“Variations in Black”: Eureka’s Stories – February 26, 2008

“Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us . . .
There be of them that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.
And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.
But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.
With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant.
Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes.
Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”

~ Ecclesiaticus 44 ~

Image: Gravesite of David A. Strother (El Paso, Illinois)

At the time of his death in 1905, an obituary writer said of David Strother that “though dark of skin his heart was white as was ever made.” Although our modern sensibilities would look upon such a statement as feint praise that was characteristic of the prejudices of the day, the author of the obituary was likely genuine in his belief that Strother was an ordinary man who had seen and accomplished extraordinary things. His passing was more than merely the death of an El Paso barber, “affectionately” known to many as “Nigger Dave,” but he was already understood as being a historic person in his own right whose life had been a testimony to the changes that the United States had experienced in the nineteenth century.

David Strother was born a free black child in Lexington, Missouri, in 1843, the son of parents who had once been enslaved but had purchased their freedom from their respective owners. His mother raised two sons while facing the indignity of having to work in order to provide funds each year so that the daughter of her former mistress would receive an education—such were the terms of her manumission (emancipation) that had been negotiated with her former owners. While her own sons were denied the right to an education by the statutes of the day, Mrs. Strother felt the burden of injustice in numerous ways throughout her life.

The Strother family relocated to Peoria, Illinois, sometime in the 1850s and joined a small, but vibrant, free black community in their new town. As a teenager, David was able to find work on the steamboats that plied the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. This type of work was not without risks. Many free blacks who worked on steamboats were often accused of being fugitive slaves who were seeking to escape from southern ports of call. At such an early age, it is likely that David Strother realized how tenuous his freedom truly was in this self-styled land of liberty.

When the U.S. Civil War began in 1861, Strother decided to accept a new position that was also fraught with danger. As an eighteen year old free black youth, he signed on to work as a cook with Company G of the 17^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry after the unit was officially chartered in Peoria. This group of soldiers, whose genesis occurred beneath the Old Recruiting Elm at Eureka College, would eventually participate in some of the most intense fighting of the Western Theater at places like Shiloh and Vicksburg. David Strother was risking his life and his own freedom as he agreed to march into hostile territory with the men of Company G. While the soldiers would be accorded the privileges due to prisoners of war if they were captured, such benefits would never fall to someone like Strother.

When the Civil War ended, Strother decided to settle in El Paso, Illinois, where he would live among some of his friends from Company G. He established a barber shop there and became an esteemed member of the community. When he voted in an El Paso municipal election on April 4, 1870, he likely became the first African American in Illinois and the second in the United States to vote after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Although the gravestone says differently, a New Jersey voter was the first African American to vote after the Fifteenth Amendment took effect.)

Later in his life, Strother would make history again. In 1897, he became the first African American to serve on a jury. He did this at the new Woodford County Courthouse in Eureka, Illinois.

Strother’s life was filled with much courage, honor, and achievement, but somehow these things were not emphasized adequately at the time of his passing. Other, more remarkable attributes were noted. Strother had two violins—how odd—and he had books in his library that were “not of the light, trashy sort”—how remarkable! To those who knew him, he was simply an “honest, courteous, unassuming, gentlemanly colored man” but he was more than that—he was a famous man—he was a giant whose deeds shattered the mythology of the ordinary.