Background
Chase was born to free African-American parents in Washington, District of Columbia
Chase was born to free African-American parents in Washington, District of Columbia
A native of Washington, District of Columbia, he attended Howard University. Soon after taking up editorship of the Bee, Chase also attended classes at Howard University Law School in 1883-1884.
As well as gaining admission to the bar, he edited the Washington Bee, a weekly newspaper, from 1882 until his death. in 1854. His Maryland-born father, an expert blacksmith, died in 1863, and young Chase was raised by his Virginia-born mother, Lucinda. Within the first year of the founding of the Washington Bee, in 1882, he became its editor and remained in that role until his death in 1921.
Continuing his editorial duties, Chase did not take a law degree and maintained his legal studies privately.
He was admitted to the bar in Virginia and in Washington, District of Columbia, in 1889, and practiced law thereafter in Washington. His standing as a lawyer and editor made Chase a Republican Party leader in Washington, and Chase was named as a District of Columbia delegate to the Republican national conventions held in 1900 and 1912.
As editor Chase"s 1882–1921 editorial leadership of the Washington Bee was "superb.. eventually turned the Bee into one of the most influential African American newspapers in the country." However, this service coincided with a dark period in the history of African-Americans in the United States. Post-Civil War Redeemers acquired political control over many United States. states.
With the goal of reversing many of the limited desegregation gains that had been made during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Redeemers proclaimed a policy of Jim Crow and implicit support for lynching.
The Bee attempted to crusade against these trends, leveraging its support base in the comparatively well-educated African-American community of Washington, District of Columbia Foreign several years, Chase editorialized against lynching and against the Atlanta compromise positions taken by fellow African-American leader Booker T. Washington. Chase"s 1912 support for the re-election of President William Howard Taft was not successful, as the Southern-born Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson was elected. Wilson"s entry into the White House marked the extension of Redeemer policy to Washington, District of Columbia and the federal government, with the new administration ruthlessly re-segregating Washington offices and other places of life and work.
The newspaper"s financial troubles continued and worsened.
Death and honors A scholarly biography of Chase, Honey for Friends, Stings for Enemies, appeared in 1973. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, the examination of the fighting editor"s life is an expanded Doctor of Philosophy dissertation.
A second dissertation, which also focuses closely on Chase"s life, work, and standing in Washington, District of Columbia, is Marya Annette McQuirter"s Claiming the City: African Americans, Urbanization and Leisure in Washington, District of Columbia, 1902–1954 (2000).
Chase attempted to respond to these dismal trends by building an editorial alliance with the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). His time as a second-wave civil rights activist was, however, short. On January 3, 1921 the editor was found dead in his newspaper office. He had literally died at his desk. The struggling newspaper survived him by little more than a year. William Calvin Chase was posthumously honored by memorial resolution 16-187 of the Council of the District of Columbia, adopted on February 7, 2006. The resolution cited Chase"s historical significance as one of the first journalistic champions of Frederick Douglass in the African-American press, and Chase"s organization of the movement to achieve the historic preservation of Douglass"s later-life home, Cedar Hill.
A boy during the administration of Abraham Lincoln, he became a lifelong member of the Republican Party.
