Sanford was certainly not a civil rights activist, but he opposed lynching and demonstrated as a prosecutor a conscious interest in avoiding racial bias. During Theodore Roosevelt’s administration Sanford tried a Chattanooga sheriff, his deputies, and members of a lynch mob for the lynching of a black defendant, despite a stay issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. Douglas reported to his superiors that when Mrs. House appeared before Judge Sanford, she would plead guilty for the light sentence of “one year and one day in a penitentiary—where I do not know but probably Atlanta.” Instead Mrs. House denied any wrongdoing; her lawyer stated that she knew bills had been in Congress and committees and told everyone the “business has not been completed.” Sanford decided Mrs. House’s letters might mean nothing more than the Association needed to keep working until passage of the legislation. Considering the factual dispute, he decided he had no alternative but to set the matter for trial.16 Sanford had prior experience with fraud cases and had shown a concern for keeping the defendant’s circumstances in mind. In one case, after a jury found a defendant guilty of mail fraud, Sanford imposed a sentence of eighteen months. Upon being informed that the defendant’s wife, who had repeatedly fainted in court, had heart trouble, Sanford reduced the sentence to a fine.17
Federal prosecutors saw no need to devote more resources to jailing Mrs. House. They viewed her refusal to plead guilty as more evidence of her arrogance. Severely disappointed at Sanford’s refusal to agree with their strategy, the U.S. attorney’s office tried to persuade Stephens to make her return to court again and, without comment, simply to plead guilty. House continued to refuse, and Sanford set a new trial date for March 22 or 29, 1917.18
In order to pressure a guilty plea from Mrs. House, the government indicted Reverend Augustus Clark, an agent for the association, hoping he would implicate her. Clark had gathered petitions and organized chapters in Texas and Louisiana. For this organizing work, he was charged with impersonating an officer of the U.S. government. A letter introduced in his case was later used as a major piece of evidence against House. Special Pension Examiner U. A. Biller, operating from New Orleans, reported that he had attempted to question Clark at his Texas home but found he had left to organize chapters in Louisiana. Bon Wier, Texas, chapter members of the association said that Clark had recruited them and collected their dues but said nothing about being a government official. Biller described Clark as “shrewd and unscrupulous” and believed that if he had been “imposed upon” by Callie House “he was willing to be imposed on provided he got his money.” The official reported that he had obtained “one letter from Clark’s niece that Callie D. House had written him” that could be used to prosecute Clark and House.19
Even without the evidence of the Bon Wier chapter members, the federal government charged Clark with obtaining money by impersonating an officer of the government. Prosecuting Clark’s case was Clarence Merritt, the well-connected son of a Texas county sheriff and state legislator. Merritt, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1916, had supported the nomination of Woodrow Wilson through forty-six ballots. The president had rewarded him with his job as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. Merritt eagerly joined in the Post Office Department, Justice Department, and Pension Bureau effort to stop the ex-slave movement once and for all.20
Merritt convened a grand jury and gathered witnesses from Bon Wier, along with government officials, to testify against Clark. Merritt charged that Clark had told nine ex-slaves that he had the authority to enroll their names so that they might receive a government pension. Like other agents, Clark always carried the association’s circulars bearing the insignia of an eagle. The members signed their names and each paid him a membership fee of one dollar.
In the trial before Judge Gordon James Russell, Merritt tried to prove that Clark had collected some $200 to $400 from ex-slaves in the area, implying that they would receive pensions from already appropriated funds. Even though the postal inspector found no one to testify that Clark had said he was a government agent, Merritt alleged that what he termed “bent and enfeebled ‘uncles’ and old black ‘mammies’” began to complain when they received no pension payments. He offered as evidence the letter the inspector had taken from Clark’s niece: “mailed on the Nashville & Memphis R.P.O. on June 6, 1916, addressed to the accused at Bon Wier, Texas, which is in the handwriting of Callie D. House, of Nashville, Tenn., and bears her genuine signature.” According to Merritt, Mrs. House had advised Clark on how he should handle the cases of persons “who did not reside in places where there was a sufficient number of victims to constitute a club.” Although the association itself was victimized by government harassment, Merritt, like government officials before him, characterized the ex-slaves as victims of those who attempted to organize them to demand that the government remedy its continued mass victimization. Using the term “ex-slaves” made sense to House, for it focused on their enslavement. However, the critical public and government officials used the term to reinforce the idea that the recruited members were ignorant, childlike consumers who needed protection from the association.
Callie House’s handwritten letter to Clark introduced by Merritt actually stated something quite different from what he charged. She said, “I tell the people that there has been something done in Congress for the ex-slaves, regardless of what anyone says, white or colored, but the business has not been completed. If it had, we would not have appointed you [Reverend A. Clark] as agent to give the ex-slaves a chance to get in the movement before the work is finished, which we are expecting at any time.” She expressed her hopes and her optimism that legislation would eventually pass.
Merritt focused on House’s statement that “there has been something done in Congress” rather than “the business has not been completed.” He argued that the letter promised the impossible; that the bill had passed and if ex-slaves became members, they would receive payment. He rejected the alternative interpretation, acknowledged by Judge Sanford during Callie House’s failed plea-bargain proceedings. Sanford’s interpretation had been otherwise. In his view her language meant that Mrs. House knew bills had been introduced repeatedly, hoped eventually one would pass, and organized ex-slaves to support the effort in their own interest. Callie House’s letter to Clark “authorized him to canvass all of Texas and four parishes of Louisiana for the purpose of organizing ex-slaves.”21
To encourage a belief that Clark’s guilt could be presumed, Merritt falsely claimed that Mrs. House had pled guilty before Judge Sanford. However, Merritt’s flimsy case against Clark collapsed before House’s trial was held. Merritt had presented no evidence that Clark had ever claimed to be a government agent and the letter, which had been seen by the allegedly defrauded members, made no such statements. Clark, described in the press as the “aged negro” defendant did not try to rebut Merritt’s case. He assumed Merritt was telling the truth when he said Mrs. House had, for some strategic reason, pleaded guilty. Consequently, using no lawyer and pleading his own case, Clark portrayed himself as a “victim” of House. He claimed to be the “innocent hireling” of Mrs. House, a black Amazon. “Uncle Tomming,” Clark invoked the racial paternalism of the white jury; he said he was “nothing but an unsophisticated old darky, unversed in the ways of the world and was the innocent dupe of Callie House, the notorious Negro from Nashville.” Paternalistic powers should protect a “silly negro” from this already convicted felon, pleaded Clark, not punish him.22
Five months after Clark’s April trial, Mrs. House appeared in court as her three-day trial began on the fourth Monday of September 1917. The Tennessean, unsurprisingly, sensationalized the trial, calling her, as the prosecutors did throughout, “Aunt Callie,” in keeping with the time when black adults were “Aunt” or “Uncle” to whites. Under the headline “Aunt Callie, Head of Ex-Slave Relief Body Ready for Trial,” the subheading read “Two hundred and Twenty Pound Negro Woman Gloriously Garbed, Center of Attraction in Federal Court—Members of Associati
on Charge Fraud.” She might have been “gloriously garbed” but it was the federal government, not members of the association, that was charging fraud. The paper went on to describe Mrs. House as discomfited briefly by the narrow doorway because of her weight. In her new black silk dress, “her velvet Merry Widow with the little touch of lavender, had become tilted to a decidedly undignified angle, Aunt Callie had begun to sweat.” The audience, “distracted by other cases being disposed of gave her time to compose herself sit at the counsel’s table and to take out a fan whereupon she assumed an air of bored tolerance.”23
In the hope that they would call themselves victims of Mrs. House, as Augustus Clark had in the Texas case, the prosecutors presented Reverend William Atkins of Lynchburg, Virginia, the president of the association, and Reverend Doc Parchment of Okolona, Mississippi, as witnesses. These men, unlike Clark, knew that Mrs. House had not pleaded guilty. Reverend Parchment attested to the authenticity of the certificate of membership beautifully embossed with the words “Love One Another” and stamped with a golden seal. The certificate indicated that the membership fees would be used to “aid the movement in securing the passage of the Ex-Slave Bounty and Pension bill” and to “aid the sick and bury the dead.”
The Tennessean reported that “The Rev. Doc was not quite certain just when it was Aunt Callie had led him to believe he was to receive the pension funds from the government.” But letters exchanged indicated he should not be “discouraged.” He testified that he could think of no evidence of fraud.24
Reverend Atkins’s testimony was also a “sore disappointment” to the prosecution. He had attended the movement’s conventions, heard the financial accounting, and observed the allocation of funds and swore in court to “Everything having been open and above board.” Affirming the association’s commitment to an open process and defending the organization’s operating procedures, Reverend Atkins testified that he saw nothing wrong with Callie House’s presence on the committees that made recommendations to the association’s convention so long as the convention approved the work. Government officials countered, telling the court that the fraud order was issued after “many certificates had been sent to the Pension Bureau by ex-slaves who insisted on having their bounties and benefits paid.” However, the government prosecutors presented no evidence of any ex-slaves who had been told by House that they could collect a pension.25
Reverend J. W. Clift of Alabama testified about the Petersburg, Virginia, convention that pretended it had “expelled” House and “I. S. Dixon [Dickerson] Callie’s right-hand man in an effort to satisfy the government after the issuance of the fraud order.” He and the other Association officers told of how they had reorganized as recommended by attorney Robert Abraham Lincoln Dick in the hope of having the fraud order lifted.
Callie House, on the witness stand, “maintained an air of self assurance throughout several hours of examination and grilling cross examination,” according to the Tennessean.26 She answered the prosecution’s questions about the association, trying to interject explanations about their local chapters’ work. Mrs. House testified how, despite the federal harassment, the chapters had continued to bury the dead and aid the sick, while agents and members also had continued to collect petitions. The prosecutor, Lee Douglas, pressed her to tell how money had been collected and sent to the national treasurer. She explained that since the imposition of the fraud order had been imposed, they had used most of the national office funds for travel expenses. The association paid House $50 per month— when they could afford to. She insisted that “she had not received yearly more than about $150.00 over and above the expenses connected with the national office expenses.”27
The prosecution focused on damning the Association’s political activities as fraudulent with no attention to the local charitable work of the chapters. Prosecutor Douglas denounced the movement’s “so-called” national conventions and “so-called” reports from local clubs, saying they deceived the “ignorant and illiterate negroes.” However, even with the two typed letters, the only letters not in Mrs. House’s handwriting in the government’s files, the evidence was inconclusive. In the absence of any evidence of income or expenditures, any funds collected by the national organization could easily have been used to pay for the agents; expenses for House and other national officers; for the conventions held in every state where they were active; and for mailings and circulars.28
In his charge to the jury after the three-day trial, Judge San-ford explained the government’s theory that she had used the mails to defraud and collected large sums. Defense attorney Stephens argued that she engaged in bona fide work to gain a worthwhile legal, legislative objective, whether she succeeded or not. The prosecution insisted Mrs. House was guilty and that she had conceived of the organization for the purpose of defrauding persons, “by making it appear ostensibly that persons would receive a benefit, when she alone would profit thereby.” The all-white, male jury found her guilty. The offense was punishable by a fine of $1,000 or imprisonment for up to five years or both. Mrs. House lacked the resources to pay a fine. When she stood before Judge Sanford, he sentenced her to only one year in prison, apparently no more persuaded of her criminality than at the failed plea-bargain proceeding.29
Callie House’s conviction, like the story of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who sought pensions, was mostly ignored. The Nashville papers reported her sentencing, but the papers around the nation focused on the war and preparedness and overlooked the story. Those stories about African Americans included the Chicago Tribune’s: “Negro Women Car Washers Take Men’s Places in Chicago Plant.” The only discussion of “civil rights” was actually about efforts to pass a bill guaranteeing insurance for soldiers who paid no premiums during the war or up to one year thereafter. African-American newspapers totally ignored the pension cause and the case.30
Outside the courtroom on the day of Mrs. House’s sentencing Reverend Atkins commented that without her, “the guiding spirit,” he had no idea what would become of the association. His expressed sentiment affirmed what everyone involved knew, Callie House was “the secret” on which the organization depended. Poor African Americans gathered outside the courtroom murmuring aloud as Reverend Atkins cried, “She kept it alive.” The collection of petitions, the finances, the local chapters, the lobbying and litigation—Callie House had kept it alive.31
In November 1917, upon the instructions of Attorney General Thomas Gregory, “the colored woman” Callie D. House, age fifty-two, entered the Missouri State Prison at Jefferson City, Missouri, to serve a one-year sentence. Prison records described her as “Negro,” “Baptist, Lecturer,” “educated,” and with black hair, brown eyes, and a “nut brown complexion.”
She was sent to the Jefferson City prison because the federal government had no facility available for female prisoners. Mrs. House was lucky that she was not incarcerated in a southern state prison. Female state prisoners were whipped, sexually abused, made the personal servants of contractors, and put to hard work in mines and farms.32
About six months after House’s incarceration, the federal government sentenced another female political prisoner to the Jefferson City facility. This woman, born to Jewish parents in Rochester, New York, also a seamstress by trade, was sentenced for protesting the military draft. One of the most famous radicals of her age, Emma Goldman had become an anarchist, war resister, sympathizer with the Soviet Union, and feminist. In the women’s wing, where these two activists lived, two thirds of their fellow prisoners were African Americans.33
Callie House was placed in the Jefferson City, Missouri, Penitentiary Women’s Wing because there was no federal prison for women.
Mrs. House left no written record of her time in prison, but Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life, prison records, and other materials describe the conditions in detail. Located in Jefferson City, the state capital, about one hundred miles from St. Louis on bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, the state priso
n was the largest in the United States. The facility housed 2,300 inmates, mostly male. In a period when prison reform was a major political and social welfare concern, Goldman saw the prison as “a model in many respects.” Compared to the “pest holes of 1893” on Blackwells Island in New York City, where she served a previous sentence, the Missouri prison cells had double the space.34
However, the Jefferson City cells lacked light and ventilation. The prisoners were made more miserable by the warden’s refusal to open the corridor windows except in very hot weather. But Goldman liked it that the prisoners had single cells and did not have to share. Still, the facility was overcrowded, with low sanitary standards, bad working conditions in the shops, poor medical services, and harsh disciplinary methods. The facility had no educational programs beyond two months of training to sew clothes for state profit.35
The women’s department housing Goldman, House, and ninety other female prisoners consisted of a long building with a cage of cells, four high and two deep facing in opposite directions in the center. Each cell measured seven feet wide, eight feet deep, and seven feet high, with solid steel ceilings, cement floors, and steel-barred fronts. Each had a toilet, a sink with running cold water, and a steel bunk fastened to the wall, with two bags of straw, one to use for a mattress, the other for a pillow. The remainder of the furnishings consisted of a crude table, chair, broom, and dustpan. Each woman received raspy brown muslin prison garb to replace her own clothes, which the matrons confiscated. The dresses, long and wide in 1890s style, fit like a tent. Cheap, uncomfortable shoes completed the outer garments.36
Emma Goldman was imprisoned for her antiwar efforts and served at the same time as House. Goldman wrote a memoir in which she described the prison.
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