Free One Righteous Man : Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York (9780807012611) by Arthur Browne Page A
Authors: Arthur Browne
higher-paying porter’s slot at Grand Central. The station had too much work for its twenty-five luggage carriers, only two of whom were black. Williams got the job. Then, recognizing that he could tap a limitless supply of young African Americans for service labor, he presented the railroad with job candidates who met his insistence on reliability, industriousness, and honesty.
One by one, Williams’s men proved themselves, and the stationmaster gave him responsibility for hiring porters. In time, the force grew to more than four hundred men, and Williams eventually became Chief Williams to the young black men he helped propel into life, as well as in the minds of the traveling public. Both would revere the Chief for elevating luggage portage into a dignified occupation. Most memorably, Williams outfitted his team with uniforms that included hats topped with red flannel. Thus was born the term by which luggage carriers became widely known—“redcaps.”
Brightly visible, they scurried from curbside to trackside, collected a modest paycheck and bigger tips, and served as concierges to the city. Abram Hill, who interviewed Williams as part of the WPA Writers’ Project, wrote that the redcaps covered up to ten miles a day as “walking booths of information,” each one prepared to answer questions ranging from “the time of departure of the Trans-Atlantic steamers to the time the baseball game begins, and how far is the nearest eating place.” 64
Wearing a red carnation in his lapel over the course of forty-five years, the Chief became well known to Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, Coolidge, and Wilson. He counted as friends New York governor Al Smith, senators Robert Wagner and Herbert Lehman, as well as Archbishop Patrick Cardinal Hayes, spiritual leader of New York’s Roman Catholics. Students at Yale and Harvard made sure to send him a ticket to the schools’ annual football match.
All of that was still to come for Williams on the day Battle applied for work. As was his practice with every job seeker, he questioned Battle closely about everything he had done over the previous five years.
Battle’s brawn was apparent. He would have no trouble hauling luggage. He was also well spoken and schooled in relating to whites. Finally, Williams may well have detected that Battle had the brains to help with the paperwork of managing an expanding work force. He offered Battle a red cap, and Battle eagerly accepted, neither man having any reason to suspect that they and young Wesley Augustus, grown straight and tall at eight years old, were on their way toward grueling fights against racial barriers.
BATTLE BROUGHT FLORENCE the good news. He expected to make the healthy sum of several hundred dollars a month, ten dollars in salary, the remainder in tips. Happily, he left behind a butler’s duties, noting with pride, “When I left the service of Mr. Forbes, I never worked in a private home again.”
Plunging into twelve-hour shifts, Battle set his mind to building a savings account. To economize, he moved into a hot-bed bunk room, where he was reunited with a brother who had joined the family’s dispersal. He remembered:
I lived for a time with a group of Red Caps and Pullman porters, ten or twelve of us sleeping in shifts in a big dormitory basement room at 233 West 41st Street at $1.00 a week each. My brother, William D., who had come North to work as a Pullman porter, while studying for the ministry at Lincoln University, shared my cot, sleeping while I was working.
During the summers, a number of young college fellows occupied such quarters while employed at the station or running on the railroad as waiters and Pullman porters to earn their college expenses. “Making the season,” they termed it.
Battle further trimmed spending by joining the redcaps for meals at McBride’s Saloon, the establishment where, they all knew, the police riot of 1900 had begun with the mistaken-identity stabbing of white cop Robert
One by one, Williams’s men proved themselves, and the stationmaster gave him responsibility for hiring porters. In time, the force grew to more than four hundred men, and Williams eventually became Chief Williams to the young black men he helped propel into life, as well as in the minds of the traveling public. Both would revere the Chief for elevating luggage portage into a dignified occupation. Most memorably, Williams outfitted his team with uniforms that included hats topped with red flannel. Thus was born the term by which luggage carriers became widely known—“redcaps.”
Brightly visible, they scurried from curbside to trackside, collected a modest paycheck and bigger tips, and served as concierges to the city. Abram Hill, who interviewed Williams as part of the WPA Writers’ Project, wrote that the redcaps covered up to ten miles a day as “walking booths of information,” each one prepared to answer questions ranging from “the time of departure of the Trans-Atlantic steamers to the time the baseball game begins, and how far is the nearest eating place.” 64
Wearing a red carnation in his lapel over the course of forty-five years, the Chief became well known to Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, Coolidge, and Wilson. He counted as friends New York governor Al Smith, senators Robert Wagner and Herbert Lehman, as well as Archbishop Patrick Cardinal Hayes, spiritual leader of New York’s Roman Catholics. Students at Yale and Harvard made sure to send him a ticket to the schools’ annual football match.
All of that was still to come for Williams on the day Battle applied for work. As was his practice with every job seeker, he questioned Battle closely about everything he had done over the previous five years.
Battle’s brawn was apparent. He would have no trouble hauling luggage. He was also well spoken and schooled in relating to whites. Finally, Williams may well have detected that Battle had the brains to help with the paperwork of managing an expanding work force. He offered Battle a red cap, and Battle eagerly accepted, neither man having any reason to suspect that they and young Wesley Augustus, grown straight and tall at eight years old, were on their way toward grueling fights against racial barriers.
BATTLE BROUGHT FLORENCE the good news. He expected to make the healthy sum of several hundred dollars a month, ten dollars in salary, the remainder in tips. Happily, he left behind a butler’s duties, noting with pride, “When I left the service of Mr. Forbes, I never worked in a private home again.”
Plunging into twelve-hour shifts, Battle set his mind to building a savings account. To economize, he moved into a hot-bed bunk room, where he was reunited with a brother who had joined the family’s dispersal. He remembered:
I lived for a time with a group of Red Caps and Pullman porters, ten or twelve of us sleeping in shifts in a big dormitory basement room at 233 West 41st Street at $1.00 a week each. My brother, William D., who had come North to work as a Pullman porter, while studying for the ministry at Lincoln University, shared my cot, sleeping while I was working.
During the summers, a number of young college fellows occupied such quarters while employed at the station or running on the railroad as waiters and Pullman porters to earn their college expenses. “Making the season,” they termed it.
Battle further trimmed spending by joining the redcaps for meals at McBride’s Saloon, the establishment where, they all knew, the police riot of 1900 had begun with the mistaken-identity stabbing of white cop Robert
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