“The Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states roughly from the 1910s until the 1970s. The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow.”[1]
The Chicago Defender, along with other African American newspapers, posted encouraging articles, suggesting better employment possibilities, social environment, and an optimistic alternative to sharecropping, particularly in light of the cotton crop failures due to the ‘boll weevil’ infestation. Black media’s exposing of the South’s Jim Crow policies, the effects of World War I, and World War II, helped drive the Great Migration to varying degrees.
Five individuals are highlighted in this special ancestral search, during this commemoration of the 2022 African-American History Month Celebration as examples of ‘cornerstones’ in a family, largely because of an event that is said to have been uniquely common to an estimated six-million plus African-Americans, between 1910 to 1970. Each of these five individuals with seemingly, different reasons for leaving the South, nonetheless, their destinies are interrelated, catapulting these ancestors from Louisiana, bound for an uncertain future in the Northern cities of Chicago and New York and to the West in the Bay Area of California in the mid to late 1930’s and 1940’s.
He is the firstborn, and only son of Peter Wade Sorrell, born in 1910 in New Orleans to the lovely Nora Vance (née Ogden). Wade’s father, never married Nora, and it was well-known within his family circles, that Wade wrestled with the ‘legitimacy’ issue for much of his life. Nevertheless, Wade seemed to agree with much of his father’s views of the importance in taking care of his family and, as a result, enjoyed a mutually respectful relationship with his father.
Wade, my maternal grandmother’s (Theresa Sorrell) brother, had completed the highest grade level of his day—eighth grade—which was equivalent to completing high school. After all, New Orleans had only one four-year high school for black students—McDonogh No. 35, granted approval in the fall of 1917, which remained the lone four-year high school until 1942, when L. B. Landry was converted from an elementary school along with the newly opened Booker T. Washington High School (also made available to black students in 1942). The importance of education for the Sorrell family is evident in Wade and his wife, Vera’s children becoming successful, career educators.
Wade was a dapper, larger-than-life persona, standing six-foot, one inch tall, and had ‘topped’ the best-dressed-men list in Chicago for more than ten consecutive years before I graduated from high school in 1972. Wade had come to town—much like ‘Big Luke![2]’
My mother, Dolores loved her family, as evidenced by the fact that her house was the one place Wade, like many of the other ‘greats’ and ‘great-greats’ who came to New Orleans (whether from Chicago, San Francisco, or New York), felt welcome enough to visit and “rest a spell”. A place or places where family members can come together from time-to-time, to simply stay connected to the central source of energy, to recharge, commune, break bread, feel loved, be healed, heal others, and then return to their respective homes, energized is vital to the family. We had never had a family reunion, prior to 2003, as far as I could remember, so those ‘visits’ from Wade, served as informal, miniature reunion.
On Friday, April 4th, 1930—some 56 years before he would give me his final instruction, “I need you to keep track of the family”—Wade may have been awaiting a telephone call at his (3913) Calumet Avenue address, as the following day (Saturday), he indicated that he had not ‘worked’ the prior day, when Ms. Bessie E. Morris, Enumerator for the Fifteenth Census of the United States in Cook County, Ward 3 in Chicago, asked the specific question in accordance with the form’s instructions. By April 1930, Wade had already become a ‘skilled’ worker in the photography profession and had earned the title of ‘finisher,’ usually performs any combination of drying, trimming, and mounting photographic prints. He knew the process of computing price of order, according to size and number of prints.
But that was the 1930’s—the time of the Great Depression, and since Prohibition wasn’t repealed until 1933, young Wade’s mixology career was ‘put on hold’ on hold for a few years!
In
the 3900 block of Calumet Avenue, just a bit over a mile west of Burnham Park,
was home to all black folks (negro), a significant percentage—more than 60% of
the seventy-eight residents listed in the 1930 U.S. Census, were born in the
Southern States of, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. An additional 14% were born in Arkansas,
Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Of the more than three fourths
‘Southern born’ residents, many of them left the South between 1910 and 1940,
much like Wade Sorrell, were part of the First Great Migration of
African-Americans settling in major cities that included Philadelphia, New
York, Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Milwaukee.
By 1940, Wade is employed as a ‘bartender’ in a Chicago tavern, at 343 East 39th Street, owned by Fred Mosley, a man in his mid-fifties, who also migrated from Forest City, North Carolina a decade, or so earlier.
Wade Joseph Sorrell did become the preeminent bartender in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago from around 1935 through the early 1970s, when he established his barbeque restaurant, “Sorrell’s Original Painted Dall,” on South Halstead. The ‘Painted Dall’ flourished in the community from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, when Wade’s declining health conditions forced the closure of the business about two years prior to his death in 1987.
Deallean
Deallean Sorrell married August Johnson on April 23, 1917 in New Orleans, (Orleans Parish) Louisiana. In the 1920 Census, Deallean, was living with her husband, August (Augustus) J. Johnson along with their two-year-old daughter, (Vivien) Victoria and their one-year-old son, Joseph, at: 511 Toulouse Street, in New Orleans, with August’s mother, Victoria and her husband (August’s stepfather), Thomas S. Elliott (from Jamaica—immigration in 1901).
Deallean was living in Lutcher, Louisiana, renting a house without a radio or on Central Avenue, more than fifty miles west of her siblings, Peter Sorrell, Dora Sorrell Johnson, Bertha Sorrell Jackson by 1930. Her children, Vivien and Joseph, ages 12 and 11, respectively, were not listed in the census records with their mother in 1930.
Deallean, unlike her
sisters Bertha (Bertha is pictured in a previous post—Tuesday, August 17, 2021 “Do
this as if it was ‘sacred’—It is!”) and Dora, did not wish to become skilled as
a domestic worker, a laundress, or a servant in Louisiana, nor did she frown
down on it for those who had chosen those labors as honest and plentiful during
her years as a young girl, and particularly, as a young woman, living in the South.
Deallean had learned to
cook all of the Creole recipes, skillfully enough to teach to her friend (Joe —
“the cook”), to be ‘in-charge’ of the kitchen on the main floor in their
brownstone in New York, where a person who knew them, could get a good meal, a
drink and whatever else…New York City had to offer during the 1940s and 1950s
by folks trying to make a better life after departing the South, where
opportunities for her siblings looked pretty bleak.
Both of Deallean’s children, Vivien and Joseph were educated in New York and had landed noteworthy careers in the dry goods business and law enforcement, respectively. Further, Deallean’s grandchildren and great grandchildren were able to capitalize on the upward mobility resulting from the opportunities presented in the North between 1935 and 1970, which may not likely have materialized had she remained in the South.
Born February 9th, 1903, somewhere in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, although, no definitive records have been located verifying records.
There are no census
records, vital records…
Jimmy, the youngest of Peter Sorrell’s siblings, was living ‘off the grid!’
He could speak Louisiana
Creole and understood the French language, fairly well. It was generally thought, that Samuel James
Pourciau, this arcane gentleman from the shadows of ‘False River,’ shared a
different father with Deallean, but not with any other of the Sorrell
siblings. Nevertheless, no one is around
to confirm any of these details.
Which brings us to the essence of Samuel James Pourciau. Whatever he was, he deliberately designed other’s perception as to who he was. Jimmy also was a perfect model of ‘Big Luke!’ No one could determine when or where he came from, nor could say for sure what he did…
My youngest brother, Prentiss remembers “Uncle Jimmy brought candy from his job around Christmas one year (1964), when he came to visit us in New Orleans!” Yeah, I said, supposedly, he was employed in a candy factory, so as young kids, getting those huge, clear plastic containers, fashioned in the shape of a cane, filled with cellophane-wrapped peppermints, strawberry bon-bons, butterscotch and cinnamon-flavored candies, made for one incredible visit for Dolores’ kids!
Uncle Jimmy (and Aunt Dee) were ‘jet setters!’
This photograph was taken at the New Orleans International Airport in the early 1960s. The United Airlines ticket counter can be seen in the background.
Jimmy enjoyed a drink or two (or three), for as long as I can remember—usually on weekends, particularly bourbon, but if all you had was scotch, he was grateful to have that as well. His second choice of libation, a bottled beer, which he preferred with his breakfast. Mind you now, my uncle was not an alcoholic, nor was he a ‘lush.’
The one and only time, I personally witnessed him (personally) ‘tipsy,’ was in the late summer of 1975, when he had come to visit the family for a few days. My buddies had pitched in to have a seafood boil at our home to celebrate having my uncle in town and the wedding engagement of Janice and me (We were married the following summer).
My friend Terry, baited him with a taste of ‘Brass Monkey,’ but, the real curiosity was in the yellow-orange colored, glass of ‘Tequila Sunrise’ that mesmerized uncle Jimmy that day. About two hours later, he announced, “I’m goin’ in and take a nap! ‘to kill ya’ ain’t somethin’ I need to be foolin’ with! Who in the hell came up with a liquor named ‘to kill ya,’ anyway?
Samuel was known in Louisiana as ‘passé blanc’ (pass for White) by his close family members, and in particular his elder brother, Peter Sorrell, who apparently was ‘made aware’ that Jimmy was ‘in trouble.’ The word on the streets was that some folks Jimmy had gambled with (amongst other things), was ‘on to him’ and were ‘looking for him.’ Somewhere before 1940, Jimmy was sent ‘elsewhere’ on a train by Peter Sorrell to avoid trouble from the ‘folks looking for him.’ Uncle Jimmy confessed “Pete asked Wade to look out for me for a while.”
Wade is Jimmy’s younger nephew (and Peter’s son), seven years his younger.
Uncle Jimmy came to Denver in 1976, blessed our marriage, take us to meet his wife’s family and later, brought us to (and educated us on) one of the most unforgettable New Year’s Eve celebrations in Five-Points in Denver—The Harlem of the West!
This photo was taken with my Yashica D camera in front of Pine Creek Apartments, 600 South Dayton St. in Denver, Colorado, Building 7. Uncle Jimmy ‘arrived’ the last week of 1979—just before New Year’s Eve!
It was an honor to know my great-grandfathers’ younger brother, to have loved him and have him love us. He was the least wealthy of all of the ancestors introduced in this story, in terms of worldly possessions, yet he was the most loved individual to all of the family who knew him, making him a rich man by most other standards. Leaving the South, proved to have been a ‘grand idea,’ for my Uncle Jimmy!
Ethel
Ethel Sorrell, born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1913, the youngest of Peter Sorrell’s
children, graduated from high school in New Orleans, attended LSU, then left Louisiana around 1942, and married shortly after arriving in Oakland, California, to a young, Douglas Wilson, a ‘Pullman Porter’ from Oklahoma.
In 1945, Ethel was employed by The United States Naval
Supply Command and in 1954, married Charles Fluker and moved to Richmond,
California, where she was active member at Easter Hill United Methodist, a
life-member of the Richmond NAACP, and a charter member of the Zeta Amecae
Auxiliary.
Ethel Sorrell is Madison Gunter Jr’s aunt and was
likely considered a potential ‘back-up plan’ by his mother, in the event his
father, now living a bachelor’s lifestyle and playing (amateur) golf locally,
was unwilling to ‘take in’ his son, a pre-high school teen.
Ethel Mae Sorrell ceased being a maid, largely due to better employment opportunities in the West, compared to what was available to African Americans in Louisiana in then 1940s. Her education proved to be advantageous and Ethel was an important example to others in the family. She inspired us all to strive for better possibilities, using education and exceptional work ethics as the best ‘leverage’ tools available.
The Great Migration allowed for Ethel M. Sorrell
Fluker to have a pretty nice life, in my opinion.
Madison (Jr.)
Madison’s father (referred to as ‘Gunter’) had met his
mother, Theresa, while they were both employed at The Snow-White Laundry on
North Dorgenois Street, a few blocks northwest of the Tremé. Apparently, Gunter’s mother, Susie (Doc)
Fuller, also employed at the Snow-White, introduced the couple, they dated and
shortly afterwards, had their son Madison, Jr.
The three golfers sued the PGA for $315,000, saying
that their livelihood was being deprived by the PGA based on race. The PGA promised to invite black players to
their top tournaments, so the lawsuit was dropped.[3]” It was perceived that Gunter was doing ‘well’
in the Bay Area, so Theresa (Madison Jr’s mother) ‘sent’ their son to live with
his father. It is doubtful Gunter ever
realized the significance in his timely departure from the South, or the role
he played in his son’s future and his impact on the Sorrell family’s future.
By 1949 Madison Herman Gunter, Jr. was in San
Francisco going to George Washington High School and caddying for his father,
Madison Gunter, Sr.
After enlisting in the Army in 1953, playing baseball
for the ASCOM until the end of the
1950s, when he returned to San Francisco and
was employed by the San Francisco cable car system through the mid-1970s.
Madison met and began dating Jeanette Fair when he was working for the San Francisco Cable System.
Uncle Madison’s departure from New Orleans, in the 1940s is still proving a tremendous decision for his entire family, including his sister’s ‘middle child!’ (Byron Marcellɵ Coleman)
[1]National Archives: African American Heritage The Great Migration (1910-1970) https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration
[2] Excerpts from: Byron Marcellɵ Coleman. Never Remove the Cornerstone (p. 15). ‘Big Luke,’ Et Cetera
[3]Black History Month: The First Black Golfers - Los Angeles Sentinel article by Jason Lewis (Sports Editor) Published February 3, 2012. https://lasentinel.net/black-history-month-the-first-black-golfers.html
[4]
Ancestry.com - Louisiana Creoles & African Americans, Historical Insight
The Great Migration.
