Buffalo’s Renaissance Man
I’ve been fascinated by Michigan Avenue for a very long time, and recently I ‘met’ one of its most prominent one-time residents—James Alexander Ross, Esquire.
In 1900, Michigan Avenue (then ‘Street’, which I will use here) was one of Buffalo’s most densely populated and racially diverse areas. Now it must be observed that ‘racially diverse’, when applied to 1900 Buffalo, doesn’t have nearly the same significance as it does today. According to Table 24 of the US Census of 1900, by ancestry/race (I use modern terminology in place of then-standard and now obsolete government terms for racial categories, but the data are the same) there were
- 350,586 Caucasians
- 1,801 American Indians/Mixed Race
- 1,698 African-Americans, and
- 96 Chinese
living in Buffalo.
Those numbers are not typos. However small their number, however, a majority of these minority groups lived in an area defined by Michigan, Clinton, Broadway, and Elm—and most densely along Vine, Potter, Gay, and a few other (now vanished) side streets sprouting off Michigan to the east and west.
Much of this area was reduced to rubble long ago, and Michigan Street itself is largely vacant lots or modern buildings. But at the turn of the last century the area was a populous, thriving, vibrant—and remarkably well-integrated racially—part of the city.
Today I hope to introduce you to one of the remarkable residents of this part of Gilded Age Buffalo, a man whose name has mostly been lost to history, but whose story deserves to be recovered and told.
The Library’s citation is “Interior of Negro Store, 1899, Buffalo, N.Y.”, with no further information as to the store’s location or history.
Given that there isn’t a superabundance of images of African-American Buffalonians from circa 1900, I became seriously intrigued about whose store this was and where it was located. In studying the image more closely, my first clue was the sign hanging from the ceiling at upper right:
‘James A. Ross Laundry, Cigar and Tobacco’.
Thus armed, I dove into Buffalo city directories, US Census records, ancestry.com, period newspapers, and my own collection of old Buffalo maps and tax records.
My research confirmed that ‘James Ross Laundry, Cigars, and Tobacco’ was in 1899 operating at 509 Michigan Street—the location of the LOC image. Here is #509 today, next door to the Michigan Street Baptist Church.
From this vantage point, we are looking into the ground floor front shop window toward the rear of the store; the LOC image was taken from this same perspective, but from just inside the shop itself; it depicts the back door and rear window, where the desk is sitting. (The door on the left front of the house would lead to the residential space on the second floor, as was typical of mixed commercial/residential housing of the late 19th century.)
In the LOC image, I believe that we can see Mr. Ross behind his shop counter and Mrs. Ross seated at the rolltop desk. Following are newspaper portraits taken about six years after the LOC image.
Well, by now I was hooked, and had to learn more. What I found about the Rosses could easily fill an entire book.
Born in Columbus, Kentucky, James Alexander Ross graduated from the State Normal School in Carbondale, Illinois, and then obtained a law degree from Oberlin College. He married the former Cora B. Paul, a Canadian, shortly afterward, and arrived in Buffalo in the very late 1890s.
Mrs. Ross quickly established herself as one of Buffalo’s leading African-American women, and Mr. Ross built successful businesses both as a working attorney and in his retail store. In addition, over a period of two short years, he somehow found time to
- establish and manage Buffalo’s first African-American newspapers (the Gazetteer and Guide (later named For You) and the Buffalo American);
- advocate for and organize the 1900 Paris Exposition’s ‘American Negro Exhibit’ (in which the LOC’s photo was displayed, incidentally);
- win the right for African-Americans to be represented with their own exhibit at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Here’s a clipping from the March 27, 1901 edition of the Buffalo Review:
- and befriend and advise James B. Parker, who knocked down Leon Czolgosz (President William McKinley’s assassin) before Czolgosz could get off additional shots.
Around 1905, the by-now-thriving Rosses moved from the 509 Michigan house to this one at 97 Florida Street, which also still exists (image © Google):
Sadly, tragedy struck the Ross family shortly afterward. In late September 1906, Mrs. Ross was struck by a streetcar and very seriously injured.
Mrs. Ross survived, and the Rosses sued the International Railway Company; three years later, the parties settled out of court. But less than two years after that—at only 35—Cora died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. (One wonders if lasting damage had been done by her accident.) In death she left behind James and the couple’s nine-year-old daughter Doris. (Mrs. Ross is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Section 42.)
The young widower and now-single father carried on—growing his law practice, newspaper, and a real-estate business to the point where Mr. Ross became one of the largest taxpayers in Buffalo. As the years went by, he also
- advised President Woodrow Wilson on issues to importance to African-Americans, and was appointed by Wilson as the District of Columbia’s Recorder of Deeds; and
- served in the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidential administration as the Works Progress Administration (WPA)’s Race Relations Administrator for New York State.
Whew! It wears me out just thinking about all this man accomplished.
After decades of advocacy and public service in Buffalo and Albany, in his later years Mr. Ross (by then remarried) moved to New York City and established himself as a real estate broker. He died there in April 1949, aged 73, and is buried in Valhalla, New York.
The Rosses deserve much more research and biography than I can provide in a short post, but I hope that my brief sketch of this fascinating couple will pique the interest of other researchers.
And I will be happy to assist them, if desired—simply contact my publisher via my website at RobertBrightonAuthor.com.
This article originally appeared on Buffalo Rising on October 7, 2024, and is part of my weekly series.