Washington, D.C. · 1944–1947
A doctor only days sober and his wife started a group for Black alcoholics in Washington, first in a friend’s home, then in a rented room at the YMCA.
“That was the first meeting of a colored group in A.A., so far as I know.”
By 1944, AA’s office in New York had no group to send a Black alcoholic to. “We do not have a colored group anywhere,” its secretary, Bobbie B., wrote that October, “and the problem is popping up more and more every day.” In 1940 one New York group had settled on letting Black alcoholics come to its meetings as visitors (A mile long tells how).
Dr. Jim S. was a doctor’s son from Virginia who grew up in Washington and went to Howard University. He began drinking hard around 1935, about the time he lost nearly all the property his father had left him. In 1940 he learned he had filled a prescription in a blackout. He took a government job, and when it sent him to North Carolina, he was glad the county was dry; he stayed sober there about six months. Back in Washington, in another blackout, he stabbed his wife, Vi, three times with a penknife on a street corner. She told the court he was a good husband who drank too much, and that she thought he had lost his mind and should be committed. The judge held him thirty days for observation. Afterward he drifted to Seattle and a steel mill in Pennsylvania, and came home broke.
Fixing an electrical outlet for a friend, he was recognized by Ella Gant, a woman he had known years before. She wasn’t an alcoholic, but she knew a man AA had helped. A day or two later she called to ask if a man could come to see him about “a business deal,” and if he would try to stay sober that day. The man was Charlie G., a white member of AA. He talked about his own troubles, then about whiskey, and for the first time Jim felt someone understood him. Walking Charlie to the streetcar, he passed the liquor stores on both corners without a thought.
The following Sunday, Charlie and three or four others met with Jim at Ella’s home. They met a few times there and a few times at her mother’s. Ministers liked the idea but never gave them a room. The Twelfth Street YMCA, at 12th and S Streets, let them have one for two dollars a night, on Friday nights. In the beginning it was, most of the time, “just Vi and myself.” White members from other groups in Washington came to show them how to hold a meeting and make Twelfth Step calls, and when the collection was short, they often paid the two dollars.
Jim wasn’t working. Vi took care of him, and he gave six months to building the group. Its letter to the office in New York says it organized in April 1945. AA’s directory of February 1946 listed 27 members, and a year later 135. In 1947 it dropped its first name, the Washington Colored Group, and became the Cosmopolitan Group: “a group for all people, all races,” as a history written for AA’s office later explained the name.
It’s 1945, in Washington, D.C. Dr. Jim S. has been drinking hard for ten years. He has lost nearly everything, and very nearly his wife, Vi. A woman he knew years ago asks if a man can come to see him about a business deal. The man is Charlie G., a white member of AA, and he talks about his own drinking. For the first time, Jim feels understood.
The next Sunday, Charlie and a few others meet with him at her home. It’s the first meeting of a Black group in AA, as far as Jim knows. Ministers like the idea but won’t give them a room, so Jim rents one at the YMCA, two dollars a night, Friday nights. At first, most nights, it’s just Jim and Vi. White members from across town come to help, and often pay the two dollars.
By 1947 the group has more than a hundred members, and a new name: the Cosmopolitan Group.
Compare the accounts
Jim believed his was the first Black group in AA. Here is what each account says, in the order it was set down.
Quotations are short excerpts and keep the words of their time; the page’s own words say Black. Bob P.’s history was written for AA’s office in 1985 and never published; it is quoted from a transcription.
Washington, first
“This physician, the originator of A.A.’s first colored group…”
The line printed above his story. Jim himself hedged: the first meeting of its kind “so far as I know.” He gives no date for it.
“Jim’s Story,” Alcoholics Anonymous, second edition, as transcribed at silkworth.net.
Washington, first
“…his struggle to start the very first group among Negroes, his own people.”
Bill W., describing Jim’s talk at AA’s convention in St. Louis in 1955.
Bill W., “When A.A. Came of Age.”
St. Louis, January 1945
“They began with five members, but grew steadily.”
St. Louis’s AA-1 Group, which first met on January 24, 1945. The Washington group was “founded in April ’45.”
Bob P., A.A. World History, chapters 3 and 5.
Washington, still
“This physician, one of the earliest members of A.A.’s first black group…”
The line above his story, rewritten. The group is still the first; Jim is no longer its originator.
“Jim’s Story,” Alcoholics Anonymous, fourth edition.
St. Louis, Chicago, then Washington
“…a marvelous man who did heroic work in Washington, D.C.”
Its author on Jim, while holding that he was wrong to call his group the first. Chicago’s Evans Avenue Group first met on March 20, 1945, in this telling, which follows the group’s written history; the group’s website says March 1944.
Glenn C., Heroes of Early Black AA; the Evans Avenue Group.
St. Louis, Chicago, then Washington
“…the first by an African American to appear in the Big Book…”
On “Jim’s Story.” Its history, drawn from AA’s archives, puts St. Louis’s group first, from January 24, 1945, then Chicago’s, from March 20, and Washington’s, from April.
Black in A.A.: Experience, Strength and Hope.
Three cities, four months
As the later histories date them, Black alcoholics in St. Louis, Chicago and Washington started groups of their own within about four months of each other. Which met first depends on who is telling it, and when.
For a closer look
What came before 1945; the white members who helped in Washington, and the compromise in St. Louis; and Jim’s talk ten years later.
In 1940 Bill W. told two Black alcoholics he had met at an institution that they could come to meetings in New York. When they did, some members were ready to walk out, and the group settled on letting Black alcoholics attend as visitors.
In May 1940, AA’s 2024 pamphlet notes, the Sunday Star in Washington reported a “colored” group meeting on Thursday nights in a church in Arlington, Virginia. The history written for AA’s office in 1985 says it apparently didn’t last.
The first letter to the New York office from a Black alcoholic came from Pittsburgh in 1943. That same year Bill wrote in a letter that he felt “very deeply about this race business”; The quarter mile in Number One Man has the letter.
AA in Washington went back to 1939, when Fitz M., one of Bill W.’s first successes in New York, moved there and began meeting with others in an apartment. Jim’s sponsor was white, and so were the members from other groups who came to the YMCA to help. They taught the new group how to run a meeting and do Twelfth Step work, and Jim wrote that without them “we couldn’t possibly have gone on.”
Washington’s Black group met on its own too, and Jim’s story doesn’t say whether its members were welcome at the white meetings. In St. Louis the separate group came out of a compromise: by AA’s 2024 account, it kept Black alcoholics out of the white meetings, at first, but let them form a group of their own, AA-1. In September 1945 a St. Louis member, Harold W., wrote to the office in New York asking that the Grapevine hold back any publicity about the group that might stir “controversial discussions of racial problems within A.A.”
Ten years later, AA held its twentieth-anniversary convention in St. Louis. On the last day, Jim spoke at the meeting called “God as We Understand Him,” and Bill W. remembered a deep silence falling as he told his story.
By then, Bill wrote, Jim and his wife had turned their home into “a combined hospital and A.A. meeting place, free to all.” That year his story went into the second edition of the Big Book, the first by a Black member. Jim died in 1962, at fifty-eight. Vi lived to be 101.
Bill took a lesson from the talk. AA could cross seas and borders, he wrote, and it could “surmount obstacles of race and creed as well.”