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."



Conversations about the Harlem Renaissance typical center on the gathering momentum in politics and the arts that was occurring in Harlem starting in the early 1920s. Before then, Harlem had been majority white: in 1910, it was only 10% black but by 1930, it was 70%. Many of the African Americans who came were part of the Great Migration that was fleeing Jim Crow conditions in the South. A significant percentage were also immigrants from the Caribbean.

As the black population grew, Harlem became not only a population center but a cultural center: politics, music, and art were all in the lively mix, in newspapers, on street-corners, and in churches, clubs and auditoriums, making Harlem the cultural capital for African Americans for practically the rest of the century.

Granddad Ralston was in Harlem for this—in fact, when he married, it was the marriage of two major streams feeding Harlem, Granddad Ralston being from the Deep South and his bride being the daughter of immigrants from St. Croix in what was then the Danish West Indies.

But the interesting thing about Granddad's career in Harlem was that it wasn't centered around the politics, music, or art of the Harlem Renaissance. While he clearly knew some of the great names of that period, his field of endeavor was sports. He was an athlete who would become a well-known coach and athletic director whose achievements were regularly not only noted but celebrated in New York's African American press.

While it may be tempting to disparage sports as not being as important as the politics, music, and art of the Harlem Renaissance, Daniel Anderson has written an interesting book entitled The Culture of Sports in the Harlem Renaissance (McFarland: 2017) in which he suggests that sports nevertheless played a key role in the larger cultural expression of the African American experience that took shape during the Harlem Renaissance. While Anderson focuses on Harlem sportswriters, he sets out the broader suggestion: sports was another way for African Americans to excel. Through the promotion of excellence, sports embodied the promise of the recognition of excellence by, and ultimately, integration into the majority white society. And of course, sports provided another way to bring the community together.

We're still working on that promise—but in the meantime, some pieces of Granddad Ralston's life and career.