Although there were Negro homesteaders in Nebraska from the 1870s on, the Negroes who first settled in Adams County came as laborers, not as landowners. Through the years, however, many have become owners of business enterprises as well as landholders. The first Negro known to have lived in the county was Harry Rodger Smith, who was employed by Curt Alexander in his livery stable. According to Burton and Lewis Past and Present of Adams County, he was "a cowboy...a thorough westerner and an excellent shot with the revolver." On September 28, 1878, when Judge William Gaslin ruled that Hastings was the winner in the election for the county seat, attorneys in Hastings entrusted Alexander with securing the legal records from Juniata immediately. Harry Smith went with him, and the two brought the county clerk's records to Hastings. Mr. Smith was born in Danville, Kentucky, but spent most of his life in Adams County. His son, Theodore "Ted" Smith, is a Hastings businessman.
Another of the first Negroes in Hastings, according to a story in the Hastings Daily Tribune of April 14, 1924, was J. S. Craig, born into slavery in Tennessee in 1850, who came to Hastings in 1882. He established the first steam laundry in town, a roofing company and organized the first billboard poster service, owning all the billboards in the city until he sold the firm to William Bartenbach. He was an organizer of the Second Baptist Church, a Negro congregation, and was an active member of the Masons.
Another early-day Negro in Hastings was Mrs. Clara Dawson Briley, known familiarly as Grandma Briley because of her great age. She was born into slavery in 1801, in Richmond, VA, and came to Hastings about 1885, living a half-mile south of town near her son "Doc" and her grandson. An interview with her was printed in the Hastings Tribune June 19, 1903, when she was still gardening, making patchwork quilts and threading her own needle at the age of 102. In the Tribune of May 25, 1910, when she was 110 years old (her birth-date is given variously as 1800 and 1801, in May and June) and recollected having met Mrs. Jefferson Davis; and in the Tribune of May 7, 1918, at the time of her 117th birthday anniversary. Shortly after that, she moved to Wichita, Kansas, to live with her grandson, the Rev. J. W. Johnson. Her son Doc was a horse-doctor in Hastings.
In May 1879, H. G. Newsom of Hastings represented the Negroes of Nebraska at the National Convention of Colored People at Nashville, Tenn. Another Negro here in the early years was Jeff Teemer, the first colored coachman, who was employed by Captain A. D. Yocum. Most of the Negroes were domestic servants, and the census figures reflect the affluence of the times; the highest number of Negroes in Adams County, in the ten-year census reports, was in 1890, when there was considerable wealth and even more ostentation about displaying it. To have Negro servants was a splendid status symbol. Conversely, the lowest number of Negroes in the county, according to the census reports was in 1900; after the depression years of the 1890s, the wealthy could no longer afford the status symbol.
There were enough Negroes in Hastings in 1903 for a baseball team, however, which they called the Black Diamonds. The Tribune of July 3, 1903, tells of "ten colored men who have banded together for the purpose of putting on some hot games of baseball this summer. There are several crackerjack ball tossers in the bunch...The team is composed of D. Briley, manager; R. W. Taylor, N. Sherwood, Ed Early, Sam Jones, Lone Cotton, G. Gates, A. Gates, S. Innis, D. Carpenter, W. Taylor, N. Briley." In that day of casual sports coverage in newspapers, nothing further was published about the team.
Preceding World War I, there were a number of prosperous Negro entrepreneurs in Adams county, all of whom owned their own homes. Paul Wright was a buyer of horses and mules for the government, the largest buyer of stock in the entire area. Ted Smith, recalling him from his earliest childhood, says that Mr.Wright was "the first man I even knew who was worth $10,000-and that was a lot in those years!" Dick Foster was a barber. The Simmons brothers, Noble and Bud, had a restaurant on First street and Hastings avenue, and Art Hughes also had a restaurant, on the east side of Hastings avenue between First and Second streets. Both restaurants served both white and Negro customers. Henry Gates was a farmer north of town, near the site of present-day Lake Hastings; he owned some of the land himself and rented other acreage from the railroad, farming in all more than eighty acres with horse-drawn equipment.
Through the years the Negroes have established a number of churches. In addition to the Second Baptist, started by J. S. Craig, there have been the Hamilton Methodist, the Church of God in Christ, Shiloh Temple, and others. For a number of years a Masonic lodge, the Marvin lodge No. 127, colored, was active in Hastings. A newspaper account tells of the colored Masonic ball held in Germania Hall in June, 1891, and another account in the September 15, 1892. Weekly Nebraskan, tells of a picnic in Cole's Park, followed by a "grand soiree" at the G.A.R.Hall with Col. A.A. Jones of Lincoln the principal speaker. Music was furnished by the Hastings colored glee club, and a reduced rate on the railroads afforded transportation for persons from Omaha and Lincoln. The committee on arrangements was Nelson Briley, John Hoff, Charles David and J.S. Craig.
During World War II, when several thousand Negro sailors were stationed at the Naval Ammunition Depot, there was a tremendous influx of Negroes to the community. Families of the serviceman lived at Prairie Village, temporary barracks-type apartments constructed at the depot; the commanding officer of the depot held weekly inspection tours of the quarters every Saturday; the housewife winning the inspection being allowed to fly a navy flag for the following week. Other Negroes not connected with service families came to Hastings to work in the ordnance plant; some of them lived in apartments at Spencer Park, some in the trailer community on Fourteenth Street west of Burlington Avenue.
A Negro USO was established in down-town Hastings during World War II by Morris Wilson, long-time Hastings resident, and Mrs. Florence Dulin. In addition, because recreational facilities for Negro Servicemen were woefully limited otherwise, the Naval Ammunition Depot sponsored dances once or twice a month, bussing Negro girls from Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines, and other centers with colored populations. A beauty contest was held once or twice a year and competition was high.
Since the official census records are taken every decade, there is no record of exactly how many Negroes lived in Hastings during the war years of 1941-45. After the war was over, a large proportion of them returned to their homes, but a number of families did remain here, being absorbed into the permanent labor force in the community.
A number of Negro athletes from Hastings have distinguished themselves, either in high school sports or in American Legion baseball or both. They include Joe Hill, Ray Cole, Wayne Rollins, O. B. Anderson, Rodney and Simmy Mullen, and others. Several others have distinguished themselves in professional life; they include Robert Eugene Mullen, for many years a juvenile probationary officer and now municipal judge in Las Vegas, Nev. ; his sister Helen, children's librarian in Philadelphia, Pa., who has a bachelor's degree from Hastings College and a master's degree from Syracuse University; another sister Faye, who is head of the Equal Opportunity Organization in Las Vegas; Beverly Boothe a graduate nurse from the Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital School of Nursing; Florence Horton, a graduate of Hastings College; Brenda Joyce Taylor, a graduate of Nettleton Business College of Sioux City, Iowa, who is now receptionist, secretary and counselor for the Labor Education Advancement Program, a branch of the Urban League of Omaha; and Capt. Oren B. Anderson, an 11-year veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry, graduate of Officers Candidate School in Atlanta, Ga., who has served in France, Germany, Korea and Viet Nam, being decorated for action in Viet Nam. His wife, Rosalie Smith Anderson, is a licensed practical nurse. John Banks is presently a student at the University of Notre Dame. Cecil Briley was graduated from Johns Hopkins University.
Theodore R. "Ted" Smith, a native of Hastings, is a successful businessman, owning and operating a trucking and disposal service, and a livestock business. Of Hastings, he wrote in 1970, "We feel Hastings has offered many opportunities to our race. I started with a $45 truck and 13 customers, and shined shoes on the side to provide for my family, and it was very hard, but today I have over 2,000 customers on my disposal route and a very successful livestock trucking firm. I employ 12, which is a small number but as one of the minority race, I feel a little pride and a lot of thanks the the city of Hastings and its many fine citizens."
Negroes in Adams County, by Decades
1880--25; 1890--327; 1900--63; 1910--97; 1920--91; 1920--91; 1930--102; 1940--106; 1950--163; 1960--194
Research Sources
The above information was taken from Adams County The Story (1972) pages 329 through 331.
Adams County Historical Society [email protected] PO Box 102 Hastings NE 68902