Read Online One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611) by Arthur Browne - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Arthur Browne
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African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The Reverend Alexander Walters spoke to Battle’s congregation from the pulpit as a seminal civil rights leader. Freed from slavery in Kentucky, Walters was ordained at the age of nineteen and arrived in New York in 1888. Shortly, he joined forces with Fortune. Outraged by enactment of Jim Crow laws and, more urgently, by a rise in lynchings, Fortune published an open letter in 1889 calling for the National Afro-American League’s creation. Walter’s name appeared as the letter’s lead cosigner.
Although the league had petered out, Walters successfully urged Fortune to revive the organization, newly named the Afro-American Council, after the US Supreme Court endorsed the doctrine of separate but equal in
Plessy v. Ferguson
. He served as president for most of the first decade of the twentieth century, the period that led Battle toward integrating the New York Police Department.
African American fraternal organizations were also blooming into a key source of social cohesion. 58 Battle joined the first of many to which he would belong. He chose the most prominent, the Elks, or more precisely the black Elks. The long-established Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks had barred African Americans, prompting two blacks in Cincinnati to form the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World—and the New York courts enjoined even the use of that name. No matter. The group carried on and Battle mixed with the many leading African Americans who took part. In 1905, he was a grand marshal of a black Elks parade in Brooklyn.
SURROUNDED BY INSPIRING MEN , Battle looked upward, but his vista still was limited to household service. He took advantage of the “recommendation of the head bellman of one of the leading hotels” to leave the Andreinis for a position as a liveried butler in the East Fifty-Ninth Street home of Arthur Holland Forbes, a wealthy man who invested in the daredevil sport of hot-air ballooning. At work, Battle greeted guests and performed household chores in formal attire. Off hours, he slipped into New York’s emerging black society, kept up with current events in Fortune’s
Age
, and embarked on a determined course of reading. His selections ranged from histories to fiction and included Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
and
The Scarlet Letter
, Hawthorne’s classic of sin, guilt, and judgment, which Battle found to be “a revelation.” 59
BATTLE HAD A LIVELY TIME . He had grown into “a well developed young man, healthy, husky, and—so the women said—handsome.” But physical appeal was not his only asset. Demographics made New York a guy’s paradise. The 1900 census found that black women outnumbered black men in the city by roughly 20 percent. Males like Battle were much in demand. A great observer of the era’s black life, Mary White Ovington, wrote: “In their hours of leisure the surplus women are known to play havoc with their neighbors’ sons, even with their neighbors’ husbands, for since lack of men makes marriage impossible for about a fifth of New York’s colored girls, social disorder results.” 60
Battle circulated through casual relationships. Then, at the age of twenty-two, he took up with Florence Carrington, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Henry and Maria Carrington who had come to New York from Newport News, Virginia. With her fair skin and long, black, and straight hair, the couple’s parallels with Thomas and Anne were striking, Thomas having wed ivory-skinned, silken-haired Anne when she was but fifteen. Battle squired Florence to the haunts where he had become a regular on West Fifty-Third Street, buying her first alcoholic drink at the Marshall Hotel bar. She was pretty and, in counterpoint to Battle’s gregarious personality, reserved. He was smitten, and so was she. The vagabond life of an adventurous young man came to an end.
Six years after Battle left home with dreams of succeeding like the
Although the league had petered out, Walters successfully urged Fortune to revive the organization, newly named the Afro-American Council, after the US Supreme Court endorsed the doctrine of separate but equal in
Plessy v. Ferguson
. He served as president for most of the first decade of the twentieth century, the period that led Battle toward integrating the New York Police Department.
African American fraternal organizations were also blooming into a key source of social cohesion. 58 Battle joined the first of many to which he would belong. He chose the most prominent, the Elks, or more precisely the black Elks. The long-established Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks had barred African Americans, prompting two blacks in Cincinnati to form the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World—and the New York courts enjoined even the use of that name. No matter. The group carried on and Battle mixed with the many leading African Americans who took part. In 1905, he was a grand marshal of a black Elks parade in Brooklyn.
SURROUNDED BY INSPIRING MEN , Battle looked upward, but his vista still was limited to household service. He took advantage of the “recommendation of the head bellman of one of the leading hotels” to leave the Andreinis for a position as a liveried butler in the East Fifty-Ninth Street home of Arthur Holland Forbes, a wealthy man who invested in the daredevil sport of hot-air ballooning. At work, Battle greeted guests and performed household chores in formal attire. Off hours, he slipped into New York’s emerging black society, kept up with current events in Fortune’s
Age
, and embarked on a determined course of reading. His selections ranged from histories to fiction and included Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
and
The Scarlet Letter
, Hawthorne’s classic of sin, guilt, and judgment, which Battle found to be “a revelation.” 59
BATTLE HAD A LIVELY TIME . He had grown into “a well developed young man, healthy, husky, and—so the women said—handsome.” But physical appeal was not his only asset. Demographics made New York a guy’s paradise. The 1900 census found that black women outnumbered black men in the city by roughly 20 percent. Males like Battle were much in demand. A great observer of the era’s black life, Mary White Ovington, wrote: “In their hours of leisure the surplus women are known to play havoc with their neighbors’ sons, even with their neighbors’ husbands, for since lack of men makes marriage impossible for about a fifth of New York’s colored girls, social disorder results.” 60
Battle circulated through casual relationships. Then, at the age of twenty-two, he took up with Florence Carrington, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Henry and Maria Carrington who had come to New York from Newport News, Virginia. With her fair skin and long, black, and straight hair, the couple’s parallels with Thomas and Anne were striking, Thomas having wed ivory-skinned, silken-haired Anne when she was but fifteen. Battle squired Florence to the haunts where he had become a regular on West Fifty-Third Street, buying her first alcoholic drink at the Marshall Hotel bar. She was pretty and, in counterpoint to Battle’s gregarious personality, reserved. He was smitten, and so was she. The vagabond life of an adventurous young man came to an end.
Six years after Battle left home with dreams of succeeding like the
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