Earl B. Dickerson Papers

Biographical Note

Earl Burrus Dickerson was among the most prominent leaders in African American business, politics, and law in the 20th century. He was born on June 22, 1891, in Canton, Miss., near Jackson. His parents, Emma Garrett Fielding and Edward Dickerson, married in 1890. His father, an upholster, died in 1896. His maternal grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Garrett, who purchased himself out of slavery along with Earl’s grandmother Eliza Montgomery, operated a livery and carriage service in Canton during the Civil War. They accumulated property in the city that would sustain the family after his death in the 1880s. Dickerson was raised by his grandmother Eliza, his mother, Emma, and his half-sister Gertrude from his father’s first marriage.

Dickerson first moved to Chicago in 1907 to attend the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago. After returning briefly to Mississippi, and working as a stevedore and dishwasher in Memphis, he returned to Chicago to attend Wendell Phillips High School in 1908. An exceptional student, Dickerson transferred to Evanston Academy, where he earned his high school diploma in 1909, and enrolled in Northwestern University that fall. He would transfer again in 1911 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earn his B.A. in 1914. There he met one of his lifelong friends and colleagues, Claude A. Barnett, and was among the founding members of the school’s chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi (then Kappa Alpha Nu) black fraternity. In 1915, he entered the University of Chicago Law School.

Over the course of his education, Dickerson supported himself with several jobs, from Pullman porter (in 1909) to teacher at Tuskegee Institute (1913-14), principal at a black high school in Vincennes, Ind. (1914-15), and librarian at the University of Chicago Law Library. In 1917, Dickerson enlisted in the Army and was commissioned as the Second Lieutenant in the 92nd Division. In France, he worked as a French interpreter, advocated for better treatment of black soldiers in the Army, and became a founding member of the American Legion.

After returning to Chicago in 1919 and completing his law degree in 1920, Dickerson’s career immediately opened onto the paths of law, business, and politics, which he pursued for the rest of his life. He began his legal career by opening his own practice in 1921 and quickly parlayed his expertise into positions of general counsel at Supreme Life Insurance Co. in 1921, attorney for the city government in 1923, board member of the Chicago Urban League in 1925, and chairman of the NAACP Legal Redress Committee in 1926. By the end of the 1940s, Dickerson had risen to the top of these fields. He would be elected as Alderman of Chicago’s Second Ward (1939-1943); become President of the National Bar Association (1945-1947) and the National Lawyers Guild (1951-1954); become Vice President (1937) and then President (1939-1940) of the Chicago Urban League; and serve as a board member of the national NAACP (1941-1971).

Founded in 1919 by Frank L. Gillespie, Supreme Life Insurance Co. (renamed Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Co. in 1929) was the first African American life insurance company to operate in the North. Gillespie hired Dickerson as general counsel and director in 1920, and Dickerson would rise to the head of investment and mortgage development in 1942 and later to President and CEO in 1955. Supreme was among the few insurance companies not only to offer life insurance, loans, and mortgages to African Americans, but also to offer white collar work to a rising black middle class. It was engaged in the civic and political life of black Chicago. Supreme was among the chief backers of the American Negro Exposition of 1940. As Supreme’s general counsel, Dickerson led the legal team in Hansberry v. Lee (1940), which overturned the Woodlawn Property Owner’s Association’s housing covenant against black homeowners. (Supreme had originally supplied the mortgage for Carl Hansberry’s property.) Though the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the covenant on a legal technicality, the decision would provide the foundation for future legal challenges against racially restrictive housing covenants.

In 1941, on the recommendation of Walter White of the NAACP, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Dickerson to the newly created Fair Employment Practices Committee. The FEPC was created to enforce the President’s Executive Order 8802, which forbade racially discriminatory hiring practices by private businesses supplying the wartime defense industry. With the Committee, Dickerson held public hearings into hiring violations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Birmingham, and was an insistent advocate for black labor rights. His perceived militancy, however, caused him to run afoul of the Roosevelt administration, and he was the only member of the original committee not reappointed in 1943.

Earl Dickerson married Kathryn Kennedy on June 15, 1930. Earl’s first marriage to Inez Moss began in 1912 and ended in divorce in 1927. Kathryn was recently divorced from Rodger Wilson, with whom she had a son, Rodger Wilson Jr. A student at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922, Kathryn maintained an active interest in the burgeoning arts and culture of the Chicago Renaissance. She was a founding officer of the South Side Community Art Center in 1940 and among the organizers of the American Negro Exposition of 1940. Earl and Kathryn Dickerson’s daughter, Diane, was born on May 13, 1934 at Chicago’s Provident Hospital, and would go on to attend Frances W. Parker High School in Chicago and Mills College in Oakland, Calif., where she kept an extensive correspondence with her father. The Dickersons frequently appeared together socially and often travelled together, including tours of Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America, and Asia.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Dickerson’s leadership role in Chicago’s black community and in the national Civil Rights movement grew larger. In 1963, for instance, he not only headed the Chicago Exposition of the Centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, but also shared the stage with Martin Luther King Jr., and A. Philip Randolph at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He retired as President of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Co. in 1971, but he continued to serve as Chairman until 1973 and as Director until 1977. In his later years, Dickerson continued his active social life and was sought after as a public speaker. He was honored at an NAACP Legal Defense Fund dinner in 1975, garnered honorary doctorates from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, and was the subject of biographical retrospectives by the Chicago Reader , the Hyde Park Herald , and the Chicago Tribune . Kathryn Dickerson, after enduring Alzheimer’s disease for several years, died in a nursing home on March 6, 1980. Earl Dickerson died in his Hyde Park apartment at 4800 Chicago Beach Drive on Sept. 1, 1986.

Sources

Blakely, Robert J. and Marcus Shepard. Earl B. Dickerson: A Voice for Freedom and Equality . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Green, Adam. Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. “Dickerson, Earl Burrus, et al.” African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. 198-220.

Scope and Content Note

The Earl B. Dickerson Papers consist mainly of personal correspondence, photographs, and memorabilia, a modest collection of professional correspondence, manuscripts of speeches, newspaper clippings, programs of public events, serials, and recorded oral histories. Particularly extensive are Dickerson’s correspondence with his daughter and the photographic record of his public activities and private life. This collection is divided into 10 series: Biography; Correspondence; Manuscripts; Clippings, Dickerson’s FBI files; Programs; Serials; Photographs; Audiotapes; and Memorabilia.

Related papers in the Harsh Collection include the Etta Moten Barnett Papers; the Ben Burns Papers; and the Just the Beginning Foundation Archives.

Series 1: Biography

This series is comprised of biographical clippings related to Dickerson’s life and career, obituaries, and public tributes paid to Dickerson at the end of his life and after his death.

Series 2: Correspondence

This series is organized into correspondence between Dickerson and his daughter, Diane, correspondence by Kathryn Dickerson, and other personal and professional correspondence to and from Dickerson (arranged alphabetically). The correspondence between Earl and Diane Dickerson are photocopies of letters originally kept in two family albums. They have been rearranged chronologically; the bulk of them span the years 1952 to 1956, while Diane attended Mills College in Oakland, Calif. Kathryn and Earl Dickerson also maintained an extensive correspondence from the 1930s to the 1950s. The remainder of the series consists of correspondence between Dickerson and his friends and colleagues in law, business, and politics, including a letter from W. E. B. Du Bois requesting Dickerson stand as a Progressive Party candidate in the 1952 U.S. elections; and several letters to Kathryn Dickerson from African American political and social organizations

Series 3: Manuscripts

This series is largely comprised of speeches Dickerson made toward the end of his life upon the occasion of major anniversaries and the receipt of honorary degrees. The manuscripts also include remarks made about Dickerson by colleagues and friends at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Dinner in 1975.

Series 4: Clippings

This series includes newspaper clippings that chronicle Dickerson’s career as a lawyer, politician, and businessman. This series also contains a significant number of clippings from the Defender recording Kathryn Dickerson’s activity on the South Side throughout the 1930s and 1940s, including her notable involvement in the South Side Community Art Center at the American Negro Exposition of 1940.

Series 5: FBI Freedom of Information Act Files

This series includes Earl B. Dickerson’s FBI file obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request. Blacked-out passages have been redacted by the FBI.

Series 6: Programs

This series consists of programs of events and organizations in which the Dickersons participated, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Dinner in 1975 or South Side Community Art Center events in the 1940s, and in which Dickerson was posthumously honored, such as by the Chicago Bar Association.

Series 7: Serials

The serials comprise full issues of newspapers and magazines that covered the events of Dickerson’s public life, as well as a small collection of historic newspapers and journals acquired by Dickerson. These range from the late 19th to early 20th century.

Series 8: Photographs

Dickerson kept an extensive photographic record, dating from his childhood in Canton, Miss., to his receipt of multiple awards and honors at the end of his life. This series encompasses formal studio portraits of the Dickerson family, photographs of the Supreme Life Insurance Co. offices, and family photographs and snapshots of the Dickersons at home, at public events, and on vacation. This series also includes whole sets of photographs recording several public events in Dickerson’s life: Diane Dickerson’s formal social debut in 1952; the visit of Nigerian Ambassador Julius Momo Udochi to Chicago in 1961; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Dinner in honor of Earl B. Dickerson in 1975.

Series 9: Audiotapes

This series contains audio recordings of Dickerson’s speeches at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Dinner (1975), at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club (1976), and First National Bank’s Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial (1982). It also contains some of the oral interviews conducted by Dickerson’s biographer, Robert J. Blakely, with many of Dickerson’s colleagues and friends, including John H. Johnson and Dr. Leonidas Berry, from November 1983 to April 1984.

Series 10: Memorabilia

Dickerson’s memorabilia includes his extensive collection of awards and honors accrued during his career as well as souvenirs from his many trips abroad. This series also includes some records from his family, financial, and social life.

Container List