Chapter Three


The Early Career of J. Ernest Wilkins

Although my husband, a former librarian, will tell you that contrary to popular belief, everything can not be found on the Internet, a surprising amount of information can be accessed on-line. Using ProQuest's large digital collection of historical newspapers, I was able to download and read scores of articles about J. Ernest Wilkins. A trip to the Boston Public Library yielded more treasures: a biography in Who's Who, another biography in Who's Who in Black America, and assorted magazine articles from old editions of Time and U.S. News and World Report. Slowly, a picture of my grandfather's life began to emerge.

The more I found out, the more curious I became. Each nugget of information seemed to lead in a new direction. Books on black history soon began to pile up on my desk and overflow from my bookshelves. After three months of obsessive research, I was overwhelmed. Books and papers filled every corner of my study. The extra chair I kept for visitors had long since become home to a three-foot stack of books and journals. My computer desktop bristled with articles I had downloaded from the Internet. My worktable was covered with scraps of paper on which I had scrawled cryptic notes while reading—“JEW ret F tlk Bkr?”

The trouble was, after a day or two, I couldn't remember where I had put the last cryptic note or just who Bkr was anyway. The only way I was ever going to make any sense of all this information was to compile it into a logical narrative. Just start from the beginning, I thought. Feeling a bit like a high school kid doing her first term paper, I wrote an account of what I had found thus far.

The Early Life of Jesse Ernest Wilkins

J. Ernest Wilkins was born on February 1, 1894, in the town of Farmington, Missouri, which is about sixty miles south of St. Louis. Farmington's high school did not admit black students at the time, so in 1912 my grandfather moved nearly two hundred miles from home to attend Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, a Missouri state school for blacks founded by African American veterans at the close of the Civil War.1

The atmosphere at Lincoln was strict. All students were required to attend a church service every Sunday morning and a religious lecture every Sunday afternoon. Any student foolish enough to curse, gamble, or drink on campus could be expelled instantly.² But J. Ernest thrived at Lincoln, and he graduated at the top of his class.³ After he became successful J. Ernest donated money to the school, and a cash prize was given in his name each year to an outstanding Lincoln graduate. He returned to campus on at least two occasions as a commencement speaker, and again when he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lincoln in 1941.

When my grandfather graduated from Lincoln in 1914, black students were legally barred from attending the University of Missouri. In order to continue his education J. Ernest was forced to move out of state. In the fall of 1914 he presented his credentials from Lincoln to the registrar at the University of Illinois. Twenty-seven years later, a recording was made of Lincoln's seventy-fifth anniversary Founders' Day Banquet, at which my grandfather told the following story:

I went to the University of Illinois in nineteen hundred and fourteen and when I presented my credentials there, the Registrar of that University got out a catalogue of the University of Missouri and he looked and he looked and he looked to find Lincoln University on the accredited list of the University of Missouri. I knew what he was doin' but I didn't say anything. He came back and said “Mr. Wilkins what school was that in Missouri you say you came from?” I said Lincoln Institute. He went back and he said, “Mr. Wilkins did you say Lincoln Institute?” I said yes sir. “Well, uh, is that in Missouri?” I said yes sir. He says “well I don't find it listed on the accredited list of the University of Missouri.” I can't tell you what I told the registrar, but I started to practicing law then. And before I got through, I had been admitted to the University of Illinois without an examination and without the “OK” of the University of Missouri. I don't know that I could have got it at that time. Certainly I can't get it now. And I say that without any reflection on the University of Missouri because where I come from we hit from the shoulder.⁴

While my grandfather was speaking, the numerous Missouri politicians in the audience must have been squirming in their tuxedos. Only three years earlier, an African American named Lloyd Gaines had tried to enter the University of Missouri Law School. When the school cited the segregation clause in Missouri's state constitution as its reason for rejecting his application, Gaines took the university to court. In 1938 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Missouri either to admit Gaines or to provide a comparable place for him to study law in his home state. Rather than admit a single black student into its lily-white university, the state of Missouri created a law school at Lincoln for black students.5 Everyone in the audience that night would have known about the Gaines case.

J. Ernest continued his speech: “We believe in education for everybody. We believe in equal opportunities in the educational field. And if Lincoln University can't give it, the University of Missouri oughta give it!”

If you listen to the recording today, you can feel the energy in the room change as my grandfather speaks. The audience, which had been applauding and laughing along with him just minutes before, now sits silently in their seats, shuffling and coughing. Then, with a bit of deft humor, J. Ernest lightens the mood and introduces the next speaker.⁶ It was 1941, not 1971, after all, and he probably felt it would not be expedient or wise to stir up further controversy.

In 1914, my grandfather began his freshman year at the University of Illinois in Urbana, about 150 miles from Chicago. The very fact that the U. of I. admitted black students at all made it the destination of choice for J. Ernest and a handful of other black students from the Midwest. But the atmosphere in town and on campus was hardly welcoming. As late as 1927 black University of Illinois students were being told to “go around back” if they wanted to eat in the city's restaurants. When one black student sued a local eatery for discriminatory treatment, the restaurant owner was found “not guilty” in a matter of minutes by an all-white jury.⁷

Desperate for a way to counteract the isolation and alienation they felt on campus, the university's black students formed their own social group, which they named the Illini Club. In the summer of 1912 a black student at the nearby University of Indiana named Watson Diggs visited the University of Illinois campus. During this visit, he convinced the Illini Club members to join a new organization he had recently created on Indiana University's campus. Diggs called his group the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Founded just the winter before by ten black men at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, Kappa Alpha Psi in its charter proudly proclaimed itself open to membership by college men anywhere, regardless of their color, religion, or national origin.⁸

By the time J. Ernest arrived at the University of Illinois in September 1914, Kappa Alpha Psi's Beta chapter had been in existence for nine months. After passing the required examinations J. Ernest was admitted to the fraternity that same year. For the rest of his life, Kappa Alpha Psi would play an enormous role in my grandfather's life. After he graduated from law school in 1922, J. Ernest became the fraternity's Keeper of Records, a position he held until he was appointed Grand Polemarch (president) of the Kappas in 1947.⁹

Keenly aware that many whites saw African Americans as inferior, the black collegians of my grandfather's era set out to prove that they were not only equal but superior to their white contemporaries. Upon graduation, these students would take their place among the group that NAACP leader W. E. B. Du Bois called the “Talented Tenth.” Du Bois hoped this corps of race leaders, through their brilliance and dedication, would lift the black masses out of their second-class status.10

This was the philosophy of the time, and the men of Kappa Alpha Psi embraced it with a vengeance. While their white counterparts were having panty raids and guzzling illegal “hooch” at speakeasies, members of Kappa Alpha Psi created mentoring programs for black youngsters and encouraged a high level of academic achievement.¹¹ For J. Ernest, membership in Kappa Alpha Psi reinforced the core values he had learned at Lincoln Institute: temperance, diligence, rectitude, and service.

Although he had to support himself by working odd jobs after school, J. Ernest excelled at the University of Illinois. Graduating with honors in the field of mathematics, he was a member of the school's mathematics club and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the elite society of leaders in intellectual achievement. At this point in his life, J. Ernest's goal was to be a mathematician. But in 1918 the nation was at war. Within weeks of graduation, my grandfather enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the 809th Pioneer Brigade.

In the early days of the First World War, U.S. Army officials had been reluctant to use black soldiers in combat. Some white officers claimed that black men did not have the courage or the intelligence to fight in battle. Others feared the long-term consequences of putting guns in the hands of an oppressed minority. Once the army finally decided to use black soldiers, they were placed in segregated units and trained at segregated facilities.¹²

In September 1918 the 809th Pioneers were ordered to ship out for France, and they sailed from New York aboard the troop ship President Grant with five thousand men on board. During the fourteen-day voyage, over two thousand of these men became infected with a lethal flu virus. The flu epidemic of 1918 traveled back and forth across the ocean on American troop ships, killing more than 20 million people in Europe and America within the next year.¹³ Less than three months after graduating from college J. Ernest, far from home and on his first ocean voyage, witnessed the flu's devastating effects firsthand. In the cramped confines of the President Grant, the disease spread like wildfire. Young men, who only a few days earlier had been in the pink of health, died by the thousands.¹⁴ There was not even enough room onboard the ship to store all the dead bodies; many soldiers had to be buried at sea, their bodies wrapped in a flag and dumped overboard to disappear forever under the cold grey waves of the North Atlantic. When the ship arrived in France, the 809th Pioneers were assigned the painful task of unloading the remaining bodies of flu victims who had died onboard the ship.¹⁵ Although this traumatic experience must have left a vivid impression, J. Ernest never mentioned it in any of his biographical interviews.

The troops of the 809th Pioneers were stationed in St. Nazaire, France, a central port of arrival for American troop ships. Although they had been trained to fight, the unit's primary function was to build and repair hospitals for the wounded American troops. J. Ernest, a noncommissioned officer, was given the rank of sergeant and put to work in the supply office.16

Contrary to the optimistic projections of many black leaders, the thousands of African Americans who volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army were not treated as equals by their white comrades-in-arms. When two French prostitutes in the town of Vannes expressed a preference for black customers, Charles Hamilton Houston, the future dean of Howard University's law school, was nearly lynched by a group of white soldiers. “The officer who led the mob began to yelp about ‘niggers’ forgetting themselves just because they had a uniform on, and it was time to put a few in their places,” Houston later wrote. Many of the college-educated black men who had volunteered for armed service during the First World War returned home disillusioned. Houston explained, “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. My battlefield was America, not France.”¹⁷

By the time he returned to the States in August 1919, J. Ernest Wilkins had chosen a new direction for his life. Although he would always love mathematics, the racial injustice he had experienced as a soldier overseas inspired him to become a lawyer.¹⁸ That fall, my grandfather began his studies at the University of Chicago Law School, supporting himself by working odd jobs and tutoring other students.

It was at the University of Chicago that he met Lucile Robinson. A pert, petite woman with fair skin, wavy hair, and a penetrating intellect, Lucile was studying for her undergraduate degree in mathematics. On a campus with so few black students, it is easy to see how the couple met; they were moving in the same social worlds and shared the same interests. It must have been love at first sight.

Lucile's father, J. W. Robinson, was a distinguished Methodist minister. Tall and handsome with a commanding presence, he presided over a large congregation at Chicago's St. Mark Church on the corner of Fiftieth and Wabash. A charismatic, flamboyant speaker, Robinson told his children that had he not been called to the ministry, he would have become an actor. Robinson's magnetic personality drew hundreds of people from all walks of life to the church. In 1912 Robinson presided over both the funeral of the controversial boxer Jack Johnson's first white wife and his second marriage ceremony three months later to another white woman.¹⁹

St. Mark Church had an excellent choir, a vibrant youth group, and an invigorating atmosphere. Most of all, however, St. Mark had Lucile Robinson. J. Ernest Wilkins became a lifelong member. No matter how busy he became later in life, my grandfather remained involved in church activities, teaching Sunday school, raising funds for the building committee, and serving as a deacon.

On November 23, 1922, my grandfather and grandmother were married. That same year, J. Ernest graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and passed the Illinois bar exam. Through rigorous self-discipline, intellectual brilliance, and relentless hard work, J. Ernest Wilkins had reached a new pinnacle of personal and professional success.

Compiling this much information had taken months. I now had a better sense of my grandfather's early life and knew about some of obstacles he'd had to overcome on his path to success. But I still did not feel like I knew the man. More important, I still had not found any answers to my major questions. What had happened to my grandfather during his years in the Eisenhower administration? Had he really been forced to resign his position as Assistant Secretary of Labor? Was he a victim of racism? If so, how had he reacted? Within two months of his resignation, J. Ernest suffered a sudden fatal heart attack. Had the stress and disillusionment he experienced during this stormy period killed him?

I had acquired a lot of background information, but to get the real skinny, I was going to have to talk to the people who knew him best. My grandmother Lucile had died in 1964. Two of J. Ernest's sons—my father, Julian, and his brother John—had also passed away. J. Ernest's last surviving son, J. Ernest Jr., was now bedridden and barely able to talk. There were only two family members alive who had known my grandfather well enough to be able to answer my growing list of questions—Uncle John's widow, Constance, and my mother.

In the past, whenever I had tried to talk to Mom about my father's side of the family, she diverted the conversation to other topics. Although she had never gone into details, I got the impression that she didn't really like J. Ernest very much. If I was going to get to the bottom of what really happened to my grandfather back in 1958, I was going to have to find out why.