The Invisible Line (63 page)

31
Humphreys to Gibson, November 28, 1892; “Advertisement of Partition Sale,”
Daily Picayune
, March 10, 1894, p. 13; “The Courts,”
Daily Picayune
, June 2, 1891, p. 6; “College Escapade,”
Dallas Morning News
, October 26, 1888, p. 1; “Montgomery Gibson Found,”
New Haven (Conn.) Register
, October 26, 1888, p. 1.

32
Humphreys to Gibson, November 28, 1892.

33
“Gen. Gibson's Will,”
Daily Picayune
, April 5, 1893, p. 3.

34
Ibid.

35
Ibid. See also McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 256.

36
“Senator Gibson's Condition Unchanged,”
Wilkes-Barre Times
, December 7, 1892, p. 2; Humphreys to Gibson, December 13, 1892; “Randall Lee Gibson,”
Daily Picayune
, December 16, 1892, p. 1.

1
See, e.g., “Life at Washington,”
New York Freeman
, March 20, 1886; “Ex-Liberian Minister Smythe,”
New York Freeman
, February 13, 1886; “The National Capital,”
New York Freeman
, January 30, 1886; “The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, September 13, 1884; and “The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, October 20, 1883. See also “The National Capital,”
New York Freeman
, February 7, 1885;
Washington Bee
, January 31, 1885, p. 3 (Richard Greener and Robert Terrell blackballed from the District's Harvard Club); and Willard B. Gatewood,
Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 163-64 passim.

2
“The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, January 12, 1884, p. 1; “Colored Men Engaged in the Profession of the Law,”
Daily Evening Bulletin
(San Francisco), June 13, 1885, p. 4; Jane Dailey,
Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Post-Emancipation Virginia
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 158; John Mercer Langston,
From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol
(Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., 1894), pp. 495-503.

3
See, e.g., “Mr. Fortune in the South,”
New York Freeman
, October 3, 1885; “Mr. Douglass' Great Speech,”
New York Freeman
, May 2, 1885; and “A White Wife,”
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, January 26, 1884, p. 3.

4
See, e.g., “Mr. Douglass' Great Speech,”
New York Freeman
, May 2, 1885.

5
“The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, January 12, 1884, p. 1.

6
“The National Capital,”
New York Freeman
, February 7, 1885; “The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, January 12, 1884, p. 1. The conversation with Susan B. Anthony was likely animated. Among the guests at the party was O.S.B. Wall's sister Sara Fidler, an outspoken opponent of women's suffrage, “claiming that woman was not made for the rough conditions of life, in political or professional efforts and struggles, or hard, severe, straining physical labors, as evidenced in her peculiar mental conformation and endowments, and her delicate, unique, physical organism.” John Mercer Langston, “A Representative Woman: Mrs. Sara K. Fidler,”
A.M.E. Church Review
, July 1887, pp. 461, 471-72. On Henry Wall's visit, see Anne Wall Thomas,
The Walls of Walltown
(1969; reprint by author, 2007), p. 33; Thomas quotes a letter from Charles N. Dean that is now among the Dean Papers.

7
Amanda A. Wall to O. O. Howard, August 13, 1890, Howard Papers.

8
“A Deserved Compliment,”
Washington Critic
, May 16, 1888, p. 1; “Judge Snell Denounces Impudent Questions by Counsel,”
Evening Critic
, January 13, 1885, p. 4; “No Hearsay Evidence for Snell,”
Evening Critic
, June 28, 1884, p. 1.

9
“Defending His Reputation,”
Washington Post
, June 10, 1888, p. 8.

10
“Christmas in Court,”
Washington Post
, December 26, 1884, p. 4; “Not Much of an Imbecile,”
Washington Post
, September 29, 1885, p. 4; “A Sensational Story Denied,”
Washington Critic
, October 17, 1885, p. 4; “An Unfounded Story,”
Washington Critic
, December 2, 1885, p. 4; and “Bits of Local News,”
Washington Post
, December 3, 1885, p. 4. Wall's letter of recommendation survives in Benjamin Rhodes's personnel file, Record Group 351, Personnel Case Files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

11
Constance McLaughlin Green,
The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 131; Affidavit of A. C. Richards,
In re: Estate of O.S.B. Wall,
No. 4523 (1891), Washingtoniana Collection; “A Disgusting Exhibition,”
Evening Critic
, September 2, 1884, p. 1.

12
“A Disgusting Exhibition,”
Evening Critic
, September 2, 1884, p. 1.

13
“Mr. Douglass' Great Speech,”
New York Freeman
, May 2, 1885, p. 3.

14
Ibid.

15
“A Fatal Street Brawl,”
Washington Post
, March 5, 1884, p. 1.

16
“The National Capital,”
New York Globe
, March 15, 1884. “On cross-examination Captain Wall admitted doing all that he could to get Langston out of the country, and keeping him there until his father reached home”: “Frank Langston's Defense,”
Evening Critic
, May 31, 1884, p. 2. See also “National Capital,”
New York Globe
, May 10, 1884; “Frank Langston Here,”
Evening Critic
, May 5, 1884, p. 1; “Langston Acquitted,”
Washington Post
, June 4, 1884, p. 3; “Ex-Minister Langston's Son,”
Washington Post
, April 5, 1887, p. 1; “Frank M. Langston at Liberty,”
Washington Post
, December 30, 1891, p. 1; O.S.B. Wall to John Mercer Langston, April 12, 1887, box 1, folder 7, Langston Papers.

17
Judge's notes and testimony of William Colbert,
District of Columbia v. Stephen R. Wall
, Crim. Case #17014 (1888), Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States, District of Columbia, Criminal Case Files, 1863-1946, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

18
Ibid., p. 9; “More Liquor Cases Tried,”
Washington Post
, February 9, 1888, p. 3; “More Barroom Licenses,”
Washington Post
, November 14, 1888, p. 8; “War on Gambling Dens,”
Washington Post
, August 27, 1890, p. 2; and “A Blow at Poker Clubs,”
Washington Post
, August 24, 1890, p. 2.

19
“The Trustees Feel Bold,”
Washington Post
, December 15, 1886, p. 2; “Teachers for Next Year,”
Washington Post
, June 25, 1884, p. 2; “Amateur Actors on the Stage,”
Washington Post
, June 4, 1889, p. 4; “Graduates of Martyn College,”
Washington Post
, June 5, 1889, p. 7; classified advertisement,
Washington Post
, June 16, 1889, p. 2 (“Miss Bel Irene Wall will appear in Junior Excelsior's Ovation, June 19, at the Metropolitan Church”); Edmund Shaftesbury,
Lessons in the Mechanics of Personal Magnetism
(Washington, D.C.: Martyn College Press, 1888), title page; and classified advertisement,
Washington Post
, March 5, 1889, p. 15.

20
“Unprofessional Conduct,”
Washington Critic
, June 22, 1886, p. 4; “A Falling Out,”
Washington Critic
, April 8, 1889, p. 1; William S. McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
(1991), p. 365; “Lawyers at Fisticuffs,”
Washington Critic
, March 15, 1887, p. 4; and “Two Colored Lawyers Come to Blows,”
Washington Post
, March 16, 1887, p. 3.

21
O.S.B. Wall to John Mercer Langston, April 4, 1887, and March 8, 1887, both in box 1, folder 7, Langston Papers.

22
“Stricken With Paralysis,”
Washington Post
, April 13, 1890, p. 1.

23
Ibid.; “The Weather,”
Washington Post
, April 12, 1890, p. 1; Ronald M. Johnson, “From Romantic Suburb to Racial Enclave: LeDroit Park, Washington, D.C., 1880-1920,”
Phylon
45 (1984), pp. 264, 265.

24
William Tindall, “Homes of the Local Government,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society
3 (1900), pp. 279, 295. According to Tindall, the courthouse had previously been used as a church where “Daniel Webster attended divine worship when he wasn't worshipping the Constitution or himself.”

25
“Stricken with Paralysis,”
Washington Post
, April 13, 1890, p. 1.

26
Ibid.

27
Ibid.

28
Amanda A. Wall to O. O. Howard, August 13, 1890, Howard Papers.

29
Ibid.; O. O. Howard to William Windom, August 15, 1890, Correspondence of O. O. Howard, 1833-1912, Roll 22: June 17, 1890-December 8, 1890, pp. 290-91, Howard Papers.

30
A. A. Wall to O. O. Howard, November 7, 1890, Howard Papers; Stephen Wall Personnel File, National Archives, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis.

31
“Capt. O.S.B. Wall,”
Washington Post
, April 28, 1891, p. 7.

1
On ghosts in the Appalachian fog, see, e.g., Charles Edwin Price, “The Face in the Fog,” in
Haints, Witches, and Boogers: Tales from Upper East Tennessee
(Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, 1992), pp. 75-77.

2
C. Mitchel Hall,
Johnson County: Heart of Eastern Kentucky
(self-published, 1928), pp. 381-82; James C. Hower, “Uncertain and Treacherous: The Cannel Coal Industry in Kentucky,”
Natural Resources Research
4 (1995), pp. 310, 318.

3
Harry M. Caudill,
Theirs Be the Power: The Moguls of Eastern Kentucky
(Urbana- Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pp. 71-72; Carolyn Clay Turner and Carolyn Hay Traum,
John C. C. Mayo: Cumberland Capitalist
(Pikeville, Ky.: Pikeville College Press, 1983), pp. 10-12; Ronald D. Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), pp. 65-85, 142, and maps 2, 3, 4, 5, 8.

4
Hall,
Johnson County,
p. 135; Edward L. Ayers,
The Promise of a New South: Life After Reconstruction
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 7, 12-13, 22.

5
Ayers,
Promise of New South
; Barbara Young Welke,
Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution, 1865-1920
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 249-79.

6
See Marion B. Lucas,
A History of Blacks in Kentucky
(Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992), pp. 1:295-98, 384n9; Welke,
Recasting American Liberty,
pp. 296-97; Kenneth W. Mack, “Law, Society, Identity, and the Making of the Jim Crow South: Travel and Segregation on Tennessee Railroads, 1875-1905,”
Law and Social Inquiry
24 (1999), pp. 377, 401; Pauli Murray, comp.,
States' Laws on Race and Color
(1951; reprint, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), p. 169;
Plessy v. Ferguson
, 163 U.S. 537 (1896); Leon Litwack,
Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
(New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 233, 246.

7
See Welke,
Recasting American Liberty
, pp. 357-58; Daniel J. Sharfstein, “The Secret History of Race in the United States,”
Yale Law Journal
112 (2003), pp. 1473, 1498-501;
Southern Railway Co. v. Thurman
, 90 S.W. 240, 241 (Ky. 1906).

8
Lowell Ed Spencer, interview by author, August 29, 2005, Paintsville, Ky.

9
Ibid.; Tommy Ratliff, interview by author, October 25, 2005, Paintsville, Ky.; Thomas Whitehead,
Virginia: A Hand-Book
(1893), p. 90.

10
Spencer interview.

11
1900 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Ky.; James S. Brown,
Beech Creek: A Study of a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood
(1950; reprint, Berea, Ky.: Berea College Press, 1988), pp. 74-75 (describing how elderly couples lived in an Appalachian hollow); Deed Book 11, p. 510, Johnson County Courthouse, Paintsville, Ky.; Deed Book 20, pp. 340-41; Deed Book 23, pp. 628-29; Deed Book 55, pp. 369-71.

12
1900 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Ky.

13
Edward R. Hazelett, interview by author, August 29, 2005, Paintsville, Ky.

14
1900 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Ky.

15
Freda Spencer Goble, interview by author, August 29, 2005, Paintsville, Ky.

16
S. Monzon et al., “Airborne Occupational Allergic Contact Dermatitis from Coal Dust,”
Allergy
62 (2007), p. 1346; Anthony Cavender,
Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 71, 98; Henry C. Sheafer, “Hygiene of Coal-Mines,” in
A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health
, ed. Albert H. Buck (New York: W. Wood, 1879), p. 2:229.

17
Miners developed “accidental tattoos” made of coal dust, typically on their shoulders and upper backs, from repeatedly scraping against tunnel walls; see O. Braun Falco et al.,
Dermatology
, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000), p. 1048. See also Alan Derickson,
Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 1-21.