–1980), and Dwight Tillery (1991–1993) have been mayors of Cincinnati; Carl Stokes (1967–1971) and Michael R. White (1990–2002) have been mayors of Cleveland; and James H. McGee (1970–1982), Richard Clay Dixon (1989–1993), and Rhine McLin, who was elected in 2001 and in 2005 as the city’s first woman mayor, have been mayors of Dayton. While ideal conditions have yet to be achieved, as exemplified by the 2001 race riots in Cincinnati sparked by the fatal shooting of a black youth by Cincinnati police officers, Ohio has, in a period of less than a century, seen both the Negro Protective Party’s unsuccessful attempt to nominate a black candidate for governor in 1897 and John Kenneth Blackwell’s unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 2006, which gathered 40 percent of Ohio’s voters.

Notable African Americans Baker, Anita (1958–) From Toledo, Anita Baker is a rhythm-and-blues and soul singer and songwriter and winner of eight Grammy Awards. Her debut album, The Songstress, was released in 1983. It contained the hit single “Sweet Love,” which Baker cowrote. Her 1986 album, Rapture, sold over eight million copies and won her the 1987 Grammy for “Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female” and the Grammy for “Best R&B Song” for “Sweet Love.”

Battle, Kathleen (1948–) From Portsmouth, Kathleen Battle is a soprano, known for her light, pure tone, and the winner of three Grammy Awards. She began singing

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professionally in 1972, when she appeared as a soloist in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Reqiem at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Italy. She made her operatic debut in 1975, appearing as Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbieredi Siviglia at the Michigan Opera Theatre. In the 1980s, she received Grammys for her albums Kathleen Battle Sings Opera (1986), Salzburg Recital (1987), and Ariadne and Naxos (1987).

Beasley, Delilah Leontium (1871–1934) Born in Cincinnati, Delilah Beasley was a prominent journalist and historian, and the first African American woman to be regularly published in a major city newspaper in the United States. In 1910, Beasley moved to Oakland, California, where she began studying the history of African Americans in California. Her research resulted in two well-received books, Slavery in California (1918) and The Negro Trail-Blazers of California (1919). The prominence earned from these publications led to Beasley becoming a regular contributor to the Oakland Tribune, for which she wrote a Sunday column entitled “Activities among Negroes.” Her column highlighted the activities of the local African American community, especially the achievements of its members. Beasley was a member of numerous service and social organizations, including the northern California chapter of the NAACP.

Beavers, Louise (1902–1962) From Cincinnati, Louis Beavers was a film actress whose career began with the silent film Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1927. She made dozens of movies in the 1920s and 1930s, but her most famous role was as the cook and housekeeper Delilah Johnson in the 1934 film Imitation of Life. A major theme in the film was the conflict between Delilah and her light-skinned daughter, who sought to pass for white, making Imitation of Life one of the first

American films to focus on the life of a black female character. She was also one of four actresses to play the title role of the black housekeeper in the early 1950s television program Beulah.

Bell, James Madison (1826–1902) From Gallipolis, James M. Bell was Ohio’s first poet of African descent. While living in Chatham, Ontario, a major destination of the Underground Railroad, in the 1850s, Bell became involved in the abolitionist movement. Returning with his family to Cincinnati, he worked as a plasterer, but became well known for his antislavery speeches and poems. His most famous poem, “The Day and the War,” was dedicated to his friend, the abolitionist John Brown. Bell later moved to Toledo and was active in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1901, he published a collection of his poems in The Poetical Works of James Madison Bell.

Bentley, Charles Edwin (1859–1929) From Cincinnati, Charles Bentley was an oral surgeon, a participant in the Niagara Movement, and a board member of the NAACP. Bentley was appointed professor of oral surgery at Harvey Medical College in Chicago in 1888. In 1905, he joined the Niagara Movement, a black civil rights organization founded that year by W. E. B. Du Bois and other African American activists. He later also became a member of the NAACP, a new civil rights organization that evolved out of the Niagara Movement in 1910.

Berry, Edwin C. (1854–1931) From Oberlin, Edwin C. Berry was a businessman and hotelier. He began as a bricklayer, but then opened an ice cream shop in Athens, Ohio, which eventually evolved into the 22-room Hotel

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Actress Halle Berry acknowledges fans as she arrives at a shopping mall in Warsaw, Poland, 2010. Halle Berry was the first African American to win “Best Actress” for her performance in Monster’s Ball. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Berry, which he ran until his retirement in 1921. By his death in 1931, Berry was known as the most successful African American small-city hotel operator in the United States.

Berry, Halle (1968–) From Cleveland, Halle Berry is a popular film star and winner in 2001 of the first Oscar for Best Actress ever won by a black actress for her performance in Monster’s Ball. Among Berry’s other well-known films are X-Men (2000), X2: X-Men United (2003), and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006); Die Another Day (2002); Gothika (2003); Catwoman (2004); Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005); and Robots (2005). She also starred as the African American actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge in the 1998 film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.

Blackwell, John Kenneth (1942–) From Cincinnati, John K. Blackwell is a wellknown Ohio politician. He served as mayor of Cincinnati from 1979 to 1980, as treasurer of Ohio from 1993 to 1994, and as Ohio secretary of state in 1998. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor in 2006.

Brown, Linda Beatrice (1939–) Born in Akron, Linda Beatrice Brown is a poet, novelist, and educator. A protégée of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, Brown published a wellreceived volume of poetry entitled A Love Song to Black Men in 1974. Under the name Linda Brown Bragg, she published the novel Rainbow Roun Mah Shoulder in 1984, work that has been praised for its strong female character and its

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skillful employment of the African American speech patterns of the South. Her poems have also appeared in Beyond the Blues (1960), an anthology edited by Rosey Pool, and in such publications as Black Scholar, Encore, Ebony, and Writer’s Choice.

contributing short stories and essays to the NAACP’s magazine, the Crisis. He worked with both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington to combat racial discrimination, and, in 1917, succeeded in shutting down Ohio showings of D. W. Griffith’s racist film Birth of a Nation.

Chesnutt, Charles Waddell (1858–1932)

Dandridge, Dorothy (1922–1965)

Born in Cleveland to parents who were classed as “free persons of color,” Charles W. Chesnutt, who had a white grandfather and other white ancestors, was sufficiently light-skinned to pass for white. However, he always identified himself as African American, and was so identified in most of the South, when anyone with the slightest trace of African blood, the so-called “one-drop rule,” was considered black. After the Civil War, his family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Chesnutt eventually became principal of the local normal school (now Fayetteville State University). In 1878, he and his wife moved to New York, but they soon returned to Cleveland, where Chesnutt passed the bar exam in 1887 and started a profitable legal stenography business. Always interested in a literary career, Chesnutt began writing stories for such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly, which published his first short story, “The Goophered Grapevine,” in 1887. His first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Conjure Woman, appeared in 1899. The stories featured black characters who spoke in dialect and faced such difficult issues as miscegenation, illegitimacy, and prejudice and racial identity. He also wrote a biography of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Although well received by critics, Chesnutt’s works sold poorly, and he was never able to support himself with his writing. His play, Mrs. Darcy’s Daughter, was produced in 1906, but was also a commercial failure. After 1900, Chesnutt increasingly devoted himself to political and social activism, serving on the General Committee of the NAACP and

Born in Cleveland, Dorothy Dandridge was a well-known singer and film star of the 1940s and 1950s. Her first film appearance was in A Day at the Races in 1937. Unhappy with being cast in stereotypical African American roles, she turned to music in the 1940s. Forming a singing group with her sister and a friend, she performed at the Cotton Club in New York and with many famous big bands of the era. She returned to acting in the 1950s, taking roles in such films as Porgy and Bess, Island in the Sun, and Carmen Jones. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her role in Carmen Jones,

Film star and singer Dorothy Dandridge, 1954. (Library of Congress)

Ohio becoming the first African American woman to receive such a nomination.

Davis, Harry Edward (1882–1955) Born in Cleveland, Harry Davis attended Hiram College in 1904–1905, and earned an LL.B. from Western Reserve University Law School in 1908. After his admittance to the Ohio Bar, he started a private law practice. In 1909, Davis used the 1896 Ohio civil rights law to bring charges of racial discrimination against a store clerk who refused to serve him. Although the seller was found guilty, the jury denied Davis any civil damages. In 1920, Davis won election to the Ohio General Assembly, eventually serving four terms. In 1923, voters approved a referendum introduced by Davis for the removal from the state constitution of a provision that limited the vote to “white male citizens.” In 1928, the Cleveland City Council appointed Davis to the Cleveland Civil Service Commission; the first black to serve on that body, Davis was president of the commission from 1932 to 1934. Elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1947, Davis became the first African American legislator to preside over that body. With his reelection in 1953, he became the only African American candidate to win election to the Ohio legislature during the 1950s. A 33rddegree Mason, Davis wrote an unpublished manuscript on the history of blacks in Masonry. His Black Americans in Cleveland was completed by his brother Russell H. Davis and published in 1972. Harry E. Davis Jr. High School in Cleveland was named in his honor in 1962.

Dove, Rita (1952–) Born in Akron, Rita Dove is the first African American to be named poet laureate of the United States and the second to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1973 and then earned

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an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1977. Dove taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for her collection of poetry entitled Thomas and Beulah, which was based on the lives of her maternal grandparents. In 1995, the librarian of Congress named her poet laureate, a title she held for two years, the youngest person ever to receive the appointment. In 2004, the governor of Virginia named her poet laureate of the Commonwealth. Besides nine volumes of poetry, Dove has published short stories, essays, and a novel entitled Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Her latest collection of poetry, Sonata Mulattica, was published in 2009. Since 1989, Dove has taught at the University of Virginia, where she holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence (1872–1906) Born in Dayton, Paul Laurence Dunbar was a prominent poet, novelist, essayist, and songwriter. The son of former slaves, Dunbar was a friend of Orville and Wilbur Wright and briefly published a newspaper with the two brothers. While working as an elevator operator, Dunbar wrote poetry in his spare time. In 1892, he self-published his first collection of poems entitled Oak and Ivy, copies of which he sold to riders on his elevator. After moving to Toledo in 1895, Dunbar published his second poetry collection, Majors and Minors. His work was well received by critics, including the poetry editor of Harper’s Weekly. His reputation as a poet was much enhanced by the many readings of his poems that he gave to reading groups and literary societies across Ohio. Dunbar’s early collections were eventually published by a New York press under the title Lyrics of a Lowly Life. In 1897, Dunbar traveled to Europe, where he again gave many wellreceived readings of his work. Upon returning to the United States, he took a position with the

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Library of Congress. Before his death in 1906, Dunbar wrote 12 collections of poetry, five novels, one play, and many newspaper articles.

Duncanson, Robert Scott (c. 1817–1872) Born in Seneca County, New York, the son of a white father and an African American mother, Robert Scott Duncanson was a free person of color who spent his early years living with his father in Canada. In 1841, he moved to Mount Pleasant, Ohio, to live with his mother, but soon settled in Cincinnati to launch his career as an artist. Although not formally trained, Duncanson made a name for himself as a portrait painter. In the late 1840s, Duncanson, inspired by the work of the Hudson River School of artists, turned to landscapes, and traveled the Ohio River Valley on sketching trips with other artists to provide inspiration for landscapes later painted in his Cincinnati studio. Duncanson was a major influence on American landscape painting, and was later known for infusing his works with subtle African American themes and influences that did not cause his painting to be characterized as African American art. His only work containing explicit African American subject matter is Uncle Tom and Little Eva (1853), which draws on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin for inspiration and is Duncanson’s only pronouncement on the question of slavery. During the Civil War, Duncanson moved back to Canada, but returned to Cincinnati in 1867 after a European tour. He died in December 1872.

Early, Sarah Jane Woodson (1825–1907) Born in Chillicothe, Sarah Jane Woodson was the daughter of Thomas Woodson, son of Sally Hemings, the slave woman with whom Thomas Jefferson may have had a sexual relationship. Woodson, who was also once owned by Jefferson, was likely not a descendent of the president. In 1829, the Woodson family moved to Berlin

Crossroads, where they prospered. Sarah attended Albany Academy in Albany, Ohio, and earned an L.B. from Oberlin College in 1856. She taught at several African American schools in Ohio before teaching English and Latin at Wilberforce University from 1859 to 1860. She was also the principal of African American schools in Hillsboro and Xenia. She moved to Hillsboro, North Carolina, after the Civil War and married Jordan W. Early, a Baptist minister, in 1868. The couple moved to Tennessee in the 1870s. In the 1880s, Sarah Early became prominent in the Temperance Movement, becoming an important figure in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, especially in regard to the involvement of African American women with the organization.

Gordone, Charles (1925–1995) Born in Cleveland, but raised in Elkhart, Indiana, Charles Gordone was an actor and playwright, who is best known for winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1970 for his play No Place to Be Somebody. Set in the civil rights era, the play explores racial tensions through the story of a black bartender involved with white mobsters. After moving to New York in the early 1950s, Gordone performed in numerous shows on and off Broadway, winning an Obie Award in 1953 for his role in an all-black production of Of Mice and Men. A director as well as an actor, Gordone cofounded the Committee for the Employment of Negro Performers and the Vantage Theater in Queens, New York. From 1961 to 1966, he performed in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, along with James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, and other African American actors who were to gain prominence in the entertainment industry.

Griffin, Archie (1954–) Born in Columbus, Archie Griffin was a star running back for the Ohio State University football

Ohio team in the 1970s, becoming the first and only two-time recipient of the Heisman Trophy in 1974 and 1975. He won four Big Ten Conference championships with Ohio State, and is one of only two players to start in four Rose Bowl games. In 1976, Griffin was selected in the first round of the NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals, for whom he played seven seasons and appeared in Super Bowl XVI in 1981. After retirement from football, Griffin returned to Ohio State to earn an M.B.A. and is today the president of the Ohio State University Alumni Association.

Hall, Arsenio (1955–) Born in Cleveland, Arsenio Hall is a comedian, producer, and talk show host. He is best known as the host of the Arsenio Hall Show, a late-night variety/talk show that ran on Fox from 1989 to 1994. Perhaps the most noted appearance on the show was that made in June 1992 by then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, who played Elvis Presley's “Heartbreak Hotel” on the saxophone. In 1984, Hall appeared with Eddie Murphy in the film Coming to America; in 1989, he appeared again with Murphy and with Richard Pryor in Harlem Nights. Hall continues to make television appearances, including as guest host in November 2009 on Lopez Tonight, hosted by comedian George Lopez, who claims Hall as a major influence.

Hill, Charles Leander (1906–1956) Born in Urbana, the son of the town’s first African American police officer, Charles Hill entered Wittenberg University in 1924 and graduated four years later. After graduation, Hill also became a deacon and then an ordained elder in the AME Church and also attended Hamma Divinity School, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity in 1931. Hill also mastered several languages, including Hebrew, ancient and modern Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. In 1931, he began a graduate fellowship at the University of Berlin, where he

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conducted doctoral research on the sixteenthcentury German reformer Philip Melanchthon. Hill also discovered the eighteenth-century text of Anthony William Amo’s dissertation on apathy; Amo was a Ghanaian philosopher who became the first person of African descent to earn a doctorate in philosophy and to teach at leading German universities. Hill translated Amo’s Latin work into English and published both his translation and a commentary on it in the A.M.E. Review in 1955. Upon returning to the United States, Hill became dean of the Turner Theological Seminary at Morris Brown College (1933). In 1936, he entered Ohio State University and, continuing his research on Melanchthon, in 1938 became only the second African American to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from that institution. In 1947, Hill became the 13th president of Wilberforce University, where he also taught philosophy. In 1951, he published A Short History of Modern Philosophy from the Renaissance to Hegel, the first work on the history of modern philosophy published by an African American philosopher.

Hubbard, William Dehart (1904–1976) Born in Cincinnati, William Dehart Hubbard was the first African American athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event when he won the running long jump competition at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Hubbard set the long jump at Chicago in 1925 and tied the world record of 9.6 seconds for the 100-yard dash in 1926 at Cincinnati. Hubbard was a graduate of the University of Michigan, where, between 1923 and 1925, he was a three-time National Collegiate Athletic Association track-and-field champion in the long jump and 100-yard dash and a seven-time Big Ten Conference champion in the 50-yard dash, the long jump, and the 100-yard dash. His 1925 outdoor long jump of 25 feet 10½ inches stood as the Michigan team record until 1980. His 1925 jump of 25 feet 3½

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inches was the Big Ten championships record until it was broken by Jesse Owens in 1935. In later life Hubbard served as a race relations adviser for the Federal Housing Authority.

Jones, William (c. 1914–2006) Born in Toledo, William Jones and three other African American players, Shanty Barnett, Al Price, and Casey Jones, broke the color barrier in 1942 by joining the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets, a team in the National Basketball League (NBL), a forerunner of the NBA. Jones, who had been a basketball star at the University of Toledo joined the Chevrolets for the 1942– 1943 season, when the Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers filled their rosters by signing black players—five years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Although both teams folded after the season for financial reasons, the precedent of Jones’ signing led to the signing of the first African American players in the new NBA in 1950.

Leach, Robert Boyd (1822–1863) Robert Boyd Leach was the first African American physician to practice in Cleveland and was Ohio’s most prominent early advocate for full citizenship rights for blacks. Originally from Virginia, Leach moved to southern Ohio, and then to Cleveland, in 1844. As a young man, he worked as a nurse on the lake steamers, his first knowledge of medicine coming entirely from books. In 1858, he earned a degree in homeopathic medicine from Western Homeopathic College and established a practice in Cleveland, which then had a black population of fewer than 800. He became a spokesman for the black community and his name was frequently mentioned with the struggle for the rights of blacks in Cleveland and Ohio. Leach had both white and black patients. He is credited with devising a treatment of cholera that

was eventually used with success throughout the Great Lakes region. During the Civil War, Leach helped recruit black soldiers for the Union army but was rejected for service himself since the army did not accept doctors trained in homeopathic medicine. Leach died in 1863 as he was beginning to undertake a study of allopathic medicine.

Marable, Manning (1950–2011) Born in Dayton, Manning Marable was professor of history and African-American studies at Columbia University, where he founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. Marable served as chair of the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) and on the Board of Directors for the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN). He also sat on the Amistad Commission, created by the New York legislature to review state curriculum regarding the slave trade. Marable authored numerous works, including The Great Wells of Democracy (2003), Let Nobody Turn Us Around (2000), Black Leadership (1998), Black Liberation in Conservative America (1997), Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism (1996), Beyond Black and White (1995), On Malcolm X: His Message & Meaning (1992), Race, Reform and Rebellion (1991), and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983). His last book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, a biography of the black rights activist Malcolm X, appeared in 2011.

Moorland, Jesse Edward (1863–1940) Born in Coldwater, Jesse Moorland was the son of a local farmer. After his mother’s death, he was raised by his grandparents and educated at Northwestern Normal School in Ada, Ohio. In 1886, Moorland and his wife moved to Urbana, Ohio, where both were teachers. The couple later

Ohio moved to Washington, D.C., where Moorland earned a master’s degree in theology from Howard University in 1891. Ordained a minister in the Congregational Church, Moorland was also appointed secretary of the Colored Branch of the Washington, D.C., YMCA. In 1893, he moved to Nashville to become pastor of Howard Chapel, and, in 1896, left Tennessee to become pastor at Mount Zion Congregational Church in Cleveland. He rejoined the YMCA in 1898, becoming an administrator and fundraiser for the Colored Men’s Department and eventually raising over $2 million for various YMCA building projects across the country. In 1914, Moorland became senior secretary of the Colored Men’s Department and presided over a steady expansion of YMCA college chapters and city associations. He retired in 1923. In 1915, he assisted in Carter G. Woodson's founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and helped develop Negro History Week (now Black History Month). Moorland also donated his personal book and manuscript collection of African American history to Howard University, where it became part of the foundation of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, which is today one of the world’s largest African American libraries. Moorland died in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1940.

Morrison, Toni (1931–) Born in Lorraine, Toni Morrison is novelist, editor, educator, and winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, which is set in Ohio. Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970 and became an Oprah Book Club selection in 2000. Her 1973 novel Sula was nominated for the National Book Award in 1975, and her 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the

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Toni Morrison is one of the most significant American authors of the twentieth century. She was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature. (Olga Besnard)

first novel by an African American author so chosen since 1940, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1987, Morrison’s Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award and was made into a 1998 film starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. In 2006, the New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel of the past quarter century. Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Morrison taught English at the University at Albany, the State University of New York. From 1989 until her retirement in 2006, Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Moses, Edwin (1955–) Born in Dayton, Moses competed in track and field at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he

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majored in physics and industrial engineering. In 1976, he began running the 400-meter hurdles. He qualified for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.63 seconds. From August 1977 to June 1987, Moses won 122 consecutive 400-meter hurdles races. During this period, he also set two more world records and won three World Cup titles and two World Championships. In 1984, he won his second Olympic gold medal in the event at the Summer Games in Los Angeles. At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, he finished third in the final 400-meter race of his career. Since the end of his track career, Moses has worked as a reformer in the areas of Olympic eligibility and drug testing. In 2000, he was elected the first chairman of the Laureus World Sports Academy, an international service organization of world-class athletes. The Edwin Moses Track was constructed in his honor at his alma mater, Morehouse College.

Scarborough, William Sanders (1852–1926) Born in slavery in Macon, Georgia, Scarborough learned to read and write when such things were illegal. He witnessed the capture of Macon by Union troops and saw Jefferson Davis led through its streets. After completing high school in Macon and all the college preparatory courses offered at Atlanta University, he matriculated at Oberlin College, where he earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in classical languages. He then joined the faculty at Wilberforce University as professor of ancient languages. In 1881, he won fame by publishing First Lessons in Greek (New York: A. S. Barnes). This was an achievement that authenticated his intellect and confirmed his status as the first African American philologist to attain professional stature in Greek and Latin. It also helped vanquish prejudices held against his entire race, for few believed a black man had the intellectual capacity to master Greek and

Latin. Throughout his life, Scarborough persistently confronted Jim Crowism in the academy by seeking active participation in a variety of scholarly societies, both black and white. Over a period of 44 years he presented many papers at the American Philological Association, one of the oldest learned societies in the United States In 1888, he dined at the side of Ohio Senator John Sherman at the first Lincoln Day Banquet held in Columbus, and went on to give decades of valuable service to the Republican Party on the local, state, and national levels. Acquainted with most of Ohio’s political leaders, he also knew Presidents McKinley, Taft, Harding, and Roosevelt as well as prominent people of African descent from Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois to the hierarchy of the AME Church. He was a member of the NAACP in its formative years and spoke to the members of the Los Angeles chapter in 1915. Always interested in culture and the arts, he published in 1902 one of the first articles written about the painter Henry O. Tanner. As president of Wilberforce University from 1908 to 1920, Scarborough led the school thorough the vicissitudes of World War I.

Stokes, Carl Burton (1927–1996) Carl Burton Stokes was the first African American to be elected as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. A native of Cleveland, he served as a prosecutor, a member of his own law firm, a state legislator and a college professor before being elected as mayor in 1967.

Stokes, Louis (1925–) Born in Cleveland, Stokes, a Democrat, represented Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1999. A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Stokes was first elected to the House in 1968, as member for Ohio’s 21st District, which covered the east side of Cleveland. In 1992, after congressional

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Carl B. Stokes is shown as he was sworn in as mayor of Cleveland on November 13, 1967. (AP/Wide World Photos)

redistricting, he became the member for Ohio’s 11th District. Stokes served on the House Appropriations Committee and was chairman of the Ethics Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. He was particularly interested in veterans’ issues, having himself served in the U.S. Army during World War II. His brother Carl Stokes was mayor of Cleveland in the late 1960s. Louis Stokes retired from Congress in 1999.

Strayhorn, William Thomas “Billy” (1915–1967) Born in Dayton, Billy Strayhorn was a jazz composer and pianist who is best known as an associate arranger for the Duke Ellington Orchestra from

1939 to 1967. Strayhorn first met Duke Ellington in 1938, and thereafter wrote and arranged many of the band’s most famous pieces, including “Take the ‘A’ Train,” the band’s signature theme, and “Chelsea Bridge” and “Lush Life.” Strayhorn was openly gay and a strong advocate of homosexual rights. He was also a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and a supporter of the cause of civil rights. In 1963, he arranged and conducted “King Fought the Battle of ‘Bam’ ” for the Ellington Orchestra to play in the historical revue My People, which was dedicated to King. He was also a close friend of Lena Horne, whose career he influenced.

Talbert, Mary Burnett (1866–1923) Born in Oberlin, Mary Burnett Talbert was a noted activist, suffragist, reformer, and educator.

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She graduated from Oberlin College in 1886, the only African American woman in her class. She became assistant principal at Union High School in Little Rock in 1887, before moving to Buffalo with her new husband, William Talbert, in 1891. She supported antilynching campaigns, actively opposed racial discrimination, and advocated for women’s voting rights, being a speaker at the 1915 Votes for Women Symposium in Washington, D.C. She was also president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) from 1916 to 1921, and a founder of the Niagara Movement from which evolved the NAACP. She also supported historic preservation, being the driving force behind the successful effort to save Frederick Douglass’ Washington home.

Tatum, Art (1909–1956) Born in Toledo, Art Tatum, who was nearly blind due to cataracts, was one of the finest African American jazz pianists of his era. His father was a guitarist and elder of Grace Presbyterian Church in Toledo. Blessed with perfect pitch and an amazing memory, Art Tatum began playing as a child and soon became highly proficient in the stride piano, a jazz piano style that evolved partly from ragtime. In 1927, he began playing interludes as “Arthur Tatum, Toledo’s Blind Pianist” on a popular local radio program. He also began to play in local clubs, and, as his fame spread, such well-known professional musicians as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Fletcher Henderson would come to hear him play. In the late 1930s, he played in clubs in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and was recognized as the greatest contemporary stride piano stylist. He recorded several sessions with singer Big Joe Turner for Decca Records in the 1940s and won some national recognition, but as piano styles changed in the 1950s, Tatum’s popularity waned. He died in Los Angeles in 1956.

Townsend, Willard Saxby (1895–1957) Born in Cincinnati, Willard Saxby Townsend was a prominent labor leader and international president of the United Transport Service Employees union. As a young man, Townsend worked as a dining car waiter and a railway porter. Appalled at the poor conditions and low wages endured by porters and transport service workers, he joined the American Federation of Labor Auxiliary of Redcaps, becoming president of the organization in 1936. By 1940, he was United Transport Service Employees president. He lobbied Congress for better working conditions for railway station redcaps and was instrumental in securing passage of legislation that set a flat per-bag rate for the transport of luggage to and from trains. He also helped redcaps gain standing under the Railway Labor Act, which spurred the growth of unions among transport service workers. After the United Transport Service Employees affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1942, Townsend worked to abolish racial discrimination in unions and later became a member of the national executive committee of the Workers Defense League. He died of a heart attack in 1957.

Trotter, William Monroe (1872–1934) Born in Chillicothe, Trotter was an activist, journalist, and cofounder in 1901 of the Boston Guardian. Trotter was raised in Boston, where he graduated from Harvard University in 1895. The first African American to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, Trotter earned his master’s degree before returning to Boston to enter the real estate field. Opening his own firm in 1899, Trotter was soon frustrated by the growing racial discrimination that he experienced in his own business and observed throughout the country, particularly the segregation, disfranchisement, and violence that characterized race relations in

Ohio the South. In 1901, Trotter and George Forbes founded the Boston Guardian, a crusading weekly that, under Trotter’s direction, began to fearlessly and articulately demand full and immediate civil rights for African Americans. Trotter made particular use of his newspaper to vehemently oppose the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington, whom Trotter believed was naively ignoring the country’s worsening racial state. In July 1903, Trotter and a group of friends disrupted a speech that Washington delivered in Boston. By constantly heckling the speaker and shouting out embarrassing questions, Trotter and his associates caused an uproar that came to be known as the “Boston Riot.” As a result of his actions, and at the insistence of Washington’s supporters, Trotter was fined $50 and spent a month in jail. In 1905, Trotter, W. E. B. Du Bois, and other prominent African Americans concerned with the increasing occurrence of lynching and other violence against blacks founded the Niagara Movement. Although Trotter helped push Du Bois toward a greater militancy in his approach to civil rights, the two quarreled over tactics, with Trotter insisting that any national civil rights organization be led and financed entirely by African Americans. To this end, Trotter founded the all-black National Equal Rights League in 1908. In 1909, despite his disagreements with Du Bois, Trotter participated in the founding of the NAACP, although he continued to vehemently oppose white involvement in the organization. A political independent, Trotter supported Democrat Woodrow Wilson for president in 1912. However, when Wilson supported increased segregation in federal offices, Trotter turned against the president, whom he confronted personally on the issue in the White House in November 1914. In 1915, Trotter organized picket lines and demonstrations in an attempt to mobilize African Americans against D. W. Griffith’s racist film, Birth of a Nation.

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In one of the earliest African American protest marches in U.S. history, Trotter led over 1,000 people in a march on the Massachusetts State House. In 1919, to Wilson’s great annoyance, Trotter announced his intention to attend the Versailles Peace Conference to push for inclusion of a racial equality clause in the peace treaty ending World War I. Although he failed to obtain a hearing at Versailles, his trip and his militant editorials in the Guardian won worldwide publicity for his cause. By the 1920s, Trotter was an increasingly isolated voice on the radical edge of the struggle for African American civil rights. Hit hard by the Great Depression, Trotter lost control of the Guardian in 1934. He died, an apparent suicide, on his 62nd birthday, April 7, 1934, when he fell from the roof of a three-story Boston building.

Turner, Charles Henry (1867–1923) Born in Cincinnati, Charles Henry Turner was a prominent educator, entomologist, research biologist, and zoologist. He was the first African American to receive a graduate degree from the University of Cincinnati (1892), and the first to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1907). Turner taught at various high schools, being either unable or unwilling to take a university teaching post. Turner published almost 50 papers on invertebrates, including Habits of Mound-Building Ants, Experiments on the Color Vision of the Honeybee, Hunting Habits of an American Sand Wasp, and Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. Turner proved that insects hear and can distinguish pitch, that cockroaches learn by trial and error, and that honeybees see color. Turner also worked for the improved provision of social and educational services to African Americans in St. Louis, where he taught. After his death on February 14, 1923, a school for disabled African American children was named in his honor.

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Tyler, Ralph Waldo (1859–1921) Born in Columbus, Ralph Waldo Tyler was a journalist and the only African American accredited as a war correspondent by the U.S. government during World War I. Tyler was hired by Emmett J. Scott, who was special assistant to the secretary of war for race relations, to report on the activities and treatment of African American soldiers in the American Expeditionary Force for the Committee on Public Information. Well known to many white reporters, Tyler worked hard to balance his work as a journalist with his position as a government employee. Tyler arrived in France in September 1918 and wrote valuable accounts of the service of black soldiers during the last months of the war. Upon his return to the United States in 1919, he traveled the country lecturing on the role of black servicemen during the war. He later became editor of the Cleveland Advocate and associate editor of the Columbus Ohio State Monitor, and wrote for newspapers in New York and Chicago. When, in about 1919, a Springfield, Ohio, restaurant refused him service because of his race, he sued the restaurant and won $100 in damages.

Walker, Moses Fleetwood (1857–1924) Born in Mount Pleasant, Moses Fleetwood Walker is sometimes considered the first African American major league baseball player. Walker played varsity baseball for Oberlin College in 1881 and for the University of Michigan in 1882. He joined the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings as a catcher in 1883. When Toledo played an exhibition against the major league Chicago White Stockings, Chicago first baseman Cap Anson refused to take the field with a black man and only relented when told his team would forfeit its share of the gate receipts if Chicago did not play. In 1884, Toledo joined the American Association, which was then a major league. Both Moses and his brother Welday Wilberforce Walker played for Toledo that year, becoming the first African

American major leaguers. The Toledo team folded at the end of the 1884 season, and Walker thereafter played for various minor league teams, including the Newark Little Giants of the International League. In 1888, Cap Anson again objected to playing with Walker when the White Stockings played an exhibition against Walker’s Syracuse, New York, team. This time Walker was replaced by a white catcher so the game could go on. Walker left baseball in 1889, shortly before the major leagues unofficially banned black players. In 1891, Walker was acquitted of killing a white man who had attacked him. Walker later became an adherent of black nationalism and had little faith that integration would improve the plight of blacks in the United States. In 1908, he published a pamphlet entitled Our Home Colony: A Treatise on the Past, Present, and Future of the Negro Race in America, which advocated African American emigration to Africa.

Walker, Welday Wilberforce (1860–1937) Born in Steubenville, Welday Wilberforce Walker and his brother Moses Fleetwood Walker, were the first African Americans to play major league baseball when they were members of the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association in 1884. When Toledo dropped out of the league at the end of the 1884 season, the Walker brothers were no longer allowed to play on a major league team. Welday Walker continued to play on various minor league clubs until 1887, when he joined the Pittsburgh Keystones of the National Colored Base Ball League.

Williams, Edward Christopher (1871–1929) Born in Cleveland, Edward Christopher Williams was a teacher and the first African American professional librarian in the United States. Williams graduated from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in 1892, and was appointed

Ohio assistant librarian at Western Reserve University’s Hatch Library. He was promoted to librarian of Hatch Library in 1894, and instructor of bibliography and reference at the Western Reserve University Library School in 1904. He left Hatch Library in 1909, when he became the principal of M Street High School in Washington, D.C. He later became university librarian of Howard University. He also published many articles, poems, and short stories in The Messenger Magazine and elsewhere. Williams died unexpectedly on December 24, 1929, just prior to completing his Ph.D. in library science at Columbia University.

Wilson, Nancy (1937–) Born in Chillicothe, Nancy Wilson is a jazz and pop singer and television actress. She attended Central State College in 1955, but dropped out in 1956 to sing with Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Big Band. She moved to New York in 1959 and was signed to a recording contract by Capitol Records in 1960. She released five albums with Capital between 1960 and 1962 and had a number of successful singles in the mid-1960s, including “Save Your Love for Me,” “Tell Me the Truth,” and “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am.” She appeared on numerous television programs from the 1960s to the 1980s and her own program, The Nancy Wilson Show, ran on NBC in 1967–1968. She has recorded over 70 albums, including A Nancy Wilson Christmas in 2001, and has won three Grammy Awards. For her civil rights work in the 1960s, Wilson was inducted on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame in September 2005. From 1996 to 2005, she was also the host of the Peabody Award–winning NPR program Jazz Profiles.

Wood, Mitchell “Booty” (1919–1987) Born in Dayton, Mitchell “Booty” Wood was a prominent jazz trombonist. Wood began playing professionally in the late 1930s. He played with Lionel Hampton in the early 1940s before serving

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in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, Wood rejoined Hampton and played with such other jazz greats as Arnett Cobb, Erskine Hawkins, and Count Basie in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1959–1960 and again in 1963, Wood played with Duke Ellington. He worked again with both Ellington and Count Basie in the 1970s and 1980s.

Woods, Granville T. (1856–1910) Born in Columbus, Granville Woods was a successful engineer and inventor. Sometimes referred to as the “Black Edison,” Woods developed a number of telegraphic devices that improved communications on rail systems. As a boy, he repaired railroad equipment with his father before briefly attending engineering school and running steam locomotives for the Danville and Southern Railroad. In 1884, he and his brother started the Woods Railway Telegraph Company, which manufactured telegraph and telephone equipment. He held several patents, including one for the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph (1887), which made possible communication between stations and moving trains, and another for an improved steam boiler furnace (1889).

Cultural Contributions Language, Literature, Art, and Music When thinking about black artists, scholars, and writers with roots in Ohio, two well-known names spring readily to mind: Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Both writers have been celebrated by the U.S. Post Office with specially issued stamps: Dunbar in 1975 and Chesnutt in 2008. Ohio, however, can point proudly to a larger group of talent and range of accomplishment. From the nineteenth century come figures such as the poets Frances E. W. Harper and James Madison Bell, the portrait and landscape artist Robert Scott Duncanson, and the

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classical philologist William Sanders Scarborough, whom the Modern Language Association has honored as its first black member with a book award established in 2001. The twentieth century is replete with notables. Some of the best known novelists and poets are: Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Virginia Anderson and Martha Southgate. The novelist Chester Himes (1909–1984) who grew up in Cleveland and Columbus, won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958. Among Ohio’s famous musicians, composers, and musical performers are: William Thomas “Billy” Strayhorn, Art Tatum, and Mitchell “Booty” Wood, opera singers Cleota T. Collins and Kathleen Battle, and popular singers Anita Baker, Nancy Wilson, and Tracy Chapman. The composer and conductor William Grant Still (1895–1978) studied at Wilberforce University from 1911 to 1915 and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1918. Among the thespians of stage and screen are: the playwright Charles Gordone, the actresses Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee, and Halle Berry, and television star Arsenio Hall. Sports celebrities range from little-known heroes such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, his brother Welday Wilberforce Walker, and Charles Follis to those known across the globe such as Jesse Owens, Archie Griffin, Edwin Moses, Wayne Embry, and the boxing promoter Don King. Some of the important historic houses, centers, and museums associated with African Americans in Ohio include the following: 

African-American Museum, Cleveland



Col. William Hubbard House Underground Railroad Museum, Ashtabula



Col. Charles Young House, Wilberforce



Paul Laurence Dunbar House State Memorial, Dayton



Follett House Museum, Sandusky



Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Cincinnati



Harveysburg Free Black Schoolhouse, now home to the Harveysburg Community Historical Society, Harveysburg



Hanby House, Westerville



John P. Parker House, Ripley



John Gee Black Historical Center, Gallipolis



Kelton House, Columbus



Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for the Performing and Cultural Arts, Columbus



National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce



National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati



Oberlin Heritage Center, Oberlin



Prospect Place Estate, Dresden



Putnam Underground Railroad Education Center, Zanesville



Reuben Benedict House, Peru



Rossville Museum, Piqua



Stone Academy, Zanesville



Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland

Religion With the encouragement of spiritual leaders such as the Baptist clergyman Wallace Shelton, black Ohioans began almost immediately to organize their own churches. Thus there are many historically important churches, representing a range of denominations, whose facilities dot the state. Among them are Mt. Zion Baptist Church founded in 1842 in Cincinnati by Reverend Shelton, Macedonia Baptist Church in Burlington built in 1849 by the Twyman freedmen with funds from the Massachusetts abolitionist Eli Thayer, Allen Temple AME Church, Cincinnati, parent church of the Third Episcopal District, and the Union Baptist Church in Cincinnati, one of Ohio’s oldest African American churches.

Ohio In terms of professional religious training, Ohio is home to the oldest African American seminary in the United States, Payne Theological seminary in Wilberforce, whose roots trace back to Union Seminary founded in 1844 in West Jefferson, Ohio. In 1863, the two institutions, under the sponsorship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were merged, and the operation was consolidated at Wilberforce. The seminary’s mission remains the same today: to educate new clergymen and train missionaries for foreign service. Finally, a selection of Ohio cemeteries worth visiting for the prominent African Americans buried there includes the following: 

African Jackson Cemetery, Piqua: remains of the Randolph Slave Settlement.



Burlington 37 Cemetery Marker, Burlington: remains of James Twyman’s freedmen.



Massie’s Creek, Cedarville: Benjamin W. Arnett, legislator and clergyman; Jeremiah A. Brown, Arnett’s colleague, and his daughter Hallie Quinn Brown, activist and club woman; Martin R. Delany, novelist, black nationalist and the first black field officer in the U.S. Army; Mollie Ernestine Dunlap, librarian at Wilberforce and Central State from 1934 to 1968; Bishop Reverdy Cassius Ransom, William Sanders Scarborough, Greek and Latin scholar and president of Wilberforce 1908 to 1920; Horace Talbert, historian of the AME Church.





Pine Street Colored Cemetery, Gallipolis: John Gee and at least 57 African American soldiers from the Civil War through World War II. Westwood Cemetery, Oberlin: Sarah “Margu” Kinson Green, the youngest person on the slave ship Amistad; John Mercer Langston, statesman; Lewis Clarke, said to have been the source for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s

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character Uncle Tom; John Copeland, Shields Green, and Lewis Sheridan Leary, supporters of John Brown who were hanged; and Orindatus S. B. Wall, lawyer and abolitionist. 

Woodland Cemetery, Dayton: Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Bibliography Anonymous. “Here Is List of Ohioan Officers.” Cleveland Advocate 4, no. 25 (October 27, 1917): 1. Anonymous. “The Negro Ticket in Ohio.” New York Times, October, 2, 1897, 2. Berger, Joseph. “Henry Lee Moon Dead at 84: Ex-N.A.A.C.P. Spokesman.” New York Times, June 8, 1985, 45. Bigglestone, William E. They Stopped in Oberlin: Black Residents and Visitors of the Nineteenth Century. Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College, 2002. Brown, Hallie Quinn. Pen Pictures of the Pioneers of Wilberforce. Wilberforce, OH: Aldine Publishing Company, 1937. Clayton, Andrew R. L. Ohio: The History of a People. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2002. Curry, Elmer W. B. A Story of the Curry Institute 1889–1907. Urbana, OH: The Institute, 1907. David, George F. Social Effect of School Segregation in Xenia, Ohio. Wilberforce, OH: Wilberforce University Press, 1933. Davis, Harry E. “John Malvin: A Western Reserve Pioneer.” Journal of Negro History 23 (July 1938): 426–435. Dock, Lavinia L., and Sarah Elizabeth Pickett. History of American Red Cross Nursing Service. New York: Macmillan Company, 1922. Farrison, William Edward. “A Flight across Ohio: The Escape of William Wells Brown from Slavery.” Ohio History 41 (1952): 272–282.

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Fuller, Sara, ed. The Ohio Black History Guide. Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1975. Gara, Larry. The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961. Garraty, John A., ed. The Barber and the Historian: The Correspondence of George A. Myers and James Ford Rhodes, 1910–1923. Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1956. Gatewood, Willard B., Jr. “Ohio’s Negro Battalion in the Spanish American War.” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 4 (1973): 55–63. Gerber, David A. Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1869–1915. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. Giffin, William Wayne. African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915–1930. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Goggins, Lathardus. Central State University: The First One Hundred Years, 1887–1987. Wilberforce, OH: Central State University, 1987. Gomez-Jefferson, Annetta Louise. The Sage of Tawawa: Reverdy Cassius Ransom, 1861–1959. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002. Green, John Patterson. Fact Stranger Than Fiction: Seventy-Five Years of a Busy Life with Reminiscences of Many Great Men and Women. Cleveland, OH: Riehl Printing, 1920. Griffler, Keith P. Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Gutman, Herbert. “Peter H. Clark: Pioneer Negro Socialist, 1877.” Journal of Negro Education 34 (September 1965): 413–418. Hill, Leonard U. “John Randolph’s Freed Slaves Settle in Western Ohio.” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society 23 (1965): 179–187. James, Felix. “The Civil and Political Activities of George A. Myers.” Journal of Negro History (April 1973): 166–178.

Kusmer, Kenneth L. A Black Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. Levstik, Frank. “The Fifth Regiment, United States Colored Troops, 1863–1865.” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 42 (Fall 1970): 86–98. List of Ohio Black Authors. www.ohioana.org/ features/lists/blacklist.pdf. Marovich, Robert. “Wings over Jordan.” In W. K. McNeil, ed. Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. New York: Routledge, 2005, 429–430. McGinnis, Frederick. The Education of Negroes in Ohio. Blanchester, OH: Curless Printing Co., 1961. McGinnis, Frederick. A History and an Interpretation of Wilberforce University. Wilberforce, OH: Brown Publishing Company, 1941. Middleton, Stephen. The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Minor, Richard Clyde. “James Preston Poindexter: Elder Statesman of Columbus. Ohio Historical Quarterly 56 (October 1947): 266–286. Moore, Leonard N. Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio’s History. www.ohiohistorycentral .org/about.php. Porter, Dorothy B. “Edward Christopher Williams.” Phylon 8 (Fall 1947): 315–321. Ransom, Reverdy Cassius. School Days at Wilberforce. Springfield, OH: New Era Company, n.d. Ronnick, Michele Valerie, ed. The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2005.

Ohio Ronnick, Michele Valerie, ed. The Works of William Sanders Scarborough, Black Classicist and Race Leader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Roseboom Eugene H., and Francis P. Weisenburger. A History of Ohio. Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1956. Rucker, Walter C., and James N. Upton, eds. Encyclopedia of American Race Riots. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. Scarborough, William Sanders. A Tribute to Charles Young. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1922. Scarborough, William Sanders. Wilberforce in the War. Xenia, OH: Eckerle, 1918. Siebert, Wilbur H. “The Underground Railroad in Ohio.” In E. O. Randall, ed. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications. Vol. 4. Columbus: Ohio Archaeological Society, 1900, 44–63. Silver, Reuben. “A History of the Karamu Theatre.” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1961. Sutherland, Jonathan. African Americans at War: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2004.

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Talbert, Horace. Sons of Allen Together with a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Wilberforce University. Xenia, OH: Aldine Press, 1906. Walton, Lester. “Moses Dickson: The Great Negro Organizer and Fraternal Leader.” Colored American Magazine, April, 1902, 354–356. Weeks, Louis. “John P. Parker: Black Abolitionist, Entrepreneur, 1827–1900.” Ohio History 80 (Spring 1971): 155–162. Weinberg, Kenneth G. Black Victory: Carl Stokes and the Winning of Cleveland. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968. Wesley, Charles H. Negro Americans in Ohio: A Sesquicentennial View. Wilberforce, OH: Central State College, 1953. Woodson, Carter G. “James Edwin Campbell: A Forgotten Man of Letters.” Negro History Bulletin, November 1938, 11. Wright, Roberta Hughes, and Wilbur B. Hughes III. Lay Down Body: Living History in African American Cemeteries. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink, 1996. Yanuck, Julius. “The Garner Fugitive Case.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 40 (June 1953): 47–66.

OKLAHOMA Alton Hornsby, Jr.

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Chronology 1830s

African American slaves enter Oklahoma territory with Native American enslavers.

1842

Black slaves in the Oklahoma territory revolt against their Cherokee masters, with a group of more than 25 men, women, and children seeking to escape to Mexico; the runaways were caught by the Cherokee militia and five slaves were executed, with the others returned to bondage.

1866

The United States concludes treaties with Oklahoma’s five Indian nations that abolish slavery among the tribes and provide for full citizenship, including the rights to land, for the freed slaves.

1889

Edward McCabe arrives in Oklahoma and begins his campaign to attract African Americans to the area and promote an all-black state.

1890

(May 2) Congress creates the Oklahoma Territory.

1890

Green I. Currin becomes the first African American to serve in the Oklahoma territorial legislature.

1890

The Oklahoma territorial legislature requires segregation in public schools.

1897

Langston University, the western most historically black college in the country and the only one in Oklahoma, is established in Langston.

1901

Whites drive blacks from Sapuls, Oklahoma; whippings and lynchings are reported.

1906

The Oklahoma Missionary Baptist Convention is formed.

1907

(November 16) Oklahoma enters the Union as the 46th state.

1907

Oklahoma’s legislature begins passing a series of Jim Crow laws, separating blacks from whites in railroad cars and prohibiting interracial marriages.

1907

The Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers is formed.

1908

A. C. Hamlin, a Republican, becomes the first African American elected to the Oklahoma legislature.

1910

The Oklahoma state constitution is amended so as to disfranchise anyone who could not read or write a portion of the U.S. Constitution or who had not been eligible to vote or descended from someone eligible to vote on January 1, 1866; the amendment effectively prevented most Oklahoma blacks from voting.

1913

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established in Oklahoma.

1915

The U.S. Supreme Court declares Oklahoma’s “grandfather clause” for voting unconstitutional.

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1915

Roscoe Dunjee founds the Black Dispatch newspaper in Oklahoma City.

1915

Oklahoma becomes the first state to segregate public pay telephone booths.

1916

Restrictive housing laws are passed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

1921

Believed to be the single worst example of racial violence in U.S. history to that time, a race riot erupts in Tulsa, leading to the destruction of more than 1,000 homes and businesses and the deaths of perhaps as many as 300 people.

1935

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in Allen v. Oklahoma City, strikes down the state’s restrictive housing laws.

1947

Oklahoma City ends discrimination in teachers’ salaries in the face of a black lawsuit.

1948

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Sipuel v. Oklahoma, declares that the University of Oklahoma must admit blacks.

1950

The U.S. Supreme Court, in McLaurin v. Oklahoma, rules that once admitted, African American students cannot be segregated and must be treated the same as other students.

1958

(August 20) The first lunch counter sit-ins occur at Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City.

1964

( January 23) The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax takes effect; as of 2010, Oklahoma has not ratified the amendment.

1964

The Oklahoma legislature is reapportioned, allowing more blacks to be elected to office.

1964

Edward Porter Miller becomes the first African American elected to the Oklahoma State Senate.

1968

Hannah Atkins, an African American librarian from Oklahoma City, is elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

1970

Coretta Banks becomes the first African American to participate in the Miss Oklahoma Beauty Pageant.

1978–1979

Rubye Hall serves as the first black president of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

1986

Vicki Miles-LaGrange becomes the first black woman elected to the Oklahoma State Senate.

1991

In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that the Oklahoma City School Board had fulfilled its obligation to integrate even though resegregation was occurring in some schools.

1994

Vicki Miles-LaGrange becomes Oklahoma’s first African American federal judge.

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1994

J. C. Watts wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma’s 4th District, becoming the only black Republican in the House.

2001

The state of Oklahoma officially apologizes for the 1921 Tulsa race riot and endorses reparations for the riot’s African American victims.

2003

When Oklahoma loses one House seat and his district is merged with another, J. C. Watts retires from Congress and founds the J. C. Watts Companies, a business lobbying and consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

2008

Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, loses Oklahoma in the November presidential election to Republican John McCain, who wins over 65 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview The Nineteenth Century African Americans entered Oklahoma in the 1830s with their Native American enslavers. The Native Americans had been forced from their homes in the East by the federal government’s policies of Indian removal and had arrived in Oklahoma territory trekking through the infamous Trail of Tears. Native American holding of African Americans in bondage continued until after the Civil War. Throughout this period, as they had done in the case of southern slavery, black and white abolitionists argued the immorality of slavery in the Oklahoma territory. But it was not until after the war that the federal government mandated black freedom in the area. It also ordered that the Native American slaveholders give parcels of land to the freedpersons. It was at this same time, 1889–1890, that Oklahoma was officially made a territory of the United States. Also, in the postwar era, the federal government made available unassigned lands for homesteading. Initially, only a few blacks took advantage of these offers. Then boosters led by Edward P. McCabe advertised Oklahoma as a land of freedom and opportunity, a promised land for southern blacks seeking refuge from racial oppression and economic deprivation. He sent

agents throughout the South, peddling his message, most of it through his own newspaper, the Langston Herald. McCabe, as Oklahoma approached statehood, also sought to be appointed governor of Oklahoma. Whites vehemently opposed the possibility. Some predicted that McCabe would be killed within a week if President Harrison would be so insensitive as to appoint him to the office. While McCabe might have failed in his quest to become governor of Oklahoma, he did succeed in attracting many African Americans to the area. But not enough to form the powerful black political party he envisioned or an all-black state. His efforts did, however, result in the strengthening of some of the earlier all-black towns and the establishment of some new ones. Most of the towns were in the eastern part of the state. One of the more important ones was Boley. The town was founded at the behest, and took its name from, W. H. Boley, president of the Fort Smith and Western Railroad. Boley had a sympathetic view of African Americans and encouraged their development of the town. Boley’s favorable reputation was further enhanced by two visits there by the preeminent African American leader of the time Booker T. Washington. The black educator even wrote favorably of the town in a 1908 article in Outlook magazine. White hostility, black emigration, and economic decline eventually led to the demise of most

Oklahoma of the all-black towns. For example, whites in Okfuskee County sought to prevent any further immigration of blacks into the area to force those who remained into the larger community, although segregated, and to never lease, rent, or sell land to blacks unless it was located more than a mile from Native American or white property. Also, amid increasing segregation and discrimination in Oklahoma, a few blacks found the Back to Africa movement of Chief Sam attractive. More, however, left for Mexico and Canada. Drops in cotton prices and particularly the Great Depression hit black farmers especially hard, drastically reducing the tax bases and forcing some of the towns into bankruptcy and to extinction. In addition to Boley and Langston, towns that have survived into recent times include Brooksville, Clearview, Grayson, Lima, Red Bird, Renitesville, Summit, Taft, Tatums, Tullahassee, and Vernon. In the all-black towns of Oklahoma, as well as outside of these insulated places, many African Americans were farmers, domestic servants, and unskilled laborers. But there was also a large class of professional and businesspeople, including barbers (who catered to black and white customers), dentists, ministers, physicians, teachers, and undertakers.

Segregation Much of the economic prosperity which some blacks, especially farmers, had was virtually wiped out in the period from 1910 to Word War II. In 1910, black farmers owned more than 20,500 farms with 1.6 million acres of land. But by the time of the Great Depression, the number of farms had dropped to 15,000 and the acreage had declined by 600,000. Between 1920 and 1940, the percentage of decline in the value of white farms was about 53 percent, but for blacks it was more than 150 percent. Accompanying the black migration into Oklahoma was an influx of whites, many from

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the South. In short order, tensions developed between the races over competition for jobs. Racial animosity also increased as lower-class whites particularly resented the economic advances of middle-income blacks. Additionally, almost all whites in the territory had come to believe that their skin color made them superior to all blacks. These attitudes led to demands for segregation, especially in education. Thus, in 1890, the territorial legislature passed an act requiring separate schools for the races. Accepting the reality of the situation, black leaders demanded equal, even if separate, educational opportunities. One result of this agitation was the creation of a black university in Langston in 1897. But Jim Crow had just barely raised his head. When plans were being made for statehood for Oklahoma, a constitutional convention dominated by the state Democratic Party rapidly moved toward constitutional segregation in all areas of public life. Although African Americans fiercely fought the proposals, the segregationists pushed ahead. Only the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt slowed the segregationists’ momentum. But when Oklahoma’s first state legislature met, the determined segregationists added segregation in public accommodations to the requirements for separate schools. Next for political and racial reasons, the state moved to disfranchise blacks. If blacks, loyal supporters of the Republican Party since Reconstruction, could be removed as voters, two things could be accomplished simultaneously, electoral politics in the state would be virtually all white, and the Republicans would be crippled. The device used for African American disenfranchisement was one used elsewhere in the South—the “grandfather clause.” This act required voter registrants to take a literacy examination. And it exempted from the requirement the descendants of persons who were eligible to vote on January 1, 1866. The clause could allow illiterate whites to become voters, but exclude

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the masses of blacks. Although the U. S. Supreme Court, in Guinn v. United States struck down the grandfather clause in 1915, Oklahoma, as did other southern states, found new ways to disfranchise most blacks. It was not until 1939 that the courts ruled against these new restrictions. Still, unfettered access to the ballot for many black Oklahomians was not a reality until the federal voting rights bills of the 1950s and 1960s.

The Modern Era Understandably then, there were few blacks elected to public office in the state. Before the civil rights era, there were only three blacks who served in the state legislature. Green I. Currin and David J. Wallace were elected during the territorial period; A. C. Hamlin was elected in the early statehood period. Yet even in the civil rights era, because of the limited strength of the black vote and white hostility toward black candidates, no more than five blacks have served in the state legislature at one time. Then in 1994, former University of Oklahoma quarterback J. C. Watts, running as a conservative Republican, was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. One of the most influential and best known of Oklahoma’s black politicians was Archibald Hill. Hill was one of the first blacks elected to the state legislature after the 1964 reapportionment. He, like most of the black legislators, had been active in the Civil Rights Movement. He has been a president of a local branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He had a reputation for “a sharp tongue” and spoke vehemently against white racism. Another very important political leader was Ben E. Hill of Tulsa (no relation to Archibald). Ben Hill, a minister, often lashed out at white racists as well as irresponsible blacks. He used his column in the Tulsa Eagle to further spread his messages. In the 1960s, he led one of the most successful black voter registration drives in Tulsa’s history. Across

the state, as of 2010, there were at least 100 black Oklahomians occupying various, mostly local, elective offices. The disadvantaged state of African Americans in Oklahoma politics was mirrored and matched in education, housing, jobs, and overall economic status. Although segregation and discrimination were designed to place African Americans in an inferior position in the state, tensions over jobs and class status combined with simple racial prejudice and hatred often led to antiblack violence. There had been such violence since before the Civil War, increasing as the black and white migrations into the state also increased after the war. The most serious explosion occurred in Tulsa in 1921. The origins of the riot involved a volatile mixture in southern, and even northern and western, race relations, a sexual or alleged sexual incident involving a black man and a white woman. The white woman, in this instance, was Sarah Page, who accused black Dick Rowland of making an advance toward her while they were in the elevator of a downtown Tulsa building. Page accused the black man of tearing her dress during the encounter. This, plus a report that the alleged culprit had run from the scene, convinced many white Oklahomians of Rowland’s guilt. As tensions increased and a lynch mob formed, a group of black men went to the Tulsa jail to protect the accused man. There they were met by a group of white men who drove them back to their neighborhoods and then burned down a large part of the area. By the time Governor J. B. A. Robertson called out the National Guard to help restore order, several black homes and businesses were destroyed by fires, many blacks (the exact number was never determined) were killed, and even more were homeless. Contemporary whites claimed black men, some of them from out of state, were responsible for the disorder. In 2001, the state of Oklahoma officially apologized for the disaster and supported reparations for its victims.

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Smoke billowing over Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the 1921 race riots. (Library of Congress)

Desegregation and Civil Rights Even before the riot, African American leaders in Oklahoma, including leaders of the NAACP and members of the black press had fought against racism and segregation as reflected in the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (1948). The case arose when an African American woman, Ada Lois Sipuel, was denied admission to the law school of the University of Oklahoma. The Supreme Court ordered her admitted. Shortly thereafter, a black man, George McLaurin, was admitted to the University of Oklahoma, but was segregated in classrooms and elsewhere on campus. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, the Supreme Court ordered the university to end McLaurin’s separate status and to treat him like any other student.

Desegregation in the public schools did not follow immediately upon the end of segregation in higher education. It was several years later before decisive action was taken to dismantle Oklahoma’s racially segregated school system. While some school districts, especially in smaller towns and cities, had begun desegregation programs in the 1950s and 1960s, others had resegregated. And the state’s two largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, seemed to drag their feet. Then in 1961, a black Oklahoma City optometrist, Alfonso Dowell, filed a suit to end the dual school system in Oklahoma City. A federal court judge ruled that the Oklahoma City school board had not achieved a unitary school system. He also directed that a policy be instituted to permit black children to transfer to white schools. He further ordered the combining of school districts so as to expedite the desegregation of students and faculty. In response

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the school board announced a plan to bus children across neighborhood boundaries in order to achieve greater desegregation. Many whites protested. However, tensions were eased somewhat after the eminent African American historian John Hope Franklin, who grew up in Tulsa, while giving the commencement address at Tulsa University in 1972, recalled that he had seen school buses travel past schools in black neighborhoods carrying white students to other schools to promote segregation. Despite increased desegregation of schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, in the early 1970s, some blacks were still suggesting that not enough was being done and that some schools were actually resegregating. Then in 1977, a federal court judge declared that the city had achieved a unitary system. The plaintiffs, however, pointed out that of the 64 elementary schools in Oklahoma City, 90 percent were one-race schools and asked for a reopening of the case. A federal court of appeals sympathized with the plaintiffs. However, when the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices decided, in a 5–3 vote in 1991, that once a school system had been declared unitary, even though resegregation occurs, the school board had fulfilled its obligations. The ruling had national implications, as it suggested a further deterrence to meaningful desegregation of American schools. In Tulsa, the path to dismantling the dual school system was equally tortuous, beginning with a court requirement for a desegregation plan in 1965. The largest school system in the state then submitted a plan calling for magnet schools and open transfers. Then in 1968, the federal government sued Tulsa under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for still maintaining a racially dual system of elementary schools. In 1971, the federal courts again ordered a plan for desegregation and in 1973, denied a stay for submitting the plan. In the end, like Oklahoma City, once the school board asserted that it had done all that it could to desegregate, the system was deemed unitary.

As the public elementary and secondary schools struggled with desegregation and the formerly all-white colleges and universities enrolled increasing numbers of blacks, the state’s lone majority-black university, Langston, was unable to effectively desegregate because of the relatively small number of white students it could attract. Critics of the state’s desegregation efforts contended that the construction and operation of junior colleges near Langston was also a major hindrance to desegregation efforts there. In addition to school desegregation activities in the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans in the Oklahoma NAACP Youth Council, under the leadership of a local schoolteacher, Clara Luper, began negotiations with Oklahoma City business leaders on a plan to desegregate public accommodations in that city. But white leaders were generally unyielding. Then, in 1958, members of the Youth Council conducted sit-ins at lunch counters and restaurants in downtown Oklahoma City. The first sit-in targeted a local drug-store. Following a few days of demonstrations, and amid white opposition, the drugstore agreed to desegregate. A few others followed rather quickly, and later the final holdouts also gave in to the demonstrators. One of the casualties of the civil rights era was black business ownership. Under Jim Crow, blacks had a monopoly on certain enterprises, including restaurants, nightclubs, race newspapers, funeral parlors, and financial institutions. Desegregation, however, brought competition from better capitalized white firms, forcing many of the black businesses to fail. In Oklahoma, like elsewhere in the country, African American social life was centered in the church. Also, as in much of black America, most of the worshippers were Baptists and Methodists. In the early part of this century, there were more than 700 black churches enrolling nearly 80,000 members in the state. Some of Oklahoma’s black clergymen rose to national prominence. For example, Reverend E. W. Perry was one of

Oklahoma the earliest presidents of the National Baptist Convention. While much of African American social, and even economic and political, life emanated from churches, blacks in Oklahoma also had a plethora of secular activities and institutions including fraternal orders, fraternities and sororities, reading clubs, and women’s clubs. The oldest women’s club was organized at Guthrie in 1910. In 1922, there were at least 17 such clubs in Oklahoma City, and a state federation of Colored Women’s Clubs came into being. In addition to their own reading clubs, the women sponsored campaigns for libraries and recreational activities for African American youth.

Notable African Americans Atkins, Hannah D. (1923–) Born in North Carolina, Hannah Atkins moved to Oklahoma in 1952. She worked as a librarian in the Oklahoma City Public Libraries and taught law and library science at the University of Oklahoma. In 1968, she became the first black woman to serve in the Oklahoma legislature. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter named her as a U.S. delegate to the 35th Assembly of the United Nations. In the 1980s, she served as assistant director of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and later served as secretary of state and cabinet secretary of social services. She held positions with the NAACP and the National Association of Black Women Legislators, and was a founder or cofounder of the Oklahoma Chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus and Oklahoma Black Political Caucus.

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inheriting his father’s instruments at the age of 12. He is best known as a pioneer of electric jazz guitar and an important influence on the development of bebop and jazz. He played with the Benny Goodman Orchestra from 1939 to 1941. In 1990, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2006, Oklahoma City renamed a street in its Bricktown entertainment district as Charlie Christian Avenue.

Dunjee, John W. (1833–1903) Born a slave in Virginia, John Dunjee was a Baptist minister and founder of black churches all across the United States. In 1892, he and his family moved to Oklahoma, where he founded churches for the Baptist Home Missionary Society. His son, Roscoe Dunjee, later became the founder of the Black Dispatch newspaper in Oklahoma City.

Dunjee, Roscoe (1883–1965) Born in West Virginia, Roscoe Dunjee, the son of Baptist minister John Dunjee, moved to Oklahoma with his family in 1892. In 1914, he founded the Black Dispatch, a leading black newspaper in Oklahoma City that he edited until 1954. Dunjee was a member of the national board of directors of the NAACP and was president for 16 years of the Oklahoma State Conference of Branches of the NAACP, which was the first such state conference to be established. Under Dunjee’s leadership, the state conference participated in several court cases that sought to end segregation in Oklahoma, including McLaurin v. Oklahoma and Sipuel v. Oklahoma, both of which dealt with segregation in Oklahoma higher education.

Christian, Charlie (1916–1942) Although born in Texas, Charlie Christian moved to Oklahoma with his family when he was a small child. Christian’s parents were musicians, and Charlie learned to play guitar after

Ellison, Ralph (1913–1994) Born in Oklahoma City, where he attended Frederick Douglass High School, Ralph Ellison took up the study of music at the Tuskegee

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Ralph Ellison, whose novel Invisible Man has become a classic of modern American fiction, wrote compellingly of the experience of African Americans in a society that has tended to ignore their problems. (National Archives)

Institute in 1933 but later moved to New York, where, under the influence of the Harlem Renaissance, he took up writing. He is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the prestigious National Book Award in 1953. Ellison published Shadow and Act in 1964 and Going to the Territory in 1986, two volumes of essays on literature, music, and American culture. In 1999, five years after his death, his unfinished novel, Juneteenth, was completed by others and published.

Franklin, John Hope (1915–2009) Born in Rentiesville, John Hope Franklin was an eminent historian who broke new ground in American and African American history with the publication, in 1947, of From Slavery to Freedom. He taught at numerous institutions, including Brooklyn College, Howard University, the University of Chicago, and Duke University. His publications include The Free Negro in North

John Hope Franklin was the most prominent African American historian in the United States and the first to serve as president of the Organization of American Historians. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Carolina, 1790–1860 (1943), The Militant South, 1800–1860 (1956), Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961), The Emancipation Proclamation (1963), Color and Race (1969), Racial Equality in America (1976), George Washington Williams: A Biography (1985), Race and History, Selected Essays (1989), and The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century (1993). In 1995, President Bill Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Hall, Rubye (c. 1922–2003) Rubye Hall was the first African American to chair the Oklahoma Board of Regents, serving from 1978 to 1979. During her term with the

Oklahoma state regents, she helped launched Langston University’s new mission and gained approval of Oklahoma’s civil rights compliance plan. Hall was a member of the board of directors of the Oklahoma City Urban League and was a longtime member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

Hamlin, Albert C. (1881–1912) Born in Kansas, the son of former slaves, Albert Hamlin moved to Oklahoma Territory with his family in 1890. He served on the local school board and was a trustee of Springvale Township before becoming the first African American elected to the Oklahoma state legislature in 1908 as a Republican. He lost his bid for reelection in 1910 due to the passage of an amendment to the Oklahoma constitution sponsored by Democrats that effectively deprived blacks of the vote. As a legislator, he sponsored bills providing funding for Taft School, which educated black orphans and blind and deaf students, and for providing equal facilities for black and white passengers on Oklahoma railroads.

Luper, Clara (1923–) Born in Okfuskee County, Clara Luper graduated from Langston University in 1944 and later became the first black student admitted to the University of Oklahoma’s graduate history program. She taught history at high schools in Spencer and Oklahoma City, and became advisor to the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council in 1957. In this capacity, she organized the first sit-ins conducted by the Youth Council in 1958 to protest segregation at Oklahoma City lunch counters. Committed to nonviolence, Luper participated in many civil rights marches and demonstrations and wrote and directed a play, entitled Brother President, which was based on the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

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McCabe, Edward (1850–1920) An attorney and land developer, Edward McCabe promoted the exodus of blacks to Oklahoma and Kansas. He is best known as the founder of the city of Langston and was involved in the creation of Langston University for blacks in 1897. A Republican with political ambitions, McCabe became secretary of the Republican League in 1894 and clerk to the Republican-dominated territorial assembly in 1895. In 1908, he sued to overturn Oklahoma’s new Jim Crow laws calling for segregated railroad cars, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Oklahoma statute.

McLaurin, George (1887–1968) George McLaurin was the plaintiff in McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950), a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended internal segregation at the University of Oklahoma. Denied admission to the University of Oklahoma to pursue a doctorate in education, McLaurin sued in U.S. District Court, basing his argument for admission on the Fourteenth Amendment. Although McLaurin won admission, he was given completely separate facilities by the university, which led him to bring another suit that led eventually to the Supreme Court decision. Along with the decision in Sweatt v. Painter (which desegregated the University of Texas), the decision marked the end of the separate but equal doctrine enunciated by the court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

Moon, Frederick D. (1896–1975) Born at Fallis in the Oklahoma Territory, Frederick D. Moon was an educator and civil rights leader who was called the “dean of black education.” He attended Langston University, where he led the effort for construction of a memorial to the school’s first president, Inman Page. He began teaching in Crescent, Oklahoma, in 1921 and was elected president of the Oklahoma Association of Negro

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Teachers in 1929. He became principal of Douglass High School in Oklahoma City in 1940. Moon drew up a plan to desegregate public accommodations in Oklahoma City and later served as president of the Oklahoma City Urban League.

Page, Inman E. (1853–1935) Born into slavery in Virginia, Inman E. Page became the first African American president of a black college in 1898, when he became the first president of the first black public college in Oklahoma, the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, now known as Langston University. During his 16 years as president, he oversaw the growth of the university from just 40 students to over 600. He also traveled the state recruiting students. In 1922, he became principal of Oklahoma City’s Douglass High School and supervising principal of the city’s separate black school system.

Tolson, Melvin (1898–1966) Born in Missouri, Melvin Tolson was a poet, dramatist, and politician, who taught at Langston University, a historically black college in Langston, Oklahoma, from 1947 to 1964. He was director and dramatist for the university’s Dust Bowl Theater. In 1944, he published Rendezvous with America, a collection of poetry that included his best-known poem, “Dark Symphony,” which compared and contrasted the history of African and European Americans. Tolson was also a journalist and served as mayor of Langston from 1954 to 1960. Influenced by his study of the Harlem Renaissance, he also authored A Gallery of Harlem Portraits. Tolson was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, which depicts the award-winning debate team that Tolson coached to victory over the University of Southern California in 1935.

Watts, J. C., Jr. (1957–) Perry, E. W. (dates unknown) E. W. Perry was the most influential African American minister in Oklahoma from the 1920s to the 1950s. He was president of the Oklahoma Baptist Convention, president of the National Baptist Convention in 1927, and a civil rights leader.

Sipuel, Ada (1924–1995) Born in Chickasha, the daughter of a minister, Ada Sipuel was the plaintiff in Sipuel v. Oklahoma (1948), a U.S. Supreme Court case that opened the University of Oklahoma to blacks. As a result of the case, Sipuel was admitted to the University of Oklahoma’s Law School in 1949, becoming the first black woman to attend an all-white southern law school. After graduation, she practiced law in her hometown and was appointed by the governor to the Oklahoma Board of Regents in 1992.

Born in Eufaula, J. C. Watts graduated in 1981 from the University of Oklahoma, where he was quarterback of the football team. In 1994, after serving four years on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities and the gas and oil industry, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. He was reelected three times from Oklahoma’s 4th District, which did not have a majority of African American voters. Watts also served as chairman of the House Republican Conference before retiring from politics in 2003.

Cultural Contributions Black Oklahoma has had a rich heritage of cultural contributions exemplified by Ralph Ellison and Melvin Tolson in literature, Charlie Christian, Lena Mitchell, Jimmy Rushing, and the Blue Devils jazz band in music, and painter J Arterbury and sculptor Jack Jones in art. In

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founded. In 1974, this group presented its first major production, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play, No Place to Be Somebody.

Bibliography Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991). Crockett, Norman L. The Black Towns. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/ entries/A/AL009.html. Oklahoma Representative J. C. Watts. (U.S. House of Representatives)

addition to church-sponsored activities, African Americans also have had other cultural events and facilities. In the period between the two world wars, for example, in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, blacks attended stage productions at theaters in their communities. During the same era, African Americans began their own state fairs. Since the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, African American artists have had their works welcomed at major galleries and other places in the state. However, blacks have continued to sponsor their own arts festivals. In drama, the Black Liberated Arts Center (BLAC) was

Franklin, Jimmie Lewis. Journey toward Hope: A History of Blacks in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Hamilton, Kenneth M. Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the TransAppalachian West, 1877–1915. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Melvin Tolson. www.enotes.com/contemporaryliterary-criticism/tolson-melvin-b. Scales, James R., and Danney Goble. Oklahoma Politics: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Wickett, Murray R. Contested Territory: Whites, Native Americans and African Americans in Oklahoma, 1865–1907. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

OREGON Darrell Millner

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Chronology 1579

The first blacks arrive on the Oregon coast with the English privateer Sir Francis Drake.

1788

The first documented presence of a black person in the Oregon area is the death of Markus Lopius, an African American crewman of Captain Robert Gray, who is killed by Tillamook Indians.

1804–1806

York, the black slave of William Clark, passes through Oregon as a participant in the Lewis and Clark expedition.

1844

Established by the first American settlers to reach the area via the Oregon Trail, the American Provisional Government of Oregon enacts the territory’s first black exclusion law, which bans slavery and requires all slaveholders to free their slaves, but then expels all newly freed slaves from Oregon and prescribes whipping as punishment for any who remain.

1845

The black exclusion law of 1844 is repealed after first being amended to substitute hard labor for whipping as a punishment for any blacks who stay in the territory illegally.

1848

The Oregon territorial legislature enacts a second black exclusion law, which allows African Americans already in the territory to remain but prohibits any further black settlement in the territory.

1850

The U.S. Congress passes the Oregon Donation Land Act, which allows white immigrants up to 640 acres of free land, but prohibits blacks and other nonwhites from claiming these donation land grants.

1859

(February 14) Oregon enters the Union as the 33rd state; it is the only free state to join the Union with a black exclusion article in its state constitution.

1862

The Oregon legislature passes an anti-intermarriage law preventing whites from marrying nonwhites; the law is strengthened in 1867 and enforced until 1951.

1862

The state legislature enacts a special “poll tax” that requires only blacks, Chinese, and Hawaiians to pay an annual tax of $5 to vote.

1863

The Oregon legislature declares that only adult white males are eligible to serve as jurors in state courts.

1865

(December 8) Oregon ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery in the United States; Oregon’s ratification comes two days after the amendment takes effect.

1866

(September 19) Oregon becomes the fifth state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending citizenship rights to former slaves.

1867

The Portland school board forbids black children to attend public schools and creates instead a separate “colored school” that operates until 1872.

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1868

(October 15) Oregon rescinds its ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, three months after the amendment takes effect.

1880

The U.S. Census counts 486 African American residents of Oregon.

1883

The transcontinental railroad reaches Portland; the arrival of the railroad led a large influx of black railway workers into the state during the 1880s.

1890

The U.S. Census finds that the number of African Americans living in the state has more than doubled over the last decade to 1,186.

1893

A resolution demanding removal of the black exclusion article in Oregon’s state constitution is introduced into the state legislature, but fails to achieve repeal.

1900

The U.S. Census counts 1,105 African Americans living in Oregon.

1906

The Oregon Supreme Court affirms the legal right to discriminate based on race.

1913

The Portland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1915

The Portland chapter of the NAACP leads an unsuccessful campaign to prevent the screening of D. W. Griffith’s racist film Birth of a Nation in Portland.

1916

Repeal of the black exclusion article in the state constitution is narrowly defeated in a statewide referendum vote.

1923

Walter Pierce, a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, is elected governor of Oregon.

1927

The black exclusion clause is finally removed from the Oregon state constitution.

1941–1945

The Kaiser Ship Building Company imports thousands of black workers to its Portland shipyards, housing them in a special housing project called Vanport, which for a brief time is the second-largest city in the state.

1945

The Urban League of Portland is established.

1948

Vanport, a wartime housing project built to house many of the new workers who came to Portland during the war to work in the shipyards, is flooded by the Columbia River, leaving more than 5,000 African Americans homeless; their forced absorption into Portland creates much racial tension over housing.

1949

The Oregon legislature enacts a fair employment practices act.

1950

The Portland City Council adopts a comprehensive civil rights ordinance, but the measure is defeated in a general election vote.

1951

The Oregon legislature bans racial discrimination for admittance to vocational schools.

1953

Oregon enacts a state public accommodations law.

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1957

Oregon enacts a state fair housing law.

1959

(February 24) Oregon ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution preventing any restriction of the right to vote on racial or ethnic grounds; the state’s ratification comes 89 years after the amendment had taken effect.

1961

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visits Portland at the invitation of the Urban League.

1964

The Portland chapter of the NAACP campaigns against racially segregated schools.

1967

A race riot erupts on Union Avenue in Portland.

1972

The median family income for nonwhites in Portland is about $7,000 per year while that for whites is about $11,500 per year.

1973

The Oregon legislature re-ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1975

Ricy Johnson, a young unarmed black man, is shot and killed by Portland police while attempting to flee from them.

1977

A plan by the Portland school board to close Jefferson High School leads to protests in the local black community and the eventual formation of the black United Front.

1983

In the so-called “Possum Incident,” Portland police leave dead possums on the doorstep of a popular black restaurant.

1984

Margaret Carter, a Democrat, is elected to the Oregon State Senate, becoming the first African American woman elected to the Oregon legislature.

1985

Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday becomes a legal state holiday in Oregon.

1985

Lloyd Stevenson, a young black man, dies when Portland police put in him in a controversial choke hold.

1989

Mulugeta Seraw is killed by racist skinheads in Portland.

1993

The Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, an organization dedicated to researching and promoting the contributions of African Americans to the history of Oregon, is founded in Salem.

2002

References to “white” are removed from the state constitution by the overwhelming passage of an elective referendum.

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Oregon with about 56 percent of the vote.

2009

The Oregon legislature has two African American members, both in the State Senate.

Oregon

Historical Overview Early Explorations The first blacks arrived in the area later known as Oregon as early as 1579. In that year the English explorer and privateer Francis Drake sailed along the Oregon coast, sojourning there for a time, as a part of the first English circumnavigation of the globe. The exact details of Drake’s landfall in Oregon have been lost to history. Upon his return to England, all documentation of his journey was confiscated by the government to protect potentially valuable information thought to bear upon the long-sought Northwest Passage from England to China. Drake’s records never resurfaced. What is certain is that Drake’s visit to Oregon marked the beginning of the Oregon black experience. Among his crew on the Pacific coast in 1579 were at least two black men and one black women, acquired during his raids against Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere. For the period between 1579 and 1788, there is circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that other blacks arrived in Oregon as members of multiracial crews engaged in commercial and/or exploratory activities. Spanish ships in the Mexico/Philippines trade frequented the coast. Indian oral traditions include tales of black survivors of shipwrecked crews absorbed into coastal native populations. No written records of such events are available. The first available documentary record of a black man in Oregon is from 1788. In that year American Captain Robert Gray arrived in Tillamook Bay with a plan to acquire sea otter pelts for the lucrative China trade from the local inhabitants. A violent encounter ensued and Markus Lopius, a black member of Gray’s crew, was killed by the Indians in a dispute over a stolen cutlass. The description of his death as recorded in the ship’s log by Robert Haswell is the beginning of recorded Oregon black history.

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The best-known and most extensively documented black arrival in early Oregon history is the story of William Clark’s black slave York of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806). Although a slave, York was a valuable member of the corps of explorers and contributed in numerous ways to their success. His adventures and contributions are included in the journals of Lewis and Clark that preserve the details of that expedition. Yet to fully appreciate the involvement of York in Oregon history, it is necessary to first examine the significant role that black people who never physically visited Oregon had on the story of how Oregon became a part of the United States of America. Around 1800, the western boundary of the young United States was the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. The land between the Mississippi and the Oregon country was under Spanish control and was known as the Louisiana Territory. The French had originally claimed Louisiana based on seventeenth-century explorations. Following the French and Indian War (1763) they had ceded it to Spain in return for Spanish aid given against the British during the war. Spain utilized Louisiana as a buffer zone between her new world colonial empire and the aggressive and expansionist United States. Spanish control of the port city of New Orleans eventually lead to increasing friction and hostility between the Untied States and Spain during the last decade of the eighteenth century. Periodic closures of the river by Spain enraged western American commercial and agricultural interests and fueled escalating political pressure on the federal government to counter Spanish control of the river. Concurrent to these events in North America, developments on mainland Europe and in the Caribbean were moving towards a crisis over the Louisiana territory. By 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte had seized control of the French government. Popular sentiment in France and Napoleon’s own grandiose aspirations for world conquest

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energized his effort to reclaim Louisiana from Spain and couple it with the fabulously wealthy sugarcane island of Haiti in the Caribbean as the foundation for a resurgent French colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. Napoleon’s plans, however, were foiled by a black slave rebellion on Haiti (1791–1803) led by Touissant L’Overture that denied Napoleon control of the cornerstone of his envisioned new world empire. When the envoys of President Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris in the winter of 1802 tendering an offer to buy New Orleans to resolve the pressing navigation issues of the western states, they were astonished to learn that Napoleon following his defeat in Haiti was willing to sell them all of Louisiana for a mere $15 million. It was an opportunity too attractive to decline, even with the troubling questions faced by Jefferson over its constitutionality. After some controversy, the deal was confirmed by the Senate and the land mass of the young United States was nearly doubled in one western leap that thrust the western boundary of the country to the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The consequent implications for Oregon history were profound and immediate. For the United States, Oregon was now not a distant realm, but a next-door neighbor. The Lewis and Clark expedition, authorized by Jefferson before the purchase of Louisiana, now had new urgency and elevated significance. When Lewis and Clark not only transversed Louisiana but also penetrated the Oregon country to the Pacific Ocean, the reverberations were continental in magnitude. They established a solid foundation for U.S. claims by right of exploration to Oregon. The contributions to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition made by York were in significant part made possible by the fight for freedom by the black slaves of Haiti.

York and the Lewis and Clark Expedition The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory had opened the way for American westward expansion,

but the way was by no means a sure or easy path at that time. In addition to the fact that the American West was already heavily populated by an indigenous Indian culture that at the least would be resistant to American claims of sovereignty, various European countries, primarily Spain, Britain, and Russia, also had claims and interest on the Pacific coast and in the western interior. The Lewis and Clark expedition provided the best American counterclaim to the European powers and initiated in the area American diplomatic efforts to establish authority over the resident populations. The expedition was led by Meriwether Lewis, an infantry captain of 29, whom Jefferson knew well from his service as Jefferson’s private secretary. Lewis selected 33-year-old William Clark to be co-commander of the corps. Between 1804 and 1806, their expedition succeeded in a roundtrip overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean that proceeded through the Louisiana Territory and the Oregon country. It was a remarkable danger- and hardship-filled odyssey. Lewis and Clark have rightfully received acclaim and lasting celebrity for their success. Other members of the corps, particularly Sacajawea, the Indian woman who accompanied them, have also been treated kindly by historians. History has not been so generous to another member of the corps, York, the black slave of William Clark. York contributed in many ways to the success of the enterprise but received scant acknowledgment from subsequent historians and commentators. He participated fully in the day-to-day tasks necessary for survival such as hunting, working the boats, transporting supplies, etc. In addition, quite unexpectedly, his presence with the corps facilitated the diplomatic success the expedition experienced with various Indian cultures they encountered, many of whom considered York’s dark skin and imposing visage as “big medicine.” References in the journals kept by expedition members extensively document the

Oregon range and importance of York’s role. On a more abstract level, York’s presence and participation in this seminal event in the opening of the West is laden with symbolism, prophecy, and irony. The emergent and expanding democracy that the young United States aspired to be as it spread its sway across the continent carried with it the contradiction of slavery. Issues related to the status of blacks and the institution of slavery in the West would dominate the social and political events of that area until they carried the country into a civil war to settle them several generations later. York’s own fate would mirror the complexity of those issues. When the corps voted to decide the location of their winter residence along the Columbia River in 1805, York was allowed to cast a vote along with the others. To allow a black man such an opportunity would have been unlikely, even illegal, in most of the established states of the Union at that time. The danger, hardship, and hard labor York had endured with the others had earned him this exception. Yet, when the corps successfully returned to the east in 1806, while every other member was rewarded with generous pay, land grants, and celebrity, York, according to some accounts, remained the slave of Clark, unpaid and unemanciapted. Clark would not grant York his freedom until approximately 10 years after their return. The intervening years were marked by friction and hostility between Clark and York. York felt his contribution should be rewarded by his manumission. He also smoldered when Clark demanded that York stay with him in St. Louis rather than return to live closer to his wife, also a slave, who lived in Kentucky. Clark responded with the full arsenal of controls available to the slave master of the era, “trouncing” (whipping) York, leasing him out to a severe master to break his resistance, and threatening to sell him down the river to New Orleans. By 1816, Clark had by his own account, set him up in a business at which York was unsuccessful.

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Clark later asserted that York came to hate his freedom and died on the trail while returning to seek Clark’s protection. An alternative description of York’s fate postulates that York, once free, returned to the West and lived out his life among the Indians. No documentary evidence is available to support either version. Such turmoil and uncertainty would be the hallmark of the black experience in Oregon and the West in the years that followed Lewis and Clark.

The Fur Trade Era Following the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition, American entrepreneurs attempted to exploit the fur-trading potential of Louisiana and Oregon. The first attempt in Oregon was made by John Jacob Astor between 1810 and 1812. Astor’s plan included a coordinated twopronged approach in which an overland party would rendezvous at the mouth of the Columbia River with a maritime party, which sailed to Oregon around South America. The resulting settlement is the present-day city of Astoria. Black men, both free and slave, had long been active in the fur trapping and trading activities on earlier more eastern American frontiers and were also included in the trans–Rocky Mountain trade from the very beginning. Astor’s overland party to Oregon included at least two black members. As the pursuit of furs in the Far West continued, black men came to play significant roles in the mountain man culture that flourished there. Some of those black mountain men helped explore and later settle the Oregon area. Prominent in the 1820s was Peter Ransa, who accompanied Jedediah Smith on his excursions through the Southwest, California, and finally into Oregon, where he was killed along with most of Smith’s party in an Indian attack known as the Umpqua Massacre of 1828. Smith was away from camp when the attack occurred and survived,

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leading other fur-trading companies in the West until his death in 1832. Smith, a slaveholder himself, utilized both slave and free black mountain men in his western adventures. Another notable free black mountain man, Winslow Anderson, accompanied storied fur trader Ewing Young into Oregon in the 1830s and became one of the first permanent American settlers in the area. Perhaps the most famous and highly regarded of the black American mountain men in Oregon was Moses “Black” Harris. Harris was a key player in Oregon fur-trading events at the height of the mountain man era in the 1830s and made the transition to the 1840s wagon train era by becoming a highly sought-after guide. Consistent with the multinational character of the Oregon frontier in the early decades of the nineteenth century, some blacks who came to Oregon did not have American origins. James “Black” Douglas became one of the most powerful figures in the Oregon country in the fur-trading era thanks to his position as a high official in the Hudson Bay Company, the dominant English commercial enterprise at the time in Oregon. Douglas’ mother was reputed to be a part black “Creole” companion of an English administrator in the South American colony of British Guiana. By 1846, Douglas had worked his way up through the company hierarchy to become chief factor at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River for Hudson Bay. When Great Britain and the United States divided the Oregon country in that year at the 49th parallel, Douglas became the first governor of Vancouver Island and later the first governor of the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Oregon Trail Era As the fur trade faded in the West, the most important activity that replaced it was the wagon train immigration across the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 1850s. Circumstances dictated that

the vast majority of migrants would be Caucasian. As slaves, the millions of blacks in the country had no choice or opportunity to take to the trail to improve their condition. In addition, the white American migrants who arrived in Oregon quickly constructed a legal, political, and economic environment that discouraged black immigration even for those few free blacks in the east who may have had both the motivation and resources to come west. Yet some blacks did come to Oregon during the trail era and left their mark on the emerging state. The explorations of John C. Frémont in the early 1840s laid the foundation for the later wagon trains. Jacob Dobson, a free black member of his expeditions, helped facilitate Frémont’s pathfinder activities. George Washington Bush and his family crossed the trail from Missouri in 1844 and became one of the first American families to settle north of the Columbia River, in an area formerly dominated by the Hudson Bay Company, while trying to avoid the impact of a black exclusion law adopted by American settlers south of the river in that year. Not all black settlers made positive contributions to the Oregon story during the early years. Winslow (a.k.a. George) Anderson, the former mountain man who came to Oregon with Ewing Young in 1836, was involved in a notorious affair called the Cockstock Incident in 1844 that led to the deaths of a local Indian chief and a member of Oregon’s provisional government. Black people as individuals did not have the greatest impact on the evolving role that race would play in Oregon’s evolution through the trail era. It was legislative issues and political activities by whites targeted at the black population that would define Oregon racially speaking in the generation before the Civil War. The conflict that dominated the western movement was the question of the status of slavery as an institution in the new territories acquired by the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Oregon American settlers in Oregon sought to avoid the turmoil created by the issue of slavery in other parts of the country with a two-pronged strategy: the provisional government declared slavery illegal in Oregon in 1844; then it packaged that declaration with a law excluding free blacks from residence in the area. By outlawing slavery and banning free blacks, Oregon was envisioned as a white homeland that would not feel the conflagration of interracial conflict because only one race, the Caucasian, would be allowed residence. As Oregon moved through the stages of development from contested territory to statehood, it twice passed black exclusion laws, the first of which mandated that blacks be arrested and publicly whipped every six months until their departure. Shortly after the adoption of the second exclusion law (1848), Congress passed the Donation Land Act for Oregon (1850) which allowed white immigrants up to 640 acres of free land. Blacks and other nonwhites were not allowed to claim these donation land grants. Finally, the statehood constitution, approved by popular vote in 1857, contained an article that prohibited blacks from coming to, residing in, or even being within the state. The article went on to forbid blacks from owning any real estate, making any contracts, or using the court system to sue in Oregon. It then empowered public officers to remove all blacks who fell under these prohibitions from the state. Another article prohibited blacks from voting. Oregon entered the Union in 1859 under this harshly antiblack constitution that also banned slavery as the rest of the country rushed ever closer to civil war over the same black issues so prominent in Oregon politics. Given the other provisions in the constitution it is clear that Oregon’s prohibition against slavery was an attempt to close the door on the possibility of any black population, free or slave, being able to settle in the state. These efforts were highly effective and guaranteed that the black population in the state would remain artificially

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suppressed. Yet due to gaps in the earlier exclusion laws and the principle that even constitutional measures could not be applied retroactively, Oregon did acquire a small black resident population in this era.

The Early Statehood and Civil War Era Oregon was a pro-Union state during the Civil War. There was, however, a strong element of prosouthern sympathy that fed a covert movement to bring Oregon into the war on the Confederate side. A secret society called the Knights of the Golden Circle aspired to take Oregon out of the Union, attach it to California, and form a Pacific coast empire that would aid the Confederate cause. The majority of Oregonians, however, were strongly pro-Union and rallied under the banner of the Union party that was able to control Oregon politics during the war years. The pro-Union, antislavery stance of Oregon during the war did not mean it had repudicated the powerful antiblack sentiments that had prevailed before the war. During the war years and shortly thereafter, Oregon adopted a package of antiblack legislation that set the course of race relations in the state well into the twentieth century. In 1862, the legislature adopted a special poll tax that applied only to blacks, Chinese, and Hawaiians and required them to pay an annual tax of $5. If they could not pay the tax in cash, they were allowed to work off the obligation at 50 cents per day in hard labor on road construction. In 1863, the legislature declared that only adult white males were eligible to serve as jurors in the state’s courts. Finally, the racial legislation adopted in this era that had the longest legal shelf life was a law to prohibit interracial marriage that was adopted in 1862 and strengthened in 1867. Under this law a white person was forbidden to marry any black, Chinese, Hawaiian, or Indian (who was less than half white). Anyone who violated this law was subject to be imprisoned, either

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in the state penitentiary or a county jail, for not less than three months or more than a year. In addition, the person who performed the marriage ceremony would upon conviction be imprisoned/jailed for the same amount of time and be fined not less than $100 nor more than $1000. This law was enforced in Oregon until 1951. Blacks in Oregon during the war years were also constrained by legislation and judicial actions from the federal level in addition to these state restrictions. In 1850, blacks had been excluded from the opportunity to get free land in Oregon like white settlers by the Oregon Donation Land Act. In 1862, during the war years, the federal government passed a national Homestead Act that regulated the distribution of the public lands. For a small fee individuals could acquire up to one quarter section (160 acres) of land after meeting various filing and residence requirements. Oregon, now officially a state, fell under the jurisdiction of this law. There were two major restrictions on who could benefit from homesteading under this law: those persons who had borne arms against the U.S government or given aid and comfort to its enemies (the Confederates) were ineligible; you had to be a U.S citizen (or have declared the intention to become such). Regarding citizenship, the prevailing legal principle in relation to blacks had been handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case (1857). Blacks were not and could not be citizens. This made Oregon blacks (and all others) legally ineligible to benefit from the Homestead Act. Within the state various local jurisdictions loaded special conditions and restrictions on blacks that operated in addition to these state and national obstacles. In Portland for example, the local school board banned attendance by black children in the regular public schools and created a separate “colored school” that operated from 1867 to 1872.

Just as national and federal events could impact blacks in Oregon in the post–Civil War years, racial politics and activities within Oregon could also play an important part in the evolution of national civil rights issues as the country moved into the Reconstruction era. Following the Union victory in the Civil War three revolutionary changes were made to the U.S. Constitution: the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended legal slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship (reversing Dred Scott [1857]) along with equal protection of the law; and the Fifteenth Amendment that allowed blacks (men) the right to vote. While the real-life experiences and circumstances of the newly freed slaves often did not dramatically change even after the adoption of these amendments, they did signal an important and dramatic realignment of national racial policy and opened the door for future black progress towards full citizenship. They are often considered a near inevitable consequence of the Union victory. In fact, the political and social struggle to accomplish their incorporation into the Constitution was one of the most complex and difficult chapters in national racial history. The process in Congress to formulate them and submit them to the states for ratification was closely fought and never a foregone conclusion. Once with the states, the local battles for approval were often treacherous, full of political conflict and intrigue. The actions of Oregon on these national amendments is another window through which to examine both local racial dynamics and the national struggle to approve them. The Oregon legislature, still under the control of the “Union Party,” a coalition of Republicans, Whigs, and loyal Democrats that had emerged during the war years, had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, but not without strong opposition from prosouthern Democrats who questioned its wisdom and legal implications. In 1866, the question of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment hit the state. Postwar politics

Oregon had begun to shift the balance of power significantly, and the resurgent Democratic Party threatened to reestablish its control of the legislature. The Union Party still held slim majorities in both houses of the legislature and was able to have ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment approved by close votes. The notion that blacks should now be full citizens with all the associated rights and privileges, perhaps leading to “social equality,” was nothing less than horrifying to most Oregonians and was contrary to the history of antiblack legislation that had characterized Oregon history to that point. Furthermore, the legislative election that preceded the ratification vote was beset by controversy. Two Unionist members who had been seated and voted in favor of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment were expelled two days after the vote and replaced by prosouthern Democrats. Had these Democrats been present to vote on the ratification issue, it would have lost in the lower house and thus failed of approval. The political infighting that followed culminated in the adoption of a strengthened antiintermarriage law (1867) and a heated debate of the states' rights issues that shortly before had led to the Civil War on the national level. In the next legislative election (1868), the Democrats won a controlling majority in both houses and promptly attempted to rescind the Oregon vote for ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The federal government in the meantime had declared the Fourteenth Amendment ratified and in effect. It refused to acknowledge the arguments put forth by the now Democraticcontrolled Oregon legislature challenging the legality of its adoption. The Fifteenth Amendment, giving black men the right to vote, was submitted to the states for ratification in 1869. By the time the Oregon legislature took it up in 1870, enough states had already ratified it to make it the technical law of the land. The Oregon legislature by a large

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margin refused to ratify the measure. The degree to which this antiblack and anti-amendment sentiment reflected the prevailing racial winds in postwar Oregon is evidenced by the history of these issues well into the twentieth century. The Oregon legislature finally ratified the Fifteenth Amendment in a symbolic vote in 1959 as a part of the centennial commemorations of Oregon statehood. It was not until 1973 that the Oregon legislature reratified the Fourteenth Amendment, overthrowing the vote to rescind ratification by the 1868 legislature. It was not until 2002 that the citizens of Oregon finally voted to remove the language from the state constitution that had dispensed rights of citizenship and participation to whites only in the original document adopted in 1857.

The Late Nineteenth Century In the years between the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction era and the beginning of the twentieth century, black life in Oregon settled into a period in which the primary role and function of blacks was to provide service and labor to the dominant white society in which they were imbedded as a distinct minority. For black females who worked outside of their own homes, this meant domestic service in the homes of white families, often on a live-in basis. Black males were confined by custom and convention to manual labor roles, sometimes individually, often times in larger labor groups. The other occupations and professions available to blacks were the creation of the “color line” erected between the racial groups in Oregon by white preference and policy. More and more as Oregon neared the twentieth century, the majority of blacks within the state were centered in the Portland area. There continued to be a scattering of blacks in residence in other parts of the state, remnants of pioneer arrivals, sometimes well situated and in harmony with their white neighbors, sometimes not. But as

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Portland emerged as the center of the state’s black population, a separate and increasingly cohesive black community was forged there in the image of the prevailing color line. This emerging black community was able to support a small number of black professionals and service providers who met the needs of black residents that racial prejudice prevented the white community from making available to them. In the late nineteenth century, the decade of the 1880s was the most dramatic regarding the shape and nature of black life in Portland and thus Oregon in general. During that decade the transcontinental railroad reached Portland (1883). With the railroad came new employment opportunities for blacks and a significant increase in the size of the black population. According to the U.S. Census for 1880, 486 blacks lived in the state. By 1890, that number had more than doubled to 1,186. It would take another 30 years for the black population to double again. The arrival of the railroad also opened up other employment possibilities for blacks within Portland and the state’s social and business hierarchies. The Portland Hotel opened in 1890. It was envisioned as a place of luxury accommodations for persons engaged in the increasingly large business and commercial activities of the state. Consistent with the hotel industry fashion of the day, an all-black staff was hired and imported to provide service functions for the new hotel. The black cooks, waiters, and other workers at the Portland Hotel came to occupy the top rung of the social and employment hierarchy within the local black community. In other parts of the state, black workers in large groups might also be imported to meet a particular need for specialized labor. For example, in the hills of the Marshfield area (present-day Coos Bay, Oregon) along the southern Oregon coast in the 1890s, significant deposits of coal were discovered. Mining interests imported black miners and their families en masse from the coal

fields of Appalachia to work the new mines. By the turn of the century, several hundred blacks were in residence in the area, which before had a virtually nonexistent black presence. Working conditions were harsh, pay was small, and racial tensions with area residents could at times be tense. When the coal deposits were depleted, the black miners were no longer needed, and most left the area for better prospects elsewhere. In general, the era before the turn of the twentieth century was one in which the black population of Oregon remained small and was expected to provide useful service to the dominant white culture. In return it could expect not to suffer the overt and violent patterns of racial subjugation that characterized other black populations in other parts of the country during this Jim Crow era. The relatively small size of the black population in this part of the West made it essentially nonthreatening to the majority population. The exclusion and antiblack policies of the pioneer generation in Oregon had done their work well. What racial violence and turbulence that did exist in Oregon in this period was more typically targeted at the Chinese population, which was much larger and considered imminently more dangerous and threatening to white prerogatives.

Early Twentieth Century Following the U.S. Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that declared discrimination based on race a legally acceptable principle, black Americans faced a wave of repressive legislative and judicial activism by the proponents of white supremacy as the country entered the twentieth century. The Oregon Supreme Court ruling in the Taylor v. Cohn case (1905) imposed the “separate but equal” doctrine articulated in the Plessy case onto Oregon race relations. Oliver Taylor had purchased box seat tickets to attend a performance at the Star Theater in Portland owned by Morton Cohn. When Taylor arrived at the

Oregon theater he was refused seating in the location for which he had purchased tickets and was denied admission. Taylor refused to accept the return of his money and sued Cohn for damages. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that Cohn’s behavior was reasonable and he was only required to refund Taylor’s ticket-purchase price to resolve the case. This legal precedent lead the way in Oregon for the open practice of discrimination in public accommodations that was not banned until the passage by the state legislature of a Public Accommodations Act in 1953. While the judicial and legislative tides were running against blacks in the state in the early decades of the century, Oregon blacks did not accept second-class status without protest and resistance. Blacks individually and collectively fought to exercise the same rights and privileges as other Oregonians. The attorney who argued for Taylor before the Oregon Supreme Court, McCants Stewart, was himself a black man. In 1913, a chapter of the NAACP was formed in Portland to seek improvement in racial conditions. It waged a strenuous campaign in 1915 to prevent the screening of D. W. Griffith’s racist film Birth of a Nation in Portland. The effort was not successful in having the film banned, but the energy and organization that had been displayed in the effort was testament to the determination of the organization’s black and white members not to suffer discrimination quietly. On the national level the early decades of the century witnessed a massive out-migration of blacks from southern states into northern cities that came to be called the “urban migration.” A combination of history, geographic location, and special employment circumstances interacted to make the black experience in Oregon during the years of the great urban migration diverge from the general pattern of black flight from the rural South. The reputation Oregon held in black circles as a hostile racial environment going all the way back to the black exclusion laws and antiblack

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legislation of the pioneer and Civil War eras was one factor in retarding black migration. While many of the legal prohibitions placed on blacks had technically been nullified by the Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Oregonians kept the antiblack language in the state constitution unchanged until 1926–1927. The last vestiges were not finally removed until 2002. Such obstinacy earned for Oregon a national reputation among people of color as a place where nonwhites were unwelcome and race relations were primitive. This reputation alone would not have disqualified Oregon as a possible relocation site since many northern states and cities shared a similar hostile tradition. Oregon, however, lacked several redeeming counter-features that existed in other locations. Much of the urban black migration was fueled by the new employment opportunities created for blacks by the manpower and war industry needs of World War I. While the war had worldwide and nationwide implications, in the United States, its primary impact was felt on the eastern coast and in transatlantic European dynamics. The war did not touch the Pacific coast as intimately or with such powerful impact. In addition, Oregon had not yet reached a sufficient level of industrial development, being only two generations removed from its pioneer roots, to play a major role in wartime economic activity. Oregon’s remote location, given the transportation and communication systems of the day, further diminished its wartime role and decreased its migration attractiveness. In short, Oregon had little to offer mobile blacks in comparison to the glamour, cosmopolitan cultural reputations, and employment potential available in such cities as Chicago, Illinois, and Harlem, New York. Beyond the national dynamics of race there were local events as well that reflected the difficult situation faced by Oregon blacks. For example, in 1905, the Portland Hotel, whose black waiters had long represented the high-water mark of local black employment opportunities, fired all 50 of its

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black waiters en masse and replaced them with white waiters. The explanation given was the hotel had decided to adopt the “European plan,” which had become the fashion in other large establishments in other parts of the United States. Indeed, in the early years of the century, there was but one arena of interracial interaction in which blacks could find lucrative employment, the illicit world of the vice industries. As far back as its frontier origins, Portland was known as a wide-open town. Political and police corruption created the necessary social space for gambling, prostitution, drugs, and bootlegging to flourish in the town. Some blacks, in conjunction with white sponsors or partners, were able to exploit these illegal avenues to economic resources when opportunities on the legal side of Oregon life were closed to them. The low point of Oregon’s hostile racial history was reached during the 1920s. In 1921, the Ku Klux Klan, the racist terrorist organization born in the South during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, established a foothold in southern Oregon. Within two years, it had swept like a bonfire through Oregon social, religious, and political circles, amassing sufficient strength to elect a card-carrying Klan member, Walter Pierce, to the office of governor in 1923. The historically small size of the state’s black population did not provide the Klan with a sufficiently threatening target to sustain a long-term mass movement, so in Oregon, the primary focus of Klan activism became a religious target, the supposedly un-American Catholic Church. At the height of Klan influence in Oregon in the early 1920s, it was regular and routine to witness large Klan parades in full hooded regalia, with floats and bands included, down the main streets of Oregon towns and cities, including the largest, in Portland. Torchlight rallies, cross burnings, picnics and barbecues, and other widely attended social/political affairs were also common

events. A frequent Klan recruiting tactic was an appearance by hooded Klan members before the congregations of white Protestant churches where anti-Catholic tirades and sermonizing would be the topic of the day. While the Klan focus in Oregon was less racial and more religious than traditional Klan practices in other parts of the country, the Oregon Klan relied upon the same tactics of terrorism and intimidation utilized elsewhere in pursuit of their objectives. A favorite practice of the Oregon Klan was a “mock lynching” in which the victim would be kidnapped by a group of hooded men, taken to a remote location, have a noose put around their neck, and be hoisted off the ground but lowered before death resulted, then warned to leave the state. As became true elsewhere in the country, the Oregon Klan eventually disintegrated as a political and social force in Oregon due to internal power struggles and corruption, monetary scandals, and questionable leadership by the end of the decade. The decline of the Klan as an organizational entity, however, did not mean the disappearance from Oregon racial life of the theories and philosophies on which the Klan had ridden to power and prominence at its height. This hostile racial stain lingered long in the state, especially in the more rural areas. In May 1924, for example, the only black family in the southern Oregon town of Grants Pass was run out of town. The local newspaper, the Southern Oregon Spectator, editorialized in bold type, “NIGGER WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE—AND WE WON’T HAVE YOU HERE.” As late as the 1970s, many rural Oregon towns informally enforced “sundown laws” that demanded all blacks be out of town by dark. Individuals with Klan backgrounds also continued to occupy influential positions in Oregon life. Walter Pierce, the Klan governor elected in 1923, went on to serve Oregon as a member of

Oregon the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress well into the 1930s. The racial hostility of Oregon life in this era was displayed in more mundane aspects of daily life as well. The Sunday comics featured black characters in the guises of the mammy, sambo, uncle, and pickaninny, all negative racial stereotypes of blacks that had been created in the nineteenth century in American popular culture to help rationalize first slavery, then legal discrimination against blacks. It was not uncommon to see the “n-word” used liberally in newspapers and magazines throughout the state. In Portland in 1931, a restaurant called the “Coon Chicken Inn” was opened at a prominent location on a busy street. The word “coon” is a derogatory term directed at black males, which implies them to be lazy, stupid, and innately inferior. This restaurant was the second of a three-restaurant chain that aspired to nationwide growth. Other units were located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Seattle, Washington. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was one of the most popular restaurants in Portland, with a reputation for good food and long lines to enter on weekends and holidays. To enter the restaurant it was necessary to walk through the mouth of a giant black head. The fact that such an establishment could become so routinely a part of the accepted and normal life of the city is a reflection of the degree to which the dominant white perspective on race reigned supreme in Portland and the state.

Coping with Racism For a black resident of Oregon in the early decades of the twentieth century, whether they lived in the state’s largest cities or the rural countryside, coping with the effects of racial discrimination and surviving in an often hostile environment was a daily challenge. In spite of the obstacles that racism could present, Oregon’s black residents devised ways to circumvent, ameliorate, or avoid

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the full destructive impact of racial disadvantages and to a remarkable degree were able to carve out a measure of livability and security within the confines of a society often defined by racial considerations. On their side of the color line black Oregonians constructed a cohesive, stable, and ultimately optimistic community that sought to create more opportunities and a better life in Oregon or elsewhere for their children. Several elements were central to the creation of this black community. Black churches emerged early in Oregon life wherever there was a significant number of black residents to support them. The churches functioned not just as religious institutions, but played an important role in the social and psychological needs of the black community. Where blacks were restricted in their access to the normal entertainment, cultural, and social outlets available to the larger community, church activities often served as a viable alternative. Religious leaders in the black community often assumed the companion role of civic or political leaders for that community as well. The spiritual vision often offered by the black church of better times to come could be an essential element of hope and encouragement when hard times dominated the present. Church activities did not represent the sole outlet or available resource to address the communal needs of the emergent black community in the state. While the color line may have prevented many interracial interactions, it could not prevent blacks from creating their own social and communal reality on their side of the line. Blacks organized private dinner parties, rented public facilities for special events, created fraternal organizations, and operated clubs and restaurants that provided the alternative and parallel opportunities essential to any community that could not be accessed on the white side of Oregon’s color line. In addition, the very racial isolation constructed by the operation of the color line created

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within the black community, at least in the urban centers, the opportunity for black businesses and individuals to provide the services that were not provided by white society. If white barbers would not cut black hair, black barbers could fill that need. If white restaurants would not serve black customers, black-owned and operated restaurants had a readymade customer base. It had been a black Portland lawyer that took the Taylor vs. Cohn case to the state Supreme Court in 1906. Perhaps the best example of how black entrepreneurship filled the vacuum created by the color line in Oregon life was the Golden West Hotel. Traditionally blacks were not welcome as guests at the state’s white hotels, even the ones in which blacks provided the labor force. Especially after the transcontinental railroad connection arrived in Portland in the 1880s, there was a need for a place for black railroad workers and other black travelers to stay temporarily in Portland. The black-owned Golden West Hotel fulfilled that need in the early years of the twentieth century. Owned by black businessman W. D. Allen, the hotel was an imposing structure in the city’s central core located close to Union Station. It offered, in addition to hotel rooms for the travelers, other amenities such as a restaurant, pool hall, and meeting rooms that could be used by local blacks as well. For many years, it was the social center of the Portland black community, a place of refuge from the racial outer world and a part of the cohesive glue that helped hold the black community together. More abstractly, the black community was held together by such institutions as the local black press. One of the most remarkable black women of any American generation, Beatrice Cannady, served as the editor and publisher of the Advocate newspaper, a weekly publication that reported local news and connected the local black community to national events of note from 1912 to 1933. In addition to her journalistic duties, Mrs. Cannady became a civil, social, and political

leader in Portland. She lectured frequently in local schools, put on a weekly radio program in the 1920s, ran for the state legislature (unsuccessfully), and hosted interracial teas and social affairs that were one of the few places in Oregon life that people from different racial and economic groups could meet and mingle on a personal basis. She also found the time and energy to graduate from law school and become the first black woman attorney in the state in 1922. She was an active NAACP member and helped spearhead the effort to ban Birth of a Nation from Portland in 1915. In the Klan years of the 1920s, she used the Advocate to challenge the rising influence of the Klan in Oregon. The Oregon black community, while small, was far from helpless or inactive in combating the racial challenges of life in Oregon. The victories, accommodations, institutions, and mechanisms created by the black population in the early years of the twentieth century were the foundation upon which later victories against Oregon’s antiblack legacy would be built.

World War II The modern era of the Oregon and Portland black experience began in the years of World War II. While Oregon in general and Portland in particular had been essentially on the sidelines of World War I, World War II had a dramatic impact on life in the Pacific Northwest, race relations especially. The railroad legacy had made Portland the center of black residence in Oregon by 1940. Oregon’s total black population according to the 1940 Census was only 2,565 residents. Of those, 1,931 lived in Portland proper, the state’s largest city. Between the world wars, employment roles for blacks in Oregon were still primarily limited to menial labor, domestic service and other service jobs, and railroad work. This pattern changed when the Pacific Northwest became a center of shipbuilding activity during World War II.

Oregon The war created tremendous demand for labor to support essential wartime industries. The traditional source of American industrial labor, young white males often of European immigrant stock, was spread around the world on distant combat fronts. Their unavailability created employment opportunities for nontraditional sources of industrial labor. Women and ethnic minorities were often turned to out of necessity to fill the labor needs created by the war. In Oregon, this dynamic had greatest impact in the Portland area. Portland is located at the conjunction of two large rivers, the Willamette and Columbia, that provide navigation access to the Pacific Ocean, yet is far enough inland to be relatively protected from enemy naval assault. Portland became the center of a large shipbuilding effort by the Kaiser Company during the war years. To supply labor for the shipyards, the Kaiser Company recruited the land, sending out agents to entice new immigrants and special trains to facilitate their relocation to Portland. Many of the new immigrants were blacks from places such as Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas who moved to Portland with their families to take advantage of the new high-paying opportunities. By 1944, at the height of Portland’s wartime population expansion, the black population had rocketed to approximately 22,000, a thousandfold percentage increase over the 1940 population size in the area. Prior to the war, the black population in Portland was not only small, it was geographically contained as well into a strictly defined black residential district. The original black community had been centered around the main railroad station, Union Station, on the west side of the Willamette River. Slow growth in the first decades of the twentieth century had pushed the black community across the river into the inner northeast area of town, the Albina district, which then became the recognized black community, although blacks even there did not represent the majority population in a well-integrated neighborhood.

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This concentration of black residence was not accidental. A very conscious effort to house blacks only in this part of town was pursued by the use of restrictive covenants in real estate documents, redlining practices by the banking and home loan industry, “ethical” prohibitions in the real estate handbook, and when necessary, vandalism and intimidation of blacks who sought home ownership outside of the designated area. The rapid and large influx of new black residents during the war years could not be squeezed into the traditional boundaries of the old black community. To satisfy the housing needs of both the new black and nonblack imported workers for the shipyards, the largest wartime federal housing project in the country was built between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, called Vanport because of its intervening location. Eventually blacks would comprise approximately 25 percent of Vanport’s population. Consistent with prevailing community standards, housing in Vanport was allocated on a segregated basis. But the institutions of the temporary city (i.e., schools, stores, theaters, etc.) operated on an integrated basis. For Portland, this increase in black population created shockwaves for race relations that continued to rattle the area for decades thereafter. Prewar race relations in Oregon had been characterized by an unstated accommodation under which whites largely ignored the small resident black population if blacks did not transgress the boundaries of their assigned subordinate “place” in Oregon life. The new black immigrants were both too numerous and too uninitiated to fit neatly into that former place. White reaction ranged from severe labor union discrimination in the competition for high-paying jobs in the shipyards, an increase in visible evidence of Jim Crow public accommodations practices, to fanciful illusions by whites of a black out-migration after the war. One arena of tension that would continue to be a sore spot for race relations for the remaining

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decades of the twentieth century was the escalated hostility to the black community evidenced by the police. The wartime police chief, H. M. Niles, had declared his belief that blacks were responsible for more crimes and misdemeanors of all types than white residents of Portland. A study of arrest rates conducted by a downtown civic organization revealed the opposite to be true. A high-profile case in which white police officers, looking for an accused black murderer, without a warrant, in the middle of the night, burst into the wrong home and shot an innocent black father to death in front of his horrified family drew national attention to Portland’s dangerous racial environment. When a coroner’s jury declared the killing “justifiable homicide” and exonerated the police, the black community seethed with anger. Blacks faced other, less lethal forms of discrimination on a daily basis during the war years. When Marian Anderson, a world-famous black Opera Singer, appeared in Portland, she could obtain accommodations at a white hotel in the downtown area only if she agreed to eat all of her meals in her room and not use the main hotel elevator. When world-renowned performer Paul Robeson performed in Salem, Oregon, he had to be driven back to Portland that night because no Salem hotel would allow him to stay under any conditions. Blacks were automatically charged a 15 percent surcharge when buying auto insurance by insurance companies. The companies justified the extra cost by claiming that if blacks were involved in court proceedings after an accident, all white juries were likely to side with their opponents regardless of the case merits. “We serve whites only” signs became a common sight in restaurant windows during the war years. Blacks were routinely restricted in when, or even if, they could use such facilities as swimming pools, bowling alleys, and movie houses. The irony of such racially discriminatory behavior while the country was ostensibly fighting a war against Nazi racism

overseas was not lost on the nonwhite population. Because of such behavior, Portland acquired a national reputation as the most racially hostile city on the Pacific coast among minority groups. It should also be noted in deference to the complexity of racial matters that the new influx of black population was also unsettling to the prewar Oregon black population on many levels. The majority of black immigrants, coming from different cultural and social environments in other parts of the country, often shared little in common with the older resident black population beyond skin color and social repression. Differences ranged from class, to language, to culture and social orientation. Yet the positive dynamics set in motion by the migration changed the racial landscape of Oregon and improved the overall status, condition, and potential for blacks immensely. The increases and artificially concentrated size of the new black community multiplied its political power and influence correspondingly. The contradiction between anti-Nazism and continued Jim Crow practices became more apparent. Effective new progressive protest organizations and a postwar wave of civil rights laws and agitation followed in the 1950s as a consequence. The new immigrants also expanded the boundaries around black employment opportunities as well as the physical borders of the old “Negro district.” In Oregon, as elsewhere, the impact of the black urban migration proved to be complex, longlasting, and ongoing. In Oregon it just came a generation later than had been the case in other parts of the country.

A Flood of Change The shipyard workers who had come to Portland during the war faced difficult adjustments in the immediate postwar years. Area employment opportunities dried up, permanent housing was difficult to find and expensive, and hostility to

Oregon wartime immigrants lingered among the prewar residents. For blacks in the Portland area, all these problems were increased by color prejudice in the area. By the 1950 Census, the black population had fallen from a wartime high of over 22,000 in the area to 11,529. Many of those who stayed continued to live in what had been planned to be temporary wartime housing in Vanport. On Memorial Day in 1948, the Columbia River flooded Vanport, washing away that refuge. The former Vanport residents were absorbed into the larger community just as the nation entered the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. As the nation struggled to change the course of its racial behavior, Oregon began to address its long, hostile racial history as well. In 1949, the state adopted a Fair Employment Practices Act; in 1953, a Public Accommodation Act, that reversed the 1906 Taylor v. Cohn precedent; and in 1957, a Fair Housing Act. The path to racial progress was not, however, smooth or straight. In 1950, the City Council of Portland had adopted its own local Public Accommodations Law that was quickly referred to a popular vote by its opponents and suffered a resounding defeat in the next general election. By the 1960s, the issue of school segregation became the major battleground for interracial conflict in Portland. The other areas of the state had black populations so small that they escaped any large-scale racial confrontations. In Portland the historic patterns of housing discrimination had produced a de facto segregated system of neighborhood schools that became the focal point of calls for change from the black community. School integration was perceived to be the pathway to racial progress by organizations like the NAACP that controlled the agenda for racial change at the time. Following a series of studies and strategic plans over the 1960s, the Portland school district designed a plan to achieve desegregation that relied on closing schools in the black community and busing black students to outlying

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white schools in carefully controlled percentages that assured that black students were in a small minority in receiver schools. This plan satisfied many in the old-time social protest organizations but generated a growing hostility from some in the black community who favored strong neighborhood schools regardless of their racial profile. This was one example of the increasingly wide gap in goals and philosophies of change between the older civil rights groups and an emerging younger generation in the black community that adopted a more militant demand for immediate change and more “Black Power.” As in other parts of the country, in the mid1960s, this push by the younger and more militant elements in the community for control of the area’s racial agenda clashed with the forces of the status quo, both black and white, and led to public eruptions of periodic conflict and violence in the form of urban riots. The largest race riot in Oregon occurred in August 1967 on Union Avenue in inner northeast Portland. Reacting to perceived acts of police brutality targeting young blacks at a popular gathering spot, the rioting lasted for several days and caused significant properly damage, although no fatalities occurred. A flood of federal dollars washed into Oregon and Portland in the last years of the 1960s as a part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty that was supposed to alleviate the root causes of anger and resentment that had fueled such urban rioting. In Portland a vast structure of “Model Cities” organizations and activities was created that included across-the-board efforts in education, police relations, and employment to resolve the problems of a “disadvantaged” black community. When the national political winds shifted with the election of Richard Nixon and his racial philosophy of “benign neglect,” the federal money dried up and the underlying racial tensions and issues remained largely unsolved and unchanged in the state.

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The Second Black Migration The decades between 1970 and 1990 in the Oregon black experience were dominated by the consequences and repercussions of what can be called the second great migration of blacks into Oregon life. The first had been the influx of black workers into the Portland area shipyards of the 1940s. The second migration was much smaller in size but saw blacks rise to a much more powerful role in Oregon life. The second migration actually had two very different and distinct components. The first component can be called a geographic migration in the form of an influx of high-ranking black professionals who arrived in Oregon in response to the affirmative action mandates that had arisen from the civil rights victories of the 1960s. Starting in the early 1970s and gaining momentum through the 1980s, blacks from other parts of the country with traditionally defined high qualifications and credentials found employment in some elite positions of power and visibility in Oregon life. By 1984, for example, Oregon featured two black members of the state legislature, a black Portland School Board member, a black member of the Portland City Council, a black dean of the University of Oregon Law School, a black conductor of the Oregon Symphony, a black managing editor of the Oregonian, the State’s largest newspaper, and a black superintendent of the Portland public schools, the state's largest school district, among other prominent and well placed black citizens. This trend represented a dramatic departure from earlier generations of Oregon life when blacks were essentially relegated to menial and service positions. The irony was that most of the newly highly visible blacks headed organizations that were still overwhelmingly white in terms of their work force and were often limited in the real power they could exercise. The second major component in this second black migration was generational in nature. The children of the 1940s workers were growing to

adulthood and beginning to shape the nature of black Oregon life in fundamental ways. This wave of generational immigrants tended to be less patient, more assertive, with higher expectations of Oregon than their parents’ generation. The pressures and demands they placed on Oregon traditions of race behavior created major confrontations in the two areas that would dominate the racial agenda of the state as the twentieth century came to a close. The first arena in which racial change evolved into racial conflict was centered on the issues of school de facto segregation and a push for integration that had first emerged in Portland in the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s, Portland public schools had adopted a plan to achieve integration by closing schools in black neighborhoods and busing black children to outlying white schools under pressure from the NAACP. By 1977, the school board proposed to close Jefferson High School, the high school with the largest percentage of black students in the city. Opposition to closing black schools had been growing since the inception of this approach and exploded with this proposal. Whereas integration at all costs had characterized the philosophy of the NAACP and the older generation of black leadership, younger, more militant new voices emerged from the community to oppose and ultimately defeat the school closure approach to achieving desegregation. Eventually a new organizational vehicle was created from these new forces called the Black United Front, which organized a series of very public direct action protests and school boycotts that overwhelmed resistance from both old-time black and white opposition and imposed a new philosophy on school desegregation efforts. By 1980, the white superintendent who had been hired in 1969 to carry out the school closure strategy had been forced from office, and a new black superintendent hired to replace him. A series of election victories brought new faces to the school board, which in 1980 adopted what

Oregon was called the Comprehensive Desegregation Plan. Basically the new plan rejected the old notion of integration in favor of a new Afrocentric philosophy advocated by the Black United Front that halted the closure of black neighborhood schools and aspired to remodel the district’s curriculum rather than reassign black children to white schools. The political conflict and fallout over this transition was tumultuous and acrimonious. The most severe combat centered around proposals for teacher training and curriculum revisions called the “baseline essays,” which had been developed by Black United Front–sponsored consultants. Eventually the battle over the baseline essays would place the Portland schools in the front lines of the national educational battle over the Afro-centric education model. Under the spotlight of national controversy and scrutiny, it was revealed that several of the authors of the essays had inflated/fabricated their credentials and included in the essays assertions and conclusions that did not stand up well to academic challenges and philosophical attack. Following this scholarly firefight the influence of the Black United Front was essentially broken, and the school system continued to wrestle with how to raise black student achievement, but from a much lower national profile. The other major conflict that marked the Oregon black experience in the last decades of the twentieth century was the hostile and sometimes deadly relationship between the black community and the police community. Historically it had been the state’s police authority that had enforced the prevailing racial policies of a given generation. It was, for example, the constable of the county who was suppose to apply 39 lashes to blacks who violated Oregon’s first black exclusion law. Later during the Civil War, it was the county sheriff who was supposed to collect the special yearly poll tax on blacks or make them work on the country roads. During the early years of the twentieth century, city and county police

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were the individuals who enforced the “informal” sundown laws and supplied other extra-legal control and supervision of the state’s small black population. Later in the century, various studies showed racial profiling brought the state’s black population much unwanted and unwarranted attention from the police community. Over these years, practically no blacks worked as policemen, further delineating a sharp line between the two communities. The large influx of new blacks during World War II heightened the tension since many in the police community operated from the assumptions defined by traditional negative black stereotypes in their interactions with nonwhite residents. These patterns continued to prevail into the 1970s, when they collided with the new dynamics of race arising from the second black migration. In the Ricy Johnson case in 1975, this young unarmed black man was shot and killed by police while attempting to flee. He was the fourth young black male killed by police in a matter of a few months, causing a significant outcry to arise from the community against police brutality. The “Possum Incident” occurred in 1981. Several patrolling officers deliberately ran over oppossums they encountered in the streets, piled the dead bodies in the trunks of their cars and dumped them on the doorstep of a popular late-night hangout and restaurant on Union Avenue. Blacks considered this a threatening attempt at racial intimidation by police. Blacks were especially incensed after the police involved were reinstated to their jobs after being fired. The protests and investigations lead to the formation in 1982 of the first Police Review Committee in Portland and the state as an outcome of an election referendum. The black community considered the Review Committee a step forward but essentially a powerless entity. These feelings were escalated by the death at the hands of police of Lloyd Stevenson in 1985. Stevenson, a young black man, had happened upon a fight in the parking

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lot of a 7-Eleven store between two white men. When police arrived, instead of confronting the white combatants, they attacked Mr. Stevenson, killing him by applying a controversial choke hold. One of the officers involved had also been involved in the possum incident. These officers too were exonerated of any wrongdoing by the justice system. Members of the black community were further enraged when following the Stevenson death police officers were seen to be wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Don’t Choke’m Smoke’m,” meaning it is less troublesome to shoot blacks than to strangle them. Tension remained unresolved between blacks and police in the last years of the century and constitutes one of the defining realities of Oregon black life into the twenty-first century.

A New Day Dawns Every era of black life in Oregon has been characterized by the kinds of contradictions that make it impossible to reduce the human experience to simple formulas and trite conclusions. In pioneer Oregon, American trail immigrants erected a political, economic, and social framework overtly hostile to the presence of blacks in Oregon, yet some blacks came and prospered. The Oregon black experience, especially since the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, has been overwhelmingly defined by the urban environment, yet hundreds of other black Oregonians have always lived in the rural areas of the state and forged a dramatically different reality compared to the blacks in Oregon cities. Oregon was a free state during the Civil War, but adopted a package of antiblack legislation that lingered until the middle of the twentieth century. The story of the Oregon black experience in the last decade of the twentieth century is filled with contradictions as well. The decade saw some blacks reach the heights of Oregon fame and celebrity or acquire and enjoy significant material wealth and comfort. Other blacks in the state

struggled to survive unemployment, underemployment, marginalization, and even physical assault. In terms of the collective black experience, the decade saw the eclipse and dispersal of the only true black community in the state, the inner northeast district of Portland. Two very different forces were at work during the decade with potential destructive power relative to that community. One force was an organized effort to intimidate and ultimately eradicate the black presence in the state, to finally achieve the racial objectives of the pioneer generation that sought total black exclusion from Oregon. The other force was impersonal and perhaps unintentional in its destructive threat to Oregon’s only traditional black community. The first force was a rise to prominence in Portland and Oregon of an emergent racist skinhead culture that identified Oregon as the long-sought white homeland. The second force was the free-market dynamics of urban gentrification. Ultimately the overt forces of racism in the form of the skinhead presence were beaten back by the applications of law and public opinion. There was no effective defense against the onslaught of gentrification that could preserve the inner northeast as a cohesive black community. The skinhead movement in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest gained momentum in the last years of the 1980s. The climactic event for Oregon blacks occurred in 1989 when a young black man Mulugeta Seraw, was attacked and beaten to death with a baseball bat by a group of skinheads on the streets of southeast Portland. The assailants were eventually arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. But the early years of the 1990s constituted a battle for the streets and national image of Oregon between skinhead organizations who saw the murder as the opening salvo of a march to final racial victory and the enemies of intolerance who attempted to rally Oregon, black and white, against the violent menace that the skinheads and other racist terrorist organizations represented.

Oregon The forces against intolerance won this war when the godfather of the skinhead movement, Tom Metzger of San Diego, California, was put on trial in Portland by the Southern Poverty Law Center, led by civil rights crusader Morris Dees. Metzger was convicted of orchestrating Seraw’s murder. A large judgment was ordered against both Metzger and his organization, which eventually left the skinhead movement in disarray. Ironically, the trial had been presided over by a black judge, Ancer Haggerty. The decline of the skinhead threat by the mid1990s, however, did not mean the salvation of black life or security for the traditional Portland black community. The booming housing market of the 1990s, coupled with a growing disillusionment of the younger white generation with the suburban American dream that had transfixed the United States following World War II, led to a stampede of real estate–hungry whites toward the housing stock and urban convenience of the traditional inner-city black community. Older residents of the now-hot real estate location found it hard to resist the buy offers at formerly unheard-of sums for homes they had lived in for decades. The children of the older black residents could not compete with the economic resources of young white professionals nor at other times afford to pay the increasingly high property taxes that followed the influx of new residents. The borders of the traditional black community, originally constructed by hostile racial policies but subsequently maintained as well by the cohesion of a shared black culture orientation, tumbled down. Many blacks found refuge in the suburbs that now seemed to have less appeal to the white population. A final ingredient assured that the old dynamics of black/ white interracial relations that had been such a defining part of Oregon’s evolution would never again define the destiny and direction of the state. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, blacks were no longer the largest minority group in the

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state. The Hispanic population, fueled by the immigration policies and economic dynamics of twenty-first-century circumstances, ascended to the position of the state’s largest minority group. The focus of Oregon racial and cultural matters has now moved to a post–black/white configuration. Ample evidence is available from the mistakes, missteps, victories, and racial progress of the past to aid coming generations in dealing with the ongoing influence of race and culture in state dynamics. Whether it will be used or not is the still-open question.

Notable African Americans Bogle, Dick (1930–2010) The Bogle family has deep roots in Oregon black history. In the 1840s and 1850s, the original Richard “Dick” Bogle in the Oregon country was a barber and black businessman in first Walla Walla, Washington, later moving to Oregon. To be a barber in a black community of that era was to be a significant and leading citizen. In 1863, this Dick Bogle married America Waldo in Salem, Oregon, in what was called at the time “the negro wedding.” The marriage roiled Oregon racial waters because it was performed by a white minister, Obed Dickinson, in his church. Editorial combat quickly followed between Thomas Dyer, of Portland’s Oregonian and Asahel Bush of Salem’s Statesman. Dyer accused Bush of being in attendance at the wedding. Bush considered the charge an infamous insult since he was a leading antiblack Democrat in the state’s racial politics and was not present. Bush retaliated by calling Dyer a “toad face” and a liar, and more colorful words to the same purpose. In the twentieth century, the Bogle family continued to attract notice and attention in the state’s racial dynamics. Kathryn Hall Bogle, mother of the descendent Dick Bogle, wrote a widely read and discussed feature story published in the

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Oregonian in 1937, titled “An American Negro Speaks of Color,” describing the trials and tribulations of black life in Oregon when that newspaper rarely if ever opened its columns to coverage of the black experience. Mrs. Bogle continued to champion civil rights and interracial progress throughout a long life of public activism. Her son Dick Bogle continued the family prominence in Oregon racial history. From 1958 through 1968, Bogle served as a Portland police officer when few blacks were on the force and the city, like the country, was rocked by racial turmoil. In 1968, Bogle made the unlikely transition from policeman to television reporter, later news anchor, for KATU (2), a major TV station in Portland. He performed that job for the next 15 years. In 1984, Bogle was elected to the Portland City Council, becoming only the second black man to hold that position. Bogle served as a city commissioner until 1992. In his retirement years, Bogle, long a jazz historian, wrote a jazz column for a local black newspaper and became a popular DJ on KMHD, the local jazz station. In 2007, he and other retired police officers formed a cold-case squad that attempted with some success to solve old homicide cases. Bogle’s career, full of “firsts” and “breakthroughs” as it was, was a fitting testament to the pioneer origins of his family.

law, the entire wagon train decided to settle north of the Columbia River in the part of the Oregon country then under British control to avoid coming under the jurisdiction of the Americans and their law. They eventually settled in the Tumwater/Olympia, Washington, area and became the first Americans to pioneer modern-day Washington State. Bush established a successful and profitable frontier farm in Tumwater. After the Oregon country was divided between the United States and Great Britain in 1846, Bush found himself once again under American jurisdiction when British interests in the area moved further north to present-day British Columbia. Under the 1850 American Donation Land Act for Oregon (homesteading), only white Americans and their offspring were eligible to acquire land in Oregon. Bush had earned a reputation among his neighbors for generosity and compassion when he aided many struggling immigrants during hard times. When Bush did not qualify to continue to own his homestead, his neighbors rallied around and petitioned Congress for an exemption for Bush to the whites-only policy. Congress granted the petition in 1855, but refused still to recognize Bush as an American citizen.

Bush, George Washington (1793–1863)

Beatrice Cannady arrived in Portland in 1912 to marry the prominent local black businessman Edward D. Cannady, who had been a cofounder of the weekly Advocate newspaper in 1903. Mrs. Cannady became the editor and guiding hand of the Advocate until 1933 and eventually one of the most influential voices in Oregon interracial affairs. Also active as a civil rights leader, Cannady had helped found the Portland chapter of the NAACP in 1913 and played a leading role in that organization’s attempt to ban the showing of D. W. Griffith’s racist movie the Birth of a Nation in Portland in 1915. During the 1920s, when

The Oregon Provisional Government, made up mostly of recently arrived America immigrants, in the spring of 1844 passed a black exclusion law that provided for the arrest and public flogging of blacks who tried to settle in the Oregon country. In the fall of 1844, a wagon train including successful Missouri farmer and free black man George Washington Bush and his family arrived along the Columbia River at the end of their Oregon Trail journey. When Bush and his wagon train companions learned of the black exclusion

Cannady, Beatrice (1899–1974)

Oregon Oregon became the location for a widespread Ku Klux Klan movement, Cannady from her position as editor of the Advocate was a forceful voice in opposition, proclaiming at one point that the Klan wore “diapers” on their heads. In 1922, Cannady was the first black woman to graduate from a law school in Oregon, the Northwest College of Law. In 1932, she became the first black female to run for the Oregon legislature, although her bid was unsuccessful. She was perhaps best known for the interracial “teas” she hosted at her comfortable home. Such interracial gatherings were a direct and powerful challenge to the conventions of the rigid racial color line that prevailed in that era. Cannady worked tirelessly giving speeches on black history to schools, aired a radio program on the same topics, and earned widespread recognition as a leading ambassador of interracial understanding and cooperation.

DePriest, James (1936–) James DePriest was hired to be conductor and music director of the Oregon Symphony in 1980, becoming the first black man to hold that position. The nephew of legendary contralto Marian Anderson, DePriest grew up to music distinction in Philadelphia. In 1965, he was selected by Leonard Bernstein to be an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. In 1971, DePriest was appointed an associate conductor with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. His career has included being guest conductor at every major North American orchestra as well as many noted international assignments in Europe and Asia. DePriest has been awarded 13 honorary doctorates over his career and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, DePriest was presented at the White House with the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence. Following his 25year tenure at the Oregon Symphony, DePriest,

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in 2005, became the director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School of Music.

Harris, Moses “Black” (d. 1847) Before the arrival of the immigrant wagon trains in the 1840s and 1850s, the West had been opened to nonnatives by a raucous group of fur traders known as the Rocky Mountain men in the 1820s and 1830s. This mountain man community, in the West in pursuit of beaver furs, was a multiracial enterprise, which included both slave and free black men. The most famous of the free black mountain men was Moses “Black” Harris, who traveled widely in the West and Oregon during the era. Harris was a contemporary of other prominent mountain men like Joe Meek and Kit Carson. Harris’ exploits and fame in the mountains was sufficiently exalted that in the 1830s, his portrait was done by famed painter Alfred Jacob Miller, giving posterity one of the few visual images of a black man from that time and place. As the fur trade declined in the 1840s, Harris made the transition to becoming a highly sought-after guide for wagon trains heading into the West. In Oregon, Harris became famous for finding and saving the lost “Blue Bucket” wagon trail in Central Oregon. By 1847, Harris, while guiding a wagon train west, fell victim to cholera and died on the trail.

Johnson, Tom (fl. 1930s–1940s) In the 1930s and 1940s, Tom Johnson was known as the most feared black man of his time in Oregon. Johnson was the overlord of the vice industry underworld in Portland’s black district. Protected by regular payments to city political and police power brokers, Johnson presided over an elaborate network of legitimate businesses, entertainment venues, and a low-interest loan program for other black small business owners

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in addition to his underworld activities. Born in New Orleans of former slaves, Johnson migrated to Portland as a railroad worker in the early twentieth century. He moved into bootlegging during the era of Prohibition, which gave him a foothold in Portland’s underworld, which he exploited with his business and organizational skills to rise to the top of black influence in the city. In his later years, he invested in legitimate real estate dealings and contributed to community charities and organizations like the Urban League in the attempt to acquire a measure of respectability.

Lopius, Markus (d. 1788) Markus Lopius is the first documented black person to arrive in Oregon. American merchant captain Robert Gray stopped on the Oregon coast in the summer of 1788 to acquire furs to trade in China. Lopius was a member of Gray’s crew that had joined the expedition in the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast. The native Indians in Tillamook Bay greeted Gray and his crew with suspicion and hostility upon their arrival. While on a resupplying assignment on shore, Lopius’ cutlass was stolen by a Tillamook Indian. While in pursuit to regain his sword, Lopius was surrounded and killed by the Indians who then proceeded to chase Gray and his remaining crew back to their ship. Lopius’ body was never recovered, which in later years led to speculation by Oregon settlers that he survived the encounter and lived on with the Indians. Indian legends refute this claim and all evidence points to it being untrue.

Maria (fl. 1579) The first blacks probably arrived in Oregon as early as 1579. In that year, English privateer Sir Francis Drake was being hunted by Spanish colonial forces in the Western Hemisphere for his raiding and plundering excursion through the Spanish colonies. Drake sailed up the Pacific

coast of North America perhaps as far as British Columbia, then doubled back and hid out on the Oregon coast to prepare his ships and crew for the difficult trans-Pacific voyage necessary for his return to England. He probably hid out at a place now called Little Whale Cove on the central Oregon coast. The details of his voyage and landing are not completely documented because on his successful return to England, making him and his crew the first Englishmen to sail around the world, the papers of his voyage were confiscated as state secrets by Queen Elizabeth I and have never resurfaced. It is certain that when Drake visited Oregon, it represented the first arrival of blacks in the Oregon country. Drake had in 1579 an integrated crew. One individual with Drake was a black woman named Maria. Maria had been taken from a Spanish ship that had been commandeered by Drake, probably off the coast of Mexico or Central America. She was a slave. By the time Drake arrived in Oregon, she was also pregnant, some say by Drake himself. The fate of Maria and the other black members of Drake’s party is not pleasant. On the trip across the Pacific, ostensibly to save food and water, Drake abandoned them on a Pacific island. They were never seen or heard of again.

Rashad, Ahmad (1949–) Born in Portland as Robert Earl Moore and known as Bobby Moore through his college career at the University of Oregon (1968–1972), Ahmad Rashad is one of the greatest athletes produced in Oregon. Moore was a football AllAmerican as a running back and wide receiver in 1971. In 1972, he changed his name to Ahmad Rashad, which means “one led to truth.” Rashad was the fourth pick in the 1972 NFL draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. After brief stints with the Buffalo Bills and Seattle Seahawks, he had his greatest success with the Minnesota Vikings (1976–82), where he was selected for the Pro

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the quest for black civil rights in Oregon, at one time chairing the Portland NAACP and in 1945 becoming a cofounder of the Portland Urban League. As the first black member of Portland’s City Club (1943) he pushed for a study of the status of blacks in the city that was finished in 1945. It remains a valuable historical window on racial issues in Oregon from the 1940s. In 1953, Dr. Unthank was a member of the group that pushed for the successful passage of the Oregon Public Accommodations Law, which overturned nearly a half century of legal discrimination in the state. In 1958, the Oregon Medical Association named him Doctor of the Year. In 1969, the City of Portland named a park in Northeast Portland “Unthank Park” in honor of his many contributions to the city and state.

York (1770–c. 1823) Ahmad Rashad, who was then known as Bobby Moore, is seen when he played college football at Oregon, 1971. Rashad was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, July 19, 2000. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Bowl four times. Following his professional football career, he became a well-known national sportscaster working both NFL and NBA games for NBC and ABC. Rashad has also hosted numerous successful sports-themed shows over his broadcasting career. In 1985, with O. J. Simpson as his best man, he married Phylicia Allen, who, as Claire Huxtable, had a long and significant career as the TV wife of Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show. In 2007, Rashad was named to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Unthank, DeNorval (1899–1977) Dr. Unthank came to Portland in 1929 after graduation from the medical school at Howard University. He quickly became a leading voice in

The Lewis and Clark expedition that explored Oregon between 1804 and 1806 by an overland route across the continent gave the United States a solid claim to the Oregon country. One important member of that expedition was the black slave of William Clark, York. York made important contributions to the success and survival of the expedition that belied his formal slave status. York carried a gun, provided food through hunting, did the same hard work that supported the expedition as the other members, and on the return journey conducted a crucial trading mission for food from the Indians when the expedition was on the verge of starvation. York’s presence in the group was also a boon to the diplomatic life of the expedition with the native tribes they encountered, who considered York “big medicine.” With the successful return of the expedition in 1806, all members were richly rewarded and recognized with the exception of York. York sought but was not given his freedom from Clark for many years after the group's return. During that time, the relationship between Clark and York became

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acrimonious; at least once Clark is known to have beaten York and at other times contemplated selling York into the harshest form of Deep South slavery. Eventually, by 1815, York was freed by Clark, but died shortly thereafter.

Cultural Contributions The cultural context of Oregon black life from the very beginning has been defined by the artificially small size of the black population in contrast to the dominant white culture. The nonnative population of Oregon was created through the migration over the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 1850s of tens of thousands of white Americans. Some black migrants came too, but it was a time of legal slavery in the country. For most black Americans, their status as slaves precluded any chance to join the Oregon migration. Once in Oregon, the pioneer generation enacted a series of harsh antiblack and black exclusion laws from 1844 to 1870. This legislation guaranteed that Oregon’s black population would be small and embattled. In spite of the small size of Oregon’s nineteenth-century black population, or perhaps because of it, a viable and cohesive, albeit small black community had coalesced in Portland by the turn of the twentieth century. This community reflected the centrality of the transcontinental railroad industry in the lives of many of its members and was located adjacent to Union Station in downtown Portland. The mobility of railroad work for many adult black men helped define black Oregon culture and connect it to the larger cultural life of the nation’s black population centers in spite of Oregon’s remote geographical location. Isolated black individuals and families also lived in the more rural parts of the state by the turn of the century, but their small numbers dictated that their cultural experience and context would be dominated by their more numerous white neighbors.

Within the Portland original black community, the dominant cultural institutions were the black churches. The churches provided the context and framework for much of the social, political, and cultural life of the community, bringing blacks together on Sundays and for special events who had little opportunity during the week for association and interaction. By the early twentieth century, an emerging black business community augmented the religious network. The Golden West Hotel, opened by W. D. Allen about 1906, became the focal point for black community secular life. Located at the corner of Broadway and Glisan Streets in downtown Portland and only a few blocks from Union Station, the Golden West provided hotel services to black customers who were not able to use the segregated facilities of the white community. The Golden West also featured a restaurant, ice cream parlor, barbershop, and several small black-owned businesses. The Golden West Hotel also became the focal point for the most integrated aspect of the cultural and racial life of the city at the turn of the century, the vice industries. The color line as drawn and maintained in Oregon severely restricted opportunities for blacks to achieve legal and legitimate success. As in later generations, these restrictions pushed some blacks to seek financial success on the other side of the legal line. Portland from its pioneer days until the middle of the twentieth century had a reputation, well earned and accurate, as a “wide-open town.” Its Far West location and male-dominated industries like mining, merchant shipping, and lumberjacking provided an eager market for gambling, bootlegging, prostitution, sports events, and related enterprises. Portland political and police circles often indulged in these entertainments and profited from protecting them. This illicit culture that flourished in Portland was the most integrated aspect of Oregon black life, with some blacks achieving considerable wealth and influence as

Oregon middlemen in the provision of these lucrative services. Thus, Portland’s black cultural life in the transition from frontier nineteenth century to early twentieth century was characterized by the parallel worlds of church-focused respectability and family-centered activities coexistent with a flourishing life of underworld illicit activities that serviced the “entertainment” demands of the dominant white culture. In the context of Portland's respectable black cultural life in the early decades of the twentieth century, two institutions stood out. In 1913, a chapter of the young NAACP was organized in Portland. Membership and leadership in this emerging civil rights organization included all the leading figures in Portland’s black community. As in other parts of the country, the first significant project for Portland’s NAACP occurred in 1915 with the release of D. W. Griffith’s antiblack epic movie Birth of a Nation. Portland’s chapter attempted to have the showing of the film banned in the city. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but it energized the black community and generated considerable support in the majority community as well, with a vigorous petition campaign and lobbying effort directed at local and state politicians. The other dominant cultural institution of the day was the Advocate newspaper of Beatrice Cannady, who in addition to being involved in its ownership was the publishing editor of the enterprise. Under Mrs. Cannady’s administration, the Advocate became both the most influential and powerful social and cultural force in the black community. The paper's columns carried local, regional, and national news, including coverage of all entertainment and social activities of import to local blacks. In the 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan became a powerful presence in Oregon life, Cannady and the Advocate became the focal point of anti-Klan activism. Culturally, Cannady challenged the racial conventions of the day by hosting large and lavish interracial tea socials at her home that

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brought together men and women from many racial backgrounds and represented the first real cultural penetration of Portland’s rigid color line. The years of the Great Depression in the 1930s were a crucial transition point for cultural dynamics in Oregon black life. Economic pressures resulted in the disappearance of both the Golden West Hotel and the Advocate newspaper. The old black community centered around the train station yielded its preeminent place in black cultural life to the emerging black residential district centered on the nexus of Broadway and Weidler Streets where they met Vancouver and Williams Avenues, in the district now called the Rose Quarter. The defining event in Oregon racial life in the 1940s was the outbreak of World War II. Portland became a center of wartime shipbuilding and the quest for labor fueled the recruitment of thousands of new black residents who came to Portland during the war years to work in the Kaiser shipyards. Many were housed in a new federal housing project called Vanport, halfway between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. The defining cultural center of wartime life, however, became the entertainment district along Vancouver and Williams Avenues and Broadway and Weidler Streets. In this district there grew up a collection of black-owned jazz clubs, supper clubs, and restaurants that made black Portland a hot spot on the West Coast music and entertainment circuit during the war years. At clubs like the Dude Ranch, Lil Sandy’s, the Rhythm Room, and the Cotton Club, to name but a few, nationally known black musical and entertainment stars such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis, Jr., and numerous others mingled and played with local talents for the enjoyment of the new and old black residents, wartime soldiers, and the larger white community. As at the turn of the century, the underworld of the vice industries was intimately involved in this cultural explosion. The presiding

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black overlord of this district was Tom Johnson, operating out of his headquarters at the Keystone Investment Co. and protected by regular contributions to the prevailing powers at City Hall and the police department. By the 1950s, Portland’s salacious reputation prompted a reform movement under newly elected mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee. Although her reform campaign had mixed results and never completely eradicated the consortium of interests between respectable but corrupt Portland polite society and the entertainment activities in the black community, it did lower their public profile; and eventually the changing social and political dynamics of the civil rights era resulted in the demise of this black cultural Golden Age of music and entertainment in Portland. Politically, the pendulum swing in the 1960s to the efforts by racial protest organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League to reverse Oregon’s long history of hostility and inequity to its black citizens. Culturally, the greatest impact to Oregon’s racial status quo occurred at the end of the decade when Portland received a new expansion franchise in the National Basketball Association, the Portland Trail Blazers. Although inept as most expansion teams are in its early years, in 1977, the Trail Blazers won the NBA’s world championship. The city, state, and region were mesmerized and fell in love with the “Ripcity” Blazers. Since many of the team's star players were black athletes such as Maurice Lucas, Lionel Hollins, Johnny Davis, and Lloyd Neal, racial and cultural repercussions followed. Trail Blazers players could and did buy homes in upscale neighborhoods, changing long-standing racial dynamics. Black athletes became local celebrities, serving as spokespersons for charitable activities and joining formally all-white exclusive social organizations and country clubs. The 1980s in black Oregon saw the rise of a different kind of cultural force in the state’s racial cosmos. James DePriest became the conductor

and musical director of the Oregon Symphony in 1980, a post he held until 2005. DePriest, in addition to his own global reputation in the business of symphonic music, was the nephew of Marian Anderson, the black operatic soloist who in the 1930s became a national racial heroine when she was denied the opportunity to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt arranged a concert for her at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, after which Mrs. Roosevelt resigned from the DAR. During his tenure DePriest advanced the global reputation of Oregon’s classical music community to levels never before imagined. On the less lofty level of cultural affairs in Oregon black community life, for the average black citizen, the local community institutions of the black barbershop and beauty salon often defined the nature of black social and cultural affairs. Both institutions operated as gathering spots, communication centers, illicit shopping sites, and sponsors of the social and cultural activities of black community life, in addition to their purely sartorial functions. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, when issues of physical appearance, especially hairstyle choices like the “afro” or “natural” also could signal political and social statements, Big John’s House of Style, located near the corner of Fremont Street and Union Avenue in the heart of the black district, was a nerve center of local importance. The House of Style was owned by John Penson, who presided over a three-chair ensemble of fasttalking, quick-witted, and quick-clipping denizens of community cultural life. Big John cut the best natural in town. He was called Big John because of his physical size and formidable personality. A product of the black community and neighborhood schools, Big John seemingly knew everyone and everything of any consequence in the black community, from where to get the best pork ribs to who to talk to about a problem with the police.

Oregon Playing a similar role on the female cultural side of black neighborhood life were the Banks sisters, Veronica, Clarice, and Teresa. Veronica was considered by many to be the top hair stylist in the city. Teresa was the administrator and businesswoman of the trio who oversaw their Waves hair salon. Beyond providing their clients with hair care services, the Banks sisters were prominent organizers of dances, parties, balls, and social affairs of all descriptions that never failed to attract large crowds and furnish the local community gossip networks with lively material for days after the events. As the twentieth century in Oregon black cultural life drew to a close, it ended as it had begun, a complex tableau of seemingly contradictory impulses and components, reflecting at once both the upwardly striving aspirations of a black cultural elite in pursuit of respectability set side by side with the pulsing dynamism of everyday black community life, full of energy, creativity, and determination to make the very best of a sometimes less-than-ideal hand dealt to them in a numerically dominant and often hostile white cultural context.

Bibliography Berwanger, Eugene H. The West and Reconstruction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Betts, Robert B. In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press; Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 2000. Bogle, Kathryn Hall, and Rick Harmon, interviewer. “Oral History Interview: Kathryn Hall Bogle on the African-American Experience in Wartime Portland.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 93, no. 4 (1992–1993): 394–405.

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Brame, Herman L. African American Athletes in Oregon: A History from 1804 to 1950. Portland, OR: H. L. Brame, 2000. Broussard, Albert S. “McCant Stewart: The Struggles of a Black Attorney in the Urban West.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 89, no. 2 (1988): 157–179. Fryer, Heather. “Pioneer All: Civic Symbolism and Social Change in War-Boom Portland.” Journal of the West 39, no. 2 (2000): 62–68. Jackson, Kenneth. The Klu Klux Klan in the City 1915–1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Langer, Elinor. A Hundred Little Hitlers. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003. Lockley, Fred. “The Case of Robin Holmes vs. Nathaniel Ford.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 23, no. 2 (June 1922): 111–137. Maben, Manly. Vanport. Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1987. McElderrt, Stuart John. “Building a West Coast Ghetto: African-American Housing in Portland, 1910–1960.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 92, no. 3 (2001): 137–148. McLagan, Elizabeth. A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1778–1940. Portland, OR: Georgian Press, 1980. Millner, Darrell. “The Death of Markus Lopius: Fact or Fantasy? First Documented Presence of a black Man in Oregon August 16, 1788.” Trotter Institute Review 5 (1991): 19–22. Millner, Darrell. “York of the Corps of Discovery.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 104 (2003): 302–333. Pearson, Rudy. “ ‘A Menace to the Neighborhood’: Housing and African Americans in Portland, 1941–45.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 102, no. 2 (2001): 158–179. Portland Bureau of Planning. “History of Portland’s African American Community:

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1805 to the Present.” Portland, OR: Portland Bureau of Planning, 1993. Richard, K. Keith. “Unwelcome Settlers: Black and Mullatto Oregon Pioneers.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 84, nos. 1 and 2 (1983): 29–55; 172–205. Smith, Alonzo, and Quintard Taylor. “Racial Discrimination in the Workplace: A Study of the Two West Coast Cities during the 1940’s.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 8, no, 1 (1980): 35–54. Stroud, Ellen. “Troubled Waters in Ecotopia: Environmental Racism in Portland, Oregon.” Radical History Review 74 (1999): 65–95.

Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998. Taylor, Quintard. “Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Oregon Country, 1840–1860.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 83:2 (Summer 1982). Toll, William. “Black Families and Migration to a Multiracial Society: Portland, Oregon, 1900– 1924.” Journal of American Ethnic History 17, no. 3 (1998): 38–70. Wagner, Tricia Martineau. African American Women of the Old West. Guilford, CT: TwoDot, an imprint of the Globe Pequot Press, 2007.

PENNSYLVANIA Joe W. Trotter

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Chronology 1681

(March 4) King Charles II grants William Penn over 40,000 square miles of land in North America that will later form the colony of Pennsylvania.

1682

William Penn lands at a site near present-day Chester.

1688

Quaker and Mennonite settlers in Germantown adopt the first formal antislavery resolution drafted in America.

1700

William Penn begins holding monthly meetings advocating emancipation of black slaves.

1712

(June 7) The Pennsylvania Assembly bans the importation of slaves.

1740

The Pennsylvania Gazette mentions the presence of an African American medical practitioner, the first such reference in the colonies.

1775

Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush establish the first American abolition society in Philadelphia.

1776

Pennsylvania Quakers abolish the practice of slavery among their own membership and then petition the state legislature to abolish slavery throughout Pennsylvania.

1780

(March 1) Pennsylvania declares the newborn children of slaves to be free, but does not emancipate those already in bondage; it is, however, the first effort by any state to abolish slavery in any form.

1784

Richard Allen becomes the first African American preacher in the Methodist Church.

1786

Richard Allen becomes a preacher at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia; also allowed only to conduct early morning services, Allen draws an African American following and the church agrees to the creation of a segregated gallery for black congregants.

1787

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones found the Free African Society in Philadelphia; the organization is a nondenominational mutual aid society for blacks that eventually becomes the African Church of Philadelphia.

1787

At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the delegates agree to count a slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning congressional representation.

1787

(December 12) Pennsylvania formally ratifies the new U.S. Constitution, becoming the second state to enter the Union.

1794

Richard Allen and others establish the AME Church in Philadelphia.

1830

The National Negro Convention convenes in Philadelphia to advocate the abolition of slavery.

1833

(December 4) Arthur Tappan founds the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia.

1833

Richard Allen publishes an autobiography entitled The Life, Experiences, and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen.

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1837

The African Institute (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania) is founded through a bequest of the late Richard Humphreys; the school is the first institution of higher learning for African Americans in the United States.

1851

Maryland slave owner Edward Gorsuch is killed in a skirmish that erupts near the abolitionist town of Christiana, when Gorsuch confronts William Parker, whom Gorsuch accuses of sheltering runaway salves.

1851

(December 11) A Philadelphia jury acquits 37 men accused of violating the new federal Fugitive Slave Act.

1855

In Philadelphia, William Still, a leader of the Pennsylvania Underground Railroad, is acquitted of helping Jane Johnson and her two sons escape from their master, Colonel John H. Wheeler, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua.

1856

( June 17) The new Republican Party, which pledged to halt the expansion of slavery into the western territories, holds its first convention in Philadelphia.

1863

( July 1–3) One of the largest battles of the Civil War occurs outside the town of Gettysburg in southeastern Pennsylvania.

1863

(November 19) President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address on the battlefield at Gettysburg.

1865

(February 3) Pennsylvania ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1867

(February 12) Pennsylvania ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1869

(March 25) Pennsylvania ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights to African Americans.

1871

Race riots erupt in Philadelphia and lead to the deaths of four blacks, including the activist teacher Octavius V. Catto.

1876

African American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister is turned away from the U.S. Centennial Exposition when he arrives at the exhibit hall to collect the gold medal his work had been awarded.

1906

(October 22) Over 3,000 black demonstrators protesting discrimination riot in Philadelphia.

1918

( July 25) A race riot in Chester leaves five dead—three blacks and two whites.

1935

This season’s Pittsburgh Crawfords team is often considered to be the best Negro Leagues baseball team of all time.

1938

(November 8) Crystal Bird Fauset becomes the first African American woman elected to the Pennsylvania legislature.

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1957

State police are required to allow Bill and Daisy Myers, the first black couple to buy a home in Levittown (now Willingboro), to move into their new house; Levittown was a suburban subdivision built in Pennsylvania by innovative developer William Levitt.

1958

Robert N. C. Nix becomes the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

1959

A lawsuit filed by Reverend Willie James leads to the desegregation of Willingboro (formerly Levitttown).

1963

(March 25) Pennsylvania ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1964

(August 28) A race riot erupts in Philadelphia.

1969

( July) One whole city block is burned and two people are killed in a race riot in York.

1970

The ban on taking in nonwhite youths is lifted at the Milton Hershey School for orphans, which was founded in 1909 in Hershey.

1971

Philadelphia minister Leon Sullivan becomes the first black to sit on the board of General Motors.

1978

(August 8) A Philadelphia police officer is killed in a police standoff with MOVE, a radical black group whose members all adopt “Africa” as a surname.

1978

William H. Gray III, a black Baptist minister, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

1982

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former radio announcer and Black Panther, is convicted of killing a Pittsburgh police officer in 1981; Jamal claims to have shot the officer in defense of his brother, whom the officer had stopped for a traffic violation.

1983

(November 8) Wilson Goode is elected as the first African American mayor of Philadelphia.

1985

(May 13) Philadelphia police drop a bomb on the headquarters of the radical black group MOVE; the resulting fire kills 11 people, including 5 children. Ramona Africa and her daughter are the only survivors. Africa is later convicted on charges of riot and conspiracy and imprisoned for seven years.

1987

Wilson Goode wins 98 percent of the black vote to defeat Frank Rizzo, who won 97 percent of the white vote, for mayor of Philadelphia.

1988

Chaka Fattah is elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate.

1991

Lucien E. Blackwell, a black Philadelphia city councilman, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1994

Chaka Fattah is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

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1996

A Philadelphia jury awards $1.5 million to the survivors of MOVE, the radical black group whose headquarters was firebombed by police in 1985.

1996

An all-white jury in Pittsburgh angers local blacks by acquitting a while police officer in the death of black motorist Jonny Gammage.

1997

A gang of whites attacks a black family in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia; in 1998, nine men are tried for the assault and six are convicted.

1997

(October 25) The Million Woman March occurs in Philadelphia to support the social, political, and economic development of black communities.

1999

Daisy Myers is the guest of honor at a reception by the mayor of Bristol Township, who formally apologized to her for the town’s refusal to accept Daisy and her husband as local homeowners back in 1957.

1999

(November 2) John F. Street becomes the second black mayor of Philadelphia.

2000

(July 12) News cameras record both white and black Philadelphia police officers beating Thomas Jones, a black man accused of stealing a patrol car and shooting at an officer. Thirteen police officers are later suspended.

2001

(May 17) Mayor Charles Robertson of York is arrested and charged with murder for his role in the York race riots of 1969, when he was a York police officer. Accused of giving bullets to white rioters and urging them to “kill as many niggers as you can,” Robertson was acquitted in 2002.

2005

The city of York announces a $2 million settlement with the family of Lillie Belle Allen, a black woman killed in the York race riots of 1969.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, carries Pennsylvania with about 54 percent of the vote.

2009

A white Philadelphia police officer is ordered to cut his hair after reporting to work with cornrows. The officer is said to be in violation of department guidelines even though the newspapers report that numerous black officers wear cornrows.

Historical Overview Colonial Period Pennsylvania’s African American community had its origins in the European colonization of North America, but the state’s black population increased only slowly until the advent of the American Revolution. Under the impact of the new republic and the dynamic growth of the state’s commercial and early industrial economy,

however, the African American population rapidly expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the eve of the Civil War, in addition to forming their own families and community institutions, African Americans had also forged alliances with sympathetic whites and pushed to transform the state and nation into a multiracial, political, and economic democracy. These early struggles for full citizenship rights would inform African American freedom movements during the emancipation era, the rise of

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Jim Crow, and the recent years of deindustrialization and increasing global social change. As early as 1639, Swedish, Dutch, and Finnish immigrants brought small numbers of enslaved Africans into the Delaware River Valley region. The colony’s black population took a significant leap forward with the arrival of the Quakers in 1681. In 1684, Philadelphia became the major center of black population growth when the ship Isabella sold 150 Africans in the city. Despite the colony’s subsequent antislavery reputation, the number of enslaved Africans in Philadelphia had increased to 1,400 (about 20 percent of the colony’s total black population) in 1767, before gradually decreasing just before the Revolution. By the eve of the Revolutionary War, however, the colony’s black population had increased to over 3,000, almost all enslaved rather than free blacks. As late as 1770, only about 150 Africans claimed freedom in the City of Brotherly Love. Although their numbers remained small before the American Revolution, blacks played an important role in the early colonial economy of Pennsylvania. Quaker residents eagerly purchased the first shipment of Africans for domestic and commercial use. In outlying rural areas, black Pennsylvanians not only helped to raise cereal and grain crops, but also tended livestock for home consumption as well as local and regional markets. Urban blacks worked in a variety of occupations—as general laborers, longshoremen, and mariners; domestic service workers in the households and business establishments of colonial elites; and as laborers in the state’s nascent iron works and shipbuilding industry. In Philadelphia, as historian Gary Nash put it, “Almost every occupational category in the city included at least one slaveholder and some such as bakers, metalworkers, woodworkers, and rope-makers, were heavily represented.” For their part, however, nonslaveholding white workers complained that enslaved blacks worked for low wages and undercut their capacity to earn a living. In 1707, Philadelphia whites lamented what they

called the “Want of Employment, and Lowness of Wages, occasioned by the Number of Negroes . . . hired to work by the Day.” White workers also implored colonial authorities to take steps to end the practice. By the early 1700s, the Pennsylvania legislature defined Africans as servants for life, and denied them access to provisions for limited terms of service that led to freedom and the rights of Englishmen for white indentured servants. From the outset of their enslavement in the colony, Africans pushed for recognition of their humanity. One of their earliest protests against the enslavement and mistreatment of African people revolved around burial rites. Whites routinely excluded blacks from cemeteries reserved for Europeans. At the same time, Europeans criticized blacks for burying their dead without the benefit of clergy or appropriate Christian burial practices. Africans repeatedly complained that slave owners failed to give them sufficient time and space to honor their dead with sacred burial rites. By the turn of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvanians gradually opened up segregated sections of white cemeteries for the interment of blacks. As indicated by a plot to rebel in 1738, Pennsylvania blacks developed an ongoing pattern of resistance that led them to join early colonial protests against British rule. On one occasion, in October 1765, two black men, one the slave of a wealthy Philadelphia legislator, marched through all parts of Philadelphia with muffled drums to protest the despised Stamp Act. As suggested by black and white resistance to the Stamp Act, the African American struggle for emancipation received support from a small number of influential white allies. In 1696, for example, the Quakers Annual Meeting adopted a measure designed to discourage the importation of slaves into the colony. By the mid-eighteenth century, Anthony Benezet of Philadelphia urged his fellow Quakers to bring their practice in line with their antislavery sentiments. By 1758, the Philadelphia yearly meeting prohibited its

Pennsylvania members from buying and selling slaves. The number of Quaker slaveholders dramatically declined thereafter.

Statehood to the Civil War Following the American Revolution, Pennsylvania’s black population jumped to nearly 10,300 in 1790. The state’s revolutionary constitution articulated the “rights of man” ideology, encouraged the manumission movement, and added to Pennsylvania’s black population growth. In 1780, Pennsylvania enacted the country’s first Gradual Emancipation Act; this law provided that any person born to slave parents after 1780 would be free on their 28th birthday. By 1860, most of the state’s African American population had gained their freedom. Back men worked as artisans, entrepreneurs, and, to some extent, as self-employed professionals, but most continued to find employment as general laborers and household and personal servants. By the 1850s, 77 percent of blacks in Pittsburgh worked in jobs defined as general laborers. Although most blacks worked in general labor, domestic, and personal service jobs, they also gradually gained access to jobs as artisans, business people, and professional people. In Philadelphia, between 1795 and 1816, black artisans worked in some 30 different trades, including shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, and painters, to name a few. The number of black proprietors rose from only 3 percent of the workforce in 1795 to nearly 12 percent in 1816. Robert Boyle, an exslave, established a successful catering business. He contracted his food services for funerals, weddings, and parties. Francis (Frank) Johnson organized a dance orchestra and made a living as a widely known trumpet and violin player. A black physician, Samuel Wilson, served the city’s black and white communities. By the turn of the nineteenth century, nearly a dozen black teachers taught black students in schools established by white philanthropists as well those founded by

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blacks themselves. While black women labored primarily as housekeepers, cooks, washerwomen, and seamstresses, they also worked as retailers and boardinghouse keepers. Moreover, some black women gradually gained access to jobs as artisans and businesswomen. Grace Bustil Douglass, for example, operated an antebellum millinery shop in Philadelphia. Based upon their expanding role in the state’s economy, Pennsylvania blacks built some of the earliest and most viable black institutions in the nation. Their institution-building activities were also based in part on the emergence of independent households among blacks and increasing residential segregation of the black community. In Philadelphia, whereas 50 percent of blacks lived in the homes of whites in 1790, some 75 percent lived in their own households as early as 1820. In addition to their earliest settlement near the Central Business District (CBD), Philadelphia blacks moved into new areas to the north and southwest of the CBD. In these areas, blacks occupied space in close proximity to poor and workingclass immigrants, particularly people of German and Irish descent. In Pittsburgh, African Americans increasingly concentrated in a near downtown area called “Hayti.” Residential segregation and the establishment of independent black households stimulated the rise of Pennsylvania’s black community. In 1794, Philadelphia’s free blacks joined Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, respectively, and formed independent Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and St. Thomas Episcopal Church. Allen and Jones, both ex-slaves, protested continuing indignities within the white church, including relinquishing their already-segregated space to make room for white worshippers in increasingly overcrowded churches. By 1812, St. Thomas had 560 members, and Bethel claimed nearly 3,000 members. The AME charter designated church membership only for “Africans and descendants of the African race.”

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Nonetheless, the AME Church remained under the jurisdiction of the white Methodist Church for two decades. When the white parent body refused to relinquish control over the black congregation, black church men took the matter to court. In 1816, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of Bethel AME and severed its ties to the white body. In the same year, free black church leaders from the nearby states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland met in Philadelphia and formed the independent African Methodist Episcopal Church. With only a few churches in 1820, by 1860, Philadelphia reported nine and Pittsburgh another half-dozen AME bodies. Baptist and to some extent black Presbyterian churches also spread across Pennsylvania. Under the leadership of Richard H. Gleaver, deputy grand master of the African Independent Grand Lodge, the African Masonic lodge movement spread from Boston to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other major cities of the North and South. As early as 1838, in Philadelphia alone, free blacks maintained some 100 lodge and benefit societies, with nearly 75,000 members. African American women comprised the bulk of church members, and spearheaded the formation of antislavery societies, temperance unions, and mutual aid and benefit societies. Black women also played a major role in the political activities of the expanding black community, including work on the Underground Railroad network. In 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped from a plantation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and moved to Pennsylvania. She soon resolved that she would return south and bring other family members to freedom. She saved her earnings from domestic service work until she could afford the journey from Philadelphia back to the South. She made nearly 20 trips into slave territory and soon became known by many as “the Moses” or “deliverer” of her people. The arrival of large numbers of fugitive slaves from the South reinforced the abolitionist

movement among blacks and their white allies in Pennsylvania and other northern states. As early as 1795, a Virginia owner reported that his bondsman had “inquired very particularly” about the way to Philadelphia, because “he heard Negroes were free there.” The Underground Railroad depended upon the cooperation of large numbers of free blacks and whites. In 1842, the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Underground Railroad network in its ruling in Prigg v. Pennsylvania. This law made it more difficult for local citizens to aid and abet fugitives. Along with several other northern states, in the wake of the Prigg ruling, Pennsylvania passed a Personal Liberty Law, prohibiting state participation in the apprehension of fugitives. In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Pennsylvania whites escalated their efforts on behalf of free blacks and slaves. The most renowned incident emerged in the town of Christiana in 1851, when whites staged a riot to save a fugitive from southern slave catchers. Pennsylvania blacks not only resisted slavery through the Underground Railroad, but fought disfranchisement, exclusion from public schools, and the activities of the American Colonization Society. When Pennsylvania disfranchised black citizens in 1837, African Americans in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania filed their famous petition: “The Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania” (1838). The petition argued that African Americans were as worthy and entitled as whites to exercise the vote. In January 1841, a group of blacks met at Bethel AME Church and proposed a statewide convention to continue the fight for suffrage. In August 1841, a statewide convention met at the same church and intensified the push for full citizenship rights for free blacks in the Commonwealth. After fighting against the colonization movement for more than three decades, substantial numbers of free blacks moved toward an emigration

Pennsylvania position by the turbulent 1850s. Martin R. Delany emerged as the most forceful spokesperson for such ideas in Pennsylvania. Originally from Charlestown, Virginia, Delany moved with his family to western Pennsylvania by the 1820s. In Pittsburgh, between 1843 and 1847, Delany published a newspaper, the Mystery. He also coedited the North Star with Frederick Douglass. In 1849, Delany broke with Douglass and moved increasingly toward black nationalism, pride in blackness, independent action, and emigration to a new homeland in the Caribbean, South America, or the Niger Valley of West Africa. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, blacks in Pennsylvania intensified their struggle for freedom for themselves and their southern brothers and sisters. As elsewhere in northern states, African Americans in Pennsylvania joined their fight to end slavery in the South with an equally determined effort to abolish Jim Crow in the North. African Americans in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania wrote to General J. S. Negley, offering “to assist in any honorable way or manner to sustain the present administration” against the southern rebellion. At the same time, black Pennsylvanians pushed to eliminate racial injustices in the commonwealth. In Philadelphia, William Still circulated petitions requesting repeal of the city railway rule requiring black people to ride on the outside platform of cars, rather than taking seats inside. On cold, rainy, or snowy days, this form of discrimination took its toll on the health of black people. When the U.S. government dropped the color ban to military service in 1862, African Americans in Pennsylvania joined the Union army.

Post–Civil War Period In the years after the Civil War, the emancipation of slaves and the enactment of new civil rights legislation, including the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the constitution, guaranteed African Americans full citizenship rights. For the

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first time since the early nineteenth century, blacks in Pennsylvania gained the right to vote. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools in 1881 and upheld the concept of equal access to public accommodations regardless of color. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania failed to fully enforce the newly won citizenship rights of African Americans in practice. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s sanction of racially segregated public accommodations in 1896, for example, Pennsylvania’s high court supported the notion of separate but equal. In the case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. George, the Supreme Court permitted proprietors to serve blacks on a segregated and unequal basis. According to the state court, “the law dealt only with the admission of blacks to public places and not the accommodations for them, once inside.” Racial friction intensified as African Americans sought to exercise their citizenship rights. As early as 1871, a race riot erupted in Philadelphia around disputes in a municipal election. When Philadelphia blacks promised to help the Republican Party oust the Democratic machine, rioting erupted in several wards of the city and four blacks lost their lives as a result. Among the dead was the activist school teacher Octavius V. Catto. Harper’s Weekly magazine later published a photo of Catto and described him as “a worthy colored citizen of Philadelphia [whose murder was] entirely unprovoked.” Racial friction also intensified within the workplace as blacks gained industrial jobs through strikebreaking activities during the 1880s and 1890s. In 1911, when word spread that a black man had murdered a white company iron and coal policeman, a white mob lynched the black worker Zachariah Walker in the small industrial town of Coatesville in eastern Pennsylvania. According to historians Dennis Downey and Raymond Hyser, the lynching of Walker reflected the spread of a national culture of racial violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Although violence erupted with the increasing migration of southern blacks into the state, Pennsylvania’s industrial firms developed strategies for curtailing the incidence of racial conflict. Specifically, iron and steelmakers supplemented black strikebreaking forces with substantial numbers of immigrant and American-born white men. In the Pittsburgh district, for example, when white puddlers struck one company, white heaters and rollers stayed on the job and later cooperated with black strikebreakers and ensured the return of the mills to full productivity. Moreover, despite their strikebreaking activities, black workers formed their own separate all-black unions, and where possible, joined predominantly white unions. In 1881, black boilers formed the Garfield Lodge No. 92 at the Black Diamond Steel Works in the Pittsurgh district and later struck the company for better working conditions. During the 1880s, a few African Americans joined the Pittsburgh Knights of Labor assembly. Jeremiah Grandison, a black worker, later represented the group at the founding convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1886.

The Twentieth Century to World War II The First Great Migration, the Great Depression, and World War II transformed the context of African American life in Pennsylvania. The African American population not only dramatically expanded but gained a substantial foothold in the state’s other industrial centers like Harrisburg, Erie, Steelton, and Johnstown, but Pittsburgh and Philadelphia continued to reflect the most significant growth areas in the state. Philadelphia’s black population rose from 84,500 in 1910 to an estimated 220,600 in 1930, while Pittsburgh’s black community increased from about 26,000 to nearly 55,000. African American men and to some extent black women entered the state’s industrial sector in rising numbers. In western Pennsylvania, black steelworkers increased from

less than 3 percent of the total workforce at the outset of World War I to 13 percent before the onset of the Great Depression. Compared to their prior experiences in the rural, small-town, and urban South, black workers praised the steel industry for offering higher wages and opportunities for economic mobility. Compared to the experiences of their northern white counterparts, however, African Americans confronted racial inequality in the workplace and in the surrounding housing, community, and political life of the state. In the aftermath of World War I, blacks made up nearly 5 percent of all the state’s iron, steel, and manufacturing employees, but they accounted for nearly 9 percent of all victims of industrial accidents. Some 26 percent of African Americans in metal industries reported serious injuries or death, compared to 24 percent for white immigrant workers and 22 percent for American-born whites. African Americans also suffered an explosion of white hostility during the war and its early aftermath. Violent race riots broke out against black people in Chester (1917), Philadelphia (1918), and Johnstown (1923). In Johnstown, authorities charged a black man in a shooting incident with a local policeman. The mayor and chief of police blamed black newcomers for initiating conflict and ordered them out of town. Authorities forced some 500 black workers and their families out of the area. Such official action weakened the position of blacks in the state’s economy and made them more vulnerable than their white brothers and sisters to downturns in the business cycle. In addition to the decline of manufacturing production and the rise of unemployment just after World War I, the economic collapse of the Great Depression underscored the precarious position of black people in Pennsylvania’s economy. By 1933, the U.S. Census of Unemployment Relief reported 18 percent of all black families on public relief compared to 10 percent for whites. In urban areas of Pennsylvania,

Pennsylvania the percentage was about the same for whites but over three times higher for blacks—33 percent in Philadelphia, and 43 percent in Pittsburgh. Only the labor demands of World War II would bring blacks back into the labor force and improve their position in the state’s industrial economy. The reemployment of black workers in the mid-1920s and again in World War II was closely intertwined with the expansion of black community institutions and the development of new movements for social change. During the interwar years, African Americans in Pennsylvania built upon their institutional and political movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to craft new strategies for combating racial and class inequality. Along with the expansion of established black Methodist and Baptist churches, the 1920s witnessed the proliferation of new storefront churches as the Great Migration accelerated. Among the most successful of these storefront or home-based holiness bodies was the ministry of Ida B. Robinson. Moving to Philadelphia in 1917, Robinson launched her career as a street evangelist. She initially affiliated with the United Holy Church of America. Two years later, she was ordained an elder and placed in charge of a small mission, Mount Olive Church. In 1924, she broke from the United Holy Church over limitations on female ministers and formed the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America. Mount Sinai held its first national convention in 1925 and later became one of the largest Pentecostal organizations in the country, with branches in the Caribbean. In addition to the rapid growth of black churches, fraternal orders, and social clubs, the 1920s witnessed the expansion of Pennsylvania branches of national organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the National Urban League; the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), or Garvey Movement; and the

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Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids. Within a few weeks of its formation, the female relatives of sleeping car porters and maids formed “ladies auxiliaries” and vigorously promoted the work of the organization in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other cities throughout the United States. At the same time that blacks in New York forged the Harlem Renaissance as a literary and cultural movement, African Americans in Pennsylvania formed New Negro literary societies such as Philadelphia’s Black Opals, along with weekly newspapers like the Philadelphia Tribune and the Pittsburgh Courier. Launched in the early 1900s, the Pittsburgh Courier rapidly expanded as an instrument of political and cultural expression in western Pennsylvania, the state, and the nation. Similarly, although professional baseball teams had roots in the prewar years, commercially successful Negro League teams included the Homestead Grays, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and the Hilldale Club of Philadelphia. Similar to earlier years in the state’s history, the transformation of African American life during the interwar years not only reflected the persistence of class and racial inequality in the state’s political economy, but also the increasing residential segregation of the black urban population. Racially restrictive housing covenants and discrimination in the state’s real estate market reinforced the growing size and number of predominantly black neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Johnstown, and other urban centers of the commonwealth. Black Pennsylvanians used the growing spatial concentration of their numbers and resources to escalate their demands for social change. In 1932, Courier editor Robert L. Vann urged blacks to abandon the party of Lincoln. “My friends,” he editorialized, “go turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall. That debt is paid in full.” In 1934, the NAACP president and attorney Homer S. Brown gained election as one of five black state legislators and the second from Pittsburgh’s Hill District. A graduate of the

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University of Pittsburgh’s Law School, Brown ran as an independent and won, but he soon declared himself a Democrat and joined forces with Democratic Governor George Earle and pushed for a “Little New Deal for Pennsylvania” and its black citizens. Under Brown’s leadership, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a new Equal Rights Law in 1935. The new law banned discrimination on the basis of color in a wide range of institutions: hotels, motels, and barrooms; public parks, bathhouses, and resorts; theaters, orchestras, and dance halls; libraries, schools, and colleges. Black leadership was by no means limited to black men. The role of black women was perhaps most apparent in the career of Crystal Byrd Fauset of Philadelphia. Born in Maryland but raised in Boston and educated at the Teachers College of Columbia University, Fauset became the executive director of the Negro Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee in 1935. Fauset not only helped to recruit black women for the Democratic Party, but also won a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 18th District of Philadelphia in 1938. Fauset was the first black woman to gain election to that post in her own right. Pennsylvania’s black men and women not only helped to usher in a “New Deal” for black people in the state. They also played a role in bringing about a new deal for black people at the national level. FDR appointed Robert L. Vann to his “Black Cabinet” of advisors in the office of the attorney general. The “Black Cabinet” enabled African Americans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to improve their position on a variety of New Deal projects. Most of all, however, African Americans in Pennsylvania helped to spearhead the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) and the Double V Campaign, for “Victory at Home and Victory Abroad” during World War II. Under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, African

Americans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere supported the call for a March on Washington to end racial discrimination in the nation’s defense industries and the military. The MOWM gained the support not only of black Pullman porters, but black churches and fraternal orders as well as civil rights and social service organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League. A writer for the Pittsburgh Courier wrote, “Our war is not against Hitler in Europe, but against Hitler in America. Our war is not to defend democracy, but to get a democracy we have never had.” Fearing the convergence of some 50,000 black people on the nation’s capital, FDR relented and issued Executive Order 8802, calling for the end of racial discrimination in industries with government contracts. This order also established the Fair Employment Practice Committee to ensure enforcement of the nondiscrimination provisions of the order. Although the FEPC lacked authority to bring sanctions against discriminating firms, it did have the authority to investigate and publicize complaints of racial discrimination against employers and report whether they were in compliance or noncompliance with the executive decree. Indeed, African Americans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere gained access to industrial jobs that were heretofore closed to them.

Civil Rights Movement The events of the 1930s and 1940s set the stage for the rise of the modern Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in Pennsylvania. As early as 1948–1953, civil rights organizations and student activists boycotted and desegregated downtown restaurants, lunch counters, theaters, and other places of amusement and leisure. In the early 1950s, interracial swimming teams challenged the “all white” rule at the Highland Park pool and the Paulson Avenue pool on Pittsburgh’s East Side. Wendell Freeland, Richard Jones, and other black attorneys filed a lawsuit against the city of

Pennsylvania Pittsburgh. The suit charged the city with operating the pool “as a public nuisance,” and sought “to enjoin the city from operating the pool unless it was safe for black patrons.” For more than two weeks, under the leadership of Reverend LeRoy Patrick, demonstrators converged on these swimming pools to exercise their right to swim regardless of the color of their skin. The court ruled in favor of the African American plaintiffs, and by late summer 1952, the city had desegregated the Highland Park and Paulson Avenue pools. In Philadelphia, under the leadership of the Baptist minister Reverend Leon Sullivan and the local branch of the NAACP, African Americans staged an escalating series of boycotts and mass demonstrations during the late 1950s and early 1960s. They called for an end to racial discrimination among major corporate employers, labor unions, and the municipal government itself. Such protests opened up jobs to blacks in new categories of skilled labor with the city’s institution of the “Philadelphia Plan”; this program provided a model for the U.S. Department of Labor’s effort to end segregation and discrimination in the construction industry nationwide. Sullivan’s ideas, which emphasized the so-called “hand up” instead of “hand out” approach to social change, also gained organized expression in his Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC). President Lyndon B. Johnson modeled the self-help features of his own War on Poverty program on Sullivan’s OIC. Cecil Moore, Sullivan’s successor as head of the NAACP, helped to expand the scope of black protests deep into the city’s working-class and poor communities. Moore and his working-class constituents staged numerous street demonstrations and nonviolent direct action campaigns between 1963 and 1965. In Pittsburgh, African Americans formed a variety of new grassroots nonviolent direct action organizations to fight for social justice. These organizations included the United Negro Protest Committee (UNPC),

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the Black United Movement for Progress, Operation Dig, and the Black Construction Coalition (BCC). In alliance with the NAACP, Urban League, and their white supporters, the mass marches and protest activities of these groups targeted discrimination in a broad cross-section of private and public institutions: area department stores, hospitals, and schools; the construction trades, the steel industry, and other industrial firms; utility companies, real estate firms, banks, and other financial institutions. Pivotal leaders in the civil rights and political struggles of Pittsburgh’s black community included Byrd Brown, attorney and president of the local branch of the NAACP; Jim McCoy, organizer for the United Steel Workers of America; William “Bouie” Haden, community activist; Alma Fox, executive director of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP; Nate Smith, labor activist; and Donald McIlvane, Catholic priest, to name only a few. Despite the successes of nonviolent direct action and boycott campaigns, growing numbers of African Americans in Pennsylvania expressed increasing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of social change. In Pittsburgh, blacks repeatedly lamented the destructive impact of urban renewal on the city’s Lower Hill District black community. In 1959, the city completed its $22 million domed Civic Arena, a combined convention and sports facility, alongside luxury high-rise apartments. Construction of the Civic Arena, located in the Lower Hill, destroyed 1,300 buildings and forced the removal of some 400 businesses and 1,551 families (8,000 residents), mostly African Americans (1,239 black compared to 312 white families). According to the Pittsburgh Courier, black Pittsburghers resented urban renewal and the city’s predominantly white Renaissance, a partnership between public- and private-sector leaders, designed to rebuild the city’s industrial infrastructure. On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King’s assassination, their anger erupted into violence in Pittsburgh’s

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Hill District. Over the next eight days, looting and fire bombing spread to other parts of the city and region. The governor sent some 4,500 national guardsmen and 350 state troopers to the city. Five nights of arson and looting resulted in 1,300 arrests; one death; 515 fires; and $620,000 in property damage. The revolt of 1968 ushered in the black power phase of the African American freedom struggle. Blacks in Pittsburgh soon developed a militant Black Construction Coalition (BCC). In an effort to improve the employment of black workers in the building and construction trade, the BCC mobilized mass marches and closed down a number of major construction sites in the city. At about the same time, Pittsburgh’s black community also witnessed the emergence of the shortlived branch of the Black Panther Party. Formed in February 1966, Philadelphia’s Black People’s Unity Movement (BPUM) blended Malcolm X’s call for a revitalized form of black socioeconomic, cultural, and political nationalism with an emphasis on community organizing and the development of grassroots black leadership. BPUM not only pushed for black history and culture courses in secondary and postsecondary institutions, but also established the groundwork for black Philadelphia’s sponsorship of the Third National Conference on Black Power and the rise of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. Philadelphia’s Black Power Movement resulted in antigang programs for black youth, black history and culture activities like the Freedom Library, massive black power rallies, and especially mass demonstrations by predominantly black, poor, and working-class public-school students to gain control of schools with predominantly black student bodies. Although the Black Power Movement in Philadelphia aimed to place black men at the center of their families and communities as the principal decision makers and actors, African American women took center stage in a variety of

actions, including the fight against police brutality and mistreatment of the poor, as reflected in the Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization (PWRO) and the Council of Organizations on Philadelphia Police Accountability (COPPAR). In Philadelphia, blacks built upon the gains of the modern black freedom struggle, forged an interracial alliance, and elected Wilson Goode the city’s first black mayor in 1983. Before Pennsylvania’s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements could consolidate gains and transform the lives of the masses of poor and working-class blacks, white resistance and deindustrialization intensified, unemployment escalated, and urban poverty expanded. Together, these developments undercut the fruits of the modern black freedom movement. Workingand middle-class whites increasingly challenged affirmative action and other efforts to redress historic and contemporary class and racial inequities. In Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the “color conscious” affirmative action principles of the Philadelphia Plan, which sought proportional representation of blacks in skilled and white-collar jobs commensurate with their numbers in the metropolitan workforce. It also required construction firms with government contracts and grant-in-aid money (for building bridges, hospitals, schools, libraries, and government buildings) to prepare specific hiring schedules designed to integrate minorities into their workforces.

Modern Pennsylvania Hostility toward desegregation and other fruits of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements increased by the final quarter of the twentieth century. In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, workingand lower-middle-class whites rallied behind conservative and racially biased police departments. In Philadelphia, they also helped to elect Frank Rizzo, the Italian American deputy commissioner

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Members of the radical organization MOVE hold sawed-off shotguns and automatic weapons as they stand in front of their barricaded headquarters in Philadelphia, May 21, 1977. The MOVE members were upset about reports that the city planned to inspect the house and possibly order them out for housing violations. (AP/Wide World Photos)

of police, to the mayor’s office—presumably to protect white neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the threat of black power. In Pittsburgh, Mayor Richard Caliguiri rescinded agreements to hire blacks and other minorities in the city’s fire and police departments; resisted implementation of a minority business enterprise program; and hampered implementation of affirmative action programs like the Pittsburgh Plan, which provided black men job training for the building trades. Even as the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements took hold, the underlying political economy of manufacturing rapidly dissipated. Between the end of World War II and 1965, employment in Philadelphia’s basic industries dropped by 25 percent. Manufacturing jobs declined by 66 percent, and textile jobs dropped by 33 percent. Chemical, food processing, and

tobacco manufacturing also suffered similar declines. In predominantly black North Philadelphia, the number of residents reporting gainful employment plummeted from 143,000 in 1950 to under 72,000 in 1970. In Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, the steel industry had nearly disappeared from the urban landscape by the turn of the twenty-first century. U.S. Steel closed its blast furnace and mill complexes at Rankin (1982), Duquesne (1984), Homestead (1986), McKeesport (1987), and, except for a coke plant, Clairton (1984). During the same period, Jones and Laughlin (later LTV Steel) closed its Hazelwood and South Side plants in Pittsburgh, along with its Aliquippa Works in Beaver County. The world’s leading producer of electric generators, transformers, and airbrake equipment, Westinghouse Electric and Westinghouse Airbrake, trimmed 15,000 workers from

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the East Pittsburgh works in the 1980s, before closing its doors as a manufacturer of air brakes and electric generators in the 1990s. By the end of the century, manufacturing jobs made up less than 15 percent of the Pittsburgh region’s workforce and unemployment soared to over twice the national average. In 1986, the U.S. Steel Corporation changed its name to USX and acquired two large energy firms, the company acknowledging the passing of the “steel era” in the history of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. The number of jobs in government, services, and finance equaled those in manufacturing. Political and business leaders enthusiastically announced the rise of a new era. In 1985 and again in 2007, Rand McNally selected Pittsburgh as the nation’s “most livable city.” The decline of the industrial economy took a huge toll on the African American community. Pittsburgh’s black population dropped from 105,000 in 1970 to just over 94,000 in 2000. In his report on blacks and deindustrialization, the journalist Jim McKay reported that, “It seems everyone knows or is related to young blacks who left Pittsburgh for an education and didn’t or couldn’t return because of the lack of job opportunities.” In the spring of 1990, the Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story on the “Reverse Exodus” of middle-class African Americans from northern cities like Pittsburgh to Sunbelt cities like Atlanta. Eric Thompson, a 29-year-old accountant at Mellon Bank’s Pittsburgh office, quit his job and moved to Atlanta, where he took a job at CocaCola’s corporate headquarters. Compared to Mellon, he said Coca-Cola provided blacks more opportunities to work in “revenue generating jobs.” The number of complaints filed with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) continued to rise through the early 1990s, before peaking at about 4,850 in 1993–1994. Although some blacks preferred to base their complaints on grounds other than the color of their skin, the percentage of race-based complaints nonetheless

ranged between 15 and 20 percent of all cases filed with the PHRC. As unemployment spread across the urban landscape in Pennsylvania’s major cities, African Americans confronted a series of new challenges, including the spread of urban poverty and the rise of what sociologist William J. Wilson described as the “Underclass” in the 1980s and 1990s. Coupled with the spread of single-parent households and the AIDS epidemic, drug addiction and blackon-black youth homicides escalated with the advent of crack cocaine in the 1980s. These destructive social changes not only underlay disproportionately high rates of incarceration, especially for young African American men, in the state’s expanding prison complex, but underscored a growing cleavage between highly educated middle-class and elite blacks on the one hand, and their poor and working-class kinsmen and women on the other. During the closing years of the twentieth century and the opening of the new millennium, African Americans in Pennsylvania again built upon their history of struggle to address the emergence of new patterns of class, racial, and gender inequality. In October 1995, under the leadership of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Pennsylvania blacks joined their counterparts from across the country for the Million Man March on Washington. This movement aimed to address the crisis confronting young black men in the nation’s major metropolitan areas. Two years later, in Philadelphia, black women from different parts of the country staged a Million Woman March. African American women called attention to persistent patterns of gender as well as class and racial inequality in African American and American society. In the 1990s, partly as a way to overcome the limits of prevailing affirmativeaction programs, particularly in education and employment, African Americans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere rallied behind a renascent reparations movement.

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In the presidential election of 2008, African Americans in Pennsylvania and the larger United States rallied behind the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Obama promised “Change we can believe in” and the “Audacity of Hope.” African Americans and people from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds built an aggressive “Get Out the Vote for Obama” campaign. They helped to elect Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States and the first president of African descent. Obama’s election signaled the emergence of a new and more hopeful moment in Pennsylvania and the nation’s history. Although the full impact of the Obama years is yet to be seen, blacks remain hopeful that he can make good on his promise to help build a more just and humane social order.

Notable African Americans The Million Woman March brought more than 300,000 African American women to Philadelphia on October 25, 1997, with a goal of building political, economic, and social unity within the African American community. (AP/Wide World Photos)

At various points in their history, particularly during the black power era, some African Americans had advocated reparations for past injustices, including colonial-era slavery in the Commonwealth. The reparations movement sought “just compensation as an entitlement” for generations of uncompensated and undercompensated African American labor in the development of the state and nation. In the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, the movement for reparations dissipated. In the wake of 9/11, African Americans in Pennsylvania and the nation found it increasingly difficult to push an aggressive social justice agenda. Passage of the Patriot Act and the intensification of other measures designed to ensure national security put a damper on radical movements for social change.

Allen, Richard (1760–1831) Richard Allen was born in Germantown to slave parents in bondage to a Quaker master, who eventually sold the Allen family to a new master with a plantation near Dover, Delaware. As a teenager, Allen began attending meetings of the local Methodist society and taught himself to read and write. In 1780, Allen purchased his freedom, and in 1784, he was recognized as a preacher by the Methodist Conference held in Baltimore. In 1786, he became a preacher at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, but because the black congregants he drew to the church were segregated into a black gallery for worship, Allen and another black Methodist preacher, Absalom Jones, withdrew from St. George’s and formed the Free Africa Society, a mutual aid society for Philadelphia’s black community. In 1794, Allen opened Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia for black worshippers. Although ordained as the first black Methodist minister in 1799, Allen’s church was

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Richard Allen (1760–1831), founder and first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. (Daniel Alexander Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church [1891])

still under white oversight. In 1816, Allen united the black Methodist congregations in the Philadelphia region to form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States. Serving as the first AME bishop, Allen, along with Absalom Jones and James Forten, became a leader of the black community in Philadelphia, where he opposed the efforts of the white American Colonization Society to return blacks to Africa, seeking instead to win civil rights for blacks in America. Always a friend to runaway slaves, Allen operated a station on the Underground Railroad from 1797 until his death in March 1831.

Anderson, Marian (1897–1993) Born in Philadelphia, Marian Anderson was the most celebrated American contralto of the twentieth century, performing concerts and recitals

An African American, Marian Anderson was amazingly popular despite racial discrimination in the United States. Her performance at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 remains a symbolic event in the Civil Rights Movement. (Library of Congress)

around the world from the 1920s to the 1960s. Her career exemplified the struggles of black artists against the racial prejudice that limited their career opportunities. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing before an integrated audience at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. However, through the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President Franklin Roosevelt, Anderson sang at an open-air concert before the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939. The concert was attended by over 75,000 people and heard by millions on the radio. In 1955, Anderson became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in 1957 and 1961, she sang at the inaugurations of Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. She lent her prestige and popularity to the Civil Rights Movement, singing benefit concerts for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Pennsylvania and the NAACP. She also sang at the March on Washington in 1963. In 1958, she was designated a delegate of the United Nations and acted as a U.S. ambassador of goodwill around the world. She was the recipient of various awards in her later years, including a Congressional Gold Medal, and a George Peabody Award.

Forten, James (1766–1842) Born free in Philadelphia, James Forten was educated at a school for black children established by Quakers. During the Revolutionary War, Forten served on an American privateer until he was captured by the British. After the war, he apprenticed with a sailmaker, rose to be shop foreman, and eventually established his own sailmaking business. This venture made him one of the wealthiest black men in America and a leader, along with Methodist ministers Richard Allen

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and Absalom Jones, of the Philadelphia black community. In 1812, at the start of the war with Britain, Forten, Allen, and Jones helped raised a force of blacks to help defend Philadelphia from attack. A leading antislavery activist, Forten passed his convictions on to his children, who continued to be prominent in the abolitionist movement. Forten died in Philadelphia in March 1842.

Goode, Wilson (1938–) Born in North Carolina, Wilson Goode moved to Philadelphia in 1954. After earning degrees from Morgan State University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a master’s in government administration, Goode became a community activist and cofounded the Black Political Forum. In the 1970s, he became the first African American appointed to the Pennsylvania

Wilson Goode, second from right, raises his hand as he takes the oath of the mayor’s office, January 2, 1983, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Goode is Pennsylvania’s first African American mayor. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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Public Utilities Commission, and eventually rose to the commission chairmanship. He entered the Philadelphia mayor’s office in 1979 as a managing director, a position that gave him high political visibility. In 1983, Goode won a racially polarized Democratic primary for mayor over former mayor Frank Rizzo and then defeated the Republican in the general election to become the first black mayor of Philadelphia. In 1985, the police confrontation with the black radical group MOVE resulted in the firebombing of MOVE headquarters, the deaths of 11 people, and the destruction of almost a whole city block. Inquires initiated by Goode called the mayor’s judgment into question and although he won reelection in 1987, his popularity and support among the black community suffered. Goode left office in 1992 and has since held various positions in the U.S. Department of Education and earned a doctorate of ministry from Palmer Theological Seminary.

Jones, Absalom (1746–1818) Born into slavery in Delaware, Absalom Jones, in 1762, was sold to a Philadelphia merchant, from whom he purchased his freedom in 1785. He became a lay minister at St. George’s Methodist Church, where, with Richard Allen, he became one of the first recognized ministers in the United States. In 1787, Jones and Allen founded the Free African Society, a nondenominational mutual aid society for Philadelphia’s black community. Unhappy with white limitations on black worshippers at St. George’s, Jones founded the independent African Church in 1792. In 1794, his congregation became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first black Episcopal congregation in the United States. Jones became a deacon in 1795 and the first black Episcopal priest in 1804. A strong antislavery advocate, Jones was a member of a group of African Americans who petitioned Congress in 1793 to protest

the federal Fugitive Slave Act. Jones died in Philadelphia in February 1818.

Locke, Alain (1885–1954) Born in Philadelphia, Alain Locke graduated from Harvard University with degrees in English and philosophy. The first African American Rhodes Scholar, Locke was denied admittance to Oxford but studied in both Berlin and Paris and was eventually appointed to a professorship in English at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1918 and then returned to Howard as chair of the Philosophy Department. Influenced by his friends, W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter Woodson, Locke became known for encouraging African American writers, artists, and musicians to look to Africa for inspiration for their work. In 1925, he edited an issue of the periodical Survey Graphic, which focused on the black cultural flowering then beginning in Harlem and introduced the Harlem Renaissance to a white readership. Locke then expanded the issue into a published collection of writings entitled The New Negro, which expounded Locke’s philosophy of black self-awareness of equality with white society. Blacks could enforce true equality by insisting upon it in their words and actions and by refusing to accept unreasonable white demands as to how blacks should behave. Locke’s philosophy became a driving force behind the development of the Harlem Renaissance, greatly influenced such important Renaissance figures as Zora Neale Hurston, and led to Locke himself being called “the Father of the Harlem Renaissance.” Locke retired from Howard in 1953 and died in New York City in June 1954.

Nix, Robert, Sr. (1898–1987) Born in South Carolina, Nix came to Pennsylvania to attend Lincoln University, from which he

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The son of Robert Nix Sr., Robert Nix Jr. was born in Philadelphia and, like his father, earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After serving in the U.S. Army, Nix became a deputy attorney general and then entered his father’s law firm as a partner. He acquired a reputation as a civil rights advocate, representing such groups as United Neighbors, which sought improvements in their impoverished West Philadelphia neighborhood. Elected to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in 1967, Nix was appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by the governor in 1971 and became the first African American to be elected to statewide office when he won election to the court in 1972. In 1984, Nix became chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and served as president of the National Council of Chief Justices in 1991–1992. He retired from the bench in 1996 and died in Philadelphia in August 2003.

completed an activist training course conducted by the American Friends Service Committee. He moved to Harlem, entered City College of New York, and participated in the effort to defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine black men accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. Working with A. Philip Randolph and A. J. Muste, Rustin became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, proposing a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in the armed forces. In 1942, Rustin was involved indirectly in the founding of CORE, then a pacifist organization that endorsed the nonviolent techniques of Mohandas Gandhi. A pacifist, Rustin was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he organized the Journey of Reconciliation, the first of the Freedom Rides designed to test the recent Supreme Court ruling banning racial discrimination in interstate transportation. In North Carolina, Rustin and other freedom riders were arrested for violating local Jim Crow laws and served 22 days on a chain gang. In 1948, Rustin travelled to India to learn nonviolent resistance techniques from Gandhi’s followers, and in 1956, Martin Luther King sought advice from Rustin on the use of nonviolence in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, Rustin participated with King in the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), but Rustin’s homosexuality and former association with the Communist Party led to his forced resignation from the SCLC board in 1960. Rustin and A. Philip Randolph organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, but Senator Strom Thurmond’s use of Rustin’s sexuality to falsely imply a relationship between him and King meant that he did not receive any public recognition for his role in the march. Rustin died in August 1987.

Rustin, Bayard (1912–1987)

Sampson, Edith (c. 1901–1979)

Born in West Chester, Bayard Rustin attended Wilberforce University in Ohio and then

Born in Pittsburgh, Edith Sampson studied law at John Marshall Law School while working as a

graduated in 1921. He then earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and began practicing in Philadelphia, where he became active in Democratic politics. He became a Pennsylvania deputy attorney general in 1934 and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1956. In 1958, he won a special election to become the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Reelected 10 times, Nix served on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. He was defeated for reelection in the Democratic primary in 1978 by William H. Gray III. The Robert N. C. Nix Federal Building in Philadelphia is named for him. He died in June 1987.

Nix, Robert, Jr. (1928–2003)

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Bayard Rustin was one of the most skillful organizers among the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. He was also influential in a range of other causes: pacifism, refugees, nuclear disarmament, Japanese American rights, and gay rights. (Library of Congress)

social worker in Chicago in the 1920s. Sampson was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1927 and opened a law practice that served the black community of Chicago’s South Side. In 1943, she became one of the first African American members of the National Association of Women Lawyers and in 1947 was appointed assistant state’s attorney for Cook County. President Truman appointed Sampson an alternate delegate to the United Nations, making her the first African American to represent the United States at the United Nations. In 1961, Sampson became the first African American representative to NATO. In 1962, she was elected a judge of the Municipal Court of Chicago—the first black woman elected to an Illinois judgeship. In 1966, she became an

associate judge on the Cook County Circuit Court, serving until her retirement in 1978. She died in October 1979.

Sullivan, Leon Howard (1922–2001) Born in West Virginia, Leon Howard Sullivan became a Baptist minister before moving to New York in 1943 to attend Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. He served as assistant pastor of Baptist churches in New York and New Jersey before moving to Philadelphia in 1950 to became pastor of Zion Baptist Church. Serving at Zion until 1988, he increased the membership tenfold and became widely known as “the Lion of Zion.”

Pennsylvania Finding that young blacks in Philadelphia were being denied jobs, Sullivan asked the city’s largest firms to interview black applicants; but when he got little response, Sullivan organized a series of boycotts with the slogan “Don’t buy where you don’t work.” Because African Americans comprised a fifth of the city’s population, the boycotts were highly effective, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. consulted with Sullivan on how best to organize boycotts in other cities under the direction of King’s SCLC. In 1962, Sullivan began the 10–36 plan, asking members of his congregation to put down $10 for 36 months to provide development funds for housing, education, and health projects to support the black community. The plan eventually set up several legal entities to manage the funds and use them to leverage loans for larger projects. Sullivan also became active in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. He developed a series of guidelines known as the Sullivan Principles by which companies operating in South Africa could oppose apartheid without completely divesting. As a member of the board of General Motors, Sullivan also pushed that company to stop doing business with South Africa until it changed its racial policies. Sullivan died in Scottsdale, Arizona, in April 2001.

Waters, Ethel (1896–1977) Born in Chester, Ethel Waters was the child of her mother’s rape at age 13, and thus had a difficult and peripatetic childhood. In 1913, she sang two songs at a Baltimore nightclub, and so impressed her listeners that she was offered a job as a singer at Baltimore’s Lincoln Theater. She toured with the black vaudeville circuit before moving to Harlem in 1919. In 1921, she became one of the first African American woman singers to make a record. She toured with various groups and played various clubs, gaining a growing reputation as a Broadway and blues singer. In the

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1930s, she performed with such artists as Duke Ellington. In 1933, she starred in a satirical black film, Rufus Jones for President. She performed regularly at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and performed in As Thousands Cheer, a Broadway musical review in which she was the only black in an otherwise white cast. By the late 1930s, Waters was singing on a national radio program, appearing on Broadway, and performing in nightclubs. In 1942, she appeared in the all-black film musical Cabin in the Sky. The film was successful, but Waters was distressed by the attention given her younger costar Lena Horne. In 1949, Waters was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress in Pinky and won praise for her performance in the 1952 film Member of the Wedding. She starred in the television show Beulah in 1950, but quit the role when she found the show’s portrayal of African Americans to be demeaning. Her career began to fade in the mid1950s; she died in California in September 1977.

Williams, Daniel Hale (1856–1931) Born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Daniel Hale Williams became the nation’s first African American cardiologist and the first doctor to perform successful surgery on the heart. In 1891, Williams founded Provident Hospital in Chicago for the training of nurses and the care of black patients. Provident was the first integrated hospital in the United States. In 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Williams surgeonin-chief at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Williams also taught clinical surgery at Maharry Medical College in Nashville and was an attending doctor at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He was a charter member and the only African American member of the American College of Surgeons and a founder of the National Medical Association for African American physicians. He died in Michigan in August 1931.

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Wright, Jonathan Jasper (1840–1885) Born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Jonathan Wright studied at Lancastrian University in Ithaca, New York, before returning home to read in the law at a local law firm. After two years of study, during which time he supported himself by teaching, Wright entered the office of Judge Collins in Wilkes-Barre, where he studied for another year. He then applied for admission to the Pennsylvania Bar, but was not allowed to even take the examination. In 1865, the American Missionary Society sent him to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work as a teacher among the newly freed slaves. He then returned to Pennsylvania and demanded to be examined for the bar. Upon being found qualified to practice law, he became the first African American admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar on August 13, 1865. In 1866, he returned to Beaufort as a Freedmen’s Bureau advisor to local freedmen. In 1868, he was elected as a delegate to the South Carolina constitution convention, where he served as vice president and was instrumental in drafting the judicial portions of the new constitution. He was elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1870 and served until 1877, when he entered private practice in Charleston. He died in Charleston in 1885.

Cultural Contributions Black Pennsylvanians have contributed enormously to the cultural heritage of the nation. Among the musicians, artists, authors, and entertainers are the world-renowned contralto Marian Anderson, singer-actor Ethel Waters (whose rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” on the Billy Graham Crusade television ministry has become a classic; she also has an autobiography by the same title), the acclaimed playwright August Wilson (a native of Pittsburgh, the setting for most of his plays), the prize-winning painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (whose major works include “The Banjo

Lesson” and “The Resurrection of Lazarus”), Horace Pippin, a primitivist whose themes include traditional Christian values, John G. Chaplin (who employed classical subjects in such works as “The Death of Hannibal” and “The Dream of Nebuchanezzar”), entertainer Bill Cosby, sculptors Charles Edgar Patience (who is best known for the carving of anthracite and whose works can be seen at the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton), and Meta Warwick Fuller (a modernist who uses themes of black pride), and author Alain Locke (whose The New Negro and other works are major interpretations of African American culture). Most of the cities and towns in Pennsylvania sponsor annual festivals celebrating African American culture. For example, there is a Celebration of Black Writing, which displays writings of African Americans in all genres and includes panels, workshops, and drama. Since 1994, Pennsylvania State University at Altoona has held a heritage and arts festival which includes culture, history, music, dance, and storytelling. Harrisburg has an annual African American family festival. Juneteenth festivals are celebrated across the state, commemorating the month in which African Americans in Texas and the Southwest learned of the emancipation of slaves. The Philadelphia celebration also includes a parade; the Pittsburgh festival has amusement park rides, national recording artists, and food; and the Chester festival includes church services and the crowning of the prince and princess of Juneteenth. Major cultural sites in Pennsylvania include the Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia (founding site of the African Methodist Episcopal Church). Also in Philadelphia is the African American Museum (one of the oldest black museums in the country) and the Art Sanctuary. In Pittsburgh there is the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, which sponsors education and performing and visual programs on African and African American culture. There is an African American Cultural Center at Indiana

Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania, which features a collection of materials on the life and history of African Americans; a Black Cultural Center at Swarthmore College; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which features an exhibition on “African American Artists Celebrate Community.”

Bibliography African-American Museum in Philadelphia. www.fieldtrip.com/pa/55740380.htm. Anderson, Elijah. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Black History in Pennsylvania, Arts and Architecture. www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/ community/arts_and_architecture/18090/scul.

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Among Northern Free Blacks 1700–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Juneteenth Celebration. www.juneteenthcelebration .com and www.juneteenth.com/Openn_us.htm. Kusmer, Kenneth L., and Joe W. Trotter Jr., eds. African American Urban History since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Lane, Roger. William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. McBride, David. Blacks in Pennsylvania History: Research and Education Perspectives. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1983.

Blockson, Charles L. African Americans in Pennsylvania: A History and Guide. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994.

Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community 1720–1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Carnegie Library, African American Culture. www.clpgh.org/research/socialstudies/ afroamericans/culture.html.

Pennsylvania History. Stories from. http:// explorepahistory.com/story.php?storyId =15&chapter=4.

Countryman, Matthew J. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Tanner, Henry Ossawa. http://baartquake.blogspot .com/2010/01/henry-ossawa-tanner-african -american.html.

Curry, Leonard P. The Free Black in Urban America 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Trotter, Joe William, Jr. River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

Downey, Dennis B., and Raymond M. Hyser. No Crooked Death: Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. 1899; report with introduction by Elijah Anderson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest

Trotter, Joe William, Jr., and Jared N. Day. Race and Renaissance. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Trotter, Joe William, Jr., and Eric Ledell Smith, eds. African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Winch, Julie. Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy 1787–1848. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

RHODE ISLAND Alton Hornsby, Jr.

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Chronology 1652

Legislation is enacted against slavery in Rhode Island, indicating that black slaves were present in the colony by this date.

1708

Black slaves outnumber white indentured servants in Rhode Island by a ratio of 8 to 1.

1709–1807

In the century before the United States ended the slave trade, Rhode Island merchants sponsor over 900 slaving voyages and bring over 100,000 African slaves to the American colonies.

1714

Rhode Island passes a law punishing anyone who helps a slave leave the colony without his or her master’s consent.

1729

Rhode Island enacts a law requiring a slave master to post a bond of £100 before freeing a slave to ensure that support of the newly freed slave did not become a public charge.

1750

Newport and Bristol are the major slave markets in the American colonies.

1755

The African American population in Rhode Island is estimated at 11.5 percent of the total population.

1765

Sent by the Nicholas Brown Company, the Sally brings back a cargo of African slaves to Rhode Island. During the voyage, 109 of the 167 Africans die at sea.

1778

The Rhode Island legislature allows blacks to serve in the Revolutionary War.

1778

(August 29) The 1st Rhode Island Regiment of African Americans defeats the British at the Battle of Portsmouth.

1784

The Rhode Island legislature approves the gradual emancipation of slaves.

1790

(May 29) Rhode Island enters the Union as the 13th state.

1796

Rhode Island merchant John Brown is acquitted of violations of the 1794 federal Slave Trade Act, which prohibited vessels trading slaves in foreign countries from outfitting in U.S. ports.

1807

African Americans comprise an estimated 21 percent of the slave-trading crews operating out of Newport.

1820s

African Americans in Rhode Island must attend segregated schools.

1820s

A race riot erupts in Hard-Scrabble, a black neighborhood of Providence.

1824

The African Union Society, a self-help group, is formed in Rhode Island.

1865

(February 2) Rhode Island becomes the second state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

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1867

(February 7) Rhode Island ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full citizenship rights to African Americans.

1870

(January 18) Rhode Island ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing blacks the right to vote.

1872

Rhode Island enacts a miscegenation law prohibiting interracial marriages; violations are punished by a $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment.

1885

Mahlon Van Horne is elected to the Rhode Island legislature.

1896

Mahlon Van Horne is appointed to a diplomatic post in the West Indies by President William McKinley.

1928

For the first time, non-property owners are allowed to participate in Rhode Island local elections.

1932

William H. Jackson Sr., the first black doorkeeper at the Rhode Island Statehouse attends the Republican National Convention, where he authors an antilynching plank for the party platform.

1947

Al Lima becomes the first black officer hired by the Providence Police Department.

1960

(November) Martin Luther Kings Jr. speaks at Brown University.

1963

(February 14) Rhode Island ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1966

The first African American is elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives.

1966

Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at the University of Rhode Island.

1967

(April) Martin Luther King Jr. speaks against the Vietnam War at Brown University.

1968

In the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rhode Island Assembly enacts the nation’s toughest prohibition of discrimination in housing.

1970

Blacks comprise about 9 percent of the population of Providence.

1980

Paul Gaines is elected as the first African American mayor of Newport.

1982

The first African American state senator is elected in Rhode Island.

2006

A monument to the 1st Rhode Island Regiment of African Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War is dedicated in Portsmouth.

2006

The median household income for a white Rhode Island family is over $70,000, while for a black Rhode Island family, it is about $43,500.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Rhode Island with about 63 percent of the vote.

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Historical Overview African American slavery began in Rhode Island by 1652. By the end of the seventeenth century, the colony was the only one to use enslaved Africans for both labor and trade. The towns of Bristol and Newport became the major slavetrading markets in the North American colonies. Although a principal site of the slave trade, Rhode Island’s slave population trailed that of its neighboring colonies, Connecticut and Massachusetts, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1708, for example, African slaves accounted for 5.9 percent of the colony’s small population. By 1755, they were 11.5 percent of the population. On the eve of the American Revolution, Rhode Island’s 3,761 blacks were down to 6.3 percent of the colony’s total population, but that number was still nearly twice as great as any of the neighboring New England colonies. African slaves worked principally in agriculture and as craftsmen and domestic servants. They were also stonemasons and stone cutters, builders of boats and buildings, and distillers of rum. In Narragansett County, the bondspersons worked on large plantations, similar to those in the Deep South. Hence the county became known as “South Country.” Some slaves were even employed as seamen on slave-trading ships. By 1807, for example, they made up 21 percent of the crews operating out of Newport. Black and white abolitionists fought slavery from the beginning. Moses Brown, a Quaker, for example, freed his slaves shortly after his conversion. He then became one of the leading abolitionists in Rhode Island. Another prominent abolitionist was Reverend Samuel Hopkins, pastor of First Congregational Church. Hopkins, remarkably liberal for his times, preached against slavery from his pulpit, tried to train two freed persons for missionary work in Africa, and advocated racial equality. He became a good friend of African American composer Newport Gardner.

Rhode Island communities were also important “stations” on the Underground Railroad, as escaped slaves made their way to Canada. Moses Brown of Providence was a “station master,” that is, a coordinator of antislavery activities. Another prominent “conductor” on the railroad was Elizabeth Buffrum Chase, who provided her home as a “station” on the railroad. The Revolutionary War provided the first opportunity for freedom for a number of enslaved African Americans. In February 1778, faced with a serious manpower shortage, the Rhode Island legislature passed a law that promised free blacks enlisting in the army “all the bounties, wages and encouragements of other troops.” Black slaves were promised freedom if they served faithfully. The black soldiers served separately in all black units under white officers led by Colonel Nathaniel Green. On August 29, 1778, the First Rhode Island Regiment, the first all-black army unit in the history of the United States, defeated British and Hessian troops at the battle of Portsmouth, Rhode Island (one of the largest land battles fought during the war). Some of the regiment’s soldiers had enlisted in order to gain their freedom. But at the end of the war, although the regiment had served courageously for five years, the unit was disbanded without pay and left to find their way home alone from Saratoga, New York. A monument to the soldiers was dedicated in Patriots Park in Portsmouth in 2006. The American Revolution also occasioned a heated debate between Quaker abolitionists and the slave traders over emancipation. In February 1784, the state legislature passed a compromise bill calling for gradual emancipation. Under the measure all children of slaves born after March 1 were to be designated apprentices, with the girls to be granted freedom at age 18 and the boys at age 21. This gradual plan of emancipation stretched out the actual time to the end of bondage for more than 50 years. In 1800, the number

Rhode Island of bondspersons in Rhode Island was nearly 390. Forty years later, slavery was virtually ended in the state, as there were only five bondspersons listed in the census. Yet as part of the compromise of 1784, the slave trade itself continued. Even after the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794, some slave traders still violated the prohibition of ships transporting slaves to foreign countries from outfitting in American ports. Only after authorities began confiscating ships that violated the act did the Rhode Island slave traders desist. With the end of slavery and the slave trade in Rhode Island, the state sought new means of addressing its “Negro problem.” Like most of the northern states at the time, it developed plans to discourage free blacks from remaining in the state and to control those that did. In the post-emancipation era, tensions developed between black and white laborers over jobs. In the 1820s, African Americans were also segregated in schools and disfranchised. During this period, white rioters attacked black property in the Hard-Scrabble neighborhood. A decade later, blacks and whites in Providence rioted for four days. By this time the blacks were 7.2 percent of Providence’s population, thus constituting one of the largest clusters of blacks in the state. Throughout the state African Americans worked as they had in bondage, in agriculture, domestic services, and various positions connected to the sea. Some owned their own businesses and several owned their own homes. Like African Americans elsewhere, the principal community institution for Rhode Island blacks was the church. Several churches, including the prestigious Union Congregational Church, were founded before emancipation by free blacks. Other prominent organizations included the African Benevolent Society, the African Colonization Society, the African Union Society (out of which the Union Congregational Church emerged in 1824; some scholars claim that the Union was the first self-help group among

741

African Americans), and a shelter for black children. The John Hope Settlement, named in honor of an 1894 African American graduate of Brown University who went on to become president of Morehouse College and Atlanta University, was founded for the recreational and other social activities of African Americans and any others who cared to participate. There were also Boy Scouts units, women’s clubs, and local branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). African Americans, because of their small numbers, have not played an important role in the political life of Rhode Island. One of the most notable black politicians was Mahlon Van Horne. He was the first black to serve on the Newport school committee, holding office in 1873 and 1892. He was also the first black to be elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly, where he served from 1885 to 1887. In 1896, he was appointed U.S. consul-general to St. Thomas, West Indies by President William McKinley. William H. Jackson Sr., a Republican, was the first black doorkeeper at the Rhode Island Statehouse and went to the Republican National Convention in 1932, where he authored an antilynching plank for the platform. In recent times, the first African American was elected to the state house in 1966; in 1982, the first state senator was elected; two blacks have been elected to Providence’s 15member city council, and Paul Gaines was elected Newport’s mayor in 1980. The African American population of Rhode Island did not grow substantially in the period of the world wars and throughout the great black migrations to the North during that same time frame. A 2008 estimate placed the black percentage of the population at 6.4 percent of the 1,050,788 residents. African Americans continued to prefer urban living. A 2010 estimate found that 15 percent of them lived in Providence, 8 percent in Newport, and 4 percent in Pawtucket. The

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black presence in the remaining cities and towns was negligible. Although free from legalized segregation since before the Civil War, the African Americans in Rhode Island continued to face disadvantages that were apparently based on race. For example, the State of Blacks in Rhode Island Planning Commission reported in 2008 that blacks lagged behind nonblacks in education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. And the Rhode Island Family Life Center revealed in a 2005 report that 12 percent of African Americans in Rhode Island could not vote. It concluded that Rhode Island had the 13th highest rate of African American disfranchisement in the nation.

Notable African Americans

Gaines, Paul L. (1932–) Paul L. Gaines was the first black mayor of Newport, Rhode Island. Gaines was also instrumental in bringing about the erection in Portsmouth of a monument to the Rhode Island black regiment that fought in the Revolutionary War; the monument was dedicated in 2006.

Gardner, Newport (Occramar Marycoo) (1746–1826) An exslave, Newport Gardner was a composer and music teacher, who operated his own school in Rhode Island before transplanting to Boston. His most noted works were “Crooked Shanks” and “Promise.” In 1826, he returned to Africa, settling in Liberia, at the age of 80.

Bannister, Edward (1833–1901)

Johnson, Barbara R. (dates unknown)

Edward Bannister was a landscape artist who won a bronze medal in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia for “Under the Oaks.” He was probably the first African American to receive a national award in art. He cofounded the Providence Art Club and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Barbara R. Johnson is president of the Women’s Newport League, one of the oldest African American women’s clubs in the United States.

Collins, Hannibal (dates unknown) Hannibal Collins was a member of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the Revolutionary War. He later served under Commodore Oliver Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

Downing, George T. (dates unknown) George T. Downing was an abolitionist, an activist in the movement to desegregate schools in Rhode Island, and owner of a hotel and other businesses in Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1850s and 1860s.

Jones, Sisseretta (1869–1933) Sisseretta Jones received her musical training at the Providence Art Club. Admirers called her the “Black Patti”—a reference to the Italian soprano Adelina Patti (a name she did not like). She performed in this country for presidents and for European royalty.

Pollard, Frederick Douglass “Fritz” (1894–1986) Frederick Pollard, a graduate of Brown University, was a professional football player. He was the first African American to play in the Rose Bowl and the first African American to be an assistant coach in the National Football League. He has been inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

Rhode Island

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of directors, and head of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.

Van Horn, Mahlon (d. 1910) Mahlon Van Horn became pastor of the Union Congregational Church in 1869 and served there for 28 years. He was Rhode Island’s first black elected official. Toward the end of his career, he was a missionary in Antigua, where he died in 1910. His son Alonzo was the first black dentist in Rhode Island.

Wheatland, Marcus F. (c. 1868–1934)

George Schuyler, 1941. (Library of Congress)

Marcus F. Wheatland was born in Barbados and was one of the first black physicians in Rhode Island. He worked at Newport Hospital and was an expert on the application of X-ray technology to the treatment of disease. He served on the Newport town council from 1910 to 1914. In 1994, Newport renamed a street in his honor as Marcus F. Wheatland Boulevard.

Cultural Contributions Schuyler, George (1885–1977) George Schuyler was born in Providence. He was a member of the staff of A. Philip Randolph’s socialist magazine, Messenger, from 1923 to 1928. He also began writing for the Pittsburgh Courier in 1924 and remained with the black weekly newspaper until 1949. From 1937 to 1944, he was also the business manager for the NAACP organ, the Crisis. His books include the controversial Black and Conservative (1966).

Stokes, Keith W. (1958–) Keith Stokes has been executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Rhode Island Foundation board

Rhode Island is the home of two African American early major musicians, Newport Gardner and Sissiretta Jones. It is also the home of landscape artist Edward Bannister. There are also church-sponsored and other musical and literary organizations, such as the Newport Youth Federation Band. The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, founded in 1975, is dedicated to “finding, preserving and telling the history and culture” of African Americans in the state. It is ranked as one of the top 10 African American museums in the country. The Providence Black Repertory Company, founded in 1996, presents artistic performances “inspired by the cultural traditions of the African Disapora” in three areas—theater, education, and public programs.

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In addition to cultural facilities in Providence, there are several African American museums and other properties in Bristol and Newport. In Bristol is the Carrington Palmer Munroe House (c. 1853), a Greek Revival, one-and-a-half-story cottage, which was built by Mr. Munroe, a free black barrelmaker. The house remained in the Munroe family until 1945. African American cultural sites in Newport include God’s Little Acre, an African American burial ground. It contains, perhaps, the largest collection of grave markers of free Africans and slaves dating back to the late 1600s. It also contains perhaps the first artwork by an African American, that of Zingo Stevens, a stone cutter. His family is buried there. Also in Newport is the Quaker Meeting House (1699), built by shipbuilder Paul Cuffe for African American worshippers, and the Bours House, the home and studio of Newport Gardner. Also there is the Rice Family Home, which was built by Isaac Rice, a free black in the mid-eighteenth century. It was a station on the Underground Railroad and is still occupied by Rice’s descendants.

Bibliography Black History in Rhode Island. www.ehow.com/ about_5382567_black-history-rhodeisland.html. Callahan, M. Catherine. “Newport’s Black Community Rooted in African Slavery.” Newport Daily News, July 14, 2007. Conley, Patrick T. Democracy in Decline: Rhode Island’s Constitutional Development, 1775–1841. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1977. Conley, Patrick T. Rhode Island Profile. Providence: Rhode Island Publications Society, 1983.

Coughtry, Jay. The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. Greene, Lorenzo J. The Negro in Colonial New England. Reprint ed. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966. James, Sydney V. Colonial Rhode Island: A History. White Plains, NY: Kraus International, 1975. McLoughlin, William G. Rhode Island: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1978. Méras, Phyllis, and Tom Gannon. Rhode Island, An Explorer’s Guide. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press; New York: Distributed by W. W. Norton, 2000. Moakley, Maureen, and Elmer E. Cornwell. Rhode Island Politics and Government. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Newport Black History. www.eyesofglory.com/ blkhist.htm. “Newport Gardner.” Black Perspective in Music 4, no. 2 (July 1976): 202–207. Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. www .providenceri.com/RI_BlackHeritage/Historical _Highlights.html. Rhode Island General Assembly Web Site. www .rilin.state.ri.us/studteaguide/RhodeIsland History/chap8.htm. Sissieretta Jones Biography. www.lkwdpl.org/ wihohio/jone-sis.htm. Steinberg, Sheila, and Cathleen McGuigan. Rhode Island: An Historical Guide. Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Commission, 1976. Van Broekhoven, Deborah Bingham. The Devotion of These Women: Rhode Island in the Antislavery Network. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

SOUTH CAROLINA Orville Vernon Burton and Nicholas Gaffney

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Chronology 1526

Pre-colonial South Carolina is the location of the first slave revolt on North American soil as enslaved Africans defeat their Spanish owners.

1663

South Carolina is founded as a British colony.

1739

The Stono Rebellion erupts in Stono under the leadership of a slave named Jemmy when approximately 50 slaves rebel and launch an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Spanish Florida.

1788

(May 23) South Carolina enters the Union as the eighth state.

1790

Charleston’s free black population petitions the state legislature for citizenship.

1793

Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin triggers the spread of cotton production and slavery across the South Carolina interior.

1816

Father Morris Brown begins the process of establishing the African Church of Charleston, South Carolina’s first independent black church.

1816

Andrew Jackson attacks a Seminole fort in western Florida harboring nearly 400 escaped African slaves from South Carolina.

1822

Free African American Denmark Vesey attempts to organize a slave rebellion in Charleston.

1832

Under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, South Carolina attempts to set a constitutional precedent by nullifying future antislavery legislation.

1860

(December 20) South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president.

1861

South Carolina fires upon Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, thereby initiating the Civil War.

1865

(January 16) General William T. Sherman issues Field Order No. 15 granting nearly 400,000 acres of the South Carolina and Georgia coast and Sea Islands for black settlement.

1865

(September) Provisional Governor William Perry calls a special session of the state General Assembly to draft the “black codes.”

1865

(November) A Colored People’s Convention is held in Charleston to protest black codes and articulate a desire for political and economic equality for blacks.

1865

(November 13) South Carolina ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

(December 20) South Carolina rejects the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

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1868

(June 25) South Carolina is readmitted to the Union.

1868

(July 9) South Carolina ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby providing sufficient state approvals for the amendment to take effect.

1868

African Americans elect black representatives at the state and federal levels; black elected officials form a racial majority in the state House of Representatives.

1869

(March 15) South Carolina ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights for African Americans.

1877

The Great Compromise triggers the collapse of African American voting rights in South Carolina.

1890

Anti–African American rights candidate Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman is elected governor and begins the process of institutionalizing Jim Crow segregation in South Carolina.

1895

The South Carolina state constitution creates literacy tests and poll tax laws disenfranchising African American voters.

1896

All-white primaries are introduced in South Carolina.

1898

The Phoenix Race Riot erupts in Greenwood County.

1900–1940

The Great Migration draws nearly 400,000 African Americans from South Carolina to the North.

1917

First National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapters form in Columbia and Charleston.

1922

First chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) forms in South Carolina.

1942

African Americans organize the Negro Citizens’ Committee to challenge South Carolina’s all-white primary.

1960

Nonviolent direct action protests of the Civil Rights Movement become widespread. Eight student sit-ins involving more than 75 students each take place across the state.

1963

(January) Harvey Gantt integrates South Carolina’s first public school, Clemson College.

1969

The United Citizens Party (UCP) is formed to help elect African Americans to state and local offices in communities where African Americans are a majority of the population.

1970

Herbert Fielding, from Charleston, and I. S. Leevy Johnson and James Felder, from Columbia, become the first African Americans elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

1983

I. DeQuincey Newton becomes the first African American elected to the South Carolina State Senate since Reconstruction.

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1992

The U.S. Supreme Court mandates the creation of South Carolina’s first majority black district since Reconstruction; James Clyburn from Sumter is elected to Congress.

1993

(July 23) James Jordan, the father of African American basketball star Michael Jordan, is robbed and murdered by two African American men near McColl, South Carolina.

1995

(January 22) The Macedonia Baptist Church in Manning is burned by arson; four Klansmen are later tried and convicted.

1996

(October 27) Joshua Grant Kennedy and members of the Ku Klux Klan fire into a crowd of black teenagers outside a South Carolina nightclub, wounding three; Kennedy is sentenced to 26 years in prison in 1998.

1999

(February) South Carolina removes its ban on interracial marriages.

2000

(May 1) Governor James Hodges approves the observance of the Martin Luther King holiday, making South Carolina the last state to do so; observance of a Confederate Memorial Day on May 10 is also approved.

2000

(July 1) The Confederate flag is removed from the South Carolina Statehouse, where it had flown since 1962.

2003

(June 26) J. Strom Thurmond, former segregationist candidate for president in 1948 and a former governor and U.S. senator from South Carolina, dies at the age of 100.

2006

(October 7) President George W. Bush signs a bill providing grant money for the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a stretch of coastline running from North Carolina to Florida that had been declared a cultural preserve by Congress in September 2006 in an effort to preserve the region’s distinctive black culture and language.

2008

(January 26) After a record voter turnout, Barack Obama wins the South Carolina Democratic primary, defeating Hillary Clinton by 55 percent to 27 percent.

2010

As of this date, South Carolina had not ratified the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax; the amendment took effect in January 1964.

Historical Overview Many scholars agree that “African American history” is really a narrative of the evolution of race relations within the United States. The blackwhite racial binary and the power dynamics within it are the protagonists of the story. Indeed, historian I. A. Newby concluded, “The central fact of the history of black Carolina has been the racism of white Carolina.” While white racism did not shape every aspect of existence for black South Carolinians, it did play a large role in

determining the path of political and social actions of peoples of African descent in the Palmetto state. Perhaps with the exception of Mississippi, the story of race relations in South Carolina makes the state unique to the rest of the South and the United States. South Carolina’s distinguishing characteristic is that African Americans, for a large period of the state’s history, comprised a majority of its population (see Table 3, below). The awareness of South Carolinians, both black and white, of the state’s black majority governed

South Carolina Table 3

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African American Population in South Carolina, 1790–1990

Year

Slave

Free

1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

107,094 146,151 198,365 258,475 315,401 327,083 384,984 402,406

1,801 3,185 4,556 6,826 7,921 8,276 8,960 10,002 415,939 604,472 689,141 782,509 836,239 865,186 794,716 815,496 823,622 831,572 796,086 948,000 1,400,000

the interaction between the two races. More importantly, this awareness wielded significant influence in shaping the struggle for power between white and black. While much of white South Carolina fought for the power to maintain and foster white supremacist ideology and practices, many black South Carolinians fought for the power to free themselves from racial oppression and determine their own destinies. In the eyes and minds of white South Carolina, the black population majority has always meant that the supremacist doctrine upon which their way of life rested sat on unstable ground. Their actions were driven by the possibility and fear that this ground could potentially erode at any moment. As a result, white South Carolina has historically taken aggressive actions to protect and preserve its dominance over its black counterpart. South Carolina was first in nullification, first to succeed from the Union, and first to act militarily against the Union, leading the South and

Percent of Total 43.7% 43.2 48.8 53.7 55.6 56.4 58.9 58.6 58.9 60.7 59.8 58.3 55.1 51.3 45.7 42.9 38.9 34.9 30.7 30.3 40.1

North into the Civil War. South Carolina also took a lead role in challenging the legitimacy of the 1965 Voting Rights Act nearly 100 years later. However, from the perspective of black South Carolinians, through enslavement and emancipation, their majority status kept the hope and possibility of freedom active in their imaginations. Their large numbers, often congregated in isolated living areas, meant that the West African culture that slave owners so desperately desired to destroy was preserved and reconstituted on South Carolina soil. The blossoming of West African culture not only shaped the identities of African Americans but also touched the cultural lives of white South Carolinians and, at some level, the United States and the world. More importantly, the maintenance of West African cultural traditions in South Carolina served as a vital source of resistance to oppression. Just as white South Carolina took pioneering action in

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preserving power over blacks, enslaved Africans, in 1526, within the political boundaries of what would become South Carolina under British colonial rule, launched the first slave rebellion on the North American continent. In November 1526, with the help of Native Americans, some of the nearly 100 enslaved Africans in the region successfully revolted against the Spanish colonizers holding them in bondage, forcing their retreat to Haiti. Seemingly, the will to dominate was matched by an equal will to resist.

Colonial South Carolina Colonial British South Carolina was founded in 1663 by newly arriving English planters from Barbados. The Barbadian model of using enslaved Africans as a plantation labor force was imported and institutionalized in the newly formed colony. African slavery came to predominate over other forms because of the Africans’ relative immunity to malarial fever, the increasing profitability of slave labor, tightening restrictions regarding the exploitation of white indentured servants, and the racial prejudices of white Europeans. From the commencement of South Carolina’s blackwhite race relations, in the form of a slave-master relationship, a struggle for power ensued. The enslaved Africans in the colony exercised their ability to run away and escape, simultaneously gaining their freedom while derailing plantation production and corroding the planters’ financial investments. Spanish Florida’s St. Augustine, offering freedom to the enslaved Africans of British North America and the willingness to protect that freedom, was a powerful magnet. In addition to concern over resistance, white South Carolinians increasingly worried about the colony’s fast-growing African population. African Americans were a majority of South Carolina’s population possibly as early as 1708, and they always remained the majority in the low-country, which included Charleston, one of

early America’s primary port cities, and its surrounding areas. Until the close of the legal transAtlantic slave trade in 1808, Charleston’s port served as one of the main entry points of enslaved Africans to the North American mainland. By the time of the rice boom of the 1730s, African slavery was fixed upon South Carolina society. Africans influenced the ecology and development of the colony because they adapted well to South Carolina’s semitropical environment. Many Africans possessed botanical knowledge that Englishmen lacked, and they often had skills that, though common in England, were in short supply in the colony. Africans were particularly knowledgeable in herding cattle and planting rice, two skills that proved essential for survival and success in life on the frontier. In the early colonial frontier years, when skill meant survival, the color of a person had less effect on status than it would in the later history of the state. The presence of a large number of Africans facilitated the development of the pidgin language Gullah—an amalgamation of European tongues and African dialects. The creolization seen in Gullah was also evident in the complex institutions, social structures, and arrangements that African Americans developed. Scholars who have studied slavery in various locations and periods have found strong families and transmitted values and a sense of community from generation to generation of black South Carolinians. Black families in slavery and in freedom were male-headed and patriarchal, and most Africans became Christians, predominantly Methodists and Baptists. As plantation production and its supporting African and African American enslaved labor force developed in colonial South Carolina, so did the variety of resistance tactics employed by blacks to gain some degree of freedom. Their manifestations of day-to-day resistance to slavery included insolence, slowdowns, running away, feigning ignorance of procedures or tools, and secretly making fun of whites. But the history of resistance to

South Carolina slavery in South Carolina was also punctuated by organized slave rebellions. Historian Vincent Harding suggested, “In South Carolina there was never a time when organized attempts at black uprisings did not seem a part of the landscape, a subject of white fears.” 1 Historian Herbert Aptheker reported that organized revolts, where 10 or more enslaved African Americans fought to secure their freedom, were attempted in 1702, 1711, 1713, 1720, 1730, 1733, and 1737. Similar to individual enslaved African Americans who absconded from their plantations, St. Augustine was often the final destination of these early insurrectionists. In 1739, enslaved African Americans initiated one of the largest rebellions in colonial North American history. In Stono, South Carolina, a slave named Jemmy led nearly 50 of his fellow bondsmen in a raid on a local arms depot. After successfully capturing the weapon storehouse, the insurrectionists set a path toward St. Augustine, killing nearly all the whites they encountered. With each step they took, their numbers swelled as enslaved Africans and African Americans joined in the revolt. Their escape to Spanish Florida was foiled only when the group stopped to celebrate their progress 10 miles south of the town. Their delay afforded white South Carolinians the necessary time to organize a successful repression. The presence of a syncretic African culture, symbolized in the rise of Gullah, coupled with the local black population’s majority, were fundamental to the ability to organize the Stono Rebellion.

American Revolution to Secession Starting in 1748, however, the influx of white settlers into the backcountry gave the colony a white majority until the census of 1820, when African Americans again gained numerical superiority. The shift in population majority may have had an effect in curbing the ability of African enslaved Americans to organize mass resistance. Participation in the American Revolution did

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provide enslaved Africans and African Americans an opportunity to gain their freedom. Those who fought with the Continental army were offered freedom in exchange for their service. Many who fought on the side of the British gained an opportunity to sail to freedom upon the defeat of the royal forces. However, Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin, making cotton a much more profitable crop to cultivate, helped return South Carolina’s population demographic back to its black majority. The rise of the “Cotton Kingdom” in South Carolina meant that the state’s interior was open for the plantation production of the staple crop. Naturally, as cotton culture spread inland, the slaveholder’s grip upon black freedom also spread westward from the rice-cultivating eastern coast of the state. The cotton kingdom’s effects in South Carolina were so prolific that by the 1820s, the black population, formerly concentrated along the coast and the lowcountry, had spread throughout the state and recreated a black population majority. South Carolina possessed an active, though small, free black population. In 1790, three Charleston free blacks petitioned the state legislature, asking that they be recognized as citizens of South Carolina. This petition was the beginning of a long fight for equal political rights by African Americans in South Carolina. While the petition was denied, free blacks continued to play an active and vital role in South Carolina’s life and culture. Charleston and other coastal cities were the center of the free black community; however, the lives of free black Americans varied greatly. Like their enslaved brethren, South Carolina’s small free black population also had limitations upon their freedom. In the wake of the War of 1812, for instance, within Charleston’s Methodist Church the white clergy and congregation began to place restrictions upon their black counterparts. The restrictions placed upon the freedom of worship of Charleston’s black congregants became overwhelming, driving them, under the leadership of

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Father Morris Brown, to formally break with the white Methodist Church. Shortly after conferring with Richard Allen (founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black church in the United States) in Philadelphia, Morris Brown returned to Charleston and in 1816 began the process of establishing an independent and fully autonomous African Church of Charleston. Institutions like the African Church of Charleston became the cornerstones of South Carolina’s free black communities. Importantly, some free blacks in South Carolina felt strong ties of solidarity with their enslaved counterparts. Often this solidarity was welded upon the fact that many free African Americans still had loved ones who remained enslaved. Such was the case with Charleston’s Denmark Vesey, whose formative years were spent in bondage sailing the Caribbean with Joseph Vesey, a ship captain. After purchasing his freedom, Denmark Vesey settled in Charleston and managed to maintain a very successful business. Vesey became increasingly enraged by white Charleston’s treatment of free blacks and their denial of freedom to the blacks they continued to hold in bondage. In response, using the communication networks created between plantations by skilled slaves who were hired out, he began to organize a mass revolt designed to seize control of Charleston. Vesey’s plans of revolution shared the fate of other highly organized revolts across the South. His plan for liberation was spoiled as knowledge of it made its way to the ears of Peter, a slave complacent in his condition and uniquely loyal to his owner. Ironically, the greatest strength of Vesey’s planned insurrection, the ability of the revolt to cast a wide net of recruitment, turned out to be its tragic weakness. The testimony of Rolla, one of Vesey’s conspirators fortunate enough to be allowed to stand trial, revealed not only the revolt’s high level of organization but also that Vesey and his conspirators attempted to raise funds for the production of arms.

Some free blacks assimilated into white South Carolinian culture and society. Free blacks in rural areas sometimes intermarried with whites. Some of South Carolina’s free blacks, like ginmaker William Ellison of Statesburg, accommodated to the slavery system and rose to great wealth. Ellison supported the Confederates, and his grandson was wounded defending Fort Wagner from Union assault. Be that as it may, however, black support for the Confederacy during the Civil War was minuscule. African Americans were most successful in their fight for freedom in the two Seminole Wars (1816–1818 and 1835–1842), both of which were fought because Indians refused to surrender their African American tribespeople. Moreover, white slaveholders wanted to secure their borders to keep slaves from running away to Native American groups. In 1816, native South Carolinian Andrew Jackson attacked a Seminole fort in West Florida because the fort harbored hundreds of runaway slaves, some from South Carolina. African American participation in slave rebellions was heroic in the context of the armed camp that white South Carolinians imposed. The large black population made most white South Carolinians unusually militant in their defense of slavery, and in the antebellum period the state held a high concentration of “fireeaters,” secession-minded, proslavery militants. South Carolina had been the leading advocate for the rights of slaveholders in the debates over the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, South Carolina had attempted to nullify a federal tariff law in 1832 to establish a constitutional precedent for nullifying future antislavery legislation.

Civil War and Reconstruction South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in 1860, and a few months later, in

South Carolina April 1861, South Carolinians fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. South Carolina’s black population, those free and those escaping across Union lines, took up arms in the Civil War. Whereas the Union army primarily fought to maintain the Union, black soldiers marched on southern battlefields with the desire to strike against their oppressors and free their loved ones still held in captivity. The desire to destroy the system of slavery of the black soldiers of South Carolina’s 33rd U.S. Volunteer Colored Troops was so strong that they bravely fought without pay or the promise of reward. The conclusion of the epic war that white slaveholding South Carolinians began was ironically defined in the collapse of the very principle initially driving them to war; white South Carolinians were stripped of the power necessary to hold African Americans in perpetual slavery. The end of the Civil War transformed President Abraham Lincoln’s famed proclamation into practice. The chains of slavery in South Carolina were shattered, and for the first time all the state’s African American residents breathed as free men, women, and children. The Thirteenth Amendment, signed into law in 1865 at the conclusion of the war, guaranteed their freedom. Under slavery, the clearest symbol of the magnitude of enslavement was the inability of African Americans to simply leave the plantation. Emancipated African Americans, however, inverted this symbol as they quickly sought to demonstrate their freedom to their former owners. In mass numbers, African Americans simply walked away from the plantations where they were formerly enslaved. Speaking of emancipated black South Carolinians specifically, historian George Devlin suggested that, “Migration as viewed by blacks was the actual proof that they were free.”2 Other than the ability to freely move about, land ownership emerged as a critical issue to South Carolina’s recently emancipated black

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population. The desires of African Americans to own land, often lands they were formerly enslaved upon, was sparked by General William T. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15. Issued on January 16, 1865, after gaining President Lincoln’s approval, Field Order No. 15 set aside nearly 400,000 acres of land for emancipated African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. Unfortunately for these new landowners, the spring of 1865 brought about circumstances placing their control of the land in grave jeopardy. Lincoln’s assassination on April 14 made the pro-Confederacy Democrat Andrew Johnson president. Also, many white slaveholding planters who had fled the land at the sight of an invading Union army during the war were beginning to return to reclaim their stakes. Without a pro–African American rights Republican Congress in session, President Johnson had the power and authority needed to restore the land to returning white exslaveholders. South Carolina’s Freedmen’s Bureau, under the direction of General Oliver O. Howard, was forced to renege on its promises of land ownership to emancipated African Americans. However, the South Carolina African Americans, who had taken control of the coastal Sea Islands, were unwilling to acquiesce. For a short time, they were successful in staging an armed resistance to any attempts by whites to step upon Sea Island shores. The full weight of white South Carolinians’ attempts to strip any immediate gains made by African Americans in the postwar moment was felt in the South Carolina Black Codes. Under the direction of provisional Governor Benjamin Perry, South Carolina created its black codes during a special legislative session in September 1865. Although the proposed codes legalized marriages between African American men and women, they prohibited interracial marriages and in some instances required blacks wishing to marry each other to gain the consent of a white man. Perhaps the most devastating aspect of the

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black codes was the introduction of required labor contracts for African American adolescents. Transporting the title of “master” from the antebellum slavery system to postemancipation labor contracts, all African Americans were to be “servants” to mostly white men involved in some form of agricultural production. The black codes deemed that all blacks would be barred from participation in any of the skilled trades. The predefined plantation work conditions in the codes mirrored nearly every aspect of work conditions under enslavement. Servants were to work from sunup to sundown, had Sundays free from plantation labor, and were prohibited from leaving plantation grounds. The codes even identified circumstances under which “masters” could physically punish their contracted “servants.” Like the African Americans of the Sea Islands, who refused to easily submit their ownership of the land, black South Carolinians were resolved to rally against the implementation of the black codes. In November 1865, only two months after the codes had been drafted, African Americans collectively mobilized in Charleston to plan their reaction. The Colored People’s Convention, held in Zion Church, was the result of the collective mobilization. The convention provided South Carolina’s blacks with a forum through which their desires for political and economic equality and social freedom could be articulated. The Republican-dominated national Congress reassembled in late December 1865 and seemingly answered the Colored People’s Convention’s call for equality. In addition to impeaching Andrew Johnson, Congress introduced the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments to the Constitution, which, respectively, guaranteed the end of slavery, black citizenship, and voting rights for African Americans. The Reconstruction Act of 1867, placing the former Confederacy under military rule, ensured that the Civil War Amendments and black rights would be enforced.

If Reconstruction could have succeeded anywhere, it was in South Carolina, where blacks formed a majority of the population. Voting rights certainly formed the foundation of the successes experienced by South Carolina blacks during this brief period. The racial solidarity among African Americans created through their shared experience of enslavement and oppression was transformed during the Reconstruction period into a powerful voting bloc. Access to the ballot coupled with a voting-age population majority ensured that black officials would be elected to represent the Palmetto State in numbers greater than any other state in the Union. In 1867, on the eve of the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, there were 84,393 black voting age males as compared to only 65,610 of their white counterparts. Out of the 31 districts in the state, 21 had black majorities. Ninety-four percent of eligible African American voters were registered to exercise their newly granted right. Perhaps South Carolina’s black community already had an idea of which of their fellow African Americans would best represent their concerns in the national context. Of the six African American men that black South Carolina sent to the U.S. Congress, four of them, Richard H. Cain, Robert C. DeLarge, Alonzo J. Ransier, and Joseph H. Rainey, participated in the Colored People’s Convention. Rainey was the first African American to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert Brown Elliot and Robert Smalls, the remaining two African Americans elected to Congress, were absent from the convention. In addition to electing and sending a majority black delegation to Congress, African Americans were equally successful in gaining black majorities in both houses of South Carolina’s General Assembly. Seventy-six of the 124 delegates charged with drafting a state constitution in line with federal Reconstruction policies were African American. In the first

South Carolina meeting of the state House of Representatives after the drafting of the new state constitution, blacks held a majority of the seats, 78 to 46. Alonzo J. Ransier, in 1870, and Richard H. Gleaves, in 1872, became lieutenant governors. Some historians, however, have called into question the ability of many of these officials to work in the interest of South Carolina’s African American masses due to their elitist perspectives stemming from their upper-class social backgrounds. Reconstruction in South Carolina experimented briefly with interracial democracy and responsive government, but most whites preferred the exclusion of African Americans from political power. The Ku Klux Klan and other white paramilitary organizations violently opposed black enfranchisement. The Great Compromise of 1877, where Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes traded African American rights for electoral votes, gave white South Carolina the power to exclude blacks from the civic process. Hayes agreed to help repeal the Reconstruction Amendments putting an end to military enforcement of African American citizenship rights. The 1876 election season was indeed treacherous. Voter fraud was common. Eight Republican legislators were murdered during the critical 1876 election, which resulted in the election of Democrat Wade Hampton as governor and the defeat of the Republican state administration that African Americans had supported. African Americans retained power only in such majority-black areas as Beaufort, where black Civil War hero Robert Smalls had his constituency. These areas continued to elect blacks to local and state offices and even to the U.S. Congress until most African Americans were totally disfranchised by the state constitution of 1896. The implementation of literacy tests and poll taxes in the 1880s expelled blacks from the voting rolls. By 1884, African American registration in South Carolina had fallen to half the

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1880 level. African Americans began to seriously consider African emigration as a response to the rapid decline of their social, political, and economic freedoms. Liberia was imagined as an ideal destination, but ultimately settlement attempts failed. With the 1890 election of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman to the governorship, South Carolina saw the first of several demagogic political leaders attain power. Tillman, Cole Blease, and, in the 1940s, “Cotton” Ed Smith rode the race issue to political prominence. They succeeded in codifying segregation laws to further restrict black South Carolinians’ voting rights, and by 1940, segregation was entrenched in South Carolina society; only 3,000 blacks, or 0.8 percent of voting-age African Americans in South Carolina, were registered to vote.

Segregation The introduction of formalized segregation in South Carolina, creating a life experience for African Americans mimicking the social conditions of their enslavement, left blacks in the state with two options; find some way to negotiate this new oppression, or leave. Between the middle of the nineteenth century and 1900, African Americans made up almost 60 percent of the population of South Carolina. This ratio changed as a result of the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1920 almost 275,000 blacks left South Carolina and headed north. While rural poverty and Jim Crow segregation provided the initial impetus for black migration, World War I and postwar agricultural depression intensified the desire to leave. In some instances, entire church congregations picked up and headed north. A second migration occurred during World War II and the following decades. Between 1940 and 1960, an estimated 339,000 African American South Carolinians left the state. Recent demographic trends suggest that

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the migration has reversed, and African Americans are now moving back to South Carolina. Those African Americans brave enough to stay or without the means to leave faced a powerful backlash against the progress toward equality they had managed to achieve. Racial violence was a part of the daily lives of black South Carolinians at the dawn of the twentieth century. Between 1882 and 1923, there were 161 recorded lynchings in the state of South Carolina. The Phoenix Race Riot of 1898 stands out as a particularly heinous example of the violent conditions African Americans faced in Jim Crow South Carolina. What began as a small scuffle at a local polling location erupted into mass mob violence as white men from Greenwood County were joined by others from surrounding counties and began attacking black residents under the guise of quelling Republican activist agitation. The Phoenix Riot left a lasting impression on Greenwood County’s black population. Hundreds of African Americans fled north in the riot’s aftermath. From an economic standpoint, the majority of South Carolina’s black population was coerced into some form of sharecropping or tenant farming. Some African Americans faced economic exploitation in these agricultural production arrangements at the hands of the white landowners they contracted with. The black church was the center of South Carolina’s African American community and played a variety of roles in African American life. Benjamin E. Mays, the renowned black educator, preacher, and civil rights leader, spoke of the importance of the black church during the Jim Crow era. He suggested, “Old Mount Zion was an important institution in my community. Negroes had nowhere to go but to church. They went there to worship, to hear the choir sing, to listen to the preacher, and to hear and see the people shout. The young people went to Mount Zion to socialize, or simply to stand around and talk. It was a place of worship and a social center

as well. There was no other place to go.”3 Teaching children to negotiate Jim Crow’s social mores became an important component of black South Carolinian parenting. Some parents taught their children to show respect toward all their white counterparts and practice submissive humility in their presence. Others taught their children to avoid whites and to distrust them altogether. However some parents socialized their children to stand up for themselves no matter the racial identities of those they faced. Despite the setbacks of Jim Crow segregation, those African Americans remaining in South Carolina managed to continue the struggle for freedom and equality. In 1917, the state’s first chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were formed in Columbia and Charleston. By 1919, six more chapters of the national civil rights organization organized across the state. Working-class African Americans in South Carolina also found a voice to articulate their political, economic, and social concerns in Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). During the 1920s, approximately 25 UNIA chapters organized in South Carolina. The modern Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina began in 1942 when a small group of black activists organized the South Carolina Negro Citizen’s Committee to challenge the all-white primary and encourage black voter registration. In the late 1940s and 1950s, citizenship schools based on the model of Esau Jenkins and Septima Clark of Johns Island were founded to help blacks obtain the right to vote and overcome racism. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) assumed the direction of the schools in the early 1960s, and they became an effective tool of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1948, South Carolina Governor J. Stom Thurmond became the standard-bearer of the “Dixiecrat” revolt against the civil rights plank of the Democratic Party. The South Carolina

South Carolina attorney general’s office vociferously defended the principles of public school segregation before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s, and the South Carolina congressional delegation resolutely opposed every civil rights bill proposed to Congress from 1957 to 1965. African Americans believed that education was a key to freedom. Mayesville native Mary McLeod Bethune worked tirelessly to improve African Americans’ educational opportunities. Education also became the foremost target of the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina. In the early 1940s, the NAACP brought court cases to equalize teachers’ salaries. Black South Carolina’s most dramatic and influential success against institutionalized racism involved the Briggs v. Elliot case against Clarendon County. This case initiated the famous Brown decision, which eventually outlawed segregated schools, and caused white leaders in South Carolina to begin equalizing the facilities of white and black schools in a desperate attempt to salvage segregation.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond The state’s efforts to preserve its culture of segregation in education, from grade schools to the state’s universities, came to a halt on January 28, 1963. Clemson University, then Clemson College, admitted its first African American student—Harvey Gantt. Gantt’s integration of the prestigious school was the end result of a long legal process. The fight to integrate South Carolina’s educational system was one that Gantt was well prepared for. Gantt’s leadership in the Charleston NAACP chapter’s youth group gave him an appreciation for civil rights integrationist philosophy. His participation in the April 1960 sit-in at S. H. Kress Five and Dime Store, along with 26 other Burke high school students, and his subsequent arrest, showed him the power of direct-action civil rights activism and its

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consequences. Matthew Perry, African American civil rights attorney, represented the students, including Gantt. Gantt soon sought Perry’s advice and legal assistance to fulfill his goal of attending Clemson College. Gantt and Perry worked together between 1960 and 1962 to create a history of correspondence between Gantt and Clemson as the college consistently denied Gantt’s transfer admissions. Gantt enrolled at Iowa State University to not delay education while he worked to build the necessary paper trail to support his case. Ironically, the South Carolina Regional Education Board paid the difference between Iowa State’s in-state and out-of-state tuition. Perry filed Gantt’s case in the U.S. District Court in Greensville on July 7, 1962. Initially, Judge Charles C. Wyche ruled in favor of Clemson College. After several appeals, Wyche’s ruling in favor of Clemson was overturned on January 16, 1963, in the appellate court; Clemson was forced to allow Gantt to enroll. For the most part, the integration of Clemson was a peaceful event thanks in large part to Clemson’s dean of students, Walter T. Cox, and his work preparing the student body to smoothly adjust to the ensuing cultural change. While most students were indifferent to Gantt’s presence on campus, he made a few lifelong friends. Most schools in South Carolina did not integrate until the 1970s, however. “Black power” had many different meanings and took many different forms as its political philosophy unfolded across the United States. Black power in South Carolina meant the creation and mobilization of a strong black electorate. The passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act created the momentum necessary to help elect 36 African Americans to South Carolina’s General Assembly between 1970 and 1988, all from a middle-class background, and nearly 14 percent of them women. Willie M. Legatte argued that the election of blacks to South Carolina’s legislature

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stemmed from shifts in the environment of urban communities and increased access to meaningful employment opportunities, which lead to a resulting increase in the number of black registered voters. In 1960, a little over 37 percent of eligible African Americans were registered to vote. By 1968, the number of eligible African Americans registered to vote increased by over 17 percent. The 1969 organization of the United Citizens Party (UCP) began the effort to catapult black South Carolinians into the Palmetto State’s chief policy-making body. The UCP served two primary purposes; it worked to elect African Americans to the state legislature, and it also concentrated its energy on electing blacks to municipal offices in communities where African Americans were a population majority. While the UCP experienced only marginal success electing black officials, its ability to mobilize the state’s black electorate forced South Carolina’s otherwise indifferent Democratic Party to include African Americans within its power structure, address their concerns, and, most important, support African American candidates seeking legislative office. With the support of the South Carolina Democratic Party, the UCP helped elect Herbert Fielding, from Charleston, and I. S. Leevy Johnson and James Felder, from Columbia, to South Carolina’s House of Representatives. Their 1970 election ended the forced absence of African Americans in South Carolina’s legislature that began with the collapse of Reconstruction. The NAACP filed lawsuits in the early 1970s in the U.S. District Court that led to the reapportionment of the state’s congressional districts. By the early 1980s, 27 House and 10 Senate districts held African American–population majorities. In 1983, I. DeQuincey Newton became the first African American to sit in the state Senate since Reconstruction. However, penetrating South Carolina’s hallowed halls of government did not mean an end to the struggle of African Americans for freedom and self-determination. Once in the

state legislature, African American elected officials found barriers to committee appointments and grappled with a lack of support for the legislation they introduced. In South Carolina today, the legal barriers that minimized black participation during the Jim Crow era are disappearing, though racism is more subtle. Issues of at-large elections, staggered terms of office, numbered post provisions, reapportionment plans designed to keep white incumbents in office and exclude minorities, bloc voting by race, majority-vote requirements, and other discriminatory practices banned by the Voting Rights Act remain prevalent today and continue to dilute black voting strength in South Carolina. Because of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, however, African Americans today register to vote about as freely as whites in South Carolina. The NAACP worked successfully to create a black congressional district, and in 1992, South Carolinians elected a black U.S. congressman, James Clyburn. These gains have come from enforcement of federal laws, not from white leadership within the state.

Notable African Americans Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955) Born near Mayesville, Mary McLeod Bethune was a well-respected educator and women’s rights activist in the state of Florida. In 1904, she founded a school that would later become Bethune-Cookman College, and she worked ardently to raise public concern over southern lynchings. In 1924, she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

Cain, Richard H. (1825–1887) Richard H. Cain represented the state of South Carolina in the U.S. House of

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Representatives during Reconstruction in the 43rd and 45th Congresses (1873–1875 and 1877–1879). He also participated in the 1868 drafting of South Carolina’s Reconstruction Constitution.

Clark, Septima (1898–1987) A civil rights activist from Charleston, Septima Clark became very active in the Charleston NAACP, eventually becoming the chapter’s vice president in 1956. Based on her time spent at the Highlander Folk School teaching adult literacy classes, Clark helped establish “Citizenship Schools” that taught adults to read across the South. The Citizenship Schools were eventually taken over by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Clayburn, James (1940–) Born in Sumter, James Clayburn was elected the Congressional representative of South Carolina’s 6th District, including Sumter, Florence, and portions of Columbia and Charleston, in 1992. He is the first African American South Carolinian to be elected to Congress since Reconstruction. Clayburn, a Democrat, was the majority whip of the House of Representatives in the 110th Congress.

Trainer Eddie Futch, left, stands with boxer Joe Frazier before Frazier’s official weigh-in for his fight against Jerry Quarry, 1974. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Congresses in the House of Representatives. He also served in the state’s House of Representatives, where he became Speaker of the House, the legislative body’s highest position. In 1876, Elliot was elected attorney general of the state.

Frazier, Joseph “Smokin’ ” Joe (1944–) DeLarge, Robert C. (1842–1874) Robert DeLarge represented South Carolina in the 42nd U.S. Congress as a member of the House of Representatives from 1871 to 1873. He also participated in the 1868 drafting of South Carolina’s Reconstruction constitution.

Elliot, Robert Brown (1842–1884) In the 1870s, Robert Brown Elliot represented South Carolina in the 42nd and 43rd U.S.

Born in Beaufort, Joe Frazier won a gold medal for boxing in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, and in 1970 became world heavyweight champion after defeating Jimmy Ellis.

Gantt, Harvey (1943–) Born in Charleston, Harvey Gantt became the first African American student to enroll at Clemson University and the first African American to integrate a South Carolina educational institution.

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Harvey Gantt, who won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in the primary, responds to a question during a news conference, 1996. Gantt defeated Charlie Sanders and faced Senator Jesse Helms in the fall election. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Gantt graduated to become an architect and later served as mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, from 1983 to 1987.

Gillespie, John Birks “Dizzy” (1917–1993) Born in Cheraw, “Dizzy” Gillespie became a pioneering figure in the development of modern jazz in the early 1940s. In addition to helping create bebop, Gillespie’s musical innovations helped create Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. Gillespie is also known for his role as a musical and cultural ambassador for the United States in the Middle East and Latin America through his participation in the U.S. State Department–sponsored Jazz Ambassador’s Program during the Cold War.

A trumpet virtuoso who with Charlie Parker instigated the bop revolution, showman Dizzy Gillespie inspired scores of instrumentalists by walking the musical high wire. His driving improvisations displayed fertile imagination, incredible technical skill, lightning contrasts, and cascading notes as he puffed out his cheeks and blew a misshapen trumpet. (Library of Congress)

Gleaves, Richard H. (1819–1907) Richard Gleaves was elected the second African American lieutenant governor of South Carolina in 1872 and 1874.

Mays, Benjamin E. (1894–1984) Born in the town of Ninety-Six, Benjamin Mays was renowned as a minister, educator, and ardent civil rights activist. Mays is perhaps most famously recognized for his role as president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1940 to 1967, where he mentored a young Martin Luther King Jr.

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Ransier, Alonzo J. (1834–1882) Alonzo Ransier represented South Carolina in the 43rd U.S. Congress as a member of the House of Representatives, serving from 1873 to 1875. He was elected lieutenant governor of South Carolina in 1870 and also participated in the 1868 drafting of South Carolina’s Reconstruction constitution.

Smalls, Robert (1839–1915)

Dr. Benjamin Mays, renowned black educator, preacher, and civil rights leader, 1968. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Miley, James “Bubber” (1903–1932) Born in Aiken, James Miley played lead solo trumpet in the famous Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1923 to 1929. Miley’s musical creativity played a large role in creating Ellington’s signature “Jungle” sound.

Rainey, Joseph H. (1832–1887) Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and the second African American to serve in Congress in general. Rainey was elected to the 41st Congress in 1870, was reelected four times, and served until 1879. He also participated in the 1868 drafting of South Carolina’s Reconstruction constitution.

Robert Smalls became a Civil War hero after he took control of a Confederate naval ship and used it to escape slavery by sailing across the Union navy’s blockade of Charleston Harbor. Smalls provided vital intelligence to Union forces during the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Smalls represented South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 44th, 45th, 47th, and 49th Congresses from 1875 to 1879, from 1882 to 1883, and from 1884 to 1887, respectively.

Vesey, Denmark (c. 1767–1822) After purchasing his freedom in 1800, Denmark Vesey became the principal organizer of the 1822 mass-based slave rebellion designed for African Americans to capture control of Charleston. However, Vesey’s plot was foiled when an informant revealed his plans.

Cultural Contributions South Carolina has a deeply rich African American cultural history; a history whose foundations are firmly rooted in the African past and survival of the middle passage. One reason that the manifestations of African cultural traits were so potent in South Carolina was the state’s African population majority. Another reason was the greater isolation of enslaved Africans from white South Carolinians, and their culture, as compared to other parts of the United States. By the start of

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the nineteenth century, Charleston, the main point of entry of enslaved individuals destined for the southeastern states, had the highest population concentration of blacks of any city in the young democratic republic. African religious beliefs were a potent source of inspiration for resistance and rebellion. Historian Walter Rucker has argued that the shared characteristics of religious belief and culture from the ethnically diverse groups of Africans enslaved in Charleston helped to create the sense of Pan-African identity needed to organize and coordinate Denmark Vesey’s 1822 foiled revolution. Conjurers, the figurative clergy of the new hybrid African religion, possessed the power and ability to coerce other enslaved Africans and African Americans to resist and rebel against the master’s authority. Where the population majority and isolation of South Carolina’s enslaved communities ensured that an African American culture formed, based on African cultural characteristics and the Africanization of European cultural forms, the population dispersion resulting from the Great Migration triggered the nationalization of black South Carolinian culture. As thousands of individuals, and entire communities, migrated north along the eastern seaboard, they took their cultural practices with them, especially their musical ones. New York was a popular destination. Famous jazz, blues, and ragtime pianist James P. Johnson recalled his encounter with South Carolina migrants while performing at the Jungles Casino dance school in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen in 1913. Johnson noted in an interview, “The people who came to The Jungles Casino were mostly from around Charleston, South Carolina, and other places in the South. Most of them worked for the Ward Line as longshoremen or on ships that called at southern ports.”4 The famous “Charleston” dance step was introduced at the Jungles Casino by Dan White, a migrant that Johnson remembered well. The dances of these South Carolina migrants and the way they

interacted with the music had a great effect on Johnson and his playing. In an interview, Johnson remembered the following: The dances they did at The Jungles Casino were wild and comical—the more pose and the more breaks, the better. These Charleston people and the other Southerners had just come to New York. They were country people and they felt homesick. When they got tired of two-steps and schottisches . . . they’d yell: “Let’s go back home!” . . . “Let’s do a set!” . . . or, “Now, put us in the alley!” I did my Mule Walk or Gut Stomp for these country dances. Breakdown music was the best for such sets, the more solid and groovy the better. They’d dance, hollering and screaming until they were cooked. The dances ran from fifteen to thirty minutes, but they kept up all night long or until their shoes wore out—most of them after a heavy day’s work on the docks.5 Johnson’s musical interactions with his audience of African American migrants from in and around Charleston inspired his most famous composition, the “Carolina Shout,” which quickly became an early standard in the canon of African American blues and jazz music. “Carolina Shout” became an inspiration for the great Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington. Duke Ellington, while still a young high school student in Washington, D.C., performed “Carolina Shout” for Johnson while the master pianist was performing in Washington. “Carolina Shout” was not Ellington’s only interaction with South Carolinian culture; it also had a large contributing influence on his world famous orchestra. Among the characteristics driving the excitement and interest in Ellington’s compositions were the unique, talented, and original musicians in his orchestra. Ellington composed each component of his score to their individual strengths. James “Bubber” Miley from Aiken, South Carolina, was perhaps the most

South Carolina famous of Ellington’s cadre of elite musicians and had the greatest influence on the early Ellington sound. Miley, who played with Ellington between 1923 and 1929, was particularly responsible for creating the muted growling sound on his cornet that became the signature sound of Ellington’s “jungle music.” Miley and his family migrated to New York in one of the many waves of the Great Migration while he was still a boy. Ellington reflected as follows on the potency of Miley’s playing in his autobiography: Bubber Miley was from the body and soul of soulsville. He was raised on soul and saturated and marinated in soul. Every note he played was soul filled with the pulse of compulsion. . . . Before he played his choruses, he would tell his story, and he always had a story for his music, such as: “This is an old man, tired from working in the field since sunup, coming up the road in the sunset on his way home to dinner. He’s tired but strong, and humming in time with his broken gait—or vice versa.”6 Miley’s playing set the standard for other Ellington horn players to follow, including Cootie Williams and Ray Nance. Perhaps no other South Carolinian has made a greater contribution in spreading the state’s African American culture than Cheraw’s John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. Gillespie began his long career as a trumpet virtuoso playing in the band in Cheraw’s African American school, named for Robert Smalls, a powerful symbol and cultural hero. While Gillespie was raised in a Methodist family, a great deal of his musical inspiration and creativity came from his exposure to Cheraw’s Sanctified Church services. Carrying the legacy and tradition of West African musical traditions, Gillespie was captivated by the church’s polyrhythmic musical performance style and improvisational call and response patterns of the congregants. The early and lasting influence of

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South Carolina’s Sanctified Church on Gillespie’s music matured as he contributed to the development of Bebop and Afro-Cuban Jazz, a truly diasporic musical creation, in the mid-1940s. Many other South Carolinians have made great contributions to national and global culture. Rock star Chubby Checker was born in Trio. “Smokin’ ” Joe Frazier, the heavyweight boxing champion of the late 1960s, came from Laurel Bay, in Beaufort County. Arguably the greatest individual to call South Carolina home, Benjamin E. Mays, told an audience of black youths at Benedict College in 1926, “I will live in vain, if I do not live and act so that you will be freer than I am—freer intellectually, freer politically, and freer economically.”

Notes 1. Vincent Harding, There Is a River (New York: Harcourt, 1981), 33. 2. George A. Devlin, South Carolina and Black Migration, 1865–1940 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989), 75. 3. Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 13. 4. Tom Davin, “Conversation with James P. Johnson,” in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Huggins (New York: Oxford, 1976), 324–336. 5. Ibid., 328–29. 6. Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), 106.

Bibliography Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publishers, 1943. Bethel, Elizabeth Raul. Promiseland: A Century of Life in a Negro Community. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.

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Burton, Orville V. “Dining with Harvey Gantt.” In W. Lewis Burke and Belinda F. Gergel, eds., Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, and His Legacy. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004, 183–220.

Carolina During the Jim Crow Era.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 2002. Legatte, Willie M. “The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, 1970 to 1988.” Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 6. Special Issue: African American State Legislative Politics (July 2000): 839–858.

Burton, Orville V. In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Maggin, Donald. Dizzy. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Davin, Tom. “Conversation with James P. Johnson.” In Nathan Huggins, ed., Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford, 1976.

Mays, Benjamin E. Born to Rebel: An Autobiography. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Davis, Marianna. The History of Blacks in South Carolina. Written for the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission for the Bicentennial. Columbia, SC, 1979.

Mullane, Deirdre, ed. Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African American Writing. New York: First Anchor Books, 1993.

Devlin, George A. South Carolina and Black Migration, 1865–1940. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989.

Rucker, Walter. “I Will Gather All Nations: Resistance, Culture, and Pan-African Collaboration in Denmark Vesey’s South Carolina.” Journal of Negro History 86, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 132–147.

Ellington, Edward Kennedy. Music Is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976. “Farewell Address to the Troops (1866).” In Deirdre Mullane, ed., Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African American Writing. New York: First Anchor Books, 1993. Harding, Vincent. There Is a River. New York: Harcourt, 1981. Hemmingway, Theodore. “Prelude to Change: Black Carolinians in the War Years, 1914– 1920.” Journal of Negro History 65, no. 3 (Summer 1980): 212–227. Holt, Thomas. Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Lamson, Peggy. The Glorious Failure. New York: Norton, 1973. Lau, Peter F. “Freedom Road Territory: The Politics of Civil Rights Struggle in South

Rucker, Walter. “Conjure, Magic, and Power: The Influence of Afro-Atlantic Religious Practices on Slave Resistance and Rebellion.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 84–103. “South Carolina Black Code (1864–1865).” In Deirdre Mullane, ed., Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African American Writing. New York: First Anchor Books, 1993. “Testimony of the Vesey Conspiracy (1822).” In Deirdre Mullane, ed., Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African American Writing. New York: First Anchor Books, 1993. Wood, Peter H. The Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Norton, 1974.

SOUTH DAKOTA William Gibbons and Gordon E. Thompson

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Chronology 1803

The United States purchases a vast tract of territory known as the Louisiana Purchase from France, including the area that will become South Dakota.

1804

An African American, York, William Clark’s slave, accompanies the Lewis and Clark expedition (Corps of Discovery) from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Northwest, providing early information about the land in the Dakota Plains. Passing through the region twice, York becomes the first documented African American to set foot on South Dakota soil.

1812

The South Dakota region becomes part of the Missouri Territory.

1817

Joseph LaFramboise starts a fur trading post at the site of present-day Fort Pierre. This marks the beginning of the oldest continuous white settlement in South Dakota.

1823

The first military campaign is waged in South Dakota after Arikara Indians attack a fur-trading party led by a General Ashley; 12 fur traders are killed and 11 wounded.

1825

Treaties are signed with a number of Indian tribes in South Dakota.

1831

The Yellowstone becomes the first steamboat to travel up the Missouri River in South Dakota, introducing steamboat services to Upper Missouri Valley.

1857

The white influx into South Dakota receives a boost with the establishment of a settlement at the site of present-day Sioux Falls.

1858

The Yankton Sioux sign a treaty that cedes much of eastern South Dakota to the United States and opens the land for settlement. White settlers continue to enter South Dakota. A provisional government is established, but it is not recognized by Congress.

1860

An unorganized U.S. Census in the Dakota Territory gives a population count of 4,837.

1860

White settlers in the Dakota Territory use the 1857 Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case to confiscate gold from black miners.

1861

The territorial legislature bars blacks from voting.

1862

Congress passes the Homestead Act, which promises 160 acres of free land to settlers.

1862

William Jayne delivers his first governor‘s message to the legislature of the Dakota Territory; Jayne addresses the question of slavery by suggesting that the members pass a bill to prohibit it.

1862

(June) Congress abolishes slavery in the territories of the United States.

1865

(February 1) President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery throughout the United States; the amendment takes effect upon its ratification in December.

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1865

(November 11) An African American man, Isaiah Dorman, is hired as a courier at $100 a month to make trips between Fort Wadsworth and Fort Rice, Dakota Territory, a distance of 360 miles.

1867

(January 10) Congress passes the Territorial Suffrage Act, which allows African Americans in the western territories to vote; the act immediately enfranchises about 800 black male voters in those territories.

1868

The territorial legislature ends discrimination against African Americans in public schools by changing a provision in the constitution to read “equally free and accessible to all children.”

1868

The territorial legislature repeals its 1861 ban on voting by African Americans.

1868

(July 21) The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

1870

(February 3) The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified; the amendment guarantees African American males the right to vote.

1870

The U.S. Census documents 94 African Americans in the Dakota Territory out of a total population of fewer than 13,000. Most came during the gold rush and served in the military at Dakota forts.

1874

African American Sarah Campbell is the only women who traveled with General George Custer’s expedition for gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She remained in the hills and cooked for miners, dying in 1888 on her ranch near Galena.

1876

(July 4) African American cowboy Nat Love, also known as “Deadwood Dick,” participates in a rodeo in Deadwood, out-roping and outshooting other cowboys to become champion of western cattle country. Love later writes an autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as Deadwood Dick and retires as a cowboy to work as a Pullman porter until his death in Los Angeles in 1921.

1878–1887

The railroads provide a major incentive to settlement in South Dakota; agriculture and industry both prosper in the territory.

1880

The 25th Infantry relocates from a station on the Mexican border to the Dakota Territory. These black soldiers are stationed at three posts—Fort Randall, Fort Hale, and Fort Meade. The unit is transferred out of South Dakota in 1892 after interracial tension in the Black Hills.

1881

Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry stationed at Fort Randall guard Sitting Bull and the 160 Hunkpapas who were led back from Saskatchewan to face imprisonment.

1882

The Blair Colony near Onida in Sully County is started by P. H. and Benjamin P. Blair; about 200 residents farm and ranch at the colony until the Great Depression of the 1930s forces them to move on.

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1883

Lucretia Marchbanks opens her own establishment, the Rustic Hotel, becoming one of the first black entrepreneurs in Dakota Territory.

1885

The Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church is built in Yankton.

1885–1887

Droughts bring the prosperity of the Great Dakota Boom to an end. The flow of settlers drops off greatly. Some settlers leave South Dakota to return to their previous homes. The region’s economy slows down, but recovers as the nation emerges from depression in the late 1890s.

1889

(November 2) South Dakota enters the Union as the 40th state.

1890

The 9th Regiment Cavalry U.S. Colored Troops arrives at Pine Ridge and drives off a Sioux Indian attack on a 7th Cavalry squadron.

1898

The 10th Cavalry wins five Medals of Honor for its service in the Spanish-American War, but no black solider or sailor is given the nation’s highest military decoration for more than half a century until the Korean War.

1904

Pioneer black novelist and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux moves from Chicago to homestead land in South Dakota; Micheaux purchases 500 acres of land on the Sioux Rosebud Indian Reservation.

1905

Mary Elizabeth Blair, a land agent for King Real Estate in Sully County’s Colored Colony, sells a 1,200-acre ranch to John McGruder, establishing one of the model ranches that attracts many other African Americans to the state.

1908

Louise Mitchell arrives in Sioux Falls to start her career in the wig and shampoo department of Koenig’s Dry Goods Store. She later opens Mitchell’s Beauty Shop and eventually owns and operates Mitchell’s California School of Beauty Culture.

1916

The Second Baptist Church is built in Yankton.

1917

Illinoisian native Oscar Micheaux publishes his novel The Homesteader, which fictionalized his experience as a black homesteader in South Dakota and later becomes the first all-black film.

1917

St. John’s Baptist Church of Sioux Falls is organized by a group of local citizens.

1920

The South Dakota chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organized in Yankton and Sioux Falls.

1920

The U.S. Census documents 832 blacks in the state out of a total population of 636,547; Yankton has the largest black community with 102 individuals.

1930

The Great Depression and collapse of the stock market cause extreme economic adversity for African Americans; just 308 out of the 646 black residents of South Dakota hold jobs, and 118 of these individuals work as domestics and in personal services.

1930–1940

During this decade, 172 African Americans leave the state of South Dakota.

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1942

The first 200 African Americans assigned to the Sioux Falls Army Air Corps Technical Training Command arrive.

1948

African American novelist and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux makes his last movie, The Betrayal, about a black South Dakota homesteader in love with a white woman.

1948

(July 26) President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 directing the desegregation of the armed forces.

1950

The Rapid City Air Base opens its African American Squadron C to persons of all races two years after President Truman issues Executive Order 9981 integrating the armed services.

1953

The Prince Hall Alpha Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons fraternal society is established.

1955

The Omega Chapter of the Order of the Western Star Society is established.

1961

The South Dakota Civil Rights Council is organized as a statewide institution to assure the preservation of American democracy and advancement of civil rights. Resolutions call for the enactment of legislation against discrimination in places of public accommodation.

1962

The South Dakota legislature passes a public accommodation law banning racial discrimination in public places after a New York Times article describes discrimination against black servicemen in Rapid City bars, restaurants, barbershops, and other places.

1964

(January 23) The state legislature ratifies Joint Resolution 1, which reads as follows: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

1968

Cleveland Abbott, a four-sport letter winner at South Dakota State University, is inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

1972

Ted Blakey, the owner of a janitorial service and pest control firm in Yankton, serves as a delegate to the 1972 Republican National Convention.

1988

Kenny Anderson, owner of a Sioux Falls laundromat and dry cleaning establishment, becomes the first African American elected to a city council in South Dakota.

1990

The U.S. Census documents 3,258 African Americans in South Dakota, 25 percent of them residing at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City.

1990

South Dakota makes Martin Luther King Day an official state holiday.

2000

African Americans comprise .06 percent of South Dakota’s population, about 4,500 persons.

2006

The U.S. Census documents 5,262 African Americans in South Dakota.

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Historical Overview Two groups of Native Americans had been longterm occupants of South Dakota prior to the entry of Europeans or African Americans. In modern times, the first of these were the Arikara Indians, who were later displaced by the Sioux in the early 1800s. Essentially, the area now known as South Dakota was Dakota or Sioux Territory before its acquisition by Europeans. After that, the territory swung back and forth between the French and Spanish until the French sold it to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. In the ensuing years, the now infamous process of reneging on treaties with Native Americans came to typify the history of Sioux-U.S. relations. These breeches of contract were most vividly expressed with the introduction of the popular Homestead Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1862 that provided for the transfer of 160 acres of unoccupied public land to each homesteader at a nominal fee after five years of residence. The resulting conflict with the Sioux in 1862 did not come to a complete end until the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. The population of white settlers did not increase by much, however, until the “Dakota Boom” that lasted from 1870 to 1880, largely attributed to the introduction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. South Dakota’s growth was not unaffected by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed each new state to determine whether it would permit slavery. The Dakota region decided not to become a slave state; instead, it was one of the first territories to grant suffrage to black men in 1867, perhaps because only 94 African Americans were reportedly living in the area at that time. As early as 1865, however, black U.S. cavalrymen were playing a significant role in protecting the land from the Plains Indian nations. And while plenty of territory was available, few blacks migrated to the area during the exodus of ex-slaves from the South in 1879. Still, ever since South Dakota became a significant interest of the United States, issues

concerning African Americans have been central to this state’s history. Strangely, the Dakota region, unlike other western territories, underwent its own Reconstruction. For, in a document called the Organic Act, blacks were in effect segregated by a territorial authorization that did not appear to entitle them to the vote or access to public education. The word “white”—as in white only—in the law had to be stricken, as it indeed was in 1868, for blacks to become enfranchised and to receive access to an equal education. The increased migration by blacks to the state suggests that the passage of this measure made the state far more attractive to them. Still, as an agricultural region, African Americans did not migrate to the state in large numbers, South Dakota’s industry never having been sufficiently developed to offer employment opportunities outside of farming. Whether as a state—which it became in 1889—or a territory, South Dakota has been plagued by droughts and other natural calamities affecting its agriculture-based economy—an economy that has since been sustained by mining and cattle production.

Towns and Cities More than 400 blacks emigrated and settled in the far western section of the state in the Black Hills region following General Custer’s confirmation of gold in these western outreaches. Other than mining, many African Americans took up work in the nearby towns of Deadwood and Spearfish. While the African American population has never risen above 1 percent of the population, it has had a noticeable role in developing the character of the state. African American cultural influence in South Dakota can be traced most fruitfully to the proliferation of black churches such as Yankton’s Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1885, and St. John’s Baptist Church of Sioux Falls. African American military men also contributed to the character of South Dakota when they

South Dakota began to arrive shortly after the Civil War, establishing a hundred-year practice of residency at military bases in major South Dakota cities such as Yankton, Sioux Falls, Sturgis, and Rapid City, in forts such as Randall, Hale, and Meade, and the Rapid City Air Force Base. In 1865, for example, the 9th Regiment Cavalry, U.S. Colored Troops, served in the Dakota Territory after the Civil War ended. Isaiah Dorman, scout for General George Armstrong Custer, was captured in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Dorman was not scalped because the Sioux considered him one of their people. Much later, in a historic and colorful episode, the 9th Cavalry troopers took part in what has been called the Ghost Dance campaign of 1890–1891. Perhaps most memorable is the role played by the 9th Cavalry in the massacre at Wounded Knee. While the corporal, William Wilson, would be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his troop’s rescue of the white 7th Cavalry; his men would go on to help lay waste to 250 Sioux men, women, and children, establishing one of the most significant historical events associated with this state. Less monumental, in nearby Fort Meade, just east of Deadwood, few violent incidents occurred between the soldiers and the white community until an enraged soldier in the nearby town of Sturgis killed a local physician and was summarily lynched by a white mob. A second incident involved one company of the 25th Infantry when it engaged in a shooting spree brought on by a disagreement with a black saloonkeeper. Another contingent of the 25th Infantry of African American soldiers was posted at Fort Randall located further south and east, on the other side of Lake Francis Case near the township of Gregory, and close by the Yankton Indian Reservation. Many children were born out of the subsequent close relationship between the soldiers and the Yankton (Native American) people. Nevertheless, when Sitting Bull arrived in the region in

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1881, he found himself imprisoned by the 25th along with the 160 Hunkpapas that accompanied him after his return from Saskatchewan. As individuals, the South Dakotan and American character of blacks in this area can be discerned best in their roles as homesteaders and what today are called “cowboys.” One Deadwood township notable was Lucretia Marchbanks, born a slave in the 1830s in Tennessee. Before landing in Deadwood around 1876, Lucretia Marchbanks had crisscrossed the continent from California to Colorado. Her claim to fame lies in her amazing history by rising from slave to cook to owner of a hotel called the Rustic. Her establishment complimented the town’s black dance hall, saloon, and eatery. The history of Deadwood would not be complete, however, without the tale of Deadwood Dick, a black cowboy. Born Nat Love, he was renamed Deadwood Dick for his amazing rodeo feats, and in 1876, he was said to “break” a horse in little more than nine minutes, a record. Significantly, if with less flair, P. H. and B. P. Blair homesteaded near Onida, a relatively isolated area at the center of the state, and provided the foundation and example for a much larger group of blacks that followed. On the south central border of the state in Gregory County, South Dakota, a great African American homesteader took up residence. Oscar Micheaux, one of the first black filmmakers, was born in 1884 in Metropolis, Illinois, before relocating on 500 acres of land near the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in 1905. By 1918, he gave up farming and left South Dakota for points east, including Chicago and New York, to form the Micheaux Film and Book Company. In his novel The Homesteader (1917) and in his film The Exile (1931), Micheaux depicts the deprivations of life on the prairie through the actions of a black man who leaves Chicago to homestead in South Dakota. Micheaux’s tales of homesteading are fully developed in his novel The Wind from Nowhere (1941).

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Even further east, at the southern end of the state, in Yankton City, the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church served in 1885 as the nucleus for a strong African American community that numbered 62 by 1890. In the early days, the town of Yankton appears to have been a popular destination for African Americans who worked around the docks. Citizens of the town produced many successful businessmen like Christopher Columbus Yancey and Jim Parsons, who owned business establishments such as saloons and restaurants. Yancey also invented carnival-striking devices. Ted Blakey picked up where his father, Isaac, left off and operated a janitorial service that set the stage for him to become the first black to serve as president of the local Kiwanis Club. Ironically, these men flourished in part because of segregation. Black barbers and women hair stylists, for instance, took care not only of their own, but were patronized by the white community as well. At the eastern border of the state, in Sioux Falls, Louise Mitchell was known for her Horatio Alger tale of how she started out selling wigs to become the owner of the California School of Beauty Culture. At her Beauty Shop in Shriver’s Department Store back in South Dakota, Mitchell trained hairdressers and is said to have worked with Helen Hayes, the actress. Another Sioux Falls notable, Kenny Anderson, used his dry-cleaning and laundry business as a stepping-stone to become the first black on the city commission of Sioux Falls in 1988. In the aftermath of World War I, increased discrimination against African Americans led to the opening of a South Dakota branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Sioux Falls and Yankton. African Americans began to leave the state in response to the effects of the Great Depression and the later events of World War II when South Dakotan blacks enlisted in the armed forces. But, in a reversal, the Sioux Falls Army Air Corps Technical Training Command led to an increase in the population in that city when blacks were assigned to it for training.

When President Harry S. Truman ordered the integration of the armed services in 1948, he helped to limit discrimination against African Americans in the armed forces, allowing, for instance, the Rapid City Air Base located in the western portion of the state to open its Squadron C to blacks and other previously excluded ethnic groups. African Americans were recruited, however, only as construction workers, quartermasters, and cooks. Still, as a consequence of this recruitment, the black population of Sioux Falls and Rapid City increased during the war. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, South Dakota has only about 5,260 African Americans out of a total population of approximately 754,844, a mere .06 percent of the total. Yet, on the whole, black South Dakotans are fairly well educated, with more than a third having received a high-school degree and 411 having acquired bachelor’s degrees. In addition 2,115 individuals are employed, earning a little less than the median household income of their white counterparts. Interestingly, a third of the black population is foreign born and speaks a language other than English at home.

Notable African Americans Abbott, Cleveland Leigh (1892–1955) Born in Yankton to Elbert and Mollie Brown Abbott, who had moved to South Dakota from Alabama in 1890, Cleveland Leigh Abbott had a distinguished career as a coach and athletic director at Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Alabama. Abbott’s parents, Elbert and Mollie Brown Abbott, left Alabama and settled in South Dakota in 1890. After graduating from Watertown High School in 1912, Abbot entered South Dakota State University at Brookings in 1916, where he won 14 varsity athletic awards during his collegiate athletic career. After graduation in 1916, Abbott married Jessie Harriet Scott (1897–1982), with whom he had one daughter, Jessie Ellen, who became the first women’s track coach at Tennessee State University in Nashville in 1943.

South Dakota During World War I, Abbott was a first lieutenant in the 366th Infantry, 92nd Division, and saw action during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918. Abbott’s later service as a commissioned officer in the army reserve led to the eventual naming of the U.S. Army Reserve Center at Tuskegee as the Cleveland Leigh Abbott Center. In 1913, Booker T. Washington had promised to hire Abbott as athletic director at Tuskegee Institute if Abbott earned a bachelor’s degree. In 1923, having successfully fulfilled this requirement, Abbott was hired at Tuskegee as an agricultural chemist and athletic director. In the latter position, Abbott served also as coach of the institute’s football team, which, during Abbott’s 32-year career at the school, won over 200 games and recorded six undefeated seasons. In 1937, Abbott also established Tuskegee’s track-and-field program for women, which fielded undefeated teams from 1937 to 1942. Six of Abbott’s athletes competed on U.S. Olympic track teams, including gold medalists Alice Coachman and Mildred McDaniel. He also coached tennis stars Margaret “Pete” Peters and Roumania “Repeat” Peters. Abbott has been inducted into various sports halls of fame, including the South Dakota State University Hall of Fame (1968), the Tuskegee University Hall of Fame (1975), the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Hall of Fame (1992), the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame (1995), and the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame (1996). Also in 1996, Tuskegee University renamed its football stadium Cleveland Leigh Abbott Memorial Alumni Stadium. Abbott died in Tuskegee on April 14, 1955, and was buried in the Tuskegee University Campus Cemetery.

Love, Nat (“Deadwood Dick”) (1854–1921) Cowboy and rodeo champion Nat Love excelled at roping, shooting, and bucking horses to earn the nickname “Deadwood Dick” and the title of champion of western cattle country on July 4,

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Nat “Deadwood Dick” Love, African American cowboy (1854–1921). (Library of Congress)

1876, in Deadwood, South Dakota. He used his prize money to write an autobiography, in 1907, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as Deadwood Dick, recounting stories and memories with Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, and the likes of Jesse James. Born into slavery in Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1854, Nat Love at a young age learned the trade of herding, and branding cattle and horses. After the Civil War, Love set out for greater opportunities. At the age of 15, after a raffle ticket brought him the money to travel west, Nat left his family and relocated to Dodge City, Kansas, to find work as a cowboy. His skills as a youth paid off, and Nat Love was soon driving cattle up the trails earning $30 a month. All the while driving cattle, Love recognized the need for the expertise of a cowboy. While once under attack from Indians, his companions taught

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him how to shoot a handgun. On the open ranges he developed a keen eye, quick wit, and alert mind. Love tested his skills in competition with the best cowboys in the West after a cattle drive landed him in Deadwood, South Dakota. Outperforming the competition, he was given the name Deadwood Dick. After retirement in 1889, Nat worked as a Pullman porter until his death in Los Angeles in 1921.

Micheaux, Oscar (1884–1951) Novelist, pioneer filmmaker, and homesteader Oscar Micheaux, the father of race-movies and Afro-American cinema, wrote, produced, and directed over 40 films between 1919 and 1948. Micheaux, the silent film era’s prolific African American filmmaker, was born in Metropolis, Illinois, the fifth of 11 children of former slaves. Raised on a farm, Micheaux left home to work as a Pullman porter. Traveling west, Micheaux recognized opportunities to purchase land. He homesteaded, purchasing a relinquished claim of land not far from the Rosebud Reservation in Gregory County, South Dakota, in 1910 where he lived until 1918. As a novelist Micheaux published life about homesteading: The Conquest (1913), an autobiographical novel, The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races (1915), and The Homesteader (1917). As a filmmaker Micheaux established the Micheaux Film and Book Publishing Corporation in 1918 in Chicago, writing, producing, and directing feature-length films with all-black casts. His career spanned 30 years and included the films The Homesteader (1917), which was shot on location in Tripp County, and Within Our Gates (1920), which was a response to D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Many of Micheaux’s films are now lost, having been either mislaid or destroyed. In 1948, Micheaux made his last movie, The Betrayal, about a black South Dakota homesteader in love with a white woman. Micheaux died in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April 1, 1951, while

Undated photo of the filmmaker and author Oscar Micheaux. Micheaux was one of the first African American filmmakers. (AP/Wide World Photos)

on a promotional tour. In 1987, Micheaux was honored with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Today the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame annually honors blacks in films in Micheaux’s memory. The Oscar Micheaux Film Festival is held each year at the Oscar Micheaux Center in Gregory, South Dakota.

York (1770–c. 1823) A slave and manservant, York was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition that traveled from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Pacific Northwest, providing early information about the land in the Dakota Plains. As part of the expedition, York passed through the area twice, becoming the first African American to set foot on the soil of present-day South Dakota. York, the son of

South Dakota slaves, Rose and Old York, was born in Caroline County, Virginia, and raised on a Kentucky plantation near Louisville with William Clark, who inherited York in 1799 as part of his father’s estate. York’s display of skill, strength, and popularity made him a valuable member of the Lewis and Clark expedition and an important contributor to its success. During the 28-month journey, York served in a variety of unusual and even unique capacities. Throughout the expedition, York was treated as an equal. He hunted on his own, carried a gun, and voted. York’s hunting is noteworthy because, at the time, slaves were not generally permitted to carry firearms. It is also unusual that he was permitted to vote with the other members of the expedition on the location of the winter camp on the Pacific Ocean. Consequently, since this was a military expedition, York may have been the first African American to actually vote in the United States. During the expedition, York also served as a scout, interpreter, fisherman, wood cutter, and cook. Standing well over six feet and weighing more than 200 pounds with dark skin and kinky hair, York was a source of fascination for the Native American peoples he encountered. The tribes had never seen a man of his dark complexion before and all flocked around York and examined him from head to toe. On one occasion, Clark noted that an Indian tried to rub the black paint off York. The Indians eventually became convinced that York was a member of another species. In the Mandan village, children brought handfuls of sand and scrubbed York’s skin with it. They had a hard time believing that the dark coloring was natural and could not be scrubbed off. After the expedition returned, all the men except York received double pay and land grants from Congress. York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good service during the expedition, but Clark, who had settled in St. Louis, refused, claiming financial difficulties, although he did allow York to return temporarily to Louisville to rejoin his wife.

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Clark may have emancipated York sometime after 1816 and helped set him up with a business in Tennessee and Kentucky. There are, however, some doubts about this story; he may simply have been hired out to the owner of a freight business. At least one other account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier. While some historians believe York was eventually freed, it has never been documented. He died of cholera sometime between 1822 and 1823 in Tennessee. A statue of York by sculptor Ed Hamilton, with plaques commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition and his participation in it, stands at Riverfront Plaza on the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. A statue of York also stands on Quality Hill in Kansas City, Missouri.

Cultural Contributions Oscar Micheaux and Nat Love or Deadwood Dick are standout cultural stars in the history of blacks in South Dakota. Their personalities exemplify to an extraordinary extent the American character of African Americans who have resided in South Dakota. Arriving in the state as early as 1804 in the person of York, a slave with the Lewis and Clark expedition, black men, acting as scouts, were already exhibiting quintessential American characteristics. Few men, white or black, would succeed in living as colorfully as Nat Love, for instance, as his equally colorful sobriquet attests: Deadwood Dick. Born a slave in 1854, he acquired this cognomen based on his cattle wrestling exploits in Deadwood, South Dakota. But he also survived bullet wounds and was captured by the Akimel O’odham tribe, among other exploits. A classic American cowboy, Love traveled from Tennessee to South Dakota, where he worked as a cowhand; and in 1876, he would go on to win the championship title for bronco riding that included contests with the rope, throw, tie, bridle, and saddle. He wound up in Los Angeles, working as a Pullman porter before his death in 1921.

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While Oscar Micheaux is best known as a filmmaker and novelist, the basis for his creative output can be laid to his days as a homesteader in Gregory County. Born in Metropolis, Illinois, in 1884, he took up homesteading near the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in 1905 after a stint as a Pullman porter. Life on the prairie, as described in his novels The Homesteader (1917) and The Wind from Nowhere (1941), reveals the rough, frontier lifestyle endearing to the American psyche. Despite Micheaux’s departure from the state some 13 years later, South Dakota continued to be acclaimed by its representation in Micheaux’s landmark, and very popular films, The Homesteader (1917) and The Exile (1931). Beyond these movies on South Dakotan themes, Micheaux struck a positive blow for black self-respect in his film The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920). It must not be overlooked, however, that though Micheaux championed the African American community, his view of the African American character was not always complementary, and consequently controversial. Micheaux thus evolves from a paradigmatic black homesteader to create a vision of African American life as one of America’s first professional filmmakers, and equally responsible for championing a way of life intimately associated with the character of South Dakota.

Bibliography Bernson, Sarah L., and Robert J. Eggers. “Black People in South Dakota History.” South Dakota History 7 (1977). Bowser, Pearl, and Louise Spence. Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

DeOllos, Ione Y. “South Dakota.” In African American Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, 2533–2535. Glasrud, Bruce A., and Charles A. Braithwaite, eds. African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Love, Nat. The Life and Adventures of Nat Love. Blacks in the American West Series. Introduction by Brackette F. Williams. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Moos, Dan. “Reclaiming the Frontier: Oscar Micheaux as Black Turnerian.” African American Review, 36, no. 3, (2002): 357–381. Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Saxman, Michelle C. “To Better Oneself: Sully County’s African-American ‘Colony.’ ” South Dakota History 34, no. 4 (Winter 2004). Schell, Herbert S., and John E. Miller. History of South Dakota. 4th ed., revised. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2004. Schwan, Lynda B. “Preserving a Legacy, The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Yankton.” South Dakota History 34, no. 4 (Winter 2004). Thompson, Harry F., ed. A New South Dakota History. 2nd ed. Sioux Falls, SD: Center for Western Studies, Augustana College, 2009. Van Epps-Taylor, Betti. Forgotten Lives: African Americans in South Dakota. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2008. Van Epps-Taylor, Betti. Oscar Micheaux: Dakota Homesteader, Author, Pioneer Film Maker. Rapid City, SD: Dakota West Books, 1999.

TENNESSEE Linda Wynn

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Chronology 1790

Individuals specializing in the trading of persons held in perpetual servitude appear in Tennessee, most notably in Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis.

1796

(June 1) Tennessee enters the Union as the 16th state.

1815

A Manumission Society of Tennessee is organized in Jefferson County.

1819

Elihu Embree publishes the Manumission Intelligencer (later called the Emancipator) in Jonesborough; it is the first paper in the United States exclusively devoted to the manumitting of enslaved persons.

1822–1824

Benjamin Lundy publishes the Genius of Universal Emancipation, a small monthly newspaper devoted to the abolition of slavery.

1829

The Tennessee Colonization Society is organized to send persons released from bondage to Liberia.

1843

Mount Lebanon Missionary Baptist Church, Tennessee’s oldest African American Baptist Congregation, is organized in Columbia.

1861

(May 6) Tennessee secedes from the Union.

1864

(April 12) At the Battle of Fort Pillow, Confederate soldiers under General Nathan Bedford Forest massacre approximately 192 black soldiers and 93 southern Unionists.

1864

(December) During the decisive Battle of Nashville, approximately 13,000 U.S. Colored Troops aid in the defeat of John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee.

1865

(April 7) Tennessee ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1865

The State Colored Men’s Convention is organized in Tennessee.

1866

(July 24) Tennessee becomes the first former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.

1866

(August 6) Members of the State Colored Men’s Convention meet in Nashville to strategize a campaign to secure the vote for African Americans.

1866

(May) Memphis suffers its worst race riot in history, as whites riot for three days seeking to drive blacks from their neighborhoods.

1866

(July 19) Tennessee becomes the third state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to blacks.

1867

(February) The Tennessee General Assembly gives African Americans the right to vote and hold public office.

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1867

(August 22) Fisk University, which was founded as the Fisk Free Colored School in 1866, is incorporated as Fisk University.

1868

Nashville citizens elect five African Americans to the City Council.

1869

(November 16) Tennessee rejects the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights to African Americans.

1872

Despite the efforts of white “redeemers,” Sampson W. Keeble of Nashville becomes the first African American elected to the Tennessee General Assembly, where he serves in the House of Representatives.

1875

The United Presbyterian Church opens Knoxville College.

1876

Meharry Medical College is established in Nashville.

1876

William F. Yardley of Knoxville runs for governor of Tennessee.

1881

Tennessee enacts the South’s first Jim Crow railroad law; African Americans in Nashville stage a freedom ride protest at the Union Station.

1882

Lane College is established in Jackson.

1892

Dr. Myles V. Lynk, a graduate of Meharry Medical College, publishes the Medical and Surgical Observer, the country’s first African American medical journal.

1892

(March 9) Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart, owners of the People’s Grocery Company in Memphis, are dragged from jail, where they had been incarcerated for a disturbance at their store, and taken a mile out of town where they are shot to death and their bodies mutilated; the incident elicits editiorials against racial injustice in Memphis from Ida Wells-Barnett.

1895

Drs. Myles V. Lynk, Robert Fulton Boyd, and others establish the National Medical Association.

1896

Reverend Richard H. Boyd founds the National Baptist Sunday School Publishing Board.

1904

Nashville’s One Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company, the longest continuously African American-owned and operated bank in the United States, is established; the bank’s name is changed to Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company in 1920.

1906

The U.S. Supreme Court in the Maryville College v. Tennessee case approves Tennessee’s 1901 Jim Crow law forcing private colleges to observe segregation.

1911

Solomon P. Harris is elected to the Nashville City Council.

1911–1913

James C. Napier of Nashville serves as register of the U.S. Treasury under President William H. Taft.

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1912

Tennessee State Normal (now Tennessee State University) opens as a public institution of higher education for African Americans.

1912

Hadley Park in Nashville is considered the first public park in the United States for African Americans.

1915

The Sunday School Publishing Board of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. is founded.

1919

The Tennessee Interracial League is declared a chapter of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

1919

Race riots erupt in Knoxville.

1924

American Baptist Theological Seminary, now known as American Baptist College, is organized.

1936

Tennessee begins out-of-state scholarships for African American citizens to prevent the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from forcing the desegregation of graduate and professional schools at the University of Tennessee.

1940

Perry A. Stephens and others organize an NAACP chapter in Chattanooga.

1941

Z. Alexander Looby, Thurgood Marshall, and other NAACP attorneys file the Harold E. Thomas v. Nashville Schools and the C. B. Robinson v Chattanooga Schools cases forcing equal pay for African American and white teachers.

1946

(February) Racial violence erupts in Columbia.

1947

Tennessee and other southern states form the Southern Regional Education Board to contract with Meharry Medical College and other universities to provide medical, dental, and professional education to African American citizens.

1947

Dr. Charles S. Johnson became the first African American president of Fisk University.

1951

Attorneys Z. Alexander Looby and Robert Lillard are elected to the Nashville City Council, becoming the first African Americans elected since the 1911 election of Solomon P. Harris.

1951

The University of Tennessee is forced to accept six African American students rather than fight the Gray v. University of Tennessee case.

1952

Dr. Harold D. West becomes the first African American president of Meharry Medical College.

1953

Scaritt College and Vanderbilt University admit the first African American graduate students into their respective divinity schools.

1955

African Americans in Nashville file suit against the city’s Board of Education to desegregate its public school system.

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1955

Officials in Oak Ridge voluntarily desegregate its school system.

1955

Nashville’s Catholic schools voluntarily desegregate.

1956

(August 26) Under court order, Clinton High School in Anderson County becomes the first public high school in the South to desegregate.

1957

Robert “Bobby” Cain graduates from Clinton High School in Anderson County, thus becoming the first African American to be graduated from a formerly segregated public high school in the South.

1957

(September 9) Nashville begins desegregating its public schools by implementing its onegrade-a-year plan, which became a model for other public school systems.

1958

Reverend Kelly Miller Smith and others establish the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC).

1959

African American citizens in Fayette and Haywood counties initiate the first legal action against a party primary under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, when they filed suit against the local Democratic Party.

1959

A federal court orders Smyrna to desegregate its public school system.

1959

State officials attack Highlander Folk School, which promoted civil rights.

1959

(November-December) Nashville civil rights leaders and student activists conduct “test sit-ins” to confirm the city’s exclusionary policy based on race.

1960

Because of the African American revolt against the Jim Crow voting system in Fayette and Haywood Counties, in the winter, white property owners evict hundreds of black tenant farmers from their land.

1960

Jackson ends segregated seating on its public transit system.

1960

The Goss v. Knoxville suit is filed to force the desegregation of Knoxville’s public schools.

1960

Wilma Rudolph becomes the first African American woman to win three gold medals in an Olympics.

1960

(February 13) Student activists launch full-scale sit-ins at lunch counters in Nashville’s downtown department stores.

1960

(March) Students in Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Memphis begin sit-in demonstrations.

1960

(May 13) Nashville becomes the first major city in the South to desegregate its lunch counters.

1961

(May 17) Nashville students, under the leadership of Diane Nash, reinitiate the Congress of Racial Equality's (CORE) Freedom Rides through the Deep South.

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1962

The court’s decision in J. H. Turner v. Memphis et al. forces the desegregation of restaurants in the Memphis airport.

1962

The case of Mapp v. Chattanooga forces desegregation of Chattanooga–Hamilton County schools.

1963

(March 21) Tennessee ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

The Tennessee Commission on Human Relations is established; the agency’s name is later changed to Commission on Human Rights and the Tennessee Civil Rights Commission.

1965

Nashville’s first desegregated basketball game is played between Pearl High School (African American) and Father Ryan High School (white).

1966

Tennessee begins the process of redrawing legislative districts in accordance with the “one man, one vote” mandate enunciated in the Baker v. Carr case; this process allows more African Americans to be elected to public offices.

1966

The Pearl Senior High School boys’ varsity basketball team becomes the first African American team to win the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s state championship.

1967

Attorney Avon N. Williams Jr. and J. O. Patterson become the first African Americans to serve in the Tennessee Senate.

1967

Dr. Dorothy Brown, a Nashville physician, becomes the first African American woman to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly’s House of Representatives.

1967

(December 2) Perry Wallace becomes the first African American varsity student-athlete to compete in the Southeastern Conference.

1968

(April 4) Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel.

1968

(May) Rita Sanders (later Geier), a history professor at Tennessee State University, and other plaintiffs file the Rita Sanders (Geier) v. Governor Buford Ellington suit to desegregate higher education in Tennessee; the case is finally settled in 2001.

1977

(January) Federal judge Frank Gray Jr. orders the merger of Tennessee State University (TSU) and the University of Tennessee, Nashville, to be effective on July 1, 1979.

1980

George Brown becomes the first African American to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court.

1990

Thelma Harper becomes the first African American women elected to the Senate of the Tennessee General Assembly.

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1991

The National Civil Rights Museum opens in Memphis at the site of Martin Luther King’s 1968 assassination, the Lorraine Motel.

1992

Willie H. Herenton is elected as the first African American mayor of Memphis.

1996

Emmitt Turner becomes Nashville’s first African American police chief.

1996

Adolpho A. Birch becomes the first African American chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court.

1997

(April 2) Tennessee ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment, 127 years after the amendment took effect.

1998

After several years of planning and debate, the two sides in the continuing court struggle over desegregation agree to remove Nashville schools from federal court oversight; the court agrees, as a new, five-year set of guidelines called the School Improvement Plan is adopted.

2002

Howard Gentry Jr. is elected as the first African American vice mayor of Nashville.

2005

DeFord Bailey is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

2006

Harold Ford Jr. runs for the U.S. Senate.

2007

Vice Mayor Howard Gentry Jr. unsuccessfully runs for mayor of Nashville.

2008

(February 5) Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, wins about 40 percent of the vote in the Tennessee Democratic Primary, finishing second to Senator Hillary Clinton of New York; Obama loses Tennessee in the general election in November, winning about 42 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Throughout the “Volunteer” State’s annals of history, people of African descent played significant roles in every arena of the state’s development. Their saga begins with the formation of North Carolina and continues beyond that state’s ceded portion of land and its 1796 transformation into the state of Tennessee. Black persons enslaved accompanied Daniel Boone to the frontier, and they were with the patriot militia that battled against the British troops at King’s Mountain. James Robertson and John Donelson brought enslaved persons with them on their expeditions to the Cumberland River country in Middle Tennessee. For more than 30 years after the American Revolution, Tennessee was a perceptible manumission

state. In 1815, a Manumission Society of Tennessee was organized in Jefferson County. Four years later, in Jonesborough, Elihu Embree published The Manumission Intelligencer (later called The Emancipator), the first paper in the United States exclusively devoted to the manumitting of slaves. In Greeneville, from 1822 to 1824, Benjamin Lundy published the Genius of Universal Emancipation, a small monthly paper devoted to the abolition of slavery. By 1827, almost 20 percent of all antislavery societies in the nation operated in East Tennessee. This section of the state became a focal point for the abolition of slavery—an issue that ultimately splintered not only the state but the entire country. By 1830, Tennessee had a specified slave code that prohibited persons held in bondage from

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possessing guns, leaving the master’s premises without a written pass, owning property, testifying against whites, being manumitted unless the county court ruled they had performed “meritorious service,” hiring their own time, and selling goods without the master’s permission. Seditious speech and provocative language by those enslaved also were forbidden. As in all the slave states, slave marriages were not recognized and, concomitantly, parents had no rights to children born to such unions. In the Upper South, Memphis ranked second to Louisville, Kentucky in slave trading. Religion served as a powerful survival device as slaves adapted the Christian faith. Methodist and Baptist churches were open to slaves in ways that almost deviated from the parameters of slavery’s conventional restrictions. Black members had either separate seating or separate services. A few churches established missions exclusively for blacks, sometimes with one of their own, under supervision, serving as the minister in charge. To relieve overcrowding, many racially inclusive Tennessee churches separated their black members into segregated evening services and some into semi-independent congregations led by either white ministers or white-supervised black ministers. After the Civil War, black congregations gained their ecclesiastical freedom and complete control of their religious institutions from whites. In 1866, one year after the war’s end, there were eight black churches in Nashville and Memphis, two in Knoxville, and one in Chattanooga. Establishing schools had been a more covert undertaking. In Nashville between 1833 and 1857, because city officials denied them admittance to the public schools, free persons of color organized their own educational institutions. Free-black pedagogues like Alphonso Sumner, Daniel Wadkins, Sarah Porter, Joseph Manly, and Rufus Conrad became Tennessee’s trailblazers in providing schooling for blacks. In contrast, no free-black schools existed in Memphis.

Nevertheless, blacks were rendered educational instruction in the Sabbath schools until 1856, when whites issued a cease-and-desist order that terminated the teaching of reading skills to blacks. Just as blacks operated churches and organized academies of learning in the antebellum era, they also owned and established business enterprises. Free persons of color monopolized the barbering trade and the hack (taxi) service in Tennessee’s larger cities. Black women also played a significant role in entrepreneurial enterprises. For example, 38 free black women in the state owned almost $250,000 cumulatively in real property by 1860.

Civil War and Reconstruction In January 1861, Governor Isham G. Harris called the Tennessee General Assembly into a special session to consider secession. Looking toward peace, on January 16 the General Assembly resolved to urge the president of the United States and each of the southern states that “the status quo . . . concerning the forts . . . be strictly maintained.” Three days later, the state’s governing body called for a convention to allow its citizens to vote for delegates and to vote on the question of “Convention” or “No Convention.” The legislative action provided for an election to be held on February 9. On January 22, the legislature adopted a resolution proposing a convention of delegates from all of the slaveholding states be held in Nashville on February 4 “to . . . define a basis upon which . . . the Federal Union and the Constitutional rights of the slave States may be . . . preserved.” Five days later, vox populi (the voice of the people—composed of white males) defeated the call for a secession convention by a vote of 69,675 to 57,798. East Tennessee explicitly rejected the call for a convention, Middle Tennessee was equally divided, and West Tennessee supported the convention. On the question of secession, they definitively defeated the measure by a vote of 88,803 to 24,749, or a ratio of almost four to

Tennessee one. However, within two months, the turbulent winds of vicissitude—instigated by the April 12 Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and President Lincoln’s calling for 75,000 soldiers to defend the Union, changed public sentiment in Tennessee. With these two destiny-shaping events, the Civil War began. Many blacks viewed the intersectional conflict as a war for freedom. Others saw it merely as a practical opportunity to flee the sinister institution and to advance themselves. Some rushed to join the Union forces but were initially rejected. During the Civil War, the state Confederate system of administration assembled large homeguard patrols to guarantee slave submissiveness, while the Confederate army seized and returned runaways. Those persons enslaved proved essential to Confederate warfare in Tennessee as a labor resource in the fields, ironworks, and military camps. They constructed the state’s line of defensive fortifications, embankments that remained incomplete when the Union forces attacked in the winter of 1861–1862. Secessionists’ control of the state of Tennessee lasted but a brief time. By a joint land-and-water effort under General Ulysses S. Grant for the army and Admiral Andrew Hull Foote for the flotilla of armored vessels, Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River was brought to surrender on February 6, 1862. Ten days later, the Union forces captured the Confederate Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, 12 miles away. Within the same month, Nashville fell captive to the Union, causing Governor Harris and the state government to relocate to Memphis. Nashville remained under Union control until the war’s termination. Just as enslaved blacks supplied forced grind and toil for the Confederate army as teamsters, construction workers, and body servants, laborers of African descent from the contraband camps constructed a substantial portion of the railroads, bridges, and forts for the federal military. The

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army employed and monetarily paid able-bodied freed persons to work on abandoned farms, government-supervised plantations, and military projects. The contraband camps changed persons of African descent from unpaid forced laborers to wage earners, from fugitive slaves to freed persons, who constituted a valuable workforce for the Union army. More than 2,700 black Union laborers worked on Fort Negley and 23 other redoubts and forts to protect Nashville. They helped defend Fort Negley against Confederate attack in November 1862. In Memphis, they built forts and river fortifications for the Union, and they completed construction of the Northwestern Military Railroad. On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, giving defiant states and territories until January 1, 1863, to surrender their armed conflict or forfeit their slaves. Although slaves in Tennessee (which was under Union control) were excluded as “military necessity,” on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed those slaves held in areas controlled by the Confederate States of America. Later in 1863, the Union army began mustering in “colored regiments.” Based on data filed in the Adjutant General’s Office, Tennessee ranked third, following Louisiana (24,052) and Kentucky (23,703), in the number of blacks who served in the army. In Tennessee, 20,133 U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) served in Union units. The Confederacy never recognized the members of the USCT as soldiers, but rather as runaway or insurrectionary slaves. On May 1, 1863, the Congress of the Confederate States of America approved a resolution declaring black troops and their officers to be criminals, thus allowing captured black soldiers and their officers to be murdered or enslaved. In several battles, most notably at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864, Confederate soldiers under General Nathan Bedford Forrest refused to take

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black prisoners and instead massacred them. As a consequence of the vehement malice toward armed blacks and southern Unionists, when the smoke cleared, approximately 192 black soldiers and 93 southern Unionists had been slaughtered, out of approximately 600 persons defending the fort. A congressional investigating committee said Forrest’s men murdered 300 soldiers and civilians after the fort surrendered. At Memphis, a few days after the Fort Pillow Massacre, black soldiers swore remembrance. After the April 12, 1864, bloodbath, soldiers of African descent entered battle with the cry, “Remember Fort Pillow!” By late 1864, in the press, pulpits, and political gatherings, Confederate whites argued the question of using black soldiers. Even Confederate General Robert E. Lee publicly endorsed the idea of arming and freeing the slaves. After disputatious debates, the Confederate Congress passed the “Negro soldier bill” on March 13, 1865, less than a month before the fall of the Confederacy. General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. The bitter fouryear intersectional armed conflict that tore asunder the nation was over, followed by the disintegration of the Confederate States of America. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ending the iniquitous institution of slavery, was ratified in December 1865. The “Presidential Plan” for southern states to regain entry into the Union required 10 percent of the voters to make a loyal pledge of allegiance and organize a loyal government before they could make application for readmission. By some accounts, Reconstruction in Tennessee began in March 1862 when Andrew Johnson, a U.S. senator from East Tennessee, became the state’s appointed military governor. Three years later, he left Tennessee to become Abraham Lincoln’s vice president. In 1865, after Johnson’s departure, Tennessee Unionists named William G. Brownlow of Knoxville for governor, rejected the act of

secession, disfranchised ex-Confederates, and offered for public balloting a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Voters approved the antislavery amendment and selected Brownlow as the gubernatorial leader. By voting to abolish slavery before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Tennessee became the first of the former Confederate States to codify such an enactment. Although Tennessee applied for readmission to the Union in December 1865, the Congress refused to seat any congressional delegation from the former Confederate States of America. It further stipulated the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which rendered former persons held in bondage as U.S. citizens. On July 18, 1866, the General Assembly of Tennessee ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Six days later, as an outcome of the state’s ratification of the amendment, on July 24, 1866, the federal government readmitted Tennessee into the United States. By being the third state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and the first state of the former Southern Confederacy, Tennessee became the only southern state to avoid military governance by the U.S. Congress. Still lacking the right of franchise, members of the State Colored Men’s Convention met in Nashville on August 6, 1866, to strategize a campaign to secure the vote for Tennesseans of African heritage. Six months after African American leaders called their second State Colored Men’s Convention, on February 25, 1867, the General Assembly passed an act giving black men the right to vote. Tennessee’s action preceded by two years the introduction and ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted the right of franchise to the country’s black male populace. For individuals of African descent, both slave and free, education was of predominate concern. Antedating “The War” in Nashville, ethnological paranoia generated an 1856 statute forbidding the

Tennessee education of all African Americans but because of the efforts of the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands and the American Missionary Association, Fisk Free Colored School opened on January 9, 1866. A year later, the Tennessee General Assembly passed enabling legislation for free public education in the state. The Fisk School, named for General Clinton B. Fisk, changed the focal point of its purpose from primary to higher education. Fisk Free Colored School was incorporated as Fisk University on August 22, 1867. Other African American institutions of higher education followed to meet the demand: Roger Williams University, formerly Nashville Normal and Theological Institute (1866–1929); Walden University, formerly Central Tennessee College (1868–1925); Tennessee Manual Labor University (1868–1874); Knoxville College (1871–); LeMoyne College, now LeMoyne-Owen (1871–); Meharry Medical College, formerly a part of Walden University (1876–); Lane College (1882–); Swift Memorial College (1883–1955); Chattanooga National Medical College (1899–closing date unknown); Knoxville Medical College (1900–1910); the University of West Tennessee (1900–1924); National Baptist Training School and Theological Seminary (1918–1934); and American Baptist Theological Seminary, now American Baptist College (1924–). Twelve years after the turn of the century, Tennessee State Normal (now Tennessee State University) opened as a public institution of higher education for African Americans. In 1867, the Republican-controlled Tennessee General Assembly approved a public education bill that instructed local school boards to bring black children under the stipulations of the existing enactments relating to public schools. Regardless of their previous condition of servitude, blacks in Tennessee realized the need for a basic education and access to public schools. They believed that education would elevate them to a state of being equal to whites.

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Between 1867 and 1883, Nashville had a number of public academies for its black population. They included Belleview, Trimble, Vandervall, Knowles, Meigs, and Pearl. Once students were graduated from the black public grammar schools, their education ended, as they were denied admission to the white institutions for secondary study. However, in 1886, Sandy Porter attempted to gain admittance for her son, James Rice Porter, to the city’s only high school, the all-white Fogg High School. After being refused admission, Porter and the African American community protested to the board of education and city council. On September 26, 1886, under Principal D. N. Crosthwaite, a college graduate with a master’s degree, Meigs High became the first public African American high school. In 1897–1898, the highschool department of Meigs was transferred to Pearl, creating one high school for African Americans. The same day that Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau, it chartered the Freedmen’s Bank in Washington, D.C., to encourage financial responsibility among the former slaves. Four branches operated in Chattanooga, Columbia, Memphis, and Nashville between 1865 and 1874. The Freedmen’s Bank and Trust Company and all of its 33 branches failed in 1874. In part, the national bank’s failure was due to fraud and mismanagement by poorly trained white officers, unsound lending practices, and the economic depression of the 1870s. Of the four branches in Tennessee, the Nashville branch was the largest and most successful. After gaining the right to vote, black citizens of the state were elected to several public offices and began an affiliation with the Republican Party that lasted well into the twentieth century. In September 1868, citizens of Nashville elected five blacks to the city council. Blacks not only won election to city council seats in the state’s capital and other municipalities, but they held city and county positions, including

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magistrate and justice of the peace. Six persons of color held council seats in Memphis during the 1870s. William Yardly, a native of Knoxville, served as municipal councilor, justice of the peace, and second assistant fire chief. The first African American in Knoxville admitted to the state bar, Yardly also became in 1876 the first African American to seek election to the governor’s office. The mounting political strength of African Americans and Republicans produced a vicious backlash from the state’s white “Dixiecrat” citizens. One manifestation of that backlash was the Ku Klux Klan, originally founded in 1866 as a social club for men seeking “amusement and entertainment”; six “bored” veterans of the Confederate army organized the Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee. After Tennessee legislated that former slaves had the right of the franchise in 1867 and Republicans organized the Union League to recruit black voters, Klan members refashioned their organization into a political and terrorist society. Mandating administrative rules that underscored the need for shrouded secretiveness, a reorganized fraternity of Klansmen came forth in April 1867, led by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. At first, they took on a paternalistic, custodial posture directed toward defending the white community from the perceived threats manifested by the Union Leaguers and the state militia. When blacks overwhelmingly voted for Republican candidates in the 1867 elections, conservative Democrats or Dixiecrats, enraged by their political losses, adopted a modus operandi of political terrorism and forceful racial coercion. As the surreptitious organization’s first Grand Wizard, Forrest sought to return white conservative Democrats to power. In early 1868, the Klan’s official constitution or Prescript, adopted in April, 1867, was reissued as the Revised and Amended Prescript of the Order of the * * * (the asterisks are cabalistic symbols used to keep the Klan’s name secret). Made up largely of exConfederates, this white-supremacist organization sought to frighten black voters and free-spoken

leaders of the black community. Black men and women were attacked, whipped, murdered, and raped by members of the Klan. They also torched religious and educational facilities. In defiance of this flagrant terrorism, blacks across the state continued to cast their ballots. In 1869, the Grand Wizard called for members of the “invisible empire” to destroy their Klan regalia. By 1870, Democrats regained control of Tennessee’s legislative body and “redeemed” state government. While they upheld the abolition of slavery and the right of the franchise for black men recently freed from physical bondage, they curtailed voter participation by passing a poll tax. With the revision of the state’s governing body of laws, political Reconstruction ended in Tennessee.

Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Because of economic, political, and social oppression, Benjamin “Pap” Singleton and other blacks encouraged those previously held in bondage to join the “Black Exodus” movement and migrate to the West. Thousands of blacks left Tennessee and settled in Kansas. However, the majority of blacks stayed and fought for their constitutional rights, as Frederick Douglass advised in his 1873 address to Nashville blacks. By 1881, the migration movement among blacks in Tennessee ceased. During the 1890s, many blacks again migrated from Tennessee, this time moving to the North. Despite the migration of many persons of African descent from the state, many African American communities advanced culturally and socially. Communication through the published word was a significant enabling tool in that advancement. In addition to Scott’s Colored Tennessean newspaper, which he later moved to Maryville, and Memphis’ Free Speech (1880s– 1892), Nashville had the Tennessee Star (1880s) and the Nashville Globe (1905–1960). The Moon

Tennessee Illustrated Weekly and the Memphis Planet were published in Memphis. In Chattanooga, Randolph Miller published the Chattanooga Blade, a weekly newspaper. Additionally, the Observer also was published in Chattanooga. In Nashville, three major religious publishing boards were established. In 1882, the African Methodist Episcopal Sunday School Union was founded. The National Baptist Publishing Board was founded by Reverend Richard H. Boyd in 1896. In 1915, the Sunday School Publishing Board of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated, came into existence. Despite the efforts of the “redeemers,” blacks participated in the political process and made use of their newly acquired constitutional rights. Beginning in 1872, Nashville blacks elected Sampson W. Keeble, the first black state lawmaker, to the lower chamber of the Tennessee General Assembly. He was followed by 12 other men of African descent between 1881 and 1887. After 1887, no blacks served in the Tennessee General Assembly until the 1965 election of Memphis attorney A. W. Willis Jr. Imposed poll taxes and other voting statutes gradually stripped blacks in Tennessee of their right to vote. By the early 1900s, the disfranchisement of rural blacks was virtually complete. The state’s Republican Party also began a movement to exclude blacks from its ranks. When conservative white Democrats regained control of the state, they overturned the gains made by blacks toward racial equality. They reverted to the extralegal tactics of lynchings, beatings, and arson previously employed to exert compliance with white supremacy by the Ku Klux Klan. To augment their extralegal tactics, they systematically imposed legal enforcement of second-class citizenship on African Americans by instituting statutory “Jim Crow” laws. By the 1880s, the General Assembly legitimated separate facilities for blacks and whites in public accommodations and on the railways. In

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1881, Tennessee enacted the country’s first racial-segregation law. The segregating of the railway system caused blacks in Nashville to stage their first freedom ride by purchasing first-class tickets and attempting to entrain the cars. Blacks in Memphis also protested against segregated public accommodations and transit. In 1879, to no avail, Mrs. Richard Robinson filed a lawsuit against the Memphis and Charleston Railroad after she and her nephew were refused admittance to the first-class car. However, in 1880, the federal court awarded Jane Brown damages of $3,000 for being denied access to the “ladies’ car.” In March of the same year, Julia Britton Hooks refused to surrender her seat in the white section of a local movie house. Hooks was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and subsequently fined. Three years later, Ada Buck successfully challenged the Louisville and Nashville Railroad for being ousted from the ladies’ car, for which she possessed a first-class ticket. Buck received a $750 judgment. As others before her, Ida B. Wells contested the “separate but equal” law on the railroad. After a violent encounter with a train conductor on the Memphis-to-Woodstock line operated by the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company in 1884, Wells, a teacher in the Memphis school system, sought legal redress against the company for refusing to provide her firstclass accommodations, for which she paid. In December 1884, the Memphis circuit court ruled in favor of Wells and awarded her $500. Her success in confronting the railroad company was short-lived. On April 5, 1887, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision on the grounds that the railroad statutorily satisfied requirements to provide “like accommodations.” Later, the 1892 lynching of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart, coowners of the People’s Grocery Store, prompted Wells, a fearless journalist and owner of the Memphis Free Speech, to begin her antilynching

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crusade in this country and abroad. Wells’ penning of a piercing exposition in the Free Speech caused angry whites to torch Wells’ newspaper office and threaten her with bodily harm should she ever return to the South. Because of her vociferation and scathing exposes against lynching, the “Princess of the Press” was catapulted into a national position of leadership among African Americans. She became the kindling voice of America’s conscience. In 1890, Chattanooga African Americans, undaunted by the 1874 bankruptcy of the Freedmen’s Bank and Trust Company, opened the Penny Savings Bank. This banking enterprise attracted investors from Atlanta and Nashville, including James C. Napier, who served on the bank’s board of directors. Three years later, however, the bank collapsed, due in part to the 1893 financial panic. Between 1898 and 1915, African American citizens in Tennessee experienced a cultural reawakening. African American–owned printing companies published numerous books and monographs to push forward the African American cause and to uplift the race. When the U.S. Supreme Court legally sanctioned separation of the races in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, Jim Crow reached its pinnacle: the highest court in the land certified “separate but [un]equal” public accommodations for blacks. By the turn of the century, most black citizens in the state tolerated the legalized southern racial system of exclusion and created a world for themselves. In 1905, state lawmakers passed the Jim Crow streetcar statute. Blacks demonstrated their protestation of the unequal seating by withholding patronage from the various municipalities’ streetcar companies in Chattanooga, Memphis, and Nashville. Black Tennesseans in Chattanooga and Nashville took advantage of an entrepreneurial opportunity and established transportation companies. Nashville’s Union Transportation Company was the most successful. The transportation company

was chartered on August 29, 1905, and Reverend Preston Taylor, also a leader in the black business community, served as president. News of the new business venture gave new life to the boycott. White transportation operators endured economic hardship in the face of the determination exhibited by Nashvillians of African descent. Reportedly, the Nashville Transit Company lost $500 in revenue per week by mid-September. Because of problems with its steam-propelled cars, later replaced with electric cars that were sabotaged by the Nashville Railway and Light Company, the Union Transportation Company ceased operations in 1907. Eleven years after the closing of the Penny Savings Bank and Trust Company in Chattanooga, African Americans in Memphis and Nashville established four financial institutions within the first decade of the twentieth century: the One Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company (1904) and the People’s Savings Bank and Trust Company (1909) in Nashville; and the Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Company (1906) and the Fraternal Savings Bank and Trust Company (1910) in Memphis. Of all the African American financial institutions capitalized in Tennessee during the first decade of the twentieth century, only the Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company was able to surmount the impediments of marginal patronage, circumscribed liquid assets, skepticism among members of its community, and Eurocentric racism—all perils associated with sustaining commercial ventures in the African American community. The oldest continuously operated African American financial institution in the United States, the One Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company changed its name to Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company in 1920. As blacks were graduated from Meharry Medical College and other medical schools, in the tradition of the period, they too continued to make a world for themselves. As a pragmatic rejoinder to the racial realities of American life, they established hospitals and infirmaries, primarily to serve

Tennessee members of their race. The contributions of African American women were consequential in instituting and maintaining black dispensaries for the care of the African American populace. They led fund-raising campaigns, made significant contributions, worked as physicians and nurses, and, in some cases, established hospitals. Pioneering African American physicians in Tennessee were in the forefront of establishing national hospital and medical associations and medical journals. In 1892, one year after being graduated from Meharry Medical College, Dr. Miles V. Lynk published the Medical and Surgical Observer, the country’s first African American medical journal. After engaging in a lengthy and futile battle to desegregate the white American Medical Association, Drs. Lynk and Robert F. Boyd and others founded the National Medical Association (NMA) in 1895. In St. Louis, at its annual meeting held in 1923, the NMA established the National Hospital Association (NHA). Dr. Henry M. Green of Knoxville was elected as the hospital association’s first president. He guided the NHA for 11 years. Although the NHA ceased operating in the early 1940s, it assisted in revealing the plight of African American physicians and their hospitals and reminded philanthropic foundations and healthcare organizations that hospitals serving the needs of the black populace needed and deserved their support. The first decades of the twentieth century continued to usher in new opportunities in Tennessee. Not only were African Americans in Tennessee concerned with the medical needs of their populace, they also demonstrated concerns for economic, educational, political, social, and recreational conditions. Reverend Robert H. Boyd of Nashville assisted black leaders in pushing forth a progressive business agenda in the state by urging blacks to “buy black,” to vote for “good Republicans,” and to initiate business opportunities. During the last year of the nineteenth

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century, Robert R. Church Sr. built a park for African Americans on Beale Street. Six years later, in 1905, Preston Taylor, a minister, entrepreneur, and business leader, opened a large amusement complex known as Greenwood Park. African American leaders, aided by Nashville city officials, opened Hadley Park, reportedly the first public park land for blacks in the country. Because of the conjoining efforts of former Memphians Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells, Fisk graduate W. E. B. Du Bois, and others, the NAACP came into existence in 1909. Under the leadership of Robert R. Church Jr., in 1917, Tennessee’s first branch of the NAACP was established in Memphis. In 1919, chapters in Nashville and Chattanooga were inaugurated, with chapters later forming in Knoxville and Jackson. Two years following the establishment of the NAACP, a branch of the Urban League was operational in the state. In 1921, African Americans in Chattanooga established a branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914. Concomitant with the development of African American academies in the South was the promotion of a neoteric catalyst in the form of philanthropy for educational institutions. The Julius Rosenwald Fund was a major contributor to the improvement of educational facilities for African Americans in the South. According to Mary Hoffschwelle’s Rebuilding the Rural Southern Community, in Tennessee the Rosenwald fund aided in the construction of 354 school buildings, the first of which was the Reaves School located in Fayette County. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I “to make the world safe for democracy,” African Americans in Tennessee patriotically contributed domestically and militarily to the war effort. After the passage of the May 18, 1917, Selective Service Act, 61,069 Tennesseans were drafted into military service. Of this

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number, over 27 percent, or 17,339, were African Americans. As in previous wars, these individuals served in racially segregated units commanded by white officers. When Tennessee soldiers returned home, they were greeted with jubilant fanfare. One of the largest celebrations for African American soldiers occurred in Jackson. Soon after the close of World War I, Tennessee State University (then Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School) established its Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in April 1919. The unit was one of the first ROTC units at an African American college; under the leadership of First Lieutenant Grant Stuart, emphasis was placed upon military science and training African American officers as leaders. After having helped to make the “world safe for democracy,” African Americans found no democracy when they returned home. The same turbulent atmosphere of racial bigotry and intolerance that was raging during the war years still gyrated with cyclonic ferocity. The summer of 1919 brought forth one of the greatest periods of interracial conflict that the country had ever witnessed, and no section of the country was spared. During the “Red Summer” of 1919, as described by James Weldon Johnson, approximately 25 race riots took place, one of which was in Knoxville during August 30–31. When Tennessee became the focal point of the revived women’s suffrage movement in 1920, women of African descent joined in the struggle. In April of the preceding year, Tennessee became the only southern state to grant women the right to vote in selected elections when Governor Albert H. Roberts signed the Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Act. Always a part of the 72-year struggle, black women in the third wave were active in seeking the right of female enfranchisement. Just as Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells were prominent on the national level in the struggle to secure the vote for women,

Nashvillians J. Frankie Pierce and Dr. Mattie E. Coleman campaigned vigorously to ensure the inclusion of black women on the local level. Pierce was among Nashville’s first black public-school teachers in the 1880s and founder of the City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. Dr. Coleman, a graduate of Meharry Medical College, was a leader during World War I. She also was behind the formation of the Women’s Missionary Council of the Christian Methodist Church, of which she became the first president. Pierce and Coleman formed coalitions with women of European descent. Pierce addressed the first meeting of the Tennessee League of Women in the chambers of the state House of Representatives. On May 18, 1920, she affirmed that black women would steadfastly work with white women because they, too, shared an interest in the “moral uplift” of their community. Pierce asserted, however, that black women wanted a “square deal.” Referring back to the contributions they made during World War I, she stated, “It remained for the war to show what the [N]egroes could do. We bought bonds, we gave money, we made comfort kits, we prayed. . . . We want recognition in all forms of this government.” Additionally, she informed the gathering of women that African Americans wanted a girls’ state vocational school and a state department of child welfare. On Saturday, August 7, 1920, Tennessee Governor Albert H. Roberts called the 61st General Assembly into extraordinary session at noon on the following Monday to consider the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Less than two weeks later, on August 18, 1920, in a close vote, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Nineteenth Amendment, also known as the “Susan B. Anthony” amendment, making Tennessee the 36th state to ratify the amendment and bestow suffrage on all American women, giving women across the nation the right of the franchise. In the fall of the same year, Nashville’s African American women voted

Tennessee in their first election. As a direct outcome of their new political influence and the incessant labor of Pierce, on April 7, 1921, the legislative body of Tennessee enacted legislation for creation of the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls. In her continuing quest to gain equal rights for African Americans, prior to the modern Civil Rights Movement and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Pierce agitated to obtain restroom facilities for women of color shopping in the city’s retail outlets. Adamantly objecting to the lack of restroom accommodations, Pierce led members of the City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in a protest march to City Hall, where they presented their demands. As an outcome of their protest, Montgomery Ward became the first department store in Nashville to furnish restroom facilities for African American women. One of the first attacks against segregation in Tennessee’s higher educational system was a lawsuit filed in 1937 by Z. Alexander Looby, in association with Carl Cowan of Knoxville and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. This suit sought to secure the admission of William B. Redmond, of Franklin, to the University of Tennessee’s School of Pharmacy in Memphis. Although Looby lost the case, the action indicated the litigious direction that African Americans would take in their struggle for equal access to public education at all levels. In 1939, Looby, along with Cowan, Houston, Thurgood Marshall (first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, October 1967), and William H. Hastie (native of Knoxville and the first African American to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals), filed suit seeking the admission of Joseph M. Michael to the University of Tennessee Law School. Tennessee officials steadfastly held to their exclusionary racial decree. The 1932 establishment of the Highlander Folk School by Myles Horton in Grundy County

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furthered the cause of civil rights in Tennessee. Originally founded to support the cause of organized labor, later the school’s founder shifted to racial issues as more African Americans attended Highlander’s training sessions. “No ordinary school” in the early 1950s, Horton and Highlander’s staff were hosts for a meeting to investigate possible problems that might come to the forefront should the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court rule to end racial segregation. When World War II ended in September 1945, Tennessee’s African American population began to embark upon the third phase of the movement for civil rights. Their military and nonmilitary experiences gave them more selfconfidence and self-assurance. Not only did African Americans in the state participate in the successful outcome of the war, but they also intellectually attacked the country’s universal system of bigotry and injustice. A number of the state’s African American academicians, both secondary and collegiate, became active in the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. They affiliated with the association in an attempt to counteract the plethora of subjective scholarly literature that willfully excluded African American contributions or that purposely miseducated the mainstream populace by misrepresenting people of African descent. Reminiscent of racial disturbances experienced in Memphis during its race riot of 1866 and Knoxville’s racial violence during the riot of 1919, within five months after the end of World War II, in 1946, Columbia, Tennessee, experienced interracial discord. A February 25 dispute over a radio repair took place among a Caster-Knott store clerk, who was a veteran of World War II, and an African American mother and her recently returned navy-veteran son and led to a verbal confrontation. The dissension culminated in a physical fracas between the two veterans and escalated into two days of racial violence in Columbia. Reporters from the black and white presses covered the racial

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disturbances, arrests, indictments, and the subsequent trial of 25 African Americans and their rendered verdicts. Walter White and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP came to Nashville and organized a legal defense. With assistance from attorneys Z. Alexander Looby of Nashville and Maurice Weaver of Chattanooga, 24 defendants were found not guilty of shooting white police officers. The remaining defendant, Lloyd Kennedy, was convicted of attempted murder in the second degree. Thurgood Marshall’s successful defense angered law-enforcement officials. A “Columbia mob” composed of “two state troopers, two Columbia policemen, and [four] Maury County sheriffs and constables” accosted Marshall on his way back to Nashville, with the intent of lynching him. Because Looby and others refused to leave Marshall alone in the hands of the “Columbia mob,” he was arrested on the trumped-up charge of drunken driving. Marshall was carried before Magistrate Jim Pogue, who determined he was innocent of the charge and ordered his release. Later, Governor James N. McCord commuted Kennedy’s sentence to one year for “attempt to commit a felony.” Columbia’s interracial imbroglio brought into national view the violence perpetrated against African Americans and summoned at least a rhetorical pledge from the U.S. government to protect the civil rights of all citizens in the South. Described as the country’s “first race riot” of the post–World War II era, this 1946 racial disturbance further emboldened African Americans and civil rights organizations to aggressively pursue government protection of their constitutional and civil rights in the ensuing decades of the 1950s and 1960s.

Civil Rights Era and Beyond The year following the Columbia race riot, African Americans began their assault on the political vestiges of Jim Crow laws. Nashvillians

and Tennesseans of African descent organized voter-registration drives. Black Nashvillians formed the “Solid Bloc” and published the Solid Bloc newspaper to enlist the latent political power of blacks in the community and to pressure the General Assembly to do away with the poll tax. Although Tennessee’s poll tax was rendered impotent in 1951, it was not abolished until the limited constitutional convention of 1953. In the 1951 Nashville elections, blacks elected attorneys Z. Alexander Looby and Robert E. Lillard to serve on the council. Looby and Lillard were the second and third persons of color elected to the city’s legislative body, following the 1911 election of Solomon P. Harris. However, before the decade of the 1950s ended, blacks in the rural western Tennessee counties of Fayette and Haywood began their attack on the restrictive electoral process that denied them access to the voting booth. In both counties, blacks organized civic and welfare leagues and launched voter-registration drives. Initiating the first legal action against a party primary under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, they filed suit in 1959 against the local Democratic Party. Whites in Fayette and Haywood Counties used their economic advantage to penalize blacks. Any black who attempted to vote lost employment, credit, and insurance policies. White merchants refused to sell them goods and services, and some white physicians withheld medical care. Because of their revolt against the Jim Crow voting system, in the winter of 1960, white property owners evicted hundreds of black tenant farmers from their land. The U.S. Justice Department filed several suits against landowners, merchants, and one financial institution for violating African American civil rights. In July 1962, “landowners were enjoined from engaging in any act . . . for the purpose of interfering with the right to vote and to vote for candidates in public office.” In 1964, black citizens of Memphis elected attorney Arch W. Willis Jr. to the lower chamber

Tennessee of the Tennessee General Assembly. Six and a half decades had passed since Monroe Gooden, an African American from Fayette County, had served in the state’s lawmaking body. The first African American in modern times to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly, Willis was later joined by 10 other African Americans. In 2009, there were 19 blacks serving in the Tennessee General Assembly. Blacks in Memphis helped to elect Willie H. Herenton as the city’s first African American mayor in 1992. Four years later, in Nashville, Emmitt Turner became the city’s first African American chief of police. In 1999, Howard Gentry Jr. became the first African American to serve as Nashville’s vice mayor, a post he held until 2007, when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor. African Americans not only confronted the vestiges of Jim Crow in the political sphere, but they also aggressively attacked separate but unequal education. Black parents in Clinton began the frontal assault on Jim Crow education when they sought redress for their children who were being bused to an all-black high school in Knoxville. Using the litigious device of the NAACP, in 1950, attorneys Avon N. Williams Jr. (then practicing in Knoxville), Carl Cowan, and Z. Alexander Looby filed the McSwain v. Board of Anderson County, Tennessee schooldesegregation case. Tennessee’s first public school-desegregation case was filed four years before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Clinton was ordered to desegregate its public-school system two years after the Brown decision was issued. Twelve black students registered for classes at Clinton High School in the fall of 1956. The same year that black students entered Clinton High School, southern congressmen denounced the Supreme Court’s Brown decision in their “declaration of Constitutional Principles,”

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commonly known as the Southern Manifesto. The document condemned the decision to desegregate public schools as an usurpation of the powers of the states and mandated the use of “every lawful means” to oppose the decision’s implementation. Tennessee’s U.S. Senators Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore Sr., along with U.S. Representative Percy Priest from Nashville, refused to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto. Because of the actions of out-of-state white agitators John Kasper (New Jersey) and Asa Carter of the Birmingham White Citizens’ Council, shortly after classes began in Clinton, Governor Frank G. Clement called out the National Guard to disengage the viciously organized antiblack resistance. To acquire an education, the black teenagers withstood months of derisive ridicule and intimidation. In June of the following year, Bobby Cain became the first African American student to graduate from a desegregated high school in the South. Sixteen months later, in October 1957, the Clinton High School building was bombed. The year following the McSwain v. Board of Anderson County, Tennessee school desegregation case, attorney Williams, on behalf of four African American students seeking admission to the University of Tennessee graduate school, filed the Gray v. University of Tennessee case. In 1952, under federal court order, African Americans were admitted to the university’s graduate and law schools. It took nine years, albeit voluntarily, before the trustees of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville allowed African American students entrance into the university’s undergraduate course of study. In January 1961, Theotis Robinson Jr. and two other African Americans became the first African American undergraduates to attend the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. Prior to African American students being admitted to the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee, six students of African descent were already attending classes at

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its Nashville campus. As a result of the 1972 case of Geier v. Blanton, filed by Avon Williams, Jr., the University of Tennessee at Nashville was merged into the historically black Tennessee State University in July 1979. According to a biographical profile of Williams by attorney Lewis L. Laska, this was the “first time that a court in a higher education desegregation suit ordered a black university to take over a white institution of higher learning.” On September 26, 1986, the former University of Tennessee at Nashville campus was named the Avon N. Williams Jr. Campus of Tennessee State University. After returning to Nashville in 1953, Avon Williams Jr. went into practice with attorney Z. Alexander Looby. Two years later, they filed suit against the Nashville Board of Education. On behalf of A. Z. Kelley, a barber whose son Robert was denied access to nearby white East High School, Looby and Williams, in consultation with the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall—Williams’ cousin—sought legal remedy under the Robert W. Kelley, et al. v. Board of Education case. The case was not heard until 1956. William E. Miller, a federal district judge, ordered Nashville’s Board of Education to prepare a plan for desegregation by January of the following year. As he did in Clinton, John Kasper agitated against the desegregation of Nashville’s public schools. In the fall of 1957, 13 young African American students of elementary-school age registered at five formally all-white schools. As the students began attending the schools, vociferous white mobs screaming racial epithets met them. Mayor Ben West ordered the city’s lawkeeping force to maintain the peace and to protect the rights of the first-grade students, who were instrumental in doing away with separate but unequal education in Nashville. On September 9, a bomb blast destroyed one wing of Hattie Cotton School, where one student of African descent enrolled.

Taking notice of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the second Brown case of 1955—that the desegregation of public schools begin with “all deliberate speed”—the Nashville board based its school desegregation plan on the adjective “deliberate” rather than on the noun “speed.” In 1958, the board of education proposed and Judge Miller approved the “grade-a-year plan,” which became a model for cities across the South. The legal team for the plaintiffs objected to the generous student-transfer provision of the plan and appealed the case. Losing in the Court of Appeals, they appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1959, but failed to obtain the required number of votes for a hearing. Although momentarily defeated, the barristers never wavered in their resolve. Their tenacity paid off in 1971, when U.S. District Judge L. Clure Morton ordered a massive cross-town busing plan to desegregate Nashville’s public schools. Memphis and other cities and towns adopted an even slower pace in desegregating their public schools. However, the University of Memphis (then Memphis State University) began gradual desegregation in the mid-1950s. In Chattanooga, by March 1962, the federal courts ordered the city to desegregate its public schools. Certain individuals and groups within the state’s populace saw busing as a universal remedy to end segregated public schools, principally in Tennessee’s urban cities. However, by the mid1990s, resistance to busing remained unfaltering, and some municipalities, like Nashville, began to investigate other remedies to school desegregation. Having begun the attack on Jim Crowism in the educational and political arenas, African Americans in Tennessee turned their attention to the social stage of segregation. In 1959, students from Nashville’s Fisk University, Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College, and American Baptist Theological Seminary began

Tennessee training in the methods of direct-nonviolence protests. Under the tutelage of Reverends Kelley Miller Smith Sr., James Lawson, and C. T. Vivian, Nashville’s black students embarked upon a different course of action. Beginning in November 1959, students and leaders of the NCLC conducted “test sit-ins” to confirm the exclusionary racial policy of Nashville’s downtown stores. After confirming the policy of racial segregation, in January 1960, the Nashville contingent was preparing to launch its full-scale direct-nonviolence protest action against businesses that discriminated. However, before they could initiate their action, students in Greensboro, North Carolina, captured the attention of the nation when they sat in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter on February 1, 1960. Twelve days later, Nashville students sought service at whites-only downtown lunch counters. Led by Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and others, the movement’s resolute tenaciousness to bring down the barriers of Jim Crow shook Nashville to its conservative foundation. Hundreds of students were arrested and some beaten. In conjunction with the sit-ins, blacks in Nashville initiated and sustained an “economic withdrawal” against downtown merchants, assisted by the African American community, including the church, doctors, and lawyers. Nashville stood on the brink of a new day. Because of Z. Alexander Looby’s prominent role, not only in Nashville but in the statewide Civil Rights Movement, on April 19, 1960, the home of attorney and city council member Looby was bombed. Later that same day, thousands of black and white protesters marched silently to the hall of justice to confront city officials. After being interrogated by Diane Nash and Reverend C. T. Vivian, Mayor Ben West affirmed the immorality of segregation. Near the end of the verbal exchange, Mayor West stated that the lunch counters should be

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desegregated. Within three months of the first sit-in, on May 10, 1960, Nashville became the first major city in the South to begin desegregating its public facilities. The Nashville sit-in movement and the student’s disciplined use of the direct-nonviolence protest action became a model for movements elsewhere. Many within the cadre of student leaders became national leaders. In Knoxville, African Americans and a small number of whites also staged campaigns against segregated public facilities. Led by students from Knoxville College and Merrill Proudfoot, a white minister at the school, the movement set out to transform racial inequities in a city that prided itself on “healthy” race relations. Knoxville’s movement drew support not only from its African American community, but also from moderate whites and city functionaries who were willing to listen and act with judicious control. When students from Knoxville College began their sit-in movement, Mayor John Duncan Sr. not wanting a repeat of the violence that was taking place in the state’s other major cities, ordered the police to protect the rights of the student protesters. Subsequent to the inauguration of the Knoxville sit-ins on June 9, 1960, Mayor Duncan and other city leaders persuaded the business community to desegregate its public facilities. On July 12, merchants desegregated the city’s downtown eating facilities. Chattanooga and Memphis also experienced student demonstrations. As with the 1960 sit-in movement in Nashville, both cities saw an escalation of violent white resistance. Local businesses in Chattanooga, under pressure from Mayor Ralph Kelly, desegregated and opened their facilities to African Americans. Earlier, Mayor Kelly had opened all city-owned facilities to blacks. In Memphis, student protesters from LeMoyneOwen College took a different tactic. Rather than stage sit-ins at lunch counters, they targeted the city’s public libraries. Later, they demonstrated against local lunch counters. By the

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summer, “Bluff City” officials desegregated the lunch counters and libraries. During the third phase of the movement for civil rights, Highlander Folk School held numerous seminars and training sessions for modern activists. Many people who fought to secure the civil rights of African Americans attended the sessions. At some point during the turbulent days of the movement, people like Rosa Parks, Diane Nash, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, James Bevel, Marion Berry, Bernard LaFayette, Julian Bond, and many others participated in sessions. While Highlander’s programs had a tremendous impact upon the national Civil Rights Movement, its interracial activities created animosity and ill will among local residents. During the first six years of the 1960s, African Americans scored unprecedented points in the field of athletic competition, beginning with Wilma Rudolph, a native of Clarksville, who in 1958 became a member of Tennessee State University’s famed “Tigerbelles,” coached by the legendary Edward S. Temple. Two years later, after qualifying for the 100-meter, the 200-meter, and the relay races in the 1960 Rome Olympiad, she became “the first American woman Olympian” to win three gold medals. In the 1964– 1965 academic year, Nashville experienced its first official desegregated athletic contest when Pearl High School and the predominately white Father Ryan High School basketball teams met at Municipal Auditorium; white nay sayers predicted the game would end in racial rioting. Pearl was defeated by a last-second, miraculous shot by Willie Earl Brown, an African American on Ryan’s team. Nashville experienced no racial difficulty. This game set the stage for athletic competition on a desegregated basis the following year. During the 1965–1966 academic term, the first year that African Americans participated in the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA), Pearl’s 1966 varsity basketball team excelled in competition. In March, Pearl

High School at the apex of an undefeated season, became the first all–African American team to win the state TSSAA Boys’ Basketball Tournament. Two years before the decade closed, a labor dispute in Memphis escalated into one of the culminating conflicts of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In 1968, the Memphis sanitation workers broadened the struggle by going on strike to protest the discriminatory pay and work rules. The strike came to represent the strivings of the impoverished laborers and the comprehensive demand by the African American community for equality and justice. Capricious comportment by white supervisors, unwillingness by city officials to recognize the union or meet with workers’ representatives to discuss their protestations, and the inimical reaction to the walk out by the city’s white residents, all made the strike a twopronged issue of race and economics. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to support the sanitation workers as a part of his “Poor People’s Campaign.” On March 18, King gave a speech to approximately 15,000 persons and subsequently brought national media attention to the plight of Memphis’ sanitation workers. His interest in this strike indicated a shift in the direction of the Civil Rights Movement. King and other leaders of the movement began to focus their attention on problems beyond overt racial discrimination and to correspondent problems of manifested economic inequality. Eleven days later, when King returned to Memphis for a mass march, pandemonium broke out that resulted in the shooting death of Larry Payne by the Memphis police. Determined to lead a peaceful protest march, Dr. King addressed a mass meeting held in Mason Temple on April 3, and called for a “human rights revolution.” The following day, on April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet. The violent death of the messenger of

Tennessee nonviolence caused massive riots in more than 100 cities throughout the United States. City leaders were pressured into recognizing Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Union. Despite the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the perceptible end of the modern CivilRights Movement, blacks in Tennessee continued to push toward the mark of reclaiming their rights and gaining equality and justice. In 1965, Governor Frank G. Clement appointed Memphis attorney Benjamin L. Hooks (grandson of Julia B. Hooks) to complete a judgeship in the Shelby County Criminal Court, making him the first African American criminal court judge in Tennessee and the South since Reconstruction. The next year he was elected to a full term. Three years later, in 1969, Adolpho A. Birch was appointed by Governor Buford Ellington as a general sessions judge, the first state judicial post held by an African American. After being elected to the general sessions court twice, Birch was appointed criminal court judge in 1978 by Governor Ray Blanton. Prior to the 1978 appointment of Judge Birch to the criminal court, in 1972, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Benjamin Hooks to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where he served for four years. Supported by Republican Howard Baker, a U.S. senator from Tennessee, Hooks became the first African American appointed to the FCC. Subsequent to serving on the FCC, Hooks, a noted civil rights activist, became the executive director of the NAACP on November 6, 1976, succeeding Roy Wilkins. After the state was ordered by the federal courts to reapportion its political districts, Harold E. Ford of Memphis, a former state representative (1970–1975), was elected to the U.S. Congress in the November elections of 1974. The first African American to serve in the Congress from Tennessee, he represented

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the state’s 9th Congressional District until 1996, when he was succeeded by his son, Harold E. Ford Jr. Two years after the elder Ford’s election to the Congress of the United States and the year that America celebrated its bicentennial, the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which became a best seller, captured the nation’s attention. The grandson of Will and Cynthia Palmer of Henning, Haley traced his lineage from Africa to Henning. Selling approximately 1.5 million copies in hardback and 6 million in softback, which set a publishing record, Roots was translated into more than 30 different languages and adapted into a made-for-television miniseries. In 1977 (January 23–30), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired the eight-part miniseries, Roots. The miniseries caused the lens of the country to visually focus on the inhumanity of African American enslavement. According to the New York Times, viewing of the eight-day series ranged from “28.8 million to 36.3 million households.” Haley, who collaborated with Malcolm X on the Autobiography of Malcolm X, characterized Roots as “faction,” a blending of fact and fiction. He was awarded a National Book Award citation, the Spingarn Medal, and a Pulitzer Prize. In 1985, the Alex Haley Boyhood Home in Henning became the first African American and the only state-owned historical site in West Tennessee. The decade of the 1980s began with Governor Lamar Alexander appointing Memphis attorney George Brown to the Tennessee Supreme Court. With his appointment, Brown became the court’s first African American jurist. In 1983, Nashville was still under federal jurisdiction and struggling to adequately desegregate its school system. The Nashville School Board and the federal court sanctioned a new comprehensive desegregation plan after numerous hearings, negotiations, plans, and appeals. Because Nashvillians of European descent continued to exit the school system,

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Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson stand on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and point in the direction of the gunshots that killed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. King’s death sparked a wave of rioting and looting in urban areas throughout the nation and brought the idealistic phase of the Civil Rights Movement to a close. (Joseph Louw/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

opting to attend private schools, the Nashville plan was adjusted and specialized “magnet schools” were created. The longest-running case in Tennessee history, Robert W. Kelley, et al. v. Board of Education, would take more than another 15 years to settle. In January 1986, during the organizational session of the 96th Tennessee General Assembly, Representative Lois M. DeBerry, an African American representing Memphis’ 91st House District, became the first woman elected by members of the Tennessee House of Representatives to serve as speaker pro tempore of the General Assembly’s lower chamber, a position she still held

in 2009. The first African American to serve in this position was Memphis Representative Harper Brewer Jr. He served as speaker pro tempore from the 91st through the 93rd general assemblies. As the 1990s began, African Americans were appointed to leadership positions in the state’s higher education system. Nominated by Governor Ned Ray McWherter, Dr. Otis Floyd became chancellor of the State Board of Regents in 1990. He had served as acting commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, vice president for administration at Middle Tennessee State University, and as president of

Tennessee Tennessee State University. Dr. Floyd was the first African American to hold the chancellor’s position. Dr. James Walker became president of Middle Tennessee State University. He was the first African American to assume the mantle of leadership at a formerly all-white university in Tennessee. In 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis was established. Located at the site of the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the Tennessee State Building Commission awarded the museum’s design contract to the architectural firm of McKissack and McKissack in 1987. Through its interactive exhibits, displays, and civil rights memorabilia, this museum is dedicated to the history of the country’s Civil Rights Movement from the nineteenth century to the present. The area was designated a national historic landmark in 1982. Six months before the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum, Thelma C. Harper, a former member of the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Council, was seated in the Tennessee Senate. Succeeding attorney Avon N. Williams Jr. Senator Harper became the first African American woman elected to the General Assembly’s upper chamber. The first African American jurist to hold several judicial posts, Judge A. A. Birch was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1993. In August 1994, he was elected to serve a full term on the bench of the state’s highest court. Later, Judge Birch became the first African American chief justice of Tennessee’s court of last resort, serving from May 1996 through July 1997. In January 2006, Judge Birch, the only African American on the state Supreme Court, retired from the bench. As the 1990s progressed, African Americans in the state captured national attention. Following the resignation of Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the controversial U.S. surgeon general, President William Jefferson Clinton nominated Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr., a professor of obstetrics and

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gynecology at Meharry Medical College, to the post in February 1995. While supported by Tennessee’s Senator William (Bill) Frist, himself a physician, and a favorable committee recommendation, Dr. Foster garnered opposition from some members in the U.S. Senate. Because of Republican parliamentary maneuvering, his nomination never reached the floor of the Senate for a full vote. Later, President Clinton appointed Dr. Foster as his senior advisor on teenage pregnancy and youth issues. The office of the U.S. surgeon general remained vacant until Dr. David Satcher, former president of Meharry Medical College and the first African American chief of the Centers for Disease Control, became surgeon general on February 13, 1998, and served until 2002. State Representative Lois DeBerry, a former president of the National Caucus of Black Women and vice president for the National Caucus of State Legislators, was elected president of the organization on March 25, 1995. With her election, DeBerry became the first woman to serve as president of the National Caucus of State Legislators. Just as other states experienced inexplicable burning of black churches, so did the “Volunteer State.” Such dastardly deeds mirrored the persistence of rigid extremists, who perhaps wanted to regress to the status quo of the racially segregated era. In 1996, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights disclosed that a potentially explosive situation existed in Tennessee—one that could erupt the “powderkegs” of disquietude into a combustion of turmoil. However, within the state were individuals who were determined to stem the tide of paternalistic reactionary groups. Shortly after the first session of the 100th General Assembly convened, lawmakers introduced legislation relative to “arson of a place of worship.” On May 14, 1997, the bill was passed by the General Assembly. Governor Don Sundquist signed the enactment into law on May 27, 1997.

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Their story intersects race, class, and gender and it is interlaced in the state’s cultural, economic, political, and social evolution. The African American excursion demonstrates that Tennessee’s story is one of diversity and a conjointly shared narrative created by all who made Tennessee their home. As with the general history of the state, the African American’s story was fashioned by national and regional individuals and occurrences. At the same time, the experiences singular to African Americans illuminate the intricacy of humankind and happenings encountered in Tennessee, as well as in American and African American history.

Notable African Americans Berry, Mary Frances (1938–) An attorney, author, American historian, civil rights activist, governmental official, university administrator, and the first African American woman to chair the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry’s most perceptible contribution has been in the civil rights arena. An assistant secretary for education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter, in 1980, Berry was appointed by Carter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent agency established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957. During her tenure with the commission, Berry differed with President Ronald Reagan on civil rights policies. In 1984, Reagan removed her from the commission. She sued President Reagan and won reinstatement by the federal district court. In 1993, President William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton named her chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Berry served as chair of the Civil Rights Commission until 2004. Throughout her term as commission chair, Dr. Berry issued numerous significant reports, including the 2000 Florida

presidential elections, police brutality in New York, environmental justice, percentage plans and Affirmative Action, church bombings, and conditions on Native American reservations. Her activism in civil rights spread abroad as a founding member of the Free South Africa Movement, which instigated protests against apartheid at the South African embassy.

Brown, Dorothy Lavinia (1919–2004) Dr. Dorothy Lavinia Brown, surgeon, legislator, and professor, became the first female African American surgeon in the South, the first known single woman in Tennessee to adopt a child, and the first African American woman to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly. Dr. Brown was also the first African American woman fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Concerned with the issues of health, education, and welfare reform, Brown introduced a controversial bill to reform the state’s archaic abortion law. At that time, Tennessee law permitted abortions only in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. Brown’s bill would have legalized abortions caused by rape or incest. Because of Brown’s stance on the abortion issue, she only served one term in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Dr. Dorothy L. Brown died on June 13, 2004, in Nashville.

Churchwell, Robert, Sr. (1917–2009) In 1950, Robert Churchwell became the first African American journalist on the Nashville Banner, a Southern daily newspaper. A 1949 graduate of Fisk University, he was hired by the paper’s publisher, James Geddes Stahlman, a dyed-in-the-wool parochial southerner. Churchwell wrote his news stories at home and carried them to the Banner’s office every day. During the 1960s, he covered the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville. Because he carried the torch for future African American journalists, Churchwell

Tennessee earned the soubriquet, “the Jackie Robinson of Journalism.” He endured with dignity his roll of being “the first African American” journalist on a Southern daily newspaper. Churchwell died on February 1, 2009.

Delaney, Beauford (1901–1979) and Delaney, Joseph (1904–1991) Beauford and Joseph Delaney, both celebrated artists, were born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Beauford Delaney was a celebrated artist who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1953, he moved to Paris, where he developed a distinct style of abstract impressionism and became a mentor and friend to writers James Baldwin and Henry Miller. In 1930, Joseph Delaney left Knoxville for New York and became a student at the Art Students League, where Thomas Hart Benton, an instructor, served as his mentor. He returned to Knoxville in 1986, where at the age of 82, he worked as artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee. The university’s Ewing Gallery featured his work in a traveling exhibition entitled Joseph Delaney: A Retrospective. Joseph Delaney died on November 21, 1991. Beauford Delaney exhibited under the auspices of the Harmon Foundation (1931, 1933, and 1935) and most notably in the Negro in Contemporary Art, a groundbreaking exhibition at the Baltimore Museum in 1944. He left New York in 1953 and spent the last 26 years of his life in Paris, France, where he died on March 25, 1979.

Edmondson, William (c. 1870–1951) William Edmondson, the first African American artist to have a one-man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, continues to be recognized for the ageless power of his artistic vision. He often credited his artistic energy and purpose to divine vision. His carvings showed the influence of popular imagery in lambs, doves, and other forms, including

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preachers, women, famous figures, and creatures of his imagination. In 1937, Alfred H. Barr Jr., director of the Museum of Modern Art, featured Edmondson’s sculptures in a one-man show at the museum. Edmondson’s sculptures continue to be included in major art exhibitions, and his work is contained in many museum collections, including those of the Newark Museum in New Jersey, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the University of Rochester Art Gallery in New York, the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville. William Edmondson died on February 7, 1951. He was later buried at Mount Ararat Cemetery in Nashville, where his grave remains unmarked.

Hastie, William Henry (1904–1976) William Henry Hastie, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, was one of the leading civil rights activists. The cousin of Charles Hamilton Houston, as a NAACP attorney in the 1930s and 1940s, he litigated some of the first major challenges to racial segregation in education, employment, and public transportation. Between 1939 and 1949, Thurgood Marshall argued 19 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and Hastie served as cocounsel or consultant on 12. Hastie along with Houston and Marshall helped build the legal code that unraveled racial segregation and informed the Brown v. Board decision. An uncompromising champion of equal justice, on May 7, 1946, Hastie was inaugurated as the first African American governor of the Virgin Islands. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman appointed him judge of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It was the highest judicial position attained by an African American. He served on the appellate court bench for 21 years. In 1968, he became chief judge of his

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circuit and in 1971, the year of his retirement from the bench, Hastie was senior judge.

House, Callie (1861–1928) Callie House was a pioneering African American political activist who campaigned for slave reparations during the Jim Crow era. A native of Rutherford County, House moved to Nashville in the 1890s. In 1894, she and Isaiah Dickerson organized the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty, and Pension Association, which would provide relief and services on a local level while agitating for reparations. House’s call for reparations faced considerable opposition. House’s grassroots organizing foreshadowed the rise of other African Americans, making her a pioneer within the African American reparations movement. On May 10, 1916, Nashville District Attorney Lee Douglass filed indictments against her and other officers of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association charging that they obtained money from ex-slaves by fraudulent circulars asserting that pensions and reparations were forthcoming. Although the evidence did not substantiate the prosecutor’s claim, an all-male, white jury convicted House on the charge of mail fraud and sentenced her to one year and one day. Because of good behavior, officials released House on August 1, 1918. She returned to Nashville and worked as a laundress. House died on June 6, 1928.

national attention and intercession from the U.S. Department of Justice. As a pursuer of racial equity, she journeyed to the nation’s capital to secure assistance from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) and to appear as a witness before various legislative committees regarding the violation of African American civil rights. Eleven years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, she, along with other parents, filed suit against the school system to compel compliance with school desegregation.

Rowan, Carl Thomas (1925–2000) Carl T. Rowan, author, journalist, government official, and media personality, was born on August 10, 1925, and grew up in White County

McFerren, Viola H. (1931–) In 1959, Viola H. McFerren, a civil rights and social activist, kindled the flame of direct action protest to incinerate the restrictive racial policy of American apartheid exploiting and excluding African Americans living in Fayette County, Tennessee. An unrelenting champion of the right for African Americans to exercise their freedom to register and vote, she was one of the organizers of Fayette County’s “Tent City,” which attracted

Carl Rowan, the director of the United States Information Agency, is shown in his office in Washington, D.C., 1964. (AP/Wide World Photos)

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and then McMinnville, Tennessee. In 1944, he became one of the first 15 African Americans admitted and one of the first African Americans to earn a commission in the U.S. Navy. One of the few African American reporters in the United States, in 1950, he proposed to his editors a series of articles on the conditions in the post–World War II South. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he served in several government positions. For his domestic reporting and foreign correspondence, he became the only journalist in American history to be awarded the Sigma Delta Chi medallion for three consecutive years. The first African American with a nationally syndicated column, Rowan also had his own radio program, The Rowan Report. The author of several books, Carl T. Rowan died on September 23, 2000, in Washington, D.C.

Smith, Maxine Adkins (1929–) A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Maxine Adkins Smith, an educator and civil rights activist, was catapulted into the African American freedom struggle when Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) refused to admit her to graduate school in 1957. An active member of the Memphis NAACP, she coordinated sit-ins, protests, and voter registration drives. In 1962, Smith was named executive secretary of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP, a position she held for over 40 years. Smith was at the forefront of Black Mondays, school boycotts that began in 1969 to force the issue of complete desegregation in the Memphis City Schools. The boycott caused city functionaries to restructure the school board into district representation, which led to the election of African Americans to the school board. In 1971 Smith was elected to the Memphis School Board. Serving on the board until 1995, she was board president from 1991 to 1992. While a member, she advocated for an African American superintendent. In 1978,

Mary Church Terrell, an African American suffragist, was president of the National Association of Colored Women and a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (Library of Congress)

Dr. W. W. Herenton was named superintendent of the Memphis City Schools.

Terrell, Mary Eliza Church (1863–1954) Founder of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, Mary Church Terrell was one of the leading twentieth-century African American women activists. The first African American woman in the United States to earn an appointment to a school board, for more than 66 years, she championed racial and gender equality. Terrell worked in the suffrage movement, which pushed for enactment of the Nineteenth

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Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. A member of the Robert R. Church family of Memphis, Tennessee, Mary Church Terrell was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She led a three-year struggle to reinstate Reconstruction-era laws that prohibited racial discrimination in the public eating facilities of the nation’s capital. Subsequently, the District of Columbia v. John Thompson case became a national symbol against racially exclusive polices and laws of the United States. She was also responsible for other civil rights gains, as she successfully persuaded the local chapter of the National Association of University Women to admit black members. Her direct action tactics proved successful, when on June 8, 1953, the court ruled that segregated eating establishments in the nation’s capital were unconstitutional. Teacher, author, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell died on July 24, 1954.

Townsend, Arthur Melvin, Sr. (1875–1959) A physician, minister, educator, university president, and business executive, Dr. Arthur Melvin Townsend Sr. amassed a distinctive career of service in many arenas during his lifetime. A graduate of Roger Williams University and Meharry Medical College, Townsend had a successful medical practice, served as a member of the medical school’s board of trustees, pastored several churches, and became a leader of the Negro Baptist Association of Tennessee and its Tennessee Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention. Later, he served as president of Roger Williams University and in 1920 became the secretary of the Sunday School Publishing Board of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. Dr. Arthur Melvin died at the age of 83 on April 20, 1959.

Walker, Joseph E. (1880–1958) Noted physician, banker, businessman, civic and religious leader in Memphis, Tennessee, Joseph E. Walker became one of the most successful African Americans of his time. From 1906 to 1919, he practiced medicine in Indianola, Mississippi. In 1912, Walker was elected president of Delta Penny Savings Bank. Five years later, he was elected president of Mississippi Life Insurance Company, which moved to Memphis in 1920. In 1923, Walker, A. W. Willis, and Dr. J. T. Wilson established Universal Life Insurance Company, which became one of the largest African American–owned insurance companies in the United States. Elected president of the National Negro Insurance Association in 1921, he was also elected president of the National Negro Business League in 1939. During the 1930s, Jet magazine listed him as one of the “10 most Influential Negroes in America.” In 1946, along with his son, A. Maceo Walker, Dr. Walker founded Tri-State Bank of Memphis and was named the bank’s first president. Joseph E. Walker died in 1958.

Wheeler, Emma Rochelle (1882–1957) In 1915, Dr. Emma Rochelle Wheeler, a graduate of Meharry Medical College, opened Walden Hospital, the first and only healthcare facility for African Americans in Chattanooga. Two house doctors and three nurses staffed the 30-bed facility complete with surgical, maternity, and nursery departments. In addition to Walden Hospital, Dr. Wheeler also established and maintained a nursing school. She also initiated the Nurse Services Club of Chattanooga, the only one of its type in the city. After 38 years of service, Walden Hospital closed in 1953. Four years later, Dr. Emma Rochelle Wheeler died and her remains were interred in Highland Cemetery.

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Oprah Winfrey on the cover of her O magazine. (PRNewsFoto/Oxmoor House)

Winfrey, Oprah (1954–) Oprah Winfrey, one of the nation’s most popular female entertainers, was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954. Later she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she resided with her father and his wife Velma.

She graduated from East High School and entered Tennessee State University. Winfrey also worked for WVOL Radio and as a reporter for Channel 5 television. At age 19, she became the youngest person and the first African American female to anchor the news at Nashville’s WTVF-TV. Winfrey worked in the television

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markets of Baltimore, Maryland, and Boston, Massachusetts, before taking a position as the host of A.M. Chicago. In 1986, the show was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and was syndicated, which became America’s number-one rated talk show. In 1988, she established Harpo Studios, making her the third woman in the American entertainment industry (after Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball) to own her own studio. In April 2000, Winfrey and Hearst Magazines introduced O, the Oprah Magazine, a monthly magazine that has become one of today’s leading women’s publications. The Oprah Winfrey Show has remained the number-one talk show for more than 20 consecutive seasons. Produced by Harpo Productions, Inc., the show was seen by millions of viewers a week in the United States and was broadcast internationally in 134 countries until it left the air in 2011.

Woodruff, Hale Aspacio (1900–1980) Hale Aspacio Woodruff, a nationally known printmaker, draftsman, and painter was born on August 26, 1900, in Cairo, Illinois, to George and Augusta Woodruff. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended the city’s public schools. After graduating from Pearl High School, where he had been the cartoonist for the school newspaper, Woodruff studied at the Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana. His early work reflects his exposure to cubism while living in France during the late 1920s and early 1930s. His large murals depicted events in African American history, such as The Amistad Mutiny for Talladega College, The Negro in California History for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in California (a collaboration with Charles Alston), and the Art of the Negro at Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries. His inclusion in all of the major texts of African American

art and in the major group of shows of African American art attests to his status as an African American master. Woodruff died in New York City on September 6, 1980.

Cultural Contributions Black Americans in Tennessee have contributed to every sphere of culture, from the visual and performing arts to almost every genre of music and literature. Numerous men and women of African heritage representing all geographical areas of the state have shared their talent with the world. Their contributions range from the obscure to the mundane. From the writing implements and the intellect of men and women surge the song lyrics for spirituals, gospel, blues, folk, jazz, and soul; novels and short fiction; works on African American history; stories of life, and growth, and trials and tribulations; poetry; literary criticism; drama; and works intended for the young. Tennessee has long been recognized for its contributions to the various genres of music. Since the original Fisk Jubilee Singers successfully placed Tennessee on the musical stage in the 1870s when they carried the Negro Spirituals to national and international audiences in a valiant effort to save the university, African Americans have assisted in completing a full score for the state’s musical motif. They have composed or performed musical compositions ranging from the spirituals to gospel, from country to the blues, from the blues to jazz, from classical to soul music, and all genres in between. In 1923, tenor Roland Hayes, a former soloist with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, became the first African American classical singer to perform at Carnegie Hall. A teacher, a serious composer, and director of the Jubilee Singers, John Wesley Work III completed more than 100 compositions. He was not only an acclaimed composer and choral conductor, but also a recognized author, educator, and

Tennessee ethnomusicologist. His father, John W. Work II, composer of the Fisk alma mater, The Gold and Blue, was known as the rescuer and preservationist of Negro religious music. His book, Folk Songs of the American Negro, was one of the first extensive studies on the origin and development of religious black music by a descendant of an ex-slave who lived during the time many of the songs had their beginning. Composer, musician, music publisher, and bandleader William Christopher Handy is recognized worldwide as the “Father of the Blues.” As noted in Eileen Southern’s Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians, Handy was “the first to present the full spectrum of black music from the plantation songs to orchestral works” during his April 27, 1928 concert in Carnegie Hall. A trailblazer, W. C. Handy and his musical representation of the blues served as an incentive to other composers. Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong (1909– 2003), a native of Dayton, Tennessee, was a black string band and country blues musician who played fiddle, mandolin, and guitar, and sang. His career spanned from the Roaring Twenties into the twenty-first century. A composer, instrumentalist, and singer, Armstrong performed across the country. In 1929, he recorded with Sleepy John Estes, another Tennessee blues legend, and Yank Rachell. The following year, Armstrong recorded in Knoxville for Vocalion Records, with his brother Roland Armstrong and Carl Martin, billed as the Chocolate Drops. Later, in 1933, they performed at the Chicago World’s Fair. Armstrong, who mastered genres from bluegrass to jazz, was the subject of two PBS documentary films, Terry Zwigoff’s 1985 Louie Bluie and Leah Mahan’s 2002 Sweet Old Song. He continued to perform with younger musicians and released his first solo album Louie Bluie in 1995, which earned him a W. C. Handy Award. In the 1920s and 1930s, DeFord Bailey won national acclaim as the “Harmonic Wizard.”

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A founding member of the Grand Ole Opry, he was the first African American to earn fame in country music. In 1928, he recorded for RCA Victor during Nashville’s first recording session. African Americans in Tennessee are known for their contributions to other musical genres such as Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues” and a native of Chattanooga. She was responsible more than any other African American for infusing the blues into the mainstream of American popular music. As a social protester, Smith became an unfaltering advocate for African American pride and justice. John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williams, the most influential blues harmonica player of his day, was the music innovator responsible for the harmonica as an authentic blues tool. A powerful

An important early jazz singer, Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” was probably the greatest of the classic blueswomen. As she sang, her rich voice and personal intensity spoke directly and emotionally of common people’s troubles, and she would move listeners deeply with both her message and her passionate delivery. (Library of Congress)

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contributor to American music, Williams is recognized as a master of the blues genre. Another West Tennessean who is listed among America’s eminent blues artists is “Mississippi” Fred McDowell. His work, rooted in the Delta blues tradition, won him international acclaim. Within the genre of gospel music, Tennessee has produced several important composers, choral conductors, and performers. Persons such as Lucie E. Campbell (1885–1963), William Herbert Brewster (c. 1898–1987), J. Robert Bradley (1920–2007), the Fairfield Four, and Cleavant Derricks (c. 1900–1976) are among the most noted. African Americans continued to add to Tennessee’s musical motif with their soul-stirring sounds of rhythm and blues. Stax Records, which began in 1957 in a back-street garage, boasted such stars as Rufus and Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Albert King, the Bar-Kays, Johnnie Taylor, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, the Soul Children, and many others. Stax relied upon its deep-soul roots to carry it upward to become a multi-million-dollar organization. Its “Memphis sound” achieved universal distinction. The oncethriving record company ended in 1976, when it filed for bankruptcy. In addition to contributing to the blues, African Americans in Tennessee also contributed to the world of jazz. Among them are Alberta Hunter, Lil Hardin, and Jimmie Lunceford of Memphis, and Lovie Austin, Jimmy Blanton, and Yusef Lateef of Chattanooga. A number of African American jazz and dance bands performed in Nashville, including those led by John Douglas “Chick” Chavis and Don Q. Pullen. Native black Tennesseans or those associated with the Volunteer State have also contributed as writers. In 1901, Dr. Sutton E. Griggs founded and operated the Orion Publishing Company. The author of more than 33 books, five of which were novels, Griggs is studied for his response to the racial injustices of his day.

Hamilton P. Green (1867–1932) was one of the first black writers in Memphis to present historical data on African Americans in the state’s Bluff City. In 1908, he wrote The Black Side of Memphis, which is an encyclopedia wealth of information about blacks and their achievements in business, industrial, and professional lives. An award-winning poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, historian, editor, and author of children’s books, Arna W. Bontemps was one of the most prolific contributors to the Negro Renaissance. From 1943 to 1965, he was head librarian of Fisk University. During his tenure, the Fisk Library became a rich repository for the study of black culture and history. Born in Brownsville, Tennessee, Dr. Hugh Morris Gloster (1911–2002) was a prolific writer. He produced many articles and delivered numerous lectures on American literature and education. He wrote Negro Voices in American Fiction (1948) and was the coauthor of The Brown Thrush and My Life—My Country—My World, which was a best-selling textbook. The founder of the College Language Association, in 1967 he succeeded Dr. Benjamin Mays as president of Morehouse College, where he served until his retirement in 1987. The year before his retirement, Gloster was selected as one of the 100 most effective college presidents in the United States by Jet magazine. Recognized during his lifetime primarily as a chemist, teacher, and administrator at Fisk University, Thomas W. Talley was Tennessee’s first folklorist. A native of Bedford County, he began collecting folk songs around 1900, and published many of them in Negro Folk Rhymes in 1922. Later, he compiled the state’s first collection of black folk tales, Negro Traditions. Talley was also a skilled singer and composer. Although reared in Buffalo, New York, American poet, essayist, and novelist Ishmael Scott Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A recognized writer, his work satirizes the American

Tennessee political culture, highlighting domestic, political, and cultural oppression. The author of more than a dozen books, Reed was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, an organization that helped established the Black Arts Movement and promoted a black aesthetic. Known for his literary theory called “Neo-HooDoo, Aesthetic” that deconstructs Judeo-Christian models through voodoo forms and for his early advocacy of cultural pluralism, Reed was an early proponent of American multiculturalism. His New and Collected Poems, 1964–2006, received the Commonwealth Club of California’s Gold Medal. An author, diplomat, critic, poet, anthologist, educator, attorney, songwriter, civil rights activist, and prominent figure in the Negro Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson was associated with Tennessee during his tenure at Fisk University (1931–1938), where he served as a professor of creative writing. In addition to being known for his service to the NAACP, Johnson was also known for penning the lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which became the Negro National Anthem. The author of several works including three anthologies, Johnson’s second collection of poetry, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, was illustrated by Aaron Douglas, also a prominent figure in the Negro Renaissance. Another Tennessee native, Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the new black poets who became popular in the 1960s, Giovanni’s frankness of style and her message gained her public approbation. Her writing and her political activities were clear reflections of her commitment to end oppression and her allegiance to the Civil Rights Movement. Early in her career, she was given the sobriquet “Princess of Black Poetry.” A 1968 graduate of Fisk University, Giovanni published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, the same year. The following year, her second book was published, thus launching her career as a writer. The author of

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30 books for adults and children, Giovanni, who is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, has received numerous awards and honors. Husband-and-wife team Frederick and Patricia Carwell McKissack, both Tennessee natives, are the authors of numerous books of historical fiction and biographies on the experiences of African Americans for children. Their tomes include Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of AfricanAmerican Whalers; Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues; Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters; and Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I A Woman among others. Now Missouri residents, they are the recipients of many awards and honors, including the Coretta Scott King Award, Newbery Honor, Notable Children’s Trade Book, and the American Library Association Best Book Award for Young Adults. Several noted blacks born or reared in Tennessee have pioneered or played prominent roles in the performing arts, such as Helen Martin (1909–2000), Morgan P. Freeman Jr., and Barry Scott among others. Martin was a pioneer in theater and a founding member of the Harlem-based American Negro Theater. She made her Broadway debut in Orson Welles’ production of Native Son. A performer on the stage, big and small screens, Martin’s career spanned more than 60 years. Freeman, an actor, film director, and narrator, has had an impressive career on stage, screen, and television. Born in Memphis, the three-time Oscar-nominated performer has had a successful career. Earning his first nomination for his role in Street Smart (1987), Freeman received his second nomination for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and the third nomination for his role in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Ten years later, he received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Million Dollar Baby. Barry Scott is widely known for his successes as an actor, writer, producer, director, motivational speaker and voice-over artist. The founder

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and producing artistic director of the American Negro Playwright Theatre at Tennessee State University, Scott has become one of the leading theater artists in Nashville, on top of his impressive acting credits nationwide, including television’s I’ll Fly Away and In the Heat of the Night. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, Actors’ Equity Association, and the American Film Radio and Television Association, he serves on the boards of the Tennessee Arts Commission, Nashville Film Advisory Commission, and Nashville Public Television. Blacks, in addition to William Edmondson, the Delaney brothers, and Hale Aspacio Woodruff, have added to the world of visual arts in Tennessee. Aaron Douglas, Frances E. Thompson, Gregory D. Ridley Jr., and photographer Ernest Withers, among others have enhanced and influenced the visual arts not only in the Volunteer State, but also across the United States. Given the appellation “pioneering Africanist” by Alain Locke, Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) was in the forefront of utilizing African-oriented imagery in visual art during the Black Renaissance. His body of work has been credited as the medium for the art genre integrating subject matter in form and style that asserts the relevancy of the black consciousness and experience in America. Locke’s praise and approval of Douglas influenced historians to describe him as “the father of Black American Art.” He was an illustrator for the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois; the Urban League’s Opportunity magazine, edited by Charles S. Johnson; and Fire!! a quarterly journal devoted to younger black artists, which he, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neale Hurston founded. He also provided illustrations for Vanity Fair, Theatre Arts Monthly, and Harlem. After illustrating an anthology of verse by black poets, Caroling Dusk, Douglas completed a series of paintings for poet James Weldon Johnson’s book of poems, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. The highly regarded illustrator and painter was asked

by Fisk University to create a series of murals to adorn the new Cravath Memorial Library (now Cravath Hall Administration Building) in 1929. A contributor to Locke’s influential anthology, The New Negro, five years later, under auspices of the U.S. Public Works Project, in 1934, he was commissioned to do a series of murals depicting the American black experience from African heritage, slavery, the Emancipation, life in the rural South, and the contemporary urban dilemma for the New York Public Library (now the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). In addition to the celebrated murals at Fisk University, Douglas was commissioned to create murals for such institutions as Club Ebony in Harlem (1927); the Sherman Hotel in Chicago (1930); and the Texas Centennial Exposition (1936). In 1937, Douglas joined the faculty of Fisk University and established the art department, where he served as chair and taught courses until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1966. The pioneering black artist’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and featured in companion volumes including Retrospective Exhibition: Paintings by Aaron Douglas (1971) by David Driskell, Gregory Ridley, and D. L. Graham; and Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976) by David Driskell. Douglas’ innovative art has also been featured in publications such as Flash of the Spirit: African America Art and Philosophy (1983) by Robert F. Thompson; Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America (1987), published by the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989), coedited by C. R. Wilson and William Ferris. During his notable career, Douglas pictorially portrayed the essence of his time and instituted a new black artistic vision. Working from a politicized paradigm of personal identity, he mingled cubist rhythms and Art-Deco dynamism with traditional African and Black American imagery to advance a new visual vocabulary. Douglas’ creative and compelling ideas, and his

Tennessee unique artistic form, merged to construct the most powerful visual legacy of the Black Renaissance and made a lasting impact on the history of art and the cultural heritage of the nation. In 2008, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts mounted the Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist exhibition, which was the first nationally touring retrospective to celebrate the art and legacy of one who put forth a decided declaration of opposition and aspiration through his images. The exhibition included approximately 100 paintings, works on paper, and book illustrations. Frances Euphemia Thompson (1900–1992), an artist, educator, and illustrator, blended her philosophy on art, religion, and education. Seeing art as a media for expression, she worked in a variety of media, including oils, polymers, water colors, German pastels, gesso, gold, silver, enamels, wood, bone, and plastics. A contemporary and friend of Aaron Douglas, she painted murals, portraits, and landscape scenes. Studying in both the United States and Europe, Thompson’s career spanned over 50 years. Named as one of the “greatest influences on Tennessee AfricanAmerican visual arts” by artist Gregory Ridley in his Visions of My People: African-American Artists in Tennessee, she exhibited her work at Tennessee State University, where she served as a professor of art and chair of the art department; Fisk University’s Van Vechten Art Gallery; the Parthenon in Nashville; the Massachusetts College of Art; and Harvard University. In 1924 she designed Tennessee A&I State College’s (now Tennessee State University) school seal, which is still current. Always an educator, in 1943, the Tennessee Department of Education published her book entitled Art in the Elementary School, A Manual for Teachers. Steadfast in her belief, Thompson incorporated her artistic renderings and faith, not only by designing baptistery murals for numerous churches in Tennessee; she also illustrated church literature for the Sunday School Publishing Board of the

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National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., located in Nashville. A portrait painter as well, the gifted artist was commissioned to paint the visual renderings of distinguished people in Tennessee and across the nation. Because much of Thompson’s work was commissioned by entities opened to the public, her artistic renderings can still be viewed in churches and on the campus of Tennessee State University. A graduate of Fisk University, Gregory D. Ridley Jr. (1925–2004) spent four years studying with painter and muralist Aaron Douglas, one of the leading artists of the Negro Renaissance. Over the years his work, utilizing myriad techniques in painting and sculpture, has appeared in major exhibitions across the nation and is included in numerous collections held by museums, art galleries, and private citizens. Among his major commissions was one for Fisk University to memorialize the history of the Carl Van Vechten Gallery of Fine Arts that resulted in his pair of copper-repoussé-sculpted panels embellishing the front entrance doors to the gallery. Functionaries at the Nashville Public Library commissioned Ridley to create public art for its Grand Reading Room. His A Story of Nashville, which included 80 hammeredcopper panels in repoussé, interpreted Nashville’s history from frontier days through the twentieth century. His History of Fisk University, which is composed of six completed copper panels, is exhibited in the Fisk Library. The Tennessee State Museum exhibited Ridley’s Visions of My People: African-American Artists in Tennessee and his one-man shows have been mounted at Cheekwood Fine Arts Center and the Nashville Artists’ Guild Gallery, as well as numerous other venues. Ridley’s work has been included in 14 visual-art publications, including American Negro Art, Prizewinning Art in America, and Two Centuries of Black American Art. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Ernest C. Withers (1922–2007) was a photojournalist

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whose voluminous catalog of dramatic black-andwhite images exposes the history of the apartheid South in the 1950s and 1960s, from the modern Civil Rights Movement to the music scene on Beale Street. A freelance photographer, in the 1950s, he covered the trial of those charged with the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the 14-yearold youth from Chicago, in Money, Mississippi. Later, he photographed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956; the “Little Rock Nine,” who in 1957 desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; the 1963 funeral of NAACP activist Medgar Evers; the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike; and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also photographed such baseball luminaries as Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays, as well as the performances of musical celebrities such as B. B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Elvis Presley. His photographs appeared in Time, Newsweek, Ebony, Jet, the New York Times, Washington Post, the Chicago Defender, and the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize. In addition to magazines and newspapers, Withers’ photographs have been collected in four books: Let Us March On! Selected Civil Rights Photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955–1968 (1992), Pictures Tell the Story (2000), The Memphis Blues Again: Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs (2001), and Negro League Baseball (2004).

Bibliography Berry, Mary Francis My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations. New York: Knopf, 2005. Booker, Robert J. And There Was Light! The 120Year History of Knoxville College, Knoxville Tennessee, 1875–1995. Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company/Publishers, 1995.

Boyer, Clarence. How Sweet The Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel. Washington, DC: Elliott & Clark Publishing, 1995. Campbell, Mary Schmidt, David Driskell, and David Levering Lewis. Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. Church, Roberta, and Ronald Walter. Nineteenth Century Memphis Families of Color, 1850–1900. Memphis, TN: Murdock Printing Company, 1988. Cimprich, John. Slavery’s End in Tennessee, 1861– 1865. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985. Cornwell, Ilene J. Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly. Vol. 6. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1991. Doyle, Don. Nashville since the 1920s. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Fayette County. Journey to Our Freedom: A Guide to African American Markers in Tennessee. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 2000. Glenn, John M. Highlander No Ordinary School, 1932–1962. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988. Goodstein, Anita S. Nashville, 1780–1860: From Frontier to City. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989. Graham, Hugh Davis. Crisis in Print: Desegregation and the Press in Tennessee. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967. Hoffschwelle, Mary. Rebuilding the Southern Rural Community. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998. Hoppe, Sherry L., and Bruce W. Speck. Maxine Smith’s Unwilling Pupils: Lessons Learned in Memphis’s Civil Rights Classroom. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007. Horn, Stanley F. Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939.

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Lamon, Lester. Blacks in Tennessee, 1791–1970. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981.

Summerville, James. Educating Black Doctors: A History of Meharry Medical College. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1983.

Lamon, Lester, and Linda T. Wynn, eds. Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee. Nashville, TN: Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History, 1996.

Ware, Gilbert. William Hastie: Grace under Pressure. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Mays, Joe H. Black Americans and Their Contributions toward Union Victory in the American Civil War, 1861–1865. New York: American Heritage Custom Publishing Group, 1994. Mitchell, Reavis L., Jr. “Aaron Douglas (1899– 1979).” In Leaders of Afro-American Nashville. Nashville, TN: Local Conference on AfroAmerican Culture and History, 1998. Mitchell, Reavis L., Jr. “Gregory D. Ridley (1925–2004).” In Leaders of Afro-American Nashville. Nashville, TN: Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History, 2006. Peterson, Alison J. “Ernest Withers, Civil Rights Photographer, Dies at 85.” New York Times, October 17, 2007. www.nytimes.com. (March 11, 2009.) Sharp, Leslie N. “Frances Euphemia Thompson (1900–1992)” In Leaders of Afro-American Nashville. Nashville, TN: Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History, 2005. Smith, Jessie C. Notable Black American Men. Detroit: Gale Publishing Group, 1999. Smith, Jessie C. Notable Black American Men, Book II. Detroit: Gale Publishing Group, 2007. Smith, Jessie C., ed. Notable Black American Women. Detroit, MI: Gale Publishing Company, 1992. Smith, Jessie C., ed. Notable Black American Women, Book II. Detroit, MI: Gale Publishing Company, 1996. Southern, Eileen. Biographical Dictionary of AfroAmerican and African Musicians. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

West, Carroll Van, editor-in-chief. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Society and Rutledge Hill Press, 1998. Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill, ed. Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. White, Robert H. Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, 1857–1869. Vol. 5. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1959. Wynn, Linda T. “The Dawning of a New Day: The Nashville Sit-Ins, February 13–May 10, 1960.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 50 (1991): 42–45. Wynn, Linda T. “Hulda Margaret Lyttle, 1889– 1983.” In Jessie C. Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, Book II. Detroit, MI: Gale Publishing Company, 1996. Wynn, Linda T. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1863– 1931.” In Jessie C. Smith, ed., Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1993. Wynn, Linda T. “Tennessee’s Carnegie Libraries.” Tennessee Conservationist 64, no. 1 (January–February 1998). Wynn, Linda T. “Toward a Perfect Democracy: The Struggle of African Americans in Fayette County, Tennessee to Fulfill the Unfulfilled Right of the Franchise.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 55 (1996): 202–223. Wynn, Linda T. “William Edward Burgharadt Du Bois: The Tennessee Connections to the Souls of Black Folk.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 58 (2004): 18–33.

TEXAS Howard J. Jones

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Chronology 1528

Esteban, the first known African to enter the territory of present-day Texas, accompanies the Cabeza de Vaca expedition as an interpreter to the Indians.

1816–1821

Black slaves are smuggled through the Texas port of Galveston.

1821

Stephen F. Austin is granted permission by Mexico to bring white American settlers to Texas; most of these settlers come from southern slaveholding states. Each settler is allowed to purchase an additional 50 acres for each black slave owned.

1823

Mexico forbids the sale or purchase of slaves within its territory, including Texas.

1824

William Goings, a free person of color, becomes a leader in the Nacogdoches colonial community.

1824

Mexico adopts a constitution freeing the slaves within its borders, including Texas, but American settlers in Texas continue to hold slaves. Mexican efforts to end slavery in Texas become one of the main grievances leading to the Texas uprising.

1829

Mexico’s Guerrero Decree conditionally abolishes slavery, but Texas is granted an exception until 1830.

1830

(April) American immigrants to Texas become dissatisfied with Stephen F. Austin’s leadership; to appease his critics, Austin declares a gift of 80 acres of land to each settler for every black slave brought to Texas.

1835–1836

The Texas Revolution erupts against Mexico and leads to the formation of the independent Republic of Texas.

1835

An immigrant from Mississippi, Hendrick Arnold, son of a white father and a black mother, serves the Texans as a spy and guide during the Texas Revolution.

1836

The beginnings of the “Yellow Rose of Texas” legend center around a free black woman named Emily Morgan, who was supposedly taken prisoner by General Santa Ana during his 1836 invasion of Texas.

1836

The Texas Republic enacts an ordinance preventing the immigration of free Negroes to Texas.

1840

Over 11,000 slaves are resident in the Republic of Texas.

1845

(December 29) Texas enters the Union as the 28th state; it is admitted as a slave state.

1845

Texas enacts a law barring free Negroes from living in Texas without legislative approval.

1853

In Dallas, Jane Elkins, a black female held in slavery, is hanged for having supposedly killed a Mr. Wisdom.

1858

In Galveston, Lucy Dougherty, an African American woman, is executed for having supposedly killed her mistress.

Texas

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1860

The U.S. Census counts 182,000 slaves in Texas, comprising almost 30 percent of the state’s population.

1860

Rumors of a planned slave insurrection sweep the state, leading to the hanging of one suspected abolitionist and the expulsion of others, as well as to the lynching of three black slaves in Dallas.

1861

(February 1) Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.

1861–1865

Unlike other parts of the Confederacy, where the presence of Union forces encouraged slaves to run away from their masters, most Texas slaves remained in bondage until the end of the war in 1865.

1865

Congress creates the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau).

1865

(May 13) Soldiers from the 62nd U.S. Colored Troops are involved in the last military skirmish of the Civil War at White’s Ranch in Texas.

1866

The U.S. Congress overrides the veto of President Andrew Johnson and extends the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

1866

Texas enacts an “Act to define and declare the rights of persons lately known as Slaves, and Free Persons of Color,” which gives blacks basic property rights, but denies them the right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, to testify against whites, or to marry whites.

1866

(August 9) James Throckmorton, a Conservative Unionist opposed to black suffrage, is inaugurated as governor of Texas.

1866

(August 20) Texas is declared reconstructed under President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan.

1866

(October 27) Texas rejects the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting citizenship to former slaves.

1867

(March 2) Congress enacts the First Reconstruction Act, which declares the Texas state government established under the Johnson Plan to be provisional.

1867

(July 4) The Republican Party of Texas holds its first Convention, thus opening Texas politics to African Americans.

1867

(July 30) General Philip H. Sheridan, commander of the Fifth Military District, of which Texas is a part under the First Reconstruction Act, removes Governor Throckmorton from office as “an impediment to Reconstruction.”

1867

Sheridan’s successor as military commander of the Fifth Military District orders an election under the new desegregated Texas State Constitution.

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1868

White racist organizations, such as the Knights of the White Camellia and the White Brotherhood, begin committing acts of violence against blacks and white Unionists in east Texas.

1870

Black buffalo soldiers are involved in a military skirmish with Indians near Kickapoo Springs.

1870

(February 18) Over four years after it had taken effect, Texas ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1870

(February 18) Texas ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, over a year and a half after the amendment had taken effect.

1870

(February 18) As a requirement for being represented in Congress, Texas ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting voting rights to African Americans; the ratification comes two weeks after the amendment had taken effect.

1870

(March 30) Texas is readmitted to the Union.

1870

(August 6) A race riot erupts in Waco.

1872

Paul Quinn College is founded in Austin.

1873

Norris Wright Cuney presides over the Colored Men’s Convention in Brenham.

1873

Wiley College is founded in Marshall.

1874

The Negro Baptist State Association is organized.

1874

Armed white Democrats seize control of the state government, thus reintroducing “white only” politics to Texas.

1876

Prairie View A&M University is founded.

1877

Tillotson College, a senior college for blacks in Austin, is chartered, but has no students until 1881.

1881

Bishop College, a Historically Black College, is founded in Marshall.

1884

Principal L. C. Anderson of Prairie View College leads the organization of the Texas Colored Teachers’ State Association.

1884

Guadalupe College is founded in Seguin.

1886

Mary Allen College for women is founded in Crockett.

1889

R. L. Smith founds the Farmers Improvement Society of Texas as a farmers’ association for African Americans.

1890

More than 100,000 African Americans vote in Texas elections.

1891

Texas cotton pickers organize a union and unsuccessfully strike for higher wages.

Texas

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1893

Black longshoremen in Galveston unsuccessfully strike for better working conditions and higher wages.

1894

L. M. Sabbeth, a black man from McLennan County, is ejected from the Republican State Convention meeting in Dallas.

1894

Texas College is founded in Tyler.

1895

An African American woman, Mrs. James Mason, is lynched at Daingerfield in Morris County.

1896

In its decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of racial segregation.

1898

St. Phillip’s College is founded in San Antonio.

1899

Texas African American novelist Sutton Griggs publishes Imperium in Imperio, the first of his five novels.

1901

Texas native Scott Joplin and ragtime music become popular.

1902

Texas institutes a poll tax, which significantly limits the ability of many African Americans to vote.

1903

Jack Johnson, an African American boxer from Galveston, wins the world heavyweight boxing championship.

1903

Texas enacts a “White Primary” law that prevents blacks from voting in the state’s Democratic primary; since the Democrats dominate state politics, most state officeholders are elected in the primary.

1905

Bill Pickett, an African American cowboy and rodeo performer born in Travis County, joins the 101 Ranch Wild West, which also features such white performers as Buffalo Bill.

1905

Butler College, a coeducational school for African Americans, is founded in Tyler.

1906

Thanks to the poll tax and the white primary law, fewer than 5,000 African Americans vote in Texas elections.

1906

A race riot erupts in Brownsville.

1909

The Negro Branch of the Houston Public Library is established.

1910

An African American man, Allen Brooks, is taken from jail in Dallas and lynched.

1910

In Palestine, a white mob hunts and kills over a dozen blacks.

1912

Jarvis Christian College at Hawkins is founded.

1914

The Progressive Party of Texas totally excludes blacks.

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1915

The first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established in El Paso.

1916

Jesse Washington, a black man, is lynched in Waco.

1917

A race riot erupts in Houston.

1918

The Dallas chapter of the NAACP is founded.

1920

Texan Rube Foster helps found the Negro Baseball League.

1920

Blacks in Houston put forth political candidates under the “Black and Tan” ticket.

1922

Marcus Garvey speaks in Dallas.

1923–1944

The all-white primary is employed in Texas to prevent blacks from voting, though challenges are launched against it by Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon.

1927

When the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates the all-white primary law of Texas in Nixon v. Herndon, the Texas legislature simply passes new laws restoring the all-white primary.

1928

Robert Powell, a black man, is lynched in Houston.

1930

Mary E. Branch begins her work at Tillotson College.

1931

(January 1) In Houston, Prairie View plays Tuskegee in football, beginning the Prairie View Bowl.

1932

When the U.S. Supreme Court rules again, in Nixon v. Condon, that the Texas white primary law violates the Fourteenth Amendment, the Texas legislature again responds by passing a new law.

1932

Blacks in Texas begin switching their political allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party.

1934

Prairie View College receives a Class A rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities.

1935

In Grovey v. Townsend, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the new white primary law makes the Democratic Party a private entity and the exclusion of blacks does therefore not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

1935

The debate team from Wiley College, coached by Melvin Tolson, gains notoriety for breaking the color barrier by defeating a white team from the University of Southern California.

1937

The NAACP holds its first state conference in Dallas.

1941

(December 7) Dorie Miller of Waco distinguishes himself during the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1943

The salaries of black teachers in Houston are equalized with the salaries of white teachers.

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1943

A race riot erupts in Beaumont.

1944

The Smith v. Allwright court case ends whites-only primaries.

1947

Texas State University for Negroes is founded in Houston.

1948

For the first time, black players appear in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

1949

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston admits its first black student.

1950

Involving the refusal by the University of Texas School of Law to admit a black student, the U.S. Supreme Court case of Sweatt v. Painter successfully challenged racial segregation in higher education.

1951

Texas State University for Negroes is renamed Texas Southern University.

1954

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education reverses the “separate but equal” doctrine enunciated by the court in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.

1956

(September) The Texas attorney general seizes the records of the state NAACP and files suit attempting to prevent the organization from operating in the state; the state charges the NAACP with failing to pay the franchise tax and inciting lawsuits that were solely designed to harass. Although the organization is weakened for a time, it continues to function in the state.

1958

Mrs. Charles White, an African American woman, is elected to the Houston School Board.

1960

In Houston, Texas Southern University students conduct a lunch counter sit-in.

1963

(November 22) President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

1964

(January 23) The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax is ratified, though such taxes continue in Texas for local and state elections.

1965

Jerry LeVias breaks racial barriers by playing football at Southern Methodist University.

1966

The use of the poll tax for local and state elections is eliminated in Texas.

1966

David Daddy Latin leads his Texas Western College (renamed the University of Texas at El Paso in 1967) basketball team to the NCAA basketball championship; against Kentucky, the Texas Western team started five African American players for the first time ever in a championship game.

1966

Two African Americans, Joe Lockridge of Dallas (Texas State House of Representatives) and Barbara Jordan of Houston (Texas State Senate), are elected to the Texas legislature.

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1967

Muhammad Ali is convicted in Houston of violating the Selective Service Act.

1972

Barbara Jordan, a Democrat, becomes the first black woman from a southern state to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1974

The Watergate hearings are televised and spotlight Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas.

1976

Barbara Jordan, U.S. representative from Texas, addresses the Democratic National Convention.

1977

Mary Allen College in Crockett closes.

1977

Earl Campbell, an African American running back at the University of Texas, wins the Heisman Trophy.

1978

George Mickey Leland is elected to Congress replacing the retiring Barbara Jordan.

1979

Gabrielle McDonald becomes the first African American to be appointed as a federal district judge in Texas.

1979

Al Edwards leads the fight for Juneteenth to become an official holiday in Texas.

1982

Lee P. Brown becomes Houston’s chief of police.

1988

Bishop College in Dallas closes.

1988

Lee Roy Young becomes the first African American Texas Ranger.

1989

Craig Washington is elected to Congress from Texas to replace the late Mickey Leland.

1989

Ida Lee Delaney is wrongfully shot and killed by a Houston policeman.

1989

Andre Ware, an African American quarterback at the University of Houston, wins the Heisman Trophy.

1990

Paul Quinn College in Waco closes and is moved to Dallas to reopen on the campus of old Bishop College.

1990

Morris Overstreet becomes the first black in Texas to win a statewide election, winning a seat as judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

1991

Texas officially recognizes Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a state holiday.

1992

Eddie Bernice Johnson is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for a Dallas district.

1994

In Houston, Sheila Jackson Lee defeats Craig Washington for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1995

Ron Kirk is elected mayor of Dallas.

1996

Michael Johnson from Dallas and Carl Lewis from Houston are among the U.S. medalists at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Texas

825

1997

C. O. (Clarence) Bradford becomes Houston’s chief of police.

1998

Lee P. Brown begins service as mayor of Houston.

1998

(June 7) In Jasper, an African American man named James Byrd Jr. is chained to a pickup truck by three white men and dragged to his death.

1999

Terrell Bolton becomes chief of police in Dallas.

1999

A drug raid is launched in the black section of Tulia.

2002

The defamation lawsuit of Texas cattlemen against Oprah Winfrey for comments made on her television program in 1996 is rejected by an Amarillo jury.

2002

Ron Kirk and Victor Morales become the top two Democratic candidates for a Texas U.S. Senate seat; Kirk wins the nomination but loses the general election to Republican John Cornyn.

2004

Harold L. Hurtt begins serving as Houston’s chief of police.

2007

The trial of Texas Southern University’s President Dr. Priscilla Slade for malfeasance of public funds is held in Houston.

2007

Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters, about a Wiley College group debate team that broke the color barrier by defeating a white team from the University of Southern California in 1935, becomes a box office hit.

2009

(May 22) Texas ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment abolishing the poll tax, 35 years after the amendment took effect in 1964.

Historical Overview Texas under Spain and Mexico African Americans first came to Texas with European explorers and settlers. Spanish colonial records attest to this fact. The first Africans who came to Texas that we know about arrived with the Cabeza da Vaca expedition in 1528. The expedition explored the region covering presentday Texas and the Southwest. One of the members of the expedition was the black explorer known as Esteban (or Estevanico, i.e., “Little Stephen”). He was an interpreter for the expedition, who was captured by Indians and spent five years among them as a slave until escaping and returning to Mexico in about 1533. He was part of a second expedition into the region in 1539,

which ended with his death at the hands of Zuñi Indians. Over the next three centuries, other blacks entered the region with the Spanish, some as slaves and some as free men or women. In 1792, Spanish Texas contained 34 Africans and over 400 mulattoes. Although the Spaniards introduced slavery to Texas, under Spanish rule, most Africans in Texas were free. Spain seems to have placed few legal bonds on free Afro-Texans to separate them from the rest of the population. When Texas became part of the newly independent Republic of Mexico in 1821, slavery continued to exist in the region, but free blacks remained free and the generally lax Spanish regulation of race relations continued in effect. Despite this fact, in the 1830s, when the American settlers in Texas sought to free themselves from Mexico, many free blacks and slaves

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in Texas fought with the Anglo-Texans against Mexico. Under the Spaniards, blacks received far more equality than they were later to receive from the Anglo-Texans. Under the laws of the new Texas republic after 1836, blacks could not vote, own property, bring suits against whites, or intermarry with whites. Under Mexican rule, such noted Afro-Texans as William Goyens of Nacogdoches and the slave girl Kiamata gained note. Goyens not only made an interracial marriage, but served as a mediator between the Native Americans of the region and the white settlers. Other Afro-Texans who distinguished themselves during these years included Peter Allen; Hendrick Arnold; Nelson Kavanaugh; Greenbury Logan; Samuel McCullough; Cary McKinney; Dick, the drummer; and members of the Ashworth family. African Americans also came into Texas with Stephen F. Austin’s “old three hundred,” the original settlers who bought land in Austin’s new Texas colony in the early 1820s. More than one-quarter of the families in this group brought slaves with them into Texas. After April 1830, Austin, to solidify his leadership, allowed settlers 80 acres of land for every black slave they brought into Texas. After the Texas Revolution in 1835– 1836, some settlers who populated Texas under Austin became dissatisfied with his leadership and chose to follow Sam Houston. Houston became president of the Republic of Texas in 1836. Eventually under Houston, in late 1845, Texas became a state in the United States. One cannot generalize and say that all African Americans held in slavery in Texas were docile and the institution was a sea of calmness. Nor can one generalize and say that the Texas version of the peculiar institution was totally volatile. A number of individuals held in slavery showed their dislike for the institution by running away, damaging property, or poisoning their owners. In 1853, Jane Elkins, a bondswoman in Dallas, was hanged for supposedly killing a Mr. Wisdom.

Then in 1858, Lucy Dougherty, a bondswoman in Galveston, was executed for having killed her mistress. Others adjusted to the institution, accepted it, and made the best of a bad situation. To escape slavery, Mexico was too far to the south, and escaping north to freedom was almost an impossibility. Even though a few Germans and a few Mexicans in Texas privately viewed slavery as immoral, it seems most Texans supported the “peculiar institution.” Freedom for those held in bondage would not come until the American Civil War, 1861–1865. According to historian Alwyn Barr, only 47 black Texans enlisted in the Union army.1 As of 2009, there is a state holiday in Texas known as “Juneteenth.” Juneteenth is the common Texans parlance for June 19th. The date is one of remembrance for African American Texans because June 19, 1865, was the day that General Gordon Granger, at Galveston, Texas, issued General Order #3, an edict setting free all remaining Negro bondsmen held in Texas. Thus the order read as follows: The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection herebefore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer. The freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts, and that they will not be supported in idleness, either there or elsewhere. By order of G. GRANGER, Major General Commanding2 To some historians looking at this matter, this order was simply a footnote to the previously

Texas issued Emancipation Proclamation, by President Abraham Lincoln, which had become effective on January 1, 1863. Regardless of Lincoln’s true purpose, there were African Americans held in bondage who simply walked away from the places where they were being held as bondsmen, for many former bondsmen in Texas, northwestern Louisiana, and southwestern Arkansas, this date came to symbolize the day of the “ ‘Jubilo’ for black people! They had prayed, sang, shouted, etc. and finally this day had come . . . FREEDOM!”3 In Texas, on June 19, 1865, black people were still being held in bondage. To the owners of plantations and others who held bondsmen, the words of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to them. Jefferson Davis was their president. So nothing had come down to them concerning a change in bondage. They knew what Lincoln had declared, but he had no sovereignty in Texas or elsewhere in the south that was still under the rule of Jefferson Davis. On southern estates, blacks kept on picking cotton, and in cities like Galveston or Houston, blacks kept on working on the docks or serving as draymen. The effort was not, as the current rumor goes, that the words of the Emancipation Proclamation were kept quiet so as to get the “slaves” to harvest another crop. Simply nothing about bondage had changed. Even though white Texans had to accept slavery had ended, they did this with wholesale reluctance. And they still never changed their view that blacks were inferior beings! A few still held onto “slaves” after 1865. After the Civil War and “freedom,” came a period known as Reconstruction. In Texas, Reconstruction lasted for less than a decade. Economically, former slaves became freedmen. As human beings, they had to barter their labor in order to live. Still, not all African American Texans were poor and destitute, but the vast majority were very poor and owned almost nothing. Black Texans had to find work. Before the war, most

827

were involved in agriculture. After the war, this remained true. Eventually, an agricultural system known as sharecropping developed, in which most blacks were involved, and tenant farming, involving mainly “poor” whites. In March 1865, the federal government created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, supposedly to ensure newly freed African Americans became part of mainstream America. In Texas, in September 1865, General E. M. Gregory became the controlling agent. For Texas, the Freedmen’s Bureau, as it was generally called, held no abandoned lands on which freedmen could be resettled. Seven months later, President Andrew Johnson replaced General Gregory with General J. B. Kiddo. Seemingly, conservative whites complained that Gregory showed too much favoritism to blacks. In 1867, Kiddo was replaced by General Charles Griffin. White Texans saw freedmen as a group of restless wanderers trying to avoid work. However, in many cases, there was logic to their restlessness. Some tried to find family members from whom they had been separated under the “peculiar institution.” Some were trying to find more favorable places to live and work. And some were simply trying to psychologically prove that they were truly free—if they could simply move from place to place, without being herded back, this was evidence they were free. Socially, religion and education dominated black life. Most black Texans became Baptist or Methodist. Seeds for rudimentary education were planted by blacks themselves and the Freedmen’s Bureau. All kinds of hostility were shown by native whites toward black education. The bureau even tried to establish a free public-school system for the whole state of Texas. The idea never got off the ground. Collegiate education for African Americans began in Austin in 1872 with Paul Quinn College, which would eventually move to Waco. Wiley College in Marshall followed in 1873. Then in 1877, Tillotson College tried

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becoming a permanent fixture in Austin, where Paul Quinn could not. The 1880s saw Bishop College develop in Marshall; Guadalupe College in Seguin; and Mary Allen College for Women in Crockett. A state effort for education of black Texans would not come until 1876 with Prairie View A&M University. But the third leg of society, political, opened new channels for blacks, former slaves, and free persons of color. Some freedmen became members of the Loyal Union League. This group, an ally group for the Republican Party, seemingly was led by George P. Ruby, a black man. Opposition to the league and promotion of white supremacy came mainly from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1867, the U.S. Congress radically changed government in Texas by passing the various “Reconstruction Acts.” Black men became real participants in the Texas government. George P. Ruby became one of the leaders. Others included Charles W. Bryant, Matt Gaines, and Richard Allen. The Reconstruction era was also the period which gave rise to the term “buffalo soldiers.” The 9th Calvary and the 24th and 25th Infantries guarded the Texas border and did a quality job. But on the state nonmilitary level, the idea of black policemen brought to the surface an all-out white hatred for blacks. In Texas, Reconstruction, involving African American political participation, came to a close in January, 1874. President U. S. Grant’s administration refused to use troops to support the Republican gubernatorial administration in Texas. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the unofficial, nonelected (by the general population) head of the Republican Party in Texas had become the African American Texan Norris Wright Cuney. But the Democrats, from the fall of Reconstruction in Texas in 1874 to 1879, used violence, intimidation of blacks, and any other means necessary to wrestle control of politics in Texas. In the last decade of the nineteenth century and going into the twentieth century, the number

of African American voters in Texas dropped dramatically. In 1890, there were over 100,000 black voters, but midway through the first decade of the twentieth century, there were just over 5,000. The white-only primary and other tools of the Texas conservatives had taken their toll. This was also the era when Jim Crowism or segregation became a mainstay of Texas society. Black Texans had tried several avenues during the Reconstruction era to enter the mainstream of American life, none of which worked, During this retrenchment era, that energy was refocused, and now the development of black clubs and fraternities, black churches, and black separate educational institutions became the mainstay. After the turn of the century, Texas white society jailed blacks on all kinds of trumped-up charges. Then the black prisoners were, in many cases, leased out to planters and others. Things were very reminiscent of pre–Civil War slavery. Lynching also became very common. Feeling these pressures, some black Texans thought of going “back to Africa,” while others became “Exodusters.” In Houston, as early as July 1879, there was an “Exoduster” convention. Henry Adams and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, leaders of the Exodus Movement, wanted to lead black folks to Kansas or the Southwest and get them far away from white southerners. Houston’s black politician Richard Allen became one of the local leaders of the Exodus movement. Today there are positive comments made when talking about buffalo soldiers who also existed during these years. But their white contemporaries had a negative view. There was general fear of black men carrying weapons. These fears made headlines in two incidents in Texas. In 1906, the Brownsville Riot broke out involving black soldiers from Fort Brown. This riot occured when a white woman accused one of the black soldiers from Fort Brown of attempted rape. Another was the Houston Riot of August 1917. Although President Theodore

Texas

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Site of the shooting that erupted in 1906 in Brownsville, Texas, between 12 African American troops and white citizens of the town. The entire black garrison of 167 men was dishonorably discharged in connection with the event. (Library of Congress)

Roosevelt summarily dismissed black troops stationed at Fort Brown, U.S. Senator Joseph Foraker, a Roosevelt opponent, pushed for an investigation that concluded the black soldiers had done no wrong. Brownsville whites might have staged the trouble to get the soldiers evicted. During the era of the Populists/Grangers, black Texans too became a part of the movement. J. J. Shuffer and Robert L. Smith were black Texans who possessed clout in the movement. Other black Texans during these years numbered among the few African Americans nationwide to gain positive notoriety. Emett J. Scott of Houston not only became secretary for Booker T. Washington but also gained the distinction among some as being the “brains” behind the Tuskegee movement. And Richard H. Boyd, a native Texan, became well known as a religious leader for his work with a black Baptist organization in Nashville, Tennessee. At the start of World War I, most black leaders supported it. It was a war that supposedly was fought to “make the world safe for democracy.”

However, Germans captured by Americans and brought to stateside American prison camps enjoyed more freedom than native African Americans who fought with the white Americans. After the war, the 1920s were characterized by violence against black Texans. Whites precipitated or condoned such violence to “keep blacks in their place,” and thereby made more inviting the message of Marcus Garvey, who spoke in Dallas in 1922 urging black Texans to become members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and eventually to journey “back to Africa.” Prior to the 1920s in Houston, there was already a branch of the NAACP, and a number of black Texans joined the organization. It was during this period that the first hospital in Texas for African Americans was founded in Houston. Galveston had earlier been the site of the first public library for blacks in the state, with another following in Houston in 1909. For a number of reasons, many black Texans had switched their support from the Republican

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Party to the Democratic Party by 1932. The fight in the Republican Party to support all-white causes and the effort to remove blacks from membership in the party definitely played roles in this switch. The switch movement was accelerated by President Herbert Hoover’s seeming acceptance of these actions by the state party. Neither party recruited black members, though the few black voters were used by both parties to tip the balance in fights between internal white factions. Violence by such groups as the Ku Klux Klan also played a role in the shift, as did economics. The Great Depression pushed black people further away from Republican ideology. World War II and the subsequent Smith v. Allright case brought some change to Texas. In Houston, Dr. Lonnie Smith had been denied a ballot in a primary. He sued, and with the legal counsel of Thurgood Marshall and others, the case declared the Texas primary laws unconstitutional. Again, the ballot box was open to black people, and this time it included women as well as men. World War II was fought under its usual cloud of segregation. Despite such, Texan Dorie Miller distinguished himself at the beginning of the war when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Messman Miller manned a machine gun and shot down several Japanese airplanes. Seemingly this made no difference to the racial attitude of white America. As early as 1945, state legislators worked to keep blacks out of the University of Texas. The aim was to give Prairie View College the means of offering professional courses. Despite such, Heman Sweatt brought a suit to be admitted to professional education courses at the University of Texas, and in 1950, he won his case. In the meantime, Texas Southern University had been established in Houston to offer professional education for blacks. One offering was a law degree. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case reversing the earlier stance taken

by the court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, thereby voiding the “separate but equal” doctrine. How far Texas had not come in 1954 in treating all of its citizens as equals, black, brown and white, was shown in the election of Alan Shivers as governor. He ran and won on an antidesegregation platform. Whether it was school desegregation or lunch counters, Texas balked. In 1956, in Mansfield, a white mob prevented the school from being desegregated. In 1960, students from Texas Southern University conducted sit-ins at lunch counters. To some, the view became bleak for black Texans with the assassination in Dallas in November 1963 of President John F. Kennedy. Now a Democrat from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, became president. Ironically, Johnson worked to try to eliminate some of the hurdles blacks had to overcome to gain freedom. There were setbacks, but there were also accomplishments. In 1967, Muhammad Ali, the boxer whom many blacks idolized, was stripped of his title when he was convicted in Houston of violating the American Selective Service Act. But in 1972, Barbara Jordan was elected to Congress from Houston. Ms. Jordan brought more acclaim to the Texas black community when the Watergate hearings were held in 1974. A few months later, she added to her acclaim when she addressed the national convention of the Democratic Party. Afro-Texans brought more positive publicity to Texas when on January 15, 1978, Tony Dorsett and other blacks playing with the Dallas Cowboys won the NFL’s Super Bowl. Still, there were setbacks. At Conroe, Clarence Brandley, a janitor, was found guilty of murder and set to be executed. He was supposed to have been executed on March 26, 1987, but before his execution, he was proven not guilty. Two years later, while driving on a freeway in Houston, Ida Lee Delaney was shot and killed by a drunken Houston policeman.

Texas

In one of the most publicized hate crimes in U.S. history, James Byrd Jr., shown in this family photo, was chained by his ankles to a truck and dragged to his death along a rural East Texas road on June 7, 1998. Three white men were convicted of first-degree murder in his death. As a result of the vicious murder, hate crimes legislation was introduced in Congress. (AP/Wide World Photos)

When Ms. Jordan decided not to run again for her House seat, George Thomas Mickey Leland ran and won. Leland was killed in an airplane crash in Ethiopia while on a humanitarian mission. Craig Washington then won Leland’s seat. Eddie Bernice Johnson, from Dallas, joined the Texas congressional delegation in 1992. A year later, Emmitt Smith helped the Dallas Cowboys win another Super Bowl. Two years later, Larry Brown joined with Smith and others, and won another Super Bowl. The focus shifted to Houston in 1994 and 1995. The Houston Rockets, with a nearly all-black cast, won consecutive NBA championships. In the political arena, Lee P. Brown, who had been the first black man to serve as chief of police in Houston, was elected as mayor of Houston in 1997. Again, this was followed in Texas by a setback. Headlines were made in June of 1998 when in Jasper, James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup.

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Again, there were some positives. Tim Duncan helped lead the San Antonio Spurs basketball team to consecutive NBA championships. Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, and Tina Thompson helped lead the WNBA’s Houston Comets basketball team to four consecutive world championships. The political arena added to this positive spirit. Ron Kirk, former mayor of Dallas gained the Democratic nomination for a U.S. senate seat. Eventually, he lost. But one could see just how far African Texans had come. Yet in 2002, Oprah Winfrey was involved in a lawsuit in Texas for supposedly having slandered the beef industry in Texas by suggesting it caused mad cow disease. Dallas received its first African American police chief, Terrell D. Bolton, in 1999. The city manager released him in 2003. There followed a protest by some in the black community. The picture became bleaker in 2007 when Dr. Priscilla Slade, president of Texas Southern University, was found guilty of malfeasance of public funds. If the pattern is followed, things should become brighter for Afro-Texans. When blacks first came to Texas, they were treated as inferiors. Despite these negative characterizations, African Americans in Texas have climbed up the ladder trying to enter the mainstream and seemingly have no plans of stopping until their goal is reached.

Notable African Americans Bledsoe, Julius Lorenzo Cobb (1897–1943) Julius (Jules) Bledsoe, black baritone and composer, was born on December 29, 1897, in Waco, Texas, the son of Henry L. and Jessie (Cobb) Bledsoe. He attended Central Texas Academy in Waco from about 1905 until his graduation as class valedictorian in 1914. He then attended Bishop College in Marshall, where he earned a B.A. in 1918. He was a member of the ROTC

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at Virginia Union University in Richmond in 1918–1919 and studied medicine at Columbia University in New York City between 1920 and 1924. While attending Columbia, he studied voice with Claude Warford, Luigi Parisotti, and Lazar Samoiloff. He was sponsored by the impresario Sol Hurok for his professional singing debut on April 20, 1924, at Aeolian Hall in New York. As a concert artist Bledsoe performed in the United States and Europe. He was praised for his ability to sing in several languages, for his vocal control and range, and for his power to communicate through music. In 1926, he performed as the baritone Tizan, the leading role in the opera Deep River. His best-known achievement was his portrayal of Joe in Florenz Ziegfeld’s 1927 production of Jerome Kern’s Showboat. His interpretation of “Ol’ Man River” made the song an American classic. He recreated this role in the film version of Showboat in 1929. In his versatile career of nearly 20 years, Bledsoe performed with such distinguished musical organizations as the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (1926), the BBC Symphony in London (1936), and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (1937). He also sang for vaudeville and radio and in opera. He sang the role of Amonasro in Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda with the Cleveland Stadium Opera (1932), the Chicago Opera Company at the Hippodrome in New York (1933), and the Cosmopolitan Opera Company, also at the Hippodrome (1934). A highlight of his career was his performance in the title role for the European premiere, in Amsterdam, of Louis Gruenberg’s opera The Emperor Jones (1934). In 1940 and 1941, Bledsoe worked in films in Hollywood. He played the part of Kalu in Drums of the Congo, and, although his name did not appear in the credits, he probably played in Safari, Western Union, and Santa Fe Trail. He wrote several patriotic songs, spirituals and folk songs. Some of his compositions were “Does Ah Luv You?” (1931); “Pagan Prayer” (date

unknown), on a poem by Countee Cullen; “Good Old British Blue” (1936); and “Ode to America” (1941). He wrote an opera, Bondage (1939), based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Bledsoe’s African Suite, a set of four songs for voice and orchestra, was featured with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, directed by Wilhelm Mengelberg. After a war bond tour Bledsoe died, on July 14, 1943, in Hollywood, from a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Waco.

Cuney, Norris Wright (1846–1898) Fathered/sired by his mother’s white chattel owner, Philip Cuney, Norris was born in 1846 on the Waller County Plantation of his father in the Sunnyside Community. At an early age he was sent to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to be educated at the George B. Vashon Wylie Street School. From there he went on to study law. Then he began work on a Mississippi River steamboat out of St. Louis. Following the Civil War, he moved on to Galveston, Texas. Here in 1867, he helped care for the city’s yellow fever epidemic patients. By 1871, he became the leader of the Galveston Union League. Then the next year, he moved up to the County Agent. That same year, he was appointed inspector of customs for the Port of Galveston. He held this position until, in 1883, he was elected the first African American alderman in Galveston. Strangely enough, this was a predominantly white district. He worked on the waterfront as a stevedore and helped to unionize black workers in Galveston. By 1873, Cuney had been appointed secretary of the Republican Party State Executive Committee. In 1875, he sought the political position of mayor of Galveston, but he lost. He also lost contests for a Texas state representative seat in 1876, and for a Texas Senate seat in 1882. But in 1882, he became chairman of the Republican State Convention in Texas.

Texas During those years from 1875 to 1877, Cuney served as leader, state grand master of Prince Hall Masons. Along with Richard Allen of Houston, he had helped organize the state body of this organization in a Brenham, Texas, meeting on August 19, 1875. Norris Wright Cuney died March 3, 1898, in San Antonio. His most detailed biography, Norris Wright Cuney: A Tribune of the Black People (1913), was written by his daughter Maud Cuney Hare.

Houston, Joshua (1822–1902) Joshua Houston, a servant of Sam Houston and an officeholder after the Civil War, was raised as a slave on Temple Lea’s plantation in Marion, Perry County, Alabama. At his death in 1834 Lea left Joshua and his family to his daughter, Margaret Lea, who took them to Texas in 1840, when she married Sam Houston. During the period that Texas was an independent republic, Joshua traveled with Houston and became a skilled blacksmith, wheelwright, and stage driver. He helped build the Houston home at Raven Hill. The Houstons taught him to read and write, though teaching slaves literacy skills was discouraged in Texas at the time. Joshua supervised the Houston household when the general was away and accompanied the family when the general went to Tennessee to see ailing former president Andrew Jackson. While living in the Governor’s Mansion in Austin with the Houstons, Joshua met most of the prominent men in the state. Beginning in the 1850s, Houston allowed Joshua to work for a stagecoach company and keep part of his earnings. In the fall of 1862, Houston freed his slaves, even though it was illegal to do so, and Joshua and most of the others asked to stay with the Houstons. After Houston’s death in July 1863, Margaret Lea Houston moved to Independence, where she soon faced hard times, since her wealth was tied up in land and Confederate scrip. Joshua reportedly offered

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Mrs. Houston his life savings, $2,000 in gold, but she told him to use the money to educate his children. After the Civil War, Joshua Houston became a successful businessman, church leader, supporter of education, and officeholder. On January 15, 1866, he purchased land in Huntsville, where he opened a blacksmith shop and built a two-story house. In 1867, he was a trustee of the Union Church, the first black church in Huntsville, which also served as a school. He was a deacon in the First Baptist Church, established in 1869. He was appointed a city alderman in 1867 and 1870 and was elected a county commissioner in 1878 and 1882. He promoted Bishop Ward College, founded in Huntsville in 1883. In 1888, he was a member of the Texas delegation to the Republican National Convention. Successively, Joshua Houston married women named Anneliza, Mary Green, and Sylvester Baker; he had eight children, many of whom had distinguished careers. He died on January 8, 1902, and was buried beside his wife Sylvester in Oakwood Cemetery, Huntsville, only a few yards from the grave of Sam Houston.

Houston, Samuel Walker (1864–1945) Samuel Walker Houston, black school founder and administrator, son of Joshua Houston and Sylvester Lee, was born into slavery at Huntsville, Texas, on February 12, 1864. His father, Joshua, was owned by Sam Houston. Perhaps inspired by his father’s career as a Walker County commissioner during the years after emancipation, Houston attended Hampton Institute in Virginia, Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, and Howard University in Washington, D.C. He worked in Washington as a government clerk at the War, State, and Navy Departments in the Ford’s Theatre Building for five years. He returned to Texas around 1900 and founded the Huntsville Times, which he edited from about 1902 until 1907. During this time he taught in the public school of Red Hill in Grimes County.

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In 1907, Houston founded the Galilee Community School, later known as Houstonian Normal and Industrial Institute, near Galilee in Walker County. His school, which enrolled students in grades 1 through 11, was probably the first county training school for black children in Texas. The Houston school received financial support from the state government, private citizens, and such philanthropic organizations as John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, the Jeanes Fund, the Rosenwald Fund, and the Slater Fund. Influenced by the curriculum at colleges he had attended, Houston emphasized a vocational and mechanical academic program with course offerings in cooking and sewing, woodwork, carpentry, and agriculture. However, because he also believed that black children should learn music, the humanities, and science, his school offered instruction in traditional academic areas. The Houstonian Normal Institute began with a single teacher; when its enrollment peaked around 1928, the school employed nine teachers and enrolled over 400 students, who came from various parts of the state and lived in dormitories on the campus. In 1930, Houston’s school was consolidated with the Huntsville Independent School District; he became the supervising principal for nine of the Walker County schools, including Galilee, Colony, Cotton Creek, Cumberland, Ollie Hill, Smither’s Farm, Phelps, Sand Hill, and Mount Prairie. Houston also accepted the position of principal at the new Samuel W. Houston High School for black students. He was a Baptist and a Republican. He served on the advisory committee for the National Republican Organization in 1928 and attended the national Republican convention. He also served as field secretary for the Texas Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation and was vice president of the Teachers State Association of Texas. Houston was a member of the Southern Sociological Congress, the National Association

of Teachers in Colored Schools, the National Association of Applied Psychology, and the National Travel Club. He also served on the state executive committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association and was a director for the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas in 1936. He married Hope Harville on April 28, 1915, and they had three children. Houston died on November 19, 1945.

Johnson, Jack (1878–1946) Jack Johnson (Arthur Johnson, also known as Lil’ Arthur), the first black to win the world heavyweight boxing championship, was born in Galveston on March 31, 1878, of poor parents. He was the second of six children of Henry (a former slave) and Tiny Johnson. He left school in the fifth grade. Young Johnson began traveling in South Texas, picking up odd jobs as a porter, barber’s helper, dockworker, and general laborer. He began his fighting career as a sparring partner and participated in so-called battles royal, where black youths fought each other and white spectators threw money to the winner. He started fighting in private clubs in the Galveston area, and became a professional prizefighter in 1897. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 destroyed his family’s home, and the next year he was jailed for boxing, which at that time was illegal in Texas. He subsequently left Galveston and did not return. Johnson began wandering the country, fighting and gaining increasing recognition. In 1903 he won the Negro heavyweight championship. Jim Jeffries, the reigning white heavyweight champion, refused to cross the color line and fight him. Johnson had to wait until 1908, when he defeated Tommy Burns in Australia, to technically win the world heavyweight boxing championship; even then he was not officially recognized as the champion. The actual heavyweight championship title was bestowed on him on July 4, 1910, in Reno,

Texas

Jack Johnson was the first African American to hold the heavyweight boxing title. He defeated Jim Jeffries in July 1910, in what was promoted as a fight between Johnson and “The Great White Hope.” Johnson was controversial because of his lavish lifestyle and his marriages to two white women. He was convicted of violating the Mann Act after traveling across state lines with his second wife Lucille Cameron, spending a year in prison. (Library of Congress)

Nevada, when he defeated Jim Jeffries, who had stepped out of retirement to become the first in a series of recruited “white hopes.” Race riots erupted after the match. After his victory, Johnson continued to fight and also appeared in several vaudeville skits. In 1913, he fled a contrived conviction for a violation of the Mann Act, which forbade the transportation of white women interstate for the purpose of prostitution. Facing a year in prison and a $1,000 fine if he remained in the United States, Johnson toured Europe, Mexico, and Canada and hoped for a pardon. He lost his championship to white Jess Willard in Cuba in 1915.

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On July 20, 1920, he returned to the United States and was arrested. He was jailed in Leavenworth Prison, where he was appointed the athletic director of the penitentiary. After his release, he returned to boxing, but his professional career was over. By 1928, he was only taking part in exhibition fights; he managed, refereed, and occasionally trained boxers. He also gave speeches, selling war bonds during World War II. Johnson was a nonconformist; as his career took off, he turned to white women, fast cars, and expensive jewels, defying an antagonistic press and public. Known “for his arrogance, his golden smile, and his white wives,” Johnson married Etta Terry Duryea in 1911. She committed suicide in 1912, and he married Lucille Cameron in 1913. They were divorced in 1924, and he married Irene Marie Pineau in 1925. He did not have any children. Johnson died in an automobile crash on June 10, 1946, near Raleigh, North Carolina.

Jordan, Barbara (1936–1996) On February 21, 1936, Barbara Charline Jordan was born in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas. For high school, she attended Phyllis Wheatley. After graduating from high school, she attended Texas Southern University, where she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She also became a prominent member of the debate team under the direction of Dr. Thomas Freeman. She graduated from Texas Southern, receiving the distinction of magna cum laude. From there she attended law school at Boston University and graduated in 1959. After school, she taught for a year at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Again, in her last years, she turned to education and taught at the University of Texas in Austin. In both 1962 and 1964, she ran for the Texas State House of Representatives, and lost each time. But in 1966, she ran successfully for the Texas State Senate. She

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Barbara Jordan, a towering personality on the U.S. political scene, in 1972 became the first African American woman ever elected to Congress from the Deep South. (Library of Congress)

became the first black person in that august body since 1883. She also became the first black woman in that branch. On June 10, 1972, she assumed the honorary position of governor of Texas for a day. That same year, she became a U.S. congressperson from Texas. As a congressperson, she fought for empowerment of women, blacks, and other minorities. Ms. Jordan brought more acclaim to Texas and the Texas black community when the Watergate hearings were held in 1974. A few months later, she added to her acclaim when she addressed the national convention of the Democratic Party. Rumors said that she was considered as a Democratic Party vice presidential nominee. Rumors also circulated that when U.S. President Bill Clinton held that office, he considered nominating Ms. Jordan to the U.S. Supreme Court. She held her seat until 1979, when she decided

not to seek reelection and was succeeded by George Mickey Leland. Her funeral was held in Houston at the Good Hope Baptist Church in 1996.

Smith, Antonio Maceo (1903–1977) A. Maceo Smith, civil rights leader, was born in Texarkana, Texas, on April 16, 1903, to Howell and Winnie Smith. After attending segregated schools in Texarkana, he earned an A.B. at Fisk University in 1924 and an M.B.A. degree at New York University in 1928, and pursued additional graduate studies in economics and business law at Columbia University. Before moving to Dallas, he owned a New York advertising agency and a Texarkana real estate company. After he arrived in Dallas in late 1932, he taught business administration in the Dallas Independent School District and served as publisher of the weekly

Texas Dallas Express. He became the first executive secretary of the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce in 1933, and in 1936 was appointed deputy director of the Hall of Negro Life at the Texas Centennial Exposition. In 1937, he became an administrative aide with the Federal Housing Administration. In 1939, the United States Housing Authority appointed Smith regional relations advisor in Region VI. Sometimes referred to as “Mr. Civil Rights” or “Mr. Organization” of Texas, Smith was a lifelong activist in the NAACP in Texas, participating in the legal campaign against the white primary in the state that culminated in Smith v. Allwright (1944). (The plaintiff in this case was Lonnie E. Smith, not A. Maceo Smith.) Smith also participated in the legal campaign against educational segregation in Texas, culminating in Sweatt v. Painter (1950). As the cochairman of the Biracial, later Triracial, Committee for the City of Dallas, Smith played a prominent role in the peaceful desegregation of public facilities and schools in the city. He served on the national board of directors of the NAACP from 1953 until 1957, when his supervisors at the FHA forced him to resign. Additionally, Smith participated in the founding and leadership of the Texas State Negro Chamber of Commerce, the Texas Council of Negro Organizations, the Dallas Urban League, and the Texas State Progressive Voters League. A career federal employee, Smith retired as assistant regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1972. In addition to his many contributions as a civil rights activist, Smith also served as general president of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity from 1952 until 1954 and was a member of the Rotary Club of Dallas and the Knights of Pythias, a member and trustee of New Hope Baptist Church in Dallas, and a member of the board of trustees of Bishop College. He was honored as Fisk University Alumnus of the Year in 1949. Smith married

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Fannie C. Fletcher in 1936. He died on December 19, 1977.

Smith, Lonnie (1901–1971) Although not a native Houstonian, he gained his “15 minutes of fame” while living in Houston. He was born in Yoakum, Texas in 1901. He earned his dental doctorate from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Then he set up his first dental practice in Galveston, Texas. He began his practice in downtown Houston in 1929. Beginning in 1903, Texas began passing laws creating the Democratic Party in Texas as a whites-only political entity. Following the “fall of Reconstruction,” the Democratic Party gained dominance in all Texas political elections. The only way to win a political office became to capture a Democratic nomination. However, through challenges by African Americans, the Democratic Party became an exclusive private white club. Much of this status came as a result of African American challenges in cases where Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon of El Paso was plaintiff. In an election in Houston in 1940, Dr. Lonnie Smith attempted to vote. S. E. Allwright, the precinct judge, refused to issue him a ballot. This set forth the case. The case was appealed, and on April 3, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dr. Smith could not be denied a ballot simply on the basis of his race. This case opened up black participation in elections throughout the United States. Dr. Smith died in 1971. He never became the biological father of a child. However, a whole race of people had become his progeny. A branch library of the Houston Public Library is named in his honor.

Cultural Contributions Differing from their eastern neighbors in Louisiana who became known for jazz and

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Creole-soul-food cooking, Afro-Texas has not monopolized any “cultural avenue.” However, black Texas has made a lasting impression in the cultural stream of music. It started with downhome blues. When the East Texas field workers finished a long, monotonous week of work, they just had to relax and unwind. Music became an outlet to “let it all hang out.” This type of blues went with those who were imprisoned. So now gut-bucket blues led to prison blues. Though there were the few, like Blind Lemon Jefferson or Hudie Ledbetter, who gained recognition, thousands never became household names. Still other noted Afro Texan musicians gained note, but not in blues. The Texarkana native Scott Joplin became known for his ragtime music. There were others like Julius Bledsoe and Etta Moten who also became noted. The black press in Texas has been very important. The Texas black press dates back to the Reconstruction era. The Freeman’s Press of Austin was, according to extant records, the initial black newspaper. Individual newspapers, generally, had a very short existence of less than 10 years. The Dallas Express, The Texas Freeman, and the Houston Informer are exceptions. Although they generally suffered from financial difficulties, they strongly promoted black selfesteem and fought for betterment of the race. Today, Texas has about 14 black weekly newspapers. And today to help keep the people informed, there are spoken and visual media outlets to assist the printed journals. Although on the very periphery of cultural contributions for African American lifestyles, the rodeo and its traditions are very important for black Texans. Some rodeo participants have earned real distinction. Bill Pickett might have been a first, but guys like Charlie Sampson have kept the tradition alive, and have proven that the rodeo is not just for fun, but it is also an avenue to earning money.

Notes 1. Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: History of African Americans in Texas, 1528–1995 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 37. 2. “Juneteenth.” Texas State Library. www.1 st.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/juneteenth.html. 3. Barr, Black Texans, 39–42. See also Howard Jones, The Red Diary: A Chronological History of Black Americans in Houston (Austin, TX: Nortex Press, 1991), 24–25.

Bibliography Barr, Alwyn. Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528–1995. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Beeth, Howard, and Cary D. Wintz, eds. Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992. Campbell, Randolph B. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Christian, Garna L. Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899–1917. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Crouch, Barry A. The Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Texans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Cuney Hare, Maud. Norris Wright Cuney: A Tribute of the Black People. Reprint ed. New York: G. K. Hall and Company, 1995). Originally published 1913. Davidson, Chandler. Biracial Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Metropolitan South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Dulaney, W. Marvin. “African Americans.” In The Handbook of Texas Online. www .tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ AA/pkaan.html.

Texas Dulaney, W. Marvin, and Kathleen Underwood, eds. Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993. Gillette, Michael L. “Blacks Challenge the White University.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (October 1982). Gillette, Michael L. “The Rise of the NAACP in Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 81 (April 1978). Grose, Charles W. “Black Newspapers in Texas, 1868–1970.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1972. Heintze, Michael R. Private Black Colleges in Texas, 1865–1954. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985. Hine, Darlene Clark. Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas. Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979. Jones, Howard. The Red Diary: A Chronological History of Black Americans in Houston. Austin, TX: Nortex Press, 1991.

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“Juneteenth.” Texas State Library. www.1 st.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/juneteenth.html. Massey, Sara R., and Alwyn Barr, eds. Black Cowboys of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. Pitre, Merline. Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas 1868– 1900. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1985. Rice, Lawrence D. The Negro in Texas, 1874– 1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Smallwood, James. Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction. London: Kennikat, 1981. Winegarten, Ruthe. Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Woolfolk, George Ruble. Prairie View: A Study in Public Conscience, 1878–1946. New York: Pageant Press, 1962.

UTAH Margaret Blair Young

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Chronology c. 1824

African American trappers/hunters find good hunting in what will eventually become Utah. James P. Beckwourth, a trapper for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, is the best known of these trappers.

c. 1843

Jacob Dodson participates in John C. Frémont’s exploration of the Rocky Mountain West.

1847

(July 24) Mormon pioneers arrive in Utah; the vanguard company includes three “colored servants”: Hark Lay, Green Flake, and Oscar Crosby. Hark and Oscar are half brothers. Others of African descent, the majority being slaves of Mormon converts, arrive within the next few years.

1847

(September) Jane Manning James, the most famous of the black Mormon pioneers, arrives with her husband (Isaac) and two children, one of whom has been born en route to Utah. She is expecting a third, Mary Ann, who will be the first African American baby born in Utah.

1848

Robert and Rebecca Smith arrive in Utah with 14 slaves. When the Smiths move to California in 1851, spurred by “gold fever,” their slaves, assisted by a few vaqueros and a local marshal, sue for freedom and are emancipated by Judge Benjamin Hayes. One, Bridget (Biddy, a.k.a. Biddy Smith Mason) will eventually be referred to as the “Mother of Civil Rights” in California and will help found the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

1849

African Americans Francis and Mary Grice settle in Utah, hailing from Missouri. Their great-grandson, Wallace Thurman, will become a famous author and member of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life. The Grices become restaurant owners. At their restaurant in 1883, an altercation between Francis Grice and a vagabond former soldier, Sam Joe Harvey (African American), breaks out. Ultimately, Harvey shoots and kills a Mormon bishop and is then lynched and dragged through the streets of Salt Lake City.

1850

After the Mexican War, the California Compromise, part of the Compromise of 1850, admits California to the Union as a free state and leaves Utah and New Mexico to choose to be either slaveholding or free according to popular sovereignty.

1851

Black Mormon convert and priesthood holder Quock (or Quacko) Walker Lewis, named for his famous uncle Quock Lewis, whose 1781 case (Quock v. Jennison) resulted in the emancipation of slaves in Massachusetts, arrives in Utah. For unknown reasons, he chooses not to settle in the state, and returns to Massachusetts after six months.

1852

Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and also the territorial governor, gives a speech titled “An Act in Relation to Service.” In it, he accepts slavery in Utah and also declares that no person of African descent can be

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ordained into the Mormon priesthood. This priesthood restriction affects not only all Mormon men of African lineage but also black women, who are denied entrance to Mormon temples for the highest ordinances of the faith. 1853

Elijah Abel, a prominent biracial Mormon who was ordained into the LDS priesthood by Church founder Joseph Smith, arrives in Utah with his wife, Mary Ann, and son Moroni. He asks to participate in the same temple ordinances available to white Mormons, but is denied permission.

1865

The Civil War and slavery end, the latter with ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6. Utah’s blacks begin celebrating “Emancipation Day” annually.

1869

The Transcontinental Railroad is completed, and many blacks move to Utah—usually the Ogden area, employed by the railroad.

1870

Samuel and Amanda Leggroan Chambers, with Ned and Susan Leggroan, arrive from Mississippi. Chambers had converted to Mormonism in 1844 but was enslaved until the end of the Civil War. Sam and Amanda Chambers will become wealthy berry cultivators; Ned and Susan Leggroan will settle in Milo, Idaho, as homesteaders.

1883

African American Sam Joe Harvey, a former soldier, is lynched and dragged through the streets of Salt Lake City after he shoots and kills Salt Lake City’s marshal, Andrew Burt, who is also a Mormon bishop.

1886

The 9th Cavalry, an assembly of buffalo soldiers, is stationed at Fort Duchesne. Among their number is the famous Charles Young, friend of W. E. B. Du Bois.

1889

African American Paul Cephas Howell, from Louisiana, investigates Utah and settles there, summoning his family and his brother (Levi) the following year. Paul Howell is initially a bricklayer, but soon becomes the first black policeman in Utah. Levi Howell becomes Utah’s first black carpenter in Union 184.

1890

The Trinity African Methodist Church is established in Salt Lake City

c. 1891

Famous black cowboy Nat Love, a.k.a. Deadwood Dick, lives in the Salt Lake area, having retired from his famous cowboy shows and from his subsequent job as a railroad porter.

1892

The Calvary Baptist Church is established in Salt Lake City.

1893

Isaac Lewis Manning, brother of Jane Manning James, arrives in Utah and reunites with his sister. The two are the most prominent black Mormons, having special seats in the LDS Tabernacle.

1895

The Broad Ax, a newspaper by and for blacks in Utah, is published by Julius Taylor. William Wesley Taylor (no relation) soon runs another paper directed to the black population in Utah, called the Plain Dealer (started in 1897), editing it until his death

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1895 (cont.)

in 1907. Various other newspapers geared to an African American audience are published from 1890 to 1910.

1896

(January 4) After the Mormons abandon the practice of polygamy, Utah is recognized as the 45th state of the United States.

1896

The 24th Infantry of black soldiers is stationed at Fort Douglas, Utah. Most leave to fight in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

1900

The Western Negro Press Association annual meeting is held in Utah.

1913

Booker T. Washington visits Salt Lake City and gives a lecture at the Calvary Baptist Church.

1919

The first Utah chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is established in Salt Lake City.

1921

Mignon Richmond becomes the first African American to graduate from college in Utah, getting her degree from Utah State University. A park and a monument are eventually dedicated to her memory.

1924

The Coon Chicken Inn, featuring stereotyped images of blacks throughout, is established in Salt Lake City, and becomes successful enough to spread to other states.

1925

The Ku Klux Klan parades in Salt Lake City and burns crosses on Ensign Peak— despite pleas from LDS Church President Heber J. Grant for Mormons to steer clear of involvement with the Klan.

1925

A black coal miner, Robert Marshall, is lynched in Price.

1937

Salt Lake hotels refuse to accommodate famous black contralto Marion Anderson. The following year, she is permitted to stay at the Hotel Utah on condition that she use only the service elevator. Singers Henry Belafonte and Ella Fitzgerald confront similar discrimination when performing in Utah.

1943

A chapter of the NAACP is established in Ogden, and the Salt Lake City branch consequently becomes more active.

1948–1949

Robert Freed, a businessman and civil rights activist, opens Utah’s entertainment park, Lagoon, to blacks, who had previously been denied entrance.

1950

Ruby Price becomes the first black teacher in Utah.

1954

(November 20) A “Symposium on the Negro” is held at Weber State College in Ogden. Inequities in housing and employment are openly discussed.

1955

Black teenager Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, and Rosa Parks is arrested in Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger—both events becoming triggers for full activation of the Civil Rights Movement.

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1955

Albert Fritz becomes president of the Salt Lake City branch of the NAACP, and an important voice for Utah’s citizens of color.

1963

(February 20) Utah ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

James Gillespie becomes president of the Ogden chapter of the NAACP, a position he serves in for the next 33 years.

1963

African American Utah resident David H. Oliver publishes a 54-page book called A Negro on Mormonism, which is a direct response to Mormon author John J. Stewart’s defense of the priesthood restriction in Mormonism and the Negro (1960)—also 54 pages. Oliver discusses the authoritarian nature of the Mormon Church and makes a plea for greater tolerance and more sophisticated education.

1965

Utah chapters of the NAACP adopt a resolution urging governments to deny visas to Mormon missionaries because of the LDS Church’s racialist policies.

1965

The Utah legislature passes its first civil rights bill, the Public Accommodations Act.

1967

Alberta Henry, civil rights activist and eventual president of the Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP, establishes the Alberta Henry Educational Foundation, which helps underprivileged students pay for college.

1969

(October 16) Willie Black, representing football players from the University of Wyoming, presents a letter to the UW administration, announcing a forthcoming protest of Brigham Young University (BYU) because of the LDS Church’s priesthood restriction. The 14 players, who want to wear black armbands as part of the protest, are dismissed from the team, igniting a nationwide reaction against BYU. Though there had been boycotts of BYU in the previous years, this particular event is the most significant.

1969

Grover Thompson is elected the first black student body president at the University of Utah.

1969

The LDS Church issues an official statement supporting civil rights. An effort within the LDS leadership to reverse the priesthood restriction fails, however, because of a lack of unanimity within the highest quorum of the Church.

1971

The Genesis Branch of the LDS Church, a support group for black Latter-day Saints, is established. Ruffin Bridgeforth serves as president, with Darius Gray and Eugene Orr as counselors.

1972

Civil rights activist France Davis moves to Salt Lake City, encountering much racial discrimination—including death threats. He teaches communications courses at the University of Utah and becomes pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church.

1972

Governor Calvin Rampton assigns Donald Cope to serve as the state’s first black ombudsman.

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1974

The Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP files a lawsuit on behalf of two black Boy Scouts who were denied leadership posts in a troop sponsored by the Mormon Church. The position of senior patrol leader was associated with the LDS priesthood, and since blacks were restricted from that priesthood, they could not hold such positions. The suit is dismissed when the LDS Church agrees to open all positions in churchsponsored troops to any troop member, regardless of ethnicity.

1976

Reverend Robert Harris is elected Utah’s first black legislator.

1978

The LDS Church reverses its priesthood restriction and extends equal privileges to black Mormons.

1980

Terry Williams, a black Democrat from Salt Lake City, is elected to the Utah House of Representatives, later becoming the first African American to serve in the state Senate.

1981

Ogden holds its first official “Juneteenth” celebration commemorating the end of slavery on June 19, 1861.

1984

Tyrone Medly becomes Utah’s first black judge.

1986

The third Monday of January is declared Human Rights Day. Through efforts spearheaded by Pastor France Davis and others, it is later named Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

1992

Jeanetta Williams becomes the head of the Salt Lake City chapter of the NAACP.

1993

The road 600 South in Salt Lake City is renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

1996

Grace Sawyer Jones becomes the state’s first black college president, presiding over the College of Eastern Utah.

1998

The documentary Utah’s African American Voices, produced by Kathleen Weiler with Dr. Ronald Coleman and Pastor France Davis, is released on KUED (PBS) television.

1998

A gravestone dedicated to the memory of lynching victim Robert Marshall is dedicated in Price.

1999

(June) The Genesis LDS branch dedicates a monument to pioneer Jane Manning James in the Salt Lake City cemetery.

2001

George Garwood is elected Utah’s first black mayor in South Ogden.

2001

Freedman Bank records (digitized) are released by the LDS Church as a genealogical resource for African Americans.

2002

Robert J. Foster becomes the first black student body president of Brigham Young University. Foster, Wayne Lee, Margaret Young, Darius Gray, and Richard Dutcher eventually complete production of the documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.

2002

Utah hosts the International Winter Olympics.

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2002

The Genesis Branch and the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation dedicate a monument to Elijah Abel in the Salt Lake City cemetery. Its inscriptions acknowledge that Abel had been ordained to the priesthood in the early days of the Mormon Church.

2006

(August) The Utah chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society is organized, with Phyllis Caruth serving as president and Pastor France Davis as chaplain.

2006

(October) The national conference of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) holds its annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir recognizes the event by focusing its weekly music program on traditional spirituals. The theme of the AAHGS conference is “The Legacy of Our Roots: A Heritage for the Future.”

2008

Phyllis Caruth, the African American president of Utah’s AAHGS chapter, produces The Wisdom of Our Years, a documentary featuring elderly African Americans in Utah telling their life stories. The production is sponsored by the Salt Lake chapter of AAHGS and has its debut in the Calvary Baptist Church.

Historical Overview African Americans in Utah history can be divided into four groups: (1) trappers and explorers; (2) participants in the Mormon migration; (3) military families; and (4) railroad workers.

of western development in the early nineteenth century. Along with Beckwourth, Jacob Dodson is important in Utah history. Dodson was an explorer with the John C. Frémont expeditions throughout the west in the early 1840s, just before the Mormon pioneers arrived.

Trappers and Explorers Trappers and explorers like James P. Beckwourth and Jacob Dodson frequented the Rocky Mountain area, including what is now Utah. Beckwourth was the son of Englishman Sir Jennings Beckwourth and one of his slaves. Though his father acknowledged him, Beckwourth was nonetheless enslaved. After moving to Missouri and apprenticing with a blacksmith in St. Louis, he left home, eventually working for the American Fur Trading Company. For eight years, he lived with the Crow tribe of Native Americans. In his autobiography, Beckwourth claimed that he was named the head chief of the Crow Nation—though he was known to be a teller of tall tales, so his claim cannot be fully trusted. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that he observed some of the most significant events

Participants in the Mormon Migration The Brigham Young Monument pays tribute to all members of the vanguard pioneer company entering Utah after the Mormons fled their settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846–1847. Among these vanguard pioneers, three “colored servants” are listed: Hark Lay, Oscar Crosby, and Green Flake. Crosby and Lay were raised on what a descendant of Green Flake called the “Crosby Breeding Farm.”1 They had the same mother, Vilate Crosby, but belonged to different white masters— Hark Lay to Sytha Crosby and William Lay, and Oscar Crosby to the widowed Elizabeth Crosby. Green Flake was a slave of James Madison and Agnes Love Flake, a family that had

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had associations with the Crosbys. In fact, many of the slaves who participated in the Mormon migration were from this “Crosby Breeding Farm,” being enslaved by female members of the Crosby family who took their husbands’ names—Thomas and Bankhead among others. Green Flake was a baptized Mormon, having accepted baptism from pioneer John Brown, also a slaveholder. He endured in the Mormon faith, and after his 1903 death was buried in the Union Cemetery, Salt Lake City, having carved his own epitaph: “In My Father’s House are Many Mansions.” He was buried next to his wife, Martha Crosby Flake, a half sister of Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby. After the Mormon migration to Utah, both Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay went to California, where they were soon emancipated. Green Flake, however, remained in Utah, thinking he had become free the moment James Madison Flake died in California in 1849. Such was apparently not the case, however. James Flake’s widow, who followed her late husband to the Mormon settlement in San Bernardino, California, requested through a Mormon apostle (Amasa Lyman) that Green be sold and the proceeds sent to her. Lyman had even secured a buyer. The request was sent by mail to church president Brigham Young, who answered evasively that he did not know the whereabouts of Green Flake, though, he said, Flake had worked for him for some time. Agnes Love Flake died in 1855, and Green never set foot in California. There were other slaves among the southern companies of pioneers as well, with names that became frequently repeated in Utah’s black history: Perkins, Redd, Robinson, and Williams. The best-known black Mormon pioneer was freeborn Jane Elizabeth Manning James, who, with her siblings and mother, had journeyed in 1843 from Wilton, Connecticut to Buffalo, New York—and then on foot from Buffalo to Nauvoo, Illinois.

In Nauvoo, Jane married another black Mormon, Isaac James. Though all of her siblings remained in the Illinois area and joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints, Jane participated in the Mormon migration to Utah. On September 19, 1847, she, her husband, and sons Sylvester and Silas arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. There, they found poverty. Jane reported in her life story that she sometimes had no food to give her children. Nonetheless, when a white pioneer, Eliza Partridge Lyman, found herself destitute, Jane James gave her two pounds of flour, half of what she herself possessed. This act is memorialized in a monument to Jane in the Salt Lake City cemetery. Jane’s description of life in Utah in the 1840s is evocative of the time: My husband, Isaac James, worked for Brother Brigham [Young], and we got along splendid accumulating horses, cows, oxen, sheep and chickens in abundance. I spun all the cloth for my family clothing for a year or two, and we were in a prosperous condition—until the grasshoppers and crickets came along carrying destruction wherever they went, laying our crops to the ground, stripping the trees of all their leaves and fruit, bringing poverty and desolation throughout this beautiful valley. It was not then as it is now. There were no trains running bringing fruits and vegetables from California or any other place. All our importing and exporting was done by the slow process of ox teams.2 The following year (1848), the Mississippi Saints joined their fellow Mormons in Utah, bringing their slaves with them. Among their number was Liz Flake, also a slave of James Madison and Agnes Love Flake, who, along with Green Flake, had been given as a wedding gift to them. Also included were the 14 slaves of Robert and Rebecca Crosby Smith, including Bridget (Biddy)

Utah Smith [Mason], who would eventually be known as the Mother of Civil Rights in California and would become a founding member of the First AME Church of Los Angeles. A monument in Los Angeles celebrates her journey west and her charitable activities in California, where she became one of the wealthiest residents of the state and a renowned philanthropist. The 1850s saw several black Mormon converts arrive in Utah: Elijah Abel and his wife Mary Ann, and Quock (Quacko) Walker Lewis, who, though married, came unaccompanied from Boston, Massachusetts. Abel had labored on two Mormon temples, one in Kirtland, Ohio, and the other in Nauvoo, Illinois. He had been the first carpenter/ undertaker in Nauvoo, and moved to Cincinnati in 1843. The LDS Church founder, Joseph Smith, had personally ordained Elijah Abel to the priesthood—something that would become a point of controversy as the church instituted a priesthood restriction forbidding the ordination of any blacks into the priesthood and also restricting them from participation in temple rituals. By the time this policy was formalized, Abel had already participated in some of these rites in the Kirtland Temple and had served as a Mormon missionary twice. Quock (or Quacko) Walker Lewis, named for his famous uncle, Quock Lewis, whose court case (Quock V. Jennison) had brought about the emancipation of all slaves in Massachusetts, was also a member of the first black abolitionist organization, the Massachusetts General Colored Association, along with the radical abolitionist David Walker. Q. Walker Lewis had joined the Mormon Church in 1843 and had been ordained into the priesthood by the founder’s brother, William Smith. His visit to Utah in 1851 was apparently a disappointment, as he returned east six months later. He died in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1856. The next group of black Mormon pioneers came late to Utah (1870), but came free, since

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the Civil War was over. This group included Sam and Amanda Leggroan Chambers and Amanda’s brother, Edward Leggroan, and his wife, Susan. Sam and Amanda became wealthy as berry cultivators, and were rich enough to travel back to Mississippi to visit family on occasion. Because there were so few blacks in Utah, and because of the strict antimiscegenation laws, the names of the approximately 60 blacks who came west in the Mormon migration are frequently repeated in Utah’s African American history. For example, Jane James, after divorcing Isaac James in 1870, was briefly married to Franklin Perkins, the father of Sylvester Perkins, who became the husband of Green Flake’s granddaughter, Martha. The daughter of Martha and Sylvester Perkins married LeRoi Bankhead. Two Leggroan children married grandchildren of Green Flake, and Jane James’s grandchild, Nettie, also married a Leggroan (Louis). As the pioneer era ended, a few non-Mormon blacks ventured to Utah in search of a better life. Prominent among them was Paul Howell, shortly followed by his brother, Levi, in the 1890s. Paul Howell became the first African American policeman in Salt Lake City. He eventually attended the Calvary Baptist Church. His daughter describes a multidenominational life among many of the African American residents of Utah before any black congregations were established: At [first] there were no churches owned by the black people; they would rent a building and hold their services there. The first church was the A.M.E., but the bishop could not send us a minister because there were not enough black people to support one. Sometimes we would have a white minister who lived in Salt Lake or laymen or an evangelist passing through. Sometimes they would stay one or two months; as the salary they received was only the collection that we took up. Evangelists usually came for revivals. . . . Eventually, the bishop would

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send us a minister, but we children went to Sunday school practically all day. At 10:00 we would go to the Mormon Sunday school and later on to the white Baptist Church, and then to the Methodist in the afternoon.3 Utah’s African American history can be explored through the history of religion in Utah, beginning with the Mormons and then expanding into African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist congregations, and eventually to various Church of God in Christ-Pentecostal organizations. Regardless of which church blacks attended, religious activity was simply part of Utah life.

Military Families Two companies of “colored infantry” arrived in Fort Duchesne on August 21, 1886, as Indian fighters, armed against three tribes of Ute Indians. They were often referred to as “buffalo soldiers.” Among the soldiers there (9th Cavalry) was the famous Charles Young, who would later ride his horse halfway across the nation to prove his fitness for office when he was retired from the military against his will. A decade after the “colored infantry” arrived at Fort Duchesne, the 24th Infantry—also comprised of black soldiers—arrived in Salt Lake City, stationed at Fort Douglas. Their arrival was greeted with trepidation from Utah’s residents, riled up over stereotypical images of blacks common in the nation during that time and convinced that a black soldier would be unruly and sexually threatening. Such fears were quickly allayed. The soldiers proved themselves beyond reproach, and a year after their arrival, a conciliatory letter was published in Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune, apologizing for the initial prejudice that greeted the 24th Infantry and forthrightly admitting that the soldiers had earned the unmitigated respect of Salt Lake’s citizens.

Indeed, the soldiers from Fort Duchesne and Fort Douglas had added significantly to life in Utah. The Jubilee Celebration of the Mormon pioneers’ arrival (July 24, 1897) included an exhibition of horsemanship and a band concert put on by the united black troops. The unusual concentration of African American soldiers in Utah for this particular celebration is notable. In 1898, most of the black soldiers—from Fort Duchesne and from Fort Douglas—were dispatched to Cuba to fight in the SpanishAmerican War, and many went from there to fight in the Philippines. There was another influx of black soldiers to Utah during World War II, when they were stationed at Hill Air Force Base (Ogden) and Dugway Proving Grounds (Tooele). Fort Duchesne was abandoned in 1912, and Fort Douglas in 1991 (though it is preserved as a museum). Hill Air Force Base and Dugway Proving Gounds remain in service.

Railroad Workers With the driving of the Golden Spike on May 10, 1869, at Utah’s Promontory Summit, Ogden became a railroad center for the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and other railroads. With job opportunities made available by the railroad, many African Americans moved to Utah, and the railroad became one of the most important employers of the black population. Blacks generally served as porters, cooks, and waiters for white passengers. Jobs for blacks also opened up in support of the railroad workers. Hotels, restaurants, and clubs catering to African Americans grew as the railroad business grew. Though many seeking employment came from out of state, a good number of locals also found jobs with the railroad companies, including Abner Howell, son of Paul and Mary Sharp Howell. Abner Howell was employed as a porter for much of his adult life.

Utah

Utah’s Black Religious/Political History Because Utah was the refuge state for the Latter-day Saints, it is impossible to separate its political history from its religious history— particularly when discussing racial issues. Because Utah chose, under Governor Brigham Young’s direction, to be a slaveholding territory, and because the Mormon Church, again under Young’s direction, also embraced racialist policies (no ordination for blacks into the priesthood nor participation in temple rituals), the denial of civil rights to all of African descent was built into the state’s organization. In addition, early Mormon settlers practiced polygamy. Political writers of the time referred to Mormons as embracing the “twin relics of barbarism”: slavery and polygamy. Brigham Young, like most Americans of his time, believed that black bondage was a result of the Biblical curse on Cain and Canaan. Young and most other religious leaders interpreted the “mark” of Cain as black skin, and further suggested that Cain’s seed was manifest in Ham’s grandson, Canaan, who was cursed to be a “servant of servants” (Genesis 9:25)—which became a common justification for slavery. Mormon doctrine included some unique tenets, including the doctrine of a pre-mortal life and of a War in Heaven that occurred in this preexistence. Two LDS Church apostles, Orson Pratt and Orson Hyde, suggested that the enslavement of blacks and their subsequent denial of common privileges was, in fact, a result of their choices in this preexistence—that they had been less valiant in the War in Heaven than had those born into Caucasian lineages. These two beliefs— a cursed lineage and some pre-mortal neutrality by blacks themselves—sustained the LDS priesthood restriction for over a century. Utah history included some overt cases of threats to civil rights or direct abuses—notably the lynching of Sam Joe Harvey in 1883; the

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parading of the Ku Klux Klan in 1925, followed by burning crosses on Ensign Peak; and the lynching of Robert Marshall, also in 1925—but violations were usually more subtle. In 1954, a symposium was held in Ogden on the status of the Negro in Utah. Participants revealed that they were not free to choose their lodging or eating establishments, that they were relegated to balcony seating in theaters, and that construction companies routinely dropped contracts to finish houses for blacks if the house was not in an area covertly designated as a black ghetto. A branch of the NAACP had been set up in Salt Lake City in 1919, but was only marginally active until the 1940s. When Ogden organized its branch of the NAACP, it flourished, and soon the Salt Lake chapter was also reinvigorated. Inevitably, the NAACP challenged the policies of the LDS Church, which influenced so much of social and political life in Utah. Representatives of the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP, headed by Albert B. Fritz, met with Mormon leaders in October 1963, requesting an official statement on civil rights. Fritz added that the NAACP would seek a special session of the state legislature to pass a civil rights bill. In response, Mormon apostle Hugh B. Brown, the most sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement of the LDS hierarchy, included a statement in a conference talk expressing the support of full civil rights for all. However, with the restrictive policies and their supportive folklore intact, such words did little to remedy discrimination in Utah. Again in 1965, the NAACP was actively seeking a stronger statement from the Mormon Church. Utah chapters of the NAACP supported a national resolution urging countries around the world to deny LDS missionaries visas due to the racialist policies of the Church. Protest marches were held in Salt Lake City and in Ogden. By 1969, under the threat of a much larger NAACP protest during the church’s General

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Conference, Mormon leaders were ready to issue an official statement in support of civil rights. The statement went further than Apostle Brown’s prior statement, but still fell short of what blacks in the state wanted, and there was no concomitant action or policy change from the Mormons. Some church leaders (Hugh B. Brown in particular) sought to reverse the priesthood restriction at this time, but because of a lack of unanimity, the action failed. Predictably, protests against the church (focused on the church school, Brigham Young University) escalated. In the most famous of many protests in the Western Athletic Conference, 14 football players from Wyoming University wanted to register their complaint against Mormonism’s “Negro doctrine” by wearing black armbands during their scheduled game with Brigham Young University (BYU) in October, 1969. Their coach, Lloyd Eaton, summarily fired all 14 players. In reaction, many college teams began wearing black armbands or otherwise protesting BYU during scheduled games. By this time, there were very few descendants of the black Mormon pioneers who still considered themselves Mormon. They had either moved out of the state or had joined the Trinity AME Church, the Calvary Baptist, or another of the many churches that were established. The LDS position, still unchanged, affected the lives of all blacks in Utah. Utah was not unique in its discrimination, but the Mormon perception of blacks as cursed or inherently “less valiant” than their white counterparts impacted social interaction. At last, in 1978, the Mormon Church, under direction of President Spencer W. Kimball, reversed its priesthood restriction and declared that its priesthood was henceforth available to “all worthy male” Mormons. This reversal also opened the way for blacks to serve again as missionaries, as several had done in the 1830s and 1840s, and for them to participate fully in temple

rituals. The policy change was hailed by civic and religious leaders throughout the world. Utah was nonetheless largely perceived as less than welcoming to blacks, though black churches continued to be organized and civil rights activists worked tirelessly. Prominent among them was France Davis, who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Davis proved himself a relentless civil rights worker. He became the pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City, as well as an adjunct professor of communications at the University of Utah. Among Pastor Davis’s colleagues at the university were renowned historian and professor of history and ethnic studies Ronald G. Coleman; and English professor Wilfred Samuels, specializing in African American literature. Coleman and Davis helped produce the acclaimed documentary Utah’s African American Voices, written by Kathleen Weiler. Along with Davis and Coleman, Samuels became a significant voice at ethnic studies events. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the University of Utah, in cooperation with the NAACP and Utah’s Humanities Council, was inviting world famous civil rights workers and scholars to present papers and creative work during the Martin Luther King Jr. day commemorations and throughout Black History Month (February). Other universities in Utah soon followed—including Brigham Young University, which (with Utah Valley University) began to cosponsor a service day and a candlelit “Walk of Life” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The contributions or tragic ends of blacks in Utah have been memorialized by several monuments. The Mignon Richmond monument and park pay tribute to the first black college graduate. The Elijah Abel monument honors the place of the first black Mormon priesthood holder. The Jane James monument depicts James’s gift of flour to a starving white pioneer. A gravestone dedicated to the memory of lynching victim Robert Marshall has also been erected in Price, Utah.

Utah

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African American Genealogy in Utah

Darius Gray poses behind the tombstone of Elijah Abel in Salt Lake City, 2003. Abel was the first black man to hold the priesthood, being ordained in 1836 by church president and founder Joseph Smith. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Blacks are still a small minority in Utah, and some manifestations of racism continue to surface, such as a 2005 ad for the growing community of Eagle Mountain, which claimed as a selling point that the “Black race population percentage [was] significantly below [the] state average”4 or the metaphor of Utah Senator Chris Buttars in 2008 comparing a state senate bill to a black baby—a “dark, ugly thing.”5 Nonetheless, the state continues to make strides towards equal treatment of all its residents. Arguably the most significant development in Utah’s contribution to the recognition and preservation of the African American legacy has been the production of genealogical resources for blacks. The greatest genealogical repositories in the world are in Salt Lake City. For African Americans in particular, genealogical research has received a huge boost in Utah.

In 1989, Utah genealogist Marie Taylor discovered a microfilmed copy of the Freedman Bank records—accounts of a bank intended to help former slaves become financially independent at the end of the Civil War. Each emancipated slave would name his siblings, children, and parents as a means of self-identification when establishing an account. The bank ultimately failed, but these records remained, though they were nearly inaccessible because there had been only minimal indexing. Taylor and Darius Gray approached some inmates of the Utah State Prison, asking if they would be willing to devote time to the arduous project of indexing and digitizing all entries and noting references to each family member of the seventy thousand depositors, a total of 450,000 names. A total of 550 inmates volunteered for the endeavor, which took 11 years to complete. As a result of their efforts, the Freedman Bank project was completed in 2001. Taylor and Gray donated it to the LDS Church, which made it publicly available. It was called by William Haley “the Rosetta Stone of African American genealogy.”6 In 2007, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society held its annual conference in Salt Lake City, utilizing the resources of the renowned Family History Center. The Salt Lake chapter of AAHGS was established, and president Phyllis Caruth supervised the production of a 2008 film featuring the life stories of eight elderly African Americans in Utah, which was then made available to classrooms throughout the state and was shown on a local PBS station, KUED.

Conclusion Utah’s African American history is spotted by some tragedy and much discrimination, but is nonetheless remarkable. It begins in the early years of the nineteenth century and becomes

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more and more significant with the passing years. In the words of Pastor France Davis, “We have watched the Legislature pass laws aimed at fairness and justice, watched positive changes in the LDS community—watched the Olympics come and go—watched young people grow up and become responsible adults and strong spiritual individuals.”7

Notable African Americans Abel, Elijah (1808–1885) Elijah Abel lived in Utah between 1851 and 1885. He was the first man of African descent to be ordained to the Mormon priesthood, though that status was not fully honored after Brigham Young declared a restriction barring blacks from priesthood ordination. Abel was a carpenter, sometimes a minstrel, and also briefly the manager of the Farnham Hotel in Ogden, Utah. He served three missions for the LDS Church, returning ill from his third mission and dying two weeks later. A monument honoring his unique place in Utah history stands at his graveside in the Salt Lake City cemetery.

Bridgeforth, Ruffin (1924–1997) Ruffin Bridgeforth was the first president of the LDS Genesis Branch, a support group for African American Mormons.

Caruth, Phyllis (dates unknown) Phyllis Caruth is the president of Utah’s chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and produced the documentary featuring eight elderly black Utahns, The Wisdom of Our Years.

Chambers, Samuel (1831–1929) Samuel Davidson Chambers and his wife, Amanda Leggroan Chambers, came to Utah after they were emancipated in Mississippi after the Civil War. Amanda was Chambers’ second wife, the first having been sold off. With them was Chambers’ son Peter. The Chambers family garnered some fame for their fruit crop and were soon wealthy enough to travel by train to visit family in Mississippi.

Coleman, Ronald G. (dates unknown) Bankhead, Mary Lucile (1902–1994) Mary Lucile Bankhead, a descendant of enslaved pioneers in the Mormon migration, became the first president of the Relief Society (women’s fellowshipping and service group) in the LDS Church’s support group for African Americans, the Genesis Branch. She was a recognized genealogist and provided firsthand historical information to researchers until her death.

Beckwourth, James (1798–1866) James Beckwourth was a famous black mountain man/trapper who frequented the area later known as Utah.

Ronald G. Coleman is a professor of history and ethnic studies at the University of Utah and a recognized scholar on blacks in the West. He is a frequent lecturer on the subject and has published extensively on blacks in Utah, and on Jane Manning James in particular. Coleman also coproduced the documentary Utah’s African American Voices.

Crosby, Vilate (c. 1808–1890) Vilate Crosby, mother of Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby (slaves of Mormon pioneers who entered the Salt Lake valley in the vanguard company) and of Martha Crosby Flake, wife of Green Flake, was a renowned midwife. She came west with a southern convert to Mormonism, Elizabeth

Utah Crosby, to whom she was enslaved, and spent the rest of her life in the Cottonwood area of Utah.

Davis, France (dates unknown) France Davis is the pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church and a civil rights activist, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and continues to work for civil rights in Utah. He is also the author of two books: An American Story Told (a memoir) and Light in the Midst of Zion: A History of Black Baptists in Utah, 1892–1996.

Flake, Green (1828–1903) Green Flake was one of three “colored servants” in the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers, entering the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. He lived most of his life in Utah and is buried, alongside his wife, Martha Crosby Flake, in the Union Pioneer Cemetery.

Fritz, Albert (dates unknown) Albert Fritz became president of Salt Lake City’s NAACP chapter in 1955, and was an important voice for blacks in Utah throughout the 1960s. He was strongly involved in conversations with the LDS Church leadership, which ultimately led to the Mormon Church’s statements in support of civil rights—a decade before the priesthood restriction was reversed. An award for judicial excellence in Utah bears Albert Fritz’s name.

Garwood, George (dates unknown) George Garwood became Utah’s first black mayor, elected in South Ogden in 2001.

Gillespie, James (1921–2009) James Gillespie was the president of the Ogden branch of the NAACP for 33 years.

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Gray, Darius (dates unknown) Darius Gray is an author and lecturer as well as a genealogist. Trained in broadcast journalism, Gray has produced two documentaries on blacks in Utah and has been featured in several PBS programs about genealogy. He and Marie Taylor supervised the Freedman Bank Genealogy project.

Harvey, Sam Joe (d. 1883) Harvey, an African American former soldier, was lynched and dragged through the streets of Salt Lake City in 1883 after he shot and killed Marshal Andrew Burt, a Mormon bishop.

Henry, Alberta (1920–2005) Alberta Henry, head of the Salt Lake City branch of the NAACP for 12 years, was an educator and a civil rights activist especially interested in housing equality and education. She founded the Alberta Henry Education Foundation, aimed at helping underprivileged students pay for college.

Howell, Paul Cephas (1855–1915) A former slave from Louisiana, Paul Howell relocated in Utah as a free man in the late 1890s and became Utah’s first black policeman.

James, Jane Manning (1822–1908) Jane James was arguably the most famous of the black Mormon pioneers. She joined the LDS Church as a freeborn black woman and journeyed first to the Mormon gathering place of Nauvoo, Illinois, and then to the Salt Lake Valley. She spent her life in domestic service, doing laundry and making soap, but was ultimately memorialized by a variety of literary and scholarly works, as well as by a monument at her graveside.

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Jones, Grace Sawyer (dates unknown) Grace Sawyer Jones became Utah’s first black college president, presiding over the College of Eastern Utah.

by Robert and Rebecca Smith, were taken to California. She and the other slaves were emancipated. Biddy became a wealthy philanthropist and a founding member of the First AME Church of Los Angeles.

Langon, Byrdie Lee (c. 1900–1979)

Medley, Tyrone (dates unknown)

Byrdie Langon, daughter of Paul Cephas and Mary Sharp Howell, published the first attempt at a history of African Americans in Utah: Utah and the Early Black Settlers. The self-published, typewritten, 40-page book has no publication date.

Tyrone Medley was the first African American judge in Utah, serving in the Third District Court.

Lewis, Quock (or Quacko) Walker (1798–1856) Q. Walker Lewis, nephew of Quock Walker, whose suit for freedom (Quock v. Jennison) emancipated all slaves in Massachusetts, and himself a member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA), the first black abolitionist organization, became a Mormon elder in 1843 and journeyed to Salt Lake City in 1851. He remained in Utah less than a year and returned to Lowell, Massachusetts, dying there in 1856.

Marshall, Robert (d. 1925) Robert Marshall, an African American coal miner, was a victim of a torturous lynching in Price, Utah, in 1925. A monument to his memory was dedicated on April 4, 1998, during a “Day of Reconciliation.”

Mason, Bridget “Biddy” Smith (1818–1891) Born a slave in Georgia, Biddy Smith Mason came west with Southern converts to Mormonism. Shortly after the California Gold Rush, she and thirteen other African Americans enslaved

Price, Ruby (dates unknown) Ruby Price became the first black schoolteacher in Utah in 1950.

Richmond, Mignon (1897–1984) Mignon Richmond was the first black graduate of a university in Utah, getting her degree from Utah State University in Logan. A park in Salt Lake City is named for her.

Samuels, Wilfred (dates unknown) Wilfred Samuels, president of African American Literature and Culture Society, is a professor of English and ethnic studies at the University of Utah. He is heavily involved in preparations for events celebrating African American history in the state and has published extensively on African American authors, including Toni Morrison and John Edgar Wideman.

Taylor, Julius (dates unknown) Julius Taylor moved to Utah from North Dakota. He edited and published the Broad Ax, a weekly newspaper from 1895 to 1899, when he moved to Chicago. He and William Taylor (no relation) were journalistic and political rivals. Julius was an ardent Democrat at a time when

Utah

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Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch, speaks out against a killing in Salt Lake City that may have been racially motivated, 1998. Police were investigating the stabbing death of a 15-year-old Hispanic boy and the wounding of a 19-year-old black youth by a group of teenagers. (AP/Wide World Photos)

William and most African Americans were Republicans.

Taylor, William W. (dates unknown) William W. Taylor (no relation to Julius Taylor) edited the Utah Plain Dealer for 12 years. A Republican, he once served as a deputy dog tax collector and ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature in 1896. He was also president of the Grand Order of Odd Fellows, a black fraternal organization.

Thurman, Wallace (1902–1934) Born in Salt Lake City, Wallace Thurman moved to Boise, Idaho, by age six. He became famous for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, and was a part of the Harlem Renaissance. His great-grandparents, Francis and Mary Grice, were longtime Utah residents before relocating to Idaho.

Williams, Jeanetta (dates unknown) Jeanetta Williams served for more than 15 years as president of the Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP. Originally from Bailey, Oklahoma, she attended Idaho State University. As president of the Salt Lake NAACP, she led efforts to change the name of Human Rights Day in Utah to Martin Luther King Holiday. She was also instrumental in having a local street renamed for civil rights activist Rosa Parks. In addition to her work for the NAACP, Williams has been a community relations officer for the Utah Transit Authority (UTA).

Cultural Contributions Utah history cannot be told well without including its black participants and their cultural contributions. A museum at Fort Douglas celebrates the black soldiers who lived on Utah’s military bases before serving in distant wars. Writers,

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from Byrdie Langon to Kate Carter to Ronald Coleman and Darius Gray, have chronicled the legacy of blacks in the state. Documentary films like Utah’s African Americans, The Wisdom of Our Years, and Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons have told the history visually, and the music of various black congregations— the Calvary Baptist Church being the most famous—have enhanced Utah’s cultural diversity. Utah’s emphasis on genealogy has impacted the entire African American population of the nation with the release of the Freedman Bank genealogy CD and with frequent conferences geared to African American genealogy. Though the African American population in Utah is still comparatively small, the cultural contributions of blacks to Utah’s history and progress cannot be underestimated. Through protests, legal action, literary and cinematic productions, and well-organized and generously funded events focused on black history, Utah’s African Americans have provided catalysts for the state to make strides in civil rights and in celebrating diversity.

Notes 1. Bertha Udell, interview conducted by John Fretwell, 1997, Fresno, CA. Unpublished. 2. Jane Manning James, “My Life Story” (as transcribed by Elizabeth J. D. Roundy), quoted in Henry J. Wolfinger, “A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the Origins of the Utah Black Community” in Clark S. Knowlton, ed., Social Accommodation in Utah (Salt Lake City, UT: American West Occasional Papers, 1975), 166. 3. Byrdie Langdon, Utah and the Early Black Settlers (Self-published, n.d.), 23. 4. Kaimipono Wenger, “Property for Sale: Great Views, Large Lots, No Blacks” (online, December 4, 2005), www.concurringopinions .com/archives.

5. Eric Snider, “A Crock of Buttars” (online, February 25, 2008). www.ericdsnider.com/snide/ a-crock-of-buttars. 6. Dick Eastman, “Freedman’s Bank Data on CD Rom” (online, February 28, 2001), www .ancestry.co.uk/learn/library/article.aspx?article= 3469. 7. Arthur Raymond, “Hundreds Celebrate Pastor’s 35 Years in Salt Lake” (online, April 27, 2009), www.mormontimes.com/people_news.

Bibliography Alexander, Thomas G. Utah: The Right Place. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1995. Bankhead, Lucile. Oral History, April 11, 1985. Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University: L.D.S. AfroAmerican Oral History Project (Interviewed by Alan Cherry). Bringhurst, Newell G. “Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks within Mormonism.” In Lester E. Bush Jr. and Armand L. Mauss, eds., Neither White nor Black. Midvale, UT: Signature, 1984, 130–148. Brown, John Zimmerman, ed. Pioneer John Brown. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1941. Bullock, Clifford A. “Fired by Conscience: The Black 14 Incident at the University of Wyoming and Black Protest in the Western Athletic Conference, 1968–1970.” Wyoming History Journal 68, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 4–13. Bush, Lester, and Armand Mauss. Neither White nor Black. Midvale, UT: Signature, 1984. Carter, Kate. Negro Pioneer. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1964. Coleman, Ronald. “A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825–1910.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utah, 1980.

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Demartus, DeEtta. The Force of a Feather: The Search for a Lost Story of Slavery and Freedom. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002.

for His More Whiter Brethren to Follow.’ ” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 26 (2006): 48–99.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. New York: International Publishers, 1968.

Oliver, David H. A Negro on Mormonism. Selfpublished, 1963.

Flake, Carol Read. Of Pioneers and Prophets. Boise, ID: Privately published, 1974. Gerlach, Larry. Blazing Crosses in Zion. Logan: Utah State University, 1982. James, Jane Manning. “My Life Story” (as transcribed by Elizabeth J. D. Roundy), quoted in “A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the Origins of the Utah Black Community.” In Clark S. Knowlton, ed., Social Accommodation in Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: American West Occasional Papers, 1975, 126–172. Katz, William Loren. The Black West. Seattle, WA: Open Hand Publishing, 1987. Kenner, Charles L. Buffalo Soldiers and Officers of the Ninth Cavalry 1867–1898: Black and White Together. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Kohler, Charmain Lay. Southern Grace: A Story of the Mississippi Saints. Boise, ID: Beagle Creek Press, 1995. Langdon, Birdie. Utah and the Early Black Settlers. Self-published, n.d. Lythgoe, Dennis L. “Negro Slavery and Mormon Doctrine.” Western Humanities Review 21 (1967): 327–338. O’Donovan, Connell. “The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis: ‘An Example

Prince, Gregory, and William Robert Wright. David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005. “Saint without Priesthood: The Collected Testimonies of Ex-slave Samuel D. Chambers.” Dialogue 12 (Summer 1979): 13–21. Stewart, John J. Mormonism and the Negro. Orem, UT: Bookmark Division, Community Press, 1960. Symposium on the Negro in Utah. Published by the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, November 20, 1954. Udell, Bertha (Great granddaughter of Green Flake). Interview conducted by John Fretwell, 1997, Fresno, CA. Unpublished. Wolfinger, Henry J. “Jane Manning James: A Test of Faith.” In Colleen Whitley, ed., Worth Their Salt: Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996, 14–30. Wolfinger, Henry J. “A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the Origins of the Utah Black Community.” In Clark S. Knowlton, ed., Social Accommodation in Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: American West Occasional Papers, 1975, 126–172.

VERMONT Alton Hornsby, Jr. and Anne Hornsby

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Chronology 1637

The first record of African American slaves in New England.

1777

Vermont breaks away from New York to form the independent Commonwealth of Vermont.

1777

(July 8) The new state constitution abolishes slavery, making Vermont the first American state to do so.

1777–1810

Some African American slaves continue to be found in Vermont despite the constitutional prohibition.

1791

(March 4) Vermont enters the Union as the 14th state; its new state constitution retains the prohibition of slavery.

1823

Alexander Twilight graduates from Middlebury College, becoming the first African American in the United States to earn a college degree.

1836

Alexander Twilight is elected to the Vermont legislature

1856

Martin Henry Freeman, who was born in Rutland in 1826, is appointed president of Allegheny Institute (Later Avery College) in Pennsylvania, thereby becoming the first African American college president in the United States.

1860

The U.S. Census records about 700 blacks resident in Vermont.

1861–1865

Over 100 African American soldiers from Vermont serve in the Civil War.

1865

(March 8) Vermont ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1866

(October 30) Vermont ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1869

(October 20) Vermont ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing blacks the right to vote.

1879

Blacks form Lodge No. 8 of the Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT) in Burlington.

1909

A regiment of buffalo soldiers arrives in Vermont.

1963

(March 15) Vermont ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1969

The first black church is organized in Burlington.

1983

Francis Brooks, who moved from Virginia to Vermont, becomes the first black elected to the Vermont legislature in the twentieth century.

2000

Blacks still constitute less than 1 percent of Vermont’s population.

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2007

Francis Brooks retires from the Vermont House of Representatives and becomes sergeant-at-arms for that body. His colleagues in the House honor him with a unanimous resolution of admiration.

2007

Vermont’s black prison population doubles.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president of a major party, carries Vermont with about 67 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Origins of Black Vermont African Americans probably arrived as indentured servants and slaves in Vermont in the 1640s, but the number was always small. Nevertheless, even after the state abolished enslavement in its 1777 constitution, slaves were seen at Bennington, Burlington, Brattleboro, Windsor, and other places. They worked mainly as unskilled laborers and domestic servants. Despite the continuation of some slavery, other citizens of Vermont were faithful to the cause of freedom and aided fugitive slaves being sought by slave catchers and on the Underground Railroad as they stopped in the state or made their way to Canada.

African Americans in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars In the period between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, small communities of African Americans appeared, mainly in the more populous areas of the state. In the 1800 Census Braintree had a nearly 3.8 percent black population; in 1810, Windsor had a 3.6 percent black population; and in 1820, Burlington had a 3.4 percent black population. By 1860, Rutland had a black population of 1.2 percent, Woodstock was at 1.7 percent, Bennington was at 1.1 percent and Burlington was at 0.6 percent. Some African Americans fought for the patriots in the American Revolution, in the War of 1812, and for the Union in the Civil War. Most

of Vermont’s African Americans were in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment—the regiment made famous by the movie Glory. However, others served in such regiments as the 10th U.S. Colored Infantry and the 43rd U.S. Colored Infantry. Four of those who served in the latter war have been recognized by the town of Coventry in a plaque, which honors those who served the nation in either the Civil War or the SpanishAmerican War. In the end it is estimated that nearly 150 Vermont blacks, out of a total African American population of about 700, aided the Union cause; 10 were killed. After the war, some white Vermonters brought blacks who had served them in battle back to Vermont to take up residence. The largest African American military presence in Vermont occurred in the summer of 1909, when seven members of the famed 10th Calvary, commonly known as “the Buffalo Soldiers,” arrived at Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester. While at the fort, the unit practiced maneuvers and participated in celebrations and parades. The presence of the buffalo soldiers caused some disquiet among Vermont whites in the area. Others, however, accepted the men in uniforms, and some of the soldiers remained or returned to the area as residents after discharge or retirement.

Urban and Rural Life In the postbellum period, blacks continued their practices of settling in the larger cities of the state. The black population was made up of natives, some of whom had been slaves, and migrants from southern New York and Virginia. Vermont did not benefit much from the Great Migrations from

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the South between the end of Reconstruction and the two world wars because the state did not have the major industries of the larger northeastern and midwestern states like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland and did not have large, established African American communities. After the Civil War, Vermont’s blacks continued to settle mainly in the state’s larger cities. During this period, Burlington evolved from a small town into the state’s largest city. Its growth and prosperity was based upon industry and the timber trade. By the late nineteenth century, the city’s African American population also increased. In the decades of 1770 and 1780 alone, the black population went from about 77 people to 115. But the population did not grow significantly for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The African Americans who landed in Burlington were singles, married couples with families, and members of extended families. They probably learned about the city from family and friends who had lived there previously. A substantial number of the Virginians who came to Burlington were spurred to do so by these factors. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of native-born blacks in Burlington was more than two-thirds of the African American population. African Americans, as most ethnic groups do, tended to live in established black neighborhoods on the city’s North End. Even in recent times, African Americans in Vermont had not developed major social institutions. For example, in Burlington, there was not a black church until 1969. The first and only major social organization early on was the Lodge No. 8 of the Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT) which was founded in the 1870s. Twenty years later, even this African American social institution did not exist; perhaps it was integrated into the White Templar’s lodge. African Americans in Vermont’s cities found work as laborers, in dockyards, and as domestic workers. Most of them achieved little economic

or social mobility from these occupations. Even when Burlington’s economy expanded into manufacturing, African Americans were given the unskilled and the most menial jobs. The largest profession among African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century was barbering. Others were scattered in such skilled positions as carpenter, printer, and shoemaker. They constituted what there was of an African American middle class. Except for the fact that African American women in Burlington tended to remain in the home, these employment trends for the majority of blacks were replicated throughout most of Vermont, even into present times. It was only in the twentieth century, aided by a culture of affirmative action and diversity, that African Americans began to find more professional work as teachers and staff members of the university, lawyers, and criminal justice officials. In 2004, Michael Knox, a New Jersey native, became one of the first black principals. He landed a job at a Brighton elementary school. Again most of this change was in Burlington and the state’s other larger cities. African Americans were scattered in several rural Vermont communities as early as the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, they had established identifiable settlements. They worked mostly as farmers for themselves or others and in domestic service. One of these rural communities was at Hinesburgh, where they settled on a hill. Indeed the settlement became known as “the Hill.” As farmers, they probably selected that spot because their crops could get more sun than in the valley. Generally speaking, the black farm families were prosperous, owning plots of land and livestock. Nevertheless by the end of the nineteenth century, racism combined with economic recessions forced the black families from the Hill. Seeking better economic opportunities, some moved elsewhere in the state; others moved to other parts of the country, including the South. Some left relatives behind in graveyards.

Vermont

Politics and Race Relations Some in Vermont have chafed at the description that Vermont is “the whitest state” in the country—suggesting not only population figures but also overt racism. In terms of African American population, Vermont remains the state with the fewest blacks, but in cities like Burlington there have, in fact, been slight increases in recent years. In rural areas, the African American population has not grown substantially over the years, and there too is a legacy of racism. In the town of Hinesburgh, which has been the subject of a recent detailed study by Elsie Guyette, blacks were often the victims of racial discrimination and racial hatred. Some were victims of vandalism. A black minister who preached to a largely white congregation was once threatened with death. The same minister, on another occasion, was invited to a white person’s home for tea, only to be told that he would have to sip it in the kitchen away from other guests. On the other hand, there were instances of racial mixing at work, in churches, and in marriage. Given the scarcity of blacks in rural Vermont, interracial marriage was likely the only choice for many of the area’s blacks. Although there was a black cemetery, some were buried in mostly white graveyards as well. Blacks could also testify against whites in court and apparently in some instances won their cases. Thus, despite the presence of racism, rural life in Vermont, by the very nature of the physical and cultural environment, suggested a good deal of biracialism. Thus scholar Guyette, in her analysis of the issues, suggests that blacks on “the Hill” in Hinesburgh seemed to have identified more with their occupation as farmers than with their race. Nevertheless, racial distinctions remain, as they do in other parts of the country, into present times. In a New York Times article in 1987, African Americans reported that in the last decade, shots were fired into the home of a black

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minister; a black girl was sprayed with a chemical by a white classmate; and there were reports of continuing job discrimination in both hiring and promotion. An African American police officer had claimed racial profiling by a fellow white officer, which landed him, wearing civilian clothes, in jail even as he was transporting a murder suspect there. Racial profiling had also been seen with whites reacting fearfully to the presence of black males. Only about 39 of the 8,100 students in the undergraduate school of the state university were black. There were no blacks in the professional schools. Hence there were few black lawyers and no judges, and blacks did not occupy significant positions in state government. More disturbing news came in a 2007 report that the black prison population in Vermont had doubled in the past 10 years. In 1997, there were 48 African Americans in Vermont jails. In that year, 21 inmates were being held on drug offenses; none of these were black. Ten years later, nearly a third of the 190 persons charged with drug offenses were black. This dramatic rise in African American imprisonment placed Vermont with the second-highest number of black people in prison per capita in the nation. Vermont officials countered charges of racial profiling by pointing to evidence that the black individuals did commit crimes. Furthermore they contend that some of the offenders were from out of state. Yet, according to the Times, neither whites nor blacks seemed comfortable in discussing racial issues. Some blacks voiced helplessness because white authorities discount their problems. Others sought solution to the problems in post-racialism, preferring not to be racially or culturally identified as African American. An Ebony magazine article at the end of the same year as the New York Times report found many of the same racial problems, but also noted more advances in race relations. For example, although there were, as the Times had stated, no blacks in the professional schools at the time,

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Ebony reported that the medical school had graduated two African Americans previously. Also, Vermont had had an African American lawyer, but he had left at the time of the Ebony article because, although highly qualified, he had not been able to find a job with a major law firm. Ebony also reported that although black undergraduate enrollment at the University of Vermont had remained static, an African American recruiter had been added to the staff. Several black faculty and staff were also employed, including a professor of pathology in the medical school and a dean of the department of allied health. And, unlike the Times article, Ebony showed a more determined effort on the part of professional blacks to improve race relations in the state. Some had done this by running for elective office, resulting in the election of Francis Brooks, a former schoolteacher, to the state legislature in 1982. He subsequently became assistant majority leader. Brooks retired in 2007 and became sergeant at arms for the Vermont legislature. Blacks had also petitioned to have the official name of a mountain called “Niggerhead” changed. The petition was successful, and the name was changed to “Marshfield.” In 1982, whites had joined with blacks in opposing a proposed rally by the Ku Klux Klan. Although black-owned businesses in Vermont were still only 0.03 percent of the total in 2000, the state had begun an affirmative action program for African Americans, Hispanics, and women. In Burlington a black woman had opened a successful mail-order business, one of the few such firms in the country, selling African-oriented merchandise to a large white clientele. In recent times, much of the improvement in race relations in Vermont has emanated from the University of Vermont. The university has consciously promoted diversity in its faculty, staff, and student body. It has established a multicultural program and requires all students to be exposed to diversity. In 1969, the university discontinued an annual celebration known as the

“kakewalk.” The affair had involved white males performing as minstrels in black face. The current social and economic status of African Americans in Vermont is impacted by prejudice and racism, including racist assumptions in medical care, witnessed by the case of a black infant born at a hospital who was assumed to be a “blue baby” because the attending staff had never witnessed an African American birth there. And the black patient who could not be treated because it was believed his veins could not be found in his dark skin. Yet much of the problem in the state seems to be the result of naivete and ignorance. For example, many of the schoolchildren in the state have never seen a black person except on television, and many did not know the full meaning of the works of Martin Luther King Jr. Current estimates (2010) place Vermont’s population at 622,000. About one-sixth of these people reside in the four largest cities of Burlington, Rutland, South Burlington, and Montpelier, the capital city. As they have done throughout their existence in the state, the African American population tends to be found in the urban areas. In the 2000 census, there were less than 1 percent of blacks in Vermont, while there were nearly 2 percent in Burlington. While the black population growth in the urban areas might seem insignificant, those who come and who stay in those areas point to the good-paying job opportunities in industries like IBM and in the colleges and universities. This, together with what some call the beautiful physical and cultural environment make them call Vermont home.

Notable African Americans Anderson, Marion Annette “Nettie” (1874–1922) Nettie Anderson, a native of Shoreham, was the daughter of a bondsperson. In 1895, she

Vermont became the first African American woman to graduate from Middlebury College. She was also the first to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the most prestigious national honor society.

Haynes, Lemuel (1753–1833) Lemuel Haynes was probably the first African American ordained by a mainstream Protestant Church in the United States. Haynes was born to a biracial couple in West Hartford, Connecticut. Although he lacked a formal education he developed a keen interest in the Bible and in theology. He frequently conducted services at the church in West Hartford, sometimes reading sermons of his own. Just before the Revolutionary War, Haynes enlisted as a “Minuteman” in the local militia. After the war, Haynes studied Latin and Greek with clergymen in Connecticut. In 1780, he was licensed to preach. His first position was with a white congregation in Middle Granville. In 1785, Haynes was officially ordained as a Congregational minister. Subsequently Haynes pastored churches in Torrington, Connecticut, and Rutland, Vermont. He was dismissed from both of these churches ostensibly because of disputes over politics and differences in style and theological doctrines with his congregations, but Haynes and later historians suspect that racism was also a major factor. During that time Haynes developed an international reputation as a preacher and writer. In 1804, he received an honorary master of arts degree from Middlebury College in Vermont, the first ever bestowed upon an African American. In 1801, he published a tract called “The Nature and Importance of True Republicanism . . . ” which contained his only public statements on the subjects of race or slavery. His last appointment was in Manchester, Vermont, where he counseled two men convicted of murder. They miraculously escaped hanging when the alleged “victim” reappeared. Haynes’s

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writings on the seven-year ordeal became a bestseller for a decade. For the last 11 years of his life, Haynes ministered to a congregation in upstate New York. Nearly 150 years after his death, a manuscript written by Haynes around 1776 was discovered in which he stated “That an African . . . has an undeniable right to his Liberty.” The treatise went on to condemn slavery as a sin, and pointed out the irony of slave owners fighting for their own liberty while denying it to others.

Prince, Lucy Terry (c. 1730–1821) Lucy Terry Prince was the author of the first poem composed by an African woman. She also argued a case before the Supreme Court. Prince was brought from Africa as an infant and enslaved in Deerfield, Massachusetts. In 1756, she married Abijah Prince, a prosperous free black man who purchased her freedom. In the 1760s, the Prince family moved to Guilford, Vermont. Although Lucy Terry was a poet, only one of her poems, a ballad called “Bars Fight” has survived. In 1785, when a neighboring white family threatened the Princes, Lucy and Abijah appealed to the governor and the state Council for protection. The Council ordered Guilford’s selectmen to defend them. Terry Prince also argued unsuccessfully before the trustees of Williams College for admission of one of her sons. Later, when a Colonel Eli Bronson attempted to steal land owned by the Princes, the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. Terry Prince argued against two of the leading lawyers in the state, and won her case. Samuel Chase, the presiding justice of the court, said that her argument was better than he had heard from any Vermont lawyer.

Turner, Daisy (1883–1988) Daisy Turner, a native of Grafton, achieved notice in the folklore of the state for refusing as

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a child to bring a black doll and recite a poem about Africa at a last-day-of-school celebration. Instead, she said a poem about how she felt about life and won first prize. A children’s book entitled Daisy and the Doll commemorates the events.

Twilight, Alexander Lucius (1795–1857) Alexander Lucius Twilight was born free in Vermont. He was the first black to earn a bachelor’s degree from an American college or university, graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont. He was an educator, minister and politician. In 1829 Twilight became principal of the Orleans County Grammar School. On the school’s property, he designed and built Athenian Hall, the first granite public building in the state. In 1836,

Alexander Twilight, ca. 1840. Twilight is the first African American to earn a college degree in the United States. (AP/Wide World Photos)

he was elected to the Vermont state legislature, the first African American elected to public office in the country. After teaching in Peru for four years, he returned to Vermont in 1828, settling in Vergennes where he taught school during the week and preached on weekends in Congregational churches in Ferrisburg and Waltham. His school at Brownington was the only secondary school in the area. After his death, Twilight was buried in the church yard in Brownington.

Cultural Contributions Interestingly enough, in spite of the small number of blacks in Vermont, the first known poem, “Bars Fight,” by an African American woman, Lucy Terry Prince, was produced there; and Alexander Twilight, the first African American to obtain a college degree, built and operated a school. Its Athenian Hall has become a museum. It, as well as his home are located in the Brownington Historic District, and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Recently, Edgar L. Davis, a Missouri native, has begun to achieve a reputation as an actor. He has performed in “Master Harold and the Boys” and “A Raisin in the Sun “in theaters in various parts of the state. More recently, groups centered at the University of Vermont, Middlebury College, Burlington College, and other institutions have sponsored Black History Month programs, King Birthday celebrations, Africans and African American Film Series, and lectures on race and culture. At a King Day Celebration at the Vermont Law School in 2010, Selma, Alabama’s first black mayor, James Perkins Jr., was the keynote speaker. Beyond the colleges and universities, the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce sponsored a King Day festival and a Black History Month program in 2010, and a white retired factory worker in Pownal began advocating for a museum for black World War II veterans in 2007.

Vermont

Bibliography Bassett, T. D. S. Vermont. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983. Davis, Allen Freeman. Postcards from Vermont: A Social History, 1905–1945. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002. Fuller, James. Men of Color to Arms: Vermont African Americans in the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Guyette, Elise. Discovering Black Vermont: African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790–1890. Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2010. Husher, Helen. Off the Leash: Subversive Journeys Around Vermont. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 1999. Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and Stephen C. Trombulak. The Story of Vermont: A Natural and Cultural History. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.

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Lee, Maureen. Black Bangor: African Americans in a Maine Community, 1880–1950. Hanover, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005. Morrissey, Charles T. Vermont: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1981. Sallant, John. Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753– 1833. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Sherman, Michael, and Jennie Versteeg, eds. We Vermonters: Perspectives on the Past. Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society, 1992. Underground Railroad in Vermont. www.american history-suite/vi.com/article.cfm/the underground-railroad-in-Vermont-after. U.S. Census. http://quickFacts.Census gov/qfd/ states/50/5010675.html. Whitfield, Harvey Amani. “African Americans in Burlington, Vermont, 1880–1900.” Vermont History 75, no. 2 (Summer–Fall 2007): 101– 123.

VIRGINIA Meg Greene

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Chronology 1619

Arrival of “20 and Odd” blacks in late August 1619 aboard an English pirate ship. These blacks were sold or traded into slavery in exchange for supplies.

1630s

Based on surviving legal documents, it was considered “customary practice to hold some Negroes in a form of life service.”

1639

Blacks are banned from owning firearms.

1640

John Punch, a runaway indentured servant, becomes the first documented slave for life in Virginia.

1662

Slavery is recognized by law in the Virginia colony. Legislation was also passed defining the status of mulatto children, that is, children born of slave mothers were also slaves.

1670

Blacks or Indians can no longer own white indentured servants.

1680

An act is passed preventing insurrections among slaves.

1691

The first act prohibiting intermarriage between races is passed.

1692

Blacks can no longer own horses, cattle, or hogs. Separate courts with no juries are set up to try slaves.

1700s

Slaves compose half of Virginia’s labor force.

1705

Virginia’s slave laws are codified.

1775

Virginia Governor Dunmore offers freedom to slaves to fight against the American rebels during the Revolutionary War.

1787

James, a slave who had acted as a spy in the Revolution, gains his freedom. He takes the name James Lafayette, in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette.

1791

Robert Carter, one of the wealthiest land and slave owners in Virginia, emancipates more than 500 of his slaves, in the largest emancipation of slaves prior to 1860.

1800

Gabriel’s Conspiracy, a slave rebellion, is thwarted.

1806

Legislation is passed requiring that freed slaves leave Virginia within a year of their emancipation or be reenslaved.

1816

The Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color is founded.

1821

(January 23) Former slave Lott Cary and other Virginians sail from Norfolk bound for Africa. The following year, the colony of Liberia is established in West Africa.

1831

Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Southampton County. As many as 60 whites die in the uprising; militia and volunteers kill more than 100 innocent blacks in retaliation. Turner and 20 of his followers are later executed.

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1841

(November) Slaves on board the Creole bound from Richmond to New Orleans revolt and force the ship to land at Nassau in the Bahamas. Nineteen are charged with mutiny and murder; the other 116 slaves are freed and granted asylum by the British authorities.

1849

Henry “Box” Brown, an industrial slave in Richmond, escapes by shipping himself to Philadelphia in a wooden crate. Brown becomes a popular antislavery speaker throughout the North and in Great Britain.

1850

Congress enacts a Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850.

1859

(October) Abolitionist John Brown attacks Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1861

(May 24) Union General Benjamin F. Butler liberates fugitive slaves who had reached Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, angering Virginian slaveholders.

1862

(April 16) President Abraham Lincoln signs legislation freeing all slaves in the District of Columbia; thousands of African Americans from Virginia escape to the city in search of freedom and work.

1863

Arlington, the former home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, is opened by the U.S. Army and the American Missionary Association as the Freedmen’s Village, a proposed model community for newly freed slaves.

1863

(January 1) President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves. Many African Americans cross Union lines at Fort Monroe and along the Potomac to become free.

1864

(October 3) After a Union attack on the railroad junction at Saltville in Smyth County, units of a Confederate brigade kill wounded troopers of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry left on the battlefield.

1864

Five African American soldiers from Virginia earn Medals of Honor for gallantry at New Market Heights outside Richmond. More than 5,723 black Virginians serve in the Union army.

1865

(February 9) Virginia ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

1865

The Richmond Theological School for Freedmen is founded in a former Richmond slave jail and classes begin in November. The school is renamed Virginia Union University in 1899, when it merges with Wayland Seminary and College of Washington, D.C.

1867

(January 9) Virginia refuses to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the rights of freedmen.

1867

(April 3) African American citizens and militiamen march to Capitol Square in Richmond on the first Emancipation Day commemoration, marking the anniversary of the fall of Richmond.

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1867

African American men vote for the first time in Virginia in an election to decide whether to call a constitutional convention and to select delegates to attend it. Twenty-four black men are elected to the convention.

1868

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) is founded by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

1869

(October 8) Virginia ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment over a year after the amendment took effect. On the same day, Virginia ratifies the Fifteenth Amendment securing the vote for African American men.

1879

The Readjuster Party, a coalition of political constituencies including Republicans, small businessmen, and African Americans, is established.

1883

A group of 1,300 black tobacco factory workers from the Lynchburg Laboring Association go on strike for higher wages in Lynchburg’s tobacco factories, shutting down the industry for several weeks.

1888

Virginia elects the first African American, John Mercer Langston, to the House of Representatives.

1893

The Southern Aid and Insurance Company is chartered in Richmond, becoming the nation’s first black-owned and operated insurance company.

1898

Four regiments of the African American Virginia Volunteer Infantry are mustered into service to fight in the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

1901

Booker T. Washington publishes his autobiography, Up from Slavery.

1902

The state’s new constitution limits voter participation through the creation of a poll tax, which effectively disfranchises most black and many white voters.

1903

African American businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker opens the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, making her the first black woman bank president in the United States.

1904

African Americans in Richmond boycott city streetcars in response to mandated segregation in the cars. The protest lasts until 1906, when a law allowing segregation of the streetcars passes.

1906

William Sidney Pittman, the first African American architect employed by the federal government, is commissioned to design the Negro Building for the 1907 Jamestown Tri-Centennial Exposition.

1910

Plummer Bernard Young purchases a fraternal newspaper and creates the Norfolk Journal and Guide, one of the best and most influential African American newspapers in the South.

1915

The Negro Historical and Industrial Association opens a three-week national exposition at the Richmond fairgrounds to celebrate African American achievement since emancipation.

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1915

African American historian Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

1916

Carter G. Woodson creates the Journal of Negro History, now the Journal of African American History.

1924

The “Act to Preserve Racial Integrity” is put into effect; the law classifies as “colored” all persons having any nonwhite ancestry. The law subjects people of mixed-race ancestry to the racial segregation laws and prohibits interracial marriage.

1926

The General Assembly requires the separation of the races at public meetings.

1928

The General Assembly decrees that lynching is illegal in Virginia.

1935

Leslie Garland Bolling’s sculptures are exhibited at the Richmond Academy, making Bolling the first African American in Virginia to be featured in a single-artist exhibition.

1936

African American singers are recorded at Virginia prisons as part of the Library of Congress project to record American folk songs in southern prisons.

1937

The first recorded sit-down strike in Virginia occurs in Ashland, when four workers at the White House Café strike for higher pay and shorter hours.

1939

A sit-in organized by attorney Samuel W. Tucker leads to the arrest of five African Americans for refusing to leave the segregated Alexandria Public Library.

1940

The Virginia Writers’ Project publishes The Negro in Virginia.

1951

In Farmville at Robert R. Moton High School, 16-year-old Barbara Johns leads a student walkout to protest unequal facilities at African American schools. Her lawsuit against Prince Edward County becomes one of the five cases incorporated into the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

1951

Seven African American men, referred to as the “Martinsville Seven,” who had been convicted of rape, are executed at the Virginia State Penitentiary. During the trial, lawyers for the NAACP attack the use of the death penalty, calling it discriminatory toward African Americans.

1954

The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision abolishes the long-standing “separate but equal” racial doctrine, stating that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

1955

Virginia adopts Massive Resistance against desegregation of public schools.

1959

Prince Edward County closes its school system instead of desegregating. The Prince Edward Academy opens for approximately 1,500 white students; there is no provision made for schooling for black students.

1963

Arthur Ashe becomes the first African American named to the U.S. Davis Cup team.

1964

Prince Edward County public schools reopen.

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1964–1965

With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, many racial discrimination practices in Virginia are struck down, opening the way to increased participation by African Americans in politics.

1967

The U.S. Supreme Court rules against prohibitions on interracial marriage in Virginia.

1968

Virginia’s efforts to desegregate schools are deemed insufficient by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1973

Hermanze E. Fauntleroy Jr. becomes the first African American in Virginia to be elected mayor of the city of Petersburg, which also elects the first majority–African American city council in the state.

1977

(February 25) Virginia ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax; Virginia’s ratification comes 13 years after the amendment took effect.

1983

John Charles Thomas becomes the first African American appointed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

1983

Yvonne Miller becomes the first African American woman in the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1987, she becomes the first African American woman elected to the Senate of Virginia.

1985

L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first African American elected to statewide office as lieutenant governor.

1989

L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor of Virginia and the first African American governor in the nation.

2003

Leroy R. Hassell Sr. is sworn in as the first African American chief justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

2007

The General Assembly votes unanimously to express profound regret for its part in perpetuating the institution of slavery.

2007

The Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Statue is unveiled not far from the site of a former slave market.

2008

(November 4) For the first time since 1964, Virginia votes for a Democrat for president when it gives 52 percent of its vote to Barack Obama, the first African American nominee of a major political party.

Historical Overview The story of African Americans in Virginia is among the most compelling in American history. Beginning almost with the creation of the permanent English colonies in North America, African

Americans have played an important role in almost every aspect of Virginia life and society. Today, African Americans make up approximately 19 percent of the population of Virginia; many of these black Virginians can trace their

Virginia ancestry to the slaves who worked the numerous tobacco and cotton plantations in the state.

Coming to the New World In August 1619, approximately 19 persons from the African kingdom of Ndongo (present-day Angola) arrived at Jamestown, the fledgling English colony located in Virginia. The captives were originally part of a group of 350 enslaved Africans aboard the Portuguese ship the São João Bautista headed for Vera Cruz, Mexico. A brutal encounter with English pirates forced the Portuguese captain to surrender part of his cargo to save his vessel. One of the pirate ships that had taken part in the attack, the White Lion, sailing under the Dutch flag, made port along the shores of eastern Virginia where the crew exchanged their human cargo for food. Although not the first blacks to arrive in Virginia (an earlier 1619 census noted the presence of 32 Afro-Virginians, but revealed little else about them, including whether they were slave or free), these 19 anonymous men and women signaled the beginning of an extremely complex and painful relationship between blacks and whites in North America. The legal and the social status of these first Africans in Virginia was ambiguous at best. In the beginning, some Africans were most likely free, while others, though not regarded as slaves, were treated as bound laborers or servants and forced to work in the fields and homes of white Virginians. Like white indentured servants, the Africans were legally tied to their owners for a specified period of time, usually between four and seven years. After the period of their servitude had expired, they were freed. If they managed to save money, some could buy their way out of their indentured contracts. In many cases during the seventeenth century, free blacks could buy land and, if not recognized as equals, were at least tolerated in colonial society.

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Before 1660, most slaves in Virginia lived on plantations; as was the case in the Caribbean and Latin America, the majority were male. Interaction between whites and blacks was common, and restrictions based on race were not rigidly enforced. By 1710, the average slaveholder in Virginia owned eight slaves; by that time the number of enslaved women had also begun to grow, which suggests that more or less stable families were emerging. Although some slaves came to Virginia directly from Africa, the majority arrived from the Caribbean, where they had undergone a period of “seasoning” that enabled them to adjust to, and survive, the often unhealthy climate of the colony. With Europeans clamoring for the products of slave labor, especially tobacco from the Virginia colony, it was important for tobacco growers to have a steady workforce. In the beginning, white indentured servants filled the need. But as the lure of the New World began to wane, colonial planters looked elsewhere for their labor supply and began to depend more heavily on African slaves to plant, cultivate, and harvest a crop. In addition, as life expectancy in Virginia improved, slaves began to appear a more attractive investment. By 1700, a slave cost about twice as much as a servant; but a slave, unlike a servant, was bound to the master for life. For that reason alone Virginia planters bought all that traders, who had long supplied slaves to the Caribbean, could bring. Given the seemingly endless supply of Africans being brought to the colony, the problem of labor shortage and labor discipline appeared to have been solved. Slavery also offered unexpected social benefits. As slaves fell permanently under the control of their masters, they could safely be denied rights that an Englishman, indentured or free, could legally demand as a subject of the crown. Slaves could thus be subjected to harsh punishment without recourse; they could be kept unarmed, isolated, and ignorant. Their skin color marked

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their probable status, making escape even more difficult. The continued abuse of Englishmen under indentured servitude might have resulted in protests from England and governmental prohibition on the further importation of servants to the colonies. The enslavement of Africans was possible, and apparently regarded as a common sense solution to the problems that Virginia faced. It is not too much to say, as the historian Edmund Morgan observed in American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, that Virginians enslaved Africans because they could not enslave Englishmen.

The Hardening of Slavery in the Eighteenth Century With the first African arrivals, ideas about race, slavery, and a proscribed code of conduct for blacks and whites in Virginia had not fully taken shape. Scholars continue to debate whether racism against blacks brought the adoption of a legal system that supported slavery in Virginia or whether the practice of slavery gave rise to racist attitudes. Not all African Americans were enslaved in colonial Virginia; many were property owners who paid taxes, went to court, married, and raised families. Among the more resourceful blacks who managed to purchase his freedom and enter the ranks of the planter class was Anthony Johnson. First appearing in colonial records in 1621 identified only as “Antonio a Negro,” Johnson was sold as a slave; he subsequently survived an Indian attack in which 52 other men died. He married an African woman. By 1650, as Anthony Johnson, he had acquired his freedom along with 250 acres and a herd of cattle. In 1655, Johnson successfully sued a white man named Robert Parker for wrongfully detaining a slave that belonged to Johnson. Sometime during the 1660s, Johnson moved his family to Somerset, Maryland, where they continued to prosper until the turn of the century.

Johnson was not alone. In Northampton County, Virginia, between 1644 and 1677, for example, 10 of 53 black males were free householders. These free blacks lived like the whites who were not of the wealthiest class. They owned some land, farmed, raised livestock, and argued in court. But the number of blacks, free or bound, remained small until 1650. Out of a Chesapeake population of nearly 13,000, only 300 were black. In the 1660s, however, the colonial government of Virginia began establishing the legal framework for perpetual servitude based on race. Every year between 1667 and 1672, the General Assembly enacted legislation that more fully defined a Virginian’s status based on skin color. Similar laws followed in 1680, 1682, and 1686. Punishments for blacks began to be harsher than those for whites who committed the same offense. A watershed year came in 1669, when Virginia became the first English colony to declare that it was not a crime to kill an unruly slave in the ordinary course of administering punishment. That same year, Virginia also prohibited masters from freeing slaves unless the freedmen were deported from the colony. Virginia also voted to banish any white man or woman who married a black, mulatto, or Indian. White slave owners, by contrast, were not held legally accountable for having sexual relations with their female slaves. Further legal restraints were deemed necessary in 1676, after a group of poor, landless whites joined a smaller number of blacks under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon, a landowner sympathetic to their plight and hostile to the colonial government. The group staged the largest popular uprising in British North America before the American War for Independence. Virginians feared men, regardless of the color of their skin, who were landless, and thus lacked any tangible stake in society. The interracial alliance of poor, landless whites and black slaves during Bacon’s Rebellion so frightened colonial officials that another law was passed barring blacks and whites

Virginia from engaging in any kind of political or social assembly. There was also another reason for redefining the status of blacks in Virginia; their growing numbers troubled whites. Between 1680 and 1720, the percentage of black slaves in Virginia soared from 7 to 30 percent. By 1705, Virginia had enacted a number of laws that removed any doubt about the status of African Americans in the colony. These statutes for the first time differentiated sharply between the legal status of whites and blacks. Simply put, whites had rights and blacks did not. With more slaves arriving in Virginia every year, the number of white servants fell dramatically. Improving economic conditions in England also influenced others who might once have emigrated to stay put. As a consequence, by the end of the eighteenth century, Virginia planters relied almost exclusively on slave labor for their economic well-being. Enslaved African Americans also worked as skilled tradesmen in the countryside and in the capital city of Williamsburg. Many others served as domestics in the households of the wealthy. The constant interaction between slave and master led to the emergence of a new and distinctive culture in the colony. White economic reliance on black labor led to an uneasy interaction and dependence between the two races. Recognizing that slave labor was the essential linchpin to their way of life meant that many white Virginians reacted adversely to talk of emancipation while, at the same time, living in fear of slave rebellion. These elements combined to foster an unyielding racial prejudice that continued well into the twentieth century. For many slaves in Virginia, the coming of the American Revolution offered an opportunity for freedom. At first they thought to give their allegiance to the rebels. But the barring of blacks from service in the Continental army prompted many to look to the British, who promised them freedom in exchange for their aid in undermining the colonial cause. In 1775, the royal governor of

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Virginia, Lord Dunmore, sought to disrupt the American war effort by promising freedom to any slaves owned by rebellious masters who would join the Loyalist forces. (Lord Dunmore did not extend the same offer to slaves owned by those who supported Great Britain.) Within a month, 300 black men had joined Dunmore’s “Ethiopian” regiment, with another 500 eventually serving with the British. In addition, thousands of blacks ran away from their masters. Others, however, cast their lot with the Americans. Some black Virginians were employed by the colonial navy as seamen or pilots on various ships fighting against the British Royal Navy. In the end, though, the thousands of African Americans who took part in the American War for Independence lost their chance for freedom no matter which side they served. Slaves of British Loyalists were confiscated along with other property and either sent to the Caribbean or to work on other plantations. For those who aided the American patriots, the reward was little more than enjoying temporary freedom while waiting for their masters to reclaim them.

Unrest and Rebellion In 1791, a revolt broke out in the wealthy French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue when free blacks were denied citizenship, Slaves joined in the revolt, killing every white person on whom they could lay their hands. Word of the rebellion reached the United States, inspiring slaves with hope and whites with fear. In 1799, in Richmond, Virginia, a white overseer caught a slave blacksmith named Gabriel Prosser stealing a pig. Gabriel attacked the white man, biting off his ear. For his actions, Gabriel was branded in open court and spent a month in jail. Angered over the incident, Gabriel felt it was time for American slaves to rise in revolt. Because of his skills, Gabriel was often hired out to other plantations. Secretly, he and other slaves began making

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A newspaper cartoon depicts the violent slave uprising led by Nat Turner that began on August 22, 1831, when Turner killed his master and his master’s family. The revolt only lasted about a week, but Turner eluded capture until October of that year. He was later tried and hanged for the crime. (Library of Congress)

weapons in preparation for a slave revolt scheduled to take place on the night of August 30. Unfortunately, the day of the planned attack saw heavy rains, making roads almost impossible to travel; Gabriel decided to postpone the attack, but his plans were uncovered. Gabriel along with 65 of his followers stood trial; he and 26 others were executed. In 1831, Nat Turner’s Rebellion broke out near Jerusalem, Virginia. Born in 1800, Turner saw religious visions from an early age and preached to other slaves. In August 1831, he believed God had called him to strike back against the white oppressors. Turner and 40 of his followers went on a 36-hour rampage in which they killed 57 whites, including men, women, and children. Approximately 1,000 Virginia militia and federal troops were summoned to restore order

and capture the perpetrators; they killed at least 100 blacks who were not involved in the rebellion. More than 50 suspected slave rebels were captured within a few days; Turner remained at large for almost two months before he was finally caught, tried, and hanged. In the aftermath of Turner’s Rebellion, Virginia executed 55 persons, yet the state was mindful to reimburse the slaveholders for the loss of their property. But the damage was done; Gabriel Prosser’s and Nat Turner’s rebellions cost the lives of an additional 200 African Americans who were murdered by white mobs who feared further slave uprisings. At one point, the state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain it and to enact even harsher laws against African Americans, slave or free.

Virginia

Antebellum Life These attitudes meant that, on the eve of the Civil War, even free blacks in Virginia faced severe restrictions. Constituting about 10 percent of the black population of Virginia in 1860, free blacks were not afforded the rights and privileges of full citizenship. If married to an enslaved black, for instance, the union was not sanctioned at law and the enslaved partner as well as any children remained the property of the master. Four years earlier, in 1856, the Virginia General Assembly had enacted two laws explicitly designed to undermine free blacks in the commonwealth. The first, passed on March 11, provided for the voluntary enslavement of free blacks. A free black woman 18 years of age and a free black man of 21 could select their own master by petitioning the circuit court. The second, passed on March 17, stated that freed slaves would forfeit their freedom and be returned to slavery if they did not leave Virginia within one year of their emancipation. As was the case in all the slave states, the slave codes of Virginia continued to impose stern discipline on the slaves and to inflict harsh punishments for offenses ranging from the trivial to the serious. Like their counterparts elsewhere, however, Virginia slave owners were reluctant to impose long jail sentences or inflict the death penalty on slaves found guilty of a crime, if for no other reason than the slaves represented a significant capital investment. The loss of their labor even for a brief period robbed planters of their property and threatened their economic welfare. Concentrated in the Tidewater region and scattered more sparsely throughout the rest of the state, slavery was actually becoming less important in Virginia during the 20 years before the Civil War than it was in the cotton- and sugar-growing states of the Deep South. Many Virginia slave owners thus supplemented their incomes by selling their excess slaves. Virginia, in essence, became a slave-exporting state. Lumpkin’s Jail in the Shockoe Bottom district of Richmond became

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one of the most notorious slave markets in the entire South. Located on a half an acre of land, the jail was known to blacks as “The Devil’s Half Acre” because it was a holding pen for more than 300,000 slaves awaiting sale further south. Owned by slave dealer Robert Lumpkin, the jail was the largest antebellum slave-trading center outside of New Orleans. Yet, by 1860, 490,000 slaves lived in Virginia, nearly 40 percent of the total population. Four hundred thirty thousand resided east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The slaves who remained on Virginia plantations found themselves subject to the discipline of the master or the overseer, who could often subject them to ruthless treatment. In Virginia, slaves also labored in cities, though both skilled and unskilled white workers protested. Virginia slaves were routinely employed in tobacco-processing factories in Danville, Lynchburg, and Petersburg and in iron foundries, such as the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. They also worked as stevedores on the docks of Norfolk. On January 1, 1858, which was the annual hiring day for slaves in Warrenton, Virginia, for example, 500 slaves were advertised as available to “hire out” to perform a wide variety of tasks from working in the fields to cutting and hauling wood, from laying or repairing railroad track to digging canals. There was a ready market in Virginia for hiring slaves. Some whites needed the services of slaves, but lacked the funds to purchase them. Others had only a temporary or seasonal need for slave labor, and thus found it more economical to lease rather than to buy. In Virginia, as in other southern states, more male than female slaves were hired out. Men worked in a variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, such as porters, messengers, and day laborers as well as more skilled occupations such as blacksmiths, coopers, and carpenters. Women tended to concentrate on domestic tasks such as laundry, house cleaning, and cooking, although they sometimes sold foodstuffs, cloth, and other items.

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Slaves could not legally contract for their services, so the master and the employer routinely worked out labor agreements. Some slaves, however, were permitted to hire themselves out, though they composed only a small percentage of all hired slaves. In Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915, Loren Schweninger found that there were 2,500 self-hired slaves in Virginia in 1860; their number constituted 10 percent of the slaves whose masters had hired them to work for another. Slavery was a complex affair in Virginia, and was not confined to plantation agriculture as it principally was in the cotton states of the Deep South. Yet, white Virginians steadfastly defended it against mounting abolitionist criticism. In the wake of John Brown’s violent raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859, Virginians rallied to the proslavery cause and never wavered. Many believed that northerners’ praise for Brown’s efforts to seize the federal arsenal, arm the slaves, and foment a slave insurrection in Virginia that would spread throughout the South and baptize the land in blood had severed the remaining bonds of Union. Although Virginia authorities executed Brown on December 2, 1859, within a little more than a year after his death, the national debate over “the negro question” erupted into civil war.

The Civil War, Reconstruction, and “Jim Crow” Virginia was among the last southern states to leave the Union. Only on April 17, 1861, two days after President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Confederate “rebellion,” did the Virginia legislature vote, 88 in favor and 45 opposed, for secession. When voters ratified the Ordinance of Secession, Virginia joined the Confederate States of America on May 23, 1861, with Richmond becoming the new national capital.

Military officials forced thousands of blacks into Confederate service as laborers and drovers. Others toiled at the same skilled trades at which they had worked before the war, such as shoemaking, blacksmithing, and coal mining. Many escaped, made their way to Federal lines, and joined the Union army. Estimates suggest that at a minimum, 5,723 black Virginians enlisted. Black Virginians never questioned the significance of the war, especially after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863. In the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had declared that “all persons held as slaves” in those states still in a state of rebellion “are, and henceforth shall be, free.” This message resonated throughout the slave quarters across the South. As one returning African American solider who entered Richmond, Virginia, near the end of the war told his enslaved brothers and sisters: “We have come to set you free.” On April 9, 1865, at the home of Wilmer McLean in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered to his Union counterpart General Ulysses S. Grant, supreme commander of all Federal troops. The Civil War was over. Slavery was at an end. For African Americans from Virginia to Arkansas, Union victory meant the beginning of a new life, filled with much hope and many uncertainties ahead. Many white Virginians, like white southerners from other states, believed that blacks could not survive in freedom. Many accused blacks of being too lazy to work without supervision and coercion, and so expected that for them, freedom would mean the freedom to steal or starve. However, Virginia blacks responded to emancipation in much the same way as blacks elsewhere. They tried to take control of their lives by withdrawing women from work outside the home and focusing on raising their children, acquiring land, and exercising their civil and political rights. Such goals

Virginia were often more easily articulated than accomplished, for blacks in Virginia and throughout the postwar South faced numerous legal and extra-legal barriers to their advancement. The Black Codes, which existed in every southern state, prevented blacks from owning land or working at a profession. In effect, they compelled blacks to remain agricultural laborers in the employ of white landowners. The Black Codes reestablished slavery by another name. Blacks nonetheless made some progress. Twenty-four black Virginians were elected as delegates to the state constitutional convention that met in Richmond between December 3, 1867, and April 16, 1868. Working through organizations such as the Union, the freedmen negotiated more favorable labor contracts for themselves in 1866 and 1867 than those they received at the end of the war in 1865. The growing prominence of blacks in Virginia political and economic life, however, only made whites more determined to regain control of the state government. On January 26, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an executive order readmitting Virginia to the Union. Grant took this action after state politicians fashioned a compromise whereby the new state constitution (known as the Underwood Constitution after the president of the constitutional convention, John C. Underwood, a federal judge and New York native who had lived in Virginia since the 1850s) would acknowledge blacks’ right to vote but at the same time would not disfranchise former Confederate officials. On July 6, 1869, Virginia voters had overwhelmingly supported the Underwood Constitution, and on October 8, 1869, the General Assembly eliminated the final obstacle to readmission when members ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. During the 1870s and 1880s, blacks occupied a prominent position in the political coalition forged by Confederate general turned railroad tycoon William Mahone of Petersburg. When

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Mahone was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880, he joined the Republican Party, which, along with the conspicuous presence of blacks in his movement, alienated Virginia Democrats, who constituted the largest political body in the state. A white backlash, even among a number of Mahone’s own supporters, was inevitable. The Democrats became the white man’s party. The election of Fitzhugh Lee as governor in 1885 marked the ascendancy of the Democratic Party in Virginia politics that lasted more than 75 years. During the last years of the nineteenth century, Virginia Democrats, now firmly in control of the General Assembly, called for a convention to revise the Underwood Constitution. Voters complied in the spring of 1900, and the convention met in two sessions from July 12, 1901, to June 26, 1902. The need for electoral and judicial reform to end political corruption and to regulate corporations, especially the powerful railroads, had prompted the convention. But so had the desire among Democrats to break the power of the Republican Party in the state by disfranchising blacks. Twelve Republican and 88 Democratic delegates approved the restrictions on black suffrage that Carter Glass of Lynchburg had proposed. To circumvent, without appearing to violate, the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the 1901–1902 Virginia Constitutional Convention required voters to prove their understanding of the state constitution and imposed a poll tax of $1.50 to be paid annually by registered voters. New voters had to pay $4.50, the sum of the poll tax for each of the previous years, and a large sum of money in those days. The Democratic majority in the General Assembly appointed all election registrars and polling officials, who often arranged for the party to pay the requisite taxes of poor Democrats but who rarely found blacks or poor white Republicans qualified to vote. As intended, these measures reduced the number of eligible voters by more than 50 percent and, by 1904, diminished

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the number of black voters from approximately 147,000 to fewer than 10,000. Literacy tests, such as Virginia’s requiring a “reasonable explanation” of any part of the state constitution, did not disappear until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stipulated that anyone with a sixth-grade education was presumed literate. The Twenty-fouth Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the poll tax in federal elections. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court banned it in all elections.

The Continuing Fight for Civil Rights Although some of the most notorious and important events of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s to the 1970s took place in the Deep South, Virginia’s role in this historic struggle for African American equality is sometimes overlooked. Yet, it was in Virginia that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed more lawsuits than in any other state, while the white response to civil rights, particularly school integration, was carried out in Virginia through the program of Massive Resistance, which, although futile, slowed the progress of African American rights in the state for years. Many of the most significant legal landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement originated in Virginia. Irene Morgan brought the lawsuit that desegregated equality in interstate bus travel in 1946. Another Virginia case extended the prohibition against segregation to include interstate bus waiting rooms and restrooms. One of the five school desegregation lawsuits decided by the momentous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, resulted from the student strike at Moton High School in Farmville, led by teenager Barbara Johns. The case of Green v. School Board of New Kent County became the single most important school desegregation decision since the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. Southern juries were desegregated as a result of

Johnson v. Virginia in 1963. Richard Perry Loving’s case resulted in the overturning of 17 state laws banning interracial marriage. In 1954, the political organization of U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. controlled Virginia politics. Senator Byrd promoted the “Southern Manifesto” opposing integrated schools, which was signed in 1956 by more than 100 southern officeholders. On February 25, 1956, Byrd called for what became known as Massive Resistance. This was a group of laws, passed in 1958, intended to prevent the integration of public schools in Virginia. At the heart of the Massive Resistance campaign was a law that would cut off state funds and close any public school that integrated. In September 1958, several schools in Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk were about to integrate under court order; instead they were seized and closed even though the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the school-closing law. After Virginia’s schoolclosing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the state’s compulsory school attendance law and made the operation of public schools a local option for the state’s counties and cities. But a simultaneous federal verdict against the schoolclosing law based on the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment could not be evaded. As a result, schools that had been closed were reopened. It seemed that citizens wanted their schools, even if it meant integrating them. Still, the numbers of African American students attending the newly integrated schools was quite small. In one county, Prince Edward, county officials tried a different tack. Ordered on May 1, 1959, to integrate its schools, county officials refused to comply and closed its entire public school system. Their solution came in the form of a series of private schools for the county’s white children, which were supported by state tuition grants and county

Virginia tax credits. Prince Edward’s solution to integration became the prototype for the all-white private schools formed throughout the commonwealth to protest school integration. African American children did not fare well throughout this period. No provisions were made for their schooling. Some students moved in with relatives in other communities or attended makeshift schools held in church basements. However, many black students simply were unable to attend school for over five years. Not until 1964, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Virginia’s tuition grants to private education, did Prince Edward County reopen its schools, marking the end of Virginia’s Massive Resistance protests. Further progress was made with the passing of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, in which federal funds were denied to schools resisting integration. This resulted in greater, but by no means full, compliance on the part of Virginia schools. Throughout Virginia, another, more passive form of resistance to integration was done through “white flight,” either to private schools or out of cities with large black populations to outlying, mostly white suburbs. In Richmond, for example, the percentage of white students enrolled in city schools plummeted from 45 to 21 percent between 1960 and 1975. The most violent episode of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia occurred in Danville during the summer of 1963, at the same time that the nation was transfixed by the televised images of T. Eugene “Bull” Connor turning dogs and high-pressure water hoses against demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. On May 31, 1963, representatives of the black community marched in a body to the city municipal building. The group was protesting against the segregated public facilities, and the need for equal employment opportunities, representation in city government, and the creation of a biracial commission to monitor racial progress. Still, the city resisted and

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instead through intimidation and force tried to prevent further protests and demonstrations. On June 10, 60 high school students marched again to the Danville municipal building. While the leaders of the march were arrested, others fled and were cornered in a blind alley where highpressure hoses were turned on them. Using nightsticks on the students, police officers arrested them and hauled them to jail. In the end, it would take the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to see their complaints answered. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965, African Americans were once more able to seize their political rights. The law authorized federal supervision of voter registration wherever fewer than half of eligible voters were registered, which included virtually all the states of the South. Supplemented by black freedom schools, these registration drives and voter rallies tripled the number of black voters by 1968, and the number continued to grow thereafter. In Virginia, the results were dramatic. In 1967, Dr. William F. Reid became the first African American delegate in the Virginia General Assembly in 82 years. Virginia’s first black mayor was Hermanze E. Fauntleroy Jr. who became mayor of Petersburg in 1973. By 1977, the majority of Richmond’s city council members were black. By 1985, there were seven black members of the General Assembly. And in 1989, L. Douglas Wilder became the first black governor elected in any state, with black voters providing his margin of victory. In 1992, Robert Cortez “Bobby” Scott became the first black congressman elected from Virginia since 1888. With the arrival of blacks on the political stage there emerged a growing interest by blacks and whites alike in African and African American history. By February 1976, Negro History Week, conceived by the Virginia-born historian Carter G. Woodson, had become Black History Month. Black studies courses and academic departments

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L. Douglas Wilder is sworn in as the 66th governor of Virginia during a ceremony outside the Capitol in Richmond, 1990. Wilder became the first elected black governor of the United States. (AP/Wide World Photos)

were founded. Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources increased the number of roadside historical markers noting black achievements and rewrote the text of old signs that perpetuated racial stereotypes. Virginians took a new interest in saving historic structures in black communities such as Jackson Ward in Richmond and in finding viable uses for them. Continuing into the twenty-first century, African Americans continue to play a vital role in the commonwealth’s history and direction.

Notable African Americans

Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. In 1786, the state of Virginia granted him his freedom for services rendered during the war.

Ashe, Arthur (1943–1993) Arthur Ashe Jr. was the first African American player to break the color barrier in the international sport of tennis. After retiring from the sport in 1979, Ashe became known for his work to promote human rights, quality healthcare, and education.

Armistead, James Lafayette (c. 1760–1830)

Bailey, Pearl (1918–1988)

A slave who joined the American army with the consent of his master, James Lafayette Armistead was a spy whose reports on the activities of the British army contributed to the defeat of Lord

Pearl Bailey was an entertainer and actress known not only for her distinctive style and her singing but also because of her work with social, civic and charitable activities.

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the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, antislavery office in 1849 in order to escape from slavery. He became a noted antislavery speaker.

Brown, Ruth (1928–2007) Ruth Brown was a popular rhythm-and-blues singer whose hit singles helped Atlantic Records become one of the leaders in the music industry. In the 1960s, Brown turned to acting that led to Tony and Grammy Awards.

Cary, Lott (1780–1828) Lott Cary, along with his colleague, Colin Teague, were the first black Christian missionaries to Africa. A devoted Baptist, Cary worked in the region that eventually became the country of Liberia.

Davis, Arthur (1904–1996) Arthur Ashe was a talented professional tennis player and the first nationally recognized African American male in the sport. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Beckwourth, James (1798–1866) James Beckwourth was an African American fur trapper and trader who became a war chief of the Crow tribe and discovered one of the main entry routes into northern California from the east.

Brown, Christ (1989–) Chris Brown is a rhythm-and-blues singer who in 2005, at the age of 16, became the first male artist to have a song debut at number one.

Brown, Henry “Box” (1815–1879) Henry “Box” Brown got his nickname “Box” after he mailed himself from Richmond, Virginia, to

Dr. Arthur P. Davis was an influential university teacher, literary scholar, and the author and editor of several important critical texts. His 1941 book, The Negro Caravan, was a landmark work in the study of black American literature.

Davis, Charles T. (1918–1981) Charles T. Davis was an influential literary critic and scholar who focused on black literature, culture, and history. His work boosted the study of African American literature within the American literary tradition.

Davis, Richard L. (1864–1900) Richard L. Davis has been called the most important black coal miner and labor leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Davis was a founder of the United Mine Workers

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of America (UMWA) in 1890 and a delegate to its first convention.

incorporated African American folklore themes and images.

Delany, Sadie (1889–1999)

Hill, Oliver (1907–2007)

Sadie Delany was a noted educator who at the age of 100 gained worldwide fame along with her sister Annie Elizabeth with the publication of their dual memoir, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years (1993).

Oliver Hill was a noted civil rights attorney. Hill eventually became the leading attorney in the case of Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), which was one of five cases that the Supreme Court combined into their 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education.

Elliot, Missy (1971–) Missy Elliot is a singer/rapper, songwriter, arranger, and producer.

Lanier, Willie (1945–)

Fairley, James Conway (1854–1910)

Willie Lanier was an NFL football player who played for the Kansas City Chiefs (1967–1977); and was elected to the professional Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986.

James Conway Farley is generally recognized as the first African American photographer.

Malone, Moses (1955–)

Fitzgerald, Ella (1917–1996) Ella Fitzgerald was a noted jazz singer, known as “The First Lady of Song.” Fitzgerald was known for her improvising and singing scat. Over the course of her career, she won 13 Grammy Awards.

Moses Malone is a professional basketball player who played for the ABA Utah Stars and St. Louis Spirits (1974–1976) and the NBA Buffalo Braves, Houston Rockets, and Philadelphia 76ers (1976–1995). He was a three-time NBA MVP (1979, 1982, 1983) and was named “One of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History” (1996). He is also a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2001).

Granger, Lester (1896–1976) Lester Granger was head of the National Urban League as well as an important civil rights leader, particularly during World War II, when he worked to desegregate defense plants and U.S. Navy facilities.

Mourning, Alonzo (1970–) Alonzo Mourning is a basketball player whose career included playing for the Charlotte Hornets (1992–1995) and Miami Heat (1995–2003). He was also a member of Team USA, which won the Olympic Gold Medal in 2000.

Hayden, Palmer (1890–1973) Palmer Hayden was one of the most important African American painters during the twentieth century. Hayden was known for his work, which depicted everyday black life. His work also

Prosser, Gabriel (c. 1775–1800) Gabriel Prosser was the African American slave leader of an unsuccessful revolt in Richmond, Virginia, during the summer of 1800.

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Reid, Tim (1944–)

Underwood, Blair (1964–)

Tim Reid is an actor, director and producer who has sought through his own acting and productions to feature realistic images of African Americans and African American life.

Blair Underwood is an actor in both film and television. His credits include Full Frontal, Rules of Engagement, City of Angels, LAX, and L.A. Law; Underwood was also an NAACP Image Award Winner for 1992, 1995, 1999, and 2001.

Robinson, Bill “Bojangles” (1878–1949) Bill Robinson was one of the most popular and beloved performers of his day. Robinson may be best known for his roles in Shirley Temple movies such as The Little Colonel (1935), where he taught the popular child star a version of the step dance. Robinson also enjoyed success on the stage and in nightclubs.

Scott, Dred (1795–1858) Dred Scott, was a slave who, in an effort to gain his freedom, waged one of the most important legal battles in the history of the United States. In 1846, he filed suit in the Missouri state courts for his freedom on the grounds that residence in a free territory had liberated him. On March 6, 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, after much debate, the Supreme Court ruled against Scott stating that Scott was not a citizen because he was both a black man and a slave.

Sykes, Wanda (1964–) Wanda Sykes is a popular stand-up comic actress of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Walker, Maggie L. (c. 1864–1934) Maggie Walker was the first woman bank president in the United States as well as a wellknown advocate of African American women’s rights.

Washington, Booker T. (1856–1915) Booker T. Washington was the most influential African American leader in the country from about 1890 until his death. An educator, orator, author, and political figure, Washington is best known as the first president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which he headed from 1881 until his death.

Whitaker, Pernell (1964–) Pernell Whitaker is a boxer who won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1984 and is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame (2006).

Wilder, L. Douglas (1931–) L. Douglas Wilder became the first elected African American governor in U.S. history and the first elected African American mayor of Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy.

Taylor, Lawrence (1959–) Lawrence Taylor was a football player who was the second overall draft pick in 1981 and went on to play for the New York Giants (1981– 1993). He is also a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Woodson, Carter G. (1875–1950) Called the “Father of Negro History,” Carter G. Woodson was instrumental in the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 as well as setting the

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groundwork for Black History Month. During his lifetime, he was probably the most significant scholar promoting the history and achievements of African Americans.

Young, Roger Arliner (1889–1964) Dr. Roger Young was the first African American woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in zoology.

Cultural Contributions African Americans have played a vital role in Virginia’s cultural life. Their contributions come at all levels of the arts, scholarship, popular culture, music, and daily life. Everyday cultural expressions of African Americans are seen in such culinary delights as soul food, that is, food that is historically derived from some of the first foods brought over by Africans upon their arrival to the New World. This included such staples as black-eyed peas, okra, sweet sorghum, and watermelon. These foods were combined with other foodstuffs, such as rice, yams, and other vegetables as well as meats such as pork, fish, and chicken, to create a cuisine that was both flavorful and colorful and which is still enjoyed by blacks and whites today. Quilting is another important artistic contribution by African American women in Virginia; although the quilts were made for everyday use, their intricate designs and symbols also make them worthy works of art. One of the most influential African American educators and leaders in the early twentiethcentury was Booker T. Washington, who founded Tuskegee Institute for black students, making it one of the leading colleges for blacks in the country. His “Atlanta Compromise” speech made him America’s major black leader for 20 years. In the area of scholarship, Carter G. Woodson’s establishing of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History was the first step toward recognizing the accomplishments and

contributions of African Americans everywhere. Woodson was the first scholar to study black history, believing in the importance of African Americans understanding and learning from their history. Woodson’s efforts led to the creation in 1926 of Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month. African American artists from Virginia have played important roles in the art world. Palmer Hayden is regarded as one of the premier artists depicting the African American folk experience. Hayden’s work focuses on the everyday life of African Americans. Corinne Mitchell, whose works are known for their feminist tone as well as documenting pivotal events in African American history, became the first African American to have a solo exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Sculptor Inge Hardison’s work also interpreted the black experience. Her series of busts of “Negro Giants in History” has introduced many young students to sculpture and to important African American figures. In the areas of theater and film, African Americans have made invaluable contributions. Located in Norfolk is the Attucks Theatre, once known as “the Apollo of the South” during the early part of the twentieth century. It is the oldest remaining theater in the nation that was financed, designed and constructed by African Americans. Newly remodeled, the theater today is an important cultural center where live concerts, theatrical performances, and educational programs are held. As an actor, producer, and director, Tim Reid has created films (Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored) and television programs (Frank’s Place) that feature realistic portrayals of African Americans and African American life. In the music world, a number of African Americans from Virginia have made their mark in various musical genres from jazz to rhythm and blues to rock to rap. Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald were both known for their powerful

Virginia voices and distinctive jazz singing styles. Rhythmand-blues singer Ruth Brown had several crossover hits during the 1960s, which established her as one of the leading voices in rhythm and blues. The tenor saxophone playing of the late Clarence Clemmons was one of the driving forces of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Rap music has been well represented by native Virginians Missy Elliot, Timbaland, and Chris Brown.

Bibliography Berlin, Ira. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. Breen, T. H., and Stephen Innes, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Brewer, James H. The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861–1865. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969. Dailey, Jane Elizabeth. Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Post-Emancipation Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Davis, Veronica. Inspiring African American Women of Virginia. Hampton, VA: Virginia Roots, 2005. Egerton, Douglas R. Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. The Classic Slave Narratives. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

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Hashaw, Tim. The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Jordan, Ervin. Black Confederates and AfroYankees in Civil War Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Malvasi, Mark G. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere, 1500–1888. Columbia, SC: St. James Press/The Gale Group, Inc., 2003. Minchinton, Waler, Celia King, and Peter Waite. Virginia Slave-Trade Statistics, 1698–1775. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1984. Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country. Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998. Mullin, Gerald R. Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Parent, Anthony. Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740. Williamsburg: VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006. PBS. “Africans in America.” www.pbs.org/wgbh/ aia/home.html. Russell, John. The Free Negro in Virginia. 1619– 1865. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Schwarz, Philip J. Slave Laws in Virginia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Smith, J. Douglas. Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century

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Virginia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Vaughan, Alden T. “The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97 (1989): 311–354. Walsh, Lorena S., “The Chesapeake Slave Trade: Regional Patterns, African Origins, and Some Implications.” William and Mary Quarterly, January 2001.

Windley, Lathan A. A Profile of Runaway Slaves in Virginia and South Carolina from 1730 through 1787. New York: Routledge, 1995. Windley, Lathan A. Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History from the 1730s to 1790. 4 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983. Volume 1 features Virginia ads. Wynn, Linda T. “Slave Life in Piedmont Virginia, 1720–1800.” In Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, 433–484.

WASHINGTON Quintard Taylor

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Chronology 1804–1806

The Lewis and Clark expedition explores newly purchased Louisiana and the Pacific Northwest; an African American, York, is prominent in the expedition.

1844

(June 25) The Legislative Committee of the Provisional Government of Oregon enacts the first of a series of black exclusion laws.

1844

George Bush, a free African American, travels with a party of Missouri emigrants on the Oregon Trail. When Bush reaches Oregon City in November, he decides to move to the sparsely populated area north of the Columbia to avoid the exclusion law. His decision encourages other settlers to follow. Eventually they petition Congress to create Washington Territory.

1845

George Bush is among a group of settlers who establish Tumwater in Washington Territory in 1845.

1858

William Grose arrives in Seattle and soon afterwards establishes “Our House,” on the waterfront, the first rooming house and restaurant in the city.

1859

Rebecca Howard founds the Pacific House Hotel and Restaurant in Olympia.

1869

African American entrepreneur George P. Riley purchases a section of land in Tacoma, Washington Territory. That section attracts settlers and is eventually known as the Hilltop District.

1875

(January 8) George and Mary Jane Washington found the town of Centerville (later Centralia) in the Washington Territory.

1883

African American women in Washington Territory are among the first black women in the nation to vote. Although a decision of the Washington Territorial Supreme Court bans women from voting in 1887, women in Washington permanently receive the right to vote in 1910.

1886

The earliest African American church in the territory (eventually called First African Methodist Episcopal or AME) is established by black Seattle residents.

1888

The first of 300 African American coal miners and their families arrive in Roslyn to work as strikebreakers for the Northern Pacific Railroad–owned coal mines.

1889

William Owen Bush becomes the first African American elected to serve in the Washington State Legislature; Bush is the author of the state’s first civil rights act and one of the cosponsors of Washington State University.

1889

(November 11) Washington enters the Union as the 42nd state.

1894

Horace Cayton establishes the Seattle Republican, the largest and most influential newspaper owned by African Americans in the state’s history.

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1896

Daniel K. Oliver is the first African American in the state to be elected to a municipal office when he becomes a member of the Spokane City Council.

1899

(April 3) The first buffalo soldiers, 107 men of the 24th Infantry, arrive at Fort Wright near Spokane. Within two years, buffalo soldiers will also be stationed at Vancouver Barracks in Vancouver and Fort Lawton in Seattle.

1910

Spokane African Americans, led by Peter Barrow Jr. create the Deer Lake Irrigated Orchards Company, one of the first enterprises to commercially grow apples in Washington.

1913

The first National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch in the state is established by 22 Seattleites led by Letitia Graves.

1917

The Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs is established in Spokane by Mrs. Nettie Asberry of Tacoma.

1920

John H. Ryan is elected to represent the 28th District (Tacoma) in the state House of Representatives. Ryan serves almost continuously until 1943, the longest tenure of any African American in that body.

1930

The Seattle Urban League is established by a group led by Lottie Biggs; the first executive director is Joseph S. Jackson.

1934

Led by Harry Bridges’ Longshoremen’s union, black and white workers merge into integrated unions on Seattle’s waterfront.

1935

African Americans, Filipino Americans, and segments of organized labor successfully defeat the first attempt to enact a measure to ban interracial marriage.

1936

Helen Dundee of Spokane, a graduate of Washington State College, is hired by the Spokane School District, becoming the first African American to teach in a public school in Washington State.

1942

Dorothy West Williams becomes the first African American production worker hired by the Boeing Airplane Company.

1942–1945

Over 20,000 African Americans migrate to Washington State, increasing the 1940 black population of the state by over 313 percent.

1949

Washington State enacts the first fair employment practices law in the West.

1950

Seattle attorney Charles Stokes becomes the first African American elected to the state legislature from the city’s 37th District.

1957

The Washington State Legislature enacts the Omnibus Civil Rights Act.

1961

(October) Seattle civil rights protesters begin various protests of employment discrimination in downtown stores, including selective buying campaigns.

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1963

(March 14) Washington ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1963

(July 1) Thirty-five demonstrators stage Seattle’s first sit-in when they occupy City Hall for 24 hours.

1963

(August 28) The same day as the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Seattle Public School District becomes the first major school system in the country to initiate a voluntary desegregation plan.

1963

(November 27) The Seattle City Council approves an open housing ordinance subject to ratification at the general election on March 10, 1964.

1964

(March 10) Seattle voters defeat the open-housing ordinance enacted by the City Council by a margin of 115,626 to 54,448.

1964

(Summer) The Seattle Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) initiates the Drive for Equal Employment in Downtown Stores, the largest protest campaign involving racial discrimination ever undertaken in the state of Washington. Its most significant victory is Nordstrom’s agreement to develop one of the first voluntary affirmative action plans in the nation.

1967

(November 7) Sam Smith is elected Seattle’s first black city councilman. Art Fletcher becomes the first African American councilman in Pasco.

1968

(April 7) Three days after Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, nearly 10,000 people in Seattle march in memory of his life and legacy.

1968

(April 19) The Seattle City Council enacts a fair housing ordinance introduced by African American Councilman Sam Smith.

1968

(November) Art Fletcher narrowly loses his bid to become lieutenant governor; Fletcher is the first African American nominated by either major party for a statewide office in Washington.

1969

(January 1) Edwin Pratt, executive director of the Seattle Urban League, is assassinated in the door of his home; the assassins are never apprehended.

1970

Three African Americans, State Senator George Fleming and State Representatives Peggy Maxie and Michael Ross, represent Seattle’s 37th District in the state legislature. This is the only time in the twentieth century that three black legislators are elected from a district.

1970

(February) U.S. District Judge William Lindberg institutes the “Seattle Plan” to integrate the city’s formerly all-white construction unions. The Seattle Plan becomes a national model for affirmative action in the construction industry.

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1975

William Craven is appointed mayor of Roslyn; one year later, he wins a four-year term as mayor. Craven is the first African American in the state to become mayor of a municipality.

1978

Seattle becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools without a court order; nearly 25 percent of the district’s students are bused as part of the “Seattle Plan.”

1981

Spokane residents elect city council member James E. Chase as the first African American mayor of the city.

1983

Henry Beauchamp is elected the first black mayor of Yakima.

1984

Joe Jackson is elected the first African American mayor of Pasco.

1986

County Councilmember Ron Sims initiates a campaign to rename King County, the most populous county in the state, for Dr. Martin Luther King.

1989

Norman Rice is elected the first African American mayor of Seattle.

1990

Seattle playwright August Wilson wins a Pulitzer Prize for the play The Piano Lesson.

1995

(July 1) Former U.S. Army General John Stanford becomes the first African American superintendent of the Seattle public schools.

1996

Ron Sims is appointed King County Executive when then Executive Gary Locke is elected governor; Sims wins the post outright in 1997.

1997

Seattle ends its busing program.

1998

(November 4) Washington voters pass Initiative 200, which ends governmentsponsored affirmative action programs in the state.

2005

(April 19) Governor Christine Gregoire signs into law State Senate Bill 5332, which officially renames King County, Martin Luther King Junior County.

2007

(June 28) The U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling involving Seattle public schools, prohibits the use of race as the sole factor in pupil assignments and says racial balance is not a compelling state interest.

2008

(November) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American nominee for president from a major party, carries Washington with 57 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Foundings The African American presence in Washington State begins in the territorial period with one settler, George Bush. In 1844, Bush was part of a

party of Missouri settlers who had followed the Oregon Trail west. Unlike most newcomers who settled in the Willamette Valley, Bush chose the sparsely populated area north of the Columbia River because Oregon’s recently enacted black exclusion law would be difficult to enforce there. Bush’s decision initiated the migration of other

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mostly white settlers north of the Columbia and eventually led to the organization of Washington Territory in 1853. Bush was soon joined by other African Americans. By 1860, Washington Territory had 39 blacks including William Gross and Rebecca Howard, who owned hotels in Seattle and Olympia. For the next three decades, more African Americans would follow. These mostly male pioneers were lured by frontier opportunities in construction, farming, and coal mining while women often worked as domestic servants or owned small boarding houses or stores. The pioneer businesspeople, and by 1890 professionals, established their clientele among the general population rather than African Americans. Pre-1900 black settlers were also drawn to Washington by what one newcomer called the region’s “free air,” meaning the absence of blatant antiblack discrimination practiced in the South. This sense of freedom stemmed from routine African American participation in civic life at a time when voting prohibitions and terror drove post-Reconstruction-era African Americans away from the polls in other regions of the nation. Washington’s African American men voted throughout the territorial period. The Washington Territorial Suffrage Act of 1883 made it possible for black women to cast ballots until that law was struck down by the territorial Supreme Court in 1887. Although Washington had only 1,602 African Americans in 1890, a year after statehood, William Owen Bush, son of pioneer George Bush, was elected to the state legislature. During the 1890s, African Americans were active in the Republican, Democratic, and Populist Parties. One, Spokane Republican, Daniel K. Oliver, was elected to the Spokane City Council in 1896. Horace Cayton Jr. who in 1908 would sit on the powerful Republican Central Committee of Washington State, strongly encouraged black political participation.

With the completion of the Northern Pacific transcontinental railroad to Tacoma, the population of Washington Territory grew dramatically. Black newcomers participated in that growth as their numbers swelled from 352 in 1880 to 6,058 in 1910. Much of the growth took place in the larger cities. Seattle’s black population grew from 19 to 2,296 in that 30-year period as newcomers found work as barbers, butlers, carpenters, cooks, machinists, and maids. Spokane had a similarly rapid rise with a population that grew from a nucleus of railroad workers. The population doubled in 1899 with the arrival of the first contingent of 107 buffalo soldiers and their families who were stationed at nearby Fort Wright. Black soldiers were soon stationed near Vancouver and Seattle. Over the next century, African American soldiers, sailors, and airmen formed an important element of new residents of Washington as they retired from military service and remained in the state. Tacoma’s black community evolved after domestic servants and railroad employees settled in the Hilltop area developed by African American entrepreneur George P. Riley in 1869. Roslyn’s black population can be traced to 300 African American strikebreakers and their families who arrived in 1888 during a labor dispute between coalmine operators and striking immigrant workers. Roslyn’s black population, which briefly rivaled the Seattle black community in size, thrived for a time and then disappeared entirely, while small communities in Yakima, Walla Walla, and Vancouver grew slowly. Post-1880 settlers continued the communitybuilding patterns established by the territory’s first black residents. The earliest African American church, First African Methodist Episcopal (AME) was formed in Seattle in 1886. By 1890, there were African Methodist Episcopal churches in Tacoma, Spokane, and Roslyn, Washington. Calvary Baptist Church, founded in 1890 in Spokane, and Mt. Zion Baptist Church, which formed four

Washington years later in Seattle, were the first churches in that denomination. By 1900, black churches flourished in other towns and cities including Newcastle, Everett, and Yakima. Other social and civic organizations followed. In 1891, 15 members of First AME in Seattle created the Frances Ellen Harper branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In the same year, First AME members became the nucleus of the Seattle branch of the African American League, the first civil rights organization in the state. Mt. Zion Church in Seattle sponsored the Ladies Aid Society that helped impoverished local African Americans, and the Evergreen Literary Society that gave lectures and concerts. The first Prince Hall Masons Lodge in Washington was chartered in Roslyn in 1889. Three years later, a second lodge was organized in Seattle, and by 1901, a third was created in Spokane. By 1920, the Grand Lodge of Washington included 35 lodges across four Pacific Northwest states and more than 600 members. Black women’s clubs evolved by the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1908, Tacoma resident Nettie J. Asberry founded the Clover Leaf Art Club. Nine years later, the Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs was organized in Spokane, uniting nearly 100 black women’s organizations from across the state. Spokane’s Calvary Baptist Church fostered the Deer Lake Irrigation Project in 1910, an ambitious effort that produced some of the first commercially grown apples in Washington State. Black-owned newspapers also helped shape community life. The short-lived Seattle Standard, the first African American newspaper in Washington, was founded in 1892 by Britain Oxendine, a former North Carolina state legislator. The Standard was soon followed by the most successful black-owned periodical of the era, the Seattle Republican, edited by Horace Cayton Jr. and his wife Susie Revels Cayton from 1894 to 1913. Cayton who was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1859, graduated from

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Alcorn College in that state in 1885 and moved west to Seattle. He became a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and developed a lucrative real estate business that provided the capital to begin publication of the Republican in 1894. Two years later, Cayton married Susie Summer Revels, daughter of Hiram Revels, the first black U.S. senator. Mrs. Cayton became a reporter for the Republican and frequently wrote its editorials. By 1910, the Republican, which focused on politics rather than racial issues, had become an influential newspaper in the state with an estimated 10,000 mostly white readers. Tacoma and Spokane also supported newspapers. The Tacoma Forum edited by John H. Ryan from 1903 to 1918, was the most successful black paper in that city. Ryan, who was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1866, moved to Tacoma in 1903 and began publishing the Forum. The Forum, like the Republican, published articles and editorials devoted to local politics, although the second page contained local “Black Society” news. Ellen Ryan, John’s wife, took over the opinion page after 1907 and occasionally wrote articulate and provocative editorials attacking anti–African American discrimination in Tacoma and across the state. Spokane’s first black paper, the Spokane Citizen, was edited by Charles Barrow from 1908 to 1913. In 1901, Barrow was a printer’s devil for the Spokesman Review, the city’s major paper. After working there for seven years, he started a printing company and began publishing the Spokane Citizen. Although the Citizen ceased publication in 1913, the printing company continued until Barrow’s death in 1950.

Developing Communities—Early 1900s Early twentieth-century African Americans in Washington were proud of their accomplishments and, in comparison to the rest of the nation, their freedoms. Two men, one a prominent visitor and the other a Washington resident, articulated those views.

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Table 4 Largest Black Populations in Washington Cities, 1900–1910

Seattle Tacoma Spokane Everett Yakima Walla Walla Roslyn

Black Population

Total Population

Black % of Total Population

1900

1910

% of Change 1900–1910

237,194 83,743 104,402 24,814 14,082 19,364 3,126

1.0 .9 .7 .7 1.2 .6 3.5

406 307 376 54 41 25 317

2,296 778 723 185 176 114 111

465 153 92 243 329 356 -65

Source: U.S. Census, Negro Population, 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), Table 12, Urbanization.

In 1913, after visiting Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, writing in an issue of Crisis, the publication of the newly formed NAACP, noted that Washington had long witnessed a persistent and often successful struggle against racial prejudice. Newspaper editor Horace Cayton observed that blacks had come to the Northwest as a new frontier where they could successfully compete with whites as equals. Yet racial prejudice was increasing in the Evergreen State at the moment both men proclaimed its demise. First, racial discrimination by both employers and unions reduced the types of jobs available to African American women and men, particularly in the state’s largest cities. Despite some World War I–related defense work, black women were increasingly relegated to domestic service. Black men were similarly situated as ship stewards, Pullman porters, chauffeurs, and messengers. Residential segregation and concentration also became evident in this period as racially restrictive covenants first evolved in Seattle around 1905 and spread across the state. While there were no exclusively all-black neighborhoods anywhere in Washington, African Americans in Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, and other cities were restricted to certain areas of their cities, in stark contrast to late nineteenth-century residents who lived throughout the various municipalities.

By the 1920s, black businesses were also much more likely to have all or mostly black customers and clients. Even here, these fledgling concerns often vied with well-capitalized Asian and white businesses for the dollars those customers provided. Most black businesses in this era lacked the resources to compete for more than African American customers. As they recognized that regional racial patterns were giving way to national trends, local blacks created organizations to defend their rights. The Seattle branch of the NAACP became in 1913 the first of these organizations. Founded by Letitia Graves, a local beautician, the branch—created four years after the national organization—was one of the first west of the Mississippi River. Other branches followed in Spokane in 1919 and Everett, Tacoma, and Yakima, Washington, by 1922. The Great Depression left an ambiguous legacy across African American Washington. The economic hardship the state’s blacks suffered was palpable. The 1930 Census showed a higher percentage of blacks gainfully employed across the state than whites. By the winter of 1931, the black unemployment rate stood at 23.7 percent (10.1 percent for whites) and would remain as high as 21.9 percent by 1937. African Americans, heavily concentrated in service occupations, saw

Washington many of those jobs quickly disappear. In the winter of 1932, hundreds of black ship stewards lost their jobs. Since as recently as 1925, 500 black ship stewards had comprised 30 percent of Seattle’s black male workforce, these losses were particularly devastating. Those lucky enough to remain employed saw their wages slashed by 40 percent. The story was much the same across the state. Hotel and railroad employees and domestic servants in private homes, a category that included 84 percent of working black women in 1930, were laid off. The employment situation was often far more dire in the smaller towns across the state, prompting an exodus from Walla Walla, Yakima, and Spokane to Seattle. Despite this employment crisis, there were hopeful signs for the state’s small black population. First, some unions began to drop their barriers to African American membership. The Maritime Strike of 1934 ended the rivalry between black and white workers in the Longshoremen and other Seattle and Tacoma waterfront unions. Although the number of workers affected was relatively small, the symbolism of integrated unions was not lost on previously antiunion black workers or on the thousands of whites remaining in segregated locals. These integrated unions, disproportionately influential in the state Democratic Party, challenged racial segregation and discrimination in nonlabor areas as well. When blacks and Filipinos successfully rallied in Olympia in 1935 to defeat a proposed anti-interracial marriage bill, members of the newly integrated unions played a crucial role in the protests while their locals endorsed their efforts. Throughout the rest of the decade, Washington’s African American voters were courted by these elements of organized labor that made sure local blacks were included in the emerging New Deal coalition at the state level. As African American Washington approached the 1940s, it clearly understood the advantages and limitations of being a small community in

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the Pacific Northwest. The wall of segregation and discrimination although daunting, never appeared invincible, and African Americans, armed with the ballot, skillfully maneuvered between the state Democratic and Republican parties, generating influence far beyond their numbers. Washington blacks knew the racial limits they faced. They also looked to the day those limits would be removed. That day would draw nearer with the World War II migration.

World War II African American communities in Washington were transformed by World War II. Twenty thousand newcomers arrived to work in defenserelated industries or were transferred to the state’s major military installations such as Fort Lewis south of Tacoma or Fort Lawton in Seattle. Between 1940 and 1950, the state’s black population increased by 313 percent. The Seattle-Tacoma area received the largest number of African American newcomers. In 1940 only 3,789 blacks lived in Seattle, 644 in Spokane, and 342 in Tacoma, all figures representing less than 1 percent of the population in each city. Four years later, the black communities in each city had nearly doubled, and entire new communities emerged in the smaller cities of Bremerton, Vancouver, and Pasco. African Americans arrived in Washington to work. They sought employment in defenserelated shipbuilding and aircraft industries. By 1944, over 250,000 workers built and repaired ships in the Puget Sound and Columbia River areas, including over 5,000 black workers. Seattle’s budding aircraft industry also came of age during World War II as Boeing received orders for thousands of B-17 and B-24 bombers. In 1940, the company, already building planes for the British government, had 4,000 workers. By 1945, over 40,000 women and men worked at Boeing’s main plants in Seattle and Renton

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Table 5 Six Cities with Largest Black Population Growth, 1940–1943 City

1940

Black 1943 est.

% Increase

Total 1943 est.

% Increase

Seattle Spokane Tacoma Bremerton Vancouver Pasco

3,789 644 342 77 47 27

7,000 1,200 600 2,000 3,300 2,200

85 86 75 2,497 7,400 8,048

480,000 142,000 140,000 48,000 30,000 6,200

30 16 28 217 60 58

Source: Calvin Schmid, Social Trends in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1944), 320; James T. Wiley, “Race Conflict as Exemplified in a Washington Town” (M.A. thesis, State College of Washington, 1949), 14; Tolbert Hall Kennedy, “Racial Survey of the Intermountain Northwest,” Research Studies of the State College of Washington 14 (September 1946): 170.

and in smaller facilities in Bellingham, Chehalis, Everett, and Aberdeen, including 1,200 African Americans. Other African Americans were stationed at military facilities across the state, including Fort Lewis, which during the war became the secondlargest military base in the United States. African American naval personnel rotated through U.S. naval bases at Bremerton and Everett while other black military personnel were assigned to army air bases such as McChord Field near Tacoma and Geiger Field and Fairchild Air Bases near Spokane. Black civilians also worked on the military bases including about 1,000 of the 18,000 federal employees in the Puget Sound area. These warinduced employment opportunities ended the work patterns of pre-1940 black residents who were mostly stewards, longshoremen, laborers, and domestic servants. The larger, more visible black population sparked “white only” signs for the first time in restaurants, theaters, motels, and recreational facilities across the state. Those businesses that did not exclude blacks, discouraged their patronage by providing poor service or separating them from whites. Seattle’s Northwest Enterprise, now the largest black newspaper in the state, and the NAACP campaigned against these practices. Many newcomers faced a greater problem, the housing shortage. While housing was difficult to

obtain for all migrants, African Americans were particularly affected by restrictive covenants that further limited their options. By mid-1943, over 7,000 blacks occupied the same buildings that housed the 3,700 Seattle Afro-Americans in 1940. Similar conditions held in Tacoma’s Hilltop section. Despite housing shortages and continuing, if declining, public expressions of racial discrimination, the outlook for many Seattle-Tacoma-area African Americans at the end of World War II was encouraging. In 1948, the average income of black Seattle families stood at $3,314, 53 percent above that of the average black family in the United States. In fact, the average income of Seattle-area African Americans was only 11 percent below the national average for white families. Unlike other cities across the nation, Seattle kept most of its wartime jobs in the postwar era. Thus the black population continued to grow steadily in the postwar period, from approximately 10,000 in 1945 to 15,666 in 1950, as defense workers from other cities moved to the area. Tacoma grew even more rapidly. Its black population reached 600 by 1943 but mushroomed to 3,199 in 1950. Most of Seattle-Tacoma’s growth could be attributed to the continued high activity at Boeing and Fort Lewis during the early years of the Cold War. Seattle’s Central District and Tacoma’s Hilltop became African American residential centers and

Washington Table 6

Seattle Tacoma Spokane Pasco Vancouver Bremerton

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Six Largest Black Populations in Washington’s Cities, 1950 Black Pop.

% Inc. Over 1940

Total Population

% of Total Pop.

15,666 3,199 1,170 980 879 743

313 835 81 3,500 1,770 864

467,591 143,673 161,721 10,228 41,664 27,678

3.4 2.2 .7 9.5 3.1 2.7

Source: U.S. Census, Seventeenth Census of the United States, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1952); Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, University of Virginia, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu.

commercial hubs. The housing shortage remained a problem, but local blacks were encouraged by the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision declaring restrictive covenants unenforceable. The NAACP and the Urban League also grew rapidly in membership and more aggressive in challenging racial discrimination. Their efforts paid off when Washington in 1949 became the ninth state in the nation to enact a Fair Employment Practices Law. Seattle African Americans were particularly heartened by the 1950 election of Charles Stokes, a black Republican, as state representative in the heavily black 37th Legislative District. Spokane experienced a different pattern of wartime change. In 1940, there were 644 blacks in the city, but by 1945, the population stood at 1,500. That population fell to 1,170 by the time of the 1950 census. Without significant defense production facilities or a major military installation, Spokane did not attract or retain black workers. Three new black communities emerged in Bremerton, Vancouver, and Pasco largely due to World War II labor demands. All three cities saw thousands of new black workers by 1943 lured by work at the Bremerton Naval Shipyard on Puget Sound, the Kaiser Shipyard on the Columbia River, and the Hanford Engineering Works in the eastern Washington desert that produced plutonium for the atomic bomb. All three communities saw almost equally rapid declines between 1945 and 1950. Those remaining formed

the nucleus of what would become permanent African American communities. World War II changed black Washington. The population explosion expanded existing communities and created entirely new ones, strengthening the regional network of black institutions and social and civic associations. In larger communities, such as Seattle and Tacoma, activists openly challenged racial discrimination. In both large and small communities, African American workers, lured years earlier by the promise of work and buoyed by the high wages and constant reminders that their labor was crucial to the war effort, were often swept aside at the end of the war. Some left Washington, but far more stayed and began to make new lives for themselves in the Pacific Northwest.

The Civil Rights Era In 1960, Washington’s African American population stood at 48,738. The black residents of the state, particularly those born in the South, understood that they could vote without interference and that no official state-sponsored policy of segregation restricted their access to jobs, schools, or neighborhoods. They also knew that private discrimination still affected their individual and collective fates. Washington’s African Americans, including many with not-too-distant roots in the South, gave moral and financial support to the

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direct-action Civil Rights Movement that began with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King. They also recognized that the type of racism they experienced in the Pacific Northwest differed only in intensity from that faced by Southern blacks. Despite the 1949 state Fair Employment Practices Law and the 1957 Omnibus Civil Rights Law, employment opportunities for Washington blacks in retail outlets or service establishments such as restaurants and recreation facilities were virtually nonexistent outside the narrow confines of the black urban communities. By 1960, many African Americans in the state, and a small but growing number of white and Asian supporters, knew that racial discrimination was both commonplace and overdue for challenge by new tactics. Those tactics varied. Many black Washingtonians supported the NAACP and similar organizations that used lawsuits or legislative action to bring change. Growing numbers, however, “took to the streets” in direct-action campaigns to challenge continuing practices of racial bias in employment, housing, and education. Their efforts were a sober reminder that despite frequent local claims that Washington led the country in its treatment of African American citizens, discrimination in housing and employment remained widespread. Housing discrimination was the most serious problem facing the state’s African Americans. While discrimination in employment and public accommodations remained constant or declined slightly, the concentration of blacks in substandard housing in the oldest sections of Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane increased in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1950, 69 percent of Seattle blacks lived within 10 of the city’s 118 census tracts in the Central District. By 1960, 78 percent lived in the same ten tracts even though the total African American population had increased by 11,000 residents. De facto school segregation was a direct outgrowth of the increasing residential segregation,

particularly in Seattle. Although the Washington Constitution enacted in 1890 prohibited segregated schools by race, by 1962, six of Seattle’s 86 elementary schools, all in the Central District, were over 75 percent African American. Garfield High School in the Central District became the state’s first predominately black secondary school when 51.4 percent of its students were African American in 1962. Washington African Americans watched, increasingly restlessly, as sit-ins, freedom rides and economic boycotts brought change in the South. By 1961 some of those tactics emerged in Seattle. Between 1961 and 1965, black civil rights activists led over 50 protests across the state. Typical of these protests was the 1963 demonstration of 1,000 people who marched on the downtown Bon Marche department store to protest employment discrimination. In 1964, the Seattle chapter of CORE initiated a campaign named the Drive for Employment in Downtown Stores (DEEDS), one of the two most ambitious challenges to employment discrimination mounted by the civil rights organization anywhere in the nation. The most significant victory in this nine-month campaign was an agreement with Nordstrom, one of the city’s largest department stores, to develop one of the first voluntary affirmative-action plans in the nation. The 1960s protests had mixed results. Overt acts of racial discrimination became rare by the end of the decade as a combination of local, state, and national legislation made such acts illegal. Combined with affirmative-action legislation promoted by the state after 1970, a number of African Americans found work in both whitecollar and blue-collar jobs for the first time, including state and local government and in the public school and statewide university system. The greatest challenge and success came in the campaign for desegregated housing. Although 90 percent of blacks in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane,

Washington

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Jeanette Rankin, former Montana congresswoman and leader of a protest march in Washington, greets Milwaukee alderman Vel Phillips, right, as she arrived to participate in the march, 1968. Rankin called for an end to the Vietnam War and social crisis at home. (AP/Wide World Photos)

and Pasco resided in segregated enclaves at the beginning of the 1960s, by the end of the decade, a small, steady stream of African Americans moved beyond the ghetto. Seattle voters in 1964 overwhelmingly rejected by referendum the City Council’s recently enacted open housing ordinance. Yet some white suburbanites began to welcome middle-class African Americans. Black families quietly relocated in various Seattle neighborhoods or in surrounding suburbs. A similar process evolved in Tacoma, Spokane, and Pasco. School desegregation proved a more difficult problem. On August 28, 1963, the date of the March on Washington, Seattle became the first major city in the nation to undertake a citywide desegregation plan. That plan, hotly contested by whites, Asians, and blacks through the 1960s, eventually evolved into an even more controversial busing program to achieve racial integration in the 1970s. Ironically, the city’s busing program

was ended in 1997 by School Board Superintendent John Sandford, the first African American to hold the post, precisely because it had become unacceptable among virtually every segment of the community. Seattle school officials continued to struggle for racial fairness in the city’s public schools into the twenty-first century but received yet another setback in 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against its plan to allocate enrollment in individual schools by race. The goal of school integration that activists envisioned in the 1950s and 1960s appears as elusive as ever since black students remain concentrated four decades later in mostly African American schools. The 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Washington, however, did generate greater African American interest in politics and a rise in black officeholding. At the beginning of the decade, 37th District Representative Sam Smith was the only African American officeholder in

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Table 7 Six Largest Black Populations in Washington's Cities, 1970

Seattle Tacoma Spokane Pasco Lakewood Yakima

Black Pop.

% Inc. Over 1960

Total Population

% of Total Pop.

37,868 10,436 2,161 1,334 1,724 1,085

41 76 -9 9 n.a. 18

530,831 154,581 170,516 13,920 48,195 45,558

7.1 6.7 1.3 9.6 3.6 2.4

Source: U.S Census, Census of Population, 1970 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1973).

the entire state. By 1970, Smith sat in the Seattle City Council while State Senator George Flemming and State Representatives Peggy Maxie and Michael Ross served in the legislature, all representing the 37th District. Fleming and Maxie were Democrats and Ross was a Republican. This would be the only time in the history of the state that all three legislators representing the district were African American. Arthur Fletcher, the only other significant black political figure in the state in the 1960s, emerged east of the Cascade Mountains. A confidant of then Governor Daniel Evans, Fletcher settled in Pasco, Washington, after arriving from Kansas in 1965. Two years later, he became the first black city councilman in Pasco, and the following year (1968) was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of the State of Washington. Fletcher, the first African American from either major political party to run for statewide office, lost the election by less than 1 percent of the vote. In 1969, he left Washington to become deputy secretary of labor in the Nixon administration, where he crafted the first significant affirmative-action initiative promoted by a presidential administration.

Into the Twenty-first Century African American political activism in the form of direct action protest peaked in the early 1970s and then declined rapidly for three reasons. First, antidiscrimination laws removed the most

egregious grievances. Second, the nation grew more conservative, and third, the mobilizing methods used against racial bias simply were not effective against the post-1970-era challenges, including the rapidly growing gang and illegal drug culture, both of which intensified black poverty. Black Washington also felt the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Far more young blacks now graduated from the state’s colleges and universities. They were often joined by other African American college graduates lured from across the nation by the opening of white-collar opportunities in government, higher education, and the corporate sector. Consequently, for the first time in the state’s history, a significant segment of black Washington was now firmly in the middle class. Both middle-class and working-class African Americans turned to politics as a strategy to ensure their economic gains and address the continuing poverty of a still-large segment of the black population. The political awakening that began in Seattle in the late 1960s spread across the state, resulting in African Americans holding the mayor’s chair and numerous other significant offices. At least one black legislator has represented Seattle’s 37th District continuously since Charles Stokes was elected in 1950. African Americans have also had continuous representation on the Seattle City Council since Sam Smith was first elected to that body in 1967. In 1989, Norm Rice became the first African American mayor of Seattle, holding the post for two terms.

Washington Table 8

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Six Largest Black Populations in Washington’s Cities, 2000

Seattle Tacoma Federal Way Kent Spokane Vancouver

Black Pop.

% Inc. Over 1990

Total Population

% of Total Pop.

55,611 26,561 8,012 7,869 5,834 4,727

7 32 n.a. 440 70 350

563,374 193,556 83,259 79,524 195,629 143,560

9.9 13.7 9.6 8.1 3.0 3.3

Source: Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population, 2000; U.S. Census, 1990; Washington State Office of Financial Management, www.ofm.wa.gov/cenpro90.

Ron Sims was elected to the Metropolitan King County Council (the second-largest government in Washington after the state itself) in 1985 and appointed King County executive 11 years later when then Executive Gary Locke was elected governor. Sims won the post outright in the 1997 election and now administers a county government that serves over 2 million people, about one-third of Washington’s population. Although African Americans have been particularly active in Seattle politics, Norm Rice’s election in 1989 follows almost two decades of black mayors across the state. The first was William Craven, who served five years as mayor of Roslyn beginning in 1975. In 1981, James Chase was elected mayor of the state’s second-largest city, Spokane. Two years later, Henry Beauchamp became mayor of Yakima, and Joe Jackson was elected mayor of Pasco in 1984. In many ways these officeholders symbolized early twentieth-century editorpolitician Horace Cayton’s call “to play the [political] game, though without a Negro constituency.” The trickle of African Americans out of segregated neighborhoods that began in the 1960s became a flood in the last three decades of the twentieth century. For the first time in the state’s history African Americans could move to any residential area they could afford. The most dramatic change came in Seattle and surrounding King County as both existing residents and post-1970 migrants accessed suburban housing. The rise of Federal Way and Kent, two Seattle suburbs, as the cities

with the third- and fourth-largest black populations in the state by 2000, attests to this dramatic shift. By 2003, more African Americans lived in suburbs beyond Seattle than within its city limits. Only two other major cities, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., could make that claim. Yet, this “victory” was tempered by the knowledge that thousands of the state’s African Americans remained in the old neighborhoods, trapped by poverty much more than by opposition to residential desegregation. Washingtonians of all colors often embraced the state’s reputation for racial liberalism. Local black residents and visitors and newcomers alike all remarked on the absence of palpable racial tension and violence or of the concentration of thousands of African Americans in sprawling ghettos. Black Washingtonians also operated in a milieu where the largest groups of color for most of the past two centuries have been either Native American or, after 1860, Asian American, a fate that simultaneously limited both African American influence and antiblack antipathy. African American Washingtonians were also aware of the limits of racial liberalism. For much of the history of the territory and later state of Washington, they recognized they faced less discrimination than their counterparts elsewhere, but they also realized that any discrimination was intolerable. Ever since George Bush moved north of the Columbia River in 1845, many of them labored to persuade their fellow citizens to embrace their views.

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Notable African Americans Bush, George (c. 1789–1863) In 1845, George Bush became one of the first permanent settlers on the Puget Sound. Bush, the son of a West Indian who married an Irish maid, was born in Pennsylvania. He moved west and in 1831 married Isabella James in St. Louis, Missouri. Facing prejudice as a free black with a white wife in a slave state, Bush and his family, which now included six children, migrated to the Oregon Country in 1844. Upon reaching the lower Columbia and learning of the recently passed black exclusion law, Bush and other settlers moved north of the Columbia, established Tumwater, the first permanent settlement on the Puget Sound. The founding of Tumwater encouraged other families to follow, and eventually Washington Territory was created in 1853. Bush who became the most prosperous farmer in the area, died on his homestead in 1863.

Fletcher, Arthur A. (Art) (1924–2005) Arthur A. Fletcher, often called the “father of affirmative action,” was born in Phoenix, Arizona on December 22, 1922. After serving in World War II, Fletcher graduated from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, in 1950. He later received a law degree and a Ph.D. in education. Fletcher was the first African American to play football for the Baltimore Colts. He entered politics in Kansas in 1954, helping Republican Fred Hall win the governorship. By 1965, he had moved to Pasco, Washington, and two years later was the first African American elected to the City Council. In 1968, Fletcher ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of Washington, losing by less than 1 percent of the vote. One year later, Fletcher joined the Richard Nixon administration where he developed the federal government’s affirmative action policies. From 1972 to 1973, Fletcher was executive director of the United Negro College Fund. Fletcher died in Washington, D.C., in 2005.

Cayton, Horace (1859–1940) Horace Roscoe Cayton Sr., prominent journalist and politician, was born enslaved near Port Gibson, Mississippi, in 1859. He graduated from Alcorn College in 1885 and moved to Seattle in 1890. In 1896, Cayton married Susie Revels, the youngest daughter of Hiram Revels, the first black U.S. senator. Among their four children was Horace Cayton Jr., who became a leading sociologist in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1894, Horace Cayton created the Seattle Republican, which he and Susie managed until its demise in 1913. The Republican became one of the city’s most influential newspapers propelling Cayton to a place on the Washington State Republican Central Committee in 1908, the first African American to serve on that body. In 1913, Cayton became one of the founding members of the Seattle NAACP. He died in Seattle on August 16, 1940.

Rice, Norman B. (1943–) Norman B. Rice, after serving 10 years on the City Council, was elected the first African American mayor of Seattle in November 1989. Rice, a native of Denver, Colorado, arrived in Seattle in 1971 to attend college. He remained in the city and worked as a television news reporter, bank executive, and member of the staff of the Puget Sound Council of Governments. Rice served two terms as mayor, where his accomplishments included revitalizing the downtown economy, promoting human rights, and strengthening neighborhoods. In 1996, Rice was defeated by King County Executive Gary Locke for the Democratic nomination for governor. After leaving office in 1998, Rice was named president of the Federal Home Loan Bank in Seattle.

Washington

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Dr. Arthur A. Fletcher delivers an emotional speech at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 2004. Fletcher was the first African American to play football for the Baltimore Colts. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Sandford, John (1938–1998) John Sandford was the first black superintendent of schools in Seattle. A native of Darby, Pennsylvania, he had a long career in the military, rising to the rank of major general. Before becoming superintendent of schools in Seattle, he served from 1991 to 1995 as county manager for Fulton County, Georgia, which includes the city of Atlanta.

Sims, Ron (1948–) Ron Sims, a native of Spokane, Washington, serves as King County executive, the chief

administrator of the King County government (Seattle and suburbs). As executive he oversees a county government that serves over 2 million people, approximately one-third of the population of Washington. Sims was first appointed to the post in 1996 and elected outright the following year. He has been reelected twice in 2001 and 2005. In the 1980s, Sims was one of the first public officials in the nation to warn of the dangers of environmental pollution called “the greenhouse effect.” He also initiated a successful 20-year effort to change the name of King County to Martin Luther King Junior County.

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Norman B. Rice, the first black mayor of Seattle and president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, listens during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in Washington, D.C., 2004. (Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Cultural Contributions Although African Americans have comprised less than 5 percent of Washington’s population through much of the state’s history, they have nonetheless made significant contributions to the cultural life of the Pacific Northwest and the entire nation. As early as the nineteenth century, Washington blacks produced a culture rooted in their churches, social clubs, and civic organizations that sustained them locally and connected them to a national black organizational and institutional world. By the twentieth century, Washington blacks, through their music, their literature, and their art, became world-famous

innovators who enriched African American and American culture. The earliest black church, First AME, was founded in Seattle in 1886, during the territorial era. It was soon followed by other AME churches in Tacoma, Spokane, and Roslyn in 1890 and by Baptist churches in Spokane and Seattle the same year. Ten years later, there were churches in Newcastle, Everett, and Yakima. These churches were centers of worship, but they were also reproducers of culture as their mostly Southern-born congregants established the traditions and values of their former communities in their new homes. Other organizations such as the Masonic orders,

Washington the women’s clubs, and the literary societies, which often grew out of the churches, continued the process of replicating old cultural patterns and traditions in the new land. Whether the gathering was a Masonic meeting, a women’s club tea, or a church pageant devoted to presenting black history to a younger generation, these events, and the organizations behind them, extended and often reshaped the culture of African America in an overwhelmingly white state. By the early twentieth century, however, black Washingtonians were now sharing that culture with a wider community especially in the musical world. Beginning in the 1920s, a number of jazz musicians had migrated to Seattle. They concentrated in nightclubs along Jackson Street in the city’s Chinatown area and created a vibrant jazz scene that lasted over four decades. One legendary venue, the Black and Tan Club, attracted both local and national jazz greats such as Oscar Holden and Fats Waller in the 1920s, Julian Henson and Louis Armstrong in the 1930s, and Al Pierre and Sarah Vaughn in the 1940s. Many of the clubs such as Basin Street were owned by Chinese businessmen who, through their international connections, gave local musicians the opportunity to perform in clubs in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Manila. By the early 1950s, a new generation of local artists such as Ernestine Anderson, Quincy Jones, and Ray Charles (who had relocated to Seattle from Florida) began to perform on Jackson Street. In 1949, Charles’ group, the McSon Trio, became the first musicians to use electronic keyboards on Jackson Street and the first black jazz artists to perform on local television. Jimi Hendrix, arguably the most famous of Seattle’s black musicians, was too young to perform on Jackson Street during its heyday, but his music was certainly influenced by that era. Hendrix, the grandson of Seattle-area vaudeville performers, would create his own legacy, which continues to influence music around the world. If the cultural contributions of Washington’s musicians loomed large across the global stage in

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the middle of the twentieth century, the contributions of local visual artists and literary figures would have a comparable impact in the latter part of the century. The career of Jacob Lawrence, the New Jersey–born painter, began in the shadow of the Harlem Renaissance but it continued in Seattle when he moved there in 1971. Shortly afterward, Lawrence painted a series of five murals depicting the overland journey of black pioneer George Bush to Washington Territory in 1845. His last painting, New York in Transit, was completed just before his death in 2000. James Washington Jr., the Mississippi-born sculptor, arrived in Bremerton, Washington, in 1944 and spent the remainder of his life crafting his work in Washington, beginning with The Chaotic Half in 1946 and ending with his noted Arctic Hare in 1981. Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright August Wilson spent most of his career in Pittsburgh and St. Paul but in 1994 moved to Seattle, where he wrote his last plays, Radio Golf and How I Learned What I Learned. Noted science fiction writer Octavia Butler moved to Seattle in 1999 where she wrote Parable of the Talents and Fledgling. Charles Johnson, who moved to Seattle in the 1970s, wrote three of his four novels, The Oxherding Tale, The Middle Passage, and Dreamer, in Washington.

Bibliography Blackpast.org, An Online Reference Guide to African American History. Online, July 2007. www.blackpast.org. Franklin, Joseph. All through the Night: The History of Spokane Black Americans, 1860–1940. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1989. HistoryLink.org, The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. Online, July 2007. www.historylink.org. Hobbs, Richard S. The Cayton Legacy: An African American Family. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2002.

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Mack, Dwayne. “Triumphing through Adversity: African Americans in Spokane, Washington, 1945–1965—A Social History.” Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 2002. Mumford, Esther Hall. Seattle’s Black Victorians, 1852–1901. Seattle, WA: Ananse Press, 1980. Schmid, Calvin F., Charles E. Nobbe, and Arlene E. Mitchell. Nonwhite Races: State of Washington. Olympia: Washington State Planning and Community Affairs Agency, 1968. Taylor, Quintard. The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994.

Taylor, Quintard. “A History of Blacks in the Pacific Northwest, 1788–1970.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1977. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998. Washington (State) Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Civil Disorder. “Race and Violence in Washington State: Report of the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Civil Disorder.” Olympia, WA: State Printing Office, 1969. Zane, Jeffrey Gregory. “America, Only Less So? Seattle’s Central Area, 1968–1996.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Notre Dame, 2001.

Contributor’s Note: I want to thank Deborah McNally for assistance on this chapter.

WEST VIRGINIA John A. Wagner

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Chronology 1619

The first African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.

1775

(November 7) Virginia Governor Dunmore authorizes the recruitment of free African Americans into the British army to fight the American rebels.

1795

The Virginia General Assembly frees Dick Pointer from slavery in appreciation for his actions in the 1778 Indian attack on Fort Donnally in present-day Greenbrier during which Pointer and his master, Philip Hammond, held off the attackers by themselves for a time.

1832

(January 20) Charles Faulkner of Berkeley County delivers a speech before the Virginia General Assembly in which he denounces slavery on economic grounds. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison publishes the speech every year thereafter in his abolitionist newspaper Liberator.

1835

(October 14) In one of 12 such cases in Wheeling, John Templeton, John Moore, Stanley Cuthbert, and Ellen Ritchie are charged with illegally teaching African Americans to read.

1847

Kanawha County native Henry Ruffner, the president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, delivers an “Address to the People of West Virginia” calling for the abolition of slavery in western Virginia for economic reasons.

1859

(October 16) John Brown and his followers seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Jefferson County in hopes of starting a slave rebellion.

1859

(December 2) John Brown is hanged for treason in Charles Town, after declaring slavery would only be abolished with great bloodshed.

1862

(July 14) The U.S. Senate passes the West Virginia Statehood bill after changing the provision for slavery in the new state constitution to allow for gradual emancipation.

1863

(January 1) President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation frees all slaves in areas in rebellion, but does not apply to areas loyal to the Union, such as West Virginia.

1863

(June 20) West Virginia enters the Union as the 35th state, having effectively seceded from Virginia.

1863

(July 15) West Virginia gives African Americans the same right to a criminal trial as whites, but blacks cannot serve on a jury.

1863

(December 9) West Virginia forbids the residency of any slave who entered the state after June 20, 1863.

1865

(February 3) West Virginia ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

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1867

The Freedmen’s Bureau reports the existence of seven African American schools in the Kanawha Valley enrolling 241 students.

1867

(January 16) West Virginia ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing full civil rights to African Americans.

1867

Storer College in Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County, is incorporated by the state as a school for African Americans.

1869

(March 3) West Virginia becomes the second state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing voting rights to African Americans.

1873

(March 12) West Virginia prohibits blacks from serving on juries.

1873

(June 11) Ernest Porterfield is hired as the first black police officer in Charleston, thus becoming the first African American to receive a public job in Kanawha County and possibly in West Virginia. Within an hour of the hiring, the chief and the rest of the force resign, leading the mayor to hire a new force rather than remove Porterfield.

1877

At the request of Charleston politicians of both parties, Booker T. Washington begins a lecture tour of West Virginia, encouraging African Americans to vote for Charleston as the permanent state capital. Charleston is selected as the state capital in August.

1879

In its Taylor Strauder decision, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a West Virginia law forbidding African Americans from serving on juries as unconstitutional.

1881

(February 3) West Virginia enacts a law allowing all eligible African Americans to serve on juries.

1888

Discontented with the major parties, 49 African American delegates convene in Charleston to nominate a slate of black candidates for governor and other state offices; W. H. Davis of Kanawha County is nominated for governor. The slate of black candidates makes this the first state election in which African Americans are a significant percentage of voters.

1891

(March 4) The West Virginia legislature establishes West Virginia Colored Institute, later West Virginia State College, at Institute in Kanawha County.

1895

(February 21) The West Virginia legislature establishes Bluefield Colored Institute, which later becomes Bluefield State College. The act becomes law without the governor’s signature on February 28.

1896

Christopher Payne of Fayette County becomes the first African American elected to the West Virginia legislature.

1898

(November 16) The start of Williams v. Board of Education of Tucker County in which Carrie Williams, a black teacher in the segregated school system of Tucker County, sues the board for three months’ pay after she teaches for eight months despite the board of education’s decision to cut costs by reducing the African American school

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1898 (cont.)

term from eight months to five. Arguing the black schools should receive the same funding as white schools, Williams wins, establishing the first precedent for prohibiting discrimination on the basis of color.

1900

(January 31) The West Virginia legislature establishes the West Virginia Colored Orphan’s Home in Bluefield, though in 1901 it is moved to Huntington.

1902

(November 4) James M. Ellis from Fayette County becomes the second African American elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates.

1906

A group of African American physicians establishes the West Virginia Medical Society.

1906

(August 15–19) The second meeting of the Niagara Movement convenes at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County. Led by W. E. B. Du Bois, the movement becomes the forerunner for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1915

Because no white college in West Virginia will admit them, 78 African Americans from West Virginia are attending schools outside the state.

1919

The West Virginia legislature enacts a law prohibiting entertainments that demean another race.

1919–1921

Three African American state legislators—T. G. Nutter, Harry Capehart, and T. J. Coleman—are responsible for the creation of several state-funded institutions that are run by and for blacks, including the West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Girls in Huntington, the West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Boys in Lakin, the West Virginia Colored Deaf and Blind School at Institute, and the West Virginia Hospital for Colored Insane at Lakin.

1921

The West Virginia legislature enacts an antilynching law.

1921

The Negro Bureau of Welfare and Statistics is created to provide economic assistance to African Americans; the agency exists until 1957.

1925

(March 19) The first West Virginia Athletic Union state basketball tournament for the state’s segregated black schools is held at the West Virginia Colored Institute gym in Kanawha County.

1925

African Americans protest the showing of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, which is scheduled for April 1 at the Rialto Theatre in Charleston. Arguing that the film violates the state law prohibiting any entertainment that demeans a particular race, the protest leaders win the support of Charleston’s mayor and the West Virginia Supreme Court and thus prevent the showing of the film.

1928

Filling the unexpired term of her late husband, Minnie Buckingham Harper is appointed to the West Virginia House of Delegates, making her the first African American woman to serve in a U.S. legislative body in the United States.

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1929

The West Virginia Collegiate Institute and the Bluefield Colored Institute confer the first college degrees on African Americans.

1930–1935

Almost 500 workers on the New-Kanawha Power Company’s Hawks Nest Tunnel and Dam project die of silicosis, a disease caused by inhaling silica rock particles. The deaths are attributed to inadequate safety practices by the contractors. Most of the workers are African Americans, and some of the dead are buried in a mass grave to hide the actual number of casualties. Later estimates put the number of dead from silicosis at almost 800, making it the worst industrial disaster in U.S. history.

1931

(December 10) Two blacks accused of killing two white constables are forcibly removed from the Greenbrier County jail and lynched by a white mob. Several men are convicted for the lynching under the state’s 1921 antilynching law, which is upheld by the West Virginia Supreme Court.

1939

(September 11) West Virginia State College becomes the first black college to establish a Civilian Pilot Training Program.

1940

West Virginia State College enrolls white trainees into its flight program, thus establishing a precedent for future integration of the U.S. military. One of the program’s black enrollees, George Spencer Roberts, will become the first African American to be appointed to the U.S. Army Air Corps.

1942

(June 26) Camp Washington-Carver in Fayette County is dedicated as the state’s African American 4-H Camp.

1947

Luther Bennett Ferguson becomes the first African American mine foreman in West Virginia, when he is named foreman at the Riverton coal mine in Crown Hill.

1950

Elizabeth Simpson Drewry of McDowell County becomes the first African American woman elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates.

1954

(May 17) The U.S. Supreme Court issues its Brown v. Board of Education decision prohibiting segregation of schools based on race. The decision begins the gradual integration of West Virginia schools, with West Virginia State College quickly integrating whites into its program and Bluefield State College integrating more slowly.

1954

(June 1) West Virginia State School Superintendent W. W. Trent sends letters to all county public school superintendents to suggest proper methods for integrating schools.

1954

The Greenbrier County Board of Education votes to continue segregated schools.

1954

(September 14) While Willard A. Brown, president of the Charleston branch of the NAACP, addresses a meeting at White Sulphur Springs Baptist Church about continued school segregation in Greenbrier County, white protesters turn off the lights and fire guns outside the church.

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1956

(January) All West Virginia counties, including Greenbrier, begin integrating schools, although students at White Sulphur Springs vote to hold their prom in December 1955 instead of May 1956 to prevent African American students from attending the annual affair.

1957

With the coming of integration, West Virginia’s Negro Bureau of Welfare and Statistics is abolished.

1957

(March 14) The final state basketball tournament for segregated all-black high schools in West Virginia is held, with Park Central High School of Bluefield defeating ByrdPrillerman High School of Amigo.

1957

(September 4) The Hampshire County Board of Education admits four black students to a previously all-white high school and elementary school, becoming one of the last West Virginia school districts to integrate.

1958

While traveling home to New Jersey from Birmingham, Alabama, Joseph H. King, an African American minister, is refused service by a Charleston restaurant.

1958

Several African American boxers walk out of the Charleston Gazette’s All West Virginia Amateur Boxing Tournament because one boxer was asked to sit in the balcony of the American Legion Armory rather than on the main floor. Gazette promotion manager James Dent agrees that newspaper will not permit segregation in the arena.

1958

(August 11) The first West Virginia chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) forms in Charleston, where it organizes boycotts of the Woolworth, Kresge, and Newberry stores that refuse service to African Americans; most of these stores integrate within the month. CORE then boycotts restaurants, department stores, and movie theaters in other West Virginia cities, Bluefield and Huntington. The boycotts enjoy much success, although some West Virginia businesses remained segregated until the late 1960s.

1958

James R. Jarrett is named head basketball coach at Charleston High School, becoming the first African American in the state to serve as head coach at a previously all-white public school.

1959

A study by the West Virginia Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reports that discrimination continues to stifle employment opportunities in the state for blacks; for instance, only one black engineer is employed in the Kanawha County chemical industry even though West Virginia State College had graduated many African Americans in that field.

1961

The state legislature creates the West Virginia Human Rights Commission to combat racism and discrimination in the state. The commission is led by Chairman Thomas W. Gavett and Executive Director Howard W. McKinney.

1961

According to the first report of the newly created West Virginia Human Rights Commission, 50 percent of the state’s restaurants, 70 percent of its hotels and motels, and 85 percent of its swimming pools discriminate against African Americans.

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1963

(February 1) West Virginia ratifies the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax.

1966

Through the work of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission, almost all West Virginia hospitals agree to end discriminatory practices.

1972

(December 22) Levi Daniel, president of District 29 in southern West Virginia, becomes the first African American to be appointed a district president of the United Mine Workers (UMW).

1998

(November 3) Marshall University professor Marie Redd becomes the first African American woman elected to the West Virginia State Senate.

2007

(September) Six white men are accused of raping and torturing Megan Williams, a black woman, in a shed for a week in rural West Virginia.

2008

According to the U.S. Census, blacks comprise about 3.6 percent of the population of West Virginia.

2008

(November 4) Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major party, loses West Virginia to Republican John McCain with about 43 percent of the state’s vote.

Historical Overview Western Virginia Until the Civil War in the 1860s, the present-day state of West Virginia comprised the western portion of the colony/state of Virginia. The first African American slaves in the Virginia colony were brought by Dutch traders in 1619. As the spread of tobacco agriculture in eastern Virginia increased the demand for field labor in the seventeenth century, racial attitudes hardened and most blacks in the colony were eventually enslaved for life as the property of their masters. In 1662, slavery was recognized by Virginia law, which also defined the status of mixed-race children, declaring that children born to slave mothers were also slaves. In 1691, Virginia enacted its first law prohibiting interracial marriages, and in 1692, blacks in Virginia were prohibited from owning livestock. Separate courts without juries were also established to try slaves. Each year, more slaves arrived to serve the colony’s growing

population, so that by 1700 black slaves comprised almost half of Virginia’s labor force. Most of the colony’s slaves were concentrated in the tobacco-growing eastern counties, but wealthier pioneers occasionally brought slaves into western Virginia as they expanded their landholdings into the region. Although most western Virginians were engaged in farming and livestock operations that were too small to support slaves, some larger tobacco farms in the South Branch, Greenbrier, Monongahela, and Kanawha valleys did employ slaves. During the eighteenth century, Virginia slave laws were codified, and measures were enacted to forbid teaching slaves to read or write. In the early nineteenth century, the state of Virginia also prohibited the education of free blacks, whose population was also increasing by 1800. Slaves were also forbidden to hold their own church meetings, and white ministers in white churches preached about the slaves’ Christian duty to be loyal to their masters. As a result, secret religious ceremonies became a vital part of slave society,

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and even today churches remain one of the strongest bonds of black communities. Most slaves in the area of present-day West Virginia lived in the Eastern Panhandle counties, but a substantial slave population also existed in the Kanawha Valley. By the nineteenth century, plantation agriculture was on the decline in Virginia and slavery was no longer as profitable in the eastern counties as it had been. Many slaves were now hired out for craft or industrial labor or sold to the expanding cotton plantations of the Deep South. In the western counties, the salt industry relied on transient poor-white and slave labor, with the latter often leased from slave owners in eastern Virginia. By this means, the first significant introduction of slavery into western Virginia occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to serve the salt industry, which was the first major industry to develop in the region. By the 1820s, slave labor in the western counties was rarely found outside these industrial areas, and half the slaves in the Kanawha Valley were owned or hired by salt firms. About 40 percent of these slaves were used to mine coal for the salt works because they could be hired from their owners for much lower wages than white laborers demanded. Because of the high risk of death or injury, it was usually better to lease and insure slaves for the coal mines rather than to buy them outright. By 1860, over 490,000 slaves belonging to over 48,000 slaveholders lived in Virginia’s eastern counties, where they comprised approximately 30 percent of the population. However, in the counties of western Virginia, there were only about 18,000 slaves owned by some 3,800 slaveholders, comprising about 4 percent of the total population of the area. Although this averaged out to about 10 slaves per owner in the east and about 6 slaves per owner in the west, the great majority of slaveholders in each region owned fewer than 5 slaves. Sizable free black populations also developed in both areas. For

instance, the Johnson family crossed the Potomac River in 1732 to become the first free black family to settle in Jefferson County in present-day West Virginia. Because slavery was not a vital component of the western Virginia economy, many in the region in the antebellum period came to believe that the existence of the institution actually harmed the economy and discouraged white immigrants from settling in the region. This opinion coincided with a growing fear over the possible consequences of slavery, especially following Nat Turner’s uprising, which left 61 whites dead in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. The same period also saw the beginnings of an organized national antislavery movement led by abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, who first printed his newspaper, the Liberator, in 1831. Although many abolitionists objected to slavery on a moral basis, many prominent political leaders in western Virginia supported abolitionism because they believed that slaves took jobs away from whites. In January 1832, Charles Faulkner of Berkeley County denounced the ill effects of slavery on western Virginia in a speech before the Virginia legislature. In 1847, Henry Ruffner, the president of Washington College and the son of Kanawha Valley salt industry pioneer David Ruffner, delivered an “Address to the People of West Virginia” in which he called for the abolition of slavery in the western counties as a means for providing more paying jobs for white workers. Ruffner believed that slavery prevented more white laborers from moving into the Kanawha Valley. Ruffner’s speech was later printed in pamphlet form and distributed nationally. In 1857, Massachusetts abolitionist Eli Thayer sought to prove this theory by establishing an industrial town of paid white workers from New England at Ceredo in Wayne County. The experiment failed because the economic panic of 1857 deprived the town of the capital it required to become established.

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John Brown and others stand with rifles inside the engine house of the Harpers Ferry Armory. With them are some of their hostages. Wounded men lay on the ground in front of them. (Library of Congress)

In October 1859, western Virginia became the scene of the most famous abolitionist episode of the antebellum era. Hoping to establish a colony for runaway slaves in the mountains of western Maryland, abolitionist John Brown, who had become notorious for his violent antislavery activities in Kansas in the 1850s, seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in an attempt to secure arms for his planned slave uprising. The plan collapsed when local slaves did not rise against their masters as expected, and Brown and his men became trapped in a small engine house, where they were captured after a two-day siege by U.S. Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee. Ironically, the first man killed in the raid was Heyward Shepherd, a free black baggage handler who was shot when he confronted Brown and his men. Convicted of treason, Brown was hanged at Charles Town on December 2; he died declaring that only great bloodshed could wipe out the stain of American slavery.

The Civil War and Statehood Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861. The state’s decision to leave the Union was widely opposed in the western counties, where pro-Union leaders created what they called the Restored, or Reorganized, Government of Virginia, which rejected the authority of the Confederate state government in Richmond. In 1862, these leaders, supported by the Lincoln administration in Washington, moved for the creation of a separate state from the counties of western Virginia. At the convention for drafting a state constitution, delegate Gordon Battelle proposed gradual emancipation for all slaves already in the state and freedom for all children born to slaves after July 4, 1865. Although there was much opposition to Battelle’s proposal, the delegates understood that any document perceived as too proslavery would not be approved by Congress. After much debate, a compromise was reached banning the introduction of new slaves or

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free blacks into the state, but saying nothing about the status of the slaves already there. When Congress debated the West Virginia statehood bill in 1862, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts refused to accept the admission of another slave state and demanded that an emancipation clause be added to the state constitution. Representing the Restored Government of Virginia, Senator John S. Carlile proposed a statewide election to decide the issue of slavery. A compromise worked out by Senator Waitman T. Willey of the Restored Government and Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on Territories, declared that all children born to slaves after July 4, 1863, would be free, while slaves under the age of 10 would be freed at the age of 21 and those between 10 and 21 would be freed at the age of 25. Because this Willey Amendment provided for the gradual emancipation of some slaves, but left others in bondage for life, West Virginia became the last slave state to enter the Union, which it did as the 35th state on June 20, 1863. A month after statehood, West Virginia granted African Americans the right to trial by jury, but denied them the right to sit on a jury. In December 1863, West Virginia forbade the residency of any slave who entered the state after June 20. In February 1865, the same month West Virginia ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery, Governor Arthur I. Boreman signed an act officially freeing all slaves in the state. In January 1867, West Virginia also ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed full civil rights to blacks. West Virginia’s postwar government was controlled by radical pro-Union Republicans, who inflicted harsh penalties on state residents who had supported the Confederacy during the war. Among other restrictions, former Confederates were prohibited from voting or holding public office. In response to these restrictions, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia,

and other secret organizations arose in the state by advertising in newspapers for new members. Angered by Republican attempts to secure the vote for blacks while abolishing the vote for many whites, these racist societies committed many acts of violence against African Americans. In the 1868 state elections, Republican William E. Stevenson narrowly defeated Democrat Johnson N. Camden, an indication that public opinion in the state was shifting away from the Radical Republicans. Although West Virginia ratified the Fifteenth Amendment granting the right to vote to African American men in March 1869, even the state’s Radical Republican legislature was split over the issue, and passage was secured by a narrow margin. Many white citizens objected to the vote being given to 2,800 African Americans when an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 white residents could not vote, and in December 1869, violence erupted between whites and blacks at Malden in Kanawha County. In 1870, Democrat John J. Jacob was elected governor, and in 1871, a Democratic legislature adopted the Flick Amendment, which revised the state constitution to restore the vote to former Confederates. In 1872, a new state constitution removed other restrictions on the rights of former Confederates and forbade the teaching of white and black students in the same school. Adoption of the 1872 constitution ushered in a period of Jim Crow legislation, whereby the rights of the state’s African American residents were gradually restricted by Democratic-controlled legislatures. Violence against blacks also became more common in West Virginia in the late nineteenth century, as state courts tended to take little notice of the lynching of black citizens.

The Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries In 1865, West Virginia provided for the creation of separate schools for black students in districts

West Virginia where there were at least 30 black children. In areas where fewer than 30 black children resided, local school boards were left to fund black education as “the board thinks best.” If the average daily attendance at a black school dropped below 15, boards were authorized to close the school for up to six months. Because of this official disinterest in funding black schools, West Virginia’s African American community undertook to create its own schools, which soon became integral parts of black society in the state. In 1862, a year before statehood, a school for blacks opened in Parkersburg. In 1866, the state took over the Sumner School and made it the first publicly financed black school in the South. By 1867, the Freedmen’s Bureau reported the existence of seven schools for African Americans in the Kanawha Valley, teaching almost 250 students. In the postwar years, black schools were founded in Charleston, Clarksburg, Fairmont, Grafton, Keyser, Lewisburg, Malden, Martinsburg, Morgantown, Piedmont, Point Pleasant, Ronceverte, Shepherdstown, Union, Weston, Wheeling, and White Sulphur Springs. To provide trained teachers to staff these schools, Storer College was established in Harpers Ferry in 1867; the college was composed of a grammar school and a normal school for the training of teachers. In the 1890s, the state created two other black normal schools—West Virginia Colored Institute (later West Virginia State College) and Bluefield Colored Institute (later Bluefield State College). In 1929, these two institutions became the first West Virginia colleges to confer degrees on African Americans. The 1872 state constitution mandated separate schools for whites and blacks, and an 1873 statute amended the 1865 education law, lowering the number of black students required for a separate black school to 15. In 1873, the policy of segregation was pushed beyond education by a law that required the birth, marriage, and death records of blacks to be kept in separate books

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from those of whites. An antimiscegenation law passed in 1882 punished any white person who married an African American with up to one year in jail and up to $100 in fines. Anyone performing such a marriage could be fined up to $200. In 1931, another statute declared miscegenation a misdemeanor, and a further law providing for stiffer penalties for miscegenation was enacted in 1955. A 1931 education law called for separate buildings for black and white schools and prohibited white teachers in black schools. Despite this sequence of restrictive legislation, West Virginia responded to the questionnaire sent out by the U.S. Supreme Court as part of its preparation for the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 that the state had “no ‘Jim Crow’ laws” and that its practice had always been simply to cater to whites in matters of public transportation and accommodation. Despite these civil and educational restrictions, economic opportunity sparked a large increase in the state’s African American population between 1870 and 1930. Construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railroad in the 1860s and 1870s drew many African American workers into southern West Virginia. An estimated 1,000 blacks were employed digging the C&O tunnel at Talcott in present-day Summers County. One of these workers was the inspiration for the legend of John Henry, who supposedly outperformed one of the new steam-powered machines in a digging competition at the Big Bend Tunnel at Talcott. The C&O railroad accelerated development of southern West Virginia’s coal industry in the 1870s, creating more jobs and attracting more black workers to the state. In southwestern West Virginia, the economy received the same boost from the Norfolk and Western Railroad. In McDowell County, the flood of migrant workers increased the African American population from 0.1 percent of the total in 1880 to 30.7 percent in 1910. Between 1870 and 1930, the black population of the entire state rose from 17,000 to nearly

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115,000. However, the economic downturns of the twentieth century caused a decrease in the state’s black population after 1930. The coal industry suffered severe economic problems after World War I, resulting in fewer jobs available for miners of all races. The industry was hit even harder during the Great Depression in the 1930s, when many blacks lost their jobs and left the state. After World War II, more jobs were lost to modernization as the coal industry increasingly replaced miners with machines. Between 1930 and 1980, the number of black coal miners working in West Virginia fell from over 20,000 to fewer than 1,500. The state’s black population as a whole also declined. By 1950, the number of African Americans living in the state was about 89,000, a figure that fell to about 56,000 in 1990. In 2009, the U.S. Census estimated the African American population of West Virginia to be about 65,000, or 3.6 percent of the state’s total population. In 1900, West Virginia voters gave Progressive Republicans control of the state government. The Progressives undertook a number of reforms that improved conditions for the state’s black population. In 1900, the West Virginia Colored Orphans’ Home was established in Bluefield. By 1930, the state had also provided African Americans with a home for the aged and infirmed, a tuberculosis sanitarium, industrial homes for boys and girls, a deaf and blind school, and an insane asylum. Although these services had always been available to whites, black West Virginians had previously been forced to travel out of state to obtain them. In 1906, the second meeting of the Niagara Movement, the civil rights group led by W. E. B. Du Bois that became the forerunner of the NAACP, met at Storer College in Harpers Ferry. In 1919, the West Virginia legislature passed a law prohibiting entertainments that demeaned another race. In 1921, the state enacted an anti lynching law, which was upheld by the state Supreme Court and used to convict several

members of a white mob that lynched two blacks accused of murder in Greenbrier County in 1931. The era of reform also saw the entrance of African Americans into the state political arena. Christopher Payne of Fayette County became the first black elected to the West Virginia legislature in 1896. James M. Ellis, also from Fayette County, became the second African American to enter the state House of Delegates in 1902. T. G. Nutter, Harry Capehart, and T. J. Coleman, who served in the state legislature in the 1920s, all played key roles in the creation of the various African American institutions established in the period, such as the West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Girls in Huntington. They also played a part in the successful 1925 campaign to prevent the showing of D. W. Griffith’s racist film Birth of a Nation in Charleston. In 1928, Minnie Buckingham Harper became the first African American woman to serve in the West Virginia House of Delegates, when she was appointed to fill out the unexpired term of her late husband.

Civil Rights Movement and Beyond In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision forced West Virginia to integrate its public schools. Desegregation was quick and peaceful in some areas, but required sustained legal effort in other districts, particularly in southern West Virginia. There was particular resistance in Greenbrier County, where the county board of education voted to continue operating segregated schools despite the Supreme Court decision. When Willard A. Brown, president of the NAACP chapter in Charleston, addressed a meeting at a Baptist church in Greenbrier County, local white segregationists shut off the lights and fired guns to intimidate the audience. Nonetheless, integration began in Greenbrier County in 1955 and was completed throughout the state by the late

West Virginia 1950s, when it came finally to the school systems of Hampshire, Hardy, and Jefferson Counties. While integration had many positive effects for African Americans, it also eliminated a significant cultural element of black society, for the state’s African American schools had reinforced the sense of identity within black communities. Despite the Brown decision, many black West Virginians chose to keep their children in allblack schools, some of which remained in operation until the late 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement also came to West Virginia in the 1950s. In 1958, the first West Virginia chapter of CORE was formed in Charleston and began boycotts of local Woolworth, Kresge, and Newberry stores, which refused to serve African Americans at their lunch counters. The stores were integrated within a month. CORE boycotts in Bluefield, Huntington, and other West Virginia cities led to the integration of restaurants, department stores, and movie theaters across West Virginia, although some state businesses remained segregated until the late 1960s. In 1961, the West Virginia Human Rights Commission, which was created by the state legislature to combat racism, reported that 50 percent of restaurants, 70 percent of hotels and motels, and 85 percent of pools in West Virginia still discriminated against African Americans. Studies in the late 1950s also showed that discrimination continued to inhibit job opportunities for blacks across the state. Thanks to the work of the West Virginia Civil Rights Commission, most state businesses and institutions had dropped their discriminatory practices by the 1970s. Blacks made advances in several other areas as well. In 1958, James R. Jarrett became the first African American to become a sports coach at a formerly all-white school, when he became head basketball coach at Charleston High School. In 1966, all hospitals in West Virginia agreed to halt any discriminatory practices. In 1998, Marie Redd, a professor

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at Marshall University, became the first black woman elected to the West Virginia legislature. In the early 1970s, the state’s coal industry experienced a rebirth during the national energy crisis and employment opportunities for blacks increased. However, the industry suffered another downturn at the end of the century and during the economic crisis beginning in 2008, which caused unemployment to reach all-time highs. Blacks again left the state in dramatic numbers, and by 2009, African Americans represented just over 3 percent of West Virginia’s total population. Politically, the state also became more conservative at the start of the twenty-first century, when West Virginia voted Republican in the presidential elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008, after having voted for the Democrat in five of the previous six presidential elections. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama, the African American senator from Illinois, won only about 26 percent of the vote in the West Virginia Democratic Primary, which he lost to Hillary Clinton, and only about 43 percent of the vote in the general election, thus becoming the first Democrat since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to win the White House without carrying West Virginia.

Notable African Americans Clifford, J. R. (1848–1933) Born free in Williamsport, Hardy County (now Grant County), J. R. Clifford joined the 13th U.S. Heavy Artillery in 1864. After the war, Clifford worked as a barber and opened a writing school for blacks in Wheeling. He graduated from Storer College in Harpers Ferry in 1875 and then taught at the Sumner School in Martinsburg, where he eventually became principal. In 1882, Clifford established the Pioneer Press, West Virginia’s first black newspaper. Speaking out for African American civil rights, Clifford operated the Pioneer Press until 1917,

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when his editorials against U.S. involvement in World War I caused the government to shut the paper down. In 1887, Clifford passed the West Virginia bar examination, becoming the state’s first black attorney. In 1896, Clifford unsuccessfully challenged the state’s segregated school system in Martin v. Board of Education. However, in 1898, in Clifford’s second landmark civil rights case, Williams v. Board of Education of Tucker County, the court rendered the first ruling in U.S. history that held racial discrimination to be illegal. In 1906, Clifford helped organize the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement at Storer College in Harpers Ferry.

Davis, John Warren (1888–1980) Born in Georgia, John Warren Davis graduated from Morehouse College in 1911. He came to West Virginia in 1919 to become president of West Virginia Collegiate Institute (now West Virginia State College) at Institute upon the personal recommendation of Carter G. Woodson. Under Davis, the school became one of the leading black colleges in the country, both in academics and athletics. In 1927, West Virginia Collegiate Institute became the first all-black school in the United States to be accredited by the North Central Association of College and Secondary Schools, which later appointed Davis as the first black member of its Committee on Institutions of Higher Education. In 1939, Davis won approval from the Civilian Aeronautics Authority to establish the first Civilian Pilot Training Program at an African American college. Through the program West Virginia State College became the first black school to enroll white trainees and the first to train a black woman solo pilot. In 1939, Davis was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. After his retirement from the college in 1953, he worked in various positions for the Fund until his death.

Delany, Martin (1812–1885) Born in Charles Town to a free mother and slave father, Martin Delany moved to Pennsylvania with his mother in 1822 when local whites discovered that Delany and his siblings were being taught to read. In 1831, Martin Delany enrolled in a school for blacks in Pittsburgh, where he founded a black newspaper in 1843. When the paper suspended publication in 1847, Delany briefly worked as coeditor for Frederick Douglass’ North Star in Rochester, New York. In 1850, Delany, who had earlier studied with several Pittsburgh doctors, entered Harvard Medical School; however, complaints from white students forced him to withdraw. In 1852, Delany published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, which urged blacks to leave the United States. Delany himself moved to Canada in 1856. During the Civil War, Delany recruited black troops in New England states and became the first black field officer in the Union army in 1865, when he was commissioned major. After the war, Delany worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina and wrote a novel entitled Blake, or the Huts of America.

Drewry, Elizabeth Simpson (1893–1979) Born in Motley, Virginia, Elizabeth Simpson moved to McDowell County as a child. After her marriage to William H. Drewry, Elizabeth taught in black schools in the coal camps along Elkhorn Creek, and later in McDowell County’s black school system. Educated at Bluefield Colored Institute, Wilberforce University, and the University of Cincinnati, she earned a degree from Bluefield State College in 1933. In 1936, Drewry joined the Democratic Party and became active in the state Federation of Teachers. She served on the Northfork Town Council and became associate chairperson of the McDowell County Democratic Executive Committee. She

West Virginia ran unsuccessfully for the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1948, but became the first black woman elected to the state legislature on her second try in 1950. During her 13 years in the legislature, Drewry was a leading advocate for education and labor. In 1955, she introduced a bill allowing women to serve on juries. In 1956, Ebony magazine named Drewry one of the country’s 10 outstanding black women in government.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1950–) Born in Piedmont in Mineral County, Henry Louis Gates was among the first group of black students to attend Mineral County’s recently integrated public schools. As a youth Gates and three other black students, known as the “Fearsome Foursome,” campaigned for integration of the Blue Jay restaurant and nightclub. After graduating from Piedmont High School, Gates attended Potomac State College in Keyser, but then moved to Yale University and finally earned a doctorate from Cambridge University. In the 1970s, Gates worked for Time magazine in London before returning to teach black studies at Yale and then at Cornell. In 1989, he published The Signifying Monkey: Toward a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, which won him wide recognition as a leading African American studies scholar. In 1991, Gates became chair of Harvard’s African-American Studies Department. In 1994, he published Colored People, which chronicled his youth and the black community in Mineral County. Gates has coedited a series of critical perspectives on contemporary African American authors and The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature. In 2006 and 2008, Gates hosted and coproduced African American Lives and African American Live 2, which traced the lineage of well-known African American figures. In 2010, he hosted Faces of America on PBS. In 2009, Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct after passersby mistakenly

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believed he was breaking into a house, which was in fact his own. The incident led to national headlines and to a meeting at the White House with President Obama and the white arresting officer.

Greer, Hal (1936–) Born in Huntington, Hal Greer was a standout basketball player at Frederick Douglass High School. Recruited to play for Marshall College (now Marshall University), Greer became the schools first African American player. In 1956, Marshall won the Mid-American Conference but lost in the first round of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. Greer was All-Conference in 1957 and 1958 and became Marshall’s second All American. He also set the school’s career record for field goal percentage (.545), scoring 1,377 points and averaging 19.4 points per game. Greer was selected by Syracuse in the second round of the 1958 NBA draft. During a 15-year NBA career with Syracuse and the Philadelphia 76ers, Greer was one of the league’s top guards, averaging 19.2 points per game. Upon his retirement in 1973, Greer held the career record for most games played (1,122) and ranked in the top 10 in points scored (21,586), field goals attempted (18,811), field goals made (8,504), minutes played (39,788), and personal fouls (3,825). He was a 10-time all-star and won the All-Star Game’s MVP Award in 1968. He was a member, with Wilt Chamberlain, of the 1966–1967 Philadelphia 76ers’ championship team, which is considered one of the best teams in NBA history. In 1981, he was elected to the Naismith Pro Basketball Hall of Fame, becoming the only black West Virginian enshrined in a major sports hall of fame.

Payne, Christopher (1848–1925) Born free in Monroe County, Christopher Payne was educated by his mother. As a youth he

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worked as a farmhand near Hinton and as a servant in the Confederate army during the Civil War. After the war, he attended night school in Charleston and became one of the first black teachers in Summers County. Ordained a Baptist minister, he organized the Second Baptist Church in Hinton and later graduated from Richmond Theological Institute and State University in Louisville, Kentucky. As a pioneering black journalist, Payne founded three newspapers—the West Virginia Enterprise, the Pioneer, and the Mountain Eagle. In 1896, Payne became the first African American elected to the West Virginia legislature, serving as a Republican delegate from Fayette County. He three times represented West Virginia at the Republican Convention, and was rewarded for his party loyalty with appointment to various positions within the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue. He studied law and was admitted to the West Virginia Bar in 1889, becoming one of the first black attorneys in the state. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Payne consul general to the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands), where he served as prosecuting attorney and police judge after the U.S. acquisition of the islands in 1917.

Starks, Samuel W. (1866–1908) Born in Charleston, Samuel W. Starks attended local black schools and worked as a janitor and a telegraph operator before moving to Chicago to study stenography and bookkeeping. Upon returning to Charleston, Starks involved himself in various business ventures, including operating a grocery store, a newspaper, and a theater. In 1892, Starks formed and became grand chancellor of the West Virginia Grand Lodge of the Knights of Pythias, a secret black fraternal organization. Starks’ Grand Lodge included representatives from most of the state’s local Knights of Pythias lodges. The Knights of Pythias was an important social organization

within the black community, providing a vehicle through which blacks could make valuable social, political, and business connections. Starks became the national vice chancellor of the Knights of Pythias in 1897 and national supreme chancellor in 1901. Under Starks’ leadership, the order’s national membership grew from 9,000 to almost 150,000. As the importance of black voters increased, state politicians turned to Starks and other black civic leaders to organize and encourage black voting. Starks thus became a significant figure in West Virginia Republican Party politics. For his party loyalty, Starks was named state librarian by Governor A. B. White in 1901 and reappointed by Governor William M. O. Dawson in 1905. In 1911, three years after Starks’ death, the Knights of Pythias erected a monument over his grave in Charleston.

Sullivan, Leon H. (1922–2001) Born in one of the poorest sections of Charleston, Leon H. Sullivan attended Garnet High School for blacks and entered West Virginia State College on an athletic scholarship in 1939. When injury ended his athletic career, Sullivan paid for college by working in a steel mill and as a parttime minister. Sullivan later moved to New York to attend the Union Theological Seminary and to serve as Adam Clayton Powell’s assistant minister at the Abysinnian Baptist Church. In the early 1940s, Sullivan helped organize a civil rights march on Washington. In 1950, he became pastor at Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Under Sullivan’s leadership, the Zion congregation grew from 600 to over 4,000 in just a decade. Believing jobs were vital to economic improvement in the African American community, Sullivan urged the city’s largest firm to interview and hire blacks. When few companies responded, Sullivan organized a highly effectively boycott that led to the eventual hiring of thousands of black workers. Due to the success of this effort, Martin

West Virginia Luther King asked Sullivan to organize similar boycotts in other cities in the early 1960s. To help blacks obtain the training they needed for good jobs, Sullivan founded the Opportunities Industrialization Center and the Zion Investment Association, which invested in new black businesses. In the 1970s, Sullivan was a prominent anti-apartheid activist. As the first black board member of General Motors, he urged the company to use its economic influence to end apartheid. Sullivan retired from Zion in 1988 and died in 2001.

Cultural Contributions A major African American cultural event in West Virginia is the annual Jefferson County African American Culture and Heritage Festival, which has been held every year in Charles Town since 1993. Sponsored by the Jefferson County chapter of the NAACP, the festival features bands, exhibits, food vendors, speakers, and a parade. Another important cultural event is the Riverside Blues Festival, which is held annually in Elkins. The festival is a fund-raiser for Riverside High School and a celebration of the many African American students who attended old Riverside High School over the years. The West Virginia Black Heritage Festival has been held in Clarksburg each September since 1990, when it began as the Emancipation Proclamation celebration. The festival’s stated goal is “to promote the African American experience while addressing the many milestones that our forefathers have made since the Emancipation Proclamation.” The festival offers food, crafts, jewelry, and artwork, and two local citizens, chosen for exemplary community service and for being outstanding examples to local youth, are crowned as king and queen of the festival. The West Virginia Department of Tourism has also developed the state’s African American Heritage Trail, which comprises 36 historical

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sites around the state associated with African American history. Many of the sites are also on the National Register of Historic Places. Among the stops on the trail are the site of John Brown’s seizure of the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry in 1859; the African Zion Baptist Church in Malden, the first black Baptist church in the state and the spiritual home of the young Booker T. Washington; and Fisherman Hall in Charleston, which was built in 1885 to support the social and economic cohesion of the local African American community. Heritage Towns, another site on the trail in Charleston, is a museum of African American history offering exhibits of African artifacts, on the lives of slaves in West Virginia, on the operation of the Underground Railroad in the state, on the Civil Rights Movement in West Virginia, and on the contemporary contributions of blacks to the culture and economy of West Virginia.

Bibliography Armstead, Robert. Black Days, Black Dust: The Memories of an African American Coal Miner. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002. Brisbin, Richard A., Jr., et al., eds. West Virginia Politics and Government. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Lilly, John. West Virginia: A History. 2nd ed. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993. Posey, Thomas Edward. The Negro Citizen of West Virginia. Institute: Press of West Virginia State College, 1934. Rice, Connie Park. Our Monongalia: A History of African Americans in Monongalia County, West Virginia. Terra Alta, WV: Headline Books, 1998.

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Rice, Otis K., and Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A History. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994.

Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004.

Wade, Howard P. Black Gold and Black Folk: A Case Study of McDowell County, West Virginia’s Black Migrants, 1890–1940. Coral Gables, FL: Author, 1990.

Thomas, Jerry Bruce. An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

Williams, John A. West Virginia: A History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003.

WISCONSIN Gladys L. Knight

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Chronology 1634

Jean Nicolet, a French explorer, arrives in the Green Bay area.

1725

Four Frenchmen and a black slave belonging to one of the men are killed by Fox Indians near Green Bay.

1746

The commander of the French garrison at Green Bay brings a black slave with him to his post.

1755–1763

Native Americans from the Wisconsin area fight on both sides during the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France.

1760

The peace provisions governing the transfer of the Wisconsin region from the French to the English allows settlers in the region to retain their black and Indian slaves.

1763

The Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian War is signed; Wisconsin is part of the territory transferred by the treaty from France to Great Britain.

1764

Charles Langlade establishes the first permanent settlement at Green Bay.

1774

Wisconsin becomes part of the Province of Quebec.

1779–1800

Operating out of Chicago, a free black fur trader named Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable is active in the Wisconsin territory.

1783

The United States takes control of the Wisconsin region following the signing of the Second Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution.

1787

Wisconsin is part of the territory covered by the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, which bans slavery in the region; British fur traders remain active in the region until 1816.

1791

Two free black fur traders operate a trading post near Marinette on the Menominee River.

1820

Blacks comprise 1.2 percent of the Wisconsin region.

1820s–1830s

Many settlers from the South come to southwestern Wisconsin to mine lead, bringing their black slaves with them.

1826–1827

The Winnebago Indian War is fought in Wisconsin between the Winnebago and the U.S. Army.

1832

The Black Hawk War is fought in southwestern Wisconsin between the U.S. Army and several Native American groups headed by Chief Black Hawk.

1836

The U.S. Congress creates the Territory of Wisconsin.

1837

Winnebago Indians cede land in Wisconsin during the Panic of 1837.

1840

The black population in the state is less than 200.

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1842

Caroline Quarlls is the first fugitive slave to pass through Wisconsin via the Underground Railroad.

1846

A slave named Paul Jones, having been brought onto the free soil of Wisconsin by his master, sues his owner for back wages.

1846

Territorial leaders draft a state constitution for Wisconsin that permits African Americans to vote, but the document is defeated by voters.

1848

(May 29) Wisconsin becomes the 30th U.S. state.

1848

Blacks settle in Pleasant Ridge.

1849

(November) A referendum proposition for extending the vote to “persons of African descent,” is approved by a vote of 5,265–4,075, but the approval is declared invalid because the proposition was not approved by a majority of all voters in the election but only by a majority of those who voted on the proposition.

1850

The black population in the state comprises 0.2 percent of the total population.

1854

Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave, is arrested in Racine, but is freed from jail by a sympathetic mob. When the leader of the mob is prosecuted for his actions, the case goes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which declares the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 unconstitutional.

1857

The St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, the first black church in Wisconsin, is built in Racine.

1857

Wisconsin voters fail to approve a referendum granting blacks the right to vote.

1860

The black population in the state numbers nearly 1,200 individuals.

1861

The only known lynching of a black man in Wisconsin occurs in Milwaukee, when a mob drags a black man accused of murder from his jail cell.

1861

Since Wisconsin law does not grant full citizenship to blacks, none of the state’s African Americans can enlist in the Wisconsin volunteer regiments being formed to fight the Civil War.

1863

Various petitions calling for a ban on any further black immigration to the state are introduced into the Wisconsin Legislature.

1863–1865

Three hundred fifty-three Wisconsin blacks fight in the Civil War during its last two years, most with Company F of the 29th Infantry Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops.

1865

(February 24) Wisconsin ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.

1865

Wisconsin voters again fail to approve a referendum granting blacks the right to vote.

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1866

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in deciding a case filed by Ezekiel Gillespie, a leader in Milwaukee’s African American community, declares that black men have the right to vote in Wisconsin.

1867

(February 7) Wisconsin ratifies the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection to blacks.

1869

(March 5) Wisconsin becomes the seventh state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing blacks the right to vote.

1870

The first integrated school in Wisconsin is built in Pleasant Ridge.

1875

William Noland becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

1880

The black population in Milwaukee is 304, 0.2 percent of the total population.

1889

(December) Blacks in Milwaukee call a convention to protest segregation in public places and state employment.

1892

William Green becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School; Green goes on to become a prominent attorney for the black community in Milwaukee.

1896

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation is constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1900

Blacks comprise 0.1 percent of the total population of Wisconsin.

1900

Sarah Scott becomes the first African American high-school principal in Wisconsin.

1910

The black population of Milwaukee is 980; the total black population in Wisconsin is less than 3,000 people.

1915

The Milwaukee chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1917–1918

Many African Americans move to Racine, Beloit, and Milwaukee from the South.

1919

The Milwaukee Urban League is founded.

1920

The black population of Wisconsin numbers 5,201 individuals, 0.2 percent of the total population.

1924

The Ku Klux Klan holds a rally in Madison.

1926

Three African American businessmen purchase Lake Ivanhoe.

1930–1954

William Kelley, executive secretary of the Milwaukee Urban League, fights to end the discriminatory hiring practices of black teachers.

1931

The Colored Flashers, Wisconsin’s first all-black basketball team, is founded.

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1940–1945

World War II sparks a large migration of blacks to Wisconsin. In 1940, the state’s African American population numbers 12,158; by 1960, it has increased to 74,546.

1945

Leroy J. Simmons becomes the first African American elected to the Wisconsin Legislature.

1947

The Racine Blues, the first all-black semiprofessional baseball team in the state, is founded.

1948

President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981, which desegregates the military.

1950

The total population in the state is 3,434,575. The white population is 98.8 percent of the total population. The black population is 0.8 percent of the total population.

1954

The Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prohibits racial segregation in schools. Milwaukee, however, remains one of the most segregated cities in the United States.

1956

Vel Phillips becomes the first woman and the first African American elected to the Milwaukee City Council.

1956

William Jenkins is elected president of the Milwaukee NAACP chapter.

1957

Led by Hank Aaron, one of the premier African American players in the major leagues, the Milwaukee Braves win the World Series in seven games over the New York Yankees.

1960

African Americans comprise 1.9 percent of the total population of the state.

1960

A report by the Milwaukee Journal finds that Milwaukee has the most pronounced pattern of racial segregation in housing and education in the country.

1963

(August 28) The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stages the first of many civil rights demonstrations in Milwaukee. Segregated schools and housing were two of the issues blacks faced in the city.

1964

William Jenkins becomes the first African American to head the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Racine.

1964

(May) CORE and the NAACP organize a boycott of Milwaukee’s segregated public schools, with more than half of the city’s black students ceasing to attend class.

1965

The Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC) is formed by the NAACP and the CORE to undertake protests and demonstrations to dramatize the issue of segregation in Milwaukee schools.

1965

The Wisconsin legislature enacts an open housing law.

1965

Lloyd Barbee files a lawsuit challenging segregation in Milwaukee schools.

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1967

(July 30) Four people die in an eight-day riot in Milwaukee that begins with clashes between police and black demonstrators.

1967

(August 28) Members of the NAACP Youth Council of Milwaukee led by Father James Groppi march for fair housing in Kosciuszko Park, where they are attacked by whites. The marchers return the next day and every day for the next 200 days.

1967

(December) The Milwaukee City Council adopts a fair housing ordinance, but it is rejected by the NAACP Youth Council marchers as being too weak and ineffective.

1968

(March) The NAACP Youth Council ends the fair housing marches it had conducted daily since August 1967.

1968

(April) Milwaukee adopts a strong open-housing ordinance.

1968

Ninety African American students are expelled for damaging an administration building during a demonstration at Wisconsin State University in Oshkosh.

1968

A desegregation law is enacted in Milwaukee.

1969

Student strikers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison demand a black studies department.

1969

Felmers Chaney becomes the first African American police sergeant in Milwaukee.

1970

Blacks comprise 2.9 percent of the total population of Wisconsin.

1970

Antiwar protestors bomb the Research Building at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

1973

The antisegregation lawsuit filed by Lloyd Barbee in 1965 to force integration of Milwaukee’s schools finally goes to trial.

1975

Jackie Blober-Cooper and Sandra Holt Witherspoon become the first African American police officers in Racine.

1976

The U.S. District Court orders integration of Milwaukee schools.

1978

Vel Phillips is elected secretary of state to become Wisconsin’s first African American constitutional officer.

1980

Blacks comprise 3.9 percent of the total population of the state.

1983

Shanna Hickman Pegues becomes Racine’s first Juneteenth Day Queen.

1987

(February) The Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum is founded in Milwaukee.

1988

Milwaukee’s America’s Black Holocaust Museum, founded by James Cameron, is built.

1990

Blacks comprise 5 percent of the total population of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin

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2000

The population of Wisconsin is 5,363,675, with whites comprising 87.3 percent of the total population and blacks 5.6 percent of the total population.

2004

Five of 15 members of Milwaukee’s City Council are African American.

2004

Representing the 4th District, which covers the city of Milwaukee and some of its suburbs, Gwen Moore becomes the second woman and the first African American to be elected to the U.S. Congress from Wisconsin.

2004

Louis Butler becomes the first African American justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

2005

The black population of Wisconsin comprises 6 percent of the state’s total population.

2006

The Milwaukee Brewers baseball team honors the Negro Leagues.

2007

More than 80 percent of black Wisconsinites live in the cities of Milwaukee, Racine, Madison, Kenosha, and Green Bay. Among U.S. cities with at least 600,000 people, Milwaukee, with 39 percent, has the fifth-highest percentage of black residents behind Detroit (83%), Baltimore (64%), Memphis (62%), and Philadelphia (44%).

2008

Democrat Barack Obama, the first African American presidential nominee of a major political party, carries Wisconsin with 56 percent of the vote.

Historical Overview Colonial Period to Statehood Situated in the north-central region of the United States, Wisconsin is bordered by Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, as well as Canada (beyond Lake Superior). From what historians can tell, blacks did not appear in Wisconsin until nearly a century after the arrival of the first known European, Jean Nicolet, a French explorer who traveled to the region in 1634. Two decades later, the French had established fur trading with various resident Native American tribes, such as the Fox, Menominee, Sioux, and Winnebago. In the following century, black slaves appeared on Wisconsin soil, which was awash in violence as the French and British and their Native American allies fought for control of the land. One of the earliest accounts of blacks in Wisconsin states that a black slave was killed by Fox Indians in 1724. At the culmination of the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1755 to 1763,

the Treaty of Paris was signed and England obtained Wisconsin. In the following year, Charles Langlade, a man of French Canadian and Ottawa descent, established the first permanent settlement on Green Bay. English dominion did not last long. In 1774, Wisconsin was added to the Province of Quebec. But a decade later, Wisconsin was ceded to the United States in the Second Treaty of Paris. Following Wisconsin’s admission into the United States’ Northwest Territory in 1787, the region’s black population began to slowly grow. Unlike the states that had formed the original 13 colonies, which had established slavery and black codes (or laws) to control free blacks, Wisconsin offered greater (albeit limited by modern standards) freedom and opportunity to the black population. Notwithstanding the fact that slavery was outlawed in Wisconsin (as mandated by the government for the Northwest Territory), and the fact that Wisconsin did not issue any black laws, racial segregation and disenfranchisement prevented blacks from full and equal citizenship.

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Still, more and more blacks made Wisconsin their home, such as the two black fur traders who established a post in Marinette in 1791. Stephen Bonga was another black fur trader who settled in Wisconsin. He was descended from a long line of fur traders, starting with his grandfather Jean Bonga, a former slave. Jean Bonga and his wife, Jeanne, also a former slave, had a son named Pierre Bonga, who married an Ojibway woman. The union produced four sons, one of whom, George, was the first African American born in Minnesota. All four children entered the fur trade. The nineteenth century saw a small migration of blacks into Wisconsin. Beginning in the 1820s, a wave of black slaves owned by white miners entered Wisconsin. At the time, Wisconsin was a hotbed of white and Native American conflict. The Winnebago Indian War took place from 1826 to 1827, and the Black Hawk War occurred in 1832. In 1824, the first fugitive slave reached Wisconsin via the clandestine operation known as the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad consisted of myriad routes that ran from the South, where the system of slavery was rampant and extraordinarily harsh, to free states in the north and Canada. It also referred to the numerous individuals who provided aid, shelter, and navigation. The Underground Railroad could be treacherous. Fugitives endured wild terrain, inclement weather, and slave catchers who pursued slaves with firearms and dogs. But these obstacles did not deter the many blacks who risked life and limb, as well as recapture, to reach freedom. Given the fact that slavery was prohibited in Wisconsin, and the state’s close proximity to Canada, Wisconsin was an ideal destination or way station for fugitive slaves. Caroline Quarlls, a 16-year-old slave, braved the perilous journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to Windsor, Ontario, in 1824. She was the first known fugitive to travel through Wisconsin’s Underground Railroad. Other blacks who migrated via the Underground

Railroad settled in Wisconsin. By 1840, there were 196 blacks and 30,749 whites in Wisconsin. In the 1840s and 1850s, Wisconsin’s gradually growing black population established the state’s first black communities. Among the black settlements were Stantonville (established 1845), Pleasant Ridge (established 1849), and Forest (established 1855). Black families primarily subsisted autonomously, though in some settlements, blacks interacted liberally with neighboring white and immigrant communities. African Americans operated stores and other town facilities, raised livestock, and managed gardens and maintained meaningful social networks among themselves. The first black church in Wisconsin, the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, was established in Racine. Free blacks in Wisconsin did not abandon their connection to blacks still in bondage, providing help to and sheltering fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad. In 1848, Wisconsin became a state, and Wisconsinites prepared to take an active role in their new government, which found itself challenged to take a position on the race issue. The state’s response to blacks and racial issues constituted a complicated amalgam of progressiveness and prejudice. Though the right to vote proved a long and arduous struggle, many white Wisconsinites were radical advocates for blacks on other issues, particularly when it came to slavery. During the 1850s, a number of whites in Wisconsin supported the state’s Underground Railroad, hiding fugitive slaves in their homes and other places. Throughout the state, in towns such as Kenosha, Milwaukee, Racine, and Janesville, whites provided safe houses and other assistance to runaways. William Tallman, an affluent attorney, built the Tallman House in Janesville, where fugitive slaves hid during the height of activity for the Underground Railroad (President Abraham Lincoln visited Tallman House for two days). White ministers operated three Underground Railroad stations in Kenosha. When, in 1850, a new Fugitive Slave Act (which mandated the

Wisconsin return of fugitive slaves to their masters) was enacted, Wisconsinites were outraged and responded accordingly, declaring unabashedly in 1854 that the Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional. Wisconsinites refused to support slavery by aiding the capture of fugitive slaves. In 1854, many Wisconsinites rallied in support of Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave, an event that precipitated Wisconsin’s formal law in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Glover had escaped from his owner, Bennami Garland, in St. Louis, Missouri, and arrived in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1852. Garland attempted to retrieve Glover through the Fugitive Slave Act. Glover was apprehended, beaten, and jailed in Milwaukee. White denizens of Racine and fervent supporters in Milwaukee protested, monitoring Glover’s trial and then breaking him out of jail and facilitating his escape to Canada. One of the more vocal and visible protesters was Sherman Booth, editor of the Daily Free Democrat in Milwaukee. Booth was singled out for his stand in the controversial Glover issue, jailed on more than one occasion, and fined. Though Wisconsinites made it clear that they opposed slavery, time and time again they denied blacks the right of suffrage. In 1849, state officials invalidated Wisconsin’s vote for black suffrage, because the votes comprised a minority of the total voting population in the state. In 1857, Wisconsinites voted against suffrage with a decisive 40,106 votes out of 67,656 votes. Blacks in Wisconsin protested their disfranchisement to no avail. But the antislavery movement was spreading rapidly across the nation, largely contributing to the tumultuous national climate that would give way to the Civil War.

The Civil War Era When, in the spring of 1961, the Civil War broke out, black and white Wisconsinites alike responded eagerly to the call to fight for the

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Union. Some 96,000 Wisconsin soldiers served in the Union army. Black Wisconsinites in the Union army totaled 272, with an additional 353 blacks serving in black militias from other states. (Black soldiers were not permitted to serve in the war until President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was declared in 1863.) The level of black participation from Wisconsin during the war was staggering, considering that, in 1860, the black population was only 1,200. While Union soldiers fought for, among other things, the emancipation of slaves in the remaining strongholds in the South, Wisconsin experienced a horrifying event. The lynching death of Marshall Clark, which occurred on September 6, 1861, was the only known lynching of a black man in the state’s history. Clark and his companion, James Shelton, had reportedly been involved in an altercation with two Irish men. One of the men, who died following the fight, blamed Clark for his injuries. Shelton and Clark were jailed; however, an angry mob apprehended Clark and murdered him. Shelton was declared not guilty at his trial and secreted away out of Milwaukee to prevent another mob attack. In the aftermath of the war, Wisconsin’s black population grew, but civil rights gains remained largely elusive. Black civil rights veterans and former slaves added to the black population as they settled in Wisconsin. However, several African Americans did attain relative success. William Noland, who was the first African American to graduate from the University of Wisconsin, was the first black mayoral candidate in Madison in 1866. Ephraim Williams launched a number of circuses; the first, the Ferguson & Williams Monster Show, established in 1885, was based in Appleton, Wisconsin. Williams managed and performed in his circuses. Bessie Smith, a legendary blues singer, was one of the notable performers in his shows. Silas and William Pendleton made a successful living in the lumber business. In 1887, Peter Pendleton, a well-admired

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Wisconsin pioneer, died at 100 years old. His two sons, William and Silas, were successful businessmen in the lumber industry. In 1887, Peter Thomas was elected to public office in Racine, and in 1900, Sarah Scott became the first African American high-school principal in Wisconsin. As new and long-standing black residents in Wisconsin pursued personal and material achievement, they continued the fight for equal access to civil rights and opportunities. Some gains were wrought by the turn of the century. Wisconsin’s Ezekiel Gillespie sued and won the right to vote in 1866. Four years later, the federal government enacted the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed black males suffrage. (Women would attain suffrage with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.) Blacks established an integrated school in Pleasant Ridge in 1870, and William Noland was the first African American to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1875. Despite these gains, discrimination was rampant in Wisconsin. In 1889, a black man named Owen Howell was refused a seat at an opera house; his supporters included blacks and whites. Ultimately, a white judge ruled in favor of Howell in the Howell v. Lit case. However, blacks in Wisconsin continued to be discriminated against in other public facilities, as well as in employment and housing. During this period, Wisconsin practiced both de facto and de jure segregation. Milwaukee blacks were at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights in Wisconsin, which gained strength around the turn of the century. In 1880, the black population in Milwaukee was 304. From that small black community emerged leaders who challenged discriminatory practices across the state. One of these leaders, William Green, was, in 1892, the first African American to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Though the struggle for civil rights was pursued by African Americans across the nation, the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

World War I to World War II Following the enormous setback of Plessy v. Ferguson, Milwaukee blacks continued to pursue the civil rights struggle. By 1910, the black population in Milwaukee had increased to 980 (in 1880 it was 304). Civil rights organizations began to emerge in Milwaukee, providing opportunity for blacks to fight back against racial injustice. In 1915, the Milwaukee chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. In 1919, the Milwaukee Urban League was established. During this period, African Americans in Wisconsin experienced setbacks as well as gains, as black communities grew and metamorphosed. Although World War I created new employment opportunities, blacks in Wisconsin did not benefit, as they were excluded from many jobs that were filled by whites and immigrants. The growth of Wisconsin’s black population was slow during this period; however, a trickle of blacks from the South, eager for a change in the racial climate and piqued by the prospects of better opportunities, migrated to Wisconsin cities such as Racine, Beloit, and Milwaukee. Following the end of World War I in 1919, Wisconsin’s blacks displayed resilience and determination in the face of adversity and discrimination. In the 1920s, African Americans opened a bank and an upscale summer retreat called Lake Ivanhoe. In 1924, Milwaukee hired its first African American police officer. During the Great Depression, which spanned more than a decade, blacks were among those hardest hit; nevertheless, they moved steadily forward. Several all-black sports teams emerged, and William Kelley, the executive secretary for the Milwaukee Urban League, led a campaign to end discriminatory practices in the school system. Kelley’s battle,

Wisconsin which started in 1930, did not see victory for many years. (It was not until 1954 that, in a decisive blow to segregated education throughout the nation, the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.) Wisconsin’s black population was small but thriving when, in 1941, the United States entered World War II. During the war, black migration into the state increased dramatically (and continued to surge through the 1960s). Blacks, primarily from Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee, arrived in droves seeking work in wartime industries, where (unlike in World War I) employers desperately needed workers, no matter their race or gender. African Americans throughout the nation served in segregated units during the war, with the support of black leaders on the home front. Black leaders endorsed black participation in the war, hoping that their efforts might motivate the American government to address issues they wrestled with at home. Although in 1948 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which abolished segregation in the armed forces, many of the core racial issues remained unaddressed.

Civil Rights to Black Power The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a response by African American leaders who had had enough of Jim Crow laws, which established racial segregation in public places, employment, housing, and other areas. The Civil Rights Movement involved litigation and nonviolent demonstrations such as marches, boycotts, and sit-ins to challenge segregation and discrimination. Media attention on the movement was greatest in the South, where racial violence and segregation were the most blatant and severe, and where the slightest resistance provoked vicious backlash. Black leaders challenged segregation on public transportation in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, which launched

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Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks to civil rights fame. The sit-in movement, which confronted segregation in public facilities and accommodations, and the Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation in public transportation and facilities, were other high-profile demonstrations that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement. But the South was not the only region where blacks challenged racial injustice. Blacks in Milwaukee waged battles against discrimination in the school system and housing market. The first demonstration in Milwaukee took place on August 28, 1963, and was staged by the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality to address the segregated school issue. In 1964, this organization, as well as numerous students, boycotted black schools. In 1965, Lloyd Barbee, a prominent attorney and civil rights activist, filed suit against the Milwaukee public schools. A decade later, in 1976, the U.S. District Court ordered the integration of Milwaukee schools. But progress on this issue remained laboriously slow long after the court’s intervention. The fight against segregated housing in Wisconsin was spearheaded by Alderperson Vel Phillips. Beginning in 1962, Phillips launched a campaign to end housing discrimination. Her housing legislation, however, was not well received by officials, and little was accomplished. In 1967, the NAACP Youth Council in Milwaukee marched in Kosciuszko Park, in what was referred to as the “Selma of the North,” to vividly illustrate their frustrations with local housing conditions (Selma is the city in Alabama where, in 1965, the legendary voting rights march, Selma to Montgomery, had begun). Father James Groppi, a white priest and a local veteran activist, joined this demonstration. Groppi, however, received the brunt of a violent attack at the park when several thousand whites assailed the demonstrators. Finally, in 1965, the Wisconsin legislation passed an open-housing law, which made

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Demonstrators on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison march in support of civil rights, 1969. (AP/Wide World Photos)

housing discrimination unlawful. This law enabled black residents to legally fight back in cases of housing discrimination. Racial violence erupted in the 1960s, during the period known as the Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement involved myriad black groups working to claim economic, cultural, and political empowerment for blacks. Militancy defined many of these organizations; some openly endorsed armed self-defense and exercised their right to wield guns. At the onset of the race riots, many of these organizations supported the rioting blacks. Some civil rights leaders, although not condoning a violent response, empathized with the plight of blacks in poor urban neighborhoods and advocated for them. By and large, the race riots of the 1960s occurred in cities outside the South. Black youths rioted in their own neighborhoods, destroying homes and businesses, venting their frustration with conditions in the ghettoes. Issues concerning

access to quality education, housing, and employment opportunities intertwined with problematic relations between a predominately white police force and black residents. Feelings of alienation and despair also contributed to the explosive riots that broke out in New Jersey, New York, and California, as well as Wisconsin and other states. Wisconsin’s major riot occurred on July 30, 1967, in Milwaukee. The riot erupted in the wake of a disturbance that occurred on July 29 at a nightclub, involving police and several arrests. Later, it was rumored that white police officers had abused black youths during an encounter, but no one knows specifically what caused the ensuing rioting. To be sure, anger and bitterness among black youths over their plight had been smoldering for months, if not years. The violent disturbance spilled over into the early hours of July 31. Mayor Henry Maier requested help from the National Guard and instituted a 24-hour curfew.

Wisconsin In the aftermath of the race riot in Milwaukee, state authorities and black leaders took a long look at the underlying causes of the riot and sought solutions to alleviate problems. Some cities implemented government-funded studies as well as programs to target and address social problems in black ghettoes. Milwaukee’s mayor launched a crusade for urban reform, which helped to highlight problems that had long been overlooked or were oblivious to mainstream society. Milwaukee’s black civil rights leaders, working through a group called Common View, issued a scalding statement denouncing, among other things, white racism. Unrest in Milwaukee was far from over. African American protest in Wisconsin persisted for the next two years. In 1968, 90 African American college students were expelled for damaging an administration building during a demonstration at Wisconsin State University in Oshkosh. In the same year, African Americans celebrated the federal open-housing and desegregation laws that were passed in Milwaukee. Blacks continued to press forward toward other goals, such as demanding a black studies department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The late 1960s saw the founding of black studies programs and departments throughout major cities in other states. San Francisco State University in California established a black studies program, the first of its kind in the nation, in 1968. Some institutions have initiated black studies programs and departments only recently.

1970s to the Present Black Wisconsinites from the 1970s onward have experienced increasing advances and inclusion into mainstream society, while maintaining a strong sense of racial identity. Although Wisconsin cities such as Racine, Madison, Kenosha, and Green Bay had the highest concentrations of blacks in the state, Wisconsin’s total black population constituted only 2.9 percent of the total

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population in 1970. But their small numbers have not prevented African Americans from making great achievements, challenging exclusionary practices, or maintaining racial pride into the twenty-first century. In the 1970s, Jackie BloberCooper and Sandra Holt Witherspoon became the first African American police officers in Racine. In 1978, Vel Phillips was elected secretary of state. Black Wisconsinites have long participated in traditional African American celebrations like Juneteenth and Kwanzaa, reflecting black Wisconsinites’ desire to maintain their connection to their cultural and ancestral roots. In 1988, Milwaukee’s America’s Black Holocaust Museum was constructed. In 2004, Gwen Moore was the first African American in Wisconsin to be elected to Congress. The progress and health of African American communities was not measured only in terms of individual achievement and cultural expression. Blacks in Wisconsin have also experienced some economic growth. Since the 1970s, the black middle class has continued to grow. The economic and social mobility of African Americans notwithstanding, a disproportionate number of blacks in the state continue to grapple with challenges in the new millennium. In 2005, blacks on average made $3.79 per hour less than whites. In the same year, 10.9 percent of blacks and 4.2 percent of whites were unemployed, and blacks performed below the academic average of whites. Another bleak statistic shows that Wisconsin’s percentage of black prisoners is one of the highest in the nation. Scholars contend that racial profiling and racism are among the reasons blacks are targeted more than whites.

Notable African Americans Many African Americans in Wisconsin have triumphed over entrenched social and economic challenges. Among this group are some who contributed greatly to the civil rights progress in the state. Whether through civil rights activism or by

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modeling successful achievement, these individuals are counted among Wisconsin’s local heroes.

Barbee, Lloyd (1925–2002) Born in Memphis, Lloyd Barbee, after serving in the Navy during World War II, moved to Madison, where he became one of the first African Americans to enter the University of Wisconsin Law School. Racial discrimination at the law school caused him to drop out in his first year, but he later returned and earned his law degree in 1956. In 1955, he became president of the Madison chapter of the NAACP and in 1961 won election as president of the Wisconsin state branch of the NAACP. In 1961, in what was the first demonstration of its kind in the country, he organized and led a 13-day sit-in at the Wisconsin state capitol in support of state fair housing and equal opportunity legislation. He also drafted a comprehensive civil rights ordinance that was enacted by the city of Madison in 1964. In 1962, Barbee moved to Milwaukee, and, in 1964, he was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly from a Milwaukee district. Barbee immediately took up the issue of school segregation. In 1965, the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP, which Barbee headed, helped found the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), which boycotted segregated public schools and created “freedom schools” as replacements. In July 1965, Barbee filed suit in federal court, alleging, in Amos v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee, that the racial segregation of Milwaukee public schools violated the rights of black students to equal protection under the law. Although the case did not go to trial until 1973 and was not decided until 1976, the judge ruled for Barbee. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Barbee worked with the legislature and with Milwaukee public schools to craft a workable integrations plan. Barbee died at age 77 in December 2002.

Chaney, Felmers (1918–) Felmers Chaney, one of Wisconsin’s oldest black citizens, led a remarkable life. He was born on July 12, 1918, in Spooner, a small town in Wisconsin, where he was the first African American to graduate from the local high school. In 1969, Chaney made history when he became the first African American police sergeant in Milwaukee. After 36 years of service, the esteemed Chaney retired. His many life achievements include becoming president of the Central City Development Corporation, CEO of the North Milwaukee State Bank, and president of the NAACP Executive Committee in Milwaukee.

Gillespie, Ezekiel (1818–1892) Born a slave in the South, Ezekiel Gillespie purchased his freedom from his owner, who was also his father. In 1854, he moved to Milwaukee, where he sold groceries and worked as a messenger for the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company. He became a leader in the city’s African American community and a conductor on Wisconsin’s branch of the Underground Railroad. He involved himself in the case of the runway slave, Joshua Glover, who was arrested as a fugitive when he sought asylum in Racine in 1854. In 1865, Gillespie attempted to register to vote in Milwaukee’s Seventh Ward, but was refused. With the support of local abolitionists Sherman Booth and Byron Paine, Gillespie challenged this decision, and, in 1866, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared that black men over the age of 21 could vote in the state. Thus, Wisconsin allowed black suffrage almost four years before ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment extended that right nationwide. In 1869, Gillespie helped found St. Mark AME Church in Milwaukee, the first African American church in the state. Gillespie died in Chicago in 1892, but his reputation in Milwaukee was such that he was brought back to the city for burial.

Wisconsin

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Democratic representative-elect Gwen Moore gestures during an interview, 2004. Moore was in Washington jockeying for committee assignments and working to build a staff for her congressional office. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Lindsay, Bernice C. (dates unknown) Bernice C. Lindsay is a well-known name in Wisconsin, where she is also known as the “Mother of the Black Community.” Lindsay’s namesake was Lindsay Heights, a redeveloped black neighborhood in Milwaukee that emerged in the late twentieth century. Previously, the neighborhood had been permeated with tattered homes and crime. The new homes and wellmanicured lawns that currently dot the area were accomplished through the efforts of the city, grassroots organizations, philanthropists, and others. Lindsay, who is now in her nineties, was born in Winchester, Indiana. She moved to Milwaukee in 1928 and emerged as an activist and community leader, serving as executive secretary of the North Side YWCA, organizing the March Church Terrell Club, and becoming a member of the Milwaukee Commission on Human

Rights. She also served on the Governor’s Council on Human Rights and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority. In the 1960s, she established the Creative Center, an institution to cultivate community interest in art and culture.

Moore, Gwen (1951–) Born in Racine, Gwen Moore lived and worked in Milwaukee as an urban development specialist and an organizer for Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Moore, a Democrat, won election in 1988 to the Wisconsin State Assembly, where she served two terms. In 1992, she became the first African American to win election to the Wisconsin State Senate. In 2004, Moore became the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from Wisconsin, winning the 4th District seat, which covers the city of

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Milwaukee and several of its suburbs. She was reelected in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Moore serves on the House Budget Committee and the House Financial Services Committee. She has sought tax cuts for small businesses, expanded funding for Medicaid, and the removal of troops from Iraq. In 2006, Moore and fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus were arrested while demonstrating on the grounds of the Sudan embassy in Washington, D.C., in an effort to call attention to the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. Moore and her colleagues were ticketed for disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly.

Phillips, Velvalea (Vel) (1924–) Born Velvalea Rodgers on February 18, 1924, in Milwaukee, Vel Phillips has accomplished several extraordinary feats. She is a graduate of Howard University, a predominately black institution in Washington, D.C., and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School. She and her husband, Dale Phillips, were prominent attorneys for many years. Between political leadership and civil rights activism, Phillips toiled to make Wisconsin a better place for African Americans. In the 1950s, she became an active member of the local NAACP. In 1956, she became the first African American and the first woman member of the Common Council in Milwaukee. Throughout the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, she participated in nonviolent demonstrations and worked in the political system to challenge discrimination in housing, employment, and education in her state. In 1978, Phillips became the first woman and the first African American to be elected Wisconsin secretary of state. Later, she became the first African American to be elected as a member of the Democratic National Committee. In retirement, Phillips maintains constant vigil over the well-being of Wisconsin’s black

community. She has served on several boards, including America’s Black Holocaust Museum.

Cultural Contributions Small black communities are frequently challenged to maintain their cultural heritage within predominately white environments. However, blacks in Wisconsin have maintained many of their cultural traditions. Black hair styles such as afros, which were popular from the mid-1960s through the 1970s and again in the new millennium, assorted braided hair styles, soul food, and annual celebrations are some of the ways in which blacks in Wisconsin preserve their links to the collective black identity and their heritage. Soul foods (a term that refers to food preparation styles and food items, many of which are rooted in Africa) such as fried foods and sweet potatoes, were brought to Wisconsin by blacks migrating from the South. Other traditions include African American celebrations such as Kwanzaa, Juneteenth, and Marcus Garvey Day, which enable blacks in Wisconsin to learn about their history and culture as well as to share their culture with the general population. Popular black music radio stations, which play a prominent role in black communities around the nation, also help to sustain black identity in Wisconsin. In predominately white environments, black radio stations are especially critical, for they may be the only resource for African American popular culture. Historically, black radio has served as a purveyor of black music and vernacular, trends, and relevant issues and as a backdrop for the formation and performance of African American dance styles. Wisconsin is currently home to a handful of black radio stations, most of which broadcast from major cities like Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Madison, which have large concentrations of blacks. These radio stations feature rhythm and blues, hip-hop, jazz, gospel, and the Tom Joyner Radio Show, a

Wisconsin popular nationally syndicated program. Hip-hop music and culture, though once mostly a black youth phenomenon, has permeated white suburbia in Wisconsin and most other U.S. states. Whether through food, popular music, annual celebrations, or the frequent association with other blacks through black churches, organizations, and formal and informal social groups, African Americans in Wisconsin have demonstrated the resilience of black culture and race pride despite centuries of oppression, injustice, and a host of social problems.

Bibliography “African Americans in Early Wisconsin.” The People’s Voices February 2010. http://comminfo .rutgers.edu/~dalbello/FLVA/voices/839/ voices/afam/. Bell-Myers, A. African-American Firsts in Wisconsin 1600–2006: Other Historical Facts of Diversity. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008.

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Dougherty, Jack. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Geib, Paul. “From Mississippi to Milwaukee: A Case Study of the Southern Black Migration to Milwaukee, 1940–1970.” Journal of Negro History 83 (Autumn 1998): 229–248. Gurda, John. The Making of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1999. Jones, Patrick D. “ ‘Not a Color, But an Attitude’: Black Power Politics in Milwaukee.” In Jeanne F. Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds., Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Jones, Patrick D. The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Katz, William Loren. Black Pioneers: An Untold Story. New York: Atheneum Books, 1999.

“Black History in Wisconsin.” Wisconsin Historical Society, February 2010. www.wisconsinhistory .org/topics/blackhistory.

Kenny, Judith. “Making Milwaukee Famous: Cultural Capital, Urban Image and the Politics of Place.” Urban Geography 16, no. 5 (1995): 440–458.

“Black Wisconsinites and Economic Opportunity.” Center on Wisconsin Strategy, February 2010. www.cows.org/pdf/ds-blackwisconsites_0111 07.pdf

“Later 20th-Century Wisconsin.” Wisconsin Historical Society, February 2010. www.wiscons inhistory.org/topics/shorthistory/later20th.asp.

Current, Richard Nelson. Wisconsin: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.

Lloyd Barbee. Videorecording, Milwaukee Public Television. Milwaukee, WI: WMVS/ WMVT, 1995.

Dahlk, William. Chipping Away at the Iceberg from Barbee to Fuller: Milwaukee Blacks and Educational Proprietorship, 1963–2000. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2010.

“Major Trends as Reported by the 2000 Census: African American Population.” Wadsworth’s Census 2000, February 2010. www.wadsworth .com/sociology_d/special_features/ext/census/ african.html.

“Desegregation and Civil Rights.” Wisconsin Historical Society, February 2010. www .wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-049/ ?action=more_essay.

Nesbit, Robert C. Wisconsin: A History. 2nd ed. Revised and updated by William F. Thompson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

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Schwalm, Leslie. A. Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Slesinger, Doris P., E. Howard Grigsby, Karl Taeuber, and Alma Taeuber. African Americans in Wisconsin: A Statistical Overview. Boston: Custom Publishing, 2006. Thompson, William F. The History of Wisconsin: Volume 6, Continuity and Change, 1940–1965. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1988. Through One City’s Eyes: Race Relations in America’s Heartland. Videorecording, Milwaukee Public Television. Milwaukee, WI: Duncan Group, Inc., 1999.

Trotter, Joe W. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum, February 2010. http://wbhsm.homestead.com/ home.html. “Wisconsin—Race and Hispanic Origin: 1820 to 1990.” Census Bureau, February 2010. www .census.gov/population/www/documentation/ twps0056/tab64.xls. Zubrensky, Ruth. “A Report on Past Discrimination Against African-Americans in Milwaukee, 1835–1999.” Milwaukee, WI: Author, 1999.

WYOMING William Gibbons and Gordon E. Thompson

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Chronology 1806

Edward Rose enters the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, becoming the first documented African American fur trapper in the state.

1807

John Colter is the first documented white-born American to enter Wyoming.

1809

Edward Rose occupies a temporary cabin in the Big Basin area.

1811

Edward Rose traps in the Big Horn Mountains.

1825

Conceived by William Ashley, the first fur-trading rendezvous, a gathering of mountain men, occurs in the Green River Valley in western Wyoming

1825

James Beckwourth traps in territory that will become Yellowstone National Park.

1840–1867

An unknown number of African Americans travel the 2,000-mile Oregon-California Trail through Wyoming in search of new frontiers in Oregon and gold in California.

1842

Janisse, a black slave, accompanies John C. Frémont on his explorations in central Wyoming.

1860

Pony Express mail service begins in Wyoming.

1866

The town of Cheyenne is founded; the Union Pacific Railroad enters Wyoming.

1866

(December 21) A Sioux force under Red Cloud wipes out the command of Captain William Fettermen at the Fetterman Battle in northern Wyoming—buffalo soldiers (African American cavalrymen) figure prominently in the battle.

1867

(January 10) Congress passes the Territorial Suffrage Act, which allows African Americans in the western territories to vote and immediately enfranchises about 800 black male voters.

1869

(May 19) The Wyoming Territory is organized.

1869

(December 7) The first Wyoming territorial legislature enacts antimiscegenation laws designed to prevent marriages between whites, blacks, and Asians; the laws are repealed in 1882, but reinstated in 1913 and remain on the books until 1965.

1869

(December 10) The first territorial legislature enfranchises white women, but refuses to grant suffrage to African Americans, thereby ignoring the Territorial Suffrage Act passed by Congress two years earlier, which granted blacks in the western territories the right to vote.

1870

Dr. Ferdinand Hayden’s mapping expedition into the southern Wyoming Territory includes Joe Clark, a hunter assigned to the Crow Indians, and other African Americans who supplied and maintained tents, firearms, horses, and livestock. Hayden and his expedition were instrumental in the eventual establishment by Congress of Yellowstone National Park.

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1872

(March 1) Yellowstone National Park is established.

1873

Wyoming mandates segregated schools in any district containing more than 15 black children.

1875

Barney Ford, a former slave who is now a prosperous barber and gold prospector travelling between Colorado and Wyoming, builds his second Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne (the first is in Denver)

1875

Lucy Phillips helps establish the territory’s first AME Church, Allen Chapel.

1879

William Jefferson Hardin is elected to the Wyoming territorial legislature from Cheyenne, becoming the first African American legislator in the state.

1890

(January) Two hundred African Americans from Harrison County, Ohio, are brought to Dana near Hanna to work as coal miners, provoking a mixed reaction among local whites.

1890

(July 10) Wyoming is admitted to the Union as the 44th state.

1892

African Americans in the 9th and 10th Cavalries of the U.S. Colored Troops are assigned to Wyoming to control Native Americans; they also help settle the Johnson County Cattle War between farmers and ranchers.

1905

Joe Martin, an African American prisoner, is lynched by an angry mob in Laramie for supposedly attacking a white woman.

1955

Wyoming repeals its nearly 90-year-old school segregation law.

1957

The Wyoming Civil Rights Act is passed, desegregating public accommodations in the state.

1960

Wyoming outlaws segregated housing.

1964

Wyoming repeals its antimiscegenation law and passes a law forbidding employment discrimination.

1966–1974

James Byrd serves as Cheyenne’s first African American chief of police.

1969

(October 17) Fourteen black football players at the University of Wyoming are kicked off the team for wearing black armbands to protest the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (Mormon) prohibition of African American priests; the church dropped its 126-year-old ban on African American men in the priesthood in 1978.

1978

Harriet Elizabeth Byrd, wife of police Chief James Byrd, becomes the first African American elected to the Wyoming state legislature since William Hardin in the nineteenth century; she is reelected four times.

1985–1989

Arthur Mercer, an African American who served in the Air Force for 31 years, is president of Cheyenne’s school board.

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1990

Wyoming’s African American population reaches 4,000; the Wyoming legislature designates Martin Luther King Day/Wyoming Equality Day as a legal holiday (third Monday of January).

1997

The U.S. Department of Commerce reports a total of 232 African American businesses in Wyoming.

2000

The U.S. Census documents 3,722 African Americans reside in Wyoming.

2006

The U.S. Census estimates 5,333 African Americans live in Wyoming.

2008

Barack Obama, an African American senator from Illinois, wins the Wyoming Democratic Caucus, defeating Senator Hillary Clinton of New York by winning about 61 percent of the vote; Obama loses Wyoming in the general election in November.

2010

As of this date, Wyoming has not ratified the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the poll tax; the amendment took effect in 1964.

Historical Overview On July 10, 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state admitted to the Union. With just over 500,000 people spread out over 97,818 square miles, Wyoming is today the least populated of the states. Among the original inhabitants of Wyoming were the Native American Crow, Arapahoe, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Sioux tribes, which dominated the landscape for 200 years. Today, the ethnic composition of the state includes a white majority, as well as Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, and Asians. Estimated at 5,333 in 2006, African Americans represent less than 1 percent of the state’s total population. Although a small percentage, African Americans have been a vital part of the state’s history ever since the Lewis and Clark expedition opened up the West at the start of the nineteenth century. Although often forgotten and ignored, Wyoming’s African Americans made significant contributions as mountain men, buffalo soldiers, cowboys, cattlemen, farmers, politicians, and entrepreneurs. Among the most famous Wyomingites are mountain men Edward Rose and James Beckwourth, homesteader James Edwards, rustler and cowboy Isom Dart,

politicians William Hardin and Elizabeth Byrd, and entrepreneur Barney Ford. The first documented African Americans in Wyoming were the mountain men and fur trappers Edward Rose and James Beckwourth. They traversed the state in the early nineteenth century seeking furs and trade with Native Americans. Rose trapped through the Big Basin in 1809 and then again through the Big Horn Mountains in 1811. Beckwourth trapped in the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone National Park area and in 1825 attended the first fur-trading rendezvous in the Green River Valley in western Wyoming. Like most Wyoming trappers and traders, Beckwourth and Rose considered the area a temporary destination. As fur trading came to an end—the last rendezvous was held in 1840—Wyoming continued to be perceived as a temporary stop to somewhere else. The 2,000-mile Oregon-California Trail through Wyoming was the shortest and quickest route across the plains and the Rocky Mountains. An estimated 350,000 people crossed Wyoming between 1840 and 1869, including an unknown number of African Americans bound for Oregon and California. Following the trail across central Wyoming in 1842, the explorer John C. Frémont

Wyoming

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Stampeded by Lightning by Frederic Remington. (Corel)

was accompanied by his slave Janisse. Other early African American arrivals in Wyoming included the parents of Edward L. Baker Jr., who was born on the banks of the Platte River in eastern Wyoming in 1865. He later served as a buffalo solider in the 10th Cavalry, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Spanish-American War. With the arrival of the Union Pacific railroad in southern Wyoming in 1867, cities began springing up and the population began to grow, leading to the organization of Wyoming as a territory in 1869. African Americans began settling in Wyoming as well, establishing communities in Cheyenne, Casper, Laramie, Rawlins, Rock Springs, and Green River. Although whites often opposed and sought to prevent such settlements, blacks worked for the railroads and in mining, and as cattlemen and farmers. Despite racial tensions, African Americans continued to migrate to the state. In January 1890, the same year Wyoming entered the Union, a group of 200

African Americans from Harrison County, Ohio, migrated to Wyoming to work in the coal mines. However, tension with local whites and the unremunerative nature of the work caused most of the African American miners to leave the state within a few years. In 1892, buffalo soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalries arrived in Wyoming to guard the population against Native Americans. The two units saw service in many parts of the state and were particularly active in attempting to settle the Johnson County Cattle War between farmers and the smaller ranchers. Unfortunately, racial tensions caused both units to be transferred out of the state within months. Nicknamed the “Equality State,” Wyoming in 1869 became the first state to pass legislation extending full suffrage rights to women, including, besides the right to vote, the right to sit on juries and to hold public office. However, equality for white women was tempered by other Wyoming statutes that denied basic rights to

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various ethnic groups. Immediately after becoming a territory, Wyoming’s legislators passed antimiscegenation laws designed to prevent marriages between people of different ethnicities; school segregation laws requiring segregated schools in any district with more than 15 black students; and racially based limitations on access to public accommodations. Legislators also did nothing to discourage lynching. Even with the repeal of school segregation and antimiscegenation statutes and the enactment of public accommodation laws in 1957, racial tensions persisted. In 1969, the famous “Black 14 Incident” involving African American members of the University of Wyoming football team occurred. Team members wore black armbands during a game to protest the policy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) whereby African Americans were denied entrance to the Latter-day Saints priesthood. The incident divided the community and continued to damage race relations in the “Equality State.” Wyoming’s African American population has historically been small. Limited by employment opportunities, African Americans have never constituted more than 1 percent of the state’s population. The 1870 U.S. Census documented 183 African Americans in the territory, most of them males. By 1900, the total number of African Americans in the state exceeded 1,000 for the first time. The African American population peaked at 2,235 in 1910 and declined to 1,375 by 1920. For the next several decades, the African American population of Wyoming remained constant: 1,489 in 1930 and 1,525 in 1940. But, following the desegregation of the military and the end of World War II, African American troops began to be stationed at F. E. Warren Air Force Base west of Cheyenne, increasing the African American population to 3,000 in 1950. Throughout the 1950s, retired military personnel remained in the area, contributing to a rise in the African American population, which, nevertheless, ultimately declined to about 2,000 in

the 1960s despite these military retirements. By 1990, Wyoming’s African American population had swelled to 4,000. Today over 5,300 African Americans are estimated to reside in Wyoming, mainly in Cheyenne. The bulk of the population remains retired military personnel. However, many African Americans are also employed in ranching, education services, and government positions. There is also a substantial African American population at the University of Wyoming in Laramie as well as in Casper and Rawlings.

Notable African Americans Baker, Edward Lee, Jr. (1865–1913) Born in Laramie County, Wyoming Territory, on December 28, 1865, Edward Baker was a career soldier who won the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration awarded by the U.S. government, for his bravery during the Spanish-American War. Baker joined the U.S. Army in 1882, rising to the rank of sergeant major in the 10th Cavalry Regiment. On July 1, 1898, in battle near Santiago, Cuba, Baker, while under fire from the enemy, saved a wounded comrade from drowning. For this action, Baker became one of the first African American recipients of the Medal of Honor. After the war, Baker was promoted to the rank of captain and given command of the 49th Infantry. He retired after 20 years of service in 1902. Baker died in Los Angeles on August 26, 1913. He is the maternal grandfather of jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon.

Byrd, Harriet Elizabeth (1926–) Educator and elected official Harriet Elizabeth Byrd became Wyoming’s first fully certified and full-time African American teacher in 1959. She was also the first African American to serve in the Wyoming legislature since statehood and the only

Wyoming African American woman state legislator (1981). Byrd was born in Cheyenne in April 1926, the daughter of Sudie and Robert Rhone. Bryd’s parents were hard-working middle-class African Americans who purchased a home in a white neighborhood in Cheyenne. A gifted student, Byrd was admitted to the University of Wyoming, but declined to attend after the university barred her from living in the dorms. She entered West Virginia State Teachers College in 1945 and married James W. Byrd in 1947. In 1949, she graduated with a B.A. degree in education that included a lifetime teaching certification recognized in all states on the East Coast. However, racism and prejudice in Wyoming, which called itself the “Equality State,” prevented Byrd from becoming a teacher for nine years. She finally got the opportunity to teach at the Goins Elementary School in 1959, but left after one year to teach special education in Laramie County. In 1976, she earned an M.A. in education from the University of Wyoming. In 1981, Byrd was elected to the Wyoming state legislature. Known as “the people’s legislator” because she spoke for the people. Byrd served four terms as a state representative and two terms as a state senator. During her tenure in the legislature, she often took on human rights issues. Her bills often failed to draw support from female colleagues who were unwilling to back measures that were unpopular with conservative white males. Byrd did, however, sponsor and pass several bills during her tenure. As a member of the Transportation Committee, Byrd presented the Child Restraint Bill mandating flags on antennas for scooters, a safeguard for the handicapped traveler. She received national recognition for a bill proposing that the buffalo be designated as the state mammal and for a bill ratifying Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday. It took nine years and several compromises before the Wyoming legislature finally passed the King Holiday bill. Byrd’s main concession was to name the

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holiday MLK/Equality Day. Wyoming became the 44th state to ratify the day as a holiday on the third Monday of January. Byrd currently lives in retirement in Wyoming. Her husband died in 2005 and her son, James W. Byrd Jr., now serves in the Wyoming legislature, holding his mother’s former seat.

Byrd, James W. (d. 2005) James W. Byrd was a veteran of the U.S. Army, who served in Europe during World War II and in Korea during the Korean War. In 1947, Byrd married Harriet Elizabeth Rhone, who became the first African American woman elected to the Wyoming legislature. As a civilian, Byrd worked in law enforcement, joining the Cheyenne Police Department in 1949 and becoming chief of police in 1966. The first African American to hold this office in Cheyenne, Byrd retired in 1974. He served as Wyoming’s U.S. Marshal from 1977 until 1982. He and his wife raised three children, two sons and one daughter. His eldest son, James W. Byrd Jr., was elected to the Wyoming Legislature in 2009. James Byrd died on December 5, 2005.

Edwards, James (1871–1951) Farmer, homesteader, and cattleman, James Edwards was one of Wyoming’s earliest African American homesteaders. He worked his way from an ordinary cattleman to become one of the most successful black ranchers on the western frontier. Born in Ohio in 1871, Edwards reached Wyoming around 1900 to work in the Cambria coalmines near New Castle, but left mining after becoming the victim of racial taunts from Italian miners. He then filed his first homestead claim to a 90-acre parcel that eventually became the center of a 10,000-acre ranch with 200 cattle and 1,000 sheep. Edwards amassed land holdings in excess of 10,000 acres in Niobrara and

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Converse Counties. His wealth surpassed that of all his white neighbors. Despite his prosperity, Edwards remained conscious of the fact that he was a black man in an all-white community. He was always careful to avoid being alone in the presence of white women, never entering a home where a white woman was alone and rarely attending the social functions of his neighbors. However, race did not keep Edwards from becoming wealthy. He successfully raised a variety of animals and agricultural crops, selling wheat, as well as cattle, sheep, chickens, and turkeys to commercial processors. For his own consumption, he bred ducks, guineas, and hogs, and grew vegetables in his garden. To increase his land holdings, Edwards invited friends to file homestead claims and then sell their land to him once the title was clear and free. Edwards’ wife, Lethel, contributed much to the success of the ranch. She managed the house, kept records of the business, worked in the fields, planted vegetables in the garden, upholstered furniture, and helped with slaughtering and processing fowls. A talented musician, Lethel also taught music lessons to nearby children. Edwards died in 1951.

Hardin, William Jefferson (1831–c. 1890) Barber, orator, and legislator, William Jefferson Hardin was the first African American legislator in a western state or territory. He served twice in the Wyoming territorial legislature in an era when whites greatly outnumbered African Americans who were often subjected to prejudice and racism. Hardin was born in Kentucky in 1831 to a free African American mother and a white father. His free status afforded him an education that subsequently led to teaching for a brief period in the city of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Hardin left Kentucky sometime after 1850 to seek his fortune during the gold rush in California. Never

reaching California, he lived instead in Canada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska before settling in Denver, Colorado, in 1863. Hardin lived for a decade in Denver, where he became a respected leader and a dynamic speaker, earning the nickname the “Colored Orator of Denver.” In Denver, he also advocated the integration of public schools and led the fight for black suffrage against formidable white opposition. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention that renominated President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and held a position at the Denver branch of the U.S. Mint in 1873, but his career in politics was short-lived. Hardin left Denver in disgrace and his political career came to an end after it was discovered that he had two wives and had dodged being drafted into the Union army by moving from Omaha, Nebraska, to Denver. Hardin relocated to Cheyenne, opening a barbershop in 1873. During the 10 years or so that he resided in Wyoming, he became well known and respected among Cheyenne’s white leaders. In 1878, he spoke often at various public events. Hardin distinguished himself as a candidate for public office when he addressed the membership of a local Presbyterian church on the evils of alcohol. A year later, Hardin was nominated by the Republicans and won a seat in the territorial House of Representatives, serving two terms until 1882. His election to statewide office established him as the first African American legislator in a western state or territory. Once in office, Hardin was determined to combat racial inequality. He spoke passionately on the floor of the House of Representatives against Wyoming’s ban on interracial marriages and introduced legislation to repeal it. He supported legislation to grant women several legal rights, including control over their property. He also opposed a plan by legislators representing the western part of Wyoming to move the state capital out of Cheyenne. He also authored several bills that became law, including a measure “to

Wyoming prevent non-tax payers from voting at elections for the issuing of bonds or imposing taxes,” and other measures to protect dairymen and poultry. Hardin declined to seek a third term. It is not known what happened to him after he left office. Some historians suggest Hardin lived and held political office in Utah and died in Leadville, Colorado, in 1889 or 1890. But according to Roger Hardaway, author of one of the few articles examining Hardin’s life and career, neither is true. Hardin never held public office in Utah and the date and place of his death can not be confirmed.

Cultural Contributions Despite racism and poor race relations, African Americans played important and significant roles in Wyoming. African American William Hardin served two full terms in the Wyoming legislature. Harriet “Liz” Byrd, elected to four full terms, was the first African American woman elected to the Wyoming state legislature. From prominent individuals to hard-working men and women, many made a name for themselves. Homesteader and entrepreneur James Edwards of Converse County worked his way from nothing to the status of a wealthy cultured citizen after building one of the most successful black-owned cattle ranches on the western frontier. African Americans settled across all parts of Wyoming, and some made names for themselves as rustlers and cowboys, such as Thornton Biggs, Jim Simpson, and Isom Dart. In the Yellowstone National Park area a small group of African Americans lived and worked between 1872 and 1907. African Americans were not new to the area. Fifty years earlier, fur trapper James Beckwourth trapped in the area. African Americans were hired temporarily in the summer to work in hotels as waiters, bell boys, and in various other service capacities, though census figures

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for the period 1880–1910 show few African Americans residing in the upper Yellowstone region. In 1880, the Wyoming Territory had only 298 blacks. In 1900, when Yellowstone National Park was first given its own place in the Census, one black person was shown as living in the park, although 50 lived in nearby Park and Gallatin counties.

Bibliography Barrett, James E. “The Black 14: William v. Eaton—A Personal Recollection.” Annals of Wyoming 68, no. 3 (1996): 2–7. Guenther, Todd R. “Y’all Call Me Nigger Jim Now, But Someday You’ll Call Me Mr. James Edwards: Black Success on the Plains of the Equality State.” Annals of Wyoming 61, no. 2 (1989): 20–40. Hardaway, Roger D. “William Jefferson Hardin: Wyoming’s Nineteenth Century Black Legislator.” Annals of Wyoming 63, (1991): 2–13. Haskell, Evelyn. “Harriet Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Byrd: Wyoming Trail Blazer in Education and Politics.” Annals of Wyoming 78, no. 1 (2006): 15–25. Kaufman, Reagan Joy. “Discrimination in the Equality State: Black-White Relations in Wyoming History.” Annals of Wyoming 77, no. 1 (2006): 13–27. King, William. “Wyoming.” The African American Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, 2899–2901. Schubert, Frank N. “Black Soldiers on the White Frontier: Some Factors Influencing Race Relations.” Phylon 32, no. 4 (1971): 410–415. Whittlesey, Lee. “A Brief History of Black Americans in the Yellowstone National Park Area, 1872–1907.” Annals of Wyoming 69, no. 4 (1997): 13–20.

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About the Editor and Contributors

Editor Alton Hornsby, Jr., is Fuller E. Callaway Professor of History (Retired) at Morehouse College. For 25 years (1976–2001) he was editor of the Journal of Negro History. He has also edited the Papers of John and Lugenia Burns Hope (microfilm edition), The Dictionary of Twentieth Century Black Leaders (2005), and Blackwell’s Companion to African American History (2005). He has authored A Biographical History of African Americans (2005), The Atlanta Urban League (with Alexa B. Henderson, 2004), A Short History of Black Atlanta (2005), Black Power in Dixie: A Political History of African Americans in Atlanta (2009), and African Americans in the Post-Emancipation South: The Outsiders' View (2010). He was the Distinguished Littlefield Lecturer in Southern History at the University of Texas (Austin) in 2011.

Contributors Randal Beeman, Ph.D., is professor of history at Bakersfield College. Orville Vernon Burton is Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University. His latest work is the highly acclaimed The Age of Lincoln (2008). He is also vice president of the Southern Historical Association. Nicholas Gaffney is a graduate student in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. William Gibbons is assistant professor in the Cohen Library at the City College of New York. His research interests include urban policy and community economic development. He has published articles on sports and Hip Hop. Meg Greene is an independent scholar and prolific author based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Anne Hornsby is associate professor of economics at Spelman College. Her articles and essays have appeared in the Journal of Negro History, the Dictionary of Georgia Biography, and A Companion to African American History. Miles Jackson is professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii. His doctoral studies were completed at Syracuse University in communication. His published work on African Americans in Hawaii includes articles and two books, And They Came: A Brief History of Blacks in Hawaii (2001) and They Followed the Trade Winds (2004). He is the executive producer of the documentary film, Holding Fast the Dream: Hawaii’s African American Experience. Jackson has traveled widely in the South Pacific and Asia. Howard J. Jones is an independent historian and retired professor of history from Prairie View A&M University. He is the author of African Americans: Their History (1997), Red Diary: A Chronological History of Black Americans in Houston (1991), and other works. He is also a founder and secretarytreasurer of the Southern Conference on African American Studies.

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About the Editor and Contributors

Gladys L. Knight is the author of Icons of African American Protest: Trailblazing Activists of the Civil Rights Movement (2008). Demetrius Lamar is a professor in the Sociology Department at Merrimack College. His research focus includes the effects of education, class, and material and immaterial inheritance on social mobility. Fred Lindsey teaches social sciences and African American studies at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California. He is the author of several publications in his field of expertise. Dwayne Mack is an assistant professor of history at Berea College. He has written articles on the Civil Rights Movement and blacks in the American West and is the author of “Hazel Scott: A Career Curtailed” in the Journal of African American History (Spring 2006) and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Berea College’s Participation in the Selma to Montgomery March” in Ohio Valley History (Fall 2005). Darrell Millner has taught African American history and black cinema history since 1975 in the Black Studies Department at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. A graduate of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Oregon, his special areas of interests are Oregon black history, blacks in the American West, and black cinema history. Komanduri S. Murty, professor and coordinator of the Sociology Program at Fort Valley State University, is the author or coauthor of five books, including Historical Black Colleges and Universities: Their Place in American Higher Education (1993). Dr. Murty has also written more than 60 book chapters and articles, which have appeared in numerous books and journals, including the Encyclopedia of American Prisons, Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Encyclopedia of Great Black Migration, Intimate Violence, Criminal Justice Review, The Status of Black Atlanta, Studies in Symbolic Interactionism, Deviant Behavior, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, Journal of Police Science Administration, Journal of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Victimology. He has also presented more than 90 articles at professional meetings—nationally and internationally. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Mississippi State University in 1984. Lisa N. Nealy is currently Assistant Professor of Research Methodologies in the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Howard University in 2004 with distinction. She also received an M.A. degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Jackson State University with high distinction. Dr. Nealy received her B.A. degree in political science from Jackson State University with distinction. She teaches American government and politics, political and global issues, statistics, scope and methods, African American politics, and state and local government, as well as courses on the chief executive. Her teaching interests are in American government and political behavior, research methodology, statistics, women politics, and African American politics. She has published widely in each of these areas, including her most recent publications, African American Women Voters: Racializing Religiosity, Political Consciousness, and Progressive Political Action in U.S. Presidential Elections from 1964 through 2008 (2009) and Methodological Pluralism in Political Science (editor, 2008). She is a recent Fulbright-Hayes Faculty Recipient of the “Study Abroad Project” in West Africa, Ghana, where she conducted primary research. Linda Williamson Nelson, Ph.D., is associate professor of anthropology and Africana studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Pomona, New Jersey.

About the Editor and Contributors

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Michele Valerie Ronnick is professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Her books include Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum: A Commentary, an Interpretation, and a Study of Its Influence (1991); The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship (2005); and The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader (2006). Walter C. Rucker is associate professor of African American and African studies at Ohio State University. His research focuses on African Diasporic culture and resistance, and he is the author of The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America (2005). Ronald J. Stephens, Ph.D., African American studies, Temple University, is associate professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Ohio University. He is also the coauthor of African Americans of Denver. Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington. He has written extensively on African American history in the American West and is the author of The Forging of a Black Community (1994) and In Search of the Racial Frontier (1998). Gordon E. Thompson is assistant professor in the English Department at the City College of New York specializing in African American and American literature and culture. He is also director of the City College’s Langston Hughes Festival. His research interests include African American poetry, the Harlem Renaissance, and interdisciplinary studies. He has published articles and reviews on Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Zora Neale Hurston, Melvin Tolson, Charles Chesnutt, and Michael Harper, among others, in the CLA Journal, the Journal of American Literature, Callaloo, American Book Review, and the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. Julius Thompson (deceased) was professor of history and director of the Black Studies Program at the University of Missouri–Columbia. His many publications include The Black Press in Mississippi 1865– 1985 (1993) and Hiram R. Revels, 1827–1901: A Biography (1982). Joe W. Trotter is the Giant Eagle Professor of History and Social Justice at Carnegie-Mellon University. Among his many works are River Jordan: African American Life in the Ohio Valley (1998), Coal, Class and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–1932 (1990), and African American History in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives, with Eric Smith (1997). John A. Wagner has taught American and British history at Arizona State University and Phoenix College. He earned a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 1995. He has published six books, including Voices of Shakespeare’s England: Contemporary Accounts of Elizabethan Daily Life, and has contributed to various American history reference works, including the Encyclopedia of American Race Riots. Carl H. Walker is a graduate of Ohio University and the University of Virginia Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs. His master’s thesis was titled “The Design and Implementation of a Community Outreach Program for Senior Citizens.” Mr. Walker also had graduate study in American civilization at the University of Maryland; law school at George Washington University; a doctoral program in American history at Atlanta University; and specialized study in public administration at several institutions including the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., the Federal Executive Seminar Center in Berkeley, California, and the Federal Executive Institute in

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About the Editor and Contributors

Charlottesville, Virginia. After he retired from a career with the U.S. Social Security Administration, he became an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Administration at Atlanta University. He later became an adjunct professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Clark Atlanta University. Shirley Waters-White is an adjunct professor of diasporic history in the Atlanta University Center. Her publications include Psalms of a Black Woman and Talkin’ About Us. Her forthcoming work is on women bishops in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Tiffany K. Wayne teaches U.S. history and American women’s history at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Seth A. Weitz is assistant professor of history at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia. He has written extensively on Florida’s political and racial and ethnic history, having numerous articles published in journals and periodicals. Claytee White is director of the Oral History Research Center, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Linda Wynn is assistant director for state programs with the Tennessee Historical Commission and a professor of history at Fisk University. She has coedited Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience with Jessie Carney Smith (2009) and Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee with Bobby L. Lovett (1996). Ben Wynne is assistant professor of history at Gainesville State College. He earned his doctorate from the University of Mississippi and is the author of Mississippi’s Civil War: A Narrative History (2006) and other works on the South and Mississippi. Jamane Yeager is a member of the Public Service Department and reference/electronic resources librarian at Elon University. Margaret Blair Young teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University. She has written extensively about African American history in scholarly articles as well as in fiction. With Darius Gray, she has also co-produced two documentaries on black Mormon pioneers and has written and produced a play about Jane Manning James. She is the president of the Association for Mormon Letters.

Index

(“f” indicates a figure; “t” indicates a table) African American Historical Society of Alaska, 26, 31–32 African American jazz, Tennessee, 810 African American League, Idaho, 228 African-American Married Ladies Industrial Club, Kentucky, 324 African American Multicultural Museum, Arizona, 54 African American Museum, Philadelphia, 734 African American Museum of Iowa, Iowa, 275 African American Renaissance Ground Tour, Maryland, 377 African American Rodeo, Colorado, 97 African American Studies Department, Kansas, 290, 296 African American Theater, Hawaiian culture, 226 African American theater, Louisiana, 344 African Burial Grounds, New York City, 566, 567, 572, 573 African Church of Charlestown, 746, 752 African Communities League (ACL), Colorado, 104 African Dorcas Society, 569 African Ecclesiastical Society, 115, 120 African Free School, New York City, 567, 569 African Free Society, Delaware, 143 African Heritage Project, Florida, 186 African Institute, The, Philadelphia, 712 African Lodge of Free Masons, Massachusetts, 383 African Masonic Lodge movement, 718 African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches: Allen AME Church, Yankton, South Dakota, 768, 771, 772; Mississippi, 426; Washington, 898. See also Bethel AME churches African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion churches: New York City, 568; North Carolina, 597 African Relief Society, Hawaii, 216 African School Society, Delaware, 132 African Society, New York City, 567, 571, 578 African Suite (Bledsoe), 832 African Union Society, 738, 741 African Zion Baptist Church, West Virginia, 929 Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), Utah, 847, 853

A. M. Herman & Associates, 15 Aaron, Billye, 192 Aaron, Henry Louis (Hank), 10, 191, 935 Abbott, Cleveland Leigh, 769, 772–73 Abbott, Robert Sengstacke, 202, 241 Abeilard, Joseph, 344 Abel, Elijah, 843, 849, 852, 854 Abernathy, Ralph David, 8, 11, 202 Abolition Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine, 314 Abolition society, Philadelphia 1775, 712 Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 714 Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem, 571, 585 Abyssinian Benevolent Daughters of Esther, 569 Abyssinian Congregational Church, 354 Abyssinian Religious Society, 354 “Act to Preserve Racial Integrity,” Virginia, 875 Adams, Abigail, 150 Adams, Henry, 828 Adams, John, 150, 155 Adams, John Q., newspaper publisher, 416 Adams, Numa Pompilius Garfield, 159 Adams, Oscar William, 5, 11 Adams, Romanzo, 223 Adams-Onis Treaty, Florida 174 Advance youth group, 14 Advocate, Oregon newspaper, 694, 702, 703, 707 African, slave ship, 2 African American Art, Delaware, 147 African American Business Council, African American Historical Society of Alaska, 32 African American Dance Ensemble (AADE), Durham, 615–16 African American Diversity Cultural Center of Hawaii, Hawaii, 215 African American Fair, Omaha, 484 African American Heritage Festival, Maryland, 377 African American Heritage Foundation of Maui, Hawaii, 215 African American Heritage Museum, New Jersey, 534 African American Heritage Trail, Massachusetts, 393 African American Heritage Trail, West Virginia, 929

967

968

Index

Afro-American Historical Society Museum, Jersey City, 534 Afro-American League, Minnesota, 416 Afro-American Protective Association, California, 76 Afro-American Protective League, Montana, 470 Afro-American Sentinel, Omaha, 489 Afro-American Society, Arizona, 53 Afro-American Symphony (Still), 70 Afro-Americans Sons and Daughters, Mississippi, 428 Afro-centrism,” xiv, xv Afro Mining Company, Arizona,38, 41 “Ain’t I a Woman” (Truth), 587 Alabama: chronology, 2–5; cultural contributions, 21–22; historical overview, 6–10; notable African Americans, 10–21 Alabama Academy of Honor, Rosa Parks, 4 Alabama Blues Project, cultural contribution, 21 Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 20 Alabama Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, 6–7 Alabama Constitution of 1819, 6 Alabama Space and Rocket Center, 5 Alabama State Board of Education, 15 Alabama State University, origin, 2; Ralph David Abernathy, 11 Alabama Territory, 2 Alaska: African American population, 26, 27; chronology, 26–27; cultural contributions, 31, 32; historical overview, 27–31; notable African Americans, 31–32 Alaska-Canada Defense Highway, 28 Alaska Territory, 26, 27 “Albany Movement,” Georgia, 190 Albany State,Georgia, 199 Alberta Henry Educational Foundation, Utah, 845, 855 Albrier, Frances, 83 ALCAN Highway, Alaska, 26, 27–29, 31 Alcorn State University, Mississippi, 427 Aldridge, Ira, 582 Alexander, Archie, 274, 278–279 Alexander, Gwendolyn, 31–32 Alexander, Houston, 496 Alexander, John Hanks, West Point, 636 Alexander, Elreta, judge, 600 Alexander, Margaret Walker, 439 Alexander, Walter G., 541 Alexandria Public Library, Virginia, 875 Ali, Muhammad, 321, 824, 830 Aliston, Will, 219 “All Around the World,” 68 All West Virginia Amateur Boxing Tournament, 918

Allegheny Institute, Pennsylvania, 862 Allen AME Church, Yankton, South Dakota, 768, 771, 772 Allen Chapel, Wyoming, 951 Allen v. Oklahoma City, 667 Allen, Anthony D., 214, 216, 224 Allen, Aris T., 365, 366 Allen, Lillie Belle, 715 Allen, Macon Bolling, 348, 352,384 Allen, Milton B., 365 Allen, Peter, 826 Allen, Richard, 143, 712, 717, 727–28, 728f, 752, 828 Allen, W. D., 694, 706 Allensworth, Allen, 76, 81, 90, 558, 556 Allied Organization for Civil Rights (AOCR), Kentucky, 318, 322 Allison, Andrew, 620 Alpha House for the Aged, Indiana, 262 Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA): and Coretta Scott King, 17; Hawaii, 221;Washington, D.C., 152 Alpha Lodge No. 17, Arizona, 37 Amandare, slave ship, 566 “Ambassador of Blues,” 440 Ambassadors Club, Connecticut, 122 American Anti-Slavery Society: Frances Harper, 373; Massachusetts, 388; Philadelphia, 712 American Architectural Institute, Paul Williams, 92 American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York, in Mississippi, 427 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in Hawaii, 217 American Colonization Society (ACS), 383, 531, 536–37, 633, 718 American Freedom Coalition, 11 American Friends Service Committee, and Angela Davis, 14 American Fur Trading Company, 234, 847 American Independent Movement, Connecticut, 124 American Missionary Association, Alabama, 6 American Missionary Society, North Carolina schools, 597 American Mutual Savings Bank, Kentucky, 316 American Slavery, American Freedom (Morgan), Virginia, 878 Amerson, Lucius Davenport, Alabama, 11 Ames, Adelbert, 433 Amistad, slave ship, 569; trial, 384, 116, 120–21 Amistead, James Lafayette, 886 Ammons, Marvin, 487 Amos, Wallace, 186

Index Amos v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee, 944 “An Act in Relation to Service,” 842–43 An American Story Told (Davis), 855 Anacostia Museum, Washington, D.C., 165 Anderson, Carl P., 638 Anderson, Charles W., 308 Anderson, Helen, 504, 508 Anderson, Kenny, 769, 772 Anderson, L. C., 820 Anderson, Marian, 152, 166, 229, 696, 728f, 728–29, 734 Anderson, Marion Annette “Nettie,” 844, 866–67 Anderson, R. C., 294 Anderson, Robert, 488, 493 Anderson, Ruben, 429 Anderson, Violette N., 241 Anderson, W. H., 400 Anderson, Walker, 101 Anderson, Walter,16 Anderson, William, 132 Anderson, Winslow (George), 686 Angelou, Maya, 64–65, 71, 456–57, 457f Annie Allen (Brooks), 248 Anthony, Daniel R., 294 Antioch College, 16, 634 Antoine, C. C., 336 Anulty, William E., 309 Apollo Theater, Harlem, 571, 589 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Walker), 383–84 Appomattox Court House, Virginia, 882 Aptheker, Bettina, and Angela Davis, 14 Arch Social Club, Maryland, 363, 370 Archer, Dennis W., 399, 402 Arctic Hare (Washington), 911 Arena Playhouse, Inc., Maryland, 364 Argenta Race Riot, Arkansas, 60 Arivac Mining Company, Arizona, 40 Arizona: African American population, 36, 37, 48; chronology, 36–39; cultural contributions, 47–48, 53–54; historical overview, 39–48; notable African Americans, 49–53 Arizona African American Art Museum, 54 Arizona Black Lawyers Association, 50 Arizona Commission on African American Affairs (ACAAA), 39 Arizona Gleam (newspaper), 38, 45, 53 Arizona Informant (newspaper), 39 Arizona Leader (newspaper), 38, 53 Arizona Lumber and Timber Company, 42

969

Arizona Sun (newspaper), 38 Arizona Tribune (newspaper), 38, 53 Ark slave ship, 360, 367 Arkansas: African American population, 58, 60, 62, 64; chronology, 58–62; cultural contributions, 70–71; historical overview, 62–64; notable African Americans, 64–70 Arkansas Baptist College, 60 Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, 62, 68 Arkansas Negro Democratic Association, 60 Arkansas State Press, and Daisy Bates, 65 Arlington model community, 873 Armed forces, segregation of, 84 Armour, Philip D., 288 Armstrong, Howard “Louie Bluie,” 809 Armstrong, Louis, 13, 51, 93, 341, 342 Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 20, 218, 874 Army regiments, Alaska, 28–29, 32 Arnall, Ellis, 198 Arnold, Hendrick, 818, 826 Arrington, Richard, Jr., 11 Art and Ethics (Grigsby), 51 Art galleries, Georgia, 211 Arterbury, J., painter, 676 “Artists of the Black Community in Arizona,” 54 Aryan Nations, Idaho, 230, 233 Asante Children’s Theater, Indiana, 267 Asberry, Nettie, 895, 899 Asbury, Francis, 138 Ashe, Arthur, 875, 886, 887 Ashley, William, 950 Askins, Jimtt, 18 “Aspects of Negro Life” murals, 298 Associated Negro Press, in Illinois, 241 Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of Colored People, Delaware, 133, 139 Association of Minority Architects and Engineers, Cleveland, 639 Atkins, Hannah D., 667, 673 Atlanta, Battle of, 188 “Atlanta Compromise,” 20–21, 189, 890 Atlanta Daily World (newspaper), 208 Atlanta Inquirer, 204 Atlanta public schools, 199–200 Atlanta race riot, 190, 197, 198 Atlanta University, 189, 199 Atlantic & Pacific (Santa Fe) Railroad, Arizona, 37 Attaway, William, 253 Attica Prison riot, 572 Attucks, Crispus, 382, 387, 391

970

Index

Attucks Theater, Virginia, 890 Audacity of Hope, The (Obama), 251 August Quarterly Festival, Delaware, 132 August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Pittsburgh, 734 Augusta, Alexander Thomas, 159 Augustine, Israel Meyer, Jr., 341 “Aunt Sally’s Speakeasy,” Bismarck, North Dakota, 626 Austin, Richard H., 398 Austin, Stephen F., 818, 826 Autobiography of Malcolm X, 799 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The, 342 Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, 173 Aycock, Richard, 194 Ayer Lumber Company, Arizona, 42 Ayers, Perry, 105–6 Bachelor’s Club, Hawaii, 221 “Back to Africa,” 258 “Back Up Train,” 67 Back-of-the-house workers, Las Vegas, 505 Bacon, Nathaniel, 878 Bailey, Bob, 499, 506, 507, 508 Bailey, DeFord, 783, 809 Bailey, Lester B., 506 Bailey, Pearl, 159, 504, 513, 886, 890–91 Baker, Anita, 645 Baker, Edward Lee, Jr., 953, 954 Baker, Ella, 582–83, 583f, 610–11 Baker, Etta Reid, 611 Baker, Josephine, 457, 458f, 513 Baker, Vernon, 229, 230, 233, 234 Baker v. Carr, 296, 782 Balance, Frank, 600 Baldwin, James, 571, 583f, 583–84 Baldwin, Maria Louise, 385, 389 Ball, Alice, 214, 224 Ball, J. P., Jr., 478 Ball, James Presley, 633 Ball, Samuel S., 240 Ball, Walter, 629 Baltimore Afro-American (newspaper), 363, 370, 375 Baltimore Black Sox, 377 Baltimore County Medical Society, 364 Baltimore Elite Giants, 377 Baltimore riots, 365, 370, 371–372 “Banjo Dick Mine,” 37, 41 Bankhead, Mary Lucile, 854 Banks, Coretta, 667 Banks, Ernie, 253

Banks, Laura Nobles, 49 Banks, N. P., 329 Banks, Veronica, 709 Banneker, Benjamin, 150, 155, 159–60, 372, 360, 361 Bannister, Edward Mitchell, 713, 742, 743 Baptiste, “Old Bat,” Arizona, 38, 41, 42 Baptized Licking-Locust Association, Kentucky, 314 “Bar Fights,” 382, 867 Baraka, Amiri (Everett LeRoi Jones), 539, 540, 543 Barbadian plantation labor model, 750 Barbee, Lloyd,935, 936, 941, 944 Barber, Jesse Max, 202 Barkley, Charles Wade, 11 Barnett, Claude, 241 Barnett, Ross, 437 Barrow, Charles, 899 Barrow, David, 306 Barrow, Joe Louis, 12, 397 Barrow, Peter, Jr., 895 Barry, Marion Shepilov, 153, 159–60 Basic Magnesium Inc. (BMI), Nevada, 504, 505 Basie, William “Count,” 457, 465, 541f, 541–42, 543 Bass, Charlotta, 82, 83, 86, 90 Bass, Joseph P., 470, 478 Bass, Karen,78, 89 Bass, Tom, 457 Bates, Daisy, 65 Battelle, Gordon, 921 Battle, Kathleen, 645–46 Bayless, Samuel, 45 Bea Gaddy Foundation, 373 BEACH, Maine, 356 Beale and Ives expedition, Arizona, 44 Beall, George, 150 Beals, Alversa, 499 Beals, Melba Portillo, 65–66 Bearden, Romare, 611 Beasley, Delilah Leontium, 646 Beasley, John, 496 Beatty, Anthany, Kentucky, 309, 320 Beauchamp, Henry, 897, 907 Beaumont race riot, Texas, 823 Beavers, Louise, 646 Becknell, Dr. Charles, Sr., 558–59 Beckwith, Byron de la, 429, 439 Beckwourth (Beckwith), James, 36, 79, 96, 106, 887; in Idaho, 228, 231, 234; in Missouri, 457–58; in Montana, 468, 474–75, 475f; in New Mexico, 546; in North Dakota, 620, 625–26, 627–28; in Utah, 842, 847, 854; in Wyoming, 950, 952, 957 Belafonte, Harry, 844

Index Bell, George, 160 Bell, Isaiah, 36 Bell, James Madison, 646 Beloved (Morrison), 653 Belton, Ethel Louis, 141 Belton, Sharon Sayles, 419 Beneath the Underdog (Mingus), 51 Benson, Doc, 38 Bentley, Charles Edwin, 646 Berea College, Kentucky, 306, 316, 317 Berea College v. Kentucky, 316 Bernstein, Charles C., 50 Berry, Chuck (Charles Edward), 458–59, 459f Berry, Edwin C., 646–47 Berry, Halle, 647, 647f Berry, Jim, 40 Berry, Mary Frances, 802 Berry, Theodore M., Cincinnati mayor, 645 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church: Indiana, 256, 259; Iowa, 273; Maryland, 360; Philadelphia, 712, 717–18, 734; Reno, 498, 512, 513 Bethel Baptist Church, 20 Bethlehem 897 Masonic lodge, Delaware, 138 Bethune Museum and Archives, Washington, D.C., 165 Bethune, Mary McCleod, 157, 165, 171, 180–81, 757, 758 Bethune-Cookman Institute, Florida, 171, 180 Between God and Gangsta’ Rap (Dyson), 404 Bibb, Henry, 306, 313, 321–22 Bibbins, George, 487 Bierce, Sarah Cordelia, 636 Big Quarterly Festival, Delaware, 132 Biggs, Lottie, 895 Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, Colorado, 108 Biloxi Beach, Mississippi, 428 Bins, Fredrick, 216 Birch, Judge Adolpho A., 783, 799, 801 Birmingham,Alabama, 3, 8, 9; Civil Rights District, 21, 22 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, 5, 22 Birmingham Southern Conservatory, 19 Bishop, Sereno E., 218 Bishop College, Texas, 820, 824, 828 Black, Willie, 845 Black American West Museum (BAWM), Colorado, 97–98 Black and Conservative (Schuyler), 743 Black and Tan Club, Washington, 911 “Black and Tan Convention,” Mississippi, 426, 432

971

Black and White Land, Labor and Politics in the South (Fortune), 181 “Black Anthony,” Delaware, 132, 135 “Black Belt,” Florida, 175 Black Boy (Wright), 252, 441 “Black Cabinet,” 181 Black Classic Press, Maryland, 365 Black Codes: Florida, 177; Illinois, 240, 243; Iowa, 272; Louisiana, 329, 337; Mississippi, 426, 432; Missouri, 448, 452; North Carolina, 596, 597; Ohio, 632, 634; South Carolina, 746, 753–54; Virginia, 883. See also Jim Crow laws Black Construction Coalition (BCC), Pennsylvania, 723, 724 Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City, 667, 673 Black exclusion law (1848), Oregon, 680, 687 “Black Exodus” movement, Tennessee, 788 Black Expo, Indiana, 266 “Black 14 Incident,” Wyoming, 954 Black gospel music, Illinois, 253 Black Hawk War: Iowa, 272; Wisconsin, 932, 938 Black Heritage Art Show, Maryland, 377 Black History Month, Virginia, 885 Black History Museum, Idaho, 229, 230, 237 Black Holocaust Museum, Wisconsin, 936, 943 Black Labor Union, Maryland, 370 Black Liberated Arts Center (BLAC), 677 Black Masonic Lodge, Colorado, 101 “Black militia,” Florida, 174 “Black Nadir,” (1870s–1900), 581 “Black National Anthem,” 183 Black Officer Training Camp, Iowa, 276 “Black Okies,” California, 82 Black Panther Party for Self Defense, establishment, 77, 88; and Eldridge Cleaver, 66; in Colorado, 105; in Illinois, 242; in Indiana, 261; in Maryland, 372; in Nebraska, 492; in New York City, 572; in Philadelphia, 724 Black People’s Unity Movement (BPUM), Philadelphia, 724 Black Political Convention, Newark, 533 “Black Republicans,” 415 Black Seminoles, Florida, 170, 175 Black Student Union (BSU), Kentucky, 320, 322 “Black Theatre Troupe,” Arizona, 54 Black United Front, Portland, 699 “Black Veterans Recognition Bridge,” Alaska, 26, 29 Blackburn, Maryline, 26, 31 “Black-but-Proud,” Arizona, 53–54 Blackdom, New Mexico, 547, 552, 553, 559 Blacker the Berry, The (Thurman), Utah, 842

972

Index

Blackman, George Washington, 228 Blackman, Homer G., 60 Blacks in Atlanta History Project, 26, 32 Blackwell, John Kenneth, Cincinnati mayor, 645, 647 Blackwell, Lucien E., 714 Blackwell, Wendel, 172 Blaine, James E., 218 Blair, Mary Elizabeth, 768 Blair, Omar, 98 Blair Caldwell African American Research Library, Colorado, 98 Blair Colony, South Dakota, 767, 771 Blake, James Hubert “Eubie,” 265, 372 Blakey, Ted, 769, 772 Blayton, Jesse B., 190 Bledsoe, Julius Lorenzo Cobb, 831–32 “Bleeding Kansas,” 286, 291–92 Blober-Cooper, Jackie, 936, 943 “Bloods,”California, 88 Blue, Dan, North Carolina assemblyman, 600 Bluefield Colored Institute, West Virginia, 915, 917, 923 Bluefield State College, West Virginia, 915, 923 Blues: “Chicago” style, 253; Mississippi, 442–43; Missouri, 465 Bluest Eye, The (Morrison), 653 Bluford, Lucile H., 450, 459 Blunt, James G., 295–96 Bogel, Kathryn Hall, 701 Bogg, Lenora, 319 Bogle, Dick, 701–2 Boise State University, Idaho, 230 Boke, Arthur, 641 Bolden, Dorothy, 202 Bolling, Leslie Garland, 875 Bolton, Frances Payne, 643 Bolton, Terrell, 825, 831 Bond, James, 316 Bond, Julian, 191 Bondage (Bledsoe), 832 Bondspeople, New Hampshire, 519 Bonga, George, 414 Bonga, Jean, 938 Bonga, Pierre, 620, 624; Minnesota, 412, 414; Wisconsin, 938 Bonga, Stephen, 414, 938 Bonita Silver and Gold Mining Company, Colorado, 96 Bontemps, Arna W., 810 Booker T. Washington Memorial Hospital, Arizona, 38, 45

Boone, JohnWilliam “Blind,” 459–60, 464 Booth, Sherman, 939 Borders, William Holmes, 202 Boreman, Arthur I., 922 Bosley, Freeman, Jr., 451 Boston African American National Historic Site, 393 Boston African Society, Massachusetts, 383 Boston Guardian, 656, 657 Boston Massacre, Massachusetts, 382, 387 Boston News Letter (newspaper), Maine, 350 Boston Saloon, Virginia City,Nevada, 500, 513 Bouchet, Edward Alexander, Connecticut, 116, 122 Bowdoin College, Maine, 348, 355 Bowdoin Medical School, 384 Bowen, John Wesley Edward (J. W. E.), 198, 202–3 Bowers, Samuel, 430, 439 Bowman, “Cherokee Jim,” 554 Box, Wiley, 41 Boyd, Dr. Robert Fulton, 779, 791 Boyd, Melba J., 402 Boyd, Reverend Richard H., 779, 789, 829 Boyer, Ella, 559 Boyer, Francis Marion, 547, 552, 559 Boyer, Jill Witherspoon, 402–3 Boyer, Sylvanus “Breezy,” 46 Boyle, Robert, 717 Boynton v. Virginia, 159 Bradford, Clarence (C. O.), 825 Bradley, Clarence, 830 Bradley, James, 633 Bradley, Tom, 77, 78, 89, 90–91 Bragg, Janet, 247 Branch Normal College, Arkansas, 59 Branch, Mary E., 822 Brandeis University, and Angela Davis, 14 Brazo, John, 620, 626 Breakdancing, 587–88 Brent, Calvin T. S., 152 Brewer, Harper, Jr., 800 Bridgeforth, Ruffin, 854 Bridges, Ruby, 332, 339 Briggs, Thornton, 957 Brigham Young University (BYU) boycott, 845, 852 Brito, Sebastian Rodriquez, 550 Britton, John G., 258 Broad Ax (newspaper), Utah, 843, 856 Broadside Annual, The, 402–3 Broadside Press, Michigan, 398, 408 Brockman, Dan, 228 Brooke, Edward William, 153, 385, 386, 390, 391 Brooks, Allen, 821

Index Brooks, Francis, 862, 863, 866 Brooks, George, 47 Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth, 242, 248, 291, 296–97 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 185, 418 Brown, Boyd, 723 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 599, 611–12 Brown, Chris, 887, 891 Brown, Clara, 96, 100, 106 Brown, Clifford, 144 Brown, Cora M., 397 Brown, Dr. Dorothy Lavinia, 782, 802 Brown, Edward, 324 Brown, George, 782, 799 Brown, H. Rap, 332 Brown, Hallie Quinn, 635 Brown, Harriet, 552 Brown Henry “Box,” 873, 887 Brown, Homer S., 721–22 Brown, Hugh B., 851–52 Brown, Jane, 789 Brown, John, Harper’s Ferry Revolt, 116 Brown, John, Iowa, 273, 276 Brown, John, Kansas, 286, 291, 292 Brown, John, North Carolina, 597 Brown, John, Virginia, 873, 882 Brown, John, West Virginia, 914, 921 Brown, Larry, 831 Brown, Lee P., 824, 825, 831 Brown, Linda Beatrice, 647–48 Brown, Mildred, 485 Brown, Morris, 746, 752 Brown, Moses, 740 Brown, Oscar, Jr., 253 Brown, Ruth, 887, 891 Brown, Thomas G., 348 Brown, W. G., 336 Brown, Will, 484, 490 Brown, Willard A., 917, 924 Brown, William, saloon owner, 498, 500, 513 Brown, William Wells, 459, 569, 633 Brown, Willie, California, 77, 78, 86, 89 “Brown Bomber,” the, 12 Brown Theater, Kentucky, 308 Brown v. Board of Education, ruling, 117 Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and Museum, Kansas, 291 Brownlee massacre, Louisiana, 330 Brownsville race riots, Texas, 821, 828, 829 Bruce Francis T., 101 Bruce, Blanche Kelso, 297, 288, 291, 427, 433, 460; at Oberlin, 635

973

Bruce, Cyrus, 525 Bruce, Dickson, Jr., xiii Bruce, Henry Clay, 291 Bryan, Andrew, 195 Bryant, Charles W., 828 Buchanan v. Warley, Kentucky, 308, 317 Buckner, Simon, Jr., 28 Buckner-Webb, Cherie, 234 Buffalo soldiers, 37, 44, 232, 468, 472f, 547, 555f, 555–56, 625f, 820, 828, 843, 850, 862, 863, 895, 898, 950, 953 Buffalo Soldiers Monument, 300 Bunche, Ralph Johnson, 82, 91, 152, 397, 402, 403 Bunker Hill, Battle of, 383, 387 Bureau of Land Management, George T. Harper, 32 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. See Freedmen’s Bureau Buris, Roland, in Illinois, 243 Burke, Yvonne Brathwaite, 89, 91–92 Burnett, Chester Arthur “Howlin’ Wolf,” 248–49, 443 Burney, William D., Jr., 349, 352–53 Burt, Andrew, 843 Burton, Thomas W., 637 Bush, George Washington, 267, 686, 702, 894, 897–98, 907, 908 Bush, John E., 60, 218 Bush, William Owen, 894 Butler College, Texas, 821 Butler, Benjamin, Louisiana, 329, 335 Butler, Benjamin, Massachusetts, 388 Butler, Benjamin F., Virginia, 873 Butler, Louis, 937 Butler, Octavia, 911 Butler, Richard, 229, 230, 233 Butler, Selena Sloan, 203 Buttars, Chris, 853 Butte New Age, African American newspaper, 470, 477 Butterfield Stage Company, Arizona, 36, 40 Byrd, Harriet Elizabeth, 951, 952, 954–55, 957 Byrd, Harry F., Sr., 884 Byrd, James, 951, 955 Byrd, James, Jr., 825, 831 Cabral, Andrea J., 386, 390 Cady Lumber Company, Arizona, 42 Caesar, Shirley, 615 Cailloux, Andre, 329, 335 Cain, Richard H., 754, 758–59 Cain, Robert “Bobby,” 781 Cairo, Illinois, riots, 242, 247 Caldwell, Elvin R, 97, 98

974

Index

Caldwell, Robert, 294 California: African American population, 76, 77, 79, 82–83; chronology, 76–78; cultural contributions, 93; historical overview, 78–90; notable African Americans, 90–93 California Eagle (newspaper), 76, 83, 90 Calloway, Bertha, 485, 486, 496 Calloway, Cabell “Cab,” III, 93, 372–73 Calvary Baptist Church: Utah, 843, 844, 845, 847, 849, 852; Washington, 898, 899 Calvert, Leonard, 367 Cambridge, Maryland, race riots, 365, 371 Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, 371, 376 Cameron, James, 936 Camp Nelson, Kentucky, 307, 315 Camp Washington-Carver, West Virginia, 917 Campanella, Roy, 423 Campbell, Charles, 215 Campbell, Charles R., 39, 53 Campbell, Cloves, Jr., 39 Campbell, Cloves C., Sr., 39, 46, 53 Campbell, Earl, 824 Campbell, Sarah, 622, 767 Campbell, William “Bill,” 191, 192 Cannady, Beatrice, 694, 702–3, 707 Cape Verdeans, Massachusetts, 389–90 Capehart, Harry, 916, 924 Cardozo, Francis Louis, 160 Cardozo, William Warrick, 160–61 Carlile, John S., 922 Carney, William H., 391 “Carolina Shout” (J. P. Johnson), 762 Carolina Times (Durham, North Carolina), 606 Carrie A.Tuggle School, Angela Davis, 14 Carrington Palmer Munroe House, Bristol, Rhode Island, 744 Carson, Andre, 257 Carson, Benjamin Solomon, Sr., 403 Carson, Julia May, 257, 262, 263 Carter G. Woodson Home, 165 Carter, Edward R. (E. R.), 198, 203 Carter, Margaret, 682 Carter, Robert, 872 Caruth, Phyllis, 847, 853, 854 Carver, George Washington, 3, 7, 12, 288, 291, 297, 460 Carver High School, 50 Carver Homestead, Kansas, 299 Carver Park, Nevada workers’ housing, 505 Carver Vocational High School for Negro Trainees, 134

Cary, Lott, 872, 887 Cassells, Cyrus, 142–43 Castle, James B., 219 Catto, Octavius V., 713, 719 Cayton, Horace, Jr., 894, 898, 899, 900, 907, 908 Cedric the Entertainer (Cedric Antonio Kyles), 460 Center for Nonviolent Social Change, 191, 211 Central High School, Arkansas, 61, 62–63, 64 Central State College, Ohio, 638, 639, 643 Chadwick, George Whitfield, 70 Chamberlain, Wilton Norman, 290, 291, 297–98 Chambers, Amanda Leggroan, 843, 849 Chambers, Ernest W “Ernie,” 486, 493–94 Chambers, Samuel, 232, 843, 849, 854 Chandler, Sallie, 349 Chaney, Felmers, 936, 944 Chaney, James, 429, 430, 436–37, 439 Chaotic Half, The (Washington,), 911 Chapman v. King, Georgia, 199 Charles, Ray, 181 Charles, Robert, 331 “Charleston”dance step, 762 Charlotte Messenger (newspaper), 614 Chase, Elizabeth Buffrum, 740 Chase, James E., 897, 907 Chase, Samuel, 867 Chattanooga Blade, 789 Chavis, Reverend Ben, 600 Chavis, John, 596 Cheadle, Don (Donald Frank, Jr.), 460 Cheatham, Henry P., 598, 603 Checker, Chubby, 763 Cherokee, and slaves in Oklahoma, 666, 668 Cherry, Bobby Frank, 5 Cherry, Gwendolyn Sawyer, 171, 181 Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railroad, 923 Chesapeake Marine and Dry-dock Company, 363 Chesnutt, Charles Waddell, 648 Chess Records, Mississippi, 443 Chestang, Pierre, 6 Cheyney University, Eleanor Dickey Ragsdale, 51 Chicago Conservator (newspaper), in Illinois, 241 Chicago Defender (newspaper), 202, 241, 248 Chicago Freedom Movement, 247 Chicago race riots, 241, 242 Chief Black Hawk, Wisconsin, 932 “Children’s Bishop,” 353 Chiles, Nick, 289 Chisholm, Shirley, 572, 582, 584, 584f Chivington, John M., 106 Christ Temple Apostolic Church, Indiana, 259

Index Christensen, R. L., 503 Christian, Charlie, 264, 673 “Christian Endeavor Club,” 223 Christmas Night Raid, Kansas, 286 Chukchi people, Alaska, 30 Church, Robert R., Jr., 791 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Idaho, 228, 231, 232; Iowa, 272; tenants of, 851–852; Utah, 842–43, 845, 846, 847, 850 Churchwell, Robert, Sr., 802–803 Cinqué, Joseph, 116, 120 Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties, Nebraska, 485 Citizens Savings Bank and Trust, Nashville, Tennessee, 790 City of Refuge Christian Church, Hawaii, 223 Civil Rights Movement: California, 85; Colorado, 104–5; Connecticut, 123–25; Florida, 178; Georgia, 199–201; Illinois, 247; Iowa, 277; Kentucky, 318; Louisiana, 332, 339; Maryland, 371; Minnesota, 416, 418; Mississippi, 428, 429, 431, 434–38; Missouri, 456; and Montgomery Bus Boycott, 8; Nebraska, 491–93; Nevada, 508–10; New Jersey, 539; North Carolina, 607–9; Pennsylvania, 722–24; South Carolina, 747, 757–58; Tennessee, 795–98; Virginia, 884–86; Washington, 903–6; Washington, D.C, 159; West Virginia, 924–25; Wisconsin, 941–43 Civil Rights Trail, 21–22 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Kentucky, 317 Civilian Pilot Training Program, West Virginia, 917 Clark v. Board of Directors, Iowa, 273 Clark, G. Alexander, 273, 276, 279 Clark, Reverend Donald, 504 Clark, Joe, 950 Clark, John, 117 Clark, Joseph Samuel, 341 Clark, Mark, 242 Clark, Marshall, 939 Clark, Robert G., 429, 438 Clark, Septima, 756, 759 Clark, William: Idaho, 228, 230; Iowa, 272; Kansas, 286; Washington, 894 Clarke, John Henrik, 12 Clay, Cassius Marcellus, 306, 321 Clay, John Henry, 259 Clay, William L., Sr., 450 Clayburn, James, 759 Clayton, Denise, 309, 320

975

Clayton, Elias, 417 Clayton, Eva, 600, 610 Clayton, Xernona, Georgia, 203 Cleage, Albert Buford, Michigan, 403 Clearview Golf Club, Ohio, 638 Cleaver, Emanuel, II, 451 Cleaver, Leroy Eldridge, 66–67, 71, 88, 93 Cleburne, Patrick, 58 Clement, Rufus, 199 Clemmons, Clarence, 891 Clemson College, 757 Clendennon, Newt, 472 Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Colorado, 108 Cleveland Advocate, 658 Cleveland Gazette, 636 Cleveland Pipers, basketball team, 639 Clifford, J. J., 925–26 Clinch, Duncan L., 174 Clinton High School, Tennessee, 781 Clover Leaf Art Club, Washington, 899 Club 715 Restaurant, Colorado, 97 Clyburn, James, 748, 758 Coal Avenue Colored Methodist Church, New Mexico, 547 Code Noir (Black Code): Alabama, 2; Illinois, 240, 243; Louisiana, 328, 334; Missouri, 448, 451 Coe, Joe, 484, 489 Cogage, William W., Delaware, 133, 134 Coker, Daniel Payne, Maryland, 361 Col. Green Mining Company, Arizona, 37 Colbert, Billy, 146–147 Cole, Aileen B., 643 Cole, Emory, 372 Cole, Henry, 372 Cole, Natalie, 13 Cole, Nat King, 12–13, 21 Cole Espanol, 13 Coleman, Austin, Arizona, 47 Coleman, Dr. Mattie E., 792 Coleman, Ronald G., 846, 852, 854 Coleman, T. J., 916, 924 Coleman, Vernel, 53 Coles, Edward, 244 Collins, Addie Mae, 4 Collins, Barbara-Rose, 398, 399 Collins, Cardiss, 242 Collins, George W., 242 Collins, Hannibal, 742 Collins, John, 559–60 Color Purple, The (Walker), 282

976

Index

Colorado: African American population, 96, 100–101, 105; chronology, 96–99; cultural contributions, 109–10; historical overview, 99–105; notable African Americans, 105–9 Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, 98 Colorado Statesman (newspaper), 96, 101–2 Colored Businessmen’s Association, Arizona, 45–46 Colored Citizen, Kansas, 288 Colored Citizen, Helena, Montana, 477, 478 Colored Commercial Club, Omaha, 484 “Colored elite,” Massachusetts, 389 Colored Flashers, Wisconsin, 934 “Colored Fraternities,” New Hampshire, 521 Colored High School, Maryland, 363 Colored Knights of the Pythias, Arizona, 53 “Colored Man’s Experience on a Nebraska Homestead, A” (Speece), 484 Colored Masons, Arizona, 53 Colored Men’s Convention, Texas, 820 Colored Men’s Democratic Club, Connecticut, 122 Colored Methodist Church (Bethel AME), Michigan, 396, 400 Colored National Convention, 279 Colored Odd Fellows, Arizona, 53 Colored Officers Training Camp, Iowa, 274, 276 Colored People (Gates), 927 Colored People’s Convention, Charlestown, 746, 754 Colored People’s League, California, 81 “Colored Pioneers Association,” Arizona, 45 Colored Republican Club (CRC), Arizona, 53 Colored Women’s Cultural Club, Connecticut, 122 Colored World (newspaper), Indiana, 263 Colter, John, Wyoming, 950 Coltrane, John, 612–13, 613f Columbia race riot, Tennessee, 793 Columbian Exposition (Chicago), 241 Comer, William H., 627 Committee against Segregation and Discrimination, California, 83 Commodores, the, 21 Common View, Wisconsin, 943 Commonwealth (newspaper), Kentucky, 312 Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Jesse Ellis, Kentucky, 316 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. George (1896), 719 Community Welfare Council, Arizona, 45 Comprehensive Management Plan, Connecticut, 118 Concerned Black Clergy, Georgia, 202 Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the United States, Politically Considered (Delany), 926 Confederation of Somali Community, Minnesota, 413

Confiscation Act, 362 Congress of Industrial Organizations, California, 83 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): Arizona, 47; and the Freedom Rides, 200; Kentucky, 308; St. Louis, 450, 456; Washington, 896, 904; West Virginia boycotts, 918, 925; Wisconsin, 935, 941 Connecticut: chronology, 114–18; cultural contributions, 128; historical overview, 118–26; notable African Americans, 126–28 Connecticut Interracial Commission, 124 “Connecticut March to Rebuild America,” 118, 126 Connecticut’s Black Soldiers 1775–1783, 118–19 Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage, 115, 120 Connecticut State Guard, 117 Connecticut WPA Federal Writers’ Project, 123 Conservative Unionist, Texas, 819 Conyers, John, Jr., 18, 398, 399, 402, 403, 640 Cook, John, 214, 216 Cook, John Francis, 151 Cooke, ReverendHenry, 504 Coon Chicken Inn, Utah, 844 Cooper, Charles, 36 Cooper, Cynthia, 831 Cooper, Dr. Anna Julia, 636 Cooper, Rosary, 523, 526 Cope, Donald, 845 Coppin, Fannie Jackson, 635 Coppoc, Barclay, 276 Coppoc, Edwin, 276 Corbin, Joseph Carter, 59, 634 Cornish, Samuel, 142, 569 Cosby, Bill, 734 Cottle, George D., 500 Cotton Club: New York, 589, 589f; Portland, 707 “Cotton Kingdom,” South Carolina, 751 Cotton picker strike, Texas, 820 Cotton States and International Exposition, 20–21, 189, 196 Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), 436–37 Courts, Gus, 435 Cousins, Charles, 97 Cowboys: Arizona, 41–42; New Mexico, 554 Crandall, Prudence, Connecticut, 115 Craven, William, Washington, 897, 907 Credille, C., 45 Creole (ship) rebellion, Virginia, 873 Crescent City White League, Louisiana, 337 “Crips,”California, 88 Crisis, The (NAACP journal), 422, 490, 584, 648, 743

Index Crispus Attucks High School, Indiana, 260, 266 Critical Resistance, and Angela Davis, 15 Crockett, Annie V., 222 Crockett, George E., Jr., 403 Crockett, George William, Jr., 398 Crockett, Wendell F., 215 Crockett, William F., 214, 224 Crogman, William Henry (W. H.), 203 Crone, Carter, 42 Crook, George, 44 Crosby, Oscar, 231, 842, 847, 848 Crosby, Vilate, 847, 854–55 “Crosby Breeding Farm,” 847, 448 Cross Street AME Zion Church, Connecticut, 115 Crow Indians: and James Beckwourth, 458, 468, 474–78; and Ed Rose, 476 Crump, William Powaton, 37, 49 Cuffee, Paul, 348, 383, 387, 391–92 Cummings, Elijah E., 366, 372 Cummings, Harry S., 363 Cummings, Mary Moss Young, 203 Cuney, Norris Wright, 820, 832–33 Cunningham, Clarence, 523 Cunningham, Raoul, 318 Cunningham, Valerie, 519, 524, 524f Curley, Michael, 389 Currin, Green I., 666, 670 Curtis, David, 216 Curtis Park subdivision, Colorado, 101 Cushing, William, 387 Cuthbert, Stanley, 914 Dabney, Austin, 194, 195 Dabney, Wendell Phillips, 637 “Daddy Grace” (Charles Manuel), 162 Dade, Francis L., 175 Dade Massacre, Florida, 175 Dahmer, Vernon, 439 Daisy and the Doll, 868 Dakota War, 412, 415 Dallas Express (newspaper), 836–37, 838 Dalleo, Peter T., 138 Dancy, John Campbell, Jr., 403–4 Dandridge, Dorothy, 648–49, 648f D’Angola, Lucie, 566 D’Angola, Paul, 574 Daniel, Levi, 919 Daniel “Chappie” James Center for Aerospace Science and Health Education, 22 Daniels, Hayzel B., 38, 46, 49–50 Daniels, John, 125

977

Daniels, L. K., 96 Dansby, Ellsworth, 247 Danville protest, Virginia, 885 “Darling Nelly Gray,” 634 Darlington, Dr. Roy Clifford, 640 Dart, Isom, 952, 957 Davids, Tice, 633, 643 Davis, Abraham Lincoln, 342 Davis, Angela Yvonne, 14–15, 88 Davis, Arthur, Alabama, 7 Davis, ArthurP., 887 Davis, Benjamin O., Sr., 152, 161 Davis, Bettye, 32 Davis, Captain Alfonzo, Omaha Tuskegee airman, 491 Davis, Charles T., 887 Davis, Chuck, 615 Davis, Danny K., 243 Davis, Edgar L., 868 Davis, France, 845, 846, 852, 854, 855 Davis, Frank Marshall, 226 Davis, Harry Edward, 649 Davis, James P., 290 Davis, John Warren, 926 Davis, Miles Dewey, 249 Davis, Richard L., 887–88 Davis, Shani, 254 Davis, W. H., 915 Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), 888 Dawn Settlement, 374 Dawson, William L., 242 Day, Thomas, cabinetmaker, 597 Day Law, 307, 308, 316 Days of Rondo (Fairbanks), 417 Dayton Renaissance basketball team, 639 “Deadwood Dick,” (Nat Love), 36, 42, 107, 233, 767, 771, 773f, 773–74, 775 DeBerry, Lois M., 800, 801 Declaration of Rights, Massachusetts, 383 Deep River (opera), 832 Deer Lake Irrigated Orchard Company, Washington, 895 Deer Lake Irrigation Project, Washington, 899 Dees, Morris, 233 DeGrasse, John V., 384 Delaney, Annie Elizabeth, 599 Delaney, Beauford, 803 Delaney, Ida Lee, 824, 830 Delaney, Joseph, 803 Delaney, Sadie and Bessie, 600

978

Index

Delany, Martin, 926 Delany, Martin R., 635, 719 Delany, Sadie, Virginia, 888 DeLarge, Robert C., 754, 759 Delaware: African American population, 135, 138, 142; chronology, 132–35; cultural contributions, 146–47; historical overview, 135–42; notable African Americans, 142–46 Delaware: Conflict in a Border State, 141 Delaware Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, 132, 136–137 Delaware State College for Colored Students, 133, 134, 139 Delaware State University, 139 Dellums, Ron, California, 89 Delta Blues Festival, Mississippi, 429 deNiza, Marcos, 36, 39, 40 Dent, James, 918 Dent, Thomas Covington, 342 Denver Black Arts Festival, 105 Denver Horse Railroad Company, 109 Denver Weekly Star (newspaper), Colorado, 96, 101, 103 deOlvera, Isabel, New Mexico, 550 DePorres Club, Omaha, 491–92 DePriest, James, 703, 708 DePriest, Oscar Stanton, 241 Dernham, James, 328, 334 DeRolph v. State of Ohio (1991), 640 Des Moines Register (newspapers), Iowa, 278 Deslondes, Charles, 328, 334 Deslondes, P. G., 336 De Sousa, Matthias, 360, 367 Detroit Race Riot, Michigan, 397, 401 Detroit Rebellion, Michigan, 398, 401 Deukmejian, George, 78 Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Alabama, 4, 10 Diallo, Ahmed Amadou, 573, 586f Diddle, Bo, 13 Digges amendment, Maryland, 363, 369–70 Diggs, Charles C., Jr., 397, 402, 404 Dillard University, Louisiana, 331 Dimensions of the Struggle Against Apartheid (Clarke), 12 Dinkins, David, New York City mayor, 572, 582 District of Columbia (D.C.): African American population, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157; chronology, 150–54; cultural contributions, 164–66; historical overview, 154–59; notable African Americans, 159–64; race riots, 152, 153

District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency, 158 District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act., 153, 158 District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, 153 Dixon, Irma, 365 Dixon, Richard Clay, Dayton mayor, 645 Dixon, Sharon Pratt, 153 Dobbs, John Wesley, 203 Dobson, Jacob, 686 Dockum Drugstore, Kansas, 290 Dodson, Jacob, 842, 847 Dolan, Joseph C., 42 Domestic Workers Union, Georgia, 202 Dora, New Mexico, freed slave settlement, 547, 552 Dorman, Isaiah, 475–76, 767, 771 Dorsett, Tony, 830 Doson, Jill, 349 Doss, Professor Ulysses, 471 Dotson, Barbara Williams, 61 Double “V”campaign, 83 Dougherty, Lucy, 818, 826 Douglas Theater, Maryland, 364, 370 Douglas, Aaron, 811, 812–13; Kansas, 289, 291, 298 Douglas, James “Black,” fur trader, 686 Douglas, Stephen, 245 Douglass, Frederick, 152, 373, 392, 569, 570, 719; in Illinois, 241; in Maryland, 361, 362, 363, 365, 368; in Massachusetts, 384, 388 Douglass, Frederick, Jr.,101, 106 Douglass, Lewis H., Colorado, 101, 106 Douglass Institute, 363 Dove, Rita, poet laureate, 649 Dove (ship), Maryland, 367 Dowell, Alfonso, 671 Downing, George T., 742 Dr. Martin Luther King Coalition of Hawaii, 215 Draft Riots (1863), 580 Drake, Bill, 629 Dream Farmer, 402 Dreams from My Father (Obama), 251 “Dream Team,” 70 Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 151, 240, 245, 412, 449 Drew, Charles Richard, 161 Drewry, Elizabeth Simpson, 917, 926–27 Driskell, David, 298 Drive for Employment in Downtown Stores (DEEDS), 904 Druid Hill Park, Maryland, 364, 371

Index Du Bois, W. E. B., 490, 581, 582; and Booker T. Washington, 21; in California, 76, 81–82; in Colorado, 104; in Georgia, 198; in Massachusetts, 385, 389; in Minnesota, 417; “talented tenth,” 140; in Washington, 900; in West Virginia, 916, 924; at Wilberforce University, 637 Dubuclet, Antoine, 330, 336 Duces of Rhythm, 144 Duffield, Milton B., 41 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 152, 649–50 Dunbar Club, New Mexico, 548 Dunbar Speaks (Dunbar), 144 Duncan, Ruby, 499 Duncan, Tim, 831 Duncanson, Robert Scott, 650 Dundee, Helen, 895 Dunham, Katherine, 249 Dunjee, John W., 673 Dunjee, Roscoe, 667, 673 Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment, 577 Dunn, Oscar J., 330, 336 DuPont, Pierre, 134 Durham Manifesto, 599 Du Sable, Jean Baptiste Pointe, 240, 244, 932 Dusable High School, Alabama, 13 DuSable High School, Arkansas, 68 Dust Bowl Theater, Oklahoma, 676 Dutcher, Richard, 846 Dymally, Mervyn, 86 Dyson, Michael Eric, 404 Eagleson, William L., 288 Earle, Richard, 348 Earley, Charity Adams, 638 Early, Sarah Jane Woodson, 650 Eastern Utah College, 846 Eastland, James O., 434 Eaton, Lloyd, 852 Ebony Fashion Show, 69 Ebony magazine, 16, 68–69, 316, 623 Eckstein Norton Institute, Kentucky, 316 Eckstine, William Clarence “Billy,” 161 Economic Opportunity Board (EOB), Las Vegas, 504, 508 Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association, Kansas, 292 Edmonds, Jefferson Lewis, 81 Edmonds, Kenneth Brian “Babyface,” 263 Edmondson, William, sculptor, 803 Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama, 5, 9 “Edna Griffin Day,” Iowa, 275

979

Edwards, Al, 824 Edwards, Donna, 366, 372 Edwards, James, 952, 955–56, 957 Elders, Jocelyn, 63, 67 Eldridge Cleaver, 66–67 Eliot, Robert Brown, 754, 759 Elison Air Force Base, Alaska, 30 Elkins, Jane, 818, 826 Ellington, Edward Kennedy “Duke,” 152, 162, 762–63 Ellington, Maria Hawkins, 13 Elliot, Missy, 888, 890 Ellis, Effie O’Neal, 639 Ellis, James M., 916, 924 Ellison, Keith, 413, 419–20 Ellison, Ralph, 673–74, 674f, 676 Ellison, William, ginmaker, 752 El Vado, New Mexico, 553 Emancipation Day: Utah, 843; Virginia, 873 Embers, Charles, 36, 41 Embree, Elihu, 778 Emerson High School, Indiana, 259 Endeavour space shuttle, 16 Ensaw, Ephraim, Indiana, 258 Enterprise, Omaha newspaper, 489 Enterprise, The (newspaper), Kansas, 289 Entertainment law, West Virginia, 916, 924 “Equality State,” 953, 954, 955 “Erasing an Absence,” 147 Erie, slave ship, 570 Escalon, Louis de, 40 Espy, Michael, 429, 439 Esteban, guide: Arizona, 39, 40; New Mexico, 549–50; Texas, 818, 825 Estes, Simon, 279–80 Estes, Sleepy John, 809 Estevanico: Arizona, 36; Florida, 173 Etheridge, Richard, 598 Etienne, Gaile, 339 Eubanks, Charles, 308 Evans, Dan, 906 Evans, Stanley J., 349 Everett, Ronald McKinley (Ron Maluana Karenga), 77, 87–88 Evergreen Literary Society, Washington, 899 Evers, Medgar Wiley, 428, 429, 435, 437, 439 Ewell, R. S., 43 Exodus Movement: Kansas, 288, 292; Louisiana, 337 “Exodusters:” Missouri, 455; Texas, 828 Ezion Methodist Episcopal Church, Delaware, 132 Ezion–Mt. Carmel Church, Delaware, 138

980

Index

F. W. Woolworth “sit-in,” Greensboro, 599, 608f, 608–9 Fabre, Shelton J., 333 Fagan, Eleanora (Billie Holiday), 374, 571 Fair Employment Practices Act/Commission, 117Arizona, 46; establishment, 83; Connecticut, 124; Illinois, 242; Kansas, 289; Missouri, 450; Montana, 471; New Mexico, 557; Ohio, 639; Oregon, 697; Pennsylvania, 722; Washington, 895, 903, 904 Fairbank, Calvin, 256 Fairbanks, Evelyn, 417 Fairfax, Alfred, 289 Fairfield High School, Alabama, 10 Fairley, James Conway, 888 Family Fun Fest, 266 Fango, Gobo, 228, 234–35 “Fannie Lou Hamer Day,” 440 Fard, JeffS., 106 Fard, Wallace D., 397, 400 Farish Street District, Mississippi, 428, 429 Farmer, Arthur Stewart, 280–81 Farmer, James, 319 Farmers Improvement Society of Texas, 820 Farrakhan, Louis, 153, 726 Farris, Elaine, 309 Fattah, Chaka, 714 Faulkner, Charles, 914, 920 Fauntleroy, Hermanze E., 876, 885 Fauntroy, Walter, 162 Fauser, Crystal Bird, 713, 722 Fauset, Jessie, 684 Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, Mississippi, 428 Fee, John G., Kentucky, 306 Felder, James, 747, 758 Fences (Wilson), 422 Ferguson, Joe, 61 Ferguson, Luther Bennett, 917 Ferguson & Williams Monster Show, Wisconsin, 939 Ferrell, F. Douglas, 86 Fettermen, William, 950 “Field hollers,” 442 Fielding, Herbert, 747, 758 Fields, Cleo, 333 Fields, James, 626 Fields, Mary, 469 Fifteenth Amendment: content of, 156; ratification by: Alabama, 3; Arkansas, 59; California, 76; Connecticut, 116; Delaware, 133; Florida, 171;

Georgia 189; Illinois, 241; Indiana, 256; Iowa, 273; Kentucky, 309, 322; Louisiana, 330; Maine, 348; Maryland, 365, 370; Massachusetts, 385; Michigan, 396; Minnesota, 412; Mississippi, 427; Missouri, 449; Montana, 469; Nebraska, 483; Nevada, 498; New Hampshire, 518; New Jersey, 532; New York, 570; North Carolina, 598; North Dakota, 622; Ohio, 635; Oregon, 682; Pennsylvania, 713; Rhode Island, 739; South Carolina, 747; South Dakota, 767; Tennessee, 783; Texas, 820; Vermont, 862; Virginia, 874, 883; West Virginia, 915, 922; Wisconsin, 934, 940 Fifth Missionary Company, Hawaii, 218 54th Massachusetts Regiment, 453 Finch, William, 203 Finley, Robert, 536 Fire Next Time, The (Baldwin), 584 Fire Station Number 3, Colorado, 96 First African Baptist Church, Georgia, 188, 193, 195, 199 First African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Washington, 898 First Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent, Arkansas, 58 First Baptist Church, Alabama, 11 First Colored Baptist Church: Arizona, 45; Kansas, 294 First Institutional Baptist Church, Arizona, 53 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 453–54 First Lessons in Greek (Scarborough), 636, 654 First National Black Historical Society, Kansas, 290 First Reconstruction Act, Texas, 819 First Rhode Island Regiment (1778), 738, 740 First Standard Bank, Kentucky, 316 “First Taste of the Strange Fruit, The,” 146 Fisher, Aaron Richard, 263 Fisherman Hall, West Virginia, 929 Fisk Jubilee Singers, 127, 808 Fisk Library, 810, 813 Fisk University, 21, 127, 779, 780, 787 Fitzgerald, Ella, 844, 888, 890–91 Fitzpatrick, James Bernard, 353 Five Points community, Colorado, 96, 100, 101, 102–3, 104, 109 Flack, Roberta, 613, 613f Flake, Agnes Love, 231, 848 Flake, Green: Idaho, 228, 231, 235; Utah, 842, 847–48, 855 Flake, Lucinda, 232

Index Flanner House Guild, Indiana, 256, 262 Fleetwood, Christian A., Maryland, 363 Fleming, George, Washington, 896, 906 Fletcher, Arthur A. (Art), 896, 906, 908, 909 Flick Amendment, West Virginia, 922 Flipper, Henry Ossian, 37, 44, 203, 547, 556 Florida: African American population, 170, 173, 174, 175, 177–78; chronology, 170–72; cultural contribution, 185–86; historical overview, 173–80; notable African Americans, 180–85 Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, 171 Flowers, Vonetta, Alabama, 5 Floyd, Dr. Otis, 800–801 Flynn, Raymond, Massachusetts, 390 Folk music, Virginia, 875 Folk Songs of the American Negro (Work), 809 Follis, Charles, 637 Food crops, African, 890 Foraker, Joseph, Texas, 829 Ford, Barney Lancelot: Colorado, 96, 100, 106; Wyoming, 951, 952 Ford, Harold E., 799 Ford, Harold E., Jr., 783, 799 Ford Motor Company, Michigan, 397, 400 Forest Leaves (Harper), 373 For My People (Alexander), 282, 439 Fort Buchanan, Arizona, 43 Fort Defiance, Arizona, 43 Fort Des Moines, 272, 274, 276 Fort Donnally, West Virginia, 914 Fort Douglas, Utah, 850 Fort Duchesne, Utah, 850 Forten, James, 729 Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont, 863 For the Trials of Negroes Act, Delaware, 136 Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 38, 44 Fort Lawton, Washington, 895, 900 Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 299 Fort Missoula, Montana, 473 Fort Monroe, Virginia, 873 Fort Mose, Florida, 170, 173 Fort Negro, Florida, 170, 174 Fort Pillow Massacre, 785–86 Fort Scott National Historic Site, Kansas, 299–300 Fort Shaw, Montana, 472–73 Fort Snelling, Minnesota, 412, 414, 415 Fort Valley State, Georgia, 199 Fort Wainwright, Alaska, 30 Fort Wright, Washington, 895 Fortune, T. Thomas, 181, 570

981

Fossett, Peter, 634 Foster, Robert J.: Utah, 846; Texas, 822 Fourteenth Amendment: content of, 156; ratification by: Alabama, 2; Arkansas, 59; California, 77; Connecticut, 116; Delaware, 133; Florida, 170; Georgia, 189; Illinois, 241; Indiana, 256; Iowa, 273; Kansas, 287; Kentucky, 309, 322; Louisiana, 330; Maine, 348; Maryland, 365, 369; Massachusetts, 385; Michigan, 396; Minnesota, 412; Mississippi, 427; Missouri, 449; Montana, 469; Nebraska, 483; Nevada, 498; New Hampshire, 518; New Jersey, 531; New York, 570; North Carolina, 598; North Dakota, 622; Ohio, 635, 640; Oregon, 680, 682; Pennsylvania, 713; Rhode Island, 739; South Carolina, 747; South Dakota, 767; Tennessee, 778; Texas, 820; Vermont, 862; Virginia, 874; West Virginia, 915, 922; Wisconsin, 934 Fouse, William Henry, 64 Fousen, Warren, 627 Fox, Abe, 510 Fox, Alma, 723 Fox, Lillian Thomas, 264 Fox Indians, Wisconsin, 932, 937 Foxx, Redd, 460–61 Francis, Nellie, 417 Francis, William T., 417 Franciscans, California, 78 Frank, James, 465 Franklin, Aretha, 404 Franklin, Chester Arthur, 461 Franklin, Clarence Lavaughn (C. L.), 404–5 Franklin, John Hope, historian, 674, 674f Franklin, Joseph Paul, 257 Franklin, Shirley Clarke, 191, 203–4 Franks, Gary, 118 Fraternities, Hawaii, 221 Frazier, E. (Edward)Franklin, 162 Frazier, Joseph “Smokin’ Joe,” 759, 759f, 763 Frederick Douglass Memorial, 393 Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, D.C., 165 Frederick Douglass “Path of Freedom,” Maryland, 377–78 Free Africa Society, Philadelphia, 712 Freed, Robert, 844 Freedman’s Bank: Tennessee, 787, 790; Utah, 846, 853, 858 Freedman’s Progress, Michigan, 396 Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Maryland, 363 Freedman’s Village, Arlington National Cemetery, 640

982

Index

Freedmen’s Bureau: creation of, 329; extension of, 330 Freedmen’s Church, Kansas, 294 Freedmen’s Hospital, D.C., 159 Freedom, Mumbet (Elizabeth), 383 Freedom Creek Festival, 21 Freedom March, Louisiana, 332 “Freedom Schools,” 429, 437 Freedom’s Journal (newspaper), 355, 569, 579 Freedom Summer Program, Mississippi, 429, 437 Freeland, Wendell, 722 Freeman, Martin Henry, 862 Freeman, Morgan P., 811 Freeman (newspaper), 142 Freeman’s Press, Texas, 838 Free Southern Theater, 342 Freetown Village, Indian, 266, 268 Frémont, John C.: Utah, 842, 847; Wyoming, 950, 952–53 Friend, The (newspaper), 218 Fritz, Albert, 845, 851, 855 Froebel school boycott, Indiana, 259 Frye, Henry E., 600, 610 Fugitive Blacksmith, The (Pennington), 362 Fugitive Slave Act (1793), 873; California, 79, 80; Indiana, 258; Missouri, 453; New Jersey, 530; New York, 578; Pennsylvania, 713, 718; Wisconsin, 933, 938–39 Fuller, Lorenzo, Jr., 289 Fuller, Meta Warwich, 734 Fur trade: Wisconsin, 932, 938; Wyoming, 950, 952, 957 “Fusion tickets,” 59 Gabriel’s Conspiracy, Virginia, 872, 879–80 Gaddy, Beatrice, 372 Gadsden Purchase, Arizona, 40 “Gag”rule, congressional, 362 Gaines, Ernest James, 342 Gaines, Matt, 828 Gaines, Paul L., 739, 741, 742 Gaines, Wesley John, 198 Galilee Community School, 834 Galloway, A. H., 598 Gammage, Jonny, 715 Gammon Theological Seminary, 202–3 “Gangsta rap,” California, 88 Gantt, Harvey, 747, 757, 759–60, 760f; Charlotte mayor, 600, 610, 760 Gardner, Newport (OccramMarycoo), 742, 743 Gardner-Chavis, Ralph, Illinois, 247 Garfield Lodge No. 92, Pittsburgh steel workers, 720

Garland, Benjamin, 939 Garner, Margaret, 634, 635, 643 Garnett, Henry Highland, 361, 568, 569, 570, 580 Garrett, Thomas, 137, 138 Garrido, Juan, 170, 173 Garvey, Marcus, 62, 97, 104, 571, 582, 584, 585, 822, 829 Garwood, George, 846, 855 Gaston, Arthur G., 10, 15 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., Massachusetts, 386; West Virginia, 927 Gathering of Old Men, A (Gaines), 342 Gay, Hazel, 504, 507 Gay, Jimmy, 504 Geary, Roscoe, Sr., 353 Gene Harris Jazz Festival, 235, 237 General Order 11, Florida, 170 Genesis Branch, LDS Church, 845, 846, 847 Genius of Universal Emancipation, 778 Gentry, Howard, Jr., 783, 795 Genung, Charles, 40 George R. Smith College, 69 George Washington Carver High School, Arizona, 38 George Washington Carver Museum, Alabama, 22 George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, Arizona, 54 Georgetown University, 152 Georgia: chronology, 188–92; cultural contributions, 210–11; historical overview, 192–202; notable African Americans, 202–10 Georgia Historical Society, 198 German Coast Uprising, Louisiana, 328, 334 Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (Rice), 19 Geronimo, surrender of, 37, 44 Gibbs, Jonathan C., 171, 177, 181 Gibson, Kenneth, Newark mayor, 541 Gibson, Walter Murray, 218 Gideon, slave ship, 566 Gifted Hands (Carson), Michigan, 403 Gilbert, Bartholomew, Maryland, 366 Giles, Gwen B., 461 Gillespie, Ezekiel, 934, 940, 944 Gillespie, James, 845, 855 Gillespie, John Birks “Dizzy,” 760, 760f, 763 Giovanni, Nikki, 811 Glanton, Willie Stevenson, 274 Glapion, Roy E., Jr., 342 Glass, Carter, 883 Gleam, The (newspaper), Arizona, 38, 45 Gleaves, Richard H., 718, 755, 760 Glory (film), 121, 392, 863

Index Gloster, Dr. Hugh Morris, 810 Glover, Joshua, Wisconsin, 933, 939, 944 Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin), 584 Goddard, Sam, 47 God’s in My Corner (Lowry), 354 God’s Little Acre, Newport burial grounds, 744 Goings, William, 818 Golden Spike, 850 Golden State Mutual Life Insurance, California, 82 “Golden Thirteen,” 247 “Golden Triangle,” Iowa, 278 Golden West Hotel, Portland, 694, 706 Gomillion, Charles Good (C. G.), 15 Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), 15 Gone with the Wind (film), 93, 107, 289, 298 Gone with the Wind (Mitchell), 190 Good Citizens League, Arizona, 53 Goode, Calvin, 39, 47, 50 Goode, Wilson, 714, 724, 729f, 729–30 Goodman, Andrew, 429, 430, 436–37, 439 Goodrich, Giles, 638 Goombay Festival, Florida, 186 Gorbachev Era, The (Rice), 19 Gordon, George, D.C., 150 Gordone, Charles, 650 Gordy, Berry, Jr., Motown Records, 397, 405 407–8 Gospel music, 376, 810 Gospel Music Hall of Fame, 67 Goyen, William, Texas, 826 Gradual Emancipation Act (1799), 115, 568, 569, 578 Grambling College, Louisiana, 331 Grambling State University, Louisiana, 333, 338 Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons, Louisiana, 329 Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, 809 Grandison, Jeremiah, American Federation of Labor, 720 Granger, Gordon, 826 Granger, Lester, 888 Grant, Hebert J., 844 Graves, Letitia, 895, 900 Gray, Darius, 845, 846, 853, 855 Gray, Fred D. (David), 15 Gray, Reverend W., 45 Gray, William H., III, 714 Graye, Lloyd V., 478 Grays Ferry, Philadelphia attack, 715 Gray v. University of Tennessee, 780, 795 Great Blacks in Wax Museum, 377 Great Compromise, The (1877), South Carolina, 747, 755 Great Debaters, The (film), 825

983

Great Migration: Illinois, 246; Louisiana, 338; Minnesota, 417; South Carolina, 747, 755 Great Plains Black History Museum, 496 “Great White Hope,” 190, 835 Greater Hartford Process, Connecticut, 125 Greater Phoenix Council for Civic Unity (GPCCU), 38, 52 Green v. Board of New Kent County, Virginia, 884 Green, Al, 67–68, 71 Green, Bob, 357 Green, Dr. Henry M., 791 Green, Dwight H., 242 Green, Hamilton P., 810 Green, John Patterson, 635, 636 Green, Mary, 36 Green, Nathaniel, 188 Green, William, 934, 940 Greenbrier County Board of Education, West Virginia, 917, 918 Greener, Richard Theodore, 384 “Greensboro Massacre,” Ku Klux Klan, 600 Greer, Hal, 927 Gregg, John A., 291 Gregoire, Christine, 897 Gregory, E. M., 827 Gregory, John H., 99 Gregory, Louis George, 349 Gregory, Richard Claxton “Dick,” 249 Grey, William H., 59 Grice, Francis, 228, 231, 842 Grice, Mary, 231, 842 Griffin, Archie, 650–51 Griffin, Charles, 827 Griffin, Edna, 274 Griggs, Dr. Sutton E., 810, 821 Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), 724 Grigsby, (Jefferson)Eugene, 47, 50–51, 54 Grimke, Archibald, 389 Grinnell, Josiah, 273 Groff, Peter C., 98, 99, 106 Groppi, James, 936, 941 Grose (Gross), William, 894, 898 Grover, Charles Porter, 469, 473 Grovey v. Townsend, Texas, 822 Growing Up Black in New Castle County Delaware (Nutter), 144 Guadalupe College, Texas, 820, 828 Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty, Arizona, 36 Guerrero Decree, Texas, 818 Guinn v. United States, 338, 670 Gullah, 750, 751

984

Index

Gunfight at O.K. Corral, Arizona, 37 Guyette, Elsie, Vermont, 864 Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, Maryland, 365, 371 Hackett, Winston C., 45, 46 Hackley, Edwin H., 106 Haden, Jim “Bouie,”723 Hadley Park, Nashville, 780 Haitian refugees, Maryland, 361 Haitian Revolution (1804), 334 Hale, Helene, 215, 224 Haley, Alex, 360, 367, 799 Haley, Harold, 15 Haley, Oretha Castle, 342 Haley, William, 853 Hall, Arsenio, 651 Hall, Ethel, 15 Hall, Katie Beatrice, 264 Hall, Nathan,38 Hall, Prince, 382, 383, 387, 392 Hall, Rubye, 667, 674–75 Hall, Vera, 366 Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, Minnesota, 417 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 428, 439 Hamilton, Grace Towns, Georgia, 204 Hamitic League of the World, Omaha, 484 Hamlet, Windell “Wink,” 100 Hamlin, Albert C., 666, 670, 675 Hamlin, Larry Leon, 616 Hammond, Philip, 914 Hammond, Wade, 46 Hampshire County Board of Education, West Virginia, 918 Hampton, Fred, 242 Hampton, Lionel, 51, 230, 234, 237 Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Virginia, 20, 874 Hanby, Benjamin R., 634 Handy, W. C. (William Christopher), 464, 809 Hansberry, Lorraine, 242 Hansberry v. Lee, 241–42, 247 Hansen, Martha, 221 Haralson, Jeremiah, 3, 7 Hardaway, Roger, 957 Hardin, Birdie, Albuquerque High School, 548, 556 Hardin, William Jefferson, 951, 952, 956–57 Hardison, Inge, 890 Hard-Scrabble race riot, Rhode Island, 738, 741 Harlem Renaissance, 571, 580–82, 588–89 Harmon, Clarence, 456 Harper, Charles Lincoln (C. L.), 204

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 361, 373, 634 Harper, George T., 32 Harper, Minnie Buckingham, 916 Harper, Thelma C., 782, 801 Harper, Virginia, 275 Harpers Ferry insurrection (1859), 597 Harpo Studios, 808 Harris, Amos, 488, 494 Harris, E. Lynn, 62, 68 Harris, Fred, 124 Harris, Gene, 229, 230, 234, 235, 237 Harris, James, 602 Harris, Jean, 419 Harris, Moses “Black,” fur trader, 36, 546, 686, 703 Harris, Patricia, 159 Harris, Robert, 846 Harris, Rosalind “Bee,” 106–7 Harris, Solomon P., 779, 794 Harrison, Benjamin, 274, 279 Hartford Central Association of Congressional Ministers, Maryland, 361 Hartsfield, Bill, Georgia, 200 Harvey, Sam Joe, Idaho, 231; Utah, 842, 843, 851, 855 Harveysburg Free Black School, Ohio, 632 Hassell, Leroy R., Sr., Virginia, 876 Hastie, William Henry, 793, 803–4 Hastings, Alcee, 181–82 Hatcher, Richard G.,257, 262, 264 Hatchett, Joseph W., 172, 182 Hatchett, Truly, 372 Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters’ First Hundred Years, 600, 888 Hawaii: African American population, 214, 215, 217, 220, 224; chronology, 214–15; cultural contributions, 225–26; historical overview, 216–24; notable African Americans, 224–25 “Hawaii’s Melting Pot,” 223 Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA), 218 Hawkins, Augustus, 77, 84, 86 Hawkins, Coleman, 291 Hawkins, Erskine, 21, 22 Hawkins, Leland, 502 Hawkins, Virgil, 182 Hawkins, Yusef, 572 Hawks Nest Tunnel and Dam project, West Virginia, 917 Hayden, Ferdinand, 950 Hayden, Lewis, 384 Hayden, Palmer, 888, 890 Hayden, Robert, 405 Hayes, Arcella, 471

Index Hayes, Benjamin, 842 Hayes, Charles A., 243 Hayes, Chris, 31 Hayes, James C., 26, 27, 30 Hayes, Robert Lee, 182 Hayes, Roland, 204, 808 Haynes, Cornell,Jr. (Nelly), 462 Haynes, Lemuel, 867 Haynes, Richard, 524 Hays, Sammy, 469 Hayward, Garfield T., 264 Healy, James, 348, 353 Healy, Michael, 26, 29–30 Healy, Patrick, 152 Healy (icebreaker), Alaska, 30 Heard et al. v. Davis et al., 50 Hemp, Kentucky, 310–11 Henderson, Erskin, 324 Henderson, James A., 222–23 Henriette, Delile, 342 Henry, Alberta Henry, 845, 855 Henson, Josiah, Kentucky, 313, 321–22 Henson, Josiah, Maryland, 361, 362, 368, 373–74 Henson, Matthew, 363, 374 Herenton, Willie H., 783, 795 Heritage Learning Center Museum, Indiana, 267 Herman, Alexis M., 15–16 Herndon, Alonzo Franklin, 204 Herndon, Angelo, 198 Herndon, Norris Bumstead, 204 Hickel, Walter, 29 Hickman, Robert, 415 Highlander Folk School, Tennessee, 793, 798 Hill, Ben E., 670 Hill, Charles Leander, 651 Hill, Jesse, 204 Hill, Oliver, 888 Hilliard, Earl, 7 Hill Neighborhood Union, Connecticut, 124 Hilltop District, Washington, 894, 898, 902 Himes, Chester, 84, 93 Hines, Earl “Fatla,”13 Hines, William, 331 Hints to the Colored People of the North (Shadd), 145 Hip-hop music, New Jersey, 544 Historical Vignettes of African American Churches in Wilmington, Delaware (Pearce), 138 Hobbs, Joseph K., Kentucky, 320 Hoggard, J. David, 504 Hoggard, Mabel, 510 Holiday, Billie, 374, 571

985

Holland, Annie Wealthy, 599 Holland, Jerome, 142 Holland, Spessard, 178 Holley, Joseph Winthrop, 204 Hollowell, Donald Lee, 204 Holmes, Alvin A., 16 Holsey, Lucius Henry,Georgia, 204–5 Holy Family Catholic Church, Mississippi, 427 Home Circle Club, Albuquerque, 548, 559 “Home farms,” Mississippi, 430 Home rule, D.C., 157–58 Homesteader, The (Micheaux), 768, 771, 774, 776 Homesteads: Nebraska, 489; New Mexico, 552, 553; North Dakota, 626; Oregon, 688 Honey Springs, Battle, of, 296 Hood, James Walker, 597, 598, 602 Hooker, Thomas, 114 Hooks, Benjamin L., 799 Hooks, Julia Britton, 789 Hoosier, Harry,138 Hope, John: Georgia, 198, 205; Rhode Island, 741 Hope, Lugenia Burns, 205 Hoppes, Alice, 549, 560 Horne, Lena, 86, 93, 513 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Minnesota, 418 “House of Hope,” Connecticut, 114 House, Callie, 804 House, Gloria, 405 Houston, Charles Hamilton, 162 Houston, Joshua, 833 Houston, Samuel Walker, 826, 833–34 Houstonian Normal Institute, 834 Houston Informer (newspaper), Texas, 838 Houston Public Library, 821 Houston race riots, 828 Howard, David T., 205 Howard, Rebecca, Washington, 894, 898 Howard Grade School, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 598, 605 Howard High School, Delaware, 134 Howard University, D.C., 21, 151, 156, 165, 730; Medical School, 159 Howell, Abner, 850 Howell, John, rancher, 498, 501 Howell, Levi, 843, 849 Howell, Owen, 940 Howell, Paul Cephas, 843, 849, 855 Howell v. Lit, Wisconsin, 940 Howlin’ Wolf. See Burnett, Chester Arthur “Howlin’ Wolf”

986

Index

Hoxie School Board, Arkansas, 61 Hubbard, Reverend James, 469, 473 Hubbard, William Dehart, 651–52 Hubert, Benjamin Franklin, 205 Hubert, Zachery Taylor, 428 Huddleston, T. J., Sr., 428 Hudson, J. Blaine, 322 Hughes, Jennie, 228 Hughes, Langston, 291, 461 Human Rights Day, Utah, 846, 857 Humphreys, Benjamin G., 432 Humphries, Solomon, 195 Hunt, Guy, 5 Hunter, Charles N., 615 Hunter, David, 170, 176 Hunter, Ralph E., 534 Huntsville Times (newspaper), Texas, 833 Hurd, Babe, Kentucky, 325 Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana, 333, 340 Hurston, Zora Neale, 182–83 Hurtt, Harold L., 825 Hutchinson, Augustus, 222–23 Hutchinson, Thomas, 387 Hyde, Orson, 851 Hyman, John A., 598, 603, 603f Ice cream, Sallie Shadd, 146 Idaho: African American population, 228; chronology, 228–30; cultural contribution, 237–38; historical overview, 230–34; notable African Americans, 234–37 Idaho Human Rights Commission, 229 I Don’t Feel No Way Tired, 486, 493 If He Hollers Let Him Go (Himes), 84 “If We Must Die” (McKay), 571, 588 Ikard, Bose, cowboy, 547, 554 Illinois: African American population, 243, 246; chronology, 240–43; cultural contributions, 252–54; historical overview, 243–48; notable African Americans, 248–52 Illinois Anti-Slavery Society, 245 Illinois Civil Rights Act, in Illinois, 241 Illinois Interracial Commission, 242 Imperium in Imperio (Griggs), 821 “I’m So Tired of Being Alone,” 67 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 597 Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT), Vermont, 862, 864 Indiana: African American population, 258, 263; chronology, 256–57; cultural contributions, 265–68; historical overview, 258–63; notable African American, 263–65

Indiana Black Expo, 257 Indiana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, 262 Indiana Herald (newspaper), 263 Indiana Museum of Art, 262 Indianapolis Leader (newspaper), 256, 263 Indianapolis Recorder (newspaper), 263, 265 Indianapolis riot, 257, 261 Indianapolis Star (newspaper), 266 “Indian Freedom Trails,” 266 Industry (ship), Massachusetts, 383 Inge, Hutchins F., New Jersey Senate, 533 Initiative 200, Washington, 897 Integrating Delaware (Willard-Povine), 140–41 International Boxing Research Organization, 12 International Convention of the UNIA-ACL, 104 Inter-Ocean Hotel, Wyoming, 951 “Interposition”amendment, Arkansas, 61 Inter-Racial Commission, Connecticut, 117 Invisible Life (Harris), 68 Invisible Man (Ellison), 674 Iowa: African American population, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277; chronology, 272–74; cultural contributions, 281; ethnic populations, 277–78; historical overview, 274–77; notable African Americans, 277–82 Iowa Civil Rights Act, 274 Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans, 275 Iowa State Colored Convention, 273 Iowa State University, George Washington Carver, 12 Iowa Volunteers of African Descent, 273 Ironsides School (New Jersey Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth), 532 Irvin, William C., 470 Irwin High School, 14 Isabelle, Robert H., 336 Isakson, Johnny, 191 Jackson, Alphonse, 332 Jackson, Andrew: Florida, 174, 175; Louisiana, 328, 334–35 Jackson, Elmer, 417 Jackson, George, California, 93 Jackson, George A., Colorado, 99 Jackson, James H., Iowa, 274 Jackson, Jesse, 153, 247, 250, 266, 267; Connecticut March, 118, 126; Operation PUSH, 242; and Ralph David Abernathy, 11 Jackson, Joseph S., 895, 897, 907 Jackson, Lewis A., 643–44 Jackson, Mahalia, 250

Index Jackson, Maynard Holbrook, Jr., 191, 201, 205 Jackson, Michael, 257, 264, 265 Jackson, Oliver Toussaint, Colorado, 102, 107 Jackson, Sheldon, Alaskan, 30 Jackson, Vincent Edward “Bo,” 16 Jackson, William H., Sr., 739 Jackson College, Mississippi, 427 Jackson County War, Florida, 171, 177 Jackson State University, Mississippi, 427 Jacob, John J., 922 Jacobs, Alma, 471 Jacobs, Harriet, 597 Jamaica Train, 335 James Baldwin Award, 68 James P. Beckwourth Mountain Club, Colorado, 97 James, Isaac, 232, 848 James, Jane Manning, 842, 843, 848, 852, 855 James v. Marinship, California, 83 Janisse (slave), Wyoming, 950, 952–53 Jarrett, James R., West Virginia, 918, 925 Jarvis Christian College, Texas, 821 Jason, William C., Sr., 133, 142 Jazz: California, 93; Hawaiian culture, 225; Idaho festivals, 230, 234, 237; Kansas, 289 Jefferson, Blind Lemon, 838 Jefferson, William J., 333 Jefferson County African American Culture and Heritage Fair, West Virginia, 929 Jeffries, James, 190, 835 Jemison, Mae, 5, 16 Jemison, T. J., 331, 339 “Jena 6,” Louisiana, 333, 340–41 Jenkins, Esau, 756 Jenkins, William, 935 Jennings, Elizabeth, 570 Jennison, Charles, 291 Jet magazine, 68 Jim Crow laws: Arkansas, 60, 61, 62; California, 76; Colorado, 96; Delaware, 133, 139; Mississippi, 433–34; Nebraska, 488, 492; North Carolina, 607, 612; Oklahoma, 666, 669; South Carolina, 747, 755, 756; Tennessee, 779, 789, 790. See also Black Codes Jocelyn Elders, M.D., 67 John, William Edgar “Little Willie,” 68, 71 John Brown Jamboree, Kansas, 299 John Henry legend, 923 Johns, Barbara, 875, 884 Johns, Vernon, 10 Johnson, Albert, Las Cruces mayor, 549, 558 Johnson, Andrew, 177

987

Johnson, Antonio, 878 Johnson, Barbara R., 742 Johnson, Charles, 216 Johnson, Dr. Charles S., 780 Johnson, Earvin “Magic,” Jr., 405 Johnson, Eddie Bernice, 824, 831 Johnson, George Anderson, 143 Johnson, Georgia Douglas Camp, 205 Johnson, Harvey, Maryland, 362 Johnson, I. S. Leevy, 747, 758 Johnson, Jack, Georgia, 190 Johnson, Jack (John Arthur), 498, 821, 834–35 Johnson, James A., 349, 353–54, 357 Johnson, James P., 762 Johnson, James Weldon, 104, 171, 183, 811 Johnson, Jimmie L., 9 Johnson, John H. “Johnny,” 68–69, 71 Johnson, Joseph, 331 Johnson, “Judy,”135 Johnson, Leroy, 196, 205 Johnson, Lubertha, 505, 507, 508, 510–11 Johnson, Lulu, 274 Johnson, Lyman T., 308, 318, 320 Johnson, Mary, 465 Johnson, Michael, 824 Johnson, Mordecai Wyatt, 162 Johnson, Nellie Stone, 418 Johnson, Rafer, 93 Johnson, Ricy, 682, 699 Johnson, Robert, 443 Johnson, Tom, 703–4, 707 Johnson County Cattle War, Wyoming, 951, 953 Johnson Plan, Texas, 819 Johnson v. Virginia, 884 Johnston, Albert C., 526 Johnston, Joshua, 361 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, race riot, 720 Jolliet, Louis, Iowa, 272 Jones, Absalom, 143, 712, 717, 730 Jones, Frederick McKinley, 420 Jones, Grace Sawyer, 846, 856 Jones, Jack, sculptor, 676 Jones, Jacqueline, 135 Jones, John, 331 Jones, Paul, 933 Jones, Richard, 722 Jones, Sisseretta, 742, 743 Jones, William, 652 Joplin, Scott, 69, 70, 461, 464, 821, 838 Jordan, Barbara, 823, 824, 830, 835–36 Jordan, James, 748

988

Index

Jordan, James, Iowa, 273 Jordan, Michael, 254 Jordan, Vernon, Georgia, 191 Jordan, Vernon, Jr., Indiana, 257 Journal of African American History, 875 Journal of Negro History, Virginia, 875 Joyner, Florence Griffith, 93 Joyner-Kersee, Jacqueline “Jackie,” 254 Jubilee (Alexander), 439 Julius Rosenwald Fund, the, 791 Julliard School of Music, 280 Jungles Casino, New York, 762 Just, Ernest Everett, 162 “Kakewalk,” Vermont, 866 Kalakaua, king of Hawaii, 218, 219 Kamehameha I, king of Hawaii, 216 Kamehameha III, king of Hawaii, 216 Kansas: African American population, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 296; chronology, 286–91; cultural contributions, 299–300; historical overview, 291–96; notable African Americans, 296–98 Kansas African American Museum, 300 Kansas Black Legislative Caucus, 290 Kansas City Monarchs, 449, 465 Kansas Emancipation League, 287, 294 “Kansas Exodus Fever,” 292 Kansas Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, 294 Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association (KFRA), 288 Kansas Industrial and Education Institute, 289, 295 Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 286, 415, 482 Kansas State Colored Convention, 287, 294, 296 Kansas Vocational Institute, 289 Karamu House, Cleveland, 637 Karenga, Ron Maluana, 77, 87–88 Kassey, Eliza, 627 Katz Drug Store, Iowa, 274 Kavanaugh, Nelson, Texas, 826 Keckley, Elizabeth Hobbs, 461, 637 Keeble, Sampson W., 779, 789 Keenan, Victoria, Idaho, 233 Kellar, Charles, 508, 509, 511 Kelley, William, 934, 940–41 Kelly, James, 488 Kelly Ingram Park, 21–22 Kendricks, Eddie, 21 Kentucky: African American population, 306, 309, 310, 312, 315–16, 318, 320; chronology, 306–10; cultural contributions, 323–24; historical overview, 310–21; notable African Americans, 321–23

Kentucky Abolition Society (KAS), 306, 314 Kentucky Civil Liberties Union, 318 Kentucky Colonization Society, 314 Kentucky Commission on Human Rights (KCHR), 308, 309, 319 Kentucky Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 316 Kentucky Derby, 323–24 Kentucky Housing Corporation, 322 Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons, 316 Kentucky State University, 316 Kettle Creek, Battle of, 194 Key, Alice, 499, 506, 507, 511 Keyes, Daniel, 547, 552, 559 Kiblah School, Arkansas, 59 Kickapoo Springs, Texas, 820 Kidd, Mae Street, 309, 319, 322 Kiddo, J. B., 827 Killen, Edgar Ray, 430, 439 Kilpatrick, Carolyn Cheeks, 398, 399 Kilpatrick, Kwame, 399, 405–6 Kimball, Spencer W., 852 King, A. D., 4 King, B. B., 428, 440 King, Ben E., 376 King, Chevrone Bowers (C. B.), 205–6 King, Coretta Scott, 5, 16–17, 191, 206, 639 King, Horace, Alabama, 6 King, Joseph H., West Virginia, 918 King, Lonnie, Georgia, 191 King, Dr.Martin Luther, Jr., 190, 199, 200, 206; assassination, 782, 798–99, 800f; in Alabama, 4, 5, 7–8, 9, 10; and Coretta Scott King, 16–17; in D.C., 153, 164; in Florida, 171; and Fred D. Gray, 15; and Fred Shuttlesworth, 20; in Illinois, 242, 247, 248; in Indiana, 257, 261; in Kentucky, 309, 318–19; in Maine, 349, 356; in Massachusetts, 385; in New York, 571; and Ralph David Abernathy, 11 King, Martin Luther, Sr., 206 King, Rodney, 78, 89 King Biscuit Blues Festival, 71 “King Cole Swingers,” 13 Kino, Francisco, 39 Kinte, Kunta, 360, 367 Kirk, Ron, 824, 825, 831 Knights of Pythias, Portsmouth, 521 Knights of the White Camellia: Louisiana, 336; Mississippi, 430, 433, 439; Texas, 820; West Virginia, 922 Knox, Michael, 864

Index Knoxville sit-in movement, 797 Kosciuszko Park, Wisconsin, 936, 941 Kruse, Edwina B., 143 Ku Klux Klan: Alabama, 7, 8; Arizona, 45; California 76, 84; Colorado, 96–97, 103–4; Florida, 177, 178, 179; Georgia, 190, 197; Idaho, 229, 232; Indiana, 256, 259, 260–61; Maryland, 363, 370, 371; Mississippi, 430, 433, 435, 439; Missouri, 455, 456; Nebraska, 485; Nevada, 501; New Hampshire, 522; New Jersey, 538; New Mexico, 553; North Carolina, 598, 604; Oregon, 692, 703; South Carolina, 748, 755; Tennessee founding, 788; Texas, 828, 830; Utah, 844, 851; Vermont, 866; West Virginia, 922; Wisconsin, 934 Kwanzaa celebration: Arizona, 53; California, 77, 87; New Hampshire, 521; Wisconsin, 943, 946 Kyles, Cedric Antonio (Cedric the Entertainer), 460 Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (Jones), 135 Ladies Refugee Society, Kansas, 287, 294 Lafayette, James, 872 Lafon, Thomas, 217 Lafon, Thorny, 342 LaGrone, Oliver, University of New Mexico, 549 Lake Ivanhoe, Wisconsin, 934 “Lamentation Day,” St. Louis, 454 Lamm, Richard, Colorado, 108, 109 Lamy, Antonious, Maine, 348 Lane, James H., 295, 296 Laney, Lucy Craft, 206 Langlade, Charles, 932, 937 Langon, Byrdie Lee, 856 Langston, John Mercer, 289, 634, 643, 874 Langston University, Oklahoma, 666, 675, 676 Lanier, Willie, Virginia, 888 Larimer, William, Colorado, 99 Las Vegas, black entertainer discrimination, 504, 505, 506–7 Las Vegas Colored Progressive Club, 503 Latin, David Daddy, 823 Law, Westley Wallace (W. W.), 206 Lawrence, Jacob, 911 Lawrence, Rick, 349 Lawrence Massacre, Kansas, 286 Lawson, Ida Napier, Connecticut, 126–27 Lay, Hark, 231, 842, 847, 848 Leach, Robert Boyd, 652 Leader, The (newspaper), Arizona, 38 League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Michigan, 398

989

Learning Tree, The (Parks), 298 Leavenworth, Kansas, 294 Leavitt, Bob, 472 Ledbetter, Hudie, 838 LeDroit Park, D.C., 152 Lee, Archy, 80 Lee, Charles, 194 Lee, Fitzhugh, 883 Lee, George, 435 Lee, Harper, 4 Lee, Howard, Chapel Hill mayor, 600 Lee, John Robert Edward, 178 Lee, Mollie Huston, 613–14 Lee, Sheila Jackson, 824 Lee, Wayne, 846 Leggroan, Edward (Ned), 232, 235, 843, 849 Leggroan, Nettie James, 232 Leggroan, Susan, 232, 843, 849 Leland, George Mickey, 824, 831 Leland University, Louisiana, 330, 336 Lenape Indians, 534 L’Enfant, Pierre, 155 Leonard, Ray Charles “Sugar Ray,” 375 Leslie, George, 195 Lesson Before Dying, A (Gaines), 342 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (King), 4, 9 LeVias, Jerry, Texas, 823 Lewis, Bill, 54 Lewis, Carl, 824 Lewis, Dr. James A., 549, 560–61 Lewis, Henry Jackson, 264 Lewis, Isaac, 325 Lewis, James B., 549, 561 Lewis, John R., 191, 206, 207 Lewis, John, Modern Jazz Quartet, 561–62 Lewis, Meriwether, 228, 230–31, 272, 286, 894 Lewis, Oliver, 325 Lewis, Quock Walker, 842, 849, 856 Lewis, Reginald, 375 Lewis, Romeo, University of New Mexico, 548, 556 Lewis, William H., 389 Lia, Carlotta Stewart, 224–25 Liberator (newspaper), West Virginia, 914, 920 Liberia, 537, 604, 778; establishment of, 872 Liberia Herald (newspaper), 355 Liberty Place, Battle of, 337 Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, The, 468 Life and Adventures of Nat Love, The, 107 Life of George Washington Carver, The (film), 12 Life of James Mars, The, 119

990

Index

Life of Josiah Henson, The (Henson), 373–74 Lift Every Voice and Sing (Johnson), 183, 811 Light, Allen, 79 Light in the Midst of Zion (Davis), 855 Ligon, Joe, Alabama, 21 Lillard, Robert, 780 Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ, Alaska, 30–31 Lima, Al, 739 Lincoln, Abraham, 176, 245; assassination of, 151 Lincoln High School, Alabama, 16 Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Missouri, 449, 454, 464, 465 Lincoln Institute, Kentucky, 307 Lincoln Normal School, Alabama, 2 Lincoln Park, D.C., 165 Lindberg, William, 896 Lindsay, Bernice C., Wisconsin, 945 Links, Inc., 215, 222 Lionel Hampton Center, Idaho, 230 Liston, Charles “Sonny,” 69–70 Litany of Friends (Randall), 406 Little, Earl, 484, 491, 494 Little, Malcolm (Malcolm X), 491, 494–96, 495f; in California, 87; in Massachusetts, 385; in New York, 572, 582; Organization of African Unity, 66 Little Colonel, The, 889 Little Rock Nine, 64, 65 Liuzzo, Viola, Alabama, 10, 398 Lively, Cheney, Indiana, 258 Livingston, Lawrence M., 137 Livingstone, Paul, 134 Lloyd, Daisy Riley, 262 Lloyd, John Henry “Pop,” 183–84 Locke, Alain Leroy, 162, 730, 734 Locke, Gary, 907 Lockridge, Joe, 823 Lodge of the Good Templars, Helena, Montana, 469, 473 Loftus, Lauretta, 562 Logan, Greensbury, 826 London, Minnie B., 276 Long, Jefferson Franklin, 189, 206–7 Longshoremen: Texas, 821; Washington, 895, 900 Looby, Z. Alexander, 780, 793, 794, 797 Look Away (play), 65 Loper, Frank, Colorado, 100 Lopius, Markus, 680, 704 Lornes, Willie “Smokey,” Colorado, 97 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 87, 88–89

Los Angeles Sentinel (newspaper), 83 Lotus Press, Michigan, 398, 408 Louis, Joe (Barrow), 12, 397 Louisiana: African American population, 334, 335; chronology, 328–33; cultural contributions, 344–45; historical overview, 334–41; notable African Americans, 341–43 Louisiana African-American Heritage Trail, 333, 344–45 Louisiana Constitutional Convention, 329, 330, 335, 336 Louisiana Racial Classification Law, 333 Louisville, Kentucky: riots, 319; slave ownership, 306 Louisville Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, 318 Louisville Boycott, Kentucky, 308 Louisville Defender (newspaper), Kentucky, 319 Louisville Examiner (newspaper), Kentucky, 306 Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, Kentucky, 316 Louisville Residential Segregation Ordinance, Kentucky, 307, 308 Love, E. K., 198 Love, Nat “Deadwood Dick,” 36, 42, 107, 233, 767, 771, 773–74, 773f, 775 Lovejoy, Elijah, Illinois, 240, 245 Love Social Services Center, Alaska, 31 Lower Hill District, Pittsburgh, 723, 724 Lowery, Joseph Echols, 207 Lowery, Robert “Boysie,” 143–44 Lowry, Ted “Tiger,” 349, 354 Loyal Union League, Texas, 828 Lucy, Autherine, 4, 10 Lumpkin, Robert, 881 Lumpkin’s Jail, Virginia, 881 Lundy, Benjamin, 778 L’Union (newspaper), 329, 339–40 Luper, Clara, 672, 675 Lynch, John R., 427, 433 Lynchburg Laboring Association, Virginia, 874 Lynk, Dr. Myles V., 779, 791 Lyrics of a Lowly Life (Dunbar), 649 Macedonia Baptist Church, Manning, South Carolina, 748 Madgett, Naomi Long, Michigan, 398, 399, 406 Madison, Robert P., 639 Mahone, William, 883 Mahoney, William P., Jr., 46 Maier, Henry, 942

Index Maine: African American population, 348, 349, 351; chronology, 348–49; cultural contribution, 357; historical overview, 349–52; notable African Americans, 352–57 Maine’s Visible Black History (Talbot), 356–57 Maine Vocational and Technical Institute, 353, 357 Maitland, John, 194 Majette, Denise, 191 Malby Law, New York, 570 Malcolm X. (Little), 491, 494–96, 495f; in California, 87; in Massachusetts, 385; in New York, 572, 582; Organization of African Unity, 66 Malcolm X (Clarke), 12 Mallory, David, 258 Malone, Annie, 462 Malone, Moses, 888 Malone, W. T., 548, 552 Malry, Dr. Lenton, 549, 558 Malvin, John, 632, 641 Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, 317–18 Mammoth Life and Accident Insurance Company, Kentucky, 315–16 Manchester Interracial Council, Connecticut, 117 Manhattan Project, Illinois, 247 Manning, Isaac Lewis, 843 Manning, Jane, 232 Manuel, Charles (“Daddy Grace”), 162 Manuel, Christopher Christian, 348, 354 Manumission Intelligencer, 778 Manzilla, Wayne, Mount Union College, 637 Maples, William Lineas, 214 Mapp v. Chattanooga, 782 Marable, Manning, 652 Marchbanks, Lucretia, 768, 771 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 153 March on Washington Movement (MOWM), Pennsylvania, 722 “March to Annapolis,” 371 Mardi Gras segregation, 335, 344 Margaret Garner (opera), 640 Maria, Oregon country, 704 Maricopa Lodge No. 16, Arizona, 37 Maritime Strike of 1934, Washington, 895, 900 Markham, David “Pigmeat,” 93 Marquette, Jacques, Iowa, 272 Mars, James, Connecticut, 119 Marshall, Andrew, 195 Marshall, Harriet Gibbs, Oberlin, 637 Marshall, Robert “Bobby,” 420 Marshall, Robert, 844, 846, 851, 852, 856 Marshall, Thurgood, 13, 153, 364, 371, 375, 794, 830

991

Martin, C. B., 41 Martin, Helen, 811 Martin, Louis, E., 402, 406 Martin, Ralph, 386, 390 Martin Luther King Jr. Day: in Arizona 39, 48; in Colorado, 98, 109; and Coretta Scott King, 17; in Hawaii, 215; in Idaho, 230; in Iowa, 275; and Lincoln Ragsdale, 52; in Texas, 824; in Utah, 846, 852, 857; in Wyoming, 952 Martin Luther King Jr. Library, D.C., 165 Martin v. Board of Education, West Virginia, 926 “Martinsville Seven,” 875 Mary Allen College for Women, Texas, 820, 824, 828 Maryland: African American population, 360, 368; chronology, 360–66; cultural contributions, 376–78; historical overview, 366–72; notable African Americans, 372–76 Maryland Colonization Society, 361, 368 Maryland Commission of Negro History and Culture, 365 Maryland Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations, 364 Maryland Congress against Discrimination, 364 “Maryland, My Maryland,” 369 Maryland National Guard, 364, 371–72 Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Poor Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, 361, 367–68 Maryland Teachers Association, 371 Maryville College v. Tennessee, 779 Mason, Bridget “Biddy,” 80, 81, 92, 843, 847–48, 856 Mason, Helen, 54 Mason, Max, 417 Massachusetts: African American population, 382, 384, 385, 387, 390; chronology, 382–86; cultural contributions, 393; historical overview, 386–91; notable African Americans, 391–93 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 388 Massachusetts General Colored Association, 383, 387 Massachusetts Medical Society, 384 Massey, James Early, 406 Mathew, William, 294 Mattingly, McKenzie, 320 Maxey, JoAnn Strickland, 486, 493 Maxie, Peggy, 896, 906 Mayhew, Allen, Underground Railroad, 482 Mayhew, Barbara, Underground Railroad, 482 Mays, Dr. Benjamin E., 207, 756, 760, 761f, 763 Mays, Willie Howard, 17 McAnulty, William E., 320

992

Index

McArthur Conservatory, 265–66 McCabe, Edward, 666, 668, 675 McCabe, Edwin, 288 McCants, Arthur, 503 McClain, Ernest, 101 McClain, Thomas Ernest, 107 McClendon, Ben, 36, 40 McCown, John L., 207 McCoy, Jim, United Steel Workers of America, 723 McCrary, Jesse Jr., 172 McCray, Billy Q., 290 McCray-Miller, Melody, Kansas, 291 Mccrummell, James, 388 McCullick, Daryl, 48 McCulloch (cutter ship), Alaska, 30 McCullough, Samuel, 826 McDaniel, Hattie, California, 93, 107, 289, 291 McDonald, Gabrielle, Texas, 824 McDowell, Fred “Mississippi,” 810 McFerren, Viola H., 894 McGee, James H., Dayton mayor, 645 McGhee, Frederick, Minnesota, 412, 416–17, 420 McGhie, Isaac, 417 McGill, Hughes, 319 McGruder, John, rancher, 768 McIntyre, Ed, 191 McJunkus, George, cowboy, 554 McKay, Claude, 571, 581, 588 McKeithen, John, 332 McKinley, William, 232–33 McKinney, Cary, 826 McKinney, Cynthia, 191, 207 McKissack, Frederick, 811 McKissack, Patricia Carwell, 811 McKissick, Floyd B., CORE, 600 McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 667, 673, 675 McLaurin, George, 675 McLendon, John, 639 McLin, Rhine, Dayton mayor, 645 McMillan, Dr. James B., 506, 507, 508, 511–12 McNair, Denise, 4 McNair, Ronald, astronaut, 600 McNeal, Joe J., Idaho, 230, 234, 235 McSwain v. Board of Anderson County, Tennessee, 795 McWorter, “Free”Frank, 240 Meacham, Robert, 184 Meachum, John Berry, 462 “Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro, The,” 362 Medical and Surgical Observer, 779, 791 Medley, Tyrone, 846, 856 Meek, Carrie, 172, 184

Meek, Kendrick, 172, 184 Meharry Medical College, Nashville, 779, 780, 790, 801, 806 Meigs Regiment, Connecticut, 115, 117 Memphis Free Speech, 788, 789, 790 Memphis Planet, 789 Menard, John Willis, 330, 336 Mercer, Arthur, 951 Merchant, Harvey, 36, 42 Mercy Hospital, Wilson, North Carolina, 599 Meredith, James, 428, 437, 438 Messenger, The (magazine), 185 Metcalfe, Ralph, 250 Methodist Church, stance on slavery, 360, 367 Metropolitan AME Church, D.C., 165 Mfume, Kweisi, 366, 372 Miami riots, 172, 179–80 Michaux, Elder Lightfoot Solomon, 163 Micheaux, Oscar, 768, 771, 774, 774f, 775, 776 Michigan: African American population, 396, 399–400; chronology, 396–99; cultural contributions, 407–8; historical overview, 399–402; notable African Americans, 402–7 Michigan Chronicle (newspaper), 397, 402, 406 Middlebury College, Vermont, 862, 866–67 Mighty Clouds of Joy, 21 Miles College, Alabama, 18 Miles, Nelson, 37 Miley, James “Bubber,” 762–63 Miller, Dorie, 220, 822, 830 Miller, Edward Porter, 667 Miller, J. W., 38, 41 Miller, L. T., 428 Miller, Maya, 499, 509 Miller, Randolph, 789 Miller, William, 417 Miller, Yvonne, 876 Milliken’s Bend, Battle of, 329, 335 Million Man March, D.C., 153, 154, 164, 726 Million Woman March, Philadelphia, 715, 726, 727f Mills, Jesse, 294 Mills College, Alabama, 6–7 Mills-LaGrange, Vicki, 667 Milner, Ron, 406 Milner, Thirman,117 Milwaukee, black population, 934 Milwaukee Journal (newspaper), 935 Milwaukee riot, Wisconsin, 936, 942–43 Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), 935, 944 Mine Owners Association, Idaho, 232

Index Mingus, Charles, 51 Mingus at Carnegie Hall, 51 Minneapolis, Black communities, 416 “Minneapolis sound,” 423 Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder (newspaper), Minnesota, 413, 420 Minnesota: African American population, 413, 415–16, 418–19; chronology, 412–13; cultural contributions, 423; historical overview, 413–19; notable African Americans, 419–23 “Minnie the Moocher,” 373 Minute Spot, Colorado, 97 Miss America Pageant, Alaska, 26, 27, 31 Mississippi: African American population, 426, 430, 432; chronology, 426–30; cultural contributions, 442–43; historical overview, 430–39; notable African Americans, 439–42 Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, 429 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 429, 437–38 “Mississippi of the West,” Nevada, 502 Mississippi Plan: Louisiana, 337; Mississippi, 427, 433 Mississippi race riots (1875), 433 Mississippi Summer Project, 437 Missouri: chronology, 448–51; cultural contributions, 464–65; historical overview, 451–56; notable African Americans, 456–64 Missouri Compromise (1820), 58, 272, 448, 452 Missouri Equal Rights League, 449, 454 Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University, et al. (1938), 450 Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation, Utah, 847 Missouri v. Jenkins (1995), 451 Mitchell, Arthur W., 242 Mitchell, Charles Lewis, 385 Mitchell, Clarence M., Jr., 375 Mitchell, Corinne, 890 Mitchell, Juanita Jackson, 364 Mitchell, Judge Samuel S., 600 Mitchell, Louise, 768, 772 Mitchell, Margaret, 190 Mitchell, Parren James, 365, 372 Moanin’ at Midnight, 249 Mobile Bay, Battle of, 2 Mobley, Mamie Till, 435, 435f Monroe, Loren Eugene, 398 Monroe, William, 396 Montana: chronology, 468–71; cultural contributions, 477–79; historical overview, 472; notable African Americans, 473–77 Montana Plaindealer, 470, 477, 478 Montgomery, Isaiah, 427

993

Montgomery, James, 291 Montgomery, Wes, 264 Montgomery, William T., 627–628 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Alabama, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18, 199 Montgomery Civil Rights Trail, 21–22 Montgomery Improvement Association, Alabama, 7 Montgomery Voters League, 17 Montgomery Welfare League, 17 Montreal Royals, Jersey City, 532 Moody, Herman, 507 Moon, Frederic D., 675–76 Moon, Henry Lee, Ohio State, 638 Moor, Samuel, 42 Moore, Alice, 465 Moore, Cecil, 723 Moore, Gwen, 937, 943, 945–46 Moore, Harry T., 171, 178, 184 Moore, Jeffrey, 195 Moore, John, 914 Moore, Kimberly, 237 Moore, Oscar, 13 Moore, Reverend Douglas E., 608 Moore, Rowena, 493 Moore, Ruth E., Ohio State, 638 Moore, Walthall, 449 Moore’s Ford Bridge, Georgia, 190, 198 Moorland, Jesse Edward, 652–53 Morales, Victor, 825 Morgan, Edward, 879 Morgan, Emily, 818 Morgan, Garrett Augustus, inventor, 638 Morgan, Irene, Virginia, 884 Morganfield, McKinely (Muddy Waters), 250–251, 443 Morgan Park High School, 16 Morial, Ernest Nathan “Dutch,” 333, 342 Morial, Marc Haydel, 333, 339, 343 Morley, Clarence, Colorado, 96–97, 104 Mormonism and the Negro (Stewart), Utah, 845 Mormons. See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) Morris, Elias Camp, 60 Morris, Robert, 384 Morris Brown College, Georgia, 199 Morrison, Toni, 640, 641, 643, 653 Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), Arkansas, 59 Moseley-Braun, Carol, 243, 247 Moses, Edwin, 653–54 MotheSieur, Antoine de la, 396 Motley, Archibald, 250

994

Index

Motley, Constance Baker, 585 Motley, Marion, 638 Moton, Robert Russa, 17 Motown Records, Michigan, 397, 407–8 Moulin Rouge, Las Vegas, 506–7, 511f, 514 Moulin Rouge Agreement, integration, 499, 508 Moulton, Elvina, Idaho, 228, 231, 236 Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 427 Mountain Eagle (newspaper), West Virginia, 928 Mount Cavalry Baptist Church, Arizona, 45 Mount Lebanon Missionary Baptist Church, Columbia, Tennessee, 778 Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, D.C., 150 Mourning, Alonzo, Virginia, 888 “Move On Up a Little Higher,” 250 MOVE standoff and bombing, 714, 715, 725f Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, Arizona, 37 Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Cincinnati, 660 Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Washington, 898–99 Muhammad, Elijah, 397, 400, 404 Murphy, Isaac B., 325 Murphy, Jack, 229 Murphy, John H., Sr., 363, 370 Murray, Albert, 21 Murray, Donald Gaines, 364 Murray, John, 118 Muscatine convention, Iowa, 273 Muscatine School District, Iowa, 279 Museum of Afro-American History, Boston and Nantucket, 393 “Museum Without Walls,” Indiana, 267 Music City Blue Society Festival, 21 Muslim Mosque, Inc., 495 Mutual Brotherhood of Liberty, Maryland, 363, 370 Myers, Charles David, 639 Myers, Daisy, 714, 715 Myers, George A., 636 Myers, Isaac, 363, 370 Myers, Mollie, 626 Myers, Winona, 639 Nacogdoches community, Texas, 818, 826 Nagin, Ray, 333, 339, 343 Napier, James C., 779, 790 Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, 306, 321 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The, 362, 373, 392 Narrows, The (Perry), 123 Nash, Charles E., 331, 337 Nash, Diane, 781, 797

Nashville Globe, 788 Nashville sit-in movement, 797 Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture, Mississippi, 429 Natchez Seminary for Black Ministers, Mississippi, 427 Nation of Islam, 87, 153, 495 National African American Theatre Festival (NBTF), 616 National Afro-American League, Florida, 181 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): in Alabama, 3; in Albuquerque, 548, 556; in Alaska, 26, 30; in Arizona, 46, 47; in Arkansas, 63; and Bettye Davis, 32; in California, 81, 86; in Chattanooga, 780; in Colorado, 103; and Daisy Bates, 65; in Delaware, 133, 140; Detroit branch, 396, 401–2; and E. D. Nixon, 17; and Eleanor Dickey Ragsdale, 52; in Florida, 181, 184; and Fred D. Gray, 15; in Georgia, 190, 191, 198, 200; in Hawaii, 215, 221; and Hayzel N. Daniels, 49–50; in Idaho, 229, 234, 236; in Illinois, 241, 246; in Indiana, 256, 262; in Iowa, 274; in Kansas, 290, 295; in Kentucky, 307, 316–17, 318; in Las Vegas, 498, 502, 506; and Laura Nobles Banks, 49; and Lincoln Ragsdale, 52; in Louisiana, 332, 338; in Maine, 349, 356; in Maryland, 363, 366, 370; in Massachusetts, 386; in Minnesota, 416, 417, 418; in Mississippi, 428, 434–35, 436; in Memphis, 791; in Missouri, 464; in Montana, 470; in Nebraska, 484, 490; in New Hampshire, 522; in New York, 571; in New Jersey, 538; in Ohio, 646, 648, 656; in Oklahoma, 666; in Pennsylvania, 721, 723; Phoenix chapter, 38; in Portland, Oregon, 681, 682, 707, 708; in Reno, Nevada, 512; and Rosa Parks, 18; in South Carolina, 747, 756; in South Dakota, 768, 772; and Tarea Hall Pittman, 92; in Texas, 822, 823, 829; University of New Mexico, 557; in Utah, 844, 845, 846, 851–52; in Virginia, 875, 884; in Washington, 895, 900, 902, 903, 904; in West Virginia, 917, 924; in Wilmington, Delaware, 140; in Wisconsin, 934, 935, 940 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council: Kentucky, 308; Louisiana, 332, 339; Wisconsin, 936, 941 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) v. Alabama, 4 National Association of Colored Women (NACW), 373, 464, 656, 721, 805 National Baptist Convention, Alabama, 3

Index National Baptist Publishing Board, 789 National Basketball Association: Charles Barkley, 11; Scottie Pippen, 70; Wilt Chamberlain, 297–98 National Black Arts Festival, Georgia, 211 National Black Convention movement, 579, 580 National Capitol Park Planning Commission, 158 National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture, 21 National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, 783, 801 National Colored Spiritualist Association, Michigan, 400 National Football League, “Bo” Jackson, 16 National League (baseball): Hank Aaron, 10; “Judy” Johnson, 135; Satchel Paige, 18; Willie Mays, 17 National Low-Income Housing Coalition, 391 National Medical Association, 779, 791 National Museum of African American Art, D.C., 165–66 National Negro Congress, 92 National Organization of Black Elected Legislative (NOBEL) Women, 32 National States’ Rights Party, Kentucky, 319 National Urban League, Pennsylvania, 721 Native Son (Wright), 252, 441 Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Virginia, 880 Naughty by Nature, 544 NCM Capital Management Group, Inc., 610 Neal, Joe, 504 Neal, William Curly, 36, 41, 44, 133 Nebraska: chronology, 482–87; cultural contributions, 496; historical overview, 487–93; notable African Americans, 493–96 Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration, 181 Negro Baptist State Association, Texas, 820 Negro Baseball League, 17–18, 92, 93, 135, 183, 253, 377, 423, 822, 874, 937 Negro Baseball Leagues Museum, Kansas City, 465 Negro Bureau of Welfare and Statistics, West Virginia, 916, 918 Negro Burial Ground, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 525 Negro Caravan, The (Davis), 887 Negro Convention movement, Indiana, 258 Negro Defense Council, Florida, 178 Negro Digest, 68 Negro Explorer at the North Pole, A (Henson), 374 Negro Historical and Industrial Associations, Virginia, 874 Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs (NHACS), 98

995

Negro History Bulletin, ASNLH, xiii Negro History Society, Nebraska, 485 Negro Hour, The, Ohio, 638 Negro in Virginia, The, 875 Negro of Delaware Past and Present, The (Young), 139, 140 Negro on Mormonism, A (Oliver), Utah, 845 Negro Protective Party, Columbus, 637 “Negro Rule,” North Carolina, 603 Negro Worker’s Progress in Minnesota, The, 418 Negro World, 585 Nell, William Cooper, 388, 392 Nell, William G., 387 Nelly (Cornell Haynes, Jr.), 462 Nelson, Alice Dunbar, 144 Nelson, Prince Roger (Prince), 421, 423 Neptune (ship), Hawaii, 214 Nevada: chronology, 498–99; cultural contributions, 512–14; historical overview, 499–510; notable African Americans, 510–12 New Castle County, Delaware, 141–42 New England Confederation, Connecticut, 114 New England Conservatory of Music, 16–17 New Era Baptist Church, Hawaii, 223 New Hampshire: chronology, 518–19; cultural contributions, 524–26; historical overview, 519–23; notable African Americans, 523–24 New Haven Colony, 114 New Hope Baptist Church, New Hampshire, 521 New Jersey: chronology, 530–34; cultural contributions, 543–44; historical overview, 534–41; notable African Americans, 541–43 New Journal report, Delaware, 141, 142 New London Sextet, Connecticut, 122 New Market Heights, Virginia, 873 New Mexico: chronology, 545–49; cultural contributions, 562; historical overview, 549–58; notable African Americans, 558–62 New Mexico Slave Code, 547 New Negro Movement, 162 New Negro, The (Locke), 734, 812 New York Globe, 570 New Orleans, Louisiana, 328, 329, 332; race riots, 330, 331 New Orleans Tribune (newspaper), 329, 339–40 New Orleans University, 331, 337 New Songs of Paradise (Tindley), 376 New York: chronology, 566–73; cultural contributions, 587–90; historical overview, 573–82; notable African Americas, 582–87 New York in Transit (painting), 911

996

Index

New York Manumission Society, 567, 578 New York’s Silent March (1917), 571 New York University, 50 Newark Race Riot (1967), 533, 539, 540f Newby, Michael, Kentucky, 309, 320 New-Kanawha Power Company, West Virginia, 917 Newman, Cecil E., 413, 420 Newman Normal School, Louisiana, 329, 336 Newton, Huey P., 66, 88 Newton, I. DeQuincey, 747, 758 Niagara Movement, 389, 412, 416, 571, 581, 646, 656, 916, 924, 926 Nicholls, Francis T., 338 Nichols, Barbara Ware, 349, 355 Nichols, William, 330 Nicodemus, Kansas, 288, 292–293, 300 Nicolet, Jean, Wisconsin, 932, 937 9th and 10th Cavalry: Montana, 468, 470; Nebraska, 483, 488; New Mexico, 547, 555, 556; North Dakota, 622; South Dakota, 768, 771; Texas, 828 Nix, Robert N. C., Sr., 714, 730–31 Nix, Robert, Jr., 731 Nixon Building Dance Hall, 22 Nixon, Edgar Daniel (E. D.), 17 Nixon, Lawrence A., 822 Nixon v. Condon, Texas, 822 Nixon v. Herndon, Texas, 822 No Place to Be Somebody (Gordone), 650, 677 Nobel Peace Prize: Barack Obama, 251; Martin Luther King Jr., 164f, 206; Ralph Bunche, 91, 397, 402, 403 Nobody Knows documentary, Utah, 846, 858 Noel, Rachel Bassette, 104, 107–8 Noel Resolution, Colorado, 104–5 Noland, William, 934, 940 Non-Importation Act, Kentucky, 306, 312 Norfolk and Western Railroad, 923 Norfolk Journal and Guide (newspaper), Virginia, 874 Norris Wright Cuney (Hare), 833 North Carolina: chronology, 596–601; cultural contributions, 614–16; historical overview, 601–10; notable African Americans, 610–14 North Carolina African American Repertory Company (NCBRC), 616 North Carolina Industrial Association (NCIA), 615 North Carolina Mutual Life, Durham, 606, 610 North Dakota: chronology, 620–24; cultural contributions, 629–30; historical overview, 624–27; notable African Americans, 627–29 Northern Pacific Railroad, Washington, 894, 898

North Star, The (newspaper), 362, 384, 569, 719 Northwest Enterprise (newspaper), Washington, 902 Northwest Ordinance (1787), 240, 244, 245, 256, 399, 412, 414, 448, 452, 642, 932, 937 Norton, Eleanor Holmes, 163 Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin), 584 Notre Dame University, 19 Noyes Academy, Canaan, New Hampshire, 518, 521–22 Nua, J., 223 Nutter, Jeanne, 144 Nutter, T. G., 916, 924 O’Connor, James A., Alaska, 29 Oaks, The, Alabama, 22 Obama, Barack, 154, 159, 243, 248, 251; nomination of, 98; election of, 61, 99 Oberholtzer, Madge, Indiana, 260 Oberlin College, 633 Oberlin Conservatory, 70 Observer (newspaper), Kentucky, 312 “Ocoee Massacre,” Florida, 171 Octagon Club, New Hampshire, 521 October Journey (Alexander), 439 Odetta, 21 Odingsells, Anthony, Georgia, 195 “Ododo Players,” Arizona, 54 Oglethrope, James, 188 O’Hara, James, 598 O’Hara, John, 603 Ohio: chronology, 632–41; cultural contributions, 659–61; historical overview, 641–45; notable African Americans, 645–59 Ohio African University, 634, 635 Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, 633 Ohio 5th Colored Troops, 635, 643 Ohio Progressive Party, 16 Ohio State University: Eugene Grigsby, 50; Jesse Owens, 17 Oklahoma: chronology, 666–68; cultural contributions, 676–77; historical overview, 668–73; notable African Americans, 673–76 Oklahoma Immigrant Association, 289 Old Brilliant mining camp, New Mexico, 548, 553 Old Calvary Baptist Church, Kansas, 290, 300 Old Capitol Museum, Mississippi, 429 Oliver, Daniel K., 895, 898 Oliver, David H., 845 Oliver, James, 195 Oliver, Mamie, 229, 230, 236 Oliver, Sheila, New Jersey assembly, 534

Index “Ol’ Man River,” 832 Olustee, Battle of, Florida, 170, 176 Olympics: Illinois’ athletes, 254; Jesse Owens, 5, 17; Rafer Johnson, 93; Ralph Metcalfe, 250; Robert Lee Hayes, 182; Vonetta Flowers, 5 Omaha Cotton Club, 491 Omaha Star (newspaper), 485 Omnibus Civil Rights Act (1957), Washington, 895, 904 One Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company, Nashville, 779, 790 100 Black Men, Georgia, 200 “100” Blacks Petition, Colorado, 101 “On the Pulse of the Morning” (Angelou), 65 Opelousas massacre, Louisiana, 330 Operation Breadbasket, Georgia, 209 Operation Breakthrough, Connecticut, 124 Operation PUSH, Illinois, 242 Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC), Philadelphia, 723 Oral History Review (Wright), 310 Ordinance of Secession, Virginia, 882 Oregon: chronology, 680–82: cultural contributions, 706–9; historical overview, 683–701; notable African Americans, 701–6; racial hostility reputation, 691, 696 Oregon Provisional Government, and Washington, 894 Oregon Symphony, 703, 708 Orion Publishing Company, 810 Orr, Eugene, 845 Osawatomie, John Brown Jamboree, 299 Ostransky, Leroy, 51 Otis, James, 387 “Our House,” Washington, 894 Overstreet, Morris, 824 Overton, Lewis, 294 Owens, James Cleveland (Jesse), 4, 5, 17; Ohio State, 638 Owens, Robert, 81 Ozark Folk Festival, 71 Pacific Beach Club, California, 81–82 Pacific House Hotel and Restaurant, Washington, 894 Page, Alan, 413, 420–21, 423 Page, Inman E., 676 Page, Walter Hines, 21 Paige, Satchel (Leroy Robert), 17–18, 461, 465, 629–30 Paine, William, 96 Paine College, Georgia, 199

997

Painter, Nell, 99–100 Palmer, Douglas, Trenton mayor, 534 Paradise of the Pacific magazine, Hawaii, 219 Paradise Valley, Arizona,39 Paradise Valley, Michigan, 397 Parker High School, Alabama, 10 Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 462, 465 Parker, George Wells, 484 Parker, John, 633 Parker, Mack Charles, 435 Parker, Robert, 878 Parker, Vernon, 39 Parker, William, 86–87 Parkland riots, Kentucky, 309 Parks, Gordon, 298 Parks, Rosa, 4, 5, 7, 8, 18, 406, 844; and E. D. Nixon, 17; and Fred D. Gray, 15 Parrish, Charles H., 316 Parsons, Jim, 772 Parting Ways Cemetery, Massachusetts, 393 Paschal, James, 207 Patience, Charles Edgar, 734 Patrick, Deval L., 386, 390 Patrick, Reverend LeRoy, 723 Patterson, David, New York governor, 573, 582 Patterson, Mary Jane, 597 Patterson, Robert, 434 Patterson, Roland Nathaniel, 365 Patton, Charley, Mississippi blues, 443 Paul Quinn College, Texas, 820, 824, 827 Payne, Christopher, 915, 924, 927–28 Payne, Daniel, Wilberforce University, 643 Payne, Donald, New Jersey congressman, 534 Payne Chapel AME Church, Colorado, 98 Payne’s Landing Treaty, Florida, 170 Peace and Freedom Party, 66 Peake, George, 632, 641 Pearce, B. Ben, Delaware, 137 “Peculiar institution,” 312, 826, 827 Pegues, Shanna Hickman, 936 Pelham, B. B., 400 Pena, Ivan, 48 Pendleton, Peter, 939–40 Pennington, James W. C., 361, 362, 375–76 Pennsylvania: chronology, 712–15; cultural contributions, 734–35; historical overview, 715–27; industrial decline, 725–26; notable African Americas, 727–34 Penny Savings Bank, Chattanooga, 790 Pensacola riots, Florida, 172 Penson, John, 708

998

Index

People’s Baptist Church, New Hampshire, 519, 521, 526 Perey, Melchor, 40 Perey, Sebastian, 40 Perry, Abe, 324 Perry, Ann, 123 Perry, Carrie Saxon, 125 Perry, Ivory, 462–63 Perry, Jacob, 383 Perry, Matthew, 757 Perry, Reverend E. W., 672–73, 676 Perry, Samuel L., 604 Peters, James S., 127 Phelps, Mary E., 96 “Philadelphia Plan,” employment desegregation, 723 Philadelphia Tribune, 721 Philander Smith College, 59; and Jocelyn Elders, 67 Phillips, Lucy, 951 Phillips, Velvale (Vel), 905, 935, 936, 941, 943, 946 Phillips, William C., 42 Phillips Chapel Colored AME Church, Arizona, 45 Phillips et al. v. Phoenix Union High School District, 50 Phoenix, Arizona, 36, 37, 38, 39 Phoenix Action Committee, 52 Phoenix Advancement League, 38, 45 “Phoenix Colored Director,” 45 Phoenix Community Chest, 46 Phoenix Index (newspaper), 38, 45, 53 Phoenix Race Riot, South Carolina, 747, 756 Phoenix Tribune (newspaper), 38, 45 Phoenix Union Colored High School, 38 Phoenix Urban League, 4, 46, 47, 52 Piano Lesson, The (Wilson), 422, 897 Pickens, William, 502 Pickett, Bill, 821, 838 Pickett, Wilson, 21 Piedmont Blues, 615 Pierce, J. Frankie, 792, 793 Pierce, Reverend Jeremiah H., 532, 538 Piggee, Leonard, 226 Pike, Zebulon, 412, 414 Pilgrim (ship), California, 79 Pilgrim Baptist Church, Minnesota, 415 Pilgrim Journey (Madgett), 399 Pinchback, P. B. S., 331, 335, 336, 337, 343 Pine Bluff Movement, Arkansas, 63 Piney Woods Country Life School, Mississippi, 428 Pinkster (Pentecostal) Festivals, 589–90 Pioneer (newspaper), West Virginia, 928 Pioneer Press (newspaper), West Virginia, 925–26 Pippen, Scottie, 70

Pippin, Horace, 734 Pittman, Judge Elizabeth, 493 Pittman, Tarea Hall, 77, 82, 83, 92 Pittman, William Sidney, 874 Pitts, Lucius H., 18 Pittsburgh Courier, 721, 722, 743 Pittsburgh Crawfords, baseball team, 713, 721 Pittsburgh Cycles, The (Wilson), 422 Piyllis Wheatley House, Minnesota, 417 Plain Dealer (newspaper), Kansas, 289 Plato, Samuel M., 264 Player, Willa B., 640 Pleasant, Mary Ellen “Mammy,” California, 79–80 Pleasant Ridge, Wisconsin, 933, 934, 938, 940 Plessy, Homer, 331, 338, 343 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 502, 675, 690, 790, 830, 940; constitutionality affirmed, 3; court ruling, 116 Poe amendment, Maryland, 363 Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral (Wheatley), 393 Poindexter, James P., 636 Point du Sable, John Baptiste, 620 Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 328, 334 Pointer, Dick, 914 Pointer, Jonathan, 641 Pollard, Frederick Douglass “Fritz,” 638, 742 Polytechnic High School, Maryland, 364 Pony Express, Wyoming, 950 Poole, Elijah. See Muhammad, Elijah Poor, Salem, Massachusetts, 383, 387 Poor People’s Campaign, 11 Porgy and Bess, Kentucky, 308 Porterfield, Ernest, 915 Port Hudson, Battle of, 329, 335 Portland Trail Blazers, NBA, 708 Portsmouth Black History Trail, 519, 525–526 “Possum Incident,” Portland, 682 Postles, Thomas E., 133 Poston, Charles D., Arizona, 40 “Pottawatomie Massacre,” 286 Powell, Colin Luther, 154, 159 Powell, Reverend Adam Clayton, 571, 582, 585 Powell, Robert, 822 Powell, Ruby, 179 Powell, Virginia Proctor, Oberlin, 638 Powell, William J., 638 Powers, Dorothy, 320 Powers, Georgia Davis, 309, 319, 322–23 Prairie View A&M University, Texas, 820, 828 Prairie View College, Texas, 822,

Index Pratt, Edwin, 896 Pratt, Orson, 851 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, D.C., 152 Preddy, Sarann Knight, 504, 505–6, 512 Presidential Medal of Freedom: B. B. King, 440; Jerome Holland, 142; John H. Johnson, 69; Joseph Echols Lowery, 207; Leontyne Price, 440; Rosa Parks, 18 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 198 Prevost, Augustine, 194 Prevost, Tessie, 339 Price, Leontyne, 428, 440, 639 Price, Lewis, 96, 101 Price, Ruby, Utah, 844, 856 Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 718 Primus, New Hampshire printer, 525 Primus Institute, Connecticut, 127 Prince, Abijah, 867 Prince, Lucy Terry, 867, 868 Prince, Wesley, 13 Prince (Prince Roger Nelson), 421, 423 Prince Chapel AME Church, Arizona, 37, 45 Prince Edward Academy, Virginia, 875, 884–85 Prince Hall Alpha Lodge of Free Masons, South Dakota, 769 Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Mason of Hawaii, 222 Prince Hall Masons Lodge, Washington, 899 Pritchett, Wendell, Rutgers University chancellor, 534 Proctor, Henry Hugh (H. H.), 198, 208 Progress, Omaha newspaper, 489 Progressive Party of Texas, 821, 830 “Property Rights Initiative,” California, 86 Prophets for a New Day (Alexander), 439 “Proposition 18,” California, 86 Prosser, Gabriel, 879–80, 888 Providence Black Repertory Company, 743 Pruitt, Wendell Oliver, 463 Pryor, Richard, 252 Public Accommodations Act, Utah, 845 Puckett, Kirby, Minnesota, 421–22 Pulitzer Prize: August Wilson, 422, 897; Gwendolyn Brooks, 242, 248, 297; Scott Joplin, 69 Pullman Porters Union, 17 Pullman Railroad, 185, 198 Pumpbelly, Raphael, 40 Punch, John, 872 Purce, Thomas “Les,” 229, 234, 236 Purple Rain, 421 Purvis, Robert, 388

999

Quakers antislavery position: New Jersey, 535; New York, 576; North Carolina, 596; Ohio, 634, 642; Pennsylvania, 712, 716–17; Rhode Island, 740 Quarlls, Caroline, 933, 938 Queen Latifah, 543f, 544 Quinn, Longworth, 406 Quinn Chapel AME Church, Kentucky, 307 Quintalt Victory (ship), California, 84 Quock v. Jennison, Utah, 842, 849 Rachell, Yank, 809 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Colorado (2005), Colorado, 105 Racine Blues, Wisconsin, 935 Ragsdale, Eleanor Dickey, 51–52 Ragsdale, Lincoln, 46, 47, 52 Ragtime, 69, 70, 464, 465 Rainbow RounMah Shoulder (Brown), 647 Rainey, Froelich, 29 Rainey, Joseph H., 754 Raisin in the Sun, A (Hansberry), 242 Ralph, Iowa, 275 Ramparts Magazine, 66 Rampton, Calvin, 845 Randall, Dudley F., 398, 406 Randall, James Ryder, 369 Randolph, Asa Philip, 83, 97, 104, 185 Randolph, P. B., 336 Rankin, John, 313 Ranne, Peter, 79 Ransa, Peter, 685 Ransier, Alonzo J., 754, 755, 761 Ransom, Henry, Arizona, 37 Ransom Place Historic District, Indiana, 267 Rap music, 590 Rapier, James T., 3, 7 Rashad, Ahmad (Robert Earl “Bobby” Moore), 704–5, 705f Reading, Ab, 44 Readjuster Party, Virginia, 874 “Rebel legislature,” Arkansas, 59 Reconstruction Act (1867), 195–96, 598, 754, 828 Red Cloud, Wyoming, 950 Red Summer (1919), Kentucky, 317 Red Summer Race Riots, 571, 792 Redd, Ernest “Speck,” 281 Redd, Marie, 919, 925 Reddick, Elizabeth, 289 Redding, Louis L., 140–41, 144–45 Redding, Saunders, 141, 145 Reeb, James, 9

1000

Index

Reed, Emerson K., 523 Reed, Harrison, 177 Reed, Ishmael Scott, 810–11 Reed, Kasim, 192 Reed, Judge Robert, 508 Reed, Thomas, 19–20 Reeves, Martha, 21 Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, 376–77 Reid, Tim, 889, 890 Reid, William F., 885 Remond, Sarah Parker, 384 Report on African American Population in Colorado (2002), 105 Residency Act, 150 “Resurrection City,” 11 Revels, Hiram R., 427, 433, 440–41, 598 Revenue Cutter Service, Alaska, 26, 27, 29–30 Reyes, Francisco, 78 Reynolds, Stephen, 216–17 Reynolds v. Board of Education of Topeka, 288 Rhode Island: chronology, 738–39; cultural contributions, 743–44; historical overview, 740–42; notable African Americans, 742–43 Rice, Condoleezza, 5, 19, 154, 159 Rice, David, 313–14 Rice, Isaac, 744 Rice, Norman, Washington, 897, 906, 908, 910 Rice, Reverend Walter A., 532 Richard Allen Cultural Center, 300 Richard J. Hamilton American Legion Post, Arizona, 47–48 Richards, Lloyd, Connecticut, 125 Richardson, Gloria, 371, 376 Richardson, Tammy Denease, 128 Richmond, Mignon, 844, 852, 856 Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Statue, Virginia, 876 Richmond streetcar boycott, Virginia, 874 Richmond Theological School for Freedmen, Virginia, 873 Ricketts, Dr. Matthew O., 484, 489 Rico, Francisco, 550 Riding, Rhoda, 627 Ridley, Gregory D., Jr., 813 Riley, George P., 894, 898 Rillieux, Norbert, 328, 335 Ripley College, Ohio, 633 Ritchie, Ellen, 914 Ritchie, Lionel, 21 Rivers, Joseph D. D., 96, 101–2, 103 Riverside Blues Festival, West Virginia, 929

Robert R. Moton High School, Virginia, 875, 884 Roberts, Adelbert H., 241 Roberts, Frederick M., 75, 81–82, 84 Roberts, George Spencer, 917 Robertson, Carole, 4 Robertson, Paul, 86 Robertson, Smith, 427 Roberts v. Boston, Massachusetts, 384 Robert W. Kelley, et al. v. Board of Education, 796, 800 Robert W. WoodruffLibrary, 211 Robeson, Paul, 542, 542f, 571, 696 Robinson, Bill “Bojangles,” 889 Robinson, Bishop, 366 Robinson, Cleo Parker, 108 Robinson, Edward Gay (Eddie), 333, 343 Robinson, Frank, Cleveland Indians, 640 Robinson, Harriet, 414 Robinson, Ida B., 721 Robinson, Jack Roosevelt “Jackie,” 82, 92, 190, 319, 339, 532 Robinson, John Marshall, 60 Robinson, Marcia, 513 Robinson, Nadine, 13 Rockingham Hotel, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 522 Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Utah, 842 Rodeo, Texas, 838 Rogers, J. A., 585 Rodgers, Joe, 98 Rogers, W. H., 196 Rollins, Clara, 643 Rondo neighborhood, Minnesota, 416, 417 Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Haley), 65, 360, 799 Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for SelfDevelopment, 18 Rosa Parks (Parks), 18, 406 Rosa Parks Peace Prize, 18 Rose Hill Baptist Church, Mississippi, 426 Rose, Edward: in Arizona, 36; in Montana, 468, 476–77; in New Mexico, 546; in North Dakota, 620, 624, 625; in Wyoming, 950, 952 Rosewood massacre, Florida, 171, 178 Roslyn, Washington, 898, 900 Ross, Michael, 896, 906 Rosser, Richard, 37, 53 Roudanez, Charles, 339 Rowan, Carl Thomas, 804f, 804–5; Oberlin, 639 Rowan Report, The, 805 Roxbury Community College, Massachusetts, 386 Royal African Company, 575

Index Royal Knights of King David, North Carolina, 615 Ruby, George P., 828 Rucker, Elza, 319 Rucker, Henry A., 208 Rudolph, Wilma, 798 Ruffner, Henry, 914, 920 Ruggles, David, 127, 569 Rumford, W. Byron, 77, 86 Rumford Fair Housing Statue, California, 77, 86 Rural slavery, New York, 575 Russell, Herman, Sr., 208 Russwurm, John, 569 Russwurm, John Brown, 348, 355 Rust College, Mississippi, 426 Rustin, Bayard, 731, 732f Ryan, Ellen, 899 Ryan, John H., 895, 899 Sabbeth, L. M., Texas, 821 Saga of Black Navy Veterans of World War II, The (Peters), 127 “Sage of Tuskegee,” 20 Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank, Virginia, 874 Salem, Peter, Massachusetts, 383, 387 Sally, slave ship, 738 Salt Lake Tribune (newspaper), Utah, 850 Saltville massacre, Virginia, 873 Sampson, Charlie, rodeo, 838 Sampson, Edith, 731–32 Samuels, Wilfred, 852, 856 Samuelson, Don, 229 Sanchez, Sonia, 21 Sanctified Church, Cheraw, South Carolina, 763 Sanderlin, E. J., 100 Sanders, Jerry D., 320 Sandfore, John, 909 San Ildefonso Treaty, Louisiana, 328 São JoãoBautista (ship), Virginia, 877 Saperstein, Abe, 253 Satcher, Dr. David, 801 Savary, Joseph, 335 Scarborough, William Sanders, 636, 654 Schmelling, Max, 12, 397 Schmoke, Kurt Lidell, Maryland, 366, 372 School of Ragtime (Joplin), 69 Schuyler, George, 588, 610, 743, 743f Schwemer, Michael, 429, 430, 436–37, 439 Scott, Barry, 811–12 Scott, Cornelius Adolphus (C. A.), 208 Scott, Dred, 412, 414, 448, 449, 453, 453f, 889 Scott, Emmett, 829

1001

Scott, Eugene, 490 Scott, Harriett, 448, 453, 453f Scott, Robert Cortez “Bobby,” 885 Scott, Robert Wilmot, 311 Scott, Sarah, 934, 940 Scott, William Edouard, 264 “Scottsboro Boys,” 3 Scottsboro Museum and Cultural Center, 21 Seacoast Black Heritage Festival, New Hampshire, 524 Sea Islands, South Carolina, 746, 753, 754 Seale, Bobbie, 88 Seattle, Washington, 894, 895, 896, 897, 898, 900, 902, 906 “Seattle Plan,” 896, 897 Seattle Post-Intelligencer (newspaper), Washington, 899 Seattle protest, 895 Seattle Republican (newspaper), 894, 899, 908 Seattle Standard (newspaper), 899 Second Baptist Church, Michigan, 396, 400 Second Colored Baptist Church, Arizona, 53 Second Mississippi Plan, Mississippi, 427 Second Seminole War, Florida, 170, 175 Seeing the Future (Jemison), 16 Seitz, Collins J., 134, 141, 145 Selling of Joseph, The (Sewall), 382 Selma, Alabama, 9–10; March,5 Seminole Indians, Florida, 170, 175 Seminole Wars, runaway slaves, 746, 752 Seneca Village, 568, 570 Separate Coach Law, Kentucky, 307, 323 Separate Place, A (documentary), 144 Seraw, Mulugeta, 700, 701 Settle, Reverend Glenn T., 638 Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, Arizona, 36 Sewall, Samuel, 382, 387 Seymour, William, 98 Shadd, Abraham, 137 Shadd, Mary Ann, 145–46 Shadd, Sallie, 146 Shafroth, John, 102 Shakur, Assata, 572 Sharp Street United Methodist Church, Maryland, 361 Sharpton, Reverend Al, 572, 586 Shattio, Ann Davis, 286 Shattio, Clement, 286 Shattuck, David, 216 Shaw, Augustus, 46 Shaw, Leander, 172, 185 Shaw, Robert Gould, 472

1002

Index

Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 597 Shaw v. Reno (1993), 610 Sheff v. O’Neill, 117, 128 Sheff v. Wade, 125–26 Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), 86, 450 Shelton, James, 939 Shelton, Wallace, 660 Shepherd, Heyward, 921 Sheridan, Philip H., 819 Sherman, William T., 188 Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, 746, 753 Sherrod, Charles, 200, 201, 208 Shipbuilding, Portland, Oregon, 695, 707 Shipp, Tom, 261 Shirley, Frank, 37, 53 Shores, Arthur D. (Davis), 20 Shorter African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Colorado, 96, 103 Shorter College, Arkansas, 60 Short History of Modern Philosophy from the Renaissance to Hegel, A (Hill), 651 Showboat (Kern), 832 Shreveport Sun (newspapers), Louisiana, 331 Shropshire, Charlotte, 492 Shuffer, J. J., Texas, 829 “Shuffle Along,” 13, 372 Shuttlesworth, Fred L. (Lee), 20 Signifying Monkey, The (Gates), 927 Sills, James, 135, 141 Simmons, Leroy J., 935 Simmons, William J., 316 Simmons College, 316 Simms, Sandra, 215 Simpkins, C. O., 332 Simpson, O. J., 78 Sims, Carl, 38, 46 Sims, Ron, Washington, 897, 907, 909 Singleton, Benjamin “Pap,” Kansas, 288, 292, 788, 828 Sioux Indians, and Isaiah Dorman, 475–76 Sipuel, Ada, 671, 676 Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma, 667, 671, 673, 676 Sissle, Noble, 265, 372 Sisters of Charity, Indiana, 256, 262 Sisters of the Holy Family, Louisiana, 342 Sit-down strikes, Virginia, 875 Slade, Priscilla, 825, 831 Slade, Stephen, 596 Slater, Andrew, 627 Slater, Rodney, 63 Slaughter, James F., 521, 523

Slaughter, John, 41–42 Slave Code: D.C.,151; Florida, 173; Kentucky, 312 Slave markets/trade: Kentucky, 312; New York, 576; Maine, 350; Massachusetts, 383, 387; Virginia, 881 Slavery and Freedom in Delaware (Williams), 135 Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy (Rice), 313–14 Sledge, Percy, 21 Sloane, Rush, 642 Smalls, Robert, 388, 754, 755, 761 Smith, Abe, 261 Smith, Abiel, 383 Smith, Antonio Maceo, 836–37 Smith, Arthur R., 45 Smith, Bessie, 809, 809f, 939 Smith, Emmitt, 831 Smith, Harry C., 636 Smith, J. R., 96, 101 Smith, James McCune, 569, 586 Smith, Jedediah, 79 Smith, John, 366 Smith, Joseph, 843, 849 Smith, Lena O., 413, 422 Smith, Lonnie, 830, 837 Smith, Mammie, 627 Smith, Maxine Adkins, 805 Smith, Nolle, 214, 225 Smith, Osborne Earl “Ozzie,” 463, 465 Smith, Otis M., 397 Smith, Rebecca, 842, 848–49 Smith, Reverend Kelly Miller, 781 Smith, Robert, 842, 848–49 Smith, Robert L., 820, 829 Smith, Sam, 896, 905–6 Smith, Venture, 119 Smith, W. H., 292 Smith, William, 849 Smith Bill, Ohio, 637 Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, Mississippi, 427, 429 Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, 154 Smith v. Allwright, 61, 199, 338, 823, 830, 837 Smoky Hollow Historic District, Florida, 186 Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color, Virginia, 872 Society of Friends. See Quakers Society of Negroes, Massachusetts, 382 Sojourner Coaching, 234 Somalian refugees, Minnesota, 419

Index Sons of Midnight, Mississippi, 433 Sororities, Hawaii, 221 Sorrow’s End (Vest), 407 Soul Make a Path through Shouting (Cassells), 142 Soul on Fire (Cleaver), 66 Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 140 South Carolina: African American population 1790–1990, 748, 749t; chronology, 746–48; cultural contributions, 761–63; historical overview, 748–58; notable African Americans, 758–61 South Carolina Volunteers, in Florida, 176 South Dakota: chronology, 766–69; cultural contributions, 775–76; historical overview, 770–72; notable African Americans, 772–775 Southern Aid and Insurance Company, Virginia, 874 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 4, 8, 11, 20, 61, 62 Southern Maine Community College, 353 “Southern Manifesto,” Virginia, 884 Southern Poverty Law Center, Idaho, 233 Southern University, Louisiana, 331, 336, 338 South Pacific Railroad, Arizona, 36, 37 South 16th Street Baptist Church, Alabama, 4, 5, 9, 10 Spears, Mack Justin, 343 Special Field Orders No. 15, Georgia, 188 Speed, James, 314 Spelman College, 199 Spencer, Peter, 132, 138, 146 Spirit of David Walker, The (Peters), 127 Spiritual Israel Church and its Army, Michigan, 400 Spokane, Washington, 895, 897, 898, 900, 902, 906 Spokane Citizen (newspaper), Washington, 899 Sports Legends Museum, Maryland, 377 Springfield race riots, in Illinois, 241, 246 St. Augustine, Florida, 170, 171, 173, 174; freedmen, 750, 751 St. Augustine Church and Seminary, Mississippi, 428 St. Frances Academy, Maryland, 361 St. Francis Hotel, Kansas, 293 St. James Literary Society, Helena, Montana, 473 St. John, John P., 288 St. John’s Baptist Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 768, 771 St. Joseph’s Church, in Illinois, 241 “St. Louis Blue,” 465 St. Louis Stars, 465 St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, D.C., 152 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Minnesota, 415 St. Mary’s City, Maryland, 360

1003

St. Matthew’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Michigan, 400 St. Paul, Minnesota, black communities, 416, 417, 418 St. Paul Baptist Church, Idaho, 229 St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, 933, 938 St. Paul Railway Company, 944 St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, 568 St. Phillip’s College, Texas, 821 St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, 143 St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, 717 Stampeded by Lightening (Remington), 953 Stanford, John, Washington, 897, 905 Stanford University: and Condoleezza Rice, 19; and Mae Jemison, 16 Stanley, Frank, Jr., 318 Stapleton, Benjamin, 96–97, 104 Starks, Samuel W., 928 State ex rel. Bluford v. Canada (1941), 450 State Normal College for Colored Students, Florida, 171, 178 State of Iowa v. Katz, 274 State of Missouri v. Celia, 453 State Sovereignty Commission, Mississippi, 435 Stax Records, Memphis, 810 Strickland, Arvarh E., 450 Steele, Charles Kenzie (C. K), 179, 185 Steele, Elaine, 18 Steelworkers, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 720 Stephens, Edward, 289 Stephenson, D. D., 260 Stephenson, W. H. C., 498, 500, 512 Steunenberg, Frank, 232–33 Stevens, George, 232 Stevens, Ted, 31 Stevens, Zingo, stone cutter, 744 Stevenson, Lloyd, 682, 699–700 Stevenson, William E., 922 Stewart, George P., 265 Stewart, John, 632, 641 Stewart, John J., 845 Stewart, Paul W., 97, 108 Stewart, T. McCants, 214, 222, 225 Still, James, 537 Still, William, 537, 713, 719 Still, William Grant, 70, 71 Stockton, Betsy, 214, 216, 222, 225 Stokes, Carl Burton, 639, 645, 654, 655f Stokes, Charles, 895, 903, 906 Stokes, Keith W., 743 Stokes, Louis, 640, 654–655 Stone, Toni, 423

1004

Index

Stono Rebellion (1739), 746, 751 Storer College, West Virginia, 915, 916, 923, 924 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 116, 121, 348, 361, 374 Stowers, W. H., 400 Straight College, Louisiana, 331 “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” 13 Straus amendment, Maryland, 363 Strayhorn, William Thomas “Billy,” 655 Street, John F., 715 Street car boycotts, Georgia, 198 Streetcar Segregation Act, Arkansas, 60 Street in Bronzeville, A (Brooks), 248, 296, 297 Stringer, Thomas W., 427 Stuart, Charles, 390 Sturgis High School, Kentucky, 308 Sugarcane, Louisiana, 328 Sugarhill Gang, 544 Sula (Morrison), 653 Sullivan, John L., 37, 41–42 Sullivan, Reverend LeonHoward, 714, 723, 732–33, 928–29 Sumner, Charles, 922 Sumner School Museum and Archives, D.C., 166 Sundown laws, Oregon, 692 “Survivalist” groups, Idaho, 229 Sweatman, Wilbur, 423 Sweatt, Herman, 830 Sweatt v. Painter, 837 Sweet, Henry Ossian, 397, 407 “Sweet Lorraine,” 13 Swett, John, 80 Swoopes, Sheryl, 831 “Symposium on the Negro,” Utah, 844 Tacoma, Washington, 894, 898, 900, 902, 906 Tacoma Forum (newspaper), Washington, 899 Takara, Kathryn Waddell, 226 Talbert, Mary Burnett, 655–56 Talbot, Gerald E., 349, 356 “Talented Tenth,” 140 Taliaferro, Lawrence, 414 Talk of the Town, Nevada, 499, 507 Talladega College, Alabama, 6 Tallahassee Bus Boycott, Florida, 171, 178–79 Talley, Thomas W., 810 Tallman, A. G., 288 Tallman, William, 938 Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 734 Tanner Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Arizona, 37, 45 Tappan, Arthur, 712

Tarrant, Carter, 306 Tate, Leona, 339 Tatum, Art, 656 “Taxpayer Leagues,” Mississippi, 433 Taylor, Creed, 45 Taylor, Dorothy Mae DeLavallade, 332, 343 Taylor, Julius, 843, 856–57 Taylor, Leah Landrum, 39 Taylor, Marie, 853 Taylor, William Wesley, 843–44, 857 Taylor, Yvonne Walker, 640 Taylor Strauderdecision, West Virginia, 915 Taylor v. Cohn (1906), 694, 697 Templeton, Benjamin F., 633 Templeton, John, 914 Templeton, John Newton, 632, 641 Tennessee: chronology, 778–83; cultural contributions, 808–14; historical overview, 783–802; notable African Americas, 802–8 Tennessee Star, 788 Tennessee State Normal, 780 Terrant, Carter, 314 Terrell, Mary Eliza Church, 791, 792, 805f, 805–6 Territorial Suffrage Act (1867), 287, 468–69, 622, 767, 950 Terry, Lucy, 382 Texas: African American population, 818, 819, 820, 825; chronology, 818–25; cultural contributions, 837–38; historical overview, 825–31; notable African Americans, 831–37 Texas College, 821 Texas Colored Teachers’ Association, 820 Texas Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation, 834 Texas Freeman (newspaper), 838 Texas Revolution, 818, 826 Texas Southern University, 823, 830 Thanksgiving Day Riots, Arizona, 38 Thayer, Eli, West Virginia, 920 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), 182–83 Thierry, Camille, Louisiana, 343–44 Thirteenth Amendment: content of, 156; ratification by: Alabama, 2; Arkansas, 59; California, 76; Connecticut, 116; Delaware, 133; Florida, 170; Georgia, 189, 195–96; Illinois, 240; Indiana, 256; Iowa, 273; Kansas, 287, 291; Kentucky, 309, 320, 322; Louisiana, 329; Maine, 348; Maryland, 363, 369; Massachusetts, 385; Michigan, 396; Minnesota, 412; Mississippi, 429; Missouri, 449; Montana, 468; Nebraska, 483; Nevada, 498; New Hampshire, 518; New Jersey, 531; New York, 570; North Carolina, 597; North Dakota,

Index 621; Ohio, 635; Oregon, 680; Pennsylvania, 713; Rhode Island, 738; South Carolina, 746; South Dakota, 766; Tennessee, 778; Texas, 820; Utah, 843; Vermont, 862; Virginia, 873; West Virginia, 914, 922; Wisconsin, 933 Thomas, Clarence, 153 Thomas, John Charles, 876 Thomas, Johnnie Lockett, 471 Thomas, John W. E., 241 Thomas, Louphena, 20 Thomas, Peter, 940 Thomas, Rebecca Primus, 127 Thomas, W. Scott, 636 Thomas and Beulah (Dove), 649 Thompson, Bennie, 429, 430 Thompson, Donnis, 222 Thompson, Era Bell, 623, 624, 628, 629 Thompson, Frances Euphemia, 813 Thompson, Grover, 845 Thompson, Julia, 37 Thompson, Linda Brown, 298 Thompson, Tina, 831 Thompson, Tracy, 229, 233, 237 Thornton, Willie “Big Mama,” 21 Throckmorton, James, 819 Thurman, Wallace, 842, 857 Till, Emmett, 242, 247, 428, 435–36, 435f, 844 Tillery, Dwight, Cincinnati mayor, 645 Tillotson College, Texas, 820, 827–28 Time for Burning, A, 486 Tindley, Charles Albert, Maryland, 376 Todd, John, 273, 276 To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), 4 Toledo Blue Stockings, 636, 658 Toledo Jim White Chevrolets, basketball team, 652 Tolson, Melvin, 676, 822 Tolton, Augustus, 241 Tom Joyner Radio Show, 946–47 Topeka, Kansas, 293, 295 Tougaloo College, Mississippi, 427 Townsend, Arthur Melvin, Sr., 806 Townsend, Ebenezer, 214 Trans-Alaska pipeline, 26, 31 Transcontinental Railroad, 843 Travis, Geraldine, 471 Traylor, Bill, 21 Treasure Valley Council for Church and Social Action, Idaho, 230 “Treaty of Cambridge,” 365, 371, 376 Trenigne, Paul, 339

1005

Trent, W. W., 917 Trimble, King, 98 Trinity Baptist Church, Hawaii, 223 Trinity College, 117 Trotter, William Monroe, 21, 389, 656–57 Troupe, Quincy Thomas, Jr., 463 True American (newspapers), Kentucky, 306 Truth, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree), 154, 407, 568, 587 Tubac, Arizona, 36, 39–40 Tubman, Harriet, 138–39, 537, 718, 362, 365, 368, 376 Tucker, Samuel W., 875 Tucson presidio, Arizona, 36, 37 Tucson Transfer Company, 37 Tulia drug raid, Texas, 825 Tulsa race riots (1921), 667, 668, 670, 671f Tumwater, Washington, 894 Turner, Benjamin S., 3, 7 Turner, Charles Henry, 657 Turner, Daisy, 867–68 Turner, Emmitt, 783, 795 Turner, Henry McNeal, 196, 198, 208 Turner, Ike, 463 Turner, James Milton, 454 Turner, Nat, 596, 872, 880, 919 Turner, Tina (Anna Mae Bullock), 463–64 “Tuskegee Airmen,” 4 Tuskegee Civic Association, 15 Tuskegee Flying School, 52 Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, 3, 7, 20; and George Washington Carver, 12; cultural centers, 22; Robert R. Moton, 17 “Tuskegee Machine, the,” 21 “Tuxedo Junction,” 22 Twenty-fourth Amendment: Alabama, 5; Alaska, 26; Arkansas, 61; California, 77; Colorado, 97; Connecticut, 117; Delaware, 134; Florida, 171; Illinois, 242; Indiana, 257; Iowa, 274; Kentucky, 308; Louisiana, 332; Maine, 349; Maryland, 365; Massachusetts, 385; Michigan, 398; Minnesota, 413; Mississippi, 428, 429; Missouri, 450; Montana, 471; Nebraska, 485; Nevada, 499; New Hampshire, 519; New Jersey, 533; New Mexico, 549; New York, 571; North Carolina ratification (1989), 598; North Dakota, 623; Ohio, 639; Oklahoma, 667; Pennsylvania, 714; Rhode Island, 739; Tennessee, 782; Texas, 823, 825; Utah, 845; Vermont, 862; Virginia, 876, 884; Washington, 896; West Virginia, 919

1006

Index

24th and 25th Infantry, 468, 469, 472f, 473, 484; New Mexico, 555, 556; North Dakota, 622, 623; South Dakota, 767, 771; Texas, 828 Twilight, Alexander Lucius, 862, 868 “Twin Cities,” 413, 417, 418 Two Other, The (Harper), 373 Twyman freedman, 660 Tyler, Ralph Waldo, 658 Tyler, William Seneca, 636 Tyman, Luska J., 320 Tyson, Charles, New Jersey township mayor, 534 Tyson, Mike, 257 Ulmer, Fran, Alaskan, 29 Uncertain Allegiance (Rice), 19 Uncle Tom and Little Eva (Duncanson), 650 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 116, 121, 348, 361, 374 Uncle Tom’s Children (Wright), 441 Underground Railroad: California, 79; Connecticut, 115, 120; Delaware, 138; Illinois, 245; Iowa, 273, 275–76; Kansas, 292, 294, 295; Kentucky, 312–13; Maryland, 368–69, 376; Nebraska, 482; New Hampshire, 526; New Jersey, 537; Ohio, 632, 642–43, 642f; Pennsylvania, 713, 718; Rhode Island, 740; St. Louis, 453; Vermont, 863; Wisconsin, 933, 938 Understanding Jazz (Ostransky), 51 Underwood, Blair, 889 Underwood, John C., 883 Underwood Constitution, Virginia, 883 Union, Gabrielle, 496 Union African Methodist Episcopal Church, Delaware, 132 Union American Methodist Episcopal church, Delaware, 138 Union Baptist Church: Cincinnati, 660; Maryland, 362 Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME), Great Falls, Montana, 470 Union Church of African Members, Delaware, 138 Union Congregational Church, Rhode Island, 741 Union Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Delaware, 138 Union Pacific Railroad, Wyoming, 950, 953 Union Station, Portland, 694, 706 United Citizens Party (UCP), South Carolina, 747, 758 United Farm Workers Movement, California, 87 United House of Prayer for All People, 162 United Mine Workers (UMW), West Virginia, 919 United Negro College Fund, Georgia, 192 United Negro Protest Committee (UNPC), 723

United Order of True Reformers, North Carolina, 615 United Peanuts Growers Association, 12 Unity 77 Masonic lodge, Delaware, 138 Universal Hagar’s Spiritual Church, Michigan, 400 Universal Life Insurance Company, 806 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA): Arkansas, 62; California, 81; and Charlotta Bass, 90; Colorado, 97, 104; Michigan, 396; New York, 571, 585; Omaha, 484, 491, 494; Pennsylvania, 721; South Carolina, 747, 756; Tennessee, 791; Texas, 829 University of Alabama, 4 University of Arizona, Laura Nobles Banks, 49 University of Arizona Law School, Hayzel N. Daniels, 49 University of Arkansas, 59; E. Lynn Harris, 68; Jocelyn Elders, 67 University of California, and Angela Davis, 14, 15 University of Chicago, John H. Johnson, 68 University of Connecticut, racial violence, 117 University of Delaware, 134 University of Denver, Condoleezza Rice, 19 University of Georgia, 199 University of Idaho, 228; Jazz festival, 230 University of Iowa, 272, 274 University of Kansas, 290 University of Kentucky, 308 University of Louisville, Kentucky, 309 University of Maryland, 364, 371; Law School, 364, 371; School of Nursing, 364 University of Miami, Florida, 178 University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), 437, 438–39 University of Utah, 845 University of Vermont, 866 University of Wisconsin, 934, 936, 940; Law School, 934, 940, 942, 943 University of Wyoming, 951, 954 Unsung Heroine Award, Mae Street Kidd, 322 Unthank, Dr. DeNorval, 705 Up from Slavery (Washington), 21, 107, 874 Urban League: California, 81, 83; Connecticut, 123; Detroit branch, 396; and Laura Nobles Banks, 49; Nebraska, 485, 490; Pennsylvania, 723; Seattle branch, 895, 896; Tennessee, 791; Wilmington, Delaware, 141; Wisconsin, 934, 940 Urban slavery, New York, 575–76 Urban Spectrum (Harris), 106–7 U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), Tennessee, 785 Usry, James, Atlantic City mayor, 533 USS West Virginia, Hawaii, 220

Index Utah: African American population, 853; chronology, 842–47; cultural contributions, 857–58; historical overview, 847–54; notable African Americans, 854–57 Utah and the Early Black Settlers (Langon), 856 Utah Plain Dealer (newspaper), 843–44, 857 Utah’s African American Voices documentary, 846, 852, 854, 858 Utah State University, 844 Vaca, Cabeza de, Texas, 818, 825 van Angola, Anthony, 566 Van Horn, Mahlon, 739, 741, 743 Vann, Robert L., 722 Vanport, Oregon housing project, 681, 695, 697, 707 Varies, Edward, 70 Vashon, George B., 633 Vashon, John B., 388 Vason, Lu, 108 Vaughan, Sarah, 543 Vermont: African American population, 862, 863–64, 866; chronology, 862–63; cultural contributions, 868; historical overview, 863–66; notable African Americans, 866–68 Verrazano, Giovanni de, 366 Vesey, Denmark, 746, 752, 761 Vest, Hilda, 407 Vicksburg, Battle of, 426, 430 Virgil, Elizabeth, 518 Virginia: African American population, 872, 876–77, 881; chronology, 872–76; cultural contributions, 890–91; historical overview, 876–86; notable African Americans, 886–90 Virginia Union University, 873 Virginia Writer’s Project, 875 Vogel Grip (ship), Delaware, 132, 135 Voice (Las Vegas newspaper), 506 Voice of the Fugitive (newspaper), 322 Voice of the Negro, 202 Waco race riots, Texas, 820 Wade, Benjamin, West Virginia, 922 WaiWai Nui Club, Hawaii, 221 Wake Forest University, 65 Walden, A. T., 209 Walden Hospital, Chattanooga, 806 Walker, Alice, 282 Walker, Charles, 198 Walker, David, 383–84, 387–88, 849 Walker, Edward Garrison, 385

1007

Walker, Joseph E., 806 Walker, Madame C. J. (Sarah Washington), 256, 261, 265, 267, 344, 464, 542–43 Walker, Maggie Lee, 874, 889 Walker, Margaret, 282 Walker, Moses Fleetwood, 636, 658 Walker, Reverend Prentiss, 504 Walker, Quock, 383, 387 Walker, Welday Wilberforce, 636, 658 Walker, William, 325 Walker, William O., 639 Walker, Wyatt T., 319 Walker, Zachariah, 719 Walker Theater, Indiana, 261–62 Wallace, David J., 670 Wallace, Perry, 782 Walls, Josiah, 171, 185 Walsh, Edward, 385, 389 Walters, Ronald, 290 Wansley, Phillip, 626 Ward, Thomas M. D., 96, 103 Ware, Andre, 824 Warfield, Jesse, 233 Warmouth, Henry Clay, 336 Warren, Morrison F., 39, 47 Warriors Don’t Cry (Beals), 65 Warwick, Arthur, 484, 490 Warwick, Dionne, 543 Washington, Booker Taliaferro, 3, 7, 20, 107, 889, 890; autobiography, 874; in California, 86; in Georgia, 189, 196; in Utah, 844; in West Virginia, 915 Washington, Craig, 824, 831 Washington, Desiree, 257 Washington, Harold, 243, 247 Washington, James, Jr., 911 Washington, Jesse, 822 Washington, Sarah Spencer (Madame C. J. Walker), 256, 261, 265, 267, 344, 464, 542–43 Washington, Walter, 153, 163 Washington: African American population, 895, 898, 900, 902, 903, 906, 907; chronology, 894–97; cultural contributions, 910–11; historical overview, 897–907; notable African Americans, 908–9 “Washington’s Black Broadway,” 166 Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, 895, 899 Washington State University, 894 Washington Territorial Suffrage Act, 898 Waters, Eldridge, 146 Waters, Ethel, 733, 734

1008

Index

Waters, Maxine, 89 Waters, Muddy (McKinelyMorganfield), 250–51, 443 Waters College, Florida, 178 Watson, Lauren, 105 Watt, Mel, 610 Watts, J. C., Jr., 668, 670, 676, 677f Watts Race Riots, California, 77, 83–84, 85, 86–87 Weaver Mining District, Arizona, 40 Weaver, Robert, D.C., 159 Webb, Wellington E., 98, 105, 108 Webb, Wesley, 133 Webb, Wilma, 98, 108–9 Weber State College, Utah, 844 Wechsler School, Mississippi, 427 Weeks, Oliver, 348 Weiler, Kathleen, 846, 852 Welcome, Verda Freeman, 365 Welfare Rights Movement, Nevada, 499 Wells, J. M., 329 Wells-Barnett, Ida, 779, 789–90, 791, 792; in Illinois, 241, 246, 252; in Mississippi, 441 Wentworth-by-the-Sea, New Castle, New Hampshire, 522 WERD radio, Georgia, 190 Wesley, Cynthia, 4 Wesley, Mary, 499 West Kentucky Industrial College for Colored Persons, 316 West Virginia: African American population, 920, 923–24, 925; chronology, 914–19; cultural contributions, 929; historical overview, 919–25; notable African Americans, 925–29 West Virginia Black Heritage Festival, 929 West Virginia Civil Rights Commission, 924, 925 West Virginia Collegiate Institute, West Virginia, 917 West Virginia Colored Deaf and Blind School, 916 West Virginia Colored Institute, 915, 923 West Virginia Enterprise (newspaper), 928 West Virginia Hospital for Colored Insane, 916 West Virginia Human Rights Commission, 918, 919, 925 West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Boys, 916 West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Girls, 916, 924 West Virginia Medical Society, 916 West Virginia State College, 915, 917, 923 West Virginia’s Colored Orphan’s Home, 916, 924 West, Charles I., MD, 499, 506, 508, 512 West, Dr. Harold D., 780 Western Appeal (newspaper), Minnesota, 412, 416 Western Athletic Conference boycott, 852

Western Cyclone, The (newspaper), Kansas, 288 Western Federation of Miners, Idaho, 232 Western Negro Press Association, Utah, 844 Western Reserve University, 633, 649, 658, 659 Western University, Kansas, 288 Westside, The, Las Vegas, 502, 503, 504, 505, 510, 513, 514 “What to the American Slave Is July 4th” (Douglass), 569 Wheatland, Marcus F., 743 Wheatley, Phillis, 382, 383, 392–93 Wheaton, J. Frank, 412 Wheeler, Dr. Emma Rachelle, 806 Whipple, Dinah, 523–24 Whipple, Prince, 518, 520, 520f, 524 Whitaker, Pernell, 889 White, Charline, 397 White, Clarence Cameron, Oberlin, 637 White, Dan, 762 White, Earl W., Jr., 508 White, George, Delaware, 133 White, George H., 599, 603 White, Michael R., Cleveland mayor, 645 White, Moses, 294 White, Robert C., 309, 320 White, Walter Francis, 209, 215, 221 Whitefield, George, 192 White House Café, Virginia, 875 White Is a State of Mind (Beals), 66 White Lion (ship), Virginia, 877 White’s Ranch, Texas, 819 White Sulphur Springs Baptist Church, West Virginia, 917 Whitfield, James Monroe, poet, 518, 524 Wickenburg, Henry, 40 Wigington, Clarence Wesley “Cap,” 422 Wilberforce University, Ohio, 70, 635, 637, 643 Wilder, L. Douglas, 876, 885, 886, 889 Wiley College, Texas, 820, 822, 825, 827 Wilkins Guard, Connecticut, 116 Wilkins, Roy, 413, 422 Willey, Waitman T., 922 Williams, Adam Daniel (A. D.), 209 Williams, Avon, Jr., 796 Williams, Ben, 438–39 Williams, Carrie, 915–16 Williams, Charley (Banjo Dick), 37, 41 Williams, Daniel Hale, 163–64, 733 Williams, Dorothy West, 895 Williams, Edward Christopher, 658–59 Williams, Ephraim, 939

Index Williams, George, 470 Williams, George Washington, 636 Williams, Hosea Lorenzo, 209 Williams, James E., Sr., 242 Williams, Jasper B., 552 Williams, Jeanetta, 846, 857 Williams, Jim, 47 Williams, Reverend John Albert, 490 Williams, John Lee “Sonny Boy,” 809–10 Williams, Kenneth, 607 Williams, La Fern, 492 Williams, Megan, 919 Williams, Merit, 311 Williams, Paul, 82, 92–93 Williams, Peter, Massachusetts, 388 Williams, Peter, Jr., 568, 569, 587 Williams, Samuel Woodrow, 210 Williams, Terry, 846 Williams, W. C., 331 Williams, William H., 135–136 Williams v. Board of Education Tucker County, West Virginia, 915–16, 926 William v. Mississippi, 434 Willingboro (Levittown), Pennsylvania, desegregation of, 714 Willis, Arch W., Jr., 789, 794–95 Willis, William “Bill,” 638 Wilmington, Delaware, 138, 141 Wilmington Federation of Teachers, 140 Wilmington Friends School, 134 Wilmington riots, 134, 141, 599, 605f “Wilmington 10,” 600 Wilson, August, 422, 734, 897, 911 Wilson, Flip, 543 Wilson, James B., rancher, 401 Wilson, Margaret Bush, 464 Wilson, Nancy, 659 Wilson, Samuel, 717 Wilson, Woodrow, Nevada state assemblyman, 504, 508 Wims, Mabel Welch, 505 Winchester, William J., 134 Wind from Nowhere (Micheaux), 771, 776 Winfield, David, 422–23 Winfrey, Oprah, 365, 807–8, 807f; and Texas cattlemen, 825, 831 Wings over Jordan, 612, 638 Winks Lodge, Colorado, 97, 100 Winn, Valdenia, 290 Winnebago Indian War, Wisconsin, 932, 938 Winston, Ivory, 281 Winters, John, 552

1009

Wisconsin: African American population, 932, 933, 934, 935, 936, 937, 939, 940, 943; chronology, 932–37; cultural contributions, 946–47; historical overview, 937–43; notable African Americans, 943–46 Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum, 936 Wisconsin State University, 936, 942 Wisdom of Our Years, The (documentary), Utah, 847, 854, 858 Withers, Ernest C., 813–14 Witherspoon, Sandra Holt, 936, 943 Witte Paert, slave ship, 566 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Washington, 899 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, Iowa, 276–77 Women’s Athenian Club, Idaho, 228 Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots (WASPs), Illinois, 247 Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), Arkansas, 61 Wonder, Stevie (Steveland Judkins), 407 Wood, Mitchell “Booty,” 659 Woodly, Emmet “Dick,” 44 Woodruff, Hale Aspacio, painter, 50, 808, 812 Woods, Granville T., 659 Woodson, Carter Godwin, 164, 875, 885, 889–90 Woodson, S. Howard, New Jersey Assembly, 533 Woodson, Thomas, 641 Woolard-Provine, Annette, 140–41 Work, John Westley, II, 809 Work, John Westley, III, 808–9 World (newspaper), Minnesota, 416 World Anti-Slavery Convention, 362 World Congress of Aryan Nations, Idaho, 229, 230 Wrestling with the Muse (Boyd), 402 Wright, Charles, 407 Wright, Cleo, 450, 455 Wright, George C., 310 Wright, J. Skelly, 332, 339 Wright, Jonathan Jasper, 734 Wright, Richard, 428, 441–42 Wright, Richard Nathaniel, 252 Wright, Richard Robert, Sr., 210 Wright, Theodore, 587 Wyatt, George, 216 Wynn, Albert R., 366, 372 Wyoming: African American population, 952, 954; chronology, 950–52; cultural contributions, 957; historical overview, 952–54; notable African Americans, 954–57 Wyoming Civil Rights Act, 951

1010

Index

Xavier University, Louisiana, 331 Yale University, racial violence, 117 Yancey, Christopher Columbus, 772 Yancy, Walter, 38 Yates, Josephine, 464 Yeager, John, 233 Yearwood, John, 128 “Yellow Rose of Texas” legend, 818 Yellow Springs Public School, 16 “Yellowstone Jack,” Idaho, 229 Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 950, 951, 952, 957 York (Lewis and Clark expedition member), 237, 228, 230–31, 272; in Kansas, 286; in Montana, 468, 472, 477, 477f; in Nebraska, 482, 488; in North Dakota, 620, 624–25, 628–29; in Oregon, 680, 683, 684–85, 705–6; in South Dakota, 766, 774–75 York, Pennsylvania, race riots (1969), 715 Young, Andrew Jackson, 191, 210

Young, Charles, 843, 850 Young, Colonel Charles, West Point, 636, 637, 644f, 644–45 Young, Coleman Alexander, 21, 398, 401, 407 Young, Hiram, 464 Young, Jim (the Giant), 37, 43 Young, Lee Roy, 824 Young, Margaret, 846 Young, Pauline A., 139, 140, 146 Young, Plummer Bernard, 874 Young, Roger Arliner, 890 Young, Whitney, Jr., 308 Younger, Jim, 41–42 Zion Methodist Church, Mississippi, 429 Zion United Methodist, Las Vegas, 513 “Zoot Suit Riots,” 83 Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Louisiana, 331, 342, 344 Zuñi Indians, Texas, 825