Fort Worth’s historical record largely missed Black people. Meet this prominent family
There are precious few African Americans that we know anything about in early Fort Worth history, due to a lack of public records. For many, that short list starts and ends with banker and businessman William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald.
Fortunately, another distinguished family can be added to the list. They are John Pratt, his son James Pratt, and James’ wife Lena. The story begins with John Pratt, a former slave and Union soldier who settled in Fort Worth after emancipation and opened a blacksmith shop on the square.
Pratt’s shop was patronized by Maj. Khleber Van Zandt, a beloved Confederate veteran, and by other “prominent [white] Fort Worthers,” according to the historical record. Their patronage brought Pratt steady business and protection from the Klan. His success made him “Fort Worth’s first Negro businessman.” And according to the recollections of a Confederate veteran many years later, Pratt used some of his money to pay for the college education of his former master’s son. Those same veterans went on record “paying tribute” to John Pratt.
That is not even the most remarkable thing about John Pratt. Though he himself could neither read nor write, he saw to it that his son, James Wellington Pratt, received an education. James was born in 1874, the third of four children. Getting an education was not an easy thing for a Black person in Texas in those years. Even learning the basic three Rs was difficult since Fort Worth did not have public schools for Black people until years later. His father would have had to engage a private teacher.
Like many other African Americans, James Pratt is hard to follow through public records. The doings of African Americans were barely reported, if at all, in the white press, and they tended to be under-reported in the census.
John Pratt apparently died before his son reached adulthood. (Again, the record is unclear.) Somehow James must have gone to college at one of the four HBCUs in Texas at the time because in 1894 he was the only Black teacher taking the “county teachers’ examination” administered by the board of examiners. He passed, which should have entitled him to be appointed to a position in the city’s “colored school.” But there was a problem: a vocal group of Black residents did not want him teaching in their school. Before the 1895 school year, they petitioned the council not to appoint him. The Daily Gazette predicted “sensational developments” were likely without specifying what they might be.
Apparently, Pratt was not persona non grata in the Black community at large because in later years he was a leader in that community. He had a wealth of talent that included public speaking and singing besides his intellectual abilities. In the 1895 memorial service in Fort Worth honoring the passing of the great Frederick Douglass, he was one of the keynote speakers, “arousing the enthusiasm of the audience to a high pitch.” He also had a fine baritone voice that he used with the Negro Harmony Club to entertain both Black and white audiences. And he was a member in good standing of the Colored Odd Fellows lodge of Fort Worth. In short, he was a respected public figure.
In 1900, James was living with his mother Elleta (“Nettie”) Payne, who had remarried and was working as a nurse for a local Black doctor. James was single, and although he listed his occupation as “schoolteacher,” he had been unemployed for the previous six months before the census taker came knocking.
Teaching positions were limited for a Black man. Fort Worth would not hire him to teach in the city’s one “colored school,” and there was no chance of teaching in a white school. Undeterred, he went to work for the federal government as a mail carrier. That was one of the few positions a Black man could get besides being a laborer or janitor. Years later, when he was getting too old to carry a mail bag and walk for miles every day, he got on as a Pullman porter, possibly the most respected employment a Black man could get in the Jim Crow era.
Sometime before 1907 (again, the records are unclear), James married Lena Johnson. Like John Pratt, Lena’s father had been an early entrepreneur in the community only instead of running a blacksmith shop, he was a barber. James would have been about 30 and Lena about 26 when they married. Something else they shared besides their love was singing talent. She was a soprano who performed publicly and taught music. They performed together for both Black and white audiences in the years to follow. The marriage lasted until death parted them. His job as a Pullman porter, with salary and tips, allowed them to buy a house on East Rosedale, valued at $800 in 1930. By that date, Lena was working as a switchboard operator, perhaps for the Jim Hotel, Fort Worth’s only Black hotel.
By their final years, James and Lena had achieved a level of financial security that would have been the envy of many Black people and white people alike. It certainly would have made his father proud. They owned a neighborhood grocery store, the Pratt Apartments, and other property on the Near South Side.
James died on Feb. 3, 1948, of pancreatic cancer. He was 63 years old, although various census records over the decades had listed his birth date as 1878 and 1884. County physician William M. Crawford had attended James the last six months of his life. That, too, is unusual since Crawford was white and had no shortage of patients. Lena provided the information for the death certificate, but her knowledge of her husband’s background was shaky. (For instance, she gave his mother’s maiden name as “Nettie.”) Baker Funeral Home took charge of the body and made the funeral arrangements. James Pratt was buried in the Old Trinity section of Oakwood Cemetery.
Lena Pratt died in 1959. She spent her last three years at the Scharrer Home for the Elderly. As with James, whoever made out the death certificate was short on details. It gives her age as 68 and her birth date 1891. No mention is made of her accomplishments as a singer and teacher. Her death certificate describes her as a “housewife.” Nor did she rate an obituary in either of the Fort Wort dailies. She was buried beside James in Oakwood. Their final resting place stands out among all the fallen headstones and unmarked graves because of the granite marker placed over it in years later by unknown persons.
The Pratt family drops off the radar after James and Lena. With no known children, the family name died with them. This is particularly sad because what father and son (and daughter-in-law) accomplished in an era of strict segregation and white supremacy is truly impressive. Father and son never ran a bank like Bill McDonald, but he had nothing on the Pratts when it came to old-fashioned drive and ambition, and, yes, career success.
Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.
