A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories

by Bettye Collier-Thomas

  The outside world has never known until now how three of the best citizens of C——met an untimely death at the hands of a Negro fighting for his life. Their friends and relatives were told by Dr. Baxter that they were accidentally shot in a deer hunt and so it is recorded.

  When Jerry and Ella Stratton had gone about two miles down the road, they met a country cart with two youths about sixteen. They were driving in a hurry, but stopped to ask the huntsmen how far it was to C——, as they were going to a nigger lynching.

  “You are too late boys. It is all over. We have just come from there, but if you want to make a dollar each, turn your horse around and drive us in to Charleston or near there. We must be there by daybreak on business of importance. What do you say?”

  The boys accepted the terms and drove Jerry and Ella within a half mile of Charleston to the Negro settlement of Lincolnville, where they hired a “hack” and started for the city. During the ride Stratton jumped from the coach and went on foot to the dock of the New York and Charleston Steamship Company, where he engaged steerage passage to New York City. A few hours before the steamer sailed a white lady dressed as a widow secured a first-class stateroom. The good ship sailed. A few days later, as they landed in New York City, Jerry Stratton sang:

  Home again, home again;

  Home from a foreign shore;

  Oh, how it fills my heart with joy

  To be at home once more.

  Chapter XIII THE SEPARATION

  The scare Jerry and Ella Stratton got from their visit to the “New South” made an impression on them for about one month, during which time they lived a quiet, respectable life as “Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Brown.” It is hard for “sporting” people to reform in New York City; the temptations are too great, and the Strattons soon drifted back into their fast life. Ella, in fact, tried to make up for lost time. She drank and smoked more. As a result in one year, she looked ten years older. One day, under the influence of liquor, in getting off a car, she fell in the street and was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in an unconscious state with a cut head. She was out of her mind for two weeks. The account of her falling on the street and being taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital appeared in all of the morning papers, and Jerry at once hastened to the hospital to see her. He had forethought enough to say that he had a message from her husband which he wanted to deliver in person. The hospital doctors decided it would not be prudent to show the letter at this time, no matter what the contents might be. They therefore filed it for her reading when she was ready to leave the hospital. Jerry Stratton called every morning for ten days, and when he was refused admittance to the bedside of his sick wife, he went away and wrote her a letter each day. These letters the hospital people filed away and did not give them to her. At last Jerry Stratton concluded that it was a dodge of Ella’s to get rid of him, and employed a private white detective to investigate the case. This fellow, who was of Southern birth, after hearing Stratton’s story in full, took his money, but never went near the hospital. He reported to Stratton that he had investigated the matter, and found out that Ella was not sick, but employed there as a nurse; that she did not care to see him—in fact, she was tired of him, and wanted to get rid of him, and had taken heroic steps to do so. Jerry Stratton believed the detective’s lie, and wrote her the following farewell letter:

  No.– W. 333rd St., New York City.

  June 16, 18–

  Dear Ella—I have called several times to see you at the hospital. Each time I have been told by a doctor or an attendant that you could not be seen. Each day I wrote a letter [inquiring] about your health and everything, and have received no reply.

  I have positive and well known reasons to know that you are not an inmate of the hospital, but employed there as a trained nurse; that you have (woman like) got tired of your dark-brown top; that you have reflected and have resolved to reform (at least in regards to me). I have in mind an old song, a part of which runs this way

  Take her, you are welcome,

  But you soon will find it true

  That she who can be false to one

  Can be the same to two.

  To which I will fondly and respectfully add that the woman who can be false to two men of her race can hardly be expected—in fact, can not be expected—to be true to one of the other race. However, Ella, I was foolish enough to conclude, after our down South experience, and the heroic stand you took, that you did love me, and when we again set our feet upon the soil of God’s country, we would live together as happily as people in our set, and that you would be as true to me as, well—women of your set. It was all a dream. Yes.

  We are parted from each other,

  And our dream of love is past,

  The bright dream was too beautiful to last

  If I do not hear from you in three days, you will never see or hear from me again, and you will be able to conclude without the aid of a doctor, lawyer, judge or jury, my opinion in future of women in general, regardless of their race, color or previous condition.

  Jerry Stratton

  About two weeks after this letter was received at the hospital, Ella was pronounced cured of all traces of liquor or cigarette smoking. She had when found a large sum of money, which the hospital people kept for her and returned with the letters of Jerry Stratton a few minutes before she left. She paid all bills due and rewarded the nurses who had attended her. As she started to leave, the letters still in her hand unopened, she remarked to the head physician, Dr. Cross: “Good bye, doctor: I am under lasting obligations to you and all connected with the hospital. You have made a new woman of me physically, mentally, morally and—I am, in fact, almost persuaded to become a Catholic” (the St. Vincent Hospital was a Catholic institution). “Any way,” she continued, “I am going to live a purer and better life in the future, and hope when I die that the world will be a small degree better for my having lived in it. Good morning.”

  She turned to go, when the doctor called her attention to the unopened letters in her hand. After thanking him, she sat down at the table in the reception room and looked at the half score of letters. She at once saw that the handwriting was that of Jerry Stratton. She looked at the postmarks and placed them one by one in a row, according to the dates. She then read them carefully. She then turned to the doctor and said in an angry, excited tone: “Why have you people kept these letters from me so long. I have been in a condition to read newspapers for the past three weeks. Was it because you knew from whom they came? I learn by these letters that several drop letters have been left here for me. Where are they? What right have you to pry into an inmate’s private business?” Without waiting for an answer from the surprised doctor, she rushed out and hurried to the nearest telephone station, where she telephoned for a cab and directed the driver to take her to the flat she and Jerry Stratton occupied the day of the accident. Here she learned that he had left there several weeks prior, but left a note with the janitor for her, in which, he said she would find all of their furniture and other goods in the Eagle storage house, rent for the same paid for one year, with agreement for rebate whenever taken out before the end of the year. The note also stated that long before she received it, he would be dead to the New York City sporting world “for the present,” and to her “forever and a day” and that he wished her well. The note ended with, in the language of Lord Byron:

  Fare thee well, and—If forever,

  Still, forever, fare thee well

  Jerry Stratton.

  Chapter XIV HER ATONEMENT

  Ella Stratton was a thrice changed woman after she had tried, with the aid of several private detectives, to find Jerry, without success. She knew that he was alive and in some unknown part of the world (or perhaps the United States) laboring under the impression that she had been false to him. She resolved to atone for her past wild acts; she resolved to live a purer and better life; she resolved to do all in her power to better the condition of the poor colored people of Greater New York. Meeting so many old compan
ions who tried to lead her back into the old paths of pleasure and vice, she removed to Brooklyn, where she was unknown, and took board with an old German couple under her maiden name, Ella Forrester. During the day she would walk around in the several sections of Brooklyn where Negro Americans resided and buy food, coal and wood for those she concluded were worthy objects of charity.

  One morning she went down town on Fulton Street, in the dry goods district, to make some purchases for herself. As she was about to go up the steps of the elevated railroad station, she felt a heavy hand pull her back. Looking around, her eyes met those of old Captain Seabergh.

  “My dear girl, I love you still. Yes, still, although you ‘done’ me on the train between here and Chicago. You”—

  “Unhand me, sir,” broke in Ella.

  “Oh, I see you are on the stage now. You are an actress. You are, perhaps, the leading lady in some ten-cent play. I will ‘unhand’ you, as you request me, but I must speak with you, no matter how painful it is to you.”

  Ella broke away from him and entered the next car. He followed her, but was prudent enough to sit unobserved by her in a corner opposite. When she left the car, he followed her to her home, or, more properly speaking, her rooms, and entered before she could object.

  He threw a check for $10,000 on the table and also placed a roll of $600 in bills on the table. “There, little girl, is your part of my will. I don’t believe I will live much longer.”

  Ella stood up and pointed first to the money and then to the door. “Take back your gold, for [you] will never buy me,” she said in a stage whisper.

  “Oh!” said the old man, as he took up his check and money, and started to depart, “I will see you again when you are either sober or in hard luck.”

  Six months later a man called upon Ella at her home; he was Captain Seabergh’s lawyer; he informed her that Captain Seabergh was dead—had been run over by a trolley car, that a roll of bills, minus his commission, were hers. The total sum was over nine thousand dollars in cold cash or at least bills (greenbacks and brown backs of small denomination of twenty and fifty dollar bills). The lawyer was gone—the money was there. “I will make this a ‘conscience fund’ and build a home and mission for needy colored people and name it after my husband, ‘Jerry Stratton,’” she said to herself.

  In the section of Brooklyn, locally known as “New Brooklyn” is a subsection that, fifty years ago, was owned by Negroes and known as “Weeksville.” At the time of the date of our story, there were more colored people in this section than any part of the late “City of Churches.” The bad and worthy poor colored people, as well as the good and well-to-do, resided in this section; “Chicago Row,” who in “Greater New York” has not heard of the infamous and immoral “Chicago Row?” “Chicago Row” has a history; it was not always “Chicago Row.” About twenty-five years before our opening, a German bought a half “block” (or square) of lots, upon which he built a row of houses, which he rented to white people. The house above was also owned by a German, who rented it to a Negro woman of questionable bearings. One by one their places were filled by the lowest Negroes in Greater New York. Chicago Row soon became the home of the lowest Negroes in the section, who were inter-larded with poor respectable colored people, who took advantage of the cheap rent. The “Row” spread all over the south side of the block (or square) and then across the street, until the whole block (or square) was composed of Negroes. The vacant lots fell in value. When Ella tried to buy two lots of fifty feet frontage, they were sold to her for a song. She built a mission and home for colored people which she called “The Jerry Stratton Mission and Home for Aged Colored People.” In the chapel there was a memorial tablet dedicated to the late Jerry Stratton and a life-size crayon picture of him behind the altar. It was the night before Christmas ten years after the date of our opening chapter. The worthy colored poor had been told to call at the mission that night when they would receive a well-filled basket containing all the parts of a Greater New York Christmas dinner, and hundreds took advantage of the opportunity. Their donor’s heart was made glad, and the “good white lady,” as the community called the reformed Ella, received their blessings.

  During the winter months she gave each day portions of food and fuel to the worthy colored poor, and, and as it is often hard to distinguish between the just and the unjust, the good and the bad or the worthy and the unworthy, many a good-for-nothing Chicago Row loafer lived in clover for years. During the week she had kindergartens for the little children, where she taught them to sew and make themselves useful, clean, and neat. At night she had prayer meetings and lectures. She greatly improved the condition of the worthy poor and had some redeeming influence over the lower class of Negroes.

  She still remained a mystery to the colored people in general, and the community and city in particular. She was only known as “Miss Ella,” and all the children (and some of the aged inmates of the home) declared that she had no other name than that of “Miss Ella.”

  There were two newspaper men—one black, the other white—who resolved to solve the mystery of “Miss Ella’s” past life. To one—the colored man—it was promotion to the staff of his paper; to the other it was cold cash. They searched the records and found out that the property was duly recorded and the trustees of the institution were some of the leading citizens of Brooklyn. The record also stated that the founder was a “Miss Ella Hope.”

  The colored reporter got the inside track, drew largely upon his imagination (as all Greater New York newspaper men—the author excepted—do) and wrote for the Brooklyn Eagle the following:

  A NOBLE CHARITY.

  The Jerry Stratton Mission and Home for Aged Colored People, situated on Atlantic Avenue, near Troy Avenue, in the section of Brooklyn where the most needy (and candor compels us to say), [and] most depraved colored people resided is a worthy and lasting monument to a noble and benevolent Christian lady, who has the good work under her careful eye, in the person of Miss Ella Hope. The estate has a frontage on Atlantic Avenue of three hundred feet and runs back two hundred feet, upon which are several buildings, the largest being the Old Folks Home, which is five stories high and built in the form of a Greek cross, at a cost of several thousand dollars. Here all worthy aged colored homeless or poor people can find an asylum the rest of their reclining years.

  Miss Ella Hope comes from old Abolitionist stock. Her grandfather, General Seth Hope, was one of the Quaker pioneers of Brattleboro, Vermont, where Miss Hope was born fifty-five years ago. Her father was a personal friend of the great Abolitionist, John Brown, and was with him at Harper’s Ferry.

  When the reporter called yesterday he was shown all over the several buildings by Miss Hope, whose pious face, snow-white locks, kindly, beaming eyes and friendly hand convinced him that this warm-hearted lady was the right person in the right place. At present the institution is in need of a little outside help, and philanthropic people in general and friends of the colored people in particular would do well to send Miss Hope a check so the good work she has started may continue.

  Ella did not see the article, and was greatly surprised when she received several goodly checks for the institution.

  In looking over his exchanges the Sunday editor of the New York Recorder saw the article in the Eagle and concluded to write up the institution. He sent a snap-shot man to take pictures of the buildings and a smart young reporter to write it up. After they had taken several pictures of the buildings, the reporter entered, pencil and pad in hand, and commenced to interview Ella. She was surprised and refused to answer his pointed questions. He showed her the article in the “Eagle,” which she read carefully with an amused smile upon her face. When she had finished, she handed him back the clipping without any comment and started for the door; he remained seated, looking about the room writing. This angered her and she remarked:

  “My time is of value if yours is not, sir.”

  “Well, as I told you, I have come to write up the institution and your
life.”

  “I am not looking for newspaper notoriety, and if I were, I would not seek it in the columns of the New York Recorder, but”—she concluded, as she took a seat near him—“if you will not interrupt me with questions, I will give a short history of my life and what will in the future be my life work.

  “I have lived all my life among colored people, I have studied their ways, their good points and their short comings, and have rightly concluded that they are no better or worse than white people. Among them can be found the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the wise and the simple. The fact that they were born black instead of white was no fault of theirs, but an accident of birth, beyond their control (the same as yours or mine). They did not come here of their own free will, like the whites, but were stolen and taken by force from their sunny African home and brought here as slaves. Since their freedom all kinds of barriers have been placed in their progressive march to a better civilization by the whites. In the North the stores and trade unions’ doors are closed against them; in the South everything, even life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are denied them; still, in the face of all these barriers, the advancement they have made in the past few years has no equal upon the pages of history. Their treatment by a nation claiming to be one of the leading civilized ones of the progressive era is a blot upon the pages of the history of our beloved country.

  “The colored people have advanced in every progressive road of life that the white man has trod; they have their eminent divines, their physicians, their lawyers, their teachers, their merchants and their farmers—in fact they have made, according to their small population and average, under untold difficulties, the advancement the whites have made, taking a ratio of the white and black population of the country.