Daniel Murray and The Story of America’s Black Elite

At the tender age of nine, Murray moved to Washington D.C. to work for his brother, who managed the United States Senate Restaurant, a venue where senators regularly ate and socialized. In 1871, at the age of nineteen, he joined a team of a dozen staff at the Library of Congress. It was there that he worked for ten years as the personal assistant to the Librarian of Congress before he was elevated to the role of assistant librarian, a role he performed for an additional forty-​two years.

Murray’s distinction as only the second Black American to hold a professional position at the Library of Congress came at a time when these sorts of prestigious government appointments were a rare achievement for Blacks. The first to hold that distinction, Jon F.N. Wilkinson, was a native Washingtonian and two decades Murray’s senior. Indeed, he served as Murray’s mentor and role model. Over time the two became known for their command of the vast library collection, both men possessing an uncanny recall of books and titles requested by congressional staffers.

In 1879, Murray, although self taught, married the highly educated Anna Jane Evans, a local school teacher and a graduate of both Oberlin College and Howard University. They were a D.C. power couple at a time when Black Washingtonians comprised a third of the population. A polished socialite who hailed from an impressive lineage of Black abolitionists, Anna Jane was related to U.S. senator Hiram Revels, the first Black citizen to serve in either house of Congress.

Anna Murray believed that any substantial progress of the race was predicated on childhood education. Because of her advocacy on the issue, she is regarded as the mother of public kindergarten in Washington D.C.

Over the course of their 46-​year marriage, the Murray’s raised seven children and were one of the wealthiest Black families in the nation’s capital. They built an opulent house in Northwest Washington D.C. on S Street, becoming the first of several Black Americans to live on that block.

Daniel’s distinguished position at the Library of Congress, combined with Anna’s connections at Oberlin, gave the two access to elite DC circles. This included some of America’s first Black U.S. senators, representatives, and business leaders.

These well-​educated and well-​off Black elites engaged in politics, mixed at high brow cultural events, and enjoyed a vibrant social life in D.C. Reflective of a rarely talked about intra-​racial divide, Blacks comprising this elite cadre typically had lighter skin complexion than those in working class DC neighborhoods. The fact that most could pass for white led Daniel Murray’s close friend Cyrus Field Adamsto to lament, “My trouble is, all my life I have been trying to pass for colored.”

Active in Republican politics, Daniel Murray frequently testified before Congress and was consulted by multiple presidents on racial issues such as lynching and Jim Crow segregation laws. He also built a reputation as a writer and researcher, authoring a voluminous collection of articles on Black history and culture, including a massive trove of bibliographies of works by and about Black authors that included biographies, books, pamphlets, and musical compositions. Furthermore, he wrote more than 500 plot synopses of Black novels, all for his planned but never published magnum opus, “Murray’s Historical and Biographical Encyclopedia of the Colored Race.”

With the volatile 1890s as a backdrop, Murray along with the likes of prominent Black leaders like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois played a prominent role in challenging disparaging myths about Black people. While Washington championed educational advancement and DuBois focused on intellectual leadership, Murray became a key torchbearer for Black literary achievement. He believed that “the true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.”

The wealth that Murray amassed was the fruit of his real estate and entrepreneurial ventures, specifically his development of several buildings in the city. In 1894, he was afforded the distinction of being inducted into the Washington Board of Trade and the first Black American to receive this honor. This was in recognition of his efforts drafting a legislative proposal that secured federal monies and support for the municipal government in the District of Columbia. ²

But despite their efforts to fuel the assimilation of Black cultural ways into the broader fabric of America, Murray and other members of the Black intelligentsia were subjected to the chilling effect of Jim Crow segregation and white supremacy. The efforts to humiliate a Black population that many whites felt had advanced quite far enough is profiled by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor in her exquisitely well-​researched book The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era.

In a 2017 lecture at the Library of Congress, Dowling Taylor offered the deeper story of the eventual downfall of America’s Black middle-​class, the failure of Reconstruction, and the concomitant rise of Jim Crow which amounted to the effective re-​enslavement of many Black workers. She recalled that for all of the positive action that occurred around elite Black advancement in the post-​Civil War period, progress was halted later in the century amid a rebirth of racial humiliation, stalled career prospects, and the diminishment of Black wealth.

This theme was highlighted in Chapter 7 of her book which she titled “Backsliding.”

She continues:

Nevertheless, Daniel Murray and the nineteenth century black DC elite remains proof that black Americans, when given the slimmest opportunity, could scale the cultural, economic, and political heights of even a generally hostile society.