by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Educator and pastor Chew, in his essay “As To The Negro From The Schools,” part of a 12 February 1909 special section on Black resident of Los Angeles in that city’s Times, continues with a subsection titled “EDUCATED NEGRO LAYMEN,” which began with his remark that “outside of the ministry are many well-equipped men, some with, and some without, diplomas.” First among the lengthy list was Jefferson L. Edmonds, a former slave who wrote a striking reminiscence about slavery that was summarized in the first part of this post and for whom there is a book and project by a descendant, Arianne Edmonds.
Chew wrote that,
The Nestor [a legendary king and paragon of wisdom in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey] among the educated colored men of the county is J.L. Edmonds, who, though an ex-slave, has by his efforts so stimulated the powers of his mind that now at the period of the grand climactic he is in the high tide of his mentality.
Edmonds was further lionized as “a valuable man to the negro” as he would have been to any other ethnic group and was “one of the leading spirits in the Forum, an organization which studies and discusses all questions of local or national interest from the point of view of the negro” while also working to “help the distressed and assist in securing the manhood rights to negroes.” Not mentioned was Edmonds’ founding and operation of The Liberator newspaper.
Next among the figures Chew praised was James M. Alexander (1866-1950), who was born in Austin, Texas. Because of the early death of his father, Alexander did not receive a great deal of formal education, but, after his day of work as a handyman, janitor or waiter, attended night school, demonstrating “an insatiable appetite for knowledge,” according to his obituary in the Black-owned California Eagle.
Chew echoed this expressively by stating that Alexander, in supporting his family from a young age, “continued to strive through the silent night to find the key which unlocks the door of opportunity and success.” This included a strong lay understanding of the law, which allowed him to help “people who flock to him for advice and aid in straightening out their tangles. It was added that “in his public life he is the leading spirit in the Afro-American Council,” which was established to assist members “in social and business relations” as well as “civil and political rights.”
Alexander, moreover, was praised for his “political sagacity and unimpeachable integrity and loved for his sympathetic helpfulness wherever that help is needed and will do good.” When the federal Internal Revenue office was opened several years later, the Republican, who was an elevator operator and janitor at Robinson’s Department Store, was given a position as a cashier by President William Howard Taft. He also had influence in getting other Black men and women government jobs, while he also was a co-founder in the mid-1890s of the first organized African-American baseball team in Los Angeles, the Trilbys.
William E. Easton (1861-1936), born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was mentioned by Chew as a descendant on his father’s side of two men who helped build defenses in the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War, as well as a Haitian independence fighter on his mother’s line—in fact, he wrote two books based on Haiti’s history (one staged in Los Angeles as a play starring the well-known African-American actor Henrietta Vinton Davis ). He was educated in Catholic schools after his mother’s death and was a graduate of a Canadian university.
Noted by Chew as one who “specializes on book-keeping and business methods,” Easton later lived in San Antonio, where he was a teacher (along with his wife, Mary, with whom he had seven children), police court clerk and editor of a Black newspaper, as well as heavily involved in Republican politics while in Los Angeles, where he relocated in 1901, he served as a deputy city and county assessor.
Chew accounted Easton as “a brilliant man, a scholar and a dramatic author of ability, and an orator possessed of rare persuasive eloquence.” After 1909, Easton edited a newspaper, served as custodian of state offices in the Angel City and then became manager of the state purchasing office, while he was also part of a Department of War (later Defense) speakers’ bureau focusing on wartime activities of Black people.
Thomas A. Greene (1867-1949), hailed from Mississippi and earned his teaching certificate from that state’s Rust University, following this with study at Walden University. He taught at both, as well as Alcorn A&M in his home state and New Orleans University and he and his wife, parents of six children, migrated to the Angel City in 1902. Greene was a printer and publisher of the Los Angeles Enterprise, having been involved in journalism in Mississippi, while in late 1906, he was appointed secretary of a branch, for Black Angelenos, of the Y.M.C.A.
Greene went on to hold that position for about a quarter-century and Chew wrote of him that,
Mr. Greene is a fine executive, and has brought the Y.M.C.A. from nothingness to the present enrollment of 200. Discreet, high-principled, enthusiastic, reasonable and faithful, he is a good man to have for a friend, and every man in the association feels and knows that Prof. Greene has a personal interest in his spiritual and temporal welfare.
Greene was also head of the Wesley Chapel Methodist Church Sunday School for more than 30 years, as well as a trustee, and was a founding director of the local branch of the Urban League, while a trustee of the Outdoor Life and Health Association. A 1948 African-American Who’s Who publication remarked that Greene was “a pioneer leader . . . respected by members of every group or race” and whose efforts were steered toward “the educational and spiritual uplift of his fellowman.”
John J. Neimore (1862-1912) was born in Texas and some sources state he came to Los Angeles in 1879 and founded a newspaper, though he clearly was too young for that achievement, and actually remained in his home state until he migrated to the Angel City in 1887 during its Boom of the Eighties. He did take part in newspaper management, including the Observer and the Advocate, in the late 80s while also running a boot and shoe store and was active in local Republican politics.
In 1892, he launched the California Eagle, which he ran for two decades until his death and, late in his tenure, he hired a young Charlotta Spears, who became, with her husband, Joseph Bass, its proprietor for many years when the paper was a staple of Black Los Angeles life. Chew remarked that Neimore had a basic education in Texas and “being early thrown upon his own resources, continued this development by private tuition.”
While in his home state, his foray into journalism provided “that school in which so many have gained knowledge and use of language as a vehicle of thought.” Chew added that Neimore “writes strong, fearless English, and is ever an unterrified champion of the rights of men.” In March 1912, however, the 44-year old publisher died rather suddenly of an ailment of the brain and was also remembered as a stalwart leader of the Second Baptist Church.
Theodore W. Troy, who penned a short article on the aforementioned “Forum” for this special section and a summary of his life presented in part three of this post, was stated by Chew to have been from Cincinnati and to have worked in Memphis as a postal carrier before migrating to Los Angeles. His first job was as a bootblack, though it was observed that “his knowledge of mathematics, grammar and geography didn’t interfere with a luster which he produced upon the boots of his customers.”
His care for those who patronized his stand meant that,
Thoroughness and care in looking after details made him a success as a [mail] carrier in Los Angeles, where he was the first colored carrier ever employed. After serving several years he resigned to look after his valuable real estate and develop some promising mining claims.
As noted in that third part of this post, Troy later went on to be a furniture dealer as well as a prime mover in the development of a Black colony in the Santa Clara Valley of Baja California, México, though the scheme collapsed in the late 1920s. Troy returned to Los Angeles, where died in March 1959 at age 89.
Chew then provided information on African-American government workers, including those “who have taken full courses of training,” with those mentioned including postal employees, a medical student at the University of Southern California, engineers, musicians. One of the latter, Buell Jones, was praised for his “talent, nay, genius” in his studies, while working as a letter carrier.
James H. Shackelford (1875-1972), educated in his native Iowa, migrated to the Angel City a few years prior with $500 to invest in a furniture business and was annually grossing ten or more times that amount. Richard H. Dunston (1856-1930) was a graduate of the early Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Wilberforce in Ohio and ran the Los Angeles Van and Storage Company.
Andrew Jackson Roberts (1852-1927), a native of Virginia, also graduated from Wilberforce and founded the first Black-owned funeral parlor in the Angel City after working as a transfer wagon driver. Called “a polished Christian gentleman,” Roberts was so well regarded by Chew that the latter stated that “the keyword to his character is energy.” Married to a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, Roberts was the father of Frederick M. Roberts, who was the first Black graduate of Los Angeles High School, attended U.S.C., earned his degree from Colorado College, worked for his father and succeeded him in running the business and then was the first African-American member of the California legislature, serving 16 years in the Assembly.
Other highlighted Black figures of note in Chew’s article included those working in undertaking, lumber, commerce and railroads, while he commented that “the industrial idea,” as championed nationally by Booker T. Washington, who contributed an essay that was mentioned in part 13 of this post, “is dominant in educational circles.” It was obvious, Chew continued, that “we want to know what becomes of the graduates who leave Hampton and Tuskegee” institutes, the latter founded by Washington. It was added that many went into teaching, while there were those who found other fields of endeavor. Seven examples of locals were given who worked as bricklayers, carpenters, electricians and painters, while one was a construction warehouse supervisor.
In a concluding subsection headed “THEY SERVE AS EXAMPLES,” the essayist wrote “these are actual men; these are facts which have been expressed conservatively” and whose competency was “accumulated by hard work, sober habits and close attention business.” Moreover, those cited in his article provided “an unanswerable argument, that the negro has the ability to receive education” which, coupled with opportunity, a key word in Washington’s article, turn each of these Black men “into a good citizen” while also preventing “the triumphs of criminal instincts” as “they do for any other men of whatsoever color.”
Chew’s conclusion is worth quoting at length and a notable ending to this remarkable special section that was the most comprehensive examination of the African-American community in Los Angeles to date as he wrote words to remember this Black History Month:
Someone has said that the negro is like a mule, without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity. Some degenerate sons point to their ancestry and glory in their achievements. We are founding our families now. They are worshiping their ancestors. We are striving to become worthy of fond remembrance to unborn generations. In this transition stage we need wisdom. That wisdom is coming to us. Some have already grasped it; the mass is waking up to it, and in this universal awakening of the whole negro race is our hope of posterity.
Will the negro revert to type? Experience tells us “No.” The African slaves imported into this country were lean, skinny, undersized; the American negro averages large as to size; this is the expected result of civilized conditions and a slight knowledge of the laws of health. The perceptible change in the body was accompanied by a greater development in the mind. The cases which have been noted are outcroppings which show that the negro brain contains a great mine of wealth for the nation which can be reached when development work is done, which, when drawn forth and purified, receiving the mint mark of acknowledged value, can be cast into the circulation of the world, and then, and not till then, will the great clearinghouse of American thought and sentiment give just credit to all.
Professor Chew’s statement that “education and opportunity were able to prevent the triumphs of criminal instincts” seems, to some extent, at odds with traditional Chinese culture.
For thousands of years, Chinese teachings have emphasized that “human nature is fundamentally good at birth” (人之初，性本善). From this perspective, wrongdoing is not viewed as the triumph of innate criminal impulses, but rather as the result of environment — such as exposure to harmful influences, poor examples, or destructive social conditions.
The value of education and opportunity is, without doubt, essential. Yet their role is not to suppress something inherently bad within a person. Rather, they cultivate and nurture the goodness that already exists within human nature and help it to flourish.