The Black Man Who Looked Too Much Like Abraham Lincoln

The name of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, is inextricably linked with African Americans.

Lincoln was elected president in 1860 on a platform of prohibiting the spread of slavery into U.S. territories, like Kansas and Nebraska, that had not yet become states. His most famous single act during the Civil War was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which effectively shut the door on American slavery forever. Lincoln himself viewed signing the Proclamation as the most consequential act of his presidency—and perhaps of his life.

As he lifted his pen to affix his name to the document, Lincoln remarked to the group gathered around him to witness this historic event:

I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.

Abraham Lincoln as he signed the Emancipation Proclamation

Ever since that moment, Abraham Lincoln has been revered in the United States and throughout the world as the Great Emancipator. And it’s all because of his commitment to freedom and full citizenship rights for African Americans. In fact, Lincoln was murdered by John Wilkes Booth specifically because he publicly advocated for allowing African Americans to vote.

But in 1940, in the nation’s capital, there were some influential people who hadn’t yet figured out the connection between Abraham Lincoln and African Americans. For them, the idea that Lincoln and his legacy might be represented by a black man was something they just couldn’t stomach.

A Contest to Find a Lincoln Look-Alike

It all started with a publicity campaign organized around the opening of the film Abe Lincoln in Illinois starring Raymond Massey as the young Lincoln. The film’s premier, on January 22, 1940, was sponsored by the Newspaper Women’s Clubas a charity benefit, and was to be held at the RKO-Keith’s Theatre in Washington. An impressive array of celebrities would be in attendance, including not only the film’s star, Raymond Massey, but also the First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt.

This was to be a huge event, and to draw even more attention to it, the Washington Daily News, in conjunction with the RKO-Keith’s Theatre, decided to have a contest to find the Washington resident who looked most like Lincoln in his early days. Hundreds of photographs were received, and finally a winner was chosen.

And the Winner Is…

The man selected as looking most like Abraham Lincoln was Thomas P. Bomar, a forty-seven-year-old Washington attorney. He was invited to meet the judges at the exclusive Carleton Hotel, and they were highly impressed. Not only did Bomar closely resemble Lincoln in his facial features, but in the rest of his body as well. He was tall like Lincoln, and had large hands with long fingers like Lincoln did. Even his hair looked like Lincoln’s. The judges gushed that Bomar looked more like Lincoln than did the film’s star, Raymond Massey. In fact, they said, he could have been Lincoln’s twin brother.

Bomar was given two front-row tickets for the premier, and was told that he would be called to the stage and presented with a check for $25. He would even get to appear along with Massey on a radio broadcast from the stage.

The judges gushed that Bomar could have been Lincoln’s twin brother!

The Winner Turns Out to Be Black!

But everything changed when someone noticed Bomar’s address. It was 132 S Street, N. W. It was that “N. W.” that caught the contest organizers’ attention. It indicated that Bomar lived in an African American section of Washington. Suddenly the contest managers lost all their enthusiasm about highlighting this close double of the 16th president. The man looked almost exactly like Lincoln, but wasn’t his skin just a shade too dark?

Jim Crow Rears Its Ugly Head

As far as the officials of the theater were concerned, the fact that Thomas Bomar looked white but was actually black was an absolute disqualification. That was because the RKO-Keith’s Theatre was a totally segregated “Jim Crow” facility. Blacks were not allowed to attend.

African Americans Picket the Theater to Protest Segregation

The irony of a movie about Abraham Lincoln being premiered in a theater that excluded African Americans because of their race was not lost on Washington’s black population. The Washington Civil Rights Committee refused to allow that travesty to proceed without a protest, and set up picket lines at the entrance to the theater.

Some of the dignitaries scheduled to attend expressed their abhorrence of segregation by pointedly refusing to cross the picket lines. As reported in the Baltimore Afro-American for February 3, 1940, p. 24, Congressman Vito Marcantino of New York and ex-Congressman John T. Bernard of Minnesota, publicly turned their tickets over to the executive secretary of the New Negro Alliance rather than attend the show.

However, one who did cross the picket to attend was the most prominent dignitary of them all.

Eleanor Roosevelt Makes a Decision She Later Regrets

Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was known for advocating equal treatment for African Americans. She was well aware of the injustice of enforced racial segregation. But for some reason, she decided to walk past the picket lines of African Americans protesting the segregation that was being enforced in the very theater she was entering. The Washington Post reported that in order to get her past the picket lines, the police had to clear a path.

Here’s a photo showing Mrs. Roosevelt crossing the picket line.

Police locked hands and forced a path through the crowd for Mrs. Roosevelt. Everybody cheered.

But Eleanor Roosevelt afterward felt compelled to admit that she was highly conflicted about her decision to cross a picket line to attend a segregated event. She wrote about her distress in her syndicated daily newspaper column, “My Day”:

“I reached the theater last night to find it picketed by the colored people who are barred from all District of Columbia theaters except their own. I have been in many theaters in the deep South where colored people are admitted, even though segregated. It seemed to me particularly ironic that in the nation’s capital, there should be a ruling which would prevent this race from seeing this picture in the same theater with white people.”

Even Eleanor Roosevelt Didn’t Really Understand the Damage Inflicted by Segregation

But in her next statement, Mrs. Roosevelt revealed that she didn’t yet fully comprehend how demeaning segregation was to African Americans:

“It may not have been quite fair or wise to picket this particular show, because the house had been taken over by an organization for a charity and the organization had a right to sell its tickets to whomever it wished.”

That apparently was her rationalization for going into a segregated theater with black people picketing outside.

Eleanor Roosevelt Has Second Thoughts About Attending a Segregated Event

But Mrs. Roosevelt’s mind was still unsettled. As the evening progressed, she couldn’t forget the protesting African Americans who were denied the right to even enter the theater where she sat:

“I could not help feeling that there was another question here of unjust discrimination and it made me unhappy. This occurrence in the nation’s capital was but a symbol of the fact that Lincoln’s plea for equality of the citizenship and for freedom, has never been quite accepted in our nation… There are basic rights, it seems to me, which belong to every citizen of the United States and my conception of them is not a rule in the nation’s capital which bars people freed from slavery from seeing in a public place one of the greatest dramatic presentations of that story.”

It seems that despite her rationalization that the organizers of a “charity” affair had the right to discriminate against African Americans, Eleanor Roosevelt’s conscience couldn’t escape the conviction that it was wrong.

With all this going on, it’s unlikely that Mrs. Roosevelt was even aware of what was happening to the winner of the Lincoln look-alike contest.

Focused as she was on what was happening on the picket line outside, it’s unlikely that Eleanor Roosevelt knew about the drama being played out inside the theater because a black man had been chosen as Abraham Lincoln’s double.

Let’s Just Forget the Whole Thing!

When Thomas Bomar arrived at the theater, along with his daughter, they were allowed to enter, apparently because they looked white and so were not stopped at the door as any person who was identifiably black would have been. Besides, with the contest having been widely publicized, it would have been a little awkward for the theater, already under fire for its bigotry, to kick out the contest winner because of his race.

Once inside, however, the Bomars found themselves not on the front row, as the tickets they had been given indicated, but in row #5. And somehow, the cue for him to go up on the stage to receive his reward for winning the contest never came. A brief announcement was quietly made that Bomar had won the contest, and that was all. In the notice given to newspapers identifying him as the winner of the Lincoln look-alike contest, Bomar’s all-too-revealing address in the black section of Washington was pointedly omitted.

A newspaper report on the incident published at the time says:

“Mr. Bomar declares that the film officials were most cordial and polite in their treatment, but the theatre management was entirely different and the treatment accorded him by the News was cool once it was definitely established he was colored… Mr. Bomar is elated over his success in competition and is loud in his praise of the film company, but doesn’t have such cordial feelings for the management of the local theatre.”

Thomas Bomar Has the Last Laugh

Although he had been disrespected and shunted aside by the theater because of his race, Thomas Bomar refused to allow that attempted racial putdown to define him. He went on with his illustrious career.

Born in 1892, he worked for the Post Office from an early age as a letter carrier and railway mail clerk. He continued as a postal worker even after receiving his law degree from Howard University Law School, and in 1939 was elected national secretary of the National Alliance of Postal Employees, the black postal workers union. Bomar went on to serve as the union’s general counsel from 1957 to 1970. He also maintained a private law practice in Washington.

With his professional qualifications, Thomas Bomar began to rise in the management ranks of the Post Office Department.

On February 13, 1947, an entry appears on U.S. President Harry Truman’s calendar for the chief executive to meet with Mr. Thomas P. Bomar, Assistant District Superintendent-at-Large, Railway Mail Service. Then, in 1952 Bomar, already the highest-ranking African American in the Post Office Department, was promoted to Assistant General Superintendent of the Postal Transportation Service.

Thomas P. Bomar died in Washington, DC, in 1974.

Further Reading:

• Perry Mason: The Case of the Silent Black Judge
• The Nat King Cole Show: First Black-Hosted TV Variety Show
• How the “Peanuts” Comic Strip Got Its First Black Character
• Real Shoeshine Man Leroy Daniels Danced With Fred Astaire in “The Band Wagon”

© 2022 Ronald E. Franklin