by Julie Greene
Skilled workers’ appeals to their rights as citizens could not prevent them from being replaced by noncitizens on the silver payroll. Substitutions continued throughout the Zone, helping to lower costs and create a more tractable workforce. Furthermore, as the construction project began to wind down in 1912 and 1913, government officials undertook a deliberate policy of systematically phasing out gold workers in favor of silver employees. As early as 1910 in some areas, officials stopped recruiting skilled men from the United States, preferring to replace them with silver workers as their numbers declined. The government had successfully brought its most powerful workers under control. After the canal was completed, in 1915, Goethals celebrated the efforts of his skilled workers, declaring them “an earnest, zealous, and enthusiastic co-operating body of employees.” His calm sentiment hid the intense struggles that had been required to create such cooperation.51
“WE LOOK TO NO OTHER GOVERNMENT FOR PROTECTION”
Although most U.S. citizens on the ICC’s gold roll were white, several dozen African American men also worked on the canal, and for them issues of race, citizenship, and skill interacted in very different ways. The 1912 census recorded only 127 African American employees. During the early years of construction there may have been more, but their numbers likely did not climb higher than 200. However, because of their awkward position in the segregation system, and because of their activism, African American workers powerfully tested the U.S. government. Henry Williams, the young Texas longshoreman, was likely typical: these men felt good fortune knocking at their doors when labor recruiters offered them a prestigious government job working to build the Panama Canal. The jobs were high-paying and, at least initially, on the gold roll. Most of the African Americans who accepted the ICC’s offer of work had been born in the rural South. Their very first job had most often involved working the land for a relative or a white employer. Work in the Canal Zone allowed these men to escape the Jim Crow South, with its widespread segregation, racial violence, and economic discrimination. Like African Americans before them who fled for the West after the end of Reconstruction, calling themselves Exodusters, and like participants in the great migrations yet to come, these few African Americans were able to vote with their feet and depart the South for a better life—in this case, jobs in the service of America’s empire. Compared with those struggling amid the indignities of the Jim Crow South, then, these were lucky men.52
Unlike most other African Americans, these men had already acquired a skill or a knowledge of business that made them contenders for a job in the Canal Zone. Some had found work with a railroad or a foundry in the South and had learned their way around a blacksmith’s shop. Others had picked up the essential skills of a riveter or a fireman. And many, like their white counterparts in the Canal Zone, had led lives of unusual adventure before arriving on the isthmus. Henry Hart, a middle-aged man born in Randon, Mississippi, in 1871, provides an example. He had worked on his father’s farm for nine years, he informed the ICC personnel officer, beginning when he was no more than two years old. At the age of twelve, Hart got a job in a blacksmith’s shop in the town of Hansboro, Mississippi, and then worked fitting iron bridges in Louisiana for nine years. Along the way, he married and had two children. A job milling ore then took Hart to Central America for three years, by the end of which he was fluent in Spanish. He developed rheumatism in Central America, which left him too ill to work for the next two years. While ill and back in the United States, Hart and his wife had a third child, named Icelina. Hart’s wife died around that time, perhaps in childbirth. The children went to live with family back in Hansboro, and when Hart recovered his health, his Spanish-language skills must have caught the eye of labor recruiters. He took a job as a blacksmith’s helper in 1907 in the gigantic Cristobal shops near Colón, in the Canal Zone. Hart would work in the Zone for eleven years, and gradually he received pay raises and a promotion to blacksmith, before resigning his position and returning to the United States in May 1918.53
Charles Arnold took a similar path to the Canal Zone. Born in 1867, Arnold gained experience while still young as a businessman in his hometown of Cincinnati. In 1897 he joined the Army, fought in Cuba during the War of 1898, and then remained in Cuba to support the U.S. government’s work. After leaving the Army, he lived in Cuba for nine more years, running a business there. In 1909 he became one of many migrants traveling from Cuba to the Canal Zone for work. There Arnold won a position as a fireman on the Panama Railroad, earning $62. 50 in gold each month. Unlike Henry Hart, though, Arnold was not well regarded by his employer. Considering his workmanship poor, officials discharged him after only six months of employment.54
Black men like Hart and Arnold did not fit easily into the biracial gold and silver system, and this caused discomfort both for them and for government officials struggling to make the system work. In 1907 and 1908 the government had moved most African Americans off the gold roll and created for them a “special” position on the silver roll that granted them certain privileges, like paid vacations, but classified them as colored and refused them many perks. Visible reminders of segregation were pervasive throughout the Zone.55
These were matters of great concern to African Americans, and they came to a head in 1912 at a time when the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln’s party, was in power in Washington and in charge of building the canal. This was not meant to be a southern—Jim Crow—operation. And yet in the name of empire and efficiency a thorough segregation system had been established, a system that trapped African Americans unjustly. That year Dr. R. H. Boyd of Tennessee, a leader in the Colored Baptist Church (the largest denomination among African Americans in the United States), made a journey to the Canal Zone. He wanted to observe the construction effort and examine the work being done by members of his church. He traveled across the isthmus, meeting with ministers and church officials as well as the governor of the Canal Zone. While he described his visit as pleasant in many ways, he was startled by the segregation. He declared that “he never saw in the States as much of a ‘Jim Crow’ situation as he found here.” Most unsettling of all, Boyd later wrote in theNational Baptist Union-Review, his church’s official newspaper, was the treatment he received at the Ancon post office. As he arrived, he “saw the United States flag floating over the post office and felt very much at home.” Yet when Boyd walked in and asked for his mail, the clerk told him he must go to the other window: “Sir, you are a Negro, and must get your mail where other Negroes get theirs. Negroes and white men do not get their mail at the same window.” Hardly able to conceal his dismay, Boyd remembered, “We looked at him and knew that he was blacker than we were, but wanting our mail so badly, we obeyed orders and went around to the window where Negroes called for their mail.” Boyd’s article describing his experiences ran in many other African American newspapers, causing consternation in black communities.56
Officials were concerned about the construction project’s reception in African American as well as white communities back home. Throughout this period Republican Party officials carefully highlighted their work supporting equal rights for Negro citizens of the United States and the records of Presidents Roosevelt and Taft as employers of Negroes in federal jobs.57 Boyd’s revelations hit African American newspapers in the early spring of 1912, just as President Taft prepared for a difficult reelection campaign. Taft would face opposition not only from the Democrat Woodrow Wilson but also from ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, who was running as the candidate of the Progressive Party. In this context the Republican Party emphasized its concern for equal rights even more forcefully. TheRepublican Campaign Text-Book for 1912 highlighted Taft’s “tender solicitude for the brown man of the Philippines” and the fact that “there were more Afro-Americans in the service of the United States government under the Taft administration than ever before in the history of the country.” Republicans stressed Taft’s fight against peonage and disenfranchisement of African
Americans in the South, his opposition to racial segregation, and his denunciation of lynching. Taft’s managers worked to fill newspapers like theChicago Defender with such material proving the party’s positive impact on black Americans.58
Now the reverend’s description of racism in the Canal Zone threatened to turn that community against the canal project—and against the Republican Party. In April 1912, Ralph Tyler, an African American serving as auditor of the Navy, alerted President Taft to Boyd’s article, and the president ordered an investigation. Goethals immediately complied, asking that both the clerk who assisted Dr. Boyd and the postmaster in charge be identified and interviewed.59
Goethals located the clerk in question, a “colored Jamaican” named John Davis who had worked seven years for the Zone post office and was about to take exams to become a lawyer. Davis was also a leader in the Zone’s Colored Baptist Church and had met with the Reverend Boyd socially in addition to waiting on him at the post office. Davis declared that nothing had taken place as Boyd described it. He had known who the reverend was as he approached the window: “I saluted him and advised him in answer to his inquiry that there was no mail there for him at the time, told him … that I was a member of his church and that if mail arrived, I would see that it reached him by placing it in Rev. Thorbourne’s box.” Later, Davis testified, when he met with Boyd socially, they discussed the Jim Crow conditions in the Zone and particularly the fact that the post office lobbies were divided into separate areas for whites and blacks: “I explained to him … that the West India population was far in excess of any other population and that the division of lobbies facilitated the delivery of the mail.” The postmaster at Ancon backed up every detail of John Davis’s testimony.60
Summarizing the results of his investigation in May 1912, the director of Canal Zone posts, Tom Cooke, carefully defended the racial system in use in the post offices. Separating the races in the post office lobbies is “chiefly beneficial to the West Indians employed on the work here.” Only six thousand to nine thousand Americans received their mail at Canal Zone post offices, as compared with forty-six thousand West Indians. Both groups should have an equal opportunity to receive their mail quickly and efficiently, Cooke opined: “There has never been any complaint here on the Isthmus of this service.” Ultimately “there is no division which could be construed in any possible manner as race discrimination in the post office work between the American and the West Indian, or between the white and the black, if that expression is better, except that the colored West Indian is provided a lobby and a delivery window of his own … and he is given just the same opportunity of receiving his mail … as the white American is.” Cooke concluded that Boyd’s report had been incorrect; he had not experienced any discrimination on the basis of his race or for any other reason. And for good measure, Cooke noted that the same “division of space” existed throughout the Zone, in the commissaries, pay offices, labor trains, and messes, and “for practically the same reason, i.e., to facilitate the work.” He added, “This division is made not for race discrimination, but for facilitating the construction of the Canal.”61
African Americans working in the Zone believed they knew better. They complained about such discrimination, and when this had no apparent effect, they launched protests against their treatment. When government officials treated them differently from white Americans—for example, when they were refused free ice, first-class seats on the train, or payment in gold—African Americans lodged complaints on the grounds of their rights as American citizens. Government officials responded to their protests ambivalently. Anxious to appease them for reasons of public relations, yet determined to uphold the color line, officials never developed a consistent policy.
Consider the case of Walter Eagleson, an African American gold employee working as a watchman for $ 75 a month in the Commissary Department. Two years after the Reverend Boyd’s accusations of discrimination, Eagleson complained when a clerk at the Balboa post office ordered him to use the silver workers’ window: “Will you please inform me, if the Postal clerks have the right to discriminate and draw a color line in the post office on a native born American Citizen?” John Baxter, the head of civil administration, forwarded Eagleson’s note to Goethals’s executive secretary, asking “whether these people are to be allowed to transact their business in the white lobby of the post office.” The latter quickly responded and rejected Eagleson’s claim that his citizenship was relevant in this matter: “As you are employed on the gold roll, of course you have a technical right to transact business on the gold roll side of the post office, although, as you are of the negro race, it would seem that you would avoid disputes of this character and save yourself and others annoyance if you would transact your business on the side where others of your race transact their business.” Goethals’s secretary ended with a quick lecture to Eagleson on race: “It has been found desirable to separate the races to some extent in order to save constant friction of the kind instanced in your letter, and it seems that no man should be ashamed of his race or color, as these are matters which we cannot control.” Eagleson must have bridled upon receiving such patronizing advice.62
In another case in 1909, six African American blacksmiths working in Empire organized to protest government racism. Since at this time government officials refused to hire African Americans on the gold roll, all six men worked as silver employees. They objected to the fact that Panamanian “negroes” could be hired on the gold roll while they could not, as well as to the government’s refusal to issue them free passes on the trains: “Why should not we American Negroes who assisted in fighting so bravely for the independence of our country not parcipitate in all the rights and privilidges, which is by far more than what the Panamanian negroes can say.”63 Goethals investigated the personnel records of all the men who had signed the protest, then responded with some accommodation to their demands. He agreed to issue pass books for the trains to African Americans and to pay them in gold rather than in silver. However, he refused to change the policy of hiring Panamanians since it resulted from a presidential executive order, and he bluntly told them their employment contracts placed them on the silver roll and could not be changed.64
The blacksmiths continued their protest, however. They wrote President Taft to say they were dissatisfied with the chief engineer’s response and were now looking to him for justice. Calling themselves “Colored American Citizens,” they presented the president with a specific request: “Please have us placedon the Gold Roll so that we will no longer be deprived of any rights that the other American gets.” When they had arrived on the isthmus, they declared, they were ignorant of the ICC’s rules and allowed officials to take advantage and employ them on the silver roll. They noted they were “American raised American born know nothing about any other Government only the American Government.” Indeed, they said, “We look to no other Government for protection only our own USA and if in case that the USA should see … fit to call on us for any use we would not hesitate one moment but gladly and willingly give our aid as we have all ways did.”65 If President Taft ever responded to these workers, no record remains of his reply.
Other African American workers protested government policies as individuals. Henry Williams, the Texan who found work in the Canal Zone as a blacksmith, provides one example. Williams’s name does not appear on any petition sent to Goethals or President Taft. Yet ICC personnel records reveal that he believed he faced racial discrimination on the isthmus and he became determined to do something about it. Like many white workers, Williams felt particularly exercised by the role of foreigners in the Canal Zone, but his reactions focused on the disadvantages they posed to black U.S. citizens. He believed the government treated foreigners better than African Americans, allowing them sometimes to work on the gold roll even as officials attempted to “keep all colored men on the silver roll.” Williams complained to Goethals, and when ignored, he took his protest to Washington, D.C. While on paid leave
in the United States, Williams visited the capital and hired a lawyer to represent him. He met with ICC officials, who then asked Goethals for his view. Goethals responded: “The truth of this whole matter is that Mr. Williams is what the men down here call an ‘agitator.’ … I have been informed that the other colored Americans on the Isthmus are not in sympathy with him or his actions.” Williams returned to work in the Canal Zone without seeing his criticisms answered. He worked the next few years without apparent incident and got a small pay raise and a promotion, yet his anger must not have abated. In 1911 he was fired for “insubordination” on the job.66
In 1910, Goethals revoked an order that required the few remaining African American gold employees to take off their hats in the commissary since white U.S. citizens faced no such requirement. Goethals conceded that this practice had resulted in “discrimination between American citizens” and thus was inappropriate. When the African American gold employee Charles Arnold complained that same year that he was not being allowed to shop on the gold side of the commissary, the acting chief engineer ruled: “We cannot afford to subject the few American negroes who are employed on the gold roll to any marked discrimination on account of their color. If they claim the privilege, of making their purchases in the commissaries on the gold side, it will have to be conceded to them.” Yet African Americans never won inclusion in YMCA clubhouses or in Canal Zone hotels and restaurants. Their housing never measured up to that accorded white workers, and while the government allowed their wives and children to come, they received not married housing but more space in the bachelor dormitories. In short, while officials sometimes responded favorably to African American workers’ demands for equality, overall they saw enforcing the color line as a more important priority.67
