Madison Taxi
Known Name(s)
Madison Taxi () Madison Taxi ()
Address
18 Lincoln Place Madison, NJ (1947, 1948, 1949)196 Main St. Madison, NJ (1950, 1951, 1952, 1953)
Establishment Type(s)
Taxi Service
Physical Status
Demolished
Detailed History
The Green Book entry for 196 Main Street identifies as it as a location for a taxi service in the years 1950-53. According to available Sanborn maps of 1921 and 1931, what was then 196 Main Street was a two-story frame “dwelling”, located on the northeast corner of Main Street and Rosedale Avenue. Today, the house no longer exists; the site is a branch of the Wells Fargo Bank, which uses number 200 as its street address. The local newspaper, The Madison Eagle includes articles from the mid-20th century that identify the house as the residence of the White family between 1940 and 1964. The Whites were very much a part of Madison’s African-American community. The White family’s social comings-and-goings were noted in the local newspaper, The Madison Eagle, just like many other middle and upper-class families (mostly white people). For instance, an announcement in the newspaper on September 5, 1940: “Miss Jessie Tolkes of Leaksville North Carolina was the weekend guest of Miss Madeline White, 196 Main Street. Miss Tolkes will leave Tuesday to resume her duties at the school at Kings Mountain, NC. “ (The Lincoln School in Kings Mountain, NC was founded by Massachusetts Congregationalist missionaries in the late 1880s to provide education to Black children. It had both a boarding school and day school and it flourished in the early 20th century. By the mid- 20th century when Miss Tolkes was affiliated with it, the school was gradually merging its students into the previously all-white public school system of Kings Mountain.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Academy_(Kings_Mountain,_North_Carolina) On September 19, 1940, a concert was held in the Madison High School Auditorium (now the Junior School, still extant at 160 Main Street, Madison). The featured performer was Lester Snitt, a “student of piano and conductor of choral societies”. It was his 4th annual concert appearance in Madison to obtain funds to continue his musical education at Johnson Smith University, a historically black university founded in 1867 near Charlotte, N.C. The headline for this article was “Negro Pianist and Conductor”. There is no further information about Mr. Snitt’s relationship to anyone in town, but the fact that he performed in Madison for several years on a fundraising tour indicates interest in and sympathy for African Americans within the largely white community of Madison. In 1964, Mr. Richard S. White, died at age 90. He is listed in the obituary as a resident of 196 Main Street, where he had lived for “some 20 years”. His funeral, held at the Madison Baptist Church, a historically black congregation in Madison founded in 1895. Until he retired at age 75, Mr. White worked as a chauffeur to Mrs. Sydel Tilghman. From the 1840s through the 1920s, Madison and nearby Morristown were a center of country houses for wealthy NY-city based businessmen and their families. The work of gardening and landscaping on those estates brought Italian immigrants to settle in the area. Housemaids, cooks, and other servants were frequently Irish. And chauffeurs, stable hands, and general laborers tended to be Black. It makes sense that after his retirement in about 1949, Mr. White may have continued to offer taxi service to those who needed a ride somewhere, and that he would have advertised his services through the Green Book. There is literally no mention of his taxi business in the local newspaper, The Madison Eagle. Richard White was a member of Tyrian Lodge # 34, a Masonic Lodge for Black men; the building at 118 Spring Street was also listed in the Green Book as a social hall.
