University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 11, 2007

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor

They include judges, doctors, businessmen and "respectable gentlemen"; one of the famous Tuskegee airmen who became one of the city's most notable educators; the proprietor of the 19th century's Hughson House hairdressing saloon who also chaired the New York State Central Committee of Colored Men; and Vernell Melson, "grandpa" to the neighborhood children on Buffalo's East Side for whom he provided a safe haven over many years.

These are among Western New York's "uncrowned kings," hundreds of men living and dead, who built, led and sustained the local African-American community for the past 150 years.

In April, their biographies inaugurated the Uncrowned Kings Initiative, an online archive at that serves as a "techno-pedia" of photos and biographies that memorialize and celebrate their lives and accomplishments.

The initiative was developed by the Uncrowned Queens Institute at UB, founded in 1999 by Peggy Brooks-Bertram and Barbara Nevergold, who continue to direct it.

The institute will host an invitation-only reception for the first of the uncrowned kings at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 19 in Allen Hall, South Campus. The reception's honorary chairs are President John B. Simpson, Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown and James A. Williams, superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools.

Brooks-Bertram and Nevergold founded the Uncrowned Queens Institute to collect, preserve and present the written and oral histories of hundreds of female African-American community builders across Western New York and Southern Ontario.

They say they established the Uncrowned Kings Initiative, which has the same goals, in response to great community interest in such a project.

The initiative spotlights the often-astounding accomplishments of Buffalo's black men from the 1850s on in their roles as educators and entrepreneurs; health-care givers, religious leaders, poets and authors; fathers, uncles and grandfathers; historians and culture keepers; attorneys and members of the judiciary; civic leaders, veterans and community activists; politicians, law enforcement officers, artists, scientists, journalists, athletes and social workers.

These men who brought such pride and strength to their communities include some very well-known names: the Hon. Samuel L. Green, senior associate justice of the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department, New York State Supreme Court; Daniel R. Acker (1910-97), civil rights advocate and former president of the Buffalo Branch of the NAACP; and Frank Mesiah, current president of the Buffalo branch of the NAACP and a former regional administrator in the Division of Equal Opportunity Development, state Department of Labor.

Another is MIT-trained architect Robert Traynham Coles, founder of the oldest African American-owned architectural firm in New York State. The former Langston Hughes Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Kansas and associate professor of architecture at the Carnegie Mellon University, Coles' many distinguished community contributions include bringing Saul Alinsky and the influential Industrial Areas Foundation to Buffalo in 1964 to organize the city's poor.

Long-time community activist Russell T. Smith, president of the board of the Buffalo Halfway House, which offers transitional services to men and women re-entering the community from correctional institutions, also is an uncrowned king.

Other lesser known but notable men are included as well.

One is Buffalo Times' telegraph operator and reporter Edward William Crosby, whose highly esteemed, late 19th-century writings were widely read and copied by contemporary newspapers whose editors had no idea he was black.

He joins the fascinating Thomas Henry Barnes of Olean, whose roles as the oldest barber in the United States and friend of abolitionist Frederick Douglass were the least of his accomplishments, and NAACP and Masonic leader Raymond Jackson, co-founder of the Colored Musicians Club.

Of course, Buffalo's "first black mayor" is included—former Ellicott District Councilman King W. Peterson, who in 1956, as acting mayor of the City of Buffalo for 10 days, became the first African-American to execute that office.

"We encourage the submission of the names, biographies and photos of men to this [Web] site, which includes a form for that purpose," Nevergold says. "We will be working with the Buffalo community to preserve a crucial facet of American history."

The reception will be presented with the generous assistance of UB and the UB Digital Libraries, the Buffalo Teachers Federation, Buffalo's Colored Musicians Club, Hospice Buffalo Inc., the Forest Lawn Group, the Kaleida Health Foundation and the Premier Group.

Brooks-Bertram and Nevergold have published four volumes in the Uncrowned Queens books series—the most recent for the Oklahoma state centennial—and initiated a new cable television project that spotlights Western New York community builders.