CHAPTER LVIII.
MRS. LILIAN MAY THOMAS.
Lillian May Thomas was born in the city of Chicago, Ill., in 1857, and was the oldest child of Rev. Byrd
MRS. LILLIAN MAY THOMAS.
and Jane Jeanetta Parker. When but nine months of age her parents removed to the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Her father was a man of great native ability and a historic character in the story of "Negro Methodism in America," being pastor to Quinn Chapel, Chicago, many years ago, followed by pastorates at St. Paul's, St. Louis, and Bethel, Indianapolis. Her mother was a graduate of the well-known Quaker institution of learning, Spiceland University, of Indiana, and long before the public school system of Indiana was created became the first pay-teacher of the colored youth in Indianapolis, afterwards teacher in St. Louis and other cities.
Lillian inlierited to a marked degree her father's controlling traits of mind and at a very early age gave signs that she was the worthy offspring of a superior parentage. Her school-days were spent in her adopted city of Oshkosh, but she was not permitted to finish what from the beginning gave abundant promise to her preceptors of being a very brilliant course of study and application. Her favorite studies while at school were grammar and composition, although not behind the average student in all of the English branches. With completion of the junior course of the Oshkosh High School her days of schooling ended, in a palpable sense, by her marriage, which, in lieu of her youth and the probable distortion, from a practical stand-point, of a brilliant literary career, was regarded by her friends as a lamentable incident, but while she was no longer found in the school-room, in "reality her studies had but just begun, since, from that time to the present, she has been a most unflagging delver after knowledge, and a veritable "book-worm" on learning's humid page. She early became a creature of luminous ideas and a much solicited contributor to that great dissemination of public opinion, the weekly and daily press. Among the first papers to solicit and publish contributions from her pen was the Northwestern, of Oshkosh, and the Evening Wisconsin, at Milwaukee, at about which time, in the event of the United States Supreme Court declaring the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional, her column and a half article on "The Rights of Colored People," or "A Plea for the Negro," which appeared in the Northwestern, secured for her at a leap, as it were, no mean place in the galaxy of women writers of either race, and distinctive encomiums for her quaint diction and rare logical disseminations, an idea of which may be gleaned from the following excerpt from the article mentioned above:
And public practice does not accord with this theory, as can be readily shown; for instance, what lady or gentleman would avoid any of the first-class hotels upon it becoming known that a Frank James, or even a Guiteau, had taken quarters there? And if the propriety of their sharing the same roof was questioned they would quickly say, "It is a public house; we do not call it associating with them," and indignantly recoil at the mere mention of these characters as their associates. But under precisely the same circumstances when it comes to the black man it is called "social equality," and the question arises. Who shall be blamed? If we question the ticket-seller or hotel-keeper they profess to only conform to the wishes of the public (meaning white, of course), or, in other words, are governed by the spirit of the times, implying that to the American people the negro is obnoxious and to insure the prosperity of their business he must be excluded. But we ask, is this the sentiment of the people or of a few rebel-hearted men who would inflict their outrages under the plea of a public necessity? If not, why stand by and with the cry of "unconstitutional" permit this human wrong to go unmitigated? Or, if we accept the theory that the negro is obnoxious, how shall we explain his presence in all dining and sleeping cars, in the largest hotels in our country, and at all pretentious receptions and parties? We have known instances in this city where the presence of the negro was so essential to the dignified aspect of entertainments to be given that they were brought from other cities for the occasion, the odium imported. And yet we cannot see why these persons courting the approval, in the matter of railways and hotels, of the most fastidious public, and in the elegant social gatherings of their most esteemed friends, would mar the equilibrium of their guests by having the negro present. "But," you say, "we have always considered them invaluable as servants, and are willing now as ever to concede to them the highest position as menials; it is only when they rise above what we consider their natural sphere that we protest—when they would become our equals."
But we say to you, this is despotism and hardly consonant with true American principles. You have adopted as a fundamental doctrine that all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, namely, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You pity England, with her Lords and Commons; Russia, with its Czar and subject, and yet practically acknowledge that you have a people among you of American birth whom you consider by God created for your servants, your inferiors by nature rather than by condition. We would ask also, if not in the land we have enriched with our labor, where would you send us that we may enjoy the civil treatment we ask? Would you say to England, France or Ireland, "Though in times of oppression in your countries we have afforded your oppressed an asylum on American soil, strange to say we have a people among us who, because of a color which to us is a badge of inferiority, we cannot suffer equal rights with ourselves, and we would ask you to take them from us, and give them what they ask"? And you might add, by way of proviso, "If you find them to be possessed of qualities which would promote our national welfare you may return them to us at such a time as our prejudice shall have abated toward them, but for the present we pray you take them from our midst."After a lapse of several years, being thrown on her own responsibility for maintenance, she came to Indianapolis about the year 1885, where she soon attracted the notice of the literati of the city and was accorded that consideration due her intellectual gifts. Being a lady of fine voice and attractive personality, through inclination coupled with the suggestions of friends, she took a series of instructions in the art of elocution under Madams Prunk and Lucia Julian Martin respectively. During a professional tour extending through six weeks her reception was a flattering one, and would have turned a less balanced head. In September, 1891, her old love for journalistic work asserting itself, she was offered and accepted a position on one of the race's great journals. The Freeman, as correspondent editor, feature writer, etc. Her "friendly reminders" which appeared weekly in that splendid publication dedicated to the women of the Afro-American race, have been read wherever the negro is found and will be accorded a positive and lasting place among the refined literary creations of her day. As a writer Mrs. Thomas' strength lies in her acute and very rare power of discrimination and analysis. Possessing a keen sense, of what might be termed intellectual intuition of the eternal fitness of things, she is quick to detect the grain and discard the chaff.
Writing with her is not indulged in for the reason urged by the mere literary dilettante, viz., pastime or mental diversion, but for a purpose, and that the lifting up of her fellow-man, the directing of human thought forward, as far as it lies within her power, and onward to those idealistic spheres where lofty souls find solace and assuagement, and where the coarse and uncanny seldom confront. In ideas and thought she is original, in treatment and application much so, and in order to present in their most invulnerable guise the children of her pen's creation she does not hesitate to waive those literary rules that intellectual inconsequentials shudder to violate and mediocrity pays abject court to. Being a most womanly woman, she is, however, the possessor of a dual intellectual composition, in that she reflects the grasp of the best masculine minds on the one hand, and all the sympathy of touch and deftness of treatment of gentle woman on the other. A remarkable growing woman, an honor to her race and her sex, and in consideration of her superior attributes of nature, Pollock's lines suggest themselves to our minds, which we quote with slight transposition:
With nature's self,
She seems an old acquaiutance,
Free to jest at will,
With all her glorious majesty,
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Then turns, and with the grasshopper.
That sings its evening song,
Beneath her feet converses.