Kicha's photos with the keyword: African American Man

Caldonoia Fackler Johnson was born to Cupid and Harriet Johnson in Knoxville, Tennesse on October 14, 1844. The Johnson family, were slaves of Colonel Pless McClung. In his early teens, Johnson moved to McClung's Campbell Station estate, where he tended his master's horses and developed a lifelong interest in horses. At the close of the Civil War Johnson found work exhuming bodies from the temporary battlefield graves for reburial in proper cemeteries. As a result of the hard times and lack of economic opportunities associated with the aftermath of war, Johnson turned to alcohol and soon became a destitute drunkard, living on the streets of Knoxville. Johnson recognized the futility of his life, vowed to stop drinking, and took a job first as a cook, then as a bartender. By 1879 he had saved $180, which he used to lease a building at the corner of Gay and Wall Streets and opened a saloon. Reinvesting his money in the business, Johnson soon operated three saloons: Popular Log, Popular Log Branch, and Popular Log Center Branch. His establishments, patronized by the leading men of the era, became the most popular whiskey houses in the city. Johnson operated his saloons in strict accordance with the law: he sold neither to minors, women, nor those who appeared to be intoxicated. Horses remained Johnson's first love, however, and he acquired an enviable stable of race horses that compared to the best in the state. He attended every major race in Tennessee and the surrounding states. In 1901 he bought the famed mare Lennette at Frankfort, Kentucky, for $6,000. He also owned George Condit, the 1893 Columbian Exposition's champion standard Bred Trotter. Johnson owned the only horse racing track in the city of Knoxville, and the track held regular races until the general assembly outlawed the sport in 1907. Today, Speedway Circle, the site of the track, maintains the original shape. Although saloons and horses remained Johnson's principal sources of income, he also had other business interests, including vast real estate holdings. In 1906 he donated a house at the corner of Vine and Patton Streets to be used as the first black YMCA building. At the presentation ceremony on May 14, 1906, Mayor S. G. Heiskell proclaimed to the large crowd of African Americans that Johnson's gift represented the largest ever given by a black person to the YMCA. From 1883 to 1885 Johnson served on the Knoxville board of aldermen. In 1922 Knoxville established the Cal Johnson Park in his honor, and in 1957 the Cal Johnson Recreation Center was erected in the park. Johnson married twice, but had no children. At the time of his death on April 7, 1925, his estate was estimated at $300,000-$500,000. Photo: Beck Cultural Exchange Center Info: Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture by Robert J Booker, Beck Cultural Exchange

James Steward Davis was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1890. He attended local public schools, and graduated from Dickinson College with a law degree. Admitted to the bar of Baltimore City, on December 22, 1915; Court of Appeals, June 19, 1915. Married Blanche Moore, 1920. Two children: Susanne Davis (b. 1921) and Blanche Davis, Jr (b. 1926). J. Steward Davis, was one of the most sought after black trial lawyers in 1920's Baltimore, he was born James Steward Davis in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His Baltimore roots came through his grandparents, both natives of that city. After his graduation from Harrisburg High School, he took a two year course at Dickinson College, and went on to study law there, graduating first in his class in 1916. He was the first person of color to be valedictorian at Dickinson. He came to Baltimore, and was admitted to the bar the following year. He began practicing by himself, although during his career he would later partner with such notable Baltimore attorneys as W. Norman Bishop, Warner T. McGuinn, and George W. Evans. Soon after beginning his law practice, Davis' legal career was interrupted by World War I, and he spent the next 18 months in the Army. He started in France as a sergeant, and was later promoted to lieutenant and became an instructor at Camp Zachary Taylor near Louisville, Kentucky. Upon returning from the war, Davis quickly built up a thriving practice as a trial lawyer in Baltimore. At six feet tall, and with a polished air and winning smile, Davis made quite an impression, and sometimes drew crowds to the courtroom. In 1921 alone he appeared in 48 cases mentioned in the Afro-American newspaper, mostly divorces and criminal defense, including the highly publicized capital murder case of Henry Brown, an Annapolis sailor. Said Davis of his legal career, "The law offers a most attractive (spot) for colored men. We get a fair show in the courts and the people appreciate our efforts" (Afro-American Newspaper, March 11, 1921, pg. 5). Though his legal career put him in the limelight, J. Steward Davis worked behind the scenes in politics as a campaign organizer, and his name never appeared on the ballot. He was the chairman of the committee supporting W. Ashbie Hawkins' revolt against the established Republican Party in 1920. Like other independent Republicans, Davis later switched to the Democratic Party, and managed the Colored City Democratic campaign for Al Smith's 1928 bid against Herbert Hoover. Davis described his political activism with these words, "It is time that we look after our own political affairs, and not entrust them to whites who are indifferent to our welfare" (Afro-American Newspaper, July 29, 1921, pg. 12). Ironically, Davis supported Herbert O'Conor's (white) campaign for State's Attorney for Baltimore City in 1926. As Attorney General, O'Conor would argue against the admission of Donald Gaines Murray (black), to the University of Maryland law school in 1935. For most of the 1920's Davis was one of the busiest and well respected young lawyers in Baltimore. Everything seemed to be going his way. He married Blanche Moore, a public school teacher, in 1920 and they soon had two children, Suzanne and Blanche. Embraced by the legal community and social circles, Davis seemed to have found his place in life. However tragedy struck in April of 1929, when he vanished without a trace, never to be heard from again. On the morning of April 15, 1929, Davis left his home at 1202 Madison Ave. for his office at 217 St. Paul Place. He never arrived. His family initially concealed his absence, and the Afro-American Newspaper first mentioned his disappearance in mid-May. An investigation by the Monumental Bar Association revealed that he had bought a train ticket to New York City that day, and that he stayed at the 135th St. Y.M.C.A. that night. After he checked out in the morning, nobody saw him again. Reasons for his disappearance abounded, but one persistent rumor was that he had misapplied money in an administration case, and left to avoid sanction. In a September 19, 1931, story, the Afro-American Newspaper reported that an executive meeting of the Monumental Bar Association settled the case quietly and swore everyone to secrecy, hoping to allow Davis to return to his practice, but no corroboration surfaced for this story. Although Baltimoreans wrote back claiming to have seen him in various cities in the United States or in France, his family never heard from him again, leaving his many friends, colleagues, and loved ones to wonder, "Whatever became of J. Steward Davis?" Maryland State Archives: "J. Steward Davis: The Vanishing Star" written by Charles Madden; edited by Professor Larry S. Gibson and Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse

A Justice of the Peace Mr. A. Burrell, a colored man of Carney, Iowa, was born in Virginia as a slave and is about sixty years of age. He came to Iowa in 1880 and lives in Crocker Township where there are about two hundred and fifty voting farmers and about two hundred Negro and foreign miners. He has served for two years as Justice of the Peace and has just been re-elected over a white opponent by a good majority to serve until January, 1915. He is a miner and farmer. He produces eighty bushels of corn to the acre and he has just bought two and one half acres to add to his four and one half at $350 per acre. He is a good specimen of the quiet, thrifty, honest Negro working man. [The Crisis Magazine, January 1915]

Lafayette Reid Mercer, for more than twenty years a policeman in Steubenville, Ohio was killed last July while arresting a drunken man. Mr. Mercer was one of the most efficient officers on the force and had kept his position during many changes of the city administration. One of the local newspapers said: "He combined intelligence with an utter lack of fear." White people of the highest character who desired special protection for women members of their family always put them in the care of Mr. Mercer. He was born fifty-two years ago in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio and was three or four generations removed from slavery. Mercer's parents a few years ago celebrated their golden wedding. He leaves a brother who is a physician, another who is a dentist, and another a trusted employee of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Beside these there are eight other brothers and sisters. The funeral service of the murdered policeman was a remarkable tribute to his character. The body lay in state in the courthouse and thousands of white and colored people paid their respect. The city offices were closed and business largely suspended while the officials, police and fire departments, joined in the funeral procession. [The Crisis Magazine, February 1915]

Photo comes from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center; Info: 'Cincinnati's Underground Railroad,' by Dr. Eric R. Jackson and Richard Cooper, William P. Newman, who escaped slavery in Virginia during the 1830s, became the pastor of the Union Baptist Church (now located on Seventh Street in downtown Cincinnati) and served in that position from 1848 to 1850. Before this, he studied for many years at Oberlin College and was a fiery orator. He traveled to Canada several times as an antislavery lecturer. Newman was also instrumental in the establishment of black schools in the Buckeye state and as an agent of the Ladies Education Society of Ohio. However, when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted, Newman and his family moved to Ontario, Canada; he continued to fight for the freedom of African Americans, both enslaved and free persons of color, until he returned to Cincinnati in 1864. He died two years later.

Under segregation, a person (of color) could be accused of “reckless eyeballing,” meaning an improper look at a white person, presumed to have sexual intent. Matt Ingram (a black tenant farmer) was convicted of this offense in North Carolina in 1951. [John Zimmerman, photographer (1953)] Matt Ingram was among the last convicted under this framework, in a 1951 case made notorious by civil rights activists in North Carolina. A seventeen-year-old white woman named Willa Jean Boswell testified that she was scared when her neighbor Ingram looked at her from a distance of about 65 feet. Prosecutors demanded a conviction of assault with intent to rape that was reduced to assault on a female by the judge, leading to a two-year sentence. He was defended by a white lawyer, Ernest Frederick Upchurch, Sr. At the appeal in Superior Court, the judge instructed the jury that Ingram was guilty if he used “intentional threats or menace of violence such as looking at a person in a leering manner, that is, in some sort of sly or threatening or suggestive manner…he causes another to reasonably apprehend imminent danger” The all-white jury again returned a conviction, leading to a six-month sentence of labor on the roads, suspended for five years. However, after pressure from the NAACP and African-American media like Ebony, the state supreme court vacated the conviction because: “it cannot be said that a pedestrian may be assaulted by a look, however frightening, from a person riding in an automobile some distance away. …He may have looked with lustful eyes but there was the absence of any overt act.” The look alone no longer represented grounds for conviction. People continued to be convicted of assault if there was “reasonable apprehension” of danger, such as a body movement, movement in the direction of the person under observation and so on. Ingram spent over two years in prison while his 3 trials took two-and-a-half years to resolve. [State v. Ingram, 74 S.E.2d 532 (N.C. 1953] Ingram was married to Linwood Jeffress Ingram (1910-2003). The couple had nine children. He died in 1973. Source: coolcleveland.com

Colored American Magazine (Feb 1904): J. R. Carter is a true example of a self made man. He was born in Virginia 33 years ago and of hard work and determination managed to enter the State Normal School of West Virginia, where he graduated from the academic class of 1901, standing second in a class of 23. Mr. Carter owns a nice home in the City of Parkersburg on the corner of Fifteenth and Latrobe streets, and can boast of owning and running the only colored restaurant in the city; and in fact the only first class restaurant that has ever been established there by a colored man. He owes much of his success to his energetic wife, Hattie. Mr. Carter has high ambitions and will no doubt make a successful businessman. He was married to Hattie R. Carter. The couple had one son, John Edgar Carter, who served in World War I, living in Savannah, Georgia then Denver, Colorado finally winding up in Tulsa, Oklahoma where their now adult son worked as a bank accountant. He died in 1908 and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Hughes Allison, author of the first black detective story in ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,’ pictured in 1950. [ Hughes Allison Archive, Newark Public Library ] In September of 1950, Hughes Allison, a playwright and writer of pulp fiction, responded to a manuscript sent by a writer who requested that he reply via the Mystery Writers of America. The author, Polly MacManus, singled out Allison for a reason: He was black, she was white, and she wanted his advice on how to write from the point of view of a black detective. Allison warned MacManus he would be “brutally frank” in his letter: “I urge you to abandon the attempt to write about Negroes.” He felt MacManus’s detective “neither talks nor acts nor thinks like any college-trained Negro I’ve ever met.” Another black character in the manuscript, a maid, “is the most unrealistic chauvinist I’ve ever encountered in fiction. And in real life, she would be regarded by the Negro detectives whom I know as the kind of stool pigeon only heaven could spawn.” He then followed up with what he considered to be one of the major pitfalls white writers face when writing black characters: "When you begin handling Negroes as major characters in fiction you immediately enter into that big and enormous and important and most complex area of American life called the Negro Question—where no answer can be secured from any part of that question if conjecture is allowed to play even a small part. You can’t guess. You have to know. You have to know Negro life as Negroes live it—and they live on numerous political, economic, social, and intellectual levels growing out of cause-and-effect patterns, the character of which is historical. The history of this matter is well documented—so well documented that those who are informed can tell at a glance who knows and who is guessing." MacManus may have had good intentions, but those, Allison wrote, “are seldom consistent with the harsh facts of history.” In a 1950 interview with the Newark Evening News, Allison explained: “It’s a battle to get a story about a Negro detective published in a national magazine, you know. I send the publisher a page-by-page explanation of what I’m doing in the story, and how I know what I’m talking about. He has to be ready in case some letters of protest arrive from Mississippi or Georgia.” Literary erasure is not always deliberate, but literary championing must be. Rachel Howzell Hall wrote earlier this year about being one of the few black mystery writers at annual genre conferences in an essay titled “Colored and Invisible” for The Life Sentence, a web site for crime and noir writers: “It can be lonely in those grand ballrooms, in those lesser ballrooms, at that reception. And there have been times when I’ve retreated to my hotel room, emotionally exhausted from being visibly invisible all day.” For a moment in the 1990s, after Walter Mosley and Devil in a Blue Dress, crime fiction made room for more black writers. But then writers like Eleanor Taylor Bland, Penny Mickelbury, Paula Woods, Charlotte Carter, and others perhaps fell away in the relentless turnover of the publishing industry: canceled contracts, merged companies, and shifting editorial priorities. In recent years, few black crime-genre writers have reached Mosley’s level of popularity. To date, there are no available statistics on how well, or how badly, they are represented in the industry. Recognizing the problem and addressing it accordingly takes work, and time. Yet it is frustrating, even shameful, how few writers of color get through the mystery corridors with a fictional representation of their own experiences. The door opened, briefly, for Hughes Allison. Before editorial neglect slammed it shut, Allison showed, years before Mosley, Himes, or any black detective fiction writer, what it was to live in his character’s skin. Hughes Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1908. His family moved to Newark, New Jersey in 1919. Allison attended Bergen Street Grammar School, Barringer High School, and Upsala College. His first short story was published in Challenge Magazine in 1935. By 1937, Allison’s first play, The Trial of Dr. Beck was being produced on Broadway, which starred famous white actor, William Bendix. Also throughout the 1930s, Allison worked as a reporter for True Story Magazine. Later he authored a series of articles about school segregation for the Newark Evening News. He wrote over 2,000 radio scripts. Allison’s most famous character is African-American detective Joe Hill, who was modeled after the real Newark Police Homicide Detective Carlton B. Norris. Allison was married to Elitea Bulkley Allison, a children’s librarian at the Newark Public Library. He died on August 26, 1974 at Presbyterian Hospital in Newark. Info: 'The Case of the Disappearing Black Detective Novel,' by Sarah Weinman and 'Newark's Literary Lights'

William (1824-1900) and his wife Ellen Craft (1826-1891) were born into slavery in the state of Georgia. Ellen was the daughter of a white slaveholding father and slave mother. Because she took after her father in appearance, she could pass for white. William, on the other hand, had a dark complexion. His master arranged for him to apprentice under a cabinet maker, and he became a skilled carpenter. In 1848, William and Ellen escaped and traveled to Boston, where abolitionists helped establish them in the community and taught them to read and write. They later helped them flee to England in order to avoid recapture under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Census records indicate that while in England, Ellen worked as a seamstress and gave birth to three of the couple's four sons while William worked for a cabinet maker. The abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War allowed the family to return to the United States in 1868, and they settled in Georgia, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Ellen died in 1891; William died nine years later. [Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery by William Tweedie, 1860]. One of the most ingenious escapes from slavery was that of a married couple from Georgia, Ellen and William Craft. (The Granger Collection, New York) Most runaway slaves fled to freedom in the dead of night, often pursued by barking bloodhounds. A few fugitives, such as Henry “Box” Brown who mailed himself north in a wooden crate, devised clever ruses or stowed away on ships and wagons. One of the most ingenious escapes was that of a married couple from Georgia, Ellen and William Craft, who traveled in first-class trains, dined with a steamboat captain and stayed in the best hotels during their escape to Philadelphia and freedom in 1848. Ellen, a "Quadroon" with very fair skin, disguised herself as a young white cotton planter traveling with his slave (William). It was William who came up with the scheme to hide in plain sight, but ultimately it was Ellen who convincingly masked her race, her gender and her social status during their four-day trip. Despite the luxury accommodations, the journey was fraught with narrow escapes and heart-in-the-mouth moments that could have led to their discovery and capture. Courage, quick thinking, luck and “our Heavenly Father,” sustained them, the Crafts said in Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, the book they wrote in 1860 chronicling the escape. Ellen and William lived in Macon, Georgia, and were owned by different masters. Put up for auction at age 16 to help settle his master’s debts, William had become the property of a local bank cashier. A skilled cabinetmaker, William, continued to work at the shop where he had apprenticed, and his new owner collected most of his wages. Minutes before being sold, William had witnessed the sale of his frightened, tearful 14-year-old sister. His parents and brother had met the same fate and were scattered throughout the South. As a child, Ellen, the offspring of her first master and one of his biracial slaves, had frequently been mistaken for a member of his white family. Much annoyed by the situation, the plantation mistress sent 11-year-old Ellen to Macon to her daughter as a wedding present in 1837, where she served as a ladies maid. Ellen and William married, but having experienced such brutal family separations despaired over having children, fearing they would be torn away from them. “The mere thought,” William later wrote of his wife’s distress, “filled her soul with horror.” Pondering various escape plans, William, knowing that slaveholders could take their slaves to any state, slave or free, hit upon the idea of fair-complexioned Ellen passing herself off as his master—a wealthy young white man because it was not customary for women to travel with male servants. Initially Ellen panicked at the idea but was gradually won over. Because they were “favourite slaves,” the couple had little trouble obtaining passes from their masters for a few days leave at Christmastime, giving them some days to be missing without raising the alarm. Additionally, as a carpenter, William probably would have kept some of his earnings – or perhaps did odd jobs for others – and was allowed to keep some of the money. Before setting out on December 21, 1848, William cut Ellen’s hair to neck length. She improved on the deception by putting her right arm in a sling, which would prevent hotel clerks and others from expecting “him” to sign a registry or other papers. Georgia law prohibited teaching slaves to read or write, so neither Ellen nor William could do either. Refining the invalid disguise, Ellen asked William to wrap bandages around much of her face, hiding her smooth skin and giving her a reason to limit conversation with strangers. She wore a pair of men’s trousers that she herself had sewed. She then donned a pair of green spectacles and a top hat. They knelt and prayed and took “a desperate leap for liberty.” At the Macon train station, Ellen purchased tickets to Savannah, 200 miles away. As William took a place in the “negro car,” he spotted the owner of the cabinetmaking shop on the platform. After questioning the ticket seller, the man began peering through the windows of the cars. William turned his face from the window and shrank in his seat, expecting the worst. The man searched the car Ellen was in but never gave the bandaged invalid a second glance. Just as he approached William’s car, the bell clanged and the train lurched off. Ellen, who had been staring out the window, then turned away and discovered that her seat mate was a dear friend of her master, a recent dinner guest who had known Ellen for years. Her first thought was that he had been sent to retrieve her, but the wave of fear soon passed when he greeted her with “It is a very fine morning, sir.” To avoid talking to him, Ellen feigned deafness for the next several hours. In Savannah, the fugitives boarded a steamer for Charleston, South Carolina. Over breakfast the next morning, the friendly captain marveled at the young master’s “very attentive boy” and warned him to beware “cut-throat abolitionists” in the North who would encourage William to run away. A slave trader on board offered to buy William and take him to the Deep South, and a military officer scolded the invalid for saying “thank you” to his slave. In an overnight stay at the best hotel in Charleston, the solicitous staff treated the ailing traveler with upmost care, giving him a fine room and a good table in the dining room. Trying to buy steamer tickets from South Carolina to Philadelphia, Ellen and William hit a snag when the ticket seller objected to signing the names of the young gentleman and his slave even after seeing the injured arm. In an effort to prevent white abolitionists from taking slaves out of the South, slaveholders had to prove that the slaves traveling with them were indeed their property. Sometimes travelers were detained for days trying to prove ownership. As the surly ticket seller reiterated his refusal to sign by jamming his hands in his pockets, providence prevailed: The genial captain happened by, vouched for the planter and his slave and signed their names. Baltimore, the last major stop before Pennsylvania, a free state, had a particularly vigilant border patrol. Ellen and William were again detained, asked to leave the train and report to the authorities for verification of ownership. “We shan’t let you go,” an officer said with finality. “We felt as though we had come into deep waters and were about being overwhelmed,” William recounted in the book, and returned “to the dark and horrible pit of misery.” Ellen and William silently prayed as the officer stood his ground. Suddenly the jangling of the departure bell shattered the quiet. The officer, clearly agitated, scratched his head. Surveying the sick traveler’s bandages, he said to a clerk, “he is not well, it is a pity to stop him.” Tell the conductor to “let this gentleman and slave pass.” The Crafts arrived in Philadelphia the next morning—Christmas Day. As they left the station, Ellen burst into tears, crying out, “Thank God, William, we’re safe!” The comfortable coaches and cabins notwithstanding, it had been an emotionally harrowing journey, especially for Ellen as she kept up the multilayered deception. From making excuses for not partaking of brandy and cigars with the other gentleman to worrying that slavers had kidnapped William, her nerves were frayed to the point of exhaustion. At a Virginia railway station, a woman had even mistaken William for her runaway slave and demanded that he come with her. As predicted, abolitionists approached William. One advised him to “leave that cripple and have your liberty,” and a free black man on the train to Philadelphia urged him to take refuge in a boarding house run by abolitionists. Through it all Ellen and William maintained their roles, never revealing anything of themselves to the strangers except a loyal slave and kind master. Upon their arrival in Philadelphia, Ellen and William were quickly given assistance and lodging by the underground abolitionist network. They received a reading lesson their very first day in the city. Three weeks later, they moved to Boston where William resumed work as a cabinetmaker and Ellen became a seamstress. After two years, in 1850, slave hunters arrived in Boston intent on returning them to Georgia. The Crafts fled again, this time to England, where they eventually had five children. After 20 years they returned to the States and in the 1870s established a school in Georgia for newly freed blacks. Photo: William and Ellen Smith Craft Photo Album, College of Charleston Libraries Bio: Smithsonian Magazine , By Marian Smith Holmes

Thomas A. Curtis (1862-1943), was born in Marion, Alabama. His parents were slaves, but by earnest toil and study his father Alexander H. Curtis, became State Senator of Alabama and was one of nine former slaves to raise money to buy land for a school. What started out as the Lincoln Normal School eventually became Alabama State University in 1867. His son, Thomas, inherited his father's love for knowledge, and therefore took advantage of every opportunity to develop his mind. He graduated from the State Normal School at Marion, in 1881, and began teaching in his native State. He afterwards went to Texas where he taught for five years. Abandoning the profession of teaching, he entered Meharry Dental College from which he graduated in 1889 with honors, being the best practical dentist of his class. For this excellency he received a gold medal. His success as the first colored dentist of Alabama was marvelous. During the first year of his labor as dentist he earned more than $2,000, and every succeeding year found him making improvements both in proficiency of his profession and increase of his practice. In 1896 he moved to St. Louis, where he practiced for more than forty-five years. He was also a civil rights activist. He helped organize the Urban League and the St. Louis branch of the NAACP, for which he served as president. Sometime in 1910 he helped found the St. Louis Argus. Bio: [ Documenting the American South and Discovering African American St. Louis: A Guide to Historic Sites By John Aaron Wright ]

Photo: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library He was born in Manhattan, NY in 1807. His family belonged to the world of the “quasi-free,” to take a phrase from the historian John Hope Franklin. Slavery was gradually being abolished in New York, but the black population was hemmed in by Jim Crow-like restrictions—notably, drastic limits on voting rights. Aldridge’s father, Daniel, worked as a street vender and served as a lay preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; his mother, of whom almost nothing is known, was named Luranah. Aldridge’s early education took place at the African Free School, a network of schools set up by antislavery advocates to educate “the descendants of an injured race.” Daniel Aldridge wanted his son to be a minister, but Ira fell in love with the theatre. "The New Yorker" by Alex Ross LONDON — The story is gripping. It is the mid-1820s, and a young black American actor improbably moves to London while still a teenager, tours the provinces and gets his big break a few years later, when he is asked at the last minute to replace Edmund Kean as Othello at Covent Garden in 1833. Can he overcome the innate prejudice of his fellow actors, the public and the critics? Will he succeed? His name was Ira Aldridge, and when the British actor Adrian Lester was asked, way back in 1998, to do an informal reading of some writings about Aldridge, he was astonished by the story. Aldridge was an anomaly in theater history: a Black actor — and an American — who achieved mainstream success in grand Shakespearean roles at a time when no black actor had ever been seen on the stage of a major London theater, and who went on to win considerable renown in Europe, honored with titles and medals by crowned heads of state. Aldridge’s Covent Garden debut in 1833 coincided with the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and the heightened debate over the decision. His performances in “Othello,” well received by the audiences, were vilified by critics; after two shows, the management closed the theater, and Aldridge never appeared again on a mainstream London stage. Until he died at 60, in the Polish town of Lodz in 1867, he toured Europe relentlessly, becoming something of a celebrity in Eastern Europe and Russia. Memorials in this country are few, but in Stratford, a plaque for him is on the back of one of the seats in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. When Aldridge died, he was on the cusp of a lengthy United States tour, beginning in Brooklyn at the new Academy of Music. [ NY Times, Roslyn Sulcasmarch ]

Photograph comes from the Alex L. Manly Papers, 1898-1899 Manuscript Collection #65, East Carolina University, Joyner Library. Alex Manly was the editor of the Wilmington Daily Record of Wilmington, North Carolina during the late 19th century. He was forced to flee the city on the eve of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. He later settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like many children of former slaves, Alexander L. Manly (1866-1944) was partially descended from a slave-owner. Born in North Carolina, Manly was reportedly the grandson of Charles Manly, who after emigrating from England had become the governor of North Carolina in 1849. Manly studied printing at Hampton University, and then settled in Wilmington, where he and his brothers established The Wilmington Daily Record, at the time perhaps the only daily newspaper run by African-Americans in the country. In August 1898, Manly published an editorial as a response to a white-owned paper’s racially charged article. Manly printed his op-ed piece at a politically and racially divisive time preceding the 1898 North Carolina elections. After losing political control of the state to an interracial coalition of Black Republicans and White Populists in 1896, Democrats had determined to regain power in the upcoming November 10, 1898 state elections, thereby thwarting Black enfranchisement and solidifying their white-supremacist agenda. In order to stave off another political defeat, Wilmington Democrats planned to stir as many as 2,000 members of the white population to riot, employing violence to intimidate Black voters and essentially seize power from the city government, slated to be in power for another year. Focusing their rage on him because of his editorial, the mob descended upon Manly’s office in order to destroy it, and lynch him. Milo recalled hearing from his father: “It was a planned deal. And the result of this riot was a few people got killed. All sorts of things happened at that time. The Negroes, to escape the mob shootings and so forth, left. My father and a friend, who was a part of the newspaper got in my father’s buggy, which of course, the Cadillac of the day, horse and buggy, and they headed out of town. But the mob that had been set up had put a circle around the town…because they were coming in to lynch ‘this nigger, Manly.’” – Milo Manly, 1984. The mob killed approximately twenty-five Black people during the insurrection, although some estimate that hundreds died. Fortunately, for Manly, a white friend warned him about the plot on his life. Because of his European heritage, he was able to pass for white, which helped aid his escape. “Well, a German grocer, who knew my father…got in touch with my father, and says, ‘Look, you’ve got to get out of town.’ He says, ‘Now, they don’t know who you are or what you are.’ Said, ‘This gang, there’s all these people out there, but they’ve lined it up that nobody can leave the vicinity of this area, with this cordon, unless they have a certain password.’ He said, ‘Now, if it ever got known that I gave you the password, they’d kill me. But I know you. I trust you. I want you to get out of here.’ He gave my father the password. My father… come up the line. They stopped him. ‘Where are you going?’ He said—named a town up there. ‘What are you going up there for?’ ‘Going up there to buy some horses,’ he said, ‘There’s an auction up there.’ Or something like that. ‘Oh, all right.’ He gave the password. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘But if you see that nigger Manly up there, shoot him.’ And they gave him two rifles. That’s right. Off away he went.” – Milo Manly, 1984. The Wilmington Riot gained national attention, and it directly resulted in Black disenfranchisement by requiring measures such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and the establishment of Jim Crow laws. Like Manly, thousands of Blacks fled North Carolina to seek refuge and employment in the North. Soon after fleeing, Manly made his way to Washington D. C. and then to Philadelphia where he worked as a painting contractor and participated in the establishment in 1906 of the Armstrong Association, a forerunner of the National Urban League, created to broaden employment opportunities for skilled African-American building trade workers from the South. “And my father, who had given them the idea, they decided to call it the Armstrong Association, named for Colonel [Samuel Chapman] Armstrong, who set up—organized and put together Hampton. My father had come from Hampton, and since it was a school set up to train mechanics, they felt that that would be a good tribute to Armstrong, and that’s why it was called the Armstrong Association.” – Milo Manly, 1984 During the Great Migration, Manly worked as a labor agent to help ease the transition of black laborers from the South. Sent south by the Armstrong Association, Manly used his experience and education in dealing with local ministers, who would recruit the laborers. Here again, Milo recalled, his light complexion helped him travel. “They needed labor. So it was decided my father would take a swing around through the South because he had contacts, of course, from his days of being editor and owner of a newspaper in the South. And so he made a tour. And then on top of that, my father looked like a white man. Nobody would expect anything … he was accepted anywhere he went.” – Milo Manly, 1984 In the 1920s, Manly remained active with the Armstrong Association and authored articles on its activities for Opportunity. He suffered the loss of his painting and decorating contracting business in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, and he died in 1944. He utilized the tools at his disposal—his education, his experience, and even his appearance—in order to better the lot of African Americans from his native South, and in his adopted home of Philadelphia. Bio: Goin North: The Life of Alexander L. Manly

William Tillman faced a brutal choice: slavery or death. He was a 27-year old African-American sailor born a free man in Delaware. He was steward and cook on board the merchant schooner S.J. Waring, about 300 tons, bound for Montevideo, Uruguay with an assorted cargo. Tillman had been on the crew of the Yankee merchantman the S. J. Waring. On July 6 the 300-ton schooner, manned by a crew of eight under the command of Captain Francis Smith, had left New York bound for Montevideo, Uruguay. Three days into its voyage, the ship was captured by a Confederate privateer, named the Jefferson Davis. The Civil War was less than four months old. The rebels ransacked the vessel and ordered Captain Smith, to haul down the Stars and Stripes. He was then taken to the privateer. Tillman was told that he, like the ship, was southern property and that he would be sold into bondage when the ship reached its new destination. The confederates put a five man prize crew on Tillman’s ship and turned her south, toward Charleston. Now, each day at sea beat down on Tillman like a hammer. An overwhelming sense of dread, however, was gradually replaced by iron-willed resolve. Tillman, in concert, with a handful of passengers hatched a bold plan. Tillman’s duties gave him the run of most of the vessel. The rebels were used to seeing him moving about. Moreover, while cautious around the handful of white crewmen and passengers, the prize crew did not consider Tillman capable of either bravery or treachery; it was to be their undoing. Tillman was key to the recapture of the S.J. Waring. And he struck in the middle of the night. On the night of July 16, with the captured ship just 50 miles off Charleston and the captors asleep in their bunks, they sprung, “killing the three with a hatchet, and throwing the bodies overboard. It was all finished in five minutes,” Harper’s Weekly reported in an August 3, 1861 article. In a few bloody minutes, William Tillman had forestalled his descent into slavery and retaken the Waring from the privateers. He now set about returning to New York, offering to unchain the two remaining members of the prize crew if they would help sail the ship and warning them, “If you cut up any antics overboard you go; recollect that I am captain of this ship now.” Hugging the coast, the Waring sailed north “with a fair wind." Bryce Mackinnon one of the passengers that day reported, “On Sunday morning July 21, 1861, at 9 o’clock we got a pilot off Sandy Hook and soon after hired a tug for $60 to tow us up to New York where we arrived at 4 o’clock truly thankful for our great deliverance. Tillman, the negro steward, became the lion of the day, and his history, character and personal appearance were minutely investigated.” Tillman’s heroic action struck a responsive chord among a Northern population that was reeling from the news of the Union defeat at Bull Run on the same day the Waring arrived in New York. The New-York Tribune wrote, “To this colored man was the nation indebted for the first vindication of its honor on the sea.” Another publication reported that the achievement drew “unstinted praise from all parties, even those who are usually awkward in any other vernacular than derision of the colored man.” At Barnum’s Museum Tillman was the center of an “attractive gaze to daily increasing thousands” and “pictorials vied with each other in portraying his features, and in graphic delineations of the scene on board the brig.” Several months later the federal government awarded Tillman the sum of $6,000 (a hefty sum in those days) as prize-money for the capture of the schooner. Sources: ‘The Lion of the Day’ by Rick Beard, NY Times (Aug. 2011) and 'A Story of High Seas Heroism' by C.R. Gibbs, Maritime Administration Photo: Tintype of Mr. Tillman photographed by Abbott of NY was part of the Howard Wolverton Collection of Black American History which was up for auction at the Quinn's Auction House on February 11, 2016 in Falls Church, Virginia.

Portrait of a handsome African American man identified as Mr. Sanford. Photographed circa 1906 by Joseph J Pennell in Junction City, Kansas. Pennell Photography Collection/Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

Portrait of a handsome African American man identified as William Powell, M.S.S. (1882-1960). At one time he was an instructor with the Mounted Service School, where cavalrymen werfe trained. He served in the U.S. Army until WWI; he retired as a Sergeant, and eventually ended up in the Old Soldiers' Home in Fort Leavenworth. The above photograph was taken circa 1913 by Joseph J Pennell in Junction City, Kansas. Pennell Photography Collection/Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas