The racial dynamics of Memphis changed between 1862-1865. During the Civil War, thousands of enslaved and formerly enslaved Black people fled to the city. In 1865, the Black population was 39%. Most of the Black population gathered around Beale, Linden, and Causey streets. These areas were considered, “Negro Quarters.”
Lymus Wallace was the first Black alderman of Memphis and one of the first Black men to serve on the legislative council between 1882-1895. Approximately 14 Black Americans were elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in the 1880s and 90s.
John Gaston was an early benefactor. When he first appeared in Memphis in 1865, he wore a dirty Confederate private’s uniform and hobbled on crutches. He had no money. Some Memphians in the army had befriended him and invited him to their homes. He worked odd jobs until he opened his own café in 1867. He was honest, frugal, and industrious. He was the poor son of French peasants. He ran away from Paris to work in restaurants in America. After living in various states, he moved to growing Atlanta and later joined the Confederate army.
In Memphis, he knew he had found a home among friendly people. After the yellow fever epidemic, he bought all the property he could. Now rich, he moved into a mansion with spacious grounds. His goal was to keep his name alive in Memphis. He established the Gaston Community Center for children to play and John Gaston Hospital, where thousands of poor people were treated.
Years later, during segregation, many Black children were born in John Gaston Hospital. Traditional white hospitals in Memphis did not admit Black patients. John Gaston was known as the charity hospital and treated Black Americans of all ages.
Lumbermen came to Memphis after exhausting New England’s white pine, virgin timber of the Middle West, and hurried to the Far West and South. It is said that eighty percent of the entire nation’s hardwood was standing untouched in the bottoms of the Mississippi River. This virgin timber attracted lumbermen from all over. Black lumberjacks helped clear the land and lived in the same logging camps. Black men were the muscle and took on jobs what white men would not do. White men reportedly could not stand the swampy timberlands any more than they were able to work in the steamy cotton fields. They were foremen and had other non-menial duties. Black labor helped produce the pretty hardwood floors we have today.
For about thirty years after 1880, loggers rotated in and out of Memphis. The money flowed into Memphis banks and the operators bought fine homes. The Lumbermen’s Club was founded in 1898 to prove that cotton was not the only king. Memphis became the largest hardwood market in the world.
Eventually, timber from trees was made to make wooden handles, axes, grub hoes, plows, picks, golf-club heads, and shovels among many others. America relied on Memphis timber to make tools.
Lumber was plentiful but cotton made Memphis a city. It was chopped and picked by mostly poor and Black Americans, but it made mostly white men rich. Memphis became the largest inland cotton market in the world. Millions of dollars poured into the city every year. After 1865, there were never enough warehouses. Bales of cotton were piled high along the streets and sidewalks. Cotton was everywhere the eye could see. On the edges of the city, cotton fields reached residents back fences. Near Union Avenue, oil mills processed cotton seed. The smell was described as country ham frying.
Planting or serving planters was the way to wealth. One of the largest Black planters was John C. Claybrook. He was born in Alabama but ran away to Memphis when he was thirteen to find work. He worked as a laborer on riverboats. As an adult, he moved to eastern Arkansas. He started out as a lumberman. He was a hard worker with extraordinary business sense. He saw great potential in clearing the land in Crittenden County, Arkansas for timber. He was backed by Front Street merchants until he was successful. He built a town around his farming and logging operation in eastern Arkansas. He became one of the most successful Black businessmen of his time in the South.
Claybrook had a second home in Memphis and retired there in 1951, died of cancer at John Gaston Hospital. Other Black planters like Scott Winfield Bond and B.A. Green owned and planted cotton in the rich soil of Arkansas.
Francie Mae. November 25, 2023.
References
CALS. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “John C. Claybrook (1872-1951).” Website. Last updated September 22, 2023. Accessed November 25, 2023.
McIlwaine, Shields. 1941. Memphis. Down In Dixie. New York. EP Dutton and Company, Inc.
Ms Francie Mae, I enjoyed reading this article, as I was born in Memphis 1954. I was born in John Gaston Hospital and I am white. My mother went to UT Memphis nursing school. This 1945-1948, she was from Nashville and my father was from Memphis. She had me there because she knew the doctors and nurses were well trained. I spent eight years in the Army and any time I met a black soldier from Memphis I would tell them that I was born in John Gaston Hospital. The response that I usually received was something to the affect, ‘man there ain’t no white people born there.’ Also, white soldiers would basically tell me the same thing. We left Memphis in 1965 for my dad’s job in Murfreesboro. I remember the terrible segregation that we all lived under. I lived under an easier system and black folks lived under a repressive system. When we would drive across south Memphis to my grandparents I would see a sea of black kids playing. I wondered why they played where they did and I played where I did. Even as a child, under ten years old, I just knew that something was not right about the situation. My mother was a Memphis/Shelby Public Health Nurse mid ‘50’s-1964. She vaccinated many children during that time, mostly black. I never heard her say the “N” word. She told me that if I ever think that I am more important than those “colored” children, what I am really thinking is that I know better than God. All people are part of God’s handiwork was her philosophy. When we moved in’65, she went to work at our local VA hospital serving veterans. My mother was in the last class for World War Two Nurse Cadet Corps At University of Tennessee Memphis. Their tuition, books boarding(nurses dormitory) and small stipend were covered for their military obligation after graduation. The war had ended and the obligation was lifted. Her parents could never have afforded to send her to UT Memphis. I think that my mother paid our country back by being a Public Health Nurse and a nurse at the VA hospital, may she rest in peace. I know that I got a little off topic talking about her here, however her Memphis story is just one of hundreds of thousands of people in Memphis both black and white from many years ago.