1930 - The United States: Notable Deaths: A-M

Notable Deaths

*There were 20 recorded lynchings in the United States in 1930.

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*Rufus Herve Bacote, a prominent physician in Kentucky and Tennessee who served as a First Lieutenant and an army doctor in the 370th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division during World War I, died in Earlington, Kentucky (October 13).

Rufus Herve Bacote (b. July 1, 1890, Timmonsville, South Carolina – d. October 13, 1930, Earlington, Kentucky) Bacote was born in Timmonsville, South Carolina, in a town ten miles from Florence South Carolina. He lived in an area mostly designated for agriculture. He was born to M.T. Bacote and Hattie Jackson of South Carolina. His father was a farmer. Rufus was the second oldest of four children. In 1917, Bacote graduated from Meharry Medical College,  in Nashville, at the age of 27. Bacote registered for the World War I draft in May 1917.

In 1917, Dr. Bacote began military service as a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve Corps and reported to the Fort Des Moines Medical Officers Training camp in Iowa. After remaining in the camp for 46 days , Bacote transferred first to Camp Funston (in Kansas), then to Camp Logan (in Houston, Texas).  Bacote was assigned to the 370th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division, which was mostly comprised of African-American soldiers of the Old 8th Illinois National Guard. Bacote was commissioned as a First Lieutenant and assigned as a medical doctor.

Fearing the threat of race riots coming from Camp Logan, Bacote and his unit were sent to France on the USS President Grant in 1918.  General Pershing assigned a majority of the African American troops over to the French who had been requesting American assistance. Bacote fought alongside fellow medical school graduates, such as George Washington Antoine and Claudius Ballard.

Bacote experienced minimal injuries during the war and had to deal with patients experiencing gassing effects and serious illness from the conditions. In 1918, Bacote was discharged.

After being discharged, Bacote returned to Nashville in the Davidson County with his wife. Later, after hearing from his medical school that there were shortages of physicians, the Bacotes moved to Kentucky where Bacote practiced medicine. In 1920, he moved again to Earlington, Kentucky. Dr. Bacote remained in Earlington and practiced there until his death in 1930.

Dr. Bacote married Amanda Bacote shortly after his graduation from medical school in 1917. The couple remained childless. 

In 1930, Dr. Bacote died of kidney disease. His body was moved to Nashville and buried.

After his death, Mrs. Bacote moved to Chicago and was heavily involved in the Pilgrim Baptist Church School there until her death.

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*Edward Willard Bates, a prominent African-American who served as a physician and surgeon in the 368th Ambulance Company in the 317th Sanitary (Medical) Train of the 92nd Division during World War I, died in Los Angeles, California (August 7).  For his bravery in battle, he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).

Edward Bates (b. November 4, 1884, Dallas, Texas – d. August 7, 1930, Los Angeles, California)  was born on November 4, 1884 to John W. and Tyria Norwood Bates in Dallas, Texas.
Both of Bates' parents were Texas natives and were well involved in the local Baptist community. This was more defined by Bates when he entered Bishop College which was located in Marshall, Texas. Bishop College is a historically black university which relocated to Dallas in the late 20th century. It remained open until 1988 due to a scandal which forced the institution to close. Bates did not end his education there as he soon entered Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.  He was a classmate and later fellow soldier of Dr. Everett R. Bailey. According to a the commencement pamphlet released on the day of his graduation on April 14, 1910, Bates was a class orator for the medical school graduates. Though Bates was listed to be from Dallas, he soon relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, and opened a medical practice in 1912. However, his time in Louisville reminded Bates of the systematic racism that still existed despite his advanced education.

In 1917, the United States had joined World War I to help the Allies. The United States military urged physicians to sign up due to the shortage, and when Bates was 33 years old he volunteered for service.

Like the majority of the African-American recruits, Bates was sent for basic training at Fort Des Moines Provisional Army Officer Training School.  He was commissioned with the rank of First Lieutenant.  Fort Des Moines had been opened for training African-American men as there had been a huge influx of African-American volunteers and a petition had been initiated by the students of Howard University calling for the use of African American troops.  However, despite the hope for a new recognition and appreciation, there was still discontent at the facility as many soldiers found that they were being unfairly assessed for merely being black. After being trained, Bates was assigned to the 368th Ambulance Company of the 317th Sanitary (Medical Train) of the 92nd Division.

Once in France, the 92nd Division was essentially assigned to France to assist the French troops, as General Pershing did not want to utilize the African-American soldiers. The French were extremely relieved at the reinforcements as the Germans were hitting them aggressively. Soon after arriving in France, Dr. Bates's surgical abilities were questioned by the Lieutenant Colonel. According to records, Bates had scored around 50% on his military and medical subjects back in the United States, which made the Lieutenant Colonel want to re-evaluate Bates before sending him into the field. Bates retook the exam and proved his ability and was soon sent over to the Gas Defense School. 

The troops in France were facing repeated gas attacks from the Germans. In early October 1918, a couple weeks before the war ended, the entire Division was sent over to the Marbache sector in France and faced an aggressive assault by the Germans. Lieutenant Bates proved his capability during the attack.  One of the company commanders, a Captain Kennedy, had been gassed and wounded.  He was in the Aide Station when the German assault began.  Despite enduring intense shell fire,Lieutenant Bates helped to carry Captain Kennedy from the Aide Station to the Ambulance Station. For this meritorious service, the next day Captain Kennedy recommended Lieutenant Bates for the Distinguished Service Cross.

When the war concluded, Bates moved back to Louisville to continue his medical practice.

Bates died unexpectedly in his home on August 7, 1930. It was reported in the Chicago Defender that Bates died of a heart attack, however, an autopsy revealed that he died from a combination of mitral stenosis and nephritis (kidney disease).

Bates married Sadie B. Bates after he returned from the war and they remained together until his death in 1930. 

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*Alexander Bedward, the namesake founder of Bedwardism, was born in Saint Andrew, a rural parish north of Kingston, Jamaica, died.

Alexander Bedward (b. 1848 in St. Andrew, a rural parish north of Kingston, Jamaica - d. 1930) , the founder of Bedwardism, was one of the most successful preachers of Jamaican Revivalism. After spending time in Panama, Bedward returned to Jamaica and was baptized by a local Baptist preacher.  He became not merely leader of a Revival branch but of a new movement, the Bedwardites, with affiliated groups all over Jamaica and in Panama. In the 1880, he started to gather large groups of followers by conducting mass healing services. He identified himself with Paul Bogle, the Baptist leader of the Morant Bay rebellion. In this connection, he advocated for changes and developments in the race relations in Jamaican society.

Bedward was arrested for sedition but instead of being sent to prison was sent to a mental asylum instead.  On release, he continued his role as a Revival healer and preacher. He urged his followers to be self-sufficient and at its height the movement gathered about 30,000 followers.  Bedward led his followers into Garveyism by finding the charismatic metaphor: Bedward and Garvey were as Aaron  and Moses, one the high priest, the other the prophet,  both leading the children of Israel out of exile.

Later Bedward proclaimed that he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that, like Elijah, he would ascend into heaven in a flaming chariot. He then expected to rain down fire on those that did not follow him, thereby destroying the whole world. In 1921, he and 800 followers marched in to Kingston "to do battle with his enemies." This, however, did not result in him flying to heaven. Bedward and his followers were arrested and he was sent to mental asylum for the second time where he remained to the end of his life.

Bedward's impact was that many of his followers became Garveyites and Rastafarians, bringing with them the experience of resisting the system and demanding changes of the colonial oppression and the white oppression.

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*Walter Cohen, a Republican politician and businessman, died in New Orleans, Louisiana (December 29).

Walter L. Cohen, Sr. (b. January 22, 1860, New Orleans, Louisiana – d. December 29, 1930, New Orleans, Louisiana) was an African-American Republican politician and businessman in the United States State of Louisiana.  

The New Orleans native was the son of Bernard Cohen and the former Amelia Bingaman. Like his better-known compatriot Homer Adolph Plessy, Cohen was a free black prior to passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.   A Catholic, Cohen noted that he was part of the most-hated ethnic group and most-hated religious group by the resurging Ku Klux Klan.  

Educated in New Orleans, Cohen was married to the former Antonia Manadé, and the couple had three children: Walter Cohen, Jr., Bernard J. Cohen, and Margot C. Farrell.

Cohen's political activity mushroomed in the 1890s, after the Reconstruction era, when he became one of the few blacks to hold appointed office into the 20th century. United States President William McKinley named Cohen a customs inspector in New Orleans. McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt, appointed him register of the federal land office. (Louisiana at the time elected a register of state lands, among them the first woman in statewide elected office in the 20th century, Lucille May Grace.)

Even when the African-American-dominated Black and Tan faction lost power after 1912 to the Lily-White Movement within the Republican Party, Cohen obtained the position of comptroller of customs by appointment from President Warren G. Harding. He succeeded A.W. Newlin as comptroller of customs.  The New York Times referred to the office as "one of the most lucrative federal offices" in the United States South.  Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge, renewed Cohen's appointment.  Though he had been a delegate to all Republican National Conventions between 1896 and 1924, Cohen was later ousted as secretary of the Louisiana State Republican Central Committee and instead headed a dissenting group. In 1928, Cohen favored United States Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas for the Republican presidential nomination, but the party selection went nearly unanimously to Herbert Hoover, the outgoing secretary of commerce.  Curtis then became the Republican vice presidential nominee. In 1928, Coolidge offered Cohen the position of minister to Liberia, but he declined the offer.

A successful businessman, Cohen was the founder and president of the People's Life Insurance Company in New Orleans, a large industrial company whose clients were African Americans. Cohen was a member of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in New Orleans. He died in New Orleans and is interred there at St. Louis Cemetery III.

Cohen's death came some six years before African American voters began a longstanding shift in allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party with the re-election in 1936 of Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

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*Henry Creamer, the song lyricist best known for composing the lyrics for "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", died in New York City, New York (October 14). 

Henry Creamer (b. June 21, 1879, Richmond, Virginia – d. October 14, 1930, New York City, New York) was an African American popular song lyricist. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, and died in New York. He co-wrote many popular songs in the years from 1900 to 1929, often collaborating with Turner Layton, with whom he also appeared in vaudeville.

Henry Creamer was a singer, dancer, songwriter and stage producer/director. He first performed on the vaudeville circuit in the United States and in Europe as a duo with pianist Turner Layton, with whom he also co-wrote songs. Two of their most enduring songs, for which Creamer wrote the lyrics, are "After You've Gone" (1918), which was popularized by Sophie Tucker, and "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" (1922) which was included in the soundtrack for one of the dance numbers in the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers 1939 movie The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.

Success on Broadway arrived in 1922 when Creamer’s Creole Production Company produced the show Strut Miss Lizzie, and in 1923 to seal their success, Bessie Smith recorded their song "Whoa, Tillie, Take Your Time". His other Broadway stage scores include Three Showers. Creamer and Layton disbanded as a duo in 1924, when Layton relocated to Europe after which Creamer continued his songwriting with pianist James P. Johnson. In 1924, Creamer joined ASCAP.

In the fall of 1926, Creamer was commissioned to direct the Cotton Club revue, The Creole Cocktail. The show featured Lottie Gee, Loncia Williams. Henry and LaPearl, Louie Parker, White and Sherman, Eddie Burke, Ruby Mason and Albertine Pickens.

Also in 1926, Creamer and James P. Johnson wrote "Alabama Stomp". In 1930, they achieved another hit with "If I Could Be with You" which was recorded by Ruth Etting.  The song also became the theme song for McKinney's Cotton Pickers and was also a hit for Louis Armstrong.

Creamer was a co-founder with James Reese Europe of the Clef Club, an important early African American musicians and entertainers organization in New York City.

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*Andrew "Rube" Foster, a baseball player, manager, and pioneer executive in the Negro Leagues, died in Kankakee, Illinois (December 9). He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.

Andrew "Rube" Foster (b. September 17, 1879, Calvert, Texas – d. December 9, 1930, Kankakee, Illinois), considered by historians to have been perhaps the best African-American pitcher of the first decade of the 1900s, also founded and managed the Chicago American Giants, one of the most successful black baseball teams of the pre-integration era. Most notably, he organized the Negro National League, the first long-lasting professional league for African-American ballplayers, which operated from 1920 to 1931. He is known as the "father of Black Baseball."

Foster adopted his longtime nickname, "Rube", as his official middle name later in life.

Foster dropped out of school after the eighth grade, and by the age of 18 he had begun playing semi-professional baseball in Texas for the Waco Yellow Jackets. In 1902 he joined Frank Leland’s Chicago Union Giants but soon left to play in an integrated semi-professional league in Michigan.
Standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 metres) tall, the large right-hander first made his mark on the game in 1903 as a pitcher for the Cuban X-Giants, winning four games (of a seven-game series) against the Philadelphia Giants in the “Colored Championship of the World.” The next year, as a member of the Philadelphia Giants, Foster earned his nickname by outdueling the great Rube Waddell in a game against the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League. In 1905 he totaled 51 victories out of 55 games played.
A dispute over money with the Philadelphia Giants led to Foster’s return to Chicago and the Leland Giants in 1907. As both star pitcher and manager, he guided the team to a 110–10 record that year. His style as a manager was no different from his style as a player—aggressive and intimidating. He was an innovative strategist, and his team members were renowned for their bunting and baserunning, especially the hit-and-run (in which the batter is signaled to hit a pitch regardless of its location and the base runner on first begins running before the pitch is released). In 1910 Foster acquired ownership of the Leland Giants and guided the squad to a 123–6 record.
The next year he joined with businessman John Schorling (a son-in-law of Charles Comiskey) to form the Chicago American Giants. The American Giants, led by Foster as player, manager, and owner, played at South Side Park and became one of the greatest teams in the history of black baseball, winning Negro League championships in 1914, 1915, and 1917, and the Negro National League championships in 1920, 1921 and 1922.
In Kansas City, Missouri, in 1920, Foster met with seven other owners of African American baseball clubs for the purpose of establishing the Negro National League. Although previous attempts to establish a league for black ballplayers and fans had failed, the Negro National League thrived under Foster’s guidance. As chief executive of the Negro National League, he curtailed the excessive trading of players to establish some parity of talent between the clubs. His dictatorial approach frequently enraged his fellow owners, despite his sacrifice of personal income to aid players and clubs with financial problems. In 1926 the strain of his work began to affect his mental health, and he was placed in a mental hospital in Kankakee, Illinois, where he died four years later.
Foster was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.

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*Charles Gilpin, a noted stage actor who was the first African American to receive the Drama League of New York's annual award, died in Eldridge Park, New Jersey (May 6).

Charles Sidney Gilpin (b. November 20, 1878, Richmond, Virginia – d. May 6, 1930, Eldridge Park, New Jersey) was one of the most highly regarded stage actors of the 1920s. He played in critical debuts in New York: in the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln and played the lead role of Brutus Jones in the 1920 premier of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, also touring with the play. In 1920, he became the first African American to receive the Drama League of New York's annual award, as one of the ten people who had done the most that year for American theater.

Gilpin was born in Richmond, Virginia to Peter Gilpin and Caroline White.  He attended St. Francis RC School.  He started work as an apprentice in the Richmond Planet print shop before finding his career in theater. He first performed on stage as a singer at the age of 12. Gilpin worked as a teacher in 1920.

In 1896, at age 18, Gilpin joined a minstrel show, leaving Richmond and beginning a life on the road that lasted for many years. When between performances on stage, like many performers, he worked odd jobs to earn money: as a printer, barber, boxing trainer, and railroad porter.  In 1903, Gilpin joined Hamilton, Ontario's Canadian Jubilee Singers.

In 1905, he started performing with traveling musical troupes of the Red Cross and the Candy Shop of America. He also played his first dramatic roles and honed his character acting in Chicago. He performed with Robert Mott's Pekin Theater in Chicago for four years until 1911. Soon after, he toured the United States with the Pan-American Octetts.  Gilpin worked with Rogers and Creamer's Old Man's Boy Company in New York. In 1915, Gilpin joined the Anita Bush Players as it moved from the Lincoln Theater in Harlem to the Lafayette Theater. As New York theater was expanding, this was a time when the theatrical careers of many famous black actors were launched.

In 1916, Gilpin made a memorable appearance in whiteface as Jacob McCloskey, a slave owner and villain of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon. Though Gilpin left Bush’s company over a salary dispute, his reputation allowed him to get the role of Rev. William Curtis in the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln.

Gilpin's Broadway debut led to his being cast in the premier of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.  He played the lead role of Brutus Jones to great critical acclaim, including a lauded review by writer Hubert Harrison in Negro World. Gilpin's achievement resulted in the Drama League of New York's naming him as one of the 10 people in 1920 who had done the most for American theater. He was the first African American so honored. Following the Drama League’s refusal to rescind the invitation, Gilpin refused to decline it. When the League invited Gilpin to their presentation dinner, some people found it controversial. At the dinner, he was given a standing ovation of unusual length when he accepted his award. Although Gilpin continued to perform the role of Brutus Jones on the United States tour that followed the Broadway closing of the play, he had a falling out with O'Neill. Gilpin wanted O'Neill to remove the word "nigger", which occurred frequently in the play. The playwright refused, asserting its use was consistent with his dramatic intentions.

In 1921, Gilpin was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. He was also honored at the White House by President Warren G. Harding.  A year later, the Dumas Dramatic Club (now the Karamu Players) of Cleveland renamed itself the Gilpin Players in his honor.

When they could not come to a reconciliation, O'Neill replaced Gilpin with Paul Robeson as Brutus Jones in the London production.

After the extended controversy and the disappointment of losing his signature role, Gilpin started drinking heavily. He never again performed on Broadway. He died in 1930 in Eldridge Park, New Jersey, his career in shambles. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, his funeral arranged by friends shortly after his death.

In 1991, 61 years after his death, Charles Sidney Gilpin was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

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*Archibald Grimke, a lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader who was the recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1919, died in Washington, D. C. (February 25).

Archibald Henry Grimke (b. August 17, 1849, near Charleston, South Carolina - d. February 25, 1930, Washington, D. C.) was a graduate of freedmen's schools, Lincoln University and Harvard Law School.  He later was appointed American Consul to the Dominican Republic and served in that capacity from 1894 to 1898.  He was an activist for the civil rights of African Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D. C.  He was also a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D. C. branch. 

Grimké was born into slavery near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849. He was the eldest of three sons of Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of European and African descent, and her master Henry W. Grimké, a widower. They lived in a common-law relationship, and Grimke recognized his sons. Archibald's brothers were Francis and John. Grimké was a member of a prominent, large slaveholding family in Charleston. His father and relatives were planters and active in political and social circles.

After becoming a widower, Henry Grimké moved with Weston to his plantation outside Charleston where they lived together without social oversight. Henry was a father to his sons, teaching them and Nancy to read and write. During this period, as South Carolina discouraged manumissions by requiring slaveholders to petition the legislature for each case, it was nearly impossible to obtain manumissions. Accordingly, Grimke never freed Weston or their children, and was simply discreet about them.

In 1852, as he was dying, Henry Grimké tried to protect his second family by willing Nancy, who was pregnant with their third child, and their two sons Archibald and Francis to his son (by his first wife), and heir Montague Grimké. Henry directed that they "be treated as members of the family."

Henry's sister Eliza, executor of his will, brought the family to Charleston and allowed them to live as if they were free, but she did not aid them financially. Nancy Weston took in laundry and did other work.  When the boys were old enough, they attended a public school with free blacks. In 1860, Montague "claimed them as slaves," bringing the boys into his home as servants.  Later he hired out both Archibald and Francis. After Francis rebelled, Montague Grimké sold him. Archibald ran away and hid for two years with relatives until after the end of the Civil War. Montague never provided well for his half-brothers or for half-brothers' mother.

After the American Civil War ended, the three Grimké boys attended freedmen's schools, where their talents were recognized by the teachers. They gained support to send Archibald and Francis to the North. They studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established for the education of African Americans.

By the time Henry began his relationship with Weston, his two youngest sisters, Sarah and Angelina, had been gone from Charleston for years. Opposed to slavery, Sarah and Angelina had left the South because of their views and became noted abolitionists and feminists. Collectively known as the Grimke sisters, they were active as writers and speakers in northern abolitionist circles, having joined the Quakers and the American Anti-Slavery Society.  After Angelina married Theodore Weld in Philadelphia, the three lived and worked for years in New Jersey. They operated a school together. In 1864, they moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, a new community outside Boston.

In February 1868, Angelina Grimke Weld read an article noting the talents of an ex-slave, Archibald Grimké, as a student at Lincoln. Noticing his surname, she followed up and learned that he was her brother's son, and about the rest of his family. She and Sarah acknowledged the boys and Nancy Weston as family, and tried to provide them with better opportunities. They paid for their nephews' education. The Grimkés introduced the young men to their abolitionist circles. The youngest son John dropped out of school and returned to the South, losing touch with his brothers and the Grimkes. However, the professors at Lincoln University found Archibald and Francis to be extraordinary students, and both Archibald and Francis graduated from Lincoln in 1870. Archibald and Francis went on to attend Harvard University and Howard University, respectively, for law.  Francis later shifted to Princeton Theological Seminary and became a minister. 

Francis J. Grimke did graduate work at Princeton Theological Seminary and became an ordained Presbyterian minister. He married Charlotte Forten, of the prominent Philadelphia black abolitionist family. She was also an abolitionist and a teacher, and became known for her diaries written mostly from 1854-1864. He headed the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C., for more than 40 years. Francis died in 1939.

The youngest brother, John Grimké, did not stay in school. He went to Florida and cut himself off from the Grimké families. He died in 1918.

After getting established with his law practice in Boston, Massachusetts, Archibald Grimké met and married Sarah Stanley, a white woman from the Midwest. They had a daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke, born in 1880. They separated while their daughter was young, and Stanley returned with Angelina to the Midwest when the girl was three. When Angelina was seven, Stanley started working. She brought Angelina back to her father in Boston. The couple never reconciled, and Stanley never saw her daughter again.  She committed suicide by poison in 1898.

In 1894, Grimké was appointed as consul to the Dominican Republic. While he was in Central America, his daughter Angelina lived for years with his brother Francis and his wife Charlotte in Washington, D. C., where Francis was minister of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church.

After graduating from school, Angelina became a teacher and writer. Her essays and poetry were published by The Crisis of the NAACP.  In 1916, she wrote the play, Rachel, which addressed lynching, in response to a call by the NAACP for works to protest the controversial film, Birth of a Nation. It is one of the first plays by an African American considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, she wrote poetry, some of which is now considered the first lesbian work by an African American.

Grimké lived and worked in the Boston area most of his career. Beginning in the 1880s, he began to get active in politics and speaking out about the rise of white supremacy following the end of Reconstruction in the South. He was appointed editor of the Hub, a Republican newspaper that tried to attract black readers. Grimke supported equal rights for blacks, both in the paper and in public lectures, which were popular in the nineteenth century. He became increasingly active in politics, and was chosen for the Republican Party's state convention in 1884. That year he was also appointed to the board of a state hospital for the insane. Grimké became involved in the women's rights movement, which his aunts had supported, and addressed it in the Hub. He was elected as president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.  Believing that the Republicans were not doing enough, he left the party in 1886. In 1889, he joined the staff of the Boston Herald as a special writer.

In the South, the situation for blacks was deteriorating, and Grimké continued the struggle against racism, allying at times with other major leaders of the day. He had also become involved in Frederick Douglass' National Council of Colored People, a predecessor to the NAACP, which grappled with issues of education for blacks, especially in the South. Grimké disagreed with Booker T. Washington about emphasizing industrial and agricultural education for freedmen (the South still had a primarily agricultural economy). He believed there needed to be opportunities for academic and higher education such as he had.

In 1901 with several other African American men, he started The Guardian, a newspaper in which they could express their views. They selected William Monroe Trotter as editor. Together Grimké and Trotter also organized the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which at the time was a gathering of men opposed to Washington's views. For a time he was allied with W. E. B. Du Bois, but Grimké continued to make his own way between the two groups.

Despite earlier conflict with Washington and his followers, in 1905, Grimké started writing for The Age, published in New York and the leading black paper -- a paper that was allied with Washington. He wrote about national issues from his own point of view, for instance, urging more activism and criticizing President Theodore Roosevelt for failing to adequately support black troops in Brownsville, Texas, where they were accused of starting a riot.

Continuing his interest in intellectual work, he served as president of the American Negro Academy from 1903 to 1919, which supported African American scholars and promoted higher education for blacks. He published several papers with them, dealing with issues of the day, such as his analysis in "Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States" (1908). He believed that capitalism as practiced in the United States could help freedmen who left agriculture to achieve independence and true freedom.

In 1907, Grimke became involved with the Niagara Movement started by Du Bois, and later with the NAACP which the latter also founded.  African Americans continued to struggle to find the best way to deal with racism and advance equal rights, at a time when lynching of black men in the South continued.

After his daughter graduated from college, Grimké became increasingly active as a leader in the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. First, he was active in Boston, for instance, writing letters in protest of proposed legislation in Washington, DC. to prohibit interracial marriages. (The legislation was not passed.) In 1913, he was recruited by national leaders to become the president of the Washington, D. C. branch and moved to the capital with his daughter Angelina. His brother Francis and his wife Charlotte still lived there.

Grimke led the public protest in Washington, D. C. against the segregation of federal offices under President Woodrow Wilson, who acceded to wishes of other Southerners on his cabinet. Grimké testified before Congress against it in 1914 but did not succeed in gaining changes. About this time, he also became a national vice-president of the NAACP. The organization supported the United States in World War I, but Grimké highlighted the racial discrimination against blacks in the military and worked to change it. 

In 1919, the NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal for his life work for racial equality.

Grimke fell ill in 1928. At the time, he and Angelina were living with his brother Francis, by then a widower. His daughter and brother cared for him until his death in 1930.

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*Archibald Grimke, a lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader who was the recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1919, died in Washington, D. C.

Archibald Henry Grimke (b. August 17, 1849, Charleston, South Carolina - d. February 25, 1930, Washington, D. C.) was an American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  A graduate of freedmen's schools, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), and Harvard Law School, Grimke later served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898.  Working principally in Boston and Washington, D. C., Grimke was an activist for rights for African Americans.  He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D. C. branch.

Grimké was born into slavery near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849. He was the eldest of three sons of Nancy Weston, who was also born into slavery as the daughter of an enslaved African or African-American female and her white owner, and her owner Henry W. Grimké, a widower. Henry recognized his sons, but he did not manumit (free) them, nor did he make the rest of his family aware of their existence. Archibald's brothers were Francis and John. Archibald's father, Henry was a member of a prominent, large slaveholding family in Charleston. His father and his white relatives on his father's side were planters and active in political and social circles.

Henry Grimke, Archibald's father, actually had two families. After becoming a widower, Henry began a relationship with Weston. It appeared to be a caring one. He moved with her out of the city to his plantation where they and their family would have more privacy. She was his official domestic partner in the house and with Nancy, he fathered three sons. Henry taught Nancy how to read, a skill that she would pass on to their sons.  

In 1852, as he was dying, Henry tried to protect his second family by willing Nancy, who was pregnant with their third child, and their two sons Archibald and Francis to his legal (white) son and heir Montague Grimké, whose mother was Henry's deceased wife. He directed that they "be treated as members of the family," but Montague never provided well for them.

Henry's sister Eliza, executor of his will, brought the family to Charleston and allowed them to live as if they were free, but she did not aid them financially. Nancy Weston took in laundry and did other work. When the boys were old enough, they attended a public school with free blacks. In 1860 Montague "claimed them as slaves," bringing the boys into his home as servants. Later he hired out both Archibald and Francis. 

 During the American Civil War, Francis ran off and became a valet for a Confederate Army Officer stationed at Castle Pinckney, a jail for Union soldiers. Francis was found and jailed for a time before being returned to Montague Grimké, who sold him to another Confederate officer.  Archibald ran away and hid for two years with relatives until after the end of the Civil War.

After the Civil War ended, the three Grimké boys attended freedmen's schools, where their talents were recognized by the teachers. They gained support to send Archibald and Francis to the North. They studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a college established for the education of blacks.

Francis and his brother went through many hardships afterward, as their father had not provided for them financially. After the Civil War, which disrupted family fortunes further, Archibald, Francis and John were enrolled at Morris Street school, part of the Charleston public schools, a segregated system set up for the first time during the Reconstruction Era by a Republican-dominated, biracial legislature. At the Morris Street School, the talents of three brothers were recognized by the teachers.  The two older Grimke brothers gained support to send Archibald and Francis to the North. 

 John, the youngest son, did not take so well with education. .It appears that he also went North for college but he dropped out.  He chose to return to South Carolina to care for their mother, Nancy.  Later, there appears to have been a rift between John, the one left behind, and his older brothers.  For whatever reasons, John cut himself off from the rest of the family.  Later, it was reported that he moved to Florida.  He died in 1918, the youngest brother dying first.

After the Morris Street School, the brothers, Archibald and Francis, were then sponsored by Mrs. Pillsbury, sister-in-law of Parker Pillsbury, for higher education at Lincoln University. It was a historically black college founded in Pennsylvania for the education of blacks. Archibald and Francis received tuition from a church committee, but had no money for books and clothing.

Nevertheless, despite the hardships, the two brothers manage to excel at Lincoln University and financial assistance would soon come from an unlikely source.

Unbeknownst to the brothers, by the time their father Henry Grimke began his relationship with their mother Nancy Weston, Henry's two youngest sisters, Sarah and Angelina, had been gone from Charleston for years. Unwilling to live in a slave society, they left the South and their family and became noted abolitionists and feminists, drawing on their first-hand knowledge of slavery's horrors. Together known as the Grimke sisters, they were active as writers and speakers in Northern abolitionist circles, having joined the Quakers and the American Anti-Slavery Society. After Angelina married Theodore Weld, the three lived and worked for years in New Jersey. They operated a school together. In 1864, they moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, a new community outside Boston.

In February 1868 Angelina Grimké Weld  read an article in The Anti-Slavery Standard in which Edwin Bower, a professor at Lincoln University near Philadelphia, compared Lincoln's all-black student body favorably with any class I have ever had, with special praise for a student  after a speech of his was reported. Because of the unusual name, she wrote to learn whether he was related to her family. After learning that he was their nephew and about his brothers, Angelina and Sarah officially acknowledged the three mixed-race boys as family. The sisters supported the three boys while they were in college, and opened their home to them. 

Angelina and Sarah tried to provide Archibald and Francis with better opportunities. They paid for their nephews' education.  Both Archibald and Francis graduated from Lincoln University in 1870. Archibald and Francis then attended Harvard University and Howard University, respectively, for law. Francis shifted to Princeton Theological Seminary and became a minister. The Grimké sisters also introduced the young men to their abolitionist circles. 

Archibald graduated from Harvard Law School in 1874.  After getting established with his law practice in Boston, Massachusettws, Archibald Grimké met and married Sarah Stanley, a white woman from the Midwest. Archibald and Sarah had a daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke (named for her great aunt Angelina Grimke Weld), who was born in 1880. Archibald and Sarah separated while their daughter was young, and Stanley returned with Angelina to the Midwest when the girl was three. When Angelina was seven, Stanley started working. She brought Angelina back to her father in Boston. The couple never reconciled, and Stanley never saw her daughter again. Sarah Stanley committed suicide by poison in 1898.

In 1894, Grimké was appointed as consul to the Dominican Republic. While he was in Central America, his daughter Angelina lived for years with his brother Francis and his wife Charlotte in Washington, DC, where Francis was minister of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church.

After graduating from school, Angelina became a teacher and writer. Her essays and poetry were published by The Crisis, the major publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  In 1916, Angelina wrote the play, Rachel, which addressed lynching, in response to a call by the NAACP for works to protest the controversial film, Birth of a Nation.  Angelina's play is one of the first plays by an African American considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.  In addition, Angelina wrote poetry, some of which is now considered the first literary works by an African American lesbian.

Archibald Grimké lived and worked in the Boston area most of his career. Beginning in the 1880s, he began to get active in politics and began speaking out about the rise of white supremacy following the end of Reconstruction in the South. In 1884, Archibald was appointed editor of the Hub, a Republican newspaper that tried to attract black readers. Grimké supported equal rights for blacks, both in the paper and in public lectures, which were popular the nineteenth century. He became increasingly active in politics, and was chosen for the Republican Party's state convention in 1884. That year he was also appointed to the board of a state hospital for the insane. Grimké became involved in the women's rights movement, which his aunts had supported, and addressed it in the Hub. 
Archibald was elected as president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Believing that the Republicans were not doing enough, he left the party in 1886. In 1889, he joined the staff of  the Boston Herald as a special writer.  Shortly after 1890, Grimke removed himself from politica and focused on scholarship.  He wrote major biographies of William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner.

In the interim, in the South, the situation for blacks was deteriorating, prompting Archibald Grimké to resume the struggle against racism, allying at times with other major leaders of the day. He became involved in Frederick Douglass' National Council of Colored People, a predecessor of the NAACP.  The National Council of Colored People grappled with issues of education for blacks, especially in the South. Grimké disagreed with Booker T. Washington about emphasizing industrial and agricultural education for freedmen (the South still had a primarily agricultural economy). He believed there needed to be opportunities for scholarly higher education such as he had.

In 1894, Grimké was appointed as consul to the Dominican Republic. He would hold this position until 1898.  While Archibald was in the Caribbean, his daughter Angelina lived with his brother Francis and his wife Charlotte in Washington, D. C., where Francis was minister of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church.

After graduating from school, Angelina became a teacher and writer. Her essays and poetry were published by The Crisis, the major publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  In 1916, Angelina wrote the play, Rachel, which addressed lynching, in response to a call by the NAACP for works to protest the controversial film, Birth of a Nation.  Angelina's play is one of the first plays by an African American considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.  In addition, Angelina wrote poetry, some of which is now considered the first literary works by an African American lesbian.

In 1901, with several other men, Archibald Grimke started The Guardian, a newspaper in which they could express their views. The trustees of The Guardian selected William Monroe Trotter as editor. Together Grimké and Trotter also organized the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which at the time was a gathering of men opposed to Washington's views. For a time, he was allied with W. E. B. Du Bois, but Grimké continued to make his own way between the two groups.

Despite earlier conflict with Washington and his followers, in 1905, Grimké started writing for The Age, published in New York and the leading black paper.  The Age was allied with Washington. He wrote about national issues from his own point of view, for instance, urging more activism and criticizing President Theodore Roosevelt for failing to adequately support black troops in Brownsville, Texas, where they were accused of starting a riot.

Continuing his interest in intellectual work, Archibald Grimke served as president of the American Negro Academy, from 1903 to 1919, which supported African-American scholars and promoted higher education for blacks. He published several papers with them, dealing with issues of the day, such as his analysis in "Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States" (1908). He believed that capitalism as practiced in the United States could help freedmen who left agriculture to achieve independence and true freedom.

In 1907, Grimke became involved with the Niagara Movement, started by Du Bois, and later with the NAACP.. Grimke and Du Bois continued to struggle to find the best way to deal with racism and advance equal rights, at a time when the lynching of black men in the South continued.

Grimké became increasingly active as a leader in the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. First, he was active in Boston, for instance, writing letters in protest of proposed legislation in Washington, D. C. to prohibit interracial marriages. (The legislation was not passed.) In 1913, he was recruited by national leaders to become the president of the Washington, D. C. branch and moved to the capital with his daughter Angelina. The move reunited Archibald and Angelina with Archibald's brother Francis and his wife Charlotte who still lived in Washington D. C.

Grimké led the public protest in Washington, D.C., against the segregation of federal offices under President Woodrow Wilson, who acceded to wishes of other Southerners on his cabinet. Grimké testified before Congress against it in 1914 but did not succeed in gaining changes. About this time, he also became a national vice-president of the NAACP. The organization supported the United States in World War I, but Grimké highlighted the racial discrimination against blacks in the military and worked to change it.

Archibald fell ill in 1928. At the time, he and Angelina were living with his brother Francis, who by then was a widower. Archibald's daughter and brother cared for him until his death in 1930.

Archibald Grimke's greatest  legacy was undoubtedly his stewardship of the District of Columbia branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  The District of Columbia branch was the organization's largest and came to represent the NAACP on all issues involving federal legislation and policy.  As branch president, Grimke led the efforts of the NAACP into the 1920s, lobbying Congress and federal agencies to inhibit the segregationist policies of Woodrow Wilson's administraion, whilc fighting against discrimination in the Washington community itself.  In 1919, in recognition of these efforts and of his lifetime of service defending the rights of African Americans, Archibald Henry Grimke received the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest honor.

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*Willie Hall, a New Orleans blues and boogie woogie piano player, died.

Willie Hall (d. 1930), best known by his nickname Drive 'Em Down, never recorded, but has had a great influence on blues and rock and roll.  

According to Champion Jack Dupree, who called Drive 'Em Down his "father" and cited Hall as "teaching me his style", Hall played in barrelhouses. His earthy song, "Junker's Blues", with its stories about needles and reefer and the Angola prison farm was recorded by Dupree in 1940. In 1949 Fats Domino reworked the song as "The Fat Man", the first of Domino's 35 Top 40 hits. The melody was used by Professor Longhair for "Tipitina" and by Lloyd Price for "Lawdy Miss Clawdy." Willy DeVille recorded the song in 1990 on his Victory Mixture album. The song also directly inspired the song "Junco Partner", first recorded in 1951 by James Waynes and later also widely covered by other musicians.

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*Pauline Hopkins, a prominent African American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian and editor, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts (August 13). 

The first known work of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (b. 1859, Portland, Maine - d. August 13, 1930, Cambridge, Massachusetts), a musical play called Slaves’ Escape; or, The Underground Railroad (later revised as Peculiar Sam; or, The Underground Railroad), was first performed in 1880. Her short story "Talma Gordon", published in 1900, is often named as the first African-American mystery story. She explored the difficulties faced by African-Americans amid the racist violence of post-Civil War America in her first novel, Contending Forces A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South, published in 1900. She published three serial novels between 1901 and 1903 in the African-American periodical Colored American Magazine: Hagar's Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest, and Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self. She sometimes used the pseudonym Sarah A. Allen. Her work reflects the influence of W. E. B. Du Bois and she is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes. 

Hopkins spent the remainder of her years working as a  stenographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from burns sustained in a house fire.

In 1988, Oxford University Press released The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers with Professor Henry Louis Gates as the general editor of the series. Hopkins's novel Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (with an introduction by Richard Yarborough) was reprinted as a part of this series. Hopkins's magazine novels (with an introduction by Hazel Carby) were also reprinted as a part of this series.

Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self is the last of four novels written by Pauline Hopkins. She is considered by some to be the most prolific African-American woman writer and the most influential literary editor of the first decade of the 20th century, though she is lesser known than many literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self first appeared in serial form in The Colored American Magazine in the November and December 1902 and the January 1903 issues of the publication, during the four-year period in which Hopkins served as its editor.

Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self tells the story of Reuel Briggs, a medical student who does not care about being black or appreciating African history but finds himself in Ethiopia on an archaeological trip. His motive is to raid the country of lost treasures, which he does find. However, he discovers much more than he expected: the painful truth about blood, race, and the half of his history that was never told. Hopkins wrote the novel intending, in her own words, to "raise the stigma of degradation from [the Black] race." The title, Of One Blood, refers to the biological kinship of all human beings.

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*A mob in Sherman, Texas, burned down a courthouse during the trial of George Hughes, an African-American man who was accused of assaulting his boss' wife, a white woman (May 9). The mob attacked the courthouse vault, retrieved the dead body of Hughes, dragged it behind an automobile and hanged it from a tree. National Guard troops were sent to Sherman to restore order as the mob looted stores in the African American business district.

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*James C. Matthews, the first African American law school graduate in New York, died in Albany, New York (November 1).

James Campbell Matthews (b. November 6, 1844, New Haven, Connecticut - d. November 1, 1930, Albany, New York) was an attorney and judge. He was notable as the first African American law school graduate in New York. He was elected a municipal judge in the late 1890s, which was the highest judicial office attained by an African-American up to that time.

James Matthews was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 6, 1844. His father was a barber, and the family moved to Albany when James Matthews was a boy.  His parents died in 1861, and Matthews was raised by Lydia Mott and Phebe Jones, two Albany anti-slavery activists who later worked in support of racial integration.

Though Albany's schools were segregated, Matthews succeeded in attending the public schools attended by white students. He then won a scholarship to The Albany Academy, and succeeded in winning acceptance despite the school's reluctance to accept a black student. Matthews was a stellar student, and graduated in 1864.

Matthews worked initially as a clerk at Albany's Congress Hotel, and was later employed as a bookkeeper. After deciding on a legal career, Matthews began studies at Albany Law School. He graduated in 1870, was admitted to the bar, and practiced in Albany.

In 1875 Matthews married Adella Duplessis of New York City. They were the parents of a son, Charles D. Matthews.

Most African-Americans of the 1800s who were able to vote and participate in the political process joined the Republica Party, which was viewed favorably as having eliminated slavery during the Civil War.  Matthews was initially active as a Republican, but later became notable for his decision to join Albany's Democratic Party.

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, nominated Matthews to serve as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a position previously held by Frederick Douglass.  He held the position by virtue of a recess appointment, but the United States Senate, then controlled by Republicans, refused to confirm him, claiming that he had attempted to coerce other African-Americans in Albany to switch their allegiance to the Democratic party in local elections.

Matthews won the election for Judge of Albany's Recorder’s Court in 1895. At the time, he took office, Matthews held the highest judicial position of any African-American up to that time. He served until 1899, when Albany's Republicans won the city elections and reclaimed control of the municipal government.

After leaving the bench, Matthews resumed the practice of law, and remained active until he retired in the early 1920s.

Matthews died in Albany on November 1, 1930.

Albany Law School's faculty includes an endowed professorship, the James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence.

In 2013 Albany Law School inaugurated the James Campbell Matthews Lecture Series.

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