by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look at the remarkable multi-page special section on African-Americans in Los Angeles from the pages of the Times and its edition on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the next page was headlined “How The University-Trained Negro Has Advanced in the Great Professions.”
Reading the essays in The New Negro: A History in Documents, 1887-1937, edited by Martha H. Patterson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is striking to compare the section dealing with the early 20th century and the generation of Black Americans born of formerly enslaved parents after the Civil War, including mention of the rising number of college graduates as part of what was really a remarkable advancement among the African-American population in the first 35 years of so after Emancipation and the conclusion of the terrible conflict.
A trio of articles on this page were penned by preeminent examples in Los Angeles of those whose academic achievements were part of that “New Negro” generation. For the “Negro Professional Men In The City,” with “Mark Makers” above that title, the writer was Dr. Alva C. Garrott, whose surname, like that of Jefferson L. Edmonds on the first page and first part of this post, was, unfortunately, misspelled.
Garrott was born in September 1866 at Marion, Alabama, northwest of Montgomery, to a carpenter and a seamstress. He graduated from Talladega College, an HBCU institution east of Birmingham, and then moved to Washington, D.C., where many Blacks migrated to find decent jobs and a better living situation and he worked in the patent office. He then attended Howard University and earned degrees in 1892 and 1899, respectively, in pharmacology and dentistry, though he chose the latter as his field, opening an office while he and his wife, Lillie De Jarnette, had a son and daughter by the end of the 19th century with another son born soon after.
In 1901, the Garrotts headed west and settled in Glendale, where they were the first Black family, but not without threats and warnings to abandon living there, though they persevered and remained residents there for some fifteen years. Lillie died in 1917 and, two years later, Garrott married Alice Watkins, who hailed from Montgomery and was a public school teacher before she wedded Garrott. She, too, was a Howard University dentistry graduate and practiced with Alva for many years.
Garrott had many positions of prominence in the African-American community of the Angel City, including as a board member of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Black Y.M.C.A. and was first president of the area branch of the Urban League, holding that position for nearly two decades. In 1932, he established the Los Angeles Dental Study Club, which was later named in his honor and is now the Angel City Dental Society, comprised of African-Americans in the profession.
Called in a 1952 obituary in the Black-owned California Eagle “militant in his defense of civil rights,” Garrott not only resisted racists trying to scare him and his family from staying in Glendale, but, although he buried his first wife in a plot he purchased at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, when his daughter died in 1928, officials there refused to inter her in the plot. Garrott sued and the case went to the California Supreme Court, which, however, ruled for the cemetery. This led him to buy another plot at Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.
An encomium in the Eagle of 31 July 1952—Garrott died the same week as Titus Alexander and Frederick Roberts, two other prominent African-Americans of Los Angeles—observed,
Dr. Garrott was the city’s [Black] pioneer professional man; he . . . set such an example of professional competence and devotion to duty . . . and was in the forefront of the many bitter battles that Negroes of this city fought to gain their constitutional rights and privileges.
The dentist began his essay with the observation that,
Only forty-four years have passed since the close of that great struggle which ended slavery in this country, but let us for a moment note the advancement of the negro along professional lines since that event. Can you realize his station then and now? Then there were no physicians, no dentists, no lawyers, no newspaper men, and only preachers of the most ignorant type. Now we have men in all these branches and men who stand high in their respective positions.
It was Garrott’s intention to demonstrate that “the negro professional men of this locality are exactly like men of the same type in other races,” having the identical type of education, passed the same examinations and used the standards in their work as those of other ethnicities. Of those highlighted, just one was born in California, while those who were from other states came to Los Angeles “with the idea of bettering their conditions” and it was evident, he concluded, “that they have been eminently successful.”
Moreover, with a couple of instances otherwise, Garrott informed readers that they all “gained these professions by their own efforts” with only the parental foundation of general encouragement so that “they have been forced to fight.” He added “these men have all had opposition and, indeed, they are still encountering it, but it is giving them strength to meet the conflicts that are to come.” The Angel City, he recorded, had five Black doctors and lawyers, a pair of dentists, a pharmacist, a veterinarian and a trio of newspaper publishers with “not a drone among them.”
Among those physicians, Dr. Melvin E. Sykes, also an Alabama native, earned two degrees, from Nashville’s Roger Williams University and from the Meharry Medical College in the same city—this was the same institution where Los Angeles’ first African-American doctor, Monroe A. Majors, matriculated. After his 1893 graduation, Sykes came to the Angel City and Garrott stated that he was “the pioneer of all the negro professional men of this locality,” being focused on this job and real estate valued at $50,000.
Dr. George A. Taylor hailed from Virginia and earned his diploma from the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg, following this with a degree at Leonard Medical College in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1890, the earliest of the current cadre of Los Angeles doctors to earn this distinction. After a period in Atlanta, Taylor settled in Los Angeles and hung his shingle in 1894 and, Garrott briefly noted, “had many obstacles, but has succeeded admirably in surmounting them, as all who know him can testify.”
North Carolina native Dr. John S. Outlaw received a bachelor’s degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and earned his M.D. at Howard, though President Chester A. Arthur signed off on an appointment to the West Point Military Academy and Outlaw chose to follow a medical career instead. He lived in New York City and Boston before going to Washington, D.C. and working as a medical examiner for the pension department, where Garrott also once worked.
In 1901, Outlaw, a member of the county medical society and the American Medical Association, migrated to Los Angeles and the chronicler recorded,
Dr. Outlaw has had phenomenal success at his practice in this city and has left no stone unturned in his efforts to succeed. The doctor knows how to make friends, and I might add, the almighty dollar. His real estate holdings will easily sum up $25,000.
The sole example among the featured professionals raised in California was Dr. Thomas J. Nelson, who, as a boy, came to Los Angeles and went to the University of Southern California, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and then completed study at San Francisco’s Cooper Medical School, where he also was a chemistry professor’s assistant, including instruction to other students. He was also a member of the county medical society.
Last of the African-American physicians was Dr. William R. Johnston, from Natchez, Mississippi. He earned his bachelor of science degree at Wilberforce University in Ohio and earned his M.D. in 1902 from Howard. After interning at the Freedman’s Hospital there, Johnston set up his practice in Omaha, Nebraska, but, in the same year of 1894, headed west and passed his state board exam at San Francisco. He immediately came south to the Angel City “where he has succeeded in gaining many friends and patients, and establishing himself in a cozy home.”
For the section on dentists, Garrott informed readers, “propriety forces me to prevail on some friend” to describe his life, so Dr. Outlaw took on that task and called Garrott “among the representative men of his race.” What was added to the above sketch was that Garrott taught in Texas for a short time and, at Howard, earned his pharmacology degree in 1895, following that by his dental one four years later. Outlaw wrote that Garrott “has built up a practice of which no one, of whatever race, should feel ashamed,” while amassing some property and “is a public-spirited and valued citizen.”
A prior post here featured Vada Somerville Watson, who later became a dentist, and touched upon some of the life of her husband, J. Alexander, so we’ll just note here that the Jamaican-born dentist was two years into his practice “and has made wonderful progress, for he has made a host of friends, and is building up a substantial practice.” Moreover, his score on the board exam was of “a very high average” and Garrott concluded “the doctor is a young man, but, judging from the past, has a bright future before him.”
Also highlighted previous on this blog was attorney Gustavus W. Wickliffe, so we’ll simply note Garrott’s statement that, after leaving his Los Angeles practice, launched in 1894, in 1900 to be a clerk for the state harbor commission at San Francisco. It was observed that “Mr. Wickliffe seems to have taken up the work where he left it seven years before and is forging ahead” while “his investments show good judgment and business ability.”
Isador (Isadore) D. Blair came from Maryland and earned a degree from Baltimore’s Morgan College before heading to the University of Michigan, where he got his L.L.B. degree in 1893. He had a practice for almost a decade at Indianapolis and came to California in 1903, with it observed that “since his stay in this city, Mr. Blair has practiced before all the courts with marked success.” This included his first trial, where he “took them all by surprise and won his case,” which the Times covered in some detail. The sketch ended that Blair “has won an enviable reputation as a lawyer and business man.”
Hailing from St. Louis, Paul M. Nash went to the Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and then Harvard, where he was editor of a pair of school publications with “this [being] the first time this honor had been bestowed on a negro.” He moved to Los Angeles in 1905 and was admitted to practice that May, working mostly in civil law “and few lawyers have made the showing that Mr. Nash has in the same length of time.”
North Carolina-born Charles S. Darden earned his degree from Wayland Seminary in the nation’s capital as the 19th century was coming to a close, then went to Howard, where he got his L..L.B. in 1904. The year after, he settled in the Angel City, passed a board exam and was admitted to practice, but he also “has been promoter for several enterprises among the colored people, and at present is president of an insurance company conducted for and by them.”
Last of the barristers was Texas native W.B. Coleman, a graduate of Tillotson College in Austin and a teacher for two decades before pursuing the law. He earned a degree in 1894 and was admitted to the bar the following year. A resident of Los Angeles since 1906, Coleman was “interested in history, economic and constitutional questions and law generally,” while his extensive educational experience made him an avid supporter of a movement to found a local trade school.
The only practicing pharmacist was Dr. Hugh S.A. Cuming, who was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands and was trained at Boston before settling in San Francisco and working for a major drug firm. Moving earlier in the decade to Los Angeles, Cuming opened his own enterprise “and has gradually built up a profitable trade.” Highly educated, Cuming spoke Danish, English, French and Spanish, which served him well with the diversity of the Angel City’s population.
When it came to the newspaper trade, Garrott remarked,
Newspaper men as a rule do not like to be interviewed. They would rather punish the other fellow, and I found J.J. Neimore no exception to the rule.
A Texas native, John J. Neimore was educated at Austin’s Sam Houston College and migrated to Los Angeles before the others mentioned above, settling here in 1888 as the great Boom of the Eighties was nearing its end. He later founded the Eagle, then in its 18th year, and Garrott commented “it takes pluck and lots of common sense to run a successful newspaper” and Neimore, later succeeded by Charlotta and Joseph Bass, was doing well.
J. Edwin Hill came from Ontario, Canada and settled in 1898 in Los Angeles, where “he has succeeded in accumulating quite a bit of property,” while “the newspaper business is practically a new venture for him,” though his New Age was said to be faring well in its less than a year of existence.
Finally, there was veterinarian Dr. J.W. Thomas, a native Californian who left while an infant and earned his undergraduate degree and doctorate in his chosen field, this latter in 1908, at the University of Pennsylvania. He arrived in Los Angeles just a few weeks prior, but his presence was “another innovation . . . along new lines so far as the Afro-American is concerned.”
With this, we’ll return with a part three, sharing more from this portion of the special section of the Times, so look for that very soon.