History of the American Negro: West Virginia Edition

Introduction

xi Introduction Ninety years ago, editor and publisher A. B. Caldwell published the History of the American Negro: West Virginia Edition, Volume VII. Appearing on the heels of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the rural South and into the nation’s major urban industrial centers, this volume of biographical portraits celebrates the achievements of black West Virginians and reinforces the very hopeful social, cultural, and political outlook of the emerging “New Negro” of the 1920s. Membership in black churches and fraternal orders, Republican Party politics, and local chapters of the NAACP figure prominently among the activities of the state’s black “men of distinction.” Specifically , Caldwell pursues these biographies with an eye for the accomplishments of “representative” African American “leaders” in a wide range of professions and lines of work, for the “inspiration and encouragement ” of the next generation of black Mountaineers, and for the benefit of “future historians” of the state’s black past. On each of these counts—as a source of inspiration, a call for race advancement, and a document for future historical study—the West Virginia Edition represents a major contribution to knowledge. Through the lens of biography, the West Virginia Edition underscores key themes in the state’s African American history. From the onset of statehood in 1863 through the publication of this book sixty years later, these themes included the ambiguous legacy of slavery and xii history american negro freedom, new patterns of class and racial inequality, and persistent movements for full citizenship and equal rights across the color line. In 1861, when Virginia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy , western Virginians opposed secession, remained in the Union, and created a new state. After becoming a state in 1863, however, West Virginia did not become a symbol of emancipation for enslaved and free blacks. While the Mountain State enacted a law for the gradual emancipation of enslaved black children after they reached adulthood, West Virginia nonetheless entered the Union as a slaveholding state. Before the constitutional convention approved gradual emancipation, the original provision stated, “No slave shall be brought or free person of color come into this state for permanent residence after this constitution goes into effect.” Because of this provision, and under the impact of the Civil War, West Virginia’s black population actually dropped from over 21,000 in 1860 to nearly 17,000 or 3 percent of the total population by the war’s end. In February 1865, however, West Virginia abolished chattel slavery nearly a year ahead of the 13th Amendment. Despite West Virginia’s ambiguous legacy of slavery and freedom for black people, African Americans from declining tobacco-growing areas of Virginia and other Upper South states gradually moved into the Mountain State. Beginning slowly during the Civil War with notable newcomers such as Booker T.Washington and his stepfather Washington Ferguson, black migration to the Mountain State accelerated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the state’s bituminous coal industry dramatically expanded. Under the impact of industrialization, the black population increased from 25,800 in 1880; to over 64,000 in 1910; and to nearly 115,000 in 1930, about 6 percent of the state’s total. At a time when most industrial firms in the nation excluded black workers from employment, both the railroad and coal industries hired large numbers of African Americans to open up the bituminous coalfields of southern Appalachia. African Americans helped lay track for the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Norfolk & Western, and the Virginian.Work on the C&O also produced the black folk hero introduction xiii John Henry, who powerfully contested the steam drill during work on the Big Bend tunnel at Talcott, present day Summers County. Following the completion of each rail line, substantial numbers of black railroad men remained behind as part of the expanding coal mining labor force. Blacks made up over 20 percent of all West Virginia coal miners from the 1890s through the early twentieth century. Whereas the majority of black migrants moved to West Virginia from the nearby states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee before World War I, rising numbers of black migrants from the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi supplanted the Upper South sources of black migrants during and after World War I. African American workers helped to increase coal production from less than 5 million tons in 1885 to nearly 40 million tons in the...