09 Mar Graham Bell to Teddy Roosevelt: Protect blacks in Cape Breton

Posted at 00:24h in Canadian Politics, Civil Liberties, Nova Scotia Politics, Technology, U.S. Politics by

TheAtlantic.com’s tech columnist Alexis Madrigal marked the 135th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s US patent for the telephone by reproducing a doodle-like drawing of the device Bell submitted with his patent application:

Bell-sketch-550

That’s a fragment; see the whole diagram here.

Madrigal found the image among Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, which are stored at the Library of Congress and available online in a searchable database. Naturally, that set Contrarian searching for terms like “Telegraph House” (9 hits), “Beinn Bhreagh” (100), “Ross Ferry” and “Kempt Head” (zip and zip). A search for “Sydney” produced 47 hits, including this remarkable letter to then-US President Theodore Roosevelt:

Bell Letter-650

Charles Thompson was a longtime employee of Bell’s, described by biographer Robert Bruce as the absent-minded Bell’s “chief proxy in coping with the gritty details of domestic life.” According to Baddeck historian Jocelyn Bethune, he had come into the Bells’ employ in January, 1887, when a fire damaged the third storey of the family’s Washington home. Bell’s papers suffered water damage, and the 18-year-old Thompson was one of several residents of a nearby boarding house hired by a housekeeper to help clean up the mess. He was smart, and he proved adept at deciphering Bell’s scrawled handwriting, and this led to a permanent position.

Royal Hotel-300Thompson became a frequent seasonal visitor to Baddeck, and owned property in Sydney. On a visit there in late November, 1904, he and his wife tried to check into the Grand Hotel, but were turned away. In a severe downpour, they tried the The Queen, The Windsor, The Sydney, and possibly one other, but were turned away every time. Finally—and by now soaking wet—they were accommodated at The Royal, ironically, the only one of the group that survives 106 years later.

Returning to Baddeck with a bad cold, Thompson wrote the Sydney Post a letter describing his treatment. The paper published it November 28, under the headline, “Color Line Under the British Flag.”

Bell’s entourage, and his Baddeck social circle, were outraged. The inventor wrote a letter of protest to Sydney’s US Consul, a Mr. M.E. West, as well as President Roosevelt.

I know Mr. Thompson very well as he has been in my employment for about twenty years, if not more. He is an upright, conscientious man in whom I have the highest confidence. He has traveled with me in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy and Great Britain, as well as in Japan and the Hawaiian Islands, and never outside of his own country has he been discriminated against on account of his color except in Sydney, Cape Breton Island &mdash at least so far as I know.
However one may deplore the existence of the color line in certain parts of the United States, we have hotels there specially for colored people, so that the exclusion of a respectable colored man from a public hotel in our country does not work the hardship it does in Sydney. Exclusion from six of the hotels of Sydney resulted in turning these people out into the cold and wet, during one of the most severe storms of the season without
a place where they could lay their heads. After several hours exposure to the storm they fortunately found at last one hotel — the Royal — where the Proprietor had humanity enough to receive them and give them shelter. Mr. Thompson is now lying ill in my house here as the result of the exposure, and his wife also is far from well.
I propose to call the attention of the State Department in Washington to the necessity of providing protection for colored citizens of the United States in Canada — so as to prevent the possibility of the repetition of another such outrage as this.
There is nothing in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, or in their manners or characters to justify exclusion from any hotel. There is so little of the negro in Mr. Thompson’s appearance that he has often — in foreign countries — been taken for a Japanese, while his wife might well pass for Spanish.
Mr. Thompson… is an upright, conscientious man in whom I have the highest confidence. He has traveled with me in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy and Great Britain, as well as in Japan and the Hawaiian Islands, and never outside of his own country has he been discriminated against on account of his color except in Sydney, Cape Breton Island — at least so far as I know.
However one may deplore the existence of the color line in certain parts of the United States, we have hotels there specially for colored people, so that the exclusion of a respectable colored man from a public hotel in our country does not work the hardship it does in Sydney. Exclusion from six of the hotels of Sydney resulted in turning these people out into the cold and wet, during one of the most severe storms of the season without a place where they could lay their heads. After several hours exposure to the storm they fortunately found at last one hotel — the Royal — where the Proprietor had humanity enough to receive them and give them shelter. Mr. Thompson is now lying ill in my house here as the result of the exposure, and his wife also is far from well.
I propose to call the attention of the State Department in Washington to the necessity of providing protection for colored citizens of the United States in Canada — so as to prevent the possibility of the repetition of another such outrage as this.
There is nothing in the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, or in their manners or characters to justify exclusion from any hotel. There is so little of the negro in Mr. Thompson’s appearance that he has often — in foreign countries — been taken for a Japanese, while his wife might well pass for Spanish.

A committee of Baddeck burghers delivered a letter of profuse apology to Thompson, to which many Baddeck residents added their signatures.

We do not understand why a respectable couple (as we all know you to be) although colored, should be turned away from any Hotel, and we sincerely hope that you and Mrs. Thompson may long be spared to spend many summers on Canadian soil and receive treatment from the hands of the public that a gentleman of your esteem so well deserves.

You can find copies of the original documents, and transcriptions, in the Library of Congress’s Bell collection: Do a search for “Roosevelt” and “Thompson.”

Thanks to Jocelyn Bethune for help sorting out this story. She wrote about the incident in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, during Black History Month of either 1998 or 1999.

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