by Carla Kaplan
80 extraordinary antilynching exhibit: Sponsored by more than 183 black and white patrons, many of whom had come to know one another through parties such as those given by Fania Marinoff and Mabel Dodge, Spingarn’s show included just under four dozen works of sculpture, painting, drawing, and lithographs by, among others, Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Reginald Marsh, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Isamu Noguchi, and George Biddle (brother-in-law of Charlotte Osgood Mason’s protégée Katherine Garrison Chapin Biddle, who was also working on antilynching artworks) . Even today, such an exhibition would be controversial. James Allen’s recent coffee-table book of lynching photographs, Without Sanctuary, generated controversy centered on the claim that large numbers of such graphic pictures had never before been publicly displayed. According to her husband Joel’s biographer, Amy Spingarn “assumed the forefront” of the work to mount the exhibition and find support for its brief tour to cities along the East Coast. Ross, J. E. Spingarn and the Rise of the NAACP, 154. Recent scholarship on this exhibition, however, never mentions Spingarn’s name; credit for the exhibition is given to Walter White, whose signature, as executive secretary of the NAACP, was attached to most of the correspondence that went out to participating artists. See, e.g., the following detailed accounts of the exhibition: Vendryes, “Hanging on Their Walls,” in Race Consciousness, ed. Fossett and Tucker; and Apel, Imagery of Lynching. Currently there is no biography of Amy Spingarn (and even Wikipedia has no entry for her). Many of the best histories of the NAACP, in fact, contain listings only for Amy Spingarn’s husband and brother—both of whom were vitally important to the organization—but none for her. See, e.g., Kellogg, A History of the NAACP, vol. 1; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice; and Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade. Amy Spingarn’s charcoal sketches of friends such as Zora Neale Hurston, though apparently never exhibited, capture the private personalities of many black celebrities; they add to the official visual record of the Harlem Renaissance left by such men as Carl Van Vechten and Nickolas Muray, but are rarely reproduced. The Spingarns have sometimes been listed, erroneously, as “African American,” even in the indexes to some prestigious manuscript collections.
80 A few of its records and archives: Author’s interview with Carolyn Ashkar, librarian, Knoxville College, November 12, 2007.
Chapter 4: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler: “The Fall of a Fair Confederate”
83 “Most of America is crazy”: Jannath [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “America’s Changing Color Line,” in Negro, ed. Cunard.
83 “My purpose?”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 536.
83 “Sad Are Beautiful Revenges”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, diary, Box 8, Folder 5, Josephine Schuyler Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (hereafter abbreviated Schomburg).
84 “was being abducted”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, manuscript fragment of “From Texas to Harlem with Love,” chap. 16, 342, Philippa Schuyler Unprocessed Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
84 “I have dropped”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, fragment of “From Texas to Harlem with Love,” 13, Schuyler Family Papers, Unprocessed, MG63, Josephine Schuyler Collection, Schomburg.
84 “dramatic”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, diary, n.p., Josephine Schuyler Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
84 “cast my lot”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 536.
84 The taboo against interracial intimacy: According to historian Peggy Pascoe, the racial categories built into both miscegenation laws and marriage license forms exerted profound pressures on cultural ideas of racial identity. Pascoe, Doing What Comes Naturally. See also Lemire, “Miscegenation.” Lemire argues that the domains of marriage and sexuality are most resistant to changes in biological notions of racial identity; anti-miscegenation and anti-interracial advocates, she shows, were canny about taking advantage of that recalcitrance.
85 “marry an intellectual”: The Chicago Defender, February 19, 1921, 7.
85 “second degree criminal assault”: “Poughkeepsie Has Marital Upset.”
85 Beatrice Taylor . . . Helen Croute: “Marriage to Colored Man Cause of Persecution,” 1; “Persecuted for Wedding Race Husband,” A1.
85 The Jack Johnson case: Pittsburgh Courier, October 19, 1929, 4.
85 “never argued”: “Intermarriage,” Editorial, New York Amsterdam News, February 15, 1928, 20.
86 “overeager to marry”: Miller, “The Marriage Bar.”
86 “uncharitable attitude”: “Mixed Marriages,” A10.
86 Almost as many blacks as whites: Kornweibel, No Crystal Stair, 113.
86 “some worthy black woman”: The Chicago Defender, October 26, 1912, 1.
86 “vogue”: Hughes, The Big Sea, 228.
86 “difference in attitude”: Jannath, “America’s Changing Color Line,” in Negro, ed. Cunard, 88.
86 “love between a white woman”: Berliner, Ambivalent Desire, 69. Berliner was writing specifically about Paris, but his description applies to New York City as well.
86 “outcasts”: “Mixed Marriages,” A10.
86 “My family is incapable”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 536.
87 “the most recognizable name”: Ferguson, The Sage of Sugar Hill, 125.
87 “the first interracial celebrity marriage”: Ferguson, The Sage of Sugar Hill, 18.
87 “America’s Strangest Family”: “Meet the George Schuylers,” 22–26.
88 “It is incredible”: George Schuyler, “When Black Weds White,” 15. Eventually at least some members of Josephine’s family were aware of her life in Harlem. Indeed, some family members corresponded with Philippa when she was a young woman. Josephine Cogdell to “Dearest Lucy,” n.d. [1940s–’50s], courtesy of Walter and Britt Juliff, in private collection.
88 “general terms ‘Negro’”: George Schuyler, “The Caucasian Problem,” in What the Negro Wants, ed. Logan, 285.
88 “race is a superstitution [sic]”: George Schuyler, Black and Conservative, 352. It is uncertain whether this is a typographical error or Schuyler’s play on the word “institution.”
88 “break down race prejudice”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 536.
89 “interracial celebrity marriage”: Peplow, George S. Schuyler, 117, n. 24.
89 best correspondents: Van Vechten, Splendid Drunken Twenties, ed. Kellner. Early on in this project, Bruce Kellner was generous with his time and candid view of Marinoff.
90 In Van Vechten’s careful system: Some years ago, the Beinecke Library decided to dispense with those designations (though a record of them is kept by the archivists), a loss to scholars of the era. Scholars do still turn to Van Vechten’s system, rather than available biographical data, because its indications of racial background are often more reliable than standard biographical sources, census data, or even the self-designations of authors. Indeed, so meticulous was Van Vechten that he even marked Jean Toomer throughout as “was N now W” in deference to Toomer’s eventual refusal to be published as a “black” or “Negro” writer. Van Vechten’s “N now W” reflects the absence, at this time, of any biracial designation but the much-detested term “mulatto.”
90 “tell the sheep from the goats”: Larsen, Passing, ed. Kaplan, 55.
90 “Us Darkies”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler to Carl Van Vechten, June 1, 1959, Carl Van Vechten Correspondence, James Weldon Johnson Collection, Beinecke.
91 “My White Fortress”: Tanne, “To a Dark Poem,” 50.
91 “The white woman was almost”: Jannath, “America’s Changing Color Line,” 87.
91 “I beat the walls for wild release”: Tanne, “Barrier,” 79.
91 Josephine Cogdell was born: Her marriage certificate lists her age as twenty-eight, though she would have been thirty-one, barely younger
than George. Her 1936 and 1967 passports both list her birth date as June 23, 1900. Her death certificate lists her birth year as 1900, rather than 1897, suggesting that George may not have known her true age. The Cogdell family Bible verifies 1897 as her birth year. I am grateful to the Juliff family for sharing this with me and allowing me to photograph the Bible’s Family Record page.
91 “savage”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 531.
92 “It was understood . . . Her name”: Author’s interview, local historian, Granbury, Texas, December 15, 2007. For obvious reasons, I leave these interviewees anonymous.
92 “little or no middle class”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 530.
92 Her father, Daniel Calhoun: Some historians use Daniel Crandell Cogdell.
92 First National Bank: The handsome Italianate stone building he had built for his bank still stands, adjacent to Granbury’s courthouse on the town square.
92 “around a million acres”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, manuscript fragment of “From Texas to Harlem with Love,” chap. 16, 342, Philippa Schuyler Unprocessed Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
92 She had tutors: Gaston Cogdell (Josephine’s nephew), quoted in Talalay, Composition in Black and White. I am grateful to Talalay for sharing her knowledge of the family with me, patiently answering my questions, and attempting, once again, to discover the location of Josephine’s lost manuscript “From Texas to Harlem with Love.”
92 “super-energy . . . Feudal Ruler”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], undated diary [1923–1924], Box 8, Folder 17, n.p., Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
93 “We lived on a scale”: When that house burned down in 1907, D. C. Cogdell had it replaced with a fourteen-room version on an even grander scale, designed by Wyatt Hedrick and built to top anything else in the county. The new house, which is still standing and was recently for sale, is a 7,000-square-foot Craftsman-style masterpiece. The house stayed in the Cogdell family until the early 1960s, when it was sold to Dr. Little, the town physician. He kept it until John and Pam Ragland bought it and turned it into the Iron Horse Inn, a bed-and-breakfast. They sold the inn to Bob and Judy Atkinson, who loved the home and its history. Judy so loved the home and its original features, she told me, that she planned to remove a few of the built-ins and take them as “keepsakes” when they left.
93 “writers weren’t held in high esteem”: Author’s interview with Walter Juliff (Josephine’s nephew), College Station, Texas, December 18, 2007.
93 Behind the house were quarters: This early history of Granbury and the Cogdell houses draws on a number of documents, including Ewell, Hood Country History, first published in 1895 and reprinted as part of Hightower, ed., Hood County History in Picture and Story; Saltarelli, “‘Bright and Shining Facts for All the People’”; Saltarelli, “Civic Pioneer Builds the ‘Ultimate’ Cottage,’”; Cogdell House handouts provided by Judy Atkinson and the Iron Horse Inn; and author’s interview with Mary Saltarelli, Diane Lock, and Claudia Southern, local historians, Granbury, Texas, December 15, 2007.
93 “How I loathe it all”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], undated diary [1923–1924], Box 8, Folder 17, n.p., Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
93 “silly notion”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], The Last Born, unpublished novel ms., 5, Schomburg.
94 D.C. proposed to Lucy: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, manuscript fragment of “From Texas to Harlem with Love,” chap. 16, 342, Philippa Schuyler Unprocessed Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
94 “savagely selfish”: Houston, quoted in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 34.
94 “determined, dogged . . . attention”: Josephine Cogdell, undated diary, Box 8, Folder 15, n.p., Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
94 “pigmy and a giant”: Josephine Cogdell, undated diary, Box 8, Folder 15, n.p., Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
94 “any man’s slave”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], The Last Born, 9.
94 “They were fiery, temperamental”: Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 33.
94 “‘godless family’”: Gaston Cogdell, quoted in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 33, ellipses in original.
94 “superbly unmoral”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], Southwest, unpublished novel manuscript, Schomburg, 618.
94 With all the high moral standards: Josephine Cogdell, diary, “High School Notebook,” Box 8, Folder 19, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
94 “absolutely unfitted”: Josephine Cogdell, untitled novel fragment, 380, Schomburg.
95 “murdered, quarreled, raped”: Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 34.
95 “‘She tried to have’”: Gaston Cogdell, Jr., quoted in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 36.
95 Elinor Glyn’s scandalous novel: Cunard sneaked Glyn’s novel—her first—into her bedroom and “thrilled” for a week to its scandalous story of sexual freedom—“exactly what I wanted to know about!”—when she was only eleven years old. Cunard, GM, 57, 56.
95 “‘liable to do most anything’”: Susie Mae Cogdell and Gaston Cogdell, both interviewed by Talalay, 34.
95 “all the iconoclasts”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, manuscript fragment of “From Texas to Harlem with Love,” chap. 16, 342. Philippa Schuyler Unprocessed Papers, Schuyler Family Papers, Schomburg.
96 “doomed”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 528. Other black friends included Dolf, Daisey’s cook and Aniky’s brother; “Uncle Bob,” butcher and half brother to a former Granbury mayor; Little Varney, the iceman; Ivory; Uncle Varney, an ex-slave; and Lou-Vanilla, mistress of a Granbury leading citizen.
96 “the activities of the Negroes”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “17 Years of Mixed Marriage,” 62.
96 “I preferred sitting”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 528–29.
96 “My mother, watching us hang around”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “17 Years of Mixed Marriage,” 62.
97 “thoroughgoing Negrophobe”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 528.
97 “among these black people”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], Southwest, 841.
98 “Any mention of the Negro”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “17 Years of Mixed Marriage,” 63.
98 “no color line in his love life”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “17 Years of Mixed Marriage,” 62.
98 “Interracial love”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, “An Interracial Marriage,” 274; Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler] “17 Years of Mixed Marriage,” 62.
98 For her daughter’s fourth birthday: Talalay, Composition in Black and White, 94. Josephine also kept letters from family members for decades. Letters from her father, going back almost forty years, were among her papers when she died.
98 “romantic era”: Josephine to Lucy, n.d., courtesy of Walter and Britt Juliff.
99 “I was a thoroughgoing Negrophobe”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 528.
99 “I became a Negrophile”: Anonymous [Josephine Cogdell Schuyler], “The Fall of a Fair Confederate,” 531.
99 “From Texas to Harlem with Love”: Years after Josephine’s death, George was still trying to get the novel published. Ronald Hobbs to George S. Schuyler, February 16, 1972, Schomburg. Hobbs was the nation’s first black literary agent.
99 “it is possible”: Britt, “Women in the New South,” in Calverton and Schmalhausen, eds., Woman’s Coming of Age, xi–xx, cited in Freedman, “The New Woman,” 376.
99 “flaming joviality . . . crude”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], The Last Born, 165, 172.
99 “humiliate wifehood”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], Southwest, 598. One of those affairs, with an older Jewish banker, may have resulted in a bequest that helped her tra
vel to California and New York, as her unpublished autobiographical novels suggest.
100 Quickly becoming pregnant: Later she would have at least one more abortion.
100 “very strange affair”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, diary, undated, Box 8, Folder 11, n.p. Josephine’s most detailed descriptions of this marriage are in her two unpublished autobiographical novels, The Last Born and Southwest.
100 “be a rebel”: Heba Jannath [Josephine Cogdell], The Last Born, 206.
100 “Taking orders from people”: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, diary, undated [1927], Box 8, Folder 11, n.p.
100 “second Paris”: Alta Californian, August 7, 1853. Quoted in Levin, Bohemia in America, 70.
100 “More open than Eastern cities”: Cherny, “Patterns of Toleration and Discrimination,” 139–40.
100 Guidebooks to San Francisco: See Levin, Bohemia in America, 307, 311.
100 “dynamite the baked”: Hapgood, quoted in Stansell, American Moderns, 2.
100 As one guidebook put it: Reimer, Bohemia, quoted in Levin, 295.
100 The San Francisco bohemians: Dearborn, Queen of Bohemia, 179.
101 “male authority and female subservience”: Kitty Cannell, quoted in Dearborn, Queen of Bohemia, 234.
101 “San Francisco supported a milieu”: Stansell, American Moderns, 4.
102 “She could be seen”: Stansell, American Moderns, 28.
102 “helping to shape”: Rudnick and Heller, 1915: The Cultural Moment, 71.
102 “We intend simply”: “The New Woman.”
102 In California, she cut it: George Schuyler described his wife as “blonde” in his autobiography, perhaps to highlight her lightness as a white woman, perhaps because he preferred blonde women, perhaps because he could not recall his wife’s hair color, though he dedicated the autobiography to her. Josephine was not a blonde but a brunette. At some point after marrying George, and possibly in deference to his preferences, she began to bleach her hair blonde. She also darkened her complexion. To date, published references to Josephine all repeat George’s error. George Schuyler, Black and Conservative, 163.
