Heroes of Early Black AA

Heroes of Early Black AA Heroes of Early Black AA Their Stories and Their Messages Glenn C. South Bend, Indiana San Francisco & South Bend http://hindsfoot.org The Hindsfoot Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1993 for the publication of materials on the history and theory of alcoholism treatment and the moral and spiritual dimensions of recovery. Mailing address at: 4141 Deep Creek Rd., Lot 216, Fremont, California 94555. E-mail address at: [email protected] The front cover shows a photo of Joe McQuany, the most famous black A.A. member in the first seventy years of the fellowship. The page-by-page Big Book study which he first devised (with later, the additional help of Charlie Parmley) came to be called the Joe & Charlie tapes in its recorded version. These presenta- tions have been listened to by hundreds of thousands of alcoholics, literally all over the world, and have saved the lives of untold numbers of people. Copyright © 2017 by Glenn F. Chesnut All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. First edition: July 3, 2017 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 9781947519107 Raymond Irving v This book is dedicated to Raymond Irving It was Raymond who served as one of my two central spiritual guides when I first came in contact with the twelve-step program. He started out as a gentleman burglar in Chicago, until alcohol and heroin put him on skid row. He finally discovered Alcoholics Anonymous in 1974, only three years after Bill Wilson’s death, which made Raymond an influential early second generation A.A. leader. He was one of the best known black figures of that generation along the Chicago axis. He is also honored to this day as one of the most revered teachers of the numerous Dignitaries Sympathy A.A. groups which stretch from one side of the nation to the other. Some of these groups still make annual pilgrimages from other states to visit one of the A.A. meeting places which he led. As one of them once commented, “the first time I saw Raymond, he just seemed to glow with light,” and the others present all nodded their heads in agreement. It was Raymond who introduced me to Jimmy Miller, the First Lady of Black A.A., and went with me to visit many other early black A.A. leaders in our area. This present book would never have existed without him quietly asking me to come with him and spend an afternoon with Jimmy Miller at her house in March 1993. And also to Frank Nyikos Frank was Archivist for Northern Indiana Area 22, and one of the A.A. people who put me in a van in 1997 and took me to my first national Alcoholics Anonymous archival and historical conference in Akron, Ohio. That was where the A.A. history-writing bug really bit me. And then Frank and I traveled hundreds of miles interviewing people and attending conferences and doing research. He organized the interview with Bill Williams in this volume, and typed up numerous transcripts of historical audio recordings and major historical manuscripts. This book could never have existed without him. And he was one of the best friends I have ever had. He could sit on the patio in front of his house, and gaze at a single tiny flower nestled in the grass, and see God in and through that little flower. vi Table of Contents Part I. St. Louis — January 24, 1945 1. The First Black A.A. Group 3 Part II. Chicago — March 20, 1945 2. The Chicago Axis: Riding on the South Shore Line 13 3. Bill Williams the Tailor: Chicago Black A.A. No. 4, Early Life 19 4. Bill Williams the Tailor: Discovering A.A. in Chicago 35 5. Bill Williams the Tailor: Working the Steps 45 6. Bill Williams the Tailor: Finding God, the Alpha and Omega 55 7. Jimmy Miller: First Lady of Black A.A. 67 8. Jimmy Miller: Forming the Interracial Group 97 9. Jimmy Miller: Meetings and Steps in Early A.A. 119 10. Jimmy Miller: He Knew It Was a God 133 11. Interview: How Bill Williams Traveled to Help Jimmy Miller 149 12. Brownie: the Professional Gambler and the St. Louis Blues 165 13. Brownie: Down and Out in South Bend, Indiana 193 14. Brownie: Gratitude and the Man Who Had No Arms or Legs 219 15. Goshen Bill: Sleeping in a Dump Truck 239 16. Goshen Bill: Fish Stories and Chickens Flying South 267 17. Goshen Bill: Working the Twelve Steps 289 18. John Shaifer: Interview 315 19. John Shaifer: the Steel Mill Worker from Gary 323 vii Part III. Washington, D.C. — April 1945 20. Dr. James C. Scott, Jr. — the National Fight for Black Rights 345 21. Dr. James C. Scott, Jr. — “Jim’s Story” in More Detail 355 22. Dr. James C. Scott, Jr. — at the St. Louis International in 1955 369 Part IV. Joe McQuany — 1977 — the Joe and Charlie tapes 23. Joe McQuany: the Most Famous Black Figure in A.A. History 381 24. Joe McQuany: the Joe and Charlie Tapes 399 Appendix I: Theodoshia Cooper, Black Psychiatric Social Worker 415 Appendix II: Other Early Attempts to Bring Black People into A.A. 420 Notes 426 viii HEROES OF EARLY BLACK AA 1 PART I St. Louis January 24, 1945 2 THEIR STORIES AND THEIR MESSAGES HEROES OF EARLY BLACK AA 3 CHAPTER 1 The First Black A.A. Group: St. Louis in January 1945 The first black group created in the new Alcoholics Anonymous movement was formed in St. Louis on January 24, 1945. Proud of their accomplishment, they called themselves the “AA-1 Group” and chose Torrence S. as their secretary.1 Torrence wrote the New York A.A. office later on, on October 20, 1945, and explained that the compromise initially adopted in St. Louis banned black people from coming to the white A.A. meetings, but did allow them to form their own separate segregated black A.A. group.2 Slightly earlier on, in September 1945, Howard W. from the St. Louis black A.A. group had written Bobbie Burger at the Alcoholic Foundation asking the New York office and the A.A. Grapevine to “withhold publicity about our group that may occasion controversial discussions of racial problems within A.A.” That is, sad to say, the very existence of the black A.A. group was kept almost totally secret, at their request, for fear that white racists would try to raise a public controversy about it.3 The St. Louis black A.A. group started with five members, and grew quickly. A year after they began their group, in 1946 they held their First Annual Dinner Meeting, inviting several important 4 THEIR STORIES AND THEIR MESSAGES guests to join their celebration, including “two Negro doctors, the secretary of the YMCA, and a representative of the Urban League.”4 Father Ed Dowling, S.J. This Roman Catholic priest, who had long been a friend of the black community, undoubtedly played an important role in getting the white A.A.’s in St. Louis to grant the black A.A.’s the opportunity there in 1945 to set up their group. Dowling, who was stationed in St. Louis for most of his career in the church, was a Jesuit, which was an order of Roman Catholic priests who often played a role in the Catholic Church similar to military special forces units like the U.S. Navy Seals and U.S. Army Green Berets, the British Special Air Service, and the French Commandement des Opérations Spéciales units — that is, the church sent the Jesuits in (anonymously in civilian clothes if necessary) where all the other Catholic priests were too scared to go, such as (for example) locations all around the globe where Roman Catholic priests, if discovered by the authorities, were automatically sentenced to hanging or some sort of death by slow torture. The Jesuits in St. Louis had consistently been one of the groups in the forefront of the black civil rights movement in that city. In the summer of 1944 they got the first African American students admitted to St. Louis University (a great Jesuit educational institution and their pride and joy, the oldest U.S. university west of the Mississippi river). Was Father Ed inspired by that success to reach out a few months later to some black alcoholics in St. Louis whom he knew, and encourage them to take the first step towards integrating A.A. in that city by starting their own A.A. group? He had helped create and support numerous self-help groups over the course of his career, many of them of a radical nature.5 HEROES OF EARLY BLACK AA 5 Father Dowling, although not an alcoholic himself, had learned about A.A. when he obtained a copy of the A.A. Big Book not long after it was first published. He traveled up to Chicago to see how A.A. meetings worked in actual practice, was enormously impressed, and came back to St. Louis and founded the first A.A. meeting there on October 30, 1940.6 As a side note: Father Ed had strong links with Chicago and many lifelong friends there, because when he was going through his early training in the Jesuit order, he had been assigned to teach at Loyola Academy, the Jesuit school on the north side of Chicago, from 1926 to 1929.7 It is probably no accident that the second black A.A.

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