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DAUGHTER OF THE EMPIRE STATE
The Life of JUDGE JANE BOLIN
By Jacqueline A. McLeod
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2011 Jacqueline McLeod
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03657-6
Chapter One
Her Standing in Poughkeepsie
Family Lineage and Legacy
On April 11, 1908—the year Springfield, Illinois, erupted in a race riot that led to the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—the woman who would become the nation's first African American woman judge was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. Although a world removed from New York, the injustice that was Springfield and the hope that would become the NAACP easily embodied the motivational forces that would guide Jane Matilda Bolin in service for the rest of her life—a life devoted to social justice. Standing as she was "at the foot of one hill and the top of another," Jane Matilda Bolin was situated in a lineage that had a legacy of service and community activism in and around Poughkeepsie that she could trace back to her paternal grandfather, Abram Bolin.
Abram Bolin descended from a long line of free Dutchess County black residents who lived in and around Poughkeepsie for nearly two hundred years. The Bolins could most likely count relatives among the freed population that increased between 1799 and 1826 in the Mid-Hudson region (Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Fishkill Landing, Hudson, Catskill, and Kinderhook) under an act that called for the gradual abolition of slavery. In 1817, New York State declared that after July 4, 1827, the practice of slavery would be abolished; by 1830, only Putnam County in the Mid-Hudson continued the practice under a legal loophole that permitted nonresidents to keep slaves in the state for a period of up to nine months. The freed population also included those who escaped the South through the Underground Railroad (which had station stops in Poughkeepsie and other cities along the Mid-Hudson) where abolitionist Sojourner Truth hid runaway slaves in a cellar in Hurley, New York.
A number of African Americans settled in Poughkeepsie after its incorporation as a city in 1854, particularly during the "city-building" period from the 1860s to the 1880s. Before the city's incorporation the black population was scattered on the outskirts of the central business district (bounded by Washington and Market Streets), an area that was also inhabited by members of the white working class and ethnic groups, especially recently arrived German immigrants. Although most African Americans remained on farms and in rural areas, by 1870, the "Queen City" of the Mid-Hudson, as Poughkeepsie was called, had an overall population of roughly twenty thousand, with a black population of more than five hundred, the largest in the area. The 1869–70 and 1880–81 editions of the Poughkeepsie City Directory for Colored persons listed the Bolins and other prominent families such as the Lawrences, Cooleys, Hardens, Du Boises, and Van Dusens among Poughkeepsie's early black residents. Their occupations included laborer, porter, farmer, waiter, carman, basket-maker, cook, and washerwoman. But by the early twentieth century the occupations of their children and grandchildren would include ministers, doctors, teachers, and at least one lawyer. However, many of the descendants of these early families still listed the same street addresses as their foreparents, suggesting a generational pattern of housing within the black community. For example, the Bolin family called 35 North Clinton Street home for several generations.
Abram Bolin was born on February 10, 1826, in Dover Plains, New York, where his father had been a farmer all his life. He grew up among Quakers and was educated in a local country district school. In 1855 he met and married Alice Ann Lawrence, a native Poughkeepsie resident. Lawrence, whom Jane Bolin described as Native American, was most likely a woman of mixed Native American and African American heritage and a member of the Lawrence family identified in the Colored directory as one of Poughkeepsie's early black families. She bore thirteen children and reared them at the Clinton Street residence in Poughkeepsie, where the Bolin family lived for nearly one hundred years and where all but two of her children were born. The head of a large family, Abram understood only too well the benefits of self-sufficiency. He was an independent businessman. He worked in the wholesale vegetable business and at various times as a farmer and gardener like his father. But Abram had also been a grocer, a meat-market proprietor, and a livestock salesman, before serving as superintendent of the Poughkeepsie Reservoir at College Hill later in life. His property holdings, economic independence, and government appointment no doubt elevated his standing in his community. But it was his vision as a parent and community leader that distinguished him in the annals of Poughkeepsie history.
A community leader and reformer in his own right, Abram Bolin is remembered as "a man of high principles." He had worked very closely with Reverend Jacob Thomas in the 1860s to erect the $6,000 edifice that was Poughkeepsie's A.M.E. Zion Church, a vital black parallel institution in a city that practiced de facto segregation. The A.M.E. Zion Church and other local black churches in Poughkeepsie, like black churches elsewhere, were never merely places of worship but served also as essential community centers when other Christian institutions like the YWCA and YMCA denied membership to African Americans, as Poughkeepsie did until after the Second World War. Abram Bolin's success in building the A.M.E. Zion Church encouraged his crusade for a parallel institution of higher learning for African Americans in New York. This, however, proved to be a greater challenge.
African Americans and their white allies had tried several times to establish a black college in or near New York State. In the early 1830s a black national convention proposed to establish a black college in New Haven, Connecticut. In the 1850s Frederick Douglass assisted in the plan to establish an "industrial college" in Rochester or within one hundred miles of Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1859 and 1866 African Americans attempted to transform the abolitionist-oriented New York Central College in McGrawville (near Cortland, New York) into a black college—but none of their initiatives succeeded. Nevertheless, in 1870 Abram Bolin and eight other Hudson Valley black residents embarked on a crusade to found a college for black New Yorkers. These residents were absolutely dissatisfied with the segregated schools available in such Dutchess County cities as Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Hudson, and Catskill, and utterly discouraged by the racial hostility at such institutions as Eastman Business College and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. The Mid-Hudson had several public schools but no colleges for African Americans; several colleges in the state had never admitted a black student.
Eastman Business College, located on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, refused to admit blacks because, as its president later explained, its many southern students would not like it. According to the New York Times and the New York Freeman, by 1866 Eastman Business College still excluded blacks. Vassar College, located just blocks from where Jane Bolin grew up, did not admit African Americans either, and as late as 1900 a Vassar administrator explained that the conditions of life at Vassar were such that he strongly advised against the admission of blacks. But the belief among Poughkeepsie's black residents was that an African American girl had passed for white while attending Vassar and was not discovered until her parents showed up for her graduation. It was not until 1934, a full decade after Jane Bolin left Poughkeepsie for Wellesley College and three years after she graduated from Yale Law School, that Vassar College announced its readiness to admit African Americans. Down the Hudson from Poughkeepsie at the West Point Military Academy the first black cadet, James Smith, enrolled in May 1870, but he was persecuted from the day he entered until the day of his premature departure. Perhaps the public debate over Smith's treatment at West Point had motivated the black leaders of the Mid-Hudson region to push even more aggressively for separate institutions of higher learning.
Those people signing the call for a black college wished to establish an institution of higher learning for the residents of their communities because existing institutions did not admit African Americans or admitted them without truly integrating them. Although it could not match the scale of Vassar College with its two-hundred-acre allotment and $800,000 endowment at founding, this endeavor to establish a black college with a fifteen-acre allotment and $300,000 endowment was nevertheless a remarkable feat for farmers, laborers, and janitors. A majority of the all-black board of trustees for the proposed institution came from Poughkeepsie, and Abram Bolin was a leader among them. The proposed institution was called Toussaint L'Ouverture College, in honor of the legendary revolutionary who led the slave revolt that in 1804 gave birth to Haiti, the first black republic and second sovereign nation in the Western hemisphere. As historian Millery Polyné reminds us in From Douglas to Duvalier, African Americans had from the nineteenth century continually invoked the Haitian Revolution as a symbol and promise of black empowerment in their struggles against racial inequality. According to Polyné, "References to the Haitian Revolution and its significance to black progress exemplified the purpose of transnational racial uplift." But a name that no doubt evoked honor for some might have symbolized too much radicalism for others, portending the challenge that the endeavor would face.
In early 1871 Bolin and his fellow trustees arranged to have a local Republican assemblyman introduce a bill into the New York Legislature to incorporate the college. A Poughkeepsie Republican newspaper appealed to whites for contributions for the proposed college, stating, "It is to be hoped that our people will give this institution a helping hand, as it will go far toward settling the vexed question of the mixture of the races in our schools and colleges." But the proposal received strong opposition from many in New York's African American community. At the 1871 New York Annual Conference of the A.M.E. Zion Church, the Reverend William Butler of New York City, a former pastor of Poughkeepsie and a most powerful personality at the conference, objected strongly. He was completely opposed to separate schools, and believed that if African Americans stood together and demanded equal access that they would get it. Like many in New York's black community, Butler thought that the Toussaint College would hinder their struggle for integrated schools. The A.M.E. Zion conference refused to endorse the college. Even Abram Bolin's assurance that the college would be open to both blacks and whites was ignored, and at the 1872 New York State black convention held in Troy, there was still no endorsement of the college. Without the support of the major black denominations in the state or the state black convention, the hope for Toussaint College was surely dashed.
By the end of 1872 the campaign for the Toussaint College had collapsed under the weight of entrenched opposition. The belief of both blacks and whites in the viability of educational integration had no doubt helped prevent the creation of Toussaint College and the establishment of any black college in the state. Moreover, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing full male suffrage may have provided African Americans in the state with added motivation to push for full access and equal opportunity.
Abram Bolin's efforts failed to create a black college for the benefit of his children and grandchildren, but those efforts certainly helped to energize the struggle for full educational integration at the public school level. In 1873 a state civil rights law allowed New York youth, regardless of race, to enroll in any public school, thereby abolishing separate public schools for Poughkeepsie's black residents, which in the end benefited Abram's children and grandchildren who were subsequently educated in the integrated public schools of Poughkeepsie. Abram Bolin's activism reflected the depth of his racial pride and the strength of his commitment to uplift his community. When he died in April 1910, several community organizations, including the Ebenezer Baptist Church Auxiliary, and fraternal organizations, such as the Grand Court Order of Calanthe, the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows and its sister organization, the Household of Ruth, paid tribute to him. A white Episcopal priest and a black Baptist minister presided at the funeral in his Clinton Street home in a manner befitting a man of his standing in the community.
This commitment to community leadership, inherited or bestowed, was not lost on future generations of Bolins including Jane Bolin and her father, Gaius Bolin. Gaius Bolin once quoted the scriptures about the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children to the third and fourth generations to make the point that heredity played an important role in shaping his character. One of Alice and Abram Bolin's thirteen children, Gaius was born September 10, 1864, and had no other goal than that of becoming a lawyer. Clearly, what the elder Bolin had accomplished with only a country district school education was extraordinary enough to inspire his son to become a man of the professional class and, more importantly, a leader in his community. Gaius Bolin became a lawyer, and by the time Jane Bolin left Poughkeepsie for Wellesley College in 1924 he was prominent in his profession and community.
Gaius Bolin benefited from both his father's activism and the 1873 legislation that ended segregated education for Poughkeepsie blacks. He attended Poughkeepsie's public schools, graduating from the racially integrated Poughkeepsie High School in June 29, 1883, the only African American in a class of twenty-three students. Gaius Bolin delivered an oration at commencement that inspired the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle to comment favorably on his intelligence and the desirability of integrated education. He considered it an honor to be a graduate of Poughkeepsie High School, whose alumni were embraced as outstanding members of the larger community. Gaius recalled that "they had no trouble obtaining the best jobs to be had in the mercantile world, the banks and as school teachers and in other walks of life, and many of them entered the professions and were successful." However, the prestige of his diploma notwithstanding, it was still necessary for him to study for two additional years in a private school to acquire more Latin and the full two years of Greek required for entrance into college. He therefore enrolled in and, in 1885, graduated from the Professor John R. Leslie's Select Classical School in Poughkeepsie.
At the suggestion of his high school principal, Samuel W. Buck, who had graduated from Williams College, and with the support of his parents, Gaius Bolin applied to Williams College, passed the entrance examination, and entered the freshman class of 1885. In his study The College Bred Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois reported that 2,331 blacks had graduated from the nation's colleges and universities between 1826 and 1899. The majority of these graduates, according to Du Bois, had earned their baccalaureate degrees after 1865 from such black institutions as Lincoln, Fisk, Wilberforce, and Howard. However, approximately 390 of these graduates or a full 16 percent had received their education at a variety of predominantly white colleges and universities including Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, and Oberlin. In 1885 Williams College followed the precedent set by these institutions and admitted its first black student when it admitted Gaius Charles Bolin. Gaius recalled having "four beautiful years" at Williams where he played football and formed lasting friendships with his white classmates, an experience that was diametrically opposed to his daughter's experience at Wellesley College four decades later. To his classmates he was "Old Charlie Bole"; fifty years after his graduation from Williams he could still recall the names of the many classmates "who made a rendezvous" of his room and "the glorious times" they had there.
Upon graduation in June 1889, Gaius Bolin returned to Poughkeepsie armed with his Bachelor of Arts degree but no comparable job prospects. Poughkeepsie had integrated its public schools, but had no equal access when it came to employment. In late nineteenth-century Poughkeepsie, the most common type of employment for black women was as domestic servants, while the majority of black men worked as day laborers on the Hudson River boats, the lumber yard, the glass and cigar factories, or as porters and janitors in local hotels and restaurants. A few worked as chauffeurs and servants for wealthy white families in the area, or independently as barbers, grocers, plumbers, and milliners. But besides the clergy, the black professional class was almost nonexistent with only one doctor and a dentist. So, for a year after his return to Poughkeepsie, Gaius worked in his father's produce business. He never gave up his lifelong ambition to become a lawyer, however, and in 1890 Fred E. Ackerman, a local white attorney, gave him the opportunity to fulfill his ambition. Gaius read the law with Ackerman for two years, passed the bar, and in 1892 was admitted to the General Term of the Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York, to practice law. He became the first black lawyer in Poughkeepsie and the only black member of the Dutchess County Bar Association. He continued to work with Ackerman for the next three years, gaining the necessary experience before establishing his own law practice in 1895.
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Excerpted from DAUGHTER OF THE EMPIRE STATE by Jacqueline A. McLeod Copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline McLeod. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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