Emma Coger (1852-1924), schoolteacher and entrepreneur. Emma Coger was born in the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois. Although her mother had been born into slavery, her family was prominent within the small but growing black community of the antebellum Midwest. Her grandmother had been a landowner in New Philadelphia, Illinois, a black town founded by former slaves in 1830, and her mother had helped founded Quincy’s first black church and owned a boardinghouse. One of Emma’s siblings married a blacksmith whose shop housed fugitive slaves, while another sister (who had been named for Zenobia, an ancient Syrian queen who had fought a war of independence against the Roman Empire) attended Oberlin, the nation’s first university to admit students regardless of race or gender. In spite of these accomplishments, the Cogers and all other black Midwesterners had to contend with state laws that banned African Americans from voting, attending public school, or settling in the state at all unless they posted a sizable bond. African Americans also faced the constant danger of being kidnapped into slavery, especially in places like Quincy that were just across the river from slave states. Additionally, African Americans throughout the country were banned from most restaurants and hotels and were restricted to segregated spaces on steamboats, trains, and streetcars; those who resisted this treatment were often arrested, physically assaulted, or both. All of these laws and attitudes applied to Coger despite the fact that her father was a white man and most of her grandmothers and great-grandmothers had given birth after being sexually assaulted by other white men, all resulting in Emma being extremely light-skinned and roughly seven-eighths white in ancestry. As a small child, she may have been present at the 1858 Quincy debate between U.S. Senate candidates Stephen Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, who spent much of their time discussing the issue of slavery, which was threatening to tear the country in two. That in fact did happen two years later when Lincoln was elected president, causing most slaveholding states to reject the election results, declare themselves a new nation, and attack U.S. military personnel. When the Civil War began, thousands of African Americans fled from the South to northern states like Illinois, and this helped lead President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which as of 1 January 1863 declared that all enslaved persons in the Confederate states were free. That day Emma and her family attended a “Grand Jubilee” celebration in Quincy. The end of the Civil War two years later helped bring about massive change for African Americans in the Midwest and around the country, as every state either created segregated black schools or in a few cases integrated their schools, while black men gained the right to vote. Coger herself was educated in Quincy’s public schools and completed high school as the only black student in a time when most African Americans did not go past the lower grades. After finishing school, in 1871 she was hired to teach in Quincy’s all-black elementary school. Thanks in part to examples like this, many African Americans saw this Reconstruction era as a time of great possibilities for racial progress and equality, but there were many whites equally determined to keep the former slaves in a subordinate position, and every step for progress brought violent backlash.
In 1872, the twenty-year old school teacher traveled about forty miles north to the town of Keokuk, Iowa. The details of what happened next vary between her court testimony, a letter written by a black Keokuk resident, another letter by her attorney, and an 1893 newspaper article. All of the accounts agree, though, that boat employees refused to sell her a first-class ticket, which would have entitled her to eat in the first-class dining room, but she finally managed to get one anyway. When she tried to sit down in the first-class dining hall, an employee pulled her chair away and declared “You shall not eat here.” She sat at another table, where the captain’s wife and two other white women said “I will not eat with a negro” and walked away, although two black workers served her soup and refused to help remove her while several other white women objected to her removal. Finally, the captain himself pulled her chair out from under her, struck her on the hands and head when she tried to hold onto the table, and dragged her from the room. She was taken to her cabin, where she stayed for the rest of the trip. Her treatment was typical for African Americans on public transportation – Emma’s own sister had suffered similar treatment during a trip to St. Louis – but her response led to atypical consequences. When she got back to Quincy, she sued the steamboat company Northwestern Union Packet Company (NWUP) for $5000 in damages for assault and battery. She chose to bring this suit in Iowa rather than in her home state because an Illinois court had recently ruled against another African American in a similar case, and several Quincy attorneys had refused to take her case. Iowa, on the other hand, had recently become one of the first states to desegregate its public schools and to grant black men the right to vote. Additionally, a prominent Keokuk attorney agreed to take her case. He was planning to run for mayor, and his decision may have been an effort to gain votes in a town with so many African Americans that several years later its minor league baseball team signed one of the first blacks in professional baseball. At the same time, his own account of the case suggests that he may have taken the case because he found Coger physically attractive and different from other African Americans.
At trial, the NWUP argued that it had the right to maintain its “well established custom” of segregation, and it also accused Coger of being verbally and physically abusive towards its employees and of causing a disturbance just to get money; to that end, it countersued her for damage to the dining room. In defiance of these claims, Coger took the witness stand to describe her experience in a courtroom where the judge, jury, and attorneys on both sides were white men. Her attorney argued that steamboats and other common carriers could not discriminate against African Americans because they were now free voting citizens, that custom could not be used to justify racial discrimination when there was no law that required that discrimination, and that because all people were created by God they should be evaluated by their “moral and religious condition” rather than their race. The jury ruled in her favor, although it awarded her only $250, possibly as a compromise with some jurors who initially wanted to rule against her. After the trial, the NWUP appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. The case now drew national attention among African Americans through Frederick Douglass’ New National Era newspaper, which printed a letter from Coger’s lawyer, a letter from a black Keokuk resident, brief comments from an Iowa legislator, and the jury instructions. Although the newspaper often focused on civil rights issues, Coger’s case was one of the only Midwestern events discussed in that issue and the only one that focused on a woman. All of the writers emphasized Coger’s education, refinement, and career, but while her attorney also highlighted her predominantly white ancestry and physical attractiveness, the black writer argued that if other African Americans “could be as bold and courageous…our rights would be gradually yielded to us.”
When the appellate trial at the Iowa Supreme Court began, Coger’s attorney tried a new tactic, saying that she was legally white because she was mostly white. This legal strategy was used to varying degrees of success by numerous African Americans of mixed ancestry, including civil rights activist John Mercer Langston and Homer Plessy of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. In most cases these plaintiffs were not trying to distance themselves from other African Americans but simply using a strategy that they hoped would force the judges to strike down all race-based laws. Her court testimony shows that she identified as an African American; additionally, if she genuinely wanted to disassociate from other African Americans and be treated as white, she could have moved away and passed for white somewhere else, rather than staying in her hometown and teaching at its black school. Aside from Aside from her testimony, the only known record of her own words is her statement about the small $250 jury award: “I did not sue for the sake of money, but to vindicate the rights of my race, and my character of womanhood.” Even so, her attorney may have seen this argument as more than strategy, telling the court that “a young lady of fine talents and good character, a teacher of music, and the head of one of the common schools in a city of the importance of Quincy, Illinois” should not be mistreated simply because “she is one eighth colored.” He also argued that racial discrimination on common carriers was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which had been ratified only four years earlier. The Iowa Supreme Court agreed, writing that African Americans were legally entitled to “every right arising in the affairs of life” and that forcing them into inferior accommodations deprived them of “the benefits of this very principle of equality.” Although it rejected the idea that Coger was white or that her mixed ancestry was legally relevant, it also stated that her “spirited resistance…defiant words…[and] pertinacity in demanding the recognition of her rights and in vindicating them” was “evidence of the Anglo-Saxon blood that flows in her veins,” and her “unwomanly courage” was a far cry from the “female delicacy and timidity so much praised.” Thus even as the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of Emma Coger and all other African Americans, it also perpetuated race and gender stereotypes by stating that her courage came from her white ancestry and was not ladylike. In any event, Iowa now became the first state in the country to ban racial discrimination on common carriers. By contrast, most other states applied the “separate but equal” principle and ruled against black plaintiffs unless they had been given grossly inferior accommodations or been banned entirely. This turned out to be a sign of the future, as racial attitudes became more conservative, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down civil rights laws, southern and western states created new segregation laws, and even in northern states courts almost always ruled against black plaintiffs. By the early 1900s, “separate but equal” was the custom in the North and the law everywhere else.
After Emma Coger’s victory in court, she returned to Quincy and resumed her teaching career. In later years she moved to the town of Boonville, Missouri and taught at another black school there. During the 1890s she went back to Quincy and briefly taught again before retiring from the classroom. Her only appearances in the public record or newspapers after that were related to her substantial property investments that provided her a comfortable income. When she died in 1924, her will stated that her properties should be converted into a retirement home for African Americans. Although her dedication to black education, property ownership, and legal equality lived on in countless other educators, entrepreneurs, and plaintiffs, it would take several more decades before African Americans made real progress in the struggle against legalized segregation.
©David Brodnax, Sr.
No comments:
Post a Comment