Walter Gay's Experiences Moving North
The youngest of three children, Walter A. Gay Jr. was born into a well-to-do African-American family in Dawson, Georgia. There, his father was a successful businessman and his mother worked as a schoolteacher.
“My father was, when I can remember, a renter of land, an owner of land, and an owner of real property, as well as a storekeeper. He was fortunate. I think he was one of the wealthiest blacks in the town of Dawson, which I don’t think had over 3,500 people in it. And I would say at that time, it was probably 40 percent black, if my recollection serves me." – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
In 1916, Gay’s father decided to move his family to the north, for the boll weevil infestation was taking a toll on his cotton fields. More important, however, was the violence against his children.
“This was during the time when the boll weevil threat was on the air, and I think that was a contributing factor in my parents’ decision to move, but by no means was it the entire… factor, or the predominant factor. We had had trouble with the majority, the Caucasian majority. My sister had been beat, I had been beaten, over trifles. Well, my sister was beat because she refused to ride or walk on the side of the street reserved for blacks. She still lives, by the way, and still can attribute a lot of her present illnesses to the beatings she got. I have a feeling that that is an oversimplification. My beating was relative to getting a bicycle, which was probably the eye-catcher for the town." – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
In 1917, the Gays moved to Philadelphia, taking rooms with his mother’s relatives at 343 South 12th Street. There, Gay attended the all-Black Durham School at 16th and Lombard and first witnessed the differences between Black Philadelphians and southern newcomers like himself.
“I would say that even though they may have been high I.Q. in certain situations, that they were rude. That is, this is what I thought it was there. Uncouth. They were not the southern gentleman by any means. And maybe properly so. They were more outgoing, but that doesn’t mean they were warmer. They just were not turned in. They were not introspective about a situation. They acted, rather than thought. They were not as good students, ordinarily, as the southern students. And they, in my judgment, did not enjoy the same religious convictions that people who had been reared in the South enjoyed….They’re the ones who were rougher. Your southerner is more passive, black or yellow, shall we say, or yellow. But yeah, when I went to Durham School, as I say, I really couldn’t participate in the activities although I did pick up some honors there, the year I was there, but the games they had, and the language used, was entirely foreign. But these were the Philadelphia blacks that I’m talking about.” – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
Gay’s father used the money he had made from his investments in Georgia to buy several properties in Philadelphia, and moved his family to their new home at the corner of 20th and Naudain Street. Within a few years, Gay’s father was able to purchase a house on the 300 block of North 58th Street in West Philadelphia. The Gays were the first Black family on the block.
“I don’t have any recollection of having difficulties in finding homes, except for this place that you’re now in. We were block-breakers, and the people next door built a wall on the porch between us and them, and wrote on the back fence, ‘Niggers live here.’ And at this time, this block at once was the most prestigious black block in the city. And at that time, it was all Caucasian, but I come from a family that’s challenged things all along, and that is true. My father liked it, and he wanted it, and he bought it in spite of the anticipated difficulties. And we did have difficulties with neighbors. But gradually, other blacks came in, and, now that goes back, I think, if you check the records here, you’d probably find that this place was bought about, probably about 1920.” – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
Gay spent one year at the Durham School before moving on to Philadelphia's prestigious Central High School, where he became president of the student senate and won a number of awards.
“I enjoyed Central. I think it is still, of all the schools I’ve been to, and I’ve been to several since, and I’ve had some little experiences and exchange professor. I think it’s one of the finest schools I’ve ever attended. I think it was fair. It had many ethnic groups represented. They graded you according to your achievements, irrespective of your ethnic or racial background. And when I was teaching, I taught two years, later at a university [Wilberforce]. Some of my students came from Central, and I could almost always pick them out because of their mental discipline.” – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
After graduating from Central High School in 1922, and then college, Gay earned his law degree from The University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1929. After passing the Pennsylvania bar in 1930 he joined the law firm of J. Austin Norris (1893-1976), one of Philadelphia’s most successful African-American lawyers and a strong champion of civil rights. In 1932 Norris became the Democratic political leader of the 7th Ward. In order to persuade more black Philadelphians to join the Democratic Party he convinced one of his clients, Forrest White Woodard, to purchase a struggling black newspaper called The Philadelphia Independent.
“I guess, probably one of the historically important features of that was the fact that…we turned it into a Democratic newspaper when all the rest of the press was Republican. And when the New Deal came in, we were in position on the ground of service, together with a guy named [Robert Lee]Vann … out in Pittsburgh, who was owner of The Pittsburgh Courier, to more or less dictate the political appointments of the New Deal for the black community in Pennsylvania. And part of that was the fact that I became the …assistant United States attorney, then Austin became a deputy attorney general. And it was all the fact that we had battled for the Democratic Party during the election of Franklin Roosevelt, which I believe was in '32.” – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984.
As a committeeman in the 34th ward and member of one of Philadelphia’s most prominent African-American law firms, Walter Gay witnessed firsthand the renewed faith that Black Philadelphians would have in the American political system during the Great Depression, as well as the successes and failures of the New Deal.
“I think our gains under the Roosevelt administration were largely those that came from the theory that government had responsibility for the disadvantaged. Up until then, if you want my own political philosophy, the feeling was that this is the area for local governments, not for national. And not, local government wasn’t doing the job. And I think all the agencies of the New Deal, WPA and all the other agencies, were advantageous to the Negro, because they were aimed at upping the poor. I might say that from my viewpoint, the Roosevelt area was limited in that approach. It was not until Johnson came in, from my viewpoint, that the Great Society, the theory that not only were we responsible to take care of people, but it was the duty of government to train people so that they would be competent to contribute to our social mix, that they had skills that were needed. Roosevelt never went that far. If he did, it was in tokenism, but he did take the position that people can’t be permitted to starve, even though we have to make makeshift jobs to give them jobs. And I’d say that we were the beneficiary, not through political appointments, political advancement, because Roosevelt didn’t do an awful lot of that.” – Walter Gay, April 25, 1984
In February 1935, Walter Gay, then just thirty, was appointed Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, only the second African American to hold that position. He would go on to enjoy a long and successful career, serving as president of the Philadelphia Urban League and on the executive committee of the Philadelphia NAACP.