Gibson, Truman K., Jr.

views updated

Truman K. Gibson Jr.

1912-2005

Attorney, boxing promoter

Truman K. Gibson Jr. was the first black American to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit, for his service advocating for the rights of black soldiers during World War II. He organized the American Negro Exposition of 1940 and was involved in a major legal battle to end racial segregation in Chicago housing. In the 1950s Gibson became the first black boxing promoter and president of the International Boxing Club (IBC).

Studied Law

Truman Kella Gibson Jr. was born on January 22, 1912, in Atlanta, Georgia. His early years were spent in the black intellectual enclave of Atlanta University, where he attended school with his brother and sister. Their mother, Alberta Dickerson Gibson, was a teacher. Truman K. Gibson Sr., one of the country's most successful black businessmen, had put himself through Atlanta and Harvard Universities and rose to prominence with the Atlanta Mutual Insurance Company.

In the early 1920s increasing racial tensions in Atlanta prompted Gibson Sr. to move the family to Columbus, Ohio, where he founded Supreme Life and Casualty, which became one of the nation's premier black businesses. On the streets of Columbus, Gibson Jr. sold The Crisis, published by family friend W. E. B. DuBois. Gibson Jr. attended a nearly all-white high school where he was an athlete, but as a light-skinned black he experienced animosity from both races.

In 1929 Gibson Sr. formed the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and moved his family to Chicago's South Side. Hoping to play Big Ten football, Gibson Jr. won a scholarship to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. However after being warned about segregation in Evanston, he looked in the phone book for another college and enrolled at the University of Chicago. During the summers he sold burial insurance in black communities throughout the Midwest.

During his sophomore year Gibson was hired as a research assistant to Harold F. Gosnell, contributing to Gosnell's book Negro Politicians and becoming acquainted with the city's black power elite. Gibson graduated from the University of Chicago Law School only to find that the Chicago Bar Association did not admit blacks. He joined the board of Supreme Liberty Life and went to work in a private law firm. In one of his first cases Gibson successfully fought off an attempt to unseat Evanston's first black alderman.

Supported His Race

During the Great Depression gambling was an economic mainstay in the black community and accounted for much of Gibson's law business. However he took on racial discrimination cases. He won $25 in damages for Isabelle Carson, a Northwestern alumna and graduate student in social work at the University of Chicago, who had been denied service at a restaurant. They married on February 12, 1939.

Gibson served as a pro bono attorney in one of the most important civil-rights cases of the day, Lee v.Hansberry, challenging real-estate covenants that barred blacks. Supreme Liberty Life bankrolled the original Hansberry mortgage and the subsequent legal battle. Hansberry's 1940 U.S. Supreme Court victory was based on a technicality resulting from Gibson's tireless research. The case was the basis for Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun.

Gibson became executive director of the American Negro Exposition of 1940, commemorating the 75th anniversary of emancipation. The Chicago Defender called it "the greatest show of educational advancement ever exhibited by any race of people." It included the first national exhibition of black artists, 120 historical exhibits, a sports hall of fame, and musical productions under the direction of Duke Ellington. However the expo's success was eclipsed by the spread of war in Europe.

Joined War Department

In 1940 Gibson campaigned for President Franklin Roosevelt's reelection. Late in that year he was named assistant to Bill Hastie, whom Roosevelt had appointed Special Aide on Negro Affairs to the Secretary of War. It had been a token pre-election offering to black soldiers. Military leaders were determined to maintain racial segregation and black soldiers were drastically underutilized, performing the most menial jobs. They were confined to training camps in the South where they were abused, assaulted, and murdered. It was Gibson's job to investigate the multitude of complaints from black servicemen and their families. He traveled the country defending black soldiers and attempting to forestall race riots.

In January of 1943 Hastie quit in frustration and Gibson took over his job. Gibson recalled writing a memo to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy: "The issue…is not one of changing fundamental attitudes. It is little more than getting the attitude across to our civilian Army that all soldiers engaged in a common task should be treated as soldiers regardless of race." Gibson's helplessness made him a target of the black press and black leaders. He wrote: "I was becoming a lightning rod absorbing all the venom that the army's racist policies would understandably generate among African Americans."

Gibson did have a few successes. His efforts led to the radio program America's Negro Soldiers, for which he lined up performers and gathered information from black training camps. He was involved in producing and distributing Frank Capra's 1944 film The Negro Soldier, which depicted the heroics of black soldiers and airmen, as well as the realities of black army life. Gibson not only saved baseball player Jackie Robinson from a court martial for knocking-out an officer, he got him accepted into Officers Candidacy School.

At a Glance …

Born Truman K. Gibson Jr. on January 22, 1912, in Atlanta, GA; died on December 23, 2005, in Chicago, IL; married Isabelle Carson, 1939 (died 2001); children: Karen Isabelle (Gibson) Kelley. Education: University of Chicago, B.Phil., political science, 1932, JD, 1935.

Career:

Law practice, Chicago, IL, 1935-40, 1945-2005; American Negro Exposition, Chicago, IL, executive director, 1940; Office of the Secretary of War, Washington, DC, assistant to the Special Aide on Negro Affairs, 1940-43, acting civilian aide, 1943, civilian aide, 1943-45; Joe Louis Enterprises, Chicago, IL, secretary and director, 1945-?; Advisory Commission on Universal Training, Washington, DC, presidential appointee, 1946-47; Committee on Religion and Welfare in the Armed Forces, Washington, DC, presidential appointee, 1948; International Boxing Club, Chicago, IL, secretary, 1949-56, executive vice president, 1956-58, president, 1958-59; National Boxing Enterprises, Inc., Chicago, IL, director, 1959.

Selected memberships:

Chicago Community Fund, director; Chicago Land Clearance Commission, secretary; Chicago Urban League, member; Roosevelt College, director; Supreme Life Insurance Company, director, executive committee member.

Awards:

President Harry S. Truman, Medal of Merit Award for Civilians, 1947; Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, honored for working "behind the scenes to end segregation in the armed forces," 2001; Art Institute of Chicago, award for work on the 1940 Black Expo, 2003.

Attacked from Both Sides

In 1945 the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 92nd Infantry Division were finally deployed to Italy, only to be accused of cowardice. The army threatened to withdraw the black division and Gibson was sent to investigate. He interviewed 800 officers and hundreds of enlisted men. He found that the black troops were scapegoats for replacement soldiers without combat training and inexperienced white commanders. As Gibson wrote in his memoir, "the army had a stake in trying to prove that black soldiers couldn't fight." However at a press conference in Rome Gibson re- ported that, although the black troops were as brave as whites, most of them were illiterate or semi-illiterate and poorly trained. A furious black public demanded Gibson's resignation. It was only many years later that the brave 92nd was vindicated.

Next Gibson visited the European theater where he reported on the successes of the first integrated combat units. As the war ended, Gibson was instrumental in the integration of redistribution centers for returning servicemen and in enabling black psychologists and psychiatrists to treat patients in integrated military hospitals.

Gibson left the War Department in December of 1945. He wrote: "I had had enough. Enough of the obstacles the army threw up at every turn to frustrate the aspirations of black soldiers. Enough of the persistent racism of the officer corps. Enough of the preconceived determination that African American soldiers would fail in combat. Enough of the incredible balancing act I was performing—behind the scenes waging war against all that, while on the surface endeavoring to put the best face on War Department dictates and policies. All the while I was being damned in the black press as a traitor to my race." Nevertheless Gibson's efforts broke ground for the desegregation of the military in 1948.

Back in Chicago Gibson reestablished his law practice with his brother Harry and accountant Theodore Jones. With the establishment of a universal draft, President Harry Truman appointed Gibson to the Advisory Commission on Universal Training, which recommended the desegregation of the military. He testified before congressional committees on several occasions and in 1948 participated in the National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs.

Introduced Televised Boxing

Gibson first met future world heavyweight champion Joe Louis in 1935 when they shared an interest in horseback riding. As an enlisted man Louis refused to box for segregated army audiences. Gibson negotiated for integrated audiences and arranged for Louis to lead a troupe of black boxers on a tour of military bases in Europe and North Africa. He also arranged the second Joe Louis-Billy Conn title fight to benefit the Army Relief Fund. In 1947 Gibson and Jones took charge of Louis's finances, legal issues, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) troubles. Gibson established Joe Louis Enterprises, Inc.

Gibson set out to revive the sport of boxing, moving its capital from New York to Chicago. He initiated an elimination series to determine Louis's successor. The IBC was formed in 1949 with Gibson as secretary and later president. Gibson recognized the potential of the television sets that were appearing in homes across America. Soon he had built a multimillion-dollar business with televised boxing almost every night of the week. Gibson wrote: "Boxing, which had seemed in the doldrums at the end of the war, had roared back, and its popularity soared to new heights. Boxing and TV complemented each other and grew together. Here was a place where race didn't seem to matter, or at least not so much as in society in general." The IBC consolidated its ownership of professional boxing, which later became the basis for government antitrust charges.

With Sugar Ray Robinson under contract, Gibson attacked IRS regulations that required professional athletes to be credited immediately with their entire winnings. His success meant that athletes could spread their winnings out over time to avoid huge tax bills.

Connected to Organized Crime

The Ring magazine wrote in 1957: "Gibson may look and sound, at times, like a church deacon. But he is no babe in the woods. He is crafty, he knows the angles." Although his partners were involved in organized crime, Gibson maintained that the IBC was clean and that no fight had ever been fixed while he was running the club. However in 1959 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the IBC was an illegal monopoly.

Gibson's purported connections to crime mobs made him a focus of both Estes Kefauver's Senate subcommittee and the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In the Pittsburgh Courier of January 2, 1960, chairman of the Illinois State Athletic Commission, Frank Gilmer, attacked "those vindictive and jealous individuals who are trying to crucify" Gibson. "To include Gibson in that situation is a travesty on justice and a reflection on the democratic system under which we live. He is one of the finest men I have ever met, and one of the most honest executives in the entire business world." In 1961 Gibson was convicted in federal court on two counts of conspiracy, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years' probation. In his memoir Gibson described it as "Guilt by association combined with the enmity of Bobby Kennedy." Although his career as a boxing promoter was over, Gibson maintained that the IBC's promotion of black athletes and interracial matches influenced the victories of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Gibson returned to his law practice. In 1977 he was convicted in a stock-swindling case. His law license was suspended for two years and he was ordered to pay $1,000 monthly to the federal government, which he defaulted on. In 1987 he was given five years probation for bank fraud.

As the last surviving member of the "black cabinet" of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Gibson wrote his memoirs detailing his struggle to integrate the U.S. military. Gibson died at Mercy Hospital in Chicago on December 23, 2005.