Black history emerges from 1897 time capsule

ASHEVILLE – Over the last 118 years, Pack Square has evolved into a bustling urban center with buildings by famous architects and whirring car traffic, but underground, something of its horse-and-buggy days remained, waiting to be discovered.

In March, a time capsule in the base of the Vance Monument yielded a voice from Asheville's 1890s African-American community.

The Colored Enterprise, a newspaper representing about a third of Asheville's population in its day, lay concealed in a box at the base of the Vance Monument for more than a century.

It was put there secretly by Masons in 1897, when the monument was dedicated, and recently discovered during restoration efforts.

The time capsule contained the only known copy of The Colored Enterprise. Although scholars such as Dr. Darin Waters, a professor of history at UNC Asheville, have found references to it during their research, they've never actually seen a copy.

Searches of university archives and Internet databases were fruitless.

"It's an important piece of information that establishes the African-American presence here," Waters said. "It demonstrates a population that wasn't just isolated in the mountains but was very actively involved and seeking ways to be engaged in the larger body politic."

So who was this person who gave voice to the black community between 1896 and 1898?

It wasn't an easy thing to do. At that time, newspapers were a delicate business — fraught with financial and personal peril. In 1898, race riots erupted in Wilmington after a white mob destroyed a black newspaper office.

According to business directories from that time, the publisher and editor of The Colored Enterprise was Thomas Leatherwood, a passionate young man who was deeply involved in business and politics.

His story has been lost over the years, likely with others from the black community.

"We just haven't really studied African-American history in this region in depth," Waters said. "This gives us an opportunity to do that."

Born in 1861, Leatherwood grew up under North Carolina's Jim Crow laws, which were passed in the early 1870s and forbid interracial marriage and integrated schools, among other things.

Before he started his paper, Leatherwood attended political meetings of blacks and whites, and his participation was recorded by the Asheville Citizen throughout the 1890s.

In 1894, he opened Asheville's only black pharmacy in the YMI building, the center of the African-American business community in Asheville. Plagued by financial difficulties, the pharmacy lasted only until 1895, according to Waters' research, but Leatherwood did not shy away from entrepreneurship.

He had edited a pre-existing newspaper, the Freeman's Advocate, for a few months in 1892, according to articles in the Asheville Citizen from that year, and on Feb. 8, 1896, he launched his own publication.

The Hickory Press noted the first issue of The Colored Enterprise, a four-page weekly with a subscription price of $1 per year.

Significant portions of the newspaper were reprinted in the Asheville Citizen throughout its two years of publication.

The white newspaper's attention to The Colored Enterprise was unusual in that time, said James Danky, a retired professor from the University of Wisconsin who founded the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture.

Leatherwood's social acumen likely contributed to his relationship with the Citizen, Danky said.

"This guy is definitely a civic leader ... someone who is savvy enough to work with the white majority community," he said.

Perhaps a result of that savvy, The Colored Enterprise got its first reprint in the Citizen in May 1896 for praising the white community after a black lawyer, Harrison Brown, was admitted to the bar.

"It seems that we are living among the best set of white people in the country," the Citizen quoted from the Colored Enterprise.

Waters said that sentiment wasn't terribly far from the truth. Although Western North Carolina's black population was unrepresented in politics, it wasn't subject to the same intimidation and terror tactics that took place in other areas.

"Asheville is different … because tourism is so important," Waters said. "It's wanting to promote the idea that the black population that is here, this is a nice community. You're not going to get the same kind of trouble that you get in other places."

Danky, on the other hand, calls the reprint a "bit of self-congratulatory feel good."

Regardless, it started a relationship between the two papers. After the initial mention, the Citizen began chronicling The Colored Enterprise's growth from four to an eventual eight columns in 1897.

The black paper's biggest promoter was an anonymous columnist for the Citizen who called himself The Tattler and wrote about everything from gossip to politics.

"The Tattler columnist seems quite unusual," Danky said. "Most of the black press was unknown to the white press — no interest as the walls of Jim Crow were so impermeable."

It wasn't an amicable relationship. The Tattler was frequently condescending, mocking and racist. Yet he continued to engage in printed conversations with The Colored Enterprise.

What's more, The Enterprise wasn't shy about confronting The Tattler.

In October 1896, The Tattler cautioned that any vote for a Republican would be an "endorsement in proportion of the policy of elevating the negro above his station."

The Colored Enterprise chided The Tattler for being "frightened at a few Negroes" and unable to see the difference between a black takeover of the country — often called "negro domination" in that day — and equal representation in politics.

The Tattler reprints the Enterprise's rebuttal with little opposition except to say he is not scared.

Danky says this conversation shows The Tattler "had more interest in all the citizens of Asheville than you would normally find."

Leatherwood continued to push for political representation, educational opportunities and jobs for the African-American community throughout his time at The Colored Enterprise.

In 1898, he protested appointments by U.S. Sen. Jeter Connelly Pritchard (for whom downtown's Pritchard Park is named) and congressman Richmond Pearson.

"The negroes of this congressional district cast 3,800 votes for Mr. Pearson and the State Representatives that placed Mr. Pritchard where he is, and today we stand without one job in the gift of the party," Leatherwood wrote. "Yet they are continually finding jobs for white men."

The column ran in several North Carolina newspapers, including The Morning Post in Raleigh.

Reprints of articles from The Colored Enterprise in the Citizen and other nearby papers end abruptly in 1898 as Leatherwood prepared for a different kind of conflict.

When war broke out between the United States and Spain in April 1898, Leatherwood began organizing a company of troops in Asheville. By May 27, he announced his all-black company would be called the "Maceo Volunteers," according to an article in the Citizen.

Leatherwood presumably named the company for Antonio Maceo Grajales, a Cuban war general who fought fiercely for independence from Spain.

He was appointed captain of the Maceo Volunteers, which became Company K of North Carolina's Third Volunteer Infantry.

Leatherwood rallied 80 men, according to the Asheville Citizen. Although the group never saw combat, they mustered in and trained at Fort Macon and moved throughout the southeast during the conflict. Their numbers eventually swelled to 100, according to a roster.

A few years after the war, Leatherwood left Asheville for Washington, D.C., where he married and opened a store on Avenue M, just north of the White House.

Ever the newspaper man, he started another publication, the Industrial Enterprise. That publication seems lost to time, too.

Although Leatherwood never made it to Cuba during the Spanish-American War, his grandson arrived there half a century later.

Maceo Leatherwood Jr. was a 20-something Navy recruit in the 1950s with no memories of his grandfather, who died before he was born. Yet he was fascinated by the man he still calls "the captain."

"It probably started with the name," Maceo said. "I always said, 'Why is it Maceo and then Thomas, Joe and Gilbert?" (his father and uncles, respectively).

In Havana, Maceo first realized his connection with the Cuban general, and his fascination with his grandfather only grew from there.

After the Navy, he trained as an artist, and his paintings explore his heritage — Native American, African and European. According to Maceo's research, Thomas Leatherwood's mother was largely Cherokee, and his father, Albert Leatherwood was of English descent, although Thomas identified as black.

One of Maceo's paintings inspired by his ancestors is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum. (He also worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as an art director for almost three decades.)

"It's all because of my grandfather being so interesting," he said, describing his research into his family's past. "He is sort of a beacon for me."

Vance Monument rededication

The 75-foot-tall Vance Monument was recently restored thanks to volunteer fundraising efforts by the 26th North Carolina Regiment, a Civil War history group. The time capsule was removed from its base as part of the restoration.

On June 6, a ceremony will rededicate the obelisk at 2 p.m. The N.C. 26th will host the event, and the Masons, who laid the cornerstone of the monument in 1897, will also be present.

The contents of the time capsule, which was recovered in March, will be on display, and copies of The Colored Enterprise and the other newspapers that were found inside will be available.

The city will also announce details of plans to create a new time capsule to be opened in 2115.

How did The Colored Enterprise survive?

Heather South, an archivist at Western Regional Archives, has never seen anything like the Vance Monument time capsule in the course of her career.

"A lot of times, time capsules don't really fare so well," she said. "Usually, you might be able to salvage a piece here or there, but a lot of times, it turns to mush."

But almost everything in the Vance capsule was salvageable.

"There's no explaining why," she said. "Everything kind of expanded and filled up all the gaps, so the only thing I can figure is that it didn't have a lot of air flow, so there wasn't really any mold."

All the documents inside the time capsule are legible, including The Colored Enterprise.

"The fact that you can read it, that's what's so amazing," she said. "I've opened other time capsules — not from this area, but in previous employment — and never, ever, ever have found this kind of salvageable material."

What else was in the time capsule?

In addition to a copy of The Colored Enterprise newspaper, the Vance Monument time capsule also included:

•A copper box, now corroded and green with age.

•Four standard-issue silver coins (dime, quarter, half dollar, dollar), now green as a result of contact with the copper box.

•Local newspapers, including the Asheville Daily.

•An honor roll from local schools.

•Masonic documents.

•A Bible, which is legible although its leather cover decomposed.

•A muster foll from Governor Vance's Civil War company.

The state archives will store the time capsule contents as a collection.

"Any one of these documents by itself isn't all that significant, but when you put them all together, and the fact that they sort of shared this history in a time capsule, to me that's what's fun about it," said Heather South, archivist for the Western Regional Archives.