The Black Pioneers of Los Angeles County: R.C.O. Benjamin, California’s First African-American Practicing Attorney, Part Six

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

We finished part five of this post by noting a scathing reaction by the Memphis Avalanche (and it certainly unleashed a slide of criticism) to an early March 1888 Los Angeles Tribune letter to the editor by R.C.O. Benjamin (1855-1900), whose career as a lawyer began in the Tennessee city eight years before and then wended its way through multiple American states and a brief stay in Ontario, Canada, including some notable legal troubles and controversies.

In fall 1887, Benjamin came to the Angel City and was admitted to practice, making him the first Black lawyer not just in Los Angeles, but California, as well. He quickly got involved in the city’s African-American political and religious realms, as well, and then wrote his lengthy missive to the Tribune as a critical reply to one published by the paper a little more than week later from the Rev. Jordan Allen of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. As we recorded in a post in this series about Allen, the minister did not advocate African-American migration to California.

Benjamin, however, very much did and he wasted little ink going right after Allen, writing,

To say that the article was sophistical would be to pay it an extravagant compliment, for it had no pretence [sic] to argument or even to meaning. Unintelligibility seemed to be the only interesting feature of the parson’s effort. Among the many things he undertook to discuss was the Southern question. It is no disgrace if a man don’t know a thing, but he appears supremely ridiculous when he undertakes to discuss a subject upon which he is not posted.

The lawyer scored the pastor for claiming that Black people were better off remaining in the South because white planters would protect them and cited a couple of examples of African-Americans with substantial property, but he remarked “of course the Rev. Jordan Allen has never lived in the South,” though that would be the Deep South because he was born in the border state of Missouri, “therefore the Rev. Jordan knows nothing about the state of affairs in that land of physical terror and political slavery.”

Allowing for exceptions involving some Black success stories, “the masses of the Southern negroes are in the worst possible condition” and Benjamin asserted that the white Southerner “regards the negro as much a[s] chattel today as he did twenty-five years ago, the only difference is that he can’t put him on the auction block and sell him to the highest bidder as in days of yore, but they have substituted instead a system of brutality unknown to any civilized people in the world.”

This involved land price gouging; discrimination in education, travel and hotel access; denial of jury service; and lack of labor contract support and protection.” Given this, Benjamin pronounced, “the [13th, 14th and 15th] amendments to the constitution are a dead letter in the South” and were so wrought “by fraud, by violence, by murder, by assassination, by bull whips and shotguns. Despite being a majority of the population in Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina and more than 40% of the residents of the South broadly, African-Americans “are unable to elect one of their race to speak for them in the American Congress on account of the mob law and lynching that are invariably inflicted upon them.”

Moreover, he called it “a historical verity” that, since 1864, 85,000 Black people were killed in the South “without trial by jury or semblance of law,” and this was a centerpiece of the Avalanche attack on Benjamin’s essay. The attorney asked if Allen was even aware of the chain gang, adding “this inhuman, barberous [sic] and iniquitious [sic] system is a Southern institution, invented expressly for the negro, and has a history barely surpassed by the inquisitions of Spain.”

This led Benjamin to ask, “will such a state of affairs tend to elevate the moral sentiment of the negro in the South? What say you, Brother Allen?” The broadside continued,

Education, training, cleanliness and character are articles that the Southern white man will not recognize in a negro. The prejudice against his color is the obstacle in his path. He is a good waiter, barber, janitor, cook. A nice ornament for the rear of a hose carriage, or a military company on parade carrying a pail of ice water.

The essayist allowed that there were some progressive white people in the South, but he went on to state that “the color line encloses the black man of the South as securely as the stockade held to starve the Union soldiers at Andersonville.” Incidentally, one such Union prisoner of war at that notorious camp, residing in Los Angeles in 1888, was Charles M. Jenkins.

As for Allen’s assumption that African-Americans were conditioned to the South’s climate and the work of raising cotton with any move from those considered fatal, Benjamin rejoined “now Brother Allen it is real mean in you not to tell us what would prove fatal; the negro, the climate, the cotton or the man for whom the negro cultivates the cotton.” If Black migration was fatal to the white planter, Benjamin was all for it.

What he was also all in favor of was supplanting California’s Chinese laboring population for Black ones and countering Allen’s contention that limiting the importation of the latter was because of the prevalence of the former. Benjamin’s views on this are worth quoting somewhat extensively given the virulent anti-Chinese sentiment of the time, this being a half-dozen years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act:

I do not hesitate in saying that I express the honest sentiment of every intelligent Californians when I say the Chinese are not wanted here . . . The negro is a citizen; the Chinaman is not. The negro is christianized; the Chinaman is not. The negro is here to stay; the Chinaman is not. Whatever money the negro may get from the white man through his labor, he will again spend it with the white man. On the contrary, the Chinaman gets all the money he can, and skips out to Hong Kong or some other ungodly town, where he can enjoy his opium and rice. The colored man is not a sloth or a sleuth hound, groping on the suburbs of civilization, or lying in the kennel of public necessity.

If anything, he continued, “the trouble with the negro is that he lacks race pride, and he has been entirely too stationary” and believes “he is duty bound to live and die on the same plantation” doing so “no matter how badly he is treated, or how poor he becomes.” Still, Benjamin concluded,

I know of no point that is more suitable for the negro than California. Here he can walk the streets unmolested; he is assured of a fair and impartial trial in the courts of justice. He can follow any avocation he sees fit, and be paid for the same. He can obtain responsible positions, if he possesses the qualifications to fill them . . . In no part of the world is there greater promise of prosperity . . . in no other part of the world is the same opportunity offered the black, the white, the rich and the poor. The Southern negro has just learned of the civil, political, educational, religious and industrial advantages offered him in this land of balmy breezes, and he is coming, Rev. Jordan Allen to the contrary notwithstanding.

Another lengthy disquisition by the attorney published by the Tribune, in its 26 May edition, was titled “How the Colored Troops Fought” and was penned for Memorial Day, so we’ll save a discussion of the essay for a future post for the holiday. What can be said here is that Benjamin sought to give the spotlight on some 200,000 Black soldiers who fought for the Union Army during the Civil War and whose bravery, courage and other attributes were left unrecognized in more than two decades since that conflict.

The African-Americans who wore the blue uniforms of the northern army did so to help save the Union and they did so “under vastly more disadvantageous circumstances” than their white brethren and Benjamin noted that some 20% of the Black soldiery perished during the war. The lawyer concluded that the commemoration of the holiday was an opportunity to “resolve to rededicate ourselves with renewed energy to the task of steadily advancing [the] principles” involved in the fight “until man in this government shall be known by his virtue and worth, and not by the color of his skin.”

Three days later, a correspondent identified only as “Vicksburg,” and who fought for the Union, criticized Benjamin’s essay. We’ll also look at this response in that future post, but, despite the claim that “I am willing to accord to every nationality and color that part they played in the late civil war,” the veteran, residing in Riverside, took offense with Benjamin’s essay, suggesting, as the latter did with Allen, that “his inaccuracy of statement is so glaring,” citing that “he says Sambo took a conspicuous part at Donelson,” but observing that “the project of arming the blacks was not entertained until after Shiloh.”

“Vicksburg” wrote that he was a leader of the Union assault at Spanish Fort and inquired if Benjamin could identify if any African-American soldiers who died in combat there. The veteran officer also insisted that “the arming of the blacks was not a paying investment by the government” and that African-Americans were not needed to win the war and more credit would have redounded to the Union if they were not recruited because “we lost more than we gained.” The conclusion was “the black man was a poor soldier, and his importance was intolerable, as the frequent collisions with the white troops testified.”

Benjamin replied, again at great length, in a missive that the Tribune published on 3 June and questioned how someone could submit letters to editors and not use their own name and opined that so doing meant that the letter was driven by “personal enmity,” or that he was “ashamed of his calumnious ingenuity” or “has written deliberate falsehoods,” with the result that the writer “dreads the derision and contempt of a well-informed public.” Moreover, Benjamin claimed he learned the identity of the writer and found that he did not live in Riverside, but in Los Angeles and was “a renegade army man.”

The attorney also informed readers that, in fact, an examination of the published Army register of the Fort Donelson battle showed that a Black artillery unit “took active part in that battle” with an officer and four enlisted men killed. The problem with this is that the 4th Heavy Artillery unit was not established until after the first Fort Donelson battle in February 1862, but it did engage against Confederate troops there in October 1864, the engagement to which he referred.

Also known is that African-American soldiers did not fight in organized units until after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September 1862 and to take effect at the start of the following year. At Shiloh, there were Black retainers with both armies, but no fighting troops. Benjamin cited official records showing that African-Americans fought for the Union at Spanish Fort, as the war came to a close, countering the claims of “Vicksburg.”

He concluded by claiming that the latter claimed to be a general, but was lieutenant of a Black regiment and was “disgracefully discharged” just after war’s end, though wanted to run for office in the fall and was said to be soliciting African-American votes. Not only this, Benjamin issued “due notice” to “Vicksburg” not to “lift his political head to the surface” as nothing would be better “than to cut if off and preserve it in the archives of political oblivion, as a warning to men of a supercilious caliber.” Whatever the failings of “Vicksburg” in his argument, Benjamin was not without inaccuracies in his.

The fifth part of this post mentioned two political meetings in the presidential election year of Angel City African-Americans, though the first, in January, was sparsely attended and the second, three months later, got tumultuous and many in attendance left early. On 12 June, however, the Young Men’s Republican Club, comprised almost entirely of white men, held a gathering at a court room with Benjamin voted a member of the executive committee from the city’s Fourth Ward (he’d been in the Second Ward when he registered to vote under two months prior) and he was one of a quartet who spoke to the assemblage.

A week later, the Tribune reported on a meeting of the recently established Oro Fino Social Republican Club, comprised of white men, but noted that Benjamin was among the half-dozen speakers, which included Governor Robert Waterman. The paper also recorded a meeting of the Eureka Republican Club, whose members included such prominent Black Angelenos as Rev. Allen, Robert C. Owens, C.W.H. Nelson and Jacob Soares. Benjamin, however, was named president of this organization just two days prior, so it is unclear if his presence at the Oro Fino gathering was because of a rift developing between him and Eureka members.

The Independence Day edition of the Los Angeles Herald proclaimed that “local colored Republicans are divided” and added that “the breach is a big one.” The Eureka Club met in the Second Baptist Church, a Black church on Requena Street that began services in October 1885 and still operates today and a reporter wrote that, with no small degree of bias, racially or politically, that,

A room possibly 25×20 [feet] was jammed to the doors with the dusky sons of Ham, and anybody passing within a block . . . would certainly wager that no worshipping of the Deity was going on there.

It was added that “the tumult inside was indescribable” as fighting raged about a proposal to change the name to the Harrison and Morton Club of Los Angeles, reflecting the Republican nominees Benjamin Harrison and Levi Morton, but dissatisfaction was such that the chair sat down in resignation.

The reporter observed that there were Texas and California factions amongst the participants, with the former at three times the size at 450 members, even though the latter, including Benjamin, started the club, though “force of numbers gave the Texans the supremacy.” The larger group was in an uproar because it did not support the Harrison/Morton ticket and it was said that otherwise “many of them assert they will be converted to the Democracy.” Texas, as a Southern state, was, of course, a bastion of the Democratic Party.

As for the minority, they decried the Texas faction as “politically, morally and socially ignorant” and so the California contingent threatened to leave the organization unless Harrison and Morton were acknowledged as the ticket and the club name accordingly changed. A Texan member told the reporter that “Harrison was no friend of the negro” while “the Republican platform was not sound on the tariff [question.]”

Two days later, the Express published a short note from Benjamin responding to a challenge issued by the Iroquois Club, which appears to have taken its name from the prominent Chicago organization and was comprised of such prominent local Democrats as future United States Senator Stephen M. White, former Sheriff William R. Rowland, future Mayor Thomas E. Rowan, lawyer George S. Patton (father of the World War II hero-general) and a few Latinos like Refugio Bilderrain, José Estudillo, and Reginaldo F. del Valle. This was to debate the positions of the two parties for the upcoming election and Benjamin, while not choosing to debate in person, offered to exchange printed views under the heading of “The character of the Democratic and Republican parties in general.”

On the 17th, reported the next day’s Times, Benjamin gave “a rousing speech” to a gathering of the West End Republicans at the newly opened fire station on Temple Street in the Bunker Hill section of town, with C.W.H. Nelson being among the African-Americans in attendance. His prominence in local political circles was certainly becoming manifest, though this was also take a turn in coming weeks, as we shall see.

Benjamin also returned to journalism with the formation in early July of a weekly Republican paper called The Observer and of which he was named editor, while his African-American partners included AME Zion Pastor Tilghman Brown, under whom Benjamin served as an elder, Soares and William S. Sampson. The quartet established an office on at the Second Baptist Church. The Tribune of the 7th stated that “the Observer will be the first paper devoted to the colored people ever published on this coast outside of San Francisco.”

Three days later, the Express informed readers that the recently published inaugural issue of eight pages was stated by its promoters as “devoted to the moral, social, educational, industrial and political interests of the colored people” and it added that “the Observer is carefully and ably edited, and very neatly gotten up.” Moreover, the edition “contains a great deal of new and interesting information regarding the colored people of Los Angeles” and that it was “a live and bright journal.” Politically, this extract was deemed to be of significance for the Express:

In politics we are Republican, without equivocation, and as an uncompromising exponent of the principles made sacred by the martyred Lincoln, the philanthropist [the late Senator and abolitionist Charles] Sumner, and soldier hero [and former President Ulysses S.] Grant, we shall at all times and upon all occasions be found at the front unflinchingly and unswervingly battling for these principles.

Part seven is coming soon, so check back with us for that.