by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Yesterday afternoon, the Homestead hosted a presentation by Dr. Marne L. Campbell, associate professor and chair of the African-American Studies department at Loyola Marymount University, as she talked about the visits to Los Angeles in the early 20th century of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, as well as the conditions of the Black community in the Angel City during that period, based on her book Making Black Los Angeles: Class, Gender and Community, 1850-1917.
Professor Campbell’s presentation included a good deal of audience engagement and interaction in multiple ways as she noted the differences between the national leaders of the African-American community with respect to approaches regarding the uplift of Black people with Washington pushing more for economic agency through moral and vocational instruction, such as at his Tuskegee Institute, and Du Bois having a stronger emphasis on academic education and civil rights, as embodied in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folks.
Listening to the presentation, one of the thoughts that came to mind as Campbell talked about how African-Americans in Los Angeles often combined the ideological concerns of Du Bois and Washington concerned an Angel City figure who might have represented this adaptation of the ideas of both men: lawyer Gustavus Woodson Wickliffe (1869-1921). In his more than a quarter-century in Los Angeles, Wickliffe seemed to both embody the academic education approach of Du Bois with the practical elements embodied in the work of Washington.
Wickliffe was born in 1869 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to parents who were freed from slavery just a few years prior, following the conclusion of the Civil War, and it was reported by a paper there that “he was from one of the oldest and best known colored families” in the city. Moreover, the account observed, he was “the first graduate from the colored high school here,” this being the Gilmore Street High School, where he matriculated in 1888.
Wickliffe then studied at the Spencerian Business College in Washington, D.C., completing his degree in 1890, and went to Howard University, established in the nation’s capital in 1867, where he studied at the law school, formed two years after the institution’s opening and the oldest historically Black law school in the nation. While working on his law degree, Wickliffe worked as a clerk for the Post Office Department, with a federal government job often being a way for African-Americans to improve their economic prospects. He also served in the District’s National Guard.
A graduate of the class of 1893, Wickliffe secured a license to practice in his home state, but soon migrated to Los Angeles and it would be interesting to know what drew him to the Angel City. Whatever the reason, he was admitted to the bar on 12 April 1894, becoming the first Black lawyer in southern California. Even with this prominent pioneering position, locating information about his practice can be challenging, given the general lack of reporting on African-Americans in the white press. An early reference was in the Los Angeles Express of 13 August 1895, which briefly noted that he represented a young Black defendant charged with burglary at Santa Monica.
More than three years later, an interesting example of Wickliffe’s work was reported upon in the 27 October 1898 issue of the Los Angeles Times, in which James Alfred, “a tan-colored” barber was under a preliminary examination after being charged with assault with the intent to kill Tom Yoshida. Remarking that the courtroom “swarmed with little brown men,” the paper observed that an incident at a Chinatown gambling joint involved a craps game “participated in by a motley crew of Japs, negroes, Chinese, Mexicans and other odds and ends of humanity,” when Alfred purportedly got into a scrap with four Japanese men.
Apparently, after one of the latter pulled a knife, Alfred deemed it necessary for self-defense to do the same “and literally carved his way out of the crowd of belligerent Asiatics,” with Yoshida receiving wounds to his head and left side. Wickliffe represented Alfred and, the Times commented, “rather expected his client to be held to answer” for trial before the Superior Court “and was not going to put in any evidence for the defense.”
An assistant district attorney, however, “took up the cudgels for the defendant, as usual,” this last bit evidently being a criticism by the paper, and put Alfred on the stand, along with several character witnesses who affirmed the defendant’s “good reputation for peace and respectability.” This done, the prosecutor informed the judge that the evidence showed that Alfred could not be convicted and moved for a dismissal, which was granted, while the account concluded that Yoshida’s “Japanese friends were disappointed with the result of the trial.”
The Los Angeles Record of 16 September 1899 reported on a case involving a Japanese man, identified as “Y. Komatsu,” accused of the attempted rape of an 11-year old African-American girl named Mary Washington, with Wickliffe representing the defendant. Komatsu was convicted and sentenced to five years at San Quentin State Prison, where he served 3 1/2 years before he was discharged.
Two months later, the Times went into some detail covering the burglary trial of Glenn Russell, a Black man whose family, the paper asserted, “has demonstrated that it is better to be born luck than rich” because it had “a predilection for getting entangled in the meshes of the law” before its members “invariably wriggle out of it with neatness and dispatch.”
Usually, the paper said it was one of the sons, Hilliard, who was frequently in trouble with authorities and “usually succeeds in providing an alibi, supported by the numerous members of his family,” but, in this case, it was younger brother Glenn, charged with the theft of a bicycle, whose trial ended as “the jury failed to be convinced of the fact that he stole the wheel” after only a few minutes’ deliberation “and again the Russell family had triumphed over the minions of the law.” When the judge ordered the verdict entered into the record and Russell released, he “was warmly congratulated . . . and the Russell family left the courtroom in a high state of exhilaration.”
How this was “wriggling” from the grasp of the authorities, especially as the jury (which would not have had any African-Americans on it) came to its decision so quickly, was not explained, and the Times thought it of some public interest to describe Glenn Russell’s attire and then add, employing a racist stereotype, that “he looked more like a champion cake walker than a bicycle thief” as family members “beamed proudly upon him as the central figure in the comedy that was being enacted.”
Moreover, the report was that prosecutors entered the proceeding with full expectation of a “cinch case,” though as the trial proceeded “their confidence waned and the verdict of acquittal was no surprise in the end.” The problem for the prosecution was pinned on a witness, “a colored lad named Rodney,” whose stint on the stand was such that detectives were questioned to try and “impeach his veracity.” The paper also remarked,
Russell was ably defended by Gustavus W. Wickliff [sic], an Afro-American lawyer of more than ordinary ability.
There were several reported cases in which Wickliffe represented clients during the 1910s including an African-American woman who sought the annulment of a marriage after her husband was convicted of a Pasadena murder (thought the judge refused on the grounds that the nuptials took place after the trial); a pastor of a Black Baptist church who was charged with withholding parishioners’ funds for a building project for which he received a discount; and a matter involving a shooting that was reported in the African-American-owned California Eagle of 31 January 1920, towards the end of his career and life.
This incident, which took place in the largely Black neighborhood along Central Avenue in downtown Los Angeles before the African-American community moved further south when the continued business and industrial spread in the central core, involved C.E. Knox paying undue attention to and then, on her testimony, assaulting the wife of Barney Daniels. Knox offered a witness named Hall to testify on his behalf and the Eagle remarked,
Daniels was most ably defended by Attorney G.W. Wickliffe and although held for trial in the Superior Court put up such a defense as to draw from the court the opinion that no jury would ever convict on the showing made by the prosecution. The court went further and branded the prosecution witnesses, Mr. Knox and Hall as consummate liars, and stated that if they told the truth that it was a mistake and an error on their part.
A strange situation occurred in March 1913 when Wickliffe went to the county archives, seeking records to use as evidence in a court hearing related to a murder trial of a Black man a decade prior. As reported in the Times of the 8th, a deputy informed the lawyer that a fee of two dollars was required for retrieval, but when Judge Charles Monroe got wind of the situation he sternly remarked, “if any deputy clerk is collecting fees for bring[ing] evidence to the court, it is graft” and he lectured the officer “it must not be done again.” Whether this was done to Wickliffe, however, because he was Black was not mentioned.
Wickliffe dabbled in real estate, was a member of fraternal orders like the Foresters, a mutual-aid benefit society, and was also very active in the Republican Party, which most Black Americans supported from the Civil War period and for decades afterward. In 1912, he was part of a group that sought to provide land for African-American farmers in the Imperial Valley of southeastern California, not long after water from the Colorado River was delivered there.
In the late 1890s, he was part of committees for a division, segregated for Blacks only, marching in Independence Day parades, though the Express of 4 July 1898 remarked that “taken as a whole,” the division, including a Pasadena marching band, a float with the theme “Land of Liberty” with Pearl Cooper as a floral queen and Camilla Morton as the “Goddess of Liberty,” and a representation from the Young Men’s Afro-American League, “was a great credit to the Afro-American citizens of Los Angeles.”
Wickliffe helped establish this latter group shortly after settling in the Angel City and two years later solidified his political credentials by presenting “a glowing speech that was enthusiastically received” by a club supporting William McKinley for president. In the 1896 presidential campaign and midterm elections two years later, the attorney was an orator and committee member for African-American Republican Party clubs.
In 1900, Wickliffe was a founding member of the Colored Republican Marching Club, including 100 on the roster including Fred M. Roberts, who ran a newspaper and mortuary and served 16 years in the California Assembly. He was the counsel for the Republican Protective League, another Black political organization founded in Oakland in 1905 and moved to Los Angeles four years later, with such luminaries as lawyers Willis O. Tyler and Charles S. Darden; physicians John S. Outlaw, Eugene C. Nelson and Frank A. Gordon; Robert C. Owens, whose family went back in Los Angeles to around 1850; and realtors Milton W. Lewis, H.H. Williams and M.G. Stokes.
Political activism for the G.O.P. continued well into the 20th century, including endorsements for district attorney and judicial candidates and, in 1919, Wickliffe traveled to San Francisco with E. Burton Ceruti, another lawyer and a key figure in the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P. and another man with the Eagle remarking that “these gentlemen will manage the campaign of Senator Hiram Johnson,” also a former California governor, “for the Presidency.”
Wickliffe enjoyed some patronage through his extensive involvement with the Republican Party as, during the years 1901 to 1907, he lived in San Francisco where he both continued his law practice but also served as the dockage clerk for the Board of State Harbor Commissioners. This appointment came just after his marriage on 3 July 1901 to Minerva C. Mitchell, a native of Oberlin, Ohio and graduate of the liberal arts college in that city, who also taught in St. Louis, Mobile, Alabama and Gustavus’ hometown of Chattanooga. Their children, Gustavus, Jr. (a waiter at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood and later a golf caddy) and Caroline (a UCLA alumna who did graduate work at USC and Northwestern University and taught high school Spanish) were born in San Francisco with the family returning to Los Angeles in 1908.
A remarkable special section of the Times for Lincoln’s Birthday 1909 included a brief biography of Wickliffe among the business elite of the Angel City’s African-American community, with it mentioning that he arrived in California on 10 April 1894 and his being admitted to the bar the following day (the official record shows that it was two days). There was also a brief discussion of his years in the north and the sketch ended with
Mr. Wickliffe seems to have taken up the work where he left it seven years before and is forging ahead. He has a wife and two children. His investments show good judgment and business ability.
Four years later, the lawyer paid for inclusion in the prestigious Who’s Who in California directory, which showed that Wickliffe maintained an office on Broadway just north of 1st Street, in what is now an empty lot across from the Los Angeles County Law Library with City Hall a block east (before he married Wickliffe resided on Main Street where the City Hall Park is located.) The family lived in East Hollywood not far west of Silver Lake Reservoir and the house, built in 1908, is still standing and Minnie also was involved in such community activities as the Busy Mothers Club, which she helped establish, and political functions, such as one in 1914 at the Sojourner Truth Home, a shelter for women and girls.
After some two decades in Los Angeles (and those seven years in San Francisco), Wickliffe died suddenly at his home at age 52 and no cause of death was located. His funeral was held at St. Paul’s Baptist Church, which he helped establish in 1912, in South Los Angeles, the center of the city’s Black community (the church, still standing, is now the Pacific Mount Olive Church of God in Christ) and burial was at Rosedale Cemetery, west of downtown. Minerva continued her community service with political organizations, women’s clubs and others and lived for nearly four decades longer, dying in 1960.
Professor Campbell’s presentation touched upon many aspects of the African-American community in Los Angeles, including the view, sometimes realized and other times not, that it was an unparalleled place of opportunity for Black migrants. It was an inspiration for this post, featuring some of the life of Southern California’s first African-American attorney, Gustavus Woodson Wickliffe, as a reflection of how his story dovetails with the themes related in yesterday’s talk. Moreover, as we head toward 2026 and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’ll look for further ways to examine elements the history of Black Los Angeles in that context, so keep an eye out for those offerings.
One report from the Los Angeles Times in November 1899, quoted in this post, struck a chord with me. It covered the burglary trial of Glenn Russell and noted that members of his family had a pattern of committing crimes and managing to escape sentencing. What troubles me is that, more than a century later, the same kinds of descriptions still apply to many African American families today – or even more than before.
It’s evident that public media in those earlier years were far less restrained than today’s when it came to race and public criticism. Yet, while modern media try very hard to avoid racial commentary, ignoring facts or pretending nothing happened is a passive and ineffective approach. Why can’t we confront this subject honestly and openly? Why can’t we work together to address the root causes? Why can’t we stop merely focusing on human rights, civil rights, discrimination, and racial profiling? Who won’t agree that to change the underlying conditions and earn back a damaged reputation is more active and constructive?
I hope this can become an open and constructive conversation – one where we can collectively identify the real problems, develop workable strategies, and implement action plans to save their youth from the streets, from the ghetto, and from the prisons.