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

by Browne, Arthur

  NO SOONER HAD Jack Johnson won the heavyweight crown than the cry had gone up: America needed to knock the black interloper off the throne. Former champion Jim Jeffries became the Great White Hope. The bout was set for San Francisco, July 4, 1910. In the run-up, Jeffries worked out with a fury that returned him to fighting trim after six years spent in retirement on a California alfalfa farm.

  Cabaret king Baron Wilkins sent Johnson off to California with a promise to bet big on his friend. Johnson telegraphed on arriving: “Send me seventeen thousand out here as the odds are better. Betting very brisk. Am in tip-top shape and will win sure.” The Age proudly reported that Wilkins had quickly assembled “Negroes of betting proclivities” into “a pool with a view to making a killing on July 4.” They wired $20,000 “with instructions for Johnson to bet the entire amount on himself.” Twenty thousand dollars then is the equivalent today of roughly a half-million dollars.87

  At almost the last minute, the governor of California barred the fight from his state. The promoters hurriedly found a new location in the wilder territory of Reno, Nevada. There, early in the afternoon on America’s birthday, with the temperature topping one hundred degrees, Johnson and Jeffries ran through their final warm-ups. In New York, thirty thousand people jammed Times Square to read bulletins posted on three sides of the Times building, and thousands more gathered to get the news in Herald Square. Wilkins’s best customers milled around a ticker-tape machine specially installed in the Little Savoy’s basement gambling hall.

  Perry Bradford, the musician, remembered: “In came Lovie Joe, opened his mouth and said that he had that money to bet on Jeffries, Barron called that bet and told Lovie to go back to the syndicate and bring some real money, no more pennies. Lovie came back with twenty thousand dollars more. So Baron covered that bet and asked Lovie Joe if he got any more money.”88

  At 2:46 p.m., the Fight of the Century began disappointingly. Johnson, at 208 pounds, and Jeffries, down to 227, spent the first round shoving and bumping more than punching. In the fourth, Jeffries opened a cut in Johnson’s mouth, and whites across the country cheered the telegrapher’s news: “First blood for Jeff.” Their exultation was short-lived. From the fifth round on, Johnson took increasing command. In the fifteenth, Johnson knocked Jeffries to his haunches with an upper cut and three lefts. Jeffries got to his feet before the count reached ten. Johnson put him down again with a left. Jeffries’s seconds reached through the ropes to help him stand. Johnson administered four blows and stood over Jeffries, cocked to put him down if he dared rise. Jeffries’s corner threw in the towel.

  In shared psychic defeat, the taunts of racial passion cooled into silence, while, twenty-seven hundred miles away in Herald Square, “You could hear a pin drop midst the big crowd which had been screaming every time Jeffries hit Johnson,” Bradford remembered. Inside the Little Savoy, Wilkins climbed atop the bar and called out, “Everybody have some champagne on the house.” A sporting man named Dude Foster paraded around shaking two bottles of champagne, waving thousand-dollar bills that he’d won wagering on Johnson and proclaiming, “I am God’s gift to women. All you beat up gals, and what came with you, if you need any of that little thing called money, see the Dude.”89

  Meanwhile, carrying a purse of $121,000, Johnson headed east by train. Along the way, he got reports that white-on-black rioting had erupted like “prickly heat all over the country,” in the New York Tribune’s memorable phrase. Racial violence that night in Houston, Washington, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and numerous other cities and towns would leave as many as twenty-six people dead. In New York, white gangs attacked with such frequency in the blocks around the Little Savoy that wounded blacks arrived at the Tenderloin stationhouse at an average rate of one every fifteen minutes. Whites assaulted blacks on West Fifty-Third Street, where Battle had dined at the Marshall Hotel. On the West Side, a mob of two hundred chased a black man toward Central Park, relenting only when a white doctor held them off with a gun, not far from the home of Battle’s former employers, the Andreinis. A short walk from Battle’s Mother AME Zion Church, crowds cheered as a band of young toughs known as the Pearl Button Gang set upon blacks. A few blocks from McBride’s Saloon, where Battle had eaten lunch with fellow redcaps, someone called for a lynching, someone produced a rope, and “the negro was in a fair way to swing into eternity,” when police arrived. On San Juan Hill, near where Battle had set up house with Florence, a white mob set fire to a tenement occupied by blacks and tried to block the doors until firefighters reached the scene. Just down the street and around the corner from Battle’s Harlem apartment, whites dragged a black man from a trolley after crying, “Let’s lynch the first nigger we meet.”90

  Five days later, Wilkins distributed handbills that read: “To every colored man, woman, and child in Greater New York: Be at the Grand Central Station at 9:30 o’clock Monday morning and let us all shake the glad hand of the stalwart athlete, the greatest of the twentieth century.”91

  Jack Johnson was again coming to New York for a show at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre. Battle arrived for work early and pulled rank: he would be the redcap who again tended to the champ. The Washington Post and New York Times pegged the crowd at ten thousand people. They had to wait because a wreck had blocked the tracks. Finally, the 20th Century Limited pulled in five hours late. Hand truck at the ready, Battle stood near Wilkins as Johnson emerged into jostling that was not to be restrained. He left behind a slender, dark-haired woman, Etta Terry Duryea. She was the daughter of a moneyed family, was divorced from a husband of social standing, was traveling as Johnson’s wife, and was white. She remained largely out of view until Johnson and Wilkins had pushed through the jubilance. They had planned a parade to the Little Savoy, but Johnson had arrived just in time for his appearance at the Victoria. Someone in the entourage told Battle that he would be bringing Johnson’s luggage all the way to the theater.

  A dozen touring cars waited at curbside. Johnson and Wilkins climbed into the first vehicle, and the caravan drove north on Fifth Avenue to Fifty-Eighth Street, down Broadway to greet a crowd outside the Little Savoy, and then on to the theater. Battle loaded Johnson’s bags, one containing the blue tights and stars-and-stripes belt the champ would wear on stage, into a horse-drawn hansom cab for the five-block ride to the Victoria, a service for which, Battle would note, Johnson neglected to tip.92

  BATTLE AND CHIEF Williams brought the story home to Harlem. No one listened more intently to descriptions of the heavyweight champion than the Chief’s son, Wesley. Thirteen years of age and approaching his adult physique of five feet nine and 180 pounds, Wesley was bigger, stronger, and faster than even boys who were years older and more developed. He reveled in sports and excelled at all forms of athletics, from basketball and handball to swimming. When he won a roller-skating race against more mature competitors, Wesley caught the eye of C. A. Ramsey, a former wrestling champion who held a black belt in judo. Ramsey was training athletes at an outpost of the Colored Men’s Branch of the YMCA. He urged Wesley to come to classes.93 Happily complying, Wesley soon was more devoted to Ramsey’s regimen of pumping iron and self-defense workouts than he was to schoolwork—his sharp mind and powerful body recalling for Battle the bullyboy days of his own youth.

  AS BATTLE’S NAME rose toward the top of the hiring list, he was called for the medical exam. Now, whatever anyone may have known about him, there was no hiding his skin color. From head to toe, he was black, and not only that, he was big and strong and black.

  And he was stoppable.

  The police surgeon diagnosed Battle as suffering from a heart murmur, thus providing a pretext for disqualifying him and proving that the fear of medical sabotage once expressed in the Age had been justified. At first, the doctor’s findings mystified Battle. Having carried “tons of baggage miles per week,” he was sure that he was fit. Then he was passed over once, and then twice on the list. A friend, Thomas Henry Peyton, warned Battle t
hat a third rejection would doom his chances.

  Peyton was a fellow former North Carolinian whose parents had been lured to leave a farm in 1876 by a man with “tales of fortunes, romance and adventures waiting for those daring enough to go” to Africa. The Peytons sent their belongings ahead, sailed for New York on an Old Dominion steamer, and discovered that they had been conned out of all their possessions. The couple returned home, leaving Thomas in Brooklyn, where he had courted one of Battle’s sisters and found a place with Moses Cobb in the lower ranks of the police department.94 Speaking of Peyton, Battle said:

  He had been doing stationhouse duty—they called them “turnkeys.” One day when I was working in Grand Central, he came up to me and said, “Sam, do you know that your name is about to be dropped to the bottom of the list, of civil service? The police commissioner hasn’t appointed you.”

  I said, “I didn’t know, I thought someday they might appoint me.”

  He said, “No. Don’t allow your name to go to the bottom of the list. Go and ask for another examination, something of that kind. Do something about it.”95

  Thanks to Peyton, Battle realized that he needed help. One man came to mind: Frederick Randolph Moore, editor of the Age, the newspaper that had advocated for opening the police department to blacks.

  To Moore, Battle’s sudden appearance must have seemed like an answer to prayers. Not only had the young man shown the courage to get this far, there was every indication, in mind, body, and character, that he could lead the way for others. Moore summoned surprised allies, among them Edward “Chief” Lee, head of Tammany Hall’s United Colored Democracy; Lee’s deputy Robert N. Wood; and Charles Anderson, New York’s leading black Republican. By appointment of President Roosevelt, Anderson served as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in New York, a patronage position of high regard for whites, let alone for blacks. Like Moore, Anderson was loyal to Booker T. Washington.

  And, of course, Moore called on J. Frank Wheaton, Bert Williams, and J. C. Thomas, whose missions were to integrate the police and fire departments and to establish a black New York National Guard regiment. Their Equity Congress was by now a thriving organization. The group promised Battle full support.

  Moore and Battle also sought the help of Dr. Roberts, but the three men soon agreed that Roberts’s medical expertise would be meaningless because he was black. Regretfully but realistically, Roberts referred Battle to an eminent white physician, Dr. James Dowling. Battle recalled to Hughes:

  I arranged an appointment during my lunch period, walking up to his office from the Grand Central. I was given a very complete examination, so painstaking, in fact, that it was mid-afternoon before I got back to work at the station.

  When Dr. Dowling finished with me he said, “You are the most perfect physical specimen I have ever examined.” I then asked him to check my heart again, because I had to prepare myself for strenuous work, and that was what had given me concern. He rechecked my heart. When he had finished this second examination, he said, “Your heart is in perfect shape. There is nothing wrong at all.”

  Without informing him of the rejection by the police surgeons, I asked Dr. Dowling for a certificate as to my state of health, again stressing attention to my heart. He sat down and made out a complete report on me. As he was about to sign it, I requested him to put all of his full professional titles down behind his name. With a smile he did so, closing not only with Professor of Diagnosis and Consulting Surgeon, but President of Flower Hospital, one of the leading city hospitals of that day.

  When I asked his fee, he said his usual charge for so complete an examination was $150. I must have looked somewhat startled at such a large amount. He no doubt noticed my Red Cap uniform and knew that I did not come from the financial class to which most of his patients belonged. He said that he would charge me only ten percent of that figure, namely his regular office fee of $15. Even this seemed a fairly large sum to me. But I went back to Grand Central that afternoon with my prized certificate.

  That evening I took the certificate to Editor Fred Moore. He wrote a letter to Mayor Gaynor enclosing it and stating that I had passed all the oral, written, mental, and character tests required for appointment to the police force, and that the enclosed certificate showed that one of the city’s finest physicians found nothing wrong with me physically. He asked, therefore, why my name had been passed over twice when men much farther down the list than I had already received appointments.

  Moore’s letter to the mayor and Dr. Dowling’s clean bill of health brightened the Christmas season of 1910 for Battle and Florence, and for Jesse in the way that a four-year-old, going on five, absorbs parental cheer. Then the weeks dragged without action. In February 1911, Moore wrote again to Gaynor, concluding, “Your general reputation for fairness leads me to believe that you will see that Mr. Battle is given that consideration to which he is entitled and as the police department is under your control I shall hope to see Mr. Battle appointed.”

  Gaynor responded by tersely telling Moore, “I do not understand that the man you mention is in danger of discrimination whatever. Do you not merely imagine that the contrary is the case?”96

  While Wheaton pressed Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo, Anderson lobbied the mayor, and Moore scathed Waldo in an editorial, Battle could only sit tight.97 Finally, after more than three months, the department summoned him for a second medical exam.

  “A young white man in line just ahead of me fainted dead away as he stood before the doctor,” Battle remembered. “When my turn came I said pointedly, ‘I’m sure you will find nothing wrong with me, sir—but the color of my skin. No doubt, that young fellow who just fell out in a cold sweat on the floor will pass his examination—because he is white.’”

  This time, the doctor said, “I don’t find anything wrong with you—or your heart.”

  And, at last, Commissioner Waldo designated Battle as a candidate for the New York Police Department.

  “The next morning headlines announced my appointment,” Battle said. “The Negro papers were particularly jubilant, heralding the event and editorializing on it almost as much as they did the year before when Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship from Jim Jeffries.”

  Twenty years had passed since Wiley Grenada Overton, Philip W. Hadley, John W. Lee, and Moses P. Cobb had fought to integrate the Brooklyn police force. Twelve had passed since Battle had met Jim Crow as he headed north from New Bern with Anne, whose face and touch had since been memories. Ten years had passed since he had stood in the presence of Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington while serving the white students of Yale. Nine years had passed since Arthur Schomburg had schooled him in racial pride and stressed self-education. Six years had passed since he had stopped working as anyone’s boy.

  He was a husband and a father, and at the age of twenty-eight, he had made history. He was Greater New York’s first black cop.

  Anderson wrote to Booker T. Washington to assure the great man that he and Moore had been key to a signal victory. Mentioning Battle only offhandedly as “this colored man,” Anderson told Washington: “Brother Lee, brother Wood, the Equity Congress and Frank Wheaton are claiming credit for the appointment. I have said nothing, but from the tenor of the Mayor’s letter, in which he asks me to ‘see that the appointee will be a credit to his race,’ it looks as though the Mayor felt that I had something to do with it. As a matter of fact, I think the appointment was largely due to all of us. Moore deserves especial credit, for it was he that interested me in the case.”98

  Then they all moved on, leaving Battle to a solitary fight, as alone as if he were beyond help behind enemy lines.

  Because he was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  STRUGGLE

  TONY RISES ON a morning in the summer of 1950 and finds what he needs: T-shirt, shorts, and canvas sneakers, to be complemented by a baseball bat, fishing pole, or homemade frog spear. Leaky comes to Tony’s side. He’s a mix, resembling a Labrador. He ea
rned his name in the failures of paper training.

  The white clapboard cottage is located in New York’s first African American vacation community. Known as Greenwood Forest Farms, the enclave comprises several dozen getaways. Prominent blacks purchased the land in 1919, laced it with winding roads, and subdivided it into lots. There’s a clubhouse and a lake.

  Tony gets going while the going is good, to play before his grandfather can shed the bed covers and run down a list of chores. There were kids to find and, maybe, a catfish to catch or a bullfrog with meaty legs to impale on nails tied to a broomstick, for Florence to fry in an iron skillet.

  He is especially hurried because Langston Hughes is sleeping in a guestroom. Hughes and his grandfather are going to spend the day talking, and Hughes is going to write things down. Hughes has come to the townhouse several times to talk and write. Once, Hughes brought a tape recorder with spinning reels that stood tall on the table. His grandfather spoke into a microphone. That is at least interesting. To hear them talk, watch the tape rewind, and hear them talk again is something new. Otherwise, Tony dislikes having Hughes around. The presence of literary greatness is nothing compared with a youngster’s summer joys, and he senses, correctly, that Hughes has little patience for a boy with a dog who would intrude on his time.

  Hughes is here at the cottage in fulfillment of a commitment rather than in pursuit of the writing of the great poems, novels, librettos, and essays that have been his life’s work and will be his legacy. Yes, he sees in Battle’s scrapbooks and he hears in Battle’s tales that Battle’s life is Harlem’s story, and he knows that Harlem’s story is a centerpiece of the rise and persecution of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. But, as compelling as Battle’s story is, his biography offers Hughes little hope of producing the next great American work of literature whose characters would be black folks and whose pages would pulse with universal humanity. In truth, Hughes had agreed to work with Battle primarily because he had needed a $1,500 check to pay the bills. He has spent the money, yet he has barely started coming to terms with his employer’s memories.