In the Black World By Thomas C. Fleming and Max Millard Published 2017 by Max Millard 1312 Jackson Street, #21 San Francisco, CA 94109 [email protected] ISBN 978-0-9662887-3-5 Copyright 2017 by Max Millard Dedicated to Jack Bair Cover photo of Thomas Fleming by Elizabeth H. Armstrong, 2006 Cover design by Eric E. Kirby TABLE OF CONTENTS The Southern Pacific.......................................146 Joining the Union............................................166 Bojangles........................................................172 Travels............................................................174 INTRODUCTION..................................................1 A Trip to Chicago............................................178 An Incident in Reno........................................184 JACKSONVILLE: 1907-1916.............................10 The Depression Begins...................................185 Vaudeville.........................................................15 Leaving the South.............................................18 THE DEPRESSION: 1932-1940........................189 Hoover and Roosevelt....................................189 HARLEM: 1916-19..............................................26 Surviving the Depression................................195 Black Entertainers.............................................28 Furthering My Education................................199 Life in Harlem...................................................34 Blacks in the Labor Movement.......................214 Black Professionals...........................................38 Black College Students...................................224 Marcus Garvey..................................................42 Discrimination in San Francisco......................228 The World War.................................................46 Black Athletes.................................................233 West to California.............................................51 Black Communists and the NAACP................240 Black Professionals and California Politics.....253 Senator Billy Knowland..................................261 THE CHICO YEARS: 1919-1926.......................58 Black Society in the 1930s..............................267 Small Town Life...............................................62 Black Entertainers...........................................272 Jazz in Chico.....................................................85 Los Angeles....................................................274 Race Relations..................................................92 Duke Ellington................................................280 Black Knights of Pythias.................................105 Jazz in the Bay Area........................................287 A Boxing Match..............................................109 Langston Hughes Comes West........................289 Black Politicians.............................................113 Sargent Johnson and the Bohemian Life.........294 Goodbye to Chico...........................................119 Working for the WPA.....................................298 Carlton B. Goodlett.........................................302 SHIPS AND RAILROADS: 1926-1932.............123 Oakland in the 1930s.......................................310 The Admiral Line............................................126 My Father Returns..........................................315 The Railroad Ferry..........................................140 1 WORLD WAR II...............................................317 INTRODUCTION Europe Goes to War........................................317 A Threatened March.......................................319 Thomas Fleming, 1907-2006 Japanese Americans........................................323 Joseph James and the Boilermakers Union......326 By Max Millard Black Migration and Housing.........................330 Easing of Discrimination.................................337 Thomas Fleming died on November 21, 2006, the week before he would have turned 99. When I got the The Black Press in the 1940s...........................340 tearful call from his adoptive niece, I felt as if a mountain A War Worker................................................342 had crumbled, because Tom seemed indestructible. I had Starting the Reporter.......................................344 seen him 10 days before and planned to attend his Greetings.........................................................352 birthday party the following weekend at the retirement home where he lived. The party would go on, but instead THE POSTWAR YEARS..................................367 it would be a celebration of his life. Coming Home.................................................367 Tom was a legendary San Francisco newspaperman. Collins and Goodlett.......................................375 His career began at the Spokesman, a radical black The Sun-Reporter............................................365 newspaper published from 1931-1935, continued through Racial Progress...............................................378 his brief stint as a columnist for the Oakland Tribune in Affirmative Action and the Right to Vote........390 1934 — when he was the only black writer for a daily newspaper on the West Coast — and culminated in his Black Prisoners...............................................397 appointment in 1944 as the founding editor of the Final Reflections.............................................399 Reporter, a black newspaper that later merged with the rival Sun to form the Sun-Reporter. INDEX.................................................................404 Except for a six-month hitch in the U.S. Army during World War II, he wrote for the newspaper each week for more than 61 years. No daily paper in the San Francisco * * * Bay Area hired a full-time black reporter until 1962, when Ben Williams made the jump from the Sun-Reporter to the San Francisco Examiner — thanks to a recommendation from Fleming. As a reporter for the black press, Tom Fleming covered nine national political conventions, met two 2 3 presidents, and got the inside story on everything from the personal history. student strike at San Francisco State University — which His favorite stories were set pieces that he told over gave birth to the nation's first ethnic studies department in and over, especially about famous people he had met. I 1969 — to the Jonestown tragedy of 1978, which claimed once told him that he should write a book about his life. more than 900 lives. He continued to write for the Sun- He said that many people had made the same suggestion, Reporter until the age of 98. but that he couldn't be bothered to do it himself. Later I I knew Tom for only his last 11 years, when he was past his peak as a newsman, but he still had the qualities that made him successful — a gift for storytelling, an uncanny memory, and a streak of stubbornness coupled with dignity. We became acquainted in the summer of 1995 when I began working as a staff writer and copy editor for the Sun-Reporter. Tom held court in the downstairs editorial office, where he spent most of the day reading newspapers, greeting visitors, talking on the phone and composing his three weekly columns — an editorial, the Police Blotter, and the Weekly Report, a commentary on national or world events. He had a loud, high-pitched, inflective voice, often punctuated by raucous laughter which rang throughout the rambling two- story building. He could also be prickly. One time a woman came in and peered at him through the half-door that separated the lobby from the office. She asked, "Are you Thomas Fleming?" He said yes. She said, "Is it Thomas or Tom?" He bellowed back: "It's Mr. Fleming to you!" Tom had many close friends and admirers who would drop by and hang around the office. I think they came mainly for his stories. He was like a living time machine: if someone mentioned a person they both Thomas Fleming's time machine. Drawing by Tony knew, Tom could go on forever with details about the Taliaferro. person's family members, mutual acquaintances and 4 5 showed him the list of historical figures profiled in Street apartment, surrounded by shelves of history books Columbus Salley's 1993 book, The Black 100: A Ranking and jazz recordings. Setting the tape recorder between us, of the Most Influential African Americans, Past and I perused his previous black history columns one Present. Tom had seen or met 45 of them, from Marcus paragraph at a time, asking him to expand on the details Garvey to Malcolm X. and to explain anything that I found unclear. In February 1996, for Black History Month, TV With his permission, I blended his written and spoken station KQED in San Francisco aired an excellent half- words to create a new column, "Reflections on Black hour documentary titled Crossroads: A Story of West History," which began with his years as a small child in Oakland. It told about Oakland's historic role as a railroad Jacksonville, Florida. The National Newspaper Publishers hub and a magnet for black Americans leaving the South. Association, a wire service for the black press, agreed to Tom saw it, and it must have triggered some memories, syndicate it, and soon the column was appearing in dozens because the following week he started writing a new of weekly papers nationwide. The Columbus Free Press column, "Some Reflections on Black History." in Ohio offered to feature it on their website, and created a Tom began the series by telling about his arrival in separate page for all of