South Bend, Chicago and Little Rock · 1945–1986
Black alcoholics were let into AA on terms, one step at a time. Where they weren’t let in at all, they started groups of their own.
“…the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking and that creeds, races, sects, or social divisions have no place in the fellowship.”
After the first Black groups of 1945, in St. Louis, Chicago and Washington, more followed: Los Angeles and Cleveland in 1946; Harlem, Philadelphia and Cincinnati in 1947; and in the South, Valdosta, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Crowley, Louisiana, by 1949. By 1952 Ann M., who had made it her work to help AA reach Black alcoholics, knew of about 25. Some began because the white groups nearby wouldn’t take Black members, or took them only on terms. AA made no rule about it. Bill W. had written in 1943 that he told each group to “abide by the wishes of the majority of its members” (The quarter mile tells of his letter).
In South Bend, Indiana, in 1948, Jimmy M., who worked at a dry cleaner’s, and Bill H., once her brother’s drinking companion, called AA three days apart. Each was told there was no “set-up for colored people.” A white member, Ray M., made the call anyway and sponsored them both. At first they couldn’t come to meetings, open or closed. When a white home let them in, they sat in the kitchen, listening from there, and were given broken cups. Six or seven months on, Earl R., who had started Chicago’s Evans Avenue Group, came to speak at an open meeting, and after that the two could come to open meetings, to listen and not to talk, their sponsor told them. Some speakers turned away rather than shake their hands.
Around 1950, once more Black members had come in, they started a group in South Bend and called it the Interracial Group, a name chosen, Jimmy said, to give white members “a hint” that Black members would be there. In Chicago the Grapevine counted nearly 300 Black members among the city’s 5,000 in 1951. Chicago’s groups were organized by neighborhood, so most of them were in five groups on the South Side, with a sixth in Evanston. They went to the citywide meetings and served on the committees that ran AA across the city.
In the South it took longer. In Little Rock in 1962, Joe McQ., a drifter from Louisville, tried the city’s only treatment center for alcoholics and was turned away; it was for white men only. Black alcoholics were sent to the Black section of the state hospital, near Benton. White members of AA held a meeting there, and Joe went for the thermos of fresh coffee and the carton of cigarettes they brought. He asked the speaker, Charles C., to sponsor him, and counted March 10, 1962, as his sobriety date. In town, a white group let him come to its meeting if he didn’t come early, didn’t stay after, and didn’t drink the coffee.
Joe kept coming. With Theodoshia Cooper, a social worker at the hospital who wasn’t an alcoholic, he started Little Rock’s first Black meeting, at Wesley Chapel, near Philander Smith College. Three white members quietly began going to the meeting on the hospital’s Black ward, and as a 2005 article about Cooper told it, that made it the first integrated AA meeting in Arkansas. Joe went on to teach the Big Book across the country (Legacy, in Suggestions Only, tells how).
It’s 1962, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Joe McQ., a drifter from Louisville, has been turned away from the city’s only treatment center for alcoholics. It’s for white men only. So he ends up in the Black ward of the state hospital.
White members of AA hold a meeting there, and Joe goes because they bring a thermos of fresh coffee and a carton of cigarettes. He listens to their stories, and he gets sober.
Back in town, a white group agrees to let him come to its meeting, on terms. Don’t come early. Don’t stay after. And don’t drink the coffee. Joe keeps coming. He helps start the city’s first Black meeting, and in time he teaches the Big Book across the country.
One group at a time
Six places, and the terms Black alcoholics met in each, from a group of their own to a seat in the kitchen.
Quotations keep the words of their time; the page’s own words say Black. Members are named as the sources name them, by first name and initial.
1945 · St. Louis
The white groups kept Black alcoholics out of their meetings, the new group’s secretary wrote to New York that October, but agreed they could form one of their own.
AA-1, five members to start
Glenn C., 2017, from Torrence S.’s letter; Bob P., 1985
Mid-1940s · Cleveland
A white member brought a Black woman to the Lake Shore Group. She could be in AA, they told him, but had to go to a different group. “She was the only one,” he said, “so we had to form a group for her.”
About fifteen, on Cedar Avenue
Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers
1947–1948 · Akron
A Black alcoholic at St. Thomas Hospital wasn’t allowed on its ward for alcoholics. Visiting Akron in 1947, Bill W. and Dr. Bob made a point of seeing him.
Sister Ignatia and Dr. Bob got the rule changed in 1948
Francis Hartigan, Bill W., 2000
1948 · South Bend
No meetings at first, open or closed. In a white home, a seat in the kitchen and a broken cup. Months later, open meetings, to listen and not to talk.
The Interracial Group, about 1950
Jimmy M., interviewed in 1993, in Glenn C., 2017
1962 · Little Rock
Come to the meeting, a white group told Joe McQ., but don’t come early, don’t stay after, and don’t drink the coffee. An earlier account puts it in his sponsor’s mouth (see Go deeper).
The city’s first Black meeting, at Wesley Chapel
Encyclopedia of Arkansas; Glenn C., 2017; Bob P., 1985
Before 1983 · Washington
When Garrett T. came into AA, Black members weren’t welcome at white meetings in Washington, so his home group, the Mideast, was a Black group, and it stayed one.
AA’s first Black trustee, 1983–87, by one account
Bob P., 1985
Let it happen
AA never made a rule about race. Each group decided for itself, and the terms changed one group at a time. Looking back in the mid-1980s, the history written for AA’s office said AA had taken no “aggressive or advocative role” on race, but had “let it happen,” and that in many places integration had come “earlier and easier than segregation.”
For a closer look
Two tellings of Joe McQ.’s terms; the argument over groups of their own; and why no one can count the Black groups after 1952.
Later accounts, from members who knew Joe and from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, say the Little Rock group set three conditions: not to come early, not to stay after, and not to drink the coffee. The history written for AA’s office in 1985 has a gentler version. Before his first meeting, his sponsor took him aside and said, “Joe, you are welcome to come to the meeting, but it would be better if you didn’t stay around for the coffee.”
Coffee and cigarettes had brought him to AA. On the hospital ward the white members came with a thermos of fresh coffee and a carton of cigarettes, and Joe, as a member he later sponsored told it, went to the meeting “just to get a cup of fresh coffee and a package of ‘ready rolled’ cigarettes.”
His wife, Loubelle (LuAnn, in the 1985 history), went to Al-Anon in the face of the same kind of resistance. Years later Joe sat on Arkansas’s Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism, which, the 1985 history noted, gave him responsibility for “the very treatment center which had refused him admittance!”
South Bend’s Black members chose their group’s name with care, as a history drawn from their memories tells it: they didn’t want a group for Black members only, any more than one for whites. They sponsored white newcomers as well as Black ones.
About 1975, with the civil rights movement stalled and some Black newcomers ill at ease in mostly white groups, Bill H. started the Interracial Group again, so they could talk openly. It met until about 1990. Two other Black old-timers opposed it, and members remembered the shouting. Brownie, as he was known, believed Black members should walk into any meeting they wanted, friendly or not. Goshen Bill, as everyone called him, sober since about 1964, held that a group for Black members only was as wrong as one for whites only.
In Washington, Garrett T.’s home group stayed a Black group. In Chicago, the 1951 Grapevine took care to say that the South Side’s groups didn’t “remain apart from the main stream” of AA in the city.
Ann M.’s count of about 25 groups in 1952 is the last. AA’s office never marked Black groups in its directories, so by 1985, the history written for it said, it was “next to impossible” to trace their growth. They were strong, it said, in northern Ohio, Detroit, Washington and Atlanta, and probably in most big cities with a large Black population.
AA wasn’t reaching Black alcoholics as it should, the history added, and that was to be the subject of a sharing session of AA’s board in January 1986. Joe McQ. believed that cultural differences kept Black alcoholics from seeking help, in AA or anywhere else.
In AA’s 2022 survey of members in the U.S. and Canada, 3.6 percent said they were Black.