Recorders Recorded

Last week from the auditorium walls of Washington's new Department of Labor Building ten flat black & tan faces stared importantly out over a large audience. In the audience, hundreds of three-dimensional black & tan faces beamed pridefully back. The flat faces belonged to Federal Art Project portraits of men who have served the District of Columbia as Recorders of Deeds since Reconstruction days. The three-dimensional faces belonged to leaders of Washington's largo Negro population who turned out in formal attire to witness the unveiling of the portraits. They had come to pay homage to a little administrative island in the U. S. Government which has remained in charge of colored folk for most of the past 60 years.

After the Civil War, U. S. Negroes began to clamor for official positions with the Government which had set them free. An active early colored Abolitionist was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, slave son of a slave mother by a white father. When he fled from Maryland to the North after the wife of his master had secretly taught him to read and write, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass, became famed as an Abolition orator and editor. As his fame grew, Northern friends who feared he would be returned to Maryland under the Fugitive Slave Law sent him to England to drum up sympathy for his black brothers. Back in the U. S. after the War, Abolitionist Douglass became a potent leader of freed U. S. Negroes. In 1871, President Grant appointed Frederick Douglass Assistant Secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission. President Grant's appointment proved so popular with U. S. Negroes that President Garfield named Douglass Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia in 1881, allowed him to staff his office with Negroes. Since then U. S. Presidents have failed to follow President Garfield's precedent only twice. Present incumbent is colored William J. Thompkins appointed by President Roosevelt in 1934.

Washingtonians of Southern extraction still dislike dealing with Negro clerks when they go to the Recorder's office in the Century Building to file records of their real estate transactions. Dr. Thompkins, like other Negroes who have held the office, is used to this. A distinguished member of his race, the 56-year-old Missourian has studied at three universities. In Kansas City, where he is editor of the Kansas City American, he was first Negro superintendent of General Hospital No. 2 and chief of its surgical staff.

After last week's ceremonies the Recorders' portraits, which gave three months' employment at $79 a month to three artists, were hung in the dusky corridors of Recorder of Deeds Thompkins' offices.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.