In June 2022, the Christian Street/Black Doctors Row Historic District became Philadelphia’s first historic district based on Black history. The designated area spans from Broad Street to 20th Street. It grants protection to the structures remaining from 1910 to 1945, the era when Christian Street boasted the city’s highest concentration of African American professionals and was the locale of many important Black institutions. Among these was the Quaker City Lodge, a thriving chapter of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World (IBPOEW) or the Black Elks. Exalted Ruler John Miller Marquess was the chapter’s leader from 1930 until his sudden death in 1936. Marquess’ life story is fascinating in itself, but also because of what it reveals about 1930s African American life on and beyond what the Philadelphia Tribune called “Black Main Street.”
Beginnings
Marquess was born in rural Arkansas in 1882. John was an excellent student, but lacked the skills required for life in the countryside. According to an obituary, Marquess “had an interest in hunting—but couldn’t shoot with the accuracy of a palsied octogenarian seated atop a bucking bronco.” The description continues, “Efforts, frantic at times, to teach him the technique of milking a cow were futile.”…