John A. Grumbles—1918 Leader in San Antonio
John A. Grumbles once lived at 1115 Wyoming Street on the East Side. He was instrumental in the establishment of the San Antonio Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which was established in 1918 along with over five-hundred founding members. At the founding and those present at the first meeting were John A. Grumbles, Mrs. Carol Brooks, Mrs. Edna Billups Carter, Mr. J.D. Lowery, Sr.; Mr. Harold Tarver, Mr. Cal Burton, Mrs. F. Hooks, Rev. Lazarus Richards, and Dr. J.T. Walton. Harold Tarver would become the second local NAACP President after Grumbles passed and become the foe of Black leader Charles Bellinger.
During this period, efforts were made to enforce segregation by excluding Blacks from the city’s public library in 1901. Later on, this prompted John Grumbles and others to create the “Colored Library Association” to service the needs of the Black community. The organization acquired the property at the present-day site of San Antonio’s Carver Community Cultural Center. Members accepted the leadership of Grumbles and included William H. Hegwood, Jesse M. Bumbrey, Charles Bellinger, G. W. Bouldin, Samul J. Sutton, and many others. William H. Hegwood would be racially harassed while working for the San Antonio Informer Newspaper, a Black news publication that served the Eastside and one that carried an article condemning the brutal hanging of Black Soldiers at Ft. Sam Houston. Interestingly, the name of Sam Houston is forever tainted as he would be a member and supporter of the racist group called the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) and a slave owner.
Grumbles combined his political expertise in dealing with white racists with his beliefs in civil rights and appropriated a large sum of his own money to purchase a parcel of land upon which a house would be placed that would become the Colored Library in 1919. Grumbles was effective in getting improvements in a racialized society so that in 1929 Charles Bellinger was able to obtain municipal bonds to construct a black library which was completed in 1930. Grumbles was a political boss at that time and used his connections with city elected officials to obtain favors from racist politicians in San Antonio. Grumbles was able to exploit the segregated model in place in San Antonio and after his death in 1926 Charles Bellinger took control of the black leadership using the same political model that Grumbles left behind. This model of submission to segregationists would eventually be opposed by the second NAACP president Harold Tarver.
Grumbles and Bellinger would not have created the system of dealing with racists on their own, but copied the model from Black Leader Lafayette Walker, a Black Union soldier who settled in San Antonio and created a system by which the Black community could negotiate for improvements in exchange for Black votes during Reconstruction. Grumbles did not serve long in the NAACP and died in 1921. He was a mail clerk for the railroad and was able to amass a fortune in his business dealings. According to Mason, “John A. Grumbles, a former head railroad postal clerk, was known to be ‘energetic, fearless and forceful, and generally accomplishes whatever he goes after.’ He was highly regarded by white civic leaders, well connected to the political machine, and one of the wealthiest black property owners in the city.” Unfortunately, his relationship with white leaders would be one of excessive compromise that would lead to Black leadership that compromised too much and often willing to please racists at Black expense.
