One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611) (44 page)

Battle updated the book to record that the fire department then had six hundred black members, including three captains and fourteen lieutenants. He counted twelve hundred African Americans in the police department, including sons of his fellow pioneers.

“They are all my children and some grandchildren for whom I look back with great pride and forward with pleasure,” he wrote.
⁶

It all came to naught.

Battle and Florence now lived alone in the great old townhouse. Charline and Eddy had bought a home in the suburb of Englewood, New Jersey. The high school there was integrated so that about 10 percent of the student body was black. Gym classes included social dancing. Teachers paired boys and girls only of the same race. Charline, who had risen to a top administrator for New York City’s after-school programs, objected. The school board abolished the dance program. “Pretty-born” Yvonne was nonetheless elected homecoming queen. Battle noted proudly that she and Tony had gone on to colleges of the high caliber he had wanted for them. Yvonne was at Bard and Tony was at Bates, each school an elite liberal arts institution.

In 1966, Battle fell ill. The diagnosis this time was leukemia. Although the outlook was fatal, visitors to the townhouse would find him in good spirits. “There is nothing to worry about,” he would tell them.

One afternoon, he summoned to his bedside four of his nephews and a grand-nephew, the grandson of Moses P. Cobb and his sister Sophia. His last words to the five young men were: “The torch has been passed.”
⁷

When he was younger than they were, Battle had seen Booker T. Washington in the flesh. As his life came to a close, he witnessed the majesty of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the inspiration of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the by-any-means-necessary fire of Malcolm X. He saw a hard struggle ahead for the race but, ever optimistic, he also expected progress.

“Not just for the Negro’s sake, but for the sake of my country I look forward to the day when all of us will do unto others as we would have others do unto us,” he had written to close his book.

On August 7, 1966, Samuel Jesse Battle died at the age of eighty-three, a man who had bent the long moral arc as far as he could and then was erased from memory.

G, always G.

My readers: Bren, Mame, Court, Brent, Pat, Chris, Lauren, Barbara, Vince, and Jim.

My rascals: Jerry, Didi, Mary, Orla, Liam, Bridgey, Arthur, Joe, Agnes, Peter, and a player to be named later.

Mort Zuckerman, enabling publisher; Sam Roberts, New York treasure; Helene Atwan, perceptive editor; Seth Fishman, steadfast agent.

Bry, uncle Bry.

G, forever G.

ABBREVIATIONS

AMN
—
Amsterdam News

BDE
—
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BN—Battle’s written notes, Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

CD
—
Chicago Defender

COH—“The First Black Policeman Remembers,” from “The Reminiscences of Samuel J. Battle,” February 1960, Oral History Collection of Columbia University

NYA
—
New York Age

NYT
—
New York Times

WWP—Wesley Williams Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

CHAPTER ONE: QUEST

1.
BN.

2.
Paul Laurence Dunbar,
The Sport of the Gods
, 1902,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17854/17854-h/17854-h.htm

3.
COH.

4.
“Negro Policeman Hazed by Silence,”
NYT
, August 17, 1911.

5.
Alan D. Watson,
A History of New Bern and Craven County
(New Bern, NC: Tryon Palace Commission, 1987), 58–59, 158–59; Vina Hutchinson,
Images of America: New Bern
(Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2000), 27, 32, 36; Lynn Salsi and Frances Eubanks,
Images of America: Craven County
(Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2001), 12, 25, 28.

6.
US Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census, 1880,
Ancestry.com
; Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley,
A History of African Americans in North Carolina
(Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2002), 51.

7.
State v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263 (1829).

8.
Milton Ready,
The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005); Watson,
History of New Bern
, 375, 398–99, 401–2.

9.
John W. Cromwell,
The Negro in American History: Men and Women Eminent in the Evolution of the American of African Descent
(Washington, DC: American Negro Academy, 1914), 172.

10.
Hatley,
History of African Americans
, 80.

11.
Watson,
History of New Bern
, 488.

12.
Ibid., 489.

13.
Eubanks,
Images of America
, 11, 56; Watson,
History of New Bern
, 559.

14.
Gilbert Osofsky,
Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto
(Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1996), 30.

15.
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1050.

16.
Ibid., 1073.

17.
Idell E. Zeisloft,
The New Metropolis; 1600—Memorable Events of Three Centuries—1900; from the Island of Mana-hat-tan to Greater New York at the Close of the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Appleton and Company, 1899), 104, 109.

18.
Letter from Robert Hunter, June 23, 1712, at
http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/Gateway%20Slavery%20Guide%20PDF%20Files/3.%20British%20Colony,%201664-1783/6.%20Documents/1712-1719.%20Slave%20revolt.pdf

19.
US Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census, 1860.

20.
US Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census, 1900.

21.
Ray Stannard Baker,
Following the Color Line
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), 132.

22.
Zeisloft,
New Metropolis
, 124.

23.
COH.

24.
COH.

25.
BN.

26.
“West Side Race Riot,”
New York Tribune
, August 16, 1900.

27.
“The Riot in Akron,”
NYT
, August 24, 1900.

28.
Garry L. Reeder, “The History of Blacks at Yale University,”
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
, January 31, 2000, 125.

29.
Edmund Morris,
Theodore Rex
(New York: Random House, 2001), 54.

30.
“Yale Commemorates Her Bicentennial,”
NYT
, October 24, 1901.

31.
Timothy Thomas Fortune, “A Boy’s Life in Reconstruction,”
Norfolk New Journal and Guide
, August 13, 1927.

32.
Emma Lou Thornbrough,
T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 3–34.

33.
David Levering Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
(New York: Owl Books, 1994), 38.

34.
Thornbrough,
T. Thomas Fortune
, 44, 105–11, 124–25, 137–286.

35.
US Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census, 1860.

36.
“Brooklyn’s Colored Policeman,”
BDE
, March 8, 1891.

37.
“On the Force,”
BDE
, March 5, 1891; “Colored Policeman,”
BDE
, March 6, 1891.

38.
“Overton’s First Tour of Duty,”
BDE
, March 7, 1891.

39.
“Colors Clash,”
BDE
, March 27, 1891.

40.
“Hired to Whip Overton,”
BDE
, April 19, 1891; “Think It False,”
BDE
, April 20, 1891.

41.
“Stand by Him,”
BDE
, March 30, 1891; “Let Off Light,”
BDE
, April 7, 1891.

42.
“Eighteen New Policemen,”
BDE
, July 9, 1982.

43.
“The Color Line,”
BDE
, April 25, 1892; “Still Another,”
BDE
, May 14, 1892.

44.
Ibid.

45.
“Maybe Overton Has a Good Case,”
BDE
, June 12, 1892; “Patrolman Overton Fined,”
BDE
, June 14, 1892.

46.
“Points About Policemen,”
BDE
, August 14, 1892.

47.
“Overton Will Resign,”
BDE
, November 18, 1892.

48.
“Colored Patrolman Hadley Dismissed,”
BDE
, November 29, 1892.

49.
“Another Colored Policeman,”
BDE
, December 8, 1892; “Points About Policemen,”
BDE
, December 11, 1892.

50.
COH.

51.
Borough of Brooklyn Death Certificate, No. 18138 of 1901, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

52.
“$3-Million Police Station Dedicated at 123d and 8th,”
NYT
, October 30, 1975.

53.
Jervis Anderson,
This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987), 25–26.

54.
“New York’s Rich Negroes,”
New York Sun
, January 18, 1903.

55.
“John W. Connors, Founder Organized Colored Baseball in New York, Is Dead,”
NYA
, July 17, 1926.

56.
Perry Bradford,
Born with the Blue
s (New York: Oak Publications, 1965), 169.

57.
“The Southland Troubadour,”
NYA
, October 23, 1948.

58.
Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazon, and Marshall Ganz,
What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

59.
“Negro Policeman Now a Regular Cop,”
New York Sun
, January 18, 1912.

60.
Mary White Ovington,
Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York
(New York: Longmans, Green, 1911), 148.

61.
US Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census, 1900.

62.
Wesley Williams,
The Seven Generations That I (Wesley Williams) Have Witnessed;
Up from Slavery: Four Generations of the Williams Family Span the Modern History of the Republic, from Pre-War Slavery Days to the Present
, WWP.

63.
“Bowery Derelicts Pay Thorley Honor,”
NYT
, November 21, 1923.

64.
Abram Hill, “Chief James H. Williams,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Eric Arnesen, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, Volume 1
(New York: Routledge, 2007), 665.

65.
“57 Years a New York Doctor,”
AMN
, October 13, 1951.

66.
Mary White Ovington,
The Walls Came Tumbling Down
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947), 40.

67.
New York City certificate of marriage, Borough of Manhattan, No. 13951 of 1905, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

68.
Ovington,
Half a Man
, 40–41.

69.
“After Brutal Policemen,”
NYA
, July 27, 1905; “Guilty Police Shall Not Escape,”
NYA
, August 3, 1905.

70.
“Become Police and Firemen,”
NYA
, December 28, 1905.

71.
Ernst Christopher Meyer, “Infant Mortality in New York City: A Study of the Results Accomplished by Infant Life-Saving Agencies, 1885–1920,” International Health Board, 124; Ovington,
Half a Man
, 53.

72.
New York State Census, 1905.

73.
“White Landlords Make Objection to Church,”
NYA
, June 11, 1914.

74.
“Beautiful Homes for Colored People,”
NYA
, October 25, 1906; Ovington,
Half a Man
, 47.

75.
“Negroes Filling Up 99th Street Block,”
NYT
, August 14, 1905.

76.
Register of New York City, Section 7, Liber 127, 365–68; Liber 128, 145–50; Liber 151, 134–46; Liber 152, 297–301; Liber 159, 7–15.

77.
State of New York Certificate and Record of Death, No. 24535, 1908, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

78.
Wilbur Young, “Equity Congress,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

79.
Geoffrey C. Ward,
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
(New York: Vintage, 2004), 14–15.

80.
“Crowds See Johnson,”
Washington Post
, March 30, 1909; “J. Johnson Hits Great White Way,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, March 30, 1909; Ward,
Unforgivable Blackness
, 143.

81.
“Negro Police for New York,”
NYA
, August 5, 1909.

82.
“The Trouble in Harlem,”
NYA
, August 5, 1909.

83.
“Subject of Negro Police,”
NYA
, August 19, 1909; “New York Negro Policemen,”
NYA
, August 19, 1909.

84.
“Will Not Take Examination,”
NYA
, September 2, 1909.

85.
Cornelius W. Willemse,
A Cop Remembers
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933), 147–49.

86.
Reverdy C. Ransom,
The Pilgrimage of Harriet Ransom’s Son
(Nashville: Sunday School Union, 1949), 215.

87.
“Send Johnson $20,000,”
NYA
, June 9, 1910.

88.
Bradford,
Born with the Blues
, 171.

89.
Ibid.

90.
“Whites and Blacks in Many Riotous Battles,”
New York Tribune
, July 5, 1910; “Eight Killed in Fight Riots,”
NYT
, July 5, 1910; “Eleven Killed in Many Race Riots,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, July 5, 1910.