Celebrating Black History Month - The Fortunes
Caroline Charlotte “Carrie” Smiley Fortune was born in December 1860. As Carrie’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Bowser, wrote in Voices of Sag Harbor, Carrie “was born a slave in Jacksonville, Florida, the daughter of a plantation owner named Smiley and an Indian girl.” Elizabeth explained, “Plantation owners made a practice of recruiting Indian girls from the then western frontiers of the United States.” and “my grandmother Carrie, [was] the issue of her Indian mother and the slave-owning plantation owner.” In the late 1870s, Carrie moved to Sag Harbor to be the personal seamstress for the wife of a Captain living near the neighborhood of Eastville. Carrie, soon made friends in Eastville and taught them her fine dress-making skills. Just look at the exquisite details in the dress she’s wearing in this photograph.
In 1878, Carrie’s sweetheart, T. Thomas Fortune, arrived from Jacksonville and claimed her as his bride, and they settled in Brooklyn. Carrie kept in touch with her Sag Harbor friends, and the Fortune’s visited frequently during summertime, eventually becoming one of the first African-American families to “summer” in Sag Harbor. Carrie and Thomas had 5 children, 3 of whom died. Carrie, herself, died in 1940 at the age of 80.
T. Thomas Fortune (1856-1928) was born a slave in Marianna, Florida and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. He attended Howard University briefly, leaving to be a journalist. Fortune established The New York Globe, which later became New York Age, the nation’s leading black newspaper which survived until 1960. “The condition of black people in the southern United States became his primary concern, and the press was his weapon to change those conditions. By 1887, he had established himself as the most prominent black journalist of the time.” Also in 1887, Fortune organized the National Afro-American League “to secure the defense of the black community against lynchings, riots, and other terrorist violence” (source: blackpast.org). This organization served as a model for later civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Fortune shepherded and opened doors for leaders like W. E. B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells. Fortune's wife, Carrie Smiley Fortune, was a founder of the National Urban League. Fortune died in 1928 at the age of 72.
