Sadie Chandler Cole

Sadie Chandler Cole (1865 – 1941) was an American singer, music educator, and civil rights activist based in southern California.

Sadie Chandler Cole, from a 1919 publication.

Early life

Sadie Chandler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Abraham Washington Chandler and Sarah Hatfield Chandler. Her parents were involved in the Underground Railroad and helped found a Baptist church in Cincinnati.[1]

Career

Sadie Chandler was a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers as a young woman. In 1903, she sang at a Los Angeles scholarship fundraiser for Vada Watson to attend the University of Southern California.[2] In later adulthood, she directed choruses in jubilee-style singing.[3]

As early as 1908, she was active in black political organizing in California; that year, she attended a rally of the Los Angeles branch of the National Negro American Political League, speaking on "The Part Women Have Played in the Settlement of the World's Great Problems".[4] She was active in the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP when it began in 1913, serving as the chapter's first vice-president, and attended national conferences representing the chapter.[5] She broke dishes and removed a "Negroes Not Wanted" sign from a lunchstand on Broadway in Los Angeles in the 1920s,[6] after she was refused service, then egregiously overcharged. The police arrived at the scene and sided with Cole.[1] She also helped to desegregate the beaches in Los Angeles County. After the closure of Bruce's Beach, a beach resort for black swimmers, she participated in a 1927 "swim in" at a whites-only beach in Manhattan Beach, California.[7]

In 1926, she sang at the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs special memorial service for Margaret Murray Washington.[8] She was one of four women (also including Hettie B. Tilghman) selected by Mary McLeod Bethune to represent the national association at the Pan-Pacific Conference in Hawaii in 1928.[9]

Personal life

Sadie Chandler married Thomas A. Cole, who became a deputy in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. They lived in Detroit, Michigan before they moved to Los Angeles, California with their daughters, Florence and Eunice. Her daughter Florence Cole Talbert became a professional soprano singer and voice teacher.[10]

Sadie Chandler Cole died in 1941, aged 76 years. Her gravesite is in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, where she has been portrayed in "living history" tours in recent years.[11]

References
  1. Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California (Times Mirror Printing 1919): 94, 241.
  2. "Colored Volunteers Boost Miss Watson" Los Angeles Times (August 29, 1903): 10. via Newspapers.comopen access
  3. Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California (University of Washington Press 2001): 252. ISBN 9780295980829
  4. "National Negro League Holds Another Rally" Los Angeles Herald (July 21, 1908): 3. via Newspapers.comopen access
  5. "Delegate" Pittsburgh Courier (July 18, 1931): 9. via Newspapers.comopen access
  6. Rick Moss, "Not Quite Paradise: The Development of the African American Community in Los Angeles through 1950" California History 75(3)(Fall 1996): 230.
  7. Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (University of California Press 2005): 273-275. ISBN 9780520239197
  8. Delilah L. Beasley, "National Convention of Colored Women Closes" Oakland Tribune (August 6, 1926): 6. via Newspapers.comopen access
  9. "Club Convention" Oakland Tribune (June 3, 1928): 35. via Newspapers.comopen access
  10. Marlo Price, "Florence O. Cole-Talbert" in Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women Volume 2 (VNR AG 1996): 130-133. ISBN 9780810391772
  11. Laura Myers, "Living History Tour 2012" The Neighborhood News Online (May 27, 2013).
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