An epilogue to a 60-year-old book

by Jack Neely

After the story about the 100 Most Influential Knoxvillians of the Century, we got lots of interesting mail. Most letters made a case for folks who should have been included there, but weren't.

The most surprising letter we got was about someone we did include. Ruth Hunt lives in Jersey City, NJ. Now in her late 40s, she's a professional model and clothing designer—hats are her specialty—and spends most of her time dealing with the fashion houses of Seventh Avenue. She has never been to Knoxville in her life. Somehow she caught wind that this weekly down here had named Charles Cansler, who died in 1953, as one of the century's most influential Knoxvillians.

Longtime principal of Austin High, Cansler also founded, in 1917, Knoxville's first free library for blacks. He got a stir of national attention just last year in a biography of black artist Beauford Delaney. Author David Leeming refers to Cansler several times in his well-reviewed book as an important influence on Delaney, who made a portrait of Cansler.

There are lots of reasons to be interested in Charles Cansler, but Ms. Hunt, the designer up in New Jersey, was interested in our list because he was her great uncle. She never knew him, but grew up in Brooklyn hearing admiring stories about Uncle Charlie from her grandmother and aunt. She recently became fascinated with her family's complex genealogy, and has appointed herself family historian.

It was only last year that Hunt first read a book called Three Generations. It's a book that her great-uncle published in Knoxville in 1939.

"I was born a brown baby in a small town in eastern Tennessee," begins Cansler's autobiographical section. "The name of the place may as well remain in obscurity as being not a matter of general interest...."

Exactly why he was vague about his birthplace is unclear, but it seems to have been somewhere in Blount County. "Since all of us are so largely the products of blind Fate that determines the place, the manner, and the conditions surrounding our birth," Cansler continues, "I have wondered how anyone can boast of these matters over which they have had so little control. That I was born a brown baby perhaps had more significance than anything else surrounding my birth."

Strikingly similar to Roots, which was published decades later, Three Generations is a novel-like narrative of the trials of one black Tennessee family across more than a century. Unlike Roots, Three Generations describes a black family who, in the time of slavery, had been free.

With almost cinematic drama and the kind of personal details that genealogists habitually neglect, it reads, at times, like a fable for bright children, and maybe it's just that. Cansler's apparently true characters include an enormous runaway slave named Caesar who lives in a cave in Blount County and plots an uprising against local slave holders. Cansler describes an abolitionist Quaker from Massachusetts as "an odd little man who seemed just to have walked out of a fairy book." There's the 300-lb. German immigrant named Kantzler who was the author's great-grandfather—and a spectral young slave named Appius who may or may not have been the author's grandfather.

The Civil War is the book's climax; Cansler's free-black ancestors provide a rare point of view on the conflict. They befriend some Confederates but are terrorized by others—one is even kidnapped by Hunt's raiders. By late 1863, Cansler's own father is helping guide Sherman's reinforcements to Knoxville.

When the shooting stopped, Cansler's mother became the first black schoolteacher in Knoxville history. She and her husband Hugh Lawson Cansler had 10 children, most of whom were successful, half of whom became schoolteachers. Charles Cansler's parents lived to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Today they're buried together beneath a huge poplar tree in a melancholy graveyard beside Knoxville College.

Ruth Hunt hopes to have a nationwide family reunion sometime in 2000, and has considered Knoxville as a likely site. She mentions that her family has long spoken of the street named for them. Anchored on both ends by churches, Mechanicsville's Cansler Street is four blocks of working-class residences, some shotgun houses, some two-story homes, some renovated, some beyond renovation. On a Sunday morning, young men hang out on Cansler Street, share a pipe and glare at strangers.

It's maybe a 20-minute walk from the more upscale neighborhood up on the hill. Lofty Brandau Street, overlooking Knoxville College, affords one of the best views in the city. Before 1935 or so, Brandau was called Lucky Street. For some, maybe it still is. Some of these houses are handsome and well-kept.

On the corner nearest the college is a large brick house, an unusual-looking turn-of-the-century place with large steps, and an enclosed balcony over the big porch. The house was, for nearly half a century, the home of Charles Cansler himself. While he lived here, his houseguests included Booker T. Washington and James Weldon Johnson, founder of the NAACP. About 15 years ago, there was some excitement about the house becoming a historic landmark.

Today the door at 1805 Brandau is framed by old-fashioned leaded glass. A sign there says WELCOME, and a thermometer tells us that 4:00 is "Clark Bar O'Clock." But if you climb the steps and knock on the door, no one answers. Through the window there's an interesting blue-tile fireplace, but no furniture.

Charles Cansler isn't home today. But you might find him in the book he wrote 60 years ago—or in the thousands of former students who found inspiration in his example.