by Alexis Clark
The Powells couldn’t have chosen a better town to raise a black family, although neighboring Boston wasn’t as welcoming. Boston, as a whole, lacked diversity. According to the 1880 census, 356,826 whites lived there. “Colored” people, as listed in the census, included blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans, and totaled just 6,013 residents.10
Despite Boston being one of the largest American cities, the black population there continued to lag. In 1890, there were 8,125 blacks; by 1920, there were 16,350. Although the black population had doubled in those 30 years, it comprised only 1.8 to 2.3 percent of Boston’s entire population.11
The few blacks who did live there rarely flourished individually or collectively. Most were victims of persistent job discrimination, residential segregation, and social prejudice. Often, blacks who migrated north for a better life had the double blow of having to compete in the job market with European immigrants as well as northern-born blacks.12 Menial jobs—bootblack, janitor, coachman, cook—were the default career options for most African Americans in Boston from the turn of the century until World War II, making the Powells’ trajectory all the more impressive.
But Boston was a complex city, and a suburb such as Milton could operate under a different value system in which blacks such as William and Ella Powell, and later their son, Lawrence, could live comfortably without any threats. Boston proper could not boast the same level of racial tolerance.
In the early 1800s there were violent race riots against the Irish in Boston. But when blacks from the South began to arrive, they found themselves on the receiving end of this intense prejudice, which was not unlike the racism they experienced in the South. In the North whites also resorted to tactics that reinforced their social, economic, and political superiority over the black population. In public places, whether for entertainment or dining, blacks were segregated to remote and inadequate corners or excluded altogether. If traveling by train, blacks were forced to sit in the “Negro” car. If traveling by boat, blacks were relegated to the deck irrespective of weather. Charles Lenox Remond, the nineteenth-century Massachusetts-born African American orator and abolitionist, said that he nearly froze to death on such a journey. Frederick Douglass once spoke about being turned away from an exhibit on the Boston Common, which had always been a public space. In the early twentieth century African Americans were also regularly vulnerable to acts of violence by white individuals. Packs of white youths hunted down blacks on the Boston Common to physically brutalize and hurl insults at them.13
Where Boston differed from the Deep South was the emerging and passionate anti-racist community that was ready to combat bigotry. An alliance between socially conscious blacks and white liberals formed in pockets of Boston communities, and together they advocated for black equality and civil rights at the beginning of the twentieth century. By 1918, the Boston branch of the NAACP was the largest in the country, with a membership of 2,553 people. Although mostly black, the group also included whites, typically descendants of abolitionists, who grew up promoting an anti-slavery agenda.14 This activism began to spread throughout major northeastern cities, and by the time Lawrence Powell was an adult, he had taken full advantage of every opportunity that came his way as an African American male.
Lawrence demonstrated leadership qualities and ambition while growing up. He was tall, lean, and athletic, with chocolate brown skin and a narrow, handsome face with high cheekbones. At Milton High School and Cunningham Gym, Lawrence was captain of the basketball team, and he excelled in baseball, football, and track. When he graduated, he apprenticed and learned how to operate and repair elevator machinery, then took a job as an elevator operator at the Boston Custom House, a good, solid occupation that paid decently.15
After the United States entered the Great War in 1917, Lawrence dutifully enlisted in the United States Army to honor his country. He wouldn’t be the first Powell to serve. A relative, John Powell, had been in the 39th United States Colored Troops (USCT) Regiment Infantry in Baltimore for the Union Army in 1864–1865, during the Civil War.16 Once Lawrence cleared his physical, he left Milton and moved to Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, as different from Massachusetts as any state could get.
Camp Zachary Taylor, named after the twelfth president, was once the country’s largest training facility for soldiers during World War I. Kentucky was a former slave state, and every aspect of its society was completely segregated; the U.S. military was no exception. And the role of black men in the army was minimized and diminished, similar to their standing in society. Ray Elliott, an African American veteran whose father fought in the Great War, learned about the racist treatment his father received in the army. “Growing up, my dad never talked about his experience,” said Elliott. His father was in the 92nd Division, the all-black regiment in the United States military sent to France under the direction of the French military because no American commander wanted to be in charge of black troops. “They felt that they weren’t good warriors and not good fighters, so . . . the French government took them under their command, and it was very exciting the fact that his regiment performed so meritoriously that the French government awarded them, the highest honor, the Croix de Guerre.”17
But most black soldiers, including Lawrence, didn’t see combat or serve overseas during the Great War. They usually maintained equipment or provided some labor reinforcement, roles typically without fanfare, prestige, or authority, let alone opportunities to rise through the ranks. For Milton-born Lawrence, who had enjoyed a comfortable and liberal upbringing, Kentucky would have been his first real encounter with a southern state and its mores. But if there were incidents of racism by white commanding officers or local Louisville residents stationed near the base, it had little impact on Lawrence, because he excelled in the army. In 1918, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, garnering him a mention in the Milton Record with the headline “‘Larry’ Powell Wins Commission.”18
Despite the fanfare at home and his promotion, Lawrence was still black and Kentucky was still the South, and by default he would have to adhere to enforced segregation and second-class citizenship. Jim Crow was the law, and the lynching of black men was commonplace after Reconstruction, peaking during the 1890s, with spikes until the 1920s. A report by the Equal Justice Initiative concludes that between 1877 and 1950, 4,075 black people were killed by “racial terror lynchings” in a dozen states, including Kentucky.19 Even as a lieutenant, Lawrence still couldn’t socialize in the officers’ club—a space exclusively for white officers—and he still had to drink from “colored” water fountains throughout the state. Eating at restaurants was also off-limits. Most socializing for African Americans was done at church or local dances held for African American troops where devout and educated African Americans congregated.
It was at one of these local dances that Second Lieutenant Lawrence Powell met his future wife. Gladys Farrow was an outspoken, big-boned, brown-skinned woman born in 1896 into a large, close-knit, educated family of African Americans from Murray, Kentucky. She was a schoolteacher and a college graduate.
Although Lawrence didn’t have a degree, he was an officer in the army, which made him a highly attractive prospect for any woman. Plus he looked regal in his official army uniform. The jodhpurs, riding boots, and single-breasted tunic jacket with the army detail on his shoulder commanded respect. The two quickly fell in love.
Gladys was almost twenty-three years old at the time—in that era, an eyebrow-raising age for a single woman without a steady boyfriend—which probably made accepting Lawrence’s marriage proposal a bit easier despite the fact that he had less education than she did. But if marrying late wasn’t shocking enough, Gladys did the unthinkable and left her beloved family in Kentucky to settle in Milton with Lawrence’s people in 1918. It was a painful decision, but Gladys was a hopeless romantic, and so she agreed to move to where the Powells had established themselves comfortably. She was also likely influenced by the absence of Jim Crow in Milton and the f
act that they could live with Lawrence’s parents in their spacious house and shop at the same stores and send their kids to the same schools as their white neighbors. She and Lawrence settled in the Powell family house on 114 Granite Place and started their own family almost immediately, having three daughters; Gladys, in 1919, Elinor, in 1921, and Ruth, in 1922.
The move to Massachusetts was a shock for Gladys. “She was from a huge southern family,” said her great-granddaughter Alethea Felton. “The Powells were affluent people, but there weren’t a lot of southern blacks around her and the culture was very different. She was extremely homesick.”
From the late 1800s to early 1920s, “marriage bars” were commonplace in the United States. This practice restricted married women from working in particular professions, or sometimes from working at all. Massachusetts, despite its growing number of women activists and suffragettes, didn’t support married women as schoolteachers, and local school boards usually shunned any who applied for employment.20 This meant all of the education and training that Gladys had so proudly earned was useless in Milton. In the early twentieth century, teaching positions were given to young, single women without children. A married woman’s job was to tend to her husband and kids, while the man of the house dutifully provided for his family. And Lawrence did just that. He found a steady government job as a clerk. By 1935, he had made enough money to move his family from Granite Place into their own house, ten minutes away, on Emerson Road. As a government employee, he was spared unemployment during the Great Depression and was even able to help those less fortunate in his community.
“They didn’t lose anything, as a matter of fact,” said Hope Taylor, a Powell grandchild. “They helped take care of a lot of neighbors in terms of sharing food and that kind of thing.”21
Lawrence and Gladys had all of the attributes of the perfect American family: three beautiful and healthy children, their own home, and even a dog. Gladys, who would resent not being able to continue her work as a schoolteacher, delved into motherhood, chronicling her children’s progress from the start. In Elinor’s baby book, she wrote, “Elinor has begun to move about. She is sitting up on her own. She seems to laugh at Gladys. And she doesn’t like strawberry.”22
Just like William and Ella, the next generation, Lawrence and Gladys, were living a life that reflected a high level of stability, an attribute not typically associated with black households in the early twentieth century and certainly not during the throes of the Great Depression. There were two factions of blacks in Boston: the small group of lawyers, doctors, businessmen, intellectual elites, and other professionals; and the majority who lived in overcrowded, tenement squalor.23
The Powells, shielded from urban blight, had been lucky to set up roots in Milton. Family photos show Gladys sitting in her white-picket-fenced backyard with flowers in full bloom, surrounded by her three daughters all wearing summer dresses with floral motifs, patent-leather shoes, and ribbons and decorative clips adorning their hair. Home ownership among the black population was still very rare, but if there was any resentment from white neighbors about the Powells’ success, it wasn’t expressed, at least not in a significant way. Other photos show Elinor, in a polka-dot dress, sitting in the parlor with two of her white friends reading Life magazine.
Perhaps because she wasn’t able to devote her time to paid work, Gladys spent a great deal of effort engaging her daughters in extracurricular activities and involving herself in community work. She and Lawrence wanted their children exposed to the same academic, social, and civic activities they had enjoyed growing up, if not more. Gladys became very involved in the community for her daughters’ benefit as well as her own. And her true love became the Girl Scouts of America. In fact, Gladys was single-handedly responsible for integrating the Girl Scout troop in Milton when she insisted that her daughters be allowed on an overnight camping trip, which had never before included black Girl Scouts. When she passed away many years later, a tribute to her dedication as a Girl Scout leader appeared in the Milton Record on June 4, 1948:
In the death of Gladys Powell, Milton Girl Scouting has lost one of its most able leaders, one who did much to build Girl Scouting in Milton to its present strong position. Mrs. Powell became leader of Troop 4, the first troop in the East Milton section. . . . She was the only colored woman as a leader of predominantly white troops in the United States—a symbol of Girl Scouting at its best, and a tribute to her exceptional personality and ability.
Gladys had a strong demeanor and had no tolerance for any hint of inequality. “She was an activist, like a feminist of her day and was against any type of racism,” said Alethea. “In today’s terms, she’d be considered a little bit crazy. She was very brazen for her time period and she didn’t care, particularly around white people. She was extremely outspoken about injustice toward her children. She had to be that way coming from the Deep South.”
Once her daughter Ruth came home and mentioned that she had been given a role in a play at the local theater company. “Which one?” Gladys asked. In addition to being active in Girl Scouts, Gladys was director of Community Dramatics and Pageants for the city of Milton and did all of the costumes for them. Ruth replied, “I’m going to be a servant.” Gladys snapped. She took her rifle and marched down to the theater. The story is told that she raised her gun at the director and producer and said, “My child will not be a maid! You will make her the lead in your play.” They gave Ruth the role, and a white child was the maid instead.
Gladys wasn’t just outspoken; she could be a bully. It was no secret that she missed her family terribly back home in the South. Milton never provided the large family closeness that she had grown accustomed to having in Kentucky. Her inability to work outside the home because she was a married woman with children was a major source of tension within her own marriage. Consequently Gladys became resentful and confrontational toward Lawrence, frequently putting him down even though he provided well for his family. Her dominant personality and persistent degrading of Lawrence, who was soft-spoken, had a negative impact on her girls.
“She would talk to him in a way that made the girls angry and resent her,” said Hope. Whether it was at the dinner table or sitting together in the parlor, Gladys would lay into Lawrence right in front of her daughters while he sat quiet and emasculated. And Gladys’s dominant, bullying behavior created bad feelings among the girls themselves, feelings that were not openly expressed but nevertheless very present in their childhood.
ELINOR WAS confident like her mother and evoked an air of self-assurance when she walked in a room. As a teenager she would grow to be six feet tall, and she was usually the tallest girl wherever she went, standing with impeccable posture and wearing well-tailored dresses. In the 1938 Milton High School yearbook, Elinor was recognized for her participation in extracurricular activities. She was the only African American student in her grade, but that had no impact on her psychologically. She, like her mother, Gladys, would join whatever group interested her, without ever letting race be a determining factor. Elinor was in the French Club, Biology Club, and Glee Club, and co-wrote the “Class Prophecy” for the graduating seniors. The essay, a cleverly composed and humorous prediction about the career path of each of her classmates, including how they would all reunite twenty years later, flowed from the hand of a free and self-assured spirit, not from someone held back by racial discrimination or isolation.
Living in Milton spared Elinor the indignities being reported in the black newspapers of the day—lynchings, poor housing, segregation, substandard schools. In her yearbook, her classmates wrote, “She injects a few raisins of conversation in the tasteless dough of existence. Elinor’s flow of ready wit has given her friends many a riotous moment in a dull study hour.”24 She was quick-witted and sociable and was able to develop a healthy sense of confidence and self-worth. And like her mother, Elinor was also ambitious and wanted a career. She dreamed of becoming a veterinarian and, in fact, predicted she would become one in
the class prophecy she wrote for herself.25
Yet Gladys wasn’t keen on Elinor’s lofty career aspirations, a fact that laid the foundation for mounting friction between mother and daughter. As a southern-born woman who was all too familiar with Jim Crow, Gladys discouraged Elinor from moving away from her support system to pursue a dream that she viewed as too ambitious for a black woman. In her journal Elinor’s older sister, Gladys, wrote that she recalled their mother telling Elinor “that unless she wanted to work in the stockyards with cattle in the Midwest, she could forget about becoming a veterinarian.” She wanted her daughters to aim high but not so far that they could face a bitter reality as black women. Moreover, she was anxious about her daughters moving away from her.
After graduating with honors from Milton High, Elinor chose to attend nursing school, a decision influenced by her mother’s overbearing nature. That she decided to move out of state was a product of the sad reality that not many nursing schools in the United States were even open to black students. And yet, by choosing the Lincoln School for Nurses in the Bronx, Elinor made a good decision. Lincoln was a highly respected medical institution with a beautifully equipped facility and an excellent staff.26