ABBREVIATIONS
AMN—Amsterdam News
BDE—Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BN—Battle’s written notes, Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
CD—Chicago Defender
COH—“The First Black Policeman Remembers,” from “The Reminiscences of Samuel J. Battle,” February 1960, Oral History Collection of Columbia University
NYA—New York Age
NYT—New York Times
WWP—Wesley Williams Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
CHAPTER ONE: QUEST
1. BN.
2. Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods, 1902, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17854/17854-h/17854-h.htm
3. COH.
4. “Negro Policeman Hazed by Silence,” NYT, August 17, 1911.
5. Alan D. Watson, A History of New Bern and Craven County (New Bern, NC: Tryon Palace Commission, 1987), 58–59, 158–59; Vina Hutchinson, Images of America: New Bern (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2000), 27, 32, 36; Lynn Salsi and Frances Eubanks, Images of America: Craven County (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2001), 12, 25, 28.
6. US Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census, 1880, Ancestry.com; Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Flora J. Hatley, A History of African Americans in North Carolina (Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2002), 51.
7. State v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263 (1829).
8. Milton Ready, The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005); Watson, History of New Bern, 375, 398–99, 401–2.
9. John W. Cromwell, The Negro in American History: Men and Women Eminent in the Evolution of the American of African Descent (Washington, DC: American Negro Academy, 1914), 172.
10. Hatley, History of African Americans, 80.
11. Watson, History of New Bern, 488.
12. Ibid., 489.
13. Eubanks, Images of America, 11, 56; Watson, History of New Bern, 559.
14. Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1996), 30.
15. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1050.
16. Ibid., 1073.
17. Idell E. Zeisloft, The New Metropolis; 1600—Memorable Events of Three Centuries—1900; from the Island of Mana-hat-tan to Greater New York at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Appleton and Company, 1899), 104, 109.
18. Letter from Robert Hunter, June 23, 1712, at http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/Gateway%20Slavery%20Guide%20PDF%20Files/3.%20British%20Colony,%201664-1783/6.%20Documents/1712-1719.%20Slave%20revolt.pdf
19. US Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census, 1860.
20. US Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census, 1900.
21. Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), 132.
22. Zeisloft, New Metropolis, 124.
23. COH.
24. COH.
25. BN.
26. “West Side Race Riot,” New York Tribune, August 16, 1900.
27. “The Riot in Akron,” NYT, August 24, 1900.
28. Garry L. Reeder, “The History of Blacks at Yale University,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, January 31, 2000, 125.
29. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), 54.
30. “Yale Commemorates Her Bicentennial,” NYT, October 24, 1901.
31. Timothy Thomas Fortune, “A Boy’s Life in Reconstruction,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 13, 1927.
32. Emma Lou Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 3–34.
33. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race (New York: Owl Books, 1994), 38.
34. Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune, 44, 105–11, 124–25, 137–286.
35. US Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census, 1860.
36. “Brooklyn’s Colored Policeman,” BDE, March 8, 1891.
37. “On the Force,” BDE, March 5, 1891; “Colored Policeman,” BDE, March 6, 1891.
38. “Overton’s First Tour of Duty,” BDE, March 7, 1891.
39. “Colors Clash,” BDE, March 27, 1891.
40. “Hired to Whip Overton,” BDE, April 19, 1891; “Think It False,” BDE, April 20, 1891.
41. “Stand by Him,” BDE, March 30, 1891; “Let Off Light,” BDE, April 7, 1891.
42. “Eighteen New Policemen,” BDE, July 9, 1982.
43. “The Color Line,” BDE, April 25, 1892; “Still Another,” BDE, May 14, 1892.
44. Ibid.
45. “Maybe Overton Has a Good Case,” BDE, June 12, 1892; “Patrolman Overton Fined,” BDE, June 14, 1892.
46. “Points About Policemen,” BDE, August 14, 1892.
47. “Overton Will Resign,” BDE, November 18, 1892.
48. “Colored Patrolman Hadley Dismissed,” BDE, November 29, 1892.
49. “Another Colored Policeman,” BDE, December 8, 1892; “Points About Policemen,” BDE, December 11, 1892.
50. COH.
51. Borough of Brooklyn Death Certificate, No. 18138 of 1901, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
52. “$3-Million Police Station Dedicated at 123d and 8th,” NYT, October 30, 1975.
53. Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987), 25–26.
54. “New York’s Rich Negroes,” New York Sun, January 18, 1903.
55. “John W. Connors, Founder Organized Colored Baseball in New York, Is Dead,” NYA, July 17, 1926.
56. Perry Bradford, Born with the Blues (New York: Oak Publications, 1965), 169.
57. “The Southland Troubadour,” NYA, October 23, 1948.
58. Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazon, and Marshall Ganz, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
59. “Negro Policeman Now a Regular Cop,” New York Sun, January 18, 1912.
60. Mary White Ovington, Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York (New York: Longmans, Green, 1911), 148.
61. US Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census, 1900.
62. Wesley Williams, The Seven Generations That I (Wesley Williams) Have Witnessed; Up from Slavery: Four Generations of the Williams Family Span the Modern History of the Republic, from Pre-War Slavery Days to the Present, WWP.
63. “Bowery Derelicts Pay Thorley Honor,” NYT, November 21, 1923.
64. Abram Hill, “Chief James H. Williams,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Eric Arnesen, ed., The Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, Volume 1 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 665.
65. “57 Years a New York Doctor,” AMN, October 13, 1951.
66. Mary White Ovington, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947), 40.
67. New York City certificate of marriage, Borough of Manhattan, No. 13951 of 1905, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
68. Ovington, Half a Man, 40–41.
69. “After Brutal Policemen,” NYA, July 27, 1905; “Guilty Police Shall Not Escape,” NYA, August 3, 1905.
70. “Become Police and Firemen,” NYA, December 28, 1905.
71. Ernst Christopher Meyer, “Infant Mortality in New York City: A Study of the Results Accomplished by Infant Life-Saving Agencies, 1885–1920,” International Health Board, 124; Ovington, Half a Man, 53.
72. New York State Census, 1905.
73. “White Landlords Make Objection to Church,” NYA, June 11, 1914.
74. “Beautiful Homes for Colored People,” NYA, October 25, 1906; Ovington, Half a Man, 47.
75. “Negroes Filling Up 99th Street Block,” NYT, August 14, 1905.
76. Register of New York City, Section 7, Liber 127, 365–68; Liber 128, 145–50; Liber 151, 134–46; Liber 152, 297–301; Liber 159, 7–15.
77. State of New York Certificate and Record of Death, No. 24535, 1908, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
78. Wilbur Young, “Equity Congress,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
79. Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Vintage, 2004), 14–15.
80. “Crowds See Johnson,” Washington Post, March 30, 1909; “J. Johnson Hits Great White Way,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 30, 1909; Ward, Unforgivable Blackness, 143.
81. “Negro Police for New York,” NYA, August 5, 1909.
82. “The Trouble in Harlem,” NYA, August 5, 1909.
83. “Subject of Negro Police,” NYA, August 19, 1909; “New York Negro Policemen,” NYA, August 19, 1909.
84. “Will Not Take Examination,” NYA, September 2, 1909.
85. Cornelius W. Willemse, A Cop Remembers (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933), 147–49.
86. Reverdy C. Ransom, The Pilgrimage of Harriet Ransom’s Son (Nashville: Sunday School Union, 1949), 215.
87. “Send Johnson $20,000,” NYA, June 9, 1910.
88. Bradford, Born with the Blues, 171.
89. Ibid.
90. “Whites and Blacks in Many Riotous Battles,” New York Tribune, July 5, 1910; “Eight Killed in Fight Riots,” NYT, July 5, 1910; “Eleven Killed in Many Race Riots,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1910.
91. “Johnson in New York,” Washington Post, July 12, 1910.
92. “Johnson’s Arrival a Negro Gala Day,” NYT, July 12, 1910.
93. Benton Pride, Wesley Williams: A Credit to His Race, WWP.
94. Thomas Roy Peyton, MD, Quest for Dignity: An Autobiography of Negro Doctor (Los Angeles: Warren E. Lewis, 1950), 3–4.
95. COH.
96. “New York City Has a Colored Police Officer,” NYA, June 29, 1911.
97. Charles Anderson to Booker T. Washington, July 5, 1911, Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of Congress; “Commissioner Waldo,” NYA, June, 1, 1911.
98. Ibid.
CHAPTER TWO: STRUGGLE
1. Langston Hughes to Maxim Lieber, December 30, 1935, Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
2. Harlem Home News, July 28, 1911, and August 25, 1911.
3. “First Negro Named for City’s Police,” NYT, June 29, 1911.
4. COH.
5. BN.
6. “The Negro as a Policeman,” NYT, June 30, 1911.
7. COH.
8. “Negro Policeman Hazed by Silence,” NYT, August 17, 1911.
9. COH.
10. “Negro Policeman Now a Regular Cop,” New York Sun, January 8, 1912.
11. COH.
12. BN.
13. Wilbur Young, “Equity Congress,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
14. “Crowd Threatens to Lynch Negro,” NYT, October 18, 1911.
15. US Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census, 1900.
16. Robert Holmes’s World War I draft registration card, National Archives and Records Administration, Ancestry.com.
17. Rev. Frederick Asbury Cullen, From Barefoot Town to Jerusalem (privately printed, n.d.), 56.
18. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934.
19. BN.
20. “To Test Legality of Covenant,” NYA, February 13, 1913.
21. “Enthuse over Negro Regiment,” NYA, June 12, 1913.
22. Peter N. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle: The Harlem Hellfighters’ Struggle for Freedom in WWI and Equality at Home (New York: BasicCivitas, 2009), 10–13.
23. Mary White Ovington, Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York (New York: Longmans, Green, 1911), 85.
24. New York State Department of Labor, Annual Report of the Industrial Commission for the Twelve Months Ended September 30, 1915, 114.
25. Clifford M. Holland, “‘Blowout’ Difficulties in Tunneling Under East River, New York City,” Railway Review, December 30, 1916.
26. “Subway Saga,” NYT, November 8, 1964.
27. “General Miles to Negroes, Talks of War and the Future of the Black Race,” NYT, August 3, 1914.
28. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Mr. Trotter and Mr. Wilson,” Crisis, January 1915, 119–20.
29. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Colored Men and Women Lynched Without Trial,” Crisis, January 1915, 145; “The Lynching Industry,” Crisis, February 1916, 198.
30. Benton Pride, Wesley Williams: A Credit to His Race, WWP.
31. Wesley Williams photograph collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
32. State of New York Certificate and Record of Marriage, New York City Department of Health, No. 3480, 1915, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
33. “Bad Faith Charged by Street Car Men,” NYT, August 15, 1916.
34. “Car Strikers Raid Stops Bronx Lines,” NYT, July 27, 1916; “State and City Prepare to Meet Great Car Strike,” NYT, August 2, 1916; “Death and Disruption Have Marked Transit Strikes in this City,” NYT, December 39, 1965.
35. Tony Gould, A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Andrea Ryken, Polio in Twentieth Century America: A “Children’s Disease” in a Child-Centered Culture, April 8, 2008, Undergraduate Library Research Award, Paper 3, http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ulra/awards/2008/3.
36. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934.
37. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Waco Horror,” Crisis, July 19, 1916.
38. “Negro Troops of N.Y. N. G.,” NYA, June 29, 1916.
39. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 5–7; Gail Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (New York: Random House, 2001), 190.
40. Napoleon B. Marshall, The Providential Armistice: A Volunteer’s Story (Washington, DC: Liberty League, 1930), 12.
41. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 1–2; “The Fifteenth,” NYA, October 5, 1916; Wilbur Young, “Negroes of New York: Equity Congress,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
42. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 231.
43. Nelson, A More Unbending Battle, 10–13.
44. Brief Adventures of the First American Soldier Decorated in the World War, as Told by Neadom Roberts, 1933 (Richmond, VA: Collection of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar).
45. Arthur W. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine: The Story of New York’s Colored Volunteers (New York: Covici Friede, 1936), 9–13.
46. Marcus Garvey, “The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riot,” speech, July 8, 1917, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers (volume I, 1826–August 1919) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 217.
47. Harper Barnes, Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Walker & Company, 2008), 123–68.
48. “Negro Guardsmen in San Juan Riot,” NYT, July 4, 1917.
49. “Hayward Begins Inquiry into Riot,” NYT, July 5, 1917.
50. “Negro Policeman Slain by Burglar,” NYT, August 7, 1917; Patrolman Killed in Battle with Negro Burglar,” New York Tribune, August 7, 1917; New York City Department of Health Death Certificates No. 7291 and 26338 of 1918 for Henry Oliver Holmes and Ella Homes, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
51. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine, 357.
52. Ibid., 46–47.
53. “First Negro Troops in Spartanburg,” NYT, August 31, 1917.
54. Little, From Harlem to the Rhine, 54–55.
55. Ibid., 57, 67–68.
56. Ibid., 75–76.
57. “Two N.Y. Negroes Whip 24 Germans, Win War Crosses,” New York Tribune, May 20, 1918.
58. Buckley, American Patriots, 200.
59. Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 118–19.
60. Recommendation for the Medal of Honor, Sergeant Henry Johnson, submitted by US Senator Charles E. Schumer, May 15, 2011.
61. Bill Harris, The Hellfighters of Harlem: African American Soldiers Who Fought for the Right to Fight for Their Country (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002), 39.
62. “City Firemen Hail Once-Scorned Chief,” NYT, October 29, 1976.
63. Marshall, Providential Armistice, 11, 12.
64. “Fifth Av. Cheers Negro Veterans,” NYT, February 18, 1919.
65. World War I army service card, Henry Johnson, New York State Archives.
66. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” Crisis, May 1919, 14.
67. “Negro Killed in Harlem Race Row,” NYT, September 16, 1919.
CHAPTER THREE: BETRAYED
1. Langston Hughes to Arna Bontemps, December 27, 1950, Langston Hughes Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
2. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 187.
3. Cornelius W. Willemse, Behind the Green Lights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), 51.
4. “The Old Toms Prison Under Criticism Again,” NYT, June 30, 1929.
5. Willemse, Behind the Green Lights, 30.
6. “Fire College Instruction: Handbook of Instruction for Fire Lieutenants and Fire Captains,” advertisement, Fire Department Motor Apparatus: Description and Equipment of Every Type of Motor Apparatus in the New York Fire Department (New York: Civil Service Chronicle, 1916).
7. “City Firemen Hail Once-Scorned Chief,” NYT, October 29, 1976.
8. Wesley Williams photograph collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
9. M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall (New York: Greenwood Press, 1932), 188.
10. Richard Zacks, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (New York: Doubleday, 2012), 23–27.
11. Werner, Tammany Hall, 466.
12. Zacks, Island of Vice, 41.
13. Franklin Matthews, “Wide Open New York,” Harper’s Weekly, October 22, 1898.
14. “Police Praised As Sergeants Dine,” NYT, March 8, 1907; “Police Gifts for McAdoo,” NYT, January 24, 1906; “Police Lieutenants Entertain Taft,” NYT, February 23, 1910; “No Cheers for Bingham,” NYT, February 9, 1909.
15. “Whitman Watches Hylan; He Could Be Removed,” NYT, January 25, 1918; “Devery Funeral Tuesday,” NYT, June 22, 1919; “Devery’s Mourners the Lowly and High,” NYT, June 25, 1919.
16. Werner, Tammany Hall, 557; “$12,000 For Enright in ‘Fictitious’ Stock Deal with A. A. Ryan,” NYT, September 21, 1921; “Bank Records Show Enright Deposited $100,421 in 4 Years,” NYT, October 18, 1921.
17. Annual Report of the Department of Health of the City of New York, 1921; E. P. Cook, MD, “Bronchopneumonia in Early Childhood—Its Treatment,” Journal of California and Western Medicine (March 1930): 170; Department of Health, Certificate of Death, No. 5743 of 1920, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
18. US Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census, 1910; Fourteenth Census, 1920.
19. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 165–66.
20. “The Reminiscences of Benjamin McLaurin,” 1960, Oral History Collection of Columbia University.
21. Eslanda Goode Robeson, Paul Robeson, Negro (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930), 70, http://archive.org/stream/paulrobesonnegro011552mbp#page/n93/mode/2up.
22. “The Reminiscences of George S. Schuyler,” 1962, Oral History Collection of Columbia University.
23. Anderson, This Was Harlem, 130.
24. “Murdered Man a Bigamist,” AMN, December 6, 1922; “Items of Social Interest,” AMN, December 6, 1922, and December 20, 1922.
25. “The Reminiscences of George S. Schuyler.”
26. “The Future Harlem,” NYA, January 10, 1920.
27. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I, 1902–1941: I, Too Sing America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 10; Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 40.
28. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes I, 6.
29. Hughes, Big Sea, 34.
30. Langston Hughes, “The Fascination of Cities, Crisis, January 1926, 140.
31. Hughes, Big Sea, 81.
32. “Making a Joke of Prohibition in New York City,” NYT, May 2, 1920.
33. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010), 207–8.
34. “Indict Arnold Rothstein,” NYT, June 7, 1919; “Inspector Henry Is Freed by Court,” NYT, June 23, 1921.
35. “Faithful Unto Death,” Evening Telegram (NY), February 23, 1916; “Enright Promotes Ten to Be Captains,” New York Sun, April 27, 1919; “Changes Surprise Police,” NYT, June 26, 1919; “Samuel G. Belton, Police Aide, Dead,” NYT, February 11, 1958.
36. “Capitol Theatre to Open Friday,” NYT, October 21, 1919; “Capitol Theatre Opens to Throng,” NYT, October 25, 1919.
37. “Bandits Get 10,000 in Capitol Theatre Holdup During Play,” NYT, December 19, 1921.
38. “Employee One of 3 Seized in Capitol Theatre Hold-Up,” New York Tribune, December 22, 1921.
39. David Suisman, “Co-workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music,” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (March 2004).
40. “Dempsey and Wills Agreement Signed,” NYT, July 19, 1922.
41. Robert C. Hayden and Jacqueline Harris, Nine Black American Doctors (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 48; Robert C. Hayden, “Mr. Harlem Hospital”: Dr. Louis T. Wright, a Biography (Littleton, MA: Tapestry Press, 2003), 19, 65; P. Preston Reynolds, MD, “Dr. Louis T. Wright and the NAACP: Pioneers in Hospital Racial Integration,” American Journal of Public Health (June 2000): 883–92.
42. “Memories of New Bern: The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922,” Joseph Patterson speech transcript, New Bern–Craven County Public Library website, http://newbern.cpclib.org/research/memories/pdf/Fire.pdf; Peter B. Sandbeck, excerpts from Beaufort’s African-American History and Architecture, Beaufort, North Carolina History website, http://beaufortartist.blogspot.com/p/african-americans-in-beaufort-1995.html.
43. “Negro Policeman Shot by a Hold-up Suspect,” NYT, December 20, 1921.
44. “Boddy Dies in Chair for Police Murder,” NYT, September 1, 1922; “Boddy Guilty, Grins at Death Verdict,” NYT, January 1, 1922.
45. “Policeman Killed By Crazed Negro to Avenge Boddy,” NYT, January 20, 1922.
46. “Negro Shoots Down Another Policeman,” NYT, May 9, 1922.
47. “Negro Thug Killed in Fight at Station,” NYT, June 28, 1922.
48. “Many Cases Indicate Epidemic of Brutality as Practices by Members of Police Force,” NYA, July 15, 1922; “Additional Developments in the Matter of Police Brutality Indicate Need of Change,” NYA, July 22, 1922; “Eyewitness Tells the Story of Beating Herbert Dent to Death,” NYA, November 11, 1922; “Crowds of Negroes at Boddy Funeral,” NYT, September 5, 1922.
49. “Charges Enright Misused Police Welfare Fund,” NYT, January 31, 1926; “Enright Sails for Brazil,” NYT, November 23, 1934; “Charges Enright Misused Police Welfare Fund,” NYT, January 31, 1926.
50. Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 58; James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 200; “Enright Must Show His Liquor Records,” NYT, September 14, 1923.
51. David Ewen, A Journey to Greatness: The Life and Music of George Gershwin (New York: Henry Holt, 1956), 41; Stanley Crouch, “About Jelly Roll Morton,” Nonesuch Records website, 1997, http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/jelly-roll-morton.
52. “Fear Sweeney Will Confess,” NYT, February 20, 1913; “Sweeney Ready to Bare Vice Graft,” New York Tribune, February 20, 1913.
53. “Too Many Saloons in Harlem,” NYA, October 1, 1914.
54. “Resort Keepers Released in Bail After Vice Raid,” New York Tribune, January 11, 1917; “Wilkins Gives Up Cabaret in New York,” NYA, October 4, 1917.
55. Bricktop with James Haskins, Bricktop (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 34.
56. “Detectives Who Raided Barron Wilkin’s Cabaret Pinch 23,” CD, March 11, 1922.
57. Bricktop with Haskins, Bricktop, 75–78; Stanley Dance, The World of Swing: An Oral History of Big Band Jazz (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 52; Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 64; Konrad Bercovici, Around the World in New York (New York: Century, 1924), 237.
58. “Punished, He Says, for Police Raid,” NYT, September 26, 1923.
59. COH.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. “Officials Witness Bouts at Pioneer,” NYT, December 13, 1923.
63. Arnold de Mille, “The Shooting of Barron Wilkins,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; “Baron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins, Negro Cabaret ‘King’ Is Slain,” New York Herald, May 24, 1924.
64. “Cabaret Owner Shot by Gambler,” NYA, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Old Timer Recalls History of Barron,” CD, May 31, 1924.
65. “Barron Wilkins Murdered,” CD, May 31, 1924; “Thousands Attend Wilkins’ Funeral,” NYA, May 31, 1924; “Barron Wilkins Funeral,” CD, June 7, 1924.
66. “NY’s Only Colored Fireman Saves Six from Burning Building,” NYA, October 25, 1924.
67. COH.
68. BN.
69. Wesley Williams to the New York Age, August 8, 1925, WWP.
70. AMN, August 12, 1925.
71. “The Negro and the Finest,” AMN, September 9, 1925.
72. Henry F. Pringle, “Jimmy Walker,” American Mercury, November 1926, 272.
73. Langston Hughes, “Youth,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 663.
74. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “An Opportunity for Negro Writers,” Opportunity, September 1924, 258.
75. Hughes, Big Sea, 245; Langston Hughes, “The Negro and the Racial Mountain,” Nation, June 23, 1926, 694.
76. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes I, 141.
77. James Weldon Johnson to Carl Van Vechten, March 6, 1927, James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
78. “Manhattan Lodge of Elks Tenders Testimonial Dinner to Sgt. Battle,” AMN, August 4, 1926.
79. BN.
CHAPTER FOUR: COMMAND
1. Rev. Frederick Asbury Cullen, From Barefoot Town to Jerusalem (privately printed, n.d.), 102.
2. Sugar Ray Robinson with Dave Anderson, Sugar Ray (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 35–37.
3. Charles S. Johnson, “Black Workers and the City,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 641–42.
4. US Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census, 1920; Fifteenth Census, 1930; Charles S. Johnson, “Black Workers and the City,” Survey Graphic, March 1925, 643; T. J. Woofter Jr., Negro Problems in Cities (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1928), 79; New York Urban League, “Twenty-Four Hundred Negro Families in Harlem: An Interpretation of the Living Conditions of Small Wage Earners,” 16 (1927 typescript at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture); Winifred B. Nathan, Health Conditions in North Harlem, 1923–1927 (New York, 1932), 19, 31; “Thousands of Worshippers Take Part in Dedication of Mother Zion’s New and Magnificent House of Worship,” NYA, September 26, 1925.
5. James Weldon Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, March 1925.
6. “Sergeant Battle Returns from Vacation,” AMN, September 28, 1927.
7. “Modern Ideas Followed in Building New School,” NYT, March 1, 1903.
8. Affidavit of Leroy Leeks, People of the State of New York v. Leroy Leeks, Court of General Sessions of the County of New York, Index No. 50235 of 1927, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
9. “Freed of Murder as Accuser Recant,” NYT, October 21, 1927; “Innocent Man Near Death Chair,” AMN, October 26, 1927.
10. Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 63, 67.
11. “New York, We’re Here!,” AMN, August 22, 1927.
12. James H. Williams to Patrick Cardinal Hayes, September 9, 1927, WWP; Wesley Williams to Robert F. Wagner, November 17, 1962, WWP.
13. “Wesley Williams Wins Promotion,” AMN, September 21, 1927.
14. “Side Lights on Society,” AMN, May 9, 1928.
15. “John Brown Pilgrims Plan for Placid Trip,” Lake Placid (NY) News, April 27, 1928; “John Brown and Abraham Lincoln,” Lake Placid News, May 18, 1928; Ned P. Rauch, “Lake Placid Club: The Beginnings,” 5, in The Lake Placid Club, 1890 to 2002, Lee Manchester, ed. (Jay, NY: Makebelieve Publishing, 2008), http://www.slideshare.net/LeeManchester/the-lake-placid-club-1890-2002.
16. “An Ordinary Shawl with an Extraordinary Story,” blog post, Ohio History, February 20, 2014, http://ohiohistory.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/an-ordinary-shawl-with-an-extraordinary-story/.
17. Sadie Hall, “Casper Holstein,” WPA research paper, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; “Light Went Out on $150,” NYT, July 18, 1905; Shane White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, and Graham White, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem between the Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 151.
18. J. Saunders Redding, “Playing the Numbers,” North American Review (December 1934): 533.
19. Winthrop D. Lane, “Ambushed in the City: The Grim Side of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, March 1925.
20. BN.
21. BN.
22. White et al., Playing the Numbers, 154; Hall, “Casper Holstein.”
23. “Negro, Back Home, Lauds Kidnappers,” NYT, September 25, 1928.
24. “Congressman Pritchard of North Carolina, Republican, Refuses Office Next [sic] Negro,” NYA, April 13, 1929.
25. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934.
26. BN.
27. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Or Does It Explode: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 42.
28. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan: Account of the Development of Harlem (orig., 1930; New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 169, 284.
29. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 245–47.
30. Greenberg, Or Does It Explode, 44–45; Nancy Cunard, Essays on Race and Empire (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002), 95–96.
31. “Christmas Cheer Brought to Thousands of Harlem Poor by Generous Civic Organizations,” NYA, January 2, 1932.
32. “New York Panorama: A Comprehensive View of the Metropolis, Presented in a Series of Articles by the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration in New York City,” Portrait of Harlem (New York: Random House, 1938),142.
33. Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935, 53, 68–69, 73, 87–88, La Guardia Papers, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
34. BN; US Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: “Society,” AMN, January 22, 1930; “Battles Give Annual Party,” AMN, March 26, 1930; Charline Battle Hunter College Transcript; California Passenger and Crew List, No. 2712, 1932; “Mrs. Enrique Cachemaille Confined to Sanitarium with Nervous Breakdown,” NYA, June 3, 1933.
35. “Crowley Battle in 1931 Recalled,” NYT, February 21, 1955; “Coll Is Shot Dead in a Phone Booth by Rival Gunmen,” NYT, February 8, 1932; “2 Policeman, 3 Thugs and Child Slain in Battle During 12-Mile Hold-Up Chase,” NYT, August 22, 1931.
36. “Police Radio Helps Trap Two in Forgery,” NYT, February 25, 1932.
37. “Major Crime Here Down 17% Last Year,” NYT, March 20, 1933.
38. “Lieut. Wesley Williams, Only Negro Officer in New York Fire Fighting Forces, Wins Praise for Bravery,” NYA, April 7, 1928; “Lieut. Wesley Williams Is Hero in Allen Street Fire; Had Narrow Escape,” NYA, June 29, 1929; undated, unattributed newspaper photograph, WWP; “8 Firemen Trapped in Blazing Building,” NYT, November 18, 1933.
39. Samuel Battle to Wesley Williams, September 6, 1933, WWP.
40. “Society,” AMN, July 5, 1933; “Ass’n Reveals Tourney Prizes,” AMN, July 26, 1933; “Ramses of N.Y.U. Sponsors Frolic,” AMN, April 28, 1934.
41. Randall Kennedy, “Racial Passing,” Ohio State Law Journal 62, no. 1145 (2001), http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/oslj/files/2012/03/62.3.kennedy.pdf.
42. US Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930.
43. White et al., Playing the Numbers, 178–79; “Negroes No Longer Control Harlem Numbers Business as Kings Work for Bronx Beer Racketeer,” NYA, August 13, 1932; “Two Put on Stand,” NYT, August 18, 1938.
44. “Numbers Banker Slain,” NYA, March 11, 1933.
45. J. Richard (Dixie) Davis, “Things I Couldn’t Tell Till Now,” Collier’s, July 29, 1939, 20.
46. “Committee Chosen to Present Harlem’s Needs to Mayor,” NYA, April 7, 1934.
47. Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 70.
48. “Rid City of Gangs, Is Order to Police,” NYT, January 12, 1934.
49. “City and State Officials Speak at NAACP Celebration,” NYA, March 24, 1934; “La Guardia Says He’d Be Glad to Help De Priest,” Afro-American (Baltimore), March 24, 1934.
50. “Identify Two Suspects in Police Killing,” New York Daily News, April 23, 1934; “Murder of 3 Cops Admitted by Felon Dying of Wounds,” New York Daily News, May 3, 1940.
51. “Miss Charline Battle Takes Vows and Changes Her Name,” AMN, June 16, 1934.
52. Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 3–4, 11.
53. John H. Johnson, Fact Not Fiction in Harlem (Glen Cove, NY: Northern Type Printing, 1980), 50; “Blumstein’s Store to Hire Negro Clerks,” NYA, August 4, 1934.
54. “Summer College Students Offer to Picket Discriminating Store; League Preparing for Parade,” NYA, July 21, 1934.
CHAPTER FIVE: RESPECT
1. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I, 1902–1941: I, Too Sing America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13.
2. “Harlem Greets Negro Lieutenant,” NYT, January 9, 1935.
3. “Negro Fireman Battle Discrimination,” AMN, October 13, 1934.
4. Oswald Garrison Villard, “Walking Through Race Prejudice,” Nation, January 30, 1935, 119.
5. “Rid City of Crooks, La Guardia Orders,” NYT, April 30, 1934; Lowell M. Limpus, Honest Cop: Lewis J. Valentine (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1939), 178; Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 358.
6. “One-Man-Raid Battles Does a Carrie Nation,” AMN, May 12, 1934.
7. Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem, 100–106; “Mayor Orders Investigation of Harlem Riot,” Afro-American, March 24, 1934; Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia, 373.
8. Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935, 1–2, La Guardia Papers, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
9. Arthur Garfield Hays, City Lawyer: The Autobiography of a Law Practice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 281–82.
10. “Police Are Hissed at Harlem Hearing,” NYT, May 5, 1935.
11. “Hays Chides Police at Harlem Inquiry,” NYT, May 19, 1935.
12. Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem, 102, 107.
13. Alain Locke, Harlem: Dark Weather Vane, La Guardia Papers, New York City Municipal Reference Library.
14. COH.
15. “Holstein Seized in a Police Raid,” NYT, December 24, 1935.
16. COH.
17. Ibid.
18. US Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census, 1940.
19. “Battle to Mark 25 Years as Cop with Youthful Outlook,” AMN, June 27, 1936.
20. “Negro Celebrates 25 Years on the Force,” NYT, June 29, 1936.
21. Clay Moyle, Sam Langford: Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champion (Seattle: Bennett & Hastings, 2006), 372.
22. Ernest Hemingway, “Million Dollar Fight: A New York Letter,” Esquire, December 1935, 35.
23. Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey (New York: Hill and Wang, 1956), 315.
24. William J. Baker, Jesse Owens: An American Life (New York: Free Press, 1986), 123.
25. Ibid., 127; “Harlemites Hiss Olympic Parade,” CD, September 12, 1936.
26. “Olympic Stars Get Welcome of City,” NYT, September 4, 1936.
27. “Sportopics: The Mighty Has Fallen,” AMN, September 26, 1936.
28. “Prominent in Week’s News,” AMN, January, 29, 1938.
29. “History of Bethune-Cookman University,” B-CU website, http://www.bethune.cookman.edu/about_BCU/history/index.html.
30. Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years, 1933–1938 (New York: Viking, 1999), 161.
31. COH.
32. Dorothy Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 82–83.
33. BOH.
34. “Fire Fighters Organize Club in Department,” AMN, September 20, 1941.
35. “Indicts Man in Holt Slaying,” AMN, February 24, 1940; “Mayor at Funeral of Slain Policeman,” NYT, February 17, 1940.
36. Sondra Kathryn Wilson, ed., In Search of Democracy: The NAACP Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins (1920–1977) (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 172–73.
37. Football Records of the New York Yankees, 1940–1941, http://www.luckyshow.org/football/NYYanks3.htm.
38. “Hundred Guests at Matron’s Surprise Celebration,” AMN, April 1, 1939.
39. “On Parole Board,” NYT, August 21, 1941.
40. Dominic J. Capeci, The Harlem Riot of 1943 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), 59.
41. Buckley, American Patriots, 270.
42. David F. Schmitz, Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2001), 146.
43. Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 189–92.
44. “A Disgusted Negro Trooper,” to Cleveland Call & Post, August 16, 1944, in Phillip McGuire, ed., Taps for a Jim Crow Army: Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 196.
45. “By Way of Mention,” NYA, July 24, 1943.
46. “First Lady Praises Mrs. Mary Bethune,” NYT, May 3, 1943; “Harlem Turned Out Sunday in Honor of Noted Educator and Leader,” AMN, May 8, 1943; “Mrs. Roosevelt Assails Bigotry in Harlem Talk,” New York Herald Tribune, May 3, 1943.
47. “Hell Breaks Loose in Eight Cities,” AMN, June 26, 1943.
48. Capeci, The Harlem Riot of 1943, 82.
49. White, A Man Called White, 236–38.
50. Ibid., 3–4.
51. “The Reminiscences of David Dressler,” 1972, Oral History Collection of Columbia University; “Welfare Island Raid Bares Gangster Rule Over Prison,” NYT, January 25, 1934; “Affidavits Name Hines Parole Czar,” NYT, January 31, 1934.
52. “The Reminiscences of David Dressler,” 1972, Oral History Collection of Columbia University.
53. “Six Soldiers Reported Killed in Dixie Rioting,” AMN, January 17, 1942; “Jim Crowed as She Escorts Body of Her Soldier Son,” Cleveland Call & Post, July 18, 1942; “German Prisoners Ate In Station Dining Room in Texas, While Negro Soldiers Were Forced to Accept ‘Kitchen Hand-Outs,’ Army Veteran Writes Courier,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 8, 1944.
54. “By Way of Mention,” NYA, February 5, 1944.
55. New York City Fire Department Transfer Request, July 25, 1941, WWP; Wesley Williams to Alfred E. Smith, August 18, 1941, WWP; New York City Fire Department Transfer Request, January 10, 1942, WWP.
56. Anonymous to Fiorello La Guardia, August 9, 1944, WWP; Anonymous to Fiorello La Guardia, September 18, 1944, WWP.
57. Wesley Williams and others to Patrick J. Walsh, October 14, 1944, WWP.
58. Wesley Williams and others to Hubert T. Delany, November 16, 1944, WWP.
59. “Fire Commissioner to Investigate Jim Crow Charges of Firemen,” NYA, December 16, 1944.
60. Wesley Williams to Adam Powell Jr., October 20, 1945, WWP.
61. Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia, 527.
62. “Casper Holstein Dies, Fabulous Harlem Figure,” New York Herald Tribune, April 9, 1944; “Former ‘Policy King’ in Harlem Dies Broke,” NYT, April 9, 1944; Casper Holstein, “One-Time Numbers King, Dies Broke,” Afro-American (Baltimore), April 15, 1944.
63. COH.
64. Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2000), 21–24, 296–97.
65. BN.
66. BN.
67. BN.
CHAPTER SIX: FORGOTTEN
1. “New York’s First Black Fire Chief Dies at 89,” AMN, July 7, 1984.
2. “Dr. E. P. Roberts Buried After 58 Years as Medic,” AMN, January 17, 1953.
3. “War Correspondent Lauds Negro Soldier Fighting in France,” NYA, November 9, 1918.
4. “Needham Roberts, Who Bagged 24 Germans in the War, Waxes Bitter Over the Way the Whites Have Treated Us,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 26, 1938; “New Facts Brought to Light in Roberts Double Suicide,” NYA, April 30, 1949.
5. COH.
6. BN.
7. John H. Johnson, Fact Not Fiction in Harlem (Glen Cove, NY: Northern Type Printing, 1980), 96; Charles Cobb, grandson of Moses P. Cobb, interview with author.