Chapter Fifteen


The Civil Rights Commission, 1957-1958

“So, Carolyn. What are you going to do with all this stuff?”

My sister-in-law Ann Marie poked a slender brown finger at the newspaper clippings I had laid out on the dining-room table and repeated her question.

“Really, Carolyn. This is great. You should think about writing this all down and publishing it.”

I had been keeping track of my research adventures in a diary, and I'd roughed out some notes on J. Ernest's early life, but I hadn't given much thought at all to what would become of all the information I was compiling.

“I don't know, Annie,” I said. “I'm a jazz musician. Writing a book seems like a pretty big project.”

“It's not that hard, Carolyn.” My sister-in-law is nothing if not persistent. “People do it all the time. Will you at least think about it?”

Well, she had me there. “OK, Annie. It's a great idea. I'll think it over.”

I'd been having dinner at my brother David's house and listening to him and Ann Marie tell me about their adventures at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The couple had actually gotten to say hello to Michelle Obama just minutes before her husband accepted the nomination.

“These are amazing times, Carolyn,” David said, pouring us each another glass of wine. “A black man is running for president. Our grandfather would have been absolutely flabbergasted. When he was alive, there were still lots of places in this country where a black man couldn't even vote, let alone run for president.”

Ann Marie and I nodded our heads in agreement as David swirled his wine pensively around in his glass.

“Carolyn, if you do write a book, be sure to write about J. Ernest's time on the Civil Rights Commission. He was the only black man on the very first commission in 1957. In a very real way it's fair to say the foundation for Obama's candidacy was laid by the work of that commission.”

It's times like these when I remember that my brother is a professor at Harvard Law School. David continued, “That commission was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which paved the way for the more comprehensive civil rights legislation passed by Congress in 1964. The 1957 Civil Rights Commission was America's first attempt to create a watchdog group to protect a lot of the freedoms we as black people enjoy today. And our grandfather was there, right at the center of it.”

I had already done some reading about J. Ernest's work with the Civil Rights Commission. But until my brother brought it up, I hadn't really thought a lot about its larger historical context. Driving home, later that evening, I mulled over what Ann Marie had asked me. What was I going to do with all this stuff? I had tracked John Bird Wilkins across four states and documented his turbulent career as a Baptist preacher. I had followed his son J. Ernest's rise from a single-parent home in poverty to a position of power and influence in the upper echelons of American government. And most recently, I had uncovered the circumstances surrounding his abrupt departure from his precedent-setting position as Assistant Secretary of Labor. Perhaps it would be a good idea to document my research in a book, if only so that my great-grandchildren might have some idea who their people were.

But there was no point worrying too much about any future plans until I'd gathered all the necessary information. It was already the beginning of September. I had promised John I would wrap up my research before the end of the month. It was time to get busy. A week later, I made another trip to Widener Library in Harvard Yard.

A civil rights bill had been approved by Congress and signed into law on September 9, 1957, after months of arm-twisting by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and a last-ditch filibuster by South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. An important provision of the bill required the president to create a bipartisan commission in order to investigate allegations of racial discrimination. To encompass what he called the “full spectrum” of points of view on the civil rights issue, President Eisenhower appointed an equal number of northern and southern representatives to the group.1 No women were asked to join the commission. And, with the exception of my grandfather, all the commissioners were white.²

To represent the North, the president chose J. Ernest Wilkins, Michigan University president John Hannah, and the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, a Jesuit priest, the president of Notre Dame University, and a strong civil rights advocate. Representing the southern point of view were Florida's former governor Doyle Carleton, Southern Methodist University Law School's dean Robert Storey, and Virginia governor John Battle. An avid segregationist, Battle believed that separation of the races was “the only answer to the Negro problem.”³

The nation's press greeted the formation of the Civil Rights Commission with cautious optimism. Time Magazine called the new commissioners “earnest and judicially minded men” and predicted that they would have “considerable influence.” The Nation, however, was not so sure. Since the six members were “deliberately chosen for their devotion to the cause of moderation, the Commission is not likely to break many lances crusading for civil rights,” it speculated.4 Writing in the New Leader, the black journalist Lewis Lomax was cautious. While J. Ernest was “no Uncle Tom,” he was not known as a militant in the fight for civil rights. As for the commission, Lomax felt, it “may yet produce some good, not because of its intrinsic merit but because public opinion will not let it fail,” a statement that fell somewhere between a ringing endorsement and a complete condemnation.⁵

Out of the vast sea of civil rights violations clamoring for immediate attention, the decision was made to focus the commission's initial hearings on instances where black citizens were being denied the right to vote. The idea that a person's right to vote should not be contingent on his race had broad support among white as well as black Americans. Nonetheless, the new commission encountered stiff resistance from southern congressmen, who delayed the group's funding and subjected its new staff director to a brutal and time-consuming confirmation process.⁶

It was late in the summer of 1958 before the commission began to meet regularly. The meetings were held behind closed doors, but rumors of contention within the group soon surfaced. John Hannah, often asked to play the peacemaker, told reporters that “at times it appeared it was going to be very difficult, indeed, to make real progress.”⁷

The source of the disagreement involved the commission's choice of staff members. J. Ernest fought hard to ensure that African Americans were represented on the commission's staff. In And Justice for All, the historian and former commissioner Mary Frances Berry notes that my grandfather “had been particularly galled by the employment discrimination experiences of his son, Dr. J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr.,” who, despite his PhD from the University of Chicago, had been “denied appointment at any research university because of his race.”⁸

Today, it's hard to imagine why having black staff members on a commission dedicated to civil rights would be an issue. How could anyone investigate discrimination effectively using a group that excluded blacks from its staff? But, I had to keep reminding myself, this conflict was taking place in the 1950s. At the time there were probably twenty states in the Union where I could legally be denied the right to use a public toilet. My grandfather did not want to be the only black man involved in the commission's investigations, and he clashed repeatedly on this issue with segregationist governor John Battle. Despite his reputation as a “civil rights moderate,” J. Ernest held his ground, and two African Americans were eventually added to the commission's investigating team.9

Over the next several weeks, commission staffers subpoenaed witnesses and heard the complaints of ninety-one African Americans who testified that they had been denied the right to vote because of their race. Just one month after his traumatic resignation from the Department of Labor, my grandfather and the rest of the commission members traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to begin the first in a highly publicized series of hearings into allegations of voting rights violations in that state.

Before the group had even interviewed a single witness, the new commissioners got a chance to experience the “Southern way of life” firsthand. In a front-page story on December 4, 1958, the New York Times reported that, because my grandfather was with the group, Montgomery's segregated hotels refused to admit the commissioners. Commission member Reverend Theodore Hesburgh recalls that, on their first night in Montgomery, the group went to every hotel in town, knowing that they would be turned away. As a commission spokesman told reporters, “we wouldn't request rooms for some commissioners and not for all,” and so the men were forced to stay at Maxwell Air Force Base, two miles from the city.¹⁰

When I interviewed him by phone, Reverend Hesburgh said that, when the exhausted and irritated commissioners arrived at Maxwell Air Force Base, the captain on night duty informed them that J. Ernest's quarters would not be in the same area as those of the white commission members. Commission member John Hannah was furious. “Give me the phone,” he barked at the young officer. “Put me through to the president!”

Hannah told Eisenhower, “You gave us a tough job to do!” and explained that the air force was trying to put J. Ernest in segregated quarters. According to Father Hesburgh, the president then ordered that the base commander be brought to the phone immediately. By the time the general in charge had been located, Rev. Hesburgh told me, all the air force men were “quaking in their boots.”¹¹

When the base commander finally came to the phone, he got an earful from his commander in chief. Eisenhower told the general that if he didn't give the commissioners rooms and a desegregated place to eat, the man would be “in Timbuktu the next morning.” Rev. Hesburgh recalls with grim satisfaction that Eisenhower “scared the wits out of that general.” When it was all over, the weary commissioners were finally able to get a decent meal together and a place to sleep.¹²

The City of Montgomery's refusal to provide a hotel room for a black man, even a high-profile black man traveling on a mission from the president of the United States, was an ominous indication of southern attitudes. Judge George Wallace had already defied a federal subpoena that ordered him to turn over the voting records for two Alabama counties. A virulent segregationist who would later run for president as a third-party candidate, Wallace refused to testify before the commission and threatened to jail any federal agent who attempted to retrieve the contested voting records. On December 9, 1958, spectators crowded into the small courtroom to watch the commission's first day of hearings. The tension in the room was palpable. In order to keep the proceedings from being interrupted by unruly spectators, Chairman Storey was forced to call for order repeatedly.13

One by one, twenty-seven African Americans took the witness box to describe the discriminatory methods used by Alabama officials. Amelia Adams, a soft-spoken graduate student at Tuskegee University, told the commissioners that when she went to the courthouse and announced her intention to register, she was told to copy Article Two of the U.S. Constitution in its entirety, without any mistakes and in clear penmanship. After she submitted the eight-and-a-half-page document as requested, Adams waited for months to hear whether she had been added to Alabama's voting rolls. She never received a reply from the state.

From his position among the commissioners on the speakers' platform, my grandfather questioned her.

“Do you have any opinion as to the reason why you haven't heard from it?”

“Well, I can read, I can write, and I think I possess all my mental facilities. So the only thing I can think of is the fact that I am a Negro,” Adams replied.¹⁴

As the hearings progressed, a rogues' gallery of Alabama officials paraded before the commission claiming to be utterly in the dark as to why no blacks were registered to vote in their counties. When Probate Judge Varner from Macon County stood before the committee to testify, he played up his “cornpone homeboy” image to the hilt. When asked why no blacks appeared on his voting rolls, Varner replied that he “only kept the records” and otherwise had no idea of what was going on. My grandfather pressed Varner to explain the procedure used for filling out the registration forms. In his best “Bubba” manner, Varner replied, “I don't know how they fix the papers. I don't even remember what's on the paper. It's been so long since I looked at one.”¹⁵

Commissioner Battle then asked Varner if there were different registration forms for black and white voters. “Not so far as I know,” Varner replied. But my grandfather was not in the mood for Varner's evasive tactics. It was impossible for Varner to say that whites and blacks followed the same registration procedures, J. Ernest observed acidly. “He never saw the records, never saw the applications, and was never present in the registration room!”¹⁶

Booker writes in Ebony that my grandfather's handling of the witnesses impressed a black reporter who attended the hearing. “There is not an ounce of fear in Wilkins. He is sharp. Where has he been all this time?” Booker also quotes another eyewitness as saying that J. Ernest “plunged right in and hit the heart of the matter. Being a Negro, he upset the tradition in that area for years to come.”17

Of the fourteen Alabama officials called before the Civil Rights Commission that day, six refused to testify at all. The rest steadfastly maintained their total ignorance of registration procedures. When my grandfather asked a Lownes County probate judge if he considered it odd that none of the fourteen thousand blacks in his county had registered to vote, the judge admitted that the situation might be considered “a little unusual, peculiar in some places, even.”¹⁸

By the end of the second day of testimony, the Montgomery hearings had reached an impasse. The state of Alabama refused to acknowledge the commission's authority to subpoena documents. Even Governor John Battle, an avowed segregationist, was frustrated. As the second afternoon's session came to a close, Battle told the recalcitrant state officials that he believed segregation was “[t]he right and proper way of life in the South.” But, he continued, their refusal to cooperate with the federal government was “an error.”¹⁹

Although they did not have full access to Alabama's voting records, the commission's hearings had exposed numerous instances of racial discrimination by state election officials. In order to keep blacks off the voting rolls, Alabama registrars did not publish voter registration times or places. When registration sessions were scheduled, the sessions for black voters would be held in tiny rooms that could not contain all the applicants. Alabama officials often required black applicants to fill out overly complicated forms and to wait in lines for hours at a time. And as my grandfather discovered during his questioning of Amelia Adams, a popular tactic used by Alabama officials involved having black applicants copy an article of the constitution perfectly or be disqualified from voting.²⁰

As 1958 drew to a close, my grandfather must have been exhausted. In the past year he had waged a bitter and humiliating battle to hold on to his job. He had suffered a major heart attack that nearly cost him his sight. Now he was trying to represent his race in a high-profile attempt to eliminate discrimination at the ballot box in the South. At Wilkins family gatherings, however, J. Ernest kept his troubles to himself. I find it hard to believe, but my mother assures me that neither the subject of J. Ernest's resignation nor that of his failing health was ever discussed. Perhaps my grandfather's stoic midwestern values would not allow him to complain while there was still so much work to be done. Or perhaps his pain was just too large for discussion.

In January 1959, the Civil Rights Commission returned to Montgomery, Alabama, for further hearings. Although less dramatic than the first session, these hearings continued to gather solid evidence of discriminatory tactics aimed at black voters. More important, the commission's hearings exposed Alabama's racist practices to nationwide scrutiny. The commission's findings shocked many whites, including the president, who called the behavior of the Alabama officials “reprehensible.”21

Under the new civil rights legislation, Alabama's efforts to deny the vote to blacks were illegal. At the end of the second round of hearings, John Hannah, now the commission's chairman, announced that he would turn the commission's findings over to the Justice Department's new Civil Rights Division. My grandfather pushed the commission members to make an even stronger recommendation, but he was opposed by Governor Battle, who preferred that the commission take no further action. In the end a compromise measure was approved, and the case against the state of Alabama was referred to the Justice Department.²²

In response to the commission's request, the Justice Department filed a suit in federal court requesting access to Alabama's voting records. The state of Alabama promptly responded by passing a law authorizing the immediate destruction of all rejected voter applications. The Civil Rights Commission then recommended that the federal government provide registrars for all elections to ensure equal access to the ballot box. But this proposal failed to attract the active support of Eisenhower officials. When Hannah tried to arrange a presentation by commission members to the Cabinet, Eisenhower's chief of staff, Wilton B. Persons (an Alabama native), somehow “forgot” to schedule a meeting, confirming the suspicions of some commissioners that the administration was not interested in a vigorous follow-up of the commission's recommendations.²³

Years later, White House aide E. Frederick Morrow wrote in his memoirs that Eisenhower's “lukewarm” stand on civil rights had made him “heartsick.” The attitude of administration officials was, he felt, “the greatest cross I had to bear during my eight years in Washington.”²⁴ J. Ernest left us no record of his feelings on the subject. It is easy for me to suspect, however, that at some level my grandfather felt betrayed.

In his journal entry for October 20, 1957, Morrow wrote that he felt “ridiculous standing on platforms all over the country, trying to defend the Administration's record on Civil Rights.” In spite of Eisenhower's decision to place blacks in high-profile positions, Morrow felt, there was no “strong, clarion and commanding voice from the White House” speaking out in support of civil rights issues. At the same time, Morrow often felt the black press viewed him as a “traitor” because of his involvement with an administration that had made “many blunders” in the area of race relations.²⁵

My grandfather had also come under fire from the black press during the course of his work on the commission. On August 2, 1958, the Amsterdam News reported that Commissioner Robert Storey had given a five-hundred-dollar campaign contribution to a segregationist candidate in Texas. New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell, an outspoken civil rights advocate, demanded that Storey resign from the commission. In a fiery editorial, the Amsterdam News took the rhetoric a step further. If Storey would not step aside, the newspaper felt that J. Ernest Wilkins, as black America's only representative on the commission, should resign his position in protest.26 The fact that this incident blew over without either my grandfather or Storey resigning speaks to the kind of iron self-restraint black “moderates” were expected to exercise during those times.

Although he probably felt discouraged and must have been bone-tired, J. Ernest kept up his daunting schedule. The Civil Rights Commission had begun to investigate voter discrimination in Shreveport, Louisiana, and a new round of hearings was scheduled to begin during the summer of 1959.²⁷ In addition to the Civil Rights Commission, my grandfather remained active in numerous organizations. He was on the board of Chicago's Provident Hospital and of the Hyde Park Kenwood Association, and he was the chairman of St. Mark's building fund. Heavily involved in the work of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, my grandfather also belonged to three other fraternal organizations, the Knights of Pythias, Sigma Pi Phi, and the Masons. In 1956 he made history as the first African American to be elected president of the Methodist Judicial Council.²⁸

But J. Ernest was not well. Although he refused to complain, his constant traveling, heavy workload, and the traumatizing events of the past year had all taken a toll on his health. Sometime in the wee hours of Monday, January 19, 1959, after returning home from a weekend speaking engagement, J. Ernest Wilkins suffered a massive stroke and died instantly. Lucile was out of town that weekend and was not at home when my grandfather died. When the housekeeper arrived the next morning, she found my grandfather dead in a massive pool of blood, his suitcases from the night before still unpacked.²⁹

The following day, President Eisenhower issued a statement to the press in which he called my grandfather “a gifted and dedicated public servant.” Labor Secretary Mitchell told reporters that “Mr. Wilkins advanced the welfare not only of our country's minority citizens, but that of all our citizens.”³⁰

Even in death, my grandfather was a racial pioneer, for his body lay in state at Washington's Foundry Methodist Church on January 21, 1959. J. Ernest Wilkins was the first African American ever to be accorded that honor.³¹ On January 22, my father arranged for J. Ernest's body to be brought to Chicago by train, and on January 23 a large funeral was held for him at St. Mark Methodist Church. After the funeral, J. Ernest Wilkins was laid to rest in the family plot at Lincoln Cemetery, alongside Lucile's mother and grandmother. Six years later, Lucile would be buried beside him, dead of a stroke at the age of sixty-four. In 1984 J. Ernest's youngest son, Julian, my father, would also be interred in the family plot.

Lincoln, a historic African American cemetery, is located in Chicago's southwestern suburbs. Keeping my family company in eternity are a lot of famous African Americans including Louis Armstrong's wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong; Rube Foster, the founder of Negro League Baseball; and the Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Gwendolyn Brooks.32 On a recent visit to Chicago, I took a solitary stroll through the cemetery's well-maintained grounds. After having seen the collapsed tombstones and overgrown graves that now comprised much of St. Louis's Washington Park Cemetery, I was thrilled to see that my grandfather's final resting place remains as beautiful now as it was fifty years ago. The Wilkins family plot is situated near an old weeping willow whose branches hang just a few feet above the ground. The cemetery still accepts new residents, and I spotted a number of expensive floral arrangements dotting the graves. Steps from where my grandfather is buried lie the graves of several distinguished Methodist pastors. As I bent to brush a stray leaf from his grave, I prayed that somewhere in heaven, J. Ernest was pleased with the research I had done.

My grandfather had been a highly private man, with several secrets buttoned tightly under his vest. In the course of the last three years, I had peeled away the layers of his life like an overripe onion. I had probed his pain and explored his greatest career failure. I had exposed his illegitimate birth and his father's bigamy.

I had chronicled his successes and documented his uncompromising intelligence. But I had also made public the damage his extraordinary emotional repression caused to the family psyche. My mother tells me that none of J. Ernest's sons cried at his funeral. This is not because they didn't love him but because, in moments of great emotional stress, Wilkins men for generations have been trained to repress their feelings.

As I took a seat on the soft grass next to my grandfather's grave, it occurred to me that our family's extraordinary emotional disconnect had probably gone all the way back to the days of slavery. My great-grandfather John Bird Wilkins must have witnessed an unspeakable amount of chaos, destruction, and death as a child. Perhaps turning his emotions off was an essential method of survival.

My great-grandfather was a brilliant man who, because of the racial discrimination that characterized the times in which he lived, had never been able to receive his due. If John Bird were alive today, he might well actually have gone to Harvard instead of having to make up all those lies. With his obvious intelligence, good looks, charisma, and gift for self-promotion, my great-grandfather might even have become the president of his class.

I could not respect John Bird for deserting my great-grandmother and her five children, yet I was not blind to the fact that my great-grandfather Wilkins had left his mark on each of us. Not only do all the Wilkins family members share his light skin, wavy hair, and bulbous nose, but somehow, across 150 years and four generations, we also share John Bird's desire to do something significant with our lives. My great-grandfather's dream of a People's Temple where black Christians of all denominations could worship together failed. But his spirit of idealism lived on in J. Ernest's determination to serve his country on our nation's first Civil Rights Commission.

And although my grandfather suffered severe setbacks on his journey, each of his sons has also made his own contribution to history. My grandfather's eldest son, J. Ernest Jr., is an extraordinary physicist, becoming a “black first” in so many areas that everyone in the family has stopped counting. J. Ernest's middle son, John, became the first black man on the faculty of University of California at Berkeley's prestigious Boalt School of Law. J. Ernest's youngest son, my father, Julian Wilkins, was the first African American to integrate a major Chicago law firm.

The desire to make our lives count for something still burns bright among the Wilkins children today. My brother David could have simply sat on his laurels as a tenured Harvard law professor, but he didn't. He went out and started a center for the study of the legal profession so that scholars could examine the issues of globalization now facing so many law firms. In his job at the Chicago Public Schools, my middle brother, Stephen, works hard to bring sports education to inner-city children. Timothy, my baby brother, has created a black lawyers' group to mentor young associates of color at his high-powered New York law firm.

And what about me? I managed to make a successful career as a college professor, but I suffered for many years from a lack of clarity about who I really was. Growing up in the clannish environment of Chicago's light-skinned elite, I'd developed a limited idea of what it meant to be a black person. Then, away at college during the rebellious black power era, I was forced to reinvent my concept. But underneath all the labels, who was I really?

After three years of research, I felt a lot closer to being able to answer that question. Now I knew at least some of the story of my ancestors. If I studied their achievements and their failures closely, I could see pieces of myself, for better or worse. Just as my great-grandfather John Bird and my grandfather J. Ernest, I feel driven to excel at whatever task I undertake. If I am honest with myself, I have to admit that, just like J. Ernest and John Bird, I am sometimes more concerned with my public image than I ought to be. Like both men, I'd like to think I also possess a healthy intellectual curiosity. I didn't inherit their abilities in mathematics or science, but I'm not too bad with words. Many times in the telling of this story, I thought of my great-grandfather, the self-professed “newspaper man.”

Yes. There was just no question about it. I was John Bird Wilkins's great-granddaughter. Light and bright perhaps, but definitely not white.

As I continued to sit by J. Ernest's grave, the strangest urge came over me. At first, I repressed it. After all, I was in a public graveyard. But a little voice inside kept saying: “Do it. Do it, please!”

I looked around furtively to see if anyone was standing nearby. But except for a man running a lawnmower several yards away, the coast was clear. I stood up and cleared my throat. Gesturing to my imaginary audience among the headstones, I began to speak in my best “nightclub performer” demeanor: “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to dedicate this next song to all you folks out there in Ancestor-land. It's an old African American spiritual. I am sure you all know it. But do me a favor please, ladies and gents. Don't scare me to death by singing along. I'm nowhere near ready to join you in the afterlife just yet.”

I let out a nervous giggle, straightened my posture, and took a deep breath. And suddenly, just as she had many years ago, the Singer took me over. No longer concerned with anything but the music, I began to sing:

There is a balm in Gilead
That makes the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
That heals the sin-sick soul
Sometimes I feel discouraged
And think my work's in vain
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again
Revives my Soul again

As the last tones of the song died away, a deep and inexplicable feeling of connection enveloped me like the gentlest of mists. Whispering a last prayer of gratitude to God for the gift of life and for my amazing ancestors, I carefully placed a bouquet of roses beside my grandfather's grave and left the cemetery.