Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Glenbrook Park & Lake Olympia Collection

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Title: Black Life in the Sacramento Valley (1919-1934) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Glenbrook Park & Lake Olympia Collection Author: Thomas C. Fleming Source(s): Sacramento Public Library # of Pages: 36 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-01-08 13:14:08 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:11:48 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:11:48

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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Black Life in the Sacramento Valley Page 17 of 37 the morning. So all of us went down to the depot that night. There must have been a hundred people standing there, hoping the president would show up so they could say they saw him. The train arrived; it slowed down, but it didn't stop. Of course, Harding was asleep then. He got into San Francisco early the next morning, and I think he died that evening. I was home that night, and the next thing I knew, the circulation manager for the Chico Record, Charlie Deuel, was pounding on my door. "Thomas! Do you want to sell some papers? We're putting out an extra. The president died." I was in my clothes in no time, and ran over to the Record office. They had assembled about 20 kids, and as the papers came off, they were giving them bundles. So we fanned out all over the town, yelling, "Extra! Extra! President dies! Extra! Extra!" Lights were turning on; people were running out to buy a paper. Everybody wanted to see it, because there weren't any radios in the homes then. I had to go back twice to get more papers. I sold all that I got, and I made about $6 that night, which was good for a teenager. Harding was a Republican, and it was Republican country up there, but I didn't see any grief over his death. With President Kennedy, it was different. Kennedy was butchered. Harding died in bed, from ilIness. And then Kennedy was far more popular than Warren Harding was. Harding was just a political hack. All he liked to do was play poker and drink bourbon whisky. He was a figurehead for the Republicans, because nobody knew whether he was intelligent or not. He never said anything. He went along with everything the party's leaders told him to do, and didn't make any ripples. OR OR Another news event I remember was the World Series of 1921, when the New York Giants played the New York Yankees. I favored the Giants because my father had taken me to see them play at the Polo Ground in Harlem, which was their home park. I was going by the office of the Chico Enterprise when I noticed a crowd standing outside. I stopped to see, and a person was putting the score up in the window as soon it came over the wire from Associated Press. The sportswriter would describe it very graphically, just like you'd read it in the paper—every ball thrown or fielded. He made it so realistic, it was almost like you were there. They posted it twice per inning, every time a team came up to bat. Those who were closest and could read the story passed the word back, and there would be discussions about the game. Many people stayed there for the whole nine innings, which was about three hours. * OK OK When I moved to Chico, I was already aware of the existence of the black press. I knew that there were both local black papers, such as the New York Age in Harlem, and national black papers that were sold in black neighborhoods all over the country. I never saw a black newspaper in a store in Chico, but people subscribed by mail, and I would sometimes see them in homes. The biggest of the national black papers was the Chicago Defender, a crusading weekly founded by Robert Abbott. He came up from the South, and was the first black http://www.cmonline.com/boson/freebies/blackhistory/fleming2.html 12/28/04