"The slightest semblance of unruliness": Steamboat excursions, pleasure resorts, and the emergence of segregation culture on the Potomac river

Journal of American History

Volumn 94, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 1108-1136

  Kahrl, Andrew W ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 53849129209     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25095322     Document Type: Article

References (152)

1. Norma A. Baumgartner-Wagner, "Management Summary Phase I: Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey of the Notley Hall Amusement Park," pp. 5-6, 1986, Notley Hall Folder (Prince George's County Historical Society, Glenn Dale, Md.);
2. "Washington Park," Washington Bee, May 15, 1909, p. 4.
3. Lewis Jefferson, "Important Facts," Washington Bee, May 22, 1909, p. 1.
4. On the Masons' decision to book their outing at River View and the controversy that ensued, see "Negro Masons' Outing," ibid., May 8, 1909, p. 4;
5. Jefferson, "Important Facts," ibid.;
6. "Mr. Jefferson's Boats," ibid., July 17, 1909, p. 4;
7. "Colonel Jefferson," ibid., Aug. 7, 1909, p. 4;
8. "Eating Crow," ibid., Aug. 20, 1910, p. 5;
9. and "The Steamer 'River Queen': Col. Lewis Jefferson and His Work," ibid., May 13, 1911, p. 4.
10. "Mr. Jefferson's Boats."
11. Washington Colored American, June 21, 1902, p. 7;
12. ibid., Aug. 23, 1902, p. 7.
13. Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity 1900-1930 (Chapel Hill, 2004), 34, 35;
14. Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1996), 14.
15. See Currier & Ives Darktown Series (Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, N.Y.);
16. and Bryan F. LeBeau, "African Americans in Currier and Ives's America: The Darktown Series" Journal of American and Comparative Cultures, 23 (Spring 2000), 71-83.
17. See also Thomas Boskin, Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American fester (NewYork, 1998), 124-26.
18. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "Negro Life in Washington," Harper's Weekly, Jan. 13, 1900, in The Sport of the Gods, and Other Essential Writings, ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin and David Bradley (New York, 2005), 274;
19. Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Bloomington, 1990), 39;
20. Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital (Princeton, 1967), 21.
21. John E. Bruce, "Washington's Colored Society" [1877], p. 7, John E. Bruce Papers (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).
22. Mary Church Terrell, "Society among the Colored People of Washington," Voice of the Negro, 1 (April 1904), 151-52.
23. Bruce, "Washington's Colored Society," pp. 6-8.
24. See also Kate Masur, "'A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation: The Word 'Contraband' and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States," Journal of American History, 93 (March 2007), 1050-84, esp. 1080-81.
25. Mark S. Foster, "In the Face of 'Jim Crow': Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel, and Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945," Journal of Negro History, 84 (Spring 1999), 130-49, esp. 136;
26. Jeane Langston interview by Andrew W. Kahrl, Nov. 11, 2005, notes (in Andrew W. Kahrl's possession);
27. Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White (New York, 1994), 172.
28. Ted Chase, Daniel Nelson, and Theodore Hudson, Highland Beach, the First 100 Years (Highland Beach, 1993).
29. Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River (Alexandria, Va., 1978), 161.
30. Washington Bee, Sept. 26, 1896.
31. Alexander Crosby Brown, The Old Bay Line (Richmond, 1940), 89.
32. Allan J. Johnston, Surviving Freedom: The Black Community of Washington, D.C., 1860-1880 (New York, 1993), 61.
33. Washington Colored American, March 23, 1901, p. 2.
34. De B. Randolph Keim, A Guide to the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay, and James River, and an ocean voyage to Northern Ports: A series of interesting and instructive excursions by water from Washington (Washington, 1881);
35. O. A. Reardon, "Potomac River Heydays, 1900-1910," typescript, 1947, pp. 8-10 (Mariners' Museum Library, Norfolk, Va.);
36. "Sight-Seeing Map of the Historic Potomac River. Points of Interest Visible from Deck or Saloon of the Potomac River Steamers," 1912, M386, Map Collection, (Kiplinger Research Library, Historical Society ofWashington, D.C., Washington).
37. See also Tilp, This Was Potomac River, 55-65;
38. and Paul Wilstach, Potomac Landings (Indianapolis, 1932).
39. U.S. Congress, House ofRepresentatives, Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1891, 52 Cong., 1 sess., 1891, p. 222;
40. Mark Donnelly, "Excursion Boating on the Potomac," typescript, Jan. 1987, SL, PSL, Potomac River folder (Kiplinger Research Library).
41. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986);
42. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York, 1993);
43. John F. Kasson, Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1978).
44. For a work that argues that "Only through exclusion could the public take shape," see Bryant Simon, Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (New York, 2004), 16.
45. David Nasaw also notes that the rise of commercialized mass entertainment and amusement was inextricably linked to the exclusion of African Americans, in Nasaw, Going Out, 15-18, 237-40.
46. "Marshall Hall Amusement Park" brochure, ca. 1920s, Artificial Collection of Rare Items for District of Columbia History, ca., 1791-1990 (D.C. Community Archives, Washingtoniana Division, District of Columbia Public Library, Washington, D.C.).
47. See also Minnie Kendall-Lowther, Marshall Hall and Other Potomac Points in Story and Picture (Baltimore, 1925).
48. Letter to editor, "Can't Go on Water," Washington Bee, June 6, 1891.
49. Harrison Howell Dodge to Justine Van Rensselaer Townsend, Dec. 17, 2004, Superintendent's Letterbooks (Mount Vernon Archives, Mount Vetnon Ladies' Association, Mount Vernon, Va.). On African Americans' protest against the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and their threats of litigation, see Minutes of Council, 1905, Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, The Superintendents Annual Report to the MVLA, May 1905 (Mount Vernon Archives);
50. and "No Negro Boat to Land: Remarkable Action of the Mt. Vernon Association-Hon. Frank Hume the Negro's Friend," Washington Bee, Dec. 10, 1904, p. 1.
51. See also Scott E. Casper, Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine (New York, 2008), galley p. 208. Thanks to Scott E. Casper for graciously sharing this material with me.
52. Washington Bee, May 18, 1894;
53. "Why the Police at No. 4 'Get Busy' When They Hear the Whistle of the 'Razor Beach' Boat," Washington Post, Aug. 23, 1908, p. SM5.
54. Washington Herald, Nov. 11, 1906, p. 4.
55. "Negro Excursion Steamers," Washington Times, July 26, 1904, p. 4.
56. "Lawlessness on the River Queen," ibid., July 14, 1904, p. 6.
57. Lewis Jefferson obituary, Washington Post, Aug. 28, 1946;
58. "An Obituary of Lewis Jefferson," unpublished paper in Moral W Trent's personal colleaion, n.d. (in Kahri's possession). There is some dispute over Lewis Jefferson's birthplace and early childhood. Jefferson's grandson and the designated heir of his estate, Moral W. Trent, claims that Jefferson was born in South Carolina to a freedwoman who was killed by whites during an assault on an emancipated black community when Jefferson was an infant. According to Trent, during the assault, Jefferson's grandmother escaped to Virginia with the infant in tow. The Washington Post obituary for Jefferson, however, lists Orange, Virginia, as his birthplace, as do all U.S. census population schedules on which his name appears. Moral W. Trent to Andrew W. Kahrl, July 22, 2007 (in Kahri's possession);
59. Lewis Jefferson obituary, Washington Post, Aug. 28, 1946;
60. Lewis Jefferson, District of Columbia, Schedule No. 1-Population, 12th Census of the United States, 1900, available at HeritageQuest Online, http://persi.heritagequestonline.com/.
61. On Jefferson's ties to Hugh Allan, see Moral W. Trent interview by Kahrl, Nov. 11, 2005, audiotape (in Kahri's possession). On Allan's business career, see "Allan, Sir Hugh," Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?Biold=39458.
62. "The River Queen: Col. Lewis Jefferson Now in Charge-The Colored People Have Purchased the Entire Interest of Mr. Bensinger," Washington Bee, June 13, 1911, p. 1;
63. Baumgartner-Wagner, "Management Summary Phase I," pp. 2-4.
64. On Jefferson's purchase ofthe Jane Moseley, see Certificate of Enrollment, May 12, 1905, Sec. 4319, Rev. Stats., Cat. No. 538, United States of America (in Moral W. Trent's possession). On Jefferson's business career, see Trent interview.
65. Washington Bee, May 8, 1909, p. 5.
66. Ibid, Feb. 19, 1910, p. 5.
67. For a description of the Nodey Hall grounds and its recreational facilities at the turn of the twentieth century, see Norma A. Baumgartner-Wagner, "Preliminary Report on the Archaeological Investigations of the Notley Hall Amusement Park (18PR311): Phase I Reconnaissance Survey," 1986, Nodey Hall folder (Prince George's County Historical Society);
68. and Norma A. Baumgartner-Wagner, "Phase II Archeological Investigations: Notley Hall Amusement Park (18PR311), Prince Georges County, Maryland," 1987, ibid.
69. "Negro Leaders Criticise Booker T. Washington: Interesting Addresses at Notley Hall Excursion," Washington Times, Sept. 16, 1903, p. 4.
70. Washington Post, May 21, 1905, p. El;
71. ibid., June 11, 1905, p. 12;
72. "Obituary of Lewis Jefferson"; Trent interview.
73. William Henry Jones, Recreation and Amusement among Negroes in Washington, D.C.: A Sociological Analysis of the Negro in an Urban Environment (1927; Westport, 1970), 47.
74. "Testimonial Excursion," Washington Bee, May 29, 1909, p. 1.
75. Mary Church Terrell Diary, June 27, 1908 (microfilm: frame 416, reel 1), Papers of Mary Church Terrell, 1851-1962 (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).
76. "Washington Park."
77. Robert Wagner Smiley, The Night Side of Washington: An Illustrated Guide-Book (Washington, 1894).
78. On the origins of black neighborhood names in Washington, D.C., see Green, Secret City 64.
79. Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjections: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1997), 23, 43.
80. Washington Times, July 23, 1907, p. 12;
81. "Why the Police at No. 4'Get Busy When They Hear the Whistle of the 'Razor Beach' Boat."
82. On how white employers of black servants reinforced the "masterservant nexus" through both their demands of subservience and the accommodations they deemed appropriate for live-in employees, see Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940 (Washington, 1994), 98-100.
83. On the criminalization of black leisure and the justifications given for restricting African Americans' use of public space, see Regina Austin, ""Not Just for the Fun of It!': Governmental Restraints on Black Leisure, Social Inequality, and the Privatization of Public Space," Southern California Law Review, 71 (May 1998), 671.
84. "Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 1890," pp. 72, 75, Annual Reports of the Commissioners, 1874-1941, vols. 16 (pan 2) to 17, Records of the Temporary and Permanent Boards of Commissioners, General Records, Records of the Government of the District of Columbia, RG 351 (National Archives, Washington, D.C).
85. John Clagett Proctor, E. Melvin Williams, and Frank R Black, eds., Washington Past and Present: A History (4 vols., New York, 1930), II, 574;
86. "Why the Police at No. 4 'Get Busy When They Hear the Whistle of the 'Razor Beach' Boat";
87. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1895, 54 Cong., 1 sess., 1895, p. 664.
88. "Water Street Asleep: Changes in What Was Once a Busding Georgetown Thoroughfare," Washington Post, May 2, 1891, p. 8.
89. In its coverage of the August 1911 overthrow of Haitian president Antoine Simon, for example, the Washington Post commented that the "mob which Manueled Simon out of Haiti was almost as hilarious as the Willow Tree Alley Social Club waiting for the Razor Beach boat." Ibid., Aug. 5, 1911, p. 6.
90. "A Big Riot at a Picnic," ibid, July 17, 1888, p. 3.
91. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1890, 51 Cong., 1 sess., 1890, p. 72. In 1891,
92. African Americans constituted 61% of those arrested for loud and boisterous behavior, 72% in 1892, and 67% in 1895. House of Representatives, Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1891, 88-94. In 1892, African Americans under twenty-one were 23% of the 803 blacks arrested for profanity, while whites under twenty-one were 11% of the 459 whites arrested on such charges.
93. In 1893, African Americans under twenty-one were 25% of the 937 blacks arrested, while whites under twenty-one were 10% of the 565 whites arrested. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1892, 53 Cong., 1 sess., 1892, pp. 77, 94.
94. On "profane noise" as a form of black resistance in the Jim Crow South, see Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993), 107-8.
95. George W. Julieen et al. to Gen. O. O. Howard, April 1866, Letters Received, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands: Assistant Commissioner District of Columbia, RG 105 (National Archives, Washington, D.C.);
96. "Pleasure Club Gets Gay," Washington Post, Sept. 17, 1897, p. 10.
97. For the argument that urbar! Progressive Era reformers deemed African Americans incapable of moral rehabilitation and sought to contain vice within African American neighborhoods, see Khalil G. Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Ideas about Race and Crime in the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming 2009), ch. 2;
98. Marcy S. Sacks, "'To Show Who was in Charge': Police Repression of New York City's Black Population at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" Journal of Urban History 31 (Sept. 2005), 799-819.
99. Shane White and Graham White, The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Boston, 2005), 158;
100. "Police Court's Procession," Washington Post, Dec. 26, 1900, p. 10. In 1914, the sociologist Charles H. McCord noted that in urban black neighborhoods, "Negroes guilty of noisy horseplay are sometimes arrested for disorderly condutt and convicted on the evidence of the arresting officer, their fines going in to help out the public treasury or their hard labor to increase the number of cheap laborers on the city streets."
101. Charles H. McCord, The American Negro as a Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent (Nashville, 1914), 276-77.
102. "From Sport to Tragedy," Washington Post, Dec. 25, 1889, p. 1.
103. "City Talk and Chatter," ibid., July 5, 1879, p. 4.
104. Ibid., Feb. 12, 1899, p. 6.
105. Smiley, Night Side of Washington, 6;
106. Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York, 1998), 211-15.
107. Frederick L. Hoffman quoted in Nancy Stepan, "Biological Degeneration: Races and Proper Places," in Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, ed. J. Edward Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman (New York, 1985), p. 102;
108. Howard W. Odum, "Social and Mental Traits of the Negro: Research into the Conditions of the Negro Race in Southern Towns," Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, 37 (no. 3, 1910), 231.
109. "Why the Police at No. 4 'Get Busy' When They Hear the Whisde of the 'Razor Beach' Boat." On "bobalition" broadsides, see John Wood Sweet, Boates Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830 (Baltimore, 2003), 353-97;
110. and David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 294-348.
111. Tilp, This Was Potomac River, 68.
112. "Interfered with an Officer," Washington Post, Oct. 10, 1899, p. 10.
113. For other incidents of African Americans resisting police efforts to break up black gatherings, see Washington Evening Star, Oct. 18, 1880, p. 4;
114. and ibid., Dec. 27, 1881, p. 4.
115. On how leisure spaces shaped solidarity in the Jim Crow South, see Kelley, '"We Are Not What We Seem,'" 85-86.
116. "Nodey Hall," Washington Bee, June 8, 1901, p. 4.
117. "Arrests at Nodey Hall," Washington Post, June 17, 1901.
118. On whites' auditory receptions of African Americans in the postemancipation era, see Mark M. Smith, How Race Is Made: Slavery Segregation, and the Senses (Chapel Hill, 2006), 53-58.
119. On the utility of vocal resistance to police harassment, see Masur, "Reconstructing the Nation's Capital," 131-33.
120. "Colored Excursions," Washington Bee, July 16, 1904, p. 4;
121. "Summer Resorts Down the River," ibid., Aug. 11, 1888;
122. "Control Our Actions," Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, May 28, 1898;
123. "Joyous Days Will Come," Washington Colored American, July 12, 1902, p. 11.
124. Harvey Johnson quoted in James Roland Coates Jr., "Recreation and Sport in the African-American Community of Baltimore, 1890-1920" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1991), 82.
125. Washington Bee, July 1, 1893.
126. On George F. T Cook's successful agitation in 1869, see Thomas Reed Johnson, "The City on the Hill: Race Relations in Washington, D.C., 1865-1885" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1975), 108.
127. "Helping the Enemy," Washington Bee, Aug. 28, 1909, p. 4.
128. Ibid., April 21, 1883.
129. On W. Calvin Chase's campaign to end Emancipation Day celebrations in Washington and on the black elite's gradual withdrawal from the city's Emancipation Day parade, see Kathleen Ann Clark, Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863-1913 (Chapel Hill, 2005), 170-71;
130. Johnston, Surviving Freedom, 62-64;
131. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 51-52;
132. and Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emantipation Celebrations, 1808-1915 (Amherst, 2003), 207-32.
133. Washington Bee, Aug. 8, 1896, p. 3;
134. Washington Colored American, Aug. 2, 1902, p. 8.
135. On Washington's black newspapers fashioning themselves as both educators of common black folks and champions of the nascent black business community, see Hal Scripps Chase, "'Honey for Friends, Stings for Enemies': William Calvin Chase and the Washington Bee, 1882-1921" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1973), 92.
136. Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, Aug. 20, 1898;
137. Richmond Planet, quoted in Washington Bee, April 23, 1898;
138. Washington Colored American, June 14, 1902;
139. "We Would Like to Know," ibid., July 26, 1902.
140. Washington Colored American, July 28, 1900, p. 5;
141. Washington Bee, Nov. 12, 1898, p. 6.
142. Robert A. McGuinn, The Race Problem in the Churches (Baltimore, 1890), 42.
143. "Battle on River Boat," Washington Colored American, June 18, 1904, p. 8.
144. Tilp, This Was Potomac River, 305-7.
145. Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 2004), 12, 11.
146. Washington Post, Aug. 16, 1891, p. 2.
147. In the etiquette manual, The Negro in Etiquette, E. M. Woods used the following example to implore his readers to conduct themselves quietly in public: "When many of our churches and lodges dismiss, one might hear some of our white neighbors remark: 'The "nigger" church is out.' "The "nigger" lodge is out.'... They know by the melodiousness of our sweet voices. The truth is, it is not far from downright vulgarity for people to condua themselves in this manner along the public thoroughfares." E. M. Woods, The Negro in Etiquette: A Novelty (St. Louis, 1899), 25-26.
148. Washington Bee, July 21, 1888.
149. On southern black newspapers' coverage of "white brutality, corruption, and hypocrisy," see Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South (New York, 1984), 228.
150. Smith, How Race Is Made, 10.
151. After Jefferson closed the park, he sold the land. By the time the property was developed in the late 1980s, little evidence remained of its former existence. Before development began, a team of archeologists conducted a reconnaissance survey of the property, where they uncovered glass bottle fragments and assorted trinkets, and traced the location of the property's five structures, which included a dancing pavilion, water tower, power house, trash dump, and a wooden building of indeterminate use. See Baumgartner-Wagner, "Preliminary Report on the Archaeological Investigations of the Nodey Hall Amusement Park (18PR311)";
152. and Baumgartner-Wagner, "Phase II Archeological Investigations. "