IN JANUARY 1900, DANIEL MURRAY RECEIVED A SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT at work. Librarian John Young had unexpectedly died a year before. The new Librarian of Congress was Herbert Putnam, the first professional librarian appointed to the position. Putnam approved a request from the organizers of the American Negro Exhibit, planned for the upcoming Paris Exposition, that the library furnish a bibliography of works authored by black Americans and collect some of the books and pamphlets listed therein. Murray was put to the task.
Participation in the Exposition Universelle was something the National Afro-American Council had long had in its sights. Indeed, it had been one of the objectives set at the formation of the council at Rochester in September 1898. That was just six weeks after Ferdinand W. Peck, a civic-minded businessman from Chicago, had been appointed commissioner general for the United States at the world’s fair that would open in the heart of Paris in April 1900. Twelve commissioners were to be appointed under Peck. The Washington branch of the NAAC had called for inclusion in that group at the meeting Murray had presided over in January 1899. Although that had not transpired, black leaders had continued to press for some avenue of representation. According to Murray, Peck had “stoutly resisted” the idea of giving up any of the nation’s limited space to African Americans. Murray had appealed directly to President McKinley during their July 1899 conference and claimed that “Mr. Dawes [Comptroller of the Currency Charles G. Dawes] later said the President had at my instance overruled Comm. Gen’l. Peck.” But other prolocutors, including Booker T. Washington, applied pressure as well. It was Thomas J. Calloway who engineered the final push.
Calloway, a graduate of Fisk University formerly employed by the US War Department and Tuskegee Institute, resided in Washington. On October 4, 1899, he sent a letter to more than one hundred race activists, seeking their backing for promotion of a separate African American exhibit at the fair. “We owe it to ourselves to go before the world as Negroes,” he wrote. “The Europeans think us a mass of rapists, ready to attack every white woman exposed, and a drug in civilized society. This information has come to them through the horrible libels that have gone abroad. . . . How shall we answer these slanders?” One way, he continued, would be a “well selected and prepared exhibit representing the Negro’s development” at the Paris Exhibition that “thousands upon thousands” would view: “Not only will foreigners be impressed, but hundreds of white Americans will be [too].” He asked for the views of his correspondents and was pleased when “nearly all replied, and the responses were practically unanimous” in their support.
President McKinley was moved by the prompting of these distinguished individuals. On November 2, he met with General Commissioner Peck, and it was decided that the United States would sponsor an American Negro exhibit and that Thomas Calloway would be the special agent in charge. Calloway officially received the job on November 15. Congress appropriated $15,000 for the exhibit. With the exposition opening on April 15, he had no time to waste.
The exhibit would highlight African American progress since Emancipation by reviewing “the history of the American Negro, his present condition, his education, and his literature.” On December 18, Calloway met with Librarian Putnam to discuss a “Negro book exhibit” and followed up with a written request the next day. In his return letter, dated January 5, Putnam assured Calloway that the library service superintendent, David Hutcheson, would give such assistance “as may be practicable” and is “apt to assign the work to Mr. Daniel Murray,” adding, “We cannot specifically detail him for any given period for work so special, but will assign to it such portion of his time as is not required by routine duties.”1
Murray took on the special assignment with zeal, never limiting himself to working on it when on the clock at the library. He “labored late at night and with great expense of time,” recalled Calloway. “It is not often we find men who without compensation will devote themselves so earnestly for the benefit of the race.”
In short order Murray produced a preliminary list of 270 books and pamphlets authored by African Americans, along with some of the works themselves to be displayed in Paris. He boasted that his list “was compiled in less than two weeks, mainly from memory.” Not quite. In a fuller telling, he reported to Hutcheson that upon getting the assignment, “I immediately set about formulating a plan which offered a reasonable prospect of securing a creditable result. . . . To facilitate the quest, with the aid of the Assistants in the Library . . . and inquiry among colored men habitually active in ferreting out such information, I was able to publish on the date above given [January 24], ‘a Preliminary List’ containing 270 titles.” He explained further that he had started with a base of 153 books and pamphlets compiled five years earlier by the Bureau of Education and added 117 titles.
The Washington Post carried an advance notice on January 22. The Negro literary exhibit for the Paris Exposition has “been put in operation under the charge of Mr. Daniel Murray, long known to every frequenter of the Congressional Library,” it reported. “Mr. Murray is given authority to select from works by colored authors which are within the Library collection, and to secure by one means or another copies of works scattered throughout the country which are not so included. . . . Not all the books secured will be sent to the exposition. Only works of real literary merit will be forwarded.” The article went on, in complimentary fashion, to describe the books of several authors.
Murray’s preliminary list of 270 titles was just a starting point. The date on the Post article was also the date on the circular he prepared “to acquaint the public with the purpose of this Library to compile a bibliography of all books and pamphlets which colored authors had at any time published.” The circular was in the form of an open letter requesting help (titles, books themselves, any relevant intelligence) in identifying books or pamphlets written by black Americans. Sent out with the circulars, along with the preliminary list, was a prepaid return envelope addressed to Murray. The circular promised that at the close of the exposition “the whole collection will be installed in the magnificent Library of Congress to be on exhibition and for consultation for all time.”
Murray started by forwarding the circulars to 180 schools for African American youths. Eventually he sent a thousand circulars to institutions and individuals. Published in many newspapers as well, the circular lent “wide publicity to the quest for books and pamphlets” and, Murray found, “had the effect of calling public attention to a previously neglected field of literary endeavor.” Even to many of the country’s librarians, “the 270 titles of books and pamphlets were a revelation.”
Murray’s quest was not straightforward. “You will I am sure appreciate the immense labor necessary to develop and render approximately complete a work of this kind,” he wrote to supervisor Hutcheson. “How separate the books or pamphlets by Negro authors from the general mass,” he posited, “since who is gifted with that prescience necessary to divine the nationality of an author by a simple glance at his works.” Murray chased down contenders based on “the imperfect recollection of individuals.” Many books included a portrait of the author, but “when this distinguishing mark was omitted, evidence had to be gathered externally, and when this was not forthcoming, the effort was abandoned.” Murray’s list, therefore, grow as it might, would always fall short of crediting additional titles to which “the Negro race is justly entitled.” Even with those difficulties, he asserted, “I did not give up the effort, since I appreciated the fact that such an opportunity might not come again in a lifetime.”2
In mid-February, General Commissioner Peck wrote to Librarian Putnam and requested that Murray accompany the collection to Paris. He offered to pay Murray’s travel expenses if the library would “continue his salary while abroad in charge of the Library’s collection of books.” Putnam asked chief assistant librarian Ainsworth Spofford for his input on the matter. It came back lukewarm. Most of it consisted of concerns about sending the books, some of them irreplaceable, overseas. “In regard to . . . detailing Mr. Daniel Murray to take charge of the exhibit, with a continuance of his salary in the employ of the Library, I have to say that such permission is wholly without precedent in the past service of this library.”
Thus was Murray’s opportunity to see Paris dashed. On March 6, 1900, Murray accompanied Thomas Calloway and his family from Washington to New York, where the Calloways boarded an ocean steamer for Paris the next day. Under that March 7 date, Murray penned a note to David Hutcheson, alerting his supervisor to a last-minute change: “Referring to our conversation yesterday my plans are now changed since Mr. Putnam thinks and I agree fully that a more effective display can be made at Paris by adopting another plan. . . . Mr. Putnam suggests that I defer the extended trip until I had the new arrangement well in shape. . . . I shall return Monday.” It would seem that Murray had intended to hand over his part of the exhibit as he saw Calloway off and then conduct further bibliographical research in New York but instead returned to the library to reconfigure the display.
By the last day in March, Murray had 980 titles in hand. The enhanced method of displaying his bibliography consisted of engrossing the catalogue entries on sixteen large sheets (18 by 24 inches) and then encasing them in frames under glass that were attached by hinges to stationary posts. The entries were arranged under subject headings such as education, sciences and arts, religion, and fiction. Over the month’s time that the display of the 980 entries was under preparation Murray “pushed night and day” to accumulate more titles. By the time it was ready in early May, he had “succeeded in securing identification to twelve hundred books and pamphlets,” as he bragged to George Myers, commenting, “Marvelous isn’t it?”
On May 14, 1900, the sixteen glass-encased sheets bearing 980 catalogue entries along with 214 books, more than 160 pamphlets, and two bound volumes of newspapers were shipped across the Atlantic. Thomas Calloway, in Paris with W. E. B. DuBois, oversaw the collection and display of the exhibit materials. The American Negro Exhibit was housed in the Hall of Social Economy, located in the center of the fair on the bank of the Seine. Dense but artfully arranged, the exhibit took up about a fourth of the space assigned to the United States in that building. On display were models, portraits, graphics, photographs, books, and various paper materials. The latter included some 360 patents issued to African Americans.
Calloway was a colleague of both Booker T. Washington and DuBois, and there were features in the exhibit reflective of the positions and priorities of both standard-bearers. Washington contributed a series of photographs from Tuskegee portraying groups of African Americans working as agricultural laborers and industrial producers. DuBois’s submissions aimed at breaking down that very stereotype. He prepared colorful statistical charts showing various aspects of progress, one set illustrating conditions in the country at large, the other focused on Georgia. He also contributed a series of photographs that celebrated black self-assertion. He described the exhibit as depicting an “honest, straightforward” picture of African Americans “without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves.” Calloway thought “the most credible showing in the exhibit is by Negro authors collected by Mr. Daniel Murray,” and DuBois concurred, describing it as “the most unique and striking” part of the exhibit.
Fifty million visitors attended the fair. The American Negro Exhibit was a sound success. The exhibition commission’s official press representative lauded it as “intelligent and valuable,” expounding, “Marvelous as has been the progress of the United States in other ways, none have equaled the facts of the progress of the American Negro.” The exhibit won fifteen medals, including a grand prix overall. DuBois regretted that the awards were made before all of the features, including the literary display, were installed, with the result that some of the strongest elements never had a chance to be considered by the judges.3
Throughout the tenure of the exhibit, article after article appeared in newspapers across the country on Daniel Murray and his project. “It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that no one would have believed that the colored race in this country was so prolific in the production of literature,” the New York Times pronounced. Even the leading literary paper in England, the Academy, took note and, like most of the other periodicals, expressed astonishment and praise.
The journalist Richard Henry Stoddard, in his New York Mail and Express piece, on the other hand, dismissed Murray’s bibliography, scornfully declaring that “there is no such thing as Negro literature” and that “the Negro has furnished inspiration rather than found it.” Murray published a clever response to Stoddard, the compiler of the Cyclopedia of American Literature, that ran in several Washington newspapers. “What feelings of wonder must arise when I tell you I have now completed and identified fully eleven hundred titles of books and pamphlets by Negro authors, many of them exhibiting excellence in a literary sense,” he wrote. “If another edition of your excellent work is contemplated, this information must be of the greatest benefit, since a ‘Cyclopedia of American Literature’ that omitted to notice so large a number of American books . . . cannot justly lay claim to completion.”
A more substantial critique, carried by the Washington Bee, was filed by editor and literary critic Frank H. Severance, who, unlike Stoddard, treated the authors in Murray’s bibliography seriously. “We might as well be entirely frank in the appraisal,” he began, “Much of it is rubbish, none of it is very great.” No Shakespeare, no Homer. Yet he judged the collection to be of value as a history of blacks in America written by blacks, singling out DuBois’s The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America as “of sterling worth.” Poetry was “the field in which the negro has made his most distinct mark,” he intoned, with Paul Laurence Dunbar first in rank. He found the collection rich in memoirs and “what may be called literary curios,” naming memoirists Paul Jennings and Elizabeth Keckley, among others.
The memoirs of ex-slaves Paul Jennings and Elizabeth Keckley were singled out as “curious” in many articles. Jennings had been James Madison’s manservant. His A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison, published in 1865, has been decreed by the White House Historical Association to be the first memoir of life in the executive mansion. Not more than 150 copies of Jennings’s slim book were printed, and Murray may well have saved it from utter obscurity.* Elizabeth Keckley was seamstress and companion to Mary Lincoln. Her memoir, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, was published in 1868. It was Keckley herself, old and infirm, who presented a rare copy of her book to Murray, seven years before she died in Washington’s Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children. Her memoir had been suppressed after the initial hoopla its publication had caused. The revelation that a black woman had been Mary Lincoln’s closest confidante outraged many and embarrassed the former First Lady and her son.
Other ex-slave memoirs now considered extraordinarily significant resources that Murray included in his preliminary bibliography (and that had been absent in the earlier Bureau of Education list) were Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave (1853) and Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Murray was well aware of the facts rediscovered by historian Jean Fagan Yellin in the 1970s, namely, that Linda Brent was the pseudonym of Harriet Jacobs and that Jacob’s narrative was an authentic, not fictional, account. Jacobs died in Washington in 1897. Cornelia Grinnell Willis, who had purchased Jacob’s freedom circa 1852, sent Murray a copy of Jacob’s memoir with an accompanying letter.
Murray’s bibliography contained many entries that are today considered historical or literary classics or both. On the other hand, his emphasis on ever lengthening his list resulted in the inclusion of many titles of dubious literary worth. He wrote to George Myers in May 1900, “Have you not some printed pamphlet bearing your name that I can have so as to include your name in the Bibliography. If it’s a campaign pamphlet and issued in your name, that will give me something.” When the Report of the Librarian of Congress for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1900, was prepared, it included a paragraph on Murray’s project, noting that his bibliography “already comprises over 1,400 titles.” The next year’s report included Murray’s Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors in its compilation of publications. Murray must have felt gratified to see that in print.4
His role in the Paris Exposition complete, Murray continued “in my leisure hours at night, and sometimes in the morning and at noon” to “prosecute the search.” His absorption in his project—a “task of herculean proportions” as he described it—undoubtedly accounts for his paying less attention to NAAC political issues and his absence at the August 1900 convention. No longer satisfied with bibliography and book collecting alone, before April 1900 was over, he was seeking data for biographical sketches of notable African American authors. On May 5, the Colored American revealed that Daniel Murray had “decided to attempt a more ambitious line of investigation.” He was writing a book, “desirous,” as he told George Myers, “of giving to the world a history of Negro literature.”
Murray’s inclination to take a pioneering role in what later would be referred to as the black history movement can be traced back to 1894. Prompted by a letter from Frederick G. Barbadoes in October of that year, seeking interest in the preservation of the “history of the Colored People of African descent in the United States,” Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Francis Grimké, John Cromwell, Eugene Johnson, and Daniel Murray joined forces in support of the notion. “The pressing necessity for such a history at this time, when we are being so unfairly criticized by published statements, so inhumanely treated by mob law; our constitutional rights violated by State enactments; by congressional and executive indifference to our condition, is apparent to all,” read the circular issued under the signatures of those five race men. Gathering the facts on black Americans’ past and present “will fill the existing blank in the true history of our country and prevent further misstatements as to our title of citizenship.”
Murray’s active interest in African American literature had begun years before the Paris Exposition, when he read Henri Grégoire’s An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes. Published in English in 1810, Grégoire’s work undermined conceptions of black inferiority by compiling the literary achievements of people of African descent. “I have prosecuted my researches,” Murray stated, “in the same spirit animating Grégoire . . . to show to the world that the colored race . . . is entitled to greater credit than is now accorded to it by the American people.” When, back in the summer of 1899, the Colored American referred to Murray writing a book, it is likely he had begun much the same work that he took up again in earnest two years later.
Murray revealed to George Myers that he “would indeed be glad to have a place that would enable me to have at command the money necessary to bring out such a book.” He referred to the English tradition of giving literary men a “place under the Government to furnish sustenance while prosecuting their literary labors” and claimed that John Young had been made Librarian of Congress to enable him to prepare his biography of Ulysses S. Grant. To suggest such a far-flung possibility for himself, Murray must have composed this letter in a state of flush.5
Reality was not so rosy. Murray had to juggle his day-to-day responsibilities at the library with his special project. Devote himself to his project as he might on his own time, he had to angle for vacation approval in order to take research trips. As he explained to his supervisor, David Hutcheson, he had discovered that a personal appeal worked best. Such an approach was facilitated by letter, and Murray wrote four thousand tailored letters by October 1900, but also required on-the-ground research in cities such as New York, Boston, and Baltimore. Murray assured Hutcheson that his research was bearing fruit. He was gathering “proof that the Negro race possessed high intellectual capacity, and had produced literary works of an exalted character,” pointedly adding, “It certainly is marvelous when the antecedent conditions are considered.”
Daniel Murray had found his niche, not only a literary niche but, he reasoned, an antidote to troubled race relations. His list of 1,400 works authored by black Americans had “shocked the world.” Believing that “the curse of prejudice is the hand-maid of ignorance,” he would now expand his research and educate the world. “Since, as literature is the highest form of culture and the real test of the standing of a people in the ranks of civilization, this showing must undoubtedly raise the Negro to a plane previously denied him, but which, in spite of every drawback he has honestly won,” he maintained. “No other test applied by the world at large is so fair and so conspicuously free from misconception.” For daily inspiration, he could look to the words of Samuel Johnson inscribed on the Library of Congress wall above a second-floor window that looked out on the Capitol: “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.”
“I am bending my energies toward the completion of my book, which is probably somewhat more than half finished,” Murray wrote to George Myers in December 1900. When the Union League Directory, compiled by Andrew Hilyer, came out in the new year, it carried an advertisement announcing that “Daniel Murray is preparing a very valuable book for publication, Bibliographia Africana, or History of Afro-American Literature, with sketches of 125 distinguished writers allied with the Negro race, to which will be appended a bibliography of 1600 books and pamphlets by Afro-American writers.” By the time the Washington Bee interviewed Murray for an article published in its August 24, 1901, issue, his book encompassed Afro-Europeans as well and he had amassed nearly 250 sketches and 2,000 titles. “Mr. Murray’s knowledge of modern languages and vast historical information so well fits him for the task that it is difficult to mention another person equally qualified,” read the piece. “To insure thoroughness Mr. Murray expects to devote fully a year longer to the work, indeed, he says, he would rather delay it five years than have it full of errors when it does appear.”6
Months before the Paris Exposition closed on November 12, 1900, the plan to install the American Negro Exhibit at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, was in the works. About eighty books that Murray had received too late to be shipped to Paris were added to the African American literary display in Buffalo in time for the exposition opening on May 1, 1901. As the summer proceeded, Murray planned a sojourn to the exposition and then “down the lake to Cleveland” to visit his friend George Myers. His trip was postponed because he was not granted vacation until the second week in September. He intended to take Harold, about to turn eight, who “is very anxious to come notwithstanding he made the Buffalo trip with his Mother” (Anna Murray may well have attended the National Association of Colored Women convention in Buffalo in July). “Harold wishes to wear his soldier suit, a sort of officer’s fatigue dress. I wish him to appear in his velvet suit,” Murray wrote to Myers on September 6, adding that Harold would have a “duck fit” were he not allowed to come. As he penned that letter, he had no inkling that September 6, 1901, was a date that would go down in history. President McKinley himself was visiting the fair in Buffalo, and late that afternoon he was laid low by an assassin’s bullet. The Washington papers did not carry the news until evening.
Father and son traveled to Buffalo as the nation awaited word on the President’s condition. He seemed to have gotten better by September 12, but the next evening at 9 p.m., the distressing news came that the President was unconscious and dying. Murray dashed off a postcard to Myers, writing, “My heart is so full I cannot enjoy myself here” and informing him that he and Harold would cut short their visit to Buffalo and leave for Cleveland in the morning. William McKinley died in the predawn hours of gangrene.
Murray’s close friend Spencer Murray, had traveled to Buffalo with President McKinley. He’d had charge of the Pullman train cars that carried US presidents since the Cleveland administration. While Daniel Murray and George Myers had, no doubt, a somber reunion in Cleveland, Spencer Murray remained on the scene in Buffalo. It was he “who was sent to get McKinley’s death-mask when his wounds resulted fatally, and subsequently he was in charge of the room in Buffalo in which [Theodore] Roosevelt took the oath of office.” The remainder of the fair was rather a bust. Murray’s book display was sent on to Charleston, South Carolina, where the Inter-State and West Indian Exposition took place from December 1901 to June 1902.7
Back in Washington, Daniel Murray, whom the Colored American dubbed the “Sage of Negro Bibliography,” was called on to toast and to write and speak about “Our Literature.” His added focus on biographical research was featured when, in May 1901, he addressed the Bethel Literary and Historical Association on “Eminent Negroes of Whom Little Is Known.” Around the turn of the century, the country’s black intelligentsia had formed several new scholarly organizations. The American Negro Historical Society of Philadelphia and the American Negro Academy were both launched in 1897. In February 1900, a nucleus of newspapermen founded the Pen and Pencil Club, an exclusive association for Washington’s literati. Murray was invited to join this coterie of about forty men of the pen who shared “a common purpose, a common ambition and a common usefulness” and were prepared to “serve the race” by “concert of action” at critical moments. That organization, the Indianapolis Freeman pronounced, “gives promise of great influence in molding national sentiment.”
On January 24, 1901, the club elected Lafayette M. Hershaw president, Daniel Murray first vice president, Henry P. Slaughter treasurer, and Paul Laurence Dunbar governing board chairman. Other members included John W. Cromwell, E. E. Cooper, Calvin Chase, Thomas Calloway, Kelly Miller, Richard W. Thompson, and Robert Terrell. There were also honorary members such as T. Thomas Fortune, who participated when in town. Meetings were held monthly at members’ homes. Henry P. Slaughter hosted the elections meeting. In March the members gathered at Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “cozy residence” in LeDroit Park. “The literary den of the famous poet was the scene of one of the most enjoyable and profitable meetings of the club.”
In addition to literary development, the Pen and Pencil Club promoted “fellowship among congenial spirits.” The annual banquet it hosted was always “a stellar event.” In 1902, the club began the tradition of holding the affair on February 14 to honor Frederick Douglass. Douglass did not know the date of his birth but in later life celebrated it on February 14 (the colored public schools had been commemorating “Douglass Day” on that date for six years). Club members invited more than a hundred leading men to the banquet at Odd Fellows Hall, where Gray Brothers Caterers held sway. The chief speakers, all referencing various aspects of Douglass’s legacy, included the recently appointed recorder of deeds, John C. Dancy, Register of the Treasury Judson W. Lyons, former governor Pinckney Pinchback, and former congressman George H. White. Given that the evening coincided with Valentine’s Day, hearts and witty sentiments served as its motif, and once the speeches had transpired, the club’s corresponding secretary, Robert Pelham, Jr., took over. Pelham engineered quite a show, most aspects of which were a surprise to the attendees, starting with the appearance of his six-year-old son, Fred, in the garb of Cupid. A four-foot-long pencil and fountain pen were unveiled, each filled with cigars and valentines. The audience laughed and applauded as little Fred delivered numerous valentines, with ditties tailored to each recipient. John R. Francis’s, for example, noted that the doctor “had performed a surgical operation since he secured his automobile. He had ‘cut’ his horse.” The pun in Murray’s valentine revealed a familiarity with the abolitionist history of his wife’s family: “We understand Capital is made of the fact that like one of the ancestors of your children, you’re a good conductor of an underground system.”
Advancement of the race through dissemination of knowledge may have been the club’s calling card, but its “social standing” was clearly “18-karats fine.” Murray’s own standing was characterized as being much the same. According to the Washington Bee, “Daniel Murray is one of the best known social and literary lights in the United States.” The Colored American did the Bee one better: “He is the authority peerless and undeniable as to the literary production of the Negro race. . . . In all social matters he is facile princeps. No social function is complete without his participation.”8
The Pen and Pencil Club met so often at Henry P. Slaughter’s bachelor apartments on 10th Street NW that they became “the club’s regular headquarters.” After serving as treasurer, Slaughter was elected president in May 1902, when Hershaw stepped away from the helm. Though Slaughter was a full twenty years younger than Murray, the two became steady friends. Both were devoted bibliophiles and collectors. Both worked for the advancement of African Americans through education and political action. For example, Slaughter, along with George White and Murray, had been on the committee appointed by the local NAAC in 1900 to testify before Congress’s Industrial Commission on the black man’s economic status.
Like Murray’s friend Fred R. Moore, Slaughter had overcome a hardscrabble early life as well as “bitter, unrelenting prejudice” to achieve success. As boys both had hustled newspapers on the street to help sustain their families; as men they became editors. Moore would take over Colored American Magazine in 1904 and later the New York Age. Slaughter had been associate editor of a newspaper in his home state of Kentucky, and eventually became editor of the Odd Fellows Journal. As a self-made man himself, Murray admired those colleagues who had carved their own paths out of a “mountain of opposition.”
After high school, Slaughter had apprenticed as a printer, and in 1896 he landed a job in the nation’s capital as compositor at the Government Printing Office. He combined that with studies at Howard University, earning two degrees. As a “a young man of unusual capacity and genius for work” and one of “Washington’s most liberal entertainers,” Slaughter took surprisingly little time to “know everybody worth knowing” and be welcomed among the capital’s black elites. Like Murray, he was a social as well as political animal and a frequent host. One of Murray’s first invitations to his place was for the stag party Slaughter threw in September 1899. Murray became so at home there that, while attending Slaughter’s July 4 entertainment in 1901, he was induced to sing, no doubt influenced by Slaughter’s “generous punch bowl, a la Kentucky.” He offered up “In Happy Moments” and “Schneider, Don’t You Want to Buy a Dog?” Murray was known for his own “famous punch” when he was host. The two men shared the same church. Slaughter was an active communicant at St. Luke’s, and it was there, in 1904, that he gave up his bachelorhood.
At this time, Murray also formed a close association with his old friend Cyrus Field Adams. Adams, editor along with his brother John Q. Adams, of the midwestern Appeal, had moved to Washington once President McKinley had named him assistant register of the Treasury (directly under Register Judson Lyons) on January 4, 1901. “We Are at the Helm: The Appointment of Editor Adams as Assistant Register of the Treasury Places This Office in Charge of Afro-Americans” trumpeted the headline in the Colored American. Murray informed George Myers almost three weeks later that “Washington has still not recovered” from the surprise. In December 1901, Murray’s biographical sketch of his friend was published in The Colored American Magazine. Adams possessed “an insatiable desire for reading,” Murray wrote, “Dull encyclopedias had no terrors for him.” Perhaps with that shared characteristic in mind, Murray welcomed Adams as a boarder. Adams took up residence with the Murrays by 1902 and remained there until at least 1910. His apartment in the Murrays’ house was filled with “books, papers, and magazines. . . . His ample library contains everything worth reading—history, travel, biography, languages, poetry, fiction—all in beautiful binding, luxuriant in variety and scope. His big roll-top desk is a workshop . . . [that] may appear disordered to the critical housewife, but the owner knows where every scrap of paper is.”
Adams was not sociable in the way that Murray and Slaughter were. He attended social functions, certainly, but was likely to be among the first to call it a night. He did not drink “spirituous liquors” or smoke cigars. Never married, his passion was philately, and his collection comprised six thousand stamp varieties by 1900. Although the president of the National Afro-American Press Association, he was not a member of the Pen and Pencil Club. Adams remained very active in the NAAC, even as Murray turned much of his attention elsewhere. The council’s first lifetime member, he served as secretary from 1899 to 1907. In that capacity he published a history of the NAAC. It included a compiler’s note dated July 1, 1902, wherein Adams disclosed that most of his work on the report had been done while he was “confined to a bed of sickness” at 934 S Street.9