A mother's advice helps Kalispell native navigate racial waters

Sylvester Douglas Thompson’s mother gave him some sage advice at an early age: no matter how ugly the words, they can’t hurt you.

“I had a good upbringing,” Thompson, 81, said about growing up in Kalispell. “Mother said you learn to tolerate; names can’t hurt you. Turn the other cheek. I was taught that from the time I was very small.”

Thompson, who now lives in Montgomery, Minnesota, was born to Charles M. and Artie Thompson in Kalispell in 1935. The Thompsons moved from Devils Lake, North Dakota, to Kalispell in 1924, and were well-known black residents here. Charles worked in the auto industry for most of his career while Artie did housekeeping for the John Sherman family and was an active member of Epworth Methodist Church.

Dorothy McGlenn, the youngest of the Sherman children, recalls how well-liked the Thompson family was, not only by her family but also the entire community.

“Artie did everything, and I loved her,” McGlenn, 91, said. “She was just part of the family.”

Charles kept the Bowman Brothers’ auto garage going when the brothers were drafted in World War II.

“When they came back [from the war] he still had the garage going and prospering,” Sylvester Douglas Thompson recalled. “He knew everybody and he didn’t mind speaking or talking; he wasn’t bashful.”

McGlenn remembers the Thompsons joining prominent Kalispell families for outings on the Shermans’ houseboat, the Kee-O-Mee, in the late 1920s and ’30s.

“We didn’t think of them as black; they called them colored in those days,” McGlenn said. “They were just part of the family. Charlie and Artie would dance on the houseboat along with everyone else.”

The reality was somewhat different for young Sylvester Douglas, who has gone by his middle name, Douglas, for much of his life. He got along with other kids for the most part, thanks largely to his mother’s advice.

“I got called all kinds of names, but there were hardly any squabbles and fights,” he said. “That procedure [of turning the other cheek] paid off for me. I created a bad into a good.”

A 1954 Flathead graduate, Douglas attended Elrod Elementary School and Linderman middle school.

“All the children I played with were Caucasian, maybe a couple of Mexican kids,” he said. “From the fifth grade on I was the only black.”

His brother, Morrell, was 14 years older than him, and was already grown and gone by the time Douglas went to school.

A youth basketball program that integrated youngsters from all of Kalispell’s elementary schools proved to be a pivotal social tool for young Douglas. By playing games at Cornelius Hedges Elementary, where most of the doctors’ and businessmen’s children attended, he was able to network with Kalispell’s well-to-do crowd.

“I got to know people from the other schools, so when they’d see me not connected to basketball I had a network of friends who stuck up for me, which helped me a lot. I could go downtown with no problem,” he recalled. “I had less trouble in Woodland Park, biking and sledding. I still had problems with name-calling. A lot of rural people came in to town on Saturday. But I had a mother who said ‘let it go in one ear and out the other.’”

There were a couple of racially charged incidents in Butte that are still vivid in his mind.

Douglas was the only black student on the Flathead basketball team as a high school sophomore in 1952. The Braves routinely had stayed at the Grand Hotel in Butte during those away games, but when the hotel desk clerk saw Douglas he turned away the team.

“You can’t stay here anymore; we don’t allowed coloreds,” the clerk told Flathead coach Frank Little.

Little then demanded to see the hotel manager and insisted the Kalispell team would be staying at the hotel.

“Frank just said ‘we’re staying here,’ and we did,” he said.

Incidentally, Flathead won the state championship that year.

During Douglas’ junior year another incident took place during a semifinal basketball game in Butte. His uncle had brought a black student, Zip Rhoades, from Baltimore to Kalispell to get him out of the big city. Zip was a senior that year, and Douglas suddenly had a black counterpart on the team.

“When we were playing and shooting free-throws we felt things hitting us,” Douglas said. “They (the Butte students) were shooting BBs at us — both of us — but not the rest of the team. The [Butte] coach was telling his team to call us racial names. I had to talk to Zip. I pulled him over and said ‘just ignore them, keep your eyes on the game.”

When state education officials got wind of the unbecoming conduct, the Butte coach was fired and banned from coaching in Montana, Douglas said.

Douglas wanted to study physical therapy in college and dreamed of working with children in an athletic or hospital setting. Money saved from working summers for the Flathead Cherry Growers Association only stretched for two years at the University of Montana, though.

With no money and no way to get a loan, he headed to the Sears Roebuck and Co. store in Minneapolis at the suggestion of the Kalispell Mercantile manager, who had worked as an executive for the department store giant and had connections.

Douglas became the first black retail salesman in the Sears men’s furnishings department. He blossomed in the job, but racial prejudice nevertheless kept calling.

In 1958 Douglas and his wife Jacqueline wanted to take another couple out to dinner at the upscale White House Café and Cocktail Lounge.

“We were dressed up with ties and suits. We weren’t looking shabby,” he said.

The couples were refused service, even though there were empty tables and a black pianist was performing there that evening.

The Thompsons sued the night club, alleging they were not allowed to enter “only because of race and color.”

An article in the Daily Inter Lake detailed the lawsuit, saying Thompson and his wife each sought $500 in damages plus costs for “humiliation, embarrassment and inconvenience.”

They won the lawsuit and received a “token cash settlement,” Douglas said.

It wouldn’t be the last time he would be compelled to take a stand for what he believed was right.

After 11 years with Sears, Douglas’ workload had grown considerably, but not his pay. The company moved him into hardware, then put him in the warehouse and gave him an expansive section to operate.

“I became a manager. They made my area bigger, but with no more compensation,” he recalled.

Douglas made his case to his supervisor, but to no avail.

“I gave them two weeks’ notice. They thought I was kidding,” he said.

He then went to work for Dayton’s, another prominent department store, and again worked his way up the corporate ladder. At one point he was the manager of Dayton’s largest children’s shoe store in a Minneapolis suburb, overseeing a staff of 22. When he later was named sales manager of the children’s shoe department at the main Minneapolis store, he realized he was being passed over for further promotions. When there was an opening for an assistant buyer, the company said they wanted a college graduate.

“The guy they hired hadn’t even gone to college,” he said. “Then I threw in the towel.

“I faced a lot of racism,” he said, reflecting on his life.

After leaving Dayton’s he worked at a potato chip plant and worked his way up, and later worked for the Creamette noodle company until he retired in 2000.

Douglas has visited Kalispell occasionally through the years, the last time in 2009. His parents are buried in Conrad Memorial Cemetery.

Douglas’ grandfather, John Wesley Thompson, had already established himself in Kalispell when Charles and Artie Thompson arrived here in the early 1920s. It’s unknown why John Wesley, “Papa Jack,” settled in the Flathead Valley in the early 1900s, although there were several black families living in Kalispell during the town’s early days.

“My grandfather lived to see my first son,” Douglas said. “We had a picture taken of four generations.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com