Cheesy Grits: Excursus: David Mannes and the Music School Settlement for Colored People (Part 2 of 2)

The Music School Settlement for Colored People opened initially as part Lincoln House Settlement sometime around 1911. Given that it initially charged but 25 cents per lesson, it should come as no surprise that it was pressed for funds from the outset. But David Mannes was nothing if not well-connected, and fascinatingly enough, well connected to the African American music community.

And indeed, it was his friend James Reese Europe, conductor of the Clef Club Orchestra (and later of the renowned Fighting 369th "Harlem Hellfighters" Marching Band) who proposed to Mannes that the Clef Club play a benefit concert for the new Music School Settlement. More ambitious still, the venue proposed was nothing less than Carnegie Hall.

Now Reese's Clef Club itself was rather an odd group: while it could be called an orchestra, it was what could be called a "pick-up" orchestra, in other words, a group of freelancers/spare-timers. Given that there were far more musicians in Harlem than venues for them to play, Europe had hit upon the idea of simply gathering them together to play whenever and wherever. It was as much a matter of the opportunity to keep their musical chops in shape as it was to play for a paying audience.

Cheesy Grits: Excursus: David Mannes and the Music School Settlement for Colored People (Part 1 of 2)

We know of David Mannes today mainly through his New York City namesake, the Mannes School of Music, which is now affiliated with the New School. Mannes himself was born in New York City in 1866 to Polish immigrant parents. He began violin lessons at an early age and joined the New York Symphony in 1891. He became concertmaster of the New York Symphony in 1898.

Because Mannes was himself the child of immigrants, he never lost sight of the plight of those who had arrived here in the U.S. with little or nothing and who worked in sweatshops so that their children might have better. He decided to cut back on touring so that he could devote more time to providing music lessons for these immigrant children. After a time of involvement with the University Settlement music school, he purchased two houses on E. Third Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side and formed the beginnings of the Third Street Music School Settlement, as a branch of the Henry Street Settlement. His Third Street School is still in operation today.

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston has many irons in many fires

The period from 1919-1924 appears to have been an extremely busy time in Granddad Ralston's life. He had just taken on the job of director of the phys. ed. program at the new Boys' Welfare Association in Harlem. He and his wife Audrey had just begun their family, starting with Jane's mother, Audrey in 1918, adding young Myrtle Renee in 1920, followed by Vera in 1922. And, it appears, he was also deeply involved in the sports programs at P.S. 89.

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston and the Boys' Welfare Association

Granddad Ralston's reputation as a successful leader, coach and teacher at Lincoln House had spread.  Six months after he and Audrey were married (in 1918), he received a job offer from the YMCA to become physical director at Camp Upton for $125/month, which was at least $25/month more than he was making at Lincoln House. While Camp Upton was a military camp, the War Department had contracted with the YMCA to provide phys. ed. programs for recruits and soldiers passing through Camp Upton, and they wanted Granddad Ralston to lead the program for African Americans.

But, six months after he and Audrey were married, there was also another factor to be considered: Audrey was pregnant with their first child. Given that Camp Upton was out in Sussex County, Long Island, some 60 miles east of Harlem, it's not hard to think of reasons why he might have declined the offer. (There are some inklings in his correspondence with the Henry Street/Lincoln House board that he was having some health problems of his own as well.)

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston: The Changes in a Man's Life

Granddad Ralston was starting to come into his own as a basketball coach at Lincoln House. His teams were the Tigers, the Pioneers, the Bullets, the Cubs, and the Tanks. Teams at this level were ordinarily divided up by both age and weight, but I've not yet seen the specifics for Lincoln House basketball teams.

And his teams won:

"Last evening at St. Cyprian's Gymnasium, the Lincoln House Tanks defeated the St. Cyprian Tanks in a very interesting game by a score of 17 to 4. The visitors led from the start and were never in danger...."

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston at Lincoln House

George Ralston accepted the offer to become the director of the boys' department at Lincoln House Settlement.  His handwritten letter was dated 28 Dec 1915 and was on the letterhead of the St. Philip's Parish House at 215 W. 133rd St. His marching orders were to report to Miss Birdye Haynes at the Lincoln House on W. 63rd St., by 3 Jan 1916. His salary of $60/month was better than an unskilled laborer but at the low end of a trade union member's salary.

In an article dated 13 Jan 1916, the New York Age was already writing about the promise of the boys' program under its new director, George R. Ralston. The brief sketch read:

"For the boys, a director is provided: George R. Ralston, formerly of St. Christopher's basketball team, and identified with the boys' work at St. Philip's Church, has been selected to take charge of this work. He is of DeWitt Clinton High School and was recently awarded a gold medal by the St. Philip's organization for his boys' work. Gymnasium classes for boys are held every afternoon and evening, and a club of boys from 14 to 16 years old holds a meeting every Tuesday evening from 7 to 9...."

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston--Not Just a Job, a Career

The Settlement movement was a progressive social movement begun in England and the United States during the latter part of the XIXth century. The movement was aimed at poor folks in cities, with the thesis being that the nation as a whole would be enriched if all its citizens were able to contribute as fully as possible without being bound by class. The aim was to provide programs and places were the more-privileged were able to share their skills, resources, and abilities with the less-privileged. The locations where these activities were centralized were called "Settlement Houses," with the most famous Settlement House in the U.S. being Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago.

In New York City, the Settlement movement almost immediately focused on the thousands of immigrants arriving New York City through Ellis Island. The Henry Street Settlement was established by Lillian Wald on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 1890s and served many of these new arrivals, helping them to learn English, to care for themselves and each other, and to navigate this new society in which they found themselves.

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston's Amateur Years: St. Christopher

St. Philip's Episcopal, 210 W. 134th St.
New York NY
By Americasroof - Own work, CC
Wikimedia Commons

The St. Christopher Club, or "St. C's" as they were called, was one of the better-established African American athletic clubs in New York City. It was "better-established" because it had the backing of one of Harlem's most prestigious churches, St. Philip's Episcopal, on W. 134th St.

St. Philip's Episcopal is the oldest African American Episcopal congregation in New York City. Formed in 1809 by Free Episcopals of Color* from Trinity Church downtown, their first edifice, built around 1818, was located on Centre Street. In 1886, the church and congregation moved uptown to W. 26th St., where they stayed until 1909, when St. Philip's was one of the leaders of the African American migration to Harlem on the north side of Central Park. (As I noted in an earlier post, even as late as 1910, Harlem was still about 90% white.)

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston's Amateur Years: The Smart Set AC

Brooklyn's Smart Set Athletic Club was founded sometime around 1904, largely to promote a new game that was rapidly gaining ground among urban African Americans: basketball. According to the New York Age, Smart Set fielded its first basketball team in 1905, with their home court being the 14th Regiment Armory in South Slope. (The sport of basketball was introduced to African Americans in 1904 by Washington DC's Edwin Henderson, a physical education instructor who had learned the game as a student at Harvard.)

Smart Set AC was soon joined by other black athletic clubs, including Harlem's St. Christopher Club and Brooklyn's Marathon AC, to form New York's first black basketball league, the Olympian Athletic League,  in 1907. The first recorded game was played on 13 November 1907 between St. Christopher and Marathon at the Knickerbocker Court on Gates Avenue just off Knickerbocker.

Cheesy Grits: Granddad Ralston's Amateur Years: The Beginning

I first thought I would use "Granddad Ralston in Harlem" as a running title for this series, but alert readers, which of course includes all of you, will have already noted that his first documented residence wasn't in Harlem at all: it was on W. 59th Street, a section of Manhattan known as "San Juan Hill." (Harlem itself was still largely white.)

Why "San Juan Hill" was so named remains unclear; what is clear is that it was sort of "Harlem-before-Harlem" insofar as it was a dense cluster of African Americans that also included a great number of recently-arrived-and-arriving Caribbean immigrants. Social conditions were terrible and jobs were few; everybody was scrabbling to make ends meet. And it was here that Granddad Ralston began his career, first as an amateur athlete and then as a professional in the field of physical education.

Cheesy Grits:Granddad Ralston Arrives

Although he was born in 1892 in South Carolina—Charleston, we presume—at some point during the first decade of the XXth century, Granddad George, his mother Valeria/"Valley", and his sister, Myrtle Christina, moved from their home in Savannah (GA) to New York City.

Why did they move? The memoirs of Walter White, the first executive secretary of the NAACP, may provide a clue. The White family lived in Atlanta (GA) just up the road from Savannah. There was a horrible white-instigated riot against African Americans in Atlanta in 1906, during which some 25+ African Americans were killed, and the White family home itself came under threat. Walter White's father gave him a gun and posted him at the front of the house:

"In a very few minutes the vanguard of the mob, some of them bearing torches, appeared. A voice which we recognized as that of the son of the grocer with whom we had traded for many years yelled, “That’s where that nigger mail carrier lives! Let’s burn it down! It’s too nice for a nigger to live in!” In the eerie light Father turned his drawn face toward me. In a voice as quiet as though he were asking me to pass him the sugar at the breakfast table, he said, “Son, don’t shoot until the first man puts his foot on the lawn and then—don’t you miss!”

Cheesy Grits: Granddad George Ralston in Harlem

Greetings once again. I've been wanting for a long time to do a biography of Jane's maternal grandfather, George R. Ralston, because he lived in an interesting place during interesting times and through his work touched so many lives. Most of his professional life was spent in New York City's Harlem. His life was lived not only in geographical Harlem but in cultural Harlem, coming of age professionally as he did during what is called the "Harlem Renaissance."