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Philip Spiess
Herewith I submit, per Mr. Lounds' request of February 15, CINCINNATI’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY: Part VI: “Wendell Phillips Dabney and Cincinnati Machine Politics”:
Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865-1952) was a fearless African-American leader, editor, politician, and historian of his people in Cincinnati at the end of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th century. He is known mainly today as the editor of The Union, Cincinnati’s oldest and longest-running Negro newspaper (a weekly, it ran for 46 years from 1907 to 1952), and as the author/compiler of Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens: Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Cincinnati: The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926; 440 pp.), still considered by most local historians as the key source and starting point for the study of the African-American history of Cincinnati. But he was also intriguingly involved in the Republican “machine” politics of the “George B. Cox era,” prior to the city’s political reform movement in the 1920s, as we shall see.
W. P. Dabney was born in Richmond, Virginia, to former slaves John Marshall Dabney and Elizabeth Foster Dabney (they must have been recently slaves, for this was 1865!). The father, John, opened his own catering business after the Civil War and did well enough to provide his family with a higher standard of living than did most former slaves. Indeed, in 2015, John Dabney was posthumously honored at Richmond, Virginia’s Quirk Hotel as a famed caterer and bartender -- he is known, in select quarters, as the world’s greatest mint julep maker (and this took some doing to be so considered in the Old South! One doesn’t know which of the varied and hotly-debated Julep recipes he used, but, being a Virginian, he undoubtedly used Bourbon whiskey). John Dabney also instilled in his son a respect for religion as a means of overcoming racial injustice, and he further inculcated the political view that the Republican Party helped blacks, whereas the Democratic Party did not (which was true enough immediately following the Civil War).
In his youth, young Wendell Phillips Dabney sold newspapers (note the future connection to journalism) and played guitar with his older brother. He also sometimes danced alongside future famed tap-dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (they grew up together in Richmond). He also served as a waiter at a local restaurant in the summer (shades of the important black poet Langston Hughes in Washington, D. C., for whom the Washington restaurant “Busboys and Poets” is named), but he became demoralized because of the way he was treated by the white customers. In his senior year at high school, he protested the separation of whites and blacks for graduation; his protest was successful, and the first ever combined white/black graduation was held at Richmond High School in 1883.
Oberlin College in Ohio has been mentioned numerous times in these installments as the “go-to” college for black students seeking higher education. Thus Dabney went there, spending 1883 in the preparatory department of the college; while there, he used his musical talents to be first violinist at the Oberlin Opera House. He was also a member of the Cademian Literary Society. By 1884, he began teaching at a Louisa County, Virginia (just north of Richmond), elementary school; in addition to his regular courses, although he had never studied a note, and knew nothing about the basic points of music composition and arrangement, he also taught guitar. (The famed Czechoslovakian classical composer Antonin Dvorak once said of Dabney, “You break all the rules, yet your technique, I must admit, is superb, and your style matchless.”)
In 1890, Dabney left Richmond and opened a music school in Boston for both amateur and professional musicians (he later ran a music school in Cincinnati, having a music studio for a while in the Rudolph Wurlitzer Music Company). In 1893, he worked with Frederick Douglass on an exhibition for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the largest World’s Fair ever held in the United States. And then, in 1894, Dabney moved to Cincinnati to oversee a property, the Dumas House hotel, that his mother had inherited from her aunt, Serena Webb.
McAllister Street and the Dumas House hotel: In the 19th century, the most important African-American area of Cincinnati was the district around McAllister Street. This street was adjacent to the northern boundary of old Fort Washington (located at the eastern and upper end of the Public Landing, a block or so southwest of what is now Lytle Park); it ran north and south from Fourth Street to Fifth Street one-half block east of Broadway (originally called “Eastern Row”). In the earliest days of the city, this part of town was a lovely area known as “Sargent’s Square,” after the gardens and “palatial” frame residence of Colonel Sargent, secretary of the “Old Northwest Territory.” After the Colonel’s house was torn down, a short road was cut through the “Square”; it became McAllister Street. Some small frame houses grew up on the street, and eventually, when brick houses became fashionable on Broadway, a few brick houses were built on McAllister Street as well. Gradually, most of the buildings and lots on the street came to be owned by African-Americans, as were a good number of residences along east Fifth Street, upper Broadway and Sycamore Street, and on Sixth and Seventh Streets.
The highest three brick buildings on McAllister Street, built at some time in the 1840s, gradually consolidated into a joined group of lodging houses, four and a half storeys in height; these eventually became the Dumas House, an African-American-oriented hotel, which, by the end of its celebrated career, was considered the oldest black hotel in the United States (it is also generally reputed to have been one of the sites involved in the “Underground Railroad” [see Installment II]). For many years the hotel was notable in two regards: first, the black folk who stayed there or lived in the area were fairly well-off African-Americans, as they were commercially involved in or connected with the steamboat and other city trades [see “John Isom Gaines” in Installment V], or they were servants in the wealthiest houses of Cincinnati (there were a good number of distinguished black butlers in those houses at this time), or (as successful gamblers) they were “sporting-men.” Second, in the days before the Civil War, wealthy white Southerners often brought their black or mulatto mistresses with them when they came to do business in the “Queen City,” putting them up at the “colored hotel,” while they themselves would stay at a white hotel (possibly the Spencer House on Third Street or probably the Burnet House -- see Post #4519).
The Cincinnati Race Riot of 1841 [see Installment I], though it is said to have begun (or the mob assembled) at the 5th Street Market (5th and Vine Streets), actually centered on McAllister Street and the Dumas House and extended over to Sixth Street and Broadway. Other racial disturbances over the years, large and small, also centered on this area, as it was the fashionable district of the “Black 400.” For the Dumas House had porches and balconies on the second and third floors, as well as large dining rooms and ballrooms, so every black snob or “swell” who hoped to rank in black society made it a point to show his face at the Dumas House at least once a day. A two-storey addition in the rear of the Dumas House was where gentlemen of “sporting proclivities” [see above] could indulge in the biggest poker and faro games in the West. The report is that, in those days, “Negroes made money,” and it is said that these African-American gents “gambled like gentlemen and the sky was their limit.” The reporter of all of this is Wendell Phillips Dabney, whose great uncle, “Sandy” Shumate, a bachelor, handsome, debonair, and a bon vivant, was the owner of the Dumas House, so he should have known. When “Sandy” Shumate died in 1869, his sister, Mrs. Serena Webb, inherited the property.
Later, as the white community began to build its residences around Western Row (later Central Avenue; see, for example, Dayton Street), the black community followed suit. As a result, the Dumas House began its long decline; its main revenue now derived from its saloon, under proprietors Andy Slaughter, Dan Carter, and others. The East End of the city declined in its property values, and the Dumas House hotel returned to its earlier status as a lodging house. Mrs. Webb, the owner, died in 1894, the property coming, through her will, to Wendell Phillips Dabney’s mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Dabney. Thus Wendell Phillips Dabney was put in charge of the property, and it became “the Dabney Building” (on the death of his mother, Dabney inherited the property).
The Dabney Buildings: Where once it had become (again) a lodging house, the Dabney Building next became a tenement, the lower floor remaining a saloon, but it then became (successively) a club room, headquarters of The Bohemian Club, the Douglass League [see below], a dancing school, a dancing hall, the Pilgrim Baptist Church, a hand laundry, and a clothes pressing establishment, as well as, over the years, a center for major political meetings. The yard in the rear was converted into a gymnasium, the first public colored establishment of its kind in the city. When the gym closed, the main hall came to be used for general and political purposes (the gym became a garage). Many meetings were held in the hall by the Republican Union [see below], with great feasting and drinking occurring. The top floor of the Dabney Building was made into a hall for the True Reformers [see Installment VIII]. This hall finally became flats (apartments). From about 1906 to 1926 The Union newspaper (at first funded by the Republican Party, the views of which, perforce, were promoted in the paper; but see both above and below) occupied part of the second floor; Mr. Dabney’s family dwelt in the other part. In due course, Dabney extended his property from the alley near Fourth Street on McAllister Street to Fifth Street, and some ways around the corner onto Fifth Street. Circa 1928, the property was acquired by the Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, which built its headquarters on the property; on the east side of McAllister Street, the Sacred Heart Home (a Catholic charity) was erected, and across the street from it was erected (1921) the Fenwick Club’s Annex, a home for unmarried Catholic men (much like the YMCA). (Although the Fenwick Club Annex was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it, like a number of other Cincinnati sites on the National Register, was torn down by Proctor & Gamble in 1979 [see earlier installments].)
Something About Machine Politics: Prior to the Civil War, Cincinnati’s politics had tended to be predominantly Whig, with its commercial interests, adhering to the Midwest politics of big-wig Whigs like Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison. But following Harrison’s abrupt death a month after taking office as President (1841), his successor, John Tyler, a Southerner, followed the distinctly more Democratic inclinations favoring pro-slavery and states’ rights, and Cincinnati’s politics (as I’ve said before), following Southern commercial interests, began to become distinctly Democratic in flavor. This tendency was further influenced by the Irish potato "famine" of the 1840s and the great influx of immigrants seeking political freedom after the European revolutions of 1848-1849, when many Irish, Italians, and Germans emigrated to Cincinnati, the majority of them Roman Catholic. The Whig Party, nationalistically focused, was dying, and the Democratic Party, increasingly oriented toward the working-class foreigners, was growing apace – thus Cincinnati became a city controlled by the Democratic Party.
However, following the Civil War, after which the new party of Lincoln came increasingly into power, and the Republicans produced, in succession, the Ohio Presidents of Grant, Hayes, and Garfield (and a little later Benjamin Harrison), Ohio itself turned Republican. Nevertheless, Cincinnati remained in the Democratic fold: what was called the “George Pendleton-John R. McLean Political Machine” dominated its politics in the 1870s-early 1880s. George Pendleton had turned from the Whig Party of his father to the Democratic Party in the 1850s as a supporter of states’ rights; he is known today as the “father” of the U. S. Civil Service and its reform (1883; his house on the National Register of Historic Places still stands on the hill at the eastern end of Liberty Street). John R. McLean’s father, Washington McLean, owned the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper, which was a major voice for the Democratic Party. John joined the staff as a reporter, and in 1881 he became the sole proprietor of the Enquirer. Later John moved to Washington, D. C., and in 1905 acquired the Washington Post newspaper as well (the suburb of McLean, Virginia, is named after him, and he was the father-in-law of Evelyn Walsh McLean, the last private owner of the Hope Diamond, now in the Smithsonian Institution; the D. C. home of the McLeans is now the Indonesian Embassy).
But in 1884 something happened which turned politics on its head in Cincinnati. This was the occurrence of the “Cincinnati Courthouse Riots,” one of the largest urban civil riots in U. S. history. (These riots were not mentioned in Installment I, because they were not race riots.) The corrupt Democratic “machine” (not necessarily Pendleton himself) rigged elections and the appointment of judges to its personal financial benefit, and, while crime was rising significantly in the “Queen City,” judges and juries were being lenient and murderers were being let off. The storm broke in March of 1884, when William Berner, a German murderer of his employer, was sentenced to a term in jail, rather than hanging. I won’t go into the details here, but there were three days of violent rioting in downtown Cincinnati, the Hamilton County Courthouse (to my mind, the most beautiful architecturally of the county’s seven courthouses) and Jail were charged and gutted by fire, and some fifty citizens were killed and about 150 wounded before the National Guard brought in a Gatling gun (one of its first uses against civilians) and dispersed the mob.
No historian (that I’m aware of) has ever written about how the Courthouse Riots altered the face of Cincinnati politics, nor have I ever taken the time to thoroughly investigate the matter, but it’s clear to me that the upshot of the riots was that the Democratic Party “machine” was drummed out of office and a new Republican “machine” came into power in Cincinnati in its place. A young man elected to the Cincinnati City Council in 1879 was George B. Cox, who owned a saloon at the corner of Longworth and John Streets (a spot known as “Dead Man’s Corner”). As a member of the Decennial Equalization Board, he was able to fix the tax rates for prominent citizens and their properties; he also served significantly on the Board of Public Affairs at the time of the Courthouse Riots. After 1886, Ohio Republican governor Joseph B. Foraker (of Cincinnati) allied with Cox and boosted him as a major Republican fund-raiser in the city. Cox became a Republican political ward boss who every time delivered the votes of his delegation as promised, and so, in due course, he became the executive chairman of the local Republican Party. Although he lost several elections for local office himself, he rose rapidly to political dominance, influencing most local elections; he did this partly because he was smart enough to franchise local working-class groups, but he also engaged the local black community in Republican politics through the Republican Union. He had two chief lieutenants, the one, “Rud” Hynicka, was Deputy County Treasurer, controlling vast funds, and the other, August (“Garry” or “Gus”) Herrmann, very popular in the “Over-the-Rhine” district, was president of the new Board of Water Works Commissioners, which also controlled large sums and contracts for upgrading Cincinnati’s water system (the one still in place); he was also president of the Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team from 1902 to 1927 and was the “father” of national baseball’s World Series. The great “muckraker” journalist, Lincoln Steffens, in his book, The Shame of the Cities (1904), called Cincinnati at this time one of “the two worst-governed cities” in the U. S. When he interviewed “Boss” Cox at his headquarters in his saloon, Steffens asked him (I’m quoting from memory here), “Do you have no civic political clubs? Do you have no reforming newspapers?” “Yes,” replied Cox, pointing laconically over his shoulder with his thumb, “but I also have the telephone.”
What, you may be asking, does this have to do with Wendell Phillips Dabney, the focus of this piece? Well, in the years I was working at the Cincinnati Historical Society, Dabney’s name kept cropping up. We knew he was a leader in the African-American community during these years, but how did he seem to have a certain influence as well in the greater Cincinnati community? Then one day we found it – a rare photograph of the “Cox Machine,” George B. himself, surrounded by his Republican cronies – and right in the center, next to “the Man” himself, was Wendell Phillips Dabney! He was Paymaster of the city of Cincinnati, not only responsible for controlling and issuing the city’s paychecks to all of its employees, but he was also in charge of bringing in the colored Republican vote at election time and collecting Party dues from faithful African-American Republicans for supporting (and financing) that vote. In other words, Dabney was Cox’s third, that is to say, “black” lieutenant! (Remember that Dabney’s father, John, had instilled in him that the Republican Party helped blacks.)
The Paymaster of Cincinnati: It can be said (and easily believed) that sentiment against colored folk intensified when they got the vote; many were determined to keep them from voting at all. Indeed, African-American citizens of Cincinnati, literally determined to vote or die, went to the polls; although no weapons were in evidence, these nascent voters often carried on their persons “guns, knives, dirks, and razors,” in places of easy access. There were not, according to W. P. Dabney, “many colored Democrats,” but factions were formed in the Republican party that courted the Negro. According to Dabney, “colored men were on many committees, were well mixed in all political deals, were called on for counsel and consultation, but . . . very few [actual] positions were given to them.”
George B. Cox [see above] was rising, due to ward work, the saloon, and all the other influences of the “lower world.” But at this time, the man who was a greater power than Cox was “Bill” Copeland [see Part VIII], a colored man who had a big saloon and a tremendous following at the polls; therefore Cox became his fast friend – and Copeland held every position possible for a colored man to hold at that time. Together they founded the Blaine Club, a Republican stronghold to which quite a number of black men belonged, although white men did not fraternize freely with black men when white women were present.
In 1894, Wendell Phillips Dabney arrived in town. As he put it, “at the end of the first year he became a citizen, the second year a politician, the third year assistant license clerk in the auditor’s office.” A good number of prominent African-American men held positions of political authority: “Bill” Copeland controlled downtown and the courthouse; Ford Stith was “King of Walnut Hills”; “Dave” Irwin was “Lord of Cumminsville"; and Professor Andrew DeHart, it is said, was well versed in every political chicanery. At that time (1896), the great colored Republican organization was the Ruffin Club. Meeting at the Dumas House [see above] over beer, a number of conspirators determined to take over the Douglass Club in the West End; by the next night, it was done, and the whole organization had become the Douglass League, Wendell Phillips Dabney president. As a result of its political efforts, more leading African-American men were put into positions within the city government and the waterworks department – and Dabney was promoted to the city treasury. When Julius Fleischmann (of the yeast company family) won as Mayor of Cincinnati, the Republicans were in full power, and the smaller black political clubs of the city and county joined into what became the Hamilton County League of Colored Clubs. But, as W. P. Dabney put it, “the Republican party freed [black] bodies from the shackles of slavery, but the colored people [of Cincinnati] have never been able to free their souls from the shackles of party.” Dabney was returned to the city treasury in 1907 and for years was "acting" as head paymaster of the city (he actually held the title of assistant paymaster), paying out millions annually, and holding the record for paying five hundred men in 65 minutes without an error; when he finally was appointed head paymaster, the highest position in the city government held at that time by an African-American, he still only received the salary of an assistant paymaster because he was colored (Cox had died of a stroke in 1916). As a result, he resigned in 1923, and in 1925 he became affiliated with the Independent Party; as Dabney wrote in 1926, “there are over 40,000 colored people [in Cincinnati] who have had for years votes enough to elect councilmen, or bring defeat or victory to either party in a fairly close election. They had the lever of power but knew not how to use it.”
Among his other achievements, Wendell Phillips Dabney was the first president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP (founded 1915). He also wrote a biography of his friend, Maggie L. Walker, the first black woman to charter a bank in the United States and serve as its president (her home in Richmond, Virginia, is now a National Historic Site). Further, he wrote a number of published songs, among them “De Noble Game of Craps” (1898), “The Fall Festival March” (for the opening of the 1st Cincinnati Fall Festival, 1900 – see my Master’s thesis, 1970, “The Cincinnati Industrial Expositions [1870-1888]: Propaganda or Progress?”), “God, Our Father (A Prayer)” (1904), “If You Must Be Caught” (1921), and “You Will Miss the Colored Soldier” (a.k.a. “My Old Sweetheart,” apparently a stirring march) (1921), as well as publishing Standard Mandolin Method (1895; with James F. Roach), and Dabney’s Complete Method of Guitar (1st ed., 1896). He was an uncle and music teacher of the ragtime pianist and composer Ford Dabney. In 1897 he married Nellie Foster Jackson of Cincinnati, a widow with two sons whom Dabney adopted. His philosophy, stated many years ago, can be summed up in these several statements: “We fight for our rights, so why not conduct ourselves as to cause the whites to see the injustice of withholding them?”; “Many of us talk so much about our civil rights that we forget about our civic duties”; and “Law for money, medicine to benefit humanity, and music for pleasure.”
[See Wendell Phillips Dabney: Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens: Historical, Sociological and Bio-graphical (Cincinnati: The Dabney Publishing Company, 1926; 440 pp.).]
Part VII: “Some Lights on African-American Music and Other Entertainments in Cincinnati” will be posted soon (this will be the second to the last of a total of 8 installments).
[to be continued]
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