How the States Got Their Shapes Too

by Mark Stein

  “Alfalfa Bill” Murray (1869-1956) (photo credit 40.2)

  The effort to create a state of Sequoyah was ultimately torpedoed by President Theodore Roosevelt. “I recommend that Indian Territory and Oklahoma be admitted as one state,” he had told Congress in his 1905 State of the Union message. That the boundaries of the Indian Territory would thereby be obliterated did not concern him. “There is no obligation,” he told Congress, “to treat territorial subdivisions, which are matters of convenience only.”

  With the president endorsing a state that combined the two territories, the action moved to the Oklahoma statehood convention in Guthrie in 1906. At this venue, the delegates elected “Alfalfa Bill” as the convention president. Murray’s opening address praised Green McCurtain and the other chiefs as “great men,” then went on to paint the colors, as it were, of the state he foresaw. “We must provide the means for the advancement of the negro race, and accept him as God gave him to us and use him for the good of society,” he declared. “As a rule, they are failures as lawyers, doctors and in other professions. He must be taught in line with his own sphere as porters, bootblacks, and barbers.… It is an entirely false notion that the negro can rise to the equal state of a white man.”

  While many states had enacted Jim Crow laws, Murray sought to embed white supremacy in the Oklahoma constitution. Other white delegates disagreed—not with Murray’s racial views, but with the political wisdom of including them in a constitution that would require approval by Congress and the signature of President Roosevelt. Ultimately, the delegates, including Murray, opted to avoid a confrontation. They contented themselves with a resolution stating “it is the sense of this body that separate coaches and waiting rooms be required for the negro race … [but] consider this a legislative matter rather than a constitutional question.”

  Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907. On the legislature’s opening day, it enacted Senate Bill No. 1, mandating segregated railroad coaches and waiting rooms as its first order of business.

  In thus privileging white people, Oklahoma faced the issue of its red people, whose political support was essential, given the state’s demographics. Anticipating this need, the Oklahoma constitution included a section devoted to the definition of race. “Wherever in this Constitution and laws of this state, the word or words, ‘colored,’ ‘colored race,’ ‘negro,’ or ‘negro race’ are used,” Article 23 stated, “the same shall be construed to mean or apply to all persons of African descent. The term ‘white race’ shall include all other persons.” Legally speaking, American Indians were now white people in Oklahoma.

  Edward P. McCabe was one of several thousand African Americans who had migrated to Oklahoma since the 1890s. Most of these settlers were from the South, seeking economic opportunity and escape from persecution. Unfortunately for them, many poor Southern whites (such as Murray) had also migrated to Oklahoma for economic opportunity.

  Compared to Murray, McCabe came from an economically advantaged background. Born in Troy, New York, in 1850, he had been raised in Newport, Rhode Island, and educated at a boarding school in Maine. As a young man, he became an attorney in Chicago and then moved to Kansas where, in 1882, he became the first African American elected to state office, serving as the Kansas auditor.

  McCabe became involved in the Topeka-based Oklahoma Immigration Association, part of the larger movement to encourage African American migration to Oklahoma. In 1890 he himself relocated there and, with landowner Charles Robbins, founded the town of Langston. He started a newspaper, the Langston City Herald, which trumpeted the town’s existence as “a Negro city.”5 Other newspapers sounded a bugle: “The blacks, it appears, are preparing themselves to try the experiment, not merely of the equality, but of the supremacy of their race,” the New York Times alerted its readers in March of that year. It warned that a “secret society of negroes which has undertaken this work in Oklahoma has a candidate of its own for the Governorship of the Territory.” Though there was no secret society, there was such a candidate, and he was Edward P. McCabe. With the imminent creation of the Oklahoma Territory, McCabe had gone to Washington at the behest of the Oklahoma Immigration Association to seek support for his appointment as governor. “There is much bitterness over the candidacy of Edward P. McCabe, colored, for governor of [the Oklahoma] Territory,” the Times reported, citing an unnamed Oklahoman who “declares emphatically that if President Harrison appoints McCabe governor, the latter will be assassinated.”

  Opposition to McCabe’s appointment—and to an African American—majority state—was not, however, universal. “A partial solution of the Southern negro question … is now at hand,” Chicago Tribune columnist William H. Thomas wrote. “A governor is soon to be appointed to preside over [the Oklahoma Territory] and a reliable, capable colored man should be placed in that position. That would mean a home for the colored man in the South.”

  Edward P. McCabe (1850-1920) (photo credit 40.3)

  President Benjamin Harrison, concerned with the potential for violence, ultimately chose a man with military experience, former Indiana congressman George W. Steele, to be governor of the Oklahoma Territory. Even after this appointment, however, articles in the press continued to sound alarms about a conspiracy to make Oklahoma a black-majority state. “Few people here seem to realize the possibility of Oklahoma becoming a Negro State,” a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune told its readers in 1891, “so quietly, yet so constantly, have the blacks been coming into the territory.” (In point of fact, the African American population in the territory was less than 9 percent.)6

  A New York Times editorial in 1892, entitled “Not Ready for Statehood,” joined the chorus of concern. “Oklahoma contains more conflicting elements than does any other Territory in the Union,” it began. “With allotment comes citizenship to the Indian, ill prepared for the privileges that go with that state.… Then comes the negro race, which is a considerable factor in Oklahoma, a factor determined to maintain its rights according to its own peculiar ideas.”

  The Chicago Tribune noted that Oklahoma’s racial conflicts were not as simple as white people versus red and black. “Another cause for excitement,” it commented in September 1891, “is the hatred of the Indians for the negro.… They know that they themselves cannot prevent the negroes from settling on the land, but they hint in unmistakable terms that they will make it very uncomfortable for the ‘black man’ if he settles among them.”

  The racial boundary between African Americans and American Indians was, in fact, even more complicated. Prior to the Civil War, some wealthy members of the Five Civilized Tribes had been slave owners—these slave owners typically being of mixed Indian-white descent. On the other hand, runaway slaves frequently took refuge among these same tribes, and (further blurring the boundary) intermarried, resulting in a growing population of African American Indians.7

  Oklahoma’s part-white Indians and part-black Indians had separate misgivings about the influx of African American settlers. Part-black Indians feared the influx might cause “pure” Indians to discriminate against their tribal claims, particularly claims of land allotments. Indeed, the Chickasaws did create a “colored committee” to determine the validity of tribal claims by part-black Chickasaws, with none other than “Alfalfa Bill” Murray among its panelists. At the other end of the spectrum, part-white Indians were concerned that the influx of African Americans might negatively impact their own tenuous status with the white ruling class.

  Oklahoma’s statehood convention in 1906–7 marked the success of the combined opposition of whites and American Indians over African Americans. Soon after statehood became official, Edward McCabe returned to Chicago. There, however, he immediately set his sights on undermining Oklahoma Senate Bill No. 1 by suing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for not providing equal accommodations for black passengers. He lost, but his appeal of the decision eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He lost there, too. During these defeats, McCabe�
�s extraordinarily energetic career began running out of steam. By 1911 Oklahoma’s Ada News reported that he had become a waiter in a Chicago area restaurant. He died quietly in 1920, so quietly that the event appears to have been noted only in the city where he was buried. “Mr. McCabe was a highly educated scholarly gentleman,” the Topeka Plaindealer wrote. “He never bartered or catered to the white man the rights of the colored race and always stood up for his people. For this we reverence and honor his name.… It is to be regretted that he died in needy circumstance and a charge on the public.”

  Green McCurtain’s career had sputtered to an end as well. In 1910 Congress investigated charges of bribery involving McCurtain. He testified that he had ultimately rejected the bribe, and no evidence to the contrary was found. He passed away later that year. A wire-service obituary sent to newspapers nationwide began, “Green McCurtain, chief of the tribe of Choctaws Indians, who sprang a sensation before a congressional committee by swearing he had been offered one-fourth of the profits of a $10,000,000 deal after the sale of Indian lands, died yesterday. He was 62 years of age.” Fourteen paragraphs followed, all dealing exclusively with the bribery accusation.8

  “Alfalfa Bill” Murray’s career did not sputter. He went on to become an Oklahoma congressman and governor. Upon his death in 1956, a wire-service obituary also appeared in newspapers nationwide. “William H. (Alfalfa Bill) Murray, one of the principal framers of Oklahoma’s constitution … died today at the age of 86,” it began, going on to recount his career as governor, his short-lived presidential bid in 1932, his feud with President Franklin Roosevelt over “constitutional safeguards of liberty,” and the election of his son, Johnston, as Oklahoma governor in 1950.9

  These contrasting obituaries sum up the complex racial boundaries that came into conflict with the emergence of Oklahoma. The result of that conflict, however, was not complex. The whites won.

  · · · NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK · · ·

  BERNARD J. BERRY

  New Jersey Invades Ellis Island

  Ellis Island is to be put up for sale for private commercial use. The little island … which for fifty years had been “God’s twenty-seven-and-a-half acres” for at least 15,000,000 immigrants, is scheduled to be sold to the highest bidder.… The decision to dispose of Ellis Island by sale put an end to the hope that the historic spot might be preserved as a public area. New York and New Jersey had each sought to obtain the island.

  —NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 14, 1956

  Nine months prior to this decision to sell Ellis Island, the efforts of New York and New Jersey to obtain the island had taken a bold new turn. January 4, 1956, had been foggy in the New York metropolitan area. As reported in the New York Times, the fog presented ideal conditions to

  land an expeditionary force of New Jersey officials on Ellis Island. New Jersey wants the island even though New York contends it is within its own territorial limits and will fight for it to the last lawyer. The three federal government employees on the island yesterday put up no resistance. In fact, it took about fifteen minutes to find them. There were no casualties, although Mayor Bernard J. Berry of Jersey City got separated from the main party and for a while was listed as “lost.”

  Once found, Mayor Berry suggested that they plant a New Jersey flag in the ground, but no one in the raiding party had thought to bring one. After some discussion about going back to the office to get one, they decided to let that go, since by the time they could return some New Yorkers might have heard about their foray, and the middle-aged officials did not think a rumble would aid their purpose.

  What was their purpose? Boundary disputes between states were settled by the Supreme Court even in the early years of the Republic, when invasions by militias did happen. What, then, were the New Jerseyans up to, and why were they up to it at this point in time?

  The purpose of the “raid” was publicity—as evidenced by the excerpt above, in which the nature and degree of detail suggest the presence of the reporter. The purpose of the publicity was to create greater awareness of New Jersey’s claim to Ellis Island, since the famous immigration portal had always been known as Ellis Island, New York. And the reason for doing so at this moment was that, just more than a year earlier, the federal government had closed the island.

  In response to the closure, New York prepared a proposal to use some of the island’s now abandoned buildings to house the homeless and treat alcoholics, and to use the remaining buildings as part of the Department of Corrections—not a place to take the family. New Jersey proposed using the island and its structures for an ethnic museum and park. Since the federal government owned the land, it could lease it for either project. But New Jersey’s proposal would stand a far better chance politically if the land it sought to lease was in New Jersey, which is what Mayor Berry and his troops in gray flannel suits maintained.

  Bernard J. Berry (1913-1963) (photo credit 41.1)

  Nor were they the first to do so. Disputes over the boundary of Ellis Island dated back to 1893, just after the island was put into service as an immigration station. In that initial challenge, it was not New Jersey that brought suit but a defense attorney for an immigrant charged with committing perjury in the statements he made when being processed at the new facility. The case was assigned to the federal court for the Southern District of New York, but the defendant’s attorney wanted his client to be tried in the federal court in New Jersey.

  The defense attorney based his argument on the unique boundary lines that divide that segment of the two states. The division is marked by two simultaneous boundary lines. Nowhere else in the country has such a boundary ever been implemented. But nowhere else was there such a valuable harbor, particularly at the time the boundary was negotiated in the early years of the Republic. One of the boundary lines is where the water meets the mainland, thus giving all of the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay—and the islands in those waters—to New York. The other boundary line is under the water along the middle of the channel. This second boundary enabled New Jersey to build a structure on its land, extend it over the water and secure it in the ground under the water—in other words, to build piers.

  Dual New York-New Jersey borders

  When the federal government decided to use Ellis Island for an immigration portal, the facility it planned required that the island be enlarged, which was done with landfill. Because the added acreage was built up from land on the New Jersey side of the underwater border, the argument could be made that the newly added land belonged to New Jersey.

  The issue of federal court jurisdiction in the 1893 criminal case was ultimately decided without ruling on the boundary issue, since neither state was a litigant. Neither was the issue resolved in 1903–4, when New Jersey sued the U.S. Immigration Commission on behalf of the descendants of the colonial proprietors of Ellis Island. In this instance, the claim was based on a deed issued by the Duke of York, whose ownership was based on a deed issued by his brother, King Charles II. The government opted to sidestep this head-scratching challenge by simply buying Ellis Island from New Jersey. The deed for this purchase was therefore issued by New Jersey, but that fact did not constitute a definitive decision on the boundary, since such a ruling could only be issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  These were the historical reasons why Bernard Berry and his merry men temporarily occupied Ellis Island, but a more contemporary issue further motivated them. In the 1950s Americans had begun moving from densely populated cities to suburbs. Shopping centers, some with branches of downtown department stores, were cropping up in the suburbs as well. Not far behind were office buildings. If the trend continued—and it did—urban centers would find themselves increasingly depleted. Berry’s raid was part of a larger effort to attract commerce to New Jersey’s older urban areas.

  In 1954, for example, Berry had sought and received commitments from Jersey City businesses to contribute to the renovation of nearby Newark’s old Center Market as part of an effort to lure the New York
Stock Exchange to relocate in New Jersey. The following year, Berry commenced a major effort to lure the Brooklyn Dodgers to Jersey City. In 1956 the Dodgers played seven league games and one exhibition game at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium. Mayor Berry again displayed his quirky publicity skills when Time magazine wrote that the Dodgers had “crossed the Hudson to Jersey City for a second ‘opening game,’ the first of seven regular-season ‘home’ games they will play there this year,” and went on to note that “somebody gave Jersey City Mayor Bernard J. Berry a ball to throw out. Came time for the historic throw. ‘Mr. Mayor, the ball,’ an aide prompted. ‘The ball?’ echoed His Honor with surprise. ‘I gave it to some kid.’ ”

  The Dodgers left Brooklyn after the following year’s season, but not for Jersey City. Team owner Walter O’Malley opted for the nation’s burgeoning “suburbanopolis,” Los Angeles, where the population had doubled since the beginning of World War II and was still expanding without end in sight. Undaunted, Berry unsuccessfully offered the stadium the following year to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Cincinnati Reds.

  Berry’s efforts to keep Jersey City and its neighboring urban centers economically viable were coupled with efforts to prevent them from becoming what he did not want them to be. Toward this end, he ordered the confiscation of the film The Moon Is Blue and the arrest of a movie theater manager, who was charged with violating state and city obscenity laws. Berry’s act in October 1953 drew national attention because The Moon Is Blue was not some low-budget porn film but a comedy directed by Otto Preminger, with a cast that included William Holden and David Niven. Critic Bosley Crowther, in his New York Times review, wryly noted the film’s prerelease hype regarding its “decency” and observed that several thousand people had jammed the two Manhattan theaters showing the film, which dealt with “such things as whether a nice young lady who has let herself be lured to a pleasant young bachelor’s apartment should frankly inquire of him as to his romantic intentions, whether she should ask him about mistresses and such, and whether she should candidly acknowledge a healthy but cautious interest in sex.” After a grand jury refused to issue an indictment, the Jersey City theater manager again scheduled the film. Again the theater was raided—this time during the film’s first show. The squadron of police, not wanting to disturb (or confront) the adult-only audience of more than 400, sat and watched with them before arresting the manager.1