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Frederick McGhee
(1861-1912)
Lawyer & Social Critic
Frederick McGhee
(1861-1912) -- born of Mississippi slave parents about
six months after the opening of the War Between the
States -- was as one of America's first
African-American lawyers a pioneer
in early desegregation, anti-lynching, and civil rights
cases, and a tireless activist and organizer for African
American civil rights.
His father Abraham, a literate slave from Blount County,
Tennessee, was sold
13 years before and sent to the John Walker cotton plantation near Aberdeen,
Mississippi.
Fredrick's mother, Sarah, already a slave on the Walker plantation,
was the daughter of an African slave. uring the Civil War Abraham , between 1864
and1869, managed to get out of Mississippi and later return to
Knoxville with Sarah and their three sons Matthew, Barclay, and
Frederick. Skilled as a blacksmith, Abraham died a year after his
returned, leaving his wife alone with three sons. Illiterate,
Sarah was reduced to a washerwoman. She soon expired leaving her sons
orphans.
By this time, Barclay, the oldest, and Matthew had positions in Knoxville
hotels as waiters, prized jobs at the time. Like their father, both were
literate, able to read and write. An 1880 Knoxville directory shows that
Fredrick was also a laborer. Somehow Frederick attended and completed his
studies at Knoxville College. Seemingly he become the fist colored lawyer in
Tennessee, Illinois, and later Minnesota.
Distinguished by his
hawk-like gaze and shock of silver hair, his forceful oratory and
fierce advocacy, Fredrick McGhee rose to fame as Minnesota's first black
criminal lawyer and the owner by 1899 of forty acres of land
in St. Cloud. He began his legal career in Chicago, where he
primarily represented whites, gaining a reputation for competence.
McGhee also converted from the Baptist faith to Catholicism and
seemingly became an associate of Archbishop John Ireland to use the
church as a positive vehicle for racial equality.
At some point during his public career, McGhee, a
respected social critic, changed his party affiliation from Republican to
Democrat. And though initially allied with Washington, McGhee later
sided with DuBois when the two giants in the struggle for racial
equality clashed on tactics and philosophy.
Like T. Thomas Fortune, Frederick McGhee was a race man. He was
sincerely concerned about the fortunes and misfortunes of the freed
slaves and the turning back of the clock by the U.S. Supreme Court
and rabid state's righters of the South. He became immediately
involved in Fortune's National
Afro-American League organized in 1890 to combat
disenfranchisement, lynching and other injustices and to
encourage separate black businesses.
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McGhee, Du Bois and
others formed the, Niagara
Movement the forerunner of the NAACP, in 1904.
Founders of The
Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls:
Left
to right: Top row: H. A. Thompson, New York; Alonzo
F. Herndon, Georgia; John Hope, Georgia; _?_.2nd row:
Fred McGhee, Minnesota; unidentified boy; J. Max Barber,
Illinois; W.E.B. Du Bois, Atlanta; Robert Bonner,
Massachusetts; 3rd Row: Henry L. Baily, Washington,
D.C.; Clement G. Morgan, Massachusetts; W.H.H. Hart,
Washington, D.C.; and B.S. Smith, Kansas |
Fredrick McGhee died in 1912 a few weeks
shy of his 51st birthday. Had he lived we do not what role he might not have
played in the NAACP. Years
later, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins would remember of McGhee that
"it was through him that the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People reached St. Paul and [our house at]
906 Galtier Street."
Nelson, Paul D.
Frederick
McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912. Feb. 2002. 261p.
illus. index. Minnesota Historical Society,
Booker
T. Wshington Papers Vol.14l /
Booker T. Washington Papers Vol.8
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In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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The White Masters of the
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From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
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update 19 December
2011
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