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A Little About Pearl Bailey

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By William Morris Agency, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28343387

It’s been a while since I worked up an Every Month is ____ History Month post. Truth is, I got rather stalled on Pearl Bailey. The more information I found on her, the more I became completely fascinated, and nothing I found was quite enough. Unlike many other personalities that no-one I know seems to remember, Pearl Bailey wrote quite a bit about her life. I can’t tell you how excited I was to find out she had penned her own memoirs and social commentary. Suddenly, only her own words would do. I acquired a few of her books and, unfortunately, they got added to my to-read shelves. And, that is where the research post ended, until now.

No, I haven’t finished reading her biography (the one I picked up). I have read through Hurry Up America and Spit (1976), and I am currently picking through Pearl’s Kitchen (1973). The song on our Christmas mix, ‘Five Pound Box of Money’ by Pearl Bailey is just too good not to share now, and since I have got enough information for a basic biographical sketch, I figured why keep waiting. I am now a confirmed Pearl Bailey fan. I’m not going to have any trouble revisiting this great lady in another post once I have read about her story in her own words.

Pearl Baily was born in 1918 in Newport News, Virginia to Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Her brother, Bill Bailey was well known on the vaudeville stage. In a later article, Bailey recounted how she stumbled accidentally into show business by way of what sounded like a sibling spat. She had been sent to the theater to fetch her brother, who was rehearsing his dance act. He brushed her off and sent her home, so she returned, entered, and won the amateur contest that night. She was just fifteen (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). After some time on vaudeville stages and touring the country with the USO during WWII, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946 (Pearl Bailey, 2022) to excited and complimentary reviews (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946).

“The way I sing is the way I live,”  Miss Bailey says…”What I do is like telling a story to music, it’s got to be something that brings a chuckle.  The audience enjoys it because it tells of things they know.”

– Pearl Bailey (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946)

Early on, she would describe herself as a writer when speaking with reporters and critics. Throughout a very successful career entertaining on stage, through which she was often featured in newspapers, she would carefully craft and plan her shows based on her projections of what the audience would be (Pearl Bailey’s next role, 1956). By 1956 she declared a desire to follow her long time dream of becoming a teacher, taking classes at UCLA towards that ambition (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). She would later earn a degree in theology from Georgetown University, but before this she published several books (Pearl Bailey, 2022):

  • The Raw Pearl (1968)
  • Talking to Myself (1971)
  • Pearl’s Kitchen (1973)
  • Hurry Up America and Spit (1976)
  • Between You and Me (1989)

Somewhat satisfyingly, her achievements and greatness were awarded many times over during her lifetime. She was appointed special ambassador to the United Nations by President Gerald Ford; she received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly!; she won a Daytime Emmy award; she was the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award; she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and she was awarded the Bronze Medallion, the highest award conferred upon civilians by New York City (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Pearl Bailey died at the age of 72 from arteriosclerosis (Pearl Bailey, 2022).

There is so much more that I haven’t covered here and, I promise, I will get to it. But for now, enjoy a little Christmas:

References

LaVern Baker

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LaVern Baker has the strange distinction of being a wildly successful performing artist, the second African American woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, one of the first eight recipients of the Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and, at the same time, unknown to far too many people. Even her Wikipedia entry calls attention to its unfinished state and includes many inaccuracies. I’ve tried to cobble together the story of her life with the most reliable information I could find.

Born Delores Evans in Chicago, she was the niece of Merline Johnson, who sometimes may have gone by Merline Baker in the clubs where she sang with the Big Bill Broonzy and Blind John Davis as the Ya Yas Girl. Many sources commonly point to another aunt: Memphis Minnie, and give her the name Merline Baker, but of all the aliases that Memphis Minnie went by, Merline was not one of them. It is possible that one errant source long ago decided LaVern Baker’s aunt was Memphis Minnie and simply ran with it, molding information about Merline Johnson to fit the fantasy.

Lavern’s ‘Jim Dandy.’ Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 03 Feb. 1957. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
The Mississippi enterprise. (Jackson, Miss.), 09 April 1960. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
“LaVern Baker” (1997) The Daily Telegraph.  13 Mar 1997, Thu. pg29

As Delores Evans she sang gospel while growing up, until, at the age of 17, she established her first entertainment persona performing at the club DeLisa under the name Little Miss Sharecropper. As Little Miss Sharecropper, she took inspiration from a contemporary, Little Miss Cornshucks, dressing herself in a tattered cotton sack to evoke the antebellum south for the southerners that were flooding into the Chicago area. During this time she also went by Bea Baker, perhaps imitating her aunt who was said to go by Baker as a back-stage alternative to her on-stage name the Ya Yas Girl.

At nineteen, she married Eugene Williams, a postal worker in Cook County. Some time just afterwards she got a gig at the Flame Bar and recorded with the Eddie Penigar Band. Then, in 1952, she adopted LaVern Baker as the name she would use for the rest of her career after joining the Todd Rhodes Orchestra and before touring Europe. Upon her return, she was signed to Atlantic Records in 1954 as their second female artist after Ruth Brown. A year later she would have her first, and one of the biggest, hits of her career: “Tweedle-Dee.”

Directly after her release of ‘Tweedle-Dee’ it was covered by Georgia Gibbs, who, like several white cover artists at the time, were taking advantage of radio’s aversion to playing ‘black’ music by making copies that would high-jack the sales of the original records. A newspaper article from 1958 gives one rendition of the story where LaVern Baker called up her Congressman, Charles Diggs, to complain about how copyright law had to be changed to rectify the situation. As excited as I was by the idea that LaVern Baker instigated a change to copyright law, I could find no mention of amendments to the law being proposed by Charles Diggs and/or made concerning music in the mid1950s.

In 1955 Baker appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, performing ‘Tweedle-Dee’ in a line up of R&B musicians arranged by DJ Dr. Jive. Her subsequent hits, including ‘Jim Dandy,’ and ‘I Cried a Tear’ endeared her to early Rock and Roll fans. She would become known as one of the first queens of the Rock and roll era.

After a tour of Australia in 1957, her marriage to Eugene Williams was ending. They were divorced by 1958 and in 1959, or 1961, she married comedian Slappy White. Some reports say that her fame was fading by the time she left Atlantic Records in 1964 and signed up to go on a USO tour in 1966. While on tour, she fell ill with pneumonia performing in Vietnam. Her recovery was long, first in Thailand and then in the Philippines. By the time she felt healthy again, in 1967, the USO tour had gone on without her and she was stranded on the Naval Base Subic Bay with no way to get home.

Slappy White, perhaps assuming the worst, both made moves to divorce Baker and to have her declared dead. He assumed all rights to her recordings.

“I decided to quit tearing myself up and accept the fact that I wasn’t going home anytime soon. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go, seeing as my own husband just up and declared I was dead so he could make some money off my records. He never even tried to find out about where I was or if I was alive. Who wants to go back to that?”

-LaVern Baker quoted in Bob Gulla’s Icons of R&B and Soul

LaVern Baker stayed in the Philippines from 1967-1988, performing at the NCO club at Subic Bay. While in the Philippines she had two daughters, and adopted another. Upon returning to the states she jumped determinedly back to work, performing at the 1998 Atlantic Records 40th anniversary celebration at Madison Square Gardens, and obtaining a lead role on Broadway in 1990. By the time she was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 1995, her health had begun to infringe on her work. A few strokes and a late diagnosis of diabetes had resulted in the loss of some memory and both her legs. Baker refused to be stopped, and continued performing until she died in 1997 at the age of 67.

Lost History

Some of the most illuminating quotation and additional details about LaVern Baker’s life, especially her years in the Philippines, comes from a 2007 first hand account by D. Armenta, a navy air traffic controller who filled in a shift at the Armed Forces Radio/Television station in Subic Bay twenty years earlier when LaVern Baker came by to tell her story. Unfortunately, only the first page was archived by the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine (in the reference list below), and, other than the quotations made in Gulla’s book and other works, is currently lost to time like much of LaVern Baker’s story.

Works Referenced

Sally Salomé Mary Bridget’s struggle for freedom

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In 1840s Louisiana, public attention was captured by the story of a German immigrant who had lived enslaved for over twenty years.  The articles communicate an alarm that a white person could be forced into the very same situation that many people of color were experiencing every day.  The story of Sally Miller was much more than mistaken identity, it explored how race was defined and performed, and how immigrant communities were encapsulated into a culture that made one race preeminent over all others. 

Based on information that came out during the court case and investigations thereafter, we now know more about Sally Miller than she did herself at the time.  She was born Salomé Müller in  Langensaultzback in Alsace on the Lower Rhine in 1814 to parents Daniel and Dorothea (“Sally Miller,” 1845; “Sally Miller,”2021).  Her parents were part of a group of about 1800 German immigrants from Alsace, mostly farmers and mechanics, who had contracted with a ships-master for passage to the United States.  The ship-master stole away with their money and left them stranded in Amsterdam. Unable to continue their journey without paying the ship owners for passage, they were stranded, until a contract for their transport was made on their behalf by the ‘Holland Government,’  so says the article in the Hartford Courant in 1846 (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846). 

book illustration of redemtioners at auction.
Stockton, F. R. (1896) “The Slaves of New Jersey.” Stories of New Jersey. American Book Company. https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/gutenberg.org/2/4/7/1/24713/24713-h/24713-h.htm

Starting in 1816 tens of thousands of  Europeans, mostly German and Swiss, were leaving their countries to escape burdensome taxes, crop failures, conscription, and unemployment in the post-Napoleonic years. Upon arriving in the seaports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam many immigrants would become victims to “soul merchants” and be forced to become redemtioners, contracted to work for for free one to three years in farms and towns of the South to pay back their debt (Hasian, 2003; Sweirenga & Lammers, 1994).  Many of the 1800 Germans from the Alsace, sailing on the Johanna for New Orleans, found themselves in the same position.

In March 1818, after many deaths aboard ship during their voyage, the indenture contracts of the surviving Müllers, father, son, and two daughters, were sold to John Fitz Miller of Attakapas Parish, owner of a sugar cane plantation.  The Müller’s friends and fellow travelers did not immediately know that within weeks of their installation at the Fitz Miller plantation, Daniel and his son Jacob died of fever.  By the time family members tried to reconnect with the two girls, they had vanished (“Sally Miller,”2021). 

Sally Miller’s story was unraveled backwards for the courts after this, but I’ll try to keep it organized.  Fitz Miller, referred to as Miller in the articles, would later say in court that Sally Miller was purchased from Anthony Williams of Mobile as Bridget, a ‘mulatress.’  Miller changed her name to Mary, because he already ‘had another slave named Bridget.’    During her time at Fitz Miller’s plantation Sally Miller would be given to the Miller’s ‘colored overseer’ for a wife and would give birth to four children, Lafayette (who died about 1839), Madison, Charles and Adeline (“Sally Miller,”2021).  After  a time Fitz Miller sold her to Lewis (or Louis) Belmonti,  who owned a cabaret in a predominantly Spanish section of New Orleans.  Belmonti would recount later that he had suspected Sally Miller was white and attempted to rescind the sale,  upon which time Fitz Miller said that ‘she was white, and had as much right to her freedom as any one, and was only to be retained in slavery by care and kind treatment  (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846). 

It was working at this cabaret that she caught the eye of Madame Karl (or Carl) Rouff, one of the Müller ‘s fellow travelers on the Johanna.  Sally Miller was about thirty.  Madame Karl immediately recognized Sally Miller as the child of her friends; she  approached and questioned her about her past and parentage.  Sally Miller was called Mary at the time, and answered that she did not know or remember her family, and that she had always been enslaved.  Not long after this meeting, Madam Karl took ‘Mary’ Miller to Salomé Müller’s cousin and godmother, Eva Schuber and her husband Francis.  The Schubers also identified ‘Mary’ Miller as Salomé, the lost daughter of Daniel and Dorothea Müller   (“Sally Miller,”2021; “Sally Miller,” 1845; “The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846).  Friends and family of the Müller’s, local merchants, came together to file suit against Belmonti for the restoration of Salomé Müller’s freedom.

Many aspects of the trial focused on what Marouf Hasian Jr. called a performance of race. In a society where identification of race was paramount to maintaining legal division, it was important for the men who enslaved Miller to demonstrate how good and virtuous they were, and also how Miller’s own choices and behavior aligned more with non-white individuals. Miller had been classified by society as a ‘mulatress’ or someone of mixed race. She was described as having dark hair, hazel eyes, and being tanned from outside labor (“Sally Miller,” 1845). People of mixed race were difficult for the institutions of the antebellum South because they represented a taboo interaction of two races, and were difficult to categorize in a system based firmly in visual appearance. Still those actors who were responsible and interested in maintaining the categorization of races clung to characteristics, behavior, language, education, and culture as a way to discerning race classification (Hasian, 2003).

The “German mind is strongly excitable and imaginative with a fondness for the wonderful, marvelous, incredible and disposition and eager desire to believe the mysterious….”

–Hartford Courant (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846)

Sally Miller’s case also highlighted the difficulties of redemtioners entering into the antebellum South. In the classification systems of the South at the time, these immigrants were not considered ‘blacks’ or free whites. “They were the perfect example of what scholars today call “not-quite” white, the homeless and impoverished sojourners who lived just a few rungs above the black slaves” (Hasian, 2003). At various points in the newspaper coverage of the trial, the German family and friends of Sally Miller were characterized as silly and prone to flights of fancy as a way to undermine their contributions to her case.

Sally Miller and her German supporters did not win her initial court suit. Instead her supporters were instructed by the judge to buy her freedom; essentially to buy into the institutions and laws constructed to normalize the enslavement of non-whites (Hasian, 2003). And though Sally Miller was refused a retrial, she did bring her case to the Louisiana Supreme Court where she was ‘restored to liberty’ (“Sally Miller,” 1845). Once, free Sally Miller continued working with the court system in an attempt to secure freedom for her three remaining children, but she was not successful (“Sally Miller,”2021). Her story inspired authors of popular fiction post civil war, and was revisited again in the 21st century by John Bailey, who suggests that Miller was never Salomé Müller, but instead used opportunity and ingenuity to trick the courts into ending her enslavement (“Sally Miller,” 2021).

The most resounding part of Sally Miller’s story, to me, was the myriad of laws built around making slavery an acceptable condition in society, from defining those who may be enslaved to tracing ownership of supposed ‘property.’ The more I have studied copyright law, the more I’ve seen that law is firmly rooted in philosophy where structures of thought are built upon each other like blocks of a building. Removing one law will have ramification for the entire structure, but may not actually pull the whole building down. There are precedents and seemingly unrelated laws written with the same philosophical underpinnings still holding out, still casting a shadow.

References

The legend of Jacquotte Delahaye

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Flag attributed to Jacquotte Delahaye By RootOfAllLight – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86283006

Anyone searching online for Jacquotte Delahaye may get more results for historical reenactment costuming and RPG characters than any real information. Known as ‘Back from the Dead Red,’ Jacquotte Delahaye’s existence has been called into doubt by several scholars, but her story is one that puts a strong female spin on the “Golden Age of Piracy.” So far, no primary source material has confirmed the details of her life that surfaced after her supposed death. Léon Treich, a French writer of fiction, wrote the most comprehensive account of her exploits. As someone from Tampa, a city where every January we honor a famous pirate for whom there is also no evidence of existence, I though it would be fitting to celebrate Jacquotte Delahaye for this years Gasparilla Festival.

At the start of the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ (1650-1720), Jacquotte Delahaye was already twenty. Jacquotte’s father was French and her mother was Haitian, though some scholars hypothesize that one of them must have been Spanish. Delahaye had worked as a barmaid and a lady’s maid before beginning her pirating career in order to support her disabled younger brother after their mother died in childbirth and their father was murdered in a Spanish raid of Saint Domingue by the British Navy. Unlike many other female pirates, Delahaye’s career did not seem to depend on her relationships with male pirates.

She was ruthless and successful in battle, given to violent excess and earning the nickname ‘The Lash.’ This nickname would quickly be eclipsed by a new moniker: ‘Back from the Dead Red’ after she faked her death in battle and rose again, with a male alias and in men’s clothes. The name ‘Back from the Dead Red’ also encompasses Delahaye’s most telling characteristic: bright red hair. At 26, she captured Fort de la Roche on the island of Tortuga back from the Spanish, after which she was appointed advisor to its governor.. This exploit is considered by many to be her greatest accomplishment. Seven years later she was killed in a shoot-out with the Spanish.

Delahaye is also said to have operated with Anne Dieu-le-Veut, another female pirate who showed up in the Caribbean after Delahaye’s death. Whether or not the two women existed at the same time, scholars have indicated that Delahaye’s life corresponds closely with that of Dieu-le-Veut. Was Delahaye Treich’s fictional overlay for Dieu-le-Veut? Or should we find her reported death in 1663 unbelievable, since we know she had already faked her death once before?

References

  1. Duncombe, Laura Snook (2017) Pirate Women:  The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas.  on Google books:  https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pirate_Women/zA90DQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
  2. Foster, S. (2020, March 1). Brave and Bold? Believe It!New Moon Girls,27(4), 16. 
  3. Gasparilla Pirate Festival (2020) Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasparilla_Pirate_Festival
  4. Jacquotte Delahaye (2020) Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquotte_Delahaye
  5. Jacquotte Delahaye AKA ‘Back from the Dead Red’ (2020) Sagas of She.  http://sagasofshe.co.uk/jacquotte-delahaye-aka-back-from-the-dead-red/
  6. Klausmann, Ulrike. (1997) “Jacquotte Delahay.” Women Pirates and the politics of the Jolly Roger. Black Rose Books.
  7. The Lady Is a Pirate. (2017).In These Times,41(5), 38.  
  8. Viehe, F. W. (2011). The Underworld Never Seemed So Fair: Women as Pirates, G’hals, Mafiosas and Gangsteristas.International Journal of the Humanities,9(3), 65–93. 
  9. Were there female pirates? (n.d.) Royal Museums Greenwich. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/were-there-female-pirates
  10. Wigington, Patti (2019) The Fascinating History of Female Pirates.  ThoughtCo.  https://www.thoughtco.com/female-pirates-history-4177454

Jackie Ormes: creating the powerful, fashionable, & modern African American female cartoon character

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Jackie Ormes, born Zelda Mavin Jackson to parents William Winifield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson in 1911, was an American cartoonist, journalist, editor, philanthropist, and ground-breaker . She was the first African American woman creator of a syndicated comic strip. Her comics, Torchy Brown and Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, depicted strong, intelligent, and fashionable African American women, which was provocative on its own. Ever the innovator, Ormes would also often use her comics to comment on society as well, targeting racial issues and environmental pollution.

Just a year after launching her Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger strip, Ormes had a play doll of her Patty-Jo character produced by the Terri Lee doll company in 1947, just in time for Christmas. Like Torchy, whose comics would often be accompanied with paper doll style wardrobes, Patty-Jo had an upscale wardrobe, and is considered the first black doll on the market that did not depict and enforce racist stereotypes.

“No matter the strip, Ormes was presenting African American women in a way that no other cartoonist in the papers had done previously. Her characters were demure and dynamic, involved in and commenting on current events, sporting the latest fashions. They were upper class women. Torchy in Heartbeats was often accompanied by Torchy Togs, paper dolls of the character with a variety of high-end outfits.”

McGurk, Caitlin (2013) Found in the Collection: Jackie Ormes! (1911-1985).  Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog.  https://library.osu.edu/site/cartoons/2013/02/22/found-in-the-collection-jackie-ormes-1911-1985/

Ormes continued making art after she retired from creating comics in 1956, and served on the founding board of directors of the DuSable Museum of African-American History and Art. In 2014, 29 years after her death, she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. In 2018 she was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Jackie Ormes’ “Torchy in Heartbeats”, September 22, 1951, from the Jackie Ormes biographical file, gift of Nancy Goldstein, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. McGurk, Caitlin (2013) Found in the Collection: Jackie Ormes! (1911-1985).  Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog.  https://library.osu.edu/site/cartoons/2013/02/22/found-in-the-collection-jackie-ormes-1911-1985/

Jackie Ormes’ story enjoys plenty of documentation, and if you want to find more, I would highly recommend the post at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog as a starting off point. There is also a biography available: Jackie Ormes:  The First African American Woman Cartoonist by Nancy Goldstein. I am currently on the hunt to see if I can get access to more of her Torchy strips; I love the art and melodrama of the samples I have been able to find so far.

References

  1. Holmes, Helen (2020) Cartoonist Jackie Ormes Made Groundbreaking Comics About Being a Black Woman.  NewsBreak.  https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2052156609162/cartoonist-jackie-ormes-made-groundbreaking-comics-about-being-a-black-woman
  2. Jackie Ormes (2020) Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Ormes
  3. Jettakd (2013) Black HERstory Month: Jackie Ormes, the first female African-American cartoonist.  ONTD Political.  https://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10396445.html
  4. McGurk, Caitlin (2013) Found in the Collection: Jackie Ormes! (1911-1985).  Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog.  https://library.osu.edu/site/cartoons/2013/02/22/found-in-the-collection-jackie-ormes-1911-1985/

What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking

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Until ten years ago, Abby Fisher was known as the first African American woman to publish a cookbook in the United States. The details now known about her life give only the faintest sketch of a woman who worked her way from enslaved cook on the east coast to business owner and author on the west. Much of what we do know was unearthed by Karen Hess, southern cooking historian, who studied Abby Fisher and encouraged the reprinting of her book after a rare copy of Fisher’s book came up for auction (“What Mrs. Fisher Knows About…,” 2021). Because I am a lover of old cookbooks and have been on a hunt for all the fruitcake recipes, and of course Mrs. Fisher had one, I was elated to find Mrs. Fisher’s book online courtesy Michigan State University:  https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5tt11. I have selected the recipes that look especially interesting to me in order share them here, but do go and check out the whole book!

Abby Fisher was born Abby Clifton to Andrew James, a white farmer of French decent, and Abbie Clifton, an African American, in South Carolina (“Abby Fisher,” 2021). During her research Hess could not find direct evidence that Abby Fisher was born into enslavement, but many have made that assumption based on Fisher’s date and location of birth (Rae, n.d.). An ad for her cookbook in the The San Francisco call from 1897 seems to support this assumption by indicating Abby Fisher was “raised in the family of the late Newton St. John of Mobile, Alabama (“An Excellent Cookery-Book,” 1897). Newton St. John was a prominent merchant and banker in Mobile prior to and after the Civil War. So, it must have been in the St. John kitchen where Abby Fisher first became a cook. Before the beginning of the Civil War, in the 1850s, Fisher met and married Alexander C. Fisher in Mobile (Rae, n.d.). After the Civil War, in 1877, the couple moved to San Francisco (“The African American Women of the Wild West,” n.d.). The 1880 census shows them on Second Street with four of their eleven eventual children. They are both listed as mixed race; Abby was working as a cook while her husband was a pickle and preserves manufacturer (“Abby Fisher,” 2021; “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About…,” 2021).

Continue reading What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking

China Mary: woman of many faces, women with no names

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I returned to tales of the ‘wild west’ and pioneers of the frontier looking for women who may have been cut out of the history books because of their sex, culture, and race. There are no shortage of stories romanticizing the time period, the seeming lawlessness, and the rugged criminal turned hero. They distract us from the many atrocities that were committed as east coast colonists pushed westward, warring with native peoples and decimating the land in order to claim for their own everything between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The harsh and turbulent conditions meant that people had to contend with so much more than we can imagine, sometimes rising in fame because of their business savvy, their integrity, and their resolve. China Mary was just such a person.

Except that she was multiple people. During the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the following legislation that prohibited immigration of Chinese people to the United States, racist actions towards Chinese people in the United States ranged from massacre to seemingly polite acts of diminution (“Chinese Exclusion Act,” 2021). Prior to and despite the prohibitions on immigration from China, many people living in China headed for the U.S. to escape facing violence from civil was between 1840s and 1860s, unemployment, famine and overpopulation of coastal cities. Chinese men often immigrated to the U.S. without their wives and some families in China decided to sell their daughters into prostitution oversees to both avoid starvation and provide the girls with the opportunities a new country may provide (Waggener, 2021). While looking up more information on the woman in Tombstone known as China Mary I came across a couple more, in Wyoming and Alaska, and discovered that Chinese people were often called China Mary or China John to save white people the trouble of learning their real names. I cannot adequately express how much this bothers me. To deny someone their name is ultimately demeaning and terribly cruel; it is an erasure. There are probably thousands of China Marys and China Johns completely lost to history by design. Today I’m going to explore the lives of Sing Choy, Ah Yuen, and Mary Bong, likely not their real names.

portrait photograph of Mary Bong or China Mary, 82.13.27. Sitka History Museum.

Qui Fah or Mary Bong 1880-1958

The woman who would become known as China Mary or Mary Bong in Sitka Alaska was born in Shiqi (Shek Kee 石岐) in Zhongshan 中山 county   (“Mary Bong or China Mary,” 2019). From her own reporting to a newspaperman in 1935, she ran away from home at the age of 13 and headed for the United States. Aware of the immigration restrictions facing her, she arrived Canada and stayed in Vancouver until she made friends with Gee Bong, a Sitka resident on a business trip. Her reasons for marrying at the age of 15 were practical, as she recounted to the newspaperman: “I learned that if I were married to a man who had his immigration papers I could get into the U.S. as his wife.  I liked my new Chinese friend from Alaska so I married him”  (DeArmond, 1994). She helped her husband with his Bakery and Restaurant, where she was dubbed China Mary.

Continue reading China Mary: woman of many faces, women with no names

Dr. Carrie Mitchell-Hampton: local leader

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1850s map of Florida from USF Libraries Digital Collections

The first African American Woman to practice medicine in the state of Florida

History tends to forget a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they were not loud enough, their geographic reach wasn’t considered sufficient, they had no scandal, they were a minority, they were a woman, etc. However, even if their impact didn’t carry their name into the future, they had impact in the lives and history of the people around them. There is little we can do about the people who are completely vanished by time, but we can give the stories of those not quite completely vanished a little more lasting purchase in the collective unconscious. For this month’s foray into history I wanted to learn about someone closer to my home: Dr. Carrie Effie Mitchell-Hampton, the first African American woman to practice medicine in the state of Florida.

Carrie Mitchell was born in Fernandina Beach, just north of Jacksonville in Nassau county. From her age as reported in her obituary, she would have been born around 1894/5, but other researchers have placed her birth at 1886. This 1886 date seems more probable since all sources seem to agree that she entered Meharry Medical School in 1904. If born in 1886, she would have been 18. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Most sources list that Mitchell grew up 130 miles southwest of Fernandina Beach, in Ocala, and that she attended both the Orange Park School for girls and Howard Academy. I assume that the Orange Park School for Girls is actually the Orange Park Normal and Manual Training School in Orange Park, just south of Jacksonville, not far from Fernandina Beach where she was born. Her time in Ocala would have started, then, when she left the greater Jacksonville area and started in Howard Academy. After Howard, she entered Meharry Medical School, in Nashville Tennessee, and graduated in 1908.

Sources don’t seem to agree on the order of what came next. Apparently she was licensed to practice medicine in Florida from 1906 to 1935, but this would have meant she obtained her license before returning to Ocala after graduating from medical school. She also owned and operated a drug store on Broadway street in downtown Ocala. Some sources claim she did this prior to becoming a doctor, but this timing doesn’t fit well with her graduation and her licensing. In 1915 she married a co-alumnus of Meharry Medical School and dentist Dr. Lee Royal Hampton. There is some mention that she gave up one of her businesses when she married. Since she reportedly practiced medicine for thirty, forty, or forty-five years, remaining the only African American woman to practice medicine through the 1920s and 1930s, I would assume that she ceased running her drug store, likely in operation from 1908 to 1915. She quickly filled her free time by helping to found, and then serving as the secretary for, the Florida Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. She was often a speaker at conventions of medical professionals and was president of the Woman’s Convention in 1955.

The couple lived on Magnolia Street in Ocala while Dr. Carrie Hampton continued her practice, becoming one of Ocala’s most highly respected citizens. Her husband, Dr. L. R. Hampton, died sometime after having practiced dentistry in Ocala for 40 years. Dr. Carrie Hampton died in Halifax Hospital 12/13/1964 at the reported age of 69.

Figure from: Map of Florida According to Latest Authorities. Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida. https://theleemsmachine.com/bean/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mapoffloridaaccordingtolatestauthorities.jpg

Referenced

  1. Colburn, D. R., & Landers, J. (1995). The African American Heritage of Florida. University Press of Florida.
  2. “Dr. Carrie Hampton, Pioneer Negro Doctor” (1964) Tampa Bay Times.  December 18.
  3. “Dr. Carrie Hampton, Thrift Hospital, and Medical Contributions” (n.d.)  City of Ocala Recreation and Parks.  https://ocala.oncell.com/en/dr-carrie-hampton-thrift-hospital-and-medical-contributions-251390.html
  4. Gibbons, P. (2016) One man’s war on Florida’s desegregated schools. RedefineED. https://www.redefinedonline.org/2016/09/war-florida-desegregated-private-schools/
  5. ‘Negro Speak’ (1936) Tampa Tribune.  April 1.
  6. “Other Events” (1955) Tampa Bay Times. October 12th.
  7. Orange Park School. (1900) The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.), 10 Aug. 1900. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027621/1900-08-10/ed-1/seq-3/>
  8. Smiley-Height, S. & McGinnes, L. (2020) First Ladies.  Ocala Style Magazine.  https://www.ocalastyle.com/first-ladies/
  9. “State’s First Negro Woman Doctor Dies” (1964) Tampa Tribune.  December 14.

Queen of the Trumpet: Valaida Snow

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Valiada Snow was in the papers. Even when journalists didn’t have a scrap to write about her, pictures of her glowing, smiling, singing and generally being gorgeous would show up alongside unrelated articles in the entertainment section. She had sponsorships, showing up in newspaper ads for RC Cola and hair treatments. She traveled the nation and the world, acting, dancing, singing, and playing trumpet.

Snow’s fall from fame and memory has been blamed on the diversity of her talent. If she had only been a torch singer, we would’ve remembered her. If she had only been a dancer, she would’ve made history. If she had only been a trumpet player, modern audiences would know her as well as Louis Armstrong. But Valaida Snow was never only one thing or another. Even within a specialty, her talent was diverse. In one oft reported performance, Snow concluded a number on the trumpet with a dance number where, for each chorus, she danced in a different pair of shoes. “The dances and shoes to match were: soft-shoe, adagio shoes, tap shoes…, Dutch clogs, Chinese straw sandals, Turkish slippers, and the last pair, Russian boots” (Reitz, 1982). Her singing was comparably varied. In addition to torch songs and blues, she was one of the few black entertainers to sing Broadway tunes as well (Mosley, 2020).

The trumpet was Snow’s primary instrument, but she also played cello, bass, violin, guitar, banjo, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, and saxophone (Charles, 1995). She conducted bands, produced shows, designed costumes, spoke seven languages (Cowans, 1943) and was reportedly a fine painter (“Valaida Snow Engagement at Orpheum,” 1946). She could write down music as it was being played (Reitz, 1982). She was also the master fabricator of her own story.

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When work and play meet: Black History Month

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Group of women members of the Tampa Urban League. USF Libraries Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.usf.edu/?b29.14207 Blanche Armwood is top row, first on left

I’ve been enjoying digging through history to find people and stories that deserve a little more study than they tend to get. This month, my personal goal to seek out these amazing people coincided with a professional goal of promoting and providing context to my library’s digital collections. For this ‘Every Month is History Month’ post, and in honor of Black History Month, I am going to refer you away from the Bean to check out my post on Digital Dialogs: Celebrating Black History Month with a Portrait of Blanche Armwood.

Blanche Armwood [was] a prominent figure on the national stage, known for her dedication to education and social reform…[She] has been compared to Booker T. Washington, both by her contemporaries and by historians. Her seeming to accept the white power structure while at the same time working toward interracial cooperation on local issues would later gain her criticism for accommodating whites (Hooper, 2011). Yet, other contemporaries described her as a ‘rebel’ who demanded equal rights and did not ask for favors (Jones, 1999). It could be said that Armwood used the methods she deemed necessary to obtain her goals in any given situation.

Schmidt. (2021) Celebrating Black History Month with a Portrait of Blanche Armwood. Digital Dialogs. USF Libraries.

Liliuokalani, Queen of Hawaii

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The story of Liliuokalani’s reign as the first queen and last monarch of Hawaii is often told from an Anglo-Protestant, U.S. allied, perspective.  This is the same perspective as the foreign Hawaiian residents who conspired to take her crown away.  Sympathetic articles in U.S. newspapers during the shift of power in Hawaii and internet history articles of today gloss over the events that culminated in her removal and imprisonment, making it seem, in my opinion, as though Liliuokalani could be partially responsible in any way for the disintegration of the Hawaiian monarchy.  Thankfully, Liliuokalani herself gave us a history from her own perspective that fills in gaps we wouldn’t have known were there.  

Before we can truly make sense of the sequence of events that deposed Liliuokalani and helped make Hawaii part of the United States of America, we have to start before her reign with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, established in the U.S. in 1810, that was peopled with a group of young protestant descendants of the founding Puritan families.  From this board the first Congregationalist mission to the Hawaiian Islands arrived in 1820, and began establishing an expatriate community, as was their modus operandi.  There already existed in Hawaii an established European presence at this time which bolstered the protestant mission to preach, convert, and intrinsically change societal and cultural norms (Ward, 2019).  This was the world in which Liliuokalani grew up.  She attended a ‘Royal School,’ dedicated to educating children from royal families, high ranking chiefs, and those with claims to the throne, which was run by missionaries sent to the islands by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Liliuokalani, 1898).   

Long before she would know for sure that she was in line for the throne, the islands had been temporarily taken by the British in a skirmish with the Americans, after which power was ‘restored’ to the Kamehameha Dynasty (Ward, 2019).  The earliest constitution in Hawaii was delivered by the King in 1840 and revised in 1852 after the above interruption to royal power.  Liliuokalani surmises that both constitution drafts were likely heavily influenced by the missionaries on the island, but both of these were delivered of the King’s own volition (Liliuokalani, 1898).  The foreign residents of the islands were also becoming deeply embedded in the King’s cabinet, government, and were acting as advisers in several capacities.  So it was remarkable, at least to Liliuokalani, that King Kamehameha V refused to take the oath to maintain the current constitution upon his ascendancy, abrogated the constitution of 1852 and, after an unsuccessful constitutional convention, wrote his own.  This example of royal leadership seemed to have a deep impact on Liliuokalani, who wrote “it is presumable, therefore, that he understood the needs of his people better than those of foreign birth and alien affinities”  (Liliuokalani, 1898).  The new constitution served the Hawaiian people for twenty three years during a period of increasing prosperity where all the island residents seemed to live in harmony.  

Liliuokalani in her book, Hawaii’s History by Hawaii’s Queen (1898), draws attention to how traditional Hawaiian culture was different to the culture of the foreign residents, and to the transforming culture of the islands during her life.  She describes a system where the King and his people interacted through an exchange not unlike that of an extended family.  The King, as the head of the family, had a house available to him in all parts of his domain and food for his table supplied by the people.  The people, in return had their needs taken care of by the King through his retinue of overseers.  There were no payments to the people for services to the King and no taxes on the people to support the state.  All lands and property ruled by the King belonged to the King and were apportioned to those that needed it for the duration of need.  This clashed with the ideals and values of the second generation white residents on the island, and has been pinpointed as an underlying reason that the American missionaries and plantation owners sought more governmental control (Ward, 2019).  While Liliuokalani was abroad for Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebration, she and her party received word of a revolutionary movement against the King that would thereafter be known as the Bayonet Constitution.  As Liliuokalani described it:  

“For many years our sovereigns had welcomed the advice of, and given full representations in their government and councils to, American residents who had cast in their lot with our people, and established industries on the Islands. As they became wealthy, and acquired titles to lands through the simplicity of our people and their ignorance of values and of the new land laws, their greed and their love of power proportionately increased; and schemes for aggrandizing themselves still further, or for avoiding the obligations which they had incurred to us, began to occupy their minds.” [and] “without any provocation on the part of the king, having matured their plans in secret, the men of foreign birth rose one day en masse, called a public meeting, and forced the king, without any appeal to the suffrages of the people, to sign a constitution of their own preparation, a document which deprived the sovereign of all power, made him a mere tool in their hands, and practically took away the franchise from the Hawaiian race. This constitution was never in any way ratified, either by the people, or by their representatives.”

(Liliuokalani, 1898)

The Bayonet Constitution removed power from the monarchy and mandated that only people of certain ethnicities, literacy, and land ownership could vote, disenfranchising many Asian residents and Hawaiian citizens, while at the same time ensuring that only wealthy non-citizen residents (just 3% of the population) could stand for election to office (Hugo, 2017; Borch, 2014).  When Liliuokalani inherited the throne, she received petitions from all over the islands to draft a new constitution, and, taking the example of King Kamehameha V, she announced that she intended a revision (Liliuokalani, 1898).  A coterie of men lead by Sanford Dole, cousin to James Dole who would later start the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, formed a league to restore and maintain the ill-gotten constitutional government and, with the help of the American military, overthrew the monarchy (“Ex-Queen,” 1917; Hugo, 2017).  Sanford Dole became president of this new Republic of Hawaii.  

Not long after the provisional government was established, Hawaiians loyal to the Queen attempted a counter coup that inspired Dole to establish military law.  All ‘royalists’ were rounded up and tried by a tribunal in ‘batches’ to save time.  After thirty five days, 191 people had been tried, most found guilty, and some sentenced to hang (Borch, 2014).  Liliuokalani acquiesced to pressure that she sign a formal abdication in order to bring an end to the trials, but the trials did not stop, and she was brought before the tribunal under charges of ‘misprision of treason.’  She was found guilty and imprisoned, though her sentence and those of other ‘royalists’ were commuted the next day by President Dole to lesser punishments.  No hangings were ever carried out.  Liliuokalani was confined to a small room in her former palace for eight months after which she was released to her private residence on house arrest for an additional year (Borch, 2014).  Hawaii was annexed to the United States later, under President McKinley, the same year the U.S. gained control of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

In her book, Liliuokalani writes of her childhood and of Hawaiian culture and the succession of Kings, though most of the material seems aimed at providing a complete backstory to her reign and her perspective to the foreign greed and love of power that unmade her homeland. After she was allowed to travel freely, Liliuokalani, with Princess Ka’iulani, turned their efforts to obtaining voting rights for the Hawaiian people (Hulstrand, 2009).  After Ka’iulani’s death, Liliuokalani withdrew from public life and lived quietly until her death at the age of 79 (“Liliuokalani,” 2009).  In addition to her own history of her life, she wrote several songs, one of which remains well known to this day:  “Aloha Oe,” translated as “Farewell to Thee” (Hugo, 2017).

REFERENCES

When Tisquantum, Ousamequin and the Wampanoag saved the Pilgrims: a different look at the Thanksgiving story

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The people we know as the Pilgrims were far from the first Europeans to set foot on or colonize the land later incorporated into the United States. Explorers, fishermen, fur traders, missionaries, and treasure seekers had all been here. European and Native American interactions prior to and contemporary with that of the Pilgrims ranged between aggressive and friendly. However generously the native people sometimes viewed European invaders, Europeans arrived to exploit natural resources, claim land that belonged to native peoples, and bring disease against which the native population had no immunity.

  • By uncredited – Baharris.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38941602
  • By The German Kali Works, New York – Bricker, Garland Armor. The Teaching of Agriculture in the High School. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Page 112., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6767475
  • By Sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944). – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4143607

At times, Europeans came to enslave. Tisquantum, often called Squanto, was kidnapped by an English explorer who took him to Spain to be sold into slavery. He was ‘bought’ by Spanish monks whose work included educating and evangelizing those they perceived as lesser. When Tisquantum finally escaped and returned to his home lands, by way of England, he found that his whole tribe had been killed by an epidemic infection likely brought to the land by the rats of European ships. Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxets.

Tisquantum was living among the Pokanoket tribe, part of a confederation of tribes called the Wampanoag, when the Pilgrims first emerged from wintering on the Mayflower. Samoset, an Abenaki Sagamore was also staying with the Pokanoket tribe at the time. Samoset had learned the English language from fishermen who frequented the waters of Maine, near the lands of the Abenaki people. He approached the Pilgrims to initiate trade relations, and would later arrange the meetings of the Pilgrim colonists with Tisquantum and Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit.

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Malvina Latour

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Image of Lake Ponchartrain. "Madisonville" by peter.clark is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Voudoo Queen

The mention of “Voudoo Queen” will immediately bring to mind the formidable character of Marie Laveau, if it brings to mind anyone. Yet, Marie Laveau was not the only Voudoo Queen to preside over Voudoo practitioners in New Orleans. In 1869, news stories syndicated all over the country told about the naming of a new Voudoo Queen, a successor to Laveau. This woman was Malvina Latour.

Before going on much further, I feel compelled to say that the newspaper pieces that reported often on Voudoo culture between the 1860s and the 1910s were sensational and exaggerated. The aim of these news items appeared, to me, to be twofold: arouse excitement and curiosity in the public while at the same time demean black Americans by casting them as savages and animals. Some journalists were more respectful than others, but all the stories seem to share the perspective that Voudoo, and those that practice it, are some kind of mysterious other; something to be gawped at instead of understood. Knowing this, it is hard enough picking through the historical documentation to find truth. Historians of New Orleans have commented on how difficult it is to separate the truth from legend when studying the lives of people like Marie Laveau. With sensationalist news articles standing in as primary sources, we may simply have to accept that no story will be wholly substantiated.

Note: the spelling Voudoo was chosen for this post based on the spelling of the historical articles referenced for information.

Life of Malvina Latour

The first newspaper stories I could find that mention Malvina Latour show up around 1869 when she was said to succeed Marie Laveau as Queen of the Voudoos in New Orleans. An 1884 article by a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat describes Malvina Latour as a handsome woman of mixed race around 48 years of age. This would mean Malvina Latour was born about 1836 and succeeded Marie Laveau when she was in her early 30s. Though the newspaper articles do not usually mention Marie Laveau’s daughter, Marie Laveau II, historians have pointed out that Laveau II was around and held quite a bit of power herself at this time, though she did not succeed her mother as Queen.

In 1886 Malvina Latour was again named as Laveau’s successor by another reporter, George Washington Cable, who had visited with Laveau before her death in 1881. Cable gave the conflicting information that the title of Voudoo Queen was held until death, and that only in 1881 did Malvina Latour take on the responsibilities. Other historians and legend makers have postulated that Malvina Latour herself was one of Marie Laveau’s daughters. Latour was sometimes referred to as Laveau or Laveau II. Confusing the three women fed Marie Laveau’s legend by lengthening her time in power to an unbelievable spans.

Yet, Malvina Latour peeks through history. Often described, young and old, as sporting a blue calico dress with white polka-dots, Latour would be Queen of the Voudoos, leading St. John’s Eve celebrations on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain, for around two decades. She was regarded as powerful as Laveau, and had performed feats that equaled those of her predecessor, though reportedly she did not add anything new to the practice while Voudoo Queen. According to many, Latour’s primary goal was to remove Catholicism and Catholic practices from Voudoo. She was unsuccessful at this and also at holding the Voudoo community together in the face of many different bids for power. Under Latour, Voudoo in New Orleans split into several factions, never to be reunited. Latour’s eventual abdication and later life are a mystery.

The St. John’s Eve celebrations of 1884 were located between Milneburg and the old Spanish Fort on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain. N Milneburg in front of Bird Cage Cottage. unknown. 1923

Truth, Legend, & Mystery

Carolyn Morrow Long, author of A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau, postulates that the New Orleans Times-Democrat reporter in 1884 may have invented Malvina Latour. Long bases her hypothesis on not being able to find Latour in any church, city or census records, and indicates that the invention of Latour was “indicative of how such sensational accounts came to be regarded as historical and factual.” Yet, the 1886 piece by George Washington Cable that also reported Latour as the successor to Laveau, was apparently unconnected with the previous journalist, revolving around an interview and visit with the aging Laveau. This, to me, serves more as corroboration of Latour’s existence since Cable’s article did not rehash the same stories and visuals of previous articles the way that most newspaper articles of the time seemed to do. I also have spent several hours searching for links in my family tree during the middle and late 1800s that were not recorded by census, church, or city records, so it does not seem strange to me that Latour is not mentioned in these documents.

Though I cannot immediately accept that Latour was a fiction, Long was making an excellent point that the legend of the Voudoo Queen has grown beyond the truth. This becomes evident when faced with obviously conflicting information like the interview with Dr. J. B. Bass of New York, in the Chicago Daily Tribune of 1881. Dr. Bass was a known Voudoo practitioner and had met Laveau when he was a teenager. He asserted that there was no such office as Queen within the order; that Laveau was a mother in the order and had respect, but held no official office. Could this be chalked up to the unique and independent way New Orleans Voudoo has evolved over time, where in the city Laveau and Latour were Queens, but in the worldwide Voudoo community, they held no such office? A later article recounting St. John’s Eve celebrations in 1890 includes recounted testimony from Marie Laveau’s daughter, perhaps Laveau II, refuting that Laveau was ever connected with Voudoo at all. Who then did Latour succeed?

As an illustration of how legend can take over our popular history Malvina Latour has since been linked to the ghost story of a violet eyed zombie girl whose prison was broken by hurricane Katrina and now roams about New Orleans. Though the best guesses at Latour’s possible birth and death dates are so far away from overlapping with her supposed role in the story, the story serves as an interesting example of how our own sensationalism can replace our history.

References

The Legend of Black Maria

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Black Maria (pronounced like Mariah or muh-rye-uh) is a bit of old slang for a police van that might be familiar to those who indulge in British period mysteries, though it has been out of use for many years.  Many people over hundreds of years have pondered the origination of the slang and many have landed upon the same old story of Maria Lee.

artist illustration of Maria Lee hauling in three sailors

Maria Lee

Maria Lee was an African American proprietress of a boardinghouse for sailors in colonial Boston, though at least one account places her in the early 1800s. She was described as being very large, strong, and energetic. She became indispensable to the Boston police force of the time for her help handling especially rowdy individuals. An oft repeated anecdote describes Maria Lee single-handedly hauling three boisterous sailors into the police station when they were causing a disturbance at her boardinghouse. For the police at the time, calling for Black Maria meant bringing in back up to take a law-breaker to jail. When police vans came about, originally large boxy horse drawn wagons, they were painted black and christened with the name Black Maria in honor of the lady who first was called to carry in the prisoners.

This story has been repeated in several periodical and newspaper publications as a bit of interesting trivia on the origination of the slang.  One 1937 article added the embellishment that Maria Lee was knifed in the back by a Chinese sailor during a fight and would subsequently be carried to the morgue in the van that bore her name (The Midland Journal).  
Before moving into my own investigations on this particular story of Black Maria, I wanted to give some consideration for the primary dissenting opinion I found, given by Reverend H. Harbaugh in 1859.  Harbaugh rejected the idea that the police Black Maria was named after an African American woman.  Instead he postulated that the name Maria was adopted due to the Hebrew meaning for Mary/Maria, bitterness, and how criminals, conveyed in such a manner, would be set upon by a black cloud of bitterness (Historically Speaking).  I find this theory to be much more far fetched than the idea that the van would have been named after a person.  I am no scholar of slang, but I have encountered little to no slang based on something as scholarly as the Hebrew meaning behind naming conventions.  Slang often erupts from the average Joe, for communicating with the average Joe.  I could be wrong, but I don’t imagine the average Joe police officer of either colonial or 1800s Boston was communicating with his fellows using Hebrew meanings behind common names.

Returning to the story of the colonial boarding house proprietress, I could not find any mention of her any further back than 1849 which talked of same legend that was later repeated (Notes and Queries).  Instead, I looked for plausibility that 1. a free African American woman was running a business in colonial Boston, 2. the police force and subsequent vans would’ve occurred at similar time, and 3. there was any possibility of a Chinese sailor during the same time.

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Blanche Calloway, the Queen of Syncopation

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When I tried out for band at the end of my fourth grade year, I wanted to play the trumpet or the flute, but the highschool band counselor they had brought in to help us choose our instruments said my mouth was all wrong for those. They recommended the clarinet, and, after a short period of normal child disappointment, I embraced my instrument. Through learning the clarinet I found Swing, Big Band, and the ‘Hot’ Jazz of the early 1900s. I wanted to play like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. The lingering feelings of my youth still lead me down roads of early jazz history. Recently, I had the opportunity to explore my library’s African American Sheet Music collection while creating an exhibit called Swing Along! But, other than the torch singers whose music I collected, I didn’t see many women. I am looking for them now, and want to …

Celebrate Blanche Calloway

  • The Detroit tribune. (Detroit, Mich.), 29 Feb. 1936. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92063852/1936-02-29/ed-1/seq-6/>
  • Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 02 June 1936. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1936-06-02/ed-1/seq-38/>
  • Blanche Calloway, sister of band leader Cab Calloway, demonstrates how to apply cosmetics made especially for black people in Miami, Florida on July 30, 1969. Her Miami business bas boomed from a small firm to a growing national market in less than a year. The model is Sylvia Dobson. (AP Photo/JPK)
  • Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.), 22 Nov. 1930. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1930-11-22/ed-1/seq-16/>
  • By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34208796

Blanche Calloway was a flamboyant performer, singer, dancer, business woman, and the first woman to lead an all male orchestra. She is relentlessly written about as residing in the shadow of her younger brother Cab Calloway. However, scholars and researchers have pointed out that, at one point, Blanche Calloway had attained more fame and renown, helping her brother in his show business breakthrough and inspiring his famous style (Wikipedia; Handy, 1998)

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