Lynching Of Black Man Announced In The Newspaper Before It Happens

 

June 26, 1919, the White people of Ellisville, Mississippi convicted a Black man and authorized his death on this day. His only crime was that he had a girlfriend who was also a White woman.

This was the Jim Crow South where the greatest crime was a Black man looking at a White woman so, one can imagine the rage White people felt knowing that a Black man was enjoying a relationship with a White woman.

The newspapers of the day attempted to make the lynching a perfectly justified action by writing that John Hartfield’s girlfriend Ruth Meeks was an 18-year-old innocent who had been ravished by a brute, but the facts were that two White men had seen Meeks and Hartfield together at the hotel he worked at in the town of Laurel. Meeks was in her mid-20s as well.

Initially, the men chased Hartfield and with the help of the sheriff in Laurel put Hartfield on the run. For ten days he avoided capture by the mob but when Sheriff Harbison of Ellisville requested bloodhounds and they were provided it ended the chase.

Hartfield was shot in the shoulder and then dragged back to Ellisville. The newspapers reported that a White doctor had cleaned his wound and ruled him fine to be jailed. Except there was no plan for him to be jailed as newspapers from Louisiana to Alabama had the headline, “Hartfield Toi Be Lynched At 5 O’Clock” Another said “3,000 Will Burn Negro”

That is what happened along with other heinous torture. Reports from witnesses state that Hartfield was drug behind a horse to a gum tree outside of town. There he was lifted into the air and riddled with bullets before being set on fire.

To give an idea of how vicious and brutal the period was there were postcards printed with images of Hartfield and his toes and other parts were cut off as souvenirs.

When contacted before the lynching Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo, an avowed member of the Klan, stated there was nothing his office could do. “We’re powerless,” Bilbo said ahead of the murder. “We don’t have troops and furthermore excitement is at such a high that if we tried to interfere doubtless it would end with hundreds of deaths. We cannot stop the inevitable.”

No one was ever arrested for the violent murder of Hartfield and there was of course no investigation.

 

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/737984011/?match=1

https://theclio.com/entry/22740

https://eji.org/news/lynching-survivor-mamie-lang-kirkland-returns-to-mississippi/