Month: July 2018

“Every American who takes part in the action of a mob or gives it any sort of countenance is no true son of this great democracy, but its betrayer” declared President Woodrow Wilson in his denunciation of lynching one hundred years ago this week. Wilson called on all Americans to “actively and watchfully . . . make an end of this disgraceful evil.”

Philadelphia wasn’t listening.

White residents of Fitler Square “stoned the home of Mrs. T. Lytle” an African-American living at 2504 Pine Street in June. The same mob “burned two wagon loads of furniture owned by other colored tenants who were moving into houses at 2524-26 Pine.” Lytle would have initiated criminal proceedings—she knew the woman who led the mob—but chose silence after being told her house would be torched on Independence Day, if she filed charges.

Editors of The Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s African-American newspaper, drew a line in the sand: “We favor peace but we say to the colored people of the Pine Street warzone, stand your ground . . . . if you are law abiding you need not fear . . . if you are attacked defend yourself like American citizens.  . . . when they tread upon your rights fight them to the bitter end.”

Something like a bitter end would come a mile away the very same day Wilson delivered his anti-mob speech. (You might have previously encountered our posts about the South Philadelphia race riots of 1918 here, here, here, here and here.) This week marks the 100th anniversary of the events. It seems appropriate to sketch a chronology:

July, 24 1918: Adella Bond, a probation officer of the Municipal Court, moves into 2936 Ellsworth Street. “The second time I went down that street, I was stoned,” she told a reporter. “When movers arrived with her furniture . . . [Bond] appeared in her doorway armed with a revolver. Her white neighbors claimed that by this action, she had invited conflict.”

July 26-27, 1918: Friday night to Saturday morning. “About 100 white men and boys gathered in front of my house,” Bond said. “I heard them talk about having guns, and I saw the guns and cartridges.  . . . a man came along with a baby in his arms. He handed the baby to a woman, took a rock and threw it. The rock went through my parlor window. I didn’t know what the mob would do next, and I fired my revolver from my upper window to call the police. A policeman came, but he wouldn’t try to cope with that mob alone, so he turned it into a riot call.” Joseph Kelly, 23, had been shot in leg.

July 27, 1918. Saturday night. Hugh Lavery, 42, shot and instantly killed by Jesse Butler, 18, on 26th Street between Annin Street and Oakford Street.

July 28, 1918. Sunday. A mob at 27th and Titan Streets gives chase to Henry Huff, 23, (who lives near 28th and Titan). Huff runs into a house and soon shoots and kills plainclothes police officer Thomas McVey, 24 (who lives at 28th and Oakford Streets). Detective Thomas Myers and civilian Frank Donohue are also shot and wounded.

Rioting erupts. “In a series of street battles waged for twenty-four hours . . . by more than five thousand white and colored men in a downtown section covering about two square miles,” reported The Inquirer, “scores were seriously injured in the most terrific and bitter race riot that has ever taken place in this city. Half a hundred men were placed under arrest.” Rioting “grew in intensity throughout the day with individual fights and mobs engaged in gun fire on nearly every other corner of a section bounded by Washington Avenue, Dickinson Street, 23rd and 30th Streets.”

July 29, 1918. Monday. Police officers Robert Ramsey and John Schneider severely beat Preston Lewis who is then hospitalized. Schneider attacks Lewis again as he lays semi-conscious on a stretcher in the accident ward. Later that day, the same two officers apprehend and beat Riley Bullock at the corner of Titan Street and Point Breeze avenue. Moments after arriving with in the 17th District Station House at 20th and Federal Streets, Ramsay shoots Bullock in the back at point blank range.

Also: A mob “many of them neighbors and friends” of [the murdered Thomas McVey] swarms into Titan Street “armed with clubs knives bricks and revolvers” and attacks the home of his alleged murderer, Henry Huff, at 2743 Titan Street.

July 30, 1918. Tuesday. Leaders of the city’s African American community call upon the mayor and director of public safety charging “failure of the police to protect the homes in persons of colored citizens” deploring “that [the] police have not been able to protect our citizens from mob violence.”

July 31, 1918. Wednesday. Saloons are closed. McVey’s funeral mass at St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic church, 24th & Grays Ferry avenue. Two hundred additional police are assigned to the burial procession, “30 to a block.” Mounted policemen, Marines and guards from the Navy Yard, as well as members of the Home Defense Reserves, continue to aid the police.

Of course, the story stretches well past the end of July 1918. Riley Bullock’s family and friends bury him on August 2nd. Saloons, closed for days, reopen August 3rd. Services for Frank Donohue are held at St. Gabriel’s Church, 30th and Dickinson. On the 8th, “white hoodlums” somehow get past police assigned to “guard” Adella Bond’s home on Ellsworth Street, steal her valuables and destroy her furniture.

Every last one of the police in the 17th District Station House at 20th and Federal are transferred. The police department receives a judicial rebuke for “looseness in the investigation of the death of Riley Bullock.”

Murder charges against Ramsey and Schneider make their way through the courts. Ramsey admits the shooting was an accident, claiming “his gun went off when he slipped on the steps.” In December 1920, a jury finds Ramsey and Schneider “not guilty” after only a half hour of deliberation.

A century passes. And for the most part, both Philadelphians and makers of public memory do their level best to forget the entire story.

[See sources in the previous PhillyHistory posts: here, here, here, here and here.]

“Sloughing against the bar with one foot on the rail would have been unthinkable behavior for most ‘decent’ women, let along spitting into the cuspidors or allowing their skirts to trail in the beer-soaked sawdust,” wrote Madelon Powers.

“For some women even entering a bar is a fearful prospect,” agreed Mary Jane Lupton in Feminist Studies. “They might get bothered or insulted or embarrassed. Part of this apprehension is based on a realistic appraisal of male behavior. Part has to do with the rather intimidating architecture of the neighborhood barroom, with its L-shaped front bar and its lineup of stools . . . The L provides a defensive line; to break into that, to disrupt the pattern, is to place oneself in a vulnerable position.”

Yet, Powers claimed, “saloongoers were not totally anti-woman . . .  Many bar songs and stories portrayed females as merciful and decent and were surprisingly sentimental about mothers, wives, and women friends. Moreover, male customers accepted and indeed welcomed a female presence in certain areas of the saloon under well-defined circumstances. Though bargoers jealously guarded their male prerogatives and commiserated over male-female conflicts, there is no indication that these men as a group reviled or hated the women in their lives. Sexists and chauvinists they were, but not complete misogynists.”

“The only circumstance in which respectable women might legitimately linger unescorted” in saloons would be “in order to consume the saloon’s famous free lunch.” To access to this lunch, “free with the purchase of a five-cent drink,” women would bypass “the male-dominated ‘barroom proper’” by entering a side door marked “ladies’ entrance.”

This entrance, according to Powers, served a threefold purpose. “First, it permitted women to enter inconspicuously and minimize public scrutiny of their comings and goings… Second, women’s entry through the side door eliminated the necessity of their running the gauntlet through the establishment front room . . . undisputed male territory.  . . .  Finally, the side door afforded women quick and convenient access both to the far end of the bar, where they could purchase carry-out alcohol and to a second chamber known as the ‘back room,’ where they could feast on free lunches or attend social events hosted there.”

And so the “ladies’ entrance” to bars and saloons became universal protocol. Except for one notable case, the most traditional of saloons: McSorley’s Old Ale House in lower Manhattan. Philadelphia artist John Sloan, who moved to New York in 1904, famously and repeatedly painted scenes of its interior.

John McSorley “believed it impossible for men to drink with tranquility in the presence of women” though drinkers tolerated, and were even amused by, young boys running in and out of the back room, snatching “handfuls of cheese and slices of onion, before dashing out, “slamming the door.”  Where many saloons welcomed women, albeit with conditions and limitations, McSorley’s made its message clear with a sign: “NOTICE. NO BACK ROOM IN HERE FOR LADIES.”

McSorley’s motto? “Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies.” When a female entered, Joseph Mitchell told in The New Yorker, “Old John would hurry forward, make a bow, and say, ‘Madam, I’m sorry, but we don’t serve ladies.’ If a woman insisted, Old John would take her by the elbow, head her toward the door, and say, ‘Madam, please don’t provoke me. Make haste and get yourself off the premises, or I’ll be obliged to forget you’re a lady.’”

Sloan considered McSorley’s back room “like a sacristy,” a place where “old John McSorley would sit greeting old friends and philosophizing. Women were never served,” added Sloan, “indeed the dingy walls and woodwork looked as if women had set neither hand nor foot in the place.”

Until June 25, 1970, that is, when, by court order, McSorley’s opened its doors to women. Shortly after Mayor John Lindsay signed the order, Lucy Komisar, a vice president of the National Organization for Women, approached “the old‐fashioned wooden doors” wearing, The New York Times felt compelled to inform its readers, “a purple jumpsuit, sandals and sunglasses.”

A waiter demanded Komisar produce her birth certificate.” The 28-year old Komisar offered her driver’s license. The waiter refused to accept the license as proof she was at least 18 (then the legal drinking age). Komisar attempted to push her way in. The two engaged in “a short wrestling match” before the manager allowed Komisar inside, “to a chorus of boos from some of the regular patrons.”

“Shortly afterward,” observed the Times reporter, “Miss Komisar was involved in an argument with “some young men who were drinking ale in their undershirts.” When “one tall, unidentified man showed her an obscene poem he had scrawled on a piece of paper, [Komisar] tried to snatch it out of his hand.”

“Why, you little ——–,” he shouted, dumping a stein of ale over her head.”

“’You can’t do that!’ she shrieked, lunging at him.” Again the manager intervened, escorting the protesting, undershirted poet to the sidewalk.

They’re really boorish, horrible men” commented Komisar, “drenched but smiling . . . as she sipped an ale at the bar.” They “have a lot of problems with their masculinity.”

Taking it all in nearby, “an old-timer in an open collar shirt shook his head sorrowfully. ‘That woman is trouble. All women are trouble. This is what happens when you let them in here.’”

Apparently, everyone had more work to do.

[Sources: Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920 (The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Mary Jane Lupton, “Ladies’ Entrance: Women and Bars,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, (Autumn, 1979); Joseph Mitchell, “The Old House at Home,” The New Yorker, April 13, 1940; John Sloan, The Gist of Art (New York, American Artists Group, Inc. 1939); Grace Lichtenstein, “McSorley’s Admits. Women Under a New City Law, The New York Times, August 11, 1970.]

“I didn’t know anything about girls,” Jack London wrote, “I had been too busy being a man.”

For London, as well as millions of other American men of similar vintage, the saloon was ground zero for “being a man” where the “test of true manhood,” as Madelon Powers put it, “was peer recognition for being a reliable ally and comrade in the volatile street culture of urban America.”

“Drinking was a man’s sport,” reminisced Travis Hoke a decade into prohibition. “And women not only loathed the saloon for its intrinsic evils but, quite naturally, because men often sought each others’ company there and excluded women. Safe in his saloon, a man boasted of marital independence, complained of marital injustice, gained strength to defy the dominant sex. There he could play at being devil-may-care and independent and generous and brave and debonair, at being manly—and there no woman dared invade him with drab truths. The saloon was for men only. It was their last stronghold in a world of women…”

“One breasted the bar, downed a drink, and became a man among men.”

According to Powers, “men who did each other the honor of drinking together were also expected to celebrate and reinforce their special bond through the swapping of drinks, favors, small loans, or other gestures of mutual assistance and friendship. . . . .by vying with one another in friendly contests of drinking, pool-playing, wagering, storytelling and the like, their displayed their ability and stamina to one another and reaffirmed their worth as clubmates. . . . rivalries were resolved through conventional forms of barroom interaction.”

America’s saloons, were men-only affairs where alcohol “was prized as a commodity of exchange, a thing intrinsically valuable that could function like money and all manner of transactions among men. When politicians, businessman, employers, union recruiters, or others wished to curry favor or reward jobs well done, they often did so not with cash, but with drink. Cash was valuable but crass; drink was both valuable and pleasurable” in the sacred space of a saloon that, we know from the noir novels of John T. McIntyre, “glittered with clusters of electric lamps and broad, gilt-framed mirrors,” its “marble-topped bar backed by pyramids of glasses and bottles.”

“The typical workingman’s saloon was readily recognizable by its swinging shuttered doors and wrought iron windows cluttered with potted ferns, posters and bottles of colored water,” writes Jon Kingsdale. “Inside was a counter running almost the length of the room, paralleled by a brass foot- rail. The floor was covered with sawdust. Across from the bar were perhaps a few tables and chairs backed up by a piano, pool table or rear stalls. Behind the bar and over an assortment of lemons, glasses and unopened magnums of muscatel, port and champagne hung a large plate-glass mirror.”

Men would revel in shared memories of the saloon as a unique and welcoming refuge. James Stevens was impressed by “the great mirror shown gloriously” above sparkling glasses and stacked labeled bottles. “Never before have I seen such an array of glasses, or such vivid colors, or such a vast mirror, or such huge carved and polished pillars and beams, or such enormous vessels of brass as the spittoons… . . The bar-room was strange and wonderful to look at, and even the smells were curious and pleasant to breathe.” John Powers “remembered vividly the strange beer smells, the sawdust on the floor, and the big men slouching against the bar with one foot on the rail.”

By 1888, Philadelphia had 5,773 licensed saloons. If “set side by side,” calculated the Inquirer, they’d “form a line nearly twenty-two miles long…” By 1915, New York would have more than 10,000, or one for every 515 persons; Chicago had one licensed saloon for every 335 residents; …  “A survey of Chicago found that on an average day the number of saloon customers equaled half the city’s total population.”

In saloons, according to Hoke, “millions of American men spent a sixth of their time and almost as much of their wages.” Saloons “had more influence on more men than all the colleges from Harvard to Stanford.” They “affected profoundly politics, religion, the lives of families, the destiny of the nation…”

“Half the Democratic captains of Chicago’s first ward at the beginning of the 20th century were saloon proprietors,” Kingsdale tells us. “One-third of Milwaukee’s 46 city councilmen in 1902 were saloon-keepers, as were about a third of Detroit’s aldermen at the end of the 19th century. Tweed’s ‘Boodle Board’ of aldermen was composed in half of saloon-keepers or ex-saloon-keepers; in 1884 nearly two-thirds of the political conventions and primaries in New York City were held in saloons; and in 1890 eleven of New York City’s 24 aldermen were saloon-keepers.”

Unfortunately, Kingsdale didn’t delve into saloon politics in Philadelphia. We’ll have to leave that story to future research, or, if we like, our florid historical imagination.

[Sources: Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920 (The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Travis Hoke, Corner Saloon. The American Mercury, March 1931, pp. 311-322; Jon M. Kingsdale, “Social Functions of the Urban Working-Class Saloon,” American Quarterly, vol. 25, No. 4. (Oct., 1973); “Comparative Saloon Table,” The Inquirer, May 28, 1888, p. 4.]

Growing up as a newsboy on the streets of San Francisco, Jack London got to know and love “the wide-open, all-male flavor of saloonlife.”

“I had no time to read. I was busy getting exercise and learning how to fight, busy learning forwardness, and brass and bluff. I had an imagination and a curiosity about all things that made me plastic. Not least among the things I was curious about was the saloon. And I was in and out of many a one. . . .”

“The saloon was the place of congregation. Men gathered to it as primitive men gathered about the fire of the squatting place or the fire at the mouth of the cave.”

“By way of the saloon I had escaped from the narrowness of woman’s influence into the wide free world of men. All ways led to the saloon [whose] doors were ever open. And always and everywhere I found saloons, on highway and byway, up narrow alleys and on busy thoroughfares, bright-lighted and cheerful, warm in winter and in summer dark and cool.”

“Yes, the saloon was a mighty fine place, and it was more than that. … The saloons are poor men’s clubs. Saloons are congregating places. We engaged to meet one another in saloons. We celebrated our good fortune or wept our grief in saloons. We got acquainted in saloons.”

“In the saloons, life was different. Men talked with great voices, laughed great laughs, and there was an atmosphere of greatness. Here was something more than the common every-day where nothing happened. Here life was always very live, and, sometimes even lurid, when blows were struck, and blood was shed, and big policemen came shouldering in. Great moments, these, for me, my head filled with all the wild and valiant fighting of the gallant adventurers on sea and land. There were no big moments when I trudged along the street throwing my papers in at doors. But in the saloons, even the sots, stupefied, sprawling across the tables or in the sawdust, were objects of mystery and wonder.”

And more, the saloons were right. The city fathers sanctioned them and licensed them. They were not terrible places I heard boys deem them who lacked my opportunities to know. Terrible they might be, but then that only meant they were terribly wonderful, and it is the terribly wonderful that a boy desired to know. In the same way pirates, and shipwrecks, and battles were terrible; and what healthy boy wouldn’t give his immortal soul to participate in such affairs?”

“Besides, in saloons I saw reporters, editors, lawyers, judges, who names and faces I knew. They put the seal of social appeal on the saloon. They verified my own feeling of fascination in the saloon. They, too, must have found that there was something different, that something beyond, which I sensed and groped after. What it was, I did not know; yet there it must be, for there men focused like buzzing flies about a honey pot.”

In saloons, confirms Madelon Powers, “men defined themselves as men. They established standards of manly comportment and continuously reaffirmed their personal and group esteem by observing. . . standards. They sought out men of the same age cohort whose experiences and interests chronologically paralleled their own. . . . Single men, married men, migrating men whose families waited behind—all sought fellowship and solace from barmates in comparable situations. As regulars dealt collectively with these deeply personal concerns, they cultivated the kind of intimate, emotionally charged relationships associated with community.”

“Bolstering the regulars’ ethic of manliness was the ambience of the saloon itself. Indeed, nearly every feature of the saloon’s interior seemed designed to promote an aura of freewheeling masculinity. The air was redolent with beer fumes and cigar smoke. The bar’s footrail was itself ‘a symbol of masculinity emancipate’ . . . Wall decorations often included photographs of prizefighters such as John L. Sullivan . . . depictions of cockfights, horse races and battleships, Also popular with lithographs of buxom, scantily clad women who posed provocatively.  . . . Brass cuspidors stood within convenient spitting distance, with sawdust scattered about to accommodate lapses in marksmanship. For those disinclined to answer calls of nature, a few establishments even featured a urination trough on the floor running lengthwise along the bar counter, built on a slight tilt to facilitate flushing.

In the opening years of the 20th century, the urban saloon served to” reinforce feelings of uninhibited masculinity and gender solidarity among workingmen.” It was a place, as Hutchins Hapgood observed of McSorley’s Saloon in New York, where “no woman ever passed or passes the threshold.” A place where “workingmen . . . sit quietly for hours over one or two mugs of ale look as if they never thought of a woman. They are maturely reflecting in purely male ways and solemnly discoursing, untroubled by skirts or domesticity.”

[Sources: Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920 (The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Jack London, John Barleycorn (1913); Hutchins Hapgood, “McSorley’s Saloon,” Harpers Weekly, Vol 58, October 25, 1913.]