by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In June, a post here as part of “The Black Pioneers of Los Angeles County” series highlighted Gustavus Woodson Wickliffe and stated that he was Southern California’s first African-American attorney. It turns out that this is with an important caveat; namely, that he was the earliest Black lawyer to be admitted to the bar, this taking place when he came to Los Angeles and earned that distinction in April 1894. Consequently, the title of the post has been changed to reflect that situation.
There was, however, a practicing attorney, R.C.O. (Robert Charles O’Hara) Benjamin (1855-1900), who came to Los Angeles in late 1887 and was admitted to practice law, rather than to the bar and then joining a bar association (local or state), with that conferred on an oral exam in those days. As previous posts here have noted, some of the earliest practicing lawyers in the Angel City, dating back to 1850, didn’t even go to law school and earn a degree, but “read law” with an attorney or a firm and were admitted to practice.
Benjamin has been presented in numerous online articles and posts as a pioneering African-American attorney in various places, as well as a newspaper editor and publisher, involved in politics and as a champion of African-American civil, economic and political rights. There is no doubt that he was an advocate for many issues vital for Black people in America in the last two decades or so of the 19th century and he wrote and spoke frequently on important topics throughout the country.
His life and story, as researched for this multi-part post, however, reveals more complex and complicated, as well as nuanced, sides to Benjamin’s short, but remarkable, life, which ended when he was brutally shot several times in the back in Lexington, Kentucky on 2 October 1900, not quite three months before the century came to a close. The killing is one of untold homicides against Black people in the Jim Crow South and the fact that Michael Moynahan was found innocent by self-defense is patently a matter of a terrible injustice and symptomatic of the systemic racism of the era.
In looking at Benjamin’s life and work, we’ll look to carefully sift through what could be located of his early years, try to make sense of his peripatetic life though large portions of America, especially during the 1880s, understand questionable actions of his that took place, and also give adequate attention to his perspectives and views on the condition of African-Americans in the United States.
The most detailed account of Benjamin’s life through spring 1887 is a biography issued at that time in Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising by the Reverend William J. Simmons, President of the State University of Louisville, renamed Simmons College of Kentucky in his honor, and a Baptist minister. Simmons’ project was obviously laudable as he sought to highlight prominent Black men and their achievements, especially as it was a dozen years since the end of Reconstruction and in the midst of the Jim Crow era.
The 149th chapter of the work is a short sketch of just over three pages about Benjamin, but it seems clear that the details of the life story were provided solely, or at least almost totally, by Benjamin. The obvious question, therefore, is how much of the biography is factual, rather than fanciful or calculated to put the subject in the best possible light.
The sketch begins with the statement that Benjamin was born the last day of March 1855 “on the island of St. Keys,” though this would actually be St. Kitts. There is a reference to his naturalization in New York City when he was 21 that stated he arrived in the United States in 1864, though no port of arrival was given. Next was a statement that, at age 11, he was sent to England for college preparation with a tutor, after which he spent three years at Trinity College, Oxford University, though he did not earn a degree. This would, of course, be a remarkable achievement for any young student, but particularly for a Black scholar—as we will see, however, there are other accounts that contradict these statements.
The Men of Mark biography continued that, after leaving Trinity, Benjamin spent two years in the East Indies, including in Java and Sumatra before returning to England. The account then states that, “being of a roving disposition,” this much was certainly true, though for varying reasons, “he soon took passage on a vessel coming to America, and arrived in the city of New York, April, 13, 1869.” A simple glance, though, at the chronology shows an issue, because, according to the bio, Benjamin arrived in England in 1866, finished his studies in 1869 and then concluded his sojourn in the East Indies in 1871.
The wanderlust continued just ten days after arrival in the Big Apple when Benjamin purportedly signed on as a cabin boy on a ship that spent a half year sailing to “Venezuela, Curacoa [Curacao], Demarara [the Demarara-Mahaica province in Guyana?] and West Indies.” A After a return to New York, the young man “concluded to abandon the sea and settled there, working at anything he could get to do.” The account went on that Benjamin “took an active part in public affairs” and names were dropped, though there seems no way to corroborate any connections.
There is, however, a fascinating letter to the New York Sun by Robert Charles Benjamin and titled “Is there any Justice for the Blacks?” The missive dated 17 July 1873, which would have made its writer, assuming it is R.C.O., barely 18 years old, recounted how a white man tossed a bucket of dirty water on the correspondent and, upon being asked why he did that, spat out, “you black nigger, you” as the pail was raised as if to strike the young man on the head.
Told by a police officer that he had to file a complaint with a judge, Benjamin wrote that another officer outside the jurist’s quarters said to him, “well, nigger, I see you was taking a free bath” and made him wait until he was dry, which was a couple of hours later. An attendant asked what “Master Darkey” wanted, but, when told that the young man wanted a hearing with the judge was rebuffed with “now, look here, you nig, just skedaddle!”
The doorman, however, said he could deliver a letter, perhaps an attempt to further mock a young Black man, maybe assumed to be illiterate. Once the missive was read, however, Benjamin wrote “I was hurled down the steps and the paper behind me.” A brief interview with “the lawyer of court” led to the conclusion by the attorney that there was nothing to be done about the incident and that Benjamin should go home. The letter ended with, “so I came home and took my clothes off, and had to take everything for granted. If you think I was rightly treated, please tell me.”
There was a reply by another reader, Charles Augustus Henry, who lived across Manhattan, and who snidely rejoined,
Allow me to inform the gentleman that the blacks rule over twelve millions of white people in the South; that they have one or two Senators in the United States Senate and five or six members in the House of Representatives, with all the combined power and influence of the Government everywhere in their favor. I think this looks like considerable justice for the Blacks.
Not satisfied with this non-answer, Henry then suggested that “who can tell but that Robert Charles Benjamin may yet be President of these United States,” unless Ulysses S. Grant decided to run for a third term and become King Ulysses I. Henry mockingly offered “I nominate Robert Charles Benjamin as the people’s black man and slop-pail candidate in 1876, because, compared to Grant, “Robert Charles Benjamin is by odds the smartest.”
Returning to the Men of Mark sketch, it was stated that he worked as an agent for soliciting subscriptions and office assistant for the New York Star, followed a few months later by a stint as city editor of the Black-owned Progressive American in 1876, the year he was naturalized. The naturalization card referred to above, however, shows Benjamin’s occupation as a letter carrier. This is in the biography, as it was explained that the young man’s advocacy for the candidacy of Rutherford B. Hayes as president (1876 was the year that the election was decided by an electoral commission by a single vote), though it was added that he stayed in the job for just nine months because the “work [was] too laborious.”
The bio continued that Benjamin soon headed for the South and taught school, first in Kentucky and in several of the Bluegrass State’s counties. It was then that the teacher “to a notion to become a lawyer” and borrowed law books from a former member of Congress, while he “recited lessons” to a county attorney and future state senator. Another stop was in Decatur, Alabama as a public school principal, followed by a stint in Brinkley, Arkansas, then travels “to other points, where he taught school, and made enough money to go to Memphis.”
It was there, the account remarked, that, Benjamin “put himself under Honorable Josiah Patterson,” a former Confederate soldier, lawyer and later a member of the Tennessee legislature and Congress. The Memphis Appeal of 29 January 1881 briefly reported that “a young colored men, R.C.O. Benjamin, was yesterday admitted to practice at the criminal court.” But, there is more to the story, as found in the Herald of Kansas, the only African-American newspaper in the state at that time, in its edition of 11 June 1880, under the heading of “An Attempted Assassination of a Colored Newspaper Correspondent.”
Benjamin, living in Decatur, Alabama, southwest of Huntsville, wrote an article, the content of which was not mentioned, in the Black-owned Washington Exodus, this being assailed by the Decatur paper’s white publisher, who called Benjamin a “contemptible Negro rascal, a Northern scoundrel whose character was abominable, and whose words should not be relied upon.” Benjamin demanded to publish a rejoinder in the paper, but was told there was “no apology, nor answer to give a ‘nigger,'” so the request was posted in the streets of the town.
Apparently, after the white man attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, he laid in wait and attacked Benjamin with a stick, while three or four other men approached with guns. The publisher fired a pistol and inflicted a wound on the young Black man’s finger, with it added that the man was fined $25 for shooting in town limits and subject to bail for a future trial. The defense was Benjamin’s rhetoric that “Southern [white] editors were traitors and brokers unto the peace and prosperity of my race.” To this, the reply was:
Yes, Mr. Editor, I did say it, and I do say without fear of successful contradiction, that any and every thing that may have a tendency to injure the colored man’s present and future progress finds [its] way into the newspapers, but anything that will bring the crimes of our oppressors before the public are forbidden publication by the editors who do not regard the public duty imposed upon them. Instead of justice and magnanimity these Southern editors or traitors to liberty, and to [the] peace and prosperity of a wronged and injured people, with all their learning and boasted progress, they sell themselves to the highest bidder and dare not meet the truth.
These are certainly powerful words and it took no small amount of courage for Benjamin to make these assertions in the Deep South four years after the end of Reconstruction and with Jim Crow on the ascent. It was small wonder that the young man left the rural Decatur for the metropolitan Memphis and that, within a half year, he was admitted to practice as an attorney.
A week-and-a-half after that admission, the Memphis Public Ledger of 7 February 1881 introduced its readers to “The Colored Lawyer,” remarking,
A new attorney with a dimple in his cheek made his debut in the police court this forenoon. He is from Arkansas, his name is R.C.O. Benjamin and, notwithstanding the length of his name, he is quite “cool and carm,” as he musically expresses it. The new attorney is also editor of the Memphis Republican.
It would be a long-standing practice of Benjamin to simultaneously practice law and journalism, while also maintaining an interest in politics and the rights of Black people, while it was also characteristic of him, as we saw with the example above, to quickly and sharply reply to accounts to which he had an opposing view.
With respect to the Public Ledger‘s brief statement, the paper, two days later, commented that
In a curt card to this office, and over the signature of ‘Cool and Carm,” Mr. R.C.O. Benjamin declares that he didn’t come from Arkansas, did not make his debut as an attorney in the police court, as has been hinted, and isn’t editor of the Memphis Republican, nor did he ever write a line for that journal. Mr. Benjamin says he has been a frequent visitor at the police court for some time past.
Whatever was the case, it did not take long for trouble to arise. The 30 May edition of the Public Ledger noted that “the colored attorneys have been entirely shut out of practice at the police court,” with one heading north, another to Arkansas and a third to Texas, though names were omitted in favor of such thinly veiled descriptions as “croaking solicitor,” “the pale young man in the yellow vest,” and “the geometrical ginger cake argufier.”
As for Benjamin, it was added that “now the ‘cool and carm’ young limb with the dimple in his cheek, has left his clients in the lurch.” The account went on to observe that “the name of the latter is J.C.O. [sic] Benjamin, as a warrant charging fraudulent breach of trust sets forth.” It was noted that he inaugurated his practice about three months prior, but “practice at the bar being dull, he entered suit against a colored damsel for her affections and other moveables.”
Apparently, he gained possession of a ring “and his knuckle growing an inch in one night, he was unable to get it off when called for.” The result was an arrest warrant “and that evening he was seen in the act of swinging on the platform of a northward bound train.” We will see that other accounts concerned variations on this general theme, the truth of the allegations being another matter.
A little more than two weeks later, Benjamin turned up in Huntsville, Alabama, where that city’s Black-owned Gazette of 18 June briefly noted that “he goes to Chattanooga to try his fortune there as a practicing lawyer.” He, however, remained in the Alabama town bordering Tennessee as the Huntsville Independent briefly noted that “upon motion of Samuel Lowery,” an African-American lawyer and newspaper publisher, “R.C.O. Benjamin, a colored Memphis attorney, was admitted to practice.”
The Huntsville sojourn, however, was short. That city’s Gazette of 13 August recorded that “Mr. R.C.O. Benjamin, with Chicago in view as a good place for finishing the summer, left the city Thursday morning.” By the end of 1881, though, the attorney was in Oswego, Kansas, and then back on the road with more trouble afoot, as that town’s Christian Advocate, also an African-American newspaper, of 14 December warned its readers:
R.C.O. Benjamin, who, we understand, is visiting [International Order of Immaculates, a Black fraternal society formed in Nashville in 1872] lodges out east and receiving their hospitality, under the guise as a financial member of the order. Allow us to inform all Immaculates, that the said Benjamin is no longer a member, neither is he entitled to fellowship in the order. Take notice, and treat him accordingly.
As we’ll be seen subsequently, this penchant for soliciting for money will arise again, adding to the complex nature of Benjamin’s activities.
Here, we’ll stop and return tomorrow with part two, so be sure to join us then.
I completely agree with the comments in this post regarding the biography of R. C. O. Benjamin, which question its accuracy since it relies solely on Benjamin’s own account. This reminds me of an old Chinese saying: “If you fully believe what you read, it would be better to read nothing at all” (盡信書不如無書). I believe this proverb emphasizes the importance of maintaining a questioning attitude while reading.