Bayard Rustin, died August 24, 1987

Bayard Rustin was a civil rights activist, and the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin

"What Rustin took away from A. Philip Randolph, especially, is the recognition that economic issues and racial justice issues are completely intertwined," says his biographer, John D'Emilio. Despite his extensive involvement in the civil rights movement, Rustin was content to remain behind the scenes, D'Emilio says.  "I think of it as part of the Quaker heritage that he internalized. You don't push yourself forward," D'Emilio says. "It doesn't matter if you don't get the credit for it. What is important is this notion of speaking truth to power."

Rustin had a long involvement with refugee affairs. As a Vice Chairman of the International Rescue Committee, he traveled the world working to secure food, medical care, education, and proper resettlement for refugees. His visits to Southeast Asia helped to bring the plight of the Vietnamese “boat people” to the attention of the American public. In 1980 he took part in the international March for Survival on the Thai-Cambodian border. In 1982, he also helped found the National Emergency Coalition for Haitian Refugees.As Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House, an agency which monitored international freedom and human rights, Rustin observed elections in Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and Grenada. His last mission abroad, coordinated by Freedom House, was a delegation to Haiti to help create democratic reform in that country.

In 1983, Rustin and two colleagues made a fact-finding visit to South Africa. Their report, South Africa: Is Peaceful Change Possible? led to the formation of Project South Africa, a program that sought to broaden Americans’ support of groups within South Africa working for democracy through peaceful means.

Late in life, Bayard Rustin gave numerous interviews discussing how anti-gay prejudice had affected his life’s work. He was invited to address gay and lesbian groups and testified on behalf of New York City’s gay rights bill. In 1986, he gave a speech "The New Niggers Are Gays," in which he asserted,

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "niggers" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

In 1987, after his visit to Haiti to study prospects for democratic elections in that country, Rustin began to feel unwell. His symptoms were initially misdiagnosed as intestinal parasites.  On August 21, 1987, Rustin was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital and diagnosed with a perforated appendix.

Rustin died in New York City on August 24, 1987.  His obituary in the New York Times reported:

Bayard Rustin, the pacifist and civil rights activist who was a chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and the 1964 New York school boycott, died early yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital. He was 75 years old and was a longtime resident of the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

A spokesman for the hospital, Jean Brett, said Mr. Rustin was admitted to its emergency room Friday morning ''complaining of abdominal pain'' and later that morning he ''underwent surgery for a perforated appendix and peritonitis.'' At 11:20 P.M. Sunday, the statement added, ''Mr. Rustin went into cardiac arrest and died at 12:02 A.M.'' yesterday.  Mr. Rustin's administrative assistant and adopted son, Walter Naegle, said, ''He seemed to be bouncing back and doing O.K., but he had a history of heart problems, and it appears that the strain of the operation caused the cardiac arrest.''

At his death, Mr. Rustin was co-chairman, with Leon Lynch, of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an educational, civil rights and labor organization based in New York, and president of its education fund.

Commenting on Mr. Rustin's death, Roy Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, said: ''Bayard Rustin was a planner, a coordinator, a thinker. He influenced all of the young leaders in the civil rights movement, even those of us who did not agree with him ideologically.''

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, said: ''We first met on the march for jobs and freedom. It was an event that changed the nation. From that moment forward, the great civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965 were not only possible but near accomplished. He taught us love and gave us peace.''

Mr. Rustin's career ranged from such activities as having organized the first Freedom Ride, which was then called a Journey of Reconciliation, in 1947, to a role in the Free India movement before the subcontinent gained its independence from Britain, to involvement in antinuclear demonstrations in England and North Africa and to serving as an aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Rustin once described his militant activity this way: ''I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.''

''Mr. March'' was what A. Philip Randolph, the labor leader, called Mr. Rustin in tribute to his tireless efforts in planning and arranging the 1963 demonstration, called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which 200,000 people took part.

That success was repeated when Mr. Rustin directed the one-day school boycott, on Feb. 3, 1964, which was called by groups that were dissatisfied with the New York City Board of Education's integration efforts. All told, 464,000 pupils stayed away from school, 360,000 more than the daily average.

Mr. Rustin was a complex, intense man with a flair for advocacy and a passion for detail. He built an international reputation as an organizer because of his skill at planning every aspect of protest demonstrations and his imaginativeness as a tactician.  He also won admirers as a political philosopher and analyst. But he never had a big power base among blacks, and late in life he was criticized by some who felt he was more an advocate of Jewish, labor and white liberal causes than of black causes.

Mr. Rustin's effectiveness as an advocate and organizer was enhanced by his striking appearance: He was a 200-pound six-footer with high cheekbones, intense eyes and, late in life, a shock of white hair.

. . . Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ''The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.''

Mr. Rustin had repeated run-ins with the law over the years. As an ardent pacifist, he spent 28 months in prison for refusing military service in World War II. He spent weeks on a North Carolina road gang after being convicted of violating bus seating laws in a civil rights demonstration in 1947. And, as the years passed, he was imprisoned or arrested more than 20 times, in cases including numerous charges in connection with his civil rights and pacifist activity.   Early in life he was a radical: he belonged to the Young Communist League for several years, then embraced Socialism and for decades was associated with Mr. Randolph, who was a founder of the modern-day civil rights movement.

. . . In his later years, Mr. Rustin's support of the unions and Israel, and his role as a prime interpreter of the black movement to the unions, to liberals and to various religious groups, won him both widespread praise and strong criticism; some blacks considered him to be an Uncle Tom, subservient to whites. In 1978 the American Jewish Congress gave Mr. Rustin one of its annual Stephen Wise awards for ''illustrious leadership in the cause of racial justice, world peace and human understanding.''  But Mr. Rustin was also criticized by blacks who were more militant than he on a variety of issues.  ''Bayard has no credibility in the black community,'' James Farmer, the veteran official of the Congress of Racial Equality, once contended. ''Bayard's commitment is to labor, not to the black man. His belief that the black man's problem is economic, not racist, runs counter to black community thinking.''

Mr. Rustin's insistence on nonviolence was also controversial. He believed in it so strongly that during rioting in Harlem in 1964 he went into the streets and tried to persuade the participants to stop. But bottles were thrown at him, and his efforts were criticized by some blacks.

Mr. Rustin's advocacy of black-Jewish harmony and of support for Israel, a major theme of his later years, also became controversial among blacks.  In the late 1960's, commenting on what was widely regarded as a rise in anti-Semitism among blacks, he urged restraint as well as good will. ''I request the understanding, the cooperation and the aid of Jews,'' he said in addressing a conference of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. ''I do so knowing that there is Negro anti-Semitism and knowing how Jews must feel when they hear some Negro extremists talk.'' He urged his audience to ''remember that the issue never can be simply a problem of Jew and gentile or black and white. The problem is man's inhumanity to man.''

. . . In his later years, Mr. Rustin continued to be active and outspoken on a wide variety of fronts. He was chairman of Social Democrats U.S.A., a descendant of the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas; chairman of the executive committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; and the first black trustee of the University of Notre Dame. 

In an interview published in The Village Voice on June 30, Mr. Rustin was quoted as saying he was homosexual. Asked in the interview how this and his 1953 arrest and subsequent sentence of 60 days in Pasadena, Calif., on a morals charge had affected his civil rights work, he said that ''there was considerable prejudice amongst a number of people I worked with,'' although they would not admit it.  He added, ''The fact of the matter is, it was already known, it was nothing to hide. You can't hurt the movement unless you have something to reveal.'' He contended that the arrest was the result of entrapment which, he suggested, was for political reasons. 

Mr. Rustin was unmarried. He is survived by an uncle, Earl Rustin, of West Chester, Pa.; an aunt, Anna Luff of Queens; three half-sisters, and his adopted son, Mr. Naegle, of Manhattan, who was his administrative assistant at the Institute for the last three years.

Walter Naegle and Bayard Rustin

Rustin was survived by Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years.  Rustin was cremated and his ashes are buried in an unmarked spot on an estate in New York.

Despite the fact that he played an important role in the civil rights movement, Rustin "faded from the shortlist of well-known civil rights lions," in large part because of public discomfort with his sexual orientation.  However, the 2003 documentary film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize nominee, and the March 2012 centennial of Rustin's birth have contributed to some renewed recognition.

The late Jervis Anderson published a biography in 1997, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen, as did Daniel Levine in 1999, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement. The most extensive biography to date is John D'Emilio's Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. A historian of sexuality, particularly the gay liberation movement, D'Emilio focuses more intently than any previous biographer on Rustin's sexual entanglements and crises, and the effects of homophobia on his career. 

 On August 8, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  The citation in the press release stated:

Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all.  An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights. 

Throughout his life, Rustin's Quakerism was a unifying force in his life and a strong plank in his personal philosophy, incorporating beliefs that were of central importance to him: that there is that of God in every person, that all are entitled to a decent life, and that a life of service to others is the way to happiness and true fulfillment.

LZ Granderson wrote in August 2013:

As big and as looming and as destructive as racism has been and continues to be in society, we must remember it is only a branch.

The root of the problem, the reason why we continue to struggle with equality, is our pathological intolerance, an intolerance no collective group of people has proven to be immune to.

"I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today, and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

Dr. King's dream has not been fulfilled because we began betraying the integrity of his dream the moment we started scrubbing Rustin's life out of Black History Month lessons and civil rights movies.

We betray that dream each time a black person claims offense to the notion that gay rights are civil rights, as if the black community is the only community capable of being oppressed.

We betray King's dream each time a white elected official is allowed to say things about the gay community in ways that would never be tolerated if directed at the black community.

I don't say these things because I view the history and plight of these two minority groups as being exactly the same -- they are not.

I say these things because racism and homophobia -- like anti-Semitism, sexism and xenophobia -- all have the same mother. And as long as concessions are made for one, we will never be free from the clutches of the others.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian award. It was established by President Kennedy 50 years ago. Considering the anniversary of the march, it is fitting that Rustin is among the 16 being honored with it in November.

But like King, he was more than August 28, 1963.

He was a giant.

And so while the medal is special, the best way to honor him is to talk about him, all of him, both now and in the many years to come. Bayard Rustin spent his life fighting for peace and equality and he did so unashamed of who he was. It's about time history, and the people he helped most, stop being ashamed of him.

“Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.”

~ Bayard Rustin 

Philip Sheridan, died August 5, 1888

Comanche Chief Tosawi reputedly told Sheridan in 1869, "Me, Tosawi; me good Injun," to which Sheridan supposedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." Sheridan denied he had ever made the statement. Biographer Roy Morris Jr. states that, nevertheless, popular history credits Sheridan with saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

Tosawi

At two conferences in 1867 and 1868, the federal government demanded that the Plains Indians give up their lands and move to reservations. In return for supplies and annuities, the southern Plains Indians were told to move to poor, unproductive lands in Oklahoma and the northern tribes to the Black Hills of the Dakotas. The alternative to acceptance was warfare. The commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ely S. Parker, himself a Seneca Indian, declared that any Indian who refused to "locate in permanent abodes provided for them, would be subject wholly to the control and supervision of military authorities." Many whites regarded the Plains Indians as an intolerable obstacle to westward expansion. 

In the Winter Campaign of 1868–69, Sheridan attacked the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche tribes in their winter quarters, taking their supplies and livestock, and killing those who resisted. Professional hunters, trespassing on Indian land, killed over 4 million bison by 1874, and Sheridan applauded: "Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated". When the Texas legislature considered outlawing bison poaching on tribal lands, Sheridan personally testified against it, suggesting that the legislature should give each of the hunters a medal, engraved with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other. In 1860, about 13 million roamed the Plains. By 1890, only about 1,000 bison remained alive.  Eventually the Indians returned to their designated reservations.

Sheridan was unconcerned about the high casualties among non-combatants, once remarking that "If a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers; but, with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack." 

In 1870, President Grant, at Sheridan's request, sent him to observe and report on the Franco-Prussian War.  As a guest of the King of Prussia, he was present when Napoleon III surrendered to the Germans, which was gratifying to Sheridan following his experiences with the French in Mexico. He later toured  Europe. 

In 1871, Sheridan was present in Chicago during the Great Chicago Fire, and coordinated military relief efforts. The mayor, to calm the panic, placed the city under martial law, and issued a proclamation putting Sheridan in charge.

The protection of the Yellowstone area was Sheridan's personal crusade. He authorized Lieutenant Gustavus Doane to escort the Washburn Expedition in 1870, and for Captain John Barlow to escort the Hayden Expedition in 1871.  Barlow named a peak in Yellowstone overlooking Heart Lake as "Mount Sheridan" for the general in 1871. As early as 1875, Sheridan promoted military control of the area to prevent the destruction of natural formations and wildlife.

On June 3, 1875, Philip Sheridan married Irene Rucker, the youngest daughter of Army Quartermaster General Daniel Rucker.  She was 22, and he was 44.  In 1874 she had been a bridesmaid at a wedding in Chicago, where Sheridan, who was also in attendance, had his headquarters. Though seemingly a confirmed bachelor, he was smitten. A whirlwind courtship ensued, and the couple were married a year later in a ceremony performed by Bishop Foley of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. 

Irene Rucker Sheridan

After the wedding, Sheridan and his wife moved to Washington, D.C. They lived in a house given to them by Chicago citizens in appreciation for Sheridan's protection of the city after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.  During their happy marriage, she was admired for both her beauty and her charm as a society hostess.

Sheridan returned to Oregon in 1875 with his wife and his brother, Michael Sheridan.   In Salem, he stayed at the Chemeketa Hotel and met with Oregon Governor Lafayette Grover, an old friend. He then visited the Grand Ronde Reservation and the former site of Fort Yamhill, which had been decommissioned in 1866.

Sheridan and his wife had four children: Mary, born in 1876; twin daughters, Irene and Louise, in 1877; and Philip, Jr., in 1880. 

Late in 1876, Sheridan was sent to New Orleans to command troops keeping the peace in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election.

Thomas Nast Cartoon
Harper's Weekly, December 21, 1878An unhappy-looking Native American, with a sign hanging around his neck saying “THIS IS THE NOBLE RED MAN.” stands on a bureau. On either side of him are doors: the left door is labeled “INTERIOR DEPARTMENT” and in front of it stands U.S. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, hands in pocket, with a serious expression on his face. On the right is a door labeled ”WAR DEPARTMENT“ with an equally serious looking General Philip Sheridan standing in front of it.  In back of the door, General William Tecumseh Sherman peers out. Schurz and Sheridan eye each other resolutely

Sheridan's department conducted the Red River War, the Ute War, and the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877, which resulted in the death of  Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. 

George Armstrong Custer

The Indian raids subsided during the 1870s and were almost over by the early 1880s, as Sheridan became the commanding general of the U.S. Army. The Apache War did not end until 1886, when their leader, Geronimo was captured.

Sheridan served as the ninth president of the National Rifle Association, which was founded in 1871.  

Sheridan with Party at Yellowstone, 1881

In 1882, the Department of the Interior granted rights to the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company to develop 4,000 acres in the park. Their plan was to build a railroad into the park and sell the land to developers. Sheridan personally organized opposition to the plan and lobbied Congress for protection of the park; including expansion, military control, reducing the development to 10 acres, and prohibiting leases near park attractions. In addition, he arranged an expedition to the park for President Chester Arthur and other influential men.  His lobbying soon paid off. A rider was added to the Sundry Civil Bill of 1883, giving Sheridan and his supporters almost everything for which they had asked. In 1886, after a string of ineffectual and sometimes criminal superintendents, Sheridan ordered the 1st U.S. Cavalry into the park. The military operated the park until the National Park Service took it over in 1916.

On November 1, 1883, Sheridan succeeded William Sherman as Commanding General, U.S. Army.

Mark Twain urged Sheridan to write his memoirs, believing they would equal General Grant’s in historical importance and interest. Sheridan completed Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan just a few months before his death. 

Sheridan suffered a major heart attack May 22, 1888 just after returning from an inspection for the site of Fort Sheridan, in Chicago. At 57 years old, hard living and hard campaigning and a lifelong love of good food and drink had taken their toll. Thin in his youth, he had reached over 200 pounds. 

On May 30, a reporter for The Hartford Daily Courant  visited Twain at his home in Hartford, Connecticut, and asked him about his relationship with Sheridan. Twain said he had known the general for twenty years or more, having first met him in Washington at a reception at General Grant's before the latter was elected president.  

"Mr. Webster and I called on General Sheridan at his office in the war department a couple of years ago, and made a contract with him for his autobiography, upon terms satisfactory to both parties. This was not long after we had published the second volume of General Grant's "Personal Memoirs." General Sheridan was as reluctant to try the untried field of authorship as had been General Grant before him; but the desire to secure a comfortable provision for their families prevailed with both. General Sheridan's procedure, after he has once made up his mind, was characteristic of him. He went at his task with all his might, and never called a halt until it was finished. One can see by his manuscript, that he, like General Grant, found authorship easy after he once got started; authorship is always easy when one has something to say. The first volume has been for some time in the hands of the printers; the manuscript of the second was delivered to us, revised, corrected and completed, a week before the general was taken sick, and is in the safety deposit vaults in New York. The maps and engravings are all finished."

After his first heart attack, the U.S. Congress quickly passed legislation to promote him to general on June 1st, 1888.  He received the news from a congressional delegation with joy, despite his pain. 

His family moved him from the heat of Washington and he died of heart failure in his summer cottage in the Nonquitt section of Dartmouth, Massachusetts on August 5, 1888.

Sheridan Grave

His body was returned to Washington, D.C. and he was buried on a hillside near Arlington House in Arlington National Cemetery, facing the capital city.  

Sheridan Monument, facing Washington, D.C.

The sculpture on the marker was executed by English sculptor Samuel James Kitson.  His burial there helped elevate Arlington to national prominence. 

Sheridan Marker, Arlington Cemetery

Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan was published by Twain's publishing house, Charles L. Webster & Co. in two volumes bound in forest green cloth.  The covers were decorated with a gilt depiction of the general leading a charge.

Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan

Although still youthful and attractive when she was widowed by her husband's fatal heart attack, Mrs. Sheridan never remarried, declaring that she "would rather be the widow of Phil Sheridan than the wife of any man living." Their young children ranged in age from their oldest daughter, Mary, who was 12 years old when he died, to their youngest child, Philip, Jr. who was eight years old.  Irene Sheridan resided with her children at 2551 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., near Sheridan Circle, where in 1908 she unveiled Gutzon Borglum's famed equestrian statue of her husband astride his warhorse "Rienzi".  

Sheridan Statue, Washington, D.C.

It was said that the Sheridan daughters started each day by leaning out of their bedroom windows and calling out "Good morning, Papa!" in the direction of the statue.

Philip Sheridan, Jr.

Philip Sheridan, Jr., followed in his father's footsteps and graduated near the bottom of the West Point class of 1902. He served as a cavalry officer, a military aide to President Theodore Roosevelt, and in Washington with the general staff. He was promoted to major in 1917 and was also felled by a heart attack, at age 37, in February 1918.

Sheridan's wife died 50 years after her husband, in 1938 at the age of 82.  Her survivors included the three Sheridan daughters, who all remained single and continued to reside in the family home on Massachusetts Avenue until their own deaths many years later.  She also had two grandchildren, Carolina and Philip H. Sheridan III, children of her son Philip, Jr. 

Philip H. Sheridan III, grandson and namesake of General Sheridan, was a World War II combat flyer who took his own life in on March 11, 1948. by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Although stunned by his death, family members revealed that the former pilot, who had flown 76 combat missions over Europe, had been suffering from what is now known as post-combat traumatic stress syndrome.  He was 31 years old when he died.

Sheridan Statue in Somerset, Ohio

The only Civil War equestrian statue in Ohio honors Sheridan. It is in the center traffic circle on US Route 22 in Somerset, Ohio, not far from the house where Sheridan grew up. Sheridan High School is located five miles north of Somerset; the athletic team is nicknamed "The Generals".

In World War II, the United States liberty ship, SS Philip H. Sheridan, was named in his honor.  In the 1960s, the M551 Sheridan tank was named after Sheridan.

M551 Sheridan tank

While stationed in the West before the Civil War, Sheridan took a Native woman (known to the whites as "Frances") as his mistress and lived with her for several years. Their relationship ended when the Civil War broke out, and Sheridan returned to the East.  

The census documents of Fort Simco, Yakima, Washington record a daughter, Emma Sheridan, born in Fort Vancouver, Washington, in 1857, to Philip H. Sheridan.  The mother is listed as "Walopquat" of the Yakima nation.  A photo of Emma Sheridan (1857-1886), has been provided by Emma’s grandson, Daniel Hoptowit Olney (1915 – 1995) author of Who Are You And Who Am I?

Emma Sheridan

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz acknowledge that Sheridan may have courted one of their members, Frances Harney of the Takelma, Rogue River Indians.  Frances had a brother, George Harney, (1835-1900), who traveled to Washington, D.C., evidenced by a 1875 Smithsonian photograph.

Elizabeth Collins Gilliam is quoted in a 1927 interview in Oregon Yesterdays by Fred Lockley as saying that 

“One of the prettiest Indian girls I ever saw was Frances the Indian girl Lt. Phillip Sheridan lived with. She was a Rogue River Indian girl. She was as graceful as a deer and as slender as a fawn. She loved Sheridan devotedly. Her brother was a fine looking Indian too. He was named Harney after an army officer. He was a teamster (drove wagon) for the (reservation) troops.”

In 1844, when she was five years old, Elizabeth Gilliam traveled overland on a wagon train from Missouri, led by her father, Cornelius Gilliam. The family settled in a cabin in Dallas, Oregon. Cornelius died on a excursion in 1848 to avenge the November 1847 massacre of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman at their Walla Walla mission. Mr. Gilliam’s rifle went off, and he accidentally killed himself. But Elizabeth lived to the age of 88.

In an interview in 1927, Elizabeth recounts that she knew Sheridan, because he used to stop over on coastal trips from Fort Hoskins to Fort Yamhill, and spend nights at the Gilliam cabin. She lived a days ride from Grand Ronde and seven miles further from Fort Hoskins. Elizabeth also said she knew Sheridan’s Indian wife, Frances, who was the daughter of Chief Harney of the Rogue River tribe, and who had been at her home quite a few times. She said she was bright, good looking, and quite likable.  She added that Sheridan was good and kind to her, and taught her to read, but they had no children. When he left her, it almost broke her heart.

Frances also told her that Sheridan had invited her and her brother and some other Indians to Washington, D.C., at the expense of the government, and that after the trip, she told Elizabeth all about it.  Afterward, Frances never saw him again.

Frances was the source for Edward Sapir’s classic Takelma Texts published by the Smithsonian in 1926, as well as providing information for the famous linguist and anthropologist John Harrington. Frances was the last fluent speaker of her people’s language. She passed away in 1934.

Frances Harney Johnson in 1934

Between 1934 and 1995, Sheridan, Oregon celebrated "Phil Sheridan Days", named after the general.  After a three-year break in the celebration, the event resumed in 1999 with a new name, "Sheridan Days", which celebrated the town more than the general. References to General Sheridan were dropped at the joint request of the Grand Ronde Tribe and Spirit Mountain Casino.

However, between June 20-23, 2013, "Phil Sheridan Days" returned.  Committee President Bob White said he and Vice President Ted Mayfield made it official when they registered "Phil Sheridan Days" with the Secretary of State’s Corporate Division in April.  White called Sheridan a “great American general” and wore a replica Sheridan uniform during the Days’ grand parade.

In a letter to the editor following the event, White wrote, “The new name and return to our beginnings caused a lot of excitement in some quarters. Our intention was never to offend our good neighbors who are such a dynamic influence in this neck of the woods. Our sincere apologies if we damaged some egos.”  Sheridan Mayor Val Adamson was quoted as saying he supported the return to "Phil Sheridan Days".

Tribal Council Chair Reyn Leno said it was a “sad commentary on the local community.” He said it showed a lack of respect for Sheridan’s neighboring Tribal community and insensitivity to Gen. Sheridan’s well-documented mistreatment of Native Americans.

“We find it disturbing that the organizing committee would want to change the name back to Phil Sheridan Days,” Leno said. “The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are convinced there is much to celebrate about today’s Sheridan community and the strong people, both Tribal and non-Tribal, who built it and continue to make it thrive today.

“We are happy to support many projects in the community, from Little League to wrestling teams, but Phil Sheridan Days is something we cannot in good conscience endorse. If anyone wants to learn what history has to say about General Phil Sheridan, a simple Internet search will provide countless texts that document his actions against Native Americans.”