Harlem Renaissance Boxers Emma Maitland and Aurelia Wheeldin Fought All Around the World

Written by Christopher Benedict

From Tobacco Farm to Moulin Rouge

November 16, 1926 was opening night for the rechristened Seven-Eleven Club in midtown Manhattan, 47th Street and 7th Avenue to be precise, after having been padlocked by Federal decree back in March when it was known as the Chummy Club.

An entirely African American revue was assembled for the occasion featuring a variety of singers, dancers, and comedians. The team of Emma Maitland and Aurelia Wheeldin, who had just returned from a 22-month tour of Europe in August, were placed prominently at the top of the bill as the main attraction.

Maitland and Wheeldin had wowed audiences in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland with the sensational novelty act they called Tea For Two. Don’t let the name fool you. Theirs was no dainty, demure routine intended to please discriminating socialites. The highlight of their stage show, you see, involved Emma and Aurelia boxing one another for three rounds every evening.

The fact that they were friends wouldn’t prevent them whatsoever from getting into a good scrap. One review of their Seven-Eleven appearances, which would run through into December, noted that the pair would “shake each other up rather badly, at times drawing blood.”

So intense were her nightly bouts with Wheeldin that Maitland remarked, “Those six minutes at times seem like two hours.” And yet they were both skilled defensively to the point that they managed to avoid injury no matter how hard and how often they went at it. “That’s where art comes in,” boasted Emma.

“I was brought up on a farm with seven brothers, and took part in all their sports and activities,” Maitland reflected, “of which boxing was my favorite.” Emma’s given name was Jane Chambers, born in Richmond, Virginia in 1893 to Wyatt and Cora Chambers, sharecroppers who were both descended from slaves. The children were not exempt from the arduous task of harvesting tobacco. Emma remembered having to toil away for an entire season just so that she could afford to buy a new outfit for church and two pairs of shoes, one to wear while working the fields and the other to keep pristine for Sunday worship.

It was while singing in the choir at A.M.E. Mother Zion Church that it was first suggested to Emma that she had a voice suited for the concert stage, as far flung a fantasy as that must have seemed at the time. Up to that point, she didn’t even have a formal education, something to which her father strenuously objected.

While recuperating from a fall out of a tree, Emma was visited by a priest who encouraged her to attend classes at the Rock Castle Convent where she would eventually earn a teaching certificate, not to mention the displeasure of her entire family. Nevertheless, a rebellious and determined Emma asserted, “I am through killing tobacco worms.” She yearned to distinguish herself from her siblings, who she described as “rough country folk who had no way of improving themselves mentally, physically, or financially.”

After teaching locally for three years, Emma departed for Washington DC, seeking out bigger and better opportunities in the nation’s capital. There she met and fell in love with Clarence Maitland, a medical student at Howard University. Upon graduating and obtaining his degree, Clarence wed Emma and the couple wasted little time welcoming a baby girl into the world. Sadly, Clarence contracted tuberculosis which stole him from Emma in rapid fashion. “Within one year, I was a fiancée, a wife, a mother, and a widow,” she lamented.

Leaving her daughter in the care of her parents, Emma made her way to New York City where she would soon be swept up in the raging cultural and creative revival that was the Harlem Renaissance. Maitland danced in Shuffle Along, the first Broadway musical solely conceived of and performed by African Americans, as well as a production called Follow Me. She also sang and played the role of Sister Bridge throughout a 40 performance-run of the musical How Come? at the Apollo Theatre.

In April 1924, Maitland boarded a steamer bound for Paris as a member of an all-black female ensemble that one newspaper referred to as “Brown Skin Vamps,” one of whom was her future boxing partner, Aurelia Wheeldin. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Wheeldin was born on September 18, 1902 and had studied music at Macalester College. Aurelia was pulling double duty on the excursion to France as a dancer and traveling secretary for the company run by Billy Pierce, a journalist turned dance instructor, choreographer, and booking agent who had arranged a six-month engagement for the women at the world famous Moulin Rouge cabaret.

Emma and Aurelia each later recalled the treatment they received from the spectators and crowned heads of France alike as being enthusiastic and very respectful. There was, however, one publicized occurrence wherein British actress Doris Lloyd (best known for her later film work in The Time Machine and The Sound of Music, among others) protested having to share the stage with African American performers. Llyod’s complaint fell on deaf ears, and the show went on without further incident.

During their stay in Paris, Maitland and Wheeldin made the acquaintance of Jack Taylor, a black heavyweight prizefighter whose nickname was the ‘Nebraska Tornado.’ Like Emma, Taylor was originally from Virginia. He moved to Omaha early in his career, hence his ring moniker, before emigrating to the far more racially inclusive environs of France. By the time he met Emma and Aurelia, Taylor had gone toe to toe with the likes of Bearcat Wright, Kid Norfolk, Battling Siki, and the great Sam Langford on four occasions.

Whether it was to learn self-defense so that they could fend off unwanted advances or for the purpose of incorporating pugilism into their routine, or perhaps both, Maitland and Wheeldin began a training regimen with Taylor consisting of running, brisk walking, gymnastics, and boxing basics. Emma became so proficient with the gloves, even participating in matches independent of her stage show with Aurelia, that she was presented with a ceremonial loving cup by the French Boxing Federation.

“When the scheduled six months’ contract engagement was ended, the captain of the company, Miss Emma Maitland of Virginia, and I formed the team of Maitland and Wheeldin and started a tour of Europe,” said Aurelia about opting to remain behind and continue on to Milan with their Tea For Two act after their time at the Moulin Rouge had run its course and the rest of the girls returned home. From that point on, Emma took charge of the logistical aspects such as travel and booking them into venues.

Maitland and Wheeldin Weren’t Messin’ Around

Back in America, Emma and Aurelia followed their stint at the Seven-Eleven Club at the tail end of 1926 with a run of performances to ring in the new year at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre, or as it was dubbed by the proud black community, ‘The House Beautiful.’

It was around this time that both Maitland and Wheeldin, who were being advertised respectively as the Champion Featherweight and Bantamweight Female Boxers, issued an open challenge to the self-professed European Champion, ‘Countess’ Jeanne La Mar, who had applied for a professional boxing license in New York in 1922 to no avail but successfully obtained one from the New Jersey State Athletic Commission the year after. Subsequent to this provocation, which was never acted upon by La Mar, there is no evidence that either Emma or Aurelia pursued the opportunity to fight professionally, although both were licensed to box exhibitions.

The pair took their show on the road throughout the United States and Canada in 1928, beginning with an appearance as the “Extra Added Attraction” to the Butterbeans and Susie Girly Revue at the Elmore Theatre in Pittsburgh. In the fall of that year, they brought their act to Mexico City and Havana, Cuba.

Simultaneously featured in the cast of the play Harlem at the Apollo Theatre in the spring of 1929, Maitland and Wheeldin were booked to exhibit their boxing prowess as part of a brand new revue called Messin’ Around which, according to one newspaper reporter, was aptly named as it was allegedly “a mess of the most trite and familiar musical comedy stuff.” Emma and Aurelia were singled out as the saving grace of this “noisy sideshow.” Although the aforementioned critic offered his stuffy opinion that “the spectacle of two women engaged in this form of combat is not particularly elevating,” he nevertheless commended them for giving “every evidence of being out for blood.”

From there, it was back to Broadway for Emma and Aurelia to perform in Change Your Luck at George M. Cohan’s Theatre in June 1930 and Fast and Furious at the New Yorker Theatre in September 1931. Presumably, they kept boxing in between. With Emma billed as “The Pride of Harlem” and Aurelia as “The African Dodger,” the matchup between Maitland and Wheeldin at New York’s prestigious Roseland Ballroom on 51st and Broadway on November 17, 1932 was the highlight of a tournament featuring “girl boxing bouts.”

The team of Maitland and Wheeldin toured together and boxed one another on a regular basis until 1940 when Aurelia decided to leave show business behind and begin a family. She married Ulrich Carrington, a physician who was one of a dozen doctors to co-found the Upper Manhattan Medical Group, the first African American owned and operated clinic in Harlem. They had a daughter, Joan, who became and still is to this day a jazz-oriented singer/songwriter. Joan Watson-Jones crafted a loving tribute to the legacy of her trailblazing mother Aurelia, who passed away in November 1963, on the title track of her most recent album, Choices.

“I’ve fought all over the world. I like the chance it gave me to travel,” Emma reminisced later in life. “And I have a hint to the wise. Boxing is a better reducer than dieting.” With her friend and boxing partner retired from public life, Maitland sought out the option of transitioning to wrestling, which she did for several years.

Additionally, she taught dance and gymnastics and preached the virtues of “clean living” to young women, forbidding them or anyone else for that matter from smoking in the gym or even near the premises.

Emma had befriended Wilma Soss, an eccentric and feisty widow who inherited her deceased husband’s stocks in the New York Central Railroad and, unhappy with the way chairman Robert R. Young was conducting business, was ejected from the 1955 shareholders’ meeting for relentlessly menacing the Board of Directors.

To ensure that this would not happen again the following year, Wilma asked Maitland to come along as her bodyguard. It is little wonder why Soss was permitted an uninterrupted turn behind the microphone free from harassment at the 1956 gathering, what with Emma positioned directly behind her, standing straight and tall while wringing her hands at the waist of her velvet dress and wearing a no-nonsense scowl etched across her face.

Having become a registered nurse and beloved member of the community, Maitland spent her remaining years at her Oak Bluffs summer home on Martha’s Vineyard which, in 2015, was commemorated as a historic site on the African American Heritage Trail. One woman attending the ceremony fondly recalled Emma protecting her from neighborhood bullies when she was a child and teaching her how to swim.

“I can teach, sing, act, dance, box, wrestle, or nurse,” said the multi-talented Emma, who died in 1975 at the age of 82. “Which would you prefer?”

Sources:

Jimmy Jemail. The Inquiring Photographer (New York Daily News, July 24, 1942)

Pat Waring. Welcome to the Trail, Emma Maitland (Martha’s Vineyard Times, June 24, 2015)

Joan Watson-Jones. My Mother Wore Boxing Trunks (YouTube, March 27, 2010)

Elaine Weintraub. Boxing Her Way to Equality and Justice (Vineyard Gazette, July 18, 2013)

New York Daily News, October 30, 1924

White Actress Draws Color Line in Paris (Nebraska Monitor, December 12, 1924)

Sister Team Is In Milan (Baltimore Afro-American (August 8, 1925)

Colored Girls Will Film Picture in African Interior (Topeka Plaindealer, September 3, 1926)

Local Girl Returns From Europe After Brilliant Stage Success (St. Paul Echo, September 4, 1926)

Pittsburgh Courier, September 11, 1926

Pittsburgh Courier, November 20, 1926

St. Paul Colored Girl Challenges French Battler (St. Paul Echo, January 15, 1927)

Pittsburgh Courier, December 31, 1927

Emma Maitland Learned Boxing From 7 Brothers (Baltimore Afro-American, January 14, 1928)

Pittsburgh Courier, January 7, 1928

Emma Maitland in Mexico (California Eagle, November 2, 1928)

New York Daily News, April 24, 1929

Plays Reviewed (Brooklyn Life and Activities of Long Island Society, April 27, 1929)

Harlem Girls in Boxing Tourney (New York Age, November 19, 1932)

She’s Not Hunting Fight, Just Wants to Be Set (Dayton Journal Herald, May 23, 1956)

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 25, 1956

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