Certain People Read online

  Certain People

  America’s Black Elite

  Stephen Birmingham

  For

  C. E. L.

  “You have to live with yourself and so …”

  —CHARLOTTE HAWKINS BROWN

  “Oh, they’re the upper crust all right. They ought to call themselves the National Association for the Advancement of Certain People!”

  —A cabdriver in Atlanta

  Foreword

  A book grows from many sources—from people, of course, but in a variety of ways. Some books are painful to research, others pleasant. Some seem almost to research themselves.

  When I first mentioned to friends (white) that I (also white) planned to write a book about the black upper crust in the United States, the first reaction of my friends was, inevitably, “But won’t you have trouble getting to them? How will you get to know them? How will you get them to talk? After all, you’re white. They’re black.”

  What happened was that they got to know me.

  Along the curiously convoluted but powerful grapevine that keeps the black aristocracy of America informed, from city to city, of what is going on, word spread very quickly that I was interested in the lives and histories of these “certain people.” Letters arrived from people who had heard of this project—people offering to help, inviting me to their cities, their homes, and offering to share with me their experiences, feelings, and memories. Other people telephoned. All were enthusiastic. The feeling seemed to be that enough—perhaps too much—had been written about “problem” blacks, and blacks with problems. There was a feeling that ghetto blacks have been overexposed, even glamorized, and that the time had come for blacks of social achievement, education, and economic success—and who, in many cases, belong to families who had been achievers for many generations—to put aside their traditional reticence and step forward, and do a little boasting.

  It would be impossible here to list all the people who stepped forward in this way and volunteered their lives and stories to this book, nor was it possible to use every life and every story that I got to know. But there are a number of people who deserve special thanks. First, I am enormously indebted to Mr. David Grafton of Chicago, who, hearing that I was writing this book, spent an extraordinary amount of time setting up appointments, arranging interviews, seeing to it that I overlooked few of his city’s black elite, and pushing the news along the national grapevine. In Chicago, I also owe a large debt to Mr. and Mrs. John H. Johnson, to Mrs. Gertrude Johnson Williams, to Mr. Basil Phillips, and to other editors and officers of the Johnson Publishing Company, who not only supplied me with valuable personal and corporate information but also gave me generous access to the Ebony photo library. Nor should I overlook other Chicago Johnsons—none of whom are related to each other—such as Mr. and Mrs. George Johnson, Mr. Al Johnson, and Mr. Bob Johnson, all of whom deserve words of thanks. Not everyone in Chicago is named Johnson, and I am also grateful to Mrs. Etta Mouton Barnett, Mr. Bill Berry, Mr. Alvin Boutte, Dr. Margaret Burroughs, Dr. William C. Clake, Mr. George Coleman, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Dibble III and their children, the late Dr. T. R. M. Howard, Mrs. Jewel Lafontant, Mrs. Barbara Proctor, Mrs. Bettie Pullen-Walker, and Dr. and Mrs. Lowell Zollar.

  In Atlanta, my old friend Dr. Charles Turner was especially helpful. In that city, I would also like to thank Mr. Owen Funderburg, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cooke Hamilton, Mrs. Freddye Henderson, Mr. Donald Hollowell, Mrs. Edward Miller, and Dr. and Mrs. Asa G. Yancey. In Memphis, I must thank Mr. Ronald Anderson Walter, who, throughout the two years it took to prepare this book, maintained a lively interest in the project and a lively correspondence with its author. I would also like to thank Mrs. Lois Conyers, Mrs. Dorothy Dobbins, Mr. and Mrs. John W. Fleming, and Mrs. Margaret Hough—all of Cincinnati.

  In Washington, D.C., for their help and interest I would like to thank the Hon. Henry E. Catto, Jr., Mrs. Beverly Gasner, Mrs. Mary Gibson Hundley, Mr. Warren Robbins, Mr. and Mrs. John W. Syphax, Mr. William T. Syphax, and Mrs. Anne Teabeau.

  In New York City, a number of people were particularly helpful, including Dr. George Cannon, Mr. Christopher Edley, Mrs. Josephine Premice Fales, Mr. Butler Henderson, Miss Gerri Major, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lee Moon, Mr. Guichard Parris, Miss Frances Sanders-Bisagna, Mr. Bobby Short, Mrs. Jane White Viazzi, and Mr. Carl Younger.

  I would also like to acknowledge the pleasure it has been to work editorially with Mr. Ned Bradford of Little, Brown, and to remember the early help and support of another brilliant editor, the late Mr. Harry Sions. As always, I am indebted to my friend and agent, Mrs. Carol Brandt, for her coolheaded guidance of the project from the outset.

  While all the above people contributed greatly to the book, I alone must be held responsible for any of its omissions, errors, or shortcomings.

  S.B.

  Contents

  PART ONE THE GENTRY

  1 Polish

  PART TWO THE BOOTSTRAPPERS

  2 “How I Got Over”

  3 Apartment Hunting

  4 Johnson vs. Johnson

  PART THREE THE OLD GUARD

  5 Family Trees

  6 Roots

  7 Rebel

  PART FOUR GETTING STARTED

  8 Memberships

  9 “Let Us Pray.…”

  10 Business Ups and Downs

  PART FIVE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

  11 Embattled Washington

  12 South of the Sudan

  13 Passing

  14 The Power of the Press

  15 Strivers’ Row

  16 … And Other Good Addresses

  17 Taste

  18 “Sweet Auburn Avenue”

  19 “King’s Wigwam” and Other Unhappy Memories

  20 “Interpositionullification”

  PART SIX WHERE ARE WE?

  21 Dollars and Cents

  22 Heroes

  23 Peeking Ahead

  Image Gallery

  Name Index

  List of Illustrations and Credits

  Unless otherwise noted, the photographs in this book are reproduced courtesy of Ebony magazine.

  1. 1833 slave sale poster

  2. Charlotte Hawkins Brown

  3. John H. Johnson and his mother, Gertrude Williams

  4. Mrs. John H. Johnson and Marc Chagall

  5. Mrs. Lowell Zollar outside her Chicago home (Courtesy of Mrs. Zollar)

  6. Mrs. Lowell Zollar at the Chicago Ritz-Carlton (Courtesy of Mrs. Zollar)

  7. Bettie Pullen-Walker at kickoff party for MsTique magazine (Courtesy of Ms. Pullen-Walker)

  8. A Links dinner

  9. A Links cotillion

  10. Barbara Proctor

  11. George E. Johnson and Senator Charles Percy

  12. Mr. and Mrs. George E. Johnson

  13. Ebony Fashion Fair model

  14. The audience at Ebony’s Fashion Fair

  15. Dr. T. R. M. Howard

  16. Mary Gibson Hundley (Photograph © 1973 by Fred J. Maroon)

  17. Mr. and Mrs. William T. Syphax (Photograph © 1973 by Fred J. Maroon)

  18. Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy (Photograph © 1973 by Fred J. Maroon)

  19. Dr. and Mrs. Winston Churchill Willoughby (Photograph © 1973 by Fred J. Maroon)

  20. Strivers’ Row

  21. The Beaux Arts Ball Committee (Photograph by Cecil Layne; courtesy of Mrs. Henry Lee Moon)

  22. Mollie Moon at the Urban League’s Beaux Arts Ball (Photograph by Cecil Layne; courtesy of Mrs. Henry Lee Moon)

  23. The John Wesley Dobbs family of Atlanta

  24. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cooke Hamilton (Courtesy of Mrs. Hamilton)

  25. Jewel Lafontant in her office (Courtesy of Mrs. Lafontant)

  26. Jewel Lafontant at home

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sp; 27. Vaughan family reunion

  28. Chicago luncheon for the Coalition for a United Community Action

  29. Haley Douglass and Mary Church Terrell

  30. Three generations of Atlanta Yanceys (Courtesy of Asa G. Yancey)

  31. Mary McLeod Bethune

  I

  The Gentry

  1

  Polish

  For nearly fifty years, during the first half of the twentieth century, one of the most dominant, though comparatively little known, forces in Negro life in America (before the term “black” became fashionable) existed in the person of a doughty little dark-skinned woman named Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the founder and headmistress of a school called the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, not far from Greensboro. Mrs. Brown, who—since she had received a number of honorary degrees—preferred to be addressed as “Doctor Brown,” was originally from Boston, and Palmer Memorial Institute was named after her late friend, also a Bostonian, Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer.

  Most Palmer graduates assumed that Alice Freeman Palmer was also black. She was, in fact, white, and was the second president of Wellesley College, from 1881 to 1887. When Alice Freeman Palmer and Charlotte Hawkins Brown met, they became friends, and both shared a concern for the quality of education that was then being offered to young Negroes in the South (Wellesley was one of the earliest women’s colleges to admit blacks, and Booker T. Washington’s daughter attended Wellesley). And, with Mrs. Palmer’s help, Charlotte Hawkins Brown had been able to get financial backing from certain wealthy New Englanders, and was able to open the doors of her school in Sedalia in 1902, the year that Alice Freeman Palmer died.

  It had been Alice Freeman Palmer’s idea that Palmer Institute should be a school for needy black children in North Carolina. But Dr. Brown had not exactly followed her late friend’s wishes to the letter. The school that she founded was not at all a school for impoverished local Negroes. It was, instead, an exclusive preparatory school for the wealthiest and best-born black children in the United States. There were only a handful of day students from Sedalia and Greensboro. The rest, who were boarders, arrived by Pullman and in chauffeur-driven limousines. “We accept,” Dr. Brown used to say, “only the crème de la crème. Anybody who is anybody sends their children to Palmer. They come to us, and we polish off any rough edges.” Palmer Institute was, in other words, the first and only private black coeducational finishing school in America.

  It was quite a thing to go to Palmer, and Dr. Brown never let her students forget it. The enrollment was small—between two and three hundred boys and girls. The tuition, though somewhat lower than that of the great New England prep schools, was high enough to make a Palmer education available only to the moneyed. Correct speech, manners, decorum, and deportment were stressed. So were neatness and cleanliness. At Palmer, if you arrived with a “colored accent,” you were expected, by graduation, to have got rid of it, and to have learned to emulate Dr. Brown’s own precise New England speech. Dr. Brown had a fetish about posture and another about table manners. There were no slouchers in the classroom or at the dinner table, and girls were taught to sit with their knees together and boys, when they crossed their legs, could do so only at the knee. At Palmer, you were taught never to blow on your soup to cool it, never to spoon it toward you, and never to slurp when swallowing it. Everyone had to study French. Everyone was required to learn piano, plus one other instrument, and there was a piano in every dormitory. Tennis was also emphasized. There were uniforms—three sets for the girls: gingham dresses for spring, navy blue skirts, blouses, and ties for fall and winter, and dress uniforms, which consisted of white, formal-length gowns and white gloves. The boys wore Palmer blazers, and there were formal dinners once a week for which the boys were required to wear tuxedos. There were also regular formal teas, where the boys wore cutaway coats, stiff collars, white shirts, black ties, and black shoes.

  What the legendary “Miss Charlotte” Noland was to her exclusive, all-white Foxcroft School in Virginia, Charlotte Hawkins Brown was to the blacks who attended Palmer. Of matronly bearing, she had short hair and wore tiny round spectacles. Being from Boston, she wore her skirts unfashionably long and always wore sensible black oxford shoes. She was always gloved, and always hatted. She had two favorite coats—a mink with a matching hat, and a Persian lamb with a matching mink-trimmed toque. She also had—or had had—a husband, who was something of a mystery. He was never mentioned, and had obviously vanished from her life long before she founded Palmer.

  She was an unabashed snob. It was better, she taught, to be an Episcopalian than to be a Baptist. Her niece, Marie, had married Nat “King” Cole, of whom she thoroughly disapproved, since she had little use for Negroes who went into sports or show business. But when Nat Cole visited Palmer, and played the piano for an informal gathering of students, the students loved him, and finally convinced Dr. Brown that her nephew-in-law might actually be a legitimate person, even a gentleman. Her two “best friends,” she liked to say, were Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune-Cookman College, and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. Her conversation was sprinkled with references to “dear Mary” and “dear Eleanor.” In reality, this was not quite the case. Her relationship with Mrs. Roosevelt was cordial, but hardly intimate; the two women did not even call each other by their first names. And, on Mrs. Roosevelt’s part, it involved a certain amount of condescension. Charlotte Hawkins Brown was one of those whom Eleanor Roosevelt often referred to as “our good colored people.” In the case of Mrs. Bethune, the two women were actually archrivals. Dr. Brown regarded Mrs. Bethune as her chief competitor in the field of Negro education. Mrs. Bethune was also on good terms with Mrs. Roosevelt, and the two black women vied fiercely for the First Lady’s attention. Whenever Mrs. Bethune was handed a new honorary degree, Dr. Brown struggled for one of her own to match it and to even the score.

  Charlotte Hawkins Brown was, needless to say, a strict disciplinarian. Everyone at Palmer had to learn to recite the school’s credo, a verse that Charlotte Hawkins Brown had composed:

  I have to live with myself and so

  I want to be fit for myself to know.

  I want to be able as days go by

  Always to look myself straight in the eye.

  I don’t want to stand with the setting sun

  And hate myself for the things I’ve done.

  Dr. Brown stood daily at the door of Palmer’s chapel with a box of Kleenex in one hand. Whenever a girl appeared with rouge on her lips, Dr. Brown would say firmly, “Palmer girls do not wear lipstick,” and, with her Kleenex, she would just as firmly wipe the offending lipstick off. When she was on the warpath, she signaled it by wearing purple. Once, a small infraction of the school rules had been committed, and the students decided to stick together; no one would name the person who had committed the misdeed. So, in purple, Dr. Brown expelled the entire student body, and presented each boy and girl with a ticket home. One young man, who was from San Francisco, was quite sure that, in time, Dr. Brown would relent and invite her students back. So, instead of going to San Francisco, he went only as far as Chicago, where he had an uncle he could visit, and cashed in the balance of his ticket. Sure enough, after a few weeks Dr. Brown told her students that they could come back to school. But when the San Francisco boy returned, and Dr. Brown discovered what he had done, she sent him to San Francisco all over again—for dishonesty and not doing what he was told.

  Dr. Brown never used the term “black.” To her generation, to call someone black was to call him a dirty name. She occasionally used the word “Negro,” and, less occasionally, “colored,” or “people of color.” Most often she would say “one of us,” or “our kind,” or “our sort.” But when she asked, “Is he one of us?” or, “Is she our kind?” she was not asking simply whether the person was a Negro. These expressions had special connotations. A person who was “our kind” was, first of all, an educated person. He was also a person from a good, and educated, family. He wa
s a person who was well-spoken. He was also, in most cases, a person with light skin and white features, whose nose didn’t spread and whose hair didn’t kink. Even though white features were an indication of illegitimacy somewhere back in the family tree, it was Dr. Brown’s unspoken belief that it was probably a good thing to have good white ancestors as well as good black ones.

  Though Dr. Brown liked to say that her school contained not only “the best Negroes,” but also offered “the best in Negro education,” not all of her students agreed with her. “I thought, if this is the best, then God help the rest,” recalls one alumna of Palmer, who was particularly struck by the fact that, for all the emphasis on politeness, gentility, and good manners, Palmer students often behaved very badly. “They were snobby, rude to the help, acted as though they owned the world, and did terrible things to each other,” she says. Once a group of older boys invited a group of newly arrived freshmen to go “snipe-hunting” with them. The newcomers innocently accepted the invitation, and discovered that snipe-hunting involved a fairly brutal initiation ritual, at the end of which the younger boys were left hung by the waist from their belts in the branches of trees.

  Still, everybody who was anybody in the black world, as Dr. Brown put it, sent their children to Palmer. Madame C. J. Walker of Indianapolis, a lady tycoon who became, with a hair-straightening device, the first black woman millionaire, sent her children and grandchildren there, as did Madame Sarah Spencer Washington, whose Apex Hair Company made her rich in New Jersey. Paul Robeson’s nieces went to Palmer, as did the daughter of Mantan Moreland—the big-eyed black comic character actor of early Hollywood films. The wealthy banking, real estate, and professional families from Atlanta—the Partees, the Yanceys, the Alexanders—many of whom have been rich for three or four generations—all sent their sons and daughters to Dr. Brown’s school. Concert singer Carol Brice (whose father was the school’s chaplain) is a Palmer alumna, as is Muriel Gassett, whose mother was a Dobbs, of the distinguished Atlanta family. Then there were Funderburgs, an illustrious family from Monticello, Georgia, and numerous sons and daughters of successful professional men—doctors, lawyers, educators, clergymen, and the like—all members in good standing of the black upper crust, or Establishment.