Jim Crow in the Pensacola Journal in 1905-1907
From Showboat's 2nd version (1936) Paul Robeson - "Ol' Man River," a song originally written for the well-known singer and actor of the time.
Earlier this year, I went to see "Showboat" put on by the Pensacola Opera. The original Ziegfeld production premiered on Broadway in 1927 and was controversial even then.
While the music was so familiar, viewing the play left me uncomfortable. A Wikipedia clarified the discomfort:
Show Boat boldly portrayed racial issues, and was the first racially integrated musical, in that both black and white performers appeared on stage together.[11] Ziegfeld’s Follies allowed single African American performers like Bert Williams, but would never have had an African-American woman in the chorus. However, Show Boat had two choruses — a black chorus and a white chorus, and it has been perceived that "Hammerstein uses the African-American chorus as essentially a Greek chorus, providing clear commentary on the proceedings, whereas the white choruses sing of the not-quite-real."
Show Boat was also the first Broadway musical to seriously depict an interracial marriage, as in Edna Ferber's original novel, and to feature a character of mixed blood who was "passing" for white.
Since the musical's 1927 premiere, Show Boat has both been condemned as a prejudiced show based on racial caricatures and championed as a breakthrough work that opened the door for public discourse in the arts about racism in America. Some productions have been cancelled because of objections.
This week, as I was reading some 1905 issues of the Pensacola Journal that is online at Chronicling America, I came across a "Jim Crow" headline. It was a startling discovery, as I had not realized the Jim Crow laws dated back that far. I immediately began a quest to see how black Americans were covered by the local editors. What follows is a sampling of the material online.
SEGREGATION OF THE STREET CARS
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, April 15, 1905, Image 4
It is said that the committee approval of Mr Avery’s bill providing that street car companies shall furnish separate cars for whites and blacks has caused Hon W H Northup, ex-mayor and present postmaster of Avery’s home town, Pensacola and who is incidentally president of the Pensacola electric railway, undertaker, liveryman, steam tug owner and many other etceteras, to think Campbell a very naughty boy. Hon. J. Campbell Avery is a mere lad unripened by experience but he has caused a flutter throughout the state and quite an increase in the revenues of the telegraph companies.
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, October 13, 1905, Image 1
JIM CROW LAW EFFECTIVE TODAY
The New City Law Separating the Races on Street Cars Goes Into Effect.
The new Jim Crow street car ordinance which was passed by the city council over the mayor’s veto fifteen days ago becomes effective today. [Mayor was Charles H. Bliss]
The new law is somewhat similar to the state law which was declared unconstitutional. It was drawn however in such shape that it will hardly be declared unconstitutional if any attempt is made to carry it to the Supreme Court.
The street railway company will divide the cars as it did during the time that the state lawwas being compiled with, exept that cards will be posted designating the white and colored parts of a car.
The colored population seems to be well satisfied and it is not expected that the cars will be boycotted as was the case when the state law became operative.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, February 07, 1906, Image 1
DECISION ON JIM CROW LAW WAS EXPECTED
A decision on the legality of Pensacola’s Jim Crow law was expected yesterday but if such was rendered by the supreme court to the state no news of it reached Pensacola yesterday or last night. Yesterday was the day set for handing down the decision but it is supposed that it was not done or some notice of the action would have reached this city. It is now the supposition that the decision will not be made until next Tuesday.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, March 15, 1906, Image 1
JIM CROW CASE TO U.S. SUPREME COURT
Jim Crow Law Has Been Appealed to Highest Court and Will Be Heard April 17
Pensacola’s Jim Crow law which has so far stood the test in every court to which it has been taken has now been appealed by the negroes to the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court, and it will be heard on April 17. It was not known that the case had been appealed from the decision of the Florida Supreme Court until yesterday when Marshal Schad was served with a subpoena to be present in Washington on the above date. This was turned over to City Attorney Jones. It is not likely that the marshal will have to go to Washington, neither will the city attorney as the case will probably be submitted on briefs.
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THE ROSA PARKS OF PENSACOLA REFUSED TO GIVE UP HER SEAT BACK IN 1906.
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 15, 1906, Image 1
The Jim Crow Law
The Jim Crow law had another round in the municipal court yesterday morning when Mary Sims, a negro woman, was arraigned upon the charge of seating herself in a compartment in the car other than that provided for colored people, and refusing to change her seat when notified by the conductor. The woman got on the car downtown Monday night and when she refused to get into the portion reserved for colored people, she was arrested. Officer Etheridge, making the arrest upon complaint of the conductor at the union depot. After hearing a portion of the testimony it was decided to hear more witnesses and the case continued until this morning.
Update: The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 17, 1906, Image 1
Among the interesting cases in this court was that of Mary Sims, colored, charged with yiolating the Jim Crow street car law. The case had been continued from Tuesday morning to allow further witnesses to be introduced and heard. The recorder, after hearing her case, adjudged the woman guilty and imposed a fine of $5 and costs.
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, October 11, 1906, Image 1
Negroes Protest Against Jim Crow DiscriminationBy Associated Press
Washington Oct 10 Representative negroes of the South in behalf of their race have complained to the interstate commerce commission of the use by the railroads of the south of Jim Crow cars for interstate passengers and have requested the commission to investigate the subject and on development of the facts to issue an order compelling the railroads not to discriminate against passengers on account of their color. The petition signed by Thomas Oliver and W.D. Johnson of Mississippi and about a dozen other negroes.
URGES NEGROES TO ORGANIZE AND FIGHT FOR RIGHTS
By Associated Press
New York Oct 10 Such men as Hoke Smith, John Temple Graves, Vardaman and Tillman ought not to be able to obtain any services from the colored man, said Oswald G. Villard. In an address before the American Council now in session here, Villard declared that no negro should think of contributing one cent for the support of the anti-negro newspapers in Georgia. He urged the negroes to organize and fight for their rights. He said the time was ripe for serving notice on the country that further efforts to degrade the negro to a servile position and to create a republic with millions of persons taxed but not represented should be fought from now on. “Leave the murdering in cold blood to the race that proudly calls itself superior and better civilized,” he said.
Emancipation ended slavery but only to replace it with an American form of apartheid, euphemistically known as Jim Crow, used to keep African Americans as second class citizens.
November 24, 1906, Page Page Four, Image 4
MONTGOMERY WILL REVOKE STREET CAR FRANCHISE
Ordinance and Company Refuses to Observe Jim Crow --
Council Will Revoke Its Right to Operate In That City
By Associated Press
Montgomery Ala Nov 23 - At a meeting for the avowed purpose of revoking all of the franchise privileges of the Montgomery Traction Company because of its failure to observe the Jim Crow street car ordinance which went into practice today the city council could not take action tonight because of the rule requiring twenty four hours notice of special meetings. A call has been issued for a meeting tomorrow afternoon when it is probable that action will be taken revoking the privileges. Since the issuance of the injunction this morning the cars have been running, after suspension of traffic for two hours and a half.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, July 22, 1906, 1st Section, Image 1
THE JIM CROW LAW
A J Leggitt, Colored, Arrested Upon This Charge by Officer Schmitz
A.J. Leggitt, a colored hackman, was arrested yesterday afternoon by Police Officer Schmitz for an alleged violation of the Jim Crow law. He gave bond for his appearance at the municipal court Monday morning. The arrest was made upon complaint of Conductor Chas Meade of the Street Railway Company who stated to Officer Schmitz that the man had taken a seat in an open car in the space provided for white passengers and refused to change his seat when told that he was in the wrong compartment. The conductor further stated that when the man refused he told him to consider himself under arrest and that after riding a few blocks further Leggitt jumped from the car and evidently walked to the city. A short time afterwards the conductor who knew Leggitt saw him upon the street near the hack stand and calling Officer Schmitz made the charge against him.
Note: August 02, 1906, Page PAGE [ONE], Image 1 Leggitt was later discharged.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, December 18, 1908, Image 3
JIM CROW DINING ROOM
Prisoners confined in the city jail who are working out their sentences on the streets were furnished their meals in the their meals in the “Jim Crow” dining room at police headquarters yesterday for the first time, a large lattice partition
separating the two races. Jeff Spottswood, the city jail chef, says that this arrangement for feeding the prisoners is a great improvement over the method of feeding the prisoners in the cells and all the officials at the police station endorse the change.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, June 09, 1906, Image 1
CONVENTION OF FORMER SLAVES ADJOURNED YESTERDAY
TO MEET IN JACKSONVILLE DURING OCTOBER 1907
By Associated Press
Washington June 8 The The Nation Ex-slave convention today adjourned a four days session here to meet meeting in Jacksonville in October of next year. The convention commended President Roosevelt for his stand for equal constitutional liberty for all. An appeal was issued to congress for legislation pensioning former slaves. Jim Crow legislation was opposed.
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 17, 1906, Image 1
NEGROES WORK TO PROMOTE EQUALITY
By Associated Press
Harpers Ferry W Va Aug 16 - At today’s meeting of the Niagara movement in which the negroes from many states are working to promote negro equality, reports from many states emphasized the organized nature of the movement among the negroes of thirty-two states. Reports say the movement was organized to give prominence to definite principles among which is abolition of all distinction based on color.
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USING VERNACULAR IN THE NEWSPAPER
July 01, 1906, 1st Section, Page PAGE EIGHT, Image 8
LOVE CHAIRS RESERVED
Negroes Sued For Right to Sit Where They Gould Make Eyes
A Jim Crow suit of two negroes against the Baltimore Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway company was tried recently in the city court at Baltimore, says the New York World. Robert Syke, colored, was called to the stand as a witness for the plaintiffs.
“Dey jes excluded us from all de good parts cf de boat,” Syke said.
“What do you mean by the good parts of the boat?” was asked.
“Well,” was the reply, “dare wuz a piannah on de boat, an’ we couldn’t git neah it. Den dey wouldn’t let us neah de love chaiahs.”
“What do you mean by the love chairs?” asked a lawyer.
“Love chaiahs is dem tings wot a fellow sits on when he’s got his gal. Dey’s twisted so’s dey can look into each other’s eyes.”
The plaintiffs lost their case.
David Pilgrim, the curator of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, grew up in Mobile, Ala.
ARTICLES ON LYNCHINGS AND CITIZEN MOBS:
THREATEN TO LYNCH NEGRO
By Associated Press
Meridian Miss July 21 Charles Hall, a negro and ex-convict, broke into the room of Miss Bettie Davidson at Energy, Clarke county late last night for the purpose of criminal assaut. Hall was employed by the lady’s father who recognized him as he was leaving the house. The negro was arrested this morning and confessed the intention. He was removed to the county seat to prevent lynching by the angry citizens.
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(SHADES OF THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS )
The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 15, 1906, Image 1
FIEND WILL BE LYNCHED IF CAPTURED
By Associated Press
Greenwood S C Aug 14 - An attempt at criminal assault was made today on Miss Jennie Brooks the twenty year old daughter of J P Brooks a prosperous merchant and farmer near this place. The young woman was left in I charge of the store and a negro after making a purchase seized a large knife and threatened her. She made a desperate attempt to defend herself with an iron bar but the negro slashed her throat and nearly severed two of her fingers. A posse is in pursuit and the negro will probably be lynched if captured.
Update: The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 17, 1906, Image 1
GOVERNOR MADE PLEA TO MOB IN VAIN
Negro Who Murderously Assaulted White Woman Lynched
by Associated Press
Greenwood S C Aug 16 - Bob Davis, a negro captured this afternoon near Ninety Six, was positively identified tonight by Miss Jennie brooks whom he murderously assaulted last Tuesday. He was carried a short distance from the Brooks home and lynched, a negro woman firing the first shot. Governor Heyward made an unsuccessful plea. Governor Heyward reached the scene shortly after the negro was captured and addressed the mob in an effort to prevent the lynching. When he concluded, the mob cheered but took the negro from the governor’s view and riddled the fiend with bullets.
NEGRO FEDERAL TROOPS UNRULY
Killed One Man and Seriously Wounded Another at Brownsville --
Will Be Moved to Prevent Further Trouble
By Associated Press
Brownsville Texas Aug 14 - Angered because of a search made in their ranks in an effort to apprehend the negro who attacked Mrs. Leon Evans at her home last Friday evening, members of a battalion of negro federal troops at Fort Brown near here entered Brownville today and became unruly, firing several volleys down the main street. Frank Natus, a bar keeper, was killed and Policeman Doings seriously wounded and his horse killed. Bullets entered many houses. The negroes belong to the twenty- first regiment and a request has been made that they be removed to avoid trouble.
Update: The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, August 17, 1906, Image 1
Armed Citizens Guard Homes Against the Negro Soldiers
By Associated Press
Brownville Texas Aug 16 - Further trouble is feared with the negro troops. A citizens guard of one hundred and fifty men is stationed along the road between the city and Fort Brown, and if the negro soldiers attempt to leave the garrison, it is the purpose of the citizens to shoot them down. Many people living near the fort are leaving their homes, and an additional appeal is being made to Governor Lanham to send state troops. Business is entirely suspended in the city.
The man who ended Jim Crow: Charles H. Houston ~ Brown v Board of Ed Topeka
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September 12, 1906, Page PAGE FOUR, Image 4
ONE POINT OF VIEW
It is a noteworthy fact that a great deal of the spoken and implied objection to Mr [William James] Bryan’s advocacy of the government ownership of railroads comes from the South and from men of his own party. The reason is not far to seek. We do not conceive that it comes from any deep seated antipthy to the national operation of our great steel highways in spite of the South’s lingering devotion to State rights and opposition to centralization outside the ranks of the ancient bourbons those two issues are no longer very potent. The protest is social in the main rather than economic.
The Southern States practically without exception indulge in what are known as the Jim Crow laws touching upon railway transportation. Their effect is well known to everybody. No negro even Booker T Washington may ride in coaches occupied by whites but must take those reserved for people of their own color. What would be the result of Federal railroad ownership upon the scheme?
Clearly no citizen could be debarred on account of his color in any cars operated by the United States. Every Jim Crow law would fall to the ground at once and the Southerners would have to stomach mixed company as best they could. This is perhaps but a side issue of a very great question but it is interesting as showing how strongly social and racial antipathies can affect men’s views of what is bound to be an important part of the next Presidential campaign.
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The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, October 03, 1908, Image 4
Washington’s Race Trouble
Paramount Issue in Nations Capital is the Negro Question
By WILLIAM E CHANCELLOR in Colliers Weekly
The author of the following article was formerly superintendent of schools in the District of Columbia.
On Friday March 27 in the evening Congressman J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama shot a negro upon Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and within a few hours all the country knew the story. But there are some features of that story which the North is not likely to know.
Congressman Heflin is a brilliant young man who served his State as municipal attorney and as legislator for ten years before being sent to Congress three years ago. He comes from the Black Belt and perforce holds certain views that he has been free in expressing.
To begin with he is certain that the only way toward any solution or even any endurance of tie negro problem is to reduce the negro to a caste. To forward this purpose he introduced into Congress at the last session a bill to require all negroes riding upon cars in the District to occupy separate cars or definitely assigned rear seats.
Next he saw that in order to control the negroes of the District it was absolutely essential to keep away from them all opportunities for consuming alcoholic stimulants. Consequently he backed in Congress and publicly supported in speeches in the District the bill for prohibition in the capital.
Lastly it was commonly believed that he was a supporter of the Tillman bill in the Senate directed toward removing from the District all persons without known and reputable means of support. The purpose of this bill was to clear out negro vagrants.
All these matters together with the details of the shooting were given out to the national press. Incidentally it is worth noting that the shot that struck the negro Lewis Lumly hit him upon the side of the head flattened there and slipped around for several inches between the skin and skull and then stuck there. The bullet was 38 caliber and was fired at close range as the congressman was leaving the car. The man owes his life to the thickness of his skull.
Some Unpublished Facts
But the matters not given out to the press or at least only hinted at are of greater concern. The cause for the introduction of the bill for Jim Crow cars was by no means mere imitation of the familiar Southern legislation. Nor was the congressman in possession of a heavy revolver because of a habit of carrying concealed weapons.
There are now in the District of Columbia one hundred and ten thousand negroes about one in three of the population. The men and women are in about equal numbers but in the absence of economic opportunity for the negro men in a community without factories or shops not one half of the men are employed. The unemployed live upon the earnings of their wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, sweethearts, mistresses and worse. In some instances granted that they must live here at all is not altogether their fault. The negro man can not in Washington as in many other Southern cities work on equal terms with Caucasians at a trade. Many of the labor unions deny him membership nor is he allowed to form unions allied with those of the whites. The negro therefore is limited to such occupations as domestic service in a population that fluctuates fifty thousand and more between January and July duties as porter and driver about commercial establishments certain minor Government posts and mechanical and other work for his own people including medicine dentistry law and surgery.
Washington or the District of Columbia now the synonymous term is the largest negro community upon the earth and has among its negro residents a group whose average wealth is greater than is that of any other group of negroes in the world. There are three whose wealth is over $100,000 each. These negro landlords and capitalists live in special blocks one of which is famous as quality row.
On the other side of tie social picture there are to be seen the two hundred and eighty-six alleys in which are thousands of small brick and frame houses. In large part owned by wealthy negroes and constituting the Show City’s disgrace.
Add one more fact and the entire situation becomes clear. In the District as of course nowhere else in the country no man votes and therefore the black is upon equal political terms with the white. In consequenc Washington has come the Mecca of negroes of two classes the rich who know that they can live here in fine houses and invest their money to advantage often as silent or side partners with the whites and the poor who know that even if the men of the family can not set work the women can and at good wages in the winter season This latter class of poor negroes is transient its members are going into and out of the District to and from Maryland Virginia and the Carolina all the time.
The Brights are Assertive
The wealthier and the better educated negroes constitute in Washington as permanent a class as the landowning families of the whites and in matters of outward social decorum they are often models. Many of them indeed arc almost white themselves. They are negroes because of class consciousness. But at the same time Washington is the great clearing house for those who would cross the line or go to the whites or go over to white in the familiar phrase. It is useless to go to white unless the family has a fair competence and with that competence if rejected in Washington the
negro has but to go farther north and professing himself and his family to be former Washingtonians he will be received as white without question when really light in color. There are cases in Washington where even a dark child has not forced the family back over the line to black.
There is in Washington negro circles a growing feud between the brights and the black to use the terms of the former or between the “yallers” and the browns to use the terms of the latter. The former are better bred and in general better
reared than the latter.
Among this transient parasitical and generally black element of the colored population are thousands whom if they were white we would brand as rowdies cutthroats thugs cadets holdup men hoboes but whom in our careless scorn we now content ourselves by loosely classing together as d----d niggers. Recently four of them attacked in a street car a white young man who was escorting a young lady.
They cut him with a razor beyond recognition and he lay for weeks in a hospital. The fear of a race war is one of the several blights upon the community and is sufficient to prevent any adequate dealing with the growing trouble.
Makeshift Negro Schools
It might be supposed that the schools being supported by Congress would help in the solution of the problem. But for several reasons they only make bad matters worse.
Twenty thousand children one-third of them colored are upon half-time in the schools and there are about one third as many kindergartens as are required. Instead of building schools congress rents an extraordinary number of miserable buildings paying some forty thousand dollars a year for this item. The negro children go to school for three or four years mostly upon halftime and then drop out to go to work which means to help their parents at home or to enter service. The negroes resent this and congress will not afford any adequate funds for manual and industrial training. What schooling most of them get is worse than nothing for it enables perhaps half of them to read daily newspapers and to acquire much perverse information in consequence of this situation.
Congressman Heflin found himself pursued by hundreds of anonymous letters warning him to quit his attack upon disorder and crime and treated with insolence in the streetcars and criticized by timid District whites for stirring up trouble. This timidity of the whites makes the negro bully in his own eyes sacrosanct. Being
incapable of cowering in this storm of threats and of reproaches as a matter of common sense the Congressman applied to the police for permission to carry a revolver. And when the time came for him to use it after a half-drunken man adding to his load the car itself by taking out a flask freely to imbibe from it had drawn a razor upon him the Southerner could only do what any man would do and used the revolver first as a bludgeon then as a firearm.
Of course it will be said that his life was not in danger. Those who know the situation believe that the life of any and every man in the District is in danger when attempts in any serious way to halt the license of these thousands of brutal negroes.
As matters are now the only other course for a decent man to pursue when thus insulted in a car or upon the street is to move away fast. And this is what most persons in the District do. They get out of the car that has the drunks upon it,
they cross to the other side of the street, they avoid certain streets and they move out of the District.
One sixth of the white population moves away every year. The changes of politics have very little to do with this. The general political condition has much to do with it. The Republican party is committed to preserving things as they are. Republicans who would not allow their own children to go to school with negro children nevertheless maintain as directors of the public schools upon the Board of Education one-third negroes. As one consequence though the city grows steadily there are actually two hundred and fifty less children enrolled this year in the public schools than last. So discredited are these schools that partially as a result two hundred private schools also are maintained in the District.
Some Needed Reforms
The negro problem in Washington will grow steadily worse and worse until some climax comes. It may come when if soon enough the republican regime is overthrown and Southern democrats who alone know how to deal with the negro are given an opportunity to restore self-government with a restricted suffrage to this
Southern city. And it may come in a worse form at some time when crowds gather. The tinder and the tar barrels and the fuel for a great and let us hope never-to-be-realized social conflagration are ready and in place. Only the lighted match and the hand to use it have not yet come. How much better it would here to remove all this inflammable material.
Yet it is not reasonable to suppose that congress will give the District prohibition separate cars ordinances calculated to encourage industrialism practical schooling and laws against vagrancy all of which are requisite for even a partially effective disposition of the negro question. In this disfranchised and helpless appanage of the nation.
Race Hybridization Next?
Strong races from the North arc always diluted into the weaker blood of the more Southern races until all their force is lost. It was so in Greece with the golden-haired blond Hellenes and unless more measures are taken to keep the lines rigid and distinct, it will be so despite the theses of scholars like the late Francis A. Walker in America with the so-called Anglo-Saxons. Of course no man has yet looked upon the face of Skuld; she is but a presented fancy, an illusion beautiful or frightful as one’s mood proposes. But some day it will fall to Urd to record that in the capital city of the American people race-prejudice broke down and amalgamation proceeded through social equality. Only very recently an octoroon family of considerable means moved into a white street of families of the highest standing. And we waited to see what would happen. There was some gossip and then silence came. As I have shown in a quieter way this moving across the line is proceeding with far more rapidity than some people care to admit However others think that race hybridization the Anglo Saxon re-enforcement will ultimately produce in America a fine tawny race superior in physique lo the Amer-indian. This doctrine is spreading out from Washington in quantity and quality very gratifying to these theorists Others think that a race competition will set in that will be immensely stimulating to both whites and hybrids. A considerable number of others the unreconciled look for extermination or at least deportation of the colored folks. Such is the trilemma toi which the results of the great war have brought us undesignedly, of course, and equally of course the result of that miserable conspiracy hatched in this District against the one man who knew, Abraham Lincoln.
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