In my research I don't think I've come across a more interesting person than Nick Chiles of Topeka, Kansas—editor, entrepreneur, hell-raiser, civil rights activist. Historians will likely give him more attention soon. In the meantime, this thread has a few Chiles highlights👇 
Chiles moved from South Carolina to Kansas in the 1880s. He made his way into public life through Topeka's black underworld, operating a saloon. By the 1890s he was enough of a presence in Topeka that white newspapers regularly complained about the "notorious negro jointist" 
In 1899 he moved into the newspaper business, launching the Topeka Plaindealer. He published it until his death in 1929. Until World War I, the Plaindealer was probably the most important black newspaper west of Chicago. 
Here are two announcements from white newspapers in Kansas about Nick Chiles' new enterprise. Notice how they describe him—"irrepressible," paying high taxes, etc.—there is a grudging respect mixed with fear over Chiles, as we will see in a bit... 
By the early 1900s he's a newspaper editor, political power broker, and involved in so many enterprises he can't be dismissed as merely a "notorious jointist." (The first two images are from Chiles's entry in a 1902 collection of biographies of successful African Americans) 
1901 is also the first time Chiles gains national attention when he posts bail for Carrie Nation (the radical prohibitionist who literally destroyed saloons) and publishes her newspaper. Nation knew that Chiles was a saloon-owner, but she explained it away with the Bible: 
Chiles had a penchant for publicity, but he usually preferred to drum up publicity to shine a light on racism. In 1900, for example, he confronted South Carolina senator Ben Tillman, a virulent racist: 
Often Chiles appealed to Christianity to confront white Christians with their hypocrisy. Note the last sentence of this description of a black Methodist convention: 
In 1904 Chiles used that strategy to get national attention again when he wrote a letter to Pope Piux X asking him to speak out against mistreatment of African Americans. The Pope's somewhat supportive response was widely printed across the country and trumpeted by Chiles. 
Woodrow Wilson inspired another example of Chiles' use of Christianity to denounce racism. In 1914 Chiles contrasted "The Wilson Way" and "The Christian Way" with side-by-side columns 
The same year Chiles sent a telegram to Wilson asking him to set aside a day of prayer to stop the lynching of black people 
But for all of Chiles's provocations, the thing that REALLY set people off was in 1905 when he had the gall to purchase a home in the same Topeka neighborhood as the Kansas governor. Despite the outrage Chiles remained in the neighborhood until his death in 1929. 
In 1909 white Kansans finally felt some measure of revenge when the story of a Kansas state congressman throwing Chiles out of his office made the rounds 
Racist cartoons celebrated the incident in a Topeka newspaper and Walt Mason (soon to be a national celebrity for his humorous newspaper poems) penned a poem in which he contrasted the incident with white people's despair over having Jack Johnson as heavyweight champ 
Chiles wasn't down for long, of course. Here's how one of his good friends and fellow black newspaper editors J.B. Bass described him: 
I could go on and on, but I suppose I'll wrap this up. Chiles kept doing his thing until he died in 1929. His influence waned after World War I, in part bc black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and Kansas City Call increasingly took up the market that he used to occupy. 
Chiles was very much a capitalist who believed in black advancement through business success. But he was also a fiery opponent of racism, confronting it forcefully and publicly. Indeed, his friend Booker T. Wahington asked him to tone it down at times, but that wasn't Chiles' way 
Chiles was also a Kansan who identified with and boosted his state & region. I think that partly explains why he is somewhat forgotten today. The early-20c black leaders further east tend to receive most of the scholarly attention.
(Of course, there are some scholars who know all about Chiles--@S_L_Alexander for one)
I'm hopeful that more people will learn about Chiles, though. In Topeka just last year a group of citizens and scholars successfully petitioned to name one of the city's bridges after him cjonline.com/local/news/201… @CJOnline
Next stop: getting @Lin_Manuel to make "Nick Chiles, the Musical"🤞
Ok gotta add just one more. From 1906 when Chiles stopped by William Allen White’s office in Emporia. Along with calling out laws that allowed segregated schools in KS (Brown v Board was initiated in Topeka 50 years later) he riffed on the idea of a blacks-only heaven 
Adding to the Chiles files. In 1921 after the infamous Tulsa riots in which white mobs devastated the city's thriving black community, Chiles sent this telegram to Oklahoma's governor. Note the appeal to Christianity (source: digitalprairie.ok.gov/cdm/ref/collec…) 
