Inside Black College Sports

 
The Man Who Started it All
 Jim Juno 7/29/2011 | General
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, once wrote “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Sir Doyle, however, never met Chappy Gardner.

Gardner was born James Estes Gardner in Steelton, Pa., in 1879, and died in November, 1943. But in-between those two dates, Gardner promoted himself like few had done before, and did it so well and so convincingly that it would become almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.

Much of which that follows in this article is culled from the few letters or articles that Gardner left behind or from newspaper accounts of contemporaries.

The problem, however, is that Gardner, for want of a better term, “embellished” his background. He was, after all, a very successful press agent for the Broadway theatre, and he neither blinked nor blanched at the opportunity to get a story in the newspaper by exaggerating either his or his clients' reputation.

Add to this the fact that much of African-American history during the late 1800's and early 1900's was passed down by word-of-mouth, and the portrait of Chappy Gardner becomes clouded by the sands of time.

And when one item petered out, Gardner simply re-invented himself to meet whatever the next challenge posed.

Gardner's main claim to Virginia Union University fame is that he is in the VUU Athletic Hall of Fame for his achievements on the football gridiron and the baseball diamond. But he was more than that, much more.

“He is the reason we have athletics here today at Virginia Union,” said Marv Willingham, a member of the VUU Hall of Fame Committee and who backed Gardner for inclusion in the school's Hall of Fame in 2008.

According to the Steelton, Pa., Historical Society, birth records weren't kept in that city until 1906, and even then, birth records usually only recorded the birth of Caucasian babies, not African-American children.

Very soon after he was born, Gardner took to calling himself “Chappy.” No one really knows why he chose or how he acquired “Chappy” as a nickname, but he would carry the name throughout his life.

In an April 21, 1928, special article (perhaps written by Gardner himself) to the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, the only reference to Gardner's early life can be found.

“In his hometown, Steelton, Pa., the natives claim 'Chappy' had made his stage debut at eight, speaking in churches and was a hit from the start,” the article reads.

In Gardner's obituary in the November 13, 1943, edition of the Afro-American Newspaper, Don DeLeighbur wrote “Gardner's record begins back in 1894 when he captained the Steelton, Pa., high school baseball team.”

DeLeighbur went on to write that Gardner organized the Steelton Cyclone Juniors, and that team eventually became known as the Steelton Cyclones, which won the Eastern Pennsylvania Colored League Baseball Championship in 1909.

According to DeLeighbur, Gardner then enrolled in Virginia Union University (then known as Wayland Seminary and College) in 1896.

It was there that he continued his love of the theatre and found an ardent supporter in 19th-century African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar when Gardner was a sophomore in 1898.

“During one of Chappy's recitals of Dunbar poem while in Virginia Union, Mr. Dunbar, who was seated in the audience with Senator Robert (sic) E. Mason of Illinois pronounced the (Pittsburgh) Courier man the perfect mimic of his voice and classed him his second,” reads the April 21, 1928, Pittsburgh Courier story.

The Senator seated with Dunbar was actually William E. Mason, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1897 until 1903. It is not known why the Illinois Senator was on the VUU campus that day.

At the same time, new sports were sweeping across the country. Sports called football and baseball, and they caught Gardner's attention.

“He organized the school's first football team and played quarterback and pitched on its first baseball team the same year (1896)” states Gardner's 1943 obituary.

The sports would be considered “club” teams by today's standards, for Virginia Union University wouldn't sponsor its first football team until 1899, Gardner's senior year. No records remain from that season and only one game, against the Richmond Athletic Association, is known to have been played.

After graduation, Gardner appears to have traveled to “the West,” as stated in the 1928 article, touring the west as “the second Paul Laurence Dunbar.”

But by 1904, Gardner had returned from his western travels and started his own newspaper column, “Along the Rialto” which would run in the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation's largest African-American newspaper for almost 30 years.

He also engaged in the manufacturing of “Vel-Vo Hair Dressing” in 1906.

But also in 1906 Gardner latched on as an utility infielder for the Harrisburg Giants, and a photo of the 1906 Giant team which was recently auctioned for $5,900 shows a young Gardner in the back row. It is the only known surviving photo of Gardner.

Gardner prospered in baseball, becoming one of the finest third basemen and second basemen in the Negro Leagues. He played for the Havana Red Sox, Brooklyn Royal Giants, Brooklyn Colored Giants and Cuban Giants in a career which stretched until 1917, including founding the New York Red Sox baseball team.

Now it gets murky.

According to his obituary, Gardner returned to Virginia Union as a coach in 1911, becoming the first salaried African-American coach in intercollegiate football.

However, a close examination of the articles from the era reveals that Gardner actually returned prior to the 1912 football season.

“We have been very fortunate in securing Coach J.E. Gardner, one of our former graduates, and now a resident of New York City, to train our football team,” Eugene E. Smith wrote in the November, 1912, which he dedicates his powers.”

Smith goes on to state that Gardner organized several professional baseball and football teams as well as playing second base for the Cuban Giants baseball team of the Negro Leagues.

So this means that Gardner's first season as coach at VUU was 1912, not 1911 as reported by Gardner's obit and even Gardner himself.

In the book “Virginia Union University and Some of Her Achievements,” published in 1927 and edited by Miles Mark Fisher, Gardner is stated as succeeding Henry E. Barco as football coach. Barco, however, has been listed as coach for 1911-12 for many years.

It's most likely that the facts became confused due to the many miss-statements through the years.

Gardner is again referred to as football and baseball coach by Smith in the June, 1913, edition of the Union-Hartshorn Journal, but no mention of Gardner is made in any Journal after that.

So we now know that Gardner coached football at VUU in the 1912 and 1913 season, giving him a record of five wins and three losses.

He would eventually also coach at Morris Brown University in 1925. But he disliked how the game was evolving.

“Football as played by Negro colleges grows slower and less scientific every year,” Gardner wrote in the January 3, 1931, issue of the Pittsburgh Courier. “I have seen very little improvement in our play since I was an active coach at Virginia Union in 1911-12 and again at Morris Brown University in 1925. Those years the play was centered on line thrusts and off-tackle plays with few trick plays and no attention given to the overhead game.”

One persistent rumor is that while at VUU, Gardner also took part in the committee which formed a football league among the Historically Black Colleges and University of Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. That league would eventually become known as the CIAA.

However, according to the First Annual CIAA Bulletin, published in 1924, the conference lists John W. Barco as Virginia Union's official representative at the formation meeting. No mention is given to Gardner.

Garner's baseball career flourished after leaving the coaching ranks. He became one of the premiere second basemen in the Negro Leagues while playing for the Cuban Giants. His talent was so great that it caught the eye of the legendary John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants.

McGraw was banned from signing African-American players for the Major Leagues, but when he died in 1934, his widow found a hand-written list McGraw had made, listing all the African-American players he would have signed to play for the Giants, if he had been allowed to.

Jimmy Powers, the long-time sports editor of the New York Dailey News, reported in 1938 that among the 50 names was Chappy Gardner.

After retiring from baseball, Gardner turned his talents to other endeavors. He founded Bilsmore Sound Film Studios, which released the first all-sound Negro Newsreels. Gardner himself handled the announcing duties.

He then became a Broadway agent. He pulled one of the most famous stunts to hit New York City.

In 1935, Gardner introduced “Princess Tamanya,” whom he billed as a first cousin of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salasse. The New York Times embraced the Princess, and Gardner wrote glowing reviews of her singing. The Times also reported that the Princess was predicting a coming World War in Europe.

The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe hung reported the Princess' every word.

Until Salassie sent a cable informing people that he had no cousin, and “Princess Tamanya” was a fraud. Gardner came clean and used the hoax's publicity to launch his press agent business.

“He put her up in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and had all the big white newspapermen interviewing her before they discovered she was a fake,” wrote Ralph Matthews in the Afro-American in 1969. “The story was a big laugh in the field of journalism.”

After 1935, Gardner concentrated solely on being an agent and writing his weekly column, now called “Bucking Traffic.”

But time was taking it's toll on Gardner, and fate wasn't being kind. In 1935, Gardner's son, Leo, was a passenger in a car accident which severely injured entertainer Annatean Haines.

In April 30, 1936, Gardner's mother, Mary L. Gardner, died at age 72 after a sudden heart attack.

Mary Gardner's death left Chappy shaken and disconsolate. His last “Bucking Traffic” appeared in the October 17, 1936, edition of the Afro-American Newspaper.

He allegedly wrote a story about tap-dancer (and brother of Pearl Bailey) Bill Bailey, stating that Bailey had succeeded Bill “Bojangles” Robinson at the Apollo Theatre and that Bailey was a better dancer than Robinson. But Bailey was so embarrassed by the article that he criticized Gardner openly in the February 20, 1937 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier Newspaper.

In 1938, Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier reported that Gardner had hooked up with the New York Brown Bombers, a professional African-American football team formed after the National Football League adopted a policy of segregation.

Gardner withdrew to where he felt most at home, Brooklyn, N.Y. He developed asthma, he stopped writing almost all together except for a small weekly newspaper in New Jersey.

He dropped all of his clients, save for Princess Tamanya, whom he would continue to promote until his death.

The only item published after the death of his mother was a letter to Leon H. Hardwick, the sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American dated February 19, 1938, where Gardner heavily criticized the powers-that-be of the Negro Baseball Leagues.

“”As jealous as those owners are of each other and as tight as they are with money, you couldn't tell them they need publicity,” Gardner wrote.

His friends attempted to help. Al Moses of the Associated Negro Press campaigned for Gardner to be appointed Commissioner of the Negro Leagues. Jimmy Powers, the editor of the New York Daily News, named Gardner one of the greatest baseball players of all time and campaigned for his inclusion in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Nothing came of it, though.

In 1943, seven years after the death of his mother, Chappy Gardner suffered a sudden asthma attack and died while receiving treatment in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Gardner's son, Leon Gardner, would be better known as “Poison” Gardner and become one of the most well-known pianists on the West Coast. Poison Gardner's records are still in demand by collectors today.

Today, all of Gardner's contemporaries are gone. Billy Rowe died in 1997 at age 82. Bill Bailey passed on in 1978. Jimmy Powers left this earth in 1995. It's unknown whether either of Gardner's children (Leon and Marjorie) are still living.

For all the mystery surrounding Gardner, a few things are certain. He was an excellent athlete, speaker, organizer and promoter, but perhaps more importantly was what Billy Rowe wrote in his column in the Pittsburgh Courier upon Gardner's death in 1943.

“The lights have dimmed out for Chappy Gardner, newspaperman and all 'round good fellow.”