James W. Hoyt (1851-1898), lot 1298

James (Jim) Willard Hoyt (1851-1898), born in Missouri, was an aggressive African American politician who participated in city, county, and state Republican party politics through thick and thin. Although it is not known when he moved from Missouri and married, his wife Fannie (Blackburn) Hoyt (1858-1944), reportedly born in Missouri or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, came to Lawrence at an early age. She gave birth to their first child Corinne (Cora) in Lawrence in January 1875, and the family resided at 1009 New Jersey Street.¹

Over the years, Mr. Hoyt held various jobs as a laborer (1883), a Pullman car porter (1887-88), a billiard saloon owner (1891-92), and a restaurant keeper (1893), despite crushing his foot and losing some toes under a railroad car in Kansas City in 1884.² He also managed the local Eagles Base Ball Club and their competitions with the Kansas City Brown Stockings and Topeka Blue Stockings teams, performed in Queen Esther at the Bowersock Opera House, and chaired a grand picnic of Black folks at Shepherd’s grove, where civil rights activist Charles H. Langston spoke.³

Hoyt entered politics, beginning in 1878, as a Republican delegate for the southeastern Third Ward.⁴ In 1884, partisan tensions heightened when Democratic Governor George W. Glick wanted the state’s 1881 prohibition law re-submitted as a constitutional amendment. Although some Republicans favored re-submission, Hoyt aired his views in regard to an unknown circular:

               My attention has been recently called to a circular entitled “Some reasons why colored men should vote for re-submission,” to which my name is signed, in connection with others, [but] I can only speak for myself. As to the contents of this circular I know nothing. My name was signed without my knowledge or consent. And I have no sympathy whatever, with its sentiments. I believe it is intended to deceive and mislead, for I know of no intelligent colored man who favors the suggestion in it. Whatever I may have believed on this subject, the lying statements of this circular has caused me to think differently. I am, therefore, opposed to the views of this circular, and brand every statement made in it as false and untrue. And so far as advising colored men to vote for Geo. W. Glick, [where] his Democratic record is concerned, I would advise them to vote the Republican [ticket], headed by that gallant soldier and noble patriot, John A. Martin

[elected governor (1885-89)].⁵

Four years later, he argued for Black representation at state conventions as follows:

               Four conventions are soon to be held touching both state and national affairs. The election will be of unusual importance and highly interesting to party leaders. The selection of men to be placed in nomination is a question of the highest moment. There can be no question as to the class of white men selected. They will select their representative men; Men who cannot simply read and write, but men who are well posted in the science of our government. The same convention which will be composed principally of white men may select some colored delegates, thus having two races represented from which it is also to be inferred as characterizing the harmony of the races in the fight. In making their choice of colored men, the colored people ask the conventions to select our representative colored me; those that are best posted, and are able to reflect credit upon their race.

The colored citizens have feelings, opinions and likes, not unlike our white citizens, and do not want colored men to be sent to conventions simply because they are colored, but because they are able to represent them.

   There is to be found among the colored people, as among the white people, a progressive element who think there might be some variation in the actions of the conventions at this juncture.

   Is this progressive element to be or is it not be represented? I mean, in the conference of honors, why not consider the work and votes of this element as being of some advantage to the object of the conventions.

   Let us have a change.

                                                Jas. W. Hoyt⁶

Toward these ends, Hoyt became a delegate at state Republican conventions as an intermittent  president of the Fred Douglass Club (January-June 1888, 1889, 1892, 1896).⁷

            During the Republican primaries in fall 1889, Hoyt began to pressure Black voters as a forcible speaker. When a dispute arose over the selection of delegates for the Republican county convention, William Fry hit him with a club, rendering him unconscious.⁸ After this contested primary, the Daily Record supported H. S. Clarke, an independent white candidate for county sheriff.⁹ As “Col. Jim Hoyt” canvassed the Third Ward, the Republican Journal mocked him as “the king of the boodle bolters” for bribing any Black voter who considered bolting from the Republican party, while attacking Clarke with this malicious rhyme: “Sing a song of bolters, pocket full of rocks; buying up the voters everywhere in blocks; subsidizing bummers, men like Col. Jim, then decrying ‘boodle’ using men like him. Isn’t this a pretty sight for the voters’ eyes; they will cast their ballots where there are no flies.”¹⁰ (The Journal also raised the specter of the 1882 lynchings claiming that Clarke had “sanctioned” the hanging of Peter Vinegar, an innocent Black man, when his fellow bolter H. B. Asher was sheriff.¹¹) In response, the Record defended Hoyt based on his “letters of commendation from Judge Thacher and Geo. J. Barker [white Republicans] testifying in the highest terms to his good qualities and fitness for the position.”¹² “A Colored Citizen” also rebuffed the Journal’s tactics.¹³ Clarke won the sheriff election by a majority of 534 votes.¹⁴

            In 1892, Hoyt’s stressful life took a turn for the worse as fights broke out among Black men at his saloon on Massachusetts street south of Pierson’s mill. After pleading guilty to disturbing the peace in February, Hoyt was fined $13.50 ($442 today) for fighting with Tom Berry in May.¹⁵ Then in July, he was arrested for selling liquor without a license, fined $200 ($6,550) for violating the prohibition law, jailed for sixty days, and sentenced to work the rock pile.¹⁶ Yet white Republicans needed his services for the next county election, so they gathered 104 petitions from tax-payers for his release. After breaking rocks for 35 days (worth $46), paying $77 in court costs ($123 total or $4,028), and completing his jail sentence in September, the county commissioners released him in October.¹⁷

            Yet over the ensuing years, several fines for drunk and disorderly behaviors, among other offenses, pushed Jim Hoyt further into poverty.¹⁸ Ironically, his eldest daughter Cora chose a relevant topic for her oration during high school commencement in 1893. She discussed the question “Is a Man Responsible for His Crimes?” based on her review of the novel Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr.¹⁹ Like Cora, Alta and Beatrice Hoyt would lead successful lives in Lawrence, while various crimes would haunt their brothers, Lloyd and George Hoyt.²⁰

            After enduring several months of illness without the ability to walk around town, James W. Hoyt, age 47, died of heart failure and dropsy in 1898. The Journal now characterized him as a “well-known Negro politician [who] always took a great interest in republican politics, attended every convention he could, and was looked upon as having considerable influence among the members of his race.” The Gazette (formerly the Record) gave him higher honors by noting that “The republican party of Douglas county has sustained a severe loss in the death of that distinguished politician, the Hon. James Hoyt.” After his funeral at St. Luke AME Church, he was buried in potter’s field at Oak Hill Cemetery.²¹

One wonders how Mrs. Fannie Hoyt bore her family’s trials and tribulations, including the loss of three infants Fannie (1886), William (1888), and Jennie (1894) who were also buried at the same potter’s field.²² Years later, she endured “two mild cases of smallpox” when her home at 1009 New Jersey street was quarantined, and she accidently cut off the tip of one finger.²³ As a long-time member of St. Luke AME church for at least 70 years, her trusting faith in God likely offered some solace. Upon her death in 1944, five children survived her: Corinne (Cora) (Hoyt) Eagleson, Kansas City, MO; Arnetta (Hoyt) Brown, Beatrice (Hoyt) James, James W. Hoyt Jr., and George Hoyt, as well as two grandchildren, Corinne and Odessa James, whom she raised (the latter family members lived in Los Angeles).²⁴