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Bethel A.M.E. Church - Iowa City,
Iowa
Information from National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
African
Americans in Iowa
Iowa City was geographically located at the intersection of at least
two routes of the underground railroad during the 1850s22
and a large
number of Quakers lived just to the east in West Branch and
Springdale.23 Iowa City was also the end of
the Rock Island rail line
during the late 1850s, a circumstance especially critical for westbound
free blacks and northern free-staters traveling to Kansas. Finally, the
presence of the State University of Iowa drew well-educated white
northerners to town. Often these were anti-slavery people who opposed both the institution
itself as well as its extension into new territories.24
The
21Leola Nelson Bergmann, The
Negro in Iowa. (Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1948,
reprinted 1969), 11,13, 15.
"Prior
to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, fugitive Missouri slaves had to
flee north into Iowa or east into
Illinois.
Quaker settlements in southeast Iowa, especially Salem founded in Henry
County in 1835, provided
refuge for
north-bound escaped slaves. (The WPA Guide to 1930s. Iowa [1986
reprint], 101). The route led to
the Iowa
City area where, among other locations, a Friends church was located in
eastern Johnson County
(section 35,
Scott Township). See A.T. Andreas's Atlas, 1875; also Topographical Map
of Johnson County.
Iowa. 1904.
Leland Sage asserted that influential residents and sometimes state
officials living in Iowa City
furnished
assistance to runaway slaves (in A History of Iowa [Ames: Iowa State
Univ. Press, 1974], 139). After
1854,
Missouri slaves had another, albeit more circuitous, option.
"[F]ree-state settlers in Kansas opened new
routes of
escape for slaves. The most important of these underground routes was
the Lane Trail, which opened
in 1856.
This overland trail ran north out of Topeka, Kansas, into Nebraska and
[entered] Iowa [at the
southwest
corner of the state.] It provided a safe route for supplies and
settlers into Kansas Territory and a
passageway
for fugitive slaves north...John Brown, James Lane, and other
abolitionists used this route to lead
slaves to
freedom CRM. 4(1998): 36. Iowa historians have long accepted the
assertion that John Brown trained
his men in
and around Springdale, Iowa, during the two years prior to his 1859
Harper's Ferry raid (See for
example,
WPA, 101-102). Once the eastbound trail entered Iowa, it ran through
towns such as Tabor, Lewis,
Des Moines,
Grinnell, Iowa City, West Branch, and Springdale. Clinton and Muscatine
were the main crossing
points on
the Mississippi River (Sage, 139).
""The
Society of Friends (Quakers) provided much of the antislavery
leadership...and was part of the
religious antislavery movement which began in the 1700s in America.
(National Park Service, "Part I. Historic
Context for the Underground Railroad," 3 [context printed 5/11/1999
from internet site
h t t p : / / w w w . c r . n p s . g o v / h i s t o r y / e x u g r r
/ e x u g g r 2 . h t m ] ).
intellectual climate, abolitionist sentiments, and educational setting
that attracted northerners to Iowa towns like Tabor,25
Grinnell, and
Iowa City may have also attracted the founders of the Bethel A.M.E.
Church who, if following Richard Allen's guidelines, placed a high
value on education.
If the antebellum years saw a steady stream of blacks take up permanent
residence in Iowa,26 the stream slowed
immediately following the Civil
War and then picked up again after 1870.
24 Leonard Parker, for example,
was one such person. Educated at Ohio's Oberlin College, well known for
its strong abolitionist bent, Parker planned to move to Kansas to find
a teaching job, though both Tabor, Iowa,
and Grinnell, Iowa, had been recommended to him (J.A. Swisher, Leonard
Fletcher Parker [Iowa City: State
Univ. of Iowa, 1927], 45). "In 1856 Kansas was the focus of various
forces...Men from Missouri had invaded
the Territory, seized the government, and imposed a code of Missouri
upon the settlers. New England was
eager to save the region for freedom; while South Carolina and Georgia
were ablaze to make Kansas an
uncompromising slave State...Lawrence was a plucky New England town,
and Mr. Parker reasoned that it must
be an education center. The location, he decided, was worth trying"
(Ibid., 43). However, Kansas was
increasingly a dangerous place and Parker left Lawrence before it was
sacked by South Carolinians and other
Southerners (Ibid., 45). After a break in the East, Parker once again
set out to find a likely place to teach.
Traveling by rail to it terminus at Iowa City, Parker spent time on the
State University campus before taking a
stage on to Grinnell. (Parker typescript, 20, collection of SHSI).
Parker's wife, Sarah C. Pearse Parker, also an
Oberlin graduate, repeated this journey through Iowa City to Grinnell a
few months later. In 1870, Professor
Leonard Parker left Grinnell College, returning to Iowa City to teach
at the State University (Swisher, 123).
"Tabor College was founded in 1857 in the southwest Iowa town of Tabor
and aspired to be the "Oberlin of
the West." The town served as an arms depot for "Eastern crusaders
[headed for Kansas who] came directly
across Iowa, usually along a route designed by William Penn Clarke, the
Iowa City Abolitionist, to avoid
contacts with pro-slavery Missourians" (Sage, 138).
Though always a minuscule percent of the white population.
Leola
Nelson Bergmann listed the following census figures for one hundred
years of
African Americans in Iowa:27
1840.....188
1850.....333
1860.....1,069
1870.....5,762
1880.....9,616 |
1890.....10,685
1900.....12,693
1910.....14,973
1920.....19,005
1930.....17,380
1940.....16,694 |
Bergmann
found that in 1870 (she has no figures for 1860) "the majority of
Negroes living in Iowa were born in Missouri,"28
indicating that simple geographic proximity dominated the migration
pattern of freedpersons into Iowa immediately following the war. This
was not the pattern for Iowa City or Johnson County, either in 1860 or
in 1870.
The majority of black residents in Johnson County in both 1860 and 1870
lived in Iowa City. In 1860 half of the county's 22 black inhabitants
had been born in the slave states of South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia
and Tennessee.29 The other half were born in
Delaware, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Iowa. All of the Iowa natives were
children under the age of 10. The birthplace state contributing the
greatest single number to the county's total was Georgia (5), though
Iowa and Ohio followed with 4 each. By 1870, there were 89 African
Americans in Johnson County, a 400% increase over the pre-war census
yet still a tiny figure relative to the town's total population of
close to 8100. By far, the largest group was the native-born Iowans (37
or nearly 42%). Trailing well behind in nativity were Virginia (10) and
Tennessee (7). For those 1870 Johnson County residents who were not
native lowans, most were born in 13 southern slave-holding states.30
Only three people had been born in two
northern states. 31
27Bergmann, 34.
"Ibid., 32.
"Close examination of the
manuscript pages for the 1860 census indicates one 8-person family was
counted
twice (Bell/Rele). This anomaly
leads to an erroneous total population figure of 30. The lower figure,
22, has
been used herein. (Possible
reasons for the same census-taker counting the a same memorable family
twice are
intriguing but not relevant to
this nomination.)
These data suggest that escaped or manumitted African Americans from
slave-holding states arrived in Iowa City earlier than in most of the
state and established families a generation before the state in general.32
The numbers also suggest Iowa City was an attractive northern town for
southern blacks both before and after the Civil War, and they hint at a
loose form of
chain migration, especially from Virginia and Tennessee.
It is impossible to be certain what attraction Iowa City held for
African Americans of the Civil War era. It was northern and like Iowa
in general was anti-slavery, but this is far from being unbiased or
without prejudices. Iowa also had an early territorial history of
southern settlers and racist attitudes. Also, with northern European
immigrants streaming into the state after the 1840s, cheap-labor jobs
were taken and competition from free blacks was unwelcome.33
In fact, Robert Dykstra claimed "it can be argued that Iowa was the
most racist free state in the antebellum Union," developing a "black
code" of restrictive legislation between 1838 and 1858 that took twenty
years to dismantle.34
While nineteenth-century sources are not plentiful on the subject, Iowa
City's white (and largely Yankee) majority apparently often had hostile
or at least unfavorable attitudes toward new arrivals. In 1865 African
American and European immigrants were held in equal disdain by one
young college student who wrote home to his sister. In his letter,
Milton Mowrer described Iowa City as a filthy town full of foul odors,
with a large population of "the lowest Bohemian emigrants." "Negroes,"
Milton wrote, "can be seen in all parts of town."35
A decade later, newspaper accounts of an August, 1874 camp meeting
3The states and number of
native-born individuals were: South Carolina (1), Georgia (4), Virginia
(10),
Tennessee (7), Louisiana (1),
North Carolina (5), West Virginia (1), Arkansas (5), Alabama (7),
Mississippi (5),
Kentucky (1), Missouri (1),
Maryland (10). The total number of individuals from Southern states was
49.
"Pennsylvania (1) and Illinois
(2).
" it is likely other individual
towns such as Muscatine and other river ports also had early black
residents
who established families in Iowa
before the Civil War. See for example, the story of Muscatine resident
Alexander Clark (1826-1891) in
Jackson, pp 43-52.
"Bergmann, 16.
"Destruction of this code
coincided with the "ascendancy of Iowa's Republican party--which,
beginning in
1854 as an Anti-Nebraska
coalition of Free Soilers and Whigs, dominated Iowa as thoroughly as
the Democrats
had ruled it before that date."
Robert Dykstra, "Iowans and the Politics of Race in America,
1857-1880," pp.
129-158. In Iowa History Reader,
edited by Marvin Bergman, ( Iowa City: Iowa State University Press,
1996),
131.
sponsored by the Bethel Church and held in Berryhill's Grove near the
church ranged in tone from generally favorable to downright nasty. One
editor noted the meeting's general success at drawing throngs of
African Americans from out of town. Another, concluded the camp meeting
failed miserably and remarked that "[r]egular work is better than camp
meetings for
those people."36
The ability to find and survive on such "regular work" was one of the
difficulties for African Americans in this small midwestern town.
Census records from 1860 and 1870 reflect that occupations available to
black men and women were mostly restricted to unskilled and low paying
positions. Married women generally stayed home, especially in 1870, but
single women listed in these two censuses supported themselves as a
cook, a seamstress, and a servant. Adult men in 1860 worked as a
teamster, a barber, and a cook.37 In 1870,
day laborers and farm help dominated the types of jobs held by adult
black men. One skilled
35"Quoted from research notes
compiled by Leslie Schwalm, associate professor of history, University
of
Iowa. The original letter is contained within the Ellen Mowrer Miller
Collection at the Iowa Women's Archives,
housed at the University of Iowa. Interestingly, Milton Mowrer says he
attended the "Negro class room in the
M.E. Church" where there was a "white Class Leader." This would
indicate the local white Methodist Episcopal
Church admitted African Americans if only on a segregated basis. Refer
to Clarence E. Walker's discussion of
the competition for black souls between the various missionary
churches, north and south, during the Civil War
and Reconstruction.
36The Daily Press, and the Iowa City Republican, respectively.
"Henry Rele in 1860 is listed as a farmer with real estate valued at
$1000, but he is the head of the 8-
person household that was counted twice. See footnote 29. The Rele
family listing is likely the more bogus
listing of the two, although it is impossible to decipher a completely
accurate census portrait of this family. Hal
Bell, the adult male of the other 8-person family declared $250 in
personal property and was a teamster.
Descendants of the Bell family persist in later censuses and, indeed,
remain in Iowa City to this day.
Throughout much of the twentieth century the family (Bell/Short) owned
and operated a downtown shoe repair
and shine business and managed land holdings in and around Iowa City.
Having arrived in the state as early as
1858, the family is truly the premier African American pioneer family
in Iowa City. Interestingly, members
have traditionally belonged to the First Presbyterian Church, not the
Bethel A.M.E. Church, perhaps because
they established themselves in town long before Bethel was built.
Twentieth century University of Iowa
students who studied the town's black community during different
decades found the Bell/Short family to be
very successful. Because their business success hinged on the patronage
of the white townspeople around them,
however, the family did not actively associate with Iowa City's much
smaller African American community.
See John R. Crist, "The Negro in Iowa City, Iowa: A Study in Negro
Leadership and Racial Accommodation,"
unpubl. MA. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1945 [Crist, a sociology
student, did not name his subjects, but
the Bell/Short family is easily discerned among his interviewees.].
worker, a brick mason, and one tenant farmer were counted. In 1918, a
graduate student in sociology at the state university in town claimed
that "the average weekly income of the white unskilled workman [in Iowa
City] is fifteen dollars, that of the black man is somewhere between
ten dollars and twelve dollars." He concluded "the colored workman,
then, far from being prosperous is having a tremendous struggle to keep
himself from being submerged by poverty. If the Negroes of Iowa City
have managed to keep out of the poor house, it is because their
capacity for making personal sacrifices is greater than that of the
white man."38
Just as black women and men were restricted to the lower paying jobs in
town, sometimes housing for their families was meager as well. Figure 2
is a historic photograph taken by Bertha Shambaugh, a local
photographer who did most of her work in the 1890s. The photograph
shows a middle age couple standing before the door of the small house
they inhabit. Most of the roof has been ripped off, apparently by a
storm. Even if the storm damage seen in the photograph was eventually
repaired, the house and its surroundings are still clearly modest. The
location of the house has been identified by one local historian and
photographer as near the Iowa River in "the Bottom" implying some sort
of soggy, insect ridden, flood prone area of town.39
There is also evidence that over the years--perhaps in response to a
slowly growing number of black students at the State University and
permanent black residents--a de facto physical separation of blacks and
whites in Iowa City developed during the twentieth century.40
Early in the century, in 1918, Gabriel Victor Cools claimed "the Negro
population of the city is scattered all over the community...In no
instance are there more than two families living on the same street,
and even then they are so widely separated that there is no close
contact between them. The Negroes all live in desirable localities, side by side with whites."
38G.V. Cools, "The Negro in
Typical Communities in Iowa" (unpubl. M.A. thesis, State University of
Iowa,
1918), 134.
39Gerald Mansheim, Iowa City. An
Illustrated History (Norfolk, VA: The Donnong Company, 1989), 94.
40There is oral tradition
associated with the Bethel church that in 1868 trustees of the new
church were
required because of their race
to build outside of the Original Town plat. (See, for example, Irving
Weber, Iowa
City [1990]1: 49). This
tradition is not supported by the physical evidence, archival records,
or historic maps
relating to the town's
development. True, the church is located just outside the Original
Town's southern border,
but when the church was
constructed there had already been a decade of industrial and
residential development
even farther south, prompted by
the construction of the railroad through town in the 1850s. By 1868,
the lot on
which the new church was
constructed was ringed by earlier platted additions to Iowa City. It
seems unlikely
that the church and the
development to its south were all "outside the city limits." For a list
of filing dates of
plat additions to Iowa City and
copies of historic maps showing their locations see Naumann, n.p. (but
E-5
within the report Multiple
Property Documentation Form).
Figure 2. Middle age couple standing before a storm damaged residence, probably 1890s
(Bertha Shambaugh photograph)
(Click image to enlarge) |
Cool theorized that this situation "is
typical of [the]condition as it exists in communities in which the
Negro population is small." He described a community of black residents
which in 1918 may have been even more isolated than it was in 1870
shortly after the Bethel church opened its doors. Based on 1870
census manuscript data (in which the order of enumeration can be
determined but not the address of each person) and an 1868 city
directory (in which proximity to the nearest street intersection is
noted), African Americans around 1870 were pretty well dispersed
throughout the city just as Cool found nearly 50 years later. The exception
to this, however, was in the Fourth Ward where the Bethel A.M.E. Church
and a cluster of black households were located. Thirty-three out of 89
or 37% of the city's black residents in 1870 lived in the Fourth Ward.
Eight of these Fourth Ward families consisting of 26 people lived less
than a block from the church, many side-by-side or backyard neighbors
to it. The isolation Cool found at the end of World War I years could
reflect a reduction in the towns's black community as some individuals
undoubtedly left for war production jobs in larger cities like Chicago,
Des Moines, or even Cedar Rapids.41
During
the Depression, in 1933, a study of black student housing in Iowa City
found that the State University discouraged African Americans from
living in campus dormitories, leaving the 58 students to find their own
approved off-campus arrangements.42 Most men lived in two black
fraternities which were not a part of the larger campus fraternity
system and,
according to Herbert Crawford Jenkins, "suffered from "the lack of a house mother's supervision."43
One fraternity was located "just outside the restricted zone for living
quarters of University students...on the edge of the business district
in not what could be called an ideal residential neighborhood. The
second house is located in that part of the city known as
'the other side of the tracks' which is generally considered to be among the less desirable places to live."44
About half the black women students, or six individuals, lived in a
house owned by the Iowa Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, a
statewide organization formed in 1901. Though no Federation chapter existed in Iowa City, the home was "sponsored by
41Cool
noted that overall the larger cities in Iowa saw increases in their
African American populations because new workers were needed to fill
the jobs vacated by whites in the service (Cool, 7).
42Herbert Crawford Jenkins, "The Negro Student at the University of Iowa: A Sociological Study,"
unpublished MA. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1933.
43Ibid., 20.
44Jenkins, 18. The Kappa Alpha Psi house was at 301 S. Dubuque; the Alpha Phi Alpha house at 230 S.
Capitol. Both are near the edge of the business district and too close in proximity to safely determine without
more research which one was on the "wrong side of the tracks."
Negro Women's Clubs of Iowa to assist the Negro girls who are in attendance in Iowa State University."45 The house was "in a neighborhood of neat and attractive homes," according to Jenkins, about nine blocks from campus.46
The rest of the students lived with "private colored families." A very
few lived alone in an apartment (3 men) or roomed and worked for white
families (3 women).47
Records
and various scholarly studies indicate that well into the
twentieth-century African Americans were restricted from patronizing
the town's restaurants, hotels, and rental apartments. One of the local
dress shops willingly sold clothes to blacks women but would not let
them try on the dress first. No white barber would cut or style African
Americans' hair during regular business hours, forcing many to travel
to Cedar Rapids, a larger town 30 miles north, or come in after hours.
Housing was generally restricted Racial tensions between the always
tiny black population and the greater community were perceived to be
increasing as the twentieth century moved toward the Civil Rights era
of the 1950s and 60s.48 Within this environment the Bethel A.M.E.
Church stood, a ready venue for members of the religious and social
community that relied on it.
(Source:
U.S.
Dept of Interior, National Register of Historic Places registration form)
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