Haste to Rise

A Remarkable Experience of Black Education during Jim Crow

David Pilgrim, Franklin Hughes

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781629637907
• eBook ISBN: 9781629638140
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Between 1910 and the mid-1920s, more than sixty black students from the South bravely traveled north to Ferris Institute, a small, mostly white school in Big Rapids, Michigan. They came to enroll in college programs and college preparatory courses—and to escape, if only temporarily, the daily and ubiquitous indignities suffered under the Jim Crow racial hierarchy. They excelled in their studies and became accomplished in their professional fields. Many went on to both ignite and help lead the explosive civil rights movement. Very few people know their stories—until now.

Haste to Rise is a book about the incredible resilience and breathtaking accomplishments of those students. It was written to unearth, contextualize, and share their stories and important lessons with this generation. Along the way we are introduced to dozens of these Jim Crow–era students, including the first African American to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Belford Lawson, the lead attorney in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. (1938), a landmark court battle that safeguarded the right to picket. We also meet one of Lawson's contemporaries, Percival L. Prattis, a pioneering journalist and influential newspaper executive. In 1947, he became the first African American news correspondent admitted to the U.S. House and Senate press galleries. There is also an in-depth look into the life and work of the institute's founder, Woodbridge Nathan Ferris, a racial justice pioneer who created educational opportunities for women, international students, and African Americans.

Haste to Rise is a challenge to others to look beyond a university's official history and seek a more complete knowledge of its past. This is American history done right!

Notes

First Words

1 To learn about Robert Barnum and the process of creating the mural, which was completed in 1996, see “The Visionary,” Ferris State University, accessed February 1, 2020, www.ferris.edu/artwalk/08.htm.

2 The man holding the sign is believed to be Charles Raymond Hurt, a chemistry professor employed at Ferris State University for thirty-four years.

3 The core values were approved in 2007.

4 Today, this village is a municipality and has been renamed Winnsboro.

5 Caswell A. Mayo, ed., American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record (New York: American Druggist Publishing Company, 1902), 58.

6 “Political Pickings,” Detroit Free Press, November 6, 1904, 6.

7 “Colored Political Club,” Muskogee Times-Democrat, March 15, 1912, 3.

8 Geraldine Rhoades Beckford, Biographical Dictionary of American Physicians of African Ancestry, 1800–1920 (Cherry Hill, NJ: Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers, 2011), 255.

9 The Tulsa Star came into existence in 1912 as the Muskogee Star. It was a staunchly Democratic African American paper in an era when most African Americans aligned with the Republican Party. Andrew Jackson Smitherman, the publisher, moved the paper to Tulsa in 1913.

10 Tulsa Star, January 8, 1916, 4.

11 Daily Times (Davenport, IA), March 28, 1928, 3.

12 Year: 1880; Census Place: Middleport, Meigs, Ohio; Roll: 1048; Family History Film: 1255048; Page: 227B; Enumeration District: 116.

13 Although laws forbidding whites and blacks in Ohio from marrying were overturned in 1887, interracial marriages remained socially taboo in that state and many others even after Loving v. Virginia (1967), the landmark Supreme Court decision that invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in all states.

14 In 1872, when Fowler was only fourteen years old, he was the only black player on a professional team in New Castle, Pennsylvania. On April 24, 1878, he pitched in a game for the Picked Nine against the Boston Red Caps, champions of the National League in 1877. The Picked Nine won the game. To gain insight into the Negro Leagues, see Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

15 “Will Play Ball Again,” Big Rapids Pioneer, July 24, 1902, 3.

16 To learn more about Foster, see Larry Lester, Rube Foster in His Time: On the Field and in the Papers with Black Baseball’s Greatest Visionary (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2012).

17 “Big Rapids Giants Win,” Big Rapids Pioneer, August 21, 1902, 3.

18 The first official championship was the 1924 Colored World Series, a match-up between the Kansas City Monarchs, from the Negro National League, and the Hilldale Athletic Club, the Eastern Colored League champions. In a ten-game series, the Monarchs defeated Hilldale five games to four, with one game ending in a tie.

19 The Cubs finished second in the National League, six and a half games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team had won the pennant the previous three years and would win it again in 1910. The Cubs were led by the legendary Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance.

20 “The Chicago Giants Base Ball Club,” Chicago Defender, January 22, 1910, 1.

21 Pittsburgh Courier, February 25, 1933, 14.

22 Harry Daniels, “The Base Ball Spirit in the East,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 25, 1909, 7.

23 The Grays team included Smokey Joe Williams, elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.

24 “Nate Harris Aids Grays in Training,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 18, 1925, 12.

25 It is unclear if he enrolled at Ferris in 1902. The university archives has an enrollment card for him for the 1903 academic term.

26 “The Would-Be Champions Downed,” Big Rapids Pioneer, November 25, 1902, 3.

27 “Ferris Is in Favor: Faculty of Ferris Institute, Big Rapids, Adopts Football,” Grand Rapids Herald, September 4, 1903, 10.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 “Home Team Won—10 to 0,” Traverse City (MI) Evening Record, October 3, 1903, 4.

31 “Ferris Team Never in It,” Detroit Free Press, October 22, 1903, 3.

32 Grif Stockley, Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2012), 95.

33 Aldridge Edward Bush and P.L. Dorman, History of the Mosaic Templars of America: Its Founders and Officials (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 179.

34 See Booker T. Washington, The Negro in Business (Boston: Hertel, Jenkins and Co., 1907). Washington explains the origins of the National Negro Business League and highlights many successful entrepreneurs, including John Bush and E.E. McDaniel.

35 Cyril H. McAdam, “Booker T. Washington’s Recent Trip through the Southwest,” Colored American Magazine, January 1906, 35.

36 E.M. Woods, Blue Book of Little Rock and Argenta, Arkansas (Little Rock: Central Printing Co., 1907), 121.

37 “Newspaper Men and Leaders in Important Conference: Discuss Ways to Best Help Nation Win the War; Personnel of Gathering,” Chicago Defender, July 6, 1918, 4.

38 “Progress of the Race in Our Sister State,” Topeka Plaindealer, June 9, 1916, 2.

39 “Editor Chiles Tells of Race Progress in His Travels thru Missouri and Kansas,” Topeka Plaindealer, November 18, 1921, 1.

40 “Through Missouri with the Editor,” Topeka Plaindealer, August 10, 1923, 1.

41 Personal correspondence with Linda Jones, vice president of the Annie Malone Historical Society, December 3, 2018.

42 Gideon Smith is shown three times in the 1911 yearbook: in the senior class roll, with the Ferris Institute band, and with the football team. In 1912, there is only one picture of Smith: in a photograph of the football team, his left hand resting comfortably on the shoulder of a white teammate.

43 Gregory Bond, “Jim Crow at Play: Race, Manliness, and the Color Line in American Sports, 1876–1916,” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008), 440.

44 Charles H. Martin, “The Color Line in Midwestern Sport 1890–1960,” Indiana Magazine of History, June 2002, 98–99.

45 “Area Deaths and Funerals,” Newport News Daily Press, September 12, 1974, 17.

46 Harry Munford was joined at Ferris by Arthur James Wells and Walter N. Lowe in 1916. In the 1917 Crimson and Gold, there are pictures labeled as “Snapshots.” One of the snapshots includes an image of Walter Lowe on the left, Arthur Wells on the right, and Harry Munford in the middle, with his arms on the shoulders of his two classmates.

47 “Michigan Board,” Druggist Circular 61 (1917): 314.

48 Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, Record Group Number 92, Roll or Box Number: 337; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.

49 Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute became simply Hampton Institute in 1930. With the addition of departments and graduate programs, it was accredited as Hampton University in 1984.

50 Percival Prattis, “Changing Years,” from an unpublished autobiographical manuscript, 85. Manuscript access courtesy of Patricia Prattis Jennings, later donated to Percival L. Prattis Papers, 1916–1980, AIS.2007.01, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh, Series 1 Subseries 4: Writings, Box 2, Folder 85.

51 A handful of the Hampton students came to Ferris to take business courses. Grady Herring was from Lamar, Alabama. He was a business student at Hampton in 1920–1921. From 1922 to 1924, Herring was enrolled in the college preparatory program at the Ferris Institute. In the 1925 catalog, Herring was listed as enrolled in the Commercial Department.

52 His name is sometimes written as Maceo Richard Clark.

53 Belford Lawson was also on the baseball team in 1919. Clarke is one of four African Americans in a 1919 picture of the baseball team. Woodbridge Ferris is also in the photograph.

54 The Washington Potomacs operated as an independent baseball team in 1923. The next year they joined the Eastern Colored League, based in Washington, DC. In 1925, the Potomacs moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and played as the Wilmington Potomacs.

55 Benjamin Harris Taylor (1888–1953) played for the Birmingham Giants, Chicago American Giants, Indianapolis ABCs, St. Louis Giants, Bacharach Giants, Washington Potomacs, Harrisburg Giants, and Baltimore Black Sox.

56 The 1900 U.S. Census lists Walter, Maceo, and Hannibal as the sons of Richard and Alice Clark (Clarke). In 1900, Walter is listed as four years old, Maceo as two years old, and Hannibal as seven months old. Their father Richard was a teacher at a public ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by David Eisler
• First Words by David Pilgrim
• Making the World Better: Woodbridge Ferris
• Ready to Play: Gideon Smith
• A Relentless Foe: Belford Lawson
• Race News: African American Journalists
• Fixing More Than Teeth: African American Dentists
• Last Words by Franklin Hughes
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors