Edgar Joseph Edmunds

Edgar Joseph Edmunds, known almost universally as E. J. Edmunds, was a remarkable product of the unique atmosphere of nineteenth century New Orleans. He was born in the city on January 26, 1851 to Edgard Amroise (or Edgar) and Rose Euphémie Foy Edmunds. Both Edgar and Rose were free persons of color.

E. J.'s family was fortunate because New Orleans was home to one of the largest and most affluent communities of free persons of color. The community was a product of Louisiana's origins as a French colony. A number Frenchmen who immigrated to the city entered into romantic relationships with Black women. Only rarely would couples marry, but such relationships, termed plaçages, were recognized legally and socially. This stood in contrast to other states where romantic, or sexual, relations between white men and Black women, while not uncommon, were largely ignored and unrecognized.

By the time E. J. Edmunds was born, free persons of color made up about about 8,000 (or 7%) of the nearly 120,000 residents of New Orleans. Most were of mixed race and could trace their parentage to plaçages. They spoke French and held skilled jobs such as druggist or carpenter. 

E. J.'s parents were part of this community. His father worked in retail. His first jobs were as a clerk and a salesman but he later became director for a dry-goods company. His work brought him into contact with manufacturers in the northeast and Europe, and he even traveled to France. He saw enough financial success that he was able to purchase his own home near Tremé, the neighborhood featured in the TV series of the same name. 

From The Industries of New Orleans

A photograph of E. J. shows that he was very light-skinned, so his parents were likely of mixed race. Unfortunately, I can't find any information about E. J.'s paternal grandparents. His father first appears in records when he was in his twenties. 

More is known about E. J.'s material grandparents. His grandmother Rose was the product of a plaçage. Her mother was Zelie Aubry, a French-speaking woman of color who had been born in Louisiana. Her father was the French immigrant Prosper Foy. Zelie and Prosper has become romantically involved by 1810, a few years after he moved to New Orleans. Prosper and Rose never married, and Prosper even became romantically involved with other women, but he remained in contact with Zelie and her family and supported them financially.

While E. J. would later became active in efforts to uplift freed people, his family had participated in the practice of enslavement. His grandfather Prosper tried farming, first at a plantation just outside the city and then at one in St. James Parish. Both plantations were maintained with the help of enslaved workers. 

The plantations were relatively modest operations. There were eighteen enslaved people on the first plantation, too few to make Prosper a member of Louisiana's planter elite. I have not been able to find any records of what crops Prosper grew, but the main cash crops in the region were rice, sugar, and tobacco. Prosper likely focused on subsidence crops and livestock (growing corn and raising hogs) and tobacco as rice and sugar planting required a larger labor force than was available to him. 

The grandmother Zelie did not try her hand at farming, but she used enslaved domestic labor to run her household as did her brother Florville Foy. E. J.'s mother Rose never enslaved anyone, but she grew up in the presence of enslaved workers.

E. J. was only eleven years old when New Orleans was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War, so he had little personal experience with slavery. His formative years were spent as people in the city struggled to readjust to the changes brought about by the Civil War and Emancipation.

Living in New Orleans, E. J. was fortunate to have access to one of the best educational systems in the south. Louisiana was one of the few southern states that had supported public schools during the antebellum. At the start of the Civil War, about ten-thousand students (or one in four free school-age children) were attended public school. The public schools were whites-only, but the city also supported a number of private schools and, unlike other parts of the south, there were no laws prohibiting the private education of Blacks.

At least on paper, schools in Louisiana were integrated after the Civil War. An 1868 clause in a constitutional revision explicitly prohibited racial segregation of public schools. However, many whites persisted in opposing racially integrated schools. Despite such resistance, E. J. and his siblings were able to obtain educations. E. J. attended the Fillmore School. It is unclear when exactly he began attending. He may be a "Master Edmunds" who was one of the students mentioned in a June 1870 newspaper report on public exercises held at the end of the school term. He is explicitly mentioned in a newspaper report published a year later.

During this time, E. J. and his siblings may have been passing as "white," at least on occasion. Both E. J.'s brother Arnold and his sister Olivia attended white-only schools before school integration was passed into law. Olivia attracted negative public attention in 1868 when conservatives newspaper began critically reporting that she and twenty-seven other Black students were attended the Bayou Road Girls School, a school that had always been whites-only. Some students were expelled, but Olivia was allowed to continue to attend after her family claimed she was white and provided a birth certificate as supporting evidence. The birth certificate had been filed in May 1868, and it replaced an older certificate that identified her parents as free persons of color. (The new certificate did not identify the parents' race.) A similar brith certificate was filed for E. J.

E. J.'s attendance at the Fillmore School is anomalous. The school was a grammar school that largely served students considerably younger than him. When he graduated, E. J. was twenty years old, six years older than the average student. Moreover, his later achievements show that he was well-educated and certainly had learned to learn in classes aimed at fourteen-year-olds. 

In June 1871, shortly after graduated from the Fillmore School, E. J. made the remarkable decision to travel to Paris, France to take the entrance exam for École Polytechnique. The school is an elite science and engineering school that educated France's technical elite. It offered a two-year program in science and theoretical mathematics. Graduates were then placed into more specialized schools that trained them for professions like the military, civil engineering, and science. Those who attended the school around this time included the distinguished mathematician Henri Poincaré who enrolled in 1873.

E. J.'s decision to apply for admissions to the Polytechnique was a bold one as admissions was highly competitive. Applicants were required to be French citizens, hold the equivalent of a high school diploma, and pass a highly competitive examination. E. J. presumably claimed citizenship though his grandfather and presented his diploma from the Fillmore School. He also passed the admissions exam, although just barely. He was ranked near the bottom of his class: 135th out of the 144 students admitted. 

It is unclear how E. J. was able to pass the exam as it tested material that went well-beyond what was taught at the Fillmore School. When E. J. took the exam, it heavily emphasized the mathematics, and included a number of questions on topics such as descriptive and analytic geometry. This went well beyond the curriculum offered at Fillmore which provided rote instruction in basic arithmetic. The test would have been challenging to many America college students, and even students studying in France's superior educational systems often sought additional private tutoring to prepare for the entrance exams. Prior to traveling to France, E. J. must have engaged in significant self-study or tutoring, but unfortunately there are no records of what exactly he did.

At the Polytechnique, E. J. faced considerable challenges. The school's curriculum was difficult for even the best of students, and E. J. had the additional burden of studying in a foreign country, far away from his family and friends. No information is available about how he was received by his classmates. As one of the few (possibly the only) foreign students in his class, he certainly stood out. His mixed-race background was also highly unusual (only one other Black student had studied at the Polytechnique and that had been decades ago), but this may have gone unnoticed as E. J. could easily have passed for white.

Despite these challenges, E. J. succeeded at the school. He was not one of the top students (he remained rank in the bottom quartile of his class), but he passed. On February 10, 1873, he was transferred to the École d'Application de l'Artillerie to receive training as an artillery officer. Completing the school would have positioned E. J. for a successful career in the French military, but he left the school around 1874 without completing a degree. As with much about his education, there is no record of how this impactful decision was made.

By spring 1875, E. J. had returned to the city of New Orleans. It is not entirely clear what he did in the intervening year. He may have spent that time in Germany studying at the University of Strasbourg as he later wrote that he had been educated there. (Strasbourg became part of the Germany Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.)

E. J. returned to New Orleans to work in education. Educational opportunities for Blacks had expanded greatly while E. J. had been in Europe. The politically influential Black politician P. B. S. Pinchback had been elected to the school board. A majority of the board was Black, and its members included several of Pinchback's political supporters. The board worked to remake the educational system of New Orleans and improve opportunities for freedmen. E. J. had much to offer them as his studies in France placed him within the ranks of the best education man in the state.

E. J. was first appointed as principal of Sumner School, a newly opened all-Black school. However, he had only served a few months when the school board gave him an appointment that would become more controversial: an appointment as teacher at the Boys Central High School. Boys Central was regarded as the premier public high school in the state. It attracted students from elite private academies. 

Boys Central was regarded as a "white school," but racial boundaries had not always been strictly enforced. E. J.'s brother A. J. had not only attended the school, but he even graduated valedictorian in December 1872. However, racial tensions within the had risen in the intervening two years. The conservative press harshly criticized efforts to expand educational opportunities, and matters came to a head in December 1874. On December 14, some Black girls attempted to take the entrance exam for the "white" high school in New Orleans. They were turned away and the students at the school issued a public letter protesting efforts to integrate school. The next day (December 15), students at Boys Central issued a similar letter protesting against efforts to integrate their school. Tensions erupted in violence two days later (on December 17). A number of white youths, including students from the Boys School, traveled around the city, visiting "white" public school and forcibly removing all Black students they found. Members of the Black community, armed with clubs and brickbats, assembled in opposition, and a "general row" broke out nearby one school. The fight left one Black man (Eugene Duclostenge) dead and two police officers (Officers Cheevers and Williams) injured. To avoid further violence, the school superintendent closed the public schools for remainder of the term. Spring and summer passed without major incident, but there was every reason to expect that E. J.'s appointment would cause further disruption.

E. J. was appointed as one of the six teachers at Boys Central on September 11, 1875. On the first day of class, his presence was predictably a source of conflict. The senior students (eleven students in total) left in protest upon leaving of E. J.'s presence. After the school day ended and E. J. left the school, a young man in late teens or early twenties went up to him and "grossly insulted him without any provocation." E. J. responded calmly and simply withdrew from the encounter.

Following the student walkout, conservatives newspapers intensified their criticism of the school board and their decision to appoint Edmunds. While they were successful in provoking public anger, they were unsuccessful in getting E. J. removed. P. B. S. Pinchback and the rest of the school board continued to support him.

The controversy surrounding E. J. had died down by the end of fall. He remained in the position until spring 1877. That was a chaotic time for the entire state. Both political parties claimed to have won the 1876 election, and two different bodies organized as the state legislature until fall when the Republicans conceded defeat. The conservatives Democrats who were swept into power quickly worked to undo the changes brought about the Reconstruction government. For E. J., this meant a decline in his professional fortunes. 

In April 1877, a new school board, now dominated by conservatives, was appointed. Two months later they re-segregated the public school system. Despite the controversy that had surrounded his appointment at Boys Central, E. J. was regarded positively by the new conservative school board. While it was impossible to employ him at the newly segregated Boys Central, the board appointed him as principal of the new Colored High School (also known as Academic School No. 4) in November. One month later, when they opened the Peabody Normal School for Coloreds, they appointed E. J. as both assistant principal and math professor. 

E. J.'s job prospects at his new positions were bad. Not only was he now working within a racially segregated school system, but he was doing so at a time when the newly elected conservatives were making severe budget cuts. E. J.'s salary was reduced and was given only limited resources for running the new schools.

To make matters worse, poor finances and racial segregation were not the only problems facing E. J. He also began experiencing serious health issues. The June examinations at the Colored High School were conducted by E. J.'s assistant as illness left him confined to his home. The exact nature of his illness was never described, but health problems were widespread in New Orleans during this time. As a major port city with a humid, subtropical climate, New Orleans had often experienced public health problems, and the situation been made worse by the Civil War as an influx of refugees taxed a public health system already strained by the collapse of civil government. Conditions became especially deadly in 1878 as an epidemic of Yellow Fever swept through the city. Over ten-thousand people died, and a fifth of the population fled the city.

Citing his health problems, E. J. resigned from the Normal School in November 1878. It is unclear how long he remained at the Colored High School, but he had left by 1880. That year he returned to Paris and taught English, French, and mathematics. 

E. J. only remained in France a short time as a new opportunity opened up. After major setbacks following the Republicans' 1876 political defeat, Pinchback and his allies were able to pass a bill creating Louisiana's first Historically Black University: Southern University. When the university opened in spring 1881, E. J. was one of the university's first two professors. However, E. J.'s relations with the university trustees was unhappy one. In June, the trustees issued a report criticizing E. J.'s conduct. They accused him of a "frequently absenting himself without giving any reason" and "mainly working rather to the detriment than to the interest of the institution." E. J.'s frequent absences could have been the result of his failing health, but there also seems to have been major conflict between E. J. and the trustees. Over the summer, the trustees began reorganizing the university, and E. J. communicated to the trustees that he was a candidate for the presidency. The trustees did not publicly respond, but they did pass a resolution notifying all the university's professors that their position had been vacated in June. This marked the end of E. J.'s time at Southern University.

After leaving the university, E. J. again left New Orleans, this time for the town of St. Joseph. St. Joseph was a small town of about five hundred people that was in the northeastern part of the state, on the Mississippi River. The move was a natural one in light of E. J.'s health problems as it allowed him to escape the public health problems prevalent in nineteenth century American cities. At St. Joseph, E. J. continued to teach and opened a school. However, he continued to suffer from health problems. Problems became so bad that he was unable to work and ultimately was set to the Louisiana Retreat, a insane asylum. He remained there until his death in 1887. 

Sources

1) Zelbo, Sian. “E. J. Edmunds, School Integration, and White Supremacist Backlash in Reconstruction New Orleans.” History of Education Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2019): 379–406. 

2) Zelbo, Sian. (2020). "Edgar Joseph Edmunds (1851 – 1887), Mathematics Teacher at the Center of New Orleans’ Post-Civil War Fight Over School Integration" [doctoral dissertation]. Columbia University.

The Professors of Alcorn State: Douglass Carr Griffing

D. C. Griffing
From Dartmouth Library

Douglas Carr Griffing (b. January 4, 1845; d. July 10, 1925)

Mississippi. Black.
Education: Oberlin College (no degree), Dartmouth (A.B.?), Harvard University (no degree)
Occupation: dealer in boots and shoes, 

Douglas C. Griffing (often misspelled "Griffin" or "Griffen") was born in Rodney, Mississippi in 1845 to Henrietta Griffing and an unknown father. Henrietta described herself as widowed in the 1880 census. Little is known about Douglas's early life. Douglas described his father as being born in Massachusetts in the 1880 census, Ireland in 1900, and Wales in 1920. The information provided by Douglas is almost certainly false. At the time, he was passing as white, so he had good reason to conceal his birthplace. Other information he provided to census takers is verifiably false. He described his mother as being born in Massachusetts in 1880 and 1900 and in Tennessee in 1920, but she described herself as being born in either Virginia or Tennessee (records are contradictory). One possible explanation for the confusion surrounding Douglas's parentage is that his father was his enslaver.

Douglas first appears in records as a student at Oberlin College. He completed the preparatory school and several years of college. He then moved to Dartmouth College in 1872 and graduated with an A.B. degree the next year. Afterwards, he pursued legal studies at Harvard University, but he left after a year without completing a degree. Instead, he returned to the town of Oberlin and served as an agent for the New National Era newspaper (a Republican newspaper founded by Frederick Douglass). 

In July 1874, Douglas was elected professor at Alcorn University. This was a chaotic time for the school, and it is unclear if he did any significant teaching. In October, disorder broke out on the Alcorn campus because of conflict between students, faculty, and administrators. The trustees requested the resignations of all professors, and three professors (not named) immediately resigned. By March, Douglas was removed from his position as the state legislature declared all professorships vacant. 

Douglas remained in the region after his professorship was declared vacant and was active in Republican politics. At an April 1876 colored State Convention, he was appointed as one of the delegates to a convention in Nashville. Records of the Alpha Delta Phi states that he was a state senator in 1876, but this appears to be an error as he does not appear in a photograph of that year's state senators.

By 1878. Douglas had left Mississippi. That year he moved to Kansas and worked as a land agent. Later, he had moved to Kearney, Nebraska and was working as a "dealer" in boots and shoes. Around this time, he began calling himself "D. C. Griffin" and claiming to be a white man from Massachusetts.

Douglas moved to Jamestown, North Dakota in 1892. He remained there until he retired. He was living in Chicago, Illinois around 1899, but he eventually settled in the town of Redlands, California. He remained there until his death in 1925. 

Sources

1. "Agents for the New National Era." New national era. [volume], October 01, 1874, Image 4

2. The Daily clarion. [volume], April 04, 1876, Image 2

3. Catalogue of the Alpha Delta Phi. 

4. Year: 1870; Census Place: Oberlin, Lorain, Ohio; Roll: M593_1235; Page: 638B

5. Year: 1880; Census Place: Kearney, Buffalo, Nebraska; Roll: 743; Page: 256B; Enumeration District: 154

6. Year: 1900; Census Place: Jamestown, Stutsman, North Dakota; Roll: 1232; Page: 9; Enumeration District: 0179; FHL microfilm: 1241232

7. Year: 1920; Census Place: Redlands, San Bernardino, California; Roll: T625_129; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 178

The last Clariosophic students: W. McBirney Sloan

William McBirney Sloan
The State April 8. 1928

William McBirney Sloan in ca. 1894
The State, April 8, 1928

William McBirney Sloan
Courtesy of Anna via FindAGrave.

William McBirney Sloan (b. August 25, 1854; d. December 10, 1931)

South Carolina.  White.

Occupation: clerk, lawyer, revenue driver, railroad agent. 

Father's occupation: clerk of the House of Representatives, grocer, merchant. 

W.  McBirney Sloan was born in Pendleton, SC in 1851 to John Trimmier Sloan and Eliza Ann Benson Sloan. His older brother Robert Sloan was also a student at USC and a member of the Clariosophic Society.

The year McBirney was born, his father John was elected to the position of clerk of the House of Representatives. He served as clerk over 25 years. He served consecutive terms until 1869, when the Republicans took control of the state government, and returned to the position in 1877, when Conservatives regained control.

Before becoming clerk, the father John had worked as a merchant. By 1860, he had accumulated considerable wealth and owned 61 enslaved workers. John is described in more detail in the entry for McBirney's brother Robert.

The Sloan family moved to Columbia in April, 1865, two months after the city had been devastated by federal troops led by General Sherman. In Columbia, McBirney attended the Columbia Male Academy. At the academy, Arthur studied alongside a number of other future USC students including Holmes Agnew, Charles W. Parmele, Charles J. and Edward M. Babbitt (sons of USC Professor Babbitt), Arthur D. Rivers, Edwin W. Screven, and John P. Thomas Jr.

In Fall, 1872, McBirney matriculated at the University of South Carolina. That Spring, he was admitted into the Clariosophic Society. At the start of McBirney's second year at USC, the first African American student matriculated in the university. McBirney was left school in protest.

After leaving the University of South Carolina, McBirney began reading law at night. He was admitted to the bar, although he never started a legal practice.

McBirney played a small but significant role in the election of 1876. That year the outcome of the election was contested. According to ballet counted the Conservative candidates for state legislature in the counties of Edgefield and Laurens won the election. However, the number of votes cast in those counties exceeded the number of registered voters, so the Board of State Canvassers did not certify the election outcome. The Board was dominated by Republicans, and Conservatives alleged that the Board's action were improper and politically motivated. The outcomes of the elections in Edgefield and Laurens had national significance. They had the potential to determine both the  gubernatorial and the presidential election.

The newly elected state legislature was required by state constitution to meet on November 28. However, on that day, the  election dispute still had not been resolved. To guard against political violence, President Grant stationed federal troops at the Statehouse. When the legislature was to convene, federal troops limited access to the Hall of the House. When the Conservative candidates from Laurens and Edgefield tried to gain entrance, they were refused. In protest, the Conservative members-elect left the Statehouse and convened elsewhere (in Carolina Hall). Members were then sworn, and elected positions like Speaker of the House were filled. McBirney's father John was elected clerk and McBirney assistant clerk. 

Two days later, on November 30, the Conservative members-elect tried again to gain entrance to the Statehouse. This time the members-elect from Laurens and Edgefield were granted entrance. However, Conservatives and the Republicans had each elected a Speaker of House. Each Speaker declared the other illegitimate, and confusion broke out as Democrats and Republicans tried to address the two speakers simultaneously.

Concerned that violence would break out, McBirney gave his father two pistols which he had been carrying. He then left the Statehouse and spent the half a day searching for more firearms. However, although tensions remained high, no violence broke out and the legislatures remained in the hall day and night for the next four days.

On December 3, a rumor spread that the Republicans were plotting to bring in a group of African-Americans from Charleston and have them forcibly remove the members-elect from Edgefield and Laurens. In response, thousands of armed Whites from all of the state came to Statehouse to support the Conservatives. 

As armed Whites assembled outside the Statehouse, violence again threated to break out in the Hall of the House. Later McBirney recounted that one of the most dramatic moments was when a visitor came to the hall shortly before the  Republican Speaker of the House arrived. Although an old friend of the Speaker, the visitor was strongly opposed to the actions of the Republicans. the Speaker entered the Hall, the visitor approached the speaker's stand and told him, "If anything happens, I'll kill you."

Despite the large presence of armed men at the statehouse, no violence broke out. Republicans and Conservatives continued to challenge each other over the election outcome, but they did so through the press and the legal system. On December 14, the Conservatives declared their candidate, Wade Hampton, the elected governor. However, the Republican governor did not recognize their decision. Hampton tried to demonstrate that he was governor in February, 1877 by issuing a pardon to a convict. 

At the time that Hampton issued his pardon, most of the guards at the state penitentiary were African-American. Conservatives were concerned that the guard who respond to Hampton's pardon by releasing all the prisoners in protest. As a precaution, the local Conservative paramilitary group the Governor's Guards was asked to furnish a squad of men to act as prison guards. McBirney was among the members chosen to serve as guards. They were sworn in and remained at the prison for ten days, until the court ruled in favor of Hampton's pardon.

The dispute over the election outcome finally came to an end in April, 1876 (four months after Hampton claimed to have been elected). That month President Grant order that the federal troops guarding the Statehouse be withdrawn. Recognizing that Conservatives were likely to tried to seize political power through violent force and Republicans would unable to offer effective resistance, the Republican gubernatorial candidate announced that he would no longer dispute the election outcome.

A few years after the election, in 1879, McBirney entered city politics. That year he was asked to run as city alderman for Ward 1. He declined to run but was voted into office anyway. He ultimately served 4 terms as city alderman.

Around this time, McBirney went into business. He helped run the general merchandise firm of Sloan and Blakely. McBirney spent most of the 1880s working as a merchant, but in 1893, he began working for the government. That year the Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland was elected. Cleveland was the first Democrat elected since the Civil War. South Carolina Conservatives benefitted from his election by receiving federal appointments.  One of Cleveland's first appointments was the appointment of Confederate veteran D. Frank Bradley as South Carolina's internal revenue collector. McBirney became Bradley's chief deputy.

McBirney served as chief deputy collector of the internal revenue for a few years. He then returned to the position of assistant clerk of the House. After some years as assistant clerk, he returned to business, selling coal and business.

McBirney had returned to working for the federal government by 1890. By that time, he had been made a railway agent and was working at the Columbia office of the Seaboard Air Line. 

During this period, McBirney became increasingly involved in city politics. He ran for city mayor in 1892. He lost the election, but was then elected to fill the unexpired term of an alderman who had died. Two years later, in 1894, he ran again for mayor, and this time he won the election. He was reelected and ultimately served from 1894 to 1898.  During McBirney's time as mayor, the city of Columbia began to modernize. His administration was responsible for installing street lights than used electricity rather than gas and for replacing horse cars with electric trolley cars. He also worked to bring manufacturing, especially cotton mills, to Columbia. He pushed to lower taxes on mills and decrease transportation costs to encourage businesses to move their mills to the area. 

Later on life McBirney worked in the United States internal revenue department, serving  for 18 years .  He was also a special United States gauger for the state alcohol dispensaries.  

In December, 1931, McBirney suffered from pleurisy which developed into double pneumonia. He died of the illness on December 10, while hospitalized. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. 

Sources Cited

1) "'Wallace House' Officer Recalls Stirring Days." The State. April 8, 1928. p. 5.

2) "Sloan Rites Are Arranged." Columbia Record. December 9, 1931. p. 12.

2) 1860; Census Place: Pendleton, Anderson, South Carolina; Page: 256; Family History Library Film: 805212

3) 1870; Census Place: Columbia, Richland, South Carolina; Roll: M593_1507; Page: 91A; Family History Library Film: 553006

4) 1880; Census Place: Columbia, Richland, South Carolina; Roll: 1238; Page: 242A; Enumeration District: 162

5) 1900; Census Place: Columbia Ward 1, Richland, South Carolina; Page: 15; Enumeration District: 0084; FHL microfilm: 1241539

6) 1910; Census Place: Columbia Ward 1, Richland, South Carolina; Roll: T624_1471; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 0079; FHL microfilm: 1375484

7) 1920; Census Place: Columbia Ward 1, Richland, South Carolina; Roll: T625_1707; Page: 28B; Enumeration District: 80

8) "Death of Col. John T. Sloan, Sr." The Anderson intelligencer, August 28, 1895, p. 3.

'sivilizing Freedmen in Arkansas: the Branch Normal College

An artist's depiction of the Arkansas river as viewed from Little Rock.
The view from Pine Bluff would have been similar

J. C. Corbin
From Wikipedia

On September 27, 1875, visitors to Pine Bluff, Arkansas could witness a scene that they could well mistake for a malaria-induced hallucination. In the middle of this rough river town in the Arkansas Delta, a scholarly-looking Black man was welcoming students to a newly opened college. That man was J. C. Corbin, a forty-two year old graduate of Ohio University and the founding principal of the Branch Normal College, Arkansas's public Historically Black College.

The mere existence of the college was a remarkable achievement. The college had been created by the state legislature two years earlier. This was a time when the state government was dominated by a Republican Party that strongly supported Black Arkansans. Much had changed in the intervening two years. The Republican party had collapsed in chaos, and political power was gained by conservative Democrats that included the state's former slave-owning elite. The new government rolled back many of the changes enacted by Republicans, but it preserved some measures enacted to support newly freed slaves as a paternalistic gesture intended to "fuse" Black voters with conservative Democratic politicians.

The early history of the Branch Normal College is of interest because it represents an unusual road in the development of higher education for freed slaves. Most HBCUs founded during this era were founded by men with a background either in the military or in missionary work. Fisk University's founding president Erastus M. Cravath was a white pastor affiliated with the American Missionary Association. Howard University was founded by the Union general O. O. Howard. Booker T. Washington, the most famous African American educator of the nineteenth century, was neither a military officer nor a missionary, but he had been mentored by Samuel C. Armstrong, who was both the son of missionaries in Hawaii and a former Union general.

Pine Bluff during the nineteenth century

Pine Bluff was a natural place to provide services for freed persons as the town had become a regional center for Black life. The town is located in the south central part of the state, on the Arkansas river. The surrounding area is part of the Arkansas Delta. In the years before the Civil War, aspiring planters brought large numbers of enslaved workers to the area as the Delta offers superior conditions for cotton-growing.

Census records clearly tell the story of this growth. In 1850, there were just under six thousand people living in the county. Ten years later, at the outbreak of the Civil War, the population had more than doubled to just over fifteen thousand. Throughout this period, just under half (or approximately forty-five percent) of the population was enslaved.

As a river town, Pine Bluff played a central role in this growth. The most efficient mode of transport in southern Arkansas was along a river, so aspiring planters arrived in the town by boat and then, after establishing themselves in the countryside, sent their cotton there to be sold at market. The town grew even faster than the surrounding countryside: the population increased four-fold, from just under three-hundred residents to almost one-thousand four-hundred. 

After the war broke out, the town's population swelled as freed slaves from the countryside went there seeking refuge. The town became a safe haven in fall 1863 when Union troops took control and set up a refugee camp. Soldiers remained there and even maintained an office of the Freedmen's Bureau until spring 1869. By 1870, Black residents represented nearly sixty-five percent of the town's population. This was a dramatic change. Before the war, they had been a substantial presence but never a majority.

The conditions that drew freedmen to the town also made it a challenging place to run a college. While Pine Bluff offered great economic opportunity before the war, it had never been an easy place to live. The town was subject to frequent flooding, and the climate was subtropical with hot humid summers. This made for an unhealthful, malarial environment that forced newcomers to go through a long and difficult period of enduring sickness while they acclimated. 

The war, especially the large influx of refugees, strained Pine Bluff's meagre public infrastructure, so problems with sanitation worsened the already bad public health conditions. Disease ran rampant through the freedmen population, and mortality rates soared.

In the face of these considerable obstacles, Corbin had few resources to support the newly formed college. During the first years, the college was run out of a rented house that also served as Corbin's residence. He was the sole faculty member and was even responsible for menial tasks like cleaning the classrooms. 

Skeptics would have questioned the value of providing Corbin with even this modest level of support. Slaves had largely been deprived of education, and Arkansas had only a negligible population of free persons of color. During the first few years after the war, the Freedman's Bureau and missionary societies had run schools for free slaves, but teachers focused on imparting basic skills like literacy rather preparing students for college. Corbin's own official reports on the college communicates a sense of frustration with the difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified Black students. So, who were the students?

Map of Pine Bluff in 1869. The location of the Branch Normal in 1875 is indicated in red.
From Arkansas Digital Archive

The first students at the Branch Normal College

The first class of students consisted of seven students drawn from Pine Bluff and Drew County (another county located in the delta). The students appear to have come from families of relative privilege. Consider the student Robert Allen. Robert was twenty years old and was living with his parents in Drew County. Robert was born in Arkansas, but his parents had moved from out-of-state (from North Carolina and Virginia). There's no record of Robert's family before the war, but they were almost certainly enslaved. (No free persons of color lived in Drew County in 1860). Robert's father was a wagon maker and a carpenter. These were skilled professions that put the family on firm economic ground and enabled the father to purchase real estate.

Also a member of the first college class was Angeline Vester. Angeline was thirteen years old, much younger than Robert, and had moved from out-of-state. She had been born in Louisiana and had moved to Drew County with her mother and stepfather. The stepfather was a Union veteran (formerly a private in the 98th Colored Infantry), and he likely brought the family to Arkansas to take advantage of the availability of farm land. By the time Angeline began her studies, the family was running a farm.

Pine Bluff in 1908
The location of the Branch Normal College in 1883 is indicated by the light blue dot.
From the Library of Congress

The Branch Normal College in the 1880s

The college graduated its first student in 1882, seven years after it opened. A second student graduated the following year. Both students, James C. Smith and Alice A. Sizemore, remained at the Branch Normal to work as teachers, the first ones Corbin hired. Both were in their earlier twenties, so they had little direct experience with enslavement, but they had grown up around people who did. No information about Alice's background is available, but James seems to have come from a background similar to that of Robert Allen. James was born in Arkansas, but his parents had moved from out-of-state (from North Carolina, likely forcibly by an enslaver). His father worked as a carpenter and wheelwright.

The college moved to permanent facilities in January 1883. The new location was a modest one: a two-story brick building constructed on a twenty acre plot in the western outskirts of town. The college still offered no living facilities, so students continued to live off-campus in rented rooms.

The Branch Normal College in 1908. Only the left-most building existed in 1883.
The right-most building is a dormitory that was built in 1887.
The building between them is a shop building constructed in 1893.
From the Library of Congress

The college celebrated its achievements at a June 1883 public ceremony held to mark the end of the academic term. The event was held off-campus at St. John's AME church. The nature of the event reveals a bit about how Corbin ran the college. The event opened with a prayer by Rev. Sylvester Hutchinson, likely the pastor at St. John's. This was followed by three student speeches: a salutatory (or welcome speech) on "Fame," a speech on "The Human Hand," and a graduating address by Alice A. Sizemore on "The Past." At the end, Frank J. Wise, a prominent white lawyer,  presented diplomas. Music was played between the speeches. The first speech was preceded by the singing of the anthem and Hallelujah by the college choir. The "First Regimental March" was played next, following by "Spirit Creator of Mankind" by the Belgian composer Louis Lambillotte, and finally Gloria from Mozart's Twelfth Mass. 

The song "First Regimental March" was likely the "Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment." Singing this son was an act of major political significance. The song was written during the Civil War, and it is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body." The lyrics proudly proclaim Black soldiers' opposition to the Confederacy. Some lines are "We are going out of slavery; we're bound for freedom's light; / We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight" and "[Former enslavers] will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin." This was a remarkably bold act by students and faculty at a college funded by a state legislature dominated by former Confederate soldiers!

While not as blatant, the rest of the event also held political significance. The speeches displayed academic knowledge and were the types of speeches delivered by students at Predominantly White Institutions during the 19th century. When had graduated from Ohio University several decades earlier, Corbin had delivered a speech on "The Dangers of Literary Distinction." Compares these speeches to those delivered by students at HBCUs like Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. At a similar exercise held in 1882, the titles of Tuskegee student speeches included "Go to Work" and "The Drunkard's Daughter." The content of the speeches was not recorded, but the titles suggested that they were exhortations to avoid vices that whites alleged were prevalent among freedpersons.

Later that year, in December, the Branch Normal College held another public exhibit. At this event, students gave speeches displaying their knowledge of classical culture. One student delivered a declamation of Anthony's Oration over Caesar, while another gave one on "Rome." Other speeches emphasized students' connections to American culture. One student read a selection from George Washington's Inaugural Address, another spoke on "Revolutionary soldiers."

The music choices suggest similar attitudes. The songs played at the June event were taken from the European musical tradition. This ran counter to common expectations. In public music performances, especially those held for white audiences, students at HBCUs typically played music that came from (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) Black traditions such as spirituals.

A closer look at Branch Normal Students

We can get an unusually close look at Branch Normal students during the 1880s thanks to the work of an interviewer employed by the Works Progress Administration. In the 1930s, the WPA sponsored a project to interview freed slaves. Among those interviewed was Joseph Samuel Badgett, a former at the Branch Normal. Here's what Badgett told the interviewer about his experiences:

After that I went to Pine Bluff. The County Judge at that time had the right to name a student from each district. I was appointed and went up there in '82 and '83 from my district. It took about eight years to finish Branch Normal at that time. I stayed there two years. I roomed with old man John Young.

You couldn't go to school without paying unless you were sent by the Board. We lived in the country and I would go home in the winter and study in the summer. Professor J.C. Corbin was principal of the Pine Bluff Branch Normal at that time. Dr. A. H. Hill, Professor Booker, and quite a number of the people we consider distinguished were in school then. They finished, but I didn't. I had to go to my mother because she was ill. I don't claim to have no schooling at all.

John Young is listed in the 1893 college catalogue as living in Pine Bluff, but I can't find any other information about him. The other two people he mentions were deceased at the time of the interview, but they had been prominent educators and religious leaders.

Former Branch Normal student A. H. Hill
From "The Sons of Allen"

A. H. Hill was Andrew Henry Hill. Hill was born after the war (in 1870) in Brentwood, Tennessee. I haven't been able to find much information about the parents, and in particular, it unclear if they were free or enslaved. When Hill was a child, the family moved to Monroe County and started a farm. When he was a young teenager, Hill became active in the AME church, but instead of immediately entering the ministry, he decided to enroll at the Branch Normal College. He completed his studies there in 1899 and then went to Ohio to attend Wilberforce University. He graduated the university three years later and then returned to Arkansas to serve as a minister at an AME church in Fort Smith. He also served president of Shorter College (an HBCU in Little Rock that is affiliated with the AME church) for almost a decade and was a minister in Pine Bluff.

Joseph A. Booker
From Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Professor Booker was Joseph Albert Booker. His life before the war is relatively well documented. In 1859, Booker was born enslaved on a plantation near the modern town of Portland, Arkansas. The plantation was run by John P. Fisher, an early settler from New Hampshire. By the time Booker was born, Fisher's plantation was a sizable farm of 600 acres which was cultivated by fifty-five enslaved workers. 

Booker experienced great hardship as a child. Both parents died when he was a baby. According to one account, his father was whipped to death for teaching other slaves to read. Booker remained on Fisher's plantation until after the Civil War. By 1870, he and his sister were working as farm laborer for a Black farmer (Jonia Georg).

A modern photo of the Fisher plantation where Booker was born
From Wikipedia

Booker followed a path similar to that of Hill. He became interested in Christianity as a teenager (although he joined the Baptist church rather than the AME church) and enrolled at the Branch Normal College. The timeline of his studies is a little confused. Badgett says that Booker was at the school in 1882 or 1883, but accounts of Booker's life state that he attended from 1878 to 1881. In any case, at some point, he left the college and moved to Nashville, Tennessee in order to attend Roger Williams University, a now defunct HBCU founded by white abolitionists. He stayed at the university for five years, earning a bachelor's degree in 1886. Booker returned to Arkansas after completing his education. He served as minister for a church in southern Arkansas for year, and then he was elected president of Arkansas Baptist College, a HBCU in Little Rock. He remained in that position for the rest of his life.

Booker credited J. C. Corbin for instilling in him a deep love of learning while he was at the Branch Normal College, but politically, the two differed in important respects. Booker was a supporter of Booker T. Washington and even hosted him when he visited Arkansas. In keeping with Washington's views, Booker advocated a conservative political approach that emphasized accommodation over confrontation. In the 1900s, he served on a city vice commission charged with cleaning up Little Rock's red light districts, and he was appointed by the governor to a race relations committee created in response to a major 1919 race riot. 

Joseph A. Booker
From AARG

Joseph Samuel Badgett was not a major public figure like Booker or Hill, but his life is also well-documented. In his interview, he says that his mother was enslaved and "had Indian in her." The last statement is consistent with other public records which record her race as "mulatto." Joseph was born during the last year of the Civil War, so he was born into slavery but had no memory of being a slave. 

Joseph says nothing about his father in his interview, and federal census records are contradictory about basic facts concerning him. The father is described as being born in Ohio in 1900 and 1910, but the 1940 census states he was born in Texas. One possibility for this silence and confusion is that the father was his enslaver, or another white man living in the household.

Joseph's enslaver was likely Madison Badgett, the only adult male with the last name "Badgett" who was recorded as living in the county in 1860. That year, Madison Badgett enslaved two women whose ages match the ages of Joseph's mother and older sister. No enslaved men were in the household, lending further support to the theory that Joseph's father was his enslaver. 

After emancipation, Joseph's mother found work as a domestic servant, and he helped support her by working as a farmhand. Joseph was educated in the state's newly formed public schools, and his teachers included J. C. Smith. Smith was likely teaching between terms at the Branch Normal College to earn some extra income.

His WPA interview focuses on his early life, but Joseph achieved major personal success after leaving the college. He settled in Little Rock and worked as an upholster and then as a barber. At the time of his interview, he had owned his own home for decades.

The Branch Normal College changed significantly after Corbin left. His departure was part of a wave of changes throughout the south as populist politicians rose to political power and created the Jim Crow political system that sought to reduce Black citizens to a state of near-slavery. At the Branch Normal, Arkansas politicians worked to replace the college's academic coursework with training for semi-skilled professions. The campus environment during the 1920s was depicted by novelist Chester Himes (whose father had been on the faculty) in his autobiography and, in fictionalized form, in his novel The Third Generation. Himes depicts the Branch Normal as a wild place where the children of poor and ignorant sharecroppers learned to become "good farmers an' good blacksmiths an' good Nigras," in the words of the governor in The Third Generation. The learning of classical western culture that Corbin had promoted was entirely gone.

Map of Pine Bluff in 1923. The location of the college is indicated in red.
University of Arkansas Library

Frank R. Veal: Allen University's "Judas?"

Veal and a dean were featured in a 1961 advertisement for evaporated milk
Ebony magazine

As Allen University president, Frank R. Veal played a crucial role in the South Carolina governor's attacks on HBCUs during the late 1950s. He comes off badly in the public record. A protest flyer named Veal as one of the "Judases, Uncle Tom's, and tools of Timmerman" who was carrying the state to deeper ruin. The AAUP report on the incident used more restrained language but likewise condemned him. It determined that he had grossly violated established rules for academic due process, and his actions were "either complete administrative confusion or hypocritical lip service used as a device to conceal administrative misdeeds." Here we take a closer look at Veal's record. 

Most surprising is that, prior to moving to South Carolina, Veal enjoyed close interactions with prominent members of the Communist Party. It appears that the South Carolina press and government officials never learned of this despite the amount of attention they paid to events at Allen.

Veal was born in 1907 to a middle-class family in Milledgeville, Georgia. Veal's father worked as a machinist and a laundryman and was able to purchase his own home. After graduating from high school, Veal left Georgia for South Carolina to attend Allen University. This began a life-long connection with the university and the AME church. He graduated with an A.B. degree in 1932 and then remained at the university for a year to teach history. He then pursued religious studies for most of the 1930s. He earned a B.D. from the divinity school at the University of Chicago and possibly an S.T.N. degree from Boston University. (The BU degree is mentioned in one newspaper article, but I could not find it in university records.) In the mid-1930s, he worked as an assistant football coach at Howard University while also taking classes. He earned a B.D. degree from Howard in 1937.

In 1940, Veal moved to Ohio to work as a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He would serve as a religious minister for most of the 1940s. He was first stationed in the city of Newark, but the next year he moved to Brown Chapel in Cincinnati. Within the church community, he is remembered for raising funds to expand the chapel's physical infrastructure. 

Veal became active in politics while in Ohio. His political work started with civil rights activity. He was a leader in the local chapter of the NAACP. This brought him into regular contact with left-wing political activists in the city. In the late 1940s, leftists, both in the city and nation-wide, were organizing around the third-party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. Wallace had served as Roosevelt's Vice President but had split with mainstream Democrats over foreign policy and communism. Wallace advocated for adopting socialist democratic policies and peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Many of Wallace's supporters were part of the socialist democratic organization the Progressive Citizens of America. In 1948, Wallace ran as a third-party presidential candidate, and the PCA formed the backbone of his political party, the United States Progressive Party.

An important part of the Progressive Party's platform was racial equality, so Veal's work in the NAACP naturally drew him into the Progressive's orbit. He served on a November 13, 1947 committee that welcomed Wallace when he came to Ohio to campaign. He also appeared at a January 21, 1948 Progressive Citizens rally held in Columbus. 

Veal's involvement with the Progressive Party attracted negative attention from internal security forces. The Progressive Party heavily drew membership from communists and was even believed by some conservatives to be under communist control. As a result, many people involved with the Progressives came under FBI investigation. Veal himself came to the FBI's attention after an informant reported that he was a communist. 

The accusation of communist membership was not absurd. Cincinnati was in fact home to a significant number of members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In Ohio, almost 3,000 people joined the Party. As a major industrial center, Cincinnati was a center for many of the regional CP's activities.

Dorothy Pilder
High school yearbook photo from Ancestry

Although both the Progressive Party and the Communist Party reached out to African Americans, African American membership was small. Many local Party members were white union members. For example, the communist labor organizer Talmadge Raley was born to poor farmers in Kentucky and had moved to Cincinnati to work at a porcelain factory. By the 1940s, he was working as an union organizer and then as a local union representative for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America.

Talmadege was unusual in that much of the CP's membership was made up of white immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from Eastern Euope. Typical was Dorothy Pilder (later Dorothy Renfrow). Dorothy was born in Cincinnati, but her parents were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia who ran a delicatessen. Others were from a working-class background. The Party member Victor Keller (or Kellar) was a Ukrainian immigrant who worked as a machine operator in a clothing factory. 

Louis B. Renfrow
Harvard yearbook photo via Ancestry

While Veal's involvement with the Progressive Party brought him into regular contact with members of the CPUSA, his direct engagement with the CP was not very significant. The only information the FBI was able to collect was a report that Veal had been put on a local CPUSA committee charged with handling religious matters. After a year, the Cincinnati FBI office decided to close Veal's file. The file ends with the remark that he was "never considered sufficiently important to be designated as the subject of a Security Card Index."

The Cincinnati office had reviewed its records on Veal because he had moved to South Carolina in August 1948. Veal left Ohio to assume leadership of "Mother Emanuel," the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. This was an honor. The church is one of the oldest and largest African American churches in the south.

Veal's largely dropped out of progressive politics after moving to South Carolina. Continued involvement with the Progressive Party was unworkable. In November, Wallace was soundly defeated in the presidential election, receiving even fewer votes that States' Rights candidate Strom Thurmond, and support for the Progressives collapsed throughout the nation. The Progressive Party never enjoyed strong support in South Carolina, and interest in communism was essentially non-existent.

After he moved, Veal fell within the jurisdiction of the Savannah office of the FBI. That office reviewed the files collected by the Cincinnati office and solicited information from law enforcement officers as well as informants. Their investigation failed to produce any indication that Veal was engaged in subversive activities. One FBI agent (Carlton M. Dillard) requested permission to interview Veal with the goal of developing him as a source of information about communists. Permission was denied, and the FBI again lost interest in him.

Veal moved from Charleston to Columbia in 1952 to serve as pastor for the Emmanuel AME Church. That year, he was one of three African Americans to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. All three lost the election by a significant margin, but their campaigns were significant as the candidates were the first African Americans in South Carolina to run for major political offices in over a generation. 

After he had served as a pastor in Columbia for a year, Veal left the church to work in higher education. He was elected president of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. The college is closely affiliated with the AME church, so his election was natural one. Veal served without attracting any controversy for three years and then returned to Columbia after being elected president of Allen University. He replaced Samuel R. Higgins who stepped down after being elected an AME bishop. 

What are we to make of this? In a report, an FBI agent dismissed Veal's activities in South Carolina with the remark that they were "self-centered to promote his own welfare." An informant the agent contacted (Albert B. Brooks) went further. He said that Veal was "over-ambitious" and trying to get elected as Allen University president with the "ultimate aim" of becoming an AME bishop.

The broad contours of the FBI agent's report appear correct. As early as 1948, the press reported that Veal was trying to replace Samuel R. Higgins as Allen University president. A charitable interpretation of his record is that he was an ambitious religious leader who wanted to advance the cause of African Americans but also recognized the constrains imposed political reality. In Ohio, with its more liberal political culture, Veal built relations with progressives, but in the conservative strong-hold of South Carolina, he recognized that he needed to respect the state's staunchly segregationist culture.

Whatever plans Veal had to use the Allen University presidency to advance his standing within the AME church were ruined by the negative publicity surrounding the governor's attacks. He remained as Allen University president until 1962, but he never received his desired bishopric. Instead, he returned to Ohio to serve as pastor of the Bethel AME Church in the town of Lockland (a suburb of Cincinnati). He remained there until his death in 1969. 

Sources

1) "Three Negro Candidates in South Carolina." Jackson advocate. [Jackson, Miss.], August 2, 1952, p. 1.

2) "Move to Oust Dr. Samuel Higgins as Allen U. Head" The Ohio daily-express [Dayton, Ohio]., June 14, 1948, p. 2

Horace B. Davis: Turning Red in the Black Belt

Newspaper announcement of the hiring of Horace B. Davis and two other professors
The Sou'wester newspaper; September 14, 1929

Horace B. Davis and his family arrived in Memphis, Tennessee in fall 1929. They moved because Horace had been hired to teach at Southwestern University (now Rhodes College). The job was just a paycheck for him. The scholarship that had funded him for the last three years had run out, and his political activities had made university administrators hesitant to employ him. 

Horace's arrival on campus did not attract any special attention. The school newspaper announced his hire in an article discussing all the new additions to the faculty, but it just offered a brief summary of his educational history. Horace's most notable appearance in the student newspaper was in a satirical issue published shortly before April 1st (a traditional day for practical jokes). Among students, Horace evidently had developed a reputation both for his interest in international politics and his appearance. The article humorously reported that Horace had recently been absent from his class, and one rumor held that he had gone to a London disarmament conference, but in fact, he had been having his suit cleaned and pressed. That task, the paper reported, was so taxing that he had to spent an entire day resting in bed.

Even though Tennessee is a border state, and Memphis was a regional commercial center, Horace found the city to be a deeply southern place. Much of the economy revolved around cotton which was grown on large farms by sharecroppers. Unfavorable leases trapped sharecroppers in debt, leaving them stuck in rural poverty. Black sharecroppers had it especially bad as the state's legal system provided them with little protection from unscrupulous landlords. In one discussion with a landlord about farming, Horace was  told candidly about the way things worked. The landlord explained that most sharecroppers maintained their own financial records and checked them against the records maintained by their landlord. When asked what sharecroppers did when two accounts did not agree, he said, "they lose."

Horace's home at 1650 Monroe Avenue, Memphis, TN
From Redfin

The lack of legal protection left Blacks exposed to violence. While Horace was living in the city, a Black streetcar passenger was shot to death by the conductor. The conductor was upset because he'd been questioned about whether he had correctly computed change for a fare payment. Although he committed the act in front of witnesses, the conductor was never charged with murder. Instead, he was sentenced to a month in jail for carrying a firearm without a permit. 

The violence of Memphis even struck close to Horace's home. He employed a young Black woman, Lillie Mae Harris, to do domestic work. One night after work, while waiting at a bus-stop, Lillie was forced into a car by two young white men. They proceeded to take her to an isolated area and then raped her. Even though she had taken note of the men's license plate number, she did not file a police report as her family discouraged her, arguing that there was no hope of seeing the rapists punished.

Lillie's mother worked as kitchen staff at Southwestern University, and she and Horace developed good social relations with each other. Through their interactions, Horace learned much about the complexities of Jim Crow social etiquette. One time Lillie and her mother invited Horace and his family to visit their uncle who lived in the country and worked as a sharecropper. Always eager to learn about the lives of workers, Horace happily accepted the invitation. 

Lillie's uncle was a gracious host. He welcomed Horace to his home and spoke freely about life in rural Tennessee. However, he also respected the social rules of Jim Crow. He served Horace and his family a meal at the dinner table, but he and his family declined to join them and instead ate in the kitchen.

One of the uncle's neighbors was a white sharecropper. He and the uncle enjoyed relations that were friendly but strangely shaped by segregation. Horace wanted to meet the white sharecropper to learn more about working conditions in the area. The uncle introduced the two. Horace was invited into the sharecropper's home, and the two candidly discussed farm life. During the whole visit, the uncle waited outside. Although the uncle and the farmer were on good terms and even hunted together, the uncle seemed to feel that it would have been improper to join a conversation between white men. 

Surprisingly, Horace had largely positive things to say about teaching at Southwestern University. At the time, the university was a small school of about five hundred students and was associated with the Presbyterian church. The student body was all-white and largely drawn from the region around Memphis. The typical incoming freshman had received a limited education from the state's primitive high school system. The university offered a somewhat old-fashioned curriculum (the most popular course was a language course on Ancient Greek), but academic standards were high. After four years at the university, most students graduated with an academic education that compared well with that offered by universities in the north.

Horace experienced first-hand how the university molded students. He was assigned to teach a freshman class that had an open-ended curriculum and was designed to help students adjust to college work. Wanting to promote critical thinking, Horace selected a textbook titled Introduction to Critical Thinking that included both a chapter on Darwin's theory of evolution and a chapter on higher criticism of the Bible. The university president objected to the use of such textbook in a freshman class at a church-affiliated school in Bible Belt, so Horace instead taught anthropology with an emphasis on the work of Franz Boas, especially his ideas about cultural relativism and his opposition to scientific racism. 

On racial issues, Horace found that many of his students held regressive views. Once he held a classroom poll on whether it was ever justified to burn a man to death. The poll showed the class to be evenly split on the issue, but when he rephrased the question as one about "lynching" rather than "burning," he was shocked to find that twenty-six of the twenty-nine students were in favor. However, the students were tolerant of opposing views on these issues. Although the students soon realized that Horace did not share their political views, they were friendly and remained engaged in their coursework. A biology professor he knew had an even more positive experience. Many of his students were able to reconciled his lectures on evolution with their religious beliefs.

Horace planned to return to New York to complete his dissertation at the end of the academic year. His departure was announced in the student newspaper without any great fanfare: "Scott [another professor], Davis plan to work on Ph.D. degrees," read the headline. Over the course of the next month, circumstances would change rapidly. Horace and his wife Marion would find themselves under the scrutiny of the national press.

By the end of the academic year, Marion had joined the Communist Party USA. Accounts of when she joined are conflicting. In his autobiography, Horace stated that she joined while they were living in Pennsylvania, but Marion wrote that she joined while living in Memphis. The decision to join was a life-changing one: party membership potentially exposed her to negative press and police repression. However, it was one made without any fanfare. Marion and Horace subscribed to the American Communist Party's newspaper, the Daily Worker. The newspaper regularly included a form that readers could send to the Party if they were interested in learning more about communism. Marion decided to fill out the form after witnessing both the worsening national economic condition (the Great Depression had begun) and the regressive political situation in Memphis. In June, shortly before she and Horace planned to leave Memphis, she became a card-carrying Communist when a Communist organizer visiting from out-of-town, Tom Johnson, presented her with her Party membership card. 

By this time, Marion had attracted the attention of local law enforcement. Law officers were evidently monitoring her mail as the police commission, Clifford Davis, later testified that she had sent a letter to the communist-organized civil rights organization, the American Negro Labor Congress. In it, she expressed optimism about the prospects for political organizing in the south. 

Although they had only been in Memphis for a year, Marion and Horace had been able to connect with the handful of communist sympathizers living in city. Those people included a former Party member by the name of Joseph Norvell. Born Josef Nowosielski in Chernivhove, Russia, he had moved to the United States in 1911 and lived in St. Louis for a number of years before moving to Memphis to work as a grocer. By the time Horace met him, he had left the Party but remained supportive of its cause. 

In late May, Horace received letters from two Party members, Robert W. Dunn (an acquaintance from the northeast) and Tom Johnson (a party organizer in Birmingham), asking him to organize a political protest. The communist-affiliated National Textile Workers Union had been trying to organize mill workers in Georgia. At a May 21 political rally, six organizers had been arrested on insurrection charges. Horace was asked to organize protest against their arrest.

Horace and Marion found Memphis to be difficult place for political organizing. Only a handful of people were interested in participating. However, after deliberating on the matter, they decided to go ahead and hold a protest. They were scheduled to leave in a few weeks, and Horace told Marion, "I somehow don't want to go away from this place without taking some kind of stand against the things I've seen."

On Thursday June 5, Marion successfully applied for a permit to hold a public meeting on the next day at Confederate Park, a public park by the Mississippi River. She and Horace then distributed leaflets announcing the meeting and gave notice to the press. That evening, a reporter came to their home to interview them about the upcoming meeting. Marion recalled giving the reporter "a mouthful." They not only spoke about the Atlanta arrests, but they also spoke in favor of social equality for Blacks and about the success of the Soviet Union. The next morning the interview formed the basis of article in which Marion's picture appeared beneath the caption "Communist leader." 

After the article came out, events progressed rapidly. Tom Johnson arrived from Birmingham  to help with organizing. It soon became clear that they would experience significant pushback. Horace and Marion began receiving angry anonymous phone calls from people who had learned of the upcoming protests from the news. The most significant phone call they received was one from police commissioner Clifford Davis. Around lunchtime, he told them that he had withdrawn the protest permit, and he had two hundred legionnaires (members of a war veterans organization) who were prepared to break up the meeting if they persisted. Horace and Tom Johnson immediately left home to meet with the commissioner and discuss the matter.

Clifford Davis
From "ET" via findagrave

In meeting with the police commissioner, Horace and Tom were walking into a lion's den. Clifford Davis was an important figure in Memphis's white supremacist power structure. Although it was not widely known at the time, he was not only in charge of the police; he was also a leader of the local Ku Klux Klan. The Memphis Klan was very different from the Klan that Horace had encountered in Pittsburgh. While the Pittsburgh Klan focused on anti-immigration, the Memphis Klan sought to enforce racial segregation and suppress labor organizing through extralegal violence. In doing so, it was acting as the extra-legal arm of the wealthy cotton planters who dominated city politics.

The meeting between Horace, Tom, Clifford and the city officials rapidly fell apart. What had started as a discussion over a park permit escalated into a discussion over social equality between blacks and whites. It ended when Clifford had Horace and Tom arrested on charges that they were going to provoke a riot by speaking out on racial issues at a permit-less meeting. He then sent two police officers to Horace's home to meet with Marion. 

The ostensible reason for having police meet Marion was to inform her that her husband had been arrested. However, their actions demonstrated that their goal was to arrest Marion and anyone else they could find. When the police officers arrived at the home, they rang the doorbell and then forced their way in after Marion answered. They began inspecting her bookshelves, and when she asked to see a search warrant, they responded by laughing. Seeking an excuse to arrest her, they asked Marion if she was still planning to hold the protest meeting. She deflected the question several times, and the officers finally became frustrated and simply told her that she was under arrest. 

After being booked, Marion was imprisoned by herself in a small room containing only a small bed and a barred window. Over the course of the evening, the police tried to extract more information from her. First, an official asked Marion if she wanted to contact her children, thinking that she had left them with other organizers and would inadvertently disclose their identities. This ruse proved unsuccessful, so she was put in contact with another prisoner who tried to extract information through casual conversation. This too failed, so the prison matron tried getting information from Marion but without success. The next day Marion along with Horace and Tom were released.

Tom was escorted by the police and onto a train leaving town. Horace and Marion were allowed to return to their home. They found it in a terrible condition. The police officers had searched bookcases and filing cabinets for incriminating material and left everything in disarray. To add insult to injury, before leaving, they had left cigar ashes and footprints all over the floor. 

Horace and Marion spent the next day and a half packing up their household. On Monday night, they went to the train station to leave Memphis for Minneapolis. When they arrived, they found that their problems with law enforcement had not come to an end. Also waiting for their train was a group of suspicious-looking men who Marion thought had been send to surveil them. Later, after everyone had departed on the train, Marion's suspicious were confirmed by a friendly train porter who discretely called her attention to a badge that one of the men was wearing. To dodge the men, Horace and Marion got out at the Chicago stop and then re-boarded.

The arrests made the news. Many newspapers celebrated the police. The headline of the article published in the Chattanooga Daily Time read "Communist party nipped at Memphis." The Sceola Times went even further by condemning the university that had employed Horace: "It appears that the good people of Memphis made a mistake in contributing to the fund to secure Southwestern for that city. This school should be located in Chicago or some other northern city where the people believe in and practice social equality. There is certainly no demand for such an institution in Memphis or in any other southern city." Horace remained unrepentant. He told one reporter, "I have broken the law twenty times in my economics class at Southwestern this past year. I believe in social equality and have taught this principal [sic] to my students." 

Police commissioner Davis remained equally firm. The day that Horace, Marion, and Tom were released from jail, police officers arrested Joe Norvell on suspected possession of "dangerous literature." The negative attention contributed to him losing his grocery business. The police commissioner told newspapers that he would continue to fight communism in the city: "I think there are some more of them here. And we aren't going to use any pussyfooting methods in stamping this out." 

By November, the police commissioner felt that he had stamped out communism. He and other city leaders testified before a House special committee charged with investigating communist activities. He told the committee that now there were no active communists in the city, and he planned to keep them "shut out." The chief of police went a step further. He told the committee that  "Memphis is too small and hot for any communists."

Despite the rhetoric, the CPUSA would send more organizers to the city in a few years. They never built a large movement, but they would struggle with Clifford Davis and other members of the city's white power structure for decades.

Joe Norvell in 1941
From Naturalization Records via Ancestory.com

Sources

1. "Cotton will be grown by power tools." The Oklahoma Weekly Leader [Oklahoma City, OK]. May 16 1930. p. 1. 

 2. "Race equality is taught by communists." The Bee [Danville, Virginia]. June 7, 1930. p. 2. 

3. "Professor Jailed over 'Red' meeting." Illustrated Daily News [Los Angles, California] June 7, 1930. p. 7. 

4. "Equal rights backer filed in Tennessee." Warren Times Mirror [Warren, Pennsylvania] June 7, 1930. p. 6. 

5. "Arrest trio for communist acts." The Bristol Herald Courier [Bristol, TN]. June 7, 1930. p. 1. 

6. "Communist plot in Memphis uncovered." The Brownsville Herald [Brownsville, TX]. June 7, 1930. p. 

7."Trio charged with attempt to organize communistic group." Johnson City Chronicle [Johnson City, TN]. June 7, 1930. p. 2.

8. "Communist party nipped at Memphis." Chattanooga Daily Time [Chattanooga, TN] June 7, 1930. p. 1.

9. "Jail bars meet of communists." The Knoxville Journal [Knoxville, TN]. June 7, 1930. p. 1.

10. "'Communists' released." The Morning Chronicle [Manhattan, KS] June 8, 1930. p. 3. 

11. "Three free as communists." The Brownsville Herald [Brownsville, TX]. June 8, 1930. p. 32. 

12. "The drive is ended on communism." The Knoxville Journal [Knoxville, TN]. June 8, 1930. p. 11. 

13. "Southwestern teacher defies authorities." The Steele Enterprise [Steele, MO]. June 16, 1930. p. 5. 

14. Look up Sceola Times

15. "Sedition charge threat in Tenn. by Legion, cops." The daily worker [Chicago, IL], June 10, 1930, Final City Edition, p. 1.

16. "Investigation of Communist Propaganda: Hearings Before a Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in the United States of the House of Representatives Seventy-First Congress Second session, Pursuant to H. Res. 220." Part 6, Vol No. 1.