To win elective office in borough, but he lost in recount

After two weeks of court appearances and ballot counting, the official and final result came in.

“Warren Wins Over Negro by One Vote,” asserted the Eagle in its headline on Oct. 3. Warren went on to win the general election and represent the 1st Assembly District.

Educated, middle-class blacks of early 20th century Brooklyn never doubted that the election was stolen from Franklin Morton.

In the Queens race, Caban declared victory, leading the unofficial count by 1,100 votes, but after a tally of the paper ballots came in, Katz opivertook her by 20 votes. That lead was later narrowed to 16 and then, on Friday, by one vote, but the official recount results is still a week or so away.

While some may say that the details of Queens and Brooklyn races are similar, 1920 was a very different time, culturally and politically, in New York City.

For one, the men who were contending 99 years ago were Republicans.

Morton, like many blacks, was a faithful member of the Republican Party, which was still respected by blacks as the party that fought to end slavery. What’s more, the black presence in Brooklyn was relatively tiny back then. The Great Migration of blacks from the South had only begun to intensify; and blacks did not have sufficient numbers to make their protests heard across the borough and the city. It wouldn’t be until 28 years later that Assemblyman Bertram Baker became the first black elected official in Brooklyn.

On a personal level, Franklin Morton carried the lessons of that 1920 race deep within him for the rest of his life. He became a heavy drinker, for one thing.

“He couldn’t go to court unless he had a drink and he’d stop shaking,” his son, the late New York State Supreme Court Justice Franklin Morton Jr., once said. Justice Morton said his dad “was cheated” out of the Assembly seat in 1920. “It was because he was black and because the other guy had more power in the party,” he said.

Ron Howell is the author of “Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker” (Fordham University Press, 2019).