Midwest Connections

Early Black Migration

Above: Era Bell Thompson and Stanley Pargellis. Newberry Library. View collection guide

Henry Early

Henry Early was born into slavery in Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1815. After securing his freedom in 1841, he moved to Mineral Point in the Wisconsin territory. The Meskwaki were forced to leave the area after the Black Hawk War in 1832, and Mineral Point became an important lead mining center. Early established a saddlery and leather goods business in the town, married Jennie Smith in 1866, and raised their three children after her death in 1874. When Henry Early passed away in 1897, the Iowa County Democrat described Early as an "industrious, honest man" who, according to his daughter, "always taught his children to do right."

Rufus Estes

Rufus Estes was born in Murray County, Tennessee, in 1857 and enslaved by D. J. Estes. Rufus was the youngest of nine children and moved with his mother to Nashville in 1867 after the Civil War. Estes found employment at restaurants in Nashville and Chicago before working at the Pullman Company for fourteen years, providing service in private dining cars. In 1907, he began his tenure as chef of the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation in Chicago. Estes included his autobiography in his published book of recipes, Good Things to Eat As Suggested by Rufus.

Good things to eat, as suggested by Rufus. Newberry Library. View at Internet Archive

Ella and Tom Richardson

This platform rocker belonged to Ella and Tom Richardson, respected members of the African-American community in Springfield, Illinois. Ella came to Springfield from Oxford, Mississippi, and married Tom in 1897. She sold canary birds and kept house. Tom was a grandson on his mother's side of William Fleurville, a Haitian immigrant who was Abraham Lincoln’s barber. His father, Jordan, was an enslaved person captured at Fort Donelson in 1862. He worked for the Springfield Produce Company for 57 years. In 1908, Tom's brother George was falsely accused of assaulting a white woman. An angry mob's demand for vengeance ultimately led to the Springfield Race Riot, during which the Richardsons were threatened with arson and violence. —Illinois State Museum

Era Bell Thompson

Era Bell Thompson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1905 and moved with her family to Driscoll, North Dakota, when she was nine years old. In 1945, while on fellowship at the Newberry Library, Thompson wrote an autobiography about her family's experiences as one of the only African American families in North Dakota. In one wry story about her youth, Thompson wrote:

In school I was learning many things in spite of the gymnasium, even things about myself, like that one in our textbook that said Negroes were black folks with kinky hair and a thick skull that education could not penetrate. I made a prevaricator out of that by getting 97 on the exam, then cut class the day of the "black analysis". The pupils wanted to know which was wrong, the book or I, and the teacher was in a spot until some bright kid remembered there was an Aryan in my family closet; so the white curse of intelligence remained on my dark shoulders, accounted for and excused. —American daughter, Era Bell Thompson

After publishing American Daughter in 1946, Thompson went on to become an influential editor at Ebony magazine for over forty years.

 

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