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PORTSIDE CULTURE

UPWARDLY MINDED: THE RECONSTRUCTION RISE OF A BLACK ELITE  
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Lawrence Otis Graham
January 31, 2017
The New York Times
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_ This book is the story of Daniel Murray, the assistant librarian of
the Library of Congress from 1881-1922, and of the milieu and fate of
the Reconstruction-era African American government workers and
officials in Washington, DC. _

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_The Original Black Elite Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten
Era _

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

Amistad

ISBN: 9780062346100

 

As I learned years ago as an African-American student at Harvard Law
School, it is a disturbing exercise to review the anti-black
legislation that this nation drafted and enforced during the 19th and
early 20th centuries. Our elected leaders not only exercised their
power to liberate and protect certain groups, they also used it to
punish those same groups when the larger citizenry began to fear or
resent their mere presence. It was evident when the country took the
land and the lives of a once-thriving Native American population, and
again when the government endorsed the internment of innocent
Japanese-American families during World War II; it can be seen again
today, as a new president uses rhetoric that demonizes Muslim American
citizens. In her brilliantly researched “The Original Black Elite:
Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era,” Elizabeth Dowling
Taylor recounts the rise of African-Americans during the time of
Reconstruction and their fall during the subsequent decades, when
legislation was advanced in order to again segregate, impoverish and
humiliate a population that many whites believed had gained too much.

By tracing the ascent of Daniel Murray, the wealthy black civic
leader, businessman and assistant librarian at the Library of
Congress, Taylor reveals how black Americans after the Civil War
benefited from opportunities afforded by Reconstruction policies. Out
of this environment of tolerance grew a strong and dignified black
community in Washington, where the black elite could advance in
prominent jobs, build successful businesses, pursue education for
themselves and their children, and purchase imposing homes.

Although Daniel Murray was born free in 1851 — his father was a
black lumberyard worker who had been manumitted in 1810, and his
mother was a free woman of color — in Taylor’s prologue we are
first introduced to a 48-year-old Murray. By 1899, he was already a
prominent government appointee, who had worked at the Library of
Congress for more than 25 years and then served as one of its
second-highest-ranking officials, assistant librarian. Murray had a
seat on Washington’s Board of Trade, a group of otherwise white
businessmen that advised the government on taxation in the nation’s
capital. His wife, Anna Evans, was a confident black socialite who
taught at local schools, attended Oberlin College and happened to be
related to the highly regarded black United States senator Hiram
Revels of Mississippi. Murray had sons who would later attend Harvard
and Cornell. He had the ear of white co-workers and business leaders,
and he often met with white congressmen and their staffers who needed
his guidance when researching legislative history in the library’s
archives.

On the morning of Oct. 2, 1899, Murray — dressed in a silk top hat
and a Prince Albert coat — had just descended the steps of his
three-story red-brick home in northwest D.C. and was on his way to
board a plushly outfitted train car. The 40-some passengers — all
white, except for Murray — made up a special welcoming committee
appointed by President William McKinley, on the occasion of honoring
Admiral George Dewey for his victory in Manila Bay. Despite an initial
picture that suggests Murray embraced clichés of racial tranquillity,
Taylor makes clear throughout her book that Murray and most of his
black elite friends “did not crave the company of white people.”
Taylor, an independent scholar and the author of “A Slave in the
White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons,” understands the
mind-set of the black elite, and she quickly points out that despite
his own rise to the top, “Daniel Murray was ‘a race man to the
core’ ”:

“If he took any pride in being the first black man to join this
organization or the only one to be invited to that social occasion,
his greater goal, his long-range vision, was to be in the vanguard of
merit-based recognition for every American of color. The rise of those
in Murray’s black elite circle was realized rather than potential.
Its members had attained high levels of education, achievement,
culture. . . . They were living proof that African-Americans did
not lack the ability to become useful contributors to mainstream
society.”

As Taylor traces Murray’s pre-Civil War childhood in Baltimore and
his subsequent move to Washington, it becomes clear that his success
— getting hired and promoted for his government job, purchasing real
estate and building a reputation in the business community — was due
to timing, connections and his ability to network with both whites and
blacks. His older half brother, Samuel Proctor, was not only a
successful Washington caterer whose client list included President
Abraham Lincoln, but also the proprietor of one of the two restaurants
in the Capitol. Because the restaurant, known as “the Senate
Saloon,” was located in the Senate wing, Murray was afforded the
chance to make casual acquaintance with senators and members of their
staffs once he began working there in 1869, when he was 18. It was
opportunities like this — in a more liberal, Republican-led
government — that aided Murray’s rise. And unlike many other
cities with large African-American populations, Baltimore and
Washington provided the ideal environment for upwardly mobile blacks.
At the time of Murray’s birth, 90 percent of the blacks living in
Baltimore were free, giving it the largest free black population in
the country. Washington, for its part, was a hub for the black elite
because of the large number of government jobs and the establishment
of Howard University, a magnet for black intellectuals and civic
leaders.

Taylor knows how to weave an emotional story of how race and class
have long played a role in determining who succeeds and who fails. We
get to meet many of Murray’s friends and acquaintances, other
members of the black elite. Howard’s law school dean Richard T.
Greener was a successful attorney after attending Phillips Academy and
then Harvard University; he became Harvard’s first black graduate in
1870. James Wormley owned the Wormley Hotel, a luxury establishment
that opened in 1871 and catered to affluent white visitors. (In a
bitter irony, it was also the reported site of the Hayes-Tilden
Compromise of 1877, which marked the end of Reconstruction.) The
newspaper publisher Pinckney Pinchback served as lieutenant governor
and acting governor of Louisiana, and owned a mansion near the Chinese
Embassy. Calvin Brent was Washington’s first African-American
architect. The civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell graduated
from Oberlin College in 1884; her father was recognized as the first
black millionaire in the South, and her husband was the first black
municipal court judge in Washington. We also meet the United States
senator Blanche Bruce of Mississippi, who later served appointments
under four presidents.

But the reader shouldn’t expect a happy ending in “The Original
Black Elite.” The rug of opportunity and dignity was abruptly pulled
out from under the nation’s African-American population. Murray and
his circle watched nervously as white politicians and their own
neighbors betrayed them. Angry white Southerners and the Ku Klux Klan
claimed that blacks had come too far; Jim Crow laws denied
African-Americans access to specific jobs, public facilities,
restaurants, transportation; and cynical politicians galvanized white
support by publicly demonizing African-Americans. After taking office
in March 1913, Woodrow Wilson oversaw the segregation of federal
offices, demoting and firing black employees; the few who were allowed
to stay were suddenly required to use “colored only” bathrooms and
eating areas.

Murray’s life spanned the beginning and the end of an era. While he
enjoyed many years of integrated experiences in Washington, just 12
years after Wilson’s inauguration and 74 years after he was born,
Taylor writes, “Daniel Murray died in a segregated hospital and was
buried in a segregated graveyard.”

 

Lawrence Otis Graham is an attorney and the author of “Our Kind of
People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class” and “The Senator and
the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty.”

* African American government officials
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* Reconstruction
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* Racism
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