Certain People

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  The Old Guard is not unaware of the blacks in the ghetto. Much of the Links’ fund-raising effort goes to support such organizations as the N.A.A.C.P., the Urgan League, and the United Negro College Fund. But socially, of course, they are beyond the pale, a painful embarrassment. Recently a woman from an Old Guard family demonstrated the prevailing attitude toward ghetto blacks. Driving with a friend through a run-down area of Washington, her car was stopped by a traffic light at an intersection, and she watched as a drunken young black man in a “Super Fly” outfit reeled across the street, bottle in hand. “Disgusting,” she whispered. “There is the cause of all our problems.” Her friend, more perceptive, said, “No, that is the result of all our problems.”

  Of the newly rich blacks, the Old Guard is disdainful. It considers these people gauche arrivistes. The Old Guard is critical of their conspicuous spending—on big houses, costly automobiles, and lavish entertaining. The new rich, meanwhile, call the Old Guard Uncle and Aunt Toms, for these are people who, after all, have lived quietly and peacefully, and have even prospered, for many years alongside whites by adopting a don’t-rock-the-boat philosophy. The new rich would very much like to rock the boat—not only the boat manned by whites, but also the one manned by the Old Guard. The members of the Old Guard have no use for black revolutionary movements, Africanism, Afro hair styles, and even dislike the term “black.” “Those people who shout Black Power are not going to include people like me when they get it,” says one Old Guard member tartly. Another says, “I do not think black is beautiful. Some black people are beautiful. But a great many are not.”

  Mrs. Anne Weaver Teabeau is Washington Old Guard. Though she has lived most of her seventy-odd years in other cities, she returned several years ago as a widow to Washington, the city she has always considered home. After all, Mrs. Teabeau is the great-granddaughter of Frederick Douglass, the great Abolitionist who moved from Rochester to Washington in 1871. Mrs. Teabeau is a dainty, light-skinned woman, and she sits in the equally dainty drawing room of her Washington town house, surrounded by family memorabilia-portraits of the white-bearded patriarch, antique china and silver, photographs of the Douglass mansion on Capitol Hill and the twenty-room family country house, “L’Ouverture Villa,” in Anacostia. Though Frederick Douglass died in 1895, before Mrs. Teabeau was born, she is full of tales of him that have been handed down—of his daring escape from a Maryland plantation, of how his name had been originally Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, and how he changed it to Douglass after a favorite character in “The Lady of the Lake.” She tells of the period when he joined John Brown, how he made his way to Canada and then to the British Isles, where he was taken up by London society, and why he first settled in Rochester—it was an Abolitionist center. Even in Rochester, however, there was discrimination. When Douglass’s daughter, Mrs. Teabeau’s grandmother, was first sent to school the principal made her sit in a cloakroom. When Douglass learned of this, he removed his daughter from the school and had her educated privately.

  Frederick Douglass was, among other things, an avid croquet player, and the Anacostia croquet court was the scene of many family battles. Mrs. Teabeau produces an 1875 letter from Douglass to her grandmother, describing a contest between Douglass and his son: “Lewis is the son of his father and is mad as a March hare when he is being badly beaten. His voice grows hoarse and he fairly trembles with rage. The worst of it is, he always thinks that I presume upon my parental authority, and I in turn think that he presumes on his filial relation.” Most of all, Mrs. Teabeau is filled with hubris and family pride. “A lot of people named Douglass claim to be related to us, but aren’t,” she says. “The other day a man telephoned me claiming to be a cousin. ‘I’m descended from John,’ he said. I told him, ‘There was no John.’”

  Of the younger, more vocal activist groups in Washington, Mrs. Teabeau says, “They stereotype us. They don’t give us credit for all we’ve done for them. To hear them tell it, only the activists have done anything.”

  Mrs. Teabeau is a former president of the Washington chapter of Links, and once, when she suggested to her membership that it might be nice if the Links at least visited Washington’s relatively new Museum of African Art, the Links, to a lady, politely refused. “We have nothing to do with Africa,” one member told her. When the museum celebrated its tenth anniversary in the summer of 1975 with a large reception—honoring, among other notables, Hubert Humphrey, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Henry Kissinger—over six hundred invitations went out, to all of the Old Guard. An attendance of at least a thousand had been hoped for. Fewer than three hundred people showed up, only one of them a Link—Mrs. Teabeau. Even she had originally not planned to attend the party, and knew that her appearance there would be unpopular with her friends. But the museum’s director, Warren Robbins, finally persuaded her to put in a brief appearance. She was, he pointed out, on the museum’s board of directors. Also, the museum is housed in her great-grandfather’s A Street mansion.

  The Museum of African Art is only one of the battlegrounds that have Washington’s blacks divided against each other. “Nothing of interest or importance came out of Africa,” says Mrs. Mary Gibson Hundley, another member of the Old Guard. “Our civilization gained from Greece, from Rome, from Europe and the Mediterranean, even from China. It gained from Egypt, but from nothing south of the Sudan.” But this is only part of the problem. With no support from the Old Guard at the top, and no support from the ghetto blacks at the bottom, the museum is also getting only minimal support from the new-rich blacks in the middle. Partly this is because Mr. Robbins, the museum’s founder, is white. In these black circles, it is also whispered that Mr. Robbins is Jewish. It is also suspected that Robbins is running the museum for his personal profit. (Actually, he has for some time been trying to turn the museum over to the Smithsonian because running it has become such a heavy financial drain.) Also, Mr. Robbins may have been unwise in choosing the Douglass mansion to house his collection. Frederick Douglass’s place in black history has, over the years, grown somewhat shaky. Though an Abolitionist, he has become, in time, a symbol of Old Guardism. It was his son who established the exclusive summer resort at Highland Beach on Chesapeake Bay, which was and still is only for “certain” black people. And Frederick Douglass’s second wife, who carried him into Washington society and dinners at the White House, was white. To some people, Frederick Douglass has become, of all things, an Uncle Tom.

  Dividing Washington is more, however, than a simple conflict of the Old Guard versus the new, old money versus new, ancient family versus upstart, native Washingtonian versus out-of-towner—though that has a lot to do with the situation. Mayor Washington, for example, born in Georgia, is considered a parvenu. But his wife, the former Bennetta Bullock, is Old Guard and, according to a friend, “The Bullocks are an old and distinguished Washington family. When you say ‘the Bullocks,’ you lower your eyes to half-mast. Her father, Reverend Bullock, was the black minister.” But another Old Guard Washingtonian sniffs and says it is more a difference in styles of living and styles of speech. “Her family came here from North Carolina in the twenties, only fifty years ago!” (“Mayor Washington talks like a Negro,” one woman says, “but of course his wife doesn’t.”) But even more it is a difference in caste, and a caste based on texture of hair and color of skin and quality of facial features. Most of Washington’s Old Guard blacks have straight hair, fair skin—some are even blond with blue eyes—and straight noses and thin lips. For these reasons, they set themselves apart. They are members of what is informally called “The Blue Blood Club”—that is, if one’s skin is light enough so that the blue veins in the wrist show through, one is a member. The resort that Frederick Douglass’s son established at Highland Beach was restricted to these people.

  The Old Guard families include, in addition to the Douglasses and Bullocks, the Terrells, the Langstons, the Wormleys, the McGuires, the Bonds (“Max Bond’s wife is a Clement from Atlanta”), the Bruces, the Gi
bbses, the Gibsons, the Syphaxes, the Cobbs, the Francises, the Brookes, and various combinations thereof as Terrells married Langstons, and so on. Though it is considered poor taste to mention it, most of these families have white ancestors of whom they are privately rather proud. Perhaps the most extraordinary black family in Washington—though they are not very black—are the Syphaxes. The first Syphax, William, was an itinerant preacher who arrived in Washington from Canada in the early part of the nineteenth century and settled in nearby Alexandria. As a minister, he was a spellbinder, and as a spellbinder he prospered. Whether he had ever been a slave, which is unknown, he had by 1820 purchased his freedom because his name appears in the census of that year as a free man. In ancient times, a Syphax was a Numidian king. A Syphax was also a general in Hannibal’s army during the Punic Wars. William Syphax’s name was originally Anderson, and so today’s Syphaxes cannot claim these illustrious ancestors. But it is a point of family pride that their forebear was clearly a man of scholarship to have chosen such a distinguished, if unusual, name.

  William Syphax prospered sufficiently to buy freedom for his wife and three daughters. His son, Charles, however, worked as a slave on the Virginia plantation of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington, where, in his capacity as chief butler in the Custis dining room, he was quite happy. Charles was a great pet of the Custis family, and chose not to be manumitted. George Washington Parke Custis, meanwhile, had a daughter, Maria, by a woman named Arianna Carter, one of his house slaves. Charles Syphax and Maria fell in love and, saying that she would rather marry a black man than lead the life led by the other mulattos on the plantation, Maria asked for permission to marry Charles. Her father, Mr. Custis, was delighted, and gave the pair a formal wedding in the parlor of the great house, with an Episcopal minister presiding at the ceremony. Upon their marriage, furthermore, Custis freed both Charles and Maria and, as a dowry, gave Maria fifteen acres of his Arlington estate.

  Custis had no white sons of his own, but he did have a legitimate white daughter, Mary, who became the heiress to the plantation. Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee, who was connected with all the great families of Virginia. The family-proud Lees of Virginia may be surprised to learn that they have black half-cousins named Syphax living nearby. And Barnaby Conrad, the author, lecturer, and San Francisco socialite, who also descends from Martha Custis Washington, and who takes his Eastern ancestors very seriously, was surprised not long ago to find a Sephardic Jew named Levy in his family tree. He may be amused to know that he also has black relatives.

  Charles and Maria Syphax had ten children—William II, Elinor, Cornelius, Charles, Cobert, Shaulton, Austin, Ennis, Maria, and John—a sufficient preponderance of male heirs to assure a profusion of people named Syphax in the Washington telephone book today. Nearly all of Charles and Maria Syphax’s children achieved an education and some degree of success. John Syphax, for example, was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. William Syphax II was perhaps the most illustrious member of his generation. An outspoken civil rights activist, he was hired in 1850 by the Department of the Interior, where he worked for the next forty years as the chief receptionist in the offices of nine Secretaries. In his desk, William Syphax kept an autograph book which he asked each distinguished visitor to sign. The blue leather book, which has been preserved by the family, is dog-eared and worn, but the signatures are still vivid. The book contains the autographs of six United States Presidents, headed by a humble “A. Lincoln,” as well as of Frederick Douglass, who wrote, next to his name, “Truth is of no color.” After the Civil War, the Secretary of the Interior, who appointed the trustees of the newly established Colored Public Schools of Washington and Georgetown, selected William Syphax as the schools’ first president and superintendent. A school is named after him today.

  During the Civil War, the Custis-Lee estate was confiscated by the federal government for nonpayment of taxes, and with it went Maria Syphax’s fifteen acres. But William Syphax, who had influential friends in Washington, succeeded in getting a Congressional investigation into the family’s title to his mother’s land. Congress passed a special bill, signed by President Andrew Johnson in 1866, returning the acreage to the Syphaxes. At the time, to avoid “sullying the name of the Father of Our Country,” by affirming the fact of Maria’s illegitimacy, Congress sidestepped the matter of her descent from Martha Washington, but did concede that George Washington Parke Custis obviously “had a paternal interest” in Maria.

  For years, many Syphaxes had houses in the little compound in Arlington which, indeed, was a small village with a main street and a trolley stop called “Syphax.” During those years, however, the Arlington Syphaxes became somewhat estranged from their cousins who lived in Washington because of Virginia’s segregationist policies. The minute the trolley crossed the Potomac River, all blacks had to move to the last three rows of the car, a move the Washington Syphaxes were not willing to make, even if it meant not visiting their Virginia relatives.

  Syphaxes have been prominent in Washington for four generations, particularly as educators, and they continue to be a force in the city today. Dr. Burke Syphax, for example, is chief of surgery at both Freemen’s Hospital and the Howard University Medical School. John W. Syphax is a retired, Harvard-educated foreign affairs official with the State Department, and his father, another John, spent fifty-two of his seventy-odd years as a Washington school principal. William Custis Syphax, Jr., a grandson of Charles Syphax, Jr., attended Howard and American Universities, and for thirty-six years worked at the Department of Labor, specializing in veterans’ affairs. His wife, Orieanna, has worked in Washington education and nursing programs for twenty-nine years. His aunt, Carrie Syphax Watson, was another influential school teacher. Syphaxes always marry well. Mrs. John W. Syphax, for example, was Melba Welles, whose father, James Lesesne Welles, was a prominent minister, and whose mother was a college dean of women. Though the Welleses are from Columbia, South Carolina, the family, on the Reverend Mr. Welles’s mother’s side, descends from ancient French Huguenot stock. With money on both sides, John and Melba Syphax live in a four-story town house in Q Street that was a family wedding present to them in 1920.

  During World War II, when more land was needed for Arlington Cemetery, the Roosevelt administration persuaded the Syphaxes to part with their Arlington acreage, which adjoined the cemetery, in exchange for another piece of property. The Syphaxes feel that they got a much more desirable parcel in the trade, and the family cemetery in Syphax Village was moved to Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. It is on the new property that William T. Syphax now lives. William T., whom the family calls Tommy to distinguish him from some half-dozen other Williams, is probably the richest Syphax, though he and his wife live in a modest, almost Spartan, brick house. In 1954, William T. Syphax and his wife, Marguerite, started Syphax Enterprises, Inc., a construction and management firm that today earns $8,000,000 a year, and is one of the twenty leading black firms in the United States. In Fairfax County, there is a Syphax Drive, where the company built a 324-unit apartment complex in 1965. In addition to managing apartment units that now number in the thousands, the Syphaxes are currently building the National Children’s Center in Washington. It pleases the family, too, that Tommy’s firm is handling the million-dollar reconstruction of the old Cairo Hotel, right around the corner from where the first William Syphax had his house at Seventeenth and P streets. Tommy Syphax, an urbane, pipe-smoking man in his middle fifties, says, “None of us has ever accepted being second-class. I set out to do something for the race. Even if it wasn’t because of my family, as a black man I wanted to accomplish something in life.” Both Syphaxes are members of more than twenty civic boards; for more than twenty years, Tommy Syphax has directed the choir at Mt. Olive Baptist Church (his father founded St. John’s Baptist Church in Washington), and his chic, pretty wife is one of the two black women in the country who are certified property managers.

  The only living descendant of th
e autograph-collecting William Syphax is his granddaughter, Mrs. Mary Gibson Hundley, a trim, light-coffee-colored widow with manners and bearing quite befitting the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the wife of the first President of the United States. Mrs. Hundley lives in a small, elegant town house in a residential block on Thirteenth Street, where she is surrounded by antiques and other family heirlooms, including her maternal grandfather’s autograph collection. Mrs. Hundley, an honors graduate of Radcliffe who for years taught languages at Washington’s prestigious Dunbar High School, had no children because she was a victim of another kind of prejudice; women teachers used to lose their jobs if they became pregnant. Still, she is enormously family-proud and, speaking in a broad-A Boston accent, is a woman of strong opinions. “I am not black,” she says, “and I do not like to be called black. I don’t have black features, hair, color, or speech. I don’t like to be called Negro, either, because ‘Negro’ is simply the Spanish word for black. I like the expression the French use. I am an Américaine de couleur.” Mrs. Hundley produces a portrait of her grandfather, an arrestingly handsome man with piercing eyes and high cheekbones. “Do you notice the thin lips? That’s his Custis inheritance, and he was very slim and tall—like the Custises. His wife was a Miss Mary Browne, another very old and distinguished family here—there’s also a school named after her—and the Brownes were part Cherokee Indian. The finest Indians, of course, were the Cherokees. In fact, when Grandmother Syphax died, she was listed as an American Indian on her death certificate. So I am part white, part black, and part red, and it is simply incorrect to call people of mixed ancestry black, and I deplore the term. I deplore people who go around looking like savages with their bushy hair. It is not an African style, and anybody who knows anything about African history knows that the African tribespeople kept their hair cropped short, for cleanliness. At Radcliffe, I was just another one of the girls. Why, I was invited to parties in Boston houses where they wouldn’t even receive the Irish!”