12 Facts About Roscoe Simmons

Roscoe Conkling Simmons was an American orator, journalist, and political activist.

Roscoe Simmons was named after New York Republican congressman Roscoe Conkling.

Roscoe Simmons began his career as a reporter for the Pensacola Daily Press before moving to the Chicago Defender, where the growing popularity of his columns made him that newspaper's highest-paid employee and a staple of its front page.

Roscoe Simmons was a member of the Colored Knights of Pythias.

Roscoe Simmons delivered the main address in the 1929 general meeting.

In 1936, Roscoe Simmons passed the bar and became a lawyer.

Roscoe Simmons formed part of the so-called "Old Guard," a triumvirate of black party insiders that wielded significant backroom influence within the GOP and which included Perry Wilbon Howard and Robert Reed Church.

Three times elected a delegate to the Republican National Convention, Roscoe Simmons gave the second to the nomination of Herbert Hoover as candidate for the President of the United States at the 1932 convention.

In 1936 Roscoe Simmons was appointed chair of the Negro Speakers Bureau of the Republican Party, a group of prominent African-American GOP activists, by national committee chairman John Hamilton.

From 1943 until 1946, Roscoe Simmons wrote several articles for the Chicago Tribune about African-American issues.

In 1951, Roscoe Simmons was admitted, on behalf of the Chicago Tribune, to the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries; he was the third African-American to be allowed into the press gallery.

In 1936, Roscoe Simmons was baptized into the Catholic Church, as noted by a close friend.