The Black Calhouns

by Gail Lumet Buckley

  By the time Lena was born, the house still belonged to one family—but it was definitely divided. The ground floor, kitchen, and third-floor former marital bedroom belonged to Edwin; Cora had the entire second floor front and back parlors, one of which Lena slept in; Burke was on the top floor now that Ted and Edna had moved out. Burke was teasing and sweet, but obviously had little time for Lena. Burke moved between his parents, taking trays to Cora, who ate like a bird, while patronizing the German delicatessen on Bushwick Avenue for himself, Edwin, and Lena, who was being taught to enjoy “bachelor” food. But now Edwin had to be a grandfather-grandmother-father-mother to little Lena, and he made her oatmeal religiously every morning. Beyond “Good morning, Mrs. Horne” and “Good morning, Mr. Horne,” Cora and Edwin still did not speak. Longer communications came from notes via Burke.

  Lena’s particular block on Chauncey Street had been desegregated by the Hornes—not that the neighborhood cared. There were clusters of middle-class black families in Brooklyn on what was basically the border of Bushwick and Stuyvesant Heights (now Bedford-Stuyvesant). Typically, the black families lived on the economic high end of their streets. The Hornes lived in one of four identical single-family brownstone row houses, built in the 1890s, each with an iron fence and a stoop. Across the street were old-style wooden tenement apartments, populated mostly by Irish. In winter the brownstones looked forlorn next to an Irish-owned farm on one side and a Swedish-owned livery stable cum garage on the other. Boys Welcome Hall, a gymnasium on the corner, was where the Horne brothers grew up playing basketball. But Lena had no playmates: she could not play with the farmer’s children, because they were boys; and she could not play with the livery stable children, because Cora feared dirt and automobile oil—not to mention horse manure. As for the Irish across the street in the tenement apartments—Cora said they “did not speak well.” One little boy from the Chauncey Street tenement, a year older than Lena, grew up to be Jackie Gleason. Lena certainly would not have been allowed to know him. With the terrible elitism of the Talented Tenth, and the old Southern Negro way of looking down on poor whites, Cora was almost as prejudiced as the Southerners in her worst nightmare.

  Edwin might be the father-mother figure, but evenings before bedtime always belonged to Cora, who was moving spiritually from Ethical Culture to Bahá’í. Considered by some to be a non-Christian cult, Bahá’í advocated racial equality and held integrated meetings throughout the United States. Lena went to Bahá’í meetings with Cora. Cora was a serious spiritual pilgrim. Although she had given up Catholicism for Ethical Culture, she still heard Lena’s Hail Marys and Catholic prayers nightly. All of Cora’s children had been baptized and raised as Catholics. As a pedagogue, she probably admired the firm but gentle discipline and strong sense of morality that nuns tried to instill in even the youngest child.

  Lena had been baptized at Holy Rosary Church on Chauncey Street, but Cora sent her to the Brooklyn Ethical Culture nursery school. Either Edwin or Burke took Lena to nursery school and picked her up. One of her classmates was little Betty Comden of future Broadway fame in the duo Comden and Green. There was a lost photograph of Lena and Betty side by side. Lena was wearing a paper crown and grinning happily. Allowed to play at last! But enough of liberalism—Cora sent Lena to kindergarten at St. Peter Claver School. Father Bernard J. Quinn was the white pastor of St. Peter Claver, a pioneer black Catholic ministry in Brooklyn. Father Quinn built a parish center so that neighborhood people could have a place to showcase their talents. Father Paul Jervis, pastor of St. Martin of Tours parish in Bedford-Stuyvesant and author of Quintessential Priest: The Life of Father Bernard J. Quinn, wrote that young Lena first performed in front of an audience at St. Peter Claver: “She is remembered as a child singing in the children’s choir of St. Peter Claver Church, then making her debut as a fledgling singer on the basement stage.” For his work among black Catholics, Father Quinn is being considered for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

  Lena wore a key around her neck and had a Hershey bar and an apple waiting for her on the kitchen table after school. She also had many dolls, all gifts from her father, needing her attention. No one thought anything of leaving an obedient child of six or seven at home alone in the afternoon for an hour or so. In nice weather, she always played in the garden in the back under the cherry tree. Soon Burke would appear and then disappear. More often than not, Edwin met her at school and they would walk hand in hand to Bushwick Avenue for some nice delicatessen for supper. Edwin smoked slim aromatic cigars, very elegant in photographs. From time to time an expensive doll or a rabbit fur coat would arrive for Lena from Teddy. Once or twice a year Ted himself might appear out of the blue. Lena was happy at home on Chauncey Street with Granddad and Grandmother. Still, she kissed the small photograph of her mother, Edna, every night.

  Twice, Cora allowed Lena to visit her mother. Both visits were disasters. The first involved taking Lena onstage, and the second, in the South, involved fleeing the site of a lynching that was about to happen and that Lena had nightmares of long after.

  Teddy, meanwhile, was on the West Coast having a fabulous time. He met up with his cousin Frank Smith Jr., who was living in Los Angeles and working as a photographer. When Teddy died he left a trunkful of photographs and scrapbooks. There were many pictures taken by Frank Smith Jr.—mostly of fun times at the beach with pretty girls and boxer Joe “Baby” Gans, the lightweight champion of the world. The National Negro Baseball League was founded in 1920—Ted would have been very happy. He also must have been pleased to see the 1923 birth of the Rens, the first full-salaried black professional basketball team, named for Harlem’s Renaissance Ballroom, where they played. Originally from Brooklyn, and direct heirs of Teddy’s Smart Set teams, the Rens became the iconic black basketball team—ahead of the Harlem Globetrotters. Teddy Horne lived the “sporting life” to the max. The photos with Irene, who became his second wife, say everything about his pose as a dandy and a lothario. In reality, he was more interested in talking than acting. He was about as unromantic and unsentimental as a person could be, but he was superconfident and certainly pleased with himself. He always looked younger than his age and never allowed himself to be bored. How nice for him that his semi-illegal activities would involve spending all his time at sporting events—with hundred-dollar ringside seats on July 4, 1923, at the Jack Dempsey–Tommy Gibbons fight in Montana, for example. He kept a wonderful record of his 1920s with his collection of speakeasy cards. He belonged to the “Exclusive Social Literary Club” (Detroit), “Citizen’s Progressive Club” (Pittsburgh), and “Pullman Athletic Club” (Chicago). My personal favorite among Teddy’s speakeasy cards was the “certificate of membership” issued to “Mr. Teddy Horne” in October 1924 to the Fifty Club (city unknown) with the expiration date listed as “never.”

  In 1922 Cora went to Washington for the meeting of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. But 1923 and 1924 were Cora’s busy years. In 1923 the National Association of Colored Women selected her to represent New York, among other prominent women. As usual, she was also a director of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Federation, which had black as well as Jewish Big Brothers and Big Sisters. According to George L. Beiswinger’s One to One: The Story of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Movement in America:

  Mrs. Edwin F. Horne, an Urban League leader … was a director of the Big Brother and Big Sister Federation of 1923. She was an authority on the special problems encountered in black Big Sisters work, which was just getting underway during the early 1920s.

  Cora also became a Republican Party activist. During the 1924 Calvin Coolidge campaign she was a national organizer and secretary of the eastern division of the National Republican Women’s Auxiliary. This was a big deal for a black woman. The black press sought her out. From the national edition of the Chicago Defender, October 31, 1925:

  Mrs. Cora Calhoun Horne, corresponding secretary of the eastern division of the National Republican Women’s auxiliary, Y
.W.C.A. and Red Cross worker, statistician, editor and social organizer, is one of Brooklyn’s busiest figures. During the last presidential campaign she was on the national speakers bureau of the Republican party.

  The 1924 Democratic National Convention, held in New York City, was integrated, but the Republican National Convention, held in Cleveland, was segregated. Besides failing to integrate its national meeting, Cora’s party did nothing about the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely restricted the number of “Negroes of African descent” allowed to enter the United States. It was typical of American racial paranoia that just when the United States wanted to reject “Negroes of African descent” the rest of the civilized world was clamoring to welcome them. It started with the war—and the capture of West African art from the former German colonies. Always receptive to the “exotic,” Paris had responded to the exhibit of African art as it had responded to the Russian ballet before the war—with wild enthusiasm. Cubism was born when Picasso changed the faces of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to look like African masks. The French love affair with black Americans, which began in World War I with the celebrated valor of Edwin’s “Harlem Hellfighters,” continued throughout the 1920s. This time, instead of the 369th Regiment, it was Josephine Baker, who had started out in the chorus of Shuffle Along.

  The nonmusical theater was also interested in black stories. Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, starring the great black actor Charles Gilpin, opened in November 1920 at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. It moved uptown in January 1921 and Gilpin received a Drama League Award. O’Neill was at his most controversial in 1924. All God’s Chillun Got Wings starred Paul Robeson as an educated black man and Mary Blair (Mrs. Edmund Wilson) as his abusive white wife. When it was learned that the drama required that Blair kiss Robeson’s hand, there were editorial demands that the play be banned. The play finally opened to decidedly mixed reviews—but thanks to the controversy, both young O’Neill and young Robeson were no longer unknowns. (Robeson was already known by fans of college football as a “Walter Camp all-American” player, one of the best in the country.) And the hottest ticket on Broadway for 1920 was a black play, Miss Lulu Bett, from the novel by Zona Gale, which became a Broadway smash with white actors in blackface and starred the extraordinary white actor Henry Hull as a totally believable black man.

  Prohibition was a bad thing for America, but very good for Harlem. During Prohibition, Harlem was as close to Paris as America got. “Gentleman” Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York City, a charming rogue, put Harlem after dark at the top of the VIP tourist list. The Cotton Club was used to royalty, who got the same chop suey as everybody else. The married mayor had a girlfriend in the Follies—everybody knew, nobody cared. Gentleman Jimmy was up to his neck in Tammany shenanigans—nobody batted an eye. He was the right man for the times, and he certainly knew nightclubs, having spent almost every night of his mayoralty in them. Harlem had everything a tourist with plenty of money and a thirst for illegal pleasures could desire. As long as he stuck to the expensive places, he would be more or less protected. The Cotton Club was, of course, the jewel in the crown of New York’s up-all-night life. After the theater, rich tourists and celebrities went to the midnight show to have a chop suey supper and hopefully see a gangster. The Cotton Club, big and garish, put on a swinging black show for whites only in the midst of a black neighborhood. The shows always had famous bands, terrific singers and dancers, comedians, songs from Tin Pan Alley greats, and beautiful girls in every color except very dark. They worked three shows a night. Everyone who was anyone went to the Cotton Club. An exception to the no-blacks rule was always made for certain black celebrities or gangsters—certain Harlem numbers kings, for example. They were always seated near the kitchen. Very near the Cotton Club there were other popular nightclubs where blacks and whites actually mingled—there were even some clubs that would not admit whites. But all night, everywhere along Harlem’s broad Parisian boulevards, there was laughter and music and traffic that stilled only toward dawn.

  Harlem did have a daytime life, however; twenty-five-year-old Dr. Frank Smith Horne, a Harlem ophthalmologist, could attest to that. Frank, a graduate of Boys High School, and a winner of letters in track and field at City College, was known as the smartest Horne brother, the intellectual. He had practiced ophthalmology for two years with his uncle in Chicago before returning to New York in 1923 to open his Harlem practice. Frank and his cousin Dr. Antoine “Judge” Graves Jr. opened practices in Harlem at more or less the same time. Neither young doctor was doing what he really wanted to do. The cousins both tolerated their day jobs. Frank wrote poetry and essays on the side while being an eye doctor; and Judge, the violinist cheered by Atlanta’s white critics, was a dentist. As young middle-class black men, they were both lucky to have work that brought them security. Frank threw himself into extracurricular activities. As a joiner, he was not that unhappy to be a second-tier, part-time, younger member of the Harlem Renaissance. But poor Judge threw himself into alcohol and a sad private life.

  In 1924 there were basically only two outlets for young black writers: the NAACP’s Crisis and the Urban League’s Opportunity. That year Opportunity published Frank’s review of a black poetry anthology. He titled the review “A Call to Makers of Black Verse”:

  Your task is definite, grand, and fine. You are to sing the attributes of a soul. Be superbly conscious of the many tributaries to our pulsing stream of life. You must articulate what the hidden sting of the slaver’s lash leaves reverberating in its train—the subtle hates, the burnt desires, sudden hopes, and dark despairs … Sing, O black poets, for song is all we have!

  In 1925 Frank won poetry prizes given by both Opportunity and Crisis. Under a pseudonym he submitted Letters Found Near a Suicide, a collection of eleven poems, to The Crisis for the Amy Spingarn poetry award. It won the second prize (thirty dollars). First prize was won by Langston Hughes—the Cleveland teenager had become a grown-up New Yorker. Frank’s long poem “Letters Found Near a Suicide” is unique in New Negro poetry—these are intimate, semi-mysterious farewells to young college friends without a single reference to race. Frank may have had other things on his mind. Sometime after college, Frank, the college runner, contracted polio. He recovered, except for one leg. He walked with a cane and obviously would never run again. One of the “Suicide” notes concerned a college runner:

  At your final drive

  Through the finish line

  Did not my shout

  Tell of the

  Triumphant ecstasy

  of victory …?

  Live

  As I have taught you

  To run, Boy—

  It’s a short dash …

  But Frank was a popular member of Harlem’s young intelligentsia, with cosmopolitan friendships and many girlfriends. Women loved his soft voice and gentle manner. Too many Harlem Renaissance writers were “befriended” by creepy white patrons. Frank was never in danger. As a part-time, second-echelon Renaissance poet with a bachelor of science degree, he would have little or no chance for sponsors. But the ophthalmologist by day was a founding member of the KRIGWA Little Theatre Movement, the serious Harlem amateur dramatics club, and wrote book reviews for Opportunity. He got into big trouble, however, when he panned Walter White’s second novel. According to David Levering Lewis’ wonderful When Harlem Was in Vogue, “In substance, the NAACP demanded an apology from the Urban League.”

  Unlike the Cotton Club clientele, Frank actually belonged to the part of Harlem after dark that did mingle with whites. Frank’s Harlem nightlife had its own white tourists—artists and intelligentsia bringing their own motives and baggage. Frank was certainly a popular second-tier figure. He won the Opportunity prize for criticism and Opportunity literary prizes in 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, and 1932. Although Walter White never forgave Frank for his withering review of White’s novel, Frank also won Crisis literary prizes in 1925, 1926, and 1928. Critic Ronald Primeau divided Frank’s poetry
into three types: “quest,” meaning athletics; black heritage; and Christianity, using Christian images to connect black religion, black spirituality, and black militancy. Many of Frank’s poems are included in anthologies, and two were translated for inclusion in a 1929 German anthology.

  But Frank was about to experience culture shock when he agreed to become acting dean of students at Fort Valley High and Industrial School (later Fort Valley State University) in Georgia. He actually became an instructor, dean, acting president, and track coach—despite the polio.

  In the fall of 1924 Cora Horne was seldom at home; she was busy with her first election year. Burke and Edwin, more than ever, were Lena’s companions and babysitters. Edwin was lonely Lena’s beau ideal. She later said that he gave her “companionship on a grave and adult level.” They took walks all over Brooklyn. They went to the museum, to Prospect Park, and to the public library to borrow books. And they went across the bridge. Edwin took Lena to see Marilyn Miller in Peter Pan. She was more excited by having traveled so far with her grandfather than she was by the show.

  Lena had seen her mother twice in four years. One afternoon that busy election season, Edna essentially “kidnapped” Lena—snatching her via a cousin from the Chauncey Street garden. As usual, Lena had been playing after school under the cherry tree in the back garden with her dolls, when an unknown white woman appeared to say that she was a friend of Lena’s mother and that Edna was sick and wanted to see Lena. The woman was actually one of Edna’s actress cousins who lived in Chelsea and passed as white. The mother-daughter reunion was tearful. Here was the mother whom Lena had longed for, whose picture she had kissed every night. Lena did not really understand what Edna meant when she told her that Teddy planned to “kidnap” her. Actually, it was Edna who did the “kidnapping.” Teddy clearly had absolutely no interest in living with his seven-year-old offspring.