McGill Family Papers

Biographical Notes

Nathan Kellogg McGill, Sr. (1888-1946) was a prominent and influential figure in journalism, law and politics in Chicago and in Florida. Born November 29, 1880 [year uncertain] in Quincy, Fla., Nathan McGill moved with his family to Sanford, Fla., while he was still a child. His parents were poor; his father worked as a laborer. He was the younger brother of Simuel Decatur McGill, later a nationally known civil rights lawyer. Nathan McGill graduated from Cookman Institute, where he was reported to be a brilliant student. His oratorical skills were showcased in a 1908 eulogy for Abraham Lincoln, later published as a pamphlet. Shortly after that success, he enrolled in Boston University School of Law, from which he graduated in 1912. He returned to Florida, practiced law and was admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court. McGill also became publisher of the Florida Sentinel in Jacksonville from 1916 to 1920.

In 1917, he married Idalee Thornton McGill, sister of Robert Abbott’s first wife, Helen Thornton Abbott. They had two sons, Nathan K. McGill, Jr., and Simuel Decatur McGill II. After a divorce from Idalee McGill, N.K. McGill married Beatrice Stiles in 1934. They had a third son, Winston B. McGill. Nathan McGill III, the primary donor of these papers, is the son of Nathan K. McGill, Jr.

By 1918 he lived at least part-time in Chicago, where he set up a law practice and may have done some work for the Chicago Defender . By 1924 or 1925 he moved to Chicago permanently, and was soon appointed an assistant state’s attorney for Cook County, sworn in on April 28, 1925. He was one of the first African Americans to hold the office. The following year he was hired as general counsel and vice-president of the Chicago Defender , beginning a period of nearly 10 years in which he was Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott’s closest business associate. McGill and his family lived well, with an impressive home on South Parkway (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive), luxury cars and a vacation home in Paradise Lake, Mich.

Throughout this period, McGill participated in major decisions on hiring writers, increasing circulation nationally and expanding political relationships. He worked with Abbott on the early Bud Billiken parades and on Abbott’s Monthly magazine. When Abbott suffered several bouts of ill health in the early 1930s, McGill served as the untitled, de facto, chief executive of the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company.

In the summer of 1934, after Abbott’s nephew, John H. Sengstacke, arrived in Chicago, a serious rift developed between Abbott and McGill. On September 12, 1934, Abbott terminated McGill from all his positions with the Defender and Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company. The newspaper published a statement that Abbott “has resumed complete management,” and that “Mr. N.K. McGill is no longer managing same.” The cause of the breakdown in relations between Abbott and McGill is in dispute.

Nathan K. McGill also served as an assistant attorney general of the state of Illinois from 1929 to 1933, and as a member of the Chicago Public Library Board of Directors from 1934 to 1940. For nearly two years, McGill published his own newspaper, Metropolitan News . The paper was severely affected by the economic conditions of the Depression and ceased publication in 1937. He filed bankruptcy papers in 1940, with court proceedings that dragged on for the last years of his life. Nathan K. McGill died May 7, 1946 at his home, 4806 South Parkway in Chicago.

Bibliography

• Davis, Frank Marshall, Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet . Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
• “Death Ends Colorful Career of N.K. McGill,” Chicago Defender , May 12, 1946.
• “McGill, Nathan Kellogg—Lawyer.” Who’s Who in Colored America, 1928-1940 . New York: Who’s Who in Colored America Pubs., 1928-1940.
• Smith, J. Clay, Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

Simuel Decatur McGill (1877-1951)
Simuel Decatur McGill (1877-1951), born April 23, 1877 in Quincy, Fla., became one of the leading civil rights attorneys in the pre-World War II South. He was the oldest brother of Nathan K. McGill, also an attorney and general counsel for the Chicago Defender . He graduated from Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Fla., and later attended Governor Dummer Academy in Massachusetts. In 1902, as the only African American student in his class, he won the award for oratory. S.D. McGill earned a bachelor of laws degree from Boston University School of Law in 1907. He was the first African American licensed to practice law in Florida.

He married Rosa A. Brooks on December 27, 1912. They had two children: Theodore, who suffered an untimely death in 1926, and an adopted daughter, Ella Harriet.

After graduation, he returned to Florida, where he began practicing law in Jacksonville in 1908. He was active in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Knights of Pythias and the Republican Party. In all three organizations, McGill rose to leadership positions on both the state and national levels. His national renown was mainly based, however, on his success as a civil rights lawyer. In a host of cases, mainly as an appellate lawyer, McGill succeeded in getting unjust convictions reversed. His 1924 victory in preventing the execution of Abe Washington was reported nationally. Often, he worked closely with NAACP leaders Harry T. Moore and Eartha White.

In his most famous case, Chambers et. al. v. Florida , he served as the appellate attorney for four African American men sentenced to death for the alleged 1933 murder of a white man in Pompano Beach, Fla. The men were tortured for a week until confessions were obtained from three of them; the fourth pleaded “not guilty,” but was convicted by an all-white jury. S.D. McGill was asked to enter the case as execution neared. In all, he worked on the case for more than six years. His first appeal to the Florida Supreme Court detailed the brutal manner in which the confessions were obtained. The court directed that the trial court reconsider the evidence in the case. The case became known as the “Little Scottsboro Case.”

McGill came before the Florida Supreme Court four more times before the case was concluded with the release of the defendants in 1940. In the final hearing, S.D. McGill argued that the case should be thrown out because the original indictments were returned by an all-white Broward county grand jury. Testimony showed that no black had ever served on a grand jury in the county, despite an African American population of nearly 50 percent.

After a long illness, Simuel D. McGill died March 15, 1951, in Jacksonville, Fla.

Bibliography

• Jones, Maxine D. and Kevin M. McCarthy, African Americans in Florida . Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, Inc., 1993.
• “McGill, Simuel Decatur—Lawyer.” Who’s Who in Colored America, 1928-1940 . New York: Who’s Who in Colored America Pubs., 1928-1940.
• Styles, Fitzhugh Lee, Negroes and the Law. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1937.
• Tushnet, Mark V., The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Scope and Content Note

The McGill Family Papers were largely compiled by Nathan K. McGill III, and the arrangement follows, in large part, the order in which the materials were created and donated to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. A great deal of the work of locating, selecting and providing identifying information for items in the papers should also be credited to Mr. McGill. Photographs were numbered in the order in which they were donated.

Related papers at the Harsh Research Collection include: Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers, David Kellum Papers, Barbara Allen Papers, Marjorie Stewart Joyner Papers and the Robert O. French Papers.

Series 1: McGill Family Research Files
These files were compiled by Nathan K. McGill III as he sought to document the history of his family, mainly the biographies of his grandfather Nathan K. McGill and great-uncle Simuel D. McGill. The files are arranged chronologically by the date of creation of the earliest document in the file. Included are programs, correspondence, selected pages from books and journals, unpublished research materials and memorabilia, as well as an extremely rare text by Rufus B. Tobey, “The Education of a Bootblack.”

Series 2: Clipping Files on McGill Family History
The clipping files were also compiled by Nathan K. McGill III from paper, microfilm and database copies of newspapers and magazines. The files are arranged chronologically, beginning with those papers on which Nathan K. McGill, Sr. worked, the Chicago Defender and the Metropolitan News . Other clippings are arranged alphabetically by serial title, then chronologically. Oversized clippings are placed at the end of the series.

Series 3: Scrapbook Compiled by Nathan K. McGill, Sr.
A scrapbook compiled by Nathan K. McGill, Sr. was found in his home. It contains clippings, programs, correspondence and memorabilia. Much of the material documents his own life, and the lives of his family members, but some of the material appears to be comprised of stories, quotations and other items that interested him. For the most part, the items are arranged as they were found in the scrapbook. Of special interest are N.K. McGill’s eulogy for Abraham Lincoln (1908) and a rare program book from “O, Sing A New Song,” the 1934 African American pageant held at Soldier Field in Chicago.

Series 4: Legal Documents
These legal documents, created from 1926 through 1945, were found in Nathan K. McGill, Sr.’s home. Most of them concern N.K. McGill, Sr.’s divorce and bankruptcy proceedings, and proceedings related to the estate of Robert S. Abbott. There is also an extensive review, by an unknown author, of “Outstanding cases” in which Simuel D. McGill participated.

Series 5: Serials
This series includes fragile hard copies of Metropolitan News, Home News (both from Chicago) and the Washington Eagle (Washington, D.C.).

Series 6: Photographs
This large collection of photographs was collected by Nathan K. McGill III from his own files and those of other members of the McGill family. They are numbered in the order in which they were accessioned, and are not grouped by year, subject or alphabet. Researchers looking for particular photographs or subjects are advised to use word searches in the container list to find photo numbers of interest.

Included in this series are about 40 photographs of the Walden, Carrington and Lyles families, to which Nathan McGill III’s mother belonged. This family, which arrived in the South Haven/Covert area of southwestern Michigan in the second half of the 19th century, was among the early African American settlers in the region. Some of them may have come to Michigan on the Underground Railroad. For more on this history, see Anna-Lisa Cox’s A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006).

Container List