Dr. Eugene Covington (1872-1929)

             Eugene Gray Covington was born in Rappannock, Virginia on August 1, 1872. His parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Holmes Covington, were both born into slavery in Virginia and were presumably freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. They rarely spoke of their lives as slaves.

            Eugene was a brilliant child whose high test scores led the principal of his segregated elementary school in Virginia to suggest enrolling him in a local Catholic school. Although the Covingtons were not Catholic, he attended the school, which was probably also segregated. When he graduated in 1895, he studied medicine at Howard University, a historically-black college located in Washington, D.C. Eugene graduated from Howard University Medical School in 1899. In a 1992 interview, his youngest son Eugene Covington Jr. claimed that his father then went on to earn a graduate degree in gynecology and obstetrics from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he played quarterback on the football team. According to Brick Young’s column in The Daily Pantagraph, quarterback Covington led the team to victory against Illinois Wesleyan University, located in Bloomington. However, Northwestern University was unable to confirm that Covington attended, let alone played on the football team. He also served an internship at Freedman’s University across the street from Howard.

            In order to support himself through college, Covington spent the summers waiting tables at a restaurant in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. It was here that he met Alice Alena Lewis of Oswego, New York, through a friend he waited tables with. They were married in Oswego in 1902 and came back to Bloomington. Eugene and Alice had three children who survived to adulthood—Girard, Eugene Jr., and Joseph— as well as one or two daughters who died in infancy.

            Covington moved to Bloomington in 1900, for reasons his family never quite figured out. It is here that he set up his first practice. He was voted into the McLean County Medical Society in 1901 and remained a member until 1910, when he was suspended from the society because he did not pay his dues. Although he was a busy and successful doctor, he often felt hardships when other doctors undercharged black patients who were otherwise able to afford the normal rate.

Covington was a member of the St. Joseph Hospital staff and also owned his own practice. His original office was located at 313 ½ N. Main Street, but eventually he moved it to a new location adjacent to his home at 410 E. Market Street. It is unknown if he had a nurse or receptionist. He also made house calls to patients who were unable to make it to the office.  One of these patients, Mrs. Caribel Washington, remembers how Covington always arrived at house calls in a car driven by his son Girard. Never did he drive, but he never arrived without the car.

He was known for being well-dressed, classy, well-spoken, and occasionally thought of as pompous. “When he stepped into a room, you knew he was somebody. You knew he was Dr. Covington[1],” recalled Mrs. Washington.

Yet racial tensions increased in Bloomington throughout Dr. Covington’s life. When Covington first arrived in 1900, the black population of Bloomington was increasing, though in nearby towns such as Normal, it was shrinking. This was probably because the leaders of Bloomington tended to be moderate or liberal reformers, and there were many job opportunities with the growing railroad industry. The city’s 800 or so African-Americans lived in relative peace throughout the city, as residential segregation was virtually unknown. However, in the 1910s and 1920s, this was changing. Residential segregation became more common, and higher education was no longer pursued by many young African-Americans in Bloomington. Very few graduated from Bloomington High School, and those who were lucky enough to avoid unemployment held limiting and menial jobs. Unflattering images of blacks pervaded the newspapers along with “blackface” minstrel shows and segregation. The Ku Klux Klan was very active in the 1920s and early 1930s as well, though there is no evidence that they threatened Dr. Covington or his family.

However, despite his success in attracting a large black and white clientele, Dr. Covington faced certain hardships on account of his race. Despite being a well-respected and talented physician, Dr. Covington was not allowed to perform surgery without having a white doctor in the room supervising him. As a young man, he was denied the chance to operate a military base hospital during World War One because of his skin color, though he was a member of the medical corps of the 8^th Illinois National Guard unit.

As one of the few African-American professionals in Bloomington at the time, Dr. Covington tried very hard throughout his life to fight back against racism. When the 1915 silent movie Birth of a Nation was released, Dr. Covington fought to keep it out of Bloomington theaters due to its romanticized view of slavery and blatant racism towards African-Americans. He also emphasized education as a way for young African-Americans to have opportunities for success. At one point, he promised a young African-American man that he would buy him a suit if he finished high school. The young man received his suit and wore it proudly on graduation day. He also requested that the mayor of Bloomington hire an African-American policeman. The policeman was hired and dismissed a few weeks later when an African-American minister suggested that his race would start a riot. As soon as he found out, Dr. Covington persuaded the mayor to give the policeman his job back, which, eventually, he did.

 He was a staunch Republican (at that time, the Republicans were the party that supported equal opportunity for African-Americans) and ran for city council in 1915, but did not get enough votes to continue to the general election. It is said that his opponents posed as his supporters and spied on his campaign meetings. Yet he supported Republican causes throughout his life. His personal motto was “malice towards none and justice towards all,” which was partially quoted from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. As a founding member of the Bloomington Republican Club, he strongly supported the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which attempted to end or significantly diminish the large amount of vigilante violence against blacks after WWI. He also participated in organizing a Negro Business Men’s Society, attended Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church and served on their trustee board, was grand medical director of the United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of Mysterious Ten, and served as major and surgeon of the Knights of Pythias in Bloomington.

His wife Alice was active as well, especially with the Progressive Club. Although the club did have social activities, the main focus was to take on civic and educational tasks. Surprisingly, she was not a member of the Three C’s social club. The Three C’s mainly consisted of elite, light-skinned African-American women, and Alice probably would have fit in well, but for some reason, she decided not to join. She was not very happy to be living in Bloomington because of how segregated it was. Once, she attended a performance at the Majestic Theater and was so bothered by the segregation that after that, she refused to use segregated facilities, such as the theater and the Miller Park Beach. Sadly, Alice died in June of 1925.

Three years after Alice died, Dr. Covington got remarried to Amanda Thomas. Amanda was divorced from her previous husband, so this news was met with a lot of unfavorable gossip from the church community. The Thomases and Covingtons were good friends even before Alice’s death and spent a lot of time socializing together. Eugene and Alice attended a Christmas party held by Amanda and her husband George in 1923, and the two couples traveled by car to Springfield in November 1924 to hear African-American orator Colonel Roscoe Conkling Simmons speak. Eugene and Amanda had no children together.

After a short illness, Dr. Eugene Covington died on February 3, 1929 at the Mennonite Hospital. In a memorial printed in an unknown newspaper, the writer stated that “Dr. Covington spent 29 years of his life in this vicinity for the sole purpose of administering relief and happiness through his knowledge gained and medicine to those concerned.” He is buried in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery next to his wife Alice.