by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our deep dive into the several pages of the special section on African-Americans in the Angel City from the Lincoln’s Birthday centenary edition of the Los Angeles Times, we turn our attention to an essay on “How Negro Soldiers Fought For The Flag,” and under a banner headline of “The Negro, Thoroughly Tried, Proves Himself an Ideal Soldier on Every Field.” First, however, we’re going to devote this sixth part to the writer of the piece.
This was Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth (1842-1914), a recent settler in Los Angeles and one of the most remarkable figures in Black America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into slavery at Louisville, Kentucky to Levi and Phillis Allensworth and said to have received his earliest education from Thomas Starbird, whose mother owned Phillis Allensworth. After a few attempts at escaping slavery from two others in Kentucky, he was sold to a Louisiana man and was a jockey for his master.
It has been stated that, not long after the Civil War erupted, Allensworth met soldiers from an Illinois regiment of volunteers and, when he told them of his desire to be free, they placed with the regimental hospital corps, even providing him clothes and applying mud to his face as a disguise. Once securing his freedom, Allensworth remained as a hospital aide. In April 1863, he enters the public record with his enlistment into the United States Navy during the Civil War.
Notably, Kentucky (birthplace of Lincoln) was a rare Southern state that chose not to secede from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America, though it had a substantial number of Confederate sympathizers and enlistees in its military forces. Louisville’s position along the Ohio River across from Indiana made it easy for Allensworth’s enlistment in the Navy and he served as a steward for two years on the U.S.S. crafts, Queen City, Tawah, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. This included service along the Mississippi during major campaigns.
Allensworth returned to Louisville after war’s end and graduated from the Ely Normal School for teacher education and Roger Williams University, and found work as a servant for merchant Morris Belknap, whose family owned a prominent hardware business. He was also chaplain for a Grand Army of the Republic (veterans of the Union Army from the late war) encampment in the city in 1870. He invested some of his savings in the Freedman’s Bank, set up for former slaves to invest funds before it collapsed in 1874.
Ordained a Baptist minister, Allensworth was secretary of a state association of Black Baptist churches in 1874 and became pastor of the Harney Street, later Centennial, Baptist Church at Louisville, of which he was credit with reviving by attracting new members and financial support. In April 1876, he offered a prayer for the opening of the Colored National Convention held in the city.
By the end of the Seventies, he attracted some attention for his remarks on the African-American exodus from the South due to “the unrighteous, unlawful, unpatriotic and uncivilized treatment” Black people endured from whites,” as well as discrimination in education, hotel accommodations, land, rail service and more. In 1879, as he made those comments, he also called for a convention, apparently never convened, to promote such migration.
A talented speaker, Allensworth resigned his pastorate in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where, as in Louisville, he took a struggling church and seems to have revitalized it by increasing the number of parishioners from about 40 to somewhere around five times that number, as well as addressing its debt, to work for a Black-owned publishing house as well as to supervise African-American Sunday schools in the state.
In early 1881, Allensworth was referred to in a newspaper account as the Baptist Sunday School missionary for Kentucky and “financial agent” for the Baptist Seminary at Louisville, along with his work for the Baptist Publication Society. That October, he demonstrated his writing ability in a letter published by the Tennessean in detailing the poor treatment of African-Americans by whites on southern railroads by remarking,
One great mistake a certain class of white people make about this matter, is that they think recognizing our manhood [humanity] is “social equality.” If these barriers [in treatment of Black people] were removed I am sure the white people would be disturbed but very little by us. We ask that the insults stop and the stigma be removed. In doing this it will aid the colored teachers to raise their people to a higher standard of citizenship.
Allensworth received what was probably his earliest widespread attention in fall 1883 when he called for a national African-American convention of ministers following the United States Supreme Court rulings on what are called the Civil Rights Cases and which essentially declared on an 8-1 vote (Justice John Marshall Harlan being the lone dissenter) that the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution only applied to government, not private, actions and had no force when it came to such areas as accommodations for Black people at hotels and theaters or on railroads.
Hoping that such a meeting could be held the following year, Allensworth wrote to his “brethren” that such a gathering would
give moral force to the work already begun, and present to the world documentary evidence and statistical data of our moral, religious and financial progress since emancipation, and to advise our people what they should do to repair the moral disasters which came to us through the existence of slavery, amend the family life, paternal authority and marriage integrity, broken down by that institution, to improve their social standing, and secure legal equality with all men.
A loyal Republican, Allensworth worked hard to secure the nomination of James G. Blaine as president for the 1884 campaign and served as a delegate from his home state to the G.O.P. national conventions at Chicago then, as well as in 1880. While Blaine defeated incumbent Chester A. Arthur, he narrowly lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland by just under 60,000 votes and 37 electoral college votes.
Allensworth attracted further national notice, in which he averred that “there is a grave apprehension among my people that a change in the national administration will be the worse for them” and that “this fear is caused by individuals taunting and doggering them by ill-timed remarks.” He asked that whites rethink their attitudes and actions, while asserting that Black people would work for “the kind of spirit and feeling that should exist between the two races,” concluding “let all of us who are interested in the welfare of our country and its people discharge our duty as a conscientious citizen and leave the result with God.”
Allensworth virtually disappeared from public view until early 1886 when reports were published across the country that he sought an appointment as the first African-American Navy chaplain. It was reported that he met with Secretary of War [that title was just revived by the current administration] and President Cleveland, who was said to have told Allensworth he was prepared to make the appointment. Moreover, it was asserted that, though, he stumped for Blaine in the recent election, he’d become a Democrat with the insinuation he did so for the federal sinecure. A white-owned Kentucky paper sniffed that “Allensworth’s conversion to Democracy must have been as sudden as the conversion of Paul to Christianity.”
Curiously, when Allensworth wrote a letter to the Bowling Green Times-Gazette to disavow any such claims to that position, he also informed his hometown paper that he was preparing a book for publication (earlier, it was reported he copyrighted two such works). He then was quoted as stating that, “one of the leading features of the book will be to give the bright side of slavery, including a number of instances where slaves were well treated and retained in the same family for generations.” The book and the other he copyrighted were, however, never published.
While he stated that he did not seek the naval chaplaincy, Allensworth was soon reported to have sought to be chaplain of the United States Army’s 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the “buffalo soldier” units of Black troops that were stationed and fought against indigenous tribes throughout the Midwest and West. The only African-American to have one of these positions was Henry V. Plummer, who was appointed by President Arthur in 1884. Another Anglo Kentucky paper groused that Allensworth, “who politically is as Black as his skin, has been given a comfortable place by Mr. Cleveland.”
The Army commissioned Allensworth in early June and a Louisville paper observed that “this is the first colored appointment given to Kentucky,” while it added that he was “a good speaker—very ready-witted and a hard worker.” It was added that the apolitical position paid $1,500 annually for five years with 10% added for the next five, 20% after ten years and 30% after fifteen. Included was a residence and feed for a pair of horses. It was added that Mrs. Starbird, his former owner, “joined in the petition for his appointment,” as well as the fact that, he was temporarily a pastor at a Cincinnati church while he waited to the official news.
Expressing that he was honored by the selection, including that it was brought about by white friends, Allensworth remarked,
I have worked hard to try and elevate the colored race, always teaching one doctrine—that when a colored man displays refinement and intelligence the whites will surely recognize it. I have made some enemies among the colored people by this, since they had an idea that their oppressed condition is due solely to the prejudice of the white people. The idea I have maintained is true in the South as well as the North, and whenever a sensible, thinking colored man makes an honest effect to rise in the world the white people will throw no stumbling block in his way.
Allensworth joined the 24th Infantry Regiment at Fort Supply, some 150 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, though, after about a year he received a 40-day furlough so that he could attend and speak at the National Colored Press Association conference at Louisville in August 1887. He was paraphrased as remarking that “the American white man did not understand the negro’s position” and that “the trouble was that when the negroes asked for legal rights the majority of the [white] people seemed to think that they were asking for social privileges.”
He added that African-Americans should distance themselves from political parties “and teach them what the colored man’s rights should be,” while calling for better relations between the two races. Citing the fact that Black soldiers helped turn the tide of the Civil War toward the Union and away from the Confederates, Allensworth concluded that “we should teach the white man that the day will come again that the negroes’ aid will be needed as it was in the past,” meaning, of course, future wars.
In 1888, the 24th Infantry Regiment was reassigned to Fort Bayard, located even more remotely than Fort Supply as it was in the southwest corner of New Mexico. Six decades before, William Workman was a member of a fur-trapping expedition that left Santa Fé and headed to this region, following the Gila River west to the Colorado River, while the Gila Trail opened in the area and brought many miners and settlers to southern California during the Gold Rush. Allensworth added overseeing schools for the children of Black soldiers to his religious duties while at Bayard.
In summer 1889, a Washington, D.C. newspaper reported that Allensworth sought a transfer to an unnamed Tennessee college, which, apparently, requested the move, as well. It was mentioned that the chaplain “says his time would be devoted to obtaining from his own race some honorable and valuable recruits for the colored regiments of the Army.” The account concluded that it was not likely the request would be granted, because there were enough officers in Tennessee and those at colleges were to teach military science and tactics.
Another furlough, this was one lasting a few months, was granted in summer 1890, during which time Allensworth gave talks, including one on “The Five Manly Virtues” and another on the cultural meaning of “The Kiss,” with a third on the needs of the Army, in Albuquerque, Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul, his hometown of Louisville, and Kansas City. As he returned to his post, the 23 September edition of the Las Vegas [New Mexico] Optic commented that he “may be properly referred to as the Fred Douglass of the standing army, at least so far as eloquence of speech be concerned.”
1891 brought another leave of absence, during which, in July, Allensworth attended and spoke at the annual conference of the National Education Association, which actually met in Toronto, Canada. He was of the just two active members, or delegates, in the Association at the time and his presentation was on the state of education in the Army. The following year, he offered his opposition to the idea of a Black alternative to West Point or Annapolis, stating that such a concept was “a means of raising the color line” and that “colored youths must attend competitive examinations and be able to pass,” citing two African-American West Point graduates (the first was Henry Flipper in 1877).
With the World’s Fair held at Chicago in 1893, Allensworth was assigned to be a chaplain on duty at this vitally important event and was also an advisory council member concerning committees of religious congresses, including a United Congress of Missions, that were convened there. There was some sniping about the assignment and its compensation which included four cents per mile of travel from Fort Bayard to the Windy City, said to involve nearly 1,700 miles, in addition to his railroad tickets. A Rochester, New York paper archly suggested “his duties as an army chaplain are not onerous at any time . . . but Captain Allensworth will no doubt have more than the usual leisure.”
His trip to Chicago also led to the permanent residency there, in the South Side, of his wife Josephine Leavell and their two daughters, Eva and Ella, with the education of the girls being an important reason for the relocation. A feature in the Chicago Tribune of 17 June 1895 included his view of his chaplaincy that,
It was not so much to look after [Black soldiers’] religion—for they had more religion than anything else, that being about all the colored man was allowed to get before the [Civil] war—that chaplains were appointed to the colored regiments, as to teach the men. And, as the colored people outside of the army have taken to their books since the war, President Cleveland thought it advisable to try the effect of colored teachers upon the colored troops, and so commissioned colored officers to look after their welfare.
Allensworth also alluded to rumors that the 24th Infantry Regiment was to be transferred, with one possible installation to be Fort Douglas, situated just east of Salt Lake City. In mid-October 1896, this did take place and the Black-operated Broad-Ax in that city marked its arrival and wrote in detail about its chaplain. Allensworth told the paper that the African-American soldiers were very well-behaved and disciplined, while it was added that around 50 of them were married with families, but he hoped “the saloons, gambling houses and immoral houses would absolutely refuse to entertain the negro soldiers, for he believes that there a thousand white men who are willing to go to hell with the black man, but there are very few who care to go to heaven with him.”
Allensworth occasionally penned letters to the Broad-Ax on subjects pertaining to important issues for Black Americans, but he also sometimes got on the wrong side (which was not necessarily hard to do) with the excitable editor and publisher, Julius F. Taylor, who launched the Salt Lake City sheet in summer 1895 and later moved it to Chicago.
In September 1897, after an Emancipation Proclamation celebration, the paper reminded readers of his appointment by a Democratic president and admonished Allensworth “to resign his position which he secured from the hands of that party, and to resecure the same position from the Republican Administration.” The following month, Taylor sourly scored the chaplain for falling prey to the designing solicitors of the Salt Lake City Tribune, which, he said, opposed the transfer of the 24th Infantry Regiment, but got Allensworth to subscribe to it. For this, he was accused of possessing “an itching desire to become the new Moses of the negro race.”
Major transformations, however, were soon to come in 1898 and we’ll halt our march through some of Allensworth’s remarkable background and return tomorrow with part seven, so be sure to join us then.