Elizabeth B. Slaughter

Miss E.B. Slaughter, of Louisville, Kentucky, is a young lady who deserves more than a passing mention. She is engaged in the millinery business, and has built up a splendid trade among white and colored patrons. Miss Slaughter learned her trade in the Millinery Department of Armour Institute in Chicago, Illinois. where she, in part, worked her way through that institution. Her store is well and neatly furnished, and she keeps on hand a line of goods that will please the best class of patrons among both races. I regard her work of great interest from the fact she is one of the first among colored ladies who have made an effort along this line. We publish a splendid picture of Miss Slaughter in this edition in the hope that it, along with this short sketch of her work and success, may inspire some other young lady to start in business of some sort. When colored people, and especially ladies, are engaged in different business enterprises, such as women take up as a means of support, white people will then be compelled to see them not only as cooks and washerwomen, but as business women and competitors. Then, too, when colored ladies can operate successful millinery stores, that in itself will at least have a tendency to make white women engaged in such business treat their colored customers with more consideration. Miss Slaughter is a graduate from the schools of this city. She is very highly respected, and I am sure that the better class of colored ladies are proud of the fact that Louisville has a colored milliner.

While she was building her business, Slaughter became involved with and eventually engaged to John V 'Mushmouth' Johnson, a notorious Chicago gambler and businessman. In 1903, Slaughter moved to Chicago, lived with an aunt and opened her shop, the Green-Lilly Millinery Company. A local newspaper described her as "an expert in making all kinds of art or fancy needle work."

In 1907, "Mushmouth" Johnson died without a will and with an estimated worth of $800,000. Following his death his sister Eudora Johnson was accused by Slaughter of maliciously slandering her character. Accusing her of being, "kept woman," "a dirty whore," "was nothing but a harlot," "a dissipated, low, and vulgar woman," and that "she was the reason for the families unhappiness." Because of this Slaughter sued his sister for $10,000 for libel and slander. The case went to trial and Slaughter was awarded $8000. During the trial it was revealed that on two occasions in 1903 and 1904 Slaughter became pregnant by Johnson. Both pregnancies ended in a miscarriage.

A little over a decade later in an article in the Chicago Defender, January 13, 1917, was an announcement that Miss Elizabeth Slaughter married Mr. T. L. Douglas on December 27, 1916 at St. Monica's Catholic Church.

Her new husband was a dapper, self-assured gentleman whose full name was Terrevous LaFayette Douglas, originally from the Bahamas. Starting off as a dentist, he arrived in Chicago where he opened up a "billiard parlour" (not a "pool hall") and then he started a cigar-making factory, and later a dental laboratory. While wooing the lovely and high-spirited Ms. Slaughter, Mr. Douglas also wrote a play, "The Carib" which played for over fifty performances at the Pekin Theater in Chicago.

In 1920, the couple moved to the city of Evanston, Illinois where they opened the "South American Art Novelty Store," where he made and imported "many South American art novelties and handmade Brazilian ebonite specialities, such as bracelets, finger rings and all kinds of jewelry, of exquisite beauty and charm for gifts of esteem." According to the newspaper article, they employed "one or two extra men and one young colored women" to manufacture the finger rings, "which he sells in 500 to 1000 lots to some of the leading retail jewelry stores in the down town district." The business was a success, and after Douglas' untimely death in 1931 at the age of fifty-five, Elizabeth took over and continued it well into the next decade.

Elizabeth died, August 5, 1956 in Evanston. She's buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth, Illinois next to her husband. The couple had no kids.

Sources: Evidences of Progress Among Colored People by G.F. Richings (11th edition, 1904); The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia edited by Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, John A. Hardin