Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (55 page)

I don’t know what convinced Low to appoint Philip to the Brooklyn Board of Education. It obviously wasn’t patronage. Did the two men know each other? Low was a speaker at the Brooklyn Literary Union in 1887, and it’s quite possible that his ties to Brooklyn’s black community reached far back in time. Or Low might have been aware of Philip’s reputation and liked what he heard. After all, the terms my great-grandfather’s obituary writer used to describe him—studious, temperate, pursuing the ends of a noble manhood, with a punctilious regard to truth and fairness—applied equally well to Low. Above all, the two men shared a common goal: improving the city’s public schools for all young people regardless of race or ethnicity.

Second only to St. Philip’s, education was Philip’s life passion. For years, he had been the secretary of the Society for the Improvement of Education Among Colored Children and an active member of its Ridgeway School Prize Committee. And the anonymous scrapbook keeper who pasted several poems next to Philip’s obituary included one titled “Why Johnny Failed: Good for a Boy to Read.” Some of the lines read:

At school, the teacher tried her best

To give him facts and rules

Of every hopeful sort—but no,

For Johnny hated school.

…

So when the day of manhood came

When Johnny searched his mind

But still and ever it played him false

And nothing could he find

But worthless trash and ugly thoughts

And lo, he failed alas!

Is any other boy who reads this

Coming to Johnny’s pass?

Philip did not want any other Johnnies to fail.

It was not at all clear, however, how best to help the Johnnies who happened to be black and living in the United States in the 1880s. By law, Brooklyn’s school system was still segregated, although, through another operation of the rule of whimsy, black children were scattered throughout many schools without major repercussions.
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I traced Philip’s course of action through the minutes of the Brooklyn Board of Education as well as Fortune’s newspapers.

As usual, my great-grandfather proceeded cautiously. Only a few months after taking his seat, he proposed that the board consider “the desirability either of enforcing the attendance of all colored children upon colored schools, or of adopting some plan of reorganization by which colored children may attend any school within their districts to the end that a uniform system may be adopted.”
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Translation: enforce the current segregated system or move to integration. The response was silence.

As the board member in charge of Brooklyn’s three colored schools, Philip began by pursuing the first option. He was particularly concerned about the deplorable conditions of Colored Grammar School No. 1. Throughout 1883, he repeatedly requested items big and small for the school—new furniture, a set of maps, two clocks, a piano. Most important, he helped push through a resolution to buy a plot of land to erect a new building.

The new school opened November 19 of that year to great fanfare. The building itself was a substantial brick structure that cost $25,000. It housed 450 students divided between a primary school on the ground floor and a grammar school on the second. Several men from the black community, Philip included, addressed the audience. In their remarks, they rehearsed the history of black education in the state beginning with
the African Free Schools; named the great men—the Reasons, Crummell, Garnet, McCune Smith, Rays, and Downings—who had benefited from its instruction; and praised the efforts of Charles Dorsey, the new school’s principal, and the teachers who worked under him, among them Maritcha and her good friend Georgiana Putnam. Finally, Mayor Low rose and gave “an excellent address, in which he compared the school house to a fortress and the children to its army, ready to protect the citadel, ready to sally forth for the attack, as well as to stand for its defense.” He concluded by endorsing the suggestion of an earlier speaker who had recommended that “the word ‘colored’ should be erased from this beautiful building.”
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Philip, it turned out, had similar ideas. When the Board of Education met on December 11, he introduced the following resolution: “Resolved—That the Principals and Heads of Departments of the schools under the control of the Board of Education are hereby directed to receive all colored children that may apply for admission on the same terms that they do white children.” The resolution passed. Jubilant, the black community heaped praise on Philip. One writer to the
Globe
compared him to a medieval knight. To those who expressed surprise at “the intrepidity, the coolness and the
élan
with which Dr. White carried the bulwarks of caste,” he invited them to look back at history. Peruse the old
Anglo-African Magazine
, he suggested, and you’ll find proof of his mettle in the 1857 report he and Charles Ray wrote on behalf of the Society for the Improvement of Education Among Colored Children protesting the treatment of black students in New York’s public schools.
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In fact, although Brooklyn’s black community was committed to the principle of integration, it was less sure about the practice. Fortune neatly summed up the ambivalence in a
Globe
editorial. “What we contend for, and what Dr. White and every other colored man of sense contends for,” he wrote, “is, not that colored schools should be abolished, but that no more inhibitions should rest upon colored children than upon white ones, that the same laws which govern one class of citizens should govern every other class, that discriminations should not be applied to one class while another is allowed every immunity.” The principle
behind school integration was important: equality before the law. But so was that behind segregation: black control over education. This latter claim in fact exactly replicated the policy of separate institutions of the 1830s. In separate schools, black teachers, who understood the needs of black children and were sensitive to parental concerns, would be kept on. In contrast, in an integrated system, one injustice, as Fortune put it, would replace another. Black students would benefit, but black teachers, deemed unfit to instruct white children, would lose their jobs. Fortune in fact was convinced that integration was nothing more than a “transparent subterfuge” cooked up to get rid of black teachers.
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In point of fact, nothing much changed. The three colored schools continued to operate as before and Philip renewed his commitment to Colored School No. 1 (later renumbered 67). Several times a year, the school held elaborate public exercises, reminiscent of the earlier Ridge-way School Prize Committee ceremonies, covered extensively by Fortune’s newspapers. There were declamations, class recitations, choruses, and solos by the students, the best of whom received medals and books. Charles Dorsey was regularly praised for his excellent stewardship of the school, as were Georgiana Putnam, the head of the Grammar Department, and Maritcha, the assistant. They were all showered with gifts; some, like a silver pitcher, fruit dish, or lamp, were quite extravagant; others, the complete works of Washington Irving, for example, were of a more serious nature. Presiding over all the festivities was Philip, whose “suavity and fatherly tenderness” made him enormously popular with the students.
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In addition, racist attitudes still prevailed. In the late 1880s, white schools continued to reject black students, claiming that the Board of Education’s integration legislation was a one-year law and had long since lapsed. Yet black schools could not refuse white teachers. When Philip, with the backing of three different superintendent reports, recommended the dismissal of two white teachers from Colored School No. 2 on grounds of incompetence, his request was summarily rejected. Although upset, he acquiesced. But not even the diplomatic Philip could contain himself during the ruckus that ensued after he requested a pay raise for Georgiana Putnam as head of department. The board dallied,
and agreed to the raise only after passing an obnoxious rule that excluded all the colored schools from general legislation and placed them in a separate category. An angry Philip resigned, returning only after Alfred Chapin, recently reelected mayor by Democratic voters, begged him to do so.
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After Philip’s death in February 1892, Mayor Chapin rewarded T. McCants Stewart for his support by appointing him to succeed Philip on the Board of Education. Skilled in legal argument and always spoiling for a good fight, Stewart was the perfect candidate to finish the work Philip had started and create a truly integrated school in Brooklyn. Yet his efforts exposed deep divisions not only between blacks and whites but also within the black community.

Here’s what happened. At its May 1892 meeting, the Board of Education decided to reverse a previous decision and give a new building designed for black children to the white P.S. 83. An angry Stewart rose to remind his colleagues of the history of the building. It was Philip White, he declared, who had persuaded the board to build the new schoolhouse for the colored P.S. 68 in Weeksville. Now that the area was becoming increasingly white, the board was reneging on its promise and catering to white parents. A compromise was eventually reached. The approximately 150 black students from P.S. 68 and their five teachers moved into the first floor of the building, while the much larger white P.S. 83, with its 500 students and many teachers, occupied the second floor. Sensing that the battle was half won, Stewart continued his push for a fully integrated school, proposing at the March 1893 board meeting that P.S. 68 be absorbed into P.S. 83. A hue and cry broke out. Whites complained that the presence of black students would lead to “deteriorating influences” and that it was impossible to “force acquiescence.” Georgiana Putnam, who by then had been appointed principal of P.S. 68, also voiced her opposition, fearing it would cost black teachers their jobs.
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In retaliation, Stewart, backed by the board, tried to get Putnam fired and replaced by a white woman. A fierce battle erupted within the black community. Fortune sided with Stewart and was almost beaten when he brought up the controversy during a meeting. Susan McKinney stood by Putnam, complaining that Stewart had “gone out of his way to do an injustice to one of his race, . … a finely educated and highly cultured woman.” Harsher still, Samuel Scottron accused Stewart of “hiding behind a mask of virtue and devotion to the public welfare” when in reality he had shown himself quite willing to betray his race.
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Surely this kind of bickering would not have broken out had Philip still been alive.

The story has a happy ending. Both Stewart and Georgiana Putnam got what they wanted, as did the black and white children of Weeksville. P.S. 68 merged with P.S. 83 without incident. Putnam became head of department, and after being promoted to principal of a primary school was replaced by Maritcha, who remembered with fondness her many years teaching “all the varied nationalities to be found in a cosmopolitan city.”
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Determined to move beyond local politics and take their struggle to the national level, in 1889 Philip, Fortune, and Stewart, with other like-minded black men, founded a national organization, the Afro-American League. Promising to “ignore all partisan politics,” the league pledged to work to “to secure passage of such laws … as shall prevent discrimination in any and every form on account of race, color, condition or religion, and to bring and prosecute in the courts actions for the redress of wrongs against their civil rights.” Philip was named treasurer and Stewart counsel.

As the league’s counsel, Stewart scored one great victory representing T. Thomas Fortune in a civil rights case. In June 1890, Fortune was refused service and ejected from the bar of New York’s Trainor Hotel, and then jailed for disorderly conduct. Although the case was dismissed, Fortune decided to sue the owner for ten thousand dollars
and appealed to the league to help support his case. Members responded by holding “indignation meetings,” and both money and sympathy poured in. At trial a year later, the jury decided in Fortune’s favor and awarded him damages and costs totaling one thousand dollars.

But there were no larger victories. At regular intervals, Stewart submitted a civil rights bill prohibiting discrimination in public places to the state legislature in Albany. In 1887, it was set aside; in 1890, it was voted down; in 1895, it passed. But by that time it really didn’t matter. Whites in power simply began reclassifying public accommodations as private, or ignored the law knowing full well that there would be no consequences. And by then the Afro-American League no longer existed.
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In these later decades, Philip had indeed become a race man publicly committed to fighting for racial justice. But with money and leisure time, he could now pursue his love for the arts. From the 1850 census, I knew that he owned a piano, and from more recent newspapers that he helped found the Mendelssohn School of Music. From his work with schools, I deduced that he was an avid reader of books. From his obituary, I discovered that he had been a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In solidarity with W. E. B. Du Bois, Philip seemed determined to enjoy on equal terms with whites the cosmopolitan high culture that was emerging in the nation’s urban centers after the Civil War. He fully endorsed Booker T. Washington’s call for the development of black business and entrepreneurship. Yet he also stood in awe of the gifts of mind and spirit that were the hallmark of all humanity and nourished what Du Bois called “the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development.”
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