by Paul R. Spitzzeri
At the dawn of 1887, Robert Charles O’Hara Benjamin (1855-1900), was living and working in Birmingham, Alabama, though he’d recently stopped publishing his Negro American newspaper, reportedly because of failing eyesight, thought it might well have been more like failing finances. Whatever the reason and, despite a late 1886 admonishment from William C. Chase, his former employer at the Black-owned Washington Bee, he began writing letters to that paper about current issues.
One of these concerned that matter that led to the tongue-lashing: the actions of James C. Matthews, the African-American Recorder of Deeds in Washington who succeeded Frederick Douglass in that office on a recess appointment by President Grover Cleveland to bypass a likely rejection of the Democratic chief executive’s nomination of a rare high-profile Black Democrat by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Benjamin previously accused Matthews of firing black clerks in the department in favor of hiring white ones, to which Chase took offense, but, somehow, the two mended fences, likely by the former acknowledging his mistake. When, however, a nomination of Matthews for the position was forwarded to Congress, Republicans in the Senate predictably voted it down, claiming that the nominee actively encouraged African-Americans to switch allegiances and support Democrats.
On 22 February, Benjamin wrote a long letter published in the Bee four days later that this rejection was “for no other reason than because he is a Negro” and that purported fact “convinces me that the Negro’s hope for political recognition is in a new party.” Chase castigated Benjamin at the end of the previous year by noting that, when living in Pittsburgh a couple of years prior, Benjamin promoted an independent movement that hurt Republicans in elections.
The Birmingham resident wrote that Democrats were hardly “in love with the Negro,” but added that “the progress of civilization, the advancement of knowledge and the demands of society force that party to recognize the Negro.” The Republican Party, “the supposed party of equality and justice,” was, however, “the pretended friend of the Negro,” so, he claimed, “our assistance must come from some neutral source.”
Benjamin continued, and it seems clear that the sentiments expressed can certainly be weighed by us now, nearly 140 years later:
Both the democratic and republican parties have by their long continuance in power and control of national affairs became so corrupt in practice and so negligent of the interests of the people as to forfeit all claim upon public confidence and support, while their usurpation of power, their greed for spoils, their cringing servility to combinations and corporations of great wealth whose policy is the robbery of the masses; the flagrant disregard of the known or expressed will of their constituencies; their appointment of a bias[ed] and dependent judiciary for partisan and personal purposes; their class legislation; their squandering of the public domain upon rich syndicates, aliens and corporations have demonstrated their unworthiness, and the necessity of their overthrow and expulsion from power and authority. There is nothing truer than the fact that political parties and public officers long invested with government power, and with the administration of law are prone to abuse their trust and privileges and to use the power placed in their hands for selfish purposes. Both the democratic and republican parties are cursed with the arrogance and the dictatorship of machine politics. They advocate no principle for they have none, and if a party cannot agree as to what principle it will advocate, it has no valid reason to exist.
Benjamin went on that Democrats exploited poor white men for the party’s interests, but Republicans “made use of the Negro to run up their bank account.” Lacking understanding of the party system, Black Americans were in a dilemma in which “instead of using the party [they have] permitted the party to use them.”
Moreover, he averred, “we clung to this [Republican] party; for it we have suffered more than any people have ever suffered for a party and for our pains it deserted us, basely abandoned us to our fate.” But, any talk of another choice was subject to question so that “we are given to understand that we have no more right now to exercise our judgment than when we were only chattels [slaves.]”
With rights denied by Democrats and action stunted by Republicans, Benjamin concluded, “we must join hands with the masses of oppressed whites in demanding a new political party.” He insisted that such an organization “will create a sentiment that will find a way to suppress the wrong and secure the right.” This idealism was enhanced by his opinion that “in the field of American citizenship, it will recognize no line of creed or color.” To his fellow African-Americans, Benjamin exhorted, “here is our opportunity. Ours will be the fault if we fail to make the best of it.”
Powerful, highly articulate and cogent on many points, in some ways Benjamin anticipated aspects of the Populist movement of the 1890s and the rise of Progressivism in the early 20th century, though the 32-year old’s expressions about a lack of discrimination “of creed or color” and the surety of the right overcoming the wrong seem hopelessly naive. Still, this letter is a remarkable product, written in the Deep South during some of the worse days of Jim Crow.
Benjamin’s penchant for sharp and pungent attacks on opponents was fully manifest in another letter to the Bee, published in its issue of 5 March. Though he was named as an interested party in a proposed Colored World’s Exposition, proposed at the end of 1886 and to be held in Birmingham, the lawyer quickly changed his views, telling the Washington paper that, after writing to Chase two weeks prior from Mobile, “I said that I Would continue telling the public what a humbug the thing is” and then shared what he wrote in his own Negro American.
Basically, Benjamin lampooned chief organizer Phillip Joseph by writing that a meeting concerning the event was completely dominated by Joseph including his motion that he be named chair; then that he be authorized to appoint all committees; then “suggested that a man of universal popularity” be appointed director general by the meeting chair with this, of course, being Joseph; and that he then “made a rousing speech in which he promised that the wishes of the people be respected all over the world.” After congratulating attendees for their taste in choosing leaders, Benjamin concluded, Joseph adjourned the meeting.
The Black newspaper, the St. Paul Appeal in Minnesota, in its 12 March edition, briefly acknowledged and thanked Benjamin for recently sending a pamphlet of his called “The Future of the Negro,” with published writings in various forms becoming a greater interest of his. Later in the month, he became involved in a notable controversy in Birmingham related to a visit Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the younger brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman, architect of the devastating march to the sea through the South during the Civil War and a Republican who served in the House of Representatives from 1855-1861, the Senate from 1861-1877, as Secretary of the Treasury from 1877-1881 and back to the Senate in 1881 for another 16 year stretch.
Sherman had presidential ambitions for 1888, but his criticism of the South for the treatment of African-Americans (and, likely, bitter feelings lingering about his brother) led to a situation in which, while staying at a Birmingham hotel, he was given some rather poor treatment. Moreover, when a quintet of Black men, including Benjamin, tried to see the senator in his room, they were denied access by the owner, saying they could only meet Sherman outside his establishment.
Benjamin and another man then wrote a note to Sherman asking for the outdoor meeting, but he told his servant to inform the local African-American delegation to come to his room. The senator then learned the hotel proprietor rejected this request. It was recorded that “Mr. Benjamin was allowed to go into the hotel barber shop, which is run by colored men,” but otherwise was denied entrance to the hostelry.
This account appeared in the Los Angeles Tribune of 29 March and was the first located mention of Benjamin in the Angel City press. A few days later, the Appeal of 2 April briefly noted that Benjamin was a founder of the Robert Brown Elliot School of Technology, named after a Black West Indian from England, who served in the United States House of Representatives, was speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives and was attorney general in the Reconstruction period, though when federal troops left as Reconstruction ended, he was forced out as attorney general. He died in poverty in New Orleans in 1884 at just age 41. It is not known, however, if the school was able to become operational, as nothing further could be located about it.
The 23 April issue of the Appeal reported that Benjamin sold the Negro American and then left Birmingham for Cincinnati to meet a sister arriving from what was said to be his hometown, Demerara in the West Indies (again, that name is found in Guyana, formerly British Guyana). Moreover, the account noted, “they will shortly leave for New York and thence will embark for Germany where she goes to pursue her studies.” Was this, however, true at all?
The same day’s edition of the Bee, however, contained a lengthy piece titled “R.C.O. Benjamin: Is He Married Or Is He Not?” and copied from the Birmingham Herald, a reporter of which saw Benjamin on the street and offered congratulations for his nuptials to a Miss Ewing of Mobile, this reported by a Bee correspondent from that latter city. Benjamin, however, “positively and indignantly denied having been married to Miss Ewing or anyone else”
Phillip Joseph (the same skewered in the article above) was spotted and asked what he knew of the purported marriage and stated that a friend of his was told by Benjamin to “go to the Ewing House, the young lady of that house is my betrothed.” Joseph then learned that a ceremony was held at the A.M.E. Zion Church in Mobile, while a search was said to have located a license issued on 24 January, with a penciled notation of “Don’t Publish” in the margin, and the names recorded as Chas. Benjamin and Virginia Ewing.
It was added that it was positively established that “Chas. Benjamin” and R.C.O. Benjamin were the same person. When Joseph was asked for possible reasons why the marriage was not to be revealed, he answered, “none, that I know of, except that which would prompt any dishonest man.” Joseph professed no hard feelings towards Benjamin, while also claiming they had only a slight acquaintance. The article ended with befuddlement and the remark “what is all means we are at a loss to know” though it added, “Mr. Joseph says it is a positive fact that they are married,” having cited a page number in the Mobile record book.
Whatever transpired, Benjamin again vanished and it was nearly three months before any reference to him. The Huntsville Gazette of 16 July cited his former paper as remarking, “I[t] is rumored that Mr. R.C.O. Benjamin is dead, the rumor says he died at El Paso, Texas, but at the beginning of September, the Gazette confirmed that he “has been heard from and is neither dead nor sleeping” as he was reported to be in Houston and corresponded with that city’s Post.
In fact, that paper recorded yet another controversy involving Benjamin in its edition of the 17th. Henry Watts, pastor of the Fourth Missionary Baptist Church, formerly Watts Chapel and still operating today, and his church members, reported the Post, “were in an awful stew” and “incensed at the remarks of R.C.O. Benjamin, the colored lawyer, who delivered a lecture at [M]arket [H]all night before last.” The account continued,
Parson Watts and his congregation got it into their heads that Benjamin in his lecture said that the women during services at Watts’ chapel stood on their heads [during the intense moments of services] and that the congregation was dissipated. It was also whispered that insult to injury had been added by comparing them to the monkeys in the wilds of Africa.
Watts was not at the address, but, when told what was evidently stated, “his blood did boil . . . [and] the whole congregation [had] been stirred as if by a long pole.” A congregational meeting was held and a committee of ten appointed to confront Benjamin and to tell him that “he had slandered their church in his lecture, and that they wanted a public retraction.” Commenting that the lecturer “is an educated man and one of considerable ability,” the Post recorded that Benjamin asked what precisely constituted slander in his remarks and, apparently not getting a reply, he refused to retract.
Benjamin was at a train station heading to Brenham, northwest of Houston, when Watts and the committee of ten arrived “in a terrible state of excitement” and searched for a police officer while keeping an eye on their offender. An officer was found, though Benjamin protested at the lack of a warrant, though he agreed to go to jail and was there when a justice of the peace issued a warrant under a charge of using obscene language in public.
A Post representative appeared and asked the prisoner for any comment, which was freely offered:
In the course of my lecture last night I advised the colored people to strive to educate and raise themselves to a higher moral plane. I told them to emulate the better class of white people and tried to show them that it was not their race that impeded their progress but rather their ignorance. [After saying that God was to be worshipped with intelligence, he continued] I said it was not necessary for a woman to stand on her head to proclaim that she had religion. To illustrate this I referred to Elder Watts’ chapel and said I had attended services there and that their manner of worship was simply disgraceful. I used no language that would be offensive to the most refined lady in the land.
Adding that he would not say anything offensive “per se” to a crowd of 600 auditors, Benjamin went on that he was on a Southern lecture tour “doing what I can toward enlightening the colored people and how badly some of them are in need of enlightenment this affair shows only too plainly.” Watts appeared and offered his argument, with material cited above, and the sheriff issued a $200 bond for Benjamin’s release until a trial could be held.
The Post then turned to a description of the offender:
R.C.O. Benjamin, the colored man who has stirred up the colored people of this city from center to circumference, is a young man not over 30 [he was 32]. He is of a ginger cake color and of medium height and slender build. He is a man of education and claims to be a lawyer practicing at Birmingham.
He told the paper he had some schooling in London, he then said he graduated from the University of Michigan, though we have seen claims of degrees earned from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Howard University, both Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
It was added that Benjamin was still editor of the Negro American, though that was reported sold at the end of 1886, as noted above. He was said to be “a fluent talker and of remarkably pleasant and easy manners” and came to Houston two months prior to address the United Brothers of Friendship, a fraternal order formed a quarter century before at Louisville. In its edition of the 21st, the Post perfunctorily noted that the case against him was dismissed.
By the end of September, Benjamin was in Ohio (where earlier reports mentioned a brother who died at Toledo and that Benjamin met a sister there as she was purportedly on her way to Europe for schooling), where he addressed the Republican State Executive Committee at a gathering in Columbus. Returning to Texas shortly afterward, he penned a lengthy description of the Lone Star State published in the Bee of 8 October, focusing on white violence against African-Americans at Matagorda County, where there was a substantial Black majority among the population, along the Gulf of México southwest of Houston.
At nearby Columbia, he continued, there was an exodus of some 50 Black families because whites forced them to leave after violence, following an African-American constable’s attempts to arrest a white man led to the deaths of four African-American men. He added that “before leaving Columbia I became sick at heart to see the colored women trembling with babes in their arms, and tears trickling down their dusky cheeks.” He concluded,
It remains to be seen, that if the American people will suffer the outrages to continue upon a poor and inoffensive people . . . ere long the whole nation will be made to pay the penalty of those inhuman crimes. It may be through flood, or tears, or famine, or blood, yet it will come. God is just and his vengeance sleepeth not.
The 8 October issue of the Appeal included a remarkable commentary on “the ubiquitous and irrepressible R.C.O. Benjamin,” adding that “there was more truth than poetry in what [he] said.” Noting the dismissal of the Houston case, the paper then notably noted, “there is no use trying to get the best of Benjamin, blow him sky high, if you like, and he always, cat like, alights on his feet.”
The Bee of 29 October published another expansive missive about Benjamin’s travels, through El Paso, into the adjacent Ciudad Juárez, but, in a brief introduction, added that “while quite a few of our contemporaries find fault with Mr. Benjamin, we are inclined to believe that he wants to make money.” For its part, the 5 November issue of the St. Paul Appeal merely observed that “Benjamin is worth several dead men,” perhaps meaning that he’d managed to stay on his feet through numerous controversies, after reporting that he was seen in Ciudad Juarez a few days prior.
Actually, by early November, Benjamin was in Los Angeles and part five next picks up the tale in the Angel City.
Despite the many negative comments about R.C.O. Benjamin in the earlier parts of this series, he also delivered some powerful speeches and writings in defense of Black people’s rights as noted in this post. I particularly agree with the following line from one of his speeches to fellow African Americans: “Here is our opportunity. Ours will be the fault if we fail to make the best of it.”
I believe he captured a key point, which still resonates today with African Americans living in the United States 140 years later. With strong legal protections firmly in place and abundant opportunities available in workplaces and schools, what remains for African Americans is to embrace responsibility and foster self-reliance, guiding young people toward positive paths and away from gangs, theft, graffiti, drugs, and street crime.