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“Big Jim” Parker and the Assassination of William McKinley: Patriotism, Nativism, Anarchism, and the Struggle for African American Citizenship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Mitch Kachun
Mitch Kachun
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
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Abstract

On September 6, 1901, at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, Leon Czolgosz, the son of immigrants and an avowed anarchist, shot President William McKinley. As McKinley clung to life for several days before succumbing, praise was heaped upon James B. “Big Jim” Parker, an African American Exposition employee who was credited with saving McKinley's life by subduing and disarming Czolgosz. By the time of Czolgosz's execution, government officials and the mainstream press were characterizing Parker as a glory-seeker who had played no role in capturing Czolgosz. African American spokespersons vigorously defended Parker, contrasting the brave, patriotic black hero with the treacherous foreign radical whose murderous act struck symbolically at the heart of the nation. These black commentators constructed a framework for understanding the assassination as a cultural critique of an American society that was paying the price for its acquiescence to extralegal violence against blacks. At the same time, black spokespersons used the assassination to create a narrative in support of African Americans’ claims to American citizenship and national belonging.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 93 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2010

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References

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6 Biographical details on Parker are sketchy. News reports consistently identified him as born in Georgia, with several accounts indicating that he had lived in Savannah, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and Saratoga Springs. Most list his age as forty-four. The Portland (OR) New Age, Sept. 21, 1901, mentioned that Parker was born “in slavery.” He may have worked previously as a Pullman porter, a journalist, a letter carrier in Atlanta, a constable for a black magistrate in Savannah, and a waiter at other expositions. All accounts comment on Parker's imposing physical presence, referring to him as a “huge negro” (New York Times, Sept. 8, 1901) or “the colossal negro” (Buffalo Sunday Morning News, Sept. 8, 1901). The Atlanta Constitution described Parker as “of herculean physique” (Sept. 8, 1901), and later “of colossal build, tall, broad-shouldered, massive limbed and of great muscular development and strength” (Sept. 11, 1901). Some estimated his height at six feet to six feet six inches, with his weight listed as two-hundred-fifty pounds by several sources. See also, New York Times, Sept. 10, 1901; Daryl Rasuli, “James B. Parker Revisited,” Illuminations: Revisiting the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition of 1901, http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/exhibits/panam/essays/rasuli/rasuli.html (accessed May 12, 2008); Rauchway, , Murdering McKinley, 64–65.Google Scholar

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8 Buffalo Sunday Morning News, Sept. 8, 1901; government job mentioned in Buffalo Evening News, Sept. 10, 1901. See also, Buffalo Morning Express, Sept. 13, 1901; Portland New Age, Sept. 21, 1901; Buffalo Courier, Sept. 11, 1901; Washington Post, Dec. 22, 1901.

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