Robert William Stewart – From Kentucky Slave to L.A. Cop

2022 UPDATE:  After this story was originally posted in 2016, Lt. Rita M. Knecht, LAPD, Ret., used her outstanding research skills to locate a wealth of information on the lives of Robert William Stewart, Joseph Henry Green and their families, as well as LAPD Chief John Malcolm Glass.  I have added the results of Lt. Knecht’s research in this blue font.  Thank you, Lt. Knecht, for contacting me and for your interest in L.A.’s first two black police officers.  Thanks also to genealogist Lyndsey Stewart for sharing Ellen Doty’s death certificate.  I am also grateful to a trio of Indiana librarians – Andrea Glenn at the Indiana State Library, Diane Stepro at the Jeffersonville Library, and Meghan Vaughn at the Floyd County Library – who were extremely helpful with researching Robert Stewart’s years in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Most importantly, at the urging of Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore, on February 23, 2021, the Los Angeles Police Commission voted 5-0 to ceremonially reinstate Stewart as an officer and retire him with honor.  In addition, on February 2, 2022, the roll call room at LAPD’s Central Station was named for Stewart.  As of March 2022, however, the LAPD website’s history section still wrongly asserted that Robert Stewart was hired in 1886 and that he was the first black police officer in the United States.

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Robert William Stewart’s distinction as the Los Angeles Police Department’s first black officer was publicized in 1977 in Homer F. Broome, Jr.’s, LAPD’s Black History, 1886-1976.  Using the records available to him at the time – before old editions of Los Angeles newspapers and other resources were easily accessed via the Internet – Broome determined that Stewart had been hired in 1886 and that he stood 6 feet 4 inches and weighed 240 pounds.  Broome’s book also includes a few photos of Stewart.  Unfortunately, Broome was able to learn little else about him, including how long he stayed with the department, and this same scant information about Stewart has been repeated ever since.

When this story was first posted in 2016, the Los Angeles Police Department website said that Robert William Stewart and another man, Roy Green, were both hired in 1886 as the LAPD’s first African-American officers.  However, the exact evidence substantiating the 1886 date has never been published or even described.  In addition, Los Angeles city directories printed in 1886 and 1887 list the members of the Los Angeles Police Department, but neither Stewart nor Green is among them. 

Recent research using publicly available resources shows that Robert William Stewart and Joseph Henry Green – not Roy Green – were both appointed LAPD officers on March 30, 1889.  Stewart and Green definitely share the title of the first African-Americans on the LAPD, although three years later than previously believed.  Available documentation suggests that Stewart and Green were probably also the first black police officers in California.

Joseph Henry Green was dismissed from the LAPD on February 18, 1890, as part of a reduction in the size of the force.  Less has been discovered about his life than Stewart’s, but we know Green was born in North Carolina on October 30, 1850.  He was likely born a slave, possibly in Wilmington, NC, where he was living in 1870.  By 1876 Green was in San Francisco, working as a waiter at the new Palace Hotel.  He stayed at the Palace until about 1882 – also probably the year he was married – then spent around a year atop Nob Hill as butler for Mary Hopkins, widow of railroad baron Mark Hopkins. 

Green moved to Los Angeles by the end of 1883 and became head waiter at the Pico House.  Green helped to organize L.A.’s “Colored Republican Club” in 1886; his political activities helped him obtain the patronage appointment of Los Angeles City Hall janitor in 1887 and be chosen for the LAPD in 1889.  Following his short service as a police officer, Green went back to being a waiter, and by 1902 Green was head waiter at the Hotel Rosslyn on Main Street.  On Friday morning, July 17, 1903, Joseph Henry Green died at his home after what the Los Angeles Herald described as a “prolonged illness.”  His cause of death was given as kidney disease at age 52 years, 9 months, and 14 days, and he was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles.  He left a widow, Amanda, and daughters Lauretta and Cecil.

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Robert William Stewart was born a slave on March 1, 1850, near Lancaster, Garrard County, Kentucky (about 75 miles southeast of Louisville).  He was the eldest of his mother's 11 children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.  His parents were Faulkner Stewart (born c. 1804-1817, died 1900) and Ellen Doty (1830-1914), illiterate slaves who began living as husband and wife in 1849.  However, they could not marry until Kentucky legalized marriages for blacks in 1866. [1]  In September 1867, after most of their children had been born, Faulkner and Ellen received a Commonwealth of Kentucky “Declaration of Marriage of Negroes and Mulattoes.”  It cost 50 cents to have their union officially recorded, plus another 25 cents for the certificate, significant amounts for newly freed slaves. [2]  

This photo of Robert William Stewart was likely taken when he was in his twenties.

The Second Street City Hall: Part 2 -- The City Hall Years (1885-89)

On July 4, 1885, Los Angeles celebrated Independence Day with a parade that ended at the city hall lot at Second and Spring, where bleachers had been built for the “literary exercises” (a reading of the Declaration of Independence, music, singing, poetry, and a speech) that followed.  The parade route was lined with as many as 15,000 people.  This was probably the first chance many Angelenos had to see the new city building after it was completed.

A little over a month later, on August 8, Los Angeles staged a funeral procession in honor of former President Ulysses S. Grant, who was buried in New York the same day.  A symbolic casket was taken from the black-draped Second Street City Hall and placed on a catafalque 18 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 16 feet high (and bedecked with two cannons and two piles of cannonballs).  It was escorted around downtown in a procession of 1,553 people, said to be the largest in the city’s history up to that time, with the possible exception of the nation’s centennial. 

The procession’s route again ended at the city hall lot for more literary exercises.  The grandstand (seating about 400, for dignitaries and two bands) was built up against the east and south sides of the old School No. 1, then in the process of being torn down.  The schoolhouse also had its sides draped in black; though obviously appropriate to the occasion, it was done largely to hide them.  The grandstand itself was draped with an American flag, apparently the largest in town, borrowed from the State Normal School. 

About 5,000 people squeezed into temporary bleachers 25 rows high that had been built around the city hall lot and which took up half of Second Street.  The Los Angeles Times noted that the bleachers had been designed to “easily” seat 4,000 people (with seats just 15 inches wide).  Another 1,200 or more took in the scene from seats between the grandstand and bleachers or some other viewpoint. “The procession, the grand stand with its great audience, and the catafalque, were all photographed by enterprising artists,” noted the Los Angeles Times the next day.  Sadly, none of those photos seems to be extant today. 

This photo looks west on Second from Spring and was almost certainly taken around the fall of 1886.  On the right is the Second Street City Hall.  This is apparently the best available photo of the building when it was owned by the city.  On the left side of the image is the domed, two-story Hollenbeck Block, which was expanded to four stories in the second half of 1887.

Behind the Hollenbeck is the steeple of the First Presbyterian Church.  At the very top of the steeple, above the ball, is a figure of the angel Gabriel.  That figure was removed in January 1887 and later replaced with a cross.

The California Bank Building opened in October 1887 on the southwest corner of Second and Fort (renamed Broadway in February 1890), across from the church.  We can’t see the building in this photo, but the trees on the corner have been removed, suggesting construction was imminent or just underway.

The Second Street City Hall: Part 1 -- Background and Construction

Introduction

Since 1853 there have been five buildings called Los Angeles City Hall.  The current city hall opened in 1928.  The fourth city hall, on the east side of Broadway between Second and Third Streets, was used for 39 years (1889-1928).  The third Los Angeles City Hall opened on Second Street in 1885.  It was the seat of city government for four years and also Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters for 11 years.  Despite these distinctions, the building is little-known.

The Second Street City Hall was designed by Los Angeles architect Robert Brown Young (1855-1914), who planned a three-story building at the northwest corner of Second and Spring, with a two-story wing of the main structure mid-block along Second Street.  However, only the two-story wing was ever built.  It was widely viewed as a failure soon after it was completed, and it eventually became a major civic embarrassment.  This may account for the apparent lack of an extant front-elevation photograph of the structure while it was owned by the city. 

When construction on the building began in late 1884, there was already standing a substantial, well-built brick building of two stories that had been Los Angeles City Hall.  So before getting into the story of the Second Street City Hall, a review of why it was built is in order.

Part 1:  Background and Construction

In August 1853, an adobe home that had been built in the 1820s at the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets  was sold by Los Angeles merchant and landowner John Temple (1796-1866) to the city and to Los Angeles County for a city hall and courthouse (the site is now mostly under Spring Street by the southwest corner of the current City Hall).  The city owned a one-quarter interest in the property, and the county owned a three-quarters interest.  A brick jail used by both the city and county was constructed behind the adobe in 1853, the first (non-adobe) brick building built in Los Angeles.  

This 1876 photo looks south on Spring Street from about Temple Street.  The building with the red dot on the roof, on the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets, became Los Angeles City Hall in 1853.  Los Angeles City and County shared the building.  The taller building in the distance, below the green dot, is the city’s first synagogue, built in 1873.