{"id":8738,"date":"2020-06-23T15:06:02","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T19:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=8738"},"modified":"2021-07-30T11:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T15:21:38","slug":"wheelings-20th-man-250-years-of-race-relations-in-the-northernmost-southern-city-of-the-southernmost-northern-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wheelings-20th-man-250-years-of-race-relations-in-the-northernmost-southern-city-of-the-southernmost-northern-state","title":{"rendered":"Wheeling\u2019s 20th Man: 250 Years of Race Relations in the Northernmost Southern City of the Southernmost Northern State"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>This revised edition, updated with new research, is reprinted with permission from the Fall 2019 issue of Goldenseal Magazine<\/a><\/em> (for Ann Thomas<\/a>)\n

\n
Wheeling\u2019s Twentieth Man<\/h2>\n
\u201cTo accept one\u2019s past\u2014one\u2019s history\u2014is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.\u201d ~ James Baldwin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On February 9, 1936, Harry H. Jones, Wheeling\u2019s only practicing African American lawyer at the time, delivered an address over WWVA Radio titled, \u201c Wheeling\u2019s Twentieth Man<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout one out of every twenty persons living in Wheeling is of African descent. This twentieth man is not a new comer nor an alien, for his ancestors were settled by force in Virginia one year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock\u2026 Justice and candor require attention to the handicaps suffered by Wheeling\u2019s twentieth man\u2026 The group, as a whole, has been barred from employment<\/a> in our local factories, mills, shops, and stores. The group generally has been restricted to personal and domestic service and coal mining\u2026A reading of the \u2018job want\u2019 columns of our local papers will verify this complaint of discrimination. Apparently, the test is COLOR of the worker<\/a>; not his or her training, experience and character\u2026\u201d [Read the full text of the speech<\/a>]<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Elm Grove coal mines were among the biggest employers of black men in the 1930s. In this 1939 image, the night shift at Valley Camp Coal is roughly half black and half white. OCPL Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Jones went on to describe an entirely distinct black community \u2013 one with its own doctors, dentists, restauranteurs, shop keepers, hairdressers, and even funeral directors. Wheeling in 1936 was actually two cities, side-by-side but completely separate. And black people were not welcome in white Wheeling. This was Wheeling under Jim Crow<\/a>: separate, but decidedly not equal<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Later that same year, Wheeling celebrated its 100th birthday of incorporation as a city with a grand pageant meant to reenact the entirety of its history. Within that pageant and the 112-page program describing it, the only indication that Wheeling\u2019s \u201ctwentieth man\u201d had been a part of that history was an A & P Food Store advertisement featuring caricatures of what appear to be black slaves carrying apples, potatoes, and other food as well dressed white men look on, smiling. Black people were otherwise ignored, as if they never existed.<\/p>\n
$\"The$ <\/a>
The only evidence found in Wheeling\u2019s centennial program that African Americans played a role in the city\u2019s first 100 years was this racist food store ad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A few months later in December 1936, William Burrus<\/a> was born on 12th Street. He grew up in this alternate universe, graduated from Lincoln<\/a> (Wheeling\u2019s black public school), and then, like so many other young African Americans, left Wheeling for Cleveland, where he worked for the U.S. Postal Service and was elected president of the American Postal Workers Union<\/a> \u2013 the first African American to be elected president of any national union by its members.<\/p>\n
While visiting his hometown many years later Burrus reflected: \u201cI\u2019ve traveled around the world. I\u2019ve met four presidents\u2026I\u2019ve met Nelson Mandela. I\u2019ve met kings and queens of other countries, and no matter where I went\u2026I was proud to represent that my home was Wheeling, West Virginia. That\u2019s where I was born, that\u2019s where I was raised. That\u2019s the foundation of who I am. I was disappointed that\u2026I don\u2019t think that Wheeling was proud of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how did this happen? Given Burrus\u2019s disappointment and Jones\u2019s neglected \u201ctwentieth man,\u201d how did Wheeling, a northern city that hosted the conventions<\/a> necessary for the northwestern counties of Virginia to break free from the Confederacy during the Civil War, become so starkly racially divided, just like a city of the old South?<\/p>\n
To answer these questions, it is necessary to go all the way back to Wheeling\u2019s founding in 1769, when a white Virginian named Ebenezer Zane<\/a> made a claim to a narrow strip of land in the valley of the Ohio by carving his initials into a tree, invoking \u201c tomahawk rights<\/a>.\u201d We now call that land \u201cWheeling\u201d from the Lenape weelunk, translated as \u201c place of the skull<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
The skull belonged to another white man who arrived prior to Zane, and the Lenape were just one of the indigenous tribes with whom the Zanes and their neighbors would engage in protracted bloody combat to enforce the rights they claimed.<\/p>\n
As Wheeling marked the 250th anniversary of Zane\u2019s claim with a citywide observation (this took place in 2019<\/a>), it became important to acknowledge that people already lived here, just as we remember that other people were brought here against their will.<\/p>\n
While discussing plans for this grand 250th observation<\/a>, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott reminded us to look at Wheeling\u2019s history in a \u201cholistic manner\u201d and \u201cbe honest about it \u2026 Wheeling was a slave city<\/a> in a slave state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, when slavery was abolished after the Civil War, Wheeling became a segregated city in a segregated state. But due to its unique position historically and geographically, Wheeling\u2019s experience with race relations was neither completely northern nor southern. It was both, and neither.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s heed the Mayor\u2019s advice and take an honest, holistic look at the 250 plus-year history of race relations in Wheeling, West Virginia.<\/p>\n
\n
Slave City<\/h2>\n
\n
The truth is that some of the \u201cfirst families\u201d who joined the Zanes brought with them enslaved human beings with the legal status of property. Wheeling was part of Virginia, the first slave colony, due to the arrival of shackled Africans at Jamestown four hundred years ago in 1619<\/a>, just as Mr. Jones reminded us. By 1788, the Old Dominion had become the Commonwealth of Virginia, a slave state.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
This carte de visite image of a woman who was most likely a slave nurse is stamped \u201cBROWN & LOSE Photographers, Wheeling, W. Va.\u201d on the reverse. \u201cAunt Susan\u201d is handwritten in pencil. Circa 1864. Courtesy Bob Arrington.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Most of the rest of Virginia\u2019s enslaved population worked on plantations, but Wheeling was different, due to the nature of the economy and a landscape, comprised of a narrow river valley, that did not support large plantations. Here, a much smaller number of slaves were kept as domestic servants or \u201chouse slaves\u201d working as carriage drivers, butlers, maids, cooks, or nurses who helped raise children.<\/p>\n
The Zanes owned slaves. One, known as \u201c Daddy Sam<\/a>,\u201d helped the defenders of Fort Henry fight off two sieges by indigenous and British forces in 1777 and 1782. Many of the city\u2019s most prominent families \u2013 the Caldwells, Jacobs, Mitchells, Paulls, Paxtons, and Yarnalls \u2013 owned slaves. In fact, many streets and even whole neighborhoods are named after slave holders, such as Archibald Woods<\/a>, for whom Woodsdale is named, the Edgingtons of Edgington Lane, and the Chaplines of Chapline Street. Society hostess Lydia Boggs Shepherd<\/a> of Shepherd Hall fame, owned as many as 15 slaves.<\/p>\n
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Slave auction bell. Oglebay Mansion Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
While the number of slaves owned by Wheeling residents remained comparatively small, the Ohio River, the National Road, and the B. & O. Railroad (both built in part by slave labor), converged to make the city a transportation hub, facilitating a prominent role in the sale of slaves<\/a> to southern markets, including the Kanawha salt mines<\/a>, as well as major slave markets further south, such as those in Louisville and New Orleans.<\/p>\n
Enslaved people were often marched along National Road, chained together in \u201c coffles<\/a>,\u201d toward the market house on 10th Street, where they were auctioned to the highest bidder, like cattle. The Mansion Museum at Oglebay Park<\/a> still has the bell that was rung to call people to these slave auctions.<\/p>\n
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The northwest corner of the old second ward market house on 10th Street was the site of Wheeling\u2019s slave auction block. Many slaves sold here ended up in southern markets from Charleston, Virginia, to Louisville and New Orleans. Brown Collection, OCPL Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
In a 1907 book called Bonnie Belmont: A historical romance of the days of slavery and the Civil War<\/em><\/a>, John Salisbury Cochran, an Ohio Civil War veteran, judge, and eyewitness to the Wheeling slave auction block, described it this way:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe auction block was on the west side of the upper end of the market about where the city scales are now located. It was a wooden movable platform about two and a half feet high and six feet square approached by some three or four steps.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Cochran\u2019s story, a Quaker named Joshua Cope purchases the slave named Aunt Tilda Taylor, and sets her free. The Quakers were abolitionists, and operated the Underground Railroad just across the Ohio River from Wheeling, helping slaves escape to freedom.<\/p>\n
Another Quaker from Mt. Pleasant Ohio<\/a>, Benjamin Lundy<\/a>, became a staunch abolitionist after witnessing a slave auction in Wheeling. Lundy wrote<\/a> about seeing \u201cdroves of a dozen or twenty ragged men, chained together and driven through the streets, bare-headed and bare-footed, in mud and snow, by the remorseless \u2018SOUL SELLERS,\u2019 with horsewhips and bludgeons in their hands!\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Lincoln School teacher Mrs. Dorothy Cooper<\/a>,\u00a0\u201c\u2026 at the corner of 11th and Chapline Streets, a whipping post stood. Squire McConnell had charge of this and administered punishment to all slaves who had committed offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, city and county codes often made participation in \u201c slave patrols<\/a>\u201d mandatory for white people, even those who did not own slaves. This policy, designed, among other things, to snare escaping slaves and suppress any kind of uprising, was enforced as a \u201ccivic duty.\u201d Some scholars argue<\/a> that the idea of whites \u201cpolicing\u201d former slaves has influenced modern law enforcement.<\/p>\n
In any event, by 1860, when Wheeling\u2019s population was 14,100 people, there were 100 enslaved people in Ohio County \u2013 42 men and 58 women. One of those, Sara \u201cLucy\u201d Bagby<\/a>, escaped from Wheeling, and with the help of the Underground Railroad<\/a>, fled to Cleveland. Her \u201cowner,\u201d William Goshorn<\/a>, found Lucy and had her returned to Wheeling under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act<\/a>, making her one of the last \u201cfugitive slaves\u201d to be returned to her owner prior to the Civil War. During the war, Lucy was freed by a Union officer even as Goshorn was arrested as a traitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Yet, West Virginia\u2019s history text books have often distorted the essential truth of slavery in what became West Virginia. (see Wood, V., West Virginia: 150 years of statehood<\/a>, wherein, \u201c\u2026westerners claimed slavery went against the spirit of the Declaration of Independence\u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n
\n
Statehood & Emancipation<\/h2>\n
\n
After a series of conventions held in Wheeling, on June 20, 1863, West Virginia broke from Virginia and became the only state to be born of the Civil War. Wheeling was the birthplace of West Virginia<\/a>. But secession from secession was based on pragmatic, mostly economic concerns, rather than abolitionist sentiment. In fact, the reluctance to let go of slavery proved a major sticking point for statehood delegates.<\/p>\n
Despite the efforts of the few abolitionist delegates like Wheeling minister Gordon Battelle<\/a>, whose attempt to abolish slavery in the state\u2019s new constitution failed, in most ways, the attitudes of western Virginians toward slavery were indistinguishable from those held by the rest of Virginia. This is made clear by the proslavery attitudes of many leading unionists like Restored Government of Virginia Senator John Carlile<\/a>, a slave owner himself, who, even as Congress and President Lincoln pressured statehood delegates to do something about the peculiar institution, wrote \u201cI believe that slavery is a social, political and religious blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to Lincoln\u2019s pressure, Restored Government<\/a> of Virginia Senator Waitman T. Willey<\/a>\u00a0introduced a gradual emancipation amendment<\/a>, which said slaves under 21 years of age on July 4, 1863, would be free upon reaching that age. Willey\u2019s proposal was successful, and the new state of West Virginia was born with 18,000 human beings still enslaved within its borders.<\/p>\n
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Lithograph of the Emancipation Proclamation. Ca 1888. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Meanwhile, on January 1, 1863 (after having approved West Virginia\u2019s statehood bill the evening prior), Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation<\/a>. By recognizing that it was about freedom, Lincoln\u2019s proclamation finally gave meaning and purpose to the horrific war that would take more than 600,000 American lives. But the proclamation\u00a0only applied to states in rebellion, meaning it specifically did not apply to the counties that would become new state of West Virginia that June.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the African American people of Wheeling would celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation<\/a> for decades<\/a> after the war ended. Wheeling hosted elaborate Emancipation Day celebrations<\/a>. Thousands of mostly African American people thronged the town for parades, gatherings at the State Fair Grounds on Wheeling Island, music, banquets, and speeches by dignitaries,\u00a0including, in 1891, America\u2019s second black Senator, Blanche K. Bruce<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n
Reconstruction<\/h2>\n
\n
The Reconstruction Amendments \u2013 the 13th<\/a>, which ended slavery, the 14th<\/a>, which made ex-slaves U.S. citizens, and the\u00a0 15th<\/a>, which extended suffrage to black men \u2013 were all ratified by the new state of West Virginia in Wheeling\u2019s Linsly Academy building on Eoff Street, the temporary home for the new state\u2019s government now known at the \u201c First State Capitol<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the Thirteenth Amendment, in many ways, slavery did not end in the former Confederacy. The text reads: \u201cNeither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.\u201d\u00a0States in the Old South soon took advantage of the second clause to developing a corrupt system to replace slavery with convict labor. African American prisoners were leased to private parties, providing cheap labor and creating an incentive to imprison even more black men, often on trumped up charges.<\/p>\n
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Unidentified Wheeling man. Ca 1880s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Even for those freedmen who fled north to escape the convict lease system and other horrors, West Virginia proved no safe haven. Despite the end of slavery, blacks in West Virginia still could not vote, serve on juries, or hold public office.<\/p>\n
The northern city of Wheeling was also unsafe. On February 1, 1866, the city\u2019s Democratic newspaper, the Wheeling Register<\/em>, opined: \u201cWe are opposed to extending suffrage to colored persons in this state.\u201d Yet, after the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, hopes for black suffrage ran high in Wheeling as the mayor joined the city\u2019s African Americans in a parade. A banner with the words \u201cFreedom \u2013 it is an honor to be freemen,\u201d was carried through the streets of town.<\/p>\n
Still, West Virginia\u2019s Reconstruction experience was quite different from that of the defeated Confederate states. While the defeated Confederate states faced \u201cbayonet rule<\/a>,\u201d during Reconstruction, federal troops were not sent to West Virginia (a loyal Union state) to enforce black civil rights. About a quarter of the state\u2019s white population were disenfranchised due to Confederate loyalties. African American suffrage gave the latter leverage, rendering blacks pawns in the struggle between liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats for political power.<\/p>\n
West Virginia\u2019s conservative Democrats, who seized power in 1872, would leverage the black vote to re-enfranchise former Confederates. If former black slaves were to vote, the reasoning went, how could white former Confederates be prevented from doing the same?<\/p>\n
In 1870 and 1871, the U.S. Congress passed the Enforcement Acts<\/a>, which imposed fines and imprisonment against all attempts to \u201chinder, delay or obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the Negro or with counting votes cast by them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conservative Democrat \u201cRedeemers\u201d (\u201credemption\u201d defined as taking political power back from the Radical Republicans and black freedmen) would leverage the Enforcement Acts as a way to re-enfranchise white Confederate voters and effectively take control of state politics. They found ways to circumvent the Enforcement Acts, disenfranchising blacks without directly forbidding them to vote.<\/p>\n
In summer 1870, delegates met in Parkersburg to settle the suffrage issue, with conservative Democrats insisting that white ex-rebels must be re-enfranchised in light of black suffrage. The twenty black Republican delegates who attended were not permitted to stay in local hotels and some had to find lodging across the river in Ohio.<\/p>\n
During the 1870 election Democrats pressured registrars to register ex-Confederates along with African Americans. The re-enfranchisement of nearly \u00bc of the state\u2019s white voters in this way resulted in a sweeping victory for the Democrats in the 1870 election. Conservative Republicans joined with Democrats, leading to approval of the Flick Amendment<\/a>, which enfranchised former Confederates by 1872.<\/p>\n
That same year, a Wheeling carpenter and former slave named Taylor Strauder<\/a> murdered his wife with a hatchet. Strauder was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to hang. His attorneys challenged the state law limiting jury service to white males as a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. When the case reached them in 1880, the U.S. Supreme Court concurred, holding in Strauder vs. West Virginia<\/em><\/a> that the law was \u201ca brand upon [African Americans]\u2026an assertion of their inferiority, and a stimulant to that race prejudice which is an impediment to securing to individuals of the race that equal justice which the law aims to secure to all others.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Despite this progress, nationally, northern interest in enforcement waned as southern whites were relentless in their attempts to reestablish white supremacy and terrorize blacks into submission through the use of Jim Crow segregation, Black Codes, the convict lease labor system<\/a>, the erection of Confederate monuments<\/a>, the violence of the KKK, and lynching<\/a>.<\/p>\n
To the extent that any of these tactics existed in West Virginia, they were less virulent. The KKK was active in the state, and even in Wheeling. But while 3,446 lynchings of African Americans occurred nationwide between 1882 and 1968, according to the Equal Justice Initiative<\/a>\u00a035 occurred in West Virginia during the same period, with none of these in Wheeling. By 1921, the state had passed an anti-lynching law<\/a>.<\/p>\n
But racism in Wheeling, as elsewhere in the state, remained systemic and its practitioners unabashed.<\/p>\n
\n
Lincoln School<\/h2>\n
\n
Drafted by newly empowered Democrats, West Virginia\u2019s 1872 constitution included Article XII, Section 8<\/a>, which decreed, \u201cWhite and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school.\u201d This language would remain in the state\u2019s constitution until 1994, and even then, 42% of the state\u2019s population voted to keep it<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Lincoln<\/a>, Wheeling\u2019s school for African Americans students, was founded in 1866 in a two-room house on 12th Street. In 1875, it moved to the black neighborhood at 10th and Chapline.<\/p>\n
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This undated photo shows the second Lincoln School building (erected in 1893 after the original burned in 1892) on Chapline Street, which was replaced by the current structure in 1943. Ann Thomas Collection, OCPL Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Lincoln\u2019s most celebrated principal, James McHenry Jones<\/a>, arrived in 1882. Jones would publish a novel called Hearts of Gold<\/em><\/a>, which highlighted important issues like racism, segregated education, lynching, and convict labor. Jones left Lincoln in 1900 to serve as president of the West Virginia Colored Institute, now known as West Virginia State University<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Even after Jones\u2019s tenure, the academic performance of Lincoln\u2019s students remained first rate. In its August 1916 issue,\u00a0 The Crisis<\/em> magazine<\/a> (edited by W.E.B. Du Bois), wrote: \u201cThe pupils of the Lincoln School at Wheeling, W. Va., in a recent test, outranked the ten white schools in spelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The school Jones helped build became a source of pride in the black community, but as a public facility, it remained underfunded and inadequate.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
William Burrus returned to his hometown to speak at the Ohio County Public Library in 2015. Ann Thomas is looking on at right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Born in Wheeling in 1936, William Burrus<\/a> graduated from Lincoln in 1954 as part of the last class before the U. S. Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education<\/em><\/a>, the landmark school desegregation case. Burrus had transferred from Blessed Martin<\/a>, Wheeling\u2019s segregated Catholic high school, so that he could play football at Lincoln.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce a year, our coach, Mr. Kinney, would take us to Wheeling High after hours, after all the kids were gone,\u201d Burrus recalled during a 2015 interview<\/a>. \u201cIt was in the dark. And they would permit us to go through their used equipment, and we would take that back to Lincoln\u2026They would bring us in there after the school was closed so they wouldn\u2019t see us. And that was so very, very demeaning. I mean, you can imagine, a 15, 16-year-old kid sneaking in, with his coach, into the bowels of the high school\u2026and we all remembered that. That\u2019s where we got our football equipment from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ann Thomas<\/a> (who would become Wheeling\u2019s first black nurse) was still attending Lincoln when the Brown decision was announced. She said that Principal Phillip Reed held an assembly to let students know about the Brown decision. \u201cMy life changed,\u201d she recalled. \u201cMy parents felt like this was a dream come true\u2026 So I took that opportunity \u2013 hesitantly \u2013 but I ended up graduating from Wheeling High. And I was one of the first blacks to attend Wheeling High.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ann Thomas (pictured in 2011) stands on the crumbling steps of Lincoln School (the one built in 1943). She left Lincoln for Wheeling High School after the Brown desegregation decision in 1954. Photo by Sean Duffy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The Brown case was the beginning of the end for segregated schools, but it was by no means the end of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n
\n
Jim Crow<\/h2>\n
\n
\u201c Jim Crow<\/a>\u201d was a term that emerged from a minstrel song<\/a>. Minstrel shows were musical comedy plays, in which white performers wore blackface to mock African Americans. They were quite popular in Wheeling, where fraternal organizations, churches, and high schools organized blackface minstrel shows well into the 1970s.<\/p>\n
When Jim Crow laws were challenged in the late nineteenth century, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs. Ferguson<\/em><\/a> (1896) that such laws were constitutional, so long as public facilities were \u201cseparate but equal.\u201d Of course, the reality was that separate facilities for African Americans, such as Wheeling\u2019s Lincoln School, were underfunded and inferior in quality.<\/p>\n
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A group of young African American women learn American Sign Language at Wheeling\u2019s segregated Blue Triangle branch of the YWCA, circa 1947. YWCA Collection, OCPL Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
In addition to the school segregation in the state\u2019s 1872 constitution, West Virginia had laws against blacks serving on juries (overturned in the Strauder<\/em> case \u2013 see above<\/a>), and an anti-miscegenation statute<\/a> that made it illegal for blacks and whites to intermarry (overturned by Loving v. Virginia<\/em><\/a>, 1967). According to one source<\/a>, \u201cIn a 1954 questionnaire issued to states by the U.S. Supreme Court in preparing its Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> decision, West Virginia noted that the state \u2018has no \u2018Jim Crow\u2019 laws, and we are not aware of any such prior laws in the statutes. The prevailing custom throughout this State has been and continues to be the catering to caucasians only for the purpose of lodging, public institutions, public halls and restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether by code or custom, for African American people in Wheeling, Jim Crow meant separate everything\u2014from restaurants and movie theaters to beauty parlors and hotels. Even when celebrities like world heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Louis, visited town, they could not stay in white-only hotels. There was a separate branch of the YWCA, the \u201cBlue Triangle<\/a>\u201d and a separate library on 12th Street. Many Wheeling businesses were listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book<\/a>, a guide for African American travelers to hotels, restaurants, and other public facilities where they could be served and not experience the embarrassment of being told they weren\u2019t welcome.<\/p>\n
William Burrus recalled working with his uncle who shined shoes at the McLure Hotel<\/a>. \u201cThey had colored restrooms. And I was about twelve years old I guess, and it was so demeaning to me that here I was forced in the hotel to assist my Uncle in shining shoes and I couldn\u2019t even use the restroom.\u201d He also remembered \u201cColored Only\u201d signs on the water fountains. \u201cAnd we were close enough to Ohio and Pennsylvania where they did not have those Jim Crow laws. I could see and feel the differences that were imposed upon me because of the color of my skin.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Clyde Thomas was the first and, to date, only African American elected to Wheeling\u2019s City Council when he was sworn in July 1, 1971. Courtesy Ann Thomas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Ann Thomas met her future husband, Clyde, at the skating rink at the Market Auditorium<\/a>, the building that replaced the old market house where slaves and once been bought and sold in Wheeling. African American kids could only skate on Monday nights. Clyde, who grew up without Jim Crow across the river in Bellaire, Ohio, became a football star for the semi-pro Wheeling Ironmen as well as the first (and still the only) African American to be elected to Wheeling\u2019s City Council.<\/p>\n
While the black population of West Virginia as a whole dropped significantly just after the Civil War, it grew in Wheeling. With the full effect of the Great Migration<\/a> (during which some six million African Americans left the old south for opportunity and greater freedom), the state\u2019s black population grew during and after WWI, primarily due to the lure of jobs in the southern coalfields and northern factories. Though remaining relatively small, Wheeling\u2019s black population doubled between 1900 and 1930.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Leon \u201cChu\u201d Berry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Despite the outmigration fueled by Jim Crow, the Great Migration brought diversity, and Wheeling\u2019s African American community thrived, producing many entrepreneurs, professionals, and cultural leaders.<\/p>\n
Examples include Leon \u201cChu\u201d Berry<\/a> (1908-1941), a legendary saxophone player who performed with the likes of Billie Holliday, Count Bassie and Cab Calloway; Everett Lee<\/a> (1916- ), who learned to play violin on Wheeling Island and became the first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the south; bass guitarist Billy Cox<\/a> (1939- ), who performed with Jimi Hendrix; and beloved community leader James S. \u201cDoc\u201d White<\/a> (1901-1988), whose Northside Pharmacy became a safe gathering place for generations of African American young people.<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\n
<\/h2>\n
\n
Civil Rights, Redlining, and Urban Renewal<\/h2>\n
\n
As Jim Crow was on the way out in Wheeling and elsewhere, the modern Civil Rights struggle was heating up in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n
Diana Bell, an Ohioan who moved to Wheeling when she was twelve, offered a different perspective. \u201cOhio was a totally different climate,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd it\u2019s still different to this day\u2026I never had the racial tension that I had here\u2026That little line made a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
In a show of solidarity, a Wheeling born man named Walter Reuther, the president of the United Autoworkers Union, was one of the only white speakers invited to share the podium with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the August 28, 1963 \u201cMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom\u201d when Dr. King delivered his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech. Courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Young Diana experienced Wheeling as a hub of Civil Rights activities. She remembered demonstrating with groups at city hall. She also remembered rioting and vandalism when Dr. King was assassinated. \u201cWe had to write \u2018Soul Sisters\u2019 on our house,\u201d she recalled, \u201c\u2019Soul Brothers\u2019\u2026so that people would know that someone black lived there, so they wouldn\u2019t do anything to our house.\u201d<\/p>\n
In post Jim Crow Wheeling, African Americans were further disadvantaged by exclusionary zoning regulations<\/a> that restricted where they could live. When this was made illegal by the 1917 Supreme Court decision Buchanan v. Warley<\/em><\/a>, racially restrictive covenants<\/a> in real estate contracts followed (see Kammer, B. \u201cHow I Benefitted from White Supremacy Growing Up in Wheeling, West Virginia\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n
When those covenants failed, white people simply left, a phenomenon known as \u201cwhite flight,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 and the neighborhoods where blacks were thought to be too numerous were \u201c redlined<\/a>,\u201d appearing on \u201c residential security<\/a>\u201d maps to warn white investors away. African Americans also faced blatant discrimination when seeking credit, both for home and business loans.<\/p>\n
When these detriments are added together, the terms \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d and \u201c white privilege<\/a>\u201d gain context and meaning.<\/p>\n
The 1970s also brought \u201cUrban Renewal\u201d to Wheeling. This effort to redevelop \u201cblighted\u201d areas of town had its greatest impact on traditionally African American neighborhoods, that is, those that were redlined.<\/p>\n
During Clyde Thomas\u2019s tenure as a councilman in the mid-1970s, Wheeling\u2019s City Council considered urban renewal for the primary African American neighborhood, the 1100 block of Chapline Street. An earlier version had essentially pushed established African American communities out of South and Center Wheeling.<\/p>\n
When a young man questioned Clyde\u2019s presence on Wheeling\u2019s urban renewal committee, Clyde responded by saying, \u201cSomebody needs to be there that looks like me, who can hear, who can read, who can comprehend and find out what it is they want to do with our community, because our community is going to be impacted by this urban renewal.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the community was impacted, heavily. The black-owned businesses and residences on Chapline Street between Lincoln School and 12th Street were taken through eminent domain and razed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole African American social fabric was there on Chapline Street,\u201d Ann Thomas recalled. \u201cWhen urban renewal did happen, people got displaced. Some people went to Ohio. It pretty much decimated the black community. The black community from that point, has never been the same and will never be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Epilogue<\/h2>\n
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From major slave market to segregated city, Wheeling maintained a southern attitude toward African Americans for most of its 250-year history. Though it served as the seat of secession from secession during the Civil War, and though after the war its treatment of freedmen did not approach the level of cruelty of the old Confederacy, it maintained its custom of treating blacks as second class citizens, separating them from whites, creating a hidden subculture not unlike other northern cities that took an out of sight, out of mind approach to race relations. Shunned and ignored, African Americans created their own separate Wheeling with its own vibrant culture.<\/p>\n
This neglectful past has heavily impacted the present. Wheeling continues to struggle to create an integrated, diverse community. Part of that struggle has to include remembering and honoring those who persevered and achieved despite that neglect.<\/p>\n
Though he did not live to enjoy the accolades (he died in May 2018), William Burrus was inducted into the Wheeling Hall of Fame<\/a>, along with Everett Lee, this past summer. Despite his disappointment, Wheeling is indeed proud of William Burrus.<\/p>\n
Ann Thomas, who chose to stay in Wheeling, passed in February 2019 with her dream for her husband Clyde to also be enshrined in the Wheeling Hall of Fame unfulfilled.<\/p>\n
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More to come in PART 2\u2026<\/h2>\n
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$\"\"$ <\/a>
Ron Scott, Jr. presents the multimedia program at the library, February 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Note<\/h3>\n
This research was adapted into a multimedia program<\/a> for the Ohio County Public Library\u2019s Lunch With Books Series. YWCA\u2008Diversity and Outreach Director, Ron Scott, Jr., presented the program for Black History Month. The resulting presentation weaved photographs, videos, and primary source material into a 250-year story of African American life in Wheeling. Taken on the road to a local high school and middle school, the program was experienced by more than 500 students.<\/p>\n
\n
For a powerful look at how this history has affected contemporary, that is, post-\u201cJim Crow,\u201d times, see Brian Kammer\u2019s remarkable essay, \u201cHow I Benefitted from White Supremacy Growing Up in Wheeling, West Virginia.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
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Sources<\/h2>\n
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Archibald Woods Papers, College of William and Mary. https:\/\/ead.lib.virginia.edu\/vivaxtf\/view?docId=wm\/viw00093.xml<\/a>. (slavery letters, ads, and other documents).<\/p>\n
Bell, D. In-person interview. 2012.<\/p>\n
Burrus, W. In-person interview. Feb. 2015.<\/p>\n
Cochran, J.S. Bonnie Belmont: A historical romance of the days of slavery and the Civil War. <\/em>1907.<\/p>\n
The Crisis<\/em> magazine (edited by W.E.B. Du Bois), August 1916, Vol. 12, No. 4, P. 95.<\/a><\/p>\n
Dunaway, W. The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation<\/em>. 2003.<\/p>\n
Equal Justice Initiative. https:\/\/eji.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Foner, E. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution<\/em>. 2019.<\/p>\n
Gates, H.L. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow<\/em>. 2019.<\/p>\n
Hadden, S. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n
Hansen. C. \u201cSlave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing.\u201d lawenforcementmuseum.org\/2019\/07\/10\/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Inscoe, J.C. Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation<\/em>. 2005.<\/p>\n
Jones, H.H. \u201cWheeling\u2019s Twentieth Man,\u201d WWVA Radio speech. Feb. 9, 1936. YWCA Collection<\/a>, OCPL Archives.<\/p>\n
Link, W., Roots of Secession, Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia.<\/em>\u00a0Univ. of North Carolina Press. 2003. pgs. 151\u2013152<\/p>\n
North-Western Virginia Gazette<\/em>. 1820. (slavery ads).<\/p>\n
Thomas, A. In-person interview. Feb. 3, 2015.<\/p>\n
WV Dept. of Arts, Culture, & History. West Virginia Archives and History. http:\/\/www.wvculture.org\/history\/archivesindex.aspx<\/a>.<\/p>\n
West Virginia Encyclopedia, e-WV. https:\/\/www.wvencyclopedia.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Wheeling Daily Intelligencer<\/em><\/a>. Various dates.<\/p>\n
Wheeling Register<\/em>. Various dates.<\/p>\n
YWCA Collection<\/a> (and Blue Triangle Collection). OCPL Archives.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This revised edition, updated with new research, is reprinted with permission from the Fall 2019 issue of Goldenseal Magazine (for Ann Thomas) Wheeling\u2019s Twentieth Man \u201cTo accept one\u2019s past\u2014one\u2019s history\u2014is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,1110],"tags":[1104,1086,91,536,1095,253,1101,1105,1088,1102,586,517,1108,1092,113,1096,1087,1107,1090,96,1103,1109,98,1054,1106,1098,1091,1094,1093,1099,1097,1100],"coauthors":[313],"class_list":["post-8738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archiving-wheeling","category-goldenseal-magazine","tag-1104","tag-african-american-culture","tag-african-american-history","tag-ann-thomas","tag-benjamin-lundy","tag-billy-cox","tag-bonnie-belmont","tag-brown-vs-board-of-education","tag-clyde-thomas","tag-daddy-sam","tag-ebenezer-zane","tag-emancipation-day","tag-everett-lee","tag-fugitive-slave-law","tag-goldenseal-magazine","tag-great-migration","tag-harry-h-jones","tag-james-doc-white","tag-james-mchenry-jones","tag-jim-crow","tag-john-salisbury-cochran","tag-leon-chu-berry","tag-lincoln-school","tag-lydia-boggs-shepherd","tag-negro-motorist-green-book","tag-reconstruction","tag-sara-lucy-bagby","tag-slave-auction-block","tag-underground-railroad","tag-willey-amendment","tag-willey-compromise","tag-william-burrus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/AW-2020-06-22_FI.png?fit=738%2C355&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pkc7-2gW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8738"}],"version-history":[{"count":92,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10387,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8738\/revisions\/10387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8738"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

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