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Number 3
February 2012
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Getting Down to Business: Why the San Diego NAACP
Was Successful
Browsing through so many newly acquired documents it was not obvious, nor did the question
immediately arise as to how did the branch earn the respect of local blacks and quickly and
permanently became their vigilant partner in fighting customary discrimination. But we are very
fortunate that an extraordinary record has survived that allows us a glimpse into the nitty-gritty
work of challenging racism in San Diego.
Thankfully, for the years 1926 through 1929 the branch’s able secretary, Viola Jefferson, sent
detailed reports of its activities combating discrimination to the national headquarter in New
York City. No other such reports for decades hence were microfilmed. Unlike anything else in
the pile of documents does the revelation of everyday slights, humiliations, and brutality have a
raw, emotional impact on the reader. What is most impressive is how calmly, intelligently, and
efficiently each case was handled by the branch. It was understood that complaining to the
branch was probably the only recourse the aggrieved party had. Time and again in those four
years the branch leaders responded as best they could as undoubtedly did their successors, day in
and day out, year after year to the present.
There are far too many incidents in the those years to try and summarize here but several
excerpts from only the 1927 report might convey a sense of what things were like then and
exemplify the dedication of those who volunteered to combat injustice:
Mrs. W. Bennett was denied the service at a soft drink stand at
University and Thirtieth Streets. When she asked for two bottles of
Coca Cola was told that the Coca Cola was worth $2.00 per bottle.
This case was immediately taken up (by) Mr. Leland G. Stanford
(photo right), the attorney for the N.A.A.C.P. (who) will take the
case to court.
The Ray Bro. Shoe Co. of San Diego, located at 1100 Broadway, has a special seat
for colored patrons in the rear of the store as they believe in discrimination against
colored people, and the matter was taken up with the general manager of the
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Ray Bro. Shoe Co. Inc. and their reply was that they were satisfied with the
management in San Diego and had no apology to make so it was decided by the local
branch of the N.A.A.C.P. to boycott the shoe store.
The Coronado High School student objected to their history teacher using the term
Nigger in their class, and registered their complaint to the N.A.A.C.P. that such terms
would be eliminated in the said class or classes.
A. S. Stanley an inmate of San Quentin serving a term of from two to four years
for forgery was given parole through the recommendation of the N.A.A.C.P.
Fry and Smith Publishing Co. has been in the practice of publishing the city
directory designating nationality by using the word Negro and through protest
of the N.A.A.C.P. the word Negro has been eliminated.
The Williams and Wallace case. Denied services at the Macy sandwich shop at
Thirtieth an Imperial Avenue, was tried in Judge Griffins court and lost its case
but was decided to appeal to the higher courts.
Miss Pansy Harper was employed in the State Department of Agriculture Municipal
Pier and was discharged from same, investigation showed that Miss Harper gave
satisfactory service but was discharged only because of texture of skin.
The largest chunk of the branch's week-to-week caseload pertained to employer/employee pay
disputes and minor criminal cases, typically with a racial angle. Rarely were the branch’s
investigations and resolution of cases reported in the region's newspapers.
Biggest Victory of the Decade
Arguably, the high point for the branch in the 1920s was not its
sponsorship of an expanded anti-Jim Crow provision in the state’s civil
right law in 1923; its visits to Mexico starting in 1926 that ultimately
persuaded the mayor of Tijuana and, more important, Baja California
governor Albelado L. Rodriguez (left) to have signs removed from Tijuana
businesses, mostly owned by white Americans, that warned blacks not to
enter; or its successful two-year fight, culminating in 1928, to have
homeless and abandoned black children allowed admission into the
Children’s Welfare Home. The biggest victory of the decade was the
cleverly engineered desegregation of San Diego County Hospital’s training program for nurses in
the summer of 1927.
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Eight years earlier the Los Angeles County
Hospital had desegregated its nurse training
program but the push to desegregate the
program at San Diego County Hospital (right)
didn’t start until 1926 when Frances Hamilton
and Hallie Williams, both graduates of San
Diego High School, applied for admission and
were denied, then sought the assistance of the
branch which put the matter before the County Board of Supervisors. A few weeks before the
board met to render a decision the local chapter of the Women's International League of Peace
and Freedom met at the home of wealthy League official and NAACP branch member Helen
Marston and had 50 of its members sign a petition in support of the branch's position. The
petition had been drafted by League member Prof. Nellie Foster (also white), a sociology
professor at the state college (now SDSU) and later NAACP branch board member. When this
was reported in the San Diego Independent the white nursing students responded with a nasty
letter to the editor disparaging the League and questioning the intellectual capacity and
civilization of peoples of African descent, adding: "If we must accept them as students in our
school of nursing, may we not be permitted to have separate quarters for them, separate dining
rooms and separate entertainment? To mingle socially with the negroes would mean that the
white people must look down to their level."
To this branch president Dennis V. Allen (left), is his shining moment,
retorted in a lengthy but inspired op-ed piece on August 31: "Why should
you (white students) demand that our girls who pass through high school,
receiving the same education as other girls, qualifying themselves for the
eligible list to fill any position, go to Chicago, the South or any other place
for nurse training when they are entitled to receive training in an institution
of its kind at home? . . . The hospital is an institution of learning as well as
business and is not a social hall for (student) parties. The question of social
equality has long troubled the white American, but we contend that if the
proper educational training is given the (black) girls, the social phase of the
subject will take care of itself. Since Abraham Lincoln loosened the chains
which held the Negro in bondage until 1863, no race of people has advanced as rapidly as the
American Negro. He has contributed more to civilization than any other nationality under the
sun." He proceeded to back up his claim by citing various accomplishment and 21 extraordinary
blacks from Benjamin Banneker to Henry O. Tanner.
Allen had threatened that if the Board of Supervisors denied the appeal of Hamilton and
Williams the branch would "revive the issue again and again until colored girls are allowed to
train in the County hospital." The San Diego Sun reported Allen reiterated "that colored girls
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possess every requisite possessed by white nurses. . . they are intelligent and refined and know
sanitation,” and that "any restriction against them could be only a restriction of color." Allen's
fear of the Board's rejection proved unfounded. In the last of three sessions airing the matter,
and in what must have been a riveting three-hour final hearing, the Board considered the
arguments of branch board members Rev. J. W. Price, Viola Jefferson, Ida Henderson, and
Rebecca Craft. The next day the Board handed down a favorable decision and the young women
began attending classes on September 5, 1927. The issue of housing them in a dormitory at the
hospital where there were no vacancies was resolved when the Board agreed to pay their car fare
to and from home. Brimming with pride and fulfillment, the branch proclaimed its triumph in a
Western Union telegram to headquarters.
Early Competitors and Internal Conflicts
The need to have an organization to advocate for the area’s black community was so pressing
that as early as 1915, four years prior to the branch having received its founding charter, local
activists claiming membership in the NAACP invoked its name and with other black groups
protested the establishment of an “industrial school for colored youth” (San Diego Union,
6/19/15) proposed by a rather mysterious black man from Los Angeles named J. Goodman
Braye. Competing with the branch to best represent the interests of blacks was the Independent
Colored Voters League comprised mainly of black Republicans who also belonged to assorted
social and civic groups. In 1919, incensed by signs in downtown stores and theaters that
announced “the trade of colored people is not solicited,” the League bypassed the newly
launched branch and once again petitioned the city council to pass an ordinance preventing
white-owned businesses from practicing racial discrimination. Once again the council failed to
act. Soon after the League’s influence evaporated while the branch’s membership swelled in
number—boasting roughly 400 members in 1920,
half of whom were white---and a similar ordinance
the branch proposed in 1923 was enacted.
The branch was briefly overshadowed by the highly
enthusiastic followers of Marcus Garvey (right)
who was at the height of his popularity in Southern
California from 1919 to 1921. Founded a year
before its counterpart in Los Angeles, on October
1921 San Diego’s Division 153 of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), said
by a confidential informant to be 360 members strong, organized a 15-car parade with a float that
traveled from the heart of the black community to Balboa Park. In 1922 a contingent of officers
of the local UNIA and its Black Cross Nurses trekked to Los Angeles to march in a UNIA
parade. A few years later, NAACP branch secretary Martha T. Dodge in a letter to James
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Weldon Johnson at headquarters in New York acknowledged that, “the Garvey movement had
crippled our branch,” and blamed the Garveyites for hampering the branch’s effort to recruit
young members. But with the arrest of Garvey for mail fraud in 1922 his movement here
vanished like a summer’s mist at noon.
There was also the nagging problem of clashing personalities, shifting loyalties, score settling,
strategy debates, and a host of other thorny personnel and policy matters. As early as 1914
future branch secretary Walter L. McDonald had alerted headquarters to the "clannishness" of
blacks in the city. He followed up with a letter in 1915 asking for help in disabusing people of
the notion that only “the most prominent families” would be allowed to become members of the
branch (annual member dues was just $1.00). Four years later when the branch was chartered
McDonald wrote to Mary Ovington at headquarters seeking advice on what to do about
controversial founding member Isaac H. Tanner, a black who owned a barber shop in La Jolla
and who for years had refused to service men of his race there. The reviled Mr. Tanner, though
he had once been nearly beaten to death by two white men because he had the nerve to dine at a
restaurant patronized by them, soon left the organization and moved to Los Angeles.
But unquestionably the most serious internal conflict that
came close to destroying the branch in its first decade of
existence began in 1924 when branch secretary Martha
T. Dodge organized the branch’s youth division. The
young folk clamored for affordable recreational space
they could use for various activities including
entertainment and fundraising, so she responded by
advocating for a community center which the students
themselves first suggested. As strange as it may seem to
us today, the idea of having such a center met with
strong opposition. Branch president Elijah J. Gentry
(photo right) supported Mrs. Dodge noting that they had shared their plan with an approving W.
E. B. Du Bois when he visited in 1923. Gentry reassured headquarters that “the Senior branch
would not allow the Juniors to do anything contrary to the great aim of the National” and that the
project would be “a mark of progress and credit to our people.” Nonetheless, when new branch
president Dennis V. Allen took office in 1925 he and the opponents condemned the plan as a
backward step toward segregation since the center was intended to benefit blacks,
misrepresenting to the press and to headquarters that the center was intended solely for use by
blacks. What was not discerned by outsiders was that rivalries and grudges had already
developed among branch leaders.
Suspicious of their opponents' motives and reluctant to compromise, the community center issue
and other matters were contested for the next five years, resulting in sour relations with
headquarters and key individuals in the community; branch members and officials quitting; a
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breakaway group headed by Mrs. Dodge called the Young People's Civic League that established
its own "Club House" in 1928; and, ultimately, the forced resignation of Allen as branch
president in 1929. The wounds took awhile to heal but by the late 1930s both Allen, who headed
a multiracial group called the San Diego Race Relations Society, and Mrs. Dodge had rejoined
the branch.
Member Profile: George Washington Woodbey
One of America's premier socialist thinkers of the past century was a founding member of the
San Diego NAACP. Born a slave in Tennessee and an ordained minister by 1874, George
Washington Woodbey (right) campaigned for prohibition of alcohol in
Nebraska and supported populist causes before embracing a brand of
Christian socialism. He arrived in San Diego in 1902 and pastored Mt.
Zion Baptist Church until his radical beliefs and activities across the
state promoting socialism collided with his congregation's conservatism.
Arrested several times and manhandled by the police for proclaiming the
gospel of socialism on city streets, he was referred to in the San Diego
Union in 1912 as "the ebony orator of street corner fame." Woodbey,
who served on the executive board of the Socialist Party of California
and ran for California State Treasurer in 1914, authored several widely read books and tracts on
socialism and Christianity, among them What To Do and How To Do It, Or, Socialism vs.
Capitalism (1903), The Bible and Socialism (1904), Why the Negro Should Vote the Socialist
Ticket (1910), The Distribution of Wealth (1910) and Method and Procedure in Baptist
Church Trials (1916). A charismatic and eloquent public speaker who lectured across the
nation, he eschewed the philosophy of racial uplift preached by Booker T. Washington in favor
of W. E. B. Du Bois' insistence on full equality. It is believed that Woodbey may have resided in
San Diego until the early 1920s. We know that his wife was granted a divorce in 1921 and that
he returned to lecture in the city in 1923, reputedly as a scholar from Tuskegee Institute, but
curiously faded into history after this, leaving us to wonder where and when he died.
Why W. E. B. Du Bois Loved San Diego
Combining business with pleasure, W. E. B. Du Bois welcomed the opportunity
to visit San Diego and had kind things to say about the city and its people. He
made four trips here: in 1913 to address a large crowd, in 1917 to meet with the
branch's organizing committee, and in 1923 and 1927 on invited speaking
engagements. Du Bois reported on his tour of western states in The Crisis (July and August
1913) that on his first visit:
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The group I shall remember chiefly through the women's club and the interesting
audience of colored people, white people and radical. Here I had my first sight of
the Pacific and realized how California faces the newest color problem, the problem
of the relation of the Orient and Occident. The colored people of California do not
quite realize the bigness of this problem and their own logical position.
And reflecting on his western states tour he recalled the striking natural beauty of the area and its
sensual delights, he added:
What wonderful and varied audiences they were (in California) . . . . the thoughtful
half thousand (listeners) down in San Diego. . . . (with) kindly and thrifty (black
citizens), with pushing leaders. . . . Then come scenes--- scenes so beautiful as to be
indescribable: the lilies and geraniums of San Diego. . . . San Diego: hedges of
gerania, fields of callas---star-eyed palms ---dark fingers of and pointing seaward
and the clustered, smoking city.
About his visit to California in 1923 he wrote in The Crisis that he
remember his friends who "rose like developing souls out of mists of
men and were kind, sympathetic, inspiring almost beyond conception
— far beyond words." Certainly Du Bois included in this cherished
group his old, dear friends Charles H. Dodge (photo left with son), an
outstanding banker and branch president from 1922 to 1923, and his
wife, Martha T. Dodge, a branch official and community organizer.
The Dodges had been close friends of Du Bois long before they
arrived in San Diego in 1912. When the Dodges traveled to the East
Coast they visited Du Bois and on all four visits to San Diego Du Bois stayed at the home of the
Dodges. It was just one more very good reason for him to come and enjoy the area.
Artifacts: Branch Stationary
Below is stationary letterhead from a communication from branch secretary Viola Jefferson sent to
national headquarters, dated January 30, 1927. Note in the center under the association's name it reads:
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“Proposes to make a group of 12,000,000 Americans free from the lingering shackles of past
slavery: physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from
disfranchisement and socially free from insult." This statement of purpose was taken from an
annual report issued from headquarters in 1915. Also note that on the right the addresses of
branch officials are given since there was no branch building or office.
Robert Fikes, Jr., Librarian
San Diego State University