Old Missoula

 

 

1^st. Black Graduate at U of M Law School – James Weston Dorsey

 

Recently, the University of Montana made issues of their historic Sentinel Yearbook available online, beginning with the 1904 edition. As historical documents they are a great source of information regarding the University, the faculty and its students, and the city of Missoula. If proof were needed that our U of M ancestors actually studied, worked, and played much like we do today, you have it here. You also have a rich source of information that likely wouldn’t be available otherwise.

 

Scrolling through some of the issues can be visually overwhelming with endless lists of students and activities that can get repetitive. Yet, the photographs of early scenes of the Missoula campus are never dull if you are interested in historical Missoula.

 

It was while scrolling through pictures in the 1920 Sentinel that I first noticed James Dorsey, a black man who resides in the middle of a photograph of Grizzly football players – about 20 of them – as though he is nothing out of the ordinary. No written description of these players makes any special notice of him, other than one sentence where he is mentioned along with several others.

 

“Dalberg, Harris and Dorsey did great work on the line, while Keely, Adams and Sullivan starred in the backfield.”

 

Two of these athletes’ names are very prominent on today’s University of Montana campus. Almost all Missoula sports people recognize the name ‘Dalberg’ arena which sits in the ‘Harry Adams’ field house. Even a few of Missoula’s sports fanatics might recognize that Steve Sullivan, who, like Dalberg, was also from Butte; and was one of the first Grizzly football players to play professionally.

 

But who was James Dorsey? Little known in Missoula’s history, James Dorsey has been honored in some different ways. He has an interesting story.

 

If you google him you will notice that he was feted by the University of Montana in 1963, when he was given the Distinguished Alumni award. It lists him with a B.A. in psychology in 1922, and LL. B. in 1927, but no other information is attached. For some of us who may not be familiar with it, LL. B. was the old term for a professional law degree. James Dorsey was the first black man to graduate from the University of Montana School of Law. In fact, he may have been the first black to receive any degree at the University of Montana.

 

James W. Dorsey was born at Fort Missoula in 1897. Some very good information about the Dorsey family can be found in the National Register of Historic Places for Missoula’s Northside Railroad Historic District (see section 8, p 6).

 

“The Northside District is unique in its social context in that it historically acted as a haven for minorities such as the Chinese, the Japanese, and African-Americans. Many of the latter had come to Missoula as part of the “Buffalo Soldiers” brigade stationed at Fort Missoula. Perhaps the most significant of these soldiers and Northside residents was Ephram[1] Dorsey. After his marriage in 1885, Ephram joined the army and was assigned to the 25^th Infantry Regiment, Company H. He reenlisted at Fort Snelling, Minnesota September 6, 1887, and by the time of his second discharge, he was stationed at Fort Missoula as a musician. He resigned from the service August 6, 1894 in order to take up a trade of shoe-maker. Ephram also participated in the intervention of labor strikes with Federal forces. In 1892, Dorsey and his comrades traveled over to the Coeur d’Alene mining district to arrest striking union men who were battling non-union and company detectives. For a time, the black soldiers took up camp along the Northern Pacific tracks in Missoula.

 

“By 1900, Ephram Dorsey had retired from the army to take up residence at 229 North Second Street West in Missoula, where he also worked as an upholsterer. The Dorseys were a part of a small enclave numbering 15 that existed in Missoula at that time. Ephram and Laura were the only married couple. They took in two single black borders named Jim Whealand, and John Haines. Both were day laborers in their twenties. Susana Millers, a widow with four children, lived at 205 North Second Street East. The occupations of the remaining nine men counted in the 1900 census included day laborers, dishwashers, porters, farmers and two barbers. It is not known how many of these men had been soldiers at the fort before entering the civilian work force. Nevertheless, the Fort Missoula connection was strong within Missoula’s Northside. Andrew Pillow, the post quartermaster who was stationed at the fort from 1894 to 1902 retired in Missoula where he spent the rest of his life. He worked as a yardman for the Northern Pacific Railroad. One of Ephram’s comrades, Samuel Lundy, company H, retired from the service and took up residence next to the Dorseys at 231 North Second Street West. Samuel was married and like the Dorsey’s, he and his family were Catholics. . . From 1915 to 1945, Ephram Dorsey’s brother, Solomon, and his wife, lived at 817 Wolf. Solomon had come to Missoula to live with his brother, Ephram, and to work in Ephram’s upholstery business. After Ephram’s death, Solomon became a janitor for various firms throughout the city, and was able to buy his own home at 817 Wolf . . .

 

“During the period from 1915 to 1945, Ephram Dorsey’s son, James, became the second African-American to play football for the University of Montana and in 1929 the first black to graduate from the university law school.”

 

The American Catholic Who’s who 1960 – 1961, states that James Dorsey was the son of Ephraim Thomas Dorsey and Laura Belle (Smith). It also states that he graduated from the Missoula Public School system in 1912 and from Loyola High School in 1918. He began attending the University of Montana in 1919.

 

Dorsey was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal in 1966 saying this about his education, “I was determined to get an education because I knew I would be hopelessly lost without it.”[2]

 

Dorsey married Vivian Marie Brooke of Billings, Montana, in 1923, shortly after graduating with his B. A. in Missoula. He had worked at a variety of menial jobs in order to put himself through college, including stints as a janitor, sign painter, window decorator, and at dance halls. On top of this he earned several letters at U of M in both track and football.

 

His first efforts toward establishing a law practice were unsuccessful. After moving to Fort Dodge, Iowa and St. Paul, Minnesota he realized that his occupation would require him to live in a city that had a larger black population. He found this in Milwaukee where he passed the Wisconsin state bar exam in 1928 and set up what became a lifelong practice.

 

He successfully represented both whites and blacks in Milwaukee, and became involved in local government. The Milwaukee Journal cited him as Milwaukee’s first black candidate nominated for any citywide office, although he did not win in the election. Later he was appointed Milwaukee’s first black court commissioner.

 

It was while serving as chairman of the Milwaukee branch of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that Dorsey played a prominent role in the cause black activism.

 

During the depression of the 1930’s blacks throughout the country had experienced unemployment to a much greater degree than whites. The 1940 nationwide census revealed that unemployment for black males was more than twice that of whites. WW II changed this somewhat when there was a shortage of workers in general. However, the hiring practices at many large Milwaukee plants did not change to any great degree and blacks were still suffering discrimination in hiring practices.

 

James Dorsey, along with William Kelley, executive director of the Milwaukee Urban League, worked to remedy these practices when they challenged these companies. In an article that appeared in the Marquette Law Review, author Phoebe W. Williams, explained their role in this process:[3]

 

During 1941, “President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which established a Fair Employment Practices Committee [FEPC] to work against job bias in government and defense industries” and prohibited racially discriminatory employment practices by defense contractors. Local black leaders Attorney James Dorsey, President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (“NAACP”), and William Kelley, Executive Director of the Milwaukee Urban League, gathered affidavits from black workers alleging racially discriminatory practices by Milwaukee firms that performed federal defense work contracts.

 

Appearing at hearings in Chicago before the FEPC, the NAACP and the Milwaukee Urban League [together] successfully presented cases against five Milwaukee companies. The evidence established that the firms refused to employ blacks and Jews. The firms issued restrictive work orders to public and private employment agencies where they sought “only white or only Gentile workers.” Testimony from the few black workers hired alleged that their employers confined them to jobs such as “porters, janitors, and common laborers.”

 

The FEPC ordered those companies to “accept applicants for all classifications of employment without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin,” warning that if they failed to comply they could incur claims of contract violations, fines, or suspension of their defense contracts. It required the convergence of federal policies and orders, acute labor shortages, and pressure from blacks and their white allies to compel Milwaukee industrial firms to reform their racist policies and employ blacks in larger numbers.

 

Dorsey also had an influence on others that resulted in positive change in the Milwaukee area. A very prominent black female attorney, Vel Phillips, received honors for her work in effecting change in the black experience in Milwaukee, and was the first black and first female to hold several positions in Milwaukee. She also made history as the first black elected to the position of Secretary of State in Wisconsin in 1978. She spoke about James Dorsey’s influence on her at a very young age[4]:

 

Born on Milwaukee’s south side, Phillips was mesmerized by the conversations she overheard between her parents and James W. Dorsey, a family friend and prominent black attorney. “He had this beautiful voice, and whenever he entered the conversation, everyone would stop and listen,” Phillips says. “I thought he was wonderful.”

 

Dorsey was also a part of the effort to end discriminatory practices in the Milwaukee school system. Along with Phillips he testified at school board meetings where the topic of black teachers was an issue[5]:

 

Attorney James Dorsey also confronted the Board, but his concerns centered on the quality of education MPS offered black children. He questioned if MPS schools “adequately prepared black youth to compete in the labor market for high-quality jobs rather than for ‘the dirty work’ handed down to them.”

 

Dorsey was also noted for his attempts to change Wisconsin state law as it applied to hiring practices and housing[6]:

 

By 1957, Attorney James Dorsey demonstrated, through his representation of black bricklayers in Ross v. Ebert, that he believed the Wisconsin Supreme Court should apply Brown when interpreting Wisconsin’s legislation addressing racial discrimination in employment. Dorsey argued to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, albeit unsuccessfully, that the union’s racially discriminatory refusals of plaintiff’s applications for membership violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court’s decision generated such negative publicity that Dorsey and black state assemblyman Isaac Coggs proposed a bill to strengthen Wisconsin’s Fair Employment Laws, which the legislature passed.

 

By 1962, Attorney Dorsey had redefined Brown’s principles and applied them in an even broader context. When advocating passage of a City of Milwaukee Fair Housing Ordinance, Dorsey restated Brown’s concepts in expansive terms: “The court said [in 1954] the doctrine of equal but separate accommodations for white and negro people had no place in America . . . . Segregation in any form is immoral . . . .”

 

Dorsey also had an impact on another prominent Missoulian – Naseby Rhinehard, the iconic athletic trainer at the University of Montana, who had a 47 year career there. Graduating at the University of Montana in 1935, Rhinehart also had a distinguished athletic career in Missoula. Rhinehart came to Missoula on the advice of James Dorsey.

 

The following quote is from a Missoulian article that appeared on September 2, 1979:

 

Naseby is a humble, quiet man who grew up in a humble but not-so-quiet Milwaukee ghetto. . . He described the area as a “cross section of noises.” People were “always getting hurt, beat up, cut or shot.” When he came to Missoula in 1931, the lack of noise was deafening for Naseby. He said that adapting to the silence was the hardest part about Missoula. . .

 

Naseby was persuaded into coming to UM by James Dorsey, a black man who had played football at UM. Dorsey, a UM law school graduate, had set up a practice in Milwaukee.

 

“Mr. J. W. Dorsey took to me as a father,” Naseby said. Naseby, who was introduced to Dorsey as a junior in high school, said that during his high school days Dorsey used to tell him “one of these days we’re going to send you to the University of Montana.”

 

He is a recipient of nine varsity letters, a trick turned by only 15 Grizzly athletes. In 1935, he was voted the winner of the Grizzly Cup Award. It is an honor given to one Grizzly athlete a year that displays “outstanding loyalty, service and scholarship as well as athletic ability.”

 

The article also mentions Naseby Rhinehart’s son, Pete, who went on to marry Dorsey’s daughter, Vivian.

 

The Grizzly cup, one of the highest athletic awards UM can bestow, was won by Naseby’s son Pete in 1958.

 

Dorsey gained another kind of notoriety in 1964 when he resigned the NAACP in protest over a local school boycott. The issue was the subject of an article in The Milwaukee Sentinel on May 20, 1964.

 

Although he had been president of the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP for several years, he felt that the organization was allowing itself to be “dictated to by other so-called civil rights groups.” He also said that he “hated to see the NAACP falling in line with other civil rights groups that use techniques other than legal redress.”

 

The Milwaukee Sentinel article also stated a view of the protest movement that Dorsey apparently endorsed:

 

“Until very recently, the NAACP traditionally had fought for human rights principally in the courtroom. Within the past year, however, the national organization has broadened its battleground to permit more participation in direct action protests.

 

“The local organization has followed suit.

 

“Dorsey said that in the boycott he regretted ‘the use of little children, in my opinion as guinea pigs, for the personal accomplishment of personal ambitions of individuals.’

 

“He repeated his contention that the boycott would put Milwaukee back 10 years in the field of race relations. Dorsey objected to the ‘image’ boycott leaders had given Milwaukee, ‘trying to make it another Birmingham, Ala., or Jackson, Miss.’

 

“Dorsey said he doubted whether some of the present civil rights leaders could have survived ‘in the days when the going was a little rough’ for Negroes.

 

“Racial prejudice and hatred exist,’ he said, but ‘other groups have accomplished a full measure of citizenship without demonstrations.’

 

“Dorsey, who lives at 2961 N. 5^th St., has been a member of the NAACP since 1925, when he was a law student at the University of Montana. He has been in law practice here since 1928. He is a past president of the Catholic Interracial council and a former chairman of the governor’s commission on human rights.”

 

In his paper about racism in Milwaukee, titled ‘African Americans, Civil Rights, and Race – Making in Milwaukee’ (2004), author Jack Dougherty presented a detailed black historical perspective on Milwaukee’s evolution over its entire history. He noted that scholarship regarding the NAACP in Milwaukee was incomplete and that James Dorsey’s role in Milwaukee’s history needed more research.[7]

 

“Perhaps one starting point would be a biography of individual NAACP leaders from one era who fell out of favor in a subsequent era. James Dorsey, for example, presided over a fairly inactive local NAACP branch in the 1930’s, then became an outspoken protest leader in Milwaukee’s “March on Washington” for wartime jobs in 1941, followed by courtroom battles against discriminatory trade unions in the 1950’s. But in 1964, Dorsey and several Milwaukee NAACP supporters were discredited by Lloyd Barbee, the Wisconsin NAACP president, for refusing to embrace bold protest tactics, such as the boycott of segregated schools.”

 

James Dorsey died in May of 1966 in a tragic fire at his home in Milwaukee. An article in The Milwaukee Journal had this to say about him:

 

“In March, 1923, Dorsey was married. After receiving his law degree, he and his wife, Vivian, drove east in his model T Ford. He tried to set up law offices in Des Moines, Iowa, and St. Paul Minn. Because of small Negro populations in those cities, his attempts failed and he and his wife headed back to the university.

 

“At Fort Dodge, Iowa, their car broke down. Falling back on one of the things he did best at the university, Dorsey took a job at a Fort Dodge theater as a lobby decorator and janitor.

 

“While working for the theater, he decided to give Wisconsin a try, especially Milwaukee. In St. Paul, he had been told by an Urban league official that Milwaukee had only one practicing Negro attorney and the city was friendly to Negroes.”