Notable Deaths
*There were eight recorded lynchings of African Americans in 1936.
*Actress Rose McClendon died in New York City (July 12). Famous for her roles in Deep River, In Abraham's Bosom, and Porgy, she helped found the Negro People's Theater and the Rose McClendon Players.
*John C. Mills (b. October 19, 1910, Piqua, Ohio – d. January 23, 1936, England), a member of the Mills Brothers vocal group, died in England from pneumonia (January 23).
Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander (b. May 9, 1903, Pelham, New York – d. February 20, 1936, Long Beach, New York) was a member of the socially prominent and wealthy New York Rhinelander family. His marriage at the age of 21 to Alice Jones, a bi-racial woman who was a working-class daughter of English immigrants, made national headlines in 1924.
Their 1925 divorce trial highlighted contemporary strains related to the instability of the upper class, as well as racial anxiety about "passing" at a time when New York was a destination for numerous blacks from the South in the Great Migration and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The trial also touched on the vague legal definition of the time as to who was to be considered "white" or "colored," alternately portraying race as biologically determined and knowable or as more fluid.
Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander was born in 1903 Pelham, New York to Adelaide Brady (née Kip) and Philip Jacob Rhinelander. Called Kip, he was the youngest of five children, including four sons and one daughter. The couple's eldest child, Issac Leonard Kip Rhinelander, died in infancy. The mother Adelaide Rhinelander died on September 11, 1915 after sustaining burns when an alcohol lamp on her dressing table exploded. The third son, T.J. Oakley Rhinelander, died in France in 1918 while serving in the 107th Regiment during World War I. Kip Rhinelander had problems with stuttering and was portrayed as relatively slow in school.
The immigrant ancestor of the Rhinelander family in America was Philip Jacob Rhinelander, a German-born French Huguenot who immigrated to the United States in 1686 to escape religious persecution following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He settled in the newly formed French Huguenot community of New Rochelle in 1686, where he amassed considerable property holdings, the basis for the family's wealth
The Rhinelanders built great prominence and wealth through their involvement in real estate, as values rose with development, and the shipping industry. The Rhinelanders are considered one of the nation's earliest shipbuilders. The family also had holdings in real estate and owned the Rhinelander Real Estate Company. By the late 19th century, many members of the family were active in philanthropic causes and participated in New York high society as part of rituals that reinforced the class lines of presumed white ancestry, wealth and Protestant religion. But the upper class was unstable in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Violations of marriage conventions within the class were often socially punished.
Leonard's uncle William Rhinelander, his father's older brother, had caused a scandal in 1876 by marrying Margueretta McGuiness, an Irish Catholic immigrant who had been a servant in the family's household. For his violation of class mores by the marriage, William was estranged from and disinherited by his parents. After William shot the family lawyer in 1884 on suspicion that the man was withholding a remittance, the family attempted to have their son declared insane (which might also enable them to annul his marriage). William Rhinelander succeeded in defeating the lunacy charge and being released from jail, but the estrangement lasted and he continued to embarrass his family. He was disinherited and dropped from the family's genealogical charts.
In 1921, Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander at age 18 began a romance with Alice Beatrice Jones, a domestic whom he met in New Rochelle through her sister while out with friends. A few years older than Rhinelander, she was the daughter of working-class English immigrants: her mother was white and her father was of mixed race, considered mulatto in England. The family belonged to a white church and interacted with white neighbors; the daughters were majority white. Alice had sisters Grace and Emily. About this time Rhinelander was attending the Orchard School in Stamford, Connecticut, an inpatient clinic where he was seeking treatment to help him overcome extreme shyness and to cure his stuttering. Upper-class men were known to have liaisons with lower-class women but the threat to upper-class solidarity was in marriage.
Alice and Kip had a three-year romance, including stays at a hotel (driven there by his father's chauffeur) and travel together in New England, during which time Alice's father tried to separate them. Alice's father appealed to Rhinelander to leave his daughter alone. He felt no good would come because of their class differences.
The young couple married at the New Rochelle, New York courthouse on October 14, 1924, shortly after Rhinelander turned 21 and received an inheritance from his grandfather. The couple moved in with Alice Jones' parents in nearby Pelham Manor.
Rhinelander did not tell his family of the marriage but continued to work at the family Rhinelander Real Estate Company. Although the couple attempted to keep their marriage secret (Jones' sister Grace claimed the couple paid reporters not to announce their marriage), news of the marriage was learned and announced by the press. Because of the Rhinelanders' fortune and social standing, New Rochelle reporters were eager to learn about Jones' background and began investigating. Reporters discovered that Jones was the daughter of working class English immigrants and her father, George, was a "colored man".
The Rhinelanders got wind that reporters had discovered Jones' mixed-race birth and attempted to keep the information out of the papers, as the marriage thus violated upper-class standards for status, class and race. According to one article printed in the New York Daily Mirror, the Rhinelanders sent an "agent" to warn the editor of the New Rochelle Standard Star that if the story was printed, there would be "dire punishment". The editor ignored the threat and on November 13, 1924, the New Rochelle Standard Star printed the story with the headline, "Rhinelander's Son Marries Daughter of Colored Man."
The New York Evening Post picked up the story but was hesitant to identify Jones' father as black. They instead referred to George Jones as being "West Indian". Other papers picked up the story but were also careful to omit the racial angle, choosing instead of focus on the differences in social class (in varying papers, Jones was identified as a nanny and "the daughter of a cabdriver"). Accounts referred to the jobs of Jones (nurse or laundress) and her family (father a stagecoach driver and uncle a butler), which at the time were understood to be positions held by blacks, as so many had come to New York in the Great Migration and replaced the Irish in these positions. The larger city papers were also wary of printing such a scandalous story due to the Rhinelanders' wealth and prominent social status. In this period, with increased immigration to New York from Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as from the rural South, there was considerable anxiety about social class and racial passing, as no one knew any longer where people had come from and could not identify race by appearance.
For a time, Rhinelander stood by his wife during the intense national coverage of their marriage. But, after two weeks and a threat of disinheritance, he succumbed to his family's demands that he leave Jones and signed an annulment complaint that his father's lawyers had prepared. The document asserted that Jones had intentionally deceived Rhinelander by hiding her true race and had passed as a white woman. Jones' attorney denied Rhinelander's claim on her behalf, saying that her mixed race was obvious. Rhinelander later said that Jones had not deceived him outright but did so by letting him believe she was white. Jones and her attorney refused to litigate her "whiteness," noting that Rhinelander had spent time with her family, including a black brother-in-law and mixed-race niece.
The ensuing divorce trial in New Rochelle was known as Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and attracted national attention. Rhinelander's attorney was Isaac Mills, a former New York Supreme Court justice. Jones retained a former protégé of Mills, Lee Parsons Davis. The jury was all-white and all-male. Jones' attorney Davis said openly that his client and Rhinelander had engaged in sex before they were married; he read love letters written by Rhinelander which detailed the couple's intimate sexual activity. Davis contended that Rhinelander had seen Jones' "dusky" breasts and legs, thus making it impossible for him not to have known that Jones was bi-racial. He also showed that Rhinelander had clearly pursued her, overturning Mills' presentation of Rhinelander having been bewitched by an older woman. In an unusual turn, vaudeville star Al Jolson was called to testify that he did not have an affair with Jones, after a letter was disclosed at the trial in which she said she heard from a co-worker that Jolson was a "flirt."
The trial was notorious for Jones being asked to display some of her body to the jury in the judge's chambers. Wearing a coat over underwear, she dropped the coat to the top of her breasts so they could see her shoulders; then she pulled it up so they could see her lower legs. The question of "whiteness" was not litigated but this was Davis' attempt to show what Rhinelander would have seen.(245 N.Y. 510). The jury viewed her shoulders, back and legs, concluding that she was indeed "colored" and that Rhinelander had to have been aware that she had some black ancestry. This was to prove that she had not tried to defraud him. The judge barred reporters from seeing the demonstration to prevent any photographs. The tabloid newspaper New York Evening Graphic, which had regularly used composographs (composite photographs) to depict various events (usually salacious in nature), created a photograph depicting a model stripped to the waist with her back to the camera being viewed by a group of lawyers and one woman in a courtroom. The photo ran on the front page of the Evening Graphic and boosted the paper's circulation.
After weighing all the evidence, the jury ruled in Jones' favor. The annulment Rhinelander requested was denied and the marriage was upheld. Alice's court victory may have been enabled by the fact that Alice performed her racial identity as the all-white, male, married jurors expected of a colored woman, and that Leonard failed to perform his racial, gender, and class identities as expected of him as a white, wealthy gentleman.
This verdict was expected to prevent Kip from ever marrying again, even after a divorce, as he had violated white upper-class social norms. Rhinelander appealed several times but the verdict was upheld. (See Leonard Rhinelander v. Alice Rhinelander; 219 A.D. 189; 219 N.Y.S. 548; Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department (1927).
Kip disappeared from public view but was discovered living in Nevada in July 1929. Rhinelander was using the assumed name "Lou Russell", had grown a mustache, and was working as a woodcutter. Jones remained in New York where she filed a separation suit against Rhinelander, charging him with abandonment and his father with interference with the marriage. In December 1929, Rhinelander was granted a divorce by default in Las Vegas. The divorce was not recognized in New York, where Jones still had a separation suit pending.
Rhinelander and Jones eventually reached a settlement in the separation suit. Rhinelander was ordered to pay Jones a lump sum of $32,500 (approximately $460,000 in 2010 dollars) and $3600 a year for the remainder of her life ($300 a month, which was never adjusted for inflation). In return, Jones forfeited all claims to the Rhinelander estate and agreed not to use the Rhinelander name or to speak publicly or write about her story. She honored those terms for the rest of her life.
The ambiguity about appearances and construction of "race" at the time is demonstrated by the censuses from 1900 to 1930. In most, Alice and members of her family in New Rochelle, New York, were classified as "white." In the 1930 census, in which she was still listed as "Alice Rhinelander," someone later changed her classification to "negro", but her sister next door was still classified as white. In that census only, their father George was classified as "negro."
Rhinelander eventually returned to New York where he worked as an auditor for his family's company, the Rhinelander Real Estate Company. Rhinelander never remarried. Alice Jones did not marry again. She continued to live with her parents in Pelham Manor. Her father died of a heart attack in 1933. Her mother died of a stroke in December 1938.
On February 20, 1936, Rhinelander died of lobar pneumonia at the age of 32 at his father's home in Long Beach, New York. He was buried in the family vault in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
After Rhinelander's death, his father Phillip continued to pay Jones her yearly settlement money. After his death in 1940, his estate continued payments until 1941 when they abruptly stopped. Jones took Phillip Rhinelander's heirs (his daughter Adelaide, two nieces and two granddaughters) to court. After two years of court battles, the New York Supreme Court upheld the original settlement agreement, and the heirs resumed Jones' payments.
After her final court battle with the Rhinelanders, Alice Jones remained out of the public eye. She died on September 13, 1989 of a heart attack caused by a stroke and hypertension. She was buried in Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle with a gravestone bearing the name "Alice J. Rhinelander."
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Performing Arts
*Composer William Grant Still was guest conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra in the Hollywood Bowl, the first African American to lead a major symphonic orchestra.
William G. Still was the first African American to lead a major symphony orchestra when he was guest conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra in the Hollywood Bowl. Still was a composer of operas and symphonies and an arranger for Broadway shows, radio and motion pictures.
Born in Woodville, Mississippi, Still studied at Wilberforce University, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Still worked in a great variety of musical settings, from playing in dance and theater orchestras, to supplying arrangements of popular music for African American show people, and was a prolific composer in the art-music tradition. In 1936, Still was the first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and became the first African American to have an opera performed by a major opera company in 1949, when New York City Opera put on Troubled Island.
*Count Basie made his first appearance in New York City at the Roseland Ballroom.
*Langston Hughes' Troubled Island opened on Broadway.
*Walk Together, by Frank Wilson, an African American playwright, ran 29 performances at the Lafayette in Harlem and inaugurated the Federal Theater Project in New York City.
*Macbeth, the most highly acclaimed production of the entire Federal Theater Project in Harlem, included Canada Lee in the cast and was produced by John Houseman and Orson Welles (April 14).
A production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, commonly nicknamed Voodoo Macbeth and directed by Orson Welles, premiered at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem.
The Voodoo Macbeth is a common nickname for the Federal Theatre Project's 1936 New York production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Orson Welles adapted and directed the production, moved the play's setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean island, recruited an entirely African American cast, and earned the nickname for his production from the Haitian vodou that fulfilled the rôle of Scottish witchcraft. A box office sensation, the production is regarded as a landmark theatrical event for several reasons: its innovative interpretation of the play, its success in promoting African-American theatre, and its role in securing the reputation of its 20-year-old director.
*Robert Johnson entered a studio in San Antonio, Texas and recorded for the first time. The first song he recorded was "Terraplane Blues" (November 23).
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Politics
*President Roosevelt lifted the restrictions the United States had placed against Italy and Ethiopia under the Neutrality Act (June 20).
*A United States Senator from South Carolina and the mayor of Charleston walked out of the Democratic National Convention in protest when an African American minister offered a prayer at the opening of a session. Later, the South Carolina delegation officially protested the presence of African Americans at the convention.
*Mary McLeod Bethune became director of the Division of Negro Affairs in President Roosevelt's National Youth Administration.
*The platforms of the Democratic, Prohibition, Socialist Labor and Union parties made no mention of the African American.
*At the Democratic National Convention, "Cotton Ed" Smith, South Carolina Senator, and Mayor Burnet Maybank of Charleston walked out while an African American minister was opening a session with a prayer. Smith said he would not support "any political organization that looks upon the Negro and caters to him as a political and social equal." Smith later walked out on a speech of African American Congressperson Mitchell of Illinois. The South Carolina delegation officially protested the presence of African Americans.
*The Republican Party platform said, "We favor equal opportunity for our colored citizens. We pledge our protection of their economic status and personal safety. We will do our best to further their employment in the gainful occupied life of America, particularly in private industry, agriculture, emergency agencies and the civil service. We condemn the present New Deal policies which would regiment and ultimately eliminate the colored citizen from the country's productive life, and make him solely a ward of the Federal Government."
Crisis condemned the Republican Party's pledge of "protection" of the African Americans' economic status: "That is precisely what the Negroes do not want. His present economic status is the chief cause of his discontent."
African Americans did not like the Democratic platform any better than the Republican one, but they had some faith in Roosevelt's personal attitudes. Joel Spingarn, president of the NAACP, endorsed Roosevelt because "he has done more for the Negro than any Republican President since Lincoln." Crisis, the NAACP journal, said, "Even with their failures, they [the New Deal relief administrators, especially Harry Hopkins] have made great gains for the race in areas which heretofore have set their faces steadfastly against decent relief for Negroes."
*The Communist Party platform read: "The Negro people suffer doubly. Most exploited of working people, they are also victims of jim crowism and lynching. They are denied the right to live as human beings." The party endorsed "abolition of poll taxes and other limitations of the right to vote." It demanded the release of political prisoners, among them Tom Mooney, Angelo Herndon and the Scottsboro boys. The party's platform continued: "We demand that the Negro people be guaranteed complete equality, equal rights to jobs, equal pay for work, the full right to organize, vote, serve on juries, and hold public office. Segregation and discrimination against Negroes must be declared a crime. Heavy penalties must be established against mob rule, floggers and kidnappers, with a death penalty for lynchers. We demand the enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution." James W. Ford was again Vice Presidential candidate on the Communist ticket.
*The Socialist Party platform said that under Democratic rule, "lynching, race discrimination and the development of Fascist trends have continued unabated. Against these infringements of human rights the Democratic administration has kept an ominous silence."
*In Chicago, 49% of the African American vote went to Roosevelt. In 1940, this vote increased to 52%.
*Charles W. Anderson (b. 1907 - d. 1960) became the first African American elected to the Kentucky state legislature, in which he served six consecutive terms. He helped dismantle legal segregation in the state when his bill allowing African American and European American nurses to go to the same school was passed in 1948. The bill further allowed African American physicians to take residencies in European American hospitals.
*Charles W. Anderson (b. 1907 - d. 1960) became the first African American elected to the Kentucky state legislature, in which he served six consecutive terms. He helped dismantle legal segregation in the state when his bill allowing African American and European American nurses to go to the same school was passed in 1948. The bill further allowed African American physicians to take residencies in European American hospitals.
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Publications
*Louis E. Martin founded the Michigan Chronicle, a black newspaper.
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Sports
*The Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling fight at Yankee Stadium was postponed 24 hours due to rain (June 18).
*Max Schmeling knocked out Joe Louis in the 12th round of their bout at Yankee Stadium in front of 39,878. Schmeling's victory was considered a significant upset (June 19).
The opening ceremony of the 1936 Summer Olympics was held in Berlin (August 1). As with the Winter Games in February, there was confusion between the Nazi salute and the Olympic salute. Most countries gave one salute or the other as they passed Hitler in the viewing stand. The British and Americans did not salute at all and gave a military-style 'eyes right' instead. The Americans were also the only country not to dip their country's flag while passing Hitler, in keeping with the U.S. custom of only dipping to the President of the United States.
On the first day of competition at the Summer Olympics, Adolf Hitler congratulated German gold medalists Tilly Fleischer and Hans Woellke, then invited all three Finnish medalists in the 10,000 meters to his box to congratulate them as well (August 2). However, he left before congratulating the gold medalist in the high jump, Cornelius Johnson of the United States. An international controversy broke out over whether Hitler had snubbed Johnson for being African-American. International Olympic Committee President Henri de Baillet-Latour told Hitler to either congratulate all the medalists or none at all. Hitler chose the latter and no athletes were invited to his box for the rest of the Olympics.
Cornelius Cooper Johnson (b. August 28, 1913, Los Angeles, California – d. February 15, 1946) was an Olympic champion high jumper. Born in Los Angeles in 1913, Cornelius ("Corny") Johnson first competed in organized track and field events at Berendo Junior High School. He achieved greater athletic success as a student at Los Angeles High School, competing in the sprint and in the high jump. Before going to the Olympics as a junior, he won the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) California State Meet in 1932. He had been second the year before.
At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, Johnson, who was then an 18-year-old high school student, placed fourth in the high jump under the existing tiebreaker rules. Had the current rules been in force, he would have won the silver medal.
He repeated as champion at the State Meet in 1933. Afterwards, Johnson attended Compton College and with coach Herschel Smith continued his high jump career.
Johnson's technique was described as a panther-like western roll. At the 1936 United States Olympic Trials, Johnson set the world record at 6 ft 93⁄4 in (2.07 m). After the bar was remeasured and everybody celebrated, Dave Albritton equalled Johnson's record.
In 1936, Johnson was one of 19 African Americans at the Berlin Olympics, where he won the gold in the high jump. Johnson's winning height of 2.03m was an Olympic record and he tried unsuccessfully for the world record.
Johnson was the co-holder of the outdoor world record for the high jump for the year 1936-1937 and won eight career U.S. titles (five outdoor, three indoor).
After retiring from the high jump, he became a letter carrier for the United States Post Office in Los Angeles, and in 1945 he joined the United States Merchant Marine.
In 1946, while working as a ship's baker on board the Grace Line's "Santa Cruz," Johnson developed bronchial pneumonia. En route from the ship to a California hospital, Cornelius "Corny" Johnson died. He was 32 years old.
Cornelius Johnson was inducted into the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994, and the California Community Colleges Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1998.
*Jesse Owens of the United States won his first gold medal of the Berlin Olympics, equaling the world record of 10.3 seconds in the 100 meter dash (August 3).
*Jesse Owens won gold in the long jump (August 4). An often-told story holds that Germany's Luz Long gave Owens some advice after he almost failed to qualify. The veracity of the story has been questioned, but it is known for certain that Owens and Long embraced in front of Hitler and became friends.
*Jesse Owens won gold in the 200 meter dash (August 5). His time of 20.7 seconds would have easily been a new world record, but the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) did not recognize records set on a turn at the time.
*The United States won gold in the men's 4 x 100 meters relay race, giving Jesse Owens his fourth gold medal of the Olympics (August 9).
In 1936, Jesse Owens from Ohio State University won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics and infuriated German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who preached the mental and physical supremacy of Aryan whites over all other racial types. Owens won gold medals in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. In the 200 meter dash, he set an Olympic record. Owens also set a world and Olympic record in the long jump, and world record in the 400 meter relay with Ralph Metcalfe.
Owens' first-place victories embarrassed Adolf Hitler, who championed the theory of Aryan racial superiority. Owens was born in Ohio in 1913. He began competing in track and field at the Fairmount Junior High School in Cleveland and continued through his years at Ohio State University. Owens was a student at Ohio State when he won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, and anchored the victorious 400-meter relay at the 1936 Olympics. The Associated Press designated Owens "the outstanding track athlete of the first 50 years of the 20th century."
*Jesse Owens won four gold medals in track events at the Berlin Olympics. Other African Americans earning gold medals were Cornelius Johnson in the high jump, John Woodruff in the 800-meter run and Archie Williams in the 400 meter run.
*Joe Louis knocked out Jack Sharkey in the third round in front of 29,331 at Yankee Stadium. It was Sharkey's final match (August 18).
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Statistics
*The average annual income per family in 1936 was, in the urban North, $1,227 for African Americans and $2,616 for European Americans; in the urban South, $635 for African Americans and $2,019 for European Americans; and, in the rural South, $556 for African Americans and $1,535 for European Americans.
*Of the urban African American work force, 36% of the African American males and 28% of the female were unemployed or in emergency work. For the European American urban work force the figures were 21% and 19%.
*An average dwelling unit for an African American family had three rooms; for a European American family, 5 to 6 rooms.
*A survey of housing in four small Southern cities among non-relief families found that 60% of European American dwellings had hot and cold water in kitchen and bathroom. Only 10% of the African American dwellings had no indoor water supply, but more than 60% had no indoor water supply for the kitchen. More than 75% had no indoor water supply for the bathroom. Of the European American dwellings, 88% had a drain in the kitchen sink, but only 26% of the African Americans had drains.
*The National Health Survey revealed that 73% of European American families and 9% of African American families in cities of less than 10,000 had indoor flush toilets.
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Visual Arts
*The WPA commissioned Richmond Barthe, an African American sculptor and artist, to do a series of murals for the Harlem River Houses.
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