American History – June 2019

(John Hannent) #1

56 AMERICAN HISTORY


white resistance: “If character, reputation, manly accom-


plishments, the heights reached, the palm won, still find any


black hero a `marked man,’ because of no fault of his own,


and church and society, home and club, united in thus ostra-


cizing him and his children, then is it not demonstrated that


it is not the Black but the White Problem, which needs most


serious attention in this country?”


Greener was speaking and writing from painful experience.


His multiple degrees and many achievements had been no


guarantors of income. His support of causes as diverse as


Irish independence and women’s suffrage put him at odds


with the more cautious Booker T. Washington, who seemed


never to support Greener and who in fact may have under-


mined the other man’s opportunities.


Greener’s constant struggle to support his family figured in


his and his wife’s 1897 separation. Their children remained


with her; he announced he would support them only to age



  1. In 1898, in another first for his race, Richard Greener


accepted a position as a U.S. government commercial agent.


He was stationed at Vladivostok, Siberia.


Around the time her father was moving out of the family


home, college student Belle was, with her siblings and


mother, living in Manhattan on West 99th Street, a white


neighborhood, shortening the family name, and, in the


1890/1900 census, identifying as white—a declaration that


may have been easier in New York City, whose population at


the time was less than 2 percent black. In this switch, the


Greeners/Greenes were not alone in the United States.


Between 1910 and 1920, 400,000 Americans of mixed racial


background nationwide disappeared from census rolls.


In Russia, Greener began a second family with a Japanese


woman. Explanations vary as to why he returned to the


United States in 1905, according to Katharine Reynolds


Chaddock, author of the only Greener biography, 2017’s


Uncompromising Activist. The formerly high-profile figure,


likely isolated by education and personal intensity, now had


less interest in activism, although he offered to mediate


between Booker T. Washington’s accommodationists and a


harder-line wing led by W.E.B. DuBois. Greener helped draft


the 1909 statement that led to the establishment of the


National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo-


ple. “I have never aspired to be a leader,” the frequent pio-


neer said. “I still believe and preach the doctrine that each


man who raises himself elevates the race.”


Greener spent his final years living near the University of


Chicago with three female cousins and working as a lawyer,


lecturer, and newspaper essayist. He died in 1922 at age 78,


his reputation gradually dimmed until 2014, when a cache of


his diplomas and business documents turned up in an attic in


one of the poorest neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side.


Harvard and the University of South Carolina acquired the


materials and subsequently honored him—Harvard with a


portrait in the Annenberg Library, the University of South


Carolina with a nine-foot bronze likeness outside one of the


campus libraries. None of the papers sheds light on Greener’s


remove from his family with Genevieve.


Belle Greene burned her personal papers. She retired from


the Morgan Library in 1948 but kept her hand in with regular


Bibliophilia Goes Big


Morgan spared no expense


in acquiring or housing his


collections of books and


related artifacts.


Little John


Morgan fils left it to


Greene to run and expand


his late father’s library.


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