Described by one observer as “one of the most learned men of his race in the legal profession,” attorney James Harris Wolff served his country honorably during the Civil War and demanded nothing less than full citizenship rights for all African Americans.
He was born August 4, 1847 in Border Springs, Mississippi, the son of Abraham and Eliza Wolff. Raised on a farm in Holderness, New Hampshire, he received his early education at a school there and showed an aptitude for mechanics. As a teen, he found work in a small store in his village and also served as a clerk in the local post office. Wolff later attended Kimball Union Academy in Meriden.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he attempted to join several New Hampshire regiments, but the government refused to enlist black men in the army at that time. Wolff tried the U.S. Navy with more success, as hundreds of men of color were unhesitatingly received into that fighting branch of military service.
On December 4, 1862, he enlisted at the rank of Landsman, serving on the USS Minnesota and the USS Maratanza — a wooden steamer built at the Boston Navy Yard in 1861. He sailed out of Portsmouth Harbor for the South and served in the West Gulf and North Atlantic Blockading squadrons during the war, taking part in great naval battles on the Mississippi, at Mobile Bay, and at Fort Fisher, North Carolina. On June 17, 1865, he was honorably discharged at Portsmouth.
Wolff matriculated at the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, a school in Hanover founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college officially associated with Dartmouth College. He left after studying there two years, later traveled to Boston, and took up the study of law at the office of Daniel Wheelwright Gooch — a Dartmouth College graduate and ex-congressman from Massachusetts. Then, he attended Harvard Law School for two years and gained admission to the Suffolk Bar on June 26, 1875.
Wolff subsequently travelled to Darien, Georgia, where he taught school for a year. After, he made his way up north to Baltimore, Maryland, where he became the first African American admitted to practice in the U.S. Circuit Court. In 1878, he returned to Boston, found a room in a boarding house at 15 Grove Street, and resumed the practice of law.
On January 21, 1880, Wolff married 22-year-old Mercy Anna Birmingham, a native of Pelham, New Hampshire. She was a very gifted musician, an accomplished pianist of an exceedingly quiet disposition, and the daughter of Dr. Samuel T. Birmingham — an old botanic physician who practiced in Boston’s West End. Wolff’s wedding ceremony took place at the bride’s home at 14 Chambers Street. One daughter and three sons were born of their marriage. Two of their sons, James Graham Wolff and Albert Gooch Wolff, became lawyers as well. For many years, the Wolff family resided at 6 Adams Street in Allston. Mr. and Mrs. Wolff were very popular in Allston and Brighton.
From the years 1880 through 1882, Wolff served as a clerk in the adjunct general’s office at the State House, having been appointed by Governor John D. Long — a Republican. After Benjamin F. Butler, a Democrat, became governor of Massachusetts on January 4, 1883, he abolished Wolff’s position.
On November 22, 1883, Wolff attended a dinner at Young’s Hotel, given by George Washington Williams, a prominent black historian who had just published his seminal work, History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1880. Williams hosted the dinner in honor of George Lewis Ruffin. Only three days before the event, Ruffin had been confirmed as a judge of the Charlestown Municipal Court, becoming the first black judge in the United States. At the predominantly Republican gathering, Wolff gave a speech titled, A Thorough Organization of the Negro Vote as a Factor in Political Victory. The same year, 1883, he opened a law office at 17 Pemberton Square.
In the late nineteenth century, it did not pay to draw the color line in Boston’s public places of amusement. A law prohibiting racial discrimination at public places of accommodation had been on the books in Massachusetts since 1865. Two decades later, African American state representative Julius Caesar Chappelle introduced a House a bill that amended the state’s public accommodations law, adding skating rinks to the list of places where discrimination was prohibited.
Wolff became active in the struggle for civil rights. On the morning of January 23, 1885 in Roxbury Municipal Court, he prosecuted David H. McKay in two test cases brought under the public accommodations law as amended. As manager of the Highland Rink, McKay had been charged with refusing on the evening of January 9 to allow African Americans George C. Freeman and attorney Edward Everett Brown the privilege of skating there because of their color.
At the trial, the complainants testified that McKay had made a distinction against black citizens in the privileges of the rink. McKay offered no evidence in his defense; consequently, he was found guilty and fined $50 and costs in both cases. After successfully prosecuting those cases, Wolff, along with Brown, decided to bring suits against McKay on behalf of four more victims of racial discrimination: Andrew E. Lewis, Henry L. Freeman, Fred Church and Clarence V. Smith. They were young black men who had been refused skate checks at the Highland Rink on the evening of January 20, 1885.
The following year, Wolff, Brown and Edwin Garrison Walker, the only son of the famed abolitionist David Walker, established the firm of Walker, Wolff & Brown at 46 School Street — the first black law firm in Massachusetts. After practicing law capably for a number of years, Walker left the firm, but Wolff and Brown continued as partners, promptly attending to probate and insolvency business matters, first at 1 Beacon Street, then at 294 Washington Street.
Edward Everett Brown, Wolff’s law partner, described him as “a practical, well-read, common sense lawyer, thoroughly conversant with the abstruse problems of commercial law.” Wolff had a profound knowledge of constitutional law. With skill and ability, he argued important cases before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
In 1891, Wolff served as chairman of the South End Equal Rights Association, which typically met at Equal Rights Hall on West Springfield Street. He was a follower of Booker T. Washington and a devoted Republican, but one who criticized his party when he believed it was not looking out for the interests of black people.
Wolff also served as president of the Wendell Phillips Club and was a member of the Crispus Attucks Club. On the night of March 6, 1899 at the American House, both clubs jointly sponsored a banquet observing the 129th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, and commemorating Crispus Attucks. That evening, Wolff voiced his opposition to America’s expansion in the Philippine Islands. He said that expansion meant obtaining power against the will of any people, and he was against it.
That same month, Commander John E. Gilman of the Massachusetts Grand Army of the Republic appointed Wolff judge advocate general of the organization. The Grand Army of the Republic was a veteran’s group founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, whose membership comprised honorably discharged Civil War veterans of the Union Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Revenue Cutter Service. Coming as a reward for his service and in recognition of his ability, Wolff’s appointment probably marked the first time in the history of the GAR that a black man held the position of judge advocate general — in Massachusetts or any other part of the country.
The membership of the GAR was composed mostly of white men, but in 1899, four African American men in Massachusetts could claim the distinction of being past post commanders in the organization: James H. Wolff, commander of the Francis Washburn Post 92 in Brighton; Horace Gray of Cambridge, commander of the William H. Smart Post 30 in that city; and Charles Lewis Mitchell and William H. Dupree, commanders of the Thomas Stevenson Post 28 in Boston. With more than 490,000 members nationwide, the Grand Army of the Republic was the largest racially integrated veteran’s organization in the United States.
In 1901, Commander-in-Chief Leo Rassieur of St. Louis appointed Wolff judge advocate general of the national organization. Four years later, on February 14, 1905, Wolff was elected commander of the Massachusetts GAR by a vote of 500 to 15, replacing Lucius Field of Clinton. The election took place at Faneuil Hall during the organization’s 39th annual meeting. It was the first occasion in the Massachusetts GAR’s history that a black comrade was chosen to fill its top post. Weeks later, on April 11, several hundred members attended a reception and banquet in Wolff’s honor, tendered by the Francis Washburn Post 92 at the GAR Hall in Brighton.
By 1903, the Wolff family had moved to 36 Bayard Street in the Allston/Brighton section of Boston. Two years later, a Boston Globe reporter characterized Wolff as “quiet, retiring and gentlemanly by nature, of medium height” and “thick-set even to the point of being stout.” He noted that the attorney possessed “a warm, genial smile and a quiet, conversational style of speaking” and was “respected by business men and esteemed by veterans of all parts of the old commonwealth.”
A comment made by President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University on February 14, 1907 provoked indignation among many black Bostonians, including James Wolff. Eliot said, “If we had a very large Negro population in Boston, we should have separate schools for colored people, and if one-half of the student body at Harvard were Negroes, perhaps we should separate them over there.”
As a man who gave four years of his life fighting to save the Union, Wolff remarked, “[Eliot] must admit that we are American citizens and do not stand for segregation of color.”
“All that the colored people ask is for the same treatment as any other American citizen,” he said.
Wolff went on to say, “We also ask for the enjoyment of those rights by the right of birth, the right of loyalty and devotion to our country, and by the right of the blood we shed to make this country what it is. The unswerving loyalty of the colored man to his country in the time of the Rebellion is well known. “We couldn’t have conquered the South in ten years if it hadn’t been for the black men of the South,” he explained.
James Harris Wolff died at Massachusetts General Hospital of hypertrophy of the prostate on May 3, 1913 at the age of sixty-five. He is laid to rest at the Ridgelawn Cemetery in Watertown, Massachusetts.
