Negro with a Hat
Page 27
Reverend Eason, who had broken away from the official AME church to form an independent People’s Church of his own, would of course have eyed, in an arrangement with Garvey, reciprocal benefits – the chance to enlarge his own congregation from the ranks of the UNIA. For Garvey, the dangers of entering into a union with this radical preacher were outweighed by the opportunities for racial solidarity. Eason was black and transparent. The same could not be said of the other Methodist preacher, the Reverend D. Jonas, who seemed bent on insinuating himself into the organisation. Jonas was pale and opaque – an itinerant, Welsh-born pastor in search of a flock. One couldn’t guarantee – he probably didn’t know himself – where he would show up next. Reverend Jonas, late of Indianapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia, revelled in the Old Testament moniker ‘Prophet Jonas’ by which he was known throughout black districts. He’d been arrested several times during the Great War on suspicion of being a German spy and spreading subversive propaganda amongst the black population. The sins of Nineveh had become those of America, and Prophet Jonas had foresworn the comforts of his race (his Celtic roots were traced to Tredegar in south Wales) to dwell, most recently, in the belly of black Harlem. In his trademark crumpled white suit and straw boater, the prophet had become a familiar sight on the corner of 135th Street, taking to the stepladders vacated by Marcus Garvey and the other black orators, to preach singularly to the cursed Negroes, the sons and daughters of Ham. He’d swept into town along with the warm weather and the latest crop of hopeful street orators whom Garvey, without a shred of irony, labelled ‘vulgar rabble rousers’.
As far as Garvey was concerned, a casual audit of the times Jonas frequented the UNIA’s headquarters made for suspicious reading: it clearly revealed an upsurge in the Welshman’s attendance when Garvey himself was out of town. ‘That fellow,’ Garvey once complained, ‘always takes advantage of my absence and comes to the [Liberty] hall.’ But to what end?
Garvey was almost instinctively wary of Minister Jonas. The reverend’s credentials – a tireless advocate of the put-upon black man as manifest in his role as secretary of the International League of Darker Peoples – gave him an outward appearance of sincerity but it was his actual appearance that was most problematic. Though rare, there were, of course, interracial organisations like the NAACP and many conscientious white people who made the plight of black folk their business. But looked at less sympathetically, Jonas was in the vanguard of another trend. Adventurous white people were increasingly drawn uptown to the daring and rapture of Harlem. In some aspects the Negro capital was on the verge of becoming a novelty cultural centre for thrill-seeking voyeurs. On Saturday nights, they’d be spied in the slow-moving cars that cruised up Lenox Avenue and back down 7th Avenue, taking in the vibe, their noses pressed to the glass and their eyes dilated by the spectacle of black lives lived in the open. Getting out of the cab was sometimes a risk though; as Claude McKay found when he brought a white friend, Max Eastman of the Liberator, up to the small cabaret operated by Ned on 5th Avenue. ‘We arrived at the door … from where Max could get a glimpse inside. He was highly excited by the scene and eager to enter.’ McKay called over to Ned but ‘his jovial black face turned ugly as an aardvark’s … He waved his fist in my face and roared “Ride back [downtown]! Ride back or I’ll sick mah bouncers on y’all!”’22
Garvey too felt he’d detected in Reverend Jonas something of the ‘slummer’ and the soul of the tourist – one had only to scratch and it would come through. For just over a decade, Jonas had attempted to carve out a niche for himself as an intermediary between the races, and also to act as an unofficial and unsolicited chaperone for visiting African dignitaries to America. Though wary of him as an interloper, and considering him guilty of encroaching on his organisation, Garvey saw the reverend’s usefulness, especially in his African agency. In July of that year, Jonas had exploited all his contacts and leverage to broker a series of meetings for an official Abyssinian delegation to the USA. Hot from their audience with the President at the White House, some of the delegates had been lured by Reverend Jonas to Harlem. The idea of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), its place in the Old Testament Bible and the romance of its imperial past, exerted a great hold on the imaginations of African-Americans, even among those with sparse knowledge of Africa. Garvey was thrilled to be able to make the announcement in large black type in the Negro World, ‘PRINCE RENDIVA GERBAU OF THE ABYSSINIAN COMMISSION TO SPEAK AT THE PALACE CASINO’, that confirmed the UNIA amongst those sponsoring the most prestigious and unprecedented engagement.
When the large and expectant crowd assembled that night for the talk from the Abyssinian nobleman they found themselves locked out from the venue. Nothing that Marcus Garvey said could induce the casino’s owner to relent. The nervous authorities had ordered him not to open the doors.
If the authorities aimed to interrupt and curtail investment in the shipping scheme, they were too late. The idea had taken hold to a degree that not even Marcus Garvey had expected. The proposed line was the story in black circles and even rivals such as William Du Bois were fielding enquiries about it from friends and relatives out of town. Uncle James Burghardt wrote from Great Barrington on 21 August asking whether his nephew considered an investment in the Black Star Line to be safe. Du Bois fired off an immediate response, urging him not to ‘under any circumstances invest any money on the BSL. The District Attorney … has pronounced its methods fraudulent.’23 Others were not so easily dissuaded. By September, the Black Star Line had accumulated over $50,000 – more than enough for the deposit on a ship. Following the end of the Great War and the decommissioning of scores of vessels the corporation should have been spoilt for choice. The directors, though, were short on experience. The most established businessman in the group, Jeremiah Certain’s area of expertise was confined to cigar manufacturing. The complicated regulations around the chartering, purchasing and sailing of vessels were bewildering, and it was with some relief and great expectation that the directors turned gratefully to Captain Joshua Cockburn. His teeth flashing with confidence, the captain professed to be honoured to act on the company’s behalf – for a small remuneration. Within a few weeks he had some exciting news to report: he’d found an affordable vessel of suitable tonnage to meet their needs. The SS Yarmouth was a thirty-year-old tramp ship that had more than paid back the cost to its owners by ferrying cotton and coal during the Great War. It was a compact (squat would be too unkind) freighter with a cargo capacity of a modest 1,400 tons, and a disproportionately tall funnel that further disturbed its aesthetic appeal. She was not, Hugh Mulzac later recalled, ‘a vessel to set a sailor’s heart aflame’.24 Nonetheless, in his report at a highly charged midnight meeting of an excitable board of directors, the captain judged her seaworthy and the asking price of $165,000 to be fair. The Yarmouth’s owners would accept a deposit of 10 per cent. In the meantime he advised that the company negotiate a charter for her at $2,000 per month. To the inexperienced directors such a figure might seem alarming, but their resolve was stiffened by Cockburn’s calculations. The cost of chartering, he assured them, would be offset by the fantastic possibility for profits. The likelihood of deficits need not be entertained as Cockburn went on to explain: ‘Even if the corporation did not make money on her charter, the psychological effect on the people would be so great that the chartering of the ship alone would boost sales of stock.’ The boardroom hummed with unanimity and the motion was passed. Captain Cockburn had particular reason to be pleased. Not only had he negotiated a handsome fee that would take effect once he assumed command of the first Black Star Line ship, but he’d also made a covert arrangement (which he neglected to mention to the board) for a finder’s fee and a share of the profits with the vendor. It was not in Cockburn’s interests, therefore, to strike too hard a bargain for the BSL, rather the opposite: it had served his purposes to inflate the price. For now, though, everybody was happy. The deposit was paid and though the contract would only be complete and a bill of sale agreed o
nce another $80,000 was handed over, the owners consented to Garvey’s wishes for a mass UNIA inspection of the hoped-for flagship.
Several thousand UNIA members and BSL stockholders swarmed across the decks of the SS Yarmouth on Sunday 14 September. No amount of rust or sound of spluttering engines could dampen their ardour. The mood of veiled excitement, hope and superstition among the investors was akin to that of the betrothed on the eve of his wedding catching one last steadying glimpse of the bride-to-be.
With the corporation now committed to the Yarmouth and the self-imposed 31 October deadline looming for its launch, Garvey needed to beat the drum louder and faster for the issuance of stock. But over the next few weeks, the chief spirit of the association found himself subject to unwarranted and unwelcome interventions that threatened to set back the project or even to scupper it entirely. The principal culprit was the pugnacious proprietor of the Chicago Defender, Robert Abbott. Those who knew both men vouched for their similarity, that both might have been poured from the same bottle. Both were portly but ascetic men with conservative tastes (notwithstanding Garvey’s ceremonial dress sense and love of parades, and Abbott’s Dusenberg convertible and Rolls-Royce limousine – neither of which he could drive). Both had studied law – though Abbott had obtained a degree and Garvey only the gowns. Both had abundant energy and took a heavy hands-on approach to the running of their businesses. They also shared a fierce hatred of the injustice meted out to black people – views which they espoused in their journals – and it seemed both, very quickly, were convinced that the other was the very worst type of Negro.
Casting a cold eye over Garvey’s plans for a shipping company and then back through the newspaper’s archives, Robert Abbott found the corollary that he felt sure would diminish enthusiasm for the Black Star Line – the fiasco of the Alfred Charles Sam affair. Lest they forget, the Chicago Defender warned its readers that Garvey’s Black Star Line proposition was ‘similar to the [bogus scheme] tried on the American public a few years ago by Chief Sam, a notorious confidence man’. Back in 1914, Alfred Sam, the son of a Gold Coast chief of the Akyem Abuakwa district, had led a cult-like movement among black folk from Texas, Oklahoma and the West Indies, enjoining them to buy shares in his steamship Liberia which had ultimately failed – not least through the intrigues and intervention of American and British officials who viewed the scheme as fraudulent and its investors ‘foredoomed to disappointment’. The Defender was perhaps harsh in its criticism as there is a strong body of evidence that Chief Sam’s intentions (in breaking the West African trading monopoly of British firms like the Elder Dempster Line) were sincere. In the intervening years, however, there’d been scores of other schemes that proved insincere. Fraudulent Nigerian businessmen were perhaps the most inventive and cunning in inducing black Americans to hand over cash for bogus shipping companies. Robert Abbott would have readers believe that Garvey was the last in the line. Such aspersions cast by one of the proprietors of the country’s leading black newspaper were potentially damaging. Garvey was lucky to have in his camp the recent convert, John E. Bruce. He called in a favour now, and Bruce, who thought the Defender’s attempt to compare Garvey with Nigerian con-men odious and ill-founded, showed himself equal to the task. Even the briefest glance at Bruce’s resumé quickly revealed his impeccable African connections (business and literary). In the pages of the Negro World he suggested that the Black Star Line had also caught the imagination of West Africans, and in so doing, he quietly refuted the Defender’s allegations: ‘My correspondents in Africa … hail it [the BSL] as the harbinger of a new day for our oppressed people here and there.’ Bruce too had caught the spirit and optimistically foresaw that ‘hundreds of well-to-do merchants and traders along these African coasts … will gladly avail themselves of the opportunity to ship their goods on [BSL] ships’.25
John E. Bruce’s quiet and gracious endorsement was hugely beneficial but Garvey’s own response to Abbott’s jibes was to embark on an ambitious stock-selling tour of Chicago, right under the Defender’s nose. The Illinois capital was second only to Harlem as a refuge and hub for aspiring black people. The Chicago Defender and Robert Abbott had played a pivotal role in encouraging Southerners to migrate to the North. Helping to set up migration clubs, the paper even went so far as to publish train timetables, advertise job vacancies and suggest places where migrants might find affordable and acceptable accommodation. Letters of those desperate to escape the South, alongside those from the successful workmen who had ‘left the South with trembling and fear’, peppered its pages. The Great Migration marked the beginning of a second emancipation after the false dawn of the Civil War. The anxious new arrivals sent unimaginable reports back home. At first they’d searched nervously for the familiar strictures of ‘whites only’ and ‘for colored’ facilities, but before long were testing the boundaries of their new-found freedom, taking up seats beside white passengers who did not flinch.
The Defender’s campaign had proved successful, perhaps too successful for some of the older settlers in Chicago, who worried that the arrival of tens of thousands of their unsophisticated brethren might discredit the race; that the dominant white culture might not be able to distinguish between them and these raggedy-headed country bumpkins who wore their slippers to the grocery store and their overalls to church. It was these new settlers that Garvey’s movement would appeal to and embrace, but it was also these new Chicagoans, and new readers of the city’s black papers, that had caused the Chicago Defender’s influence to grow along with its expanding distribution (now edging towards 200,000 nationwide). Abbott was confident (he’d have preferred ‘conscientious’) enough to publish a list of commandments for the newcomers to the black metropolis which included:
Don’t use vile language in public
Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into street brawls
Don’t use liberty as a license to do as you please … and
Don’t be a beer can crusher
At the head of the aptly and ambitiously named Defender, Robert Abbott considered himself an uplifting guardian and the city’s black population, especially the migrants, his wards. Marcus Garvey threatened to trample all over his neat back yard. Before setting out from Harlem, the prospective president of the Black Star Line gave some indication of what he had in store for Abbott; he lambasted him in the Negro World as a man who encouraged self-loathing in Negroes through his heavy reliance on the advertising revenue from hair-straightening and skin-bleaching products. Abbott was a buffoon reliant on cheap sensationalism, a man who was ‘so ignorant and incapable of fulfilling the position of an editor that his “frothy utterances … have caused the entire race to be most seriously embarrassed”’. Garvey’s description was at variance with much of the industry’s view of Abbott as a black mini-version of the monstrous newspaper baron, William Hearst. ‘The Chicago Defender is a paper that so closely resembles, in certain particulars, Hearst’s well-known rags,’ the American Mercury magazine wrote admiringly, ‘that its zealous contemporaries still hint that Hearst is its real owner.’26 Marcus Garvey was spoiling for a fight with a formidable opponent who was wealthy, avaricious, courageous and, at times, extremely vindictive.
The UNIA leader and his entourage of seven, including Reverend Eason, Amy Ashwood and Henrietta Davis, rolled into Illinois Central Terminal on 28 September 1919. They immediately made their way to the black district on the south side of the city – a teeming centre of Negro life where the recently arrived young poet, Langston Hughes, recalled that ‘excitement reigned from noon till noon’. The group pushed on past the vice-riddled pool rooms and cabarets of State Street, heading for the 8th Regiment armoury (the home of the local all-Negro infantry) for a series of extraordinary mass meetings. The streets were still being cleared up a month after one of the country’s bloodiest race riots, and black people were still in a defiant and indignant mood. Despite the heavy rains, several hundred curious Chicagoans showed up at the armoury to get sight of the now famou
s Negro orator. Garvey’s stated purpose was ‘to offset the libellous impression created upon the minds of the people by the Chicago Defender’ that the Black Star Line was a fraudulent enterprise. He had set aside a week to do so and would remain in Chicago until he felt secure in having achieved that purpose. The selling of further stock in Chicago, then, was secondary to shoring up the reputation of the UNIA and the Black Star Line.
There were few sales on the first night but, in a clear sign that business would pick up, the following morning Marcus Garvey was accosted by an enthusiast called Sheridan Brusseaux. He explained that his wife had been at the meeting but had missed the opportunity to purchase shares. Garvey did not have a stock book to hand but, struck by the man’s insistence, asked his secretary to direct Brusseaux to the address of one of the stock salesmen. Though Brusseaux only bought two shares, his keenness surely indicated that the Defender’s negative publicity had been reversed.27