wheeled-and-dealed behind the scenes for piecemeal benefits on behalf of their communities.5
In Georgia, for example, Henry Lincoln Johnson and Benjamin J. Davis, Sr., controlled the allotment of federal patronage from the 1910s through the 1930s. Davis represented the state as a delegate to every Republican National Convention from 1908 until his death in 1945, and served as one of Georgia’s two members on the national committee and as secretary of Georgia’s Republican Executive Committee. Other African Americans in high-ranking positions included William Shaw, secretary of the Georgia Republican State Central Committee, and national committeewoman Mamie Williams. Supported by Atlanta’s large population of middle-class African Americans, Georgia’s Black-and-Tan leadership was among the most active in the South. Davis and Shaw made the black vote an important factor in Atlanta’s municipal elections through intensive registration drives, and Davis, a founding member of the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and an occasional member of the Platform Committee, successfully pressed the national party to include anti-lynching legislation on party platforms.6
African Americans in other southern states possessed similar positions of influence within GOP ranks. Little Rock attorney Scipio Jones controlled federal patronage in Arkansas for almost three decades, and served as a delegate to national conventions into the 1940s. In South Carolina, N. J. Frederick served as Richland County (Columbia) commissioner and as a delegate to national conventions throughout the 1920s and 1930s. As secretary of the Republican State Central Committee and secretary of the Orleans Parish Central Committee, Walter L. Cohen led the Louisiana Republican Party from 1898 until his death in 1930, and was appointed to one of the most valued federal posts in the South, comptroller of customs for the Port of New Orleans.7
Black control of southern Republican organizations did not always go unchallenged. Their opponents, self-professed “Lily-Whites,” consisted mainly of southern industrialists who were skeptical of Democratic populist appeals, and sought to “purify” the GOP of African Americans in order to bring competitive two-party politics to the South. On issues of white supremacy, there were few differences between Lily-Whites and race-baiting Democrats. Though they assumed control of the GOP in some states, such as North Carolina, their ascendance was far from guaranteed, as the case of Mississippi demonstrates. Despite fierce Lily-White opposition in the Magnolia State, a delegation led by black attorney Perry W. Howard was seated at the 1924 Republican National Convention, and Howard was elected to represent the state alongside an African American woman, Mary Booze, on the national committee. Locally, S. D. Redmond, a black dentist from Jackson, became chairman of the state executive committee, a post he held until 1948. Though Lily-Whites would continue to challenge Howard’s leadership, the victories of his Black-and-Tan faction in the mid-1920s solidified his power for the next three decades. Howard attended all but one national convention as a delegate from 1912 to 1960, and served as one of Mississippi’s two members on the national committee until his death in 1961, the longest tenure of a committeeperson in party history.8
Despite being a fierce competitor of Lily-Whites, Howard was mostly silent on the issue of civil rights. In 1921, he became the highest paid black federal employee, when President Warren G. Harding appointed him special assistant to the attorney general. After moving to Washington, D.C., he rarely returned to Mississippi, and, unlike Benjamin Davis, Sr., of Georgia and other more race-conscious Black-and-Tans, Howard declined to challenge his party on issues of race, and even joined conservatives in opposing anti-lynch legislation. His accommodationism appealed to Mississippi’s Democratic establishment, who defended him in 1928 after he was indicted on charges of selling federal jobs. Not only did Democrats receive over 90 percent of Howard’s appointments, but they also enjoyed the presence of an allegedly corrupt black official as the head of the state’s Republican Party.9
As much as Howard represented the most dubious example of Black-and-Tan politics, the Republican Party of neighboring Tennessee sustained the hope many African Americans placed in the GOP. The state’s party was shared by traditionally Republican Appalachian counties in the east and Black-and-Tans in the west led by Robert R. Church, Jr., of Memphis. The son of one of the wealthiest black men in America, Church retired from the family-owned Solvent Savings Bank as a twenty-seven-year-old millionaire, and devoted his life to politics. He was first elected as a delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention, and over the subsequent decades served on the state Republican Executive Committee and the Republican State Primary Board.10
His standing in the party was enhanced by his ability to finance a large share of southern and midwestern Republican campaigns with his own money, or money he raised via his family’s extensive business network. Preferring to wield influence behind the scenes, and in spite of vehement opposition from state Democrats, Church secured patronage for major southern appointments, including several racially progressive federal judges and the U.S. attorney general for West Tennessee. He also recommended African Americans to positions inside his district and within the federal government. Because of Church, African Americans made up almost 80 percent of Memphis’s mail carriers in the 1920s, who received the same salary and pension as their white coworkers. On the national level, he secured positions for Charles W. Anders as the internal revenue collector for New York’s wealthiest district and James A. Cobb as judge of the Washington, D.C., municipal court. One of the South’s most rabid segregationists, Alabama senator James Heflin, gave inadvertent homage to Church’s influence when reciting a derogatory poem on the floor of the Senate in 1929: “Offices up a ’simmon tree / Bob Church on de ground / Bob Church say to de ’pointing power / Shake dem ’pointments down.”11
In addition to securing federal posts for African Americans, Church was deeply concerned with issues of black social and political equality. A close friend of NAACP executive secretary James Weldon Johnson, Church served on the organization’s national board of directors and contributed to its growing presence in the South by subsidizing nearly seventy branches in fourteen states. He also organized the Lincoln League of Memphis to ward off Lily-White opponents in February 1916. The league registered almost 10,000 voters by the fall, and black Republicans outnumbered Lily-Whites by a four-to-one margin, comprising almost one-third of Shelby County’s total electorate.12
Three years later, Church expanded the league into a national organization comprised of some of the country’s most influential African Americans. In February 1920, four hundred delegates attended the Lincoln League’s first national convention in Chicago, and demanded that the Republican National Committee increase the presence of African Americans in the forthcoming presidential campaign. RNC Chairman Will H. Hays responded by appointing five members of the league, Church, James Weldon Johnson, Roscoe Conkling Simmons, S. A. Furniss, and William H. Lewis, to the Advisory Committee on Policies and Platforms. On election day, Church further demonstrated his importance to the GOP when black voters helped secure President Harding’s victory in Tennessee, the only southern state to swing to the Republican column.13
Figure 1. Black-and-Tan leaders outside Robert Church, Jr.’s Solvent Savings Bank and Trust in Memphis, Tennessee, circa 1920s. Left to right: Church, Henry Lincoln Johnson, Roscoe Conkling Simmons, Walter L. Cohen, John T. Fisher, and Perry W. Howard. M.S.0071.038087.001, Robert R. Church Family of Memphis Collection, University Libraries Preservation and Special Collections, University of Memphis.
As Church assumed a national role in the 1920s, his pupil, George W. Lee, took control of duties in Memphis. A World War I veteran commissioned by the Army as a lieutenant, Lee founded a successful insurance company in the 1920s. “Lt. Lee,” as he referred to himself, secured the promotion of the county’s first black rural mail carrier, post office station superintendent, and foreman, and the mid-South region’s first assistant postal distribution officer. An active member of the Memphis NAACP and Urban League, Lee also drafted resolutions for the national Lincoln League demanding that the Republican Party increase federal appointments of African Americans, pass anti-lynch legislation,
