In 1884 T. F. Cassels was chairman of a convention of Tennessee’s African American leaders. Three hundred men, representing seventeen counties, met in Nashville to discuss various political issues, one of the most disturbing of which was a recent Supreme Court decision that Congress could prohibit racial discrimination by state agencies, but not by private organizations. Keynote speaker James Napier urged black voters to stick with the Republican Party, working “with united purpose and concert of action” to gain complete “privileges and blessings of American citizenship.” Samuel A. McElwee, a fellow member of the Tennessee House, proclaimed that blacks would “declare eternal war” until they secured the rights due to them. Cassels agreed that the Supreme Court’s ruling had “given rise to serious questions concerning the legal status of Negroes” and urged careful deliberation before taking any action toward securing their rights.
During the same year school teacher and activist Ida B. Wells was thrown off a train when, having purchased a first-class ticket, she refused to leave the ladies’ car (reserved for whites only) and move to the smoking car as requested. Wells filed suit against the Chesapeake & Ohio & Southwestern Railroad Company, and hired Thomas F. Cassels as her attorney, but the railroad company convinced him to drop the suit, and Wells fired him for failing to pursue the issue. Another attorney took up the case and won it in Circuit Court, saying that the company had violated two Tennessee statutes: the first prohibited railroads from charging blacks first-class fare and then seating them in second-class cars; the second required “separate but equal” accommodations for blacks and whites. Wells was awarded $500. However, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision three years later, finding for the railroad company instead.
Cassels served as a Republican presidential elector in 1888. He and his family were widely respected in Memphis, as can be surmised from city directory entries, which help to fill the gap left by the lost 1890 census. Thomas, variously called “T. Frank” and “Thomas F.,” was working as an attorney – sometimes with a partner, sometimes not. For several years in the mid-1880s, he was also listed as U.S. Surveyor of Customs. Emma frequently had her own directory entry, usually as “E. F. Cassels.” She was a teacher at the Clay Street School until 1882, at the Kortrecht Grammar School through 1886, and then simply in the “Public School.” Her name disappeared from the directory for a few years until she emerged in 1898 as the principal of the Love Avenue School. There were no entries for the Cassels’ older son, Clinton, after the 1880 census, when he was nine years old.
In 1891 Francis D. (DeWitt) Cassels appeared in the city directory as a student, boarding with his parents at 678 Broadway; in 1893 and 1894 he was teaching at the Virginia Avenue Public School, but in 1895 he was found for the first time as a member of the law firm Cassels & Cassels “Thomas F. & F. Dewitt, Lawyers, 51 Beale.” The father-son partnership continued until an entry in the Polk Directory reported, “Cassels Francis D, died Jan 30 99.”
His obituary appeared in the Memphis Appeal, February 1, 1899, under the headline, “F. D. Cassells Dead. Colored Man of Prominence, a leader of His Race”:
Francis Dewitt Cassels, colored, a young lawyer, and son of Attorney T.F. Cassels, died Monday morning and was buried yesterday afternoon. He was a prominent member of his race, and had been married but four months, his wife being the daughter of Mail Carrier McFarland. He was for several years a teacher in the Virginia avenue public school. The funeral services were held at the Second Congregational Church, and were conducted by Rev. N.H. Pius, principal of the Howe Institute, who was assisted by the Rev. W.S. Ellington, pastor of the First Colored Baptist Church. Notwithstanding the intensely cold weather, the church, of which the deceased was an active member, was crowded, and many and beautiful were the floral offerings sent by friends. . . .
According to Shelby County death records, F. D. Cassells [sic] died January 30, 1899, of consumption (tuberculosis). He died at 678 Broadway, his parents’ home, attended by Dr. Elmer E. Francis, One Equitable Building, res 445 Mississippi Avenue. The undertaker responsible for his burial in Zion Cemetery was Walsh and Co., John J. Collins, Manager, at 330½ Second Street, Memphis (telephone 468).
Thomas F. Cassels died, also of tuberculosis, four years later, on April 2, 1903. His burial permit states he was an attorney at law, had been born, like his parents, in Ohio, and had been ill for one year. He died at 861 Lauderdale Street (not a hospital or infirmary), in the 13th Ward, and was survived by his wife. Like his son, he was buried in Zion Cemetery.
Clinton’s widow, Aline, returned to live with her parents for a short time, and the 1901 Polk Directory showed her working as a teacher. However, by the time of the 1910 Census (in which, for the first time the widowed Emma Cassels stated that both her children had died), Aline Cassels was living in Ward 12, Manhattan, New York, and working as a singer in Vaudeville! She had lopped a couple of years off her age, saying that she was 26 (although she was certainly 30), but all the other information confirms her identity – a black female, widowed, born in Tennessee to a father from Kentucky. Her name also appeared on a passenger list on the ship Mayaro, leaving Trinidad on October 3, 1913, and arriving in New York on October 11, 1913, John Vaughn, Master. Two of the three other Americans on the ship were associated with the oil fields (one was actually from Titusville, Pennsylvania), but there was no indication that she was traveling with either of them.
A 1908 book extolling the accomplishments of black Memphians states, in part, “In the matter of able and brilliant colored lawyers practicing at the bar of Memphis, the colored people are to be congratulated. They have an aggregation of the ablest and best equipped lawyers in the state of Tennessee. For over thirty years the colored people of Memphis have been ably represented at the bar of public justice, the pioneer in the profession having been Hon. T. F. Cassells, one of the craftiest, most resourceful, and most learned lawyers, regardless of race, that ever practiced at the Memphis bar.” (Hamilton, 59)
KBL 11/30/2010
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Sources:
Callender, James Thomson Callender. Richmond Recorder, September 1, 1802.
Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
Clark, Herbert. “The Life of James Carroll Napier, 1845-1940.” Paper presented at the Afro-
American Culture and History Annual Local Conference, Nashville, 1983.
Hamilton, G. P. The Bright Side of Memphis. Memphis: Self-published, 1901, reprinted in 2003 for Burke’s Book Store, Memphis.
Knoxville Messenger, February 1, 1868.
Lovett, Bobby L. A Profile of African Americans in Tennessee History: Introduction. http://www.tnstate.edu/library/digital/document.htm
McBride, Robert M., and Dan M. Robinson. Biographical Directory, Tennessee General Assembly, Volume II (1861-1901). Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives, and Tennessee Historical Commission, 1979.
Memphis Avalanche, September 22, September 24, October 6, 1880.
Memphis City Directories: Boyle-Chapman, 1876; Sholes, 1877-1885; Weatherbe, 1883; Dow,
1885-1892; Polk, 1891-1896, 1898-1901; Degaris, 1897-1898.
Memphis Daily Appeal, September 14 & October 5, 1880; February 1, 1899.
Nashville American, February 29 & March 1, 1884.
Oberlin College Archives, Digital Collections. http://dcollections.oberlin.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/photos&CISOPTR= 371&CISOBOX=1&REC=7
Tennessee General Assembly. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee.
Nashville: Tavel and Howell, 1881, 1883.
Much gratitude to Dr. Joseph Cartwright for his help in tracing Thomas F. Cassels’ Oberlin career. In addition, everyone who conducts Memphis research is grateful for the bountiful website produced by Tom Leatherwood, Shelby County Register of Deeds: http://register.shelby.tn.us/
Links to Underground Railroad (Ohio), Jackson/Ross counties, and Cassels/Woodson info:
www.angelfire.com/oh/chillicothe/ugrr.html
www.angelfire.com/oh/chillicothe/settlements/html
www.angelfire.com/oh/chillicothe/formerslaves.html