ByGone Muncie: A tale of two Stokes
I initially set out to write about William Stokes, Muncie’s first African American police officer. I’ve been building a "Stokes File" for a while now, adding biographical details as I found them. However, as the file grew, so too did discrepancies.
For instance, the Muncie Morning Star wrote on July 9, 1900, that William Stokes was the president of Muncie’s Union of Barber Shops. Two weeks later, the Evening Press reported on a raid that patrolman William Stokes made on an illegal gambling house. Was Stokes a barber or a cop?
Turns out, there were two men named William Stokes in Muncie around 1900! William H. Stokes, owner of the National House Barber Shop on South Walnut, was a political leader in Muncie’s Black community and the city’s first African American justice of the peace. His half-brother William T. Stokes was a blacksmith by trade and Muncie’s first Black police officer.
William Henry Stokes was born in 1848 in South Carolina. His family relocated to Oxford, Ohio about a year later. He graduated from Wilberforce University and studied law at the University of Michigan. Sometime in the 1870s, he moved to Muncie and married Emma McCoy, a school teacher from Indianapolis. Over the years, Stokes worked as a barber in several established downtown Muncie shops.
Like many African Americans of the day, Stokes supported the Republican party. He was listed in 1880 as a member of the Young Men’s Republican Club and stumped often for GOP candidates. In September of that year, Stokes was part of the delegation welcoming Frederick Douglass. In 1881 he served as a Center Township justice of the peace. JPs were elected magistrates who adjudicated small claims and performed civil marriages. Working out of the Patterson Building, Stokes offered “prompt attention paid to collecting, conveyancing, settlement of claims, and the renting of property,” according to an 1882 Evening Press ad.
Stokes appeared often in local newspapers during the gas boom. He was the president of Bethel AME’s Literary Society and the superintendent of AME’s Sunday schools. He was also president of Muncie’s barber’s union and chairman of the Lincoln League. After his justice of the peace term ended in 1885, the Morning News reported that “Mr. W.H. Stokes, the well known tonsorial artist, is engaged in business for himself, being now the sole proprietor of the barber shop on south Walnut street. Prof. Stokes is a number one barber and the News wishes him success.” In the 1890s, Stokes served as a state GOP delegate and president of the Industrial League of Colored Politicians.
His half-brother William T. Stokes was born in 1857 in Greenville, Ohio. He came to Muncie sometime in the 1890s and opened the Kentucky Shoeing Shop at the corner of Charles and Hackley streets with Isaiah Wingfield. William T. was one of many African Americans that had moved to Muncie during the boom. The city’s Black population had grown rapidly from 187 residents in 1880 to 739 in 1900. The era’s Black community was politically active and, as Hurley Goodall and Elizabeth Campbell wrote in The Other Side of Middletown, “strong, vibrant, and visible.” Black Munsonians often lobbied municipal leaders to hire African Americans as police officers and government employees.
When MPD patrolman John Seldomridge went on leave in early December 1899, William T. Stokes was hired as a temporary replacement and given a beat in the Industry neighborhood. Stokes immediately became a celebrated patrolman. On December 10, the News reported that “Patrolman Stokes, the new colored officer, caught a runaway horse late Saturday night and found it to be a rig belonging to some country boys who were loafing in a south side saloon.” In late January of 1900, the News wrote that Stokes was “making a good record as a patrolman.” He is the “only colored member of the Muncie Police Force [and] an efficient officer and has many friends.”
After some debate among commissioners, Stokes became a permanent patrolman in March of 1900. In May of that year, he accidentally shot himself, but his wound wasn’t life threatening. When he returned to his beat in June, a man by the name of George Ford “called him vile names, reflecting on his color.” After Ford spewed the epithet a second time, Stokes punched him in the face. Police commissioners fined Stokes $10, a common discipline at the time. Fellow officer Hamilton Beall was fined the same day for calling the head of the Salvation Army a “dirty liar.”
His brother William H. defected from the Republican party in October of 1900 and began stumping for Democrats. At a Dem party rally at the Wysor Grand Opera House on October 24, Stokes gave a speech explaining his political conversion, explaining how “the Republican party at election time has always been a friend of the colored man, and between elections would not speak to him,” according to the Muncie Daily Herald. He told the packed opera house about a recent meeting he had with state GOP chairman George McCulloch. Stokes said, “Mr. McCulloch, our people are dissatisfied with the treatment we are getting at the hands of the Republican party. We think we ought to be getting some of the offices that are at the disposal of the party.” McCulloch replied, “Stokes, you are kicking again, you never seemed to be satisfied,” then turned and walked away.
Stokes’ desertion didn’t go unnoticed. Three days before the November election, a mob of mostly white men “gathered in front of Mr. Stokes’ residence shortly after last midnight” with the intention “to lynch him as their actions and appearance certainly intended to give that impression,” according to the Daily Herald. “In the possession of the mob was a long horse rope, which for various reasons was inferred to be intended for the neck of Mr. Stokes.” Stokes escaped out the back door just before police arrived. He later told a reporter that “he will shoot to kill the next person who breaks into his house.”
His brother William T. quit the MPD in March of 1901 after being accused of drinking on the job. Stokes told a reporter, “I was accused of being drunk last Sunday. I did take whisky, but as a medicine for the reason I was suffering with the grip” (flu). Whisky was a common remedy. He felt that, even if the charges were cleared, his detractors in Muncie would use it against him, so he “decided to resign, rather than stand trial.” Fellow officers asked commissioners to drop the charges, but got nowhere. Stokes returned briefly to his Kentucky Shoeing Shop, before moving to Cleveland. He died in 1936.
His brother William H. remained an active political leader and barber until the First World War. He later moved to Indianapolis and died on July 10, 1925. Like all true Munsonians, he was returned home and buried at Beech Grove Cemetery.
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society board member and a Senior Lecturer of Media at Ball State University.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: ByGone Muncie: A Tale of Two Stokes
