By Diane Euston
There are some names in Kansas City’s history that stick out to us, many of whom have parks or streets named after them. But as we dig deeper into our city’s past, it becomes vividly clear that so many important figures have been all but forgotten.
This is especially true when it comes to Black history. Some names certainly stand out – Lucile Bluford, Leon Jordan, Bruce Watkins and Sarah Rector, to name just a few. But comparatively, the history of the Black population pre- and post-emancipation is all but lost to the stories of city leaders of a lighter complexion.
One man and his family chose to move away from their home of Ohio in order to step into a role that, for the most part, remained vacant in Kansas City as it grew after the Civil War. As more and more freed Blacks abandoned the fields in the South, there was a call for self-advancement, especially in large cities. And, the quickest way to advance oneself was through education.
Before we dive into the life of educator, activist, writer and editor, James Dallas Bowser, we must take a step back in time to understand the dire circumstances surrounding the lives of millions of formerly enslaved men, women and children who uprooted their lives in search of a better situation.
Kansas City’s Black Population in the 1860s
From its founding in 1838, some Kansas Citians and residents of Jackson County relied upon enslaved labor for many tasks. As people migrated to the area from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, they often brought with them the enslaved.
Before the Hannibal Bridge spanned the Missouri River and linked Kansas City to commercial hubs in 1869, there was an earlier period of intense growth in the city. When Kansas Territory opened for settlement in 1854, the city grew from just 700 folks along the riverfront to a bustling hub of 7,285 people focused on industry in 1858.
In 1860, Jackson County was composed of 18,882 white residents, 3,944 enslaved and just 70 freed Blacks. Kansas City’s population in 1860 was 4,418, and the enslaved population was 166. Due to heightened tensions and violence, Kansas City suffered during the days leading up to the Civil War. The enslaved lived scattered nearby their slaveholders in the most affluent neighborhoods, and the 24 freed Blacks living within the city limits were employed as laborers, washerwomen, cooks and barbers.
At the close of the Civil War, a sprinkling of freed Blacks were noted in the city directories, living scattered throughout the city. Many of the formerly enslaved likely tried to reconnect with families after being split apart while others moved to friendlier towns such as Lawrence and Leavenworth, Kan.
But some did stay in the area. Their stories of survival during enslavement were rarely recorded or passed down to their children and grandchildren. Oftentimes, the pain of the past was rarely worth mentioning as the newly freed fought to make ends meet.
Blacks who chose to move to Kansas City did so likely because cities offered better protection than rural areas. Also, the state constitution in 1865 allocated funds to establish Black schools throughout the state. Sometime around the close of the Civil War, the first Black school west of the Mississippi was built in Westport and was known as Penn School.
The prayers for better conditions, including an education, further drew the African American population to move to large cities. At first, segregated neighborhoods were not a consideration, and the population was scattered throughout Kansas City amongst the white working class and merchants.
But the need for a school in Kansas City specifically for the growing Black population later drew an invisible line of segregation in the city right as a young 23-year-old teacher known as J. Dallas Bowser arrived in the city ready to educate the growing population of Blacks in Kansas City.
James Dallas Bowser’s Early Life and Education
J.D. Bowser was born in 1846 near Weldon, N.C. shortly after his parents, freed people of color, Henry (b. 1819) and Mary (b. 1820) were married.
His parents appear to have been born free, and it is possible that the Bowers were freedman as early as 1790. Six weeks after he was born, his parents opted to move near Chillicothe, Ohio to join a thriving African American community.
In fact, some of the original settlers of the community were the formerly enslaved at Monticello and served Thomas Jefferson. Eston and Madison Hemings, the children of enslaved Sally Hemings and Jefferson, moved to Chillicothe in 1837. The town was also a station on the Underground Railroad.
J.D. Bowser’s father, Henry, worked on a farm and also was employed as the first “colored school teacher” to Black children in the area. After attending high school, J.D. taught one year side-by-side with his father. He was an exceptional writer and deeply intellectual, drawn naturally to the fight for equality for his people.
J.D. later said he was “lured [to Kansas City] by the glowing accounts of the chances of a fortune to be made.” Accompanied by his parents and a younger brother, Willy, J.D. eloquently recalled his life-altering journey out west to his new home in 1868. His words, in part, read:
We awoke to find ourselves at the Grand Avenue depot at Kansas City near midnight. Setting out to go up town we discovered that most of the would-be streets climbed some hill and led nowhere in particular. . . Main Street was the only paved thoroughfare, Delaware Street was a winding ravine. . . The West Bottoms was a forest of giant sycamores, a winding wagonroad along the river leading to old Wyandotte. Indians were frequently on the market square. The white-tented wagons of the argonauts of the plains were busy loading their wares for their journey to the great Southwest.
After teaching for one year at Penn School in Westport, J.D. turned his attention to the north – to that city that excited him the minute he landed there. It was time for Prof. Bowser to make a lasting mark on the fledgling operation of public schools in Kansas City.
Lincoln School
In 1867 with the help of the Freedman’s Bureau, the Kansas City School District created Lincoln School, the first public school for African Americans in the city. Early education often started in the basement of churches, and Lincoln opened first inside a church at the corner of 10th and McGee.
African American educator, civil rights leader and diplomat James Milton Turner (c.1840-1915) was named principal of Lincoln School. Turner was born enslaved in St. Louis, educated in secret and attended university at Oberlin College in Ohio. After serving in the Civil War fighting for the Union, the new constitution allocated funds to open segregated Black schools across the state.
Turner began to work for the Missouri Department of Education and established 30 schools (including Lincoln University in Jefferson City) throughout the state.
While in charge of Lincoln School in Kansas City, Turner moved the operation in 1869 to a small wooden church at 10th and Charlotte (then called Gay St.) that housed the Second Baptist Church where the Bowsers worshiped. The school had “three large school rooms, well furnished with educational fixtures.”
Turner, set to be appointed by President Grant as the U.S. minister to Liberia, left Lincoln School in the hands of 25-year-old J. Dallas Bowser. As principal, he appointed none other than his father, Henry, as a teacher at the school. J.D. recalled:
I took charge […] of 125 pupils, of all grades from A B C to Algebra and of ages from five to forty years or more. Few people could write, so much of my spare time was engaged in writing letters for nearby settlers. . . We knew Twelfth Street as Ottawa, Holmes as Hackberry, Charlotte as Gay, Troost as Kane, Forest as Elizabeth and so on.
J.D. and his family moved to a small residence at 912 E. 10th St.
Kansas City wasn’t devoid of racial discrimination. As the new principal of Lincoln School, J.D. opted to visit the all-white Washington School at Independence Ave. and Cherry run by James W. Perkins, a Union Civil War veteran.
“With the courtesy usually shown to visiting teachers, Mr. Bowser was introduced to the pupils and asked to speak to them,” the Kansas City Journal reported. This created quite the stir, and the Republican mayor, Francis R. Long, visited the Board of Education weeks later in protest. The minutes of the meeting recorded that the mayor appeared on “behalf of certain citizens of the First Ward to request the removal of the principal of [Washington School], for introducing a colored man into the same with marked tokens of respect.”
The Board took no action.
Another incident in 1872 at a neighboring white school made headlines. Wishing to gather some information about how the school dealt with disciplinary issues, J.D. visited the school with permission of a teacher. While there, another teacher called him “an impudent, dirty n—-” and claimed the teacher who let him in “deserved a cowhiding, and there were those in the city who could be easily found to administer it.”
Despite the blatant racism, J.D. Bowser refused to give up. By 1873, Lincoln School was “totally unfit” as a school and enrollment swelled. To accommodate increased enrollment, the school rented a room across the street. Regardless, the facilities were dilapidated. The Kansas City Times wrote, “There are FIFTY CHILDREN REFUSED ADMITTANCE here on account of a lack of accommodation. It is time that something more was done for the colored population.”
J.D. made it five more years as principal of Lincoln School with his father by his side as one of two teachers in the building.
Meeting His Match: Dora J. Troy
Born in 1854 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Samuel (1823-1901) and Maria Randolph Troy (1821-1902), Dora was raised among freedmen. Her father, a trained shoemaker, left Essex County, Va. after marrying in 1847. Samuel’s father, Samuel, Sr. (1794-1887) was also a shoemaker who was born enslaved – his father was his white slaveholder. After Samuel, Sr. married a free woman of color named Sarah, she used her own money to purchase her husband and set him free.
Samuel, Jr.’s parents and several brothers moved to Cincinnati and were active participants on the Underground Railroad.
Cincinnati was the perfect fit for African Americans seeking community, education and entrepreneurial opportunities. One of the largest free Black communities in the United States (with over 3,000 residents in 1850), Cincinnati became home to the Troy family.
The parents of at least seven girls, the Troys valued the importance of education; both parents could read and write. Thus, they opted around 1860 to move the family from Cincinnati to Xenia, Ohio where a relative was principal of a Black school.
After serving as a private in the Union Army, Samuel returned to shoemaking in Xenia. At least two of his children, Dora and Louisa (b. 1860), continued through high school and began teaching school.
Likely introduced due to both family’s extreme involvement in education in Ohio, James Dallas Bowser returned to Ohio in 1873 and married Dora Troy. Dora moved to Kansas City to join her husband.
J.D.’s father, a major influence in his life, would not live to witness all of the greatness his son would accomplish. In August 1875, Henry Bowser died of consumption at the age of 56. His Lincoln students were invited to attend the services at the Second Baptist Church.
Replacing his father’s teaching position was easier than he could ever imagine. J.D.’s wife, Dora, trained as a teacher, took the position as first assistant at Lincoln School. Mr. Bowser was paid $70 a month while principals at the white schools were paid between $85 and $100 per month.
Political Activism as a Radical Republican
Bowser was never one to cower in a corner, and his professionalism, reputation, writing and rhetorical skills were some of the very best in Kansas City. He was politically active in the Republican party, and in 1872, there was talk of him being nominated by the Radical party to the legislature; despite the calls for him to serve, he always declined.
Nevertheless, J.D. never turned down a chance to speak in public. While a part of a Republican meeting in August 1872, the Kansas City Times reporter walked out before hearing his speech. As the only Black speaker, J.D. wanted his voice heard.
He wrote a lengthy letter to the newspaper, and the Times published it. It reads in part:
Assure us by your actions that our civil and political equality is a living and practical fact. If you see us going to school, let us alone – let us go. The more learning, the better citizens. If we want to buy a farm, let us buy it. Don’t say that is too good for us. If we seek official position by virtue of our merit, and the suffrages of the people, let us alone and stop howling about social equality and negro supremacy. Do this, and the negro ever ready to forgive where there is evidence of true repentance, will not hesitate to forgive at the ballot-box also, and to vote for any and all candidates, whether former friend or former foe, who exhibit proper guarantees of freedom in the use of his rights, encouragements in efforts to learn, and inducements to self-improvement and development in his new and elevated character as an American citizen.
Even today, J.D.’s words hold merit.
Turning a New Page
In July 1878, Bowser was back to writing letters to the newspaper in order to garner support for the new Lincoln School. Enrollment had swelled to a whopping 1300 students. There was talk of moving the school out of the area where Blacks had slowly settled in order to be close to the only school.
J.D. passionately argued that there was a reason that Lincoln School was placed where it was, and it had to do with the cost of real estate and the gradual segregation of the Black population in Kansas City. He wrote:
The colored people bought according to their means. They were unable to procure property on Main Street, Quality Hill, Forest Avenue, or upon any popular thoroughfare. . . When the colored people located in the Second Ward it was thought to be too far out of the city proper to become offensive to acute sensibilities of the elite of said ward. . . To divide this school would be ruinous to the system.
A new building was erected at the northwest corner of 11th and Campbell, and within a few years, the school would add high school classes to their curriculum.
For whatever the reason, there seemed to be no room for Principal Bowser at the new school. Without explanation, he resigned from Lincoln and began teaching at a school in Wyandotte.
This was far from the end of James Dallas Bowser’s influence on Kansas City. He still had four decades more of activism to give.
The Gate City Press
Even though J.D. Bowser taught in Wyandotte, he continued to choose to live with his wife, Dora in Kansas City on the east side, living at 912 E. 10th St. with his mother.
He also focused less on running schools and more on expanding his outreach through the written word. J.D. was an incredible writer, often contributing his opinion to Kansas City newspapers.
In 1880, H.H. Johnson founded The Free Press, the first Black newspaper in Kansas City. Before printing his second issue, Johnson reached out to Bowser, “whom he knew to be a wide-awake, vigilant writer and business man,” and explained he was without the money to continue publication.
Bowser purchased the paper from Johnson, changed its name to the Gate City Press and began publication immediately. The paper, published until 1889, was “a household word in the West, and its columns [were] quoted by the leading journals of the land.”
The 1891 book, “The Afro-American Press and Its Editors,” wrote of the Gate City Press, “Among the many weekly journals published in the West, none carries with it such great influence, and none is so powerful in the maintenance of right principles as the Gate City Press, published at Kansas City, Mo.”
“Bowser War” Over Black Schools
When J.D. Bowser left Lincoln School in 1879, there was a series of four interim principals for the next decade. When Bowser left in 1879, a man named Mr. Agee took over. The KC Journal wrote, “There was a Bowser faction and an anti-Bowser faction, and the Bowser faction made Mr. Agee very tired indeed.”
Mr. Agee only lasted one year at Lincoln School.
The next principal named was D.V.A. Nero, a capable and well-educated man. But the minute he took the helm, even adding high school curriculum, Nero began receiving threatening letters, including one that said they would poison him.
The superintendent of Wyandotte Schools where J.D. Bowser was employed met with Bowser and accused him of either writing the letters or knowing the person who did it. He emphatically denied this. The newspapers continued to wage a war in words, and Bowser’s own Gate City Press published attacks on Nero. The Gate City Press called the teachers at Lincoln School “incompetent” and organized a mass meeting with the superintendent of Kansas City schools present.
The verbal attacks continued, and the Kansas Journal reported, “The Nero faction openly assert that it is Bowser’s plan to make it unpleasant for anyone to teach at Lincoln School except members of the house of Bowser.”
Interestingly, throughout the attacks, J.D. Bowser’s wife, Dora, continued to teach at the school. By 1888, she moved to another school.
Despite the wars, Lincoln School thrived. In 1885, students completed the first high school program and graduated students. It wasn’t until 1887 that the Kansas City School District added high schools throughout the city.
Bowser focused his energies on his writings during the 1880s, editing the Gate City Press and presenting numerous papers about the struggles for Black educators. Paper titles included: “Should the Education of the White and Colored be Identical?”, “Should the Negro Join Labor Organizations?”, “The New Renaissance, Methods of Teaching History in Elementary and Secondary Schools” and “Some Unsolved World Problems.”
His involvement as a well-known Black editor also allowed him to associate with some of the most powerful Black leaders of the day. In 1887, he was the host to ex-Congressman Robert Smalls of South Carolina, who, in 1862, as an enslaved man with eight others in bondage, seized a steamboat loaded with ammunition for a new Confederate fort in Charleston.
Bowser’s mother, Mary, passed away inside the family home on E. 10th St. in 1885, living long enough to see her son as a powerful member of the Black community. J. Dallas Bowser was her only child still living at her death, despite raising at least five other children.
Back to Kansas City Schools
After taking jobs outside education, including working as a railway postal clerk, inspector of Weights and Measures, Deputy Assessor, Inspector of Customs and a Census Clerk, James Dallas Bowser turned his attention back to his first love of teaching.
He suspended publication of the popular Gate City Press for unknown reasons in 1889, and by 1891, he was principal of Bruce School in Kansas City, Mo.
In 1893, the Kansas City School District opened Attucks School to support a growing Black population on the east side in a rented building on 18th St. The school was named for Crispus Attucks, a Black man killed in the Boston Massacre.
By 1896, Bowser was named principal of Attucks School at 18th and Brooklyn. But he was, according to the newspapers, unpopular for unknown reasons. The newspaper reported that children were taken out of the school in protest of his leadership, stating he was “guilty of immoral conduct.”
The Black community yet again was split into two factions with one group wishing to have another man as principal. A petition calling for his removal had “no specific charges preferred against [Bowser],” so no action was taken.
Despite the feelings of some in the Black community, Bowser was recognized nationally for his work at the school. At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, he was given a certificate of efficiency and a gold medal for his leadership at Attucks School. His specialty at the time was teaching philosophy and math, but he was also well-known for his extensive knowledge of the history of Kansas City and the Santa Fe Trail.
By 1900, Bowser, employed in 1869, was the only employee left in Kansas City Public Schools from its founding.
As the Black population continued to rise on the east side, specifically in the Paseo District, the Attucks School building at 18th and Brooklyn was deemed too small. In 1904, land at 1815 Woodland Ave. was purchased to build a two-story schoolhouse.
When the school opened in 1905, J.D. Bowser was assigned to continue his role overseeing several hundred Black students, predominantly children from the growing 18th and Vine area. Built at the cost of $36,811, Attucks School included eight rooms, a manual training room and a library. Nine teachers worked under Bowser.
The Rising Son reported in 1906, “The Negroes are indeed proud of the soil from whence he sprang; as he is a great gift to struggling Negro humanity.”
By 1911, Attucks School had 13 teachers and 560 students.
After just shy of 40 years in Kansas City’s schools, Professor Bowser opted to retire from education by 1917 after a quick stint in Quindaro. His interests led him to invest in the community and travel the world. In 1910, he traveled to Europe and wrote, “Go. . . everybody who can, and see the world on the other side of the sea; in particular London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Venice, whose museums, cathedrals and art galleries are in themselves ample compensation for they might cost in money and time invested.”
A Poem for the Ages
James Dallas Bowser was a prolific writer, and he never missed an opportunity to use current events to bring attention to the Black experience. In February 1899, a well-known poet, Rudyard Kipling, penned “The White Man’s Burden.”
It was written about the Philippine-American War and encouraged the United States to control the Philippine Islands and their people, implying that it was “the white man’s burden” to pay for building an empire and “civilize” non-white people on the Earth.
Heated responses, emulating the structure of “The White Man’s Burden,” were published by several people of color. One of them was none other than James Dallas Bowser.
In April 1899, Professor Bowser addressed a diverse crowd at the Vine Street Baptist Church. He, in part, said, “[The Black man] cannot get rid of his color, surely. He must continue to wear this badge [. . .] He must recognize that there is to be in this country but one civilization and that distinctly American.” He read his poem for the first time, titled “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden.” It became his personal favorite. It reads:
TAKE UP THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN
Take up the Black Man’s burden —
“Send forth the best ye breed”
To judge with righteous judgement
The Black Man’s worth and need,
To set down naught in malice,
In hate or prejudice,
To tell the truth about him,
To paint him as he is.
Take up the Black Man’s burden,
Ye of bold and strong,
And might make right as only
It does no weak race wrong;
When yours — his chances equal,
Give him the fairest test,
Then, “Hands off!” be your motto
And he will do the rest.
Take up the Black Man’s burden,
Don’t cure him in advance,
He can not lift a White Man’s load
Without a White Man’s chance;
Shut out from mill and workshop,
From counting-room and store,
By caste and labor unions,
You lose Industry’s door.
Take up the Black Man’s burden,
Don’t crush him with his load;
Nor heap it up in courses
By scoff and jeers bestowed —
The haughty Anglo-Saxon
Was savage and untaught —
A thousand years of freedom
A wondrous change has wrought!
Take up the Black Man’s burden,
Black men of every clime.
What though your cross be heavy,
Your sun but darkly shine,
Stoop with a freeman’s ardor,
Lift high a freeman’s head,
Stand with a freeman’s firmness,
March with a freeman’s tread.
These words continued to be reprinted in Black newspapers across the country for decades to come, as their words remained palpable as struggles for equality continued.
“Kansas City and How it Grew.”
The Invisible Black and White Boundaries in Real Estate
Many Kansas Citians are aware of the racial redlining that riddled the Kansas City real estate market in the 1920s and 1930s, but lesser known is the history prior to this.
In 1900, African Americans were distributed throughout the city, but three main neighborhoods were settled more heavily. Belvidere centered around land north of Independence Ave. on the east and west side of Troost. Hick’s Hollow was just east of Belvidere and west of Prospect, and the Bowery was just east of Troost and west of Prospect.
The population boom in the 1880s caused overdevelopment of inexpensive, affordable housing on Kansas City’s east side. The financial crisis of 1890 created even more housing inventory. James Shortridge, author of “Kansas City and How it Grew,” stated, “With exclusionary laws still in the future, location [of Blacks] remained primarily a matter of affordability.” This along with good access to public transportation may have been the driving force behind the east side’s growing Black population.
Bowser and his wife, Dora had the means to buy real estate outside the invisible boundaries building around the Black community. In 1900, the couple was living near Attucks School at 2220 Brooklyn, but the Bowsers began to invest in real estate across the city.
They purchased a two-story home at 2212 Park Ave. with the intention of living there and renting their home on Brooklyn, but “the neighbors were up in arms immediately and began at once to take action to drive Bowser and his family from the neighborhood.”
According to the Kansas City Journal, J. Dallas Bowser refused to leave. White neighbors on Park Ave. filed suit and alerted the School Board, citing that Bowser was “taking advantage of his color in certain real estate transactions at 2323 Lydia Ave. and 2212 Park Ave.”
This, of course, is a comical and enraging charge. Bowser was never willing to back down to a challenge. The Board of Education got involved because East side residents were angry. The Kansas City Journal wrote, “He argued before the board that a negro attempting to rise and live a decent and clean life should be encouraged and not thrown down.”
Bowser explained he had purchased a home prior at 2323 Lydia but “there were such strong objections made to his living there that he consented to lease the property and bought on Park.”
The School Board refused to consider the action, and the president stated that the fact that Professor Bowser would continue in his position as principal at Attucks School “was sufficient indication of his standing with the board.”
That home on 2323 Lydia where he had been “chased out” by white neighbors became his home for the next decade. He leased the other properties despite further objections.
Mirroring the Quality Hill neighborhood on the west side of town, well-to-do African Americans began to move from the West Bottoms and into an area just east of The Paseo near 24th St. This neighborhood quickly became known as “Negro Quality Hill.”
In 1913, after a successful side business in real estate, J.D. and his wife, Dora moved to a “stately mansion” in the heart of “Negro Quality Hill” at 2400 Paseo. They called it “Troy Hall,” paying homage to Dora’s surname.
Troy Hall had spacious rooms and a library that was large enough to house the large collection of books J.D. Bowser had collected for over 50 years. The Kansas City Son wrote, “This delightful couple in sweet contentment and happy association are spending the evening of their life often entertaining their myriad friends young and old and living a wholesome and inspiring life which is indeed a benediction as well as an incentive to the younger people of their wide circle of friends to emulate their achievement.”
The couple would happily live out the rest of their lives inside Troy Hall.
Witnessing History While Also Being a Part of It
After the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, J.D. Bowser watched as the oldest Black woman in the community, 94-year-old Flora Waldon cast her vote in November 1920.
He wrote in the Kansas City Sun, “I thought of the remnant who were in at the birth of Negro Emancipation and manhood suffrage who are still living in Kansas City, and whom it would do my soul good to know that they, too, had gone to the polls, and, like Mrs. Waldon, had cast their first ballots for that grand old part which made universal suffrage possible, and back of it freedom itself, turning the auction block into a school house and the whipping post and slave pen into Universities and happy homes.”
James Dallas Bowser’s prominence within the Black and white community led him to work extensively with the YMCA, even serving as secretary of their chess and checker association in 1915.
He became a member of the Inter-Racial Committee of Twelve in 1920. Organized by the all-white Citizens’ League, the organization was comprised of 12 well-respected white and Black residents to garner community engagement. He also was part of the Negro Business League of Kansas City, the Old Settlers Association and the NAACP.
James Dallas Bowser passed away inside Troy Hall in the wee hours of the morning on January 1, 1923 from heart disease. He was 76 years old. His large estate was in the care of his wife and called for large donations to the Paseo YMCA, St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church and the Children’s Home.
The Kansas City Sun proclaimed while announcing his death, “The race lost one of its intellectual lights and the City one of its best citizens.”
Dora was bedridden and paralyzed at the time of his passing, and a sister (a prominent teacher in Dayton, Ohio) named Louise Troy moved to Kansas City to take care of her. She passed away in 1929. They are buried, along with his parents, at Elmwood Cemetery.
There is no school or road named after James Dallas Bowser, and his life, although incredibly important to Kansas City’s history, has been all but lost with the passing of each decade. In his lifetime, he spearheaded Black education and equal treatment in an ever-increasing segregated city.
His name should be memorialized: James Dallas Bowser. His name should be easily recalled as one of the prominent Black leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries. His contributions, written and spoken, should be studied by school children and referenced by today’s local politicians.
It was said in the newspaper at his death, “He was a strong factor in the life of this city, always gentlemanly, but fearless in standing for the rights of his people.”
He took on the Black man’s burden, and we are all better for it.
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