Mystery letter a window into America’s segregated past

Old and sporting an imposing title, a book recently donated to the Longview Library seemed like a lackluster find — until you opened it and found a 68-year-old letter that is a window into the history of American segregation.

My wife, Paula, is a volunteer of Friends of the Longview Library, which raises money for library projects. One of the group’s activities is sorting through the hundreds of books donated each year. Volunteers screen them for possible addition to the library’s collection, inclusion in public book sales or —for more valuable books — online marketing.

Among the recent donations was a blue hardback published in 1954 called Existentialism and the Modern Predicament by F. H. Hinemann, a noted writer on philosophical topics. The book had been checked out of the Washington, D.C., library system and never returned.

Hinemann is not exactly good bedtime reading. But folded inside the book was a letter typed on Southern Pacific Railway stationery dated Feb. 23, 1955, from Washington, D.C.

It is addressed to J.R. Engelhart from C.T. Hunt. It appears to be a reprimand from Hunt to Engelhart based on an eyewitness account Hunt received from a passenger named J.E. Bowie. It is about an incident on a train between Washington, D.C., and Alexandria,Virginia, on Feb. 18, 1955.

Bowie reported that Car S-1 had only nine seats sold and that “there were approximately 12 or 14 colored passengers seeking space.” Bowie said he told Engelhart of this, but that Engelhart made no effort to assign these seats to the waiting passengers.

Bowie said he, himself, had gotten three seats on the train and that when he walked through the coaches from Washington to Alexandria, he saw “no evidence of overloading.”

Hunt’s letter asks Engelhart: “Please advise why you did not carry out your duties as instructed.”

Judging from the browning of its edges, the letter had been in the book a long time. We have no idea how the book and letter came to Longview, or who donated them.

The letter coincided with a significant time in racial desegregation. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling made public school segregation illegal. On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boosted the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. In January 1956, the Interstate Commerce Commission prohibited racial segregation on interstate trains and passenger buses.

The letter documents how routine racism was in 1955 and reminds us of the many forgotten people who opposed segregation. People like Mr. Hunt.

“Wow! What an amazing find!” Jerry McCoy, special collections librarian at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., wrote to Paula after she approached the library about the letter.

“By 1955 Union Station in Washington, D.C ., had long been the demarcation point for passenger trains traveling south to become segregated (the Alexandria, Virginia station was only a few minutes away on the other side of the Potomac River).”

The book and letter are now at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library. The Friends of the Library are eager to find out what more researchers there may learn.

“While it may be impossible to determine the identities of the individuals that were mentioned in the letter,” McCoy wrote,“we would certainly like to attempt to do so (especially the identification of J.E. Bowie).” •••