LAWRENCE GROSSMAN
In His Veins Coursed No Bootlicking
Blood: The Career of Peter H. Clark
Peter H. Clark was one of the most
prominent black leaders of the
nineteenth century. Working as a
schoolteacher, he emerged as a
champion of the antebellum Negro
community in Cincinnati, achieved
recognition after the Civil War as one
of the leading black men of
Ohio, and became a figure of national
importance in racial matters by
the 1880s. Though Clark's fame proved
ephemeral, an understanding
of his career illuminates
nineteenth-century black history. The
development of Negro life in Ohio,
especially in its political, legal,
and educational aspects, is
incomprehensible without consideration of
Clark's effective leadership. Though lack
of a consistent racial
outlook and inability to sustain
long-term political connections limited
his influence, these very weaknesses
made Clark's career a
microcosm of the manifold ideological
tendencies in black America.
Through a long life, Clark touched
every programmatic base on which
his contemporaries stood. At one time
or another he advocated
absolute integration into American
life, independent institutions for
his race, cooperation with southern
white racists, and emigration to
Africa. He drifted back and forth
between the two major parties, and
even espoused, for a while, Marxian
socialism. These twists and
turns, which some observers dismissed
as idiosyncracies, do form a
pattern: they were a series of
desperate attempts to dispel the effect
of white prejudice upon him, and, by
extension, upon his race.1
Early nineteenth-century Cincinnati was
a haven for newly-freed
blacks as well as runaway slaves
because of its location across the
Ohio River from slave-holding Kentucky.
But the influx of Negroes
evoked anti-black sentiment among
whites, many of whom were from
the South. Though a free state, Ohio
discouraged the migration of
Dr. Grossman is Assistant Professor of
History at Yeshiva University.
1. The neglect of Clark by historians
probably is due to his lack of identification with any
specific ideology or institution, the
absence of a collection of his personal papers, and the
obscurity that covers the last thirty
years of his life. Basic biographical information is
available in William Wells Brown, The
Rising Son: or, The Antecedents andAdvancement
of the Colored Race (Boston, 1874), 522-24; Cleveland Gazette, March 6, 1886; William
J.
Simmons, ed., Men of Mark: Eminent,
Progressive and Rising (Cleveland, 1887), 374-83;
Dovie King Clark, "Peter Humphries
Clark," Negro History Bulletin, V (May 1942), 176.
80 OHIO HISTOR'
blacks into its territory. By law, a
black man entering the state had to
show a certificate of freedom and post a
five-hundred-dollar bone
guaranteeing good behavior. Ohio
statutes kept blacks away from the
ballot box and out of juries and militia
units, barred them fron
testifying against whites, and refused
to educate their children fron
general tax revenues. Beyond the letter
of the law, a pattern of socia
and economic segregation walled blacks
off from whites, condemning
the great majority to lives of poverty.
In Cincinnati this situation o
chronic inequality was occasionally
punctuated by white riots agains
blacks, which increased in frequency
during the 1830s and 1840s, fed
by anti-abolition sentiment and economic
rivalry between lower-class
blacks and whites. Antebellum Cincinnati
deserved its reputation as the
most Negrophobic city in the Midwest.2
Peter Humphries Clark, whose life would
be shaped by Cincinnati's
racial tension, was born there in 1829,
the year of the city's first
anti-black outbreak. He was the eldest
child of Michael Clark, a
barber and the offspring of a union
between a Kentucky slave woman
and her white master. Michael Clark's
owner-father had emancipated
him and sent him across the Ohio River
in 1817.3 He provided his
son, Peter, with the best education
available to a Cincinnati Negro. In
1844 Peter Clark graduated from a
private black elementary school
established by liberal whites, and
entered Gilmore High School,
founded and run by a white
philanthropist. The first secondary school
for blacks in the city, Gilmore was
conducted on a high scholastic
level. Peter Clark and his classmates
enjoyed "a commodious
building of five large rooms and a
chapel," as well as a gymnasium.
Students received "instruction in
the branches usual to a full English
course of study, besides which, Latin,
Greek, drawing and music
were taught." Clark excelled, and
was appointed an assistant teacher
in 1846 while still a student; however,
upon graduation two years
later, the young man had to find a job.4
2. John M. Langston, From the
Virginia Plantation to the National Capital (Hartford,
1894), 62-67; Frank U. Quillin, The
Color Line in Ohio: A History of Race Prejudice in a
Typical Northern State (Ann Arbor, 1913), 13-34; Carter G. Woodson, "The
Negroes of
Cincinnati Prior to the Civil War,"
Journal of Negro History, I (January 1916), 1-22
Richard C. Wade, "The Negro in
Cincinnati, 1800-1830," Ibid., XXXIX (January 1954),
43-57; Eugene Berwanger, The Frontier
Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice
and the Slavery Extension Controversy
(Urbana, 1967), 33-34.
3. Cleveland Gazette, March 6,
1886. Dovie King Clark, in "Peter Humphries Clark,"
Negro History Bulletin, V (May 1942), 176, identifies the explorer William
Clark as Peter's
grandfather, a pedigree not mentioned in
Peter Clark's lifetime and therefore dubious.
4. Cleveland Gazette, March 6,
1886; U.S., Congress, House of Representatives,
Special Report of the Commissioner of
Education, House Executive Document
315, 41st
Congress, 2nd session, 1871, 371.
Peter H. Clark 81
Discrimination against blacks in
employment rendered a
high-school diploma of little practical
benefit to a Cincinnati Negro.
Clark's father was fortunate enough to
find an anti-slavery white
stereotyper willing to take Peter Clark
on as an apprentice in return
for two hundred dollars, which was
probably a large part of the family
savings. However, betrayal came quickly:
the stereotyper sold his
business and decamped, with the two
hundred dollars, to the
California gold fields. The man who
bought the business refused to
keep a Negro apprentice. To make matters
worse, Michael Clark
died, and Peter Clark had to take over
the family barbershop. The
work was repugnant to him because it
entailed catering to the
prejudices of white customers,
especially their insistence that he not
serve any blacks. Disgusted, Clark left
barbering forever, vowing that
"he would never shave another white
man, and, if he did, he would
cut his throat."5 This
violent rhetoric in response to prejudice was
just the first of many open
manifestations of Clark's bitterness toward
a white world that treated him on the
basis of color rather than merit.
While clerking in a store in 1849, Clark
tried to enter teaching, the
field in which he ultimately would
excel. This possibility became
available to Clark because the Ohio
legislature that year, under
Free-Soil influence, allowed Negroes to
organize and control their
own public schools, to be financed from
general tax funds
apportioned on a per capita basis. Clark
helped organize the first
black public school in Cincinnati and
was its first teacher. But so
sharp was local white opposition to
Negro public education that the
Cincinnati city council refused to
appropriate money to pay Clark's
salary on the grounds that blacks, not
being citizens, could not be school
trustees and handle public monies. While
the issue was adjudicated in
the courts, Clark was again unemployed.6
Once more, racial prejudice
clouded his prospects.
Clark responded to this frustration by a
decision to turn his back on
America and emigrate. The idea was in
the air; blacks across the
country, impatient with white America's
toleration of caste, were
debating the pros and cons. In Ohio,
Negro leader John Mercer
Langston told a black convention that
they would never get their
rights in the United States, and pressed
for a program of voluntary
colonization to some other area. The
idea attracted the support of a
substantial minority of the convention
delegates. The white American
Colonization Society, meanwhile, tried
unsuccessfully to get an
5. Simmons, ed., Men of Mark, 374-75.
6. Ibid.; Special Report of the
Commissioner of Education, 371;
Woodson, "Negroes
of Cincinnati," 16-17.
82 OHIO HISTORY
appropriation from the Ohio legislature
to finance black emigration.7
Peter Clark, swayed by the emigrationist
argument, wrote to the
Society in 1850 explaining that he and
two friends wanted to settle in
Liberia. Willing to work there as
teachers, they also were prepared to
take "a course in Bookkeeping and
penmanship before we go" if such
employment were available, and, Clark
added, "if so what salary."
Clark did begin the long journey to
Africa in 1851, getting as far as
New Orleans, but, not finding the boat
that was to transport him
across the Atlantic, he returned home.8
At about this time the Ohio Supreme
Court decided that Cincinnati
would have to obey state law and support
black schools. Clark
returned to his teaching, but not for
long. In 1853 the city council
charged the Negro school trustees with
incompetence and placed the
black schools under white overseers, who
immediately fired Clark for
religious heterodoxy. On the basis of
the scriptural texts that he had
pupils recite, Clark was charged with
disbelief in predestination and
the Trinity. He was, in truth, a
Unitarian, rejecting fundamentalism.
Clark's admirers, however, suspected
that the allegation was at least
partially a smokescreen for the real
fear that Clark was not
subservient enough to white dictation.
At a mass protest meeting,
Clark, described by a newspaper reporter
as "a fine-looking,
well-educated young man," told his
supporters that they had the right
to employ teachers of their own choice.
"For the place in the school he
did not care, but for the principle he
did."9
Reinstatement came only after four years
of storekeeping,
newspaper work, and lecturing. Clark was
hired as principal and
teacher at the Western District Colored
School in 1857, after the
black schools were returned to the
control of Negro trustees. He was
promoted in 1866 to be principal of
Gaines High School, the first
black public secondary school in
Cincinnati. Clark ran Gaines for the
next two decades with great
effectiveness, and influenced a
generation of young Cincinnati blacks.10
7. Howard H. Bell, "The Negro
Emigration Movement, 1849-1854: A Phase of Negro
Nationalism," Phylon, XX
(Summer 1959), 137-38; Jane H. and William H. Pease, They
Who Would Be Free: Blacks' Search for
Freedom, 1830-1861 (New York, 1974),
257;
"Ohio in Africa," Quarterly
Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of
Ohio, VII (June and September 1912), 93-102.
8. Clark to Reverend William McLain,
September 17,1850, The Papers of the American
Colonization Society, Letters Received,
April-June 1851, No. 191, Library of Congress,
also in Journal of Negro History, X
(April 1925), 285-86; Cleveland Gazette, March 6,
1886.
9. Cleveland Gazette, March 6, 1886; Simmons, ed., Men of Mark, 376;
Brown, Rising
Son, 450-51; Boston Liberator, September 30, 1853.
10. Cleveland Gazette, March 6,
1886; Simmons, ed., Men of Mark, 377; Isaac Martin,
ed., History of the Schools of
Cincinnati and Other Educational Institutions, Public and
Private (Cincinnati, 1900), 187. Clark had meanwhile married
Frances Williams in 1854.
Peter H. Clark 83 |
|
From the 1850s through the 1880s "Professor" Clark became something of a Cincinnati institution. Clark was short and wiry, and a beard, "sharp features, bright eye," and "dyspeptic appearance" gave him a distinctive presence. All who met him were struck by his learning, eloquence, and straightforward if impolitic candor; qualities which earned Clark a leadership role in the local and national black community while also attracting white respect.11 Black historian George Washington Williams, who lived in Cincinnati for a time, caught the essence of the man: "Clark is a capital little fellow. He is sarcastic, industrious, earnest, nervous, and even practical at times."12 Industry and earnestness were the traits that enabled Clark to achieve prominence; sarcasm and nervousness were the scars left by white prejudice. The constructive side of Clark's character
11. Brown, Rising Son, 523-24; Linda Krane Ellwein, "The Negroes in Cincinnati: The Black Experience, 1870-1880" (M.A. thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1970), 87. 12. George Washington Williams to Frederick Douglass, May 3, 1876, The Papers of Frederick Douglass, Library of Congress. |
84 OHIO HISTOR
coexisted with a gnawing awareness that
he and his race were denied
opportunities open to whites. Clark's
unwillingness to compromise
with prejudice is probably what Williams
perceived as impracticality
After 1852 Clark abandoned emigration as
the answer to the race
problem and became a vigorous
abolitionist and fighter for the lega
equality of northern blacks. He
considered the effort to end slavery
in the South and the struggle to erase
the word "white" from the
Ohio constitution as dual aspects of the
same crusade.13 Clark's
linkage of the two goals was typical of
most black abolitionists, but
his sharp, public denunciation of
vacillating whites, even those most
sympathetic to his views, was not. He
opposed the new Republicar
party formed to keep slavery from
spreading. In July 1856, Clark
went to Syracuse, New York, to
participate in a convention of radical
abolitionists, former Liberty party men
who considered the
Republicans too conservative, and who
were about to name their own
candidates and frame their own platform
for the national election.
Clark, addressing the mostly white group
of political abolitionists,
heaped scorn on the Republicans, who, he
said, had long condoned
slavery by silence, and were only taking
an interest in the issue when
their own access to western lands was
threatened. What followed
probably made even Clark's audience
uncomfortable: there was little
difference, according to Clark, between
free and slave states anyway.
He could not vote in Ohio, nor could he
expect a fair trial, because his
black peers were kept off juries. He
announced: "If you wish to
abolish slavery you must combat it
wherever it is found, whether in
political parties, in churches, or in
your own homes."14 Two years
later he told a black convention in Ohio
that the Republicans, through
tacit acceptance of the Fugitive Slave
Law, showed a willingness to
sell out principle in order to gain
conservative support, and Clark,
therefore, "did not consider his
rights any safer with Republicans
than with Democrats." Rejecting the
major parties, he also denied the
utility of "failed Anti-Slavery
Societies, State Organizations, etc." In
view of the recent Dred Scott decision,
he "had about made up his
mind never to petition for a right
again; but if he could seize it, he
would do so."15 The
sentiment and its phrasing echoed his youthful
refusal to shave white men. Impatient
with whites, Clark, as some
13. Simmons, ed., Men of Mark, 376;
Brown, Rising Son, 523; Proceedings of the
Colored National Convention held in
Rochester, July 6th, 7th and 8th, 1853 (Rochester,
1853), 6; BostonLiberator, February
15, 1856. His involvement in a key fugitive slave case
is recorded in Levi Coffin, Reminiscences
of Levi Coffin (Cincinnati, 1876), 543-44.
14. Radical Abolitionist, I (July
1856), 98.
15. Proceedings of a Convention of
the Colored Men of Ohio Held in the City of
Cincinnati on the 23rd, 24th, 25th
and 26th days of November, 1858 (Cincinnati,
1858), 9,
13-14, also in Boston Liberator, December
3, 1858.
Peter H. Clark
85
others of his race, used the rhetoric of
physical resistance on the eve of
the Civil War.
The war years deepened Clark's sense of
grievance. Angry that
emancipation was not made an immediate
northern war aim, he used
his eloquence in the cause before a
white audience in a Cincinnati
Unitarian church, evoking "round
after round of irrepressible
applause."16 But Clark
and other blacks were rebuffed when they
volunteered to form a military unit to
defend Cincinnati. Then, in
1862, when a Confederate raid upon the
city was expected, over
seven hundred blacks including Clark
were dragged off the streets and
from their homes with no warning and
forced to work on building
fortifications, as if they would not
have served their community
willingly. This indignity inspired Clark
to publish a stinging pamphlet
about the episode. He viewed the
behavior of white Cincinnatians as
one more proof that "there is an
ellipsis universal in American writing
or speaking. When an American writes,
'All men are created free and
equal,' he means all white men."
Clark went so far as to claim that
had the Confederates captured the city,
they would have treated local
blacks no worse than the white residents
did.17 His account is so
clouded by cynicism toward whites that
modern scholars consider it
an unreliable source.18
After the war Clark's quest for a
solution of the race problem led
him to advocate political independence.
Though Clark affiliated with
the Republican party during the 1860s,
his original distrust of the
organization resurfaced during the Grant
Administration. Clark
publicly attacked Ohio Republicans in
1869 for their avoidance of a
firm commitment to the pending Fifteenth
Amendment which would
enfranchise Negroes nationally. However
Clark, as other blacks, had
no alternative to Republicanism, since
the national Democratic party,
long the main political support of
slavery, was still unreconciled to
southern Reconstruction, and Ohio
Democrats continued to use
anti-black prejudice to win votes. With
ratification of the amendment
in 1870, however, and its creation of a
potentially crucial black voice
in Ohio politics, Clark announced that
if the Democrats "are willing
to forget and forgive, then I am willing
to join hands with them in
promoting the glory of our country and
the freedom of all our
people."19 Almost alone
among black leaders in his lack of
16. Boston Liberator, February
28, 1862.
17. Peter H. Clark, The Black Brigade
of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1864), 4, 7, and
passim.
18. Louis Leonard Tucker, Cincinnati
During the Civil War (Columbus, 1962), 39 n. 33;
Edgar A. Toppin, "Humbly They
Served: The Black Brigade in the Defense of
Cincinnati," Journal of Negro
History, XLVIII (April 1963), 85 n. 30.
19. Dayton Ledger, September 24,
1869; New Era, May 5, 1870.
86 OHIO HISTORy
sentimental attachment to the party of
Lincoln, and skeptical abou
whites doing anything for blacks out of
humanitarianism alone, Clark
felt his race would benefit only if both
parties could be made to
compete for its vote. Early in 1871
Clark became the only black to
join with several eminent local white
Republicans in forming the
Cincinnati Central Republican
Association, opposed to the Grant
Administration and favoring civil
service reform, low tariffs, and
amnesty for former Confederates. This
group was a precursor of the
liberal Republican movement of 1872.
Addressing the Association
convention in April 1871, Clark claimed
to have originally favored
keeping the defeated South in
territorial status for a quarter-century.
Now, however, he advocated a return to
power of "respectable"
ex-Confederates, who acknowledged the
Reconstruction Amendments,
as the golden mean between Ku Klux Klan
terror and rule by
southern white Republicans who allegedly
manipulated Negroes for
selfish ends. Continued proscription of
whites in the South, he
argued, only increased anti-black
feeling there. Strangely, Clark's
political realism and refusal to
compromise with Republican
half-measures were leading him toward an
accommodation with
Democrats whose records on the race
issue were more reprehensible
than those of Republicans. By August
Clark reconsidered and drew
back, calling himself a regular
Republican, because the Democrats,
despite recent verbal acceptance of
Negro rights, were not yet to be
trusted.20
Clark had fresh complaints against the
Republican party in 1872,
but continued an uneasy allegiance to
the organization. He could not
see why Senator Charles Sumner's civil
rights bill did not get solid
party backing: "when a white man
had prejudices that interfered with
the comfort and convenience of the
colored people, the law should
step in and curb those prejudices."
Clark also wanted Cincinnati
Republicans to give blacks more
patronage jobs, and in the spring
municipal elections he advocated that
local Negroes, as a bloc,
support only those candidates, of either
party, who pledged to employ
blacks if elected.21 But when
the national campaign heated up, and
anti-administration Republicans joined
Democrats in opposing
Grant's reelection, Clark decided that a
national administration under
Democratic influence would leave the
freedmen at the mercy of
southern whites. Clark played a key role
in getting the convention of
black leaders held at New Orleans in
April to endorse the regular
20. Cincinnati Enquirer, April 6,
1871; New National Era, August 17, 1871.
21. Cincinnati Enquirer, January
2, March 4, 1872.
Peter H. Clark 87
Republican nominee, and he then worked
hard for Grant's success.22
In recognition of his campaign efforts,
and probably also to avert
future deviation from Republicanism,
the party nominated him as a
delegate to the Ohio state
constitutional convention early in 1873.
This maneuver backfired. Clark was not
elected to the convention,
running far behind all the other
Republican nominees: many
Republicans, unwilling to support a
black, had scratched his name
from the ballot.23 Clark and
a few friends organized a protest
convention attended by one hundred
black Ohioans at Chillicothe in
August. Charging that the Republicans
had only fought the slave
power in order to keep blacks out of
the West and then to preserve
the Union, Clark claimed that the party
had now dropped them, going
back on its 1872 platform. Therefore,
"it is not only our right but our
duty to vote against it."
Grievances about lack of patronage were not,
in Clark's eyes, mere selfishness
"when that denial of office implies,
as it does undoubtedly, a denial of my
equality as a citizen." But
then, as if fearful of shocking the
solidly Republican blacks of Ohio,
he urged them only to vote against
"those men who have crawled into
the Republican ranks under false
pretenses." Despite the opposition
of a few blacks present who wanted to
give the party more time to
fulfill the race's demands, the
Chillicothe convention resolved that
blacks should use independent judgement
in voting for local offices in
the fall election, because "the
colored voters of the State do not
consider themselves under eternal
obligation" to the Republicans.
Probably the only consideration that
kept the convention from
extending this advice to the state
ticket as well was the Democratic
nomination of William Allen, a veteran
Negro-baiter, for governor.24
During the state campaign of 1873 Clark
stumped Ohio spreading
the Chillicothe message, and since the
black vote, though only about
2.4 percent of the electorate, was
important in this hotly contested
state, Clark influenced the strategies
of both parties. Alarmed
Republicans, after trying
unsuccessfully to buy him off with
patronage, charged that Democrats were
financing his activities,
which was probably true, and sent out
their own black speakers to
counteract him. More importantly, the
Republicans for the first time
nominated a black man for the state
legislature in order to offset
Clark's charges.25 Meanwhile
Ohio Democrats urged Clark on by
22. New National Era, May 2, 9,
16, October 24, 1872; Cincinnati Enquirer, August 16,
1872.
23. New National Era, April 17,
1873.
24. New National Era and Citizen, August
28, 1873.
25. Ibid.,September 11, October 2, 1873; Dayton Herald, September
13, 1873.
88 OHIO HISTORY
stressing alleged Republican hypocrisy,
and kept the race issue out o
the campaign even though the civil
rights bill, anathema to
Democrats, was still pending in
Congress.26 On election day the
Democrats won control of the legislature
and elected their candidate
for governor by the thinnest of margins.
Though officially the
Chillicothe movement had not advocated
black independence on the
state ticket, it perhaps had enough of a
spillover impact on the
governorship race to decide the outcome.27
Clark's effort in 1873
showed that blacks could get certain
concessions from both parties it
it was not a foregone conclusion that
they all were going to vote one
way. A precedent had been established
for nominating a black
Republican for the legislature, and Ohio
Democrats had dropped their
anti-black rhetoric. Clark had also
enhanced his personal reputation
as a force in politics: the Cincinnati
Republicans made a point of
seating him in a place of honor at their
local convention the following
March.28
Though back in the Republican fold,
Clark soon veered off on a
new, more idiosyncratic
tangent-socialism. Again, it was a renewed
sense of grievance that touched off
political rebellion. In 1877 he tried
but failed to win the presidency of
Howard University. The old
charge of religious deviation was used
against him, but evidently the
board of trustees had decided to name a
white president in any case.
It was even more grating that the new
Republican administration in
Washington refused to give him patronage
despite his campaign work
in 1876.29 In late March 1877, Clark
spoke at a meeting of the
Cincinnati Workingmen's party, a
socialist group. Explaining that he
had always leaned toward their doctrine,
Clark announced that "the
capitalist is the enemy." Indeed,
from his perspective, exploitation of
northern labor paralleled the oppression
that poor southern blacks
suffered from white landowners. That
summer, wage cuts for railroad
workers induced by a chronic depression
brought a wave of strikes in
rail centers across the country, in some
cases leading to violence.
When the strike hit Cincinnati the
Workingmen's party held a meeting
in support of the action, and Clark's
speech, which made no reference
to specifically black grievances, was
the highlight. After expressing
solidarity with the strikers, he said
that only a socialist system could
avert the fluctuations of the business
cycle. Clark rejected the
26. Cincinnati Enquirer, August
13, 16, September 6, 1873.
27. New National Era and Citizen, November
20, 1873.
28. Cincinnati Enquirer, March
27, 1874.
29. Clark to Alfonso Taft, October 24,
1876, The Papers of William Howard Taft,
Library of Congress; Rayford W. Logan, Howard
University: The First Hundred Years,
1867-1967 (New York, 1969), 81-83; Cincinnati Enquirer, July
21, 1877, August 4, 1879.
Peter H. Clark 89
American myth that any man could succeed
through individual effort,
"for one man who is strong enough
physically and mentally to break
through the hindrances of poverty, there
are ten thousand who fail."
To the objection that socialism would
grant the government vast new
powers, Clark answered that the federal
authority should be "a
machine for doing for the citizen any
thing which can be more
conveniently done by combined than by
individual effort." He ended
the address with an appeal to the
strikers to remain peaceful, which
cooled the situation and helped avert
violence.30
Clark became a fixture at local
socialist meetings, and, as one of the
few native-born Americans in the
movement, did what he could to
channel it away from doctrinal fixation
and revolutionary rhetoric and
toward political organization, urging it
to broaden its base beyond the
working class. Nominated by the
Workingmen for the post of Ohio
school commissioner in 1877, he polled
12,515 votes statewide,
running ahead of his ticket.31 Achieving
a place on the national
executive committee of the Socialist
Labor party in 1878, he ran for
Congress from Ohio's first district as a
Socialist that fall, and received
275 votes out of over 25,000 cast. His
devotion to the cause lapsed a
year later, and he declared himself a
Republican in September 1879.32
But this interlude had shown that, in
Clark's iconoclastic mind,
nothing in white America was beyond
question, not even capitalism
and the self-help ethic, which held the
unwavering allegiance of all
other black leaders. His socialist
speeches were undoubtedly sincere.
Nevertheless, it is probable that
Clark's political talents and
ambitions, frustrated by the racial
prejudice of the mainstream
parties, helped propel him toward a
disproportionately
immigrant-based splinter movement
desperate for effective leadership,
in which he could rise quickly to
influence.
Clark's next sojourn in the Republican
camp lasted only three years,
and he switched to the Democrats in
1882. This time he was not alone
among northern blacks in playing the
maverick. A number of influential
blacks were disgusted by President
Chester A. Arthur's neglect of the
southern blacks. The Supreme Court's
decision of 1883 striking down
the Civil Rights Act of 1875 furthered
black disenchantment with the
Republican party, whose Presidents had
appointed all the court's
30. Cincinnati Enquirer, March
27, July 23, 1877; Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of
Violence (New York, 1959), 231.
31. Cincinnati Enquirer, August
12, 19, 1877, February 4, September 1, 1878;
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1877, 620.
32. Cincinnati Enquirer, February
14, October 16, 1878, September 7, 1879. On Clark's
socialist phase also see Herbert G.
Gutman, "Peter H. Clark: Pioneer Negro Socialist,
1877," Journal of Negro
Education, XXXIV (Fall 1965), 413-18.
90 OHIO HISTOR
members. Clark's old idea of an
independent black electorate able to bi
for benefits from both parties was
catching on.33 In Clark's words, "a
soon as we have a few thousand colored
men in each of the evenl
balanced States . . . who will vote for
the friends of the race, withou
regard to the party label they bear,
the fight will be won ... for neithe
party can afford to despise such a
political body actuated by suc
motives."34
In Clark's case allegiance to the
Democrats worked out well at first
The Cincinnati Democratic machine
appointed Clark's son, Herbert,
deputy sheriff, and financed a black
Democratic newspaper edited b
both Peter and Herbert Clark, the
Cincinnati Afro-American which
appearing only during election
campaigns, lasted into the 1890s. Th
Afro-American hammered away at alleged Republican betrayal c
blacks and the evils of black reliance
on one party only. The paper als
magnified the significance of
Democratic patronage apportioned to Ohi
blacks.35 After serving as
an alternate delegate to the Democrati
National Convention of 1884, Peter
Clark was almost alone among blac
leaders and the Afro-American was
equally isolated among blac
newspapers in supporting Democrat
Grover Cleveland for president.3
Upon Cleveland's victory, Clark
dismissed fears that the first nationa
Democratic administration in a
quarter-century would impair black
rights. Clark wrote that events had
proven federal intervention in the
South powerless against white public
opinion there. Blacks should stop
looking to the federal government for
salvation. Rather, they should
practice more self-reliance, ingratiate
themselves with their white
Democratic neighbors, and work on the
state level for legal protection.3
The emphasis on federal impotence and
the affirmation of self-help were
inconsistent with his attitudes during
the socialist years. Also, his sense
of grievance and impatience with Republican
equivocation had pushed
him again into advocacy of
accommodation with southern whites. A,
with Booker T. Washington in the next
decade, Clark can be criticized
for easing the way toward acceptance of
the disfranchisement and
degradation that came to southern
blacks. Yet, if the strategy of alliance
33. Vincent P. DeSantis, "Negro
Dissatisfaction with Republican Policy in the South,
1882-1884," Journal of Negro
History, XXXVI (April 1951), 148-59.
34. New York Freeman, July 18,
1885.
35. Washington Bee, March 3, 1883. The only extant issue oftheAfro-American,
that of
September 19, 1885, is located at The
Ohio Historical Society, but other black newspapers
such as the Washington Bee, Cleveland
Gazette, and New York Globe, quoted the paper
extensively.
36. Cleveland Gazette, July 5,
September 13, October 4, 1884; New York Globe, July
19, October 18, 1884.
37. Frederick Douglass et al., "The
Democratic Return to Power-Its Effect?" African
Methodist Episcopal Church Review, I (January 1885), 235-39.
Peter H. Clark
91
with Democrats backfired on the national
level, it did work in the state of
Ohio, where Clark used it to erase the
legal color line.
The laws of Ohio in 1883 did not protect
the equal access of blacks to
places of public accommodation, and with
the Supreme Court's decision
of that year nullifying the federal law,
Ohio blacks had no protection of
their civil rights. Also, remnants of
the Ohio black laws encouraged
racial segregation in public schools, a
pattern that characterized most of
the state, and also banned interracial
marriages. In 1880 and 1883 black
Republican state legislators suggested
repeal of the black laws, but their
white Republican colleagues, in control
of the legislature, would not let
the matter come to the floor.38 Only
the Clark-led rebellion against
Republicanism brought action.
Enjoying the allegiance of Peter Clark
and hoping to make large
inroads into the black electorate, Ohio
Democrats nominated George
Hoadly for governor in 1883. A former
law partner and disciple of
Salmon P. Chase, and a distinguished
advocate and judge, Hoadly had
been a vocal anti-slavery man before the
Civil War, and then a Radical
Republican. He moved into the Democracy
during the 1870s, but
retained a commitment to equal rights
for blacks.39 His chances of
attracting black support rose when the
Republicans nominated Joseph
B. Foraker to oppose him. Foraker
allegedly had left Ohio Wesleyan
University because of the admission of a
black student, and had, in 1882,
been prominent as the defense lawyer for
the Springfield, Ohio, school
board against a civil rights suit filed
by a black who wanted his child
admitted to a white school.40 With
Peter Clark and the Afro-American
working for the Democrats and Foraker's
record demoralizing black
Republicans, Hoadly won the election by
1,318 votes. He attributed the
result to the crossover of "from
three to seven thousand" blacks to his
column. Because he claimed to have
"broken the color line" in politics,
Hoadly could be expected to press for
black rights in Ohio that
Republicans had neglected.41
Hoadly and Clark were old friends, and
the governor understood the
heartbreak of the black schoolteacher:
"His color has kept him in the
shadows: had be been a white man, there
is no position in the State to
38. Ohio, General Assembly, House of
Representatives, Journal of the House of
Representatives, 1880, 49, 61; John P. Green, Fact Stranger Than
Fiction (Cleveland,
1920), 178.
39. George Hoadly, Jr., "George
Hoadly," Green Bag, XIX (December 1907), 685-88.
His racial egalitarianism is evident in
George Hoadly to Daniel S. Lamont, March 28, 1885,
The Papers of Grover Cleveland, Library
of Congress.
40. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a
Busy Life, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1910), I, 176.
41. Cleveland Gazette, October 13,
20, 1883; New York Tribune Almanac (New York,
1884), 79; Hoadly to Daniel S. Lamont,
March 28, 1885, Cleveland Papers.
92 OHIO HISTOR
which he might not have aspired."42
Hoadly shattered precedent b
naming Clark the first black member of
the Board of Trustees of Th
Ohio State University, explaining that
Clark's "accomplishments as
scholar ... made him especially suited
for the post." Despite fear tha
white trustees might resent him, Clark
worked in perfect harmony with
the others.43 Hoping to
develop further their new, positive relationship
with blacks, Hoadly and the Democratic
legislature gave out othe
patronage jobs to members of the race.44
Just as Clark had predicted, when both
parties wanted black suppor
they competed for it. Governor Hoadly's
inaugural address asked the
legislature to pass a civil rights law
to replace the invalidated federa
statute, and he brought Clark to speak
to the Democratic legislative
caucus on the issue. With Republicans
fearful of losing black votes,
bipartisan bill passed guaranteeing
equal access to places of publi
accommodation, and when blacks expressed
dissatisfaction at its limite
scope, the legislature enacted another
bipartisan law relating t
barbershops and restaurants.45 Hoadly
then tried to get the Democrati
legislature to outlaw segregated
schools, but Clark had doubts abou
this. Comparing separate black schools
to black churches, he felt tha
integration would be acceptable only
when black children and teacher
were treated as equals in the regular
public schools. Clark's opponent
among Ohio blacks, notably Harry C.
Smith, editor of the Cleveland
Gazette and a firm integrationist, charged that he was trying
to retain hi
job at Gaines High School, which would
cease to exist with integration
Under Hoadly's urging, Clark agreed to a
compromise which would
allow local black communities to opt for
separate schools. This bil
passed the Ohio House of
Representatives, but barely failed in the
Senate.46
The gubernatorial election of 1885 was a
replay of the 1883 contest
with the incumbent Hoadly taking on
Foraker again, but this time the
Republicans took no chances with the
black vote. Against Clark's
campaign work for Hoadly, the
Republicans stressed that the
Democratic party in the South terrorized
blacks. Foraker also pledged
42. Hoadly to Grover Cleveland, April
25, 1885, Cleveland Papers.
43. Hoadly to W. S. Chamberlain, April
7, 1885, The Papers of George Hoadly, The
Ohio Historical Society.
44. Hoadly to Daniel S. Lamont, March
28, 1885, Cleveland Papers; Cleveland
Gazette, February 9, May 31, 1884.
45. Ohio, Inaugural Address of
Governor George Hoadly, 1884, 8; Cincinnati
Afro-American, reprinted
in Washington Bee, February 16, 1884; Ohio, Genera
Assembly, General and Local Laws and
Joint Resolutions, 1884, 15-16, 90.
46. Ohio, Governor, Annual Message of
Governor George Hoadly, 1885, 7-8; Clark, in
Cleveland Gazette, April 26, 1884, and the integrationist view of the
paper in bid., March
22, 1884; Hoadly to Daniel S. Lamont,
March 28, 1885, Cleveland Papers.
Peter H. Clark 93
to push for an end to the black laws.
This time sweeping the election,
Foraker gave out substantial patronage
to blacks, and demanded and
achieved the end of legal public school
segregation and the ban on
intermarriage in 1887.47
Peter Clark, more than any other man,
was responsible for all that
happened since 1883, and he proudly
claimed the credit. Taking the
unpopular course of entering the
Democratic party and urging other
blacks to do so, he had made that party
sensitive to black desires. By
happy coincidence the Democrats, led by
Governor Hoadly, valued
black favor. The resulting civil rights
bills from a Democratic legislature
impelled the Republicans to bid higher.
Neither party could ignore the
black man any longer.48 Clark,
often so erratic and impractical, had
accomplished much.
But it was done at tremendous personal
sacrifice; Clark's prominence
as a Democrat cost him his job. When
the Republicans captured control
of the Cincinnati Board of Education in
1886, they fired him on political
grounds.49 Ironically, his
removal meant that a year later it was not
Clark, but his successor, who was the
last principal of Gaines High
School when it disappeared with the end
of the black laws. Clark spent
1887 and 1888 as principal of the State
Normal and Industrial School in
Huntsville, Alabama, but could not get
used to the sycophancy expected
of him by local whites, and he moved
permanently to St. Louis, where
he worked as principal of the Sumner
Negro High School.50
Clark gradually lost interest in active
politics after leaving Cincinnati,
and he emphasized instead the economic
development of the black
community, much in the spirit of Booker
T. Washington.51 He still
47. Joint Debates between Hon. George
Hoadly and Hon. Joseph B. Foraker at
Toledo, Ohio, October 8, 1885 and
Cincinnati, Ohio, October 10, 1885 (Columbus,
1887),
77-78,114-16; Benjamin W. Arnett and
Jere A. Brown, TheBlackLaws (n.p., 1886), 15,27;
Cleveland Gazette, January 16, 1886; Everett Walters, Joseph Benson
Foraker: An
Uncompromising Republican (Columbus, 1948), 36; General and Local Laws and
Joint
Resolutions, 1887, 34.
48. New York Freeman, March 26,
1887. A more detailed account of these events is
Lawrence Grossman, The Democratic
Party and the Negro: Northern and National
Politics, 1868-1892 (Urbana, 1976), 80-93.
49. "Peter Clark has gone down in
Cincinnati with the party of his choice" (Cleveland
Gazette, June 26, 1886). For Clark's side of the story see New
York Freeman, June 19,
1886.
50. Cleveland Gazette, September
3, 1887; William Hooper Councill to Booker T.
Washington, September 3, 1887, and Peter
H. Clark to Washington, January 16, 1888, in
Louis R. Harlan et al., eds., The
Booker T. Washington Papers, 15 vols. (Urbana, 1972),
II, 382,408; ClevelandGazette, August
4, November 24, 1888. Also see David A. Gerber,
Black Ohio and the Color Line,
1860-1915 (Urbana, 1976), 242-43.
51. Clark to Frederick Douglass, May 13,
1889, Douglass Papers. Clark's interest in
black self-help goes back at least to
1875, when he chaired a meeting devoted to the topic.
Convention of Colored Newspaper Men (Cincinnati, 1875), passim.
94 OHIO HISTOR
campaigned for the Democrats in 1888,
but the swelling tide o
disfranchisement and anti-black violence
in the South made him see tha
political independence, so effective in
Ohio, could not accomplish muc
on a national scale. Throwing up his
hands, Clark turned toward the on
strategy he had never advocated before.
In the spring of 1892 he
organized a day of national prayer and
fasting to evoke God'
intervention against southern lynchings,
because governments and
parties were impotent. By 1901 he was
recalling John Merce
Langston's old argument that natural
antipathy between the racer
dictated black emigration, and Clark
commented that "time has
vindicated" that view.52 He
taught for two decades in St. Louis. Nearly
eighty years old and after over a
half-century of teaching, he retired in
1908, reporting that "my general
health is good and I may last a year o
two longer." He lasted much longer
than that, dying in 1925 or 1926, in
his tenth decade.53
It is impossible to categorize Clark
within the context of
nineteenth-century black leadership. He
fits into no ideological
"school." Sometimes an
integrationist in the Frederick Douglass mold,
at other times willing to accommodate
himself to white racism as did
Booker T. Washington, Clark also went
through emigrationist and
socialist phases. But all of these
strategies were principled, if desperate,
efforts of a talented and ambitious man
to escape the stifling influence of
racial prejudice which dogged him.
Though usually held in tight check,
the full degree of his resentment
spilled out in a remarkable 1873 speech
which explains his life, if anything
can:
I do not forget the prejudice of the
American people; I could not if I would. I
am sore from sole to crown with its
blows. It stood by the bedside of my mother
when she bore me. It darkens with its
shadow the grave of my father and mother.
It has hindered every step I have taken
in life. It poisons the food I eat, the water
I drink and the air I breathe. It dims
the sunshine of my days, and deepens the
darkness of my nights. It hampers me in
every relation of life, in business, in
politics, in religion, as a father or as
a husband. It haunts me walking or riding,
waking or sleeping. It came to the altar
with my bride and now that my children
52. Indianapolis Freeman, July 28, October 27, 1888; Carter G. Woodson, ed., The
Works of Francis J. Grimke, 4 vols. (Washington, 1942), I, 280-81; Peter H. Clark
to John
W. Cromwell, December 21, 1901, in
Cromwell, The Negro in American History: Men and
Women Eminent in the Evolution of the
American ofAfrican Descent (Washington,
1914),
37-38.
53. Clark to William Howard Taft,
December 30, 1908, Taft Papers. The mystery about
Clark's death probably stems from the
fact that he outlived almost everyone who knew
him in his years of prominence. Wendell
P. Dabney, Cincinnati's Colored Citizens
(Cincinnati, 1926), 114, states that
Clark died "this summer, when near the century
mark." A search of the obituary
columns of St. Louis newspapers for the summer months
of 1925 and 1926 proved fruitless. Dovie
King Clark, "Peter H. Clark." could only say that
he died at "a very advanced
age."
Peter H. Clark 95
are attaining their majority, and are
looking eagerly with their youthful eyes for a
career, it stands by them and casts its
infernal curse upon them. Hercules could
have as easily forgotten the poisoned
shirt which scorched his flesh, as I can
forget the prejudices of the American
people.54
After Clark's death, one Cincinnati
black who remembered the old
days called him the city's
"greatest colored product from the
standpoints of intellectuality, courage
and racial loyalty. In his veins
coursed no bootlicking blood."55 Obsessed
by the indignity of living in a
land permeated with prejudice, Clark
strove to exorcise the demon. The
fact that he could not indicates not his
weakness but the demon's power.
54. Dayton Herald, September 26, 1873. In reference to his children's
careers: Clark's
daughter, Ernestine, was the first black
woman to graduate from the Cincinnati Normal
School, and his other daughter,
Consuelo, graduated from Boston University Medical
School, and became one of the first
female black physicians in the country. His son,
Herbert, seems to have gone from one
political patronage job to another. Simmons, ed.,
Men of Mark, 382.
55. Dabney, Cincinnati's Colored
Citizens, 114.
LAWRENCE GROSSMAN
In His Veins Coursed No Bootlicking
Blood: The Career of Peter H. Clark
Peter H. Clark was one of the most
prominent black leaders of the
nineteenth century. Working as a
schoolteacher, he emerged as a
champion of the antebellum Negro
community in Cincinnati, achieved
recognition after the Civil War as one
of the leading black men of
Ohio, and became a figure of national
importance in racial matters by
the 1880s. Though Clark's fame proved
ephemeral, an understanding
of his career illuminates
nineteenth-century black history. The
development of Negro life in Ohio,
especially in its political, legal,
and educational aspects, is
incomprehensible without consideration of
Clark's effective leadership. Though lack
of a consistent racial
outlook and inability to sustain
long-term political connections limited
his influence, these very weaknesses
made Clark's career a
microcosm of the manifold ideological
tendencies in black America.
Through a long life, Clark touched
every programmatic base on which
his contemporaries stood. At one time
or another he advocated
absolute integration into American
life, independent institutions for
his race, cooperation with southern
white racists, and emigration to
Africa. He drifted back and forth
between the two major parties, and
even espoused, for a while, Marxian
socialism. These twists and
turns, which some observers dismissed
as idiosyncracies, do form a
pattern: they were a series of
desperate attempts to dispel the effect
of white prejudice upon him, and, by
extension, upon his race.1
Early nineteenth-century Cincinnati was
a haven for newly-freed
blacks as well as runaway slaves
because of its location across the
Ohio River from slave-holding Kentucky.
But the influx of Negroes
evoked anti-black sentiment among
whites, many of whom were from
the South. Though a free state, Ohio
discouraged the migration of
Dr. Grossman is Assistant Professor of
History at Yeshiva University.
1. The neglect of Clark by historians
probably is due to his lack of identification with any
specific ideology or institution, the
absence of a collection of his personal papers, and the
obscurity that covers the last thirty
years of his life. Basic biographical information is
available in William Wells Brown, The
Rising Son: or, The Antecedents andAdvancement
of the Colored Race (Boston, 1874), 522-24; Cleveland Gazette, March 6, 1886; William
J.
Simmons, ed., Men of Mark: Eminent,
Progressive and Rising (Cleveland, 1887), 374-83;
Dovie King Clark, "Peter Humphries
Clark," Negro History Bulletin, V (May 1942), 176.