During a civil rights hearing, the Virginia legislature asked: "Dr. Henderson, what is your race?" E.B. paused, then responded reflectively: "This calls for some consideration. One of my great-grandfathers was an Indian. My father's father was Portuguese, and my mother's father was one of the highly respected white citizens in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her mother was this gentleman's slave. Now, which race do you suggest that I subscribe to?"
And so it went with Edwin Bancroft Henderson, author, educator, sportsman, and political and social rights advocate. He was a man of vision and action -- a man with an overriding purpose to deliver justice and equality.
Henderson was a native Washingtonian and long-time Falls Church, Virginia, resident, whose roots sank deep in our national capital area. He was a District of Columbia (DC) school teacher for many years, traveling the segregated trolley car to and from work.
In January, 1915, when the Falls Church City Council passed an ordinance designating certain parts of the city as the colored people's exclusive habitat, despite their being interspersed throughout the town's boundary, E.B. joined with others to form the Colored People Protection League, which sued the city to rescind the order.
After a few months of legal wrangling and reconsideration, the council abandoned the proposal. This was the same year in which E.B. also helped to organize the first rural branch of the NAACP, in Fairfax County, Virginia.
In one of those delicious historical twists of irony, many years later, in 1965 when he was 81 years old, the City honored E.B. just before he and his wife moved to Tuskegee, Alabama, to live out their days with one of their sons, Dr. James Henry Meriwhether Henderson, a noted plant physiologist at Tuskegee University. And in 1982, five years after his death at 93 in February, 1977, Falls Church again paid him homage by dedicating the Providence Recreation Center in his memory.
Dr. Henderson was a man whose role in D.C. metropolitan area athletics was virtually legendary. He was the first certified black male physical-training instructor in U.S. public schools. [The first black so accredited was a female, Anita Turner, who encouraged E.B. to follow in her footsteps.]
Given my obvious bias for writing, I'm most amazed at his prolific efforts in this area, especially his astounding rate of publication in area newspapers: The Washington Star, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. Over 2,000 of his letters were printed during his lifetime on wide-ranging issues affecting the commonweal. If you'd like to read them, they're on display at the Morrland-Spingarn Reaserch Center in the Howard University library.
Whether it was authoring The Negro in Sports in 1939 at Carter G. Woodson's request, or penning and presenting a speech in October, 1945, on the effect of dropping the atomic bomb, E.B. Henderson was a man of vision, versatility, and veracity. His intellectual reach and range were stunning.
He modeled behavior for others to imitate and fostered debate on issues of import to everyone. He was incapable of silence or idleness. Perhaps the title of his biography, written by his son and daughter-in-law, best sums up E.B. and his life: "Molder of Men."
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Fred W. Apelquist, III, M.Ed.
Approximately 535 words.
© 1997