Part III
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| Highlighted plots are the possible sites for John Coleman's house. Dates listed are when existing houses were built. Arrow shows direction of Coleman's relative who would have lived two blocks to the north. |
As quickly as the segregation
ordinance was passed in 1912, it was challenged the next month.
On October 27th, John
Coleman, a black entrepreneur and native Ashlander, purchased a home on Henry
Clay Street in the town. At that time, there was already an
established black neighborhood in Ashland, just north of Randolph-Macon
College, called Berkleytown. It was a hub of
activity with stores, a hotel, and restaurants, and the first black school in Hanover County would be built there in 1950
under pressure for the country to provide “separate but
equal educational opportunities.”
John Coleman purchased his small
piece of property for $500 and he paid cash to the Commissioner of Revenue
in Hanover County. The deed book where the sale is recorded notes that it was a small piece of
property situated on the south side of Henry Clay Street, between Snead and James Street-
not in the black neighborhood of Berkleytown.
There
were no street numbers used then, and the property is described as being 27 ½
feet wide by 190 feet deep. When Coleman purchased the property, there was
a black person renting the home, which had been grandfathered under the ordinance.
Ashland’s law specifically stated that it was fine for a black person to
own a home, but they could not reside in that home if the majority of people
living on that block were of the opposite race. Coleman did have some
relatives who lived about two blocks away from the Henry Clay house, so he
could have just simply been moving closer to family.
There are no indications that he
bought the home as a challenge to the ordinance.
At some
point between October 27th of 1911 and October 14th, 1912 John Coleman had
decided to move into the home, because on October 14, 1912, a summons was given
to the town sergeant to deliver to Coleman, ordering him to appear before Mayor
Henry Ellis at 4:00 PM that same day and to pay a $20 fine for the violation of
segregation ordinance. Mr. Coleman was actually charged $20 for the
violation, and $1.80 for “costs,” but it was noted that he asked for an appeal
and was granted one. For that he had to pay $45 “recognizance” fee.
Clearly, Coleman had the means to pay the fine, but his concerns were
with the principal of the law.
The next month, in November of 1912, the Ashland Town Council voted to form a
committee to search for a lawyer to defend the segregation ordinance as
challenged by John Coleman, and they would eventually hire James E. Cannon, of
Richmond, who would go on to become the City Attorney for Richmond in 1923.
The lawyer that Coleman hired to defend his right to live on Henry
Clay Street was Callom B. Jones, Jr, the 25 year old lawyer who also served on
the Ashland Town Council and had voted in favor of passing the segregation
ordinance. John Coleman and Callom Jones were close in age, and both had
lived in Ashland all their lives, so it is very likely that they knew each
other prior to this professional relationship.
When Callom Jones, Jr., served on the Ashland Town Council, he was briefly
appointed interim mayor when there was a gap between, and the question stands,
how could he vote to approve the ordinance and then spend four years attacking
the credibility of the law? Jones was 24 years old when he first served
on Council, a young lawyer living at home with his parents, just down the
street. The rest of the members of Council were his parents’
contemporaries- all white men, all having known Jones from when he was a
child. It would may have been incredibly difficult to vote against these
older town leaders, especially for a 24 year old who was just beginning to
understand his convictions.
Four months later, in March of 1913, the committee that had been appointed by
the town council reported that they had detained Mr. James E. Cannon for a fee
of $150. When the case of Ashland v. Coleman went before Judge Chichester
of Hanover County on September 16th, 1913, Callom Jones had lined up seven
reasons that the segregation ordinance was unconstitutional:
1. A
public trust cannot be delegated or assigned at will.
2. [The
segregation ordinance] will create a petty legislative body in every city
street with jurisdiction over this branch of municipal affairs.
3.
The
Town Council cannot abdicate its legislative powers vested in it by the state.
4.
The
use of one’s property is as much a property as the property itself.
5.
The
ordinance is unequal, unreasonable, oppressive, partial and is discriminating.
6.
The
ordinance is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.
7.
The
condemnation of the use of property by a body known as the “greater number of
which are white, etc.,” on a street, is not the due process of law.
Jones argued that by passing the ordinance,
the Town Council violated the power that had been given to them by the state,
and referenced several other cases that supported this. By leaving the
designation of whether a street was a “white” street or a “black” street to the
other residents of that street, that the Town had effectually abdicated its power;
thereby leaving the decision to the other homeowners. He also argued that
by having one set of property owners on a street decide about whether another
property owner can live on the street, that
those majority property owners are taking away the private property rights of
the other person (whom they are asking to leave the block.) They have
control over a piece of property that they have no right to have control over.
The people who have 2/3rds ownership of the block now have power over the
people who have 1/3rd. Jones stated that
the Town abdicated its power of authority by allowing those streets to decide.
John Coleman was denied the lawful use of his property by 2/3rds of the
other property owners on Henry Clay St.
In his defense of the town, lawyer James
Cannon had argued that the town was well within its rights as the General
Assembly of Virginia had passed legislation in March of 1912 (six months after
Ashland passed their ordinance) allowing all towns and cities in the state to
enact segregation laws to keep the races separate. He also argued that
the town council was charged with preserving the public peace; the public
safety and order, and that keeping the races separate was the natural way to
keep everyone calm and happy. This was the general consensus of the era,
as many newspaper articles also wrote about the need to keep blacks and whites
separated in all aspects of their daily lives, except, interestingly, in cases
of blacks working as servants in the homes of whites. The segregation
ordinance in both Ashland and Richmond made exceptions for this. Carolyn Hemphill, the current president of
the Hanover Black Heritage Society asked, incredulously, “They would let black
people live in your house, take care of your children, cook your meals, but
they wouldn't let them live down the street?”
In his ruling on the case, Judge Chichester
further commented on the General Assembly act, stating that even though the
Ashland ordinance had been passed six months prior to the General Assembly Act,
that the town was still acting within its jurisdiction because the ordinance
was an effort to preserve the public morals, an argument that was often used to
promote racial segregation: “The central idea of the ordinance under
consideration seems very manifest. It is to prevent too close association
of the races, which association results, or tends to result, in breaches of the
peace, immorality and danger to health.” He also argued that the
ordinance did not violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution because it
restricted the residence of whites and blacks equally. He concluded that
the town of Ashland had full authority to pass the ordinance and declared it
valid. Coleman’s appeal was denied.
The
Thursday, September 18th, 1913 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper
carried news of the hearing on the front page: “Opinion Upholds Segregation
Law.” The city of Richmond was interested in the news from Hanover County
because there were six cases that were pending over the Richmond segregation
ordinance. Richmond City Attorney H.R. Pollard was quoted as saying, “As far as
I know, this is the first ruling of its kind in Virginia. It is of the
utmost importance and has a direct bearing on the cases now pending against the
city…”
Besides
the quote from the city attorney, there are several circumstances which point
to Ashland v. Coleman as being the first time that a black man had challenged a
segregation ordinance. In the court records obtained from Hanover County,
Callom Jones cited several other cases related to the power of municipal
corporations and the ability for the majority of homeowners on a street to
decide if a billboard should be erected, or a stable to be built, but no cases
involving discrimination over the color of a person’s skin.
At the November 13th regular council meeting,
it was recorded that “Mayor Ellis reported that the Segregation Ordinance
passed by the Town of Ashland had been confirmed by Judge Chichester, but that
the attorney for John Coleman, the defendant in the case, had noted an appeal.”
More than a year later, on October 12th, 1914, the minutes of the
Ashland Town Council approved the payment of $250.00 to James Cannon for him to
represent the town in the appeal case pending before the Virginia Court of
Appeals. The next month, they also approved the hiring of attorney H.R.
Pollard to assist in the appeals case.
Pollard was the City Attorney of Richmond at the time, and he would also
write an amicus curae on behalf of the City of Richmond for the US Supreme
Court Case of Buchanan v. Warley.
In
September of 1915, Coleman’s case was joined together with the case of Mary
Hopkins v. City of Richmond, who was arrested for renting an apartment on a
street that had mostly white residents, and brought before the Virginia Court
of Appeals. In a statement published
earlier that year in the Richmond Planet Newspaper (African-American), H.R.
Pollard wrote that “the unwonted persistency with which many of the leaders
among the colored people in this country have resisted the application of the
basal principal involved in this legislation is almost pathetic.” The rulings
in Hanover and Richmond that supported the segregation ordinances were upheld
by the Court of Appeals, and in the days ahead, those “pathetic” black leaders
would take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In this
early part of the 1900s, segregation ordinances were gaining popularity across
the southern half of the United States. The pendulum of Reconstruction had
swung in the other direction and Jim Crow laws had begun to spread west to
Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Missouri. The National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People was founded in 1909, and by 1913 had hired a full-time lawyer
to help fight against racist legislation. Backed by large support in
Louisville, Kentucky, the NAACP chose this municipality to stage its fight. The
case that would eventually appear before the US Supreme Court, would be
Buchanan v. Warley, a carefully staged court battle between two people chosen
by the NAACP to challenge the segregation ordinance in that city.
The
visibility of that case was heightened by the use of black ministers who coordinated
their Sunday sermons (called, “Segregation Sundays”) to preach on the evils of
Jim Crow laws. William Warley, the president of the Lousiville NAACP, and
Charles Buchanan, a white real estate agent, coordinated the sale of a piece of
property in an area of Louisville where the majority of the residents were
white. Warley entered into a contract to purchase the home, and then
refused to pay based on the inability for him to be able to occupy the
home. Buchanan sued him for breach of
contract. The Louisville ordinance was
supported by the district courts, and appealed to the Kentucky Court of
Appeals, where it was also upheld.
Buchanan
v. Warley was heard before the US Supreme Court in April of 1917, with attorney
Moorefield Storey arguing that segregation laws violated the Constitutional
rights of black citizens. Storey was a white, New England lawyer, whose
family were dedicated abolitionists. He
was the founding president of the NAACP, as well as a practiced constitutional
lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association. In his
arguments before the Supreme Court, Storey argued that the ordinances were
discriminatory to both whites and blacks, that a “discrimination against one
race in violation of the Constitution is not less repugnant because another
race is also discriminated against,” and the court agreed with him. In writing
for the unanimous court, Associate Justice William Day stated that, “property
is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it
includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential
attributes of property.” The Court ruled that all segregation ordinances were
unconstitutional and ordered that they be removed from all municipal policy.
The Richmond Planet newspaper wrote of the ruling, “God bless the Supreme
Court of the United States, Republicans and Democrats, Jew and Gentile.
We have always believed that God in his own time would make the crooked
ways straight…”
After
the loss at the Virginia Court of Appeals, it appears that Coleman returned to
his successful life in Ashland. In 1918, he built a Sears &
Roebuck house at the corner of Henry and Berkley Streets in Ashland; in the
center of the Berkelytown community. It is a home that was remembered to
have hosted dances and still stands today.
He married his wife, Mildred, and they had a son, William, in 1920. John
Coleman’s death certificate in 1933 states that he died at Retreat Hospital in
Richmond from complications with the surgical removal of a hematoma in his
abdomen; he was 49. His “Mayhew” house was sold in 1937 to help settle
his estate.
From an
interview with James Tinsley, the great-nephew of John Coleman, it became clear
that the Coleman brothers, John and Judson, were hard-working businessman who
made a practice of buying land in Ashland. Coleman’s widow, Mildred, and
his son, William (who was 13 when his father died), were not well liked by the
rest of the family. So much so, that
Judson Coleman eventually bought both of them train tickets to Detroit,
Michigan, where their descendants still live. Many of those same parcels are
owned by family members today, and many of those parcels have been the subject
of litigation. The Coleman family was not afraid to stand up for their
rights, and believed in the power of the court system to help defend their
property.
Callom
Jones would marry later, in 1925 to Bessie Elliotte who was 16 years younger,
from Overland Park, Kansas, and have two sons. His family remembers him
as active in the community, for his church, and with the Republican party. His private law practice was successful, and
he lived in Richmond with his wife and sons. The 1940 census lists the
family as living on Park Street in Richmond and having a 20 year-old black man
living with them as a servant: William Coleman, John Coleman’s son. Thirty years after that lawsuit, the bond
between Coleman and Jones still existed.
It would seem as though Jones battled a
conflict of interest when he tool Coleman’s case in 1912. He had voted
with the majority on the town council to pass the ordinance, and he continued
to serve on the council from 1910 to 1916- all while he argued in court that
the council had no authority to restrict the residences of its citizens.
Fortunately, Jones recorded his moral beliefs in a small book that he
self-published in 1938, titled “The Teachings of Jesus, The Christ, By Callom
B. Jones, For the guidance of his sons.”
Within
this paper-bound book contain Jones’ interpretation of many of the stories of
Jesus from the bible, as well as life instruction. Most notable was this
passage from the letter to his sons found at the beginning of the book:
“My dear
boys: ...In your journey down the path of life, you will contact all types and
character of men, men of different races, men of different religions, but
always be mindful of the fact that they are creatures of the same God that
created you… Hatred therefore, should not enter your lives but the firm
idea of doing good to all men. For by so doing there will be no place for
hatred.”
In 1951,
Jones’ death certificate lists his cause of death as a “coronary thrombosis”
due to the “extraction of some tooth;” Callom died at age 64 after developing a
blood clot from the removal of a tooth. His wife, Bessie, would return to
Kansas where she remarried, and her children and grandchildren remained in the
Midwest.
Miriam Pierce’s home stands today as the Kappa
Alpha Theta sorority house at Randolph Macon College, which admitted its first
black students in 1968. According to the 1920 census, Pierce and her
husband were a middle-aged couple without children living in an apartment in
D.C. They never returned to Ashland.
The
Sears & Roebuck house that Coleman built in 1918 is listed as one of
the historically significant homes on the Black History walking tour of
Ashland, but for its construction, not for the connection to Coleman.
There are several homes currently standing on the south side of that
particular block of Henry Clay Street that would have been there when Coleman
bought his home in 1911. Those are all
large Victorians on the eastern half of the block. The homes on the
western half are smaller, and most constructed after 1950. It is probable that Coleman’s house stood in
this section of the street as it would have been the closest to his relatives
on Snead St. This block has both white and black residents living on it today.
The
story of John Coleman, Callom Jones, and the segregation ordinance seemed to
have been forgotten if not for a mention in the book, “The Strange Career of
Jim Crow” by C. Vann Woodward. The pieces to an important moment in time
were closed between covers of old books, and sunk deep in the archives of old
newspapers and court records. The story
serves not as a commentary on the plagues of racism, which are well recorded,
but more on the subtle and complicated relationships in a small town: people
who live very close together are often separated by more than a fence, a
street, or a train track.
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