Chinese American Family at Dinner, March 1958, A. Aubrey Bodine, MdHS, B502-H.

The story of race in Baltimore has traditionally been presented as a black and white issue. Particularly in discussions about the Civil Rights Era, the focus has been on the interaction between these two racial groups, with Jewish residents representing an ethnic middle ground between them.

In researching this pivotal time period in the city’s history, I was surprised to come across a 1945 Baltimore Sun article in which NAACP represetative Juanita Jackson Mitchell stated that Chinese students “are permitted to enter Polytechnic Institute, where Negroes can’t enter.”(1) How could that be so? Some might point to the stereotypes that we are exposed to today, such as the image of the quiet, academically driven, Asian-American student. However, these stereotypes were less prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many West Coast cities, most notably San Francisco, struggled with how to deal with large Chinese immigrant populations. School systems were in a particularly awkward position, as most municipalities only had provisions that addressed the segregation of “colored” or “negro” children. San Francisco’s first “Chinese School” was established in 1859, with subsequent state and city laws gradually curtailing the rights of the growing community. Asian-descended children were formally and informally segregated throughout the western states, as whites feared their exotic customs and supposed moral deficiencies. In 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Exclusion Act, prohibiting Chinese workers from entering the country.(2)

These developments had little effect on Maryland’s tiny Asian, mostly Chinese, population. By 1900, the state’s Chinese inhabitants numbered less than 500, 426 of whom resided in Baltimore.(3) While visiting Baltimore’s public schools in 1911, Stanford University education professor Dr. Elwood P. Cubberly was surprised to encounter just a single Chinese child, whom he was told was “the only one in the schools of the city.” He remarked that “in San Francisco we have hundreds of these children and they present a most difficult problem.”(4) Fourteen years earlier, fifteen year old Hom Let had become the first Chinese student admitted to a Baltimore school.

Chinese immigrants began to arrive in Baltimore as early as the 1880s. The first “Chinatown” was centered around the 200 block of Marion Street, bound by Fayette Street to the south, Park Avenue to the east, Howard Street to the west, and Lexington Street to the north. Following World War I, it moved to the 300 block of Park Avenue.
Mrs. James Hom with abacus, March 1958, A. Aubrey Bodine, MdHS, B502-C.

Although hailed by The Baltimore Sun as “the first Chinese pupil to be entered in Baltimore’s Public Educational Institutions,” Hom Let’s acceptance into the Baltimore school system 1897 caused an immediate controversy.(5) The California-born boy was enrolled at Primary School Number 10 on Hollins Street—what is today James McHenry Elementary/Middle School in Old West Baltimore. According to the article, he was initially placed in the first grade, where the other boys “did not treat the new pupil as fairly as they should have done,” as they were intrigued by his “queer-looking silk trousers.” Hom Let’s admission sparked an almost immediate debate over where Chinese students would fall in the city’s binary racial environment. Several civic leaders commented on his status. Mayor Alcaeus Hooper, who did not object to his admission, cited “the intelligence of the race in mastering all studies.”(6) Others remarked that there was no specific ordinance to prevent the Chinese from attending white schools, but feared the abuse that Let might receive from his classmates. The newspaper account also included the opinions of Chinatown residents, who were happy with his placement as “negroes are seldom well liked by the Celestials [Chinese].” However there was no specific explanation as to how he was formally enrolled in the white school.

The issue would be officially addressed by the Baltimore city school board in March of 1898. School Commissioner John T. Foley proposed that a separate school be established for Chinese Baltimoreans, specifically for English language training. However when the plan was forwarded to the City Solicitor, he determined that any public school designation outside of “white” or “colored” was legally prohibited. The Solicitor further stated that “only the children or wards of naturalized Chinamen can attend the schools free of charge.”(7) By this time another Chinese student had joined Hom Let in the school system.(8)

The few Chinese children in Baltimore would continue to utilize the city’s white schools unmolested until 1913. That year, Benjamin Jew, a recent immigrant, was refused entry by the principal of the Number 5 Public School located at Broadway and Ashland Avenue. The principal had rejected the child specifically on “the ground that he was not white.” Benjamin was eventually accepted into the school after his Sunday school teacher—also an instructor at the public school—intervened on his behalf. Other church members also appealed to the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Charles J. Koch. As to the child’s non-citizen status, Koch would ambiguously state that “I presume that he was sure of his ground.” Instead of further addressing that technicality, the School Board President declared that he would rather not venture an opinion as to the child’s right to attend a white school.”(9) Again it seems that local officials preferred to ignore the Chinese students’ tenuous position, barring a surge in their numbers or a public uproar from white Baltimoreans. An increase in the Chinese population became unlikely when the United States Congress further restricted immigration in 1924 by passing another Exclusion Act that permitted only the children of native born Americans to enter the country.(10)

In 1927, the federal government attempted to resolve the school issue after a Chinese family in Mississippi protested their daughter’s exclusion from the local white, public school. The Supreme Court ruled that the division was between the “pure white or Caucasian race on the one hand and the brown, yellow and black races on the other.”(11) The young Mississippi girl could either attend the colored school in Bolivar county or opt for a private option. It doesn’t appear that the verdict had any bearing on the situation in Baltimore, where the minority group’s status continued to be determined by the whims of the community or the local principal. In fact, the success of Chinese students in the city’s most prestigious public high schools soon became a subject to celebrate in the papers.

Poly Cracker, 1931, Yearbook, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

When Sec Ai Lew graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1931, an article in The Baltimore Sun stated that he was “called a brilliant student by members of the faculty, liked by all of his classmates.”(12) Lew had immigrated to the city when he was six years old, though his primary education experience is not discussed in the article. The Poly Cracker yearbook from that year similarly sung the young man’s praises, asserting that “when he came to America he did not know A from Z in English, but he now puts some of the native butter-and-egg men to shame with his grammatical accuracy.”(13) That same year the newspaper noted that Lillian Chin and Ruth Oy Lee graduated from Western High School, where each participated in multiple extra-curricular clubs just as their white classmates did.(14) Neither situation was presented as a controversy, but the Chinese students were a notable curiosity. Nor did The Baltimore Sun make any mention of their opportunities as compared to those for African-Americans in the city.

Polytechnic’s State Championship Soccer Team of 1931. Sec Ai Lew, bottom row, right.
Poly Cracker, Yearbook, 1931, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

As with other ethnic groups, Baltimore’s Chinese community experienced a boom during the 1940s as migrants sought to enjoy the war-time prosperity. For Leslie Chin, who emigrated from China at age ten, it meant a temporary hiatus from elementary school after his uncle pulled him out of school to work in the kitchen at “ChinaLand,” his restaurant at Eutaw and Fayette Streets. In an oral history interview conducted in 1977, Chin recalled that all the young men who would have held kitchen jobs were drafted into service, requiring school age children to fill the void. This was technically illegal, but, as Chin joked that “they had no way to find me … because I was hidden in the kitchen (laughs).”(15) He did not attend school again until after the war when he entered Baltimore City College in 1946. When asked about his experience with prejudice as a child, Chin said:

“I never had that feeling, but when I talked to other people, they had, yes (I) think prejudice is there and as I look into it, I can see. But from my personal experience, I know I didn’t, even when I finished school …When I (was) in school I had a lot of friends and I go to parties. The childhood experience with Hobines. I feel no discrimination.”

Greenbag, 1949, Yearbook, Baltimore City College. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

Living with a German-American family, the Hobines, clearly affected Chin’s acculturation process and comfort level with white classmates. He did not seem shy in his pursuits in high school, participating in sports and serving in the school’s executive board and as a homeroom president.(16) It is likely relevant that City College, like Polytechnic and Western, was a selective college preparatory school which white students chose to attend. The experience for Chinese students might have been more openly hostile at a neighborhood institution, as it was for African-Americans that integrated the zoned schools of south and southeast Baltimore following the 1954 Brown vs. Board decision.

Even after World War II, Chinese-Americans never formed a numerically significant community in Baltimore City. Considering the blatant discrimination and violence that Chinese-Americans faced in California and other western states,  integration of the city’s white public school system was relatively painless for Maryland’s Chinese students, due in large part to their small numbers. While certainly a trying experience, the childish abuse that Hom Let received in 1897 could never rival the severe hostility that African-Americans would suffer through to attend the same schools. In Baltimore, whites viewed Chinese students as a novelty or curiosity rather than the threat that larger minority groups could represent.

Even as federal restrictions have been eased and immigrant populations have established a significant presence in most major cities, Baltimore has largely maintained its bipartite racial status. Today, black and white students make up nearly 94 percent of the city’s public school system. At the beginning of the 2012 school year, students of Asian descent numbered 888, or just over one percent.(17) Despite their limited presence, Chinese students raised interesting questions for the Baltimore City Public School System, perhaps foreshadowing both white and black reactions to mid-century desegregation efforts. (David Armenti)

David Armenti is the Student Research Center Coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society.

Footnotes:

(1) “NegroesRequestSchool Control: Seek Full Charge of Colored Education in City,” The Baltimore Sun, 16 February, 1945.

(2) Leslie Chin, History of Chinese-Americans in Baltimore (Baltimore: Greater Baltimore Chinese American Bicentennial Committee), Maryland Historical Society Library, PAM 12367.

(3) Historical Census Browser, University of Virginia Library, County-Level Results for 1900.

(4) “Investigating School System,” The Baltimore Sun, 10 March 1911.

(5) “Hom Let Goes to School,” The Baltimore Sun, 18 February, 1897.

(6) “Is He White or Colored?,” The Baltimore Sun, 19 February, 1897.

(7) “Cannot Teach the Chinese”, The Baltimore Sun, 22 March, 1898.

(8) “Harry Hom Let’s Progress”, The Baltimore Sun, 23 March, 1898.

(9) “Chinese Boy in Class”, The Baltimore Sun, 18 September, 1913.

(10) Leslie Chin, History of Chinese-Americans in Baltimore

(11) “Chinese Must Go To Colored Schools,” The Baltimore Afro-American, 26, 1927.

(12)“Chinese, Who Left Home At Age Of Six, Graduated From Poly,” The Baltimore Sun. 16 June 1931.

(13) Poly Cracker, 1931, Yearbook, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

(14) “Two Chinese Girls Receive Diplomas,” The Baltimore Sun, 19 June, 1931; Westward Ho, 1931,Yearbook,WesternHigh School. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

(15) Leslie Chin, Interview by Stephen Knipp, Maryland Historical Society, OH 8223

(16) Greenbag, 1949, Yearbook, BaltimoreCityCollege. Enoch Pratt Free Library: Maryland Department.

(17) 2012 Maryland Report Card, Baltimore City, Demographics Data Summary, Enrollment.

David T. Abercrombie, undated, MdHS, MS 1.

Abercrombie & Fitch – the name brings up images of young, scantily clad men and women staring out from advertisements with smoldering eyes and pouty lips. But the store known today for its teen apparel as well as its controversial ideas about how to dress children was originally a much different enterprise, offering clothing and gear for the outdoor set a little over a century ago. One half of the dynamic style duo of founders Abercrombie and Fitch is a son of Baltimore and the innovator behind the company once known as the “Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World.”

The future clothing magnate, David Thomas Abercrombie, was born in Baltimore in 1867 to John and Elizabeth Abercrombie. John Morrison Abercrombie immigrated to Baltimore as a boy in 1847 from Falkirk, Scotland. Prior to David’s birth, he attended Baltimore City College and eventually established himself as a newsman, working a managerial position at the Baltimore branch of the American News Company. Elizabeth Sarah Daniel, the daughter of a Scottish doctor practicing in Ottawa, met her future husband through family friends. The Abercrombies had a lot of children. First born, David was eventually joined by six siblings: John, Harry, Maud, Mary, Robert, and Ronald.

All but one of the Abercrombie sons followed in their father’s footsteps and attended City College (Robert attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute). While at the school David developed a keen interest in both engineering and exploration.  After graduating in 1885 he enrolled at the Maryland Institute, School for Art and Design – now known as the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) – as an engineering student. While MICA might today appear an odd choice for a prospective engineer, the college was originally established as a trade school, and in 1885 still offered courses in fields like mechanical sciences and chemistry. According to school historian Douglas Frost, Abercrombie attended the college during its transition period when the curriculum began to shift from one offering a variety of mechanical, engineering, and artistic courses to a program increasingly focused on the visual arts. (1)

After graduating, Abercrombie left Baltimore to pursue his dreams of exploration. He worked as a surveyor and civil engineer for several railroad companies including the Baltimore & Ohio. Abercrombie mapped and surveyed previously undocumented regions of the Appalachians ranging from North Carolina to Kentucky. To withstand the rugged terrain and ever-changing weather of the Appalachians, he fashioned for himself and his surveying crew personalized camping gear using textiles of his own design. In an Abercrombie family history written in 1940, brother Ronald noted that,

“[David’s] inventive genius enabled him to make a practical solution to most every problem of the prospector, huntsman, camper and woodsman. He was one of the best woodsmen, in its broadest sense, of his time. When sheet aluminum was first made, he was the first to utilize it in manufacturing of camp utensils, nesting kits and other useful articles for the camper. This application was soon followed in general use in home kitchen ware.”(2)

David T. Abercrombie, undated, MdHS, MS 1.

Unfortunately, David developed farsightedness, cutting his field career short at the age of 25. However, Abercrombie’s ingenuity and innate talent for invention would eventually lead to greater successes in the clothing industry. After being forced into premature retirement from his chosen profession in 1892, Abercrombie’s fellow surveyors suggested he pursue a career as an inventor, manufacturing his creations for other outdoorsmen. He soon joined his uncle at the National Waterproof Fiber Company in New York City. Over the next six years Abercrombie worked for a series of companies manufacturing new products until 1898, when he opened his very own retail store on South Street in Manhattan. The David T. Abercrombie Company sold premium sporting products including fishing and camping gear, rifles, and specialized clothing. David’s own designs were often featured in the products.

The store was a hit among the Manhattan elite and gained enough success to warrant a move from South Street to the trendier shopping district on Park Avenue. His many clients included explorer Robert Peary and President Theodore Roosevelt  (Abercrombie also clothed the future president and his Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War). One particularly loyal customer was a lawyer by the name of Ezra Fitch. His interest in the store went beyond mere patronage, and in 1900 he left his practice to join Abercrombie as a business partner. In 1904, the store officially adopted the name Abercrombie & Fitch Company.

The relationship between the co-owners quickly soured however, and within a few years Abercrombie and Fitch were battling over the future direction of their enterprise. Abercrombie wanted the store to remain true to its origins as an outdoor outfitter, but Fitch’s ideas for a more generalized retail store, catering to a larger clientele, won out. In 1907, a mere three years after becoming official partners, David Abercrombie “disposed of all his interest” in Abercrombie & Fitch.*

Abercrombie Family Coat of Arms, MdHS, MS 1.

While A&F would go on to become a global brand, Abercrombie’s career in the clothing industry was far from over. With the help of his youngest brother Robert, David refashioned his old company, the David T. Abercrombie Company, into a textile manufacturer. Over the next decade, his success as a clothing outfitter only grew. As the United States prepared to enter World War I, Abercrombie’s reputation was such that the U.S. Army made him a Major of the Quarter Master Reserves, entrusting him with the management of the New York Packing Depot where his civilian employees “turned out an average of six thousand uniform-size packages a day.” His pioneering packing and folding processes, involving a stretchable, waterproof paper of his own invention, afforded the armed forces a new abundance of space. According to an article in the July, 1919 issue of Popular Science Monthly, in only a year’s time, Abercrombie’s innovations saved the government 85 million dollars. When he was discharged at the end of the war the government promoted him to the rank of Lt. Colonel. He continued to work in the manufacturing business until his death in 1931.

While David left Baltimore as a young man to find his fortune in New York, many of his siblings remained in Baltimore. Harry pursued a career in law, serving as a lawyer in the Legislature of Maryland and eventually becoming a judge on the bench of the People’s Court. (3) John became a physician and coroner. Ronald also went on to a successful career as a physician following his collegiate years at Johns Hopkins University where he was not only a gymnast, but also “the Best College Center at Lacrosse ever produced in this country,” which probably involves a bit of hyperbole as this quote was pulled from Ronald’s autobiography.(4) He later sat on several Hopkins boards and served as Director of Physical Education.** Ronald left a mixed legacy at Johns Hopkins as he later admitted in his autobiography that as the JHU “Director of Physical Education, [he was the] instigator or founder of the ‘Lily White’ practice in college athletics.”(5) As Hopkins did not admit its first African-American undergraduate student, Frederick Scott, until 1945, its delay in breaking down the segregation barrier may have had something to do with the influence of a certain alumnus. (6) Abercrombie & Fitch would later deal with its own charges of racism –  in 2005 the company brokered a $40 million dollar settlement in a class action suit charging the company with racial profiling in hiring practices at its retail stores.

Today, the Abercrombie and Fitch brand has become as far removed from the original vision of founder David Abercrombie as can be imagined. The company once renowned for its top of the line sports gear now markets exclusively to fashion trendy teeny boppers. In a 2006 interview A&F CEO Mike Jeffries laid out exactly who the store was in business for:

“…we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that…In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”(7)

Ironically, the idea of enlarging the store’s market was what destroyed the partnership of David Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch a little over a century ago. But who knows, maybe Abercrombie would have approved the “good-looking” image if it promoted the fitness necessary for outdoor adventures. (Ben Koshland)

Years ago when I attended Baltimore City College, someone listed off some famous graduates of City and told me that Abercrombie of Abercrombie & Fitch was a fellow knight. I always thought this was cool but just another fun fact or statistic I could use when crushing some silly engineer in the so called debate of the greatest high school in all the land. However, while going through some of the Johns Hopkins school ephemera at MdHS, I stumbled upon a program for a JHU athletic event from 1894. Alongside the traditional gymnastics, the program listed some pretty exciting events like class tug of war, roman ladders, and chicken fighting (not to be confused with cockfighting); all things I think should be reintroduced into collegiate athletics. But while I was glancing over this program I noticed a name kept popping up, Abercrombie. He was listed as a participant in parallel bars, rings, vaulting horse, horizontal bar, and the roman ladder; not too shabby. I assumed this had to be Mr. Abercrombie and decided to do a little digging within the archives. It turns out this was not the Abercrombie of the clothing conglomerate; it was…his brother Ronald.

What a difference a century makes…
(left) Abercrombie & Fitch Catalog, 1913; (right) Abercrombie & Fitch Advertisement, accessed 2013.
(Images not from MdHS collection)

*Abercrombie didn’t cut all ties with his former partner – the David T. Abercrombie Company manufactured textiles for Abercrombie & Fitch for many years following his departure from the company.

** Ronald was also a contributing member to Maryland Historical Society – in 1943 he published an article in the MdHS Magazine on the Sweet Air Estate. This estate owned by the Carroll family is now a part of GunpowderFallsState Park. The Sweet Air loop begins in Sweet Air, a few miles east of Cockeysville and runs all the way to the Pennsylvania boarder.

Footnotes:

(1) Frost, Douglas L. MICA: Making History, Making Art. Baltimore: Maryland Institute College of Art, 2010). 

(2) Abercrombie, Ronald. The Abercrombie’s of Baltimore (Baltimore: Private Publisher,  1940), p 20.

(3) Ibid., p.27

(4) Ibid., p. 29

(5) Ibid., p. 29

(6) Wynhe, Dr. Barbara. “1945.” The History of African Americans @ JohnsHopkinsUniversity. May 9, 2013.

(7) Sole, Elise, “New Petition Urges Abercrombie & Fitch to Change Its Anti-Plus-Size Stance,” Yahoo! Shine, May 9, 2013.

Sources and Further Reading:

Abercrombie, Ronald. The Abercrombie’s of Baltimore. Baltimore: Private Publisher,  1940.

McBride, Dwight A. Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch. New York: NYU Press, 2005.

Business Insider, ABERCROMBIE: How A Hunting And Fishing Store Became A Sex-Infused Teenybop Legend, Accessed April 25, 2013.

Connors, Michael, “Save Money By Bailing Your Clothes, Apply This Lesson Learned in the War,” Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 95, No.1, July, 1919.

Sole, Elise, “New Petition Urges Abercrombie & Fitch to Change Its Anti-Plus-Size Stance,” Yahoo! Shine, May 9, 2013.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/woman-protesting-push-up-bras-for-young-girls-at-abercrombie-fitch-cited-by-mall-security.html

http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/abercrombie-fitch-lawsuits-sued-racial-racist/10/26/2009/id/25015