alongside Harlem’s famous, influential and intriguing—Osofsky, Harlem, p. 112.
“After the summer crops were all in”—Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), p. 386, cited in Jones, Labor of Love, p. 157.
African Americans also were pulled—Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North 1900–1920 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor, 1975), p. 52.
25 million Europeans—Gerald Rosenbaum, Immigrant Workers (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 70, and Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981), pp. 35 and 40, cited in Carole Marks, Farewell—We’re Good and Gone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 81.
100,000 by 1918—Henri, Black Migration, p. 52.
an estimated half million—Gerald Patton, War and Race: The Black Officer in the American Military, 1915–1941 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), p. 27, cites George Edmund Haynes, “Negroes Move North,” Part I, Survey (May 4, 1918), pp. 115–22; Chicago Commission: The Negro in Chicago, p. 79.
as much as $8 a day—Chicago Commission: The Negro in Chicago, pp. 80 and 84.
of the eastern seaboard states—Osofsky, Harlem, p. 18.
“white employers [who] would judge”—William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), p. 100.
“children should be scrubbed”—T. Arnold Hill to Arthur T. Aldis, July 5, 1917, cited in ibid., p. 100.
“most dangerous departments”—Jones, Labor of Love, pp. 166–67.
“least desirable jobs”—Marks, Farewell, p. 131.
“You have opened up a trade”—Maggie Wilson to MW, Oct. 1, 1913, in “Walker’s Hair Parlor and Lelia College,” brochure, circa 1914, p. 4 (MWFC/APB).
pushing her annual sales above $100,000—“Over 10,000 in Her Employ,” New York Age, no date, 1916, Hampton Institute Archives.
“You don’t know how it does my heart good”—MW to FBR, June 3, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“contemplating enlarging her present business”—The Colored American Review, July–Aug. 1916 (GSC/CU, Vol. 41).
a magazine she would soon own—MW to FBR, June 18, 1916, Letter #2 (MWC/IHS).
“handicaps, restrictions”—The Colored American Review, Mar. 1916 (GSC/CU).
“has risen to command the respect”—“Welcome to Madame Walker,” New York News, Mar. 4, 1916.
“I first want to say that I did not succeed”—New York Age, undated, Hampton Institute Archives, Madam Walker file.
“as famous for her lectures”—The Colored American Review, July–Aug. 1916 (GSC/CU).
Philip G. Peabody—a wealthy Boston attorney—“P. G. Peabody Dies,” New York Times, Feb. 26, 1934, p. 37.
pledged $1,000—The Crisis, Nov. 1918, p. 18.
“an effective program to stamp out lynching”—Charles Flint Kellogg, NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 216–18, cites NAACP Board Minutes on May 31, 1916, June 12, 1916, Oct. 9, 1916, and Jan. 2, 1917.
her $100 contribution was acknowledged—Oswald Garrison Villard, receipt for $100 contribution, Aug. 4, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
It was Villard—Lewis, Du Bois, pp. 390–91.
“all the believers in democracy”—Dorothy Salem, To Better Our World: Black Women in Organized Reform, 1890–1920, Vol. 14 of Black Women in United States History: From Colonial Times to the Present (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), p. 148; Kellogg, NAACP, p. 298.
One-third of the signatories were women—Ibid.
only black women whose names appeared—Ibid., p. 148.
“signaled that the race problem”—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 387.
“Lincoln freed you”—Ibid., p. 388.
By the time the National Guard—Ibid.
In 1915 alone—“Lynchings and Race Riots,” cited in Kellogg, NAACP, p. 256.
“depicted in full-page ghoulishness”—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 514.
“state-sanctioned terrorism”—Stewart E. Tolnay and Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 19 and 50.
“the opening wedge”—Kellogg, NAACP, p. 218, cites Washington Bee, July 8, 1916, and NAACP Board Minutes, June 12, 1916, and July 10, 1916.
“scolded him for beating the mules”—“The Waco Horror,” Supplement to The Crisis, July 1916.
He was so psychologically unbalanced—Ibid.
After his arrest—Ibid. (See also Kellogg, NAACP, p. 218, which cites New York Times, May 16, 1916; “The Will to Lynch,” New Republic, Oct. 14, 1916, p. 261; and NAACP Board Minutes, June 12, 1916.
“ghastly burnt cork husk”—Lewis, Du Bois, pp. 514–15.
the Crisis supplement was mailed—Kellogg, NAACP, p. 218.
knew an opportune moment—David Levering Lewis, “Du Bois and the Challenge of the Black Press,” The Crisis, July 1997, p. 43.
“the inalienable right of every free American”—Du Bois, “Editorial—Agitation,” The Crisis, Nov. 1911, p. 11.
Eufaula, Alabama—“Along the Color Line—Crime,” The Crisis, Mar. 1911, p. 10.
“McLean County, Kentucky”—“Along the Color Line—Crime,” The Crisis, June 1911, p. 53.
“Honea Path”—“Opinion—Lynchers Triumphant” and “Opinion—South Carolina Protest,” The Crisis, Dec. 1911, p. 60.
“I need not tell you how much”—Dr. Joel E. Spingarn, undated invitation to Amenia Conference, Joel Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13 (MSRC).
“Much to my regret”—MW to J. E. Spingarn, Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13 (MSRC).
“fundamental rights of the Negro”—Johnson, Along This Way, pp. 308–9.
He had also vetted the guest list—“The Amenia Conference,” Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13, Folder 519 (MSRC).
“At last the time has come”—“W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Amenia Conference: An Historic Negro Gathering” (Amenia, NY: Troutbeck Leaflets No. 8, 1925), p. 10, Joel Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13, Folder 525 (MSRC).
As Du Bois assembled the participants—“The Amenia Conference,” program with schedules and list of participants, Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13, Folder 525 (MSRC).
Among the eleven women—Ibid.
Day visitors included—Ibid.
Helen Keller, Lincoln Steffens—“First List Invited for Day Only,” Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13, Folder 522 (MSRC).
“the thing which all of us call ‘The Problem’”—Du Bois, “The Amenia Conference,” p. 13.
“One can hardly realize today”—Ibid.
“The wall between the Washington camp”—Ibid.
“The Amenia Conference”—Johnson, Along This Way, pp. 308–9.
“Antiquated subjects of controversy”—“Second draft Amenia, NY, August 26, 1916,” Spingarn Papers, Box 95–13 (MSRC).
more “a matter of emphasis”—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 521.
“We all believed in thrift”—Du Bois, “The Amenia Conference,” p. 12.
“the legacy from Troutbeck was far less one”—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 521.
“It marked a definite shift”—Ibid.
“anachronistic” and “he encouraged training”—Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, p. 20.
Du Bois had become familiar—“Along the Color Line,” The Crisis, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Dec. 1911), p. 51.
Madam Walker’s first Crisis advertisement—“Madame Walker’s Preparations,” The Crisis, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jan. 1912), p. 130, and Vol. 3, No. 4 (Feb. 1912), p. 174 (Madam Walker’s second Crisis ad appeared in Feb. 1912).
circulation of 16,000—“Publishers’ Chat with Readers,” The Crisis, Apr. 1912, p. 222.
In fact, its rapid growth—Harlan, Booker T. Washington, p. 365.
proposal to “found an industrial school”—“Along the Color Line—Education,” The Crisis, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 59. (There are no documents in Walker’s papers regarding this school.)
sh
e was featured in a quarter-page photograph—C[hanning] H. Tobias, “The Colored Y.M.C.A.,” The Crisis, Nov. 1914, p. 34.
There appears to be no existing correspondence—There are no letters in the author’s personal Walker Collection or in the Walker Collection at the Indiana Historical Society between Madam Walker and Du Bois before 1916. In Jan. 2000, Linda Seidman, curator of the Du Bois Collection at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, could locate no Walker/Du Bois correspondence.
Madam Walker also had committed—The Colored American Review, July–Aug. 1916 (GSC/CU, Vol. 41).
“[I] don’t want my agents to fall behind”—MW to FBR, Apr. 1916 (undated but after April 16 and before Easter 1916) (MWC/IHS).
voiced support for the Niagara Movement—“Negro Women Greet the Niagara Movement,” 1907 Du Bois MSS, reprinted in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Vol. 2: From Reconstruction to the Founding of the NAACP (New York: Citadel Press/Carol Publishing Group, 1990; originally published in 1951), p. 913.
By 1910, four NACW members—“The N.A.A.C.P.,” The Crisis, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Nov. 1910), p. 12; Salem, To Better Our World, p. 155.
Members of both groups cooperated—Salem, To Better Our World, p. 114.
make lynching “an American embarrassment”—Ibid., pp. 114–15.
allocated $100—Minutes of the Tenth Biennial Convention of the National Association of Colored Women, August 7–10, 1916 (NACW, 1916), p. 69.
Mary Burnett Talbert—Lillian S. Williams, “And Still I Rise: Black Women and Reform, Buffalo, New York, 1900–1940,” in Hine et al., eds., “We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible,” p. 522.
Both a teacher and the founding president—“Madam C. J. Walker Buys Splendid Home,” Indpls. Recorder, Oct. 31, 1914, p. 1.
Carter had objected to sending a letter—Minutes of the Ninth Biennial Convention of the National Association of Colored Women, 1914 (Library of Congress microfilm), p. 36.
“I shall never forget”—Report of the 17th Annual Convention of the National Negro Business League, Kansas City, Missouri, Aug. 16–18, 1916 (Washington, DC: William H. Davis, 1916), p. 134.
“I am here in the interest of the NAACP”—Ibid., p. 176.
CHAPTER 16 SOUTHERN TOUR
first chapter of the Madam C. J. Walker Benevolent Association—MW to FBR, Apr. 10, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
Booker T. Washington Memorial Fund—“Appeal to be addressed to the Negro People of the United States in behalf of the Booker T. Washington Memorial Fund of $2,000,000.00,” no date, Library of Congress R#613 (from Kenneth Hamilton).
Henrietta “Hetty” Green—“Henrietta Howland Green,” in Webster’s Dictionary of American Women (New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1996), pp. 248–49; Norris McWhirter, Guinness Book of World Records, 1980 Super Edition (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), p. 494.
Annual sales of Lydia Pinkham’s patent medicine—Caroline Bird, Enterprising Women (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 126.
Other direct-sales companies—Peiss, Hope in a Jar, p. 72.
watched sales leap from $30,000—Alfred C. Fuller, A Foot in the Door (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 114.
Initially Ransom viewed her grand scheme—MW to FBR, Apr. 10, 1916.
“I think you misunderstood my meaning”—MW to FBR, undated (after Apr. 16, before Easter), 1916 (MWC/IHS).
Instead she meant to set up—Ibid.
As an incentive, she proposed annual prizes—Ibid.
For the generous monthly salary of $125—MW to FBR, undated (after Apr. 16, before Easter), 1916.
“An enthusiastic audience”—MW to FBR, Apr. 10, 1916.
“I was very much flattered”—MW to FBR, undated (after Apr. 16, before Easter), 1916.
“I fear you might [think] me egotistical”—MW to FBR, handwritten letter, no date (MWC/IHS).
“Of course I know there are no women”—Ibid.
That September, Madam Walker’s $300 contribution—Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute receipt, Warren Logan to Madam Walker, Sept. 22, 1916 (MWC/IHS). (Seth Low died Sept. 17, 1916.)
“I am writing to suggest the name”—FBR to R. R. Moton, Sept. 27, 1916 (Robert Russa Moton Papers, LOC, Box GC-5, f.27) (sent by John A. Vernon).
the school had “the highest respect”—R. R. Moton to FBR, Oct. 4, 1916 (Robert Russa Moton Papers, LOC, Box GC-5, f.27) (sent by John A. Vernon).
religious gatherings—AMEZ “General Conference”—MW/NY to FBR/Indpls., Feb. 22, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“a packed house” at Reverend Peter James Bryant’s and “her last tour of the South”—“Mme. C. J. Walker’s Lecture Tour,” The Colored American Review, July–Aug. 1916, (GSC/CU, Vol. 41).
At summer’s end—MW to FBR, Oct. 5, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“Open Your Own Shop”—“Mme. C. J. Walker’s Preparations for the Hair/Supreme in Reputation,” ad in The Messenger, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan. 1918).
“In those circulars I wish you would”—MW to FBR, Oct. 30, 1916.
“Address them as ‘Dear Friend’”—MW to FBR, undated (after Apr. 16, before Easter), 1916.
“From the Kitchen to the Mansion”—Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 169.
“howling success” and “All the big guns”—MW to FBR, Sept. 10, 12 and 14, 1916 (MWC/IHS); “Mme. C. J. Walker’s Lecture Tour”; “Madame C. J. Walker Visiting the City,” Atlanta Independent, Oct. 7, 1916, p. 1. Usually referred to as S. Willie Layten, she was born in Memphis in 1863 to a Baptist minister and his wife. During the 1880s, while living in California with her husband, she became active in religious and secular groups. By 1894 she had moved to Philadelphia with her daughter and without her husband, soon assuming a leadership role among Baptist women; Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, p. 157.
Nearly three million and two most prominent white Baptist groups—Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, p. 166.
“only in evidence by pinning tags on anyone”—MW to FBR, Sept. 10, 1916.
“found so many poor people”—MW to FBR, Sept. 26, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
She reached Atlanta in early October—“Madame C. J. Walker Visiting the City,” Atlanta Independent, Oct. 7, 1916 (thanks to Herman “Skip” Mason, Jr. for this article).
Mae’s arrival at Spelman Seminary—LWR to FBR, Sept. 28, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
founded in 1881—Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Jo Moore Stewart, Spelman: A Centennial Celebration (Atlanta: Spelman College, 1981), p. 12.
its “primary aim”—Ibid., p. 27.
to honor the parents of Rockefeller’s wife—Ibid., pp. 22 and 24.
only about 5 percent of Americans—Kristen Iversen, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth (Boulder: Johnson Books, 1991), p. 129.
Among the 768 students—“Annual Report to the Trustees of Spelman Seminary, 1916–1917,” Spelman Messenger (from Taronda Spencer, College Archivist, Spelman College).
adopted in 1904 after the death of Laura’s parents—Harlan, Booker T. Washington, p. 124.
Upon receiving Lelia’s request—Lucy Hale Tapley to LWR, Sept. 14, 1916 (Spelman College Alumnae Office).
“I know Mrs. Walker cares for and protects her”—Margaret Murray Washington to Tapley, Sept. 16, 1916 (Spelman College).
“It gives me great pleasure”—Reverend James W. Brown to Tapley, Sept. 20, 1916 (Spelman College).
“Miss Robinson has a most amiable disposition”—Bishop Alexander Walters to Tapley, Sept. 20, 1916 (Spelman College).
On the application—Spelman Application and Registration, Sept. 11, 1916.
English-Latin curriculum—Ibid.; Spelman Assistant Registrar Selonia Smith to Willard B. Ransom, Aug. 7, 1950 (Spelman College).
study music—Tapley to LWR, Sept. 14, 1916 (Spelman College).
Mae’s “pleasing personality”—Dean Edith V. Brill to LWR, Sept. 14, 1917 (Spelman College).
Ma
e was “always very pleasant”—Juanita Martin interview with author, 1982.
early member of the NAACP—“Along the Color Line,” The Crisis, Vol. 35, No. 9 (Sept. 1928), p. 304.
charging forth to Meridian, Greenwood—MW to FBR, Oct. 27, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“We are only making two-day stops”—MW to FBR, Nov. 8, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“I truly made a hit in Natchez”—Ibid.
“Went to my home in Delta”—MW to FBR, Oct. 30, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“World’s Richest Negress”—“World’s Richest Negress in Delta,” Oct. 30, 1916, clipping with no newspaper name shown (MWFC/APB).
“The report that I advertise to take the kink out”—“Negro Woman Gets in Society Addition,” undated clipping, but appears to be Hot Springs, Arkansas, newspaper in Jan. 1917 (MWFC/APB).
“I am enclosing a signature card”—FBR to MW, Nov. 4, 1916 (MWFC/APB).
“We had a narrow escape”—MW to FBR, Nov. 24, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“I arrived here sick”—Ibid.
“I think instead of coming home”—Ibid.
“Mme. really frightened me”—Ibid.
“I was so ill”—MW to FBR, Nov. 25, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“To-day the doctor told me she was on the verge”—MW to FBR, Nov. 24, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
“to give my mind a real rest”—MW to FBR, Nov. 27, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
a highly capable former Jackson schoolteacher—LWR’s 1920 Walker agents convention speech, p. 3 (undated manuscript).
“I don’t know if they will be able”—MW to FBR, Nov. 24, 1916.
Madam Walker checked into the Pythian—MW to FBR, Dec. 1, 1916 (MWC/IHS).
two-year-old Hot Springs, Arkansas, hospital—Linda McDowell to author, Jan. 22, 2000, E-mail.
seventy-room—Ibid.
eight elegant European-style—Shirley Abbott, “Hot Springs, Ark., Fondly Recalled as a Paradise Lost,” Smithsonian, Vol. 22, No. 4 (July 1991), p. 106.
adrenaline rush—Marvin Moser, “What You May Not Know about High Blood Pressure,” Bottom Line Personal, Nov. 30, 1993, p. 13.
On Her Own Ground Page 48