One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611) by Arthur Browne Read Free Book Online

to the point of remaining silent in the face of lynchings. He can be praised for realism in recognizing the futility of all-out war with a society that tolerated racial murder. And he can be condemned for accepting the unacceptable.
    Political leaders courted Washington in pursuit of African American votes. Roosevelt was no exception. Elevated from vice president to president on the assassination of William McKinley, he hosted Washington in the hope that Washington would communicate to America’s blacks that they had an ally in the White House. The dinner took place on Roosevelt’s thirty-second day in office. At the table were the president, First Lady Edith Roosevelt, a friend of Roosevelt’s, and Washington, whose arrival and departure went unnoticed until an Associated Press reporter checked the day’s White House guest list. After midnight, the dispatch went out: “Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee, Alabama, dined with the President last evening.”
    The South seethed. The
Memphis Scimitar
declared: “The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the President, when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House.” 29
    A few days later, Yale’s administration delivered a second jolt to Battle and his fellow blacks on the dining hall staff as they prepared to serve meals at a celebration of the university’s two hundredth birthday: the invited dignitaries included Washington and Roosevelt.
    The date, October 23, 1901, proved to be a glorious autumn day. The trees offered reds and yellows as if in fiery congratulations. At the right moment, Battle made his way to a vantage point from which to watch the dignitaries and students in a long procession to Yale’s Hyperion Theatre. University presidents joined renowned scholars, government leaders joined military commanders, artists joined writers, lawyers joined bishops, the Secretary of State joined the US Chief Justice, Woodrow Wilson joined Mark Twain, and there was the president of the United States and there was the leader of black America. Battle spotted Washington easily. 30 His lonely skin tone was impossible to miss among the sixty-two white men who were awarded honorary degrees. And there was Roosevelt, with his stout bearing and proud gusto. Battle viewed him as a hero and would count him one for the rest of Battle’s life. Soon, he would express his appreciation face-to-face.
    NEW HAVEN OFFERED Battle the Yale dining hall and little else. Judging that he would find greater opportunities in New York, he headed down the coast determined “to try my luck there permanently.”
    It is easy to imagine him, now nineteen years old and feeling himself on the make. Still, it is just as easy to see him as a mark for the hustlers who played the city’s angles. Unsurprisingly, his recollections included a bit of a fleecing:
    My first experience with politics as a young man came only a few days after I had first set foot in New York. Walking along a midtown street with a friend on a primary election day, we were approached by a white man who asked us, “Would you like to make two dollars?”
    Naturally we said, “Yes.”
    The man handed us two marked ballots and instructed us on how to put them into the ballot box. After we had “voted” we stood down the street a ways from the polls and watched him pay others, Negro and white, to do the same thing. Never having voted before, I had not learned then to take my ballot seriously, and did not realize the import of what I was doing.
    Battle’s return to New York brought a happy reunion with his younger sister Sophia, who was living with a family in East New York, a countrified area of Brooklyn miles from the commercial center near the bridge. He took lodgings there, set out to find work, and encountered a revelation that would influence the central course of his life. More than a decade earlier, while Brooklyn was still an independent