There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There Are No Girls.
On the Internet.
Hey, y'all, So I wanted to share a new podcast with you all that I cannot get enough of, called Our Ancestors Were Messy by Coco Hill Productions. All about the messy, complicated, petty stories from historical figures that they probably did not cover in school. It is something that has been bringing me a ton of joy lately, so I wanted to share it with you all too, So check it out and don't forget to subscribe.
The Secret Adventures of Black People presents Our Ancestors were Messy.
On the Craig Well is poor, having only his wages to depend on.
Oh my gosh, today, a forbidden romance threatens the future of one of DC's most elite families.
And Lulu was probably like, I don't care about this side of the track. That side of the track, I'm in love.
And provides podder for two of DC's busiest gossip columnists.
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was read with a great deal of interest.
This episode stops Junkoline Hill, host of the podcast explain it to me for Box Black Alive and your host Nicole Hill, Oh diadd I think it's dad. This is our Ancestors Were Messy, a podcast about our ancestors and all their drama.
Mm hmm. Where did you grow up?
So? I bounced around Kansas and Missouri for a good chunk of my childhood. But I feel like when people ask where you're from, they're asking where did you graduate from high school? And the answer to that question is Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, which I mean, I love it there, but wow.
Yeah, Like the number one thing people say is like, oh they got black people there? In the answer snow and that's why I am not there.
So where are you now? So I'm in DC now.
I moved out here to go to Howard like most Howard grads. That's probably the longest I've gone without saying the words. I went to Howard and I just stayed ever since.
And what would you say, is your relationship to the city? Oh my gosh, I really do feel like it raised me.
I was talking with someone recently and I asked, how long do you have to live in a place to no longer be considered a transplant because I've lived in DC for fifteen years now.
And my friend was like, you're good. Yeah, you're in. I've been on and off in DC for twenty years. I'm not there now, but I'm only ever away for like a couple of years at a time. But I count myself and I keep leaving. So you're in. You've been there the whole time, steady, No.
I essentially bleed mambo sauce.
Now, as far as now, what kind of a black are you?
Ooh, Okay, I've been thinking about this.
And I feel like.
Original recipe, Like I am just a regular, a very regular black person, like not a new black, just old fashioned black lady. Well okay, I'm not an old fashioned black lady. Let me not say that, but I mean, I was like, what is that old fashioned?
What's the original recipe? I don't know.
I don't have all the bells and whistles, like, I'm not like, ooh, post racial society, even the conversations like the diaspora wars. I think I'm a little original recipe in that because I'm like, y'all, we.
Are all black. What are you and like people will argue about the one drop rule and I'm like, mmm, you're black.
I also, I think I have a very good black dar Like there are people who are black and I clock it, and I have friends who are like, that's a black person. I'm like, I I know when a Negro is in my presence.
I'm okay. So this might be this is awkward, this is the third rail, but we're gonna this story is about class. Yes, so on a scale of one to five, one being trash and five being like free, clear, honest, easy to do. Can you rate the quality of the conversations about class that you've witnessed within the black community. Oh it's hard to do.
It's hard because sometimes it's good and then sometimes it's bad. Like I said, I went to Howard and there's that tweet where someone's like, I hate Howard.
Bitches.
They're always in the bathroom arguing about slavery, and it's like, I that's I am at the party. I am the person in the bathroom arguing about slavery.
Mm hmmm hmmm.
Also, the thing is everyone tends to get blinded by their own experience, and there's a defensiveness like an inherent defensiveness. M I'm gonna give it a two. I'm gonna give the conversations a two, especially if they're happening online.
Oh my gosh, don't even try. Oh my god, I know. Then it's like zero, It's yeah, why do you think that is? Why do you think class is such a like it makes people defensive?
Okay, I think no matter who you are, class gets sticky. It's that whole thing. It's like, don't talk about politics and money and it's both those things together. But I think for so long class and race has been married in this country, and for good reason, like understandably so there have been systemic things that, you know, uh, make a lot of black people part of the same class
and make it very hard to have upward mobility. But when that upward mobility does exist, it can get a little sticky because it's this thing of well, you're still experiencing racism, and it's like yeah, but also like there are privileges that come with having money, and then there's all this like class anxiety that's harder to move up in the world, and then you feel defensive about it, and it's just it gets sticky so quickly.
How comfortable are you with discussing class. Oh, I'm pretty comfortable with it.
But again, I think that's because I've been arguing in bathrooms about the bathroom for the past fifteen years.
Okay. The story is about class and is actually in DC ooh, back when it was really Chocolate City, back when it was becoming Chocolate City. We are in the Gilded Age aka the Victorian Era aka the eighteen eighties. In Society News, President Grover Cleveland has become the first and only president to get married in the White House. Ye bride is twenty seven years his junior, and she told their reverend, doctor Byron Sutherland, that they would be changing her vows from honor love and obey to honor
love and keep a progressive lady, aggressive young lady. Reverend doctor Sutherland is like, fine, we can do whatever you want, because I've already been in so much trouble because he'd married another DC recently, and in doing so, he'd ushered in one of the biggest society scandals that the black elite had ever seen. This is the story of a battle between romance and class. This is the story of the scandalous loves of Lulufrancis.
Oohoo, I love first of all, I love love, I love scandals, I love drama.
This is the story for you then, Okay, So slavery ended twenty years ago. Black people are moving all around the country now that they can, and they're trying to decide where do we want to be? What city are we about to turn chocolate? A lot of them decide on Washington.
D c.
Period. So there are a lot of really great black schools there, obviously. Hu you know, there's a ton of other black people around that's very attractive, the highest concentration of black people in the nation at that time. And in the city there's a class of black elites. They are wealthy. They're from the DC Maryland Virginia area, which obviously we call the DMV, and they're known as the
First Families. Oh so there's a couple different ways that a person can become a member of the First Families, the black elite. And I'm going to tell you how one man did it. He is the father of the star of today's episode, and his name is Richard Francis. Richard was born enslaved in Virginia, a Southern gentleman never mixed his own drinks, so they would have enslaved black men do that for them. So this was one of Richard's jobs. He did it really well. He didn't have
a choice. So when he was freed, eventually he went to work at a white owned tavern up the street from the White House. He rises from basically like a bar back to the most popular bartender at this tavern, it's called Hancock's Old Curiosity Shop.
Ooh, I'm drinking in old fashioned and I just imagine the old fashions he would make me.
Oh, they would be so good. And you're black, so he'd really hook him up. Well, you're a black woman and it's the Victorian era, so maybe he wouldn't, so he'd probably be like, why are you drinking, you hussy? Go home. He is a really really good bartender, and because of its location, it's really popular for politicians from across the country to come in and they all fall in love with his mint julips. This is his specialty.
One of his patrons is a senator and he tells Richard that he wants to help him get a job running the private restaurant in the US Senate, and Richard's like, I would be very into that. So the Senator puts in a good word and Richard gets the job. He's not the first black man to hold that position, but it's still like a really big deal. So once he's there,
he seems to be making good money. He takes his earnings and invest them in DC real estate brilliant and so then he makes more money and he can afford to now be a member of the First Families. So in order to be a member of the First Families, you need to have a combination of the following. This isn't an exhaustive list, but to start economic security, you need enough money to not have to worry about money, and you got to be real classy with it, meaning
you need to own a beautifully furnished home. You need to dress well, you need to vacation in the right spots. Harper's Ferry, West, Virginia actually is super popular. Oh with them. Frederick Douglass and his family have a house out there. Richard is financially set and I don't know how you decorated his home or where he vacation, but he has money, so check that's one thing. You have to have a prestigious job running the private restaurant in the US Senate counts.
So check. You need to go to college. I don't know Richard's educational background, but he's obviously very intelligent. But he did not go to college, I'm assuming, so no check for that. And you have to be from the DMV, which he is from.
So check.
Oh, they're strict.
They are very serious about those rules of very serious. I would not be grandfathered in my fifteen years. It'd be like, girl, you are not from here.
They would be like, Nope, you're out. Rich has made the three out of four, so that means him, his wife, their son, and two daughters are officially members of the first family. And so that brings us to the star of today's story. This is one of Richard's daughters, Miss Louise Marla Francis, whom everybody calls Lulu. Lulu is likely
a fashionista, a little spunky and opinionated, likely educated. She would have been doing things like attending organizing meetings for women's suffrage at the city's first black Presbyterian church, the fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. She's a woman described by The Washington Post at the time as the bell of Colored DC. So basically, she is our ideal rom com heroine. I wish I had a picture of her, but I do not. But let's cast her in our mind. Who do you think could play this person?
Okay, it sounds like she's that girl and this person is not an actress.
But I'm just.
Imagining, like Gilded Age Lorie Harvey.
That's so funny. I was thinking Lori Harvey.
Yeah, like guilded age Lori Harvey. She's that girl, know the girl, et cetera. Just remember that you're the prize, always, always.
Always, So once Lulu hits marrying age, inquiring minds would want to know who is it going to be? Who's she going to pick? Much like Lori Harvey at this time, she could have ended up with a young w btw boys they're in the same class, or maybe his mortal enemy Booker T. Washington. Let's say, your Lulu, what would your ideal husband at this time be? And for context, let me just tell you that her sister married a man with a good government job working at the pension office,
so that means they're economically secure, socially elite. Her brother goes to Howard University and then the University of Michigan, where he graduates magna cum Lottie, and then he comes home to DC, marries an elite black woman at the fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, becomes a doctor. All right, so you're Lulu, do I have to pick from the menu you mentioned? Or can I make my ideal? Man up? Make your eyes I deal eighteen eighty six.
Man up Ooh you know what, I'm gonna go with a doctor. I'm gonna go with the doctor somebody that like all the black people go to. They're like, oh, he is that doctor. He is that guy, and I'll be like, yeah.
That's my man. Okay. So Lulu starts dating one of her dad Richard's employees. Oh he's an aspiring young barber named John F. Cragwell. Can I have you read how the papers described mister Cragwell at that time. It's on page one.
Oh my gosh, this is so rude. Craigwell is poor, having only his wages to depend on.
Oh my gosh, that's your man. M hm.
He's probably a nice guy. He might be rocking her world in one of several ways. But also, like, what else are we gonna I guess family money other than wages.
I mean yeah, ideally family money or real estate investments. Ough. So rude, so rude. She likes that boy, she likes the okay, so okay, So this is the thing. Craigwell is a barber or a tonsillary artist, which is what they're called. At this time, black men were like finding that they actually really enjoy the experience of like going to a shop together, talking reckless, hanging out, also getting their hair done. So men are like, oh, okay, you
guys like this. They start opening barbershops somewhat regularly. They begin popping up all over black communities and people are starting to be like, huh, this seems like it's a community hub. This seems like a potentially lucrative business. So being a black barber does have the potential to become like an important role in the black community and a profitable job. So Lulu's like maybe, She's like, you know, there's potential here. Dad like just let them cook, Like
we don't know what he can do. So they keep dating and they do fall in love.
Ah.
So like, let's picture a romance montage. You're Lulu, You're with your Craigwell. Can you just like describe the world that you two would build together. What kind of dates would you want to go on with him in the eighteen eighties.
Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna tell you one thing. We are getting ice cream. We are going to an ice cream parlor.
Okay.
We are making eye contact at church and he is.
Walking me out while I fan myself. He's courting me.
He's sitting in my mother's parlor and we are drinking tea under the watchful eye of my father and siblings. I don't know, like, is there a promenade that we go to.
Is there? I don't know what things are open.
There's probably no zoo yet, probably no museums, but like whatever the version of that is, maybe he's outside my window at night and throwing rocks and we're writing each other letters. Maybe we even sneak a little kissy kiss and no one sees it.
Being fast. This cross class kind of upstairs downstairs romance is not something that the first families would have been cool with. They're very snobby. So, like, just to put it in person effective, there's like two hundred and thirty thousand people in DC at this time, seventy five thousand or thirty two percent of them are black, and then four hundred of the seventy five thousand are members of the First Families. Okay, so it's giving literal talent. You
took the words out of my mouth. That's what we're talking about here, is the talented Tent. So the town's ad fifth really, so the First Families, they're exclusive. If you're wealthy and black, but you're coming to DC from like Philly or New York or Detroit, they call you a foreigner or a stranger. And if you're poor or uneducated and black, they don't call you anything at all because they're living by this mandate of lift as we climb.
The saying is everywhere. It's a huge part of the strategy that the race has come up with during a time when they literally had to move in next door to the people who used to enslave them. So it's like not a good time. So they think like, Okay, how are we going to change this? How are we going to make things better for ourselves? And WBTA boys and a lot of people come up with this idea of the Talented Tent and they're like, all right, we
need y'all to go in there. Be as respectable and as elegant and educated as possible to put these white people at ease and show them that, like, see, I'm a human just like you see my hands. You can't really reason. You have to be like it's okay, it's okay, or you have to just fight.
But it gives something that I would have thought to do when I was like in my twenties and felt like I had something to prove.
And this is like they're the first generation of people. A lot of them were slaves and now they're free. White people are not okay with this. It's not like everybody's like, oh, yeah, you earned it, good for you. Like they're under duress at all times, so yes, you're
having to like overcompensate, overprove, overdo all these things. And the idea is if we send y'all in there to do that, then white people will be put at ease and then go around to the back of the club, open the door, and then you're gonna let all the rest of us in. Here's what the strategy didn't for. It's hard to be in something but not of it.
What did Audrey Lord say, master's house, master's tools, et cetera.
Yes, So the talented tenth start to adopt the traditions and the customs of the elites they're meant to be imitating. And then they come back to the black community and are these enforcers at the politics of respectability and brutal critics of anybody that doesn't comply. Ooh, I wonder if that had any long term consequences. You know what, I keep thinking, I'm like, you create a strategy that'll really work for you, but then, uh oh, we just kept
the same exact strategy for like hundreds of years. We didn't update it, you know, as like modern people. I think we're trying to update it now. But it's so hard for me to judge them ever, because I'm like, it did work. I am Hereah.
It's also the thing of like, if you're barely one generation out of being enslaved, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna have some empathy.
Back to Lulu. Lulu has a friend who she does seem to turn to for advice. The papers don't name her, but I'm imagining her to be like a level headed best friend, archetype like Dion and clueless. So I just want to call her Dion.
Yeah, every rom com needs a best friend. Every rom com needs a best friend.
Of course. All right, so I'm imagining this next part, but indulge me. Dion probably would have listened to Lulu go on and on and on about her great love and these walks along the promenade the ice cream, and she's like, girl, come on, now, do you really think that this is going to work out? He is a barber, and he is broke and we are royalty, like, what are you doing? And Lulu was probably like, Dean, I
don't care about that. I don't care about upstairs, downstairs, this side of the track, that side of the track. I'm in love. And not only does she and Craig Well continue dating, they get engaged. Oooh, but someone finds Craig Well and they have a conversation with him. We don't know what they say, we don't know who it is. All we know is that afterwards he goes to Lulu and he says, I can't be with you anymore. Our engagement is over. And then he moves to Pennsylvania. Oh
my gosh, she has to stab him. He broke her heart. Lulu is so sad. I'm picturing her like running upstairs and then flinging herself on the bed and crying and crying and crying, and Dion's trying to console her, but she's also maybe breathing a little sigh of relief along with Richard, Lulu's dad, and the rest of the first families, because Lulu was probably gonna end up like Lucinda Seton. Anyway,
allow me to tell you the cautionary tale of Lucinda Seton. Oh, thirty years before Lulu's forbid love, the DMV had another it girl and her name was Lucinda Seton. When a famous German American painter came to d C looking to paint the portrait of the quintessential African American lady to be displayed across Europe. Do you know who he chose? Lucinda? See not.
He's going to paint her like one of his German girls.
So Lucinda's all this happening with her her like time to shine. It's eighteen fifty, so the Civil War is ten years off. Slavery is in full effect. It's the culture. But also we have a community of free black people, and that's what her family is. But that year, the census was taken and for the first time it recognized and counted as separate Africans and mixed race people, so
half white, half black. So it was reported that there were a little over three million enslaved black people in America at that time, and two hundred and fifty thousand of them were mixed race. So these two hundred and fifty thousand people, for the most part, they're not born of you know, like loving concent sensual relationships. That's how we're not at all here, you know what I mean.
So we're talking about horrible like mass rape from white and slavers of black women, and then black women are giving births these hundreds of thousands of people, and these are just the people that they counted. So the white men who fathered these children at that time, there was like a culture among some of them of claiming these children and either giving them better jobs on the plantation,
like in the house. We know what this does to our community, But they're bringing their children inside all.
Right, time for colorism to start.
But they're like, you know, you are my son, you are my daughter. You work inside. It's disgusting and weird, but this is what they're doing. Or they're freeing them after a certain age, or sending them off to Europe to be educated, or even sometimes leaving them inheritances. Some of the elite families got their start this way, or they claimed to have gotten their start this way because it was seen as a respectable thing. It was like
you were special to your dad. Obviously, we know this is how we came by being light skin, which is among the most important qualities a member of the black elite could ever possess. Horrible beginnings, what we did with that trauma is multiply it. But this is how this is part of their story too. So Lucinda Seton's family seemed, from what I can surmise, to have partially gotten their start this way. I mean they are very light. She's
like part Indian, part white, part black. Okay, he's a red bone.
As we say, she would be in the fenty three hundreds.
She would be in the fenty three hundreds. Thank you for translating that from mono audience. So you know they're free through all this, you know, weirdness and grossness. But they also somebody opened up a grocery store and it would eventually become the largest grocery store chain in the DMV, and so that's how they came by a bunch of money. So Lucinda's doing great. She's living the dream until she marries a blacksmith. Smith is doing okay for him, so
he's doing, you know, the best of it can. But he's also middle class, so now she is too. She clearly married for love because she has to move into a middle class neighborhood and a quaint little home on I Street in northwest d C. Which is like now, now, it's like girl, that's money, Yes, exactly. So she moves to I Street where the men go to work and the women raise kids and nobody comes by to paint
their pictures. Oh no. Lucinda has six kids, five girls and a boy named William, and she seems to have been searching for a way to get back in to the first families that get back into the life she'd become accustomed. But they need to make some money. If Lucinda setons six kids get educated, they can get good jobs, make real money, and put their family back on the map. So all the kids are sent to school. William goes to the prestigious private elementary school in the basement the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. So now all Lucinda has to do is just wait. Unfortunately, in eighteen sixty three, tragedy strikes. Her husband is murdered during a robbery. Oh no, So now Lucinda is a widow with six kids to feed. I don't know if her family helped her out a bit. Maybe they did, but she does become a dressmaker, and she starts an ice cream shop to make ends meet.
Oh my gosh, did Lulu go there with Craig.
Well, they are going to cross paths, we'll see. But she has to pull her kids out of their schools to help earn money for their survival. Some of the members of the First Families probably still stop by her little house on Ice Street and wish her well, but it's clear to everyone that Lucinda is now even further away from being one of them than she was before. She'd married into a precarious financial situation, and now she was a poor with no hope of ever advancing. So
now we're back. We're back with Lulu and Dion. In the eighteen eighties, we left Lulu. She's crying in her bedroom, probably making it up, but you know, she's sobbing. Dion is there. She's rubbing her head. She's saying, don't worry about Craigwell. All men are dogs. It's gonna be okay. Then I picture Lulu's father, Richard, poking his head in the room to check on his daughter Lulu. She doesn't notice him because she's sobbing, but Dion looks up. The
two exchange of knowing Glands. What was that? Look? Cut to Lucinda's house. Lucinda sne is still in DC, in that little house on I Street, and she would have likely been watching the Lulu Craigwell affair with a lot of interest, maybe because the story mirrored her own, or maybe because she had made it her and her six kids business to know exactly actly what the First Families were getting into and to tell everybody.
Oh, that is nasty, Lucinda, don't be nasty.
They may have counted her out, but they shouldn't have, because Lucinda has a son named William Chase, and he's all grown up now and she's taught him everything she knows. William and Lucinda are coming for the First Families, and sadly, Lulu will find herself caught in the crossfire. Oh my god.
But you know what, I watch a lot of housewives, so I do understand when you get iced out, Like the alternative is like time to be a gossip monger and start some mess coming up.
Lucinda starts a beehive and Lulu prepares to become a bride. We now return to our ancestors were messy.
Back to Lulu. She's single now, but then she meets a man. His name is mister Sneed. Mister who mister snead s n e ed.
Okay, so she's back outside. She's back outside, all right, she got her toes. She doesn't have her toes out. It's the Gilded day.
No, no, no, no, no, no whatever.
That version is like, hey girl, we've got a new man. Forget that old one. We're moving on.
Mister Sneed is a waiter at the Arlington Hotel, which is one of America's most opulent hotels. And the first families would have been like, this is a great look. The papers call him swell h A waiter's a great look. Yeah, because it's had a really really really fancy hotel, okay, and because at this time to put on a uniform and work in a hotel like work for dignitaries and all these things. This is really really important to them. Okay, So Lulu and Sneed begin a courtship. Lulu and Sneed
get engaged. Lulu's dad, Richard, agrees to give them a wedding present, which is a uh love that mm hmmm, we love a house's gift. That's amazing. Lulu and her parents and maybe mister Sneed draft an invite list, and although I couldn't find it, I could guess who would be on it. All the first families, the famed suffragette Mary Church Terrell and the Terrells love Mary Church Terrell, Langston, Hughes's great uncle John Mercer Langston and the Langstons would
of course be there. Obviously, they have to invite the founder of the fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, John F. Cook, and the Cooks, the McKinley's, the Cardozos, the grim Keys. Everybody's gonna be there, as in Cardozo High School. Cardozo's right, I know, it's wild. Wow. I was like, all these last names come from this, what I know?
I saw I heard a seat and I was like, wait a minute, I know that street and the school.
So then this question arises between the couple. I'm guessing Lulu is the one that asked this question. She says, mister Snead, should we invite mister Craigwell to our wedding? Would you ever invite an ex to your wedding? Okay? And this is gonna sound messy.
If y'all are cool and your current partner does not know the extent of your friendship with this person, yes, but if it is well known, girl, he does not need to be there. No, stop being messy.
Okay. Well, Lulu's parents send out the invitations and the household prepares for a royal wedding two people who most certainly would not have received an invite from the Francis family and would have been in their feelings about it. For Lucinda Seaton and her now grown son, William Chase. So, if you'll recall, she'd had to pull him out of school when he was nine to help support the family, and he started selling newspapers and that's how you got to know a lot of the editors and the newsrooms
and the reporters in Black DC. He grows up, he goes to Howard Law school who passes the bar. He becomes a lawyer, and he will continues reporting and working in various newsrooms. And he lives at home on I Street with his mom and his sisters. They're all very close. William has got this flare for the dramatic. He has dreams of becoming a renowned actor, and he actually ends up falling in love with and marrying another actor, and the two of them are in little plays together and stuff.
It's very cute. Mainly though, his time is spent lawyering, reporting, and jockeying for political appointments. Because there's another way that a person can become a member of the black elite, and that is by doing the absolute most. If he can become a combination lawyer, reporter, and politician, he will be economically secure, have the most prestigious jobs anyone can have, be lifting as he climbs in matters of law, news and politics.
Okay, being a politician and a journalist at the same time gives me pause, but I do respect the hustle.
It's a wild combo, But like, how do you go on both these things?
Sir?
But okay, totally fine, no questions. We're all on board. No notes. But the problem was when it came to the politics. He never seemed to get the political appointments that he went after, and when he was rejected, he did not take it and stride. He would go into the office of whatever newspaper he was working for at the time, he would sit down at his typewriter and he would go absolutely insane on everyone he held responsible for him not getting the jobs he thought he deserved.
So like one time, Frederick Douglass was like, I will hook you up, and he said great or great great, and then Frederick Douglas is like, no, no, I can't. He publishes all this that I hate you. I hate the way that you dress, I hate the way that you I hate your hair, like just Patty.
Well, okay, but if you're going scorched or like that, that's why you're not a politician, like a not insignificant amount of having a career is being personal and getting people to like you. And if you go scorched earth when you get a no, you're gonna keep getting those right.
But he doesn't care. People describe him as handsome, a climber, and very very combative.
Oh he was handsome. I see why he's like that.
Like, oh wait, that changes everything. Okay, got it clear, That's why he's acts like that. So finally William does secure one of the jobs he's been going after. He's named the editor of The Washington b a brand new weekly paper serving the black citizens of DC whose motto was Stings for our enemies, honey for our friends. Oh
oh oh. It's estimated that at this time there are like twelve thousand newspapers serving segregated black communities across America, but when you get to a major city like DC, there's usually a few, so the competition is really fierce and you need to do something to stand out. So William is like, what's up, sisters, what's up my wife? You all are now going to be on stay at the Washington B And he makes all of them like reporters and cultural critics in addition to some outside people.
And then they set up offices at Lucinda's house on I Street. There they turned the Bee into appointment reading.
So was it like the shade Room? Essentially this was their shade room.
Well, okay, so it was. They primarily cover news related to the fight for civil rights and social justice. They're like covering news that all the white papers are covering, but without all the racism and with black people in it. That's like the idea mm hmm. But they also make sure from time to time to just let William get behind his typewriter and do his thing. He'll be like, what's up, White leaders? I am so sick and tired of all the ways that you do not point black
people to position the power. You are so racist and you're so hypocritical. And then he'll be like, what's up, Black leaders? Nothing that you're doing is going to make a difference in the black community because you are too intellectual and you're too theoretical. And then this is his favorite, He's like, what's up, first, families, you think you're so much better than us, You think I don't know what's
going on behind closed doors. A lot of his readers, who The Bee refers to as the household, that's what they call black DC.
He's like, okay, exactly, but it's giving the shape room exactly.
It's good branding. It's good branding. You got a brand your audience. The household feels looked down upon by the black elites because they're working class or they're poor, or their dark skin, or they couldn't go to college, and so behind their back, the household calls the first families the fust families, the what families fust f ust, which is slang for musty.
Oh nothing, musty, jesus. Okay, I think being called musty is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Do you know? I agree, because like musty isn't just stinky.
Musty is like you're funky and you've been flunky for a minute.
Can I have you read on page two what the be said about them?
Yes, let me see who. They wouldn't be caught dead with an ordinary Negro, and they foolishly expect to become absorbed by the white race.
Ooh, drag them? No, okay, but here's the thing. You're Lulu, so you're the fusty one. How would you feel reading this? Okay?
And this is what? Okay, this makes me think. It's that thing of hey, we're all black people, et cetera, et cetera. But and I admit sometimes when I see tweets about this where people complaining about quote unquote black elite or like black college educated people, there's something in you that inherently gets defensive, even though you'll have these conversations about men, about white supremacy, and you say, hey,
you gotta take a hard look at XYZ. But when the finger points to you, it admittedly does not feel good.
And I do feel like people start bringing out their like no, no, no, no, their cards where it's like, well, my dad, my pay I'm first generation college graduate, Like I don't. Don't put me with them, like my family grew up with no money. You just want to start you do these things.
And it takes a lot of work to check that and say, okay, only hit dogs holler if I'm hollering, what am I doing? What's happening? And that takes a lot of maturity and a lot of thought.
So back to William. He is assaulted twice and sued five times for libel over his articles. He's like, I don't care. There's this section of the paper called the Clara and Louise column. Every week the paper publishes a letter from an anonymous Clara to an anonymous Luis or vice versa. And in the letters, among other things, they share the tor details about the ups and the downs and the scandals of the first families, Okay, lady whistledown. The lady whistled down to a t and the first
families hate this column. Their complaints about it reached such a fever pitch that William, who is normally like don't care, don't care, don't care, has to release a statement being like, sorry, I don't know who Clara and Louise are. I understand your pain. However, I am never going to stop. I'm never going to back down. Every week, tune in because I'm going to be publishing all of their insights into
your scandals and your hypocrisies. On November twenty seventh, eighteen eighty six, just five days before Lulu and Sneed's wedding, the Washington be publishes a bombshell in their weekly gossip column, which, as you'll recall, is written in the form of letters between an anonymous Clara and an anonymous Louise. I have compiled a medley of the letters that Clara and Louise wrote to each other over the next two weeks about the scandal, which I would love for us to read
right now, if you would not mind. I think I'm playing Louise, if you will play Clara dear Clara, I hardly know how to begin or what relate first. But the most sensational thing that has ever happened in our society is the elopement of missus Lulu Francis girl. Not you Elope, Cho.
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was read with a great deal of interest. I never was made more surprised in my life.
It will be remembered that mister Craigwell had been going with Miss Francis for a number of years, and it was understood that the engagement between them had been canceled.
Mister Craigwell was persuaded to break the engagement by a lady connected with the Francis family.
Oh did I think nasty work? Nasty work.
Then Miss Francis went to Harrisburg on a visit, and mister Craigwell did not greet her with any respect, nor did he.
Write to her for over a year.
Still, she said that he was the only man she ever loved, and if she married an it would be for spite. The lady was told by a friend not to marry for spite. Okay, Lulu, Lulu, while you let why you let men play let's just continue because I have I have a lot of thoughts. Let's continue.
Mister Snead expressed tender feelings for the lady. He gave her his heart, and they were engaged, and he went to the expense of making their wedding a brilliant affair.
The lady asked her friend would be wise to give mister Craigwell an invite to her marriage. She was told now, Mister Craigwell, on the reception of an invitation from Miss Francis and mister Sneed, announcing their marriage, immediately left Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and came to d C. Once in the city, mister Craigwell remarked to his friend that he would never leave d C without Miss Lulufrancis, but, finding that he could not persuade her parents to bless his reunion with Miss Francis,
he returned to Harrisburg. Mister Craigwell could not rest in Harrisburg, so he returned again to d C and inaugurated another scheme. This time, he solicited the services of the sister of Miss Lulu. While out walking with mister Sneed, Miss Lulu called at her sister's and told mister Sneed to wait outside as she wanted to see her sister about address. Mister Craigwell was there and he pleaded with her to become his wife.
Mister Craigwell told Miss Francis that he always loved her and that it was hard to see his first love married to another man who would make her life miserable. At this juncture, Miss Francis said, but my invitations are out for my marriage to mister Sneed. Oh I could fix that, said mister Craigwell. After deciding what steps were
best to pursue. It said that Miss Francis, mister Craigwell, her sister, and her brother in law traveled to the residence of Reverend Doctor Sunderland, who married President Grover Cleveland.
In the afternoon of Wednesday, November second, The marriage license was procured and they were married. Doctor Sunderland said that he thought the affair a romance and that it did not excite his suspicions. It was settled, and poor mister Sneed was made a victim of despair.
The household is started and society is up in arms to think that Miss Francis would be guilty of such an act.
Mister and Missus Francis are heartbroken to think that their daughter would treat them so.
She has been reared a lady and looked upon and respected as such. Her parents consist of the best elements of our society. This is Sneed's last song. Where has my Lulugan? Is a song I shall sing.
The chestnut bells are ringing, and the boys are singing. Sneed, Sneed, Sneed, Oh Sneed, Where has thy Lulugan? I have been told that mister Sneed has received a just retribution. It's said that he had many sympathizing friends who regretted that he was disappointed, and many young ladies who were pleased.
I saw mister Sneed at the fraternals last Wednesday evening, and he approached Major Fleetwood and said, Major, I carried you an invitation to my wedding, but I suppose that you have heard that my intended has gone off with another. Then Major laughed and said, yes, Snead, I don't know whether to congratulate you or to extend my condolences. Mister Sneed, in reply, said that he would like to have his congratulations yours lovingly, yours truly Louise Clara. All right, girl,
go ahead, so much to say. I have so much to say, and it really is giving. Lori Harvey, I'm glad that's who we live with. I feel like mister Sneed is Michael B.
Jordan, Oh, mister Sneed is, Oh, mister Steed is Michael B. Jordan, which you know, Michael, call me. I'm around. I have so many thoughts because, on one hand, it's better to end a marriage before it's miserable. She clearly was not into it. He was, although you know at the end he's like it was. He feels very draky. It's very like her loss. And I mean that derogatory that being said, don't spend the block like no, if that man left once, he'll leave again. And when he does it again, you're
gonna feel so stupid. I just like, oh, I'm gonna get you back, baby, like I guess. But she let that man spend the block and here we are, what a scandal. I think it would have been better if she had said, you know, I'm not feeling it, call it off, maybe wait some time, lay low a little bit, but to run off and get married. Also, her sister was in Cahoots. We can't forget this. It's not all Lulu. Her sister was in Cahut.
So was it her mom who was all like, don't marry that girl? No, they said it was a friend. So that's why I feel like Diana. Okay, So this is my conspiracy theory that I had cooked up in my head based on no evidence. I feel like Richard, Lulu's dad went to Dion, Lulu's best friend, and he was like, Dion, my daughter cannot marry that broke barber. I need you to go to him and tell him that if he really cares for Lulu, the best thing he can do for her is to leave her. And
so then Dion like went to him. She said that Lulu is like, oh my god, he left me. I want to be with him. And maybe Richard gave him some money, because you know that's how rich people do it. That is true. So then mister Craigwell leaves town. Lulu is like, oh my god, like, I can't live without him. Dion's like, you'll be fine. Lulu's like, should I invite him to my wedding? Dion is like, girl, no, then boom boom boom, He's back in her life. They're married.
Also, it's this thing of and this is something my mom always said, And of course there are exceptions to this rule, but it's a thing of if your child is dating someone you don't like, don't make a fuss because that will only drive them into their arms.
Ooh yeah, and that's exactly what they did.
You came for the mess Now stay for the rest When our Ancestors were Messy continues, and now for the thrilling conclusion of this week's installment of Our Ancestors were Messy.
After the elopement, it's reported that Craigwell went to see about making arrangements for him and Lulu to get to Pennsylvania, and Lulu and her sister went home to face their parents. Allegedly, mister Sneed is also there. Me, I would just fake my own desk. Yeah, how would your parents react to you showing up at the door being like okay, Mary, Okay.
The thing is I'm an only child, So the amount of conniption that would be.
Had, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you would never survive it. Unfortunately, there's no record of what went down at the Francis home during this meeting, but at the end, mister Sneaed is sent away and that's the last we ever hear of them. Now, Richard Francis Lulu's dad, and his wife,
Lula's mom. They are humiliated in front of all the first families, the household, and potentially hundreds of thousands of recorded black newspaper readers across the nation, because I found articles about this elopement and papers in New York, in Alabama and Missouri, and a lot of them were pulling
their reporting from the Beast, So this is bad. Also, since Lulu was on the radar of the Washington Post, White DC may have known about all of this too, and so Richard may have had to deal with his coworkers and clients whispering about this in the US Senate as well as everywhere that he went in DC. Not long after the scandal, in eighteen eighty eight, Richard passes away suddenly, all his stress. His funerals held at the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. Today, bartenders still remember and revere Richard for his incredible mint Julips. When I was doing the research for this episode, I kept getting linked to all these magazines and all these articles about like famous black bartenders and recipes, famous recipes created by black bartenders, and there was Richards. It's the Dick Francis Special for a mint Julip, and I will link the recipe in
the show notes. I never did find another article after the scandal that mentioned Richard and Lulu together, so I don't know what their father daughter relationship was after that or at the time that he passed away. But in the bios of his that I came across, and in his obituary, he's listed as having left behind a wife and one son, and that's it day, So both the daughters got got maybe both the daughters. I don't know.
Dang dang heard Nanny strict. I know Washington Be continues to grow in readership and prestige post elopement scandal, and they gain a reputation across DC and in history as a paper that fought fearlessly for civil rights and social justice, in addition to the Clara Luis gospel column. But that's less so in the history books. That's in the back.
And eighteen eighty three, Lucinda passes away with the Washington Be still running from her home on Eye Street, which she managed to hold on too, against all odds and then pass on to her children. So shout out to Lucinda. I know that's right. William keeps the paper going right up until his death in nineteen twenty one, which made it at that time one of the longest running black newspapers in America. The DC First Family, you know, it's hard to track down exactly what happened to them or
all their wealth. Obviously, DC people will recognize some of the names seton McKinley, but unfortunately those places are named after the enslavers that the First Family shared names with, not the First Families themselves. Oh yeah, although I will say Cardozo is named after Francis Cardozo, who was a famous Black clergyman and politician. So we got that one.
But here's what we do know. Charles County in PG County, Maryland, right outside of DC, are the richest majority black counties in the nation, and they have been for a very long time. And I don't know why these places in Maryland became bastions of black wealth, but it does seem like in some way the legacy of the First Families in DC still lives on. But I wish someone would look into this because I would love to know, like, why do they congregate there?
What is it about pretty Girl County that we can't stay away from?
Uh? Uh uh. As for our newlyweds, mister and missus Craigwell, they spend a little bit of time out in Pennsylvania and then right before the turn of the century they moved to Seattle, Washington, and once they get there, they make their way into black history. Now I can only find a record of what mister Craigwell did because of the times. But I know, I believe and feel that I know that Lulu was there right beside him, holding
him down. Can I have you read the summary of mister Creigwell's life, which was written up for his obituary and published in Seattle's black newspaper, The Northwest Enterprise.
Okay, uh Northwest. Mister John Fields Craigwell, pioneer resident of Seattle and veteran barber, died Monday morning from a heart ailment. Mister Craigwell was born in Virginia in eighteen sixty two. After graduation from high school, young Craigwell moved to Pennsylvania, but later returned to Washington, where he engaged.
In the barber business.
In eighteen eighty five, mister Craigwell was married to Miss Louise Francis, by the same minister that Mary Grover Cleveland. They moved to Seattle in eighteen ninety, where the young barber again started his business. His shop was a gathering place for business leaders during and after the days of
the Alaska gold Rush. During his fifty six years as a barber, he shaved many notables, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley, John jacobast Alexander Graham Bell, and many others. Besides his business, mister Craigwell was interested in several civic affairs. He used to take an active part in politics, and at the time of his death he held one of the highest offices in the Presbyterian Church.
Surviving are his widow.
Missus Louise Craigwell, two daughters, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild. On November twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, mister and Missus Craigwell celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, which hundreds of Seattle's citizens attended.
Oh thank got a happy ending. Good for you girl.
Okay, you could spend the block this one time, but never do it again.
Craigwell passes away in nineteen thirty seven and Lulu passes away in nineteen forty two. And as much as I would love to tell you that's the end, I want you to have this happy ending, there is one last part. Oh no, oh, why are they like this? See, don't spend the block. I told you, I told you, don't do it. Do not text that man. Yes, Lulu and Craigwell were among Seattle's earliest black citizens and members of
Seattle's black elite. And yeah, Craigwell does go on to become a barber and the city's most successful black entrepreneur. He has a staff of eleven toncilary artists in fashionable downtown barber shops. But about those shops, So white people really liked to be waited on by black people immediately following the end of slavery, but they didn't want other
black people around also being served. So some barbers would guarantee their all white clients, tell that the staff would be all black, but that they wouldn't serve any black people. And members of Seattle's black press accused Craigwell of this practice, and they call him a segregationist barber. It's very hard to be in it but not of it. Of course, there's so much more that happened, but for now, that is the story of the scandalous cross class romance of Miss Lulu Francis.
Wow, buh gilded age, Lori Harvey, you took me through a lot, just.
Now a lot. Do you think it's possible to be in it but not of it, to be operating in these spaces of power but not adopting their practices and their ways of thinking and treating people.
Ooh, this is a question that I think about a lot, just living my own life and living in DC. I would like to think that you can be around and not be dragged down by the grips and allure of power, but I know that as humans we don't do that. It's almost like the Ring and Lord of the Ring is like you're around it and the pool becomes so strong that you can't say no, and then like what do you become?
You know?
I would like to think that someone is strong enough to do it, but I don't know if that person exists.
Yeah, that's real. How are you feeling about the tactic uplift as we climb as a strategy for eighteen eighty six, what do we gain? What do we lose?
Okay, huh, Honestly, there are things about There are things about it that worked at the time, so I can't begrudge them that. And I guess like the other option would have led to even more death and destruction for black people. So I get the route that they took,
and you know, talk about Monday morning quarterbacking. But you know what if we say, Okay, we're just going to do this for two years and then like we have to be real people after this, you know, we can't be doing this in twenty twenty four, Like they here's a plan where this strategy is sunseted by twenty twenty four.
What would what would you have us do?
Probably disengage completely, just stop caring, like just being like nothing is going to work. If people want to be racist, they're just gonna do it, and they will find any and every reason to do it. At this point, who cares about the white gays? What are we up to?
That is the strategy I we deploy. Now, what do you think about looking at black history starting from the messy beginnings? Because Craig Weell is like in Seattle, that name is a big deal. He's like seen as a big pioneer and as a person who's done this incredible thing. And you start the story from the time that he got to Seattle, and then you know, you kind of talk about all the hard work he did, everything he overcame, his incredible resilience in business acumen, and he's you know,
an amazing black capitalist. But we don't talk, you know about the southern part. Yeah, I don't know.
I kind of like the mess because it's also a reminder that something my mom would say to me over and over again is there's nothing new on under the sun. And I would think, mmm, I don't think that's true. But this makes me realize, no, there really is nothing new under the sun. And I think we would all give ourselves a lot more grace if we looked at our ancestors as people and knew that they could get messy too, sometimes even messier.
Because this is wild. I'm like, five days before your wedding, like that is wild. Like she loved that man down