Editor’s Note: Written By Mark Brunswick:
This is my last post on Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s 1924 essay, ‘Delaware: A Jewel of Inconsistencies.’
There is an interesting nugget in the essay,
“The Delaware Negro, by the way, has the reputation of being a, “bad actor” when he gets started. Whether this has anything to do with the conservative attitude of the white citizenry,deponent sayeth not”.
There are elements of duplicity in all of Wilmington political life. Some are particularly malformed and vibrant in the Black community. Election days are big paydays. Street money flows from many crossroads. Street workers eat from an election day menu. Afterwards, a small number of Black politicos eat from a secret menu based on their roles as selected officials or ‘influencers’. The Delaware Way creates a corrupt foundation with all of this.
After the Civil War, there was no Reconstruction effect in Delaware. While Reconstruction brought new citizens into local, state and federal government, it would not be the case in Delaware. There was no sentiment favoring the rise of Freedmen, now citizens, in government without a degree of social control. The ability to control the politics of Black Wilmington is still an important feature of The Delaware Way.
“BUT Delaware is the only state in the Union where a colored man may not practice law. There is no law against it, merely custom and maneuver.”
…Delaware never calls a Negro to a jury, except to serve on a coroner’s jury of a Federal jury.
The combination of no Negro lawyers and no Negro jurymen has resulted on the nolle prose of cases where shrewd Negro malefactors threatened to import their own counsel or stand by their constitutional rights of being tried by their own peers.”
This was written five years before Louis L. Redding was the first Black lawyer admitted to the Delaware Bar. His Wikipedia entry states that he was the only Black lawyer here until 1954.
The significant absence of Blacks in the legal profession has had far reaching consequences. Lawyers are involved in more than criminal defense matters. Membership in the bar allows for civil and criminal representation, advocacy and policy development. There is no major Black law firm in Delaware with the facility to handle criminal and civil matters or weighs in on matters on a significant scale.
“There are no Negro policemen in the city of Wilmington.”
“There are no Negro firemen in the city of Wilmington”
While there was probably some marginal presence in city hall, I suspect that this was the condition throughout city government. There was no ability for the Black community to participate in policy and policies were not particularly geared for the advancement of the community.
In many ways, these are the foundations for the Wilmington we have today. We have had three Black mayors. Not one has taken a role in creating equitable participation for the community in the fruits of development. Instead, the Black community sees contracts awarded to sycophants, marginal opportunities and a legacy of front companies working with larger contractors. The residents of Southbridge successfully negotiated a meaningful community benefits agreement with a developer only to have city leadership say, “We don’t support this. Our developers have a better plan.” There was not even the counter offer of a better plan from the city’s developers; just the Delaware Way—we change the rules when we need to.
Wilmington City Council is paralyzed. They have a terror of addressing public safety and other substantive policy. In the early 90s, the FOP took the lead in getting the General Assembly to change Wilmington’s residency laws because they felt it was too dangerous to live among the people they policed. The FOP does not have the voter numbers to control city politics but they control policing policy.
Housing is a mess. The Land Bank is a slow motion disaster. Not to worry, the developers are building housing for a population which, by the next census, will be more present in city politics.
Council leaders are sitting back waiting to see who will be anointed as the next mayor. That is, if the current mayor decides to retire.
Of course, we have other elected officials who are more than willing to shill for the development czars as long as campaign contributions come their way. That’s The Delaware Way.