It’s not every day that you walk the streets of Harlem and bump into a published author and even rarer if that author is a good friend. That happened to me last week at the corner of 145th and St. Nicholas where I met Eric Washington. I had heard his book about James H. Williams, the noted Red Cap at Grand Central Terminal or station, had been published, but I hadn’t pursued getting a copy. No worry. He had one with him and gladly handed it over.
When Eric told me about the project several years ago, I had no idea who he was talking about. I was still in the dark when I began leafing through the pages and discovered that Williams, called the “chief” because he was the Chief Porter of the Red Caps, was a real mover and shaker during his day. Eric’s portrait of him was absolutely captivating and the promise just to read a few pages and get back to it later was not to be. In a day or so I had turned the pages and arrived at the conclusion that Williams would be my column for next week, and here it is.
As Eric notes, James Henry Williams was born on Aug. 4, 1878, at 227 15th Street in New York City. “His mother Lucy gave birth in perhaps the very same bed in which she had birthed two sons before him and would birth another son and a daughter after him,” he wrote. A child of freed slaves from Virginia, not much is said about Williams’ early years, other than that he attended the venerable Grammar School 81, which had a roster of the distinguished alumni.
Williams’ father was a waiter and his mother was a laundress, and with a brood of hungry mouths to feed it was good that teenage Williams began to help out with a job as a delivery boy. Within a few years that job would be necessary for his own children after his girlfriend and then wife, Lucy, had their first baby boy, Wesley. Now it was time to kick his aspirations into high gear and attain employment above and beyond domestic service. In 1903, thanks to family connections, Williams was hired as a Red Cap at Grand Central Terminal, breaking the longstanding color barrier.
Three years later, his prestige as a Red Cap began to have dividends when he became a member of the Manhattan Lodge of Elks. According to Eric, “He was elected Esteemed Leading Knight, making him second in command in the hierarchy of Manhattan Lodge officers, after the exalted Ruler Sandy Jones.” His ascendance as an Elk was matched by his rise at Grand Central Terminal where in 1909 he was promoted to chief attendant of the Red Caps. When he was profiled in local newspapers his status acquired wider resonance and he was suddenly cast among the Black elite.
His position at the Station afforded him numerous opportunities to meet and greet noted celebrities in all walks of life, and Williams exercised his charm and winning personality to its fullest affect. That gracious aplomb was maximized when the hoi polloi arrived on the 20th Century Limited train and the Chief, as he was eventually called, was there to welcome them or to wish them a bon voyage. His calling card could have read, “We make the first and last impression” for travelers.
But managing hundreds of Red Caps didn’t mean there wasn’t time for Williams to handle other matters. “Socially,” Eric cited, “Chief Williams cultivated personal relations with the societal and artistic elite both white and Black. The press often reflected esteem for his diligent activism and philanthropy, notably on behalf of the NAACP, the Urban League, and his diligent support for Black soldiers during two world wars.” Inevitably, too, his fellow Red Caps were part of his outreach, and he recruited them to play baseball, basketball, and to be part of musical ensembles. He was among the founding members of the American Tennis Association that hosted alternative tournaments for African American players who were denied entry to the white tournaments. The eventual winner of the student competition was presented the Williams Cup trophy.
“As a public figure,” Eric summarized, “Williams promoted enterprises that fostered race pride, and that also influenced interracial alliances to affect social reform. Through his position, he created a gateway that produced such agents of social change as Lester Granger of the Urban League, the activist and performer Paul Robeson, the rights leader and jurist Raymond Pace Alexander, the journalist and politician Earl Brown, and the Broadway star and booking agent Richard Huey.” And he knew them all and they knew him as the Chief.
His influence and guidance that touched so many was also evident in his household where his children took his warmth and compassion to heart and extended it to other realms. In fact, his son Wesley became the first African American fireman in New York City, and his daughters made their mark in fashion and civil service.
In 1952, four years after Williams’ death, New York Governor Herbert Lehman wrote a letter of deep gratitude to Wesley Williams upon his retirement from the fire department. “I had the privilege of your father’s friendship for a great many years, and I know that I first met you through him when he introduced us at the Grand Central Station just before you were appointed as Battalion Chief. He, too, was a very fine man.”
If you desire more of this fine man, Eric will be in conversation and signing his book “Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal” on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 6:30 p.m. at the Schomburg Center.