First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany

“Hometown Heroes of Racial Reconciliation”

 

Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, January 18, 2004



Call to Celebration


Singing in an inter-racial, inter-faith gospel choir in Oakland, California was an important part of my Unitarian Universalist spiritual formation.I’m not sure I knew it at the time however.I had recently joined the First Unitarian Church’s chancel choir and started developing my ability to read music and sing tenor.The gospel choir took me to a whole new experience of vocal performance.
Gospel choirs don’t read music--they memorize it.I remember taping our rehearsals and singing my lungs out in the car driving to work as I learned the tenor part.This taught me how to listen to those around me and follow the director carefully.Memorizing the music allowed us to create a kind of vocal unity that bonded us and helped us start to cross the color line.

Selecting non-Christ centric music was a struggle for our Missionary Baptist director.The center of his theology was Jesus.Being an inter-faith group, we had non-Christians, myself included, some of whom could barely sing lyrics laced with God images.We finally recognized as a group that we just couldn’t do justice to gospel music without singing some songs about Jesus.So some of us sang our hearts out for Jesus, not as the one and only resurrected savior, but as one great living example of how to bring capital ‘L’ Love into the world.

That Gospel Choir inspired a vision in me that I bring to this congregation.Whether we are believers or unbelievers in a wide range of different theologies, I believe secular images, God images, Christian images, Jewish images, Islamic images, Eastern images, African images, and other theological metaphors can encourage our spiritual growth and development.We gather not to decide the undecide-able.We gather not to judge the ineffable.We gather to support each other as we risk expanding our circle of love.We gather to sing our hearts out while we do it.


 

Reading


From an address upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Albany Inter-racial Council by the founding President and member of our congregation, Harold P. Winchester:
Looking back from the vantage point of a quarter of a century, it would seem as if the conception of the Albany Inter-racial Council, like many others, was spontaneous and unplanned.Yet all the material and psychological conditions were at hand to furnish flaming tinder for that first spark to ignite.That first spark flashed on Sunday, March 28th, 1928, just 25 years ago last month, at the First Unitarian Church on Washington Avenue in this city where at its Unity Forum the principal speaker was James Weldon Johnson, the noted Negro poet, author, and composer, who had as his topic, “The Negro Problem in America.”At that time, your historian happened to be both Chairman of the Unity Forum Committee and also Scout Master of the only Negro Boy Scout Troop in the Fort Orange Council.This latter work, taking him into the badly run-down homes of his scouts in the South End, gave him considerable concern about the Negro problem in Albany and led to the invitation to Dr. Johnson as one of the speakers on the year’s Forum program.

After church the morning of the Johnson meeting this question had arisen in our Forum Committee meeting as to how we should seat the audience as we had hoped that many Negroes would attend such a meeting.We quite quickly decided that the seating should be done without discrimination but due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, including the absence of the Chairman in meeting Dr. Johnson at the station, the result was that most of the white people were seated on the left hand side of the hall and the Negro group on the right hand side.The inside story of how this sad mistake happened and its repercussions in the following days would be of psychological interest to all of you but right now we are only concerned with its relationship to the start of the council.

Dr. Johnson gave a splendid inspirational talk in the course of which he recounted the recent gains of the Negroes, particularly in the North, and some of their handicaps, especially from prejudice in the South.In the question period after the lecture, Dr. Johnson was asked to recite several of his most popular poems and songs, to the delight of the audience.With the audience, quiet and relaxed, after a brief silence, a tall white lady arose in the audience and stated she was from the South which had been so severely criticized for its Jim Crowism that afternoon but that she had been greatly surprised when she had come INTO THIS MEETING in the North that afternoon to find that there was segregation even here in this so tolerant North for practically all the white people were being ushered into seats on one side of the church and the Negro group on the other side.This challenging statement seemed to stir up the emotional tone of the meeting immediately.Dr. Johnson asked then what is the real situation in Albany.A number of Negroes arose and voiced complaints about many housing and segregation problems in Albany, in several cases rather bitterly.Then Dr. Johnson asked if there were any local inter-racial committee working toward a solution of these difficulties.He was assured emphatically that there were not and never had been such efforts.

At this point a rather perturbed and indignant Chairman sent a note up to the Moderator, Miss Elizabeth Smith, at that time City Librarian and a member of the Forum Committee of the Unitarian Church, suggesting she might announce that if any one present was interested in the possible formation of an inter-racial committee in Albany, they might meet for a few minutes after the Forum in adjoining Channing Hall.Miss Smith made the announcement and when the meeting had concluded, a small group of us adjourned to Channing Hall.Like those who sailed on the Mayflower, that original group was expanded considerably over the years … (he then lists some names including the notable African American leaders Mr. Charles and Mrs. Harriet Van Vranken and Ida Yarborough) … After a brief discussion in which the consensus of opinion was that the racial situation was such in Albany that an Inter-racial group would be quite useful, we adjourned because of the lateness of the hour to meet in the same place two weeks hence.


Sermon


This Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr.’s federal holiday is often taken up remembering him and his legacy.I assure you we will do that again in the future as I’m currently reading an excellent book on this life that I know has several powerful sermons in it.
The story of the African American struggle for civil rights right here in Albany has its own story -- that I’m afraid is slowly being forgotten.As you heard from the reading, in the first half of the 20th Century our congregation was right in the middle of it.

I thought when I picked this sermon title, I’d just have to go to a library, check out a book and have all the information I needed.Such was not the case.Piecing together that history hasn’t been easy.I expect just about everyone who was at that gathering to hear James Weldon Johnson is now dead.I’ve rummaged through the libraries of SUNY, the Albany Institute of History and Art, and spoken with local historians.I’ve discovered the history of the African American Albany community is buried treasure waiting to be discovered.One of the gems can be found in our own archives.

Documenting earliest African American history here, as elsewhere, is difficult because they were considered property.We have documentation from the provincial census of 1697 that 23 Negroes resided in Albany County.Slavery in Albany reached its peak around 1790 when 572 slaves were counted as residents in the first Census.That meant that a third of the city’s households had slaves.They were counted, but not named, nor were their occupations listed.

That starts to change after 1800 when the first African American names enter the historical record.I’d like to mention a few notables this morning.Samuel Schuyler is one of the first prominent African Americans in Albany historians have discovered.While no one has made a direct association between him and Albany’s founding Philip Schuyler family, any assumed association probably helped him and his family throughout their lives.

Born in 1781, the first records of him show up when he baptized the first of his eleven children in 1805.He reappears along the waterfront as a laborer in the 1809 tax records.In 1813, He started buying real estate in the South End and had several properties by 1815.During the next twenty years he acquired dozens of properties.He made his money as a towboat captain making runs to New York City and across the Hudson. By the mid-1830s, Samuel Schuyler & Company owned a flour and feed store located at Bassett and Franklin Streets.His sons built up the Schuyler Towboat Company into a successful Albany business.

Benjamin Lattimore is another one of the early notable African Americans.Born a free man in Connecticut:

in September 1776, he enlisted the Third New York New Regiment of the Continental army. A few days later, his company was sent to New York City where he took part in the losing battle for Manhattan. In 1777, he was on duty at Fort Montgomery and was captured when the British stormed the fort. Taken to New York City, he was made a servant of British officers. While on a trip into Westchester County, he was captured by the Americans and sent home.

He found his regiment again and passed through Albany on his way to be part of an offensive in the Mohawk valley.After the war, he found his way back, was baptized in the Albany Presbyterian Church in 1799, marrying, starting a family and again acquiring property.Lattimore earned his living as a licensed cartman, hauling cargoes and taking away trash.He was founder and an early superintendent of the first Black School in Albany.In 1816 a small group of “courageous men of color” petitioned the New York State Legislature for permission to establish a school in Albany.

Any record of the early Afro Albanian community must mention Steven Myers.Born in 1800, freed at the age of 18, he worked as a grocer and a steamboat steward.He started two publications, the first called The Elevator of which no record currently exists, and the second, The Northern Star Freeman’s Advocate, the paper of the Northern Star Association, a self-help group that among other things assisted fugitive slaves.Myers was a primary contact for the Underground Railroad for Albany.He also helped start the Wilberforce School, in Albany that educated African American children from 1845 till 1873.William Wilberforce was an English Abolitionist widely influential in getting the movement started in America.

From 1873 to 1928 so far, has been a void in my research.From what Harold Winchester reports from the Negro side of the aisle, I expect the African American community in Albany had been steadily losing ground and influence after the closing of the Wilberforce School.The meeting right here in this room almost 76 years ago began to turn the tide.

They did meet two weeks later and incorporated themselves soon after.One of the Board’s first actions at the request of its African American Board members was to approach the Knickerbocker News and ask that they begin capitalizing Negro just as they capitalized Caucasian.It was their first victory.

The reports of the appalling conditions in the South End motivated them to engage the Urban League to do a survey.The results were shocking.I browsed through the report at the Albany Institute Library.I’d like to read for you the excellent summary by Harold Winchester:

This survey showed that there were approximately 2500 Negroes in Albany in November, 1928 and that conditions so far as housing, health, employment, recreation, education, availability of social welfare, cultural advantages and business were such as no enlightened citizenry could permit to continue.The housing situation was shown to be particularly appalling.With the exception of a very few houses built by Negro owners for their own use, no buildings constructed after 1900 had been available for Negroes in Albany.The only houses open to them were those in the most undesirable sections of the city where landlords refused to make even the most necessary repairs and the rent charged was not only out of proportion to the neighborhood but was frequently from 50 to 100 per cent higher than that of white tenants in the same house.

Due largely to these undesirable housing facilities, the survey found that health conditions prevailing among Negroes in Albany were much less favorable than that shown in other communities.It showed that while Negro births were in proportion with white births yet the rate of Negro deaths was twice that of the white population. The employment situation was equally startling.Many concerns refused to employ Negro workers.More than half of the male Negro workers in Albany were engaged in the domestic and personal service type of labor.Due to low wages paid, the employment of a large number of Negro married women was necessitated.There was, at that time, no Negro professional man in Albany.There was no Negro teacher.

Our survey showed too that there were no recreation facilities for colored boys and girls.Gymnasiums of the city, except those in the public schools, were closed to them, as were swimming pools.There was no place in which the colored youth could gather for recreation.Except for the Boy Scouts, no Albany social service organization would take Negroes to their summer camps at that time.Only three Negro children had graduated from the Albany High School in the previous four years and there were only 11 colored children in the High School at that time.There were no Negroes attending any of the various private; semi-private, or graduate schools in Albany.The orphanages would not accept colored children.There were no colored social workers.

The first recommendation the Council acted upon from the Urban League survey was to set up an administrative social organization, inter-racial by design, with the purpose of “ameliorating the social difficulties affecting the Negro.”An executive director, James H. Baker, Jr., was found and his salary funded through the Community Chest.Next they publicized the report in the community to gain support for reform. 

The strongest recommendation of the survey was the need for a community center in Arbor Hill, a place where “the colored population” could recreate, have dances and activities for young people and provide room for local civic organizations. Remember this was 1928.The white community didn’t consider desegregation as a viable solution to providing these amenities.So with their eyes wide open to what they were doing, they began to seek a location for a community center.They felt a segregated facility was better than none at all.

In 1932, the Old Sixth Presbyterian Church at 122 Second Street became available and was purchased for this purpose for $12,000.After taking the pews out and renovating it, in October it opened its doors as the Booker T. Washington Community Center.This was the first incarnation of what became the Arbor Hill Community Center today.

There is much more to tell, but my time unfortunately is brief.What was remarkable to me as I researched the Inter-racial Council was the energetic Black-White cooperation and the fiscal support of the White community.When the White community was educated, they responded.It speaks powerfully to the blindness of oppression.For the most part, the first families of Albany were not setting out to grind their boot into the Black man’s back to hold him down.They just weren’t paying attention to the results of their actions.And if they did notice, the discomfort of seeing the pain would make them avert their eyes.Or worse, blame the victim for their inability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

This disturbs me today because the dissolution of the Albany Inter-Racial County and the Urban League collapse more recently in the beginning of this century leaves a vacuum of institutionalized inter-racial cooperation.Without such an organization, I fear we may be slipping backward toward polarization.As I’ve learned in ARISE, marginalized communities only gain real power through organizing.Unfortunately ARISE has not, so far, been able to become the vehicle for this to happen.

One bright spot has been the West Hill Ministers Fellowship in which I participate that brings African American ministers together with European American ministers and priests right in our neighborhood.I’ve seen this organization strengthen since I’ve been here, particularly with the support of the Prayer and Healing Center on Clinton Avenue.While I part company with their Fundamentalist Christian theology, I cannot fault their steadfast commitment to resurrect West Hill.Rev. Beresford Bailey, minister of the Star of Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church has been a guiding light of the Ministers Fellowship from its founding about ten years ago.

The reason we need these Inter-racial organizations is not just to address social iniquities in the community.We need them because of what they do to grow individual human hearts.Hear Harold Winchester’s description of how he has been affected by his involvement:

They were busy years, full of meetings, regular and special, full of crises, full of unusual situations.It was grand to work together in inter-racial co-operation and with mutual respect and tolerance.We learned much from our joint endeavor in trying essentially to realize the brotherhood of man.The writer looks back upon his six active years as President as some of the most interesting and exciting of his life and is grateful for this lesson in brotherhood which he has tried to carry into other spheres of activity.

Realizing, in more modern language, the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity--reminiscent of loving your neighbor isn’t it?Crossing the color line in particular continues to be challenging.As long as that remains true, inter-racial organizations can help make that possible.

Julian Bond, at General Assembly in Boston last summer, suggested one path for us right now.He urged us to become active members of the NAACP.I met with Anne Pope, President of the Albany Chapter of the NAACP, as part of my research for this sermon.She told me how difficult her work is on both sides of the color divide and her need for black and white support.

The work of Racial Reconciliation is far from done.Racism is alive and active in our community.It isn’t the active racism of the KKK lynching people and burning crosses on people’s lawns.It is the more insidious variety--ignorance, abandonment and neglect.Turning toward learning and engagement is not easy, but it can carry you into very personally fulfilling work that will teach you what loving your neighbor really means.When we truly work in partnership to solve these problems, we discover the transforming power of love working through us.

As our hometown hero Harold Winchester discovered, this is enough meaning for a lifetime.

Copyright © 2004 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All rights reserved.