>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC. [silence] >> PAM JACKSON: Good afternoon. I'm Pam Jackson. I'm Director for The
Center for the Book here for the Library of Congress. We're part of the National and
International Outreach Unit, and we're very pleased to be with
you today for this afternoon's talk. It's a really exciting topic
with a really great group of people and a great author. I should mention that today's
talk is brought to you in part by The Daniel A.P. Murray African
American Cultural Association for employees here at
the Library of Congress, and they all have a
special part in our program that will be introduced
just shortly. I should mention that here, you
know, for our external audience for the most part, but to remind
us internally too, at the Library of Congress it's our focus, it's
our mission, it's our desire to be recognized and
remind the public that we are America's
first cultural institution. And it's our mission to provide
a rich and enduring source of knowledge and we care about
doing that, because we care about inspiring creativity and the intellectual
endeavors of people everywhere. And today's topic and
book talk is designed to further the library's
mission in that way. I'd like to mention that The Center for the Book includes both The
Young Readers Center and The Poetry and Literature Center, and it's
our mission to promote books, and reading, and libraries,
and literature, and poetry for the purpose of having
informed and engaged societies. We know that now, more than ever,
literacy is critical to upholding, defending, protecting, and preserving vibrant
and robust democracies. And we have now for 2017, titled
ourselves as defenders of democracy. We thank you for being
here for part of that, because our talks are
designed in part to promote and extend a commitment to a
culture of reading and to make sure that the Library of Congress's
mission is really focusing on- one anchor of it is that we
create and sustain a culture that values literacy and literature, and we do that with
today's talk as well. Just as a quick aside, I'd
like to mention that The Center for the Book administers The
Library of Congress Literacy Awards, another way we further the
mission of the library, and we are currently soliciting
applications for prize money from The Library of Congress for
literacy promotion organizations. You should visit us at
read.gov/literacy awards to learn more about that program. Now onto today's focus. As we get started I want to do
two things- ask that you all reach down and check your devices. Make sure they're on
silent or vibrate. And I do that because
our second point is that we are recording today,
both for the library's webcast, and we have the honor
of having C-SPAN with us today for this book talk. So, as you participate and ask
questions in the conversation at that point in the program, please
know that you'll be being recorded and a part of our webcast. We can mention that you can also
visit us at read.gov to see more than 250 of our author talks and
webcasts that we have available from The Center for the Book for the
talks that we've had over the years. I'll also mention that
if you have not already, the book for today's talk
is available for sale out in the vestibule,
and we encourage you to obtain your own copy,
if you have not done so, and to know that she'll be
available for a book signing after today's talk as well. Finally, the chief criteria for
deciding the books to feature in our Books and Beyond Series here
at The Center for the Book has to do with the connection to
The Library of Congress. And certainly today's book
is connected in a variety of different ways- both
celebrating, honoring, and acknowledging an
extraordinary figure in our history, both our personal lives as
Library of Congress employees and our cultural lives as Americans. But, also because the
research was done here. That's an important part of what
the library likes to promote and to encourage, which says we have
a vast, rich, set of collections that matter to people, and we can
only share them if people engage with them, find out what's in
them, write about them, publish, and come do talks about them. And that's one of the things
that we care about, and do, and celebrate at The
Center for the Book. So, to further our program
and to talk about it I'm going to introduce The Library of
Congress historian, John Y. Cole. Now, John's a special
figure in our lives, because he's actually the founding
director for The Center for the Book and was part of the initiative
that led to the legislation that created us 40 years ago. We're actually celebrating our
40th anniversary this year. So, I'd like to acknowledge
and appreciate John, who also has a very special
relationship with today's author and to the subject of the
book, Mr. Daniel Murray, who will introduce our author,
and to introduce a couple of the key components of
the rest of today's program. Thank you so much for
your attention. Enjoy the talk. [applause] >> JOHN COLE: Well, as Pam
has mentioned, I'm John Cole. I'm here not only to help celebrate
Daniel Murray and the book series that The Center for the Book has
under way, called Books and Beyond, but also to acknowledge some very
special guests we have today. We have members from the Daniel
Murray family, the descendants of Harold Murray, who Harold was one
of Daniel Murray's seven children. Do I have that right? >> Yeah. >> JOHN COLE: Yeah. And most of them have made the trip
from Mexico to be with us today, and I would like them to stand and
be acknowledged in a special welcome from The Library of Congress. [applause] >> JOHN COLE: So, we have live
participatory history going on today, and part of my remarks
are going to be aimed at the family, as well as some of our other
special guests, but we also, through the Murray family, have
a special Daniel Murray project that I'd like you to learn
about before those of you who don't know the full story
of Danial Murray get immersed in Elizabeth's wonderful
talk and book. So, I'm hoping that Darren Jones ... Darren, where are you? ... is right here, will
tell you a little bit about The Danial Murray Association and especially the special
project, The Bench by the Road. Let's give Darren and The
Murray Association a hand. [applause] >> DARREN JONES: Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. >> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. >> DARREN JONES: My
name is Darren Jones. I am the program director for The Daniel A.P. Murray African
American Cultural Association. On behalf of the association and
our president, Larry Sarratt, and our board members ... Raise your hand, board members. ... I want to thank you
for being here today, and we have about 150 members of
The Daniel Murray Association. Let me see the hands of
the members in the room, so everybody can see you. Thank you for coming today. Well, we have a special honor coming
up for Mr. Murray on April the 28th. The Toni Morrison Society is
placing 20 benches around the world as historical markers for
African Americans and culture. The Daniel Murray Society
has been chosen as one of those places that
will get a marker. Now, let me just tell you,
it was a long process. About two years ago Iris Taylor
went and talked with the people at the Toni Morrison Society. We had to go to the Congress to get
the Congress to come to The Library of Congress and The Architect of
the Capitol, because we were told that they don't place benches in
someone's name on Capitol Hill. So, we had to go through the
Congress to get the library and The Architect of the Capitol to
agree that we can place a bench here at The Library of Congress
in honor of Daniel Murray. [applause] >> DARREN JONES: So, that
project is almost complete. We're still raising money. We have to pay $5,000 for the
bench, and we're also going to have a celebration, so we're
raising money for that celebration. And I'm being told something else, but I don't remember
exactly what that is. We are going to be having
the presentation on the 28th, which is a Friday, the
last Friday in April. And so, we hope you all
can join us at that time. It will be a marker to
celebrate the life and legacy of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray. I want to thank Mr. Cole for
allowing me to get up here today, and I hope that you all
can join us at that time. Thank you. [applause] >> JOHN COLE: We're
squeezing a few more members of the family in, but
we're doing it. I first learned about Daniel Murray
back when I was a young librarian, before even The Center for the Book
was created, which was 39 years ago. I was a collections librarian,
and I was assigned to work on a collection called The
Colored Author Collection, that had many labels called Colored
Author across the front of them, but The Library of Congress
had decided to do some things about this collection
that were all good. Part of it was to put them
into the general collections. Part of it was to sort out the
valuable pamphlets that were going to be part of the Rare
Book Division. And I had a partner, her name was
Dorothy Porter, who was the director of The Howard Library, and she
helped me on this, and we sorted. Many of the duplicates in
some of the special books from the Daniel Murray Collection,
that was left to the library after Mr. Murray died,
were that way made part of the library's permanent
collections. And I wrote an article
about it, and it was one of the first articles I ever wrote. It was in 1978. And guess what? 37 years later, now, I have found
myself writing another article about Daniel Murray and I have
learned so much about him and much of what I have learned really
comes from this wonderful book that we're going to hear more
about today from the author. But, I must say that I've never
forgotten what really struck me about Mr. Murray was his passion
about the importance of literature and the way that literature
and the literature of African Americans could tell
their story in a permanent fashion. He devoted his life, as you
will hear, to this was one of the several projects
he was involved in, that it was his passion. The books and the love of literature
that he's left behind is now part of his legacy at The
Library of Congress, not just through the collections
that I've worked on, and many, many others have worked on,
but also through the work of The Murray Association, which
is carrying this tradition. Now, I first met our author,
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, Beth Taylor, a couple of decades
ago when she was the Director of Interpretation at Thomas
Jefferson's Monticello. Beth, who holds a PhD from
the University of California at Berkeley, has spent more than
20 years in museum education and research, including not only
Monticello, but also as Director of Education at James
Madison's Montpelier. Her museum experience and her
great experience as a researcher, and her writing skills led
naturally to now a career as an independent scholar
who's turning out wonderful books
on important subjects. Her first book, "A Slave in
the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons," which
was published in 2012, was a New York Times best seller
and a National Book Award nominee. It also brought her to
The Library of Congress for the first talk about her book. And at the same time it
brought her to The Library of Congress National Book
Festival to talk about the book. She is now back, and
we are just delighted. She is now also, among her other
lives, a lecturer and fellow at The Virginia Foundation for
the Humanities, which I must say, to plug The Center for the Book,
is the home for The Virginia Center for the Book, so our lives
come together in many ways. Today The Library of
Congress is very pleased to help her launch this new
and very important history, a book about Daniel Murray and his
remarkable family, but yes, also, as she herself describes it, it's a book about America's
original black elite in what has now become a
forgotten era in American History. Thank you, Beth, for reintroducing
this era now in another period of our history and to another
generation that has so much to learn from the story that
you so skillfully tell. May I present Elizabeth
Dowling Taylor. Thank you. [applause] >> ELIZABETH D. TAYLOR:
Good afternoon. >> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. >> ELIZABETH D. TAYLOR:
I'd like to thank Pam. I'd like to thank John. I'd like to thank The
Center for the Book. I'd like to thank The
Murray Association. I'm hoping you'll make
me an honorary member. And in general, there are many staff
members at The Library of Congress to whom I owe a debt for their
help with my research here. And indeed it was when I was
researching my first book on Paul Jennings, James
Madison's enslaved man servant, that I stumbled across
Daniel Murray. Daniel Murray, one of his first
contributions to The Library of Congress, and he was an assistant
librarian of Congress at a time when such professional appointments
for black men were rare, and he started by putting
together a list of 27, excuse me, 270 titles by African
American authors. And one of them was the
memoir by Paul Jennings, which The White House
Historical Association considers to be the first memoir of life behind the
scenes in the White House. Precious few copies of it had
been made, and I would maintain that if it was not for
the save by Daniel Murray, and this wasn't the only important
memoir or other notable works, that it would have been lost
to obscurity all together. My book is a biography
of Daniel Murray, pioneer in the Black History
Movement, major race activist, model civic citizen,
and prominent member of Washington D.C.'s black elite. But it is also the story
of a larger narrative, and that is the remarkable
rise and disastrous decline of African American
prospects over the span of Murray's lifetime, 1851 to 1925. The rise of prospects
for African Americans after emancipation brought,
as one ex-slave put it, "a glorious harvest of good things." In particular, the 14th
and 15th amendments to The United States Constitution,
which granted Americans of every color all rights,
including the right to vote. But later the federal government,
in the name of reconciliation with the former Confederate states,
brought about a early abandonment of Reconstruction and ushered
in a denial of the rights of African Americans that were
embedded in that very Constitution. There was renewal in the south of
oppression of African Americans that included stigmatization,
discrimination, segregation, intimidation, terror. Now, I have long been a student of
slavery, given my work at Monticello and Montpelier, and I know how
important it is, how central it is to understanding American history. But I was a little bit slower in
understanding that that period between emancipation and the modern
civil rights era is just as central. Sometimes you mention the word
Reconstruction to Americans and they're not sure if that
was a good thing or a bad thing. And I'm going to share with
you a personal anecdote about my own ignorance prior to
my intensive study of this era. I had a picture, a picture in my
head of African American legislators in the halls of Congress
looking like buffoonish rubes with hay seeds in their teeth. I, as part of my research
for this current book, as difficult as it was,
watched The Birth of a Nation, the original 1950 movie
by D.W. Griffith. It was the second time
I was watching it. I recall that I had watched it in
high school in a humanities class. No discussion about the content. The whole point was to
discuss Griffith's innovative film techniques. And when I watched it this time
there was a particular screen shot and there it was, shabbily
dressed African Americans in the legislative chamber, one of
them with bare feet up on a desk, looking enormous and close up, and in the background
was his colleague gnawing on an enormous chicken leg. That was my picture. That was the picture in my head. And it shows you how strong
popular culture can be, especially visual images. And indeed this movie captivated
the American public and put in their heads lots of false
images that were not countered by our schooling, because of
the inaccuracy of our schooling in presenting these
parts of our history. So, to be sure, there were
23 African American gentlemen who served in the halls of
Congress and in the Senate, and they did so with distinction. So, yes, Reconstruction
was a good thing. It ended too early. What followed was a bad thing, and
that of course was the Jim Crow era. Again, African Americans were
abandoned by the federal government and allowed to be virtually
re-enslaved by white supremacists. Now, we have to recognize all of
our history, own all of our history, including the chapters
that we're ashamed of. And only then can we do a better
job of considering the solutions to the legacies of these shameful
chapters, if we have a full picture. Now, in telling my story of
rise and reversal, I wanted, from the beginning, to personalize
it in the lived experience of one man and his family. I chose Daniel Murray and his
family, because I admire him and because as it turned out
he was even a better choice than I realized initially. And that is because his
arc fit the overall arc of the narrative almost perfectly. I also chose to focus on the
black elite for two reasons. One was to underscore
the heterogeneity of the African American experience. In our own time, we hear common
reference to a phrase that's one of my pet peeves, "the
black community," as if 42 million Americans formed
an indistinguishable block. African Americans are certainly
not a monolithic group today, but nor were they even in the
time before the Civil War. The second reason that I focused on
the black elite is because they put in highest relief, the absurdity
of the notion of white supremacy. They were not works in progress. They had achieved high
levels of education, accomplishment, gentility. They were prosperous. They were doctors. They were lawyers. They were businessmen. They were entrepreneurs. They were district or federal
office clerks or held higher titles. So, they gave the lie to the
contention by white supremacists that black Americans were incapable of contributing to
mainstream society. Now, Daniel Murray was born in Washington's sister
city of Baltimore. And he came here at about
age 18, after the Civil War. One of his half siblings who
lived here was a caterer, and at the time he was
the proprietor of one of the two restaurants in the
United States Capitol Building. Now, in The Capitol Building
there was a restaurant on the Congressional side
and on the Senate side. And on the main floor of The
Capitol was The Library of Congress. That's where it got its start,
and that is where it remained until 1897, when it moved over
to the dedicated new structure that we now know as
The Jefferson Building. So, Danial Murray worked
as a waiter for his brother in the Senate restaurant. And there, even as a waiter, he
rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty, including not only
law makers, but the librarian of Congress, Ainsworth Spofford. Spofford came to think
highly of Murray, and he took him under his wing. He hired him into the library. Murray Started there
in 1871 when he was 19. And you know, as I was just in
the cab coming here today I, for the first time, figured
out, did the math to figure out Murray was an employee at The
Library of Congress for 52 years, and it just turns out that he spent
26 in the Capitol Building and 26 in The Jefferson Building,
divided equally. Yes. Quite a career, but
we'll get to the sad part. So, he worked in The Library of
Congress, and Spofford trained him in the librarian's trade,
but in other ways too, including teaching him how to make
research inquiries, and gather data, and encouraged him
to pursue languages. They were very close. Spofford was a true mentor to
Murray, and he advanced him readily. He got the title of Assistant
Librarian of Congress, and he was indeed Spofford's
personal assistant. Well, that was all well and
good, but Murray never relied, thank goodness, on his Library
of Congress salary alone, and many in the black elite
had a second stream of income. In Murray's case he was a real
estate and building entrepreneur. He was also very active in civic
life, and I mean for decade, after decade, after decade. He was the first African
American to be elected to The influential Board of Trade. He also married well. You know, the black elite in Washington was a very
exclusive group, make no mistake, and you had to have a certain
package of qualities to be admitted. Most were light skinned. Most had money, but
neither one of those alone, or even the two combined,
would be enough. The more important question
was who are your people? Are you already related to established members
of the black elite? Do you hail from a family line with notable Civil War
heroes or abolitionists? Well, Anna Evans did,
and in abundance. She was from the abolitionist
town of Oberlin, Ohio and she had attended Oberlin
College before her family moved to Washington D.C. And she was
from a long line of abolitionists. Two of her relatives were two of the
young men who sacrificed their lives as two of John Brown's
raiders at Harper's Ferry. Another one of her
relatives was Hiram Revels, and he was the first
black citizen to serve in either house of Congress. So, this was a great match. Daniel Murray and Anna
Murray were married in 1789. Thank you. You're listening very well. Married in 1879. They had built for themselves an
opulent house, especially in terms of interior design, in
Northwest Washington on S Street. Murray was the first African
American to live in that block. He integrated that block, and there
were other black families to follow. Now, there was a time for the
black elite in Washington, and for African Americans at large, where everything was going
swimmingly- the period from 1865 to 1875, so the passage of the
13th, 14th, 15th amendments, and also any number of
civil rights measures, culminating in the Civil Rights
Act of 1875, which granted access, regardless of color, to
all public facilities. Now, I'm not saying
that color prejudice in Washington ever
went away all together. Of course it did not, but there was
a definite trend in that direction, to the point where incidents of
discrimination would be called out as bucking that trend. Murray and his cohorts were
primed to think of themselves as Americans first, people of
color second, no apology for color. They were ready. It was the logical next step to
assimilate into society at large. Nobody knew that that
Civil Rights Act of 1975 would be the last
civil rights bill passed by Congress for 80 years. As W.E.B. DuBois later
lamented, "The slave went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun,
then turned back towards slavery." Now, historians will
tell you that the end of Reconstruction was
the election of 1876. Rutherford B. Hayes was able to
assume the presidency the next year, this was a contested election. But Democrats conceded a series of
electoral votes if Hayes promised, which he did, to remove the last
of the federal troops in the south that were enforcing
Reconstruction commitments. Now, I would say that was
the beginning of the end. Sure enough, changes came swiftly
for African Americans in the south, but for Murray and other
members of the black elite in Washington it was
a slower process, and it was a staggered progress. It took them until the decade
of the 1890s to face the fact that there was a backward
slide, that it was real, and that they were not to
be considered exceptions, regardless of their accomplishments
and their refinements. When the rug was pulled out from
under all African Americans, those in the black elite
only had further to fall. More and more the only
thing that was important was that one fatal drop
of African blood. In Washington with
each passing year, there was more segregation
and more discrimination. In 1897 Murray faced a
case of personal reversal. I have talked about
how well his career at The Library of Congress
was going. Well, this was until the change
in sentiment in Washington as more southern racists were coming
with their rabid brand of racism to Washington, and
those black congressmen and senators were being replaced by
southern, shall we say, colleagues. Probably not a good word. Murray lost the support
of Ainsworth Spofford after he was no longer
the Librarian of Congress. He stayed on as Chief
Assistant Librarian. It had been he who had
conceived of the whole need for a dedicated library building,
because the books were overflowing to the max in the spaces
they had in the Capitol. There had to be a great
increase in staff, and there had to be a new
organization of staff. And initially Murray was
chosen to be the chief of the new division of periodicals. But, after Spofford could not
support him the new librarian of Congress enacted a
reorganization that demoted Murray from his high position and sent
his salary flying backwards, not just to what he had been
making before he got a raise along with a new title, but to what he had
been making maybe a decade before. And I'll say now, his salary
never rose again for the remainder of his quarter century service
to The Library of Congress. Now, what was the problem
with Murray being head of the Periodicals Division? White men, about three white men, had to report to Murray,
white underlings. That would not do. Now, I'm happy to insert
here that today we are all, and Daniel Murray would be
thrilled to know, that the Librarian of Congress is an African American
to whom all 3,000 and some Library of Congress employees report to. He might question that it was a
woman, but he'd be happy to know that it was an African American. [laughter] Now, the [inaudible] came with the administration
of Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was southern bred,
as were many members of his cabinet, and it was their idea,
for the first time, that federal offices should be
segregated according to color. African Americans worked
in screened off areas. They had to use "colored
only" toilets. Same thing with their lunch room. This extended, sad to say,
to The Library of Congress. One day Murray finds out
there's a separate cloak room for black men only, and in the lunch
room there's a sequestered area for African American employees. In the public cafeteria,
well, not public after all, because neither visitors nor
employees of color are welcome to eat in the public cafeteria. Now, what the people in the
black elite found out is that, as I've indicated, they were to
be segregated and stigmatized with the rest of the race,
but they were not going to take these changes laying down. They weren't going to sit back
and wait on white largess. They got organized and in 1898 the
first truly national civil rights organization in America was formed,
The National Afro-American Council. And Daniel Murray served on
the first executive committee and was the chief of its
legal and legislative bureau. And he and they worked very hard
on a host of issues, anti-lynching, anti-Jim Crow, and
perhaps most notably, they were the first civil
rights organization to challenge in the court system the maneuvering
that the southern states had done to get around the right to vote that
every black American was guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Now, I'm sure that many of you
are not familiar with the NAAC. You've heard about
The Niagara Movement. Of course we all know
about the NAACP, but as historian Rayford
Logan has pointed out, The National Afro-American Council
has not gotten the credit it deserves as the primary precursor
of these other organizations. The membership was much greater
and it lasted much longer than The Niagara Movement certainly. And the NAACP, when they
put together their goals, their approach, their strategies,
especially the idea of fight it out in the courts- that
all came from the NAAC that Murray was so involved with. But there was an even stronger
political stance that he took, passionist, as John
called it earlier. That was the belief that
scholarship can be put to the cause of Negro protest. So, Murray's goal, Murray said that prejudice is the
handmaiden of ignorance. Now, he had started out
with this list of 270 works by African American authors. Well, believe me, that
was only the beginning. The man become obsessive
about carrying out this work. He was allowed to work in it,
if he had a time here and there at The library of Congress, but
most of it he did in his own time. And it just, it mushroomed,
and he moved on. He always continued
with the bibliography, but he moved onto biography as well. Then he moved on from African
Americans to Euro-Africans as well, and he moved from literature and
the polite arts to all fields of endeavor, and then
to, as he would put it, the colored race throughout
the world. And in the end, and he had
mountains and mountains of sketches, 25,000 biographical sketches. In the end his goal was to produce
a six volume, 800 pages each, what he called "Murray's Historical
and Biographical Encyclopedia of the Colored Race
Throughout the World." This was his grand vision. This was his opus. Well, sad to say that he never
did get to see it published. There was no publisher willing to
underwrite an endeavor like that. Carter Woodson, he tried too. W.E.B. DuBois, he tried too. And it wasn't until the last century
of the 20th century, the last year, excuse me, of the 20th century that an Encyclopedia
Africana saw printer's ink. Now, I am happy to say, and despite
that little dig I had at Murray about women earlier, because
you know it's true that men at the time were loath to give
women the intellectual credit they give themselves. But on the other hand, Anna
Murray was an activist too, a race activist. Her husband was very
supportive of what she did. They were like a power couple,
the way that Mary Church Terrell and Robert Terrell
were, for example. Some of you may be
familiar with that couple. Well, Anna's thing was early
childhood intervention. You know, Murray said, "The true
test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature,"
while Anna maintained that it was in the home that indicates any
substantial progress of a race. And her idea was that if you can't
have proper upbringing in the home, as believe me, the black elite were
careful to do with their children, very carefully cultivated. If that can't always be
the case in the home, then the next best thing
is the kindergarten. And Anna Murray is the mother
of public kindergartens in Washington D.C. And this would be
both for white and for black pupils. She became, you know as
time went by her interest in kindergartens became more
overtly part of the cause. And she identified early
childhood intervention as one of the solutions to
the race problem. And she went all over the country as
a race speaker, very well received. She was quite an orator. And she always, I must say,
presented a striking appearance, because there was a strong genetic
tradition in the Evans' family to have premature white hair. And so, here she was at a very
young age, still in her 20s, and she had this beautiful
white hair. She was tall and slender. And very many descriptions of her
are available, because she made such a striking appearance. But as I say, for all of this action
there wasn't any real progress. That's one of the reasons
why I admire Murray and Anna for their civic service on
race issues and other issues is because it is frustrating. They waded in and they stayed in
the water, and they stayed there, and kept fighting decade
after decade. And the black elite, they
certainly were disillusioned. Many found that their jobs were lost
or stalled, as Daniel Murray did, that their incomes were
decimated or irregular. They were denied access
to public facilities. They faced humiliation and
disrespect on a daily basis. And most importantly of
all, they lost the prize. Washingtonians, as well as
southern blacks, lost the vote. Now, I'd like to turn
to the next generation. You know, the Murrays
had seven children. There were six sons
and one daughter. Two, a son and a daughter,
died as little children. And they were buried
in a park like setting in an interracial cemetery
in Washington. Later it was deemed that that
cemetery was a health hazard, and Murray had to exhume the
bodies of his little children, could find no other interracial
cemetery that would accept them, tried 30 different places. And they ended up having to go to
a new cemetery, which especially at that point was described as
nothing more than a potter's field, although it's the cemetery where eventually all the Murray
family members were buried and so were many other leading
members of the black elite, like Blanche Bruce or
John Mercer Langston. And I'm referring to
Woodlawn Cemetery. It was especially ghoulish
with the little girl, Helene. She had died of diphtheria, and
so her body had to be drenched in a solution of chloride of lime
before it could be reinterred. Now, there were five remaining sons. We all think of the American dream. One aspect of it is that one wants to see one's children do
better than one's self. Well, this was not to be. If that's true, then the Murray
generation and the generations with his sons had much to
be disillusioned about. His sons went to top colleges. All five have college degrees. One went to Harvard. Three of them went to Cornell. Of course at these schools
discrimination was showing its ugly head. The generation before, an African
American could go to Cornell or go to Harvard, and
there wasn't any discussion about separate dormitories. But now the schools would tell
you, in deference to students from the south, who found having
to room with blacks odious, all of a sudden there was. Moreover, if you got through
the experience, nevertheless ... I want to mention, as a side, that
one of Murray's sons, his son, Nathaniel, was one of
the six African Americans at Cornell University that founded
the first black college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. And that of course was a way
to get around the isolation and to bond and support one another. But, when they finished with
their college education they found that the job pickings
were slim to none, that there were very few career
opportunities open to them. And that's why Murray's
sons, Nathaniel and Henry, spent their working lives in the colored public
school system in Washington. Some of you may be
surprised to know, some of you may well already
know this, that at the time that we're referring to,
the colored school system, the public colored school system
in Washington was par excellante, all the way up to the capstone, which of course would
be Howard University. A good reason for why that
was so was because there were so many shall we say over-educated
black men and women who found such career opportunities so limited
in range that so many of them, even with PhDs, ended up working
in the public school system. Now, Harold had great job success,
but he had to go to another country to find it, namely Mexico. Some of you who know Washington
history may well be familiar with Lillian Evans-Tibbs, known
professionally as Madam Evanti. She was a well-known opera singer. Well, what you might not know is
that she was Anna Murray's niece, and she faced the same
kind of prospects. She had to go to Europe to
have more career opportunity. She had a life's goal of singing
with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City, but because of
her color, that was never allowed. Only two of Daniel and Anna
Murray's sons had children. One had two children, and
Harold had 10 children. You shouldn't be too surprised
that all of the Murray descendants that are with us today are
descendants of Harold Murray. I'm honored. We're all honored. Your ancestors would be thrilled to
know that you made the great effort to make the trip here
today to honor his memory and Anna's memory as well. Well, in closing, I have
a fair amount to say about what this book can show us. It's a cautionary tale. There's no mistake about that. Most Americans cherish our
founding ideals, individual rights, equal treatment under the
law, religious liberty. We like to think these ideals
were not always honored. We have shameful chapters
in our past. And to my mind the only way we can
redeem ourselves as a nation is to honor those ideals in the future,
even in times of hyped up fear. We like to believe that there's
a American master narrative and that it's one of
increasing freedoms over time. This story gives the lie to that. The American master narrative
is not unidirectional, and it can reverse
direction again at any time. I think the most extreme time that
it's happened in our past is the one that I've just described. And here was a case where
the Constitution spoke loud and clear, but was discounted. Moreover, we like to think
of our nation as first and foremost, a country of laws. But not only the southern
governments, but the United States government
turned their backs on crime as serious as arson and lynching. So, yes. I think it's
a cautionary tale. Today we struggle with the elements
of wanting our individual rights, but worrying about
increased security. And we have to be very careful how
much of the latter we're willing to give up to fortify the former. And in this current political
climate we need to worry about the ideas that
are floating out there. Some Americans are more
real Americans than others. The very concept of
religious liberty, one religion being
favored over another. If religious liberty doesn't exist for all sects, then
it doesn't exist. This idea that profiling, whether
it be African Americans, or Muslims, or Arab looking people- the
problem isn't that we just have to stop describing it
as politically correct. It's not politically correct. It's just correct. So, I would wonder if we
shouldn't move from a state of caution to a state of action. Rights won must be rights guarded. Our founders understood that. For self-representative government
to succeed, it takes a free press, and it takes a vigilant
and informed citizenry. Rights won must be rights
guarded, or else, as in this case, they will need to be rights re-won. And it was a slow and torturous
climb back up for African Americans. I told you there's no
happy ending to this story, but I would maybe close
by echoing the words of Congressman John
Lewis, "Get in the way. Get in trouble, good trouble." Thank you so much. [applause] >>JOHN COLE: We are squeezed
for time, so Elizabeth, she's going to answer 3 questions. So let's have, does somebody
have a question for her? In the back. Yes sir? >>AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible) >>ELIZABETH: Yes, I
was asked to expand on Daniel Murray's business career. You know, he was well to do. In fact, he was one of the most well to do black Americans
in Washington for sure. And as I mentioned, he never relied
on his Library of Congress salary and instead he was very savvy
in acquiring real estate. And you look at the original black
leader in Washington- we're talking about what some of you would
be familiar names like Cooke and Syfax and Brent and Wormley. These were people who
were here early. They had a leg up and that
included the opportunity to buy land that later became prime real estate. Murray came here right after the war
and he had those early pickings too. He also invested in
stocks and bonds. He had numerous houses. He was both a building entrepreneur. He hired 50 black men
at any one time. And his father in law and his
mother was his construction foremen and he built way well over
100 structures in Washington- sometime these were houses for
friends like Pinckney Pinchback. Sometimes they were spec houses. In one case, he built three
houses near Logan Circle. One for himself and two to rent. In the end, once he built
his house on S Street, he rented all three of those. He also had properties in Maryland. So, he was a savvy investor
and given the stall that he had in salary at the Library of
Congress, that served him well. >>AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible) >>ELIZABETH: Well, I'm going to
talk a little bit more about Murray and his cohorts and their
efforts to make change- both politically and otherwise. I do want to mention first, his
association with the Board of Trade. That was a very influential body
given the government in Washington. And Murray, as I think I mentioned, was the first African American
elected to the Board of Trade and did you know that the
number of blacks increased, but it never kept pace
with the overall increase of numbers on the Board of Trade. And then there were fewer
and fewer African Americans- not only proportionally, but Daniel
Murray was part of that Board of Trade until he died in 1925. I think he may well again of
been the only African American on the Board of Trade
at the end of his life. Well, there were two issues that he
was compassionate about and worked on the Board of Trade and got to see
ultimately after decades of effort, success with both of them. One was to establish in Washington,
manual trade high schools. Manual education I call it, I should
say because Murray was very sure that this wasn't about
training for trades, this was about acquiring
an employing both the head and the hands to understand
drawings and to be able to manufacture something
from you know, two dimensions to three dimensions and so on. And eventually, he and the
other members of the Board of Trade were able to see two
such high schools established in Washington and one for
white pupils and Armstrong for black pupils and Anna's
brother, Bruce Evans was principal of Armstrong for many years. And the other was, to
establish in Washington, a free public library open to all. The Library of Congress books
don't circulate there of course and at this time they
didn't have extended hours. So, that was very important and
that eventually was realized with what was initially called the
Carnegie Library Mount Vernon Square and of course lead directly to
the Marlin Luther King Jr Library. So, those were two, those were
two elements that he worked on that he could see
through to fruition. There were so many
others that he did not. You know, the National
Afro-American Council- some of the people involved
included T. Thomas Fortune, He was really the instigator. Along with Bishop Alexander Walters
who was the President for so long. And Murray interestingly
enough, he's not a lawyer. He was chosen to be the head of
the legal and legislative bureau. And part of the reason for that
is, over his time in the Library of Congress and at one point he had
been assigned to the law library, he had not only a self-taught
thorough grounding in law, but he gained much experience
writing legislation and he, you know, whether it be with African
American supporters or whether it be with white congressmen and
senators and he knew how to network, there were many cases where
legislation that was presented by a congressman or a senator was
in fact written by Daniel Murray, including the whole e
tax plan for Washington, DC- a change in the structure which
was another Board of Trade activity. But, again and again
Washingtonians had to fight against Jim Crow cars
coming into the city. They had bird-dogged
that issue because over and over again it would come up. You know his, another
active participant in the NAAC was George White and he introduced the first
anti-lynching legislation and then there was one after another
all the way into the 1920's and none of them ever got through. Now, what Murray worked really
hard on was in Louisiana, there was a grandfather's clause,
was part of their new constitution which was a way to suppress,
almost entirely the black vote. In their constitution called
for a literacy requirement. But, they said that if anyone
was the descendent of the man who could vote in 1865,
then they were exempt. They were grandfathered out. Well, that was, I mean obviously,
that's such an obvious way of getting around the intent of
the 15th amendment and Murray and the other officers in the
NAAC, took this on and as I say, it was the first time that a national civil rights
organizations said let's fight it out in the course. They didn't get as far as the
Supreme Court on a technicality, but they certainly
lead the groundwork for that approach in the future. >> PAM JACKSON: So we actually
said 3 questions and we are going to change our mind
and keep it to two. >>I'm sorry, I blabbered
on too long. >> PAM JACKSON: And, it is
with very deep appreciation that we have you here and that
you've shared the knowledge that you've shared. First of all, you talk
with no notes. My gosh, the entire time. It was really awesome, but I think
that one of the things that I'd like to emphasize here is how much
we care about reading and writing- not just because we do it,
but because we get to share it in the way you shared today
and make it come alive and make it real for us. I feel now personally mentored
by Daniel Murray from this talk- even more so from the words
on the page although the words on the page are absolutely
exquisite too. So, first of all, if you
haven't bought this, go buy it. It's outside and there'll
be book signing. Elizabeth is generous enough to
stay with us for a little while for book signing outside
shortly, so make sure you do that. Again, on behalf of the Center
for the Book and on behalf of the Librarian of Congress,
Carla Hayden, I thank you for being with us and joining us
today in partnership with the Daniel A. P. Murray
Association who has a special gift for the family which is this "Black
Americans in Congress" book - they have a copy for each of the family members
who are with us today. [applause] >>Thank you. And we want to very much
honor and celebrate you. Your heritage, your
gift, your families gift. The gift that Daniel
Murray is to us is huge. We can all take away from this talk, however much we knew before
we came into the room. We certainly had an
opportunity to take away from the room a very special
incentive to take action. So, thank you very much
for joining us today. Thank you for your attention. Take care and have
a great afternoon. [applause] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc dot gov.
