Meet legendary family in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas

Mixing within the grand open areas of the College of Texas Legislation Faculty final yr, the descendants of Oral Rochester “O.R.” Lott Sr. and Viola Madison Lott greeted each other with distinctive heat.

The distant reminiscences of these ancestors, born of former slaves within the 1890s and builders of a thriving lumber and housing enterprise in East Austin, lingered among the many oldest company.

But the assembled progeny had been really current to salute that historic couple’s son, the late Virgil C. Lott Sr., the Austin American-Statesman reported.

In 1953, Virgil turned the primary African American to graduate from the College of Texas Legislation Faculty. As a part of a distinguished profession of public service, he was additionally the primary African American to sit down on the bench of a courtroom in Austin.

Since 2011, the UT regulation faculty has given out the Virgil C. Lott Medal to honorees who “made vital contributions to the authorized career and to the advance of understanding amongst all peoples.”

A few of the recipients have been former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court docket Wallace B. Jefferson, former Texas State Sen. Rodney Ellis, former U.S. Commerce Consultant Ron Kirk and Myra McDaniel, the primary African American secretary of state of Texas.

Freshly lionized this night was Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP and former appearing dean of Texas Southern College’s Thurgood Marshall Faculty of Legislation.

The Lott household had been significantly delighted by a brand new plaque that reminded company of Virgil’s accomplishments, and so they gathered in small and enormous teams across the memorial for images.

Starting in 2011 with a narrative on the sprawling Limón/Estrada dynasty, which counts hundreds of Central Texas members, Michael Barnes has written in regards to the ancestral households who’ve formed our area over the course of generations. They’ve included the Koock-Kuykendall-Faulk clan, most related to Inexperienced Pastures, the Callahans of normal retailer and rodeo fame, the restaurant-running Lungs, Bertha Sadler Means’ prolonged relations and the Saldañas of South Austin. They’re among the many historic articles collected in his three volumes of “Indelible Austin” books.

“My father pioneered a bit of the black progressive motion throughout some very darkish occasions,” says Virgil’s daughter, Joycelyn Lott Toliver. “His rapid plan was to easily graduate from regulation faculty, however the huge payoff was larger than Daddy. Whereas pushing via the racism and present process the worst of circumstances, he created a secure house on the UT Legislation Faculty for blacks to be taught and develop — generations past his desires.”

In Austin’s ancestral households, a key determine or figures usually have a tendency to face out as early group leaders. These leaders’ descendants reap the advantages, which may spur their very own accomplishments on an excellent bigger public stage.

Early within the 20th century, Oral and Viola Lott performed that essential household position for the Lott household.

Oral owned the Lott Lumber Co. as one of many largest black-owned lumberyards in Texas. Oral was very a lot concerned in onsite homebuilding, not simply in Austin, however in Bastrop and Williamson counties.

Viola dominated over an prolonged brood with a agency hand.

“When she stated be there,” Toliver remembers, “you had been there.”

Viola was the daughter of a outstanding Methodist minister in Austin. Oral and Viola married on New 12 months’s Eve 1913 in Austin and so they lived for a number of years in Cologne, however Viola was depressing and needed to maneuver again to Austin, the late Ira Lott informed their grandchild, in accordance with relations.

Toliver additionally has helped put collectively genealogical data of Viola’s household, the Madisons, which incorporates black and white members. She additionally organized reunions.

One member of this familial department, Henry Inexperienced Madison (1843-1912), was a farmer and policeman who homesteaded a cabin in East Austin along with his spouse, Louise Madison. It dates to 1864 on the newest.

The cabin was found throughout the partitions of a picket body home throughout demolition. Because the American-Statesman reported as a part of its Austin Untold Tales sequence in 2015, the property’s proprietor in the course of the late 1960s, Mrs. Greenwood Wooten, donated the cabin to the town. She cooperated with the Rosewood Recreation Affiliation and the Delta Sigma Theta service sorority to take the cabin aside and put it again collectively in 1973 in Rosewood Park, the place it may be seen right this moment, a concrete monument to the bigger Lott household historical past.

“I really like the roots of our household,” Toliver says. “When you’re gone, you’re gone, and no one else is aware of this household historical past.”

Born in 1893, Oral introduced a few of his nation methods — picked up throughout his youth in a freedom colony of former slaves and their descendants at Cologne, not removed from Victoria — into the town.

“He cherished his horse,” Toliver says of the person she remembers as “Massive Daddy.” “And within the lumberyard, the place everyone labored, the wooden smelled so good. We performed across the again aspect.”

In 1921, Oral invented a collapsible ironing board; his utility for a patent was reported within the Victoria Day by day Advocate. He’s known as “O.R.” in newspaper ads for the ironing boards.

Members of the family remembered how Oral had met Booker T. Washington in Austin on considered one of his excursions all through the southern states selling industrial and agricultural training and that that was what prompted him to later attend Tuskegee Institute, majoring in development.

Lott met J.E. Mosby in 1914 at which era he shaped a enterprise relationship and a partnership often known as Mosby and Lott. A few of their preliminary endeavors concerned salvaging constructing supplies from buildings and houses within the geographic areas across the Capitol constructing and UT, in accordance with relations. They operated in downtown Austin.

After the 1928 city plan created a separate Negro District in East Austin, the Mosby and Lott firm was compelled to maneuver.

Oral constructed homes, a few of them for his six youngsters, all situated not removed from the others.

“All people had a home,” Toliver says, “however they needed to pay for it.”

The Lotts had been among the many major builders of McKinley Heights, an upscale postwar African American neighborhood within the Rosewood space, the place lots of the pioneers of the fashionable civil rights motion lived in proximity, there and within the Grant Park subdivision not far-off.

“Massive Daddy’s firm constructed an entire subdivision,” Toliver says. “All people lived on the east aspect till they acquired the cash to depart.”

In 1930, Oral was elected as the primary president of the Negro Residents Council, which for many years was a vital energy dealer within the metropolis. The principle purpose early on was to win primary companies for East Austin.

In 1936, Oral purchased out Mosby and the enterprise turned Lott Lumber Co., which continued to thrive till Oral’s loss of life in 1952.

A doer, Oral was, in accordance with household lore, “the person with a plan.” He even deliberate his legacy.

“He requested my father to handle the household earlier than he died at Holy Cross Hospital,” Toliver says. “He trusted him.”

That son, Virgil, like the remainder of the household, labored within the lumberyard.

Born in Austin in 1924, Virgil graduated from the outdated segregated L.C. Anderson Excessive Faculty earlier than serving with valor within the Military throughout World Warfare II within the U.Okay., France and Belgium. In 1949, he earned a level in enterprise administration from Samuel Huston Faculty, now Huston-Tillotson College.

In Austin, Virgil adopted within the footsteps of Heman Marion Sweatt, who opened up the UT Legislation Faculty — and all graduate {and professional} packages within the South — to integration by way of the groundbreaking 1950 U.S. Supreme Court docket choice Sweatt v. Painter.

But the stress and trauma of the years-long case affected Sweatt’s bodily and psychological well being. He missed courses and failed others. In 1952, he withdrew from regulation faculty.

The strain affected Virgil, too.

“Watching him, I noticed what a strong-willed and brave man he was,” Toliver wrote in a private memoir for the American-Statesman’s “Tales of the Metropolis” sequence in 2012. “There have been days and nights on finish when he and Heman Sweatt — I referred to as him Uncle Pink — would examine at our home in East Austin, and we youngsters weren’t allowed to make any noise. I keep in mind going with him to the regulation faculty library and seeing extra books than I had ever seen. I felt like something you needed to know on Earth was in that library!”

After leaving regulation faculty, Sweatt earned a grasp’s diploma from Atlanta College in social work and remained concerned in civic teams, together with the NAACP and the Nationwide City League. The Travis County Courthouse, the place the historic case was first heard, is known as after him.

Virgil persevered in Austin and graduated from UT Legislation in 1953. He was named a municipal decide in 1966 and remained lively in civic life, together with serving as founding president of the Capital Metropolis Lions Membership, the primary department of that service group in East Austin.

Virgil’s spouse, whom he met in school, was no much less lively. Gloria Olivia Lott was among the many first African American ladies employed by the Texas State Employment Fee. In line with Toliver, she volunteered in the neighborhood and her church and was one of many founding members of the Austin chapter of the Jack and Jill Basis, together with African American leaders Bertha Sadler Means, Ada Collins Anderson, Mattie Bell, Ella Mae Johnson, Willie Mae Kirk and others.

Virgil by no means forgot, nevertheless, the highway he had taken to civic management.

“Actually, my dad’s first two semesters in regulation faculty had been spent within the basement of a constructing close to the Capitol, the place UT had rapidly organized instruction for my dad and Henry Doyle, who later turned a decide in Houston,” Toliver says. “This ‘separate however equal’ regulation faculty was the preliminary response to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall — who later turned the primary African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court docket — difficult the segregation of upper training in Texas.”

Virgil’s life was not nearly his profession. He performed steadily along with his three children — his solely son, Virgil C. Lott Jr., died in a automotive accident in 1964; his different daughter, Adrienne Lott Reeder, now lives in Houston — and he favored to golf and fish, particularly at household retreats close to the Gulf Coast. For her half, Gloria cherished ballroom dancing with civil rights pioneer Volma Overton Sr.

The household attended Wesley United Methodist Church, the house church of many East Austin leaders. Virgil served as legal professional for David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, one other main congregation.

“At some point once I was in my father’s workplace, he put me on the cellphone with then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who later turned vp after which president,” Toliver says. “I keep in mind after we took Dad to the airport to catch a Braniff Airways aircraft to go to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.”

Virgil died in 1968 at age 43 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, not removed from the neighborhoods that his household helped construct.

A lot was anticipated of Joycelyn Lott Toliver, a resident of Spherical Rock, a lot because it was for the Lotts that got here earlier than and after her — a guide could possibly be written about this prolonged and completed household.

“I used to be very disciplined,” she says. “I didn’t need to disappoint my dad and mom. I used to be in Woman Scouts, the guide membership, Sweet Stripers. I used to be a majorette on a regular basis in junior excessive, highschool and school. Ooooh, that was enjoyable. I used to be elected Miss Kealing Junior Excessive and was a Younger Democrat, too. I had an image of me and Mrs. Roosevelt with Ada Anderson, Zeta Allen and Bertha Means.”

An avid reader like her father, Toliver earned a level in sociology from what’s now Tennessee State College, established in 1912 because the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Regular Faculty for Negroes. She labored in knowledge processing whereas her first husband, Eddie Dotson Jr., a product of a middle-class East Austin household, flew planes within the Air Power.

Toliver moved again to Central Texas when her brother died.

“Austin? I’m transferring again to Austin! We’re by no means leaving the realm once more!” she remembers saying. “We moved to Spherical Rock in 1974. They didn’t have any visitors lights again then.”

Toliver and Dotson, had two youngsters, Ericka Nicole Dotson, who owns a series of 19 hair extension boutiques within the U.S. and Africa referred to as Indique Hair, and Eddie “Tre” Dotson III, who just lately opened Liberty Barbecue in Spherical Rock with John Brotherton after working for years within the Central Texas hospitality enterprise. Ericka’s salons have been closed in the course of the coronavirus disaster, however she stories sturdy on-line enterprise, whereas Tre’s joint is working supply and curbside pickup choices.

As profitable because the siblings have turn out to be, their youths took some detours. Their dad and mom — Joycelyn and Eddie Jr. — had constructed a comfy life in Spherical Rock, however they grew aside and divorced in 1986.

Eddie Jr. withdrew altogether to a trailer in Menchaca and led an remoted life till he disappeared from the Austin space round 1990.

In line with a 2009 American-Statesman story, the household, together with Eddie Jr.’s aunt, Robbie Overton, spent the subsequent 29 years searching for him. Seems he had lived with some associates in California till he skilled homelessness earlier than a Los Angeles Instances columnist found him residing beneath a freeway.

With the journalist’s assist, Ericka and Tre had been capable of find their father and convey him again to stay in Ericka’s unused condominium close to the Pennybacker Bridge. He died in 2014.

For her half, Joycelyn married Marshall Toliver, who was born and reared within the St. John’s group on the border of Caldwell and Bastrop counties, in 1990. Inside an internet of East Austin and rural associates and relations, the couple had recognized one another peripherally for many of their lives.

A fascinating storyteller with a straightforward chuckle — inclined to separate her narratives into related anecdotes — Toliver prefers to not speak an excessive amount of about herself. She is happy with her complete household, however repeatedly places the highlight again on her father and the modifications she noticed whereas rising up.

“Witnessing these occasions and the best way my dad interacted with all individuals, black and white, wealthy and poor, made me understand that an individual could be whomever she or he needs to be, and every individual can certainly assist change the world,” Toliver wrote in 2012. “In the present day, my husband and I stay in a various group of a number of ethnic teams. I usually surprise the place I’d be right this moment if it had not have been for the pioneers, like my father, who fought for our civil rights and confirmed us the best way.”