Booker T. Richmond & Iowa City black history

Iowa Federation Home for Colored Girls

I found and then put aside late last summer a brief news item about Chariton's Booker T. Richmond while researching his life and times, preparing a script that would be used to honor him during our annual September Cemetery Heritage Tour. 

A 1923 graduate of Chariton High School, Booker enrolled at the University of  Iowa's College of Law during the fall  of  1929 and the following spring was an attendant at a wedding reported upon in the Iowa City Press-Citizen of April 25, 1930, under the headline, "Keokuk Couple Married Here." Here's the text:

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"Miss Margarete Arlene Hawkins and Mr. Ralph Melvin Smith, both of  Keokuk, Ia., were united in marriage Wednesday evening, April 24th, at the Carey Social center, the Rev. Edward L. Fuller officiating at the ceremony.

"Miss Violet G. Holt and Mr. Booker T. Richmond were the wedding attendants. Mr. and Mrs. C. Bruton and a number of university students, including the young ladies of the Federal home, were guests at the ceremony."

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Looking at these two paragraphs again this week, I was intrigued by several references in it that help to illuminate some of the challenges faced 90 years ago by a brilliant young man like Booker, who was determined against the odds to obtain a good education. I learned a lot while following those threads of information.

Iowa City generally is looked upon these days as one of Iowa's progressive outposts, but the past is a different country and when Booker arrived in Iowa City in the fall of 1929, he would have had difficulty finding a place to live.

The University of Iowa had enrolled black students as early as the 1870s, but its dormitories were closed to black students until 1946. No alternative housing units were built. Few white homeowners were willing to take in black roomers.Iowa City's permanent black population was very small, barely large enough to support a single church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal, certainly not large enough to offer any sort of social venue for young people.

Then the Rev. Edward L. Fuller, officiant during that April wedding, came along with a plan to improve the situation for black students by opening the Carey Social Center, where the wedding was held, in downtown Iowa City.

The Bethel A.M.E. congregation hired the Rev. Mr. Fuller as pastor during early 1929 and by September, he had opened the Social Center as an outreach to black university students. In addition to  religious services, the center offered inexpensive meals,  opportunities to socialize, and employment or help in finding employment to students who needed financial assistance.

The Rev. Mr. Fuller resigned his pastorate in November of 1929 to devote full time to the center, which he had moved by the following October to 110 East Burlington St. 

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Victoria G. Holt, Booker's companion attendant at the Hawkins-Smith marriage, was a daughter of Emma Carter Holt, cook-caterer at the Carey Social Center.

Mrs. Holt also may have been Booker's landlady, although that's idle speculation on my part. But she is recognized as a member of Iowa City's black community who supplemented her income by taking in borders, including for a time (but not during 1929-30) at what now is known as the Tate Arms, 914 South Dubuque Street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places because it provided off-campus dormitory-style housing for African-American students.

Tate Arms

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And then there's the reference to the "young ladies of the Federal home" who attended the wedding. 

This would have been the Iowa Federation Home for Colored Girls at 942 Iowa Avenue, operated from 1919 until 1951 by the Iowa Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs (IFCWC) and intended to offer the sort of dormitory-style housing for young black women that the University of Iowa declined to provide. It, too, is now listed on the National Register  of  Historic Places.

Finally, "Mr. and Mrs. C. Bruton" were among the guests. These guests actually were Frances and Cecil H. Brewton Sr. Mr. Brewton (1899-1988), who would direct the X-ray department at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines from 1943 until retirement, was during 1929-30 director of a popular Iowa City-based dance band, Cecil Brewton and His Blue Rhythm Kings, and Booker --- a talented musician, too --- often played banjo with the band.

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Booker took the Iowa bar exams, a three-day written and oral marathon, during October of 1930 and earned the highest marks among his fellow candidates. Admitted to the bar, he went on to establish a Des Moines law practice, a struggle in overwhelmingly white Iowa. Sadly, he died of a stroke at the age of 52 in September of  1957 and is buried in the Chariton Cemetery. He was a young man with an acclaimed command of the English language, but left no account of himself behind.

I've written more than once about Booker and his remarkable family. The script for last fall's cemetery tour may be found here. You can learn more about the entire Richmond family in a post entitled "Lillie Richmond at her children at rest." And here's another, "Meet Aunt Lillie Richmond ...."