Читать книгу Eunice Hunton Carter - Marilyn Greenwald - Страница 12

Name: Stanton Hunton

Age: About 30 years old

Stature: 5 feet 7 inches

Colour: Bright Mulattoe [sic] Man

Description: With long hair and dark eyes[,] an aquiline nose, tolerably large, small hands and a little knock kneed—no other marks visible. How Freed: Emancipated by Wm. H. Gaines

(Copy delivered 28th February 1937)

—Stanton Hunton’s emancipation papers

IN LESS THAN FIFTY WORDs, Virginia slave Stanton Hunton was granted his freedom and thus given the opportunity to travel north to start a new life in what was—literally—a promised land. Hunton didn’t know it at the time, but he would represent the first of three generations of Huntons to make long journeys in attempts to improve their lives and those of their children. Stanton Hunton—who was then probably twenty-seven and not thirty as listed on his emancipation papers—made his way alone to Chatham, Ontario, to begin a new life in a community of like-minded people who were not welcome in their own country. The further north he traveled as a free man, the more ambivalent he may have grown about his identity—was he, at heart, still an American, or would he become a Canadian, or possibly even loyal to Great Britain? At least he now had a choice.

ADDIE WAITES HUNTON begins her biography of her husband, William, with a brief recounting of the early life of her father-in-law, Stanton Hunton. And it’s a natural starting point—he not only raised Addie’s husband and his eight siblings, but Stanton’s life story reads like fiction. Born in Virginia in 1815, he and his brother, Benjamin, were the slaves “of a most humane maiden lady of the Virginia aristocracy who taught him to read and provided him with an education,” Addie writes. Addie Hunton notes in passing that the ties of slave to mistress may also have been “those of blood.” It is possible that his owner was Elizabeth Hunton, who may have been his aunt, and that the name “William Gaines” on the emancipation documents belonged to one of her employees. (Census records also note that he had lived on the “Eppa Hunton Plantation” in Fauquier County.) “Slavery, more often dehumanizing to both master and mastered than otherwise … had overspread the nation like a black cloud that grew more and more ominous with time,” Addie writes. Despite the so-called “humanity” of his owner, Stanton tried to escape three times before his mistress relented and allowed him to buy his freedom, apparently with money she had paid him in wages. In the second paragraph of her book, Addie notes that all of Stanton’s attempted escapes had been risky thanks to federal laws that required all states to return escaped slaves to their owners.

Stanton Hunton first traveled to Washington, DC, and eventually made his way to the Ontario community of Chatham, a small community about fifty miles north of Lake Erie. It was in Chatham where Stanton Hunton became an active abolitionist, raised a family almost single-handedly after the early death of his wife, and, ultimately, became a wealthy man. It was in Canada where several of his nine children remained for the rest of their lives. Addie Hunton believes it was Stanton Hunton’s adopted country of Canada that nurtured her husband’s sense of mission, his pioneering spirit, and his single-minded determination.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT of 1850 triggered an influx of escaped and former slaves to Canada. Because the legislation required that all escaped and captured slaves be returned to their masters—even those caught in free states—no portion of the United States was deemed safe for escaped slaves. Once slaves passed over the border between the United States and Canada, the law, of course, did not apply.

In some ways, the small towns of Kent County in the southwestern Canadian province of Ontario would seem a perfect refuge for the oppressed in the United States. Chatham, in particular, was one of several Canadian river towns that began to thrive in the early nineteenth century as railways began replacing ships as modes of transportation, thus connecting disparate regions of Canada and promoting economic growth in the country. Further, it was the only urban center between London and Windsor. In short, it was a rich agricultural area that benefitted from railway lines that passed through it and was located on a river. And, perhaps most important, it was sufficiently inland to provide security for escaped slaves. By the mid-nineteenth century, Chatham and nearby Buxton were viewed as ideal settlement locations for Blacks hoping to escape the oppression of the United States. As time went on, close-knit communities began to develop in those areas. And, as the cities grew, so did the need for skilled and unskilled labor. The Black newspaper in Chatham, the Provincial Freeman, encouraged Blacks to immigrate to Chatham, where they could find employment and would have equal protection under the law. (Chatham was seen as a haven for artisans, businesspersons, and, to a lesser extent, unskilled laborers. Buxton was a rural region where the main occupation was farming.) From 1851 to 1861, the Black population of Chatham increased from 353 people to 1,259, about one-sixth of the total population. About half were skilled or semi-skilled workers—many were shoemakers, carpenters, and blacksmiths—and 41 percent were unskilled workers.

After his brief stay in Washington, DC, Stanton Hunton migrated northward, entering the seemingly hospitable environment of Chatham in 1843. Stanton, a brick mason and carpenter, stayed in Chatham for one year so he could establish himself; but he was lonely. He returned to Natchez, Mississippi, to buy the freedom of his brother, Benjamin, and the two returned to Chatham. Soon, Benjamin “succumbed to the severity of the life and climate,” Addie writes. The ambitious Stanton was thriving personally and professionally in Chatham, but he was still lonely. As Addie tells it, he had apparently traveled through Cincinnati, “where he had seen many lovely colored girls,” and decided to return to the city. He met and soon proposed to local resident Mary Ann Conyer. The two moved to the east side of Chatham, home to many of the city’s Black residents, built a house on the corner of King and Wellington Streets, and had nine children before Mary Ann died in 1869. Stanton never remarried and, for the most part, raised his younger children—including William—by himself.

Still, it would appear that Stanton and Mary Hunton led a contented life together in Chatham. He eventually joined a small circle of Canadian abolitionists in the region—Chatham had become a stop on the route of the Underground Railroad—and came to own a two-story brick building on one of the city’s main avenues, King Street. The structure housed three stores, a large gathering hall, and three offices. He thrived as a carpenter, brick mason, and businessman, but the focus of Stanton and Mary’s lives were their children, religion, and learning.

The Huntons were devout members of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, which was known for its evangelical zeal. (By 1851, 55 percent of Chatham’s Black residents belonged to a denomination of the Methodist church; 36 percent were Baptists, 3 percent were Catholics, and the rest were Presbyterians or had no religious affiliations.) Addie notes that religion and tradition were extremely important to Stanton: “He had a fixed faith in religious tradition and custom, and would, if need be, vigorously defend the faith against any mixture of newer theories of ‘isms.’” Above all, he instilled in his children the value of industriousness and self-reliance; each child had his or her own chores, and Stanton assigned them more if the tasks were completed early. Idleness was prohibited. Going hand in hand with the focus on religion and industriousness was, naturally, education. Stanton knew that was key to his children’s success, and he stressed its value throughout their childhood. In a brief oral history voiced by an actor that was based on his writings, Chatham’s Black Mecca Museum displays a life-size Stanton Hunton declaring that his children are his greatest pride and joy: “Augustus followed me into the carpentry business. George became a schoolteacher; William Alphaeus started out as a teacher and rose to become the Secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA. The baby, Robert, became the managing editor of Protest, a newspaper for the coloured race in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

Still, some of the details of a pivotal event in Stanton Hunton’s life remain murky—his association with abolitionist and martyr John Brown. Chatham and its surrounding communities played a key role in the history of American slavery, and part of this role is graphically illustrated today in an exhibit in the Black Mecca Museum, operated by Chatham’s Black Historical Society. The harrowing activities of escaped and freed slaves from the United States are told through relics such as the harrowing front pages of Black newspapers, first-person accounts by former slaves in the form of transcripts, “reenacted” recorded conversations, quilts and other handiwork of Chatham residents, and displays of leg irons and shackles.

Brown became a crucial character in the city’s history when he decided in 1858 to visit with some of the city’s antislavery activists and possibly garner support for a planned attack on Harper’s Ferry. Stanton Hunton was among the handful of Chatham residents who met with Brown—one time in Hunton’s home—although the precise details of the meetings are still somewhat vague. Brown’s visit represented a turning point in Hunton’s life, though, and his family kept as a souvenir a table where Brown sat when he visited the Hunton home. According to Addie, Brown had visited several cities in Ontario where ex-slaves lived but had decided to make Chatham the base of his preparations because of the rapid growth of the city, its central location, and its “intelligent citizenry.” He and some of Chatham’s residents formed a provisionary organization to consult with Brown, and meetings were held in April and May of that year, some in churches and some in the office of the Provincial Freeman.

The Huntons also treasured a brief note from Brown to Stanton, inviting him to a meeting at the local firehouse: “My Dear Friend: I have called a quiet conference in this place, May 8, and your attendance is earnestly requested. Your Friend, John Brown.” Little else is known about the meeting, other than what was said in some notes taken by a participant who indicated that there was little ceremony at the opening proceedings: “[The participants] were of two colors but one mind [and] all were equal in degree and station here,” he wrote, adding that the mission of the group was unadorned yet of utmost importance: “No civic address to this Canadian town; no beat of drums; no firing of guns was heard…. Yet the object of this little parliament was the freedom of four million slaves.” In her history of the Hunton family, Christine Lutz writes that twelve White and thirty-three Black men attended the meeting, which was the culmination of a series of discussions held at locations along Chatham’s King Street East. Little else is known about Brown’s visit to Chatham or residents’ possible participation in the October 17, 1859, Harper’s Ferry raid. But the visits are etched in the memories of those who lived through them. When Addie met her father-in-law for the only time when she was a bride—apparently in 1893—“he was still keen in his memory of the scenes and events in Chatham at that important period that thrilled to the dynamic power of John Brown.” And, near the end of his life when he was ill, William Hunton made sure to make a pilgrimage to Brown’s grave in upstate New York.

Unlike many other former slaves who moved to Canada before the Civil War, Stanton Hunton’s loyalty to his adopted home and its ruling country of Great Britain was absolute. He remained in Chatham for the rest of his life, even after he could have returned safely to the United States as a free man. After the Civil War, Blacks left Chatham in large numbers, in part because of increased economic opportunities in the industrialized northern United States. Census figures indicate that Chatham had only 315 Black residents in 1871 compared to 1,259 in 1861. Further, about 45 percent of Chatham’s Black males held skilled occupations between 1861 and 1871; that number declined to 38 percent by 1882. Part of this decline may have been due to an influx of White residents in the years following the Civil War. A similar pattern in nearby Buxton, whose racial composition had also changed by the late 1860s, with many Blacks leaving for economic opportunities in the northern United States. Whites were buying land in higher numbers, and fewer Blacks were coming in to replace the ones leaving.

Still, the end of the Civil War was not the only reason many Black residents returned to the United States. Despite the success of Stanton Hunton and other former slaves who moved to Canada, Chatham was hardly an egalitarian paradise devoid of racism. Its public schools were segregated, in part because of district gerrymandering that ensured the separation of races in the schools, and they remained so despite decades of attempts by Blacks to integrate them. And general anti-Negro bias did exist among some Whites, as it did in the northern United States. Schoolchildren such as William Hunton and his siblings were used to hearing epithets applied to the areas of town that housed much of Chatham’s Black population: “Coonsville,” “Africa,” and “Nigertown” [sic] were the most common. Still, William and his siblings did not experience or witness racial violence, and they were granted the same rights under the law as other Canadians.

Stanton Hunton would come to consider Canada his home, and he instilled his patriotic feelings in his children, who, like William, loved their parents’ adopted country. As Christine Lutz notes, “identity” for people like Stanton Hunton could be a fluid concept—abolitionism was an international movement, and some of Chatham’s residents’ loyalty to Canada stemmed from their resentment of a country that allowed legal enslavement. Because Canada was a territory of Great Britain, Hunton and others also considered themselves loyal to the mother country. Stanton and Mary Hunton named their first daughter Victoria after the British Queen. When the adult William Hunton visited London on YMCA business in 1894, he was particularly thrilled to be there “having acquired a cherished knowledge of British traditions and customs” and “stirred by the knowledge that he would for the first time visit the seat of the British empire.” But Stanton’s loyalty to Canada also stemmed from his personal experiences. He valued the camaraderie of like-minded former slaves whose goals mirrored his: they sought to achieve economic independence by working hard; they wanted to raise children who were safe and well-educated; and, in the case of some, they wanted to participate in antislavery activity without fear of recrimination.

As Addie Hunton implies throughout her biography of William, many of his values were shaped by his father and his allegiance to Chatham, William’s birthplace. “It was into this environment, so rich in its pioneer influences, strong humanitarian principles, and Christian faith that, on October 31, 1863, Stanton Hunton’s sixth son, William Alphaeus Hunton, was born,” she writes. “He was to inherit not only the pioneer and far-visioned qualities involved in this background, but also the quiet reticent, but stalwart character of his father.”

THE BIRTH of Eunice Roberta Hunton brought Addie and William great happiness, feelings that were particularly deep because she would become their first child to survive infancy; four years later, William Alphaeus came along—he was the namesake of their second child who died as a baby. (A daughter, Bernice, also died as an infant.) But William’s job duties and travel schedule only accelerated after Eunice’s birth. Addie says little in William’s biography about her personal life after the couple’s move to Atlanta in 1899. Still, she does note that his exhausting job, the associated travel, and the dispiriting social environment—“traveling over the South under conditions unfavorable to both body and spirit”—were taking a toll on him. “One realizes that he must have experienced at times great yearning for the companionship at home and the nursery hours of his children, where he could find relief from problems and cares.” Although William had suffered from some minor ailments in adulthood, five years after the move to Atlanta, he exhibited the first signs of serious illnesses that would dog him for much of the last nine or ten years of his life. In 1899, he wrote to Moorland to tell him that he had been bedridden due to malaria, and Addie writes that he was stricken after a trip to the Gulf states. “His heart weakened under the strain and he was desperately ill for some time,” she wrote, adding that a summer vacation with relatives in Michigan and Ontario helped him gain back his health.

Although she was devoted to her young children, Addie was not one who could devote all her time to domestic activities and child care. She soon began work as a secretary and later bursar at Clark College. Even more important to her, however, was the start of an activity that would occupy her for much of the rest of her life—the women’s reform movement. The women’s club movement was a significant reform movement in the United States and one that remains active today. In July 1896, at a convention in Washington, DC, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed as a result of a consolidation of several other similar groups with Mary Church Terrell as its president. Terrell was a prominent reformer whose father, a former slave, became wealthy in the real estate business in Memphis during Reconstruction. Terrell was a teacher, both in college and in public schools, and the first Black woman to be offered the position of registrar at a White college, an offer she declined to get married. Addie had been an enthusiastic supporter of the NACW since its inception. The NACW, whose motto, “lifting as we climb,” defined itself as an organization to “promote equality and justice for all women and girls and ensure they are represented and empowered in their communities.” Much has been written about the purpose and mission of the NACW and similar organizations, and they were established for a variety of purposes, including to gain the vote for Black women, to fight against discrimination and racial violence, and to provide aid and educational resources for poor Blacks and poor families. Between 1900 and 1920, more than 50,000 women became involved with women’s clubs and similar organizations that fought for social justice. The women’s club movement underscored the social status of Black women as they evolved from slavery to domestic workers and keepers of the hearth and home, to underground crusaders. Addie knew firsthand about the importance of Black people sharing information and stories, and the power of organizations to create unity. Similarly, she and others knew of the vital importance of education as a tool for upward mobility. Black women during this era of Reconstruction were in a “no woman’s land”—they lacked the legal status of their White counterparts and the social status of Black men.

Obviously, race dominated discussions of these women’s clubs, but it is important to note that issues of class also played a role in their formation. The NACW was an organization of middle-class women and, as Lutz writes, that concept might seem antithetical to its purpose: “Like many other reformers in turn-of-the-century America, [the NACW leadership] accommodated the class, race and gender hierarchies of a now-powerful capitalism even as they protested its inequities.” The NACW shared many of the values and goals of White women’s clubs of the era. Paula Giddings writes in her chronicle of Black women and power in the United States that the history of slavery naturally had a dramatic and immediate effect on the outlook of Black women of the era, many of whom were daughters of former slaves. In that way, racism and feminism were intertwined. Because they had a history of fighting for freedom and even for their lives, Black women learned to fight battles the same way men did, earning them a status that transcended feminism: “[Black women] redefined the meaning of what was called ‘true womanhood,’” Giddings writes. Because of this history of savagery under slavery, “her participation in the workforce, her political activities, and her sense of independence made her more of a woman, not less of one.”

By the time her children were toddlers, Addie Hunton had begun navigating this byzantine power structure in a society where Black women had faced a form of double discrimination—and, in her case, as an educated woman with a successful husband, class entered the picture. By this point in her life, she began taking advantage of her writing ability to submit essays to some widely read journals designed to provide a forum for Blacks. Included in this group a bit later were The Crisis, the widely read magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that was founded in 1910 by W. E. B Du Bois, and, at this point in Addie’s life, a new monthly called Voice of the Negro. Founded in 1904 in Atlanta, Voice of the Negro was considered the leading Black periodical in the country, and its eclectic content consisted of serious political and cultural essays as well as poems and some arts reviews. Most important, the magazine offered a glimpse into the thoughts, concerns, and opinions of Black people of the era—only four decades after the end of slavery. At ten cents an issue, each publication opened with several pages of a news review called “Our Monthly Review.” During its first year, the magazine focused heavily on current events, international and education issues, and the activities and goals of organized groups like the NACW. During its first year, for example, it devoted its September issue to politics and the upcoming presidential race; it gave a resounding thumbs up to incumbent Theodore Roosevelt and overwhelming support to Republicans. That party, according to one article, “proposes an honest investigation into conditions in the Southern States,” where there is likely suppression of the Black vote. Democrats, on the other hand, advocate taxation without representation, limited education, and disenfranchisement of people of color, the writer says.

Addie contributed several essays and opinion columns to Voice of the Negro, and she was in good company. Prominent authors, educators, and intellectuals of the era—including Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell—were also contributors. Through her bylines, Addie gradually became a known and respected figure in social justice circles. (Voice of the Negro, which later was renamed The Voice, stayed in Atlanta for only two years, moving to Chicago in 1906 after the Atlanta riots. It folded a year later.)

Addie’s writing often had a distinctive tone, and she had developed a style that was clear and concise, but also a bit flowery at times and often full of vivid imagery and allusions. For instance, in the July 1904 column in Voice of the Negro titled “Negro Womanhood Defended,” she discusses what she believes are unwarranted negative sexual stereotyping of Black women and attacks on their morals, and she ventures into the area of class differences among Blacks. “Whence come these base aspersions to blight and dwarf the spirit of the Negro woman? Who … can be so forgetful to her service and servitude as to seek to crush her already wounded and bleeding soul.” In this essay, she begins by making references to class differences among Black women, noting that criticisms and “base aspersions” against Black women in society are often made by those who “know little or nothing of that best elements of our women who are quietly and unobtrusively working out the salvation of the race…. The Negro women with whom they [critics] come in contact exhibit none of those higher qualities that are based upon virtue.” But Addie is brutally direct when bringing up the horrors and indignities faced by women who were once slaves, noting that their history of slavery would affect their lives and the lives of their relatives for years to come: “For two centuries, the Negro woman was forced by cruelty too diverse and appalling to mention…. She was voiceless and there was no arm lifted in her defense…. There is an unwritten and an almost unmentionable history of the burdens of those soul-trying times when … the Negro woman was the subject of compulsory immorality.” Addie ends her essay on an oft-repeated note in her life and in her writings—the idea that it is the role of Black women to maintain homes, provide stability for families, and work to improve the lives of their children: “With her deeper interest in her people, her larger knowledge of their needs, with the culture and character that education give, she is constantly at work for the uplift of her race.” This article in Voice of the Negro came as part of a special issue of the magazine about women and by women. The female contributors were identified by short descriptive phrases before their names. Addie was called “the calm and equitably poised Mrs. Addie Hunton,” who at the time was president of the Atlanta Women’s Club.

Addie’s work with the NACW and other reform organizations addresses the intersection of gender and race equality. Upon the fifteenth anniversary of the NACW in 1911, she spells out very specifically in The Crisis the activities and successes of the group up to that point, writing that its forty-five thousand members had come from a variety of backgrounds and ages to unite for common goals: “This unifying process in the spirit and aim of the intelligent colored women has been one of her strongest blessings in the past decade.” Among its many accomplishments is organizing divisions that focus on disparate subject areas such as literature, temperance, domestic science, music, art, and others; organizing state federations of the group and sponsoring local conventions; fighting for the end of segregation in public facilities; and lobbying for anti-lynching laws. Five years earlier, she had written a similar article for Voice of the Negro summarizing the accomplishments of the Atlanta chapter of the NACW—a chapter of which she was president. By this time, Addie headed a state federation of affiliated women’s clubs, including the NACW, and she did some traveling within the South for the group. This article is an upbeat and optimistic summary of the accomplishments of the NACW nationwide. As was characteristic of Addie, the article opens poetically: “Somewhere it has been written by a poet-singer of the race: ‘The harvest is great / let the reaper be many / May you sow and beautifully reap.’” Addie continues, “The colored women of the country have caught the spirit of this stanza and have gone forth to sow. Right earnestly have they toiled, and there is promise of a bountiful fruitage for the reaping by and by.”

During her first six years in Brooklyn, Addie traveled across much of the country as a NACW organizer, giving dozens of speeches, soliciting members, and urging women to form regional NACW-affiliated organizations. In some ways, Addie’s efforts with the women’s club movement mirrored her husband’s—both became part of existing organizations that fought racial inequality, and both hoped to enrich the lives of middle-class and poor Blacks while, ironically, indirectly working within a society that tacitly promoted some of the institutions they opposed.

WILLIAM HUNTON’S first few years with the YMCA were filled with highs and lows. By the first decade of the twentieth century, he had, by any measure, provided great leadership with the YMCA and surpassed any expressed or implicit goals the International Committee and its Colored Men’s unit might have had. He and Jesse Moorland worked together well as a team; ultimately, William focused on gaining participation on college campuses, and Moorland organized branches in cities. By 1911, more than one hundred student associations had membership near seven thousand in twenty states, and the two made sure that all YMCA conventions and conferences were integrated. But ongoing frustrations dogged William through most of his tenure with the YMCA, the most serious being the lack of money and manpower that the organization was willing to invest in its Colored Men’s Department. Hunton and Moorland were reasonably successful at soliciting donations during their travels, and William’s letters to Addie frequently mention how grateful he was to the donors, whom he consistently labeled as generous and kind. His success with the organization is particularly impressive, given that he succeeded with limited resources.

Both William and Addie believed that the YMCA’s Christian leadership could gradually help to end segregation in the United States. William was encouraged by the fact that not all YMCA facilities in the South were segregated, and he believed college students, who were young and open to new ways of thinking, could help reverse culturally induced racism. In retrospect, one might conclude that their optimism at the turn of the century was overly idealistic. As Addie writes, her husband “learned that real understanding and appreciation of values could create an esprit de corps that could transcend the traditions of centuries, and he kept his faith that in the brotherhood of man was found the true norm of life.” During the latter part of his tenure with the YMCA, William’s activities gradually contained international components. Under William’s supervision, the YMCA had hoped to staff its African missions with Black students from its branches in the South, and as time went on, William worked to fulfill this goal. In her husband’s biography, Addie writes at length about his trips to London early in his career for the Golden Jubilee of the YMCA, and about his trip to several Far East nations when he visited Japan for the Conference of the World Student Christian Federation in Tokyo in 1907. He also traveled throughout western Europe to cities, including Edinburgh, Paris, and Brussels. As Addie writes, a continuing theme running through most of his visits overseas was, ironically, acceptance and egalitarianism. As both Addie and William realized, Black people were sometimes treated with more dignity and respect internationally than they were in their own country. Addie fills a dozen pages of her biography with excerpts of William’s speeches and anecdotes indicating how the mixed-race groups he addressed often applauded William enthusiastically and indicated their agreement with his comments about the scourge of segregation and the cruelty of European colonialism in parts of Africa.

Still, by the turn of the century, with Atlanta as their home base, the Huntons appeared to be living a conventional middle-class existence—or as conventional as it could be considering they were Black people living in the Jim Crow South in an era of legal segregation. By 1906, Eunice was seven years old; her brother, Alphaeus, born on September 18, 1903, was three. It is not known how much William was paid by this point, but some of the correspondence between William and Moorland indicate that finances in the Hunton household were tight; a few letters and telegrams indicate that William occasionally requested short-term loans from Moorland—particularly when his children were young. “Dear Moorland,” he wrote in 1903, “Can you let me have $20 until next Monday…. I enclose check in payment which you are not to put in bank until Monday. You will greatly oblige me.” Moorland responded in a telegram that he had just sent the check.

The family lived on Houston Street, which was considered the unofficial border between White and Black residential areas in the city. And although only five schools in the town would allow Black children, one of those was located near their home. Addie acknowledges in her husband’s biography that the family was reasonably content when, one day, a catastrophic event would shatter their complacency and forever change their lives. A violent race riot that erupted in Atlanta in the fall 1906 was “one of the most tragic incidents of our married life,” she writes, and prompted their immediate relocation North. Over four days, beginning on September 22, a group of men, inflamed by erroneous newspaper reports about Black sex crimes, began attacking Black men at random. Twenty-five Black people and four Whites were killed and 150 injured. Addie’s recollection indicates she was still devastated decades later: “After eight contented years in Atlanta, the pent-up hate and envy of a dominant group broke upon us suddenly, though not without some previous rumblings. In a moment all our sense of security was gone, and we had to realize that we, as colored people, had really no rights as citizens whatsoever. It left us very empty, for we knew in that hour that all for which we had labored and sacrificed belonged not to us but to a ruthless mob.” The riot triggered a severe physical reaction in William—he had a recurrence of colitis. This condition had dogged him a few years earlier, but this attack was so severe that he considered canceling or delaying the long-planned trip to the Far East. “His spirit for the first time lost its resilience,” Addie writes, adding that in hindsight, she believes that the shock of the event indirectly contributed to William’s much more severe illnesses a few years later. The family moved out of their home in December 1906, with Addie and the two children heading north to Brooklyn while William traveled to Asia during the first months of the year. Addie acknowledges that the move from their beloved Atlanta home didn’t seem real. “We did not realize that we were taking final leave,” she writes. (Indeed, even Eunice, who was seven when the family left Atlanta, would write decades later about her memories of the gentle beauty of her childhood home and city). The family moved permanently to Brooklyn the following year.

Relocating her home must have been a culture shock to Addie, who was well-traveled but who was accustomed to living in the South. Still, the economic opportunities and good schools in Brooklyn made it a magnet for immigrants and Black people. Moreover, there were plenty of opportunities for men and women who were willing to work hard and establish their roots there. Also, Addie’s new home offered her proximity to New York City and its people and resources. She soon joined the National Board of the YWCA, a move that would pave the way for a more significant role in that organization a few years later. She also became a member of a group called the Cosmopolitan Society of Greater New York, which she described in an article in Voice of the Negro as a “socialistic” group comprising people of all colors and races who gather to become acquainted and learn to understand and appreciate each other and to take “strong issue with those who believe in the inferiority of any race.” As time went on, she became more active in this group.

A few years after the move from Atlanta, William’s health declined even more. Still, he remained an energetic and devoted advocate for the YMCA, and by this time he had established himself as a beloved and respected figure. Howard University had conferred upon him an honorary degree, and, in 1913, the YMCA honored him for twenty-five years of service—three in Norfolk and twenty-two with the International Committee. His continued travels drove home this reputation. But he was spending even less time at home and had established the Washington, DC, headquarters of the YMCA Colored Department, as his home base. However, he continued as a prolific letter writer who wrote almost daily to his wife.

Interestingly, Addie and her two children did some extensive traveling themselves in 1909 and 1910—the three spent much of those years in Europe, mostly in Alsace-Lorraine and Strasbourg, Germany, where Addie attended Kaiser Wilhelm University. Addie writes little about this trip in William’s biography, other than to note that she and her husband “felt very close [in this period] despite the ocean between and his letters teemed with interest.” Christine Lutz and Stephen Carter, Eunice’s grandson, imply that she gathered her children and took them overseas out of sheer loneliness and possibly estrangement from William, but to Addie, traveling had always been an eye-opening experience, and she may have wanted her young children to live in another part of the world. Addie, Eunice, and Alphaeus returned home in 1910 as William’s health took a downward turn. Addie writes that it was her husband’s poor health that led to the family’s return to Brooklyn “before I had fully finished the studies I had undertaken.” She did not elaborate on the specific nature of those studies—but she did enroll in the College of the City of New York shortly after her return. William had begun to have severe respiratory problems by now and had developed a chronic cough that two minor surgeries could not alleviate. Addie knew he was quite ill when “his spirit was not quite so tranquil” as usual. Once again, William took a vacation—this time to a quiet rural area on Long Island, where, she said, he fished, “loafed,” and read—and apparently felt substantially reenergized that he returned to work full-time. But by this time, William’s health had declined precipitously, even though he managed to continue most of his strenuous travel. By fall 1913, William acknowledged in letters to Addie that he felt ill much of the time—a complaint that was uncharacteristic—and within a year of that time, he was unable to work.

Meanwhile, Addie had expanded her network of activism. In her role with the YWCA, she was asked to do what her husband had done for the group’s counterpart, the YMCA: encourage the agency to provide facilities and services for Blacks. Addie was successful in persuading the YWCA to hire a Black field secretary, and she introduced the organization to Black female leaders in New York City and officials of the NACW. It was during this period that she began volunteering with the NAACP, becoming that organization’s point person for women’s equality. Her activities here became a springboard for what would prove to be one of Addie’s lifelong missions: obtaining the vote for women.

Addie’s biography of her husband is an homage to his hard work and to what she felt was his determination and selflessness; in fact, she and her family are, indeed, only minor “characters” in the book. In most cases, she mentions herself and her children only in terms of how they affected or reacted to him. It is only in the last three chapters of the twelve-chapter book that her tone becomes emotional and poignant. These chapters focus primarily on the last two-and-one-half years of his life after his respiratory illness was diagnosed as tuberculosis. The diagnosis soon became known to those with whom he worked at the YMCA, and Addie fills several pages with portions of the heartfelt letters his coworkers sent to him, wishing him a speedy recovery. Based on the examples she gives, these were hardly brief pro forma get-well wishes but instead were detailed, sincere, and full of genuine concern. Some contained newsy tidbits about YMCA administrative events, and many were full of spiritual references. Most were eloquent and touching.

What is particularly stirring about these last few chapters, however, is Addie’s recounting of their physical closeness. For what is apparently the first time in their marriage, they spent uninterrupted months together, some of them traveling to areas considered more hospitable to William’s health. William’s health had deteriorated to the point where he often had trouble speaking, and, alarmingly, he would sometimes suddenly start to hemorrhage after long fits of coughing. Still, he managed to help plan a major national YMCA-related event: a Negro student congress to be held in Atlanta in the spring of 1914. Addie gives the reader a detailed record of the ups and downs of his illness and finally, the gradual decline that forced him to curtail his job duties completely. Sadly, immediately before the long-planned Atlanta student congress, he hemorrhaged and lost consciousness for days, so he was unaware of the stream of concerned letters and telegrams that arrived in the Huntons’ home when his friends and coworkers heard the news. (Addie, however, did address the 665 participants of the Negro Christian Student Conference, talking mostly about the importance of the YWCA and women.) After three of his siblings came to visit—George from Montreal, Victoria from Detroit, and Mary from St. Louis—Addie admits that she was overcome with emotion and sadness: “It was often necessary in those trying days for me to find privacy to fight my emotions and to gain strength to match my faith with that of my husband.”

At the urging of William’s doctors, he and Addie spent much of the last two years of William’s life in rural Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, home to a respected clinic that treated tuberculosis. By this time, Eunice, who was a high school student, lived with her maternal aunt in Brooklyn to continue her schooling; Alphaeus moved with his parents. Addie implies that their time in Saranac Lake was among the happiest of their marriage and referred to it as “those shining uninterrupted hours that God gave us together in that glorious setting.” He had gained a little strength during their second trip there, and one of its highlights was a visit to John Brown’s grave near Lake Placid. It was important to him that the two make that trip, Addie writes, “to the shrine of this martyr whose life had touched so closely that of his own father, and when we returned … we tried to describe the little cemetery, the house, and every detail of that sacred spot.”

But correspondence among Hunton, Moorland, and Addie indicates that—perhaps unsurprisingly—those last two to three years of William’s life were also filled with stress and tension for Addie. She not only had to witness the almost daily physical deterioration of her husband’s health but also deal with the unrelenting financial strains caused by his treatment and the costs of their living quarters. A constant stream of letters between Addie and Moorland indicates Moorland had advised Addie on the subject of their family’s finances and, to a limited degree, William’s care. The letters suggest that the Huntons had rented their home in Brooklyn to help pay for living expenses in Saranac Lake. Doctors at the clinic had recommended special equipment and medication for William as well as a full-time nurse, and the couple accrued bills they could not pay. Further, there appeared to be some confusion as to whether William would continue to be paid by the YMCA as a full-time employee, whether he would get sick pay, or whether he would not be paid at all.

Dozens of letters between Addie and Moorland show a gentle tug-of-war between the two, with Addie implying that it would be impossible for the family to juggle the costs of their daily living (and expensive medication) with what she indicates is the tremendous expense of a fulltime nurse. Yet she also writes numerous times that caring for such a sick person was exhausting, and she was often physically ill and, as she writes, close to a breakdown. But those last two years of William’s life illustrate the devotion both Addie and Moorland felt for William—and how Moorland and William were far more than just colleagues, but instead more like close brothers. The letters sent among Addie, Moorland, and a few other top officials of the YMCA show that William’s health, by the start of 1914, had declined so precipitously that he could no longer work, thus triggering the temporary move to Saranac Lake. And although Addie notes in William’s biography that their time there allowed them to be together uninterrupted for the first time in their marriage, clearly all was not well. First, the costs associated with the move and daily expenses combined with William’s medical expenses dogged them constantly, and some came unexpectedly. The clinic in Saranac Lake recommended that the Huntons employ a private nurse for William, and Moorland advocated this to Addie, despite the high cost. In one letter in late 1914, Addie asks for a temporary fifty-dollar loan that she would repay him in two weeks. William had incurred $88 more than expected that month in nursing care and medication, she wrote, and she had no money for repairs for their home: “I don’t know how I am going to make it at this rate but God will find a way and I don’t dare let the nurse go under [the] circumstances…. Pray for us.” Some tension developed between Addie and Moorland—the former worried that they could not afford the long-term services of a private nurse, while the latter stressed that a nurse was necessary. “I would be willing to go to the ends of the earth and do anything to bring Mr. H back to health but I think you will see that I can’t do the impossible,” she wrote him a week before Christmas in 1914. Addie noted in several letters that she felt ill due to stress—and in January 1915, she had asked Eunice to leave school for a week for a visit to help her. “I am all nerves myself but I am holding them down by absolute force,” she wrote to Moorland. Two months later: “I feel stronger now than for some time, but realize I am in danger of a mental collapse, but I am using all precautions and will fight it out. Pray for us that we may have strength and courage in this severe battle.”

Naturally, the combination of William’s inability to draw a regular paycheck, combined with the added medical and housing expenses, forced a financial crisis. The Huntons apparently sold their Brooklyn home before they moved to Saranac Lake, but Addie owned a home in Washington, DC, at 919 South S Street NW that she had inherited and one that was used periodically by William and his family, as well as a brother, Benjamin. But it still carried a mortgage and needed renovations and repairs, according to letters between her and Moorland. Together, these factors caused a perfect storm of sorts for the Huntons; and to Addie, it was more than just a financial crisis. The fact that the family had trouble making ends meet distressed her immensely, and she felt it demeaning to ask Moorland for loans. (Interestingly, she did note in one letter that the couple had maintained a small savings account for their children that she apparently did not want to access.) Yet, by the start of 1914, Moorland also worried that his sick friend William would not be able to afford the medical attention he needed, nor would he be able to support his family. After receiving another panicked letter from Addie about finances in spring 1914, he sought financial help from the YMCA for his friend, even though he knew he could not get financial assistance through conventional methods. For instance, in April of that year, he sent a candid letter to Frederic Shipp, secretary of the International Committee in New York, describing William’s dire financial straits. He needed $600, he wrote, “to clear up a number of obligations”—such as property taxes and insurance premiums, “which would have been taken care of had he not been stricken.” (That amount did not cover medical costs, he added.) “This is a delicate matter,” he added, and a crisis “which has come upon him like a thief in the night.” Shipp replied that he could arrange for the money to be sent to William as a salary bonus, and “his [regular] salary would be continued.” ($100 in 1914 would be worth about $2,500 in 2020 dollars.) But Moorland and Shipp knew that this financial arrangement was unorthodox: “You can assure Mr. and Mrs. Hunton that no one, not even the members of our [International] Committee, will be apprised as to his bills,” Shipp wrote. In a response letter to Shipp, Moorland wrote that William was grateful when he told him of the financial arrangement but “he did not want to be put on a basis of charity…. I explained to him that there was no such thought.” The conversation showed the deep bond between William and Moorland. “He expressed his deep appreciation of my loyal friendship … and said he did not know how he could ever repay me and what would he do without my constant presence,” Moorland wrote. “I never had a more pleasant conversation in my life … I have always been Hunton’s best personal friend in every way and will stand by him to the end.”

And Moorland continued to “stand by” his friend, and for the first time in their friendship, William addressed Moorland by his first name in letters. (“My dear Jesse”) and signed his letters with his childhood name of “Billie.” Moorland had to realize that the family’s budgetary short-term fix was just that and that as long as William was ill, the family would continue to have financial problems. By late 1914, Moorland sent a mailing to all YMCA field secretaries across the country seeking donations to cover some of the costs of William’s medical care; three months later, after only seven responded with small donations, he sent another donation request: William’s poor health and living expenses in Saranac Lake “make it incumbent upon those who love Mr. Hunton as we do, to bear some of the burdens, not as a duty but as a sweet privilege.” Moorland’s efforts to raise money for his friend may have proved controversial, with some YMCA officials apparently questioning the solicitation. A letter from a YMCA official in Philadelphia alludes to the fact that several people objected to the solicitation. “It seems to me that it is grose [sic] ingratitude on the part of any fellow who knew Mr. Hunton’s sacrificing life given entirely to Association work and then not do something to make him happy in his last moments.”

William Hunton left Saranac Lake in September—after a temporary rally of his medical condition—but sent Addie home four months earlier, fearful that she would break down if she stayed longer, he told Moorland. He spent the last year of his life at a home in Greene Street in Brooklyn, receiving many visitors, including W. E. B Du Bois, the prominent author and opinion leader. The fact that Du Bois visited him speaks to William’s stature within the Black community of the era—and to the fact that Du Bois considered him an important person. In a letter to Moorland describing his visit—which came less than a week before William died—Du Bois described him as “greatly emaciated” and looking ten years older than his age of fifty-three. By this time, Du Bois writes, he was on strong opioids for pain, and he lapsed in and out of consciousness. Interestingly, Du Bois in the letter mentions Moorland’s solicitations for donations, noting that it was in some ways a public relations issue: “It would be very unfortunate all around to have the impression get abroad that there was misunderstanding or lack of sympathy and unity between two men [William and Hunton] who are the historic figures and the chief representatives of Association work among colored men.”

On Wednesday, November 26, 1916, before his two children left for school, he asked Addie, Eunice, and Alphaeus to kneel at his bedside so he could pray for them. He lapsed into a coma that afternoon and died later that day. “I am not embarrassed to write, nor do I make any apology for so doing, that in his death those who were at his side as well as myself saw the passing of a saint,” Addie wrote. But perhaps even more telling are Addie’s comments that the two grew very close as William’s disease progressed: “I think that God willed it that we should have almost three years of unbroken companionship before our earthly ties were broken.” Evidently, her husband’s years of traveling for a noble cause had taken their toll on the strong and resourceful Addie, who was ultimately grateful that in his final years, she finally had her husband to herself. But she probably realized that after his death, her life would change dramatically.