Stories

“When I came to Cincinnati, I was employed as a waiter in a private house, at ten dollars a month for the first month.  From that time on I received $20, till I went on board a steamboat, where I got higher wages still.  In time, I found myself in receipt of $50 per month, regularly, and sometimes even more.  I resided in Cincinnati about fourteen years, and from thence came on to the farm I am now on, in Pebble township, on Brushy Fork of Pee Pee creek.  Have been here about sixteen years.

“Since my residence in Ohio I have several times visited Monticello.  My last visit was in the fall of 1866.  Near there I found the same Jefferson Randolph, whose service as administrator I left more than forty years ago, at Monticello.  He had grown old, and was outwardly surrounded by the evidences of former ease and opulence gone to decay.  He was in poverty.  He had lost, he told me, $80,000 in money by joining the South in rebellion against the government.  Except his real estate, the rebellion stripped him of everything, save one old, blind mule.  He said that if he had taken the advice of his sister, Mrs. Cooleridge [Ellen Coolidge], gone to New York, and remained there during the war, he could have saved the bulk of his property.  But he was a rebel at heart, and chose to go with his people.  Consequently, he was served as others had been—he had lost all his servants and nearly all his personal property of every kind.  I went back to Virginia to find the proud and haughty Randolph in poverty, at Edge Hill, within four miles of Monticello, where he was bred and born.  Indeed, I then realized, more than ever before, the great changes which time brings about in the affairs and circumstances of life.” (Israel Jefferson, Pike County Republican, 25 Dec. 1873)

In the south, the policy of white toward Negro is one of suppression and antagonism.  Once the issue of social equality is raised, the whole American idea of fair play is laid aside in favor of mob force and lynching bees.  The result is that our national tranquility is shaken to the roots, and the very life of American ideals is threatened.

In the west, on the other hand, the athletic ideal governs the relation between the races.  Here the American idea of fair play prevails.  The race issue is never present in politics, but rather Negro and Caucasian vote on all questions from a moral and purely objective viewpoint.

The problem of racial disorder in the south is not a Negro problem, but a purely American one.  If in one corner of the land law and order may be set aside to favor the passions of a group, why is it not feasible to do the same thing in other parts of the country?  Thus the very existence of the principles, upon which our nation was founded are at stake.   (San Jose Evening News, 2 Sep. 1922)

…When you asserted that the whole history of the past was in favor of “contact,” as being the most powerful means of destroying antipathies, the history of our own country must have entirely escaped your memory.  The very act which gave it political existence, was an act of separation.  Is the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, therefore, a “weak and foolish” document, and were its framers “weak and foolish” men?  Have you forgotten the history of the separation of the Friends, the Methodists, and even the Presbyterians?  Of the utility of these several separations I do not now pretend to speak.  My object in referring to them is, to show that other men than me, or old father Abraham, have been “weak and foolish” enough to resort to separation, and the formation of societies of their own, as a means of curing existing antipathies.

The principle which I have endeavored to maintain in my three preceding letters on separate settlements is this, that it is right, and in accordance with the mind of God, for men whose condition has been rendered unhappy in one place, to better it if they can, by removing to another; and that the manner, time, and place of such removal, should be exclusively matters of their own choice.  And through what kind of glasses you were looking, Mr. Editor, when this simple principle appeared to you like “colonization magnified,” I am at a loss to know.  Those which I use are a plain pair of Parisian manufacture;–and when I look at it through them, it has no such appearance.  Purchasing contiguous tracts of land from the Congress of our native country, and settling upon them, so as to have society, churches, and schools of our own, without being subject to the humiliation of begging them from others, looks very much like being exiled to the cheerless coast of Africa, don’t it?  Surely your readers will be able to distinguish the difference….

But I can assure you that in the West it [issue of separate black settlements] is not merely a matter of theory; it has long since been reduced to practice.  My father now resides, and has been for the last eight years residing in such a settlement, in Jackson county, Ohio.  The settlement is highly prosperous and happy.  They have a church, day and Sabbath school of their own.  The people of this settlement cut their own harvests, roll their own logs, and raise their own houses, just as well as though they had been assisted by white friends.  They find just as ready and as high market for their grain and cattle, as their white neighbors.  They take the newspapers and read many useful books, and are making as rapid advancement in intelligence and refinement as any people in the country generally do.  And when they travel out of their settlement, no colored people, let them reside where or among whom they may, are more respected, or treated with greater deference than they are….” (“Augustine” [Lewis Woodson] to editor, 13 July 1838, in Colored American, 28 July 1838)

After a while he became interested in politics.  He ran for the Board of Education once and didn’t win.  In 1918, he ran for Assemblyman and people thought he was crazy, but he was elected.  He was there for 16 years, four terms.  He was the first black elected to an official position in the state of California.  He was the first black elected to a state office west of the Mississippi…. 

He didn’t like the word “Negro.”  He used the term “Americans of African descent.”  He wanted to stress the fact that we were Americans and should be treated as Americans.  Whereas most newspapers would say, “another Negro lynched,” his newspaper would say, “another American lynched.”  (Pearl Roberts typescript autobiography, Roberts Collection, African American Museum and Library at Oakland)

Trotter’s Tribute To His Mother /  VIRGINIA ISAACS TROTTER / April 25, 1842—October 16, 1919 /  MOTHER /

Mother love she had for her children in all its tenderness and sternness, in all its earnestness and pleasantry, in all its ambitiousness and indulgence, in all its love and leniency, yet with hope and strong appeal for their rectitude and achievement.

As all real mothers do, she labored for them and with them, holding high the standard for private life and public attitude.  Born in her [line or lines evidently left out] from her saintly mother was her devotion to God and to moral ideals, and from her father, Tucker Isaacs, brave devotion to liberty and equality without the insult of restriction because of color.  Her husband held racial self-respect and assertion of rights above all else.

Thus it was she taught her son to stand against any denial of right because of race as a principle of self-respect.  It was not strange she encouraged him when he entered the lists against race discrimination as only a true mother can, daily offered him cheer and confidence, and backed him for organ and organization with her earthly means.  The strength she gave him in the battle never can be his as when she maintained her aid and interest until heart and mind were stilled by death itself.  That her sacrifice may not have been in vain we fight on.  God give us strength and success and give her bliss above.

Her son, / WM. MONROE TROTTER. October 16, 1930. (Philadelphia Tribune, 7 Apr. 1932)