by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In a matter of months after settling in Los Angeles, after seven years of living and working in several states and, briefly, Canada, including legal scrapes and other controversies, as well as becoming the first African-American practicing attorney in a number of places, R.C.O. Benjamin, who achieved that distinction in the Angel City and California, made his mark in several areas as a lawyer, historian, poet and political activist.
His skills as a writer and orator were often characterized by a sharp, cutting edge when it came to confronting his opponents, be they Black or white, and this could and did lead to conflicts that went beyond verbal sparring to physical jousting. One notable occurrence was in later July concerning the Oro Fino Republican Club mentioned in part six, including after a ballot box was stolen during a party caucus election and factionalism within the organization arose.
During a contentious meeting with a great deal of agitation manifested, Benjamin accused one faction of denying some men from voting. It was reported in the Los Angeles Express of the 24th that Benjamin related how representatives from the Los Angeles Tribune requested his help when it came to the ballot box issue and that “he agreed to help the ticket, but would like to see two of his friends elected,” one as sergeant-at-arms, to positions within the club. He explained,
I found that [club] bosses were scratching my [African-American] men [off ballots after promising to support them], so I worked against the caucus ticket, and I think it was defeated—at least a part of it was.
Another incident pertaining to Benjamin’s editorship of the Black-owned newspaper, the Los Angeles Observer, revolved around Walter Van Dyke, a nominee for Superior Court judge, with the paper reporting that Benjamin interviewed the candidate and then published that Van Dyke was a long-time abolitionist as well as expected to secure the African-American vote because of his prior acts or those of the Republican party on behalf of Black people.
Van Dyke asserted that the alleged interview presented his responses in a style alien to his manner of speech, but, more importantly, he told other papers that “although a candidate, I am not in the market to beg or buy votes, and any voter, whatever his color may be, who thinks it his duty to support another should do so by all means.” The idea that Benjamin fabricated an interview or took a casual conversation and represented Van Dyke in a way not intended was certainly notable, if true.
A paper that was not as mainstream was the Porcupine, the name of which is highly suggestive, operated by lawyer and averred historian Horace Bell. The paper quoted from the Observer, which recounted how Benjamin met Van Dyke on Spring Street just after securing the Republican nomination and shook Benjamin’s hand, which was apparently the first time he’d done so “although he has passed us on the street three times a day for over a year.” What the Van Dyke interview was reported to have involved, said the editor and lawyer, was:
“I suppose you boys are well organized, and will stand by your friends.” We answered, “Oh yes” “That’s right” [and] said Van Dyke, with a smile on his phiz [face]; “the party has done a great deal for your race. I have been a abolitionist all my life, and have always taken an interest in your people.” We thanked him both for the sacrifice he had made for the Negro race, and the information he had given us and retired to the secrecy of our sanctum to soliloquize over the infernal hypocrisy of office seekers in general, and Hon. Walter Van Dyke in particular.
Bell then mocked Van Dyke for his claims that the supposed interview was misrepresenting him to such a degree and was “all of a flutter because of The Porcupine’s prickings and the Observer’s observations.” Calling him a “non-entity” who threatened to treat the two papers “with the contempt they merit at his hands,” Bell concluded “the old man is wise beyond his years in coming to such a conclusion, because if he only talks back he will be used up before the campaign opens.” Van Dyke not only won a seat as judge, serving for eleven years, but became an associate justice on the state supreme court and served six years until his death in 1905.
The 18 August edition of the Express ran a piece titled “A Colored Sensation” and which began with “according to all accounts there is a war in Africa” because, in the Observer, “Benjamin referred to one [C.H.] Twine as a ‘drunken sot'” while also claiming he was seeking to influence white Republicans regarding the election, including soliciting funds for a group called the “Bonebrake Invincibles,” led by Major George H. Bonebrake, a real estate developer and banker.
It will be recalled, however, earlier in this post that a man named Twine (already convicted in November 1887 of threatening to shoot the wife of a friend) was represented by Benjamin in a case involving the transporting of a woman and her child to Los Angeles for marriage, when her husband was still in Texas and there was no legal divorce. Benjamin secured Twine’s release on a writ of habeus corpus, or unlawful detainer, but Twine then disappeared. He came back, however, and resumed his place in Republican Party circles and who knows how much of the earlier incident, aside from politics, informed Benjamin’s diatribe.
In any case, it was stated that Twine threatened to shoot and kill the editor, who responded in print that he could easily be found at the Observer office where the Second Baptist Church was situated. When Twine showed up, Benjamin drew a Colt .45 pistol and had it at the ready, with his adversary purportedly telling him (quoted in dialect) to either put the gun away or shoot because Twine would otherwise find a way to get at Benjamin later and kill him. Twine then turned on his heels and left, but the attorney filed a complaint “on the charge of using threatening language, ” but, when the two men appeared before a judge “the matter was amicably settled.”
Matters were calm for a few weeks, during which time Benjamin represented an African-American defendant in an assault case, a Black woman for using indecent language, and a white man accused of the murder of his brother; gave a speech to the Irish-American Republican Club; and lost a civil case brought against him by the Los Angeles Express‘ printing company, perhaps related to his history of Haitian revolutionary and politician, Toussaint Louverture, printed by the firm in the spring.
More problems, however, ensued regarding his Observer commentaries and, on 8 September, conflict came to a head. First, as factionalism arose among Black male voters, something that would not have been as much of an issue before the Boom of the Eighties which brought many more African-American residents to the city since it burse forth two years prior though it was at this point about in the bust stage, a new Black-owned newspaper, the Advocate, was formed.
The Times of 8 September reported,
The majority of the colored people have been dissatisfied with the course of the Observer, a weekly newspaper published by R.C.O. Benjamin and John Jacob Astor Soares. The Observer started out as an organ for the whole colored population of Los Angeles county, and the colored people at first were inclined to give it a liberal patronage. The Observer early in the campaign exhibited strange tendencies toward Republican candidates, first severely criticizing one candidate and then another, seemingly taking pains to misrepresent them [Superior Court judicial candidate Walter Van Dyke perhaps]. Then the Observer commenced an unwarranted attack on the Republican County Central Committee in a long article . . .
The paper also referred to the schism among African-American Republicans with the Harrison and Morton Club splitting from the Eureka organization because they were “disgusted by the course pursued by Benjamin and others.” As has been noted in a few places in this post, Benjamin long promoted a more independent political position for Black voters and the Times added that “Benjamin and [Thomas] Pearson [a county and state G.O.P. delegate] are leaders in an independent movement, and have organized the Independent Colored Club, promising to support the Republican national ticket, but avowing an intention to be independent on the State and county tickets.”
The founders of the new Advocate included Rev. Jordan Allen of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Robert C. Owens, J.C. Johns, P.M. Jackson, and Allen Smith and the Times article concluded with the observation that, seemingly addressing Benjamin:
Inquiry among several prominent colored people has elicited the facts that the only trouble among them has arisen from an insatiate desire on the part of several would-be leaders to rule or ruin, upon whom the more conservative element have gently but heavily seated themselves.
Gentle was hardly what was reported that same day in the Express, which, under the heading of “Razors in the Air,” informed is readers that,
For some time there has been a bitter feeling existing among the rank and file of the colored population. Not long since a colored lawyer put in an appearance in this city and announced himself as a leader of men. He gave the name of R.C.O. Benjamin and soon installed himself in the good graces of several prominent colored citizens. [After he formed the Observer,] everything went along smoothly for some time, when Benjamin showed an inclination to “burn up” everybody who did not fall in with his ideas and notions. Several aspirants for office were unfairly scored. To their credit they paid no attention to Benjamin or his articles.
The paper continued that the latest edition of the paper included “several insulting articles” directed toward Jackson, Johns and Owens of the Advocate and this “was a little more than the gentlemen could stand.” Earlier in the day, in front of the County Courthouse (this being the Market House built over a quarter century prior by Jonathan Temple and just before the courts moved to a new facility at Broadway and Temple Street), “Benjamin was discovered by several of the injured parties, who immediately proceeded to interview him.”
This “interview” involved the report that “Mr. Johns got in the first say, which as a whack, fair and square upon Benjamin’s nose.” Before Johns could launch another punch, “Owens swung out his right mauler, which settled with a dull thud on Benjamin’s upper lip.” The Express then wondered how long the beating would have continued had not ten law enforcement officers intervened. The account ended with Johns and Owens walking to the Justice Court “where they expressed a willingness to enter a plea of guilty of battery and pay [a] double fine if they could be allowed the pleasure of once more interviewing the colored publisher.”
The next day’s Times noted that Benjamin was in the act of explaining his editorial actions when Owens hit him on the jaw, followed by Johns and who it identified as someone named Matthews, but who was Jackson, who “got in their work, one of the blows cutting his lip badly.” The three men posted bail before the justice pending an appearance when called for.
The Tribune, also of the 9th and with the title of “Benjamin Battered” and referring to him as “the lightweight,” presumably meaning his boxing weight, “colored lawyer,” commented that he “had his face disfigured by several leading lights of the colored population. It noted that Jackson, Johns and Owens “hunted up the youthful lawyer” standing, perhaps because he well knew he was wanted by his adversaries, in front of the office of the sheriff at the courthouse and “would have made mincemeat” of Benjamin except for the obvious law enforcement presence, though “as it was the colored journalist received several nasty blows on his face.”
A week later, the Times of the 15th published a letter from two African-Americans, R.W. Stewart and P.M. Hickman, who claimed that Benjamin was “under contract” with Democrats to “deliver to that party the 3000 colored votes of this county.” The pair, identifying the initials of the attorney/editor to “Recently Converted Over,” and also mocking Pearson, rejoined that they would “find it a hard matter to deliver the goods. Moreover, they referred to Benjamin as a “jack-leg lawyer with solid South white blood in his veins” and expressed that it was “a greater pity that [he] has not sense enough to keep his mouth shut.”
Calling Benjamin a “shyster,” Hickman and Stewart went on to assert that,
But a few weeks ago this halfbreed Benjamin went to Boyle Heights and made a speech in which he said: “I am loaded to the muzzle! I am ready to go off with the wrongs of my people at the South, where they are not allowed to vote their sentiments.” Yet in a week we find him ready to defend ballot-box stealing and fraud on the people, in the Fourth ward of this city. Then he was a rampant, hot, enthusiastic Republican. Now he says the colored vote “is not solid for the county ticket.” Whence comes this sudden change, this cold wave?
As part six of this post noted, there was controversy among the Oro Fino Republican Club over a ballot box of caucus votes being stolen and Benjamin was embroiled in the dispute. The two letter writers again averred that the Democrats were behind the purported transformation in Benjamin’s position. Lastly, they warned Black voters “who remember their previous condition under Democratic rule” that being part of a secret political organization was to “yield up your manhood, your liberty of thought and action” as well as a “voluntary slavery of mind and body,” so it was best to abhor “such an unpatriotic, hellish union.”
In its issue of the 10th, the Democratic-supporting Herald opined that “the Negro voter is getting his eye-teeth cut at a marvelous pace” because “the g.o.p. [sic] has long regarded the man and brother as a chattel.” Remarking that “a rude awakening at once is in store,” the paper referred to Benjamin as “getting his eyes open” to the political reality in a lengthy missive from him in that edition. The Herald, moreover, insisted that he would soon see that “there is but one party of the people” and “will leave Republicanism” and “join the historic Democracy.”
The letter from Benjamin began with his assertion that he launched the Observer for “the enlightenment and the advancement of my people (the Negro race)” and that doing so was “a downright necessity.” His paper was “independent, [and] wide awake” and was far more necessary than “the subsidized partisan sheet, which can see but one light, one party, one church, one side.” Moreover, “the Negro is narrow and intolerant because of the one-sidedness of his training, but he will grow in the esteem and confidence of the American [white] people in proportion as he grows in liberality and tolerance.”
Benjamin claimed circulation for his paper in the thousands and he offered that “the intelligence of my race have expressed an admiration for the independent spirit and the clean and lucid matter which it contains.” It was only the “illiterate of my race” and Republicans running for office who opposed him, but the former did not know better, and the writer continued,
My honest endeavor is to show the Negro that it is bad policy to trade with a man who holds an old debt against him. The Negro has worked twenty-four years [since the Civil War years] to pay the debt of gratitude, and still the Republican party hold[s] a mortgage on him. When will the debt be paid? When will the Negro be released from political bondage? The fact of the matter is, the Negro is in debt to no political party for his emancipation.
After retailing some of the history of the African-Americans were finally freed from slavery, Benjamin noted that “in these days when black men are being shot down in cold blood and swung up to the limbs of trees throughout all the South by irresponsible tramps, no Republican Congress ever did more than resolve [to] investigate the matter.” He also critiqued the deal that delivered the 1876 election to Rutherford B. Hayes, who almost immediately ended Reconstruction and other matters and remarked, “I am interested in the present and future prosperity of my people, and I shall not spare the Republican party when it proves recreant to its promises to the race.”
In the Observer, he went on, “I have never given it a lashing which it did not deserve, and which was not fortified with facts based upon its treachery to the race which no man could deny or explain away.” So, too, he criticized Democrats for their denial of Black rights and informed the Herald‘s readers “I have not coined my cheek to gain cheap favor of the politicians of either party” while “for fifteen years I have been battling for my people.”
Also of significance is his distinction of the demographics of generational difference as he averred “I do but echo the sentiment of a vast army when I say that the younger and more progressive men of the race . . . want value received for all we deliver.” These African-Americans of a more recent generation “have not deserted any party; the party has deserted us” and he pronounced “we are sick of the farce . . . and we do not much care who is offended because we demand what is our own.”
For Benjamin, “the Negro is simply a political cypher and a voting machine” and he remarked that Frederick Douglass and other “high mucka-mucks” no longer were as influential as they once were. He proposed that “the ultimate solution of the race problem will be reached only when the Negro divides his vote” and, expecting criticism for his “advance position,” the correspondent concluded,
We have already slept too long while others have been up and doing. We have allowed others to think for us and to dictate our actions entirely too much. That our interests have been so long neglected and our faith abused is due entirely to the fact that we have stood in our own shadow, committing to others the matters we should have looked after ourselves. If we have rights denied us that are ours, if we exercise no influence upon the politics of the country, if we find enemies in places where we imagined we had friends, it is all our fault.
As so often the case, Benjamin expressed his views eloquently and powerfully, though to what effect is another matter. We’ll return tomorrow with part eight, so check back in with us then.