by Shannon Butler
One would have to be living under a rock (a really big one) these days to not know the importance of the current situation we find ourselves in. Protesting in large crowds, which is breaking down the barriers of our recent social distancing guidelines, parts of the country are rethinking their police forces, and racial tensions appear to be similar to those of the 1960s. All of this drives a history nerd to contemplate, what were the views of previous generations when it comes to racial equality in our area? You might hear people from the north (especially right here in our area) say things like, “well we fought on the right side of the Civil War,” or “we had a lot of abolitionists up here,” or “Ok so maybe we did have slaves, but they were treated better than the ones in the south.” All of this makes me think of an oral history that I conducted years ago with Mrs. Doris Mack, a volunteer from Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.
Doris (who was 92 when I interviewed her, and still going strong by the way) was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. She and her husband Theodore moved up to Poughkeepsie after WWII. Both she and her husband became close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt when Theodore was studying for his degree at Bard College. What interested me during our interview was that Doris said, “I never really felt segregated in my life until I came up here. In Durham you knew your place, you knew where you belonged. When Mack (her husband) and I first got here, we didn’t feel welcomed until Mrs Roosevelt.” In other words, there was plenty of segregation and racism up here, even into the 1950s.
Bill Jeffway and the folks at The Dutchess County Historical Society have done a great job outlining some of the important highlights in the history of racial equality and justice here in the area (https://dchsny.org/african-heritage/) and one of the pieces that is quite a powerful read is the speech made by Judge Jane Bolin. Jane Bolin was the first black female judge in the United States and she was a native of Poughkeepsie. In February of 1944 she gave a speech while visiting her home city that spoke very clearly of the feelings concerning racial equality (or lack thereof) at the time. “When I am asked why I ever left such a beautiful town as Poughkeepsie I am forced to answer: ‘Yes, it is physically beautiful, but I hate fascism whether it is practiced by Germans, Japanese, or by Americans and Poughkeepsie is fascist to the extent of deluding itself that there is superiority among human beings by reason solely of color or race or religion.’” She went on to say that she had hoped that she could tell the world that in Poughkeepsie “there are Negroes on the staff of the district attorney, in the fire and police departments, in the city council – I should like to say that Negro physicians are welcomed on the staff of the Poughkeepsie hospitals, that Negro nurses are employed there,” however, that was still not the case in her home town.
A few years later in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that she was informed by the officials at Vassar Hospital that they had determined that “Negro doctors and nurses can work with a predominantly white staff. They also have Negro workers in various capacities throughout the hospital working without disrcimination.” However, there doesn’t appear to have been any black doctors or nurses hired permanently on the staff until the 1960s. Eleanor Roosevelt had been interested in racial equality since she had entered the White House as First Lady in 1933. From her home in Hyde Park, she welcomed students from the Wiltwyck School (which was an integrated school for inner-city boys just across the river), she discussed racial justice issues with political candidates like Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, and she supported the peaceful protests of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) like freedom rides and sit-ins. She wrote in her My Day column on May 30th 1946, “We have no room in this country for racial prejudice because our people come from every race and were brought together by an idea and are made strong as a nation by the fact that we believe in certain democratic ideals.” Those ideals must still be true today.
If we go back even further, we find that in 1858, Frederick Douglass came to Poughkeepsie and likewise made a speech concerning the issues of the racial injustice of slavery. He undoubtedly left a strong impression on the hundreds who came to hear him, just as Judge Jane Bolin did in 1944, and just like the Black Lives Matter demonstration which we saw on Church Street just last week.
More about Doris Mack from the NPS: https://www.nps.gov/vama/blogs/living-history-with-doris-mack.htm
More from the Dutchess County Historical Society: https://dchsny.org/african-heritage/
Images:
Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day Column 1948 (Poughkeepsie Journal)
Eleanor Roosevelt with the Wiltwyck School at Val-Kill (FDR Library, National Archives and Records Administration)
Judge Jane Bolin (Library of Congress)
Frederick Douglass (National Archives and Records Administration)
