Day of Hummingbird Night, 60th of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "He married a Black woman" - the enigmatic admission from my parents about why they wouldn't talk about my grandfather. It didn't tell me much about my Grandpa. It told me even less about that Black woman, who I much later learned had a somewhat extraordinary background.

Silas Junior's second wife, the mysterious woman spoken of only in whispers in my childhood home, was the former Dorothea E.S. Francis, the youngest child and only daughter of Dr. John R. Francis, a prominent physician and educator during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr. Francis belonged to the upper crust of African-American society and was a close associate of Booker T. Washington (he is mentioned in Washington's book, A New Negro for a New Century). Dr. Francis was an advocated for Black self-reliance, and agreed with Washington in the proposal that African-Americans should develop the skills necessary to become self-sufficient.

A resident of Washington, D.C., he also maintained a summer home in Uniontown, Maryland. Toni Morison's Song of Solomon mentions how unusual it was back then for African-American families to be able to afford separate summer homes - her hero (or anti-hero), Milkman, is teased by his streetwise friends about his family's summer home. Nevertheless, Dr Francis' neighbor in Uniontown was Frederick Douglass. Close friends, Dr. Francis was one of the pallbearers at Douglass's funeral.

John R. Francis was born in 1856 as a free man in Washington, D.C. His father, Richard “Uncle Dick” Francis, was one of the wealthiest African Americans in D.C. John Francis was Uncle Dick’s only son, and was encouraged along with his sister, Lulu, to do well in all areas of life and to always be conscious of the needs of others. Uncle Dick owned various properties and in 1885, long after his son had left home, purchased the famous Hancock's Restaurant near the Capitol, where Uncle Dick became a well-known bartender and caterer. The Washington Post reported that Hancock’s "was noted particularly for two things -- its cocktails and its fried chicken." 

His family's wealth and high social status afforded John Frances the opportunity for a good education. Like Silas Jr., his family was able to afford him a private-school education. He graduated from Wesleyan Academy, a Methodist prep school in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and then  graduated (Class of 1878) in medicine with high honors from the University of Michigan.

In 1881, at the age of 25, Dr. Francis married his wife, Bettie. The Francis family resided at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue, mere blocks from the White House, although in later years the family moved to 1102 Ninth Street, NW, D.C. The couple had five children - four boys and one girl, Dorothea. Their two eldest sons followed in their father's footsteps and became medical doctors. The third son attended Harvard, where he studied law. 

Dorothea was the youngest child, born on May 29, 1897, and Dr. Francis’ only daughter. I’ve found little information about her, other than that in 1920, at the age of 23 and two years before marrying my grandfather, she and her mother, Bettie, apparently sailed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, arriving on October 2. 

Dr. Francis was a professor of clinical obstetrics at Howard University and served as a member of the committee of the board of trustees and the permanent committee on the construction of the Carnegie Library. In 1886, he was appointed a trustee of the D.C. school board, but he ultimately resigned over the board's lack of support for the education of African Americans. 

He was also an obstetrician in the Freedmen's Hospital, where he tended to the sick in the streets and appealed for guardianship for abandoned babies who were born in his care. In time, he became acting surgeon-in-chief of the hospital. In this position, he instituted reforms in working standards, mainly in his chosen field of obstetrics. He also implemented a nursing program at the hospital where African American nurses were trained. 

Although he was known primarily as an obstetrician, Francis worked as a general practitioner in the Black community, providing free care for those who were unable to pay for medical services. Many African Americans at the time were prone to high mortality rates and shorter life spans because of their social conditions. The Francis-Stevens Educational Complex served families who lived in a swampy area of D.C. known as Foggy Bottom, as well as Black students from Georgetown. 

Upon leaving public health-care services, Dr. Francis established a private practice called the Francis Sanatorium at his former home on Pennsylvania Avenue. The first of its kind in the United States, the institution offered services to poor African Americans who lived in deplorable, unhealthy conditions. Trained nurses and private-care doctors rendered services, including emergency services. Patients were treated in a comfortable medical institution that didn’t resemble an institution.

Dr. Francis died at his home on May 23, 1913, and his funeral service was held at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. 

On November 29, 1922, Dorothea Francis married my grandfather, Silas Junior. They were divorced by 1929 and Dorothea moved back to the family home in D.C. She never remarried and passed away of unknown causes on June 25, 1939, at the age of 42. Impermanence is swift.  

Dorothea and Junior had no children. However, I found a transcript online of the proceedings of a separate divorce case, which contained a financial discussion of fees paid to Silas Junior for the custody of the couple's child. They may not have had children, but at some point and for some duration they provided a home for someone's child. 

The marriage of Junior to Dorothea is an interesting development in Junior's biography. In 1919, back from the War and with discharge papers identifying him as "White," one could easily image the light-complexioned young attorney with an Ivy League, prep-school education might have chosen to avoid the racial animosity being directed toward Black WWI veterans at the time and adopt a White identity. It was right there for his taking if he had chosen that route. 

But that's not what he did, and I respect him so much for his decision to be true to himself and his background. Instead of "going White," he embraced his identity by marrying a Back woman, and a daughter of Black History royalty at that, and took an apartment at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue in New York, which became the very epicenter, the intellectual and artistic heart, of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.