Isaac Franklin Bradley (1862 - 1938)

• Year: 2025
• Citation: Vol. 94 No. 2 Pg. 41
• Pages: 41

Isaac Franklin Bradley (1862 - 1938) No. 94 J. Kan. Bar Assn 2, 41 (2025) Kansas Bar Journal April, 2025

By Karen Arnold-Burger, Judge, Kansas Court of Appeals

“I was a bare headed, bare footed, sparsely clad youngster at Cambridge,^[1] a small but important shipping point on the Missouri River, on April 9, 1879, when the Fannie Lewis, a majestic side wheel steamer, docked at that place.^[2]She was towing a couple of great barges upon which the largest number of refugees came at one time. I begged Mother to let me go down to the woods, to where she was landed, and went aboard her, and heard those mothers and fathers sing and pray, and tell some of the story of that from which they fled. Some of the songs I had heard before, perhaps not sung with the pathos and depth of feeling that I heard that day, and the prayers I heard I can never forget. They sang 'Rock Daniel,' and rocked some as they sang it. They also sang 'Ride On, Jesus, Ride On' and 'I've Done Got Over,' and 'Redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb.' Who would have dreamed that in 10 years I could have picked up an education and reap the good fortune of being elected a justice of the Peace in this city in which capacity, certain of these same people came before me for judgment in April 1889."^[3]

Isaac Franklin Bradley, the first Black graduate of KU Law School, was born to enslaved parents in 1862 in Hazelwood Hall near Cambridge, Missouri. "I do not remember ever seeing my father, for the reason, that very shortly after my advent, he took French leave[.]"^[4] He reports that "from the age of four to the age of 17 he never had a new hat or a new pair of shoes, in fact was often short on old ones."^[5]

Young Bradley had only 18 total months of formal education, but in 1881 he enrolled in Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri,^[6] finishing in 1885, just in time to start law school at the University of Kansas.^[7] He completed his legal studies in 1887 in Frazier Hall, where the first law school was located, graduating with honors.^[8] He immediately went to Kansas City, Kansas to set up his practice at 548 Minnesota.^[9] Many Exoduster families were among his clients.

He lived with his wife and two children in a beautiful two-story home he built at 400 Haskell. In 1889, he was elected Justice of the Peace.^[10] In 1891, he returned to private practice, but he was lured back into public service in 1894 when he was appointed to serve as assistant county attorney in Wyandotte County. He returned to private practice five years later — certainly realizing that it was more lucrative than either a judicial or prosecutorial career. It was then that he added the title entrepreneur to his resume. Along with several partners, Bradley established the Kansas City Embalming and Casket Company, d/b/a J.W. Jones Funeral Home, The Kansas City Coal and Feed Company, and the Wyandotte Drug Store.^[11] In 1901, he helped establish the Widows and Orphans Home, an orphanage for Black children.^[12]

Bradley became an outspoken proponent of racial equality. At that time in history, Black doctors and nurses were denied access to most hospitals. So in 1898, Bradley and other prominent Black professionals in Kansas and Missouri founded Douglass Hospital, the nation's first Black community-owned and operated hospital west of the Mississippi River. It was also the region's first modern hospital to welcome all patients equally regardless of their race. A nursing school was established in the hospital which graduated its first nurses in 1901. By 1915, the Douglass Hospital Nurse Training School was incorporated into the curriculum at Western University in Kansas City, Kansas. It operated until 1977, with its final location being at 3700 N. 27th Street, across the street from the Bishop William T. Vernon Colored School, which is still standing. Unfortunately, not only was the building torn down after it closed, but all its records were destroyed.^[13]

Still only 36 years old, Bradley became one of the early members of both the National Afro-American Council, and the National Negro Business League — both controlled by Booker T. Washington.^[14] Ida B. Wells-Barnett — a friend of Bradley's — described an incident involving Bradley at the 1901 meeting of the Business League in Chicago:

"It seems that during the session of the Business League, a human being was being burned alive in Alabama. Mr. I.F. Bradley, a delegate from Kansas, offered a resolution of condemnation and that resolution was referred to the committee on resolutions. Mr. [Booker T.] Washington went into the committee and forbade the committee's reporting it back to the national body. He gave as his reason that it might endanger his school [Tuskegee Institute] if he, as president of the Business League, permitted such a resolution to be passed.

Whereupon, Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, who had become an ardent convert to Mr. Washington's views, violently disagreed with him in the committee room and left the meeting. Both he and Judge Bradley came to my home and narrated the above incident. Both were very indignant, but there was nothing they could do about it...