Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2011 Higher than those of their race of less fortunate advantages:Race, ethnicity, and West Indian political leadership in Detroit's African American community, 1885-1940 Kathryn Lorraine Beard Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Beard, Kathryn Lorraine, "Higher than those of their race of less fortunate advantages:Race, ethnicity, and West Indian political leadership in Detroit's African American community, 1885-1940" (2011). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 269. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. ‘HIGHER THAN THOSE OF THEIR RACE OF LESS FORTUNATE ADVANTAGES’: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND WEST INDIAN POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN DETROIT’S AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1885-1940 by KATHRYN L. BEARD DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2011 MAJOR: HISTORY Approved by _____________________________________ Advisor Date _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ DEDICATION For my ancestors who brought me this far: My great-grandparents, Wylie Warren and Belle Dora Jackson Warren; Charlie Hayes and Walter Trotter Hayes; my grandparents, Catherine Warren Buffington and James Clemons; Emma Hayes Beard, and John Lallie Dowd. My mother Wanda Lavenia Clemons Beard and father, Arthur Walter Beard. And for my Nana, Phylis Beard Hall. To my elders that keep me going: Chelsea Warren Sandifer, Stanley Samuels, Richard Beard. All of you have blessed me with your wisdom, wit, fortitude, and gumption. There is no me without you. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Those who have helped see this project to fruition are far too numerous to name, but I thank each person who ever assisted me, even if not named individually. My thankfulness is deep-seated and sincere. Firstly, I thank the brilliant members of my dissertation committee, who demanded the best I could give: Drs. John Bukowczyk, Monica Schuler, Marc Kruman, and Guerin Montilus. Your criticism and advice always contributed to the creation of a better project than I ever envisioned and your support of my work was invaluable. To the staff of the Wayne State University History Department, specifically Gayle McCreedy, Ginnie Corbin, Kay Stone, and Terri Patton, I thank you for keeping me calm and sane (mostly!) at every step of this project. These women were an incredible source of emotional support, bureaucratic savvy, and technological expertise. We’ve shared so much over the years that they feel like family at this point. While I met dozens of helpful staff members in repositories far and wide, I have a special appreciation for the staff of the Burton Historical Collection at the Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library. David, Anna, Debra, and Mark all spent many, many hours assisting me with research and providing information about Detroit that I never would have found in any printed source. I want to thank my children for their willingness to live with a shadow much of their lives and for being an unceasing source of inspiration. I like to thank my grandsons for always making Nana smile. iii PREFACE This is a dissertation on West Indian immigrants in the city of Detroit and their leadership of key institutions in the African American community from 1885 to 1940. This study examines two distinct periods of Detroit history. The first part of the dissertation explores the period prior to the Great Migration when Detroit had a very small African American population and West Indian immigrants held key positions in political organizations, religious institutions and social clubs. The second part of this study investigates the period when the African American population swelled greatly and West Indians continued to hold positions of leadership. The dissertation also identifies the emergence of a small West Indian community in post-World War I Detroit, prior to the arrival of the mass of immigrants from the Caribbean after changes in immigration laws in the mid-1960s. I argue that West Indian immigrants perceived that they were better positioned to assume positions of leadership and viewed themselves as the legitimate leaders of the African American community. They conveyed, to some extent, their perceptions to both black and white Americans. African Americans, while they accepted West Indian immigrants in leadership positions, often resented the relative success of their foreign-born counterparts. This resentment led to friction between the two groups and was often disclosed in public forums. These immigrants sought to overcome the worst effects of racial discrimination by distinguishing themselves from African Americans and by fusing middle-class status to ethnicity. As more African Americans began to enter the middle class and the West Indian immigrant population remained dwarfed by their American-born counterparts, the link between class and ethnicity lessened in significance as race became a more salient characteristic with which both African American and Afro-Caribbean people had to contend. West Indians continued to value their iv Caribbean origins, but incorporated in the African American community and assimilated into American society. I chose this topic to understand better the diversity of black Detroit. I first met West Indian immigrants at the community college I attended as a teenager. The United States had recently invaded Grenada and one of the West Indians I met was Grenadian. He seemed surprised that an American like me knew where his country was and had some familiarity with the leftist politics of Maurice Bishop, and that I could argue somewhat cogently against the actions of the United States. As I became more aware of a Caribbean community in the city, I gained an appreciation for the cultural differences between African American and West Indians. I began to notice class distinctions among West Indians and wondered had earlier immigrants shared the working-class backgrounds of the majority of the immigrants I encountered. Were the differences and distinctions I noted between African Americans and West Indians related to culture, class, or both? My dissertation is a continuation of the curiosity that emerged from my first encounters with blacks who were not from America. I wanted to discover when the first West Indians began to arrive in Detroit, how they interacted with African Americans, and why some West Indians felt superior to African Americans. I questioned had their perceived superiority always existed and if so, why? I also wanted to understand what role class played in the West Indian community. My observations made me want to examine the past to gain a greater understanding of the present. Writing my dissertation answered the majority of the questions I had. My research demonstrates the arrival of West Indian immigrants in Detroit beginning in the late nineteenth century and their continual arrival in the city throughout the interwar period. My work illustrates the existence of cultural differences between black people from the Caribbean and American- born blacks and how transnational patterns kept West Indians physically and psychologically v connected to the region. This transnationalism reinforced their distinctive culture and frequent and extensive contact with the Caribbean brought fresh cultural infusions to Detroit. This project reveals that the majority of West Indian immigrants had middle-class backgrounds or aspirations to become middle class. Furthermore, this dissertation describes how they attempted to link middle-class status to ethnicity to separate themselves from African Americans, with whom they were racially identical. West Indians’ efforts to distinguish themselves from African Americans created conflicts between the two groups as the immigrants perceived themselves as legitimate leaders of the black community. My work uses biographical sketches of Caribbean blacks and institutions and organizations in black Detroit to establish that these immigrants did obtain leadership positions disproportionately to their numbers in the Detroit’s black population over a fifty-five year period. The project confirms that upwardly mobile and naturalizing West Indian immigrants had the ambition and the resources to expand the spatial boundaries created by racial segregation and were among the first residents of a new West Side neighborhood that had several features of an ethnic enclave. Finally, my dissertation indicates that as more African Americans gained middle-class status, West Indians had less success differentiating themselves by linking class to ethnicity. A shared racial identity increased in significance, as West Indians integrated into the African American community and assimilated into American society. This work has obvious deficiencies. This dissertation does not offer a comparative analysis of other immigrant communities, although studies of the development of West Indian communities in New York and Boston inform it. Nor does my work examine the experiences of working-class West Indians and the institutions that served them—the spiritualist