Cicero M Fain III - Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story

An Appalachian Story

CICERO M. FAIN III

2019 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fain, Cicero M. III, 1958 author.

Title: Black Huntington: an Appalachian story / Cicero M. Fain III.

Description: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [2019] | Significant revision of authors thesis (doctoral)Ohio State University, 2009, titled Race, river, and the railroad: Black Huntington, West Virginia, 18711929. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019001712 (print) | LCCN 2019005745 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252051432 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252042591 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252084423 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : African AmericansWest VirginiaHuntingtonHistory19th century. | African AmericansWest VirginiaHuntingtonHistory20th century. | African AmericansWest VirginiaHuntingtonSocial conditions19th century. | African AmericansWest VirginiaHuntingtonSocial conditions20th century. | African AmericansMigrationsHistory19th century. | African AmericansMigrationsHistory20th century. | Migration, InternalUnited StatesHistory19th century. | Migration, InternalUnited StatesHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC F 249. H 95 (ebook) | LCC F 249. H 95 F 35 2019 (print) | DDC 975.4/0496073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001712

Cover illustration: First Taxi in Huntington, W.Va., Dan Hill and his horse drawn wagon, circa 1873. Source: West Virginia History On View, West Virginia & Regional History Center, WVU Libraries.

On a pristine Saturday in early May 2009, I drove to Indianapolis, Indiana, to attend the fiftieth birthday party of Billy Doc Garrett, a lifelong friend of mine. Among the other partygoers that night were other long-time friends, including one whose association with me dates back to serving on the safety patrol in grade school. The next afternoon, five of us gathered on the back deck of Billys house and reminisced about growing up in Huntington. Over the next few hours, we ate party leftovers, drank beer, and warmly (and, not infrequently, loudly) discussed, laughed, needled, lamented, and commemorated our experiences in black Huntington. Through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, we remembered baskets made, footballs caught, girls courted (and lost), front-porch visits, stupid things done, church trips taken, and friends and family who had passed on. Interestingly, to a man, we recalled our formative years in the city fondly, with one stating, I wouldnt have traded it for anything. It occurred to me then, that for many of us the years in Huntington had been the best years of our lives.

Unlike so many, to us, community was no notion; it was a foundational force in our lives, demonstrated in the intergenerational, interclass alliances and associations linking and binding us. It existed in the lives and deeds of African American teachers, postal workers, lawyers, factory laborers, preachers and parishioners, hustlers, and players who shaped our lives in subtle and explicit ways. It existed on the playgrounds, sports fields, churches, street corners, schools, basements, pool halls, and front porches of our neighborhoods where we played, congregated, learned, partied, and worshipped. At that time we didnt know that the experiences of our formative years would be, well, formative. That the lessons of our youthto develop character, to be goal-oriented, to rely on faith, to demonstrate resiliency, to be good-humored, and to be compassionatewould provide the key elements needed to be productive, self-reliant, moral adults. Three generations of my family grew up in Huntington, with each generation building upon the labor and sacrifice of the previous. Before becoming a factory laborer at the now-defunct International Nickle Company, my grandfather worked as a butler. Before becoming a regional human resources manager for BASF, my father was a factory laborer. Before obtaining my PhD in history, I worked as a paperboy and then as a salesman at Sears and, later, at Keen Jewelers. None of these accomplishments would have occurred without the sacrifice, support, and strength of many women who also labored, in a variety of ways, to move the family forward. My family story, like so many of yours, is a quintessential American story.

Certainly, this ethos extends and compels many black Huntingtonians to return to the Douglass High School Black Alumni Reunion, which, since 1973, has been held every two years in the city. Yet, as more and more Douglassites die, the abiding intergenerational ties and enduring collective impulse linking black Huntingtonians wane. In response to this reality and in an effort to recognize and reify the social and familiar connections, a combined Douglass-Huntington High School Black Alumni Reunion was held for the first time in August 2009. Since then, alumni, their children (and grandchildren), and extended family members have met every two years to commemorate the history and legacy of the two schools, to party and fellowship, and to commune and celebrate. It is a remarkable thing, this pilgrimage! Indeed, so important was it for my mom, severely weakened by cancer, to attend the 2007 reunion that she ignored doctors orders against travel. Through sheer force of will, she basked in the well-wishes, hugs, compliments, and laughter of the weekend. By Sunday, though, she was too weak to make the return trip home. Within eight days she was dead.

At one point during the course of the afternoon birthday party I stepped into the kitchen and began chatting with Billys father, a long-time Huntingtonian, and, for the first time during our acquaintanceship, with Billys wife. It was a warm, intimate conversation, flavored with abiding affection for the elder, who worked long hours for many years in Huntingtons factory economy to raise his family. While filling my plate with the leftover chicken, greens, and dirty rice, and probing as historians do, I discovered to my great surprise that Billys wife and mother of their three children is the daughter of Susan Spencer and thus a descendant of the Burlington 37. How remarkable! I thought. To be face to face with a descendant of that pioneering group of black migrants who settled into Burlington, Ohio, in 1849, across the river from Huntington, many of whom shaped black Huntingtons metamorphosis.

Driving down I-70 to Columbus Sunday evening, radio off and window down, I savored the profundity of the days event, of the synchronicity and serendipity between my (our) personal history and my professional interests. Though bemused (and a little dismayed) over my inability to retain the same level of recall of the people and places informing the old neighborhood and community as my friends, the trip had been gratifying, nourishing, and edifying. It had presented an opportunity to discover through the communion with lifelong friends the richness and uniqueness of our black experience in Huntington. It had reminded me that, at my core, I am a black Huntingtonian.

The trip also reaffirmed to me the importance of asking questions. It was this impulse that compelled me to ask, Why hasnt anyone done a scholarly study on black Huntington? Here, I thought, was a story waiting to be told! Why, given the history, vibrancy, and resonance of the experience, given the stories Ive heard, the names spoken, the faces remembered, and the experiences recounted, had no one gathered the various threads and patches of fabric to construct the quilt of historic memory? Some years later I posed a similar question to Mrs. Edna Duckworth, the last of the black community historians, as we sat in her small senior-citizen apartment. Her response was to hand me a short, unpublished manuscript, A Black History of Huntington. I departed her company with a conviction to build upon her research. With equal parts pride, impulsivity, and naivety, I started the process to put to pen to paper, flesh to bone, so to speak. Its culmination is this study. Needless to say, as a third-generation black Huntingtonian, attempting to separate myth from reality and reconcile sentiment with evidence wasnt an easy process, but it has been a deeply satisfying one. Thus, this is a personal and scholarly mission to chronicle and to better understand the seminal period of a black past heretofore available in bits and pieces, in front-porch conversations and street-corner rhetoric, photo albums and barber shops, school and church anniversary programs, biographies and local histories, dining-room recollections and newspaper articles, court records and census data, manuscript collections and slave testimonies, but not previously rendered in a comprehensive scholarly examination.