Sunday, August 10, 2014

George W. B. Conrad - President, National Catholic Interracial Federation


George Washington Bryant Conrad (1867-1947)
President, National Catholic Interracial Federation, 1932-1947
Attorney, Preservationist

Born on 22 June 1867 in Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, George W. B. Conrad was an attorney who worked for fifty-two years for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He began his career with the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (predecessor of the PRR) railroad as a messenger at the Union Depot in Richmond, Indiana in 1882. In 1885, he became a stenographer in the Superintendent’s Office under J. T. Miller. In 1887, he became stenographer and operator in the Engineer’s Office. He was appointed to the same capacity in the freight division office in 1888.

He later left that position to enter Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio. He then entered the Law School at the University of Michigan, from which he graduated in 1902. He returned to the railroad as a company attorney.

He was very active in community and civic affairs in Cincinnati. He spearheaded preservation of the residence of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was a founder and President of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Home Memorial Association. He ran for the Ohio State House of Representatives in 1938. Conrad was perhaps best known for his active involvement in the Catholic Church. He served as President of the National Catholic Interracial Federation from 1932 until his passing in 1947.

The Catholic Interracial Federation was the brainchild of Father William Markoe, S.J., who along with his fellow Jesuit, Father John LaFarge, stood at the forefront of the Church’s stance on racial justice. The Federation grew out of a split within the Federated Colored Catholics, a black-led organization presided over by Professor Thomas Wyatt Turner, a member of the science faculty at Howard University. The Federation had chapters across the nation, particularly in the South and Midwest.

His father, Thomas A. Conrad, was a native of either Illinois or North Carolina. He was a private in Company B, 5th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. His mother, Elizabeth Jackson, was a native of Ohio. They were married on 20 May 1866 in Xenia, Ohio. Thomas A. Conrad died on 17 September 1924 at the National Military Home in Jefferson, Ohio. Elizabeth Jackson Conrad died on 31 December 1875 in Xenia, Ohio. Thomas was married for a second time to Mary A. Edwards on 18 July 1879.

On 8 June 1910, he married Beatrice Adelaide Cox, a teacher, who was the daughter of Alfred Cox and Cora McKnight. George and his wife Beatrice had a daughter, Elizabeth Conrad, who like her mother became an educator. She was first married to Taswell Thompson, a marriage which produced one son, Taswell Thompson, Jr. She later married Melvin W. Corbin.

Over the course of his eighty years as an attorney, active layman, and preservationist, George Washington Bryant Conrad enjoyed the esteem of those in his community of all races. He died on 11 December 1947 in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.
 

Sources: Dabney, Wendell Phillips. Cincinnati's Colored Citizens: Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Negro Universities Press, 1926) 242; Smith, J. Clay. Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) 412-413.