Dolemite in Indian Territory?!

 

Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite
From RogerEbert.com

Dolemite! The Human Tornado! Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law! The Avenging Disco Godfather! Prince DuMarr! The godfather of rap! Rudy Ray Moore was all of this and more. 

Moore was an inveterate entertainer who tirelessly promoted his self-image. The basic outlines of his self-history are laid out in the Eddie Murphy film Dolemite Is My Name. That film is a love-letter from contemporary Black comedians to beloved, influential mentor. (In addition to Murphy, Keegan-Michael Key, Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess, and Wesley Snipes star in the film.) 

Dolemite Is My Name opens in the 1970s, when Moore was living in Los Angeles and working at Dolphin's, a historic Black-owned record store. In Moore's telling, a wino named Rico frequently performed "toasts," humorous and often obscene rhymed stories. Moore offered to pay him if he performed one of his routines, the story "Dolemite." Impressed with the story, he developed it and incorporated it into a comedy routine which became a successful comedy record, "Eat Out More Often," and the film Dolemite. 

Rudy Ray Moore was in his late 40s when Dolemite came out, and the film was the culmination of decades spent working as a performed. Moore had tried working as a dancer, a singer, and a rhythm and blues musician before finding success as the outlandish "blue" comedian. 

While Moore found success in Los Angles, he spent most of his life in the midwest, in cities like Akron, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Toledo. However, he was born in the south. He was born in Fort Smith and spent his childhood in northwest Arkansas. This in itself is unremarkable. Moore was born at the start of the Great Migration, a time when millions of Black people left the south for midwest seeking social and economic opportunities. 

I recently listened to an interview with Moore's biographer (Mark Jason Murray) and realized that his time in Arkansas is somewhat of a mystery. Talking about himself was one of Moore's favorite actives, but he said almost nothing about his family and his childhood in Arkansas. His biographer said that the topic made him uncomfortable, and it was difficult to get him to discuss it. Intrigued, I decided to poke around the available records, and Moore's family background is almost as interesting as Dolemite's!

Rudy Ray Moore's family background

Rudy Ray Moore doesn't exist. Moore's birth name was Rudolph Frank Moore. He was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas but spent most of his childhood in Logan County. Born in 1927 to Nathaniel and Lucile Smith Moore, Rudy was the oldest of seven children. When Rudy was an infant, his father worked as a farmer, but by 1940, he had turned to coal mining. 

Both parents were young, Nathaniel had been born in 1907, Lucille in 1911. I have not been able to find much information about Lucille's parents, but Nathaniel's parents are well-documented. They were John J. and Della Byrd Moore. Della was born and raised in northwestern Arkansas a few years after the end of the Civil War, in 1868. Her parents, Sugh (or Suggs) and Celia Sheppard Byrd, were born in the 1850s. I can't find any information about their lives before the war, but they were almost certainly enslaved and likely worked on small family farms (there were few large plantations in northwestern Arkansas).

John J. Moore is unusual in that details about his life before the Civil War were recorded. He was born in Oklahoma (then Indian Territory) on the Creek (or Muscogee) nation. He was enslaved by a Creek man named Billie Grayson (or Brayson). After the end of the Civil War, he went by the name John Grayson for a numbers of years. In the first years after the war, he moved to northwestern Arkansas. He moved back and forth between Indian Territory and Arkansas from the late 1860s until the 1880s. It was in the 1880s that he and Lucille met and got married. During this period, John, like many freedmen, worked as a farmer, but by 1891, he became active in the church. In that year, he moved to Fort Smith to serve as a church minister. Three years later, he moved to Missouri to preach. 

Nathaniel was one of the youngest children of John and Della. It's unclear where he was born as the extent records are contradictory. Some records state that he was born in Wagoner County, Oklahoma (a city near the Creek Nation), while others state that the was born in Logan County, Arkansas. In any case, the family had moved to northwestern Arkansas when Nathaniel was young.

Rudy Ray Moore's family

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten a copy of Moore's biography, so I haven't been able to find any details about his childhood. It was doubtlessly difficult. Arkansas as a whole was a poverty-stricken state that was firmly in the grip of Jim Crow segregation. Moore was fortunate that his parents had a stable marriage, but he evidently found Arkansas unbearable, and at age fifteen (in 1942), he left his family and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. In later interviews, Moore said that he wanted to escape the depressing prospect of spending his life working in the fields. However, I suspect that he also had a falling out with his parents. Although his family otherwise appears to have been closely knit, Moore appears to have had a minimal relationship with them. 

As a teenager newly arrived from rural Arkansas, Moore found work as a waiter and bus boy in hotels. Through that work, he became exposed to the entertainment industry. Cleveland, at the time, was a national center for manufacturing that had a booming economy. The Black population had experienced major growth as Black family in south were drawn to the region by the availability of well-paying factory jobs and relatively mild political climate. An exciting Black entertainment district grew out of this environment, and Moore decided that he wanted to become a part of it. He began performing singing, dancing, and comedy routines in clubs. One of the first characters he played was bare-chested, turban-clad man named "Prince DuMarr." Moore would remain working as an entertainer and performed for the remainder of his life. His biographer recounts that, at the end of his life, Moore was living in a nursing home and regularly performing before other residents. 

Moore's family took an entirely different path. In the 1940s, a few years after Moore left for Ohio, his parents and siblings moved to southwestern Wyoming, likely because his father had found work at a coal mine. They were still living there in 1950, but then the records about them becomes thin. It is clear that the family members became close. Moore's sisters (Geraldine and Della) married and moved away to live with their husbands, but his brothers and parents all settled in the area around Spokane, Washington. Moore's brother were active in the Baptist church. Both Louis N. and Gerald were deacons, while Nathaniel Jr. was a reverend. 

While there feelings went unrecorded, his church-going brothers must have been horrified that their sibling was famous (or notorious) for creating some of the most lewd and vulgar Blaxploitation films of all time. 

There are hints that the brothers maintained some contact with Moore. Moore is mentioned by name in the obituaries for both Louis N. and Nathaniel, Jr. But, after Moore left for Ohio, he appears to have been largely forgotten by the people Moore left behind. A November 4, 2019 article in the Arkansas Times reported that there is no indication in Arkansas towns of Fort Smith or Paris that Rudy Ray Moore once lived there. Many residents have no idea who he is. When the reporter asked the Fort Smith Visitors' Bureau about Moore, a bureau official answered, "Was he a marshal?"

Moore's work in entertainment takes on a new dimension in view of his childhood and his lifelong estrangement from his family. The creation of outlandish characters like Petey Wheatstraw and Dolomite appears as an act of self-invention, a life-long effort by a Black teenager from Arkansas to do more with himself than work the cotton fields. That Moore, only two generations removed from slavery, succeeded in crystallizing the storytelling traditions of Black working class men into a series of independent films is perhaps an achievement almost as remarkable as the fantastic acts of Dolemite.

Sources

1. Koch, Stephen. “Straight Outta Westark.” Arkansas Times, November 2019, pp. 62–64, 66–67.

2. Petkovic, John. "Legend of Rudy Ray Moore: How a Cleveland dishwasher became the subject of Eddie Murphy’s "Dolemite Is My Name." The Plain Dealer, October 20, 2019. 

Stopping the Steal in Chesterfield County, 1870

January 1871 was a difficult time in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. The 1868 political enfranchisement of former slaves had resulted in the dominance of the county government by Republicans. This was a horrifying outcome for the country's traditional elites, who were comprised of planters and ex-Confederate officers. The October 1870 election had been their first opportunity to regain control of local government.

At first, it seemed like conservatives had succeeded in sweeping the election. Their victory had been hard won. The Republican state senator (R. J. Donaldson) and his supporters had engaged in ballot misconduct, but these efforts had only narrowed the margin of conservative's victory, and the senator was now facing criminal prosecution. At the statehouse on November 22, the conservative Reform candidates were sworn in as Chesterfield's legislative representatives. Chesterfield, it seemed, had been "redeemed" from "Radical rule." 

Later events showed that celebrations were premature. A week after the conservatives were sworn into office, their Republican challengers contested the election outcome. The state legislature is ultimately responsible for determining outcomes, and conservatives had legitimate fears that the election results would be overturned by the Republican-dominated Legislature. To eliminate Republicans as a political force in the county, Chesterfield conservatives would use all available tools, the legal system, the press, and even political violence.

One of the first steps took place at the end of the January 1871 term of the circuit court. At the end of every term, the county grand jury issues a report. Typically, the grand jury would report on the performance of elected officials and the condition of government facilities. A typical report might describe how the county jail was in a poor state and needed repairs. However, the Grand Jury had the ability to report on potential crimes that they felt should be prosecuted. They did not have the ability to force a prosecution, but a report put pressure on law enforcement and judicial officials as it put the matter on public record. It was in this way that the grand jury appears to have tried to use the legal system to weaken county Republicans. 

In their report, the grand jury stated that six men (Patrick Quilty, Grave Graves, Alfred Thomas, Evander Brayboy, Jim Chavis, and Andrew Marshall) had illegally voted. The grand jury also gave a list of witnesses who could testify. 

The grand jury didn't offer any details about the charges, and I have hard a time tracking down what they specifically the men were accused of doing. (The South Carolina Department of Archives and History might have relevant records if anyone is interested in digging into this.) The only details I can find are about the charge against Alfred Thomas. He had voted in Chesterfield County but was accused of being a resident of Darlington County, where his wife lived. 

One of the accused, Patrick Quilty, was a Black merchant living in Cheraw. Two of the three men listed as witnesses against him were election managers for the Cheraw polling station, so presumably the election managers saw him illegally cast a ballot in Cheraw. Two of the other men accused (Grave Graves and Evander Brayboy) appear also have been connected to Cheraw as some of the suggested witnesses were people who can be identified as Cheraw residents. Legal records did not record the race of the accused men, but I am guessing that they were all Black men. This was one of the first elections in which Black men could vote in, and many white conservatives accused them of abusing their right. 

The legal process

More information is available about how the legal process played out. Then as now, the county solicitor was responsible for deciding whether or not to prosecute. If he decided to prosecute, he first had to make a case before the Grand Jury. If the Grand Jury was convinced, then they would issue a true bill of indictment and there would be a jury trial to determine guilt. The circuit judge presided over both the grand jury hearing and the jury trial.

The solicitor was elected by popular vote, so the solicitor for Chesterfield county was typically a conservative, and the solicitor at the time, Archibald J. Shaw, was very much a product of South Carolina's conservative political class. He had spent his entire life in South Carolina and had worked as a lawyer during the antebellum. When the Civil War broke out, he served as an officer in the Confederate army. I have not been able to find any record of his political views, but he almost certainly was horrified that Black men had been given the right to vote and was more than willing to prosecute them for voting irregularities. 

The circuit judge, James M. Rutland, was from a similar background as Shaw. He too was a native South Carolinian who had worked as a lawyer in the antebellum. However, he held opposing political beliefs. He was one of the very few elite South Carolinians who had openly opposed secession. After the war, he supported Reconstruction and served as a delegate to the 1868 convention held to revise the state constitution. Rutland's politics played an important role in election to a judgeship. Unlike solicitors, circuit judges were elected by the state legislature, which then was dominated by Republicans.

What about the composition of the juries? Unlike today, juries were not formed by randomly selecting voters. Rather, they were respected community members chosen by local government. Each year the selectmen of each town were to make a list of voters who were "well qualified to serve as jurors, being persons of good moral character, of sound judgement" that contained between a tenth and a twentieth of the voter population. Then, at the start of each term of circuit court, the county clerk filled a grand jury and two petit juries by randomly picking from the lists provided. 

Only men could served as jurors, and certain professions (members of state government, lawyers, ministers, teachers, etc) and the elderly were excluded from service. Most significantly, Black men, enslaved only five years earlier, could be jurors. 

Despite the revolutionary political changes, the January 1871 grand jury that reported on the accusations of illegal voting was not that different from antebellum juries. The foreman was J. C. Craig, a fifty-something year old white farmer from Cheraw. In the antebellum, Craig had run his farm with help from eighteen enslaved workers, putting him on the cusp of planter status. I can document that two other jurors (John Henry Perkins and William Freeman) enslaved people. However, the jury was not all white. It included at least one Black man, Edward Blakeney. Blakeney in his fifties and living in Old Store township (approximately the location of modern Pageland). His last name suggests that he had been enslaved by John Blakeney, the largest enslaver in the area.

Both the grand jury and the petit juries formed for the next court of court (in May) were similar. They included two Black men, Wade Floyd and Robert Brewer. Both appear to have been community leaders. Floyd had served as an election manager in 1870, while Robert was a Republican candidate for the state legislature in 1874. However, these men were exceptions. Most jurors were white South Carolinians, many of whom had supported the Confederacy. We have an unusually detailed information about the views of one juror, James Harrington Powe. Powe was a college graduate and a former Confederate army captain. Many years after the war, he wrote down reminiscences of his experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and these were published by his daughter. 

One of the sketches that Powe wrote is a "humorous" account of a political meeting that was held on his farm "during Carpet-Bagger rule." The sketch is a satire that highlights the ignorance and dishonesty of Republican politicians. Two Republican candidates for the state legislature, "Prof. Theodore St. Clair Cobblestone, from Massachusetts" and "Mr. 'Cristofer Hodges'." Hodges is freedman described as "a great dude, his long kinky hair, being parted in the middle, fell over each ear, giving him the appearance of an umbrella. He was attired in a swallow-tail, black trousers, and white vest." Powe has him speaking in thick dialect: "I come for te ax yer tea gib me yo votes, so I kin go ter Kerlumby ter risprisint yer den dat State His, day call de Legislature. I'll wurk fer de eberlastin' good ob all uns, an' I'll do my lebel bes' tea git dat forty akers an' de mule." The meeting ends with Hodges being accused by another freedman, Cuffe Prince, of stealing his watermelons during the antebellum, and the two reconciling and getting elected to the Legislature.

Powe's account bear little resemble to historical fact. There were no legislators named Christopher Hodges or Cuffe Prince. At most two of Chesterfield's legislators, J. P. Singleton and D. J. J. Johnson, were formerly enslaved, and these men were skilled workers who lived in Cheraw (Singleton was a mason). However, it does clearly demonstrate Powe's attitudes towards Black voters. He certainly was not someone to hesitate to convict a freedman for illegal voting.

What happened?

Criminal prosecutions began in May, the first term of court after the Grand Jury reported on the allegations of illegal voting. The solicitor brought changes against seven men, five of the men that were accused in the Grand Jury's report and two other men (Charles Robeson and Ben Hinson). (As far as I can tell, no charges were ever brought against one of the men, Jim Chavis, who was named in the Grand Jury report.)

Of the seven men charged, the Grand Jury only returned a true bill of indictment against three of them. Only one jury trial was held, and it resulted in the criminal conviction of Alfred Thomas. Thomas was sentenced to three months in the county jail. However Alfred did not serve his full sentence. He was pardoned by the governor on June 23, the month after he was convicted. As justification for his decision, the governor explained that the jury had determined that Alfred could only legally vote in Darlington County (where his wife lived), but he had always lived and voted in Chesterfield County.

One additional charge was filed the next year. In the January term of the circuit court, Jack Evans was convicted of illegally voting and sentenced to three months in jail. However, he too did not serve the full sentence as he was pardoned by the governor on March 15 (so Evans likely spent approximately two months in jail). The reasons for Evans's pardon are somewhat curious. The governor wrote that Evans was "ignorant of the offense he was committing, being used as a tool by others." This was a common explanation for misconduct by freedmen, with the "others" typically being white Republican politicians. He also stated that the county probate judge and others had recommended the pardon. The year 1872 was an election year, and it is unclear whether the judge making the recommendation was the outgoing judge or the incoming judge. The incoming judge was W. J. Hanna, a leading conservative figure within the county. The outgoing judge was one "K. Craig." I can't find any information about him (even his first name appears to have gone unrecorded), but he also appears to have been a conservative.

In all, a year of legal proceedings had resulted in two men being imprisoned for a few months. No further prosecutions for illegal voting took place. My guess is that, after the initial grand jury report, conservative leaders in Chesterfield backed away from further political conflict. The month before the grand jury again met (in April), Robert Melton, a Republican official in northwestern Chesterfield, was murdered by Ku Kluxers, who almost certainly had been encouraged by the general anger towards Chesterfield Republicans. This act of violence seems to have been a step too far. Quite generally, political violence against Republicans had exploded in the South Carolina in the months after the election, and conservatives everywhere realized it needed to be stopped. Not only was it provoking a heavy-handed response from the federal government, but it was also empowering violent common criminals who threatened to plunge the state into general chaos. Moreover, violence was not needed. The Republican Party lost all county elected positions except for the two seats in the state's House of Representatives, and they only held onto them because the Republican-dominated Legislature was willing to overturn the election results and act against the will of Chesterfield voters. Republicans' grip on Chesterfield was slipping, and with the county's large white majority, the county was likely to completely slip out of their grasp after the next election. There was no need to prosecute a handful of people for illegally voting. The next election, held in 1872, demonstrated the truth of this. Conservatives spent the county elections. For generations, Chesterfield County would be run white conservatives, and Black voters would be almost wholly excluded from political decisions.

Sources

1. Reminiscences & Sketches of Confederate Times