The Black Angels by Maria Smilios

Author:Maria Smilios [Smilios, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

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Mr. Reiman was standing behind the counter of his hardware store, his pipe dangling from his mouth, when Missouria walked through the pockmarked screen door the next day. She told him about the petition and the agent, and he puffed and listened. Reaching into one of the many drawers, he pulled out a piece of paper and jotted down the name of a lawyer. It was his friend, he explained, who’d helped other nurses in similar situations. But before calling the lawyer, Mr. Reiman wanted her to see another friend, Mr. William A. Morris Sr., president of the Staten Island chapter of the NAACP.

Morris was big and imposing, but his stature belied his disposition. At heart, he was gracious, easygoing, a family man who devoted himself to advocating for nonviolent change. But in his tenderness, there was a fierceness, a fire that recalled Mama Amy’s.

She liked him immediately.

Originally from North Carolina, Morris arrived on Staten Island in 1898. In those forty-six years, he had built a successful moving business and became well known as an honest man, a character trait that earned him the respect of the white community—no small feat. While he appreciated their trust, he knew the different ways white Staten Islanders tried to push out Black people, especially those hoping to buy homes.

The history of bigotry reached back decades, but twenty years ago, in June 1924, the enmity of white Staten Islanders became public.

That year, a mile from Wheeler Avenue, Sam Browne, a mail carrier and Spanish-American War veteran, had bought a home and was preparing to move in when he received the following letter: “If you move into that house on Fairview Avenue, Castleton Hill, it will be the worst day’s work you ever did. You may treat this lightly, but after you move in, it will be too late. You should know better than to move where you are not wanted. Yours for the flaming cross, ‘K.K.K.’ ”

The letter made Browne uneasy, but he disregarded it, refusing to be intimidated. His wife was a respected teacher at the local public school, and he was a war veteran and civil servant. In his eyes, he had a right to live wherever he wanted. A month later, he moved to 67 Fairview Avenue, in the all-white “stucco and rose garden neighbor- hood” of Castleton Corners.

Mr. Musco Robertson, Browne’s next-door neighbor, owned Robertson Development Company, the real estate agency controlling large portions of Staten Island. Within days of Browne moving in, Robertson, a Southerner, approached him and introduced himself as the “chairman of a citizen’s committee.” In a friendly but firm tone, he explained that Browne was “the only negro man in the neighborhood,” then offered to buy the house. Browne refused, saying he “intended to make the place his permanent home.”

Before he left, Robertson handed the war veteran his brochure advertising Castleton Corners: “This exceptional development is dotted with many beautiful homes and every one is occupied by a 100 percent American family.” Having grown up in Alabama, Browne understood exactly what “100 percent American family” meant.

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