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171 Chapter Eight Voice of Betrayal Does Peter Clark think that by becoming a Democrat he has changed his skin, and that by serving the Democratic party in its oppression of his people he has become a white Democrat? Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, 1885 On the eve of the 1884 presidential election, a “mob” led by Mike Mullen, a Cincinnati police lieutenant, raided the home of John Venable, a black boarding home operator who also happened to be president of the Colored Blaine and Logan Club—a political club dedicated to securing the election victory of Republicans James G. Blaine and John A. Logan ticket for president and vice president, over their Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland.1 Operating without warrants, Lieutenant Mullen and his squad seized twenty-fourAfrican American men from Venable’s home on Gilmore’s Landing, near the Ohio River, that evening. These men then were marched to the Hamilton Street station house and confined to the cellar from midnight on the eve before elections, until well after the polls closed on Election Day. The police never charged them with any crimes and made no record of their arrests or confinement. Apparently, the lock-up of Venable’s boarders constituted only a small part of a larger scheme to deny African Americans the right to vote that election. As the truth unfolded, it soon became clear that Mullen and other police officers, acting under the presumed authority of the mayor, seized every African American man they could find from streets, carriages, theaters , and even their homes. While in custody, they were denied food, water , and communication with the outside, and none were informed of their charges or given writs of habeas corpus.2 Not only were several of their civil liberties violated in the detention, but they were denied the most important civil right of all: the franchise. When the whole story came out in the press, papers reported that Mullen had illegally arrested and detained a total of 152 African American 172 America’s First Black Socialist men that night—a detention that effectively prevented these men from exercising their Fifteenth Amendment right to vote the following day. Papers reported that the police had offered to release those who promised to vote for the Democratic ticket.3 And while terrorism, false imprisonment, and other schemes to deny African Americans the franchise were common in the South, people were shocked to learn that it had happened in a northern city.4 Even more shocking was the fact that one of Cincinnati’s leading African American citizens, Peter H. Clark, was implicated in the raids. His name was spoken in the same breath as tales of voter intimidation, disfranchisement, and bribery—a fact that hastened his loss of status and respect as a race man. What could have possessed Clark to participate in such a sordid political scandal that included disfranchising and discrediting African Americans —the very people for whom he had tirelessly worked his entire life? What could have possessed a man with an impeccable professional reputation to risk everything by attempting to bribe someone? The answers to these questions begin with Clark’s decision to become a Democrat in 1882 and his calculated decisions as a member of that party afterward. In the mid-1880s, Peter Clark’s thirst for personal political power, coupled with his desire that Democrats retain local political dominance, eclipsed all other goals. He understood that the changing demographics and political culture dictated that he venture into political waters that few African Americans ever had: machine politics.5 But to enter that world—as it was constructed in Cincinnati—he had to leave behind his own identity politics even as he embraced a party dominated by working-class ethnics. Unfortunately , his decision to play machine politics led to Clark’s very public and embarrassing fall from the pedestal of race leadership. The mass disfranchisement of African Americans in Cincinnati exposed the dirty schemes and widespread corruption in Gilded Age politics in the city. The Queen City reigned over little more than political fraud and corruption. Local officials accepted bribes, politicians purchased votes, and parties purchased elections. In 1881, a councilman went to the press with charges that the city council had been offered bribes to vote for the Union Depot ordinance. Papers reported that a local gubernatorial candidate admitted spending fifty thousand dollars purchasing votes in the 1883 primary.6 The most common and widespread form of political corruption in the city, though, happened...

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