Against the Tide: The Turbulent Times of a Black Entrepreneur

By J.H. Sullivan

Against the Tide is a true story that captures the fear and hardships faced by African Americans during a disturbing time in American history - the post-Reconstruction period that led to the introduction of Jim Crow laws.

Through hard work and determination, Hansford C. Bayton would rise from humble be

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steamboat Era Museum
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989076529

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Introduction

They say that if you drive a thoroughbred racehorse too hard, he will eventually break. But in the meantime, you’ll get a good few runs out of him before he becomes wise to the game. Hansford C. Bayton, who grew to manhood in the Chesapeake Bay area during the post-Reconstruction Era, had more than his share of good runs, catapulting him across the finish line on many occasions. He had a natural drive to succeed. But, strangely enough, his detractors were comprised of both whites and blacks. And in time, even within his own family, blood ties would prove to be both a bonus and a curse. Even during an era when the dizzying heights that blacks had reached during Reconstruction had suddenly been removed from under their feet, Captain Hansford Bayton stood his ground. And at the end of his run, after the serial burnings of four of his steamboats, and his left eye removed, he would not give in. He would not succumb to the pressure, to the crowds, or to those who yearned to whisk him unceremoniously off the track.

Uncle George Banks

Captain Hanks Bayton was a name heard in our home for as long as I can remember. My uncle, George Banks, conjured up his name as often as the words the Beatles ricocheted off the walls of our bedrooms as my siblings and I were growing up. Having contracted polio as an infant, Uncle George, like his hero President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who had contracted polio as an adult), had iron braces fitted to his legs. According to my mother, the disease befell him on a scorching Baltimore summer day when my grandmother Julia (after whom I am named), took him to the beach. From that day onward, the previously robust and chortling infant was a ghost of his former self, requiring the use of a walker for the remainder of his life. But, just like his hero President Roosevelt, through sheer will and determination, he steeled himself and overcame his own personal challenges.

From a vibrant street corner in Harlem during the 1920s, when the sidewalks seemed to throb with a rhythm that both blacks and whites, young and old responded to in unison, my uncle ran a profitable newspaper stand. And, powered only with a smile and easy charm, he befriended well-known black musicians and composers, including Eubie Blake and Duke Ellington. And along the way, Uncle George became a highly skilled raconteur. He also professed to know the great racehorse Man o’ War’s handlers at Glen Riddle Farm and at the Belmont. (Those men, many of whom were African American, slept in the stalls next to the racehorses to safeguard them.) For his entire life, my uncle had the racing bug. To this day and because of him, we rarely miss watching the Kentucky Derby on television. Although handicapped, George Banks never permitted his misfortune to give him license to bow down to adversity.

He lived with my family in Philadelphia intermittently during his later years. As a civil rights leader and pastor, and later as the first African American board member of General Motors Company, my father changed houses often, and each time, Uncle George would move along with us.

Smart and astute, but having faced a life of hardship, he was humble and self-deprecating in his quiet way. George was always around and served as a kind of surrogate father for my own dad who, in service to others, traveled extensively when we were young. He was particularly close to my brother Howard and me during a period when we lived in a three-story stone house on Milton Drive in Philadelphia.

My mother and father (Grace Banks Sullivan and Reverend Leon H. Sullivan)

When I was two years old, I caught a particularly virulent form of chicken pox and had a very high fever for a number of days. According to my mother, the day that the fever finally broke, I cried out as I heard the cranked out musical chimes that came from the ice cream truck that passed the house every day at the same time. At that moment, the truck was slowly lumbering down the street to the end of the cul de sac, where our house on Longford Road was situated. My Uncle George, knowing that my cries were a promising sign, got up from the chair in the living room where he always sat, took his walker, and slowly traversed the length of the driveway and the street to the corner to buy me an ice cream cone from the vendor. My mother would later say it was possible that my uncle, getting up as he did and struggling to purchase my ice cream, may have recalled the story of his Aunt Primrose, who died at the age of one from a fever that would not abate.

I remember Uncle George as a razor-sharp observer, who listened closely to our supper time banter. Because of the paralysis, his spine pointed upwards at an angle, making walking difficult, and during his youth, he had been the victim of spiteful hunchback jokes. But he had enough spirit to rise above such cruelty. Whenever one of us would come close to him, to share a joke or what went on in school that day, he would play a little game. As we hovered in and then ran away, he would grab us by our wrist or arm and not let us go. It was as though, by keeping us close to him, he could borrow our freshness and vitality of youth. But when we cried, Let us go! he would, and we would dash away to our fun and games. Live and Let Live was his motto.

On Christmas Eve, when we were snug in our Doctor Denton’s pajamas and the tree lights glistened like silvery stars, my brother, sister, and I would await Uncle George’s stories—as only he could tell. After my father told the Christmas Story, it was Uncle George’s turn. He often spoke of his grandfather, and each time, the story of Captain Bayton was prefaced with slight variations on the following words:

Do you kids know how to make a tapestry? To make a tapestry, you have to make absolutely sure that different types of wool and yarn, coarse and smooth, red, black, and white, are woven together in perfect harmony. That takes time and patience, like the homemade sherry that your mother prepares early to serve on Christmas Eve. Your great-granddaddy, Cap’n Hanks, didn’t just appear out of the blue, like a thunderbolt. It took time for someone like him to emerge on the scene. So let me tell you his story. About how those building blocks had to have been carefully stacked, one after another, for someone like your great-grandfather to make the splash that he did, given the world in which he lived. Problem is, that once he got to where he wanted to go, they couldn’t pry him off, no matter how hard they tried. It was as if he had bonded himself to the River for life. Even in defeat, though, he still won the race. Maybe you’ll learn something from his story and decide to be adventurous in your own life.

For some noted early American families, personal histories are documented in history books or are explored during tours of antebellum museums or great houses. For our family, the kitchen table was the chosen spot for an exploration of our ancestry. After an exhausting day of church services and over a Sunday meal of roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and succotash, my mother and Uncle George ground the family history into our heads with the same determination that she rolled out dough on her perennially floured wooden cutting board into what would become our Sunday biscuits.

Like many black Americans, my maternal family tree is an amalgamation of descendants of both free and enslaved blacks, slave owners, and Indians—all having resided in the Tidewater region of Virginia. We are able to trace our family name back to one mixed race slave, John Banks, who was born in 1705 and who was owned by the Virginia Morlands.¹ The Morlands were an early American colonial family originating from York, England and with whom there is a presumed shared genetic legacy. But our African roots, like our Native American roots, went even deeper. The first Africans arrived in Virginia from the slave boats in 1619, and their numbers grew rapidly under the conditions of bondage. They were brought over from West Africa by the thousands to harvest tobacco on huge tracts of land in the Commonwealth. By the late 18th century, the importation of African slaves, brought from Gambia, Guinea, and other African countries, led to them outnumbering both whites and Indians in Essex County.²

Tappahannock has the distinction of being the oldest town in Essex County. Located on Virginia’s Middle Peninsula, the village is tipped like a basket of spring flowers on the edge of the banks of the magnificent Rappahannock River. To us kids, our visits to Tappahannock meant a stop at Lowery’s Seafood Restaurant on Church Lane, where fried oysters, freshly-made clam chowder, and sweet tea were served up in a loud, boisterous atmosphere. Tappahannock had—and still displays—a quaint invincibility about it. Its beauty is subtle, but is something to be savored, like the boldfaced words printed in a Puritan’s hymnbook. Seated between rich, green pine country and a river stocked to overflowing with marine life, the land shimmers and shines with a hallowed, primeval quality. The area is a promontory, isolated from the mainland and almost an island unto itself, with soggy black soil and ancient trees. Even today, among black Southerners, the mention of the Chesapeake Bay conjures ancient memories of promise.

The legendary Chesapeake Bay has roots going back to the 17th century, when the English explorer Captain John Smith sought out the region for its Eden-like quality—where wildlife of all shapes and sizes roamed the land, from rattlesnakes, foxes, and ducks to wild deer in prolific numbers. The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are intertwined with the names of brave African American leaders, including Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. If it were not for the boat that shuttled the escaped slave Frederick Douglass to eventual freedom in Pennsylvania, the abolitionist movement might arguably have lost steam. If it were not for the tough-minded Harriet Tubman, the conductor of the Underground Railroad, who had the courage to arrange for the transport of escaped slaves to freedom on the watery passageway of the Bay, many would have remained in bondage.

The Chesapeake waterways were a safety valve for escaping slaves. In order to avoid capture, they stealthily boarded ships docked at the wharfs to be ferried up the Bay and onto the Susquehanna River.

And so, over the Christmas and New Year holidays, my Uncle George sat my sister Hope and me on his good knee, and my brother Howard stood by his shoulder as Uncle—in keeping with the African American oral tradition—shared stories about Captain Hansford (Hanks) Bayton, and of the surreal beauty of his grandfather’s birthplace. Those stories lulled us away from the realities we were facing in our young lives. Our father, the late Reverend Leon Sullivan, was a civil rights leader who was a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and who was an early vocal critic of police brutality in Philadelphia, even challenging a well-respected police chief named Frank Rizzo.

Unfortunately, because of his outspokenness—which sometimes was vocalized on the six o’clock news in only the way a black Baptist preacher’s opinions can be—our family was threatened on occasion. I remember armed bodyguards being stationed outside our house and wondering why my skin color (which was nearly the same shade of my Jewish and Italian friends in school) drew so much ire. European immigrants claimed Ellis Island as the entry point of their historical journey as an American. What about us? What was our starting point? I thought.

The stories about my ancestors intrigued me. Along with Captain Bayton, Uncle George told of my great-aunt Ruth Bayton (a beaut), who became a showgirl sensation in Europe during the Jazz Age. Ruth was one of Captain Bayton’s daughters, and she evidently had the same charisma that her father had in spades—the it ingredient that could not be defined, but that was so clearly there. Ruth was blessed with a figure that had a symmetry that only the Lord Himself could have dreamed up, and skin as smooth and lush as a Cadbury chocolate bar. Ends up she shimmied her way through what was known as the Harlem Renaissance. The press knew her as the prettier version of Josephine Baker, Uncle George would intone. But the life and times of Captain Bayton was clearly always Uncle George’s favorite story to tell.

He would always make sure the room was pin drop quiet and then would recite again the often-heard story of our famous steamboat captain ancestor.

In the Game of Life, you need to play to win. Knock you down, and you get up. Hear me? That is exactly what your great-granddaddy did. He told the truth, and you could either take it or leave it. Damn the consequences. In the end, they burned down his boats, took his home and everything he had. They took away his identity, and that was the worst of it. But they couldn’t take away his family. Why, one of the six kids was your great-aunt Ruth Bayton. Whew – she was a wild one. She even ran off with the King of Spain. They conned my granddaddy in the end, but I’ll tell you what. He ran one heck of a good race.

In the late summer of 2002, my mother, my three children, and I traveled to White Stone, Virginia to visit the ancestral home of my great-grandfather, Captain Hansford C. Bayton.

In my youth, we had made various sojourns to Lawson Bay Farm, but this year was different. My father had passed away the year before, and since that time, my mother had lived her life as if in a fog, groping for