Burdett, Samuel

Source:

 African American National Biography

Burdett, Samuel

(1846?–?),

businessman, anti-lynching advocate, and pioneering member of Seattle, Washington's black middle class, was born in Kentucky, but exactly when or where has not been established. Some indications of Burdett's background, however, emerge from the 1850 census of Bullitt, Kentucky. One “Sam'l Burdett” is listed as a four-year-old black child living in the household of a white Burdette family headed by a fifty-year-old man named Pyton Burdett, who had a wife and seven children. A black woman named Louisa Burdett is also included in the household along with three black children, among them, “Sam'l.” The status of Louisa and her three children as either slaves or free persons is not indicated. Whatever her background in 1850, it is clear that ten years later Louisa had prospered. In 1860 the Bullitt, Kentucky, census listed Louisa Burdett, 36, with three children including a fourteen-year-old Samuel living in their own dwelling house and listed as a separate family. Additionally, their real estate was valued at $300, and their personal estate at $100. This data strongly suggests that Samuel Burdett had an ambitious and resourceful mother.

Samuel Burdett participated in the Civil War between 1864 and 1865, and was reportedly present at Lee's surrender to Grant. After the war he joined the Ninth Cavalry, where he became a veterinary surgeon and served for eighteen years. Like many other African American men, Burdett's military service widened his horizons, rejuvenated his connection to the nation, and provided him with skills he parlayed into a career. Sometime in 1872 he married a woman named Belle. Not much is known about her origins, except that she and her parents were also from Kentucky.

In 1891 the couple moved to Seattle, Washington, where Samuel worked as a veterinarian until 1900 and then headed a mining and loan company. While in Seattle, the Burdetts helped create the foundations of middle-class society for African Americans in the Northwest. The same year he moved to Seattle, Burdett founded the Cornerstone Grand Lodge of the York Masons, a group that organized entertainment, social activities, and financial loans. In 1893 Burdett organized a life insurance group called the “Supreme Altar of the Ancient Order of the Sons and Daughters of Ham.” Its ambitious purpose was not only to provide financial protection from disasters, but apparently also to elevate the mind and morals of his fellow African Americans. A historian of Seattle's black middle class, Esther Hall Mumford, noted that the Burdetts were considered a leading family and owned a grand piano.

Like many other African Americans who left slavery and the South behind, Burdett's migration north and west was marked by increasing political radicalism and a growing claim on the right of full participation in American citizenship. In Seattle Burdett was active in the Afro-American League, helped organize Juneteenth festivities, and worked for the state Republican Party. In 1898 he volunteered to recruit and organize a regiment of “Aframerican Infantry” to serve in the Spanish-American War. His offer was ultimately rejected but displayed the willingness of black veteran patriots to risk their lives and break down racial barriers through military service.

Increasingly, Burdett used his high social standing to tackle the controversial topic of lynching. Although Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a prominent journalist, had been writing and giving speeches denouncing mob violence, no progress had been made in ending the plague that infected the entire nation. In 1900 Burdett published A Test of Lynch Law, an Expose of Mob Violence, and the Courts of Hell that passionately attacked lynching and connected such mob violence to the larger problem of black oppression. Burdett described coming across a crowd in Seattle listening to a phonographic exhibit of the Paris, Texas, lynching in which a white mob burned a black man named Henry Smith to death. For a few cents people could listen to Smith's dying screams. This episode was a remarkable example of how the terrors of lynching were not limited to the South, but reached almost every corner of the United States and inspired activists such as Burdett to work for racial justice. Burdett also revealed in his book that he was a founding member of the International Council of the World. According to Burdett this group, organized in 1901, was dedicated to ending racial violence. The group offered a $500 reward for the apprehension and conviction of any person involved in the death of a lynching victim. Burdett also claimed that the council hired detectives to investigate lynchings in the South. These methods demonstrate the wide variety of approaches activists took in the early years of the antilynching campaign. Later in the second and third decade of the twentieth century, the NAACP would dominate antilynching work with its famous journalistic exposés and efforts to make lynching a federal crime. Burdett's group did not have the same kind of financial resources or national exposure, and yet their pioneering efforts show the valiant and determined roots of this struggle. The exact year of Burdett's death is unknown, although it may be telling that the 1910 Seattle census does not list either Samuel or Belle Burdett.

processed xml | source xml