by Paul R. Spitzzeri
R.C.O. Benjamin’s effort in 1891 to bring close to 1,500 African-Americans to California from the South took place during a period in which he continued to write and publish small books or large pamphlets, including, as noted in part nine, “Don’t,” which was directed toward Black girls and was one of his many works of non-fiction and poetry.
He followed this with one racial issues, which the Black-owned Washington Bee of Independence Day briefly touted, saying that he, “an able and distinguished friend,” issued the work based on one of his speeches and that he was “a gifted speaker and one of the best orators of the race.” It ended “the Bee is with you Benjamin, push forward.” The Huntsville Gazette in Alabama, where he once lived, remarked that the work was “interesting and able” and that “the writer is a genial soul wit[h] a brilliant intellect.”
While it was reported that Benjamin was to visit the South during the first part of the year to recruit people for his immigration scheme, it does not appear that such a trip took place, though he did go to Portland, Oregon for lecturing. In early July, he was back in California and participated in an Africa Methodist Episcopal Church conference in Sacramento, with the capital city’s Bee stating that he “is referred to as ‘the coon who treed the fox,'” due to his speech at the state Republican convention against the nomination of a judge, Charles N. Fox, to a seat on the California Supreme Court.”
At the end of July, as the little town of Red Oak, Iowa, in the southwestern part of the state, prepared to host the National Colored Congress in mid-August, it informed readers that “among the noted attractions will be a party of the most distinguished colored gentlemen in this country from California,” including Benjamin, who was General of the Supreme Lodge of the Knights of King Solomon.
A description of him from the Portland Oregonian was cited and it observed that he was president of the California Colonization Society and a special correspondent of the Pacific Coast Press Association, while he was also accounted “an author of rare literary ability” and “as an orator he ranks with the highest” as his talks “are brilliant and often thrilling, and his oratorical powers forcible and splendid.”
When the confab was held, the Lincoln Journal-Star of Nebraska in its edition of 14 August listed Benjamin just behind Frederick Douglass at the head of a roster of “distinguished colored men” that also included former minister to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and member of Congress John M. Langston, former Representative from South Carolina Robert Smalls and more than a dozen others.
With respect to the immigration plan, a vociferous opposition arose in the pages of the Oakland Times, which, in its 11 August edition, which launched a broadside starting with,
We had thought that every newspaper man of average intelligence was familiar with the doings of R.C.O. Benjamin, the colored man who is now posing as a preacher, but who, not so long ago, was a Los Angeles politician of the lowest stripe—so bad that even his own people repudiated him—and who, a little later, blossomed out as a San Francisco lawyer, only to fail because the big town over the bay was afflicted with too many of his sort already.
Benjamin, of course, was a lawyer in Los Angeles, the first admitted to practice there and in California broadly and, while he certainly had conflicts with Black Angelenos, as we’ve chronicled in this post, he had support, as well. This was true in San Francisco, so the Oakland sheet’s expression of surprise that Sacramento papers took his idea seriously is countered by its own racist views.
For example, the Times asserted, “California is not in need of the sort of colored people that Mr. Benjamin would probably bring here—if he brought any” and it added that “the mere fact” that he “says he has 70,000 acres of land on which he proposes settling the families that he brings, is the best possible proof that he has not one square foot of land in Fresno county or anywhere else.” It then suggested that “it is an even bet that R.C.O. Benjamin has not got seventy cents that has come honestly into his possession, to say nothing of seventy thousand acres of land.
Notably, the paper opined that,
California has now, in the Chinese, as close an approach to the servile class as is either safe or desirable. The negroes already here came without assistance, and are a self-sustaining, self-respecting part of the community. The bringing of vast numbers of ignorant blacks from the Gulf States is an entirely different matter, and California should not invite the race incubus that now rests a dead weight upon the South. We want neither cheap labor, nor cheap laborers.
There is a reasonable question as to how much land and money to which Benjamin had access as part of his project, but it is also true that he publicly stated that he wanted to recruit African-Americans who could pay their way to the Golden State and be self-sufficient. Still, it is interesting that the Times ended its critique with:
Mr. Benjamin’s scheme can be nipped in the bud with all the neatness in the world if the newspapers of the state, and particularly the newspapers of Los Angeles, will turn their attention to it. Los Angeles, you know, is the town in which Mr. Benjamin made his California debut. He was there during a part of the boom days, he ran a jim-crow paper there for a short time, and he was quite prominent during the Harrison [presidential] campaign [of 1888].
Calling the Los Angeles Observer a “jim-crow paper” is especially eye-catching, unless by that the Times meant that he advocated, as he often did, that Blacks be independently minded and not automatically loyal to the Republican Party. Yet, as we’ve seen he sought office in San Francisco as a G.O.P. member.
A week later, the Oakland sheet observed that the New York Tribune stated that 50,000 African-Americans could instantly find work in California and blasted “the evil done by thoughtless newspaper proprietors who open their columns to irresponsible men.” It continued that “had there been no notice taken of the wild vagaries of one R.C.O. Benjamin,” no on would take seriously such ideas. It repeated that there was no need of fifty, much less fifty thousand, “colored paupers” in the state, especially when so many whites could not find work.
Moreover, it reminded readers, the state “has been, for a few years past, getting rid of the Chinese, and as fast as they are gone their places have been taken by white men.” Black migrants have been “educated and self-sustaining” and from the Northern states, while efforts “to flood the state with colonies of ignorant field-hands” have not been successful and it asserted that “the conditions here are not favorable to the Southern negro.”
Yet, a wire report from San Francisco from 12 August observed that California “Senator Leland Stanford,” of the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, “is giving aid and encouragement to thousands of southern negroes, who are establishing large colonies” in the Golden State. That 50,000 figure was cited and was expected to be the number migrating in the next year. It was added, however, that,
In view of these facts the politicians are alarmed, as the colonists are quite likely to bewilder the shrewdest political manager on the coast. The Rev. R.C.O. Benjamin, a prominent and wealthy colored man of this city, is at the head of the movement.
Another of these wire reports, from the Fall River News in Massachusetts and also from the 12th, quoted Benjamin more extensively, including that, “our object in bringing negroes to California is to supplant the Chinese. The Celestials are not citizens or voters, and the colored people are both.” He claimed that there were signed contracts to guarantee work to Black emigrants and that there were 50,000 acres in Fresno and Shasta counties available for settlement.”
Moreover, he stated that an average of five families each week were arriving and that this would involve 8,000 in the next year, mostly from Alabama, the Carolinas and Texas. It was added that “Mr. Benjamin leaves for the South in a few days to arrange to send out a large number of colored people,” with many “sacrificing their home to secure money to pay their way.”
The next day, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Benjamin stated that “the object is to supplant the Chinese” and it approvingly, if haltingly, remarked that “Mr. Benjamin’s scheme appears at least to have the merit of making its beneficiaries self-supporting from the outset.” It was added that the idea was to provide small tracts that would be paid off in up to eight years and, notably, the women and children would work the property, while the men would work elsewhere and earn money to pay debts more quickly.
It cited the Times, which was a Democratic paper, as opposed, but it discountenanced the idea that African-American migrants would be as the Oakland sheet described them, citing Benjamin’s contention that only those that had the means to get themselves west would be included. The Inquirer, however, offered these thoughts, as well:
The plan looks feasible, as far as its industrial features are concerned; but it is a question of whether there will not be difficulty in working it out, because of popular prejudice. The white population of California may object as strongly to a superabundance of negroes in that State as it does to a superfluity of Chinamen—and of the latter race, as is well known, one is considered a superfluity.
The paper also wondered if Southern states would not protest more than Democratic papers in California because of the loss of laborers, even as it mused that the migration would not be of such a magnitude “to eliminate the race problem there,” even as more Northern whites were settling in the South.
It added that, while Southerners only saw the value of African-Americans “as the only laborer thoroughly fitted to work under its burning sun,” Blacks in California, if educated properly, would be “capable of self-government . . . and he will the sooner become as free socially as he already is politically.”
Given this, the Inquirer concluded,
All things considered, Mr. Benjamin’s enterprise seems to be one by which all concerned—except perhaps the Chinaman—will be benefited, and therefore we wish it success.
The Savannah News in Georgia offered further comment on the migration plan, including that the opposition “have had trouble enough with the Chinese and don’t want any more race issues,” while also wondering if “perhaps Washington, D.C., would help along the Benjamin scheme.”
This was because “it has a much larger population of blacks than it wants, and it is certain that it would like to get rid of some of them.” Moreover, asserted the Southern paper, “lawlessness is increasing there at a rapid rate, and the blacks are responsible for most of it” and it cited an unnamed writer in the nation’s capital that younger African-Americans were responsible for most crime, namely “those who have grown up since the war and since they have became [sic] free.” The insinuation is that emancipation unleashed the bonds that fettered criminal behavior because, when older Black people were arrested for crimes, and, of course, no evidence was provided, it was for minor, not violent, crime.
It was also claimed that “in all parts of the south two-thirds of the crimes are committed by blacks,” never mind the terrible reign of terror and death wrought by whites against African-Americans in the Jim Crow era. The paper continued that “under the circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the Benjamin scheme does not meet with favor in California” because it was asserted that “leading people,” whoever that might be, preferred that land remain occupied than settled “by a class of people that cannot be assimilated and will be certain to be a source of trouble.”
Still, it commented that,
It seems that the Southern Pacific railroad is anxious that Benjamin’s scheme shall succeed, because it wants its unoccupied lands settled. The most of these lands are comparatively worthless without irrigation, and it can afford to sell them for little or nothing. Indeed, it is probable that it would give them away to a good class of settlers and would contribute something toward getting water for irrigation purposes.
In its edition of 26 August, the Fresno Republican featured the project, but informed readers that Stanford and the Southern Pacific, “nor any other person eminent in finances or politics,” had anything to do with it. Instead, it was Benjamin’s California Colonization Society that was solely responsible for the “pure business enterprise.”
The account continued that “it has been quietly at work for a year or more” obtaining the land in that, as well as Shasta, county “and has the needful funds to bring from the south 5000 colonists this year,” not the amount ten times that number, “as an experiment.” How those monies were to be accumulated was left unexplained, other than what appeared to be a stock subscription plan. The Reverend A.S. Watson, the secretary and treasurer of the Society, told the paper,
Yes, sir, we are now to begin the active work of our society. Mr. Benjamin is now in Texas and we expect a party of 150 colored people from that state in about three weeks. These will be located on the Perrin colony near town . . . Mr. Benjamin will be away six months, perhaps longer, if the business of the society should demand it. He will go [throughout the South] . . . and will organize companies of colonists and send them to California.
Four days later, the Oakland Times reported that “the negro colonization scheme seems to have died a-bornin’, for even Senator Stanford has stepped out and left R.C.O. Benjamin to his fate.” It mocked that “the preacher-politician will not travel through the South, now, to rope his confiding fellows into his little plan for the advancement of Benjamin” and snidely added that “it is a long, hot walk from Fresno to Texas” without a free railroad pass from Stanford and the Southern Pacific.
Moreover, it derided Benjamin because the effort “is too much in the nature of work—and Mr. Benjamin belongs to that somewhat large class whose muscular development has been confined to the jaw.” It lamented that he was not actually leaving because that would be a benefit for the Golden State and it hoped that “Mr. Benjamin will consent to give us a rest for a time.” On the other hand, if his next scheme “involves his leaving the State,” then the paper “will cheerfully lend them all the assistance in its power in its furtherance,” while hoping that “all those papers will that are published in towns in which Mr. Benjamin has ever dwelt.”
Actually, Benjamin was in Texas, where he lectured on 9 September at a Baptist church in Galveston a little over a week later, though not on the colonization scheme, but on “The Five Big Liars,” these being the “circular, ornamental, musical, historical and cowardly” and which included damning comments on the political situation affecting Black Americans. The city’s News of the 11th stated that the two-and-a-half hour talk “was a masterpiece of oratorical effort, and was instructive and timely.
The 3 October edition of the Huntsville [Alabama] Gazette reported that a month prior, a convention of African-Americans gathered in Houston for a state convention and that “R.C.O. Benjamin of San Francisco made the principal address of the day.” While he did end up further east, he decided to stop in Birmingham, where he lived four years prior before quickly decamping after a purported breach of promise matter and eventually going to California and Los Angeles.
We will resume tomorrow with part eleven, so please join us then!
When I first read that the Los Angeles Times called the Observer a “Jim-Crow paper,” I took it almost as a compliment – an acknowledgment and a confirmation that Benjamin’s long-standing efforts to urge Black people toward political independence, rather than automatic loyalty to the Republican Party, had rooted and established a particular style in his newspaper.
On a second reading, however, I saw it as the Times, echoing the common 1880s white perception that anything created or led by Blacks was inherently inferior, openly and without hesitation mocked the Observer as second-rate.
As Paul noted in this post, labelling Benjamin’s paper as Jim-Crow was eye-catching because it was contradictory: while Benjamin preached independence, he still sought political office as a Republican.
I believe the first two scenarios above can also make the phrase of “Jim-Crow” stand out strikingly.