In the end, it all came crashing down for David H. McKay. The “best appointed rink in the world” was self-designed, lasting nearly two years. Cut corners or ignorance of architectural principles found the structure bowing to the whims of the elements – a less than ideal situation in cold, wintery Boston.
A thick blanket of snow strained the Highland Rink’s structural integrity, collapsing it under the weight. The dozen or so people inside survived, but were almost certainly worse for the wear on the cold December day. “[F]or the honor of the profession,” an architectural magazine snarkily noted following the incident, “we are glad to say that no architect’s name is mentioned as having been concerned in the design of the truss.”
The fight for equal access to the city’s amusements simmered at least half-a-decade before Confederates fired the opening volley of the American Civil War at South Carolina’s Fort Sumter. A barber named Julian McCrea was denied entry to the Howard Athenaeum after buying a balcony ticket for an amateur comedy show. The doorman matter-of-factly explained that the establishment did not cater to black patrons.
"I have the right to enter,” McCrea protested, following a threat to fall to the ground. He cited the Bill of Rights ratified 75 years prior, noting that the nation’s foundational text barred such discrimination on the basis of race. “I bought my ticket and mean to enter if possible.”
Summoned by the theater’s owner, the police escorted the man from the building. McCrea brought the case to court, asserting that he had suffered “an injury and an indignity” at the hands of the theater owner. An impassioned plea from the barber’s attorney (and future Massachusetts Governor ) John A. Andrew failed to move the court.
While there was no legal mandate for such discrimination, protections against it were also sorely lacking. Five years after the theater incident, doctor, lawyer, teacher and abolitionist John Rock delivered a fiery speech condemning the sub-human treatment of black Bostonians, explaining,
Some persons think that because we have the right to vote, and enjoy the privilege of being squeezed up in an omnibus, and stared out of a seat in a horsecar, that there is less prejudice here than there is farther South. In some respects this is true, and in others it is not true. For instance, it is five times as hard to get a house in a good location in Boston as it is in Philadelphia, and it is ten times as difficult for a colored mechanic to get work here as it is in Charleston, where the prejudice is supposed to be very bitter against the free colored man
For the next two decades, public amusements would serve as a focal point in the struggle for equal treatment under the law. On a Saturday night in January 1885, Richard Brown was grabbed by the collar and “violently thrust out of” the Boston Roller Skating Rink along with his two crying grandchildren. The same month across town, Edward Everett Brown and George Freeman were subjected to similar treatment at the Highland Rink.
The three-month-old rink was as “well appointed” as advertised, boasting a live orchestra and thousands of Japanese-style paper lanterns suspended from the impossibly high ceiling. Much like the Boston Roller Skating Rink, however, it did not cater to black patrons. After paying $0.50 for admission into the garish lobby, the man at the ticket counter refused to let them skate.
The two men sought out the manager. Brown asked why he and his friend had been refused service. The Boston Globe reports the exchange thusly,
“It seems to me the grounds are plain enough,” McKay replied. “I do not allow colored people, of either sex, to skate in my rink.”
Brown was shocked, but perhaps not surprised. “The only reason why you refuse to allow us to skate is because we are colored?”
“That is the only reason,” McKay said. “I allow no colored persons to skate on my floor.”
Brown, a lawyer, cited precedent before threatening legal action. Still refusing to let the men skate, McKay instead offered a refund. Brown and Freeman left the rink without taking the money. They brought the story to The Globe instead. Speaking with the paper, McKay explained that black customers were allowed, but only as spectators. “I have nothing to say, against their behavior or their dress,” he told the paper. “They were colored: that was my objection. I would not break the rule even for Fred[erick] Douglass.”
By the end of the month, Brown and Freeman faced off against McKay in court. The rink owner was fined $50 apiece for the two men, on top of court costs. But the larger victory arrived months later. The roller-skating incidents were foundational to a reinvigorated push for equal rights under the law. The organizing culminated when Julius Chappelle, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who had born into slavery, introduced a bill.
Chappelle argued that the proposed legislation was about much more than the “immoral places” condemned by a fellow lawmaker.
“We do not care particularly about the skating rinks, but it is the principle that underlies the whole thing that we argue for,” Chappelle explained. “I tell you, if a notice should be put up over the gates of hell that colored men would not be admitted, we would try to enter, because we have a right to.”
The bill, "An Act to Punish Persons Making Discrimination in Public Places on Account of Race or Color,” was signed by Governor George Robinson in June.
Sources:
The untold story of roller-skating heroes who fought racism in Victorian-era Boston https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/05/magazine/untold-story-roller-skating-heroes-who-fought-racism-victorian-era-boston/
"We Do Not Care Particularly about the Skating Rinks": African American Challenges to Racial Discrimination in Places of Public Amusement in Nineteenth-Century Boston, Massachusetts https://www.jstor.org/stable/26070303?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents
The Black Abolitionist Papers VOLUME V The United States, 1859–1865 by C. Peter Ripley
Long Road to Justice http://www.longroadtojustice.org/teachers-guide/03-Post-Exhibit-Learning.pdf