Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[Black Lightning]

A gifted tennis player, Althea Gibson set numerous records by being the first African American to win at some of the most prestigious tennis courts in the world. In times of racial segregation Althea Gibson's most difficult opponent was racism and ignorance. It wasn't until 1950 that 23 year old Althea Gibson became the first African American allowed to compete in the U.S. Nationals. In 1956 Gibson became the first African American to win the French open and the following year she became the first African American, male or female to win a championship at Wimbledon. That same year she won her first U.S. National tournament. In 1958 Althea Davis repeated the previous year's feats and won both Wimbledon and the U.S. National again!

A 5-foot-11 right-hander, Althea Gibson had a strong serve and preferred to be on the attack. An athletic woman, she had good foot speed, which allowed her to cover the court. As the years went on, she became more consistent from the baseline. Including six doubles titles, she won a total of 11 Grand Slam events on her way to the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Althea Davis became the first black woman to be named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, not once but twice.

Althea Gibson was born in Silver South Carolina on August 25, 1927, to Daniel and Annie Bell Gibson. At the age of three, Gibson moved north with her family to Harlem, New York. With her family on welfare, Althea Gibson was sometimes a client for the Society to prevent cruelty to children. Harlem was a rough neighborhood and Althea was often in fights. Skipping school and getting into trouble, she often ran away from home. Althea spent her spare time hanging out at public recreation buildings, often playing table tennis. Musician Buddy Walker, worked for the city's recreational program in the summer to supplement his income. He noticed her playing table tennis, and thought she might do well in tennis, and brought her to the Harlem River Tennis Courts, where she learned the game and began to excel. Soon the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, where upper-class African-Americans played was interested in her game, raising the money to pay her member fees into the club, they also covered the expense of tennis lessons from Fred Johnson. She began her amateur tennis career in 1942.

Winning the girls' singles event at the American Tennis Association's New York State Tournament in 1942, Althea repeated her victory in 1944 and 1945, but had still only competed against other African Americans.

Wanting to further her game Althea Gibson found the support she needed to succeed. Dr. Hubert Eaton and Dr. Walter Johnson, two African-American physicians who loved tennis and helped many young African-Americans who wanted to play the game came to Althea Gibson's aid. The two men not only paid all of her expenses during this period, they also taught her the etiquette of tennis and the rules of living in a middle class family.

In Wilmington North Carolina she lived at Dr. Eaton’s home with his family during the school year and attended Williston High School. He coached her and taught her tennis etiquette. Althea lived in Lynchburg, Virginia with Dr. Johnson’s family during the summers, and played tennis through the American Tennis Association, traveling to tournaments with Dr. Johnson. Not only did she complete high school, Gibson went on to attend Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, graduating in 1953.

Continuing to enter and win the ATA tournaments, Althea Gibson was still not allowed to compete against white woman in tennis. In July of 1950, American Lawn Tennis Magazine published an editorial by tennis champ Alice Marble, urging the tennis world to give Althea Gibson the opportunity to play in its tournaments. "If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of players, then it's only fair that they meet this challenge on the courts," Marble wrote. The tennis world listened and that same year Althea Gibson was allowed to compete in the U.S. Nationals.

Gibson defeated Barbara Knapp in straight sets. Her second-round match on the grass of Forest Hills was against Louise Brough, who had won the previous three Wimbledon's. After being routed 6-1 in the first set, Gibson recovered to win the second set 6-3 and led 7-6 in the third when a thunderstorm struck, halting the match. When it resumed the next day, Gibson dropped three straight games to lose the match.

Learning to adjust to the higher level of competition, Althea Gibson quickly rose to the top and was ranked in the world top ten women's tennis players from 1956 through 1958, reaching a career high of No. 1 in those rankings in 1957 and 1958. Gibson was included in the year-end top ten rankings issued by the United States Tennis Association in 1952 and 1953 and from 1955 through 1958. After winning back to back titles at both the U.S. Nationals and Wimbledon, along with her victory at the French Open, Althea Gibson became a household name. She was the top-ranked U.S. player in 1957 and 1958. In 1958, she appeared as the celebrity challenger on the TV panel show "What's My Line?".

 

[Black Lightning]

American football pioneer Fritz Pollard was one of the professional sport's first African-American players and its first African-American coach.



Synopsis
Born on January 27, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, Fritz Pollard broke racial barriers while achieving distinction on the football gridiron. He was the first African-American to play in the Rose Bowl, and later he became the first black coach and quarterback in the formative days of the NFL. Pollard also was a prominent businessman with a consulting firm and a newspaper, among his many ventures. He died in 1986, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Early Years and College

Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard was born on January 27, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois. He felt the sting of racism as an African-American child growing up in the predominantly white neighborhood of Rogers Park, but he won admirers with his athletic accomplishments at Lane Tech High, where he was a three-time county track champion, a gifted baseball player and star on the football gridiron.

Pollard received a Rockefeller scholarship to attend Brown University in 1915, and he became a college football standout despite his modest 5'9", 165-pound stature. He was the first African-American to play in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 1915 season, and in 1916, he led Brown to back-to-back wins over Ivy League powerhouses Harvard and Yale en route to an 8-1 overall record. For his efforts, he was honored as the first African-American running back named to Walter Camp's All-American team.


Pro Football Pioneer
After leaving Brown, Pollard briefly pursued a degree in dentistry before joining the military and serving as a director of an Army YMCA. He was employed as the football coach at Lincoln University in 1919 when he was recruited to play for the Akron Pros, a professional football team in Ohio.

The Pros joined the American Professional Football Association in 1920. One of just two African-American players in the league, along with Bobby Marshall, Pollard led his team to an 8-0-3 record and the APFA's first title. The following year, he again proved a dominant player while doubling as the first African-American coach in the league.

The APFA was renamed the National Football League in 1922, and Pollard served as one of its primary gate attractions over the next few years. He played the 1922 season with the Milwaukee Badgers and the following year signed with the Hammond Pros, for whom he become the first black quarterback in NFL history. Pollard also spent parts of the 1923 and '24 seasons with the independent Gilberton Cadamounts in the Pennsylvania Coal League.

Pollard returned to the NFL in 1925 to play for Hammond Pros, the Providence Steam Roller and the Akron club, which had been renamed the Indians. He spent the 1926 season with the Indians before calling an end to his NFL career.

In 1928, Pollard organized the Chicago Black Hawks, an all-African-American professional team. Seeking to demonstrate that blacks and whites could compete without incident on the field, Pollard arranged exhibition games with teams throughout the city and brought the Black Hawks to warmer West Coast climates during the winter. During their three-year run from 1929-32, they were among the most popular draws in the sport.

A "gentlemen's agreement" struck by NFL owners in 1933 prevented the signing of more black players. In response, Pollard served as the coach of another high-profile African-American team, the Harlem-based Brown Bombers, from 1935-38.


Other Ventures and Legacy

Fritz was involved in several business enterprises during and after his professional football career. He founded the F.D. Pollard and Co. investment firm in 1922 to serve the African-American community, and in 1935 he founded the New York Independent News, the first black tabloid. Pollard also worked as a casting agent, studio manager and producer in the entertainment industry, as well as a tax consultant.

In 1954, Pollard was the first African-American elected to the National College Football Hall of Fame. He was elected to the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1967, and in 1981 he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Brown University. Pollard died on May 11, 1986, at age 92.

In 2005, the football pioneer received a long-overdue honor with his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His name lives on through the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which was founded in 2003 to help promote the hiring of minorities in the NFL.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

A persuasive appreciation of what jazz is and of how it has permeated and enriched the culture of America

The family of musical styles known as jazz came into being around 1900 as several popular black musical idioms coalesced. This free-flowing, spontaneous music based in improvisation emerged primarily from ragtime and the blues. But jazz did not remain solely in the domain of American music, for very quickly it swept through virtually all of the national culture as fiction, poetry, film, photography, painting, and classical music came under its spell. If it's art that expresses a nation's essence best, then jazz set America's tempo and afforded an artistic pattern for modernism.

In this book for the nonspecialist Peter Townsend shows how during an entire century jazz has appeared in a wide diversity of times and places and in many different cultural settings.

He reveals how jazz surfaced early in America's movies (The Jazz Singer, Strike Up the Band, Orchestra Wives, Blues in the Night) and how it became an aesthetic model serious composers (George Gershwin, Aaron Copland) did not miss. Jazz has punctuated literary fiction (Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison) and American poetry (William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Percy Johnson). Jazz influenced painting (Jackson Pollock, Romare Bearden, Stuart Davis, Archibald Motley, and Jimmy Ernst), and several photographers have devoted their careers to documenting jazz performers and their music scene (William Claxton, William Gottlieb, Roy De Carava, Carol Reiff).

As modernism swayed to the tempos of jazz and adapted to its modes, the once clearly defined lines of demarcation faded and jazz became well established as one of the great musical cultures of the world.

 

[Black Lightning]

Roslyn, Washington was a coal mining town located at the eastern base of the Cascade Mountains. The first commercial operations in Roslyn were initiated in 1886 by Logan M. Bullet, Vice President of the Northern Pacific Coal Company, (a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railroad). Within two years the town’s population grew to over 1,000 as miners from the eastern United States and Europe were attracted by the work the coal company offered.

Dissatisfied with wages and working conditions, the white miners went on strike in 1888. Company officials recruited strikebreakers including African Americans. The first black miners came to Roslyn under these circumstances. James E. Shepperson was hired by the company to bring these black miners from Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky to replace the striking miners. Most of the African Americans did not know at the time they were being recruited to break an ongoing strike. Approximately 300 black miners came to Roslyn Washington between 1888 and 1889. Many brought their families, creating the single largest increase in the black population in the history of the Territory. As could be expected, resentment grew among the white out-of-work miners. “Sheriff Samuel T. Packwood of Kittitas County reported to Territorial Governor Eugene Semple, “There is a bitter feeling against the Negroes and U.S. Marshals among the miners, and I fear there will be bloodshed over the matter.”

Eventually the tensions eased and the black and white residents of Roslyn came to an understanding. When the entire community needed a school house, the black citizens of Roslyn offered up their church. After the strike was broken, white miners slowly returned to work and reconciled themselves to working along side black miners. The shared dangers of late 19th Century coal mining helped forge a bond between these groups. The demand for coal also meant expansion of mining in the region which in turn generated considerable work and reduced the sense of competition for jobs between the miners. Finally, when the United Mine Workers organized the workers, black and white miners entered the union as equals. Roslyn’s multi-ethnic citizens created a vibrant community as the town’s population continued to grow, peaking in 1930 at slightly more than 4,000 residents.

Several black fraternal organizations were created in Roslyn including the first Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in Washington Territory and a lodge of the Knights of Pythias. Black women in Roslyn joined such organizations as the Eastern Star and the Daughters of Tabernacle. African Americans also formed both Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches. The churches and fraternal organizations provided the community care during illness, a guarantee of burial rights, and an active social life which included band concerts, speakers, and benefits.

The last coal mine in the area shut down in 1963. The black population, however, began to decline in the 1920s. By the 1960s, the town’s population dwindled to just over 1,000 and was overwhelmingly white. By the early 1970s only one African American family remained in the town, the Cravens. Ironically in 1976, William Craven was elected mayor of Roslyn and thus became the first black mayor in the history of Washington. Craven served as mayor until 1980.

 

[Black Lightning]

Nineteenth Century writer Frances Anne Rollin is noted as the author of Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany which upon appearing in 1868 became the first full-length biography written by an African American. Rollin also kept a diary in 1868, making it the earliest known diary by a southern black woman.

Frances Ann Rollin was born in 1845 in Charleston, South Carolina into a free family of color originally from the island of Saint Domingue. Her father, William M. Rollin was a successful lumber merchant in Charleston. During the Civil war, Frances Rollin attended The Quaker School for Colored Youth in Philadelphia where she began her career as a writer and a proponent of civil rights and feminism.

In 1865, Rollin returned to Charleston as a teacher for the Freedmen's Bureau. Illegally refused first class passage on the ferry to Beaufort, that year, Rollin won a lawsuit against the captain of the ferry, Pilot Boy. She was aided in her suit by Major Martin Delany, then the highest ranking black officer in the Union Army.

Delany was so impressed by the young teacher that he commissioned her to write his biography. Rollin traveled to Boston to write and to seek a publisher. Her account describes her writing experience as well as her meetings with notable abolitionists and luminaries of the Civil War era and notes Delany’s financial challenges once the Civil War ended.
Finally, in the summer of 1868 Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany was published by Lee and Shepard, a Boston publisher. Rollin, employing the affectionate nickname used by friends and family, wrote under the pen name Frank A. Rollin.

Returning to South Carolina in 1868, Frances Rollin was employed by a Pennsylvania-born black attorney, William J. Whipper, who had been recently elected to the South Carolina Legislature. Despite family objections, Rollin and Whipper married a few months later.

Rollin continued her diary during their brief courtship and first year of marriage. The diary allowed a rare glimpse into the social life of Columbia, the South Carolina capital, and recorded the anti-black, anti-Republican violence then ongoing in the state during Reconstruction.

Marital and political difficulties took their toll on the Whippers over the next 12 years. By 1880 the dream of a Reconstructed South with equal opportunities for blacks was over and the Ku Klux Klan was on the move. Rollin separated from her husband and took her children, Ionia, Leigh, and Winifred to Washington, D.C. where old friend Frederick Douglass, Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, offered her a position.

Rollin saw the children through college and lived to see Winifred become a teacher, Leigh begin his career as an actor, and Ionia attend Howard Medical School. Though separated from Whipper, Rollin continued to support the political causes they both favored. In 1892 Rollin contracted an illness while campaigning for Republican Presidential Candidate James C. Blaine from which she never recovered.

Frances Rollin died in Beaufort, South Carolina of consumption on October 17, 1901.

 

[Black Lightning]

During the first twenty-five years following the American Civil War and the emancipation, many African American men in the South were elected to state legislatures and local government posts. Among those in Tennessee was Samuel Allen McElwee from Haywood County, one of the two western counties with a majority black population. McElwee, a lawyer, became the most powerful Republican Party leader in Haywood County in the late 19th Century. He served in the Tennessee legislature from 1882 to the rigged election of 1888. As a legislator he earned a reputation as a skilled orator and was a presenter at the National Convention of the Republican Party in 1884 in Chicago.

McElwee was born in Madison County, Tennessee and grew up in neighboring Haywood County. He was educated at local freedmen’s schools and Oberlin College in Ohio before starting a teaching career in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. McElwee also attended Fisk University, graduating in 1883 and the following year at the age of 26 he was elected to the Tennessee Legislature, representing Haywood County. While serving in the Legislature McElwee obtained a law degree from Central Tennessee Law School in Nashville in 1886. McElwee was the first and only African American to practice law in Brownsville, Tennessee until the 1960s.

While in the legislature McElwee fought for equal educational opportunities for the freed people. He worked with other black legislators to defeat bills involving Jim Crow and contract labor.

McElwee’s political career came to an abrupt end in 1888 when his conservative Democratic opponents used fraud, intimidation and terrorism to reduce the number of black voters in the heavily African American areas of Haywood and Fayette Counties. McElwee was forced to flee Brownsville as a group of black men guarded his exit. He relocated to Nashville, Tennessee after the 1888 election where he maintained a law practice and started an unsuccessful newspaper. McElwee and his wife, Georgia, moved to Chicago in 1901 where he continued his law practice until his sudden death in 1914.

 

[Black Lightning]

Crystal Bird Fauset, the first African-American female state legislators in the United States, was born on June 27, 1894 in Princess Anne, Maryland. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts but spent most of her adult and political life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between 1914 and 1918 Fauset worked as a public school teacher in Philadelphia. In 1918 she began working as a field secretary for African American girls in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), a job she held until 1926. In 1925 the Interracial Section of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC or Quakers) was formed and Fauset joined the organization in 1926, wanting, as she said, to work on her interest “in having people of other racial groups understand the humanness of the Negro wherever he is found.” Between September 1927 and September 1928 she made 210 appearances before more than 40,000 people for the AFSC. During the late 1920’s Fauset studied at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, graduating in 1931.

In 1932 Fauset founded the Colored Women’s Activities Club for the Democratic National Committee where she helped African American women register to vote. In response to her efforts the Roosevelt Administration appointed her Director of the Women and Professional Project in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Philadelphia. In 1935 she also served on the Federal Housing Advisory Board. That same year Crystal Bird married sociologist and political thinker Arthur Fauset and they became a dynamic political couple. Fauset then began to work on the Joint Committee on Race Relations of the Arch and Race Streets (Quaker) Yearly Meetings where she helped establish the famous Swarthmore College Institute of Race Relations which documented employment and housing discrimination against Pennsylvania African Americans.

In 1938 Fauset was elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature, representing the 18th District of Philadelphia, which was 66% white at that time. As a state representative Fauset introduced nine bills and three amendments on issues concerning improvements in public health, housing for the poor, public relief, and supporting women's rights in the workplace.

In 1941 Fauset’s friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped her secure a position as assistant director and race relations director of the Office of Civil Defense, becoming part of President Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” and promoting civil defense planning in black communities, recruitment of blacks in the military, and dealing with complaints about racial discrimination. In 1944, disappointed by the Democratic Party’s failure to advance civil rights, Fauset switched to the Republican Party and later became a member of the Republican National Committee’s division on Negro Affairs.

After World War II Fauset turned her attentions to a more global forum, helping to found the United Nations Council of Philadelphia, which later became the World Affairs Council. Throughout the 1950s she travelled to Africa, India, and the Middle East to meet and support independence leaders. Fauset died on March 27, 1965 in Philadelphia.

 

[Black Lightning]

The first all-black city to be incorporated in Florida, Eatonville was established in 1887 after being settled two decades after the Civil War ended by former slaves. Located six miles north of Orlando, the town was first named Maitland and got its start when former slave, Joseph C. Clarke, along with northern philanthropist Lewis Lawrence, bought over a hundred acres of land from Josiah Eaton, one of the few white landowners willing to sell to African Americans. They then parceled the acres to black families from the surrounding area of central Florida. On the fifteenth of August, 1887, the town was officially incorporated when twenty-seven registered black voters indicated their intention to create a municipality. They named the town in honor of Josiah Eaton who eventually also served as its mayor. The new town’s citizens, however, chose Columbus H. Boger as its first mayor to head an entirely black-staffed government.

The life of Eatonville, like other all-black towns and the black sections of mostly white communities, revolved around its church and its school. The St. Lawrence African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.), then simply called the Methodist Church, was the first religious institution in the city. The church received the first ten acres of land purchased by Clarke and Lawrence, and upon its founding in 1881 (predating the town by six years), it became the first African American church in the area. St. Lawrence A.M.E. still stands in Eatonville and continues to serve the community to this day.

Along with St. Lawrence A.M.E., the town’s first post-primary school, the Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, was central to the town’s culture. The school, which was founded by Professor and Mrs. Russell C. Calhoun in 1889, sat on land that was donated in the memory of Dr. Robert Hungerford, a white doctor who had died while caring for sick African Americans. The Hungerford School, headed by Tuskegee Institute graduates, the Calhouns, was modeled on Tuskegee’s principles—teaching vocational, literacy, and life skills to African Americans in Central Florida.

Eatonville is best known, however, for its most famous daughter, Zora Neale Hurston. Her preacher father, John Hurston, who would become the town’s mayor in 1897, had moved with his family to the town in 1894 when Zora was three. Although born in Notasulga, Alabama, she always considered Eatonville her home.

Hurston’s experiences growing up in Eatonville, largely independent of white influences, would come to shape her writing style, and the town was featured in much of her works, notably the 1928 essay, “How it Feels to be Colored Me” and her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. In 1990 the town established the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts. Now Eatonville holds an annual Zora Festival, a nearly month-long celebration of the arts and humanities in January. The festival, which draws over a hundred thousand visitors to the small town, whose permanent population in 2010 was 2,159, has featured presentations from university professors, exhibitions of local artists, and performances by big-name musicians, including the Isley Brothers and Lyfe Jennings. In 2010 90 percent of the residents were African American, 7 percent were white, and the rest were Latino, Asian, and Native American.

 

[Black Lightning]

Located on the long stretch of the Atlantic City, New Jersey, shoreline just south of downtown, Chicken Bone Beach was designated as the exclusively African American section of beach around 1900. It remained a blacks only beach until the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. During the segregation era, the beach provided recreation and later stellar entertainment for African Americans, both tourists and local residents. Ironically, before 1900 blacks and whites in Atlantic City lived side-by-side and African Americans used the beaches without restriction. By 1900 hotel owners pushed black beach-goers from the fronts of their establishments down to the Missouri Avenue beach south of the Million Dollar Pier. This move was done to appease a growing number hotel guests from the Jim Crow South.
By the 1940s, black entrepreneurs began to provide entertainment during the summer evenings. Leading black performers such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Louis Jordan, the Mills Brothers, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, and the Club Harlem showgirls, staged shows for black tourists and local residents. The showgirls dubbed the beach “Sunshine Row” and soon began attracting other visitors by alternately sunbathing and putting on brief skits. Visits from prominent figures such as Sugar Ray Robinson and singer, Peggy Thomas, added to Chicken Bone Beach’s growing mystique.

Despite the glitz of headline entertainers and showgirls, Chicken Bone Beach remained a family-oriented beach which served the needs of working class Atlantic City. Family members, friends, and neighbors cared for all the children who spent the day at the beach while their parents worked in the tourist industry.

The nickname, Chicken Bone Beach, derived affectionately from the tradition of the thousands of vacationing families who flocked to the shore bringing beach balls, umbrellas and blankets for ocean-side fun and picnic baskets with fried chicken and other delights for seaside dining. When they finished eating, they buried the chicken bones in the sand.

With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, all Atlantic City beaches were open to everyone and this all-black beach disappeared. By the 1970s Casinos further changed the culture of the beach by making Atlantic City into a world class resort which in turn limited access to all working class families. To protect this endangered African American heritage site, the Atlantic City Council passed an ordinance in 1997, declaring Chicken Bone Beach (also known as the Missouri Avenue Beach) into an historical landmark.

Today, the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation promotes heritage pride through annual summer jazz concerts including the Chicken Bone Beach--Jazz on the Beach Concert Series that commemorates the era’s earlier block party atmosphere. For nearly two decades concert series have occurred at the Kennedy Plaza stage on Boardwalk between Mississippi and Georgia Avenue in July and August, presented by the foundation and the Atlantic City Free Public Library, along with other partners.

 

[Black Lightning]

Brownsville Affray, 1906

In July 1906, the U.S. Army stationed three companies of the all-black Twenty-Fifth Infantry at Fort Brown, Texas, adjacent to Brownsville. In recent years, southern Texas and the border region had seen periodic disturbances between American soldiers and local Chicanos who resented the military's presence. Soon after their arrival, black soldiers began complaining of police harassment and civilian discrimination.

On the night of August 13, a group of unidentified men fired more than a hundred shots into private homes and businesses near the fort, killing a young bartender. A well-organized citizens' group accused the black infantrymen, prompting a U.S. Inspector General's investigation directed by Major Augustus Penrose. Penrose later concluded that a handful of soldiers had knowledge of the shooting, but the shooters' identities could not be discovered because the black troops refused to answer investigators' questions. On November 6, claiming a "conspiracy of silence" to protect their guilty comrades, President Theodore Roosevelt announced the dishonorable discharges of 167 men in Companies B, C, and D. To avoid further trouble with border residents, Fort Brown and neighboring Ringgold Barracks were closed in October.

African-American leaders nationwide condemned Roosevelt's handling of "the Brownsville affray." One study suggests this event marked the beginning of African Americans's abandonment of their historical loyalty to the Republican Party. From 1907 to 1910, the U.S. Senate reexamined the case and eventually allowed fourteen infantrymen to reenlist but upheld the summary guilty verdict. In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense reduced the discharges to honorable status.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

During the first twenty-five years following the American Civil War and the emancipation, many African American men in the South were elected to state legislatures and local government posts. Among those in Tennessee was Samuel Allen McElwee from Haywood County, one of the two western counties with a majority black population.

reminded me of....

William A. Feilds

William A. Feilds[N 1] (born c. 1846–1852, died September 9, 1898) was an African-American schoolteacher and principal, born a slave, who served one term as a Republican legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1885 to 1886. He was also elected a member of the Shelby County county court (a legislative body), and a justice of the peace.[1] According to researchers on the American documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? (2011), he is the maternal great-great-grandfather of actress, singer, and Miss America 1984, Vanessa Williams and of actor Chris Williams and the maternal great-great-great-grandfather of Jillian Hervey.[2][1]

Birth into slavery

William A. Feilds, born in West Tennessee in 1852, was elected to represent Shelby County in the 44th Tennessee General Assembly, 1885-1886. Although many records spell his surname as “Field” or “Fields,” William himself seems generally to have used the “e-i” combination, also generally adding a final “s,” as can be seen in surviving legislative records. In view of the fact that William Feilds’s parents were born in Virginia (1880 census), it is probable that he was descended from the same group of slaves as former Tipton County Representative John Boyd (42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882). Boyd’s mother, Sophia Fields* Boyd, was the slave of Jean Field Sanford, who was a young child in 1836 when her father, Charles Grandison Feild, moved his household from Mecklenburg County, Virginia, to Haywood County, Tennessee. Several of Charles G. Feild’s family members, including his nephew Roscoe Feild, lived in the same part of Shelby County as William and his family.






Election to Tennessee General Assembly

William A. Feilds was 32 years old in 1884 when he was elected to a single term in the Tennessee General Assembly. A flattering news article appeared in the Cleveland Gazette: “The legislature of Tennessee has among its members three colored members, Mr. McElwee, Mr. Fields, and Mr. Green E. Evans. These three gentlemen are all school teachers, and give evidence of aspirations to become lawmakers. They are young, ambitious and full of zeal, and if an opportunity is given may prove themselves equals and superiors of many Tennessean Senators before the adjournment of the present session.” The Memphis Daily Appeal was not so kind: “W. A. Fields is of a bright copper color, and besides the business of accumulating a considerable family has been a professional school teacher and an active participant in county Republican conventions. He lives near the National Cemetery, and has no wealth to speak of beyond a fair supply of words and a tolerable knowledge of English grammar.

Feilds was appointed to three legislative committees: Federal Relations, Internal Improvement, and Public Roads. He followed the lead of his cousin John Boyd in attempting to amend some of the Tennessee labor laws that effectively maintained many blacks in bondage to their white landlords. One of his bills proposed to limit the amount of lien a landlord could impose on tenants’ crops – existing laws allowed land owners to bankrupt tenant farmers by requiring excessively large debt payments. He also introduced a bill to enforce greater integrity in the hiring process. Former slaves, unaccustomed to working for pay, were frequently exploited by employers who advertised high wages for a job and then paid laborers much lower amounts once they were hired. A third bill attempted to ensure fair elections by requiring voting sites to be overseen by judges from different political parties. As many African American candidates and voters would soon learn to their dismay, election fraud was commonplace, particularly among white Democrats who were steadily gaining control of the polls in West Tennessee counties with large black (hence Republican) populations.

Of particular interest to teacher-principal Feilds were legislative efforts to educate black children successfully and to give African Americans greater control over the schools in their communities. He urged passage of his bill, HB 119, which would require parents and guardians to enroll children aged 7-16 in school for 120 days per year. Other legislators also sponsored education bills during that term. For example, Representative Greene Evans promoted a bill, written at the request of Governor Bate, to create the position of Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction to oversee the black schools across the state. Although Evans introduced the bill in both the regular and extraordinary sessions of the 44th General Assembly, and the governor urged its passage in his State of the State address that opened the session, it was never voted into law. In fact, it was rare for a black legislator’s bill to be enacted, particularly if it broadened the rights or protections of black citizens. Of the few bills that were successful, some were eventually amended so drastically that even the sponsors voted against them! William A. Feilds’s bills were no exception to this rule: three of them failed or were tabled in committee; the fourth was rejected on its third reading before the House.

Feilds also supported the efforts of his colleagues, Representatives Evans and Hodge, to repeal Chapter 130 of the 1875 Acts of Tennessee, which permitted segregation in public facilities and transportation. At least one bill aimed at overturning Chapter 130, Tennessee’s first “Jim Crow” law, was introduced in every session to which black legislators were elected, but none ever received sufficient votes to pass.

Feilds’s name was read into the record on Tennessee Day at the 1885 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, but it is not clear whether he was in attendance there.

Representative William A. Feilds was the great-great-grandfather of actress-singer Vanessa Williams, who first learned of their relationship during a 2011 episode of the NBC television show, Who Do You Think You Are?
(Photo courtesy of Vanessa Williams)
Later years

To the eternal dismay of researchers, the 1890 census, which would surely have provided valuable information about the Feilds family, was destroyed in a fire in 1921. Complicating matters even further is the presence in census records of another Memphis couple named William and Elizabeth Feild. This William, a laborer who lived at 982 Delaware Avenue, died in 1909 of pneumonia.

By the time of the 1900 census, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Feilds had become a widow. She and six of her children – Mary (24), Silas W. (22), Estell (the “Stella A.V.” of the 1880 census, now 20), Luther (18), Ida (16), and Bland (12) – were living with her brother Bland and his family at that time. Bland (48) and his young wife, Jennie V. (25) had an infant son by now – John B., three months old.

William and Elizabeth’s oldest son Cyrus enlisted that same year (1900) in the U.S. Army. He was stationed at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, as one of the famed “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 25th Infantry, an African American unit in what was still a segregated Army. As a member of that regiment, although he entered too late to participate in the Cuba campaign of the Spanish American War (which included the unit’s action at the famous Battle of San Juan Hill), he might have taken part in quelling the Creek Rebellion and capturing Creek leader Chitto Harjo (“Crazy Snake,” 1846-1911) and others. Cyrus Feild was probably also sent to the Philippines to participate in operations against nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo. Notes from the U.S. Army Register of Enlistments document his promotion to sergeant, his honorable discharge in 1903, and his service rating of “Excellent.” Cyrus (32) later appeared in the 1910 census with his wife (Sadie, 30) and three young children: Mary E. (4), William (2), and Cyrus Jr. (1), and was listed as the “informant” on his mother’s death certificate (she died of lobar pneumonia) in March 1914. Cyrus Feild himself died at the age of 77 and was buried in the Memphis National Cemetery in January 1956.

William A. Feilds had a much briefer life than his son. There were no city directory entries for the senior Feilds from 1885 to 1891, when he appeared in the Polk Directory as a Justice of the Peace. In 1894 (Polk) he was also listed as a Notary Public, and in 1898 as Justice of the Peace (Polk), as well as a County Magistrate (Degaris), with his office on Charleston Avenue and his home on the Old Raleigh Road, east of the city. A magistrate in a rural county during those years was the equivalent of what we now think of as a “county commissioner.” He could issue warrants and hear minor criminal cases, perform marriages, and appoint guardians and administrators to help to settle estates. Magistrates were also part of the local legislative body that approved all county expenses and passed county laws and ordinances. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were thought of as a “court” because of their judicial duties; in recent years, as county governments have assumed a more complex role, the magistrates/commissioners tend to be considered more of a legislative body.

 

[Black Lightning]

The Knoxville Race Riot in Knoxville, Tennessee, was one of several race riots that took place in the “Red Summer” of 1919. The so-called “Red Summer” of 1919 was a series of violent riots, predominantly whites against blacks, which lasted from May until October of that year and resulted in an estimated six hundred deaths across the nation.

The riot began on August 30, 1919, when an intruder entered the home of Bertie Lindsey, a twenty-seven-year-old white woman, and shot her while she was asleep in her bed. The only witness was Lindsey’s twenty-one-year-old cousin, Ora Smyth, who soon after the intruder left their Knoxville home, stealing a purse on his way out, ran next door to the house of a city policeman. One of the officers investigating the crime scene, Andy White, immediately accused Maurice Mays.

Maurice Franklin Mays was a well-known African American political figure who briefly served as a deputy sheriff in North Knoxville. Afterward, however, Mays spent much of his time gambling, bootlegging, and managing the Stroller’s Café on East Jackson Avenue located in Knoxville’s red light district. At about six months old, Maurice Franklin Mays became the foster child of William Mays, a former slave, and his wife Frances Mays. Mays’s biological father was the white Democratic mayor, John E. McMillan. Ella Walker, Mays’s biological mother, worked as McMillan’s maid.

On August 30 at 3:30 a.m., Andy White along with two other officers traveled to Mays’s apartment where they found a revolver in his dresser. Soon after, White handcuffed Mays and hauled him over to the crime scene where Ora Smyth “identified” him as the intruder after barely glancing at Mays. Maurice Franklin Mays was then taken to the Knox County jailhouse.

At around 8:00 a.m. the next morning, angry whites began to congregate near the Knox County Jail. A few individuals broke into the jail in search for Mays; however, he was moved to a jail located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a protective measure. No African American inmates were harmed during their search, but over a dozen white inmates were freed, leading to the pillaging of the liquor storage room and the demolition of the jail.

Later that day, the National Guardsmen were notified about several holdups taking place in the black section of Knoxville, near Vine Avenue and Central Street, by a band of African Americans. Not long after, a detachment was sent to the scene, followed by a mob of white rioters. Although only one business was broken into by African Americans, the white mob raided and destroyed numerous black-owned businesses in the area. Eventually, guardsmen joined the mob, engaging in gunfire with black residents. In the end, hundreds of citizens were wounded and seven people were killed—six blacks and one white. The riot prompted many African Americans to flee the city.

Although the Knoxville riot of 1919 started as a murder case and not a race riot, in the end, it became one. Maurice Franklin Mays was convicted of the murder of Bertie Lindsey by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. On March 15, 1922, in Nashville, Tennessee, Maurice Franklin Mays was pronounced dead after being sentenced to the electric chair. He was thirty-five years old.

 

[Black Lightning]

The New Orleans Massacre, also known as the New Orleans Race Riot, occurred on July 30, 1866. While the riot was typical of numerous racial conflicts during Reconstruction, this incident had special significance. It galvanized national opposition to the moderate Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson and ushered in much more sweeping Congressional Reconstruction in 1867.

The riot took place outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans as black and white delegates attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Convention had reconvened because the Louisiana state legislature had recently passed the black codes and refused to extend voting rights to black men. Also on May 12, 1866, four years of Union Army imposed martial law ended and Mayor John T. Monroe, who had headed city government before the Civil War, was reinstated as acting mayor. Monroe had been an active supporter of the Confederacy.

As a delegation of 130 black New Orleans residents marched behind the U.S. flag toward the Mechanics Institute, Mayor Monroe organized and led a mob of ex-Confederates, white supremacists, and members of the New Orleans Police Force to the Institute to block their way. The mayor claimed their intent was to put down any unrest that may come from the Convention but the real reason was to prevent the delegates from meeting.

As the delegation came to within a couple of blocks of the Institute, shots were fired but the group was allowed to proceed to the meeting hall. Once they reached the Institute the police and white mob members attacked them, beating some of the marchers while others rushed inside the building for safety.

Now the police and mob surrounded the Institute and opened fire on the building, shooting indiscriminately into the windows. Then the mob rushed into the building and began to fire into the crowd of delegates. When the mob ran out of ammunition they were beaten back by the delegates. The mob left the building, regrouped, and returned, breaking down the doors and again firing on the mostly unarmed delegates.

As the firing continued some delegates attempted to flee or surrender. Some of those who surrendered, mostly blacks, were killed on the spot. Those who ran were chased as the killing spread over several blocks around the Institute. By this point both the rioters and victims included people who were never at the Institute. African Americans were shot on the street or pulled off of streetcars to be summarily beaten or killed. By the end of the massacre, at least 200 black Union war veterans were killed, including forty delegates at the Convention. Altogether 238 people were killed and 46 were wounded.

The riot's repercussions extended far beyond New Orleans. Northerners angry over the violence helped the Republican Party take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the Congressional elections of 1866. That Republican controlled Congress subsequently passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, a series of measures that called for Army occupation of ten former Confederate states and measures that ensured voting rights for African Americans. Meanwhile martial law was immediately reimposed in New Orleans after the riot and Mayor Monroe and other city officials were forcibly removed from office for their part in the massacre.

 

[Black Lightning]

Houston Mutiny of 1917

By the time the U.S. entered World War I, black soldiers and white Texas civilians had a history of hostile relations dating back more than fifty years. At Camp Logan, men with the Third Battalion of the Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment faced increasing harassment from Houston authorities. On August 23, 1917, a rumor reached the camp that Corporal Charles Baltimore had been killed for interfering with the detention and interrogation of a black woman by Houston police; in fact, Baltimore had been beaten but survived and was later released. Reacting to the rumor and to racial discrimination, about 150 black troops marched for two hours through Houston. As local whites armed themselves, a violent confrontation ensued that claimed the lives of four black soldiers and fifteen local residents, and wounded a dozen others. The soldiers’ leader, Sergeant Vida Henry, killed himself after the death of a National Guardsman whom the troops had mistaken for a policeman. The group subsequently fell into disarray and the violence dissipated.


In November, the largest court-martial in U.S. military history convened at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to try sixty-three soldiers from the Third Battalion. Thirteen of the convicted men were executed by hanging on December 11. The following year, two additional courts-martial were held and another sixteen sentenced to hang. Responding to pressure from black leaders, President Woodrow Wilson commuted the death sentences of ten of the condemned men. In total, nearly sixty soldiers received life imprisonment for their roles in the affair. The Houston Mutiny anticipated the “Red Summer” riots of 1919 in which many African American servicemen retaliated against white mistreatment. On the other hand because of the Mutiny, the Twenty-fourth Infantry Regiment was not allowed by the U.S War Department to go to France to fight in World War I.

 

[Black Lightning]

East St. Louis Race Riot: July 2, 1917

The city of East St. Louis, Illinois was the scene of one of the bloodiest race riots in the 20th century. Racial tensions began to increase in February, 1917 when 470 African American workers were hired to replace white workers who had gone on strike against the Aluminum Ore Company.

The violence started on May 28th, 1917, shortly after a city council meeting was called. Angry white workers lodged formal complaints against black migrations to the Mayor of East St. Louis. After the meeting had ended, news of an attempted robbery of a white man by an armed black man began to circulate through the city. As a result of this news, white mobs formed and rampaged through downtown, beating all African Americans who were found. The mobs also stopped trolleys and streetcars, pulling black passengers out and beating them on the streets and sidewalks. Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden eventually called in the National Guard to quell the violence, and the mobs slowly dispersed. The May 28th disturbances were only a prelude to the violence that erupted on July 2, 1917.

After the May 28th riots, little was done to prevent any further problems. No precautions were taken to ensure white job security or to grant union recognition. This further increased the already-high level of hostilities towards African Americans. No reforms were made in police force which did little to quell the violence in May. Governor Lowden ordered the National Guard out of the city on June 10th, leaving residents of East St. Louis in an uneasy state of high racial tension.

On July 2, 1917, the violence resumed. Men, women, and children were beaten and shot to death. Around six o’ clock that evening, white mobs began to set fire to the homes of black residents. Residents had to choose between burning alive in their homes, or run out of the burning houses, only to be met by gunfire. In other parts of the city, white mobs began to lynch African Americans against the backdrop of burning buildings. As darkness came and the National Guard returned, the violence began to wane, but did not come to a complete stop.

In response to the rioting, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent W.E.B. DuBois and Martha Gruening to investigate the incident. They compiled a report entitled “Massacre at East St. Louis,” which was published in the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. The NAACP also staged a silent protest march in New York City in response to the violence. Thousands of well-dressed African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, showing their concern about the events in East St. Louis.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) also responded to the violence. On July 8th, 1917, the UNIA’s President, Marcus Garvey said “This is a crime against the laws of humanity; it is a crime against the laws of the nation, it is a crime against Nature, and a crime against the God of all mankind.” He also believed that the entire riot was part of a larger conspiracy against African Americans who migrated North in search of a better life: “The whole thing, my friends, is a bloody farce, and that the police and soldiers did nothing to stem the murder thirst of the mob is a conspiracy on the part of the civil authorities to condone the acts of the white mob against Negroes.”

A year after the riot, a Special Committee formed by the United States House of Representatives launched an investigation into police actions during the East St. Louis Riot. Investigators found that the National Guard and also the East St. Louis police force had not acted adequately during the riots, revealing that the police often fled from the scenes of murder and arson. Some even fled from stationhouses and refused to answer calls for help. The investigation resulted in the indictment of several members of the East St. Louis police force.