Climbing Up to Glory

by Wilbert L. Jenkins

  EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE ECONOMIC SECURITY

  Believing that they held the key to their own economic progress, freedmen in large numbers invested their savings in the Freedmen’s Savings Bank when it was established during the early years of Reconstruction. On March 3, 1865, Congress passed a law creating the National Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company whose function was “to receive on deposit such sums of money as may... be offered... by or on behalf of persons heretofore held in slavery in the United States, or their descendants, and investing the same in the stocks, bonds, Treasury notes and other securities of the United States.” Those who created the institution hoped that it would do for the freedmen “that which savings banks have done for the workingmen of the North.”66 Throughout the South, blacks began to deposit their money—often brought in bundles of paper, rags, and old stockings—in the various local branches.67 Many thought that if they put their money in the bank, they would show whites that blacks were thrifty and industrious and not lazy. Moreover, they were adamant in their support of the bank, believing that it was the duty of every black person who had a dollar to spare to deposit it because the bank was doing much to advance the cause of black people. The Freedmen’s Savings Bank was a morale booster and a source of inspiration for blacks. The distinguished and much-admired Frederick Douglass was at one time president of the national branch. Whenever former slaves went into a local Freedmen’s Bank, they would see finely dressed blacks working as tellers.

  Freed blacks struggled against great odds to save money and deposit it in the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. A reporter for the New York Tribune told his readers: “I know of one colored washerwoman, who has a family to support, that has in one of these banks over $260 in gold and silver. I know an old black man—all his life a slave—who deposited at one time, soon after the branch was established, $380 in gold and silver. He said he earned it while a slave by working at night by the light of a pine-torch, after he had done all the overseer demanded of him.” Another freedman brought $700 in gold to deposit, which he had kept concealed for twelve years. But large deposits were rare. Most freedmen had very little money. What was important to many of the poor, however, according to one scholar, “was the idea of saving toward a better life.” Having a savings account meant freedom and advancement, a chance to “get on in the world.”68 Louisa Anderson, a thirty-five-year-old former slave and widow with three children, managed to save $16 from her meager earnings as a servant. An illiterate teamster named Oscar Gibbs, who guessed his age as between thirty and forty and had to provide for a family of nine, had a bank account, although it contained only $4.50. One depositor later recalled: “I can remember that I used to walk up to the bank and put in the few pennies that I could scrape together.” Indeed, freedmen saved money by the penny, nickel, and dime—the average amount deposited at one of the 890 branches in July 1874 was only ninety-two cents. These small sums should not be dismissed too lightly. In 1869 the average wage for a farm laborer was $15.50 per month. In 1870, $60 would buy several acres of land, three head of cattle, or ten hogs. It might represent one-third of a farm laborer’s yearly income, excluding board.69

  Freedmen used the wealth acquired through savings to engage in business as individuals and as groups. Mary Barbour’s father was a successful shoemaker after the war near New Bern, North Carolina. 70 Blacks organized the Chesapeake Marine Railroad and Dry Dock Company in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1865. It would remain in operation until 1883, providing employment for over 300 black mechanics. Its success was due, in no small part, to the skillful leadership of Isaac Myers. The company was founded as a consequence of the pressure placed upon black caulkers by white caulkers. Due to either unfair competitive methods, prejudice, or force, blacks were driven out of the shipyards. Fortunately for black carpenters, the white carpenters finally agreed among themselves not to work in those yards where black carpenters were employed. The result was the organization of a shipyard owned and controlled by freedmen where their fellow workmen might labor. Railways were built, and furnaces and workshops were erected. Now, the black carpenters and caulkers could begin their work.71

  Not to be outdone, some freedwomen also became entrepreneurs. They ran boardinghouses and opened restaurants and grocery stores. Hager Ann Baker, for example, a waitress during slavery, opened a grocery store in Savannah after the Civil War.72 Another Georgian, Annie L. Burton, was a domestic in the North when her sister died and left an eleven-year-old son. In an effort to start a new life, Burton and the youth moved to Green Cove Springs, Florida. “My idea was to get a place as chambermaid at Green Cove Springs through the influence of the head waiter at a hotel there, whom I knew. After I got into Jacksonville, the idea of keeping a restaurant came to me. I found a little house of two rooms where we could live, and the next day I found a place to start my restaurant.” It was nothing fancy. Burton purchased a stove and then secured second-hand furniture and other things she needed from a dealer.73 In Dallas County, Texas, Jane Johnson Calloway, who had been a slave, opened one of the county’s largest and most profitable coal businesses.74

  Unfortunately, a number of these black businesses folded. For a people only recently freed from slavery and desirous of demonstrating their thrift to whites and serving as role models for young blacks, failure sometimes proved devastating. Of course, since most freedmen had little business experience, they fell prey to unscrupulous promoters. At Savannah, for example, $50,000 was invested in a venture that proved worthless, and $40,000 was invested in a land and lumber enterprise that failed.75

  Labor unions were another means to obtain economic advancement. Former slaves, once organized, could use their near-monopoly over certain trades to force concessions from employers. Even before the longshoremen, destined to become the most powerful black union in Charleston, organized officially in late 1868, they had already engaged in two successful strikes.76 Other black urban laborers such as the stevedores in Richmond, longshoremen in New Orleans, stevedores in Savannah, mechanics in Columbus, coopers in Richmond, and unskilled dockworkers in New Orleans also struck for higher wages.77 In most cases, however, a combination of an overabundance of labor, a lack of black-and-white labor solidarity, and the use of law enforcement officials against strikers contributed to the failure of strikes. For example, in Richmond, despite community support, black stevedores and coopers’ strikes failed in April and May 1867 because strikebreakers were found among the large number of unemployed blacks and whites.78 In December 1865 black and white dockworkers in New Orleans struck for higher wages. In this case, black-and-white labor solidarity would not become a reality. White crewmen marched along the levee, “knocking down every black man who would have gladly worked for less than that high tariff,” the black Tribune reported. White workers repeatedly drove off a number of freedmen toiling along the docks at the lower rate with threats and assaults. When it became obvious that the shipmasters intended to request Federal military protection for black strikebreakers, white workers grew alarmed and began to fraternize with blacks in an effort to get them to not work. Their actions were not sincere, for they had no intention of promoting solidarity with black workers. When police were called in to quell the disturbances, they generally targeted black strikers and let white strikers do as they pleased. Thus, police arrested six blacks but allowed several hundred whites to parade along the levee for several hours.79

  That black dockworkers failed in their bid for higher wages and white dockworkers succeeded illustrates not only the sharp limits of interracial collaboration but also the distinct positions occupied by blacks and whites in the waterfront’s occupational hierarchy. Unskilled blacks were easily replaced; all it took was police protection of strikebreakers. Consequently, black dockworkers were forced to return to the job at their original wage of $2.50. By contrast, skilled white crewmen eventually won their wage demands of $6 for gang members and $7 for foremen per day. Despite the failure of black dockworkers to secure their wage increase, they did succeed in imposing a
greater degree of order upon the chaotic system of employment and payment by May 1867.80

  Black women throughout the South were also cognizant of the value of their labor and refused to work for unfair wages without protest. For example, washerwomen in Jackson, Mississippi, struck for higher wages in June 1866. They requested $1.50 per day, $15.00 per month for family wash, and $10.00 per month for individuals.81 Whether or not the strike was successful is not known. In the summer of 1877 twenty-five black laundresses struck for higher wages in Galveston, Texas. They marched through downtown Galveston demanding $1.50 per day and shutting down steam and Chinese laundries. Crying out, “We will starve no longer,” they insisted that other laundresses stay away from work. The women caught a Miss Murphy and carried her out into the street when she insisted on going to work anyway, and they tore off the clothes of Alice because they thought that she had “gone back on them.” Moreover, the black laundresses locked up Mr. Harding’s laundry and demanded that Chinese owners “close up and leave this city within Fifteen days, or they would be driven away.”82

  The failure of many labor strikes by blacks must be placed in the proper historical context. Their failure reflected a national trend. Strikes throughout the nation were largely unsuccessful, particularly in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The influence of management was growing while the influence of labor was steadily declining. Both black and white workers held little clout in a country ravaged by depression, where work was often difficult to find and labor was overabundant. After the Panic of 1873, union membership fell nationwide by 90 percent, and by 1880 fewer than one in one hundred workers belonged to a union.83 Once Radical Republicans were driven from power in the South, the threat of any significant labor strike succeeding all but vanished. Political support from conservative legislators now reinforced the control that industry had over labor. Law enforcement officials were used in ever-increasing numbers to protect strikebreakers and quell labor disturbances.

  Forming labor unions and engaging in strikes was just one of many battles that blacks would have to wage. To escape the racism and racial discrimination of Southern whites and provide better social and economic opportunities for themselves, some blacks in the closing years of Reconstruction either migrated to the West and Southwest or emigrated to Africa. Three of the best-known black proponents of emigrationist movements in the late 1870s were Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, Henry Adams, and Bishop Henry M. Turner.84 However, before this time, some blacks were already living in the West and Southwest, having moved to these areas either before or during the early years of Reconstruction. In these regions, black men found employment as railroad workers and miners. In San Francisco, black men who often were young and single worked as sailors and railroad laborers. Other black men joined cattle drives in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma as cooks and cowboys. Nat Love, for example, earned the nickname “Deadwood Dick” by winning a roping contest in Deadwood, Arizona. Still other black men in the West became farmers, taking advantage of the Homestead Act, which offered free land to those who agreed to cultivate it. Although it was difficult for black women in western cities to find employment other than domestic work, some secured jobs as laundresses.85

  Not only did black men and women in the West demonstrate a great deal of determination to prosper, but some also succeeded. For instance, in 1865, blacks in San Francisco owned tobacco and soap factories as well as laundries and real estate offices. A small number of mining companies, such as the Colored Citizens of California, were organized by black men. In Nevada, Montana, Colorado, and Utah a few blacks owned silver mines. In addition, as a result of her thriftiness, Clara Brown, who cooked and washed for miners, became the first black member of the Colorado Pioneer Association in 1870.86 Anna Graham ran a successful beauty parlor in Virginia City, Nevada. And Sarah Miner built her deceased husband’s express and furniture-hauling venture into a successful business.87

  THE TRIALS OF THE BUFFALO SOLDIERS

  The vast majority of black men who enlisted in the U.S. Army went to the West and Southwest to serve in the many military campaigns against Native Americans. Black men were attracted to the army for many reasons. Regimental chaplains usually taught the soldiers, who displayed a keen desire for education, to read and write. The military also provided one of the few semblances of equality for blacks, since the prosperity of the post-Civil War years did not otherwise extend to them. It also represented a steady job in an overabundant labor market. The package deal for a recruit included food, clothing, shelter, and salary, with an annual increase of one dollar per month and a reenlistment bonus at the end of five years. While black regiments had more applicants than positions available, white regiments had difficulty in finding and retaining volunteers. Moreover, as noted earlier, black volunteers viewed military service as an elevation in status and an opportunity to improve themselves.88 In fact, lithographs of black soldiers in action often hung in the homes of blacks as “symbols of hope for a better day.” Indeed, historian Rayford Logan captured the feelings of most blacks toward soldiers from their own community when he said, “We Negroes had little, at the turn of the century, to help sustain our faith in ourselves except the pride that we took in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry.”89

  Black soldiers participating in the military campaigns in the West and Southwest against Native Americans numbered 12,500, about 20 percent of the total of U.S. soldiers deployed in these areas.90 Yet, until recently, very little was known about these men. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Hollywood produced one movie after another on soldiers who fought Native Americans in the post-Civil War period without devoting much attention to the role of black soldiers. For better or worse, black soldiers played an integral role in winning the West for America. Although black soldiers were involved in their share of Native American firefights between the late 1860s and World War I, much of their duty in the West revolved around the mundane and the unglamorous. They built telegraph lines, escorted stagecoaches and government supply trains, protected supply lines, and chased bandits and hooligans.91

  These black soldiers came to be called “Buffalo Soldiers,” a name given to them by Native Americans. Why Native Americans gave them this name is unclear. Perhaps it was due to their tenacity in battle,92 since buffaloes were regarded as tough and nearly impossible to subdue. It also may have been the similarity between the curly black hair of blacks and that of the buffalo or the dark brown skin of both.93 Whatever the reason, black soldiers, appreciating the comparison to the stoic animals considered sacred by the Native Americans, adopted the name. The Tenth Cavalry even added the image of a buffalo to their unit insignia.94

  The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry served throughout the West and Southwest against Native Americans for twenty-eight years. More than two hundred battles and skirmishes were fought by these regiments during that period. The Buffalo Soldiers won fourteen Congressional Medals of Honor, nine Certificates of Merit, and twenty-nine Orders of Honorable Mention between 1870 and 1890.95 Sergeant Emanuel Stance, a native of Charleston, barely five feet tall, became the first black to earn a Medal of Honor in the Native American wars in May 1870.96

  In spite of the military accomplishments of the Buffalo Soldiers, they were regularly subjected to white racism and racial discrimination by U.S. Army officers. Not only were they forced to live and work in separate quarters, but they also had to endure inferior quarters, inferior food, inferior clothing, and even inferior leadership and training. An inspector at Fort Clark in Texas in 1872 wrote of the conditions that black soldiers there were being forced to endure: “The quarters are wretchedly [constructed]. All except two companies of cavalry are in huts.” He added that the officers’ quarters were also inadequate, “the guard house is cramped: the regimental Adjutant’s office is in a tent. There is no place for divine service or instruction.” The situation was even worse for those units on the move, as in the cas
e of a black infantry regiment serving on the Mexican border in Texas, which had not slept under a roof for several years. It was customary for commanders at military installations to force black units traveling on assignments throughout the West to sleep outside the fort’s walls if segregated facilities were not available inside.97 Their obvious vulnerability to Native American attacks while they slept apparently did not concern most army officials.

  The Buffalo Soldiers not only had to contend with the racial discrimination of army officials but also with civilian hostility toward them in the towns and territories to which they were assigned. Notwithstanding the fact that they were protecting the settlements, black soldiers could not depend on equal justice from white sheriffs. Local police sometimes targeted black soldiers suspected of some violation and subjected them to unrestrained abuse. Adam Paine, a black Seminole scout and Medal of Honor winner, for example, in January 1877 was shot from behind and killed by a Texas sheriff.98