African-American Whiskey Men

 

Foreword:  The documented record of pre-Prohibition African-Americans involved in the liquor trade is sparse indeed.  Blacks were not uninvolved in making and selling whiskey.  Given the tenor of the times in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, however, their activities were generally ignored by the press and in other forms of publication.  Nonetheless, the stories of a few have emerged in recent years as interest in Black History has intensified.  Here are presented brief vignettes of three men of color, one born a slave who became a bartender, another who ran a saloon in a “Wild West” boomtown, and a third who operated a liquor store in the “Jim Crow” South.  Each manage to survive and prosper.

          

Fields Cook, shown here, was born into slavery in King William County, Virginia, about 30 miles east of Richmond.  Early in life, he was involved in the liquor trade as a bartender in an upscale Richmond, Virginia, hotel and restaurant.  In time, Fields became a major early civil rights activist, a juror in the indictment of Jefferson Davis and a Baptist minister. 

It appears Cook’s owner allowed him to be hired out, although the practice was strictly forbidden by Virginia law.  He went to Richmond and while still a slave became associated with the Ballard House Hotel, right.  Fields was listed in the 1860 census as a waiter.  He also was tending bar at the Ballard.  As one writer put it:  “He was six feet tall, literate, personable and industrious.”  One could add, thrifty.  By 1850 Cook had purchased his freedom, supplementing his earnings by working as a “leech doctor,” using traditional methods of healing.

Throughout the Civil War Cook remained in Richmond, managing the bar and restaurant at the Ballard House.  According to a narrative from his youth Fields believed “that God has called me to the ministry.”  The Virginia Legislature in 1823, however, had enacted a law that prevented blacks from preaching or conducting religious services.  After the war he was able to be ordained as a Baptist minister.  

Fields also became an ardent civil rights advocate.  In August 1865, he  represented Richmond in the first state convention of African-Americans, that met in Alexandria, Virginia.  He was named a vice president and designated to write the convention's address to the public.  As a result of his activism, Fields was chosen as one of the black men on the Richmond grand jury that indicted Jefferson Davis for insurrection, below. 

In 1870 Cook and his wife moved to Alexandria.  After serving for a time as pastor of the Alexandria’s Third Baptist Church, Rev. Cook became founding pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, a congregation that still exists and numbers some of Alexandria’s most notable citizens among its members. 

Details of William A. G. Brown’s life before arriving in Virginia City, Nevada, are scant.  Local records listed his death there in April 1893 and gave his age as 63.  This would put his birth at 1830 in Massachusetts and likely in or near Boston, the name he gave his saloon.  Although Brown was not born in slavery, his education would have been in segregated schools.   He is shown here in a photo from Virginia City.

Brown was drawn to Virginia City by the promise of wealth, related to the silver and gold being extracted from Nevada’s Comstock lode.  After an initial stint as a bootblack by 1864 Brown had abandoned his shoeshine stand and opened the Boston Saloon at site described as on “an upslope location along Virginia City’s mountainside setting and well beyond the center of town.”  Two years later Brown moved to the center of Virginia City’s entertainment and red light district, the site shown below, ringed.  Although brothels were plentiful, the district also was the site of Virginia City’s opera house, theaters, and some respectable drinking establishments.

Brown’s saloon, while a watering hole for African-Americans, was one of the high end eateries in Virginia City, frequented by white patrons as well.  Archeologists excavating the site of Brown’s saloon point to his entrepreneurship and sophistication  For example, he was not relying on beer and local “rogut” whiskey to serve over his bar.  A bottle of French champagne, shown here, and a shard from a Gordon’s (English) gin have been found on the site.  Another fragment disclosed a soda water from Cantrell & Cochrane of England.  These imported items required inter-continental shipping and were pricey. 

Whether it was a shooting incident at the saloon or another cause, after eleven years in the liquor business, Brown sold the Boston Saloon in 1875 at the age of about 45 and retired in town with his profits.  By so doing he avoided the ravaging fire the same year that leveled the saloon and much of Virginia City. The Boston was not rebuilt.  Brown’s activities in ensuing years have gone unrecorded along with his place of interment.

Jere M. Blowe ran a saloon and liquor business in Vicksburg, Mississippi, during a period of history when the local newspaper opined:  “Don’t mess with white supremacy;  it is loaded with determination, gunpowder and dynamite.” Yet Blowe managed to provide leadership in his community and, apparently against all reason, professed to be proud of the city in which he spent his life.

Blowe, shown here in maturity, was born in 1861, the son of slaves.  Of his early life we have little information.  By the late 1800s, he had established himself as a Vicksburg saloonkeeper and was operating a retail liquor store at 316 S. Washington Street.  During a period in the South when discriminatory laws were being enacted against blacks, Blowe still could afford to sell his whiskey in ceramic jugs with his name proudly emblazoned  He also could indulge in  whimsical containers for his whiskey, such as the pig bottle shown below.

With his business success, Blowe became an leader in black Vicksburg.  He was a officer and member of a number of organizations. His primary affiliation was as the historian of the Most Worshipful Stringer Lodge F. and A. M., a Masonic order introduced into Mississippi for blacks in 1867.  Blowe, who also had literary gifts, authored a book on the history of the organization that still can be found in local libraries.  His picture conveys the image of a man at once serious and genial.

In addition,  Blowe had political ambitions.  For a time he reportedly served as an alderman, a position that seems to have had little power in Vicksburg.   Blowe also was selected an alternate delegate to the GOP Convention of 1908.   As one author put it: “Although impotent in the state and local context, Mississippi’s blacks, like Republican functionaries in other parts of the South, took an important part in the nomination of Presidential candidates.”

That same year, 1908, Mississippi voters dealt all of the state’s saloons and retail liquor establishments a fatal stroke when they voted a complete ban on alcohol statewide. White and black, all such establishments were forced to shut down.  Blowe’s was among them.  The 1910 census found the Blowe family living with Lulu’s 68-year-old mother at her Vicksburg home.  Jere, still just age 45, was listed as working in the insurance business.  Although living during the imposition of discriminatory Jim Crow laws. Blowe reputedly is said often to have expressed his pride in the “Historic City,” of Vicksburg.  

Note:  Longer posts on each of these African-American whiskey men may be found on this blog:   Fields Cook, June 30, 2020;  William A. G. Brown, June 14, 2020;  Jere Blowe, April 6, 2013.