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Citizens of
Color
By Francis
F. Beirne The essay below was written over fifty years
ago. It has little to do with the present realities of the city,
though some of the families spoken of here still exist, some
high, some low:
It is estimated that Negroes make up 20 per
cent of the total population of Baltimore, forming one of the
largest Negro communities in the country. On the one hand they
have contributed generously to the to the support of those
amenities of life which characterize a civilized community; on
the other hand their presence poses a social problem of
formidable proportions.
Since Negro slavery was an
institution of the Maryland colony it is to be presumed that
Negroes were in Baltimore from the town’s beginning. Though a
century was to pass before slavery was abolished, protests
against the institution began early in Baltimore. The first one
of which there is record was made at the eighth Methodist
conference meeting in Baltimore in April, 1780.
It is significant perhaps
that this particular conference was attended only by Northern
preachers, who therefore may have been legislating rather more
for their Southern brethren than for themselves. However that
may be, they declared officially that keeping slaves was
contrary to the laws of God, of man and nature, and resolved
that all traveling preachers of the Baltimore Conference who
owned slaves should be required to set them free.
Eight years later, on
September 8, 1788, there was established in Baltimore “The
Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the
Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage.”
This was the first antislavery society to be formed in Maryland,
the fourth in the United States and the sixth in the world.
Conspicuous among its founders were members of the Society of
Friends, but other leading citizens took part.
On July 4, 1791, the
society at a public meeting listened to an oration delivered by
Dr. George Buchanan, a member of one of Baltimore’s
oldest families and a physician of national distinction.
“God,” said Dr. Buchanan, “hath created mankind after his
own image and granted them liberty and independence, and if
varieties may be found in their structure and color, these are
only to be attributed to the nature of their diet and habits, as
also to the soil and the climate they may inhabit, and serve as
flimsy pretexts for enslaving them.” He went on to mention by
name several Negroes who had achieved high position in various
fields and remarked, “These are sufficient to show that the
Africans whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as brutes
and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery, are equally capable
of improvement with yourselves.”
In a slave-holding
community it was indeed bold thus frankly and publicly to argue
equality of the races. Yet apparently Dr. Buchanan’s thesis
provoked no objection. On the contrary the minutes show that the
president of the society was directed to thank Dr. Buchanan
“for the excellent oration.” The president at that time was
Samuel Sterett and the vice-president Alex McKim, both like Dr.
Buchanan members of Baltimore’s oldest and most influential
families.
Baltimore, too, was
exceptionally active in the movement in the 1820’s to
transport free Negroes in the United States back to Africa and
established a colony there. Liberia was the result. Many
prominent persons were enthusiastic supporters of this scheme
for righting the wrong of slavery. They did not realize that the
Negro population in this country had grown to such proportions
that an attempt to return any appreciable part of it to Africa
was altogether impracticable. John Eager Howard and Isaac McKim
were vice-presidents of “The American Society for Colonizing
the Free People of Colour of the United States.” In the second
annual report of the society issued in Washington in 1819
reference was made to “the generosity of the city of
Baltimore” in the matter of money contributed toward the
operations of the society. Other Baltimoreans active in putting
through the program were General Robert Goodloe Harper and J. H.
B. Latrobe. General Harper is credited with having suggested the
name Liberia for the colony with having suggested the name
Liberia for the colony while Mr. Latrobe proposed Monrovia as
the name of the capital. In recognition of Maryland’s
contribution, which largely was that of Baltimore, a part of the
colony situated at Cape Palmas was given the name of Maryland
which it still bears.
Shortly after establishment
of the colony its first governor, John B. Russwurm, a Negro,
arrived in Baltimore on a visit. The Board of Directors of the
local chapter of the society tendered him a handsome dinner and
drank his health. An auspicious as the occasion may have seemed
with respect to racial relations something like a century was to
pass before whites and Negroes would again sit down at the same
table at a public dinner in Baltimore.
Slaves were property. It is
understandable that persons whose wealth depended upon the
institutions were reluctant to surrender it. Yet there can be no
doubt that owning slaves was on the conscience of many
Marylanders. They showed it by manumitting them in their wills.
Among those taking this course was Charles Ridgely, former
Governor of the State and master of Hampton. The liberation of
all Negroes slaves in Baltimore of course came only with the
Civil War. It is interesting to note that at the time of the
riot in April, 1861, attending the march of the 6th
Massachusetts Infantry through the city, some 300 of the most
respectable Negro residents tendered their services to the city
authorities. Mayor Brown thanked them for their offer and asked
them to hold themselves in readiness in case they should be
needed.
But emancipation did not
prove to be a complete solution of the Negro problem. Some
members of the race prospered while others found it hard to make
a living in their new-found freedom. In Baltimore as in other
large cities the Negroes comprise the poorest element in the
community. It has been said that, in hard times, the Negroes are
the first to lose their jobs, and, as times improve, the last to
be re-employed. The racial problem is accentuated by the
constant movement of Negroes from Virginia, the Carolinas and
other Southern states who are attracted to the Baltimore labor
market. Unlike the Baltimore-born Negroes they are not adapted
to the local environment, and through the working of the old law
of supply and demand the influx of newcomers depresses the labor
market. It also adds to the already crowded conditions in those
sections of the city which have been taken over by the Negroes.
In Baltimore segregation is
the general rule. When Negroes enter a neighborhood the whites
moved out. Consequently as the increasing Negro population seeks
more room and tries to spread out into hitherto white
neighborhoods it meets opposition. Nevertheless expansion has
continued, but not a rate sufficient to prevent heavy congestion
in the Negro sections. Here the population is more than 58,000
to the square mile compared with 9,000 to the square mile in the
white neighborhoods.
Even when the Negroes take
over a neighborhood they inherit the oldest houses in the city.
In short what they get is a blighted area. It has been estimated
that while only 27.3 per cent of the white population lives in
blighted areas, no less than 92.6 per cent of the Negro
population does. The effect of this crowding is reflected a few
years ago the life expectancy of a Negro child in Baltimore was
put at 53.9 years as compared with 65 years for a white child.
Serious crimes committed by Negroes are far out of proportion to
their population in the community.
There are three large Negro
neighborhoods in the city. One is in northeast Baltimore in the
vicinity of Johns Hopkins Hospital, another is in South
Baltimore convenient to the harbor and the third is in northwest
Baltimore. The last named by far the largest and the most
important. Pennsylvania Avenue, from Dolphin to Laurens Street.
is its “Great Way.” Here are found its night clubs, its
theaters, its beauty shops and fortune tellers. Here the
sporting element congregates on Saturday nights and here on
Easter Sunday the Negroes have their own fashion parade.
As was true of other
Southern cities, the large Negro population once afforded an
abundant supply of domestic help. At the turn of the century,
before the exodus to the suburbs, Baltimore’s fashionable
residential area lay in the blocks adjacent to and north of Mt.
Vernon Place. It embraced Mt. Vernon Place itself, and Park
Avenue, Cathedral Street, North Charles, St. Paul and Calvert.
Most of the houses ran to four stories and, in addition, had
their kitchens in the basement. They were extravagant to run, as
a rule, required the care of five servants. There was a cook, a
downstairs maid and an upstairs maid on continual duty. There
was in addition a laundress and also a man who looked after the
furnace and washed the front steps.
These were the houses of
the wealthy and the well to do. But families of modest means
supported at least one servant. They wondered how people in the
North and in the West got along with no servant at all. This
happy existence continued pretty well up to the outbreak of
World War II. Baltimoreans caught a glimpse of the realities of
life only on occasions when sickness or a death in a
domestic’s family kept her at home. In the 1920’s and
1930’s it was estimated that the domestic servant industry in
Baltimore, almost entirely controlled by Negroes, amounted to
$19,000,000 annually.
Then, with the advent of
World War II and a demand for labor in the factories turning out
war goods, the domestic servants vanished from their accustomed
places. Men who were making good wages wanted their wives at
home to cook for them. Unmarried women had no difficulty finding
jobs in the war plants. Housewives found it hopeless to persuade
them to stick to domestic labor. They couldn’t be convinced
that it was any easier.
So, with considerable
distress, Baltimoreans in the middle-income brackets found
themselves in the same boat with their opposite numbers in the
North and West. They had to go without. They learned to cook. At
least there was consolation in not having to feed and pay a
servant. Money saved on those items was used for labor-saving
devices in the kitchen. In Baltimore as elsewhere the profession
of baby sitting was born.
An agency that has been
active in attacking the problems arising from the proximity of
the two races is the Baltimore Urban League, one of a number of
such leagues found in other cities with large Negro populations.
Its membership is composed both of white and Negro citizens. It
was established in 1924 “to improve conditions under which
Negro citizens of Baltimore live and work” and “to build a
better climate of racial understanding.” The individual
generally identified as founder of the League was John R. Cary,
a member of the Society of Friends. Thus was maintained the
Baltimore tradition of Quaker interest in the welfare of the
Negro which was manifested more than a century earlier in the
antislavery society.
At the time of the founding
of the League the city’s outstanding scandal was a congested
square in the Negro quarter of northwest Baltimore known as
“Lung Block.” It was bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue, Druid
Hill Avenue, Biddle and Preston Streets. Negroes are notoriously
susceptible to tuberculosis. In “Lung Block” the death rate
for the disease was 958 per 100,000 of population as compared
with a citywide rate of 131.9. The League seized upon the
cleaning up of “Lung Block” as its first project. By dint of
harbor labor and pitiless publicity it aroused the community to
the shame and disgrace of conditions. Eventually the block, with
its tumble-down and germ-infested houses, was razed and a modern
housing development erected on its site.
On the occasion of its
twenty fifth anniversary in 1950 the League published a survey
of the progress that had been made and was being made toward the
realization by Baltimore Negroes of those rights set forth in
1947 by President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. The
survey reported that in Baltimore the threat of widespread
violence or mob action was virtually nonexistent. That is
interesting in view of Baltimore’s earlier unsavory reputation
as Mobtown.
Under the heading of safety
and security of person the chief complaint was that the police
handle Negro prisoners more severely than whites. Note was made
also that in the courts punishment meted out tended to be less
for Negroes who committed crimes against each other than those
who committed crimes against whites, and in some instances,
punishment of whites was less than for Negroes for the same
crime.
The survey noted that it
was customary for Negroes to be represented on juries and public
boards. It called attention to the fact that segregation was
practiced generally. But while white and Negro children were
educated separately in the public schools, some progress had
been made in getting professional courses in local colleges
opened to Negroes. Reference was made to Negroes in the graduate
schools of the University of Maryland. There were individual
instances also of a Negro at St. John’s College, Annapolis,
and of Negroes in the graduate schools of the University of
Maryland. There were individual instances also of a Negro at St.
John’s College, Annapolis, and of Negro students in the
engineering school of John Hopkins University, Loyola College
and the Peabody Institute. The survey went on to point out that
while Negroes had been taken on the Baltimore police force, they
were excluded from driving buses of the Baltimore Transit
Company and that certain job restrictions were in effect with
the Telephone Company and the Gas and Electric Company. It was
pointed out that Negroes found a barrier raised against them in
trade unions.
A source of irritation in
recent years has been use of the public parks and their
recreational facilities. Negroes also complain over being
excluded from theaters, restaurants and hotels and of receiving
differential treatment in the stores.
Baltimoreans looking back
over the past fifty years are impressed with the progress that
has been made in the recognition of rights of the Negro
citizens. There is no question that there will be further
recognition as the years go by. The question is how rapid the
progress should be. Thus far the white population has yielded
with surprising calm to the demands for change. Constant
agitation thus far has achieved such gratifying results from the
standpoint of the Negro that there is a tendency for the more
radical element to increase its demand with the end of wiping
out all racial distinction. That is not likely for many years to
come.
Striking evidence of the
progress that has been made by Baltimore Negroes is to be found
in the several institutions run by them. Conspicuous among these
are the Provident Hospital, Morgan College and the Baltimore
Institute of Musical Arts.
The Provident Hospital is
housed in the old buildings of what once was the Union
Protestant Infirmary, now Union Memorial Hospital. It is
strategically located in the Negro neighborhood in northwest
Baltimore and serves the Negro population. White physicians act
in an advisory capacity. Aside from that the medical and
surgical staffs, nurses, orderlies and administrative staffs are
all composed of Negroes. Associated with the hospital is a
nursing school conducted entirely for and by Negroes.
Morgan College is
attractively located in the northern suburbs in what otherwise
is a white neighborhood. It offers courses in the cultural arts
and the sciences including domestic science. Morgan is
coeducational and has a student body of several thousand.
The Baltimore Institute of
Musical Arts is a new agency. It owes its creation to the fact
that, as a general rule, Negro students have not been accepted
by the Peabody Conservatory of Music. It is too soon to evaluate
the instruction it offers in vocal and instrumental music. In
view of the natural musical endowment of the Negro the Institute
of Musical Arts offers great promise of achievement.
The growth of Baltimore’s
Negro community has produced a demand for special services
presented by Negroes. The weekly newspaper, the Afro-American,
is an outstanding example. The demand has led also to the
development of a professional class including lawyers, doctors,
dentists, teachers, insurance men, real estate men and
merchants.
For many years catering for
the city’s leading social events has been in the hands of
Negroes. Two names which stand out in this field are those of
Charles Shipley and T. Henry Waters.
Until shortly before his
death in 1943 the cream of the business went to Shipley. Shipley
came originally from Howard County. An older brother, William`,
held the important post of butler to General John Gill of R., a
bon vivant of his day. Charles entered the Gill household as
second man. In that capacity he had the opportunity to put his
special talents to work learning how the best food was prepared
and served.
For years Shipley regularly
served the supper for the Bachelors Cotillion and for the
Assembly. Whenever distinguished visitors came to Baltimore
Shipley was called in to prepare the menus for them. And when he
was in charge it could be taken for granted that the food would
be the very best and that it would be served with exquisite
taste. On the visit of Cardinal Mercier of Belgium, hero of the
German occupation of his country in World War I, to Cardinal
Gibbons, it was Shipley who had charge of the food. He acted in
a similar capacity during the visits of Queen Marie of Rumania,
Prince Paul of Greece and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Shipley’s men on formal
occasions were attired in plum-colored livery and his equipment
was the finest. He owned several after-dinner silver services
whose value ran into hundreds of dollars. An admirer once said
of him: “It was the achievement of Shipley that he and his men
could come into any house, or any apartment, and turn it for an
evening into a sort of ducal palace.” One lady said she never
enjoyed her own parties until she discovered Shipley. After that
she could turn everything over to him confident that there would
never be a slip.
Shipley made a specialty of
old Maryland country-cured ham and terrapin. Once King Prajadhikop
of Siam came to the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a patient. Among
other things his doctor prescribed Maryland terrapin. Of course
the only person in Baltimore regarded as fit to prepare terrapin
for a king was Shipley. Prajadhikop was so delighted with the
dish that, after his return to Siam, he several times had orders
of Shipley’s terrapin sent halfway round the world to him.
Shipley went out of
business several years before his death in 1943 at the age of
sixty four years. He was born epicure and in his later years
confessed that he could acclimate himself to what he called the
“gin, jazz, hot dog and blues days.” Fortunately he confided
the secret of preparing terrapin to his son who still carries on
the Shipley tradition at the Maryland Club.
Following Shipley’s death
Waters, who had already been pressing him hard in general
popularity, took over most of the entertainments. Waters got his
start as a butler to Hugh Bond another prominent Baltimorean who
belonged to an age when good living was a fine art. His service
has shown the results of the early training.
Another Negro associated
with Baltimore’s entertainments, both public and private, is
Rivers Chambers. His catering is done for those who want, not
food, but music. When an invitation says River Chambers will be
present it is put there to draw a crowd. For Rivers Chambers is
a surefire attraction. Sometimes Rivers Chambers is an
individual, sometimes he is three people, sometimes he is an
orchestra of twenty pieces, sometimes he is in several places at
once. However many he may be Rivers Chambers is synonymous with
gay music and general good cheer.
It all began back in 1930
at the beginning of the great depression. Chamber then was
playing the organ in a movie house in New York City. At the same
time one Charles (Butler) Brown was playing in a jazz band in
Albany, New York, and one Leroy (Tee) Loggins was making music
in a traveling musical show in Louisiana. When times got hard
all three headed for Baltimore. They formed the nucleus of an
orchestra which played for seven years as a pit band in the
Royal Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue. Rivers Chambers was the
leader and the general inspiration behind the venture.
Around 1937 Chambers, Brown
and Loggins, forming a musical trio, extended their operations
to include outside parties. It did not take them long to achieve
fame throughout the city and to build up an extensive clientèle.
Success was speeded by an accident. One night in a beer garden
on Wilkens Avenue Buster Brown had his accordian going and was
in the middle of hill billy song entitled “They Cut Down the
Old Pine Tree,” when he forgot the words and had to improvise.
He found himself singing and then repeating “Oh, cut it down,
oh cut it down, and they hauled it away to the mill.” The tune
was catchy and in a few minutes everybody in the place had
joined in. No telling how many times since the old pine tree had
been cut down. The song requires no voice. It isn’t sung, it
is shouted. It never ends. And it makes a party go.
Rivers Chambers and his
fellow musicians are almost invariably present at alumni
dinners, lodge smokers, convention banquets, anniversary
parties, wedding receptions, debutante parties and wherever more
than two or three are gathered together to have a good time. The
orchestra plays for the fashionable dancing classes, too.
Chambers thinks he must have appeared in virtually every house
in the Green Spring Valley. He has played also for various
Governors of Maryland, Mayors of Baltimore, U. S. Senators and
lesser statesmen.
An incident Chambers likes
to recall is when the Duke of Windsor joined his band for an
evening. The occasion was an exclusive dinner given by an old
Baltimore friend of the Duchess during one of the visits of the
Windsors. Chambers was engaged to sing spirituals. But, being an
experienced showman, he prepared for any eventuality by tossing
his drums and other noisemaking instruments in the back of his
car. Sure enough, after a round of spirituals, the Duke
approached Chambers and remarked that he knew something about
playing the traps. He supposed Chambers hadn’t brought his
along. But Chambers had and soon the Duke was having the time of
his life as a member of the orchestra.
It is not unusual for a
stranger at a party to find Buster Brown before him, playing an
accordian and singing some song appropriate to the stranger’s
home, college club or profession. Brown has been put up to it by
some other guest. There isn’t any song he doesn’t know or
can’t learn in a couple of minutes after somebody has hummed
the air to him. If a guest from Patagonia were to appear at a
Baltimore party Brown could be counted on to produce a
Patagonian folksong or its national anthem, if Patagonia has
one.
On Sunday, January 7, 1933,
the Sunpapers announced the death of William Paine,
hat-check man at the Merchants’ Club, after a service of
thirty years. The interesting thing about Paine was that he was
a hat-check man who used no checks. Though he handled hundreds
of hats and coats at one time he could remember every person to
whom a hat and coat belonged. The announcement went on to say
that it was expected that from then on checks would be used. It
seemed unlikely that anybody could duplicate this remarkable
feat of memory.
However, apprenticed to
Paine for nine years was a young man named William Gilbert. In
the course of those nine years Gilbert had learned the secret
from the master. When he first replaced Paine, old members of
the club were skeptical. But not for long. Soon Gilbert was
taking care of hats and coats on the memory system as
confidently as Paine had ever done. At a Christmas party at the
club he once handled as many as 550 hats and coats without
making a mistake. How he does it is Gilbert’s secret, as it
was Paine’s. When questioned he replied that he “just trusts
to mother wit.”
In the course of years
Baltimore has sheltered or produced other individual Negroes of
unusual distinction for a variety of reasons. The town was still
young when, around 1796, there appeared on the local scene one
Joshua Johnston. Information about him is fragmentary. There is
reason to believe he came from the West Indies as a slave. Local
tradition has made him a bondsman of General Sam Smith, or
General John Stricker and of Hugh McCurdy. It is based on the
fact that he painted portraits of the families of all three of
these gentlemen, for he was a portrait painter of no little
talent. Somewhere along the line Johnston, if he actually had
been a slave, must have been manumitted, for in the city
directory for thirty years between 1796 and 1824 he is listed as
a “free Negro householder.” Some twenty one existing oil
portraits are known to have been his work. He evidently was
influenced by the Peale family which also was producing
portraits at that time. Critics gave Johnston serious
consideration as an “American primitive.”
More famous throughout the
nations than Joshua Johnston, and for quite another reason, was
Joe Gans, a native Baltimorean, Joe was born on November 25,
1874. He grew up round the fish market. In 1890, at the age of
sixteen years, he took part in his first prize fight at the Avon
Club, knocked out another Negro boy and won $4 out of a $5
purse. His official career, however, dates from 1894. From then
on he was continually in the ring and for eight years spent his
time working his way up to the top. On May 21, 1902, he became
the lightweight champion of the world. Joe held the title until
he was knocked out by Battling Nelson at San Francisco in the 17th
round of a fight on July 4, 1908. Many said that it was not
Battling Nelson but tuberculosis that dethroned Joe. At San
Francisco he already was a sick man; two years later he died of
the disease.
Old sports writers have
said that Joe Gans was the greatest fighter of all time. In
addition to his skill he had the reputation for being a good
sportsman and a clean fighter. He was idolized in his home town
by white and black alike.
Joe’s last losing battle
was fought in Arizona where he had gone in the hope of regaining
his health. Realizing that the end was near he was rushed back
home to die. After his death his body lay in state in Whatcoat
Methodist Episcopal Church and crowds passed to pay “The Old
Master” their last respects. Joe was buried in Mount Auburn
Cemetery, in Westport, a southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
People still come from distant parts of the country to visit his
grave.
Nearly thirty years later
Baltimore witnessed the state funeral of another distinguished
son. It was that of Chick Webb, known nationally and
internationally as “Harlem’s King of Drums.” William Henry
Webb, to give him his full name, was born in East Baltimore. He
was one years old when respects were being paid to the moral
remains of Joe Gans. At an early age Chick was crippled by
tuberculosis of the spine. While making a living as a newsboy he
got into the habit of drumming out tunes on fences, boxes and on
the wooden steps of row houses which abound in Baltimore.
Drumming was in Chick’s
soul. At fifteen years he played in a Negro orchestra. At
sixteen he left for New York and showed so much ability that
shortly he was organizing his own band. His style of drum
playing came to be known as the “power drive.” Soon the
connoisseurs were saying that Chick Webb’s was the
“hottest” swing band in the country. It got a contract to
play at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Chick was a
composer as well as a band leader and the author of several song
hits. His band had the distinction of being the only swing band
ever to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House. It took part in
a benefit concert and accompanied Lily Pons, Helen Jepson and
Grace Moore in a complex arrangement of “Minnie the
Moocher.”
The old and deadliest enemy
of the Baltimore Negro caught up with Chick as it had done with
Joe Gans. He died of tuberculosis in Johns Hopkins Hospital in
June, 1939. His body was taken to the humble home of his
grandparents at 1313 Ashland Avenue. There, and later at Waters
African M. E. Church, his frail form, clad in his white tuxedo,
lay in state in a silver casket. It was estimated that 15,000
persons of all races passed by his bier to pay him final honors.
Among the mourners were Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and other
great names in the world of swing. In East Baltimore, which the
musician knew well in his youth, his name has been immortalized
in the Chick Webb Memorial Center, an athletic club for poor
Negro boys.
A Baltimore prophet “not
without honor” is Father Divine. Around the turn of the
century this native son was known as George Baker, who earned a
modest living as a hedge trimmer and odd jobs man. That was
before he went onto New York and Harlem, experienced a rebirth
and came out as Father Divine. Another bull’s-eye for
Baltimore. “Peace, it’s wonderful!”
The Negro race produced
still another rare man in Emanuel Chambers. For thirty years he
was known affectionately to hundreds of members of the Baltimore
Club and the Maryland Club. Emmanuel was born on a farm in
Harford County and came as a boy to live in Baltimore. In 1907
he commenced his distinguished career as a club servant. The
Baltimore Club then was situated at Charles and Madison Streets
and Emanuel entered its employ. There he remained until it
merged with the Maryland Club in 1933. Emanuel was part of the
merger. In the course of the thirty years he served the two
clubs he earned a reputation for solving the problems of the
club members which became legendary. In fact it was generally
believed there was nothing Emanuel couldn’t do.
A club member wanted seats
to grand opera at the Lyric which had been sold out for six
months. He appealed to Emanuel who produced the seats. A club
member sought in vain for a Pullman reservation to Chicago;
Emmanuel came up with a whole section. Once he is said to have
arranged for an express train to stop at Laurel Race Track to
pick up two friends of members of the club who wanted an
afternoon at the races before returning to their home in New
York.
White ties, shirt studs and
collar buttons were no trouble at all. In an emergency Emanuel
could always provide them. Once he is said to have remained a
forgetful club member that it was his wedding day. There was a
time when the District of Columbia required a District license
for all cars coming into the area from Maryland. A club member
who had business in Washington and wished to use his car once
appealed to Emanuel, and Emanuel produced the District license.
He cautioned the borrower, however, to return it before 4 p.m.,
that same day. For, he explained, there was a funeral at that
hour and the license belonged to the hearse.
The late Chief Judge
Carroll Bond of the Maryland Court of Appeals once visiting in
London and was entertained by friends at a London club. The
conversation turned to the subject of servants. In the company
was much-traveled Englishman who was unacquainted with Judge
Bond’s background. He remarked in the judge’s hearing that
his travels he had run up with many excellent servants but, in
his opinion, by far the best he had ever known was a man named
Emanuel at the Maryland Club in Baltimore.
Emanuel never married.
During the course of his service at the clubs he lived on his
salary and saved his tips. These he turned over to his friend
Ellicott H. Worthington for investment. Regularly dividends were
plowed back into the capital amount. In 1937 Emanuel retired at
the age of seventy-six years. He lived to be eighty-four. Thanks
to his frugality and the skill of his financial advisor, his
estate had by that time grown to more than $154,000. In his will
Emanuel provided for the establishment of the Emanuel Chambers
Foundation, Inc., naming Mr. Worthington and four other members
of the Maryland Club as trustees. The testator expressed the
wish that income from the estate be allocated to nonprofit
charities “regardless of race, color, or creed.” The
trustees have faithfully carried out Emanuel’s wishes. A
recent audit revealed that since Emanuel’s death in 1945 the
corpus had increased to $180,000 and yielded income to the
amount of $6,000 a year. Out of that income $26,625 already has
been contributed to local charities.
In a discussion of the
contribution of the Negro race to Baltimore, the life and
character of Emanuel Chambers is an appropriate and inspiring
note on which to end.
Beirne, Francis F. • The Amiable Baltimoreans • E. P.
Dutton & Co., Inc. • New York, NY • 1951 |
