page_title: Roscoe Simmons
section_title: Early activities
hierarchical_section_title: Roscoe Simmons / Career / Early activities
caption_attribution_description: English: handbill for an appearance by Roscoe Simmons
context_page_description: Roscoe Conkling Simmons was an American orator, journalist, and political activist. The nephew of Booker T. Washington, he is noted as the first African-American columnist employed by the Chicago Tribune and for his longtime influence on and participation in the United States Republican Party.
context_section_description: Simmons began his career as a reporter for the Pensacola Daily Press before moving to the Chicago Defender, where the growing popularity of his columns made him that newspaper's highest-paid employee and a staple of its front page. During World War I he reported from Europe on the conditions of African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. During this time he earned the nickname "the Colonel," though reportedly never left Paris, having become "distracted by its allure and its women."
  As part of a scheme by the Military Intelligence Division to elevate the prominence of patriotic black leaders as a counter to the perceived threat of subversion within the African-American community, Simmons was engaged in a nationwide series of lectures and speeches. Major Walter Loving served as his manager. Simmons quickly established a reputation for unparalleled oratorical skills, with William Jennings Bryan calling him "one of the great orators of the world." Promoted in advertisements as "America's greatest orator," W. Herbert Brewster even attributed a 1916 speech by Simmons as his motivation "to be somebody someday."
  In his stump speech "My Country and My Flag", Simmons declared:
  We have but one flag, the flag that set us free. Its language is our only tongue, and no hyphen bridges or qualifies our loyalty. Today the nation faces danger from a foreign foe, treason skulks and stalks up and down our land, in dark councils intrigue is being hatched. Woodrow Wilson is my leader. What he commands me to do I shall do. Where he commands me to go I shall go. If he calls me to the colors I shall not ask whether my colonel is black or white. I shall be there to pick out no color except the white of the enemy's eyes.
  He was a member of the Colored Knights of Pythias. He delivered the main address in the 1929 general meeting.
  In the 1920s, he worked as the editor of The Chicago Defender, a black weekly paper published out of Chicago, Illinois. While editor, he was president of the Lincoln League and helmed the Speaker's Bureau, Western Division. 
  In 1936, Simmons passed the bar and became a lawyer.
caption: A 1918 promotional handbill advertising a speech by Roscoe Simmons
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