by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In August 1889, after not quite two years, though this was a lengthy stay compared to some of his previous places of residence, R.C.O. Benjamin, the first Black lawyer to be admitted to practice in Los Angeles and California broadly, pulled up stakes and headed north. While it was reported that he was headed to Tacoma, Washington, he ended up in San Francisco, perhaps while on his way to the former burg.
One detail that was left out of the recent parts of this post was a statement made about Benjamin in many references to his life and work, which is that he was perhaps the first African-American editor for a white newspaper, when he held this position for the Los Angeles Sun in 1888. This may well be true, though nothing to that effect was found for this post.
The earliest reference to Benjamin in the City by the Bay was his presentation at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, with the San Francisco Chronicle of 21 August 1889 remarking,
R.C.O. Benjamin, the Los Angeles colored lawyer, who interested the colored people of this city some weeks ago by his oratory, has been requested by a large number of colored citizens to favor them with another lecture . . . The subject will be “Peculiarities of the Negro Race.”
The 17 September edition of the San Francisco Examiner reported that the church “was crowded to the dome last evening with colored citizens in consequence of the announcement that a meeting was to be held there to take some action in connection with recent race riots in the South.” One of the points of discussion concerned the encouragement of African-American migration to the western states.
Benjamin, who spoke to the assemblage, was among nine men appointed to be a committee on resolutions and the body produced a set that condemned authorities in Louisiana and Mississippi for their unwillingness to pursue justice for their Black citizens. The group also “called for the formation of a permanent organization whereby substantial help might be extended to the colored people of those States, and means furnished them to emigrate to the West.”
The 25 October issue of the paper mentioned the creation of the California Protective League “for the further consideration of the question of how best to protect the colored population of the Southern States” and Benjamin “will discuss the present and future condition of the American negro.” The Examiner added that in the few weeks since the organization was launched, the League “has made rapid progress” with a state convention soon to be called with delegates chosen for a national organization as “the league is being rapidly organized in many other States.”
The Chronicle of the 29th observed that Benjamin read his address, which was not usual for him, but this perhaps reflected his sense of the gravity of the occasion. He was typically direct in his remarks, asserting that “the white race appreciate[s] the advantages of the country . . . but are not willing that the negroes should do the same” and this “is the result of race prejudice.”
Still, he added, “the negroes are here to stay” and were growing in number “and have made greater progress than any enfranchised slave race ever made before in the same time.” The way to combat prejudice, he asserted, was “by persistent and united action” so that “instead of devoting too much time and money to pleasure and fashion they must buy houses and lands, build schools and colleges, and wealth, intelligence and ‘grit’ would earn what is now denied.”
The Examiner‘s edition of the 30th briefly summarized Benjamin’s remarks, commenting:
His remarks, which were forcible and convincing, were listened to with the greatest attention. Speaking of the present condition of the negro, he referred to the sentiment contained in the lines of the “Star Spangled Banner,” and declared that the stars and stripes have been perverted into stars for the white man and stripes for the negro.
By early 1890, Benjamin relocated to Fresno in the Central Valley and that city’s Republican featured him in its issue of 29 January under the headline of “A Colored Lawyer: The Fresno Bar Illuminated by a Black Meteor.” With the simple beginning of “Fresno has a colored lawyer,” the piece went on that “his coming here is a practical throwing down of the gauntlet to his white brethren” and added that “he promises to become a second Fred Douglas[s].”
While it stated he was a “graduated attorney at law,” which, if that means he had a law degree, that has not been established, the paper continued that “his attire is neat and stylish, his manners refined, his voice soft, his bearing self-poised, without ostentation, and his language graceful.” It also stated that he’d had successful practices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, though by what standard this was measured was left unsaid, while remarking that he was a candidate for a consulship to Haiti, something not previously reported.
When a white man accused a black man of theft, apparently holding in biases “the alleged affinity between razors, watermelons and the average dishonest darkey.” When questioning the purported victim, Benjamin merely asked if he was staying in a hotel with people passing through it throughout the day, but a young girl testified that she saw a Black man in the hostelry and the next morning her mother found she was missing $5. Several days later, the defendant was discharged because of a lack of evidence.
The 21 March edition of the Republican mentioned that Benjamin was the presiding elder of A.M.E. Zion Church, though he soon left Fresno and returned to San Francisco, where that city’s Call-Bulletin of 13 April reported briefly that “the San Francisco Sentinel . . . devoted to the interests of the colored people of the State, made its first appearance yesterday.”
Republican in politics, the weekly paper was edited by Benjamin and the Chronicle of the following day called it “a very creditable production, well written and printed, and contains a great quantity of interesting news and comment.” Following his tendency to advocate for independent political thinking among African-Americans, Benjamin, so noted the Winters Express of 24 May, “demands more consideration from the Republican party for the negro” and, he asserted, “if the party will not concede this we are against the party.”
Benjamin’s national stature seems to have been reflected in the reporting of the 6 July edition of the Atlanta Constitution of his selection as a California delegate to a proposed convention for Black Americans in Atlanta in mid-October, though it appears that the plan was not carried out. Two days later, he was back in Los Angeles with the Tribune remarking that he gave a talk at the A.M.E. Church on “Race Drawbacks” and that his presentation “was interspersed with anecdotes, which kept the audience in laughter from beginning to end.”
In mid-August, the California Conference of the A.M.E. Church met in San Francisco and Benjamin was noted as a speaker. When the A.M.E. Zion Church had its state gathering a month later, the Chronicle of 18 September noted that “R.C.O. Benjamin was unanimously elected by the conference presiding elder and Sunday school superintendent of the schools on the coast.”
With respect to politics, Benjamin garnered significant attention when he attended the Republican Party state convention at Sacramento in early August and forcibly argued against the nomination to the state supreme court of Charles N. Fox because of his involvement in a complicated Fresno lawsuit that seemed to provide him political patronage. The Sacramento Bee of 14 August remarked that Benjamin “received a dispatch from colored citizens of Los Angeles, congratulating him for accomplishing Fox’s defeat,” though there was more opposition than just from the Black lawyer.
As the 1890 gubernatorial election approached, the Call-Bulletin of 14 October covered the proceedings of the newly formed Ingalls Colored Republican Club as calls rang out for the election of G.O.P. candidate Henry H. Markham, a Pasadena attorney and former member of Congress who won the election and served a single term. The paper continued that,
R.C.O. Benjamin, a colored orator of considerable ability, occupied the rostrum for upward of one hour and kept his hearers in constant roars of merriment by his remarks. He possessed the happy faculty of advancing good, sound arguments in favor of Republican principles, and at the same time interspersing humorous parables and anecdotes.
While he’d often been, and would later be, highly critical of the G.O.P. as the “party of protection and liberty” for African-Americans in the quarter-century since the end of the Civil War and slavery, it was reported that he outlined the many benefits Black persons received from the party, noting the growth of the race’s endeavors in economics, education and politics and asserted it was “all owing to the influence of the Republican party, which had always been the sole political friend of the negro.”
As the year came to a close, Benjamin drew attention for his representation in San Francisco of an African-American defendant on a grand larceny charge. The Examiner of 4 December commented that he was “a bright young colored man who has already attained considerable fame in the southern part of the State as a lawyer and an orator,” while also noting his “savage verbal attack” on Fox that “nearly turned the late Republican State Convention at Sacramento ‘upside-down.” With respect to the trial, the paper noted that Benjamin “seemed very much at his ease, and not at all overawed by the dignity” of the judge “or the eloquence and acumen” of the prosecutor.
The Chronicle of the following day went further, observing that,
The chief center of interest to the spectator seemed to be the colored counsel for the defendant, R.C.O. Benjamin, a young man who has attained no little distinction as an attorney in the lower part of the State. Several years ago Benjamin was a District Attorney, and while engaged in prosecuting a white man charged with a serious offense, he received a bullet wound in his cheek. It was this occurrence which induced his immigration to California a very short time afterward.
This information could only have come from an interview with the lawyer, but we know that he was not a district attorney anywhere, while the story about being shot in the face while prosecuting a white man has not been found anywhere else. Lastly, the move to California came after a breach of promise controversy in Alabama, though it was also said that conflict involving his efforts to visit Ohio Senator William Sherman at a hotel also spurred his leaving.
Concerning his courtroom defense, the paper wrote that Benjamin “showed no little shrewdness in his manner of handling the witnesses, and in the argument displayed a degree of satirical power and native humor which not only edified and amused court, jury and spectator, but also won for the young lawyer words of praise” from the prosecutor in his closing argument and from the judge.” The evidence, however, was clear and the defendant found guilty, though the jury recommended mercy.
Following up on the concept of bringing Southern Blacks to California, the beginning of 1891 found Benjamin ramping up this effort and discouraging attempts to resettle African-Americans in Liberia, established as an African colony for freed slaves in the 1820s. He told the Chronicle of 7 January, “they shall not go to Africa if I can prevent it. They shall come to California” and he continued that “I will have 1200 of them out here by next April.” He expressed confidence in this assertion as well as that prospective emigrants would shun the idea of Africa after it was fully understood.”
Remarkably, he produced a letter written to him from the famed British adventurer Henry M. Stanley, who spent years in Africa and who, while offering that the central portion of that continent was “the land best adapted in the whole world for American negroes,” added that “how to get there is the question, and how to set about organizing” because such a scheme “requires a larger capital than any body of men is likely to subscribe—and individuals can do absolutely nothing,” though he felt a later time might change the situation.
Benjamin, however, told the paper, when asked what class of immigrants would come to the Golden State,
Not paupers, I assure you. I shall select only such people as have means to pay their fare and will have a little money to support themselves with on their arrival . . . Nearly all who will come are agriculturists, and they own a little land in the South . . . One thing is certain—all who come must have some means to make a start. I shall also bring laborers . . . Not a few of [the white California ranchers he said he spoke to] have promised that if we can bring out a sufficient number of colored men to do their work they will discharge their Chinese help and hire negroes. I shall get employment for many of the negroes as brickmakers. Hundreds will go to work in the vineyards and the hop ranches, and orchards will also receive many of them.
He cited working with A.S. Walton, the pastor of the Fresno A.M.E. Zion Church, with which Benjamin was connected during his residence there, in bringing people to what the minister said was “a paradise for the negroes of the South” and that “we intend to have thousands of negroes here before the end of the present year. If we are fortunate, the hegira from the South will be on a grand scale within two years.”
A.T. Wilkins, a Baptist minister in Charleston, South Carolina, was also cited by Benjamin as a major factor in the scheme, which involved settling African-Americans in such locales as Fresno, Paso Robles and Red Bluff, though it was added that “as no colonization project was under way the negroes will be scattered all over the State before they shall have been here very long.” The article concluded with the statement that Benjamin was to leave for North Carolina and work his way through the South and “says he is certain of working up a steady tide of negro emigration from the Southern States to the Pacific shore.”
The 30 January edition of the Ventura Free Press cited the Chronicle as reporting that Benjamin was in San Luis Obispo County gauging interest from farmers and grape growers, including for the sale of small tracts to Black farmers. It was stated that land was found in the county and 35,000 acres in Shasta County, as well, and that Benjamin was to go the South in April and return with up to 1,400 African-American settlers.
Meanwhile, Benjamin labored on a small publication that was titled “Don’t,” and was labeled a “book for girls,” though mention in the Black-owned St. Paul Appeal didn’t say anything more than that it “contains much that is good and no young lady should be without it.” The work appears to have been a primer for how African-American girls should conduct themselves. The Chronicle of 26 May reported that Benjamin clarified, by writing to the institution, that Stanford University, which was in its first year of operation, allowed Black men to be admitted, though not women.
It does not appear that Benjamin went to the South to recruit Black immigrants as he stated he would. In early June, he was in Portland, Oregon, where his lecture on “The Negro Problem” was given a detailed review by the Oregonian of the 6th. He was deemed “a representative negro, and educated man, a close and logical thinker, a good talker and an honor to his race” whose presentation “was full of bright thoughts, practical suggestions and amusing incidents.”
One notable statement was that he asserted that a majority of Black Americans preferred the term “colored” over “Negro,” which he felt was a mistake because the latter was directly tied to African origins. He delved deeply into the history of his people, stating that the Americas were far inferior to the African homeland and vividly describing the horrors of capture and shipment of Africans to slavery in this continent. Benjamin also proudly noted the growth of the Black population and he prophesied that, by 1985, there would be just under 100 million white people and 136 million African-Americans (the actual total of the latter was under 30 million and the former not far below 200 million).
The orator broadcast the contributions of Black Americans in the nation’s history, including during the Revolutionary and Civil wars (recall his debate in Los Angeles on the latter topic) and repeated “the negro is here to stay, and there is no other solution of the problem than to accept the situation and abide by the consequences.” Significantly, Benjamin told the assemblage, “the negro does not seek social equality. Just give him his legal rights and let him alone” while he also remarked “if he falls, let him fall; if he survives, let him survive.” He asserted that “the progress of the negro since 1865 has been phenomenal” and “it is one of the marvels of history.”
The only way to hold back African-Americans “is to beat [them] climbing” as they “climb against the greatest obstacles, and [are] discouraged by no obstacle” because their struggles had no analog in American history. Promoting general human progress in terms that were popular at the time in terms of “humanity . . . assuming colossal proportions,” Benjamin opined that “the negro is marching triumphantly into this train of brilliant luster, and no limit can be set to his progress that does not bind the efforts of others.”
His advice to Black people included fomenting unity, “organize for the promotion of your civil rights,” vote wisely and in the race’s interests, “get grit and show it” in terms of investing money in property, build industrial schools, and avoid frivolous goods and activities. The last point was: “let us determine to overcome all obstacles to a successful level with other races.”
With this, we’ll return tomorrow and continue our look at the remarkable life and career of Benjamin, so join us then.
I don’t fully agree with Benjamin’s comparison between American whites and Blacks, since it is just as easy to frame a metaphor in a negative sense as in a positive one.
However, I must admit that he was remarkably creative in his speech. He claimed that the shining stars on the American flag represented whites, while the red stripes symbolized the bloody stripes (lash marks) on the backs of enslaved Blacks. What a striking metaphor, and what a forceful, convincing speech!