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

by Browne, Arthur

  36. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934.

  37. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Waco Horror,” Crisis, July 19, 1916.

  38. “Negro Troops of N.Y. N. G.,” NYA, June 29, 1916.

  39. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 5–7; Gail Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (New York: Random House, 2001), 190.

  40. Napoleon B. Marshall, The Providential Armistice: A Volunteer’s Story (Washington, DC: Liberty League, 1930), 12.

  41. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 1–2; “The Fifteenth,” NYA, October 5, 1916; Wilbur Young, “Negroes of New York: Equity Congress,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

  42. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 231.

  43. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 10–13.

  44. Brief Adventures of the First American Soldier Decorated in the World War, as Told by Neadom Roberts, 1933 (Richmond, VA: Collection of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar).

  45. Arthur W. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers (New York: Covici Friede, 1936), 9–13.

  46. Marcus Garvey, “The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riot,” speech, July 8, 1917, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers (volume I, 1826–August 1919) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 217.

  47. Harper Barnes, Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Walker & Company, 2008), 123–68.

  48. “Negro Guardsmen in San Juan Riot,” NYT, July 4, 1917.

  49. “Hayward Begins Inquiry into Riot,” NYT, July 5, 1917.

  50. “Negro Policeman Slain by Burglar,” NYT, August 7, 1917; Patrolman Killed in Battle with Negro Burglar,” New York Tribune, August 7, 1917; New York City Department of Health Death Certificates No. 7291 and 26338 of 1918 for Henry Oliver Holmes and Ella Homes, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

  51. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine, 357.

  52. Ibid., 46–47.

  53. “First Negro Troops in Spartanburg,” NYT, August 31, 1917.

  54. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine, 54–55.

  55. Ibid., 57, 67–68.

  56. Ibid., 75–76.

  57. “Two N.Y. Negroes Whip 24 Germans, Win War Crosses,” New York Tribune, May 20, 1918.

  58. Buckley, American Patriots, 200.

  59. Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 118–19.

  60. Recommendation for the Medal of Honor, Sergeant Henry Johnson, submitted by US Senator Charles E. Schumer, May 15, 2011.

  61. Bill Harris, The Hellfighters of Harlem: African American Soldiers Who Fought for the Right to Fight for Their Country (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002), 39.

  62. “City Firemen Hail Once-Scorned Chief,” NYT, October 29, 1976.

  63. Marshall, Providential Armistice, 11, 12.

  64. “Fifth Av. Cheers Negro Veterans,” NYT, February 18, 1919.

  65. World War I army service card, Henry Johnson, New York State Archives.

  66. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” Crisis, May 1919, 14.

  67. “Negro Killed in Harlem Race Row,” NYT, September 16, 1919.

  CHAPTER THREE: BETRAYED

  1. Langston Hughes to Arna Bontemps, December 27, 1950, Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

  2. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 187.

  3. Cornelius W. Willemse, Behind the Green Lights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), 51.

  4. “The Old Toms Prison Under Criticism Again,” NYT, June 30, 1929.

  5. Willemse, Behind the Green Lights, 30.

  6. “Fire College Instruction: Handbook of Instruction for Fire Lieutenants and Fire Captains,” advertisement, Fire Department Motor Apparatus: Description and Equipment of Every Type of Motor Apparatus in the New York Fire Department (New York: Civil Service Chronicle, 1916).

  7. “City Firemen Hail Once-Scorned Chief,” NYT, October 29, 1976.

  8. Wesley Williams photograph collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.

  9. M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall (New York: Greenwood Press, 1932), 188.

  10. Richard Zacks, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (New York: Doubleday, 2012), 23–27.

  11. Werner, Tammany Hall, 466.

  12. Zacks, Island of Vice, 41.

  13. Franklin Matthews, “Wide Open New York,” Harper’s Weekly, October 22, 1898.

  14. “Police Praised As Sergeants Dine,” NYT, March 8, 1907; “Police Gifts for McAdoo,” NYT, January 24, 1906; “Police Lieutenants Entertain Taft,” NYT, February 23, 1910; “No Cheers for Bingham,” NYT, February 9, 1909.

  15. “Whitman Watches Hylan; He Could Be Removed,” NYT, January 25, 1918; “Devery Funeral Tuesday,” NYT, June 22, 1919; “Devery’s Mourners the Lowly and High,” NYT, June 25, 1919.

  16. Werner, Tammany Hall, 557; “$12,000 For Enright in ‘Fictitious’ Stock Deal with A. A. Ryan,” NYT, September 21, 1921; “Bank Records Show Enright Deposited $100,421 in 4 Years,” NYT, October 18, 1921.

  17. Annual Report of the Department of Health of the City of New York, 1921; E. P. Cook, MD, “Bronchopneumonia in Early Childhood—Its Treatment,” Journal of California and Western Medicine (March 1930): 170; Department of Health, Certificate of Death, No. 5743 of 1920, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

  18. US Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census, 1910; Fourteenth Census, 1920.

  19. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 165–66.

  20. “The Reminiscences of Benjamin McLaurin,” 1960, Oral History Collection of Columbia University.

  21. Eslanda Goode Robeson, Paul Robeson, Negro (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930), 70, http://archive.org/stream/paulrobesonnegro011552mbp#page/n93/mode/2up.

  22. “The Reminiscences of George S. Schuyler,” 1962, Oral History Collection of Columbia University.

  23. Anderson, This Was Harlem, 130.

  24. “Murdered Man a Bigamist,” AMN, December 6, 1922; “Items of Social Interest,” AMN, December 6, 1922, and December 20, 1922.

  25. “The Reminiscences of George S. Schuyler.”

  26. “The Future Harlem,” NYA, January 10, 1920.

  27. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I, 1902–1941: I, Too Sing America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 10; Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 40.

  28. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes I, 6.

  29. Hughes, Big Sea, 34.

  30. Langston Hughes, “The Fascination of Cities, Crisis, January 1926, 140.

  31. Hughes, Big Sea, 81.

  32. “Making a Joke of Prohibition in New York City,” NYT, May 2, 1920.

  33. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010), 207–8.

  34. “Indict Arnold Rothstein,” NYT, June 7, 1919; “Inspector Henry Is Freed by Court,” NYT, June 23, 1921.

  35. “Faithful Unto Death,” Evening Telegram (NY), February 23, 1916; “Enright Promotes Ten to Be Captains,” New York Sun, April 27, 1919; “Changes Surprise Police,” NYT, June 26, 1919; “Samuel G. Belton, Police Aide, Dead,” NYT, February 11, 1958.

  36. “Capitol Theatre to Open Friday,” NYT, October 21, 1919; “Capitol Theatre Opens to Throng,” NYT, October 25, 1919.

  37. “Bandits Get 10,000 in Capitol Theatre Holdup During Play,” NYT, December 19, 1921.

  38. “Employee One of 3 Seized in Capitol Theatre H
old-Up,” New York Tribune, December 22, 1921.

  39. David Suisman, “Co-workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music,” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (March 2004).

  40. “Dempsey and Wills Agreement Signed,” NYT, July 19, 1922.

  41. Robert C. Hayden and Jacqueline Harris, Nine Black American Doctors (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 48; Robert C. Hayden, “Mr. Harlem Hospital”: Dr. Louis T. Wright, a Biography (Littleton, MA: Tapestry Press, 2003), 19, 65; P. Preston Reynolds, MD, “Dr. Louis T. Wright and the NAACP: Pioneers in Hospital Racial Integration,” American Journal of Public Health (June 2000): 883–92.

  42. “Memories of New Bern: The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922,” Joseph Patterson speech transcript, New Bern–Craven County Public Library website, http://newbern.cpclib.org/research/memories/pdf/Fire.pdf; Peter B. Sandbeck, excerpts from Beaufort’s African-American History and Architecture, Beaufort, North Carolina History website, http://beaufortartist.blogspot.com/p/african-americans-in-beaufort-1995.html.

  43. “Negro Policeman Shot by a Hold-up Suspect,” NYT, December 20, 1921.

  44. “Boddy Dies in Chair for Police Murder,” NYT, September 1, 1922; “Boddy Guilty, Grins at Death Verdict,” NYT, January 1, 1922.

  45. “Policeman Killed By Crazed Negro to Avenge Boddy,” NYT, January 20, 1922.

  46. “Negro Shoots Down Another Policeman,” NYT, May 9, 1922.

  47. “Negro Thug Killed in Fight at Station,” NYT, June 28, 1922.

  48. “Many Cases Indicate Epidemic of Brutality as Practices by Members of Police Force,” NYA, July 15, 1922; “Additional Developments in the Matter of Police Brutality Indicate Need of Change,” NYA, July 22, 1922; “Eyewitness Tells the Story of Beating Herbert Dent to Death,” NYA, November 11, 1922; “Crowds of Negroes at Boddy Funeral,” NYT, September 5, 1922.

  49. “Charges Enright Misused Police Welfare Fund,” NYT, January 31, 1926; “Enright Sails for Brazil,” NYT, November 23, 1934; “Charges Enright Misused Police Welfare Fund,” NYT, January 31, 1926.

  50. Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 58; James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 200; “Enright Must Show His Liquor Records,” NYT, September 14, 1923.

  51. David Ewen, A Journey to Greatness: The Life and Music of George Gershwin (New York: Henry Holt, 1956), 41; Stanley Crouch, “About Jelly Roll Morton,” Nonesuch Records website, 1997, http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/jelly-roll-morton.

  52. “Fear Sweeney Will Confess,” NYT, February 20, 1913; “Sweeney Ready to Bare Vice Graft,” New York Tribune, February 20, 1913.

  53. “Too Many Saloons in Harlem,” NYA, October 1, 1914.

  54. “Resort Keepers Released in Bail After Vice Raid,” New York Tribune, January 11, 1917; “Wilkins Gives Up Cabaret in New York,” NYA, October 4, 1917.

  55. Bricktop with James Haskins, Bricktop (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 34.

  56. “Detectives Who Raided Barron Wilkin’s Cabaret Pinch 23,” CD, March 11, 1922.

  57. Bricktop with Haskins, Bricktop, 75–78; Stanley Dance, The World of Swing: An Oral History of Big Band Jazz (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 52; Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 64; Konrad Bercovici, Around the World in New York (New York: Century, 1924), 237.

  58. “Punished, He Says, for Police Raid,” NYT, September 26, 1923.

  59. COH.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Ibid.

  62. “Officials Witness Bouts at Pioneer,” NYT, December 13, 1923.

  63. Arnold de Mille, “The Shooting of Barron Wilkins,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; “Baron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins, Negro Cabaret ‘King’ Is Slain,” New York Herald, May 24, 1924.

  64. “Cabaret Owner Shot by Gambler,” NYA, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Old Timer Recalls History of Barron,” CD, May 31, 1924.

  65. “Barron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Thousands Attend Wilkins’ Funeral,” NYA, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins Funeral,” CD, June 7, 1924.

  66. “NY’s Only Colored Fireman Saves Six from Burning Building,” NYA, October 25, 1924.

  67. COH.

  68. BN.

  69. Wesley Williams to the New York Age, August 8, 1925, WWP.

  70. AMN, August 12, 1925.

  71. “The Negro and the Finest,” AMN, September 9, 1925.

  72. Henry F. Pringle, “Jimmy Walker,” American Mercury, November 1926, 272.

  73. Langston Hughes, “Youth,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 663.

  74. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “An Opportunity for Negro Writers,” Opportunity, September 1924, 258.

  75. Hughes, Big Sea, 245; Langston Hughes, “The Negro and the Racial Mountain,” Nation, June 23, 1926, 694.

  76. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes I, 141.

  77. James Weldon Johnson to Carl Van Vechten, March 6, 1927, James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

  78. “Manhattan Lodge of Elks Tenders Testimonial Dinner to Sgt. Battle,” AMN, August 4, 1926.

  79. BN.

  CHAPTER FOUR: COMMAND

  1. Rev. Frederick Asbury Cullen, From Barefoot Town to Jerusalem (privately printed, n.d.), 102.

  2. Sugar Ray Robinson with Dave Anderson, Sugar Ray (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 35–37.

  3. Charles S. Johnson, “Black Workers and the City,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 641–42.

  4. US Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census, 1920; Fifteenth Census, 1930; Charles S. Johnson, “Black Workers and the City,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 643; T. J. Woofter Jr., Negro Problems in Cities (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1928), 79; New York Urban League, “Twenty-Four Hundred Negro Families in Harlem: An Interpretation of the Living Conditions of Small Wage Earners,” 16 (1927 typescript at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture); Winifred B. Nathan, Health Conditions in North Harlem, 1923–1927 (New York, 1932), 19, 31; “Thousands of Worshippers Take Part in Dedication of Mother Zion’s New and Magnificent House of Worship,” NYA, September 26, 1925.

  5. James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, March 1925.

  6. “Sergeant Battle Returns from Vacation,” AMN, September 28, 1927.

  7. “Modern Ideas Followed in Building New School,” NYT, March 1, 1903.

  8. Affidavit of Leroy Leeks, People of the State of New York v. Leroy Leeks, Court of General Sessions of the County of New York, Index No. 50235 of 1927, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

  9. “Freed of Murder as Accuser Recant,” NYT, October 21, 1927; “Innocent Man Near Death Chair,” AMN, October 26, 1927.

  10. Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 63, 67.

  11. “New York, We’re Here!,” AMN, August 22, 1927.

  12. James H. Williams to Patrick Cardinal Hayes, September 9, 1927, WWP; Wesley Williams to Robert F. Wagner, November 17, 1962, WWP.

  13. “Wesley Williams Wins Promotion,” AMN, September 21, 1927.

  14. “Side Lights on Society,” AMN, May 9, 1928.

  15. “John Brown Pilgrims Plan for Placid Trip,” Lake Placid (NY) News, April 27, 1928; “John Brown and Abraham Lincoln,” Lake Placid News, May 18, 1928; Ned P. Rauch, “Lake Placid Club: The Beginnings,” 5, in The Lake Placid Club, 1890 to 2002, Lee Manchester, ed. (Jay, NY: Makebelieve Publishing, 2008), http://www.slideshare.net/LeeManchester/the-lake-placid-club-1890-2002.

  16. “An Ordinary Shawl with an Extraordinary Story,” blog post, Ohio History, February 20, 2014, http://ohiohistory.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/an-ordinary-shawl-with-an-extraordinary-story/.

  17. Sadie Hall, “Casper Holstein,” WPA research paper,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; “Light Went Out on $150,” NYT, July 18, 1905; Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, and Graham White, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 151.

  18. J. Saunders Redding, “Playing the Numbers,” North American Review (December 1934): 533.

  19. Winthrop D. Lane, “Ambushed in the City: The Grim Side of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, March 1925.

  20. BN.

  21. BN.

  22. White et al., Playing the Numbers, 154; Hall, “Casper Holstein.”

  23. “Negro, Back Home, Lauds Kidnappers,” NYT, September 25, 1928.

  24. “Congressman Pritchard of North Carolina, Republican, Refuses Office Next [sic] Negro,” NYA, April 13, 1929.

  25. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934.

  26. BN.

  27. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Or Does It Explode: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 42.

  28. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 169, 284.

  29. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 245–47.

  30. Greenberg, Or Does It Explode, 44–45; Nancy Cunard, Essays on Race and Empire (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002), 95–96.

  31. “Christmas Cheer Brought to Thousands of Harlem Poor by Generous Civic Organizations,” NYA, January 2, 1932.

  32. “New York Panorama: A Comprehensive View of the Metropolis, Presented in a Series of Articles by the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration in New York City,” Portrait of Harlem (New York: Random House, 1938),142.

  33. Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935, 53, 68–69, 73, 87–88, La Guardia Papers, New York City Municipal Reference Library.

  34. BN; US Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: “Society,” AMN, January 22, 1930; “Battles Give Annual Party,” AMN, March 26, 1930; Charline Battle Hunter College Transcript; California Passenger and Crew List, No. 2712, 1932; “Mrs. Enrique Cachemaille Confined to Sanitarium with Nervous Breakdown,” NYA, June 3, 1933.