Racial Housing Covenants

 by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In February 1958, Ganung Realty Company listed 917 Lake Street in Elmira for sale. The spacious home had 4 bedrooms, 1 bath, an attic playroom, multiple fireplaces, and an enclosed front porch. It also boasted a 2-car garage and a fenced-in back yard perfect for pets. The list price as $10,800 or approximately $125,000 in today’s dollars. There was one catch: no coloreds.

917 Lake Street

 

917 Lake Street realtor's notes.

Real covenants, or legal agreements related to land use, have a long history in American law. These agreements can be between the current owner and buyer, between the current owner and all future buyers, and between neighbors as in a home owners’ association. Covenants can lay out an action which must be performed or forbid an action. In the case of covenants between owners and buyers, the terms of the agreement are written right into the deed of sale. Up until fairly recently, it was legal to restrict the race of who could buy or rent a property.

In America, the first racially restrictive housing covenants emerged in the mid-19^th century. They didn’t become widespread, however, until 1917 when the Supreme Court struck down race-based municipal zoning laws in the case Buchanan v. Warley. White landowners turned to racial covenants to keep racial minorities out of their neighborhoods. The specific language used varied wildly. Some simply specified that owners must be white or American-born. Others named specific groups blocked from buying, most often Blacks, but frequently including Asians, Jews, and immigrants.

Locally, there is little evidence of racial zoning laws. There were, however, multiple housing developments with racial restrictions. From 1914 through 1916, the Glen View Manor development, located in West Elmira between Water and Church Streets across from Rorick’s Glen, was billed as “fully restricted” and “carefully restricted” with “not a lot sold to an undesirable party.” The Fairfax development, located on the Southside off Broadway, was more explicit with regard to racial segregation. A 1929 ad proudly proclaimed the development was restricted to white people only. Just a year later, the Blemont tract, between Lake and Grand Central Avenue on the northside, was similarly restricted. Most of West Elmira’s post-war construction was advertised as being a “restricted neighborhood.”

Ad for Fairfax development, June 28, 1929

 Civil rights activists did not take this lying down. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and various buyers of color brought a series of lawsuits related to racial covenants. In 1926, the Supreme Court upheld them as legal in Corrigan v. Buckley as they were private and not government action. In 1948, however, the court reversed course in Shelley v. Kraemer, finding that, while having a housing covenant in and of itself didn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment, using a court to enforce it did. Despite this, homeowners continued to use racial covenants until 1968 when Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, better known as the Fair Housing Act, explicitly prohibited racial covenants and discrimination against renters and buyers based on race, color, religion, or nation of origin. The law was later expanded to include sex, family status, disability, and LGBTQ status.

Despite no longer being legal, the effects of racial housing covenants still linger today. The racist language is still written into historic deeds and appears on abstracts of title. Moreover, the economic impact still persists. Multiple generations of Black families were unable to build generational wealth through homeownership. Generally speaking, homeownership accounts for as much as two-thirds of individual household wealth. White families are four times more likely to inherit a house or received funds from the sale of one as Black families. Economists estimate that between 12 and 16% of the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap stems from this disparity. The house on Lake Street was far from an isolated incident and racial covenants restricted far more than where people could live.

 

Frederick Douglass in Elmira

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

 

During his lifetime, Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818-February 20, 1895) was arguably the most famous Black man in America, if not the world. He was an ardent abolitionist, civil rights advocate, orator, author, and statesman. Douglass went on a series of speaking tours across the United States and Europe from the 1840s through the 1890s. As it turns out, he also spoke in Elmira. Multiple times.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. He escaped to freedom in 1838. By the 1840s, he was traveling across the Northeast, speaking on the evils of slavery and the need for abolition. From 1845 to 1847, he toured the British Isles, lecturing and fundraising for the abolitionist cause. Upon returning to the United States, Douglass settled in upstate New York where he began publishing the abolitionist newspaper The North Star in Rochester while continuing to speak around the Northeast. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, Douglass pivoted to speaking about issues including civil rights for Blacks and women. From 1886 to 1887, he toured Europe, visiting the British Isles again as well as France, Italy, Egypt and Greece before returning to the United States.

Douglass first came to Elmira in the 1840s. During a visit in 1840, he inspired the establishment of an AME Zion church which now bears his name. In 1848, he came along with an African-born man named Ward who had been kidnapped into slavery in America. The two of them spoke of their experiences of slavery and the cause of abolition at a small school-room on Carroll Street to a crowd of 50 or so Blacks and a handful of whites. Robert Morris McDowell, then a lad of 14, described the two men’s speeches as “stirring, eloquent and pathetic.” The event seems to have been part of a larger speaking and fundraising tour as they apparently spoke again the following day in Corning. 

Frederick Douglass, ca. 1840s

 

After the Civil War, Douglass had multiple speaking engagements in Elmira. This time, however, he wasn’t drawing tiny crowds in dinky little school-rooms, he was selling out the Elmira Opera House. He spoke here twice in 1872. The first time was on February 23^rd when he spoke at the Opera House in support of the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic). The newspaper reported that he was staying at the home of Charles Langdon, the son of Douglass’s old friend and abolitionist ally, Jervis Langdon. Douglass was back in Elmira on October 1^st when he spoke at the Republican meeting being held in downtown Elmira as part of the New York State Fair.

Douglass returned to Elmira on July 17, 1873, to participate in a Grand Celebration of the Civil Rights Bill. The celebration was sponsored and planned by the Colored Citizens of Elmira. The day kicked off with a church service, followed by a parade featuring (in order) officers of the Elmira police department, the LaFrance Cornet Band, Taylor Guards of Williamsport (colored), Excelsior Cornet Band of Williamsport (also colored), a company of colored Elmira soldiers with drum corps, a bunch of kids with flags, and carriages with day’s speakers and public officials, including Douglass himself. The parade ended in Hoffman Grove (now Grove Park), where Mr. William H. Lester of Dryden read the 15^th Amendment and Civil Rights bill, and John W. Jones and William Johnson both spoke. After a break for dinner, Douglass gave a speech at the Opera House on the topic of Civil Rights which the newspaper described as “sound, practical discourse, lit up with many brilliant passages of rhetoric and abounding with eloquent expressions such as Mr. Douglass has long been noted for.” The day was capped by a dance party at Holden Hall and a festival at the AME Zion church. 

Frederick Douglass, 1876

 

Douglass’s last speaking engagement in Elmira was for a similar event on August 3, 1880. This Emancipation Day Celebration commemorated the passage of Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Law in August 1833, as well as America’s own Emancipation Proclamation. Black folks came to Elmira from a hundred miles around to participate in the festivities. The event was kicked off by a parade from Dickinson Street in the heart of Elmira’s Black community to Grove Park. The parade featured the LaFrance Band, the Palmer Guards of Syracuse, Black Civil War veterans, carriages with various notables, young ladies representing each of the states, the Rescue Hook & Ladder Company of Norwich, the colored Horseheads Hose Company, Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A. band, and members of the colored Masonic lodge. At the park, there was a program of music and prayer followed by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by William H. Lester of Dryden and a speech by Douglass. A feast was served at the AME Zion church in the evening followed by a grand ball at the Armory. The Elmira Daily Advertiser pronounced Douglass’s speech to be an “able and eloquent production, and every way worthy of the great reputation of its distinguished author” in a front-page article the following morning. 

Grove Park, ca. 1900

 Just think, if you had been born in a different era, you might have been able to hear Frederick Douglass, world-famous orator and activist, speak right here in Elmira. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. Kind of wild when you think about it.

Green (Book) Means Go

 By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

 

For Black motorists in the mid-20^th century, hitting the road could be a dangerous proposition. Travelers frequently had their cars vandalized and could find themselves attacked by whites or arrested arbitrarily by the police. Throughout the Jim Crow south, Blacks were frequently denied service at hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other public accommodations. It happened in the north too. Since 1873, New York has had laws against discrimination in public accommodations, but that didn’t stop some New York hotel and restaurant owners from refusing to serve Black customers.

Enter The Negro Motorists Green Book. Created by Victor Hugo Green, a Black postal worker from New York City, the book provided Black motorists with a list of places across the nation where they knew they would be given service. The lists included hotels, tourist homes, restaurants, night clubs, gas/service stations, beauty salons, and barber shops. An updated version was published yearly from 1936 to 1966. Travelers were encouraged to write in the names, addresses, and kind of business of friendly places they knew about to keep the lists fresh.

The Negro Motorists Green Book not only helped to protect Black motorists in their travels, it helped to promote Black businesses. Black women benefited especially considering that most tourist homes and beauty salons were women-owned. Getting listed was free, but businesses could pay to have their listing displayed in bold or with a star to denote that they were “recommended.” Esso Standard Oil Company, as a major sponsor of the Green Book, became the gas station of choice for Black motorists. A number of Black Essos station owners were featured in the various articles included in each book. Other articles profiled popular black tourist destinations like Idlewild, Michigan; Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts; and Belmar, New Jersey.

While each addition of The Negro Motorists Green Book devoted pages to accommodations in New York City, accommodations for Black motorists upstate were few and far between. Mrs. J.A. Wilson’s tourist home (bed and breakfast) at 307 East Clinton Street in Elmira was first listed in 1940.  Like many of the businesses listed in the Green Book, Mrs. Wilson’s tourist home was a Black-owned business. Almaria M. Wilson began operating her home as a boarding house in 1925 to supplement her husband John’s income. She continued to operate it until 1942. Outside of her work, Wilson was an active member of the Douglass Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church and the Topaz Reading Circle.

Green Book, 1940. Courtesy of New York Public Library

Later editions of the Green Book featured the Elmira landmark Greet Pastures, located at 670 Dickinson Street. The book listed it as a tourist home, but it was so much more. Opened in 1932 by Beatrice Johnson, her husband Richard, and her brother Edward Hodges, Green Pastures was a restaurant, bar, and night club which happened to offer lodgings, especially to the traveling musicians who played there. Green Pastures was a happening place. As the only Black-owned night club in the Twin Tiers, it was considered an important stop of the Chitlin' Circuit and hosted jazz and blues bands from all over the country. Green Pasture’s kitchen was known for its soul food, especially their fried chicken, ribs, biscuits, and collard greens. In 1972, the original building was demolished and the club moved to a new location at 723 Madison Avenue. It closed in 2011. 

Green Book, 1955. Courtesy of the New York Public Library

 

By the 1960s, the once popular Green Book was becoming obsolete. Even before the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, the work of activists was lessoning the impact of racial discrimination in public accommodation. The rise of the interstate system in the late 1950s was driving back-road Black-owned hotels out of business. By 1963, the editors of the Green Book were struggling to justify its existence. The final edition was issued in 1966 under the new name Travelers' Green Book: 1966–67 International Edition: For Vacation Without Aggravation. No longer focused on Black travelers, the last edition featured a white woman on the cover. Green Pastures of Elmira was still listed though.

 

Green Book, 1966. Courtesy of the New York Public Library

Fly the Friendly Skies? The First African American Stewardess

 By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Do you remember Mohawk Airlines? The “Route of the Air Chiefs” airline carried passengers all around New York State. 

It was one of the first feeder airlines to take advantage of the 1944 Civil Aeronautics Board’s (CAB) push to increase access to regions previously not served. A decade later, Mohawk Airlines increased another kind of access, by hiring the nation’s first woman of color as a stewardess.

Mohawk airlines was the renamed Robinson Airlines operating out of Ithaca, NY. Inventor Cecil S. Robinson started it as a side business to his aerial surveying company, though it wasn’t always profitable. The CAB push meant the government was willing to subsidize new routes, and Robinson sold operations to Robert Peach, one of his pilots and a Cornell University law student. Peach had learned to fly as a pilot during World War II. By 1948, Mohawk Airlines was certified as a regional carrier and flying routes throughout the region, including in and out of Elmira/Corning. In less than a decade, the company outgrew their Ithaca facilities and moved their headquarters to Utica. The growth in aviation encouraged competition among the airlines, and they actively looked for innovative approaches to appeal to passengers. Social norms were changing. In 1956, the carrier publicly expressed an interest in hiring flight attendants of color, and one year later, Mohawk hired twenty-five-year-old Ruth Carol Taylor.

 

Taylor had lived in upstate New York, graduated from college, and was a practicing nurse. She was born in Massachusetts, the eldest of two daughters of Ruth Irene Powell, a registered nurse, and William Edison Taylor, a barber. The family lived in New York City for a short while, then moved to Trumansburg, so that her father could run a farm. She attended Trumansburg Central High School, and then enrolled at Elmira College.

In 1951, her father died and her mother moved back to New York City. Taylor then transferred to Bellevue School of Nursing in NYC. She graduated and practiced nursing for three years before applying to be a flight attendant. At that time, airlines hired nurses to reassure the flying public, so that was a good fit. However, no airline had hired anyone of color. Taylor, interested in flying, applied to Trans World Airlines (TWA) and was interviewed three times, but was not selected. Determined, she filed a complaint with the New York State Commission on Discrimination. About that same time, Peach, perhaps realizing that things needed to change, instructed his company to look for good candidates. Almost 800 women of color applied and were interviewed to be a Mohawk hostess. The company only hired one, Ruth Carol Taylor. Her first flight was February 11, 1958, and generated so much publicity that TWA quickly hired Margaret Grant and declared her as their first African American flight attendant.

Six months after her first flight, Taylor hit another discriminatory wall and was let go for violating the rule that all stewardesses must be single. She had married her fiancé, Rex Legall. The couple moved to the British West Indies and then to London. They divorced and Taylor moved to Barbados. In Barbados she created the country’s first professional nursing journal. In 1977, she returned to NYC bringing her son and daughter with her.

Ruth Carol Taylor was an activist all her life, fighting for racial equality. She participated in the Civil Rights Movement, co-founded the Institute for InterRacial Harmony, and after her son was mugged, wrote The Little Black Book: Black Male Survival in America or Staying Alive and Well in an Institutionally Racist Society.

 

Being the first of anything isn’t always easy, but seeing Taylor in her uniform certainly encouraged other young women to consider the profession. When interviewed for an article in JET magazine, Taylor shared that she “…didn’t take the job because she thought being a flight attendant would be so great...I knew better than to think it was all that glamourous. But it irked me that people were not allowing people of color to apply…Anything like that sets my teeth to grinding.”

 

An activist to the end, Taylor was 92 when she died in May 2023.

 

Ace Photographer

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

 Over the years, I must have seen the logo of Ace Photo Studio on the back of a hundred photos in our collection, but I didn’t know much about the studio or George “Ace” Horsey, the man who owned it. Then two of his nieces came in looking to see what we had on their family. In the end, they wound up educating me! They kindly shared their family’s story with me so I, in turn, could share it with you.

 

 

George “Ace” Horsey Jr. (1926-1990) was born in Salisbury, Maryland one of the seven children of Danie and George Horsey Sr. He was always interested in photography. While serving in the United States Army Air Corps in World War II, he got an opportunity to take a training course on the subject. In 1950, Horsey, his wife Mary, and their young family moved to Elmira so he could take a job at the General Electric (G.E.) Foundry as the plant photographer. He took pictures for advertising purposes and the G.E. News, the company newspaper. In 1956, he was elected sergeant-at-arms in the plant’s Electrical Workers Union and served on the labor contract negotiation team at one point. 

 

From G.E. News, January 15, 1954

Outside of work, Horsey was a member of the Douglas A.M.E. Zion Church where he frequently took pictures of members and events. Quite a number of his photographs ended up in the local newspaper throughout the 1950s. In 1956, he began volunteering at the Neighborhood House where he served as the instructor for the Camera Club. He took kids on photo shoots to area parks, taught them how to develop film, and served as judge during their annual photography show. He eventually became involved on the Neighborhood House board of trustees, serving as treasurer for a time.

 

Douglas A.M.E. Zion Church choir, ca. 1960s

Horsey and his family prospered in Elmira. He and Mary had four children: Mary, Barbara, Vanessa, and George III. He encouraged his aging parents and siblings to join him here. Most did. Many of their children still live in the area today. 

 

Danie & George Horsey Sr. with children George Jr., Epluribus, Louise, Richard & Geneva, ca. 1950s

 

Horsey children Mary, George III, Barbara & Vanessa, ca. 1950s

Horsey children Mary, George III, Barbara & Vanessa, ca.1980

In 1958, Horsey opened Ace Photo Studio, Elmira's first Black-owned photography studio. It was originally located at 665 Lake Street, although the studio had a number of homes over the years. Horsey specialized in portraits, weddings, and commercial photographs. He was very interested in historic photography and also offered a service where he would make new copies of customers’ old family photos. Horsey retired and closed his studio in 1984. He died on May 29, 1990, leaving behind his family and a wealth of images documenting over 40 years of Elmira’s history.

Ace Photo Studio, ca. 1970s

 

The negatives from Ace Photo Studio are held by his family. One of his nieces generously allowed me to scan some for this blog. The truth is, there are so many fascinating people and stories in Chemung County and we here at the Historical Society barely know a tenth of them. It is only through the efforts and generosity of the community that we are able to learn about and share them. Thank you, Horsey family, for sharing your story. Thank you to the next person who shares theirs too.

Hired Girls and Domestic Servants

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

In 1847, Miriam Whitcher, wife of the Reverand Benjamin Whitcher of Elmira’s Trinity Episcopal Church, was struggling to find a hired girl. She wanted one who could make bread, wash, and iron and was good natured, but knew her place. In May, she hired Martha and soon became depended on her, but by September she was fed up with how overly familiar Martha was. She fired her and tried to do without for a while, before breaking down and hiring fourteen-year-old Ellen, the daughter of poor Irish immigrants who “had no ideas of equality and does not seem to think of coming to the table with us.” She couldn’t do the work, however, and was soon replaced by Jane, a twenty-five-year-old Black woman, who could both do the work and know her place. Jane worked for the Whitchers for nearly a year. (See this blog post for more on Whitcher)

The Whitcher situation was not unique. During the mid-19^th century, the entire concept of domestic labor was in flux. In the early 1800s, the nation was predominantly rural and the average farmwife was responsible not only for cooking, cleaning, and childcare, but also gardening, tending livestock, making cheese, spinning, weaving, making the family’s clothing, and often making extra products to sell. A family might temporarily hire a neighbor’s teenage daughter to help the wife out during the planting or harvest or after childbirth. These hired girls would work alongside and supplement the work of the farmwife for brief periods and were generally not regarded as servants. They were part employee, part guest, living under their employer’s roof and eating with them at the table. They also did not make a career out of it, but rather ‘helped’ during their teen years to gain funds and experience before marriage.

Running parallel to this was a system of unfree unpaid domestic labor in the form of slavery. In 1800, there were two households with slaves in Elmira and, by 1810, there were eleven. Enslaved women performed much of the same work as white hired ‘help,’ but these Black women were understood to be inherently inferior. They would certainly never be welcomed at their master’s table. All slaves in New York State were freed as of July 4, 1827, but a system of Black indentured servitude lingered well into the 1830s.  (see this blog post for additional details) For the rest of the 19^th century, domestic service was one of the few careers open to Black women both nationally and in Chemung County.

By the 1840s, a number of compounding factors were beginning to change the nature of paid domestic labor. Increased industrialization shifted textile production from the household to the factory, greatly reducing the amount of work a wife was expected to perform. These same factories offered new, better-paying employment opportunities to young women and girls. The end of slavery in the northern states and the Underground Railroad resulted in a new pool of Black workers who lacked the options enjoyed by white women and could not demand the same levels of pay or respect. The Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1852 resulted in a wave of desperately poor Irish immigrants who were largely in the same boat.

By mid-1800s, 15 to 30% of all urban households had at least one domestic servant. Unlike the old ‘help’ previously employed by farmwives, these women were employed full-time and year-round. A small, middle-class household like the Whitchers might have a single maid-of-all-work who would cook, clean, and do laundry alongside their mistress. A larger, more prosperous household might employ a cook, a laundress, and multiple maids, maybe even a nanny or governess as well. In these households, the lady of the house would act as manager overseeing their labor without performing any of it herself. Having a servant became a sort of status symbol. It also freed up upper class women to become involved in charities, clubs, politics, and self-improvement. 

 

Nanny employed by the Diven family, ca. 1890s

Locally, there are a couple well-known domestic servants, both associated with Mark Twain. One was Mary Ann Cord (1798-1888), the cook at Quarry Farm. Mary Ann had been born into slavery in Maryland. In 1852, she was sold away from her husband and their seven children and brought to New Bern, North Carolina. It was there she found her youngest son, Henry, during the Civil War. He had escaped to freedom years before and found work as a barber in Elmira. She came to Elmira with him and where she met and married Primus Cord. From 1870 until her death, she and Primus worked for the Cranes of Quarry Farm, her as cook and him as groundskeeper. In 1874, Mark Twain wrote A True Story Word for Word as I Heard It based off of her life story (see this blog post for additional details).

 

Mary Ann Cord. Image courtesy of Elmira College

Katy Leary (1856-1934), meanwhile, was born and raised in Elmira, the daughter of poor Irish immigrants. In 1880, she took a job with the Clemens family sewing baby clothes. She worked for them for the next thirty years serving as a lady’s maid, housekeeper, nurse, chaperone, traveling companion, seamstress, nursemaid, and nanny. After Samuel Clemens died in 1910, Katy left service and opened a boarding house with her pension money. Interviews with Katy were the basis for the book A Lifetime with Mark Twain, published in 1925. 

Katy Leary, ca. 1925

 The life of a domestic servant in the late-1800s was unpleasant. Pay was low, the hours were long, and the work could be grueling. Servants often lived within their employers which left them with little privacy and made them vulnerable to exploitation. Domestic servants tended to either be young and unmarried, or older widows returning to the workforce. While some women, like Mary Ann and Katy, made careers out of it, most domestics preferred to abandon the field in favor of marriage or other employment.