Beautiful Jim Key

by Mim E. Rivas

  This would have been his mother wit talking. There were signs. He could probably feel, when he was able to stand still, that the winds were changing again, the shifting ground underneath his feet signified harder times ahead. Maybe he foresaw the coming world wars, the rise of the machines, the great struggle to come for civil rights, but in any event he somehow perceived that this window of consciousness that had opened wide to value kindness and goodness was going to be closing soon. He and Beautiful Jim Key had come along in the right way at the right time for the humane movement. But that time was fleeting. Why stay too long at the fair?

  And there were other causes and concerns that needed aid in his later years. In the various black newspapers and journals that Dr. Key collected, there was an emerging divide that was troubling. There was the path of less resistance, the separate-but-equal approach of Booker T. Washington, whose focus on education at Tuskegee and formation of the National Negro Business League won approval from the Doctor. But there was also the recent voice of W. E. B. DuBois, the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, who wanted full equality, and who warned against the deepening color line, adding a sense of urgency to the need for leadership from the black upper class in helping develop political organizations and foster the economic empowerment for all people of color. William Key apparently believed both leaders were right, that education, education, education was the cornerstone of advancement on the one hand, but that a color-blind marketplace—such as he had created for himself—had to be actively, consciously cultivated, maybe even demanded. Those happened to be his values as a self-educated professional and as an entrepreneur, and what he hoped to convey to Negro audiences in whatever capacity he was able.

  These were also his priorities for how he spread out his assets, spending generously when it came to assisting his relatives with their educational and business pursuits, and securing more property for himself. Besides the 240 acres that he wanted to develop, he owned the land and home near what had been Keystone Driving Park (soon to be turned over to the Davises) and his place on North Main Street, which had another house, stables, and offices for his veterinary businesses (eventually to be taken over by Dr. Stanley Davis), and he was also looking to purchase a house in town, closer to the train station and the courthouse square. The property he had in mind was on Bethany Lane, in one of the better neighborhoods in Shelbyville, with a graceful white Victorian home on it, a stables and corral out back, and plenty of pasture where Jim and Monk, and the other Key family horses and animals could graze and play. Now that Maggie had received her degree, he was ready to legalize their union and provide for her a comfortable life. Plus, he had never written a will, and that was another thing he ought to do. Not that he was slowing down much or was ever even tired after performing on his feet hour after hour. Maybe his Keystone tonic was a youth elixir after all. Then again, it was a wise man who knew that only this day was given and that tomorrow was never promised.

  Perhaps he was not feeling as safe as he once had felt traveling among so many strangers, a symptom of fame and of not being able to be anonymous, as well as a symptom of the increase in racist attacks on people of color. When recent race riots exploded in New York, the white mobs went on a rampage, some with the express purpose of killing black celebrities and entertainers like Bob Cole and Bert Williams. To be an African-American of wealth and stature was threatening enough, but to be loved and admired by white audiences seemed to be a crime, especially when black male musicians and actors found favor with white female fans.

  So though it was all very well for a famous big dark stallion to bow and make bedroom eyes at the white women in his audiences, if the venerable mulatto horse trainer ever tried it, he would have been killed, as they said, in a New York minute. Presumably, this was one of the reasons why William Key agreed for Albert Rogers to be presented as the owner of Beautiful Jim Key, so as not to be known as the owner of a horse now estimated to be worth upward of $200,000.

  Fame aside, the Doc didn’t have to know the statistics—that since 1893 up to this era, once a week, on average, two Negroes were lynched by mobs—to know that the brutal killings by hanging, mutilation, or being burned alive were not slowing down. The South was more dangerous than the North and West, but sometimes only by degree. Dr. Key, with his therapeutic orientation, needed to step back as a way of finding a prescription, or at least a perspective. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois wrote about a similar inner struggle of his divided self:

  It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

  Key needed to reconcile the duality that while he and many more in white America had flourished in recent years, too many African-Americans still struggled under the yoke of prejudice and cruelty. Of the ten million Negroes in the United States, nine million lived in the South, more and more separate, less and less equal. He wanted to do more to help, as he had done when he had visited North Carolina and made an ostensibly large contribution on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of North Carolina, an African-American organization that “secured homes for the homeless” and had built a hospital as well as an orphanage in Charlotte.

  One of the reasons it was becoming harder to include the humorous political debate with Jim in his act was that none of the political parties they mentioned any longer held the advancement of people of color as a part of their platforms. How could he and Jim joke about voting, when most black people were denied that right?

  But his real reason for contemplating retirement was less about those or any personal trends, and more about Jim’s well-being. He worried that the winter travel, in spite of the comforts provided to them, could be creating a time-lapse disaster. True, Jim hadn’t come down with any illnesses from traveling, as of yet, but the Doctor believed that horses weren’t designed to move so often from one extreme climate to another.

  At the end of 1901, they departed in a November winter storm from Massachusetts, where the doting Boston Traveler reported, by the way, that A. R. Rogers said Jim was earning net 4 percent on a million dollars per year, and that he was sending Jim to balmy Charleston to their world’s fair for the next three months, where, predicted the Traveler, “he is sure to be the main feature as he has been this past month,” and where, if Charleston didn’t yet have a humane society, they would soon after Jim got there.

  The South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition was another financial disappointment to investors and another indication that the glut of big-scale fairs and expositions was beginning to erode the public appetite for them in general. But once again Beautiful Jim Key was a top draw, the proverbial horse who couldn’t lose. He proved to be such a moneymaker and publicity success, he was declared the “Feature of the Midway,” as his friends in Boston had predicted. Before long, Albert’s fellow concessionaires hired him as a consultant to increase their business and then collectively elected him president of the Charleston Amusement Concessionaires Club. With his trademark spunk and ingenuity, A. R. Rogers launched a midway newspaper—for which he served as managing editor—to promote daily events and increase traffic to the various concessions.

  By this point, Rogers had become a celebrity in his own right, sought after for his promotional expertise by peers like these in South Carolina, by fair organizers, creators of exhibits and rides, by other promoters, and even by entertainment trade papers such as Billboard Magazine. Nine months earlier, he was interviewed in that periodical about the new phenomenon of so-called electric parks, which were modest-size amusement parks set at the ends of trolley lines to make sure that American families had somewhere to go when they paid the full fare to take the trolley out of town. Rogers told th
e reporter, “Probably no amusement line has developed so rapidly the last three years as the street railway parks, or has any more profitable proposition been adopted.” His “Advice to Street Railway Managers of Parks,” as the column was entitled, was to capitalize on riders’ idle time by publishing free newspapers like his Street Railway Journal, with paid advertising from park concessionaires. (The park phenomenon was not as long-lived as he predicted, however, once city dwellers began to make their treks to the suburbs to live.) Albert had raked in the bucks by publishing these railway journals, not just from charging the cost of the ads but also by including more Jim Key product endorsements.

  Even though he represented many other successful attractions and was traveling less and less with Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk, the name of Beautiful Jim Key always appeared at the top of his letterhead and was always his most potent calling card. On one flyer of this era, in a fit of hubris by which he likened himself to Barnum, he did list himself above Jim’s name, proclaiming: “ROGERS—A name that stands for all that is refined, high class and entertaining in the amusement world.” But he must have reconsidered this approach, since he quickly dropped it, allowing his roster to do that pitch:

  BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, The Greatest Drawing Card in America

  Liquid Air Exhibitions

  Edison’s Electrical Fairyland

  Sub-marine Tank Exhibition: Deep Sea Diving in the Largest Tank in the World. A trip to the bottom of the sea. Divers at work raising sunken vessels, marine tableaux, etc.

  The Novel Animated Picture Exhibitions

  Southern Life and Cotton Exhibition: A reproduction of a Typical Southern Plantation with the Negroes gathering cotton in the fields, etc.

  Barnard’s Patented Giant Sea Wave

  Stella, Maid of the Moon: The Beautiful Mysterious Floating Star

  Electrical Naval Battles: Reproducing in miniature celebrated Naval Battles, with Guns and Mines Fired, Boats and Signals run, all by Electricity

  Am. Wild Game Park and Sportsman’s Exposition: A reproduction of a forest, with Live Buffalo, Moose, Caribou, Deer, Bears, etc., and an Indian Encampment with their Dances, Races, Games and Plays. Trappers, Guides, Log Houses, Canoe Races, Souvenirs, etc.

  Portable Electrical Prismatic Fountain: with Fire and Serpentine Dances and Plastique Poses. “The Girl with the Robes of Fire.”

  The Celestial Chinese Band and Festival Lanterns: With Chinese Races and Games and wonderful Kite Flying Contests, with their Chinese Dragon and Centipede Kites 100 feet long, Mammoth Butterfly Kites ten feet high and other grotesque designs. Chinese singing and acting, Chinese Fireworks, Day and Night. In all, the most unique entertainment possible.

  Less high class but more profitable, the amusement rides he brokered and leased for parks and fairs—updated versions of Shoot the Chutes and the Mirror Maze, along with roller coasters such as the Loop-the-Loop—were another avenue of income. In all his marketing efforts, Rogers continued to be as innovative and relentless as William had first known him to be.

  Interestingly enough, since Jim had been rethinking his political views, he was no longer billed in the South as the Educated Democratic horse but instead as the Educated Southern horse. Dr. Key was undoubtedly upset that the Charleston Exposition had done much less than the Tennessee Centennial to involve people of color, both in planning and in attending the fair. Because of his concern, coupled with the influence of Albert Rogers, and the popularity of Beautiful Jim Key, it was agreed that New Year’s Day, January 1, 1902, be celebrated as Negro Day. Special ten-cent discount coupons were issued that read:

  This special ticket and 15 cents will admit the bearer to the astonishing performance of the Feature of the Midway, the Wonderful Educated Horse, BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, Who can read, write, spell, count, figure, change money, tell time, play cards, etc. Taught by Dr. Wm. Key, the Most Successful Colored Trainer in the World. The One Show Everyone Wants to See of ALL, Regular admission 25 cents. Don’t lose this ticket. This ticket worth 10 cents. Good New Year’s Day Only. Negro Day at the Exposition. This Special Price for Colored People Only, by Special Request of Dr. Wm. Key who wants all his colored friends in Charleston to see Jim.

  New Year’s Day 1902 had thus become another pinnacle, a day-long celebration with continuous performances in the Beautiful Jim Key Palace on the midway of the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition. Fair planners were astonished to see how profitable the day had been and promptly opened admission to people of color; later it was believed that Negro fairgoers helped the Exposition from suffering worse losses. And it meant more to Dr. Key. On this New Year’s Day in his personal history he was given a reprieve from the discomfort of being a Negro permitted to perform on stages of halls where other people of color weren’t allowed to sit in the better seats or at all. But not only that: on this day he didn’t have to hide or diminish who he was and what he had accomplished. His feeling was certainly akin to the sentiments expressed by Booker T. Washington in a speech—a copy of which Dr. Key came to own—to the almost all-white National Educational Association:

  You may not know it, but my people are as proud of their racial identity as you are of yours, and in the degree that they become intelligent, social pride increases. I was never prouder of the fact that I am classed as Negro than I am today.

  How did Jim, “who had been raised in a colored family,” as the Southern newspapers had noted, feel about what this meant to the Doc? How much could he have understood, after all? What might Doc Key have explained to him? The only answer is that Beautiful Jim Key could unquestionably sense his teacher’s unbridled happiness and pride, which in turn would have made Jim the happiest horse who ever lived.

  Albert Rogers saw it. The secret of Beautiful Jim Key’s extraordinary abilities was something more than “simply education.” Yes, it was kindness and patience, together with the strange life among humans that Jim had lived early on and the inseparable nature of the relationship between horse and man. It was both more than all that, yet also more basic. It was love. The love between human and nonhuman was so powerful it had bridged the language divide, more similar to a father-son relationship than anything else Rogers could conjure. Jim was happy when Doc Key was happy. The secret was love.

  At the end of January, this realization was with Albert Rogers when he, Key, and Key took a brief recess from Charleston to travel to the freezing North to do a benefit honoring George Angell in Providence, Rhode Island. The program proclaimed, “Kindness has accomplished what cruelty could not have,” and further noted, “Affection toward an animal is never misplaced.”

  These deepening sensibilities inspired Rogers, a short while after their return to Charleston, to add a new line to the promotional pamphlet that was now in its seventh or eighth edition. Romantic though he was, he couldn’t find a way to articulate what he now understood was really a great love story, saying instead very chattily: “One of the most interesting features of this marvelous performance is the affection displayed towards each other by the horse and his trainer.”

  In this edition he also included an interesting comment Dr. Key had made about the Bible studies he and Jim had been working on. They had found many more than the fifty-four biblical allusions to horses and donkeys that they had first counted but had stuck with learning those fifty-four. Jim had learned to recognize them when quoted aloud and to cite book, chapter, and verse from written cards placed on his screen. Dr. Key had only begun incorporating this skill into their shows and was also teaching Jim to spell the names of the prophets. Bill Key repeated what he had told Albert when they had started this process. “Jim likes to hear about horses in the Bible, for they were very prominent animals then.”

  Rogers couldn’t have imagined a more prominent horse than Jim was in this time. He looked at the book names and chapter citations—Genesis 50, Exodus 14, Revelations 6, and so on, in no special order.

  Dr. Key continued, “Jim likes the prophets. The prophets had visions of horses. John says he l
ooked up and beheld a white horse in heaven, and what Jim wants to know is, if there are white horses in heaven, why can’t a good bay horse go there also?”

  A long silence naturally ensued. Albert had come to know William Key well, even with the formalities of their relationship, and he knew by now that this comment was both literal and metaphoric. What did he tell Jim? Rogers responded.

  Doc Key had no ambivalence on this topic and assured Mr. Rogers that all horses go to heaven, good or not.

  This set the mood for the Doctor to tell Albert that it was time for a break. By way of preamble, they discussed some of Doc Key’s complaints, including the fact that since he did most of the selling of the souvenir items, he ought to be getting a bigger share of the profits, despite the cost of their production being on the promoter’s shoulders. Rogers made some concessions, and they clarified some of the murkier areas of their arrangement, as well as how they could keep their humane work and merchandising activities going in the event that Jim had to suddenly retire.

  This was a theoretical discussion until Dr. Key confessed what he hadn’t really admitted to himself. Jim Key had woken up on a couple of mornings and had been unable to stand. A good guess was that he had a touch of rheumatism, and it could get worse. Much worse. But then the symptoms had vanished.

  Understandably upset, Rogers proposed a way to continue the Jim Key Band of Mercy and the souvenir and pamphlet sales, without Jim having to perform. Rogers had recently purchased an especially smart pony named Dick who was being trained at Glenmere, as Doc Key knew. The hope was that Dick could eventually do shows and benefits too. The other hope, better yet, was that Dr. Key might feel differently in a month or two.

  With that, the two men shook hands, and a few days later, Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk left Charleston for Shelbyville. After a month or so, as they all settled into a much slower pace, a letter arrived from Albert Rogers requesting that some of the equipment he had purchased or had made for the show be shipped to Glenmere. He wanted to know where the large megaphone was, and what the dimensions were for the display rack, as he was commissioning a new one for Dick.