1923: White Terror Causes Mass Exodus Of African Americans From Their Homes

 Dec. 30, 1923, the assault, and murder of a white woman in the community of Catcher, Crawford County in Arkansas ignited a race riot. The riot was spread out over a few days, but the ramifications are still felt nearly 100 years later

On Dec. 28, Effie Latimer was shot in the back and hit over the head with the gun. Latimer, a 25-year-old white woman, was found unconscious on the ground when a friend came to visit her that afternoon. She gained consciousness long enough to tell a doctor that she recognized her shooter as Son Bettis, a local African American farmer, adding two other men were present, though she was not able to identify them.

According to several newspaper accounts, it was in fact the doctor who gave the identity of the supposed “Negro” attacker, and he was the last to see Latimer alive. The prime suspect a Black farmer named Son Bettis stated he was innocent and picking cotton on his land near Van Buren 4 miles south. There is reason to believe Bettis had nothing to do with the assault as Mrs. Latimer’s husband had left her the week before and had taken half of their belongings. It was known they had a troubled marriage.

Bettis was arrested that afternoon and two more men were arrested. Charles Spurgeon Rucks Jr., 26, and John Henry Clay, 14, the next day. At this time Deputy Sheriff W. A. Bushmaier Jr. said he received a confession from Rucks, but Rucks stated Bushmaier lied while in court. Bushmaier did have the sense to have the men taken to Fort Smith and then Little Rock.

On Dec. 29 an angry white mob of more than 500 white citizens surrounded the jail at Fort Smith, demanding that the prisoners be handed over to them. Many others were running the Catcher and Van Buren roads threatening black residents, smashing tombstones in the black cemetery, and digging up remains of the deceased and burning them.

On December 30 the situation completely exploded in violence when Rucks's father was shot and killed by Deputy Sheriff Frederick Creekmore. Also, 11 other Black men were arrested for “Night Riding” and threatening whites.

The mob that had been seeking blood spent their time assaulting Black farmers and making threats. At least 40 families left their homes and land in Catcher and made their way to Van Buren and other towns west and east.

The mass exodus seemed to end on the 31st when no Blacks other than those arrested could be found in Catcher.

Son Bettis and Spurgeon Rucks Jr were convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair, they were executed on June 27, 1924. Clay was sentenced to life in prison; on August 16, 1928, he was found dead from exposure in a field near one of the prison camps at Cummins. 

Catcher quickly became another “Sundown Town” where a Negro found within the city limits after sundown would be arrested, possibly shot. Van Buren has one of the higher African American populations in Arkansas.

Photo: murder victim Effie Latimer, suspects Spurgeon Rucks Jr. and Son Bettis

Sources:

https://www.swtimes.com/story/news/2021/06/18/1923-race-riot-catcher-arkansas-led-exodus-black-families/7626544002/

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/catcher-race-riot-of-1923-5885/

https://blackthen.com/assault-murder-sparked-catcher-race-riot-1923/

Herbert Simmons: Just Another Georgia Lynching

 

Dec. 29, 1904, the Pike County, Georgia coroner said Herbert Simmons killed J.A. Parks and so the people of the county decided that was sufficient to hang him from a tree and fill him full of bullets, which was the style at the time.

Mr. Parks, a white man, had been brutally murdered and robbed on the evening of Dec. 27^th on his way home. He had been seen in the company of three negros according to newspaper reports. A well-respected man with strong ties to Georgia A & M (Now Georgia Tech) the community reacted with great anger towards Mr. Park's murder. The newspapers of the day do not report how the corner or the men at the inquest decided on Simmons other than he apparently lived not too far from Parks.

The constable of unincorporated Neal Georgia was taking Simmons to the county jail when they were stopped by a white mob Simmons was beaten and then taken and hung from a tree, and the mob in their rage shot him over 100 times as well.

Based on the newspaper reports, or the bias in the reporting, the mob was justified in killing Simmons and no investigation into his murder ever occurred.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/71228164/?terms=%22Herbert%20Simmons%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/616590091/?terms=%22Herbert%20Simmons%22&match=1

The Massacre At Wounded Knee: A Final Act Of Genocide

 

Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. Cavalry troops went into the Lakota encampment on Wounded Knee Creek on the Pineridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. They were supposedly there to collect weapons and the Lakota were being peaceful when an altercation between an old man named Black Coyote and two troopers broke out and his rifle went off. This sudden weapons fire reportedly caused the frightened soldiers, who were already disturbed by a man named Sits Straight starting to dance the Ghost Dance, to begin randomly firing. When they were done between 150 and 300 Sioux were dead, more than half women, children, and elderly. 25 cavalry troops were also killed, it is believed by friendly fire the way the army had circled the camp and began firing. The Ghost Dance religion had swept the plains natives over the last two years as it contained the promise of removal of the whites from the native land. This and raids on white settlements had made the Bureau of Indian Affairs take a very hard stand against the Lakota. The Lakota themselves were also on edge because of the assignation of the great chief Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting Bull) on December 15th.

The Massacre at Wounded Knee proved to be one of the last incidents in the repression of the First Nations of the Plains. The BIA attempted to portray the devastation at Wounded Knee as a battle, but later investigations and eyewitness accounts clearly established the event as a mass murder. There was no significant armed resistance, because of the weapons confiscation, and the U.S. Army combatants significantly outnumbered the Lakota.

For some reason, 20 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded for action during the massacre. In June 2019, a bill was proposed by the United States Congress to rescind the medals that were received for this action. In 1990, the United States Congress apologized to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre

https://historyguild.org/wounded-knee-shame-or-honour/

Forgotten History: The Wrongful Hanging Of Chief Two Sticks

 Dec. 28, 1894, Lakota Chief Cha Nopa Uhah (“Two Sticks”) was hung today still proclaiming his innocence. “My heart is not bad. I did not kill the cowboys; the Indian boys [meaning White Faced Horse, Fights With, Two Two, and First Eagle] killed them. I have killed many Indians, but never killed a white man; I never pulled a gun on a white man. The great father* and the men under him should talk to me and I would show them I am innocent. The white men are going to kill me for something I haven’t done.”

Chief Two Sticks had been arrested and convicted for the Feb 4th murder of four white riders for the Humphrey Ranch 30 miles north of Chadron, Nebraska.

The Humphrey Ranch immediately sent word to Captain George LeRoy Brown of the 11th Infantry. Brown telegraphed Ft. Meade near Sturgis, South Dakota and tribal police were ordered to arrest Two Sticks. When they arrived at his camp a gunfight ensued five of the policemen were killed and one was wounded.

After this first fight, a party of 25 tribal policemen went to the camp of Chief No Waters where Two Sticks was holed up and another gun battle followed. First Eagle, Two Two-, and White-Faced Horse were killed in the shootout. Two Sticks was badly wounded.

Two Sticks survived and, in the spring, came up for trial, and although their witnesses did not place him at the scene and there was no other evidence of his participation in the killing of the Humphrey riders he was still convicted.

At his hanging, Two Sticks said, “My heart knows I am not guilty, and I am happy. I am not afraid to die. I was taught that if I raised my hands to Wakan Tanka (God), and told a lie, that God would kill me that day. I never told a lie in my life.”

As the noose was placed around his neck Chief Two Sticks sang his death song. He was dropped through the trapdoor and, according to the reports, “his death was instantaneous.”

He was placed in a pine box and buried outside of the gates of the regular graveyard because the citizens of Deadwood did not want the body of an Indian contaminating their graveyard. 

On December 9, 1998, the Adams Museum in Deadwood repatriated Two Sticks’ Sacred Pipe to his great-grandson, Richard Swallow, Sr., and the Oglala Lakota Tribe in compliance with the Native Americans Graves Protection and Act of 1990.

Sources:

https://www.indianz.com/News/2009/07/06/tim_giago_the_execution_of_lak.asp

https://www.historynet.com/sioux-chief-two-sticks/

https://academic.oup.com/whq/article-abstract/52/2/225/6178604?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-42-1/reasonable-doubt-the-trial-and-hanging-of-two-sticks/4201_hall.pdf

https://www.newspapers.com/image/648857625/?terms=%22four%20cowboys%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/674941514/?terms=%22Chief%20Two%20Sticks%22&match=1

Registering To Vote Leads To Mass Evictions, Housing Crisis in Tennessee

Dec. 28, 1960, Sharecropper Early Williams, and his family had gone to sleep for the night in their tent on the farm of Shepard Towles, a Black landowner in Sommerville, Tennessee when shots tore through their tent. Williams got a minor flesh wound that was treated at the hospital in Memphis. White teens had shot up the tent whether for laughs or as a real murder attempt because law enforcement did not arrest anyone for the assault.

This was the first outbreak of violence against the Black families living in these “Tent Cities” set up on the farms of Towles and fellow Black farmer Gertrude Beasley. These encampments came into being because White landowners in Fayette and Haywood Counties evicted Black sharecropping families for having the audacity to vote.

The evictions were not the only reprisals as White-owned stores in the two counties refused to sell the evicted farmers, and banks would not provide loans or even saving accounts. White doctors and hospitals refused care and the KKK and White Citizen Councils attempted to terrorize the occupants of the Tent Cities.

According to one estimate, 345 families were displaced during the peak of the tent city movement. Most of them took refuge in donated tents on Towles’ or Beasley’s property. At this time the situation had begun to make national news and brought some heavyweight attention. On November 18, 1960, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against thirty-six landowners who had evicted their black tenant farmers. On December 14, 1960, the Justice Department filed suit against an additional forty-five landowners, twenty-four merchants, and one financial institution in Fayette County for violating the civil rights of African Americans. 

Also famed Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, a rare southern Democrat who favored Civil Rights, worked with the Department of Agriculture to investigate and provide relief. The senator got into a very public battle with the Red Cross who refused to provide assistance to the sharecroppers. “I believe in alleviating human hardship,” said Kefauver. “This is a matter about which we must search our souls and if we do, I’m sure any needs will be met.”

On July 26, 1962, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Malcolm McRae Jr., ruled that the landowners were permanently enjoined from engaging in any acts for the purpose of interfering with the right of any person to register to vote for candidates for public office.

By 1962, many African Americans including most of those forced into the Tent Cities of Fayette and Haywood Counties had registered to vote and the encampments were disbanded. “Tent City was a miserable life,” recalled Early B. Williams, who was evicted by his landlord in the fall of 1959; in “Our Portion of Hell,” a book written by a civil rights activist named Robert Hamburger. “I was never sorry I registered. I figured we’d overcome someday,” Early added.

Photo Credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust.

Sources:

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/tent-cities-of-fayette-and-haywood-counties-1960-1962/

https://www.tnmagazine.org/12103-2/

https://www.memphis.edu/tentcity/moving-shacks-tents.php

https://www.newspapers.com/image/604299129/
 

CRT History Snapshot: Negro's Body Goes Missing and No One Cares

 

Dec. 28, 1905, Athens, Alabama was no stranger to racial trouble, no part of Alabama was. On this day there was another lynching with an unsolved mystery. On this morning a mob of 100 men acted as an extra-judicial posse and began tracking a Black man from Birmingham for the alleged assault on a policeman in the small town of Elkmont. The officer, Henry Nichols, was slightly injured from a gunshot. The posse pursued Alex. McDonald through the night and brought him back to Athens early in the morning with a rope around his neck and reportedly over 100 bullets riddling his corpse. The coroner took possession of the body and promptly lost it with no report of anyone finding it. There was total indifference by local authorities to the lynching and missing body, or at least none reported in any newspaper of the time.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/242649729/?terms=%22Alex%20McDonald%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/242649729/?terms=%22Alex%20McDonald%22&match=1

History Snapshot: Gaslighting The Public To Excuse Lynching

Dec. 27, 1889, Lynching was so common in the Jim Crow South that it often barely made it into the paper and even then, it was just a few lines. The story was nearly always the same as well, White Woman Attacked. This time it was a remote part of Tuscaloosa County in Alabama. The woman was the wife of a farmer named Fowler and the suspect was one Bud Wilson. Mr. Wilson was arrested by two deputy sheriffs fifteen miles from Tuscaloosa, and while en route to the jail the party was overtaken by an armed mob of 50 men and hung from a tree while they riddled his body with bullets. The newspapers tried to make the mob into heroes for saving Mrs. Fowler from a black man who was known to be a “notoriously bad character and was wanted on several charges,” no one was ever charged in Wilson’s death.

Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/812814585/?terms=%22James%20Fowler%22&match=1

https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/2317

https://www.newspapers.com/image/272949225/?terms=%22James%20Fowler%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/812814585/?terms=%22Bud%20Wilson%22&match=1
 

History Snapshot: Lynched After Watching A Movie

Dec. 27, 1919, no Black person was secure from the White Mob once they had decided to kill someone. Even veterans were immediately suspected in crimes against whites. On this evening a WWI veteran named Powell Green got into an altercation with a theater owner, R.M. Brown, in Franklinton, North Carolina. There is no reason given for this in any of the newspaper accounts.  What is known is that Powell and Brown were arguing in the street when police arrived and when they attempted to take Powell into custody, he shot Brown. At this time the police chief loaded Powell in his car and per instructions from the sheriff attempted to take him to jail in Raleigh. However, his car was stopped by a roadblock just outside of town. The mob pulled Green out from the car and wrapped him in ropes and drug him behind a car for a half mile, not satisfied they shot him to death and then hung him from a tree.

There was a large outcry regarding the lynching and defiance of law & order from the governor’s office and an immediate coroner’s jury no one was ever cited or charged with being part of the mob and no one was charged in Powell’s brutal death, which was the 2^nd in five months in Franklin County.

Sources:

https://lynching.web.unc.edu/dhp-markers/powell-green-2/

https://www.newspapers.com/image/72349674/?terms=%22Chief%20Winston%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/650816171/?terms=%22Powell%20Green%22&match=1

 

Forgotten History: The Calumet Italian Hall Christmas Eve Tragedy

 

Dec. 24, 1913, it looked like a hard, blue Christmas in the city of Calumet, Michigan with the Western Federation of Miners striking against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. The strike had been going on for six months by Christmas and things were grim. The union’s ladies' auxiliary sponsored a holiday party at the Hall owned and operated by a mutual benefit society for Italians. Sadly, this party that was to provide emotional relief ended in tragedy.

At approximately 5 PM the ladies started the evening festivities when a large, bearded man yelled “FIRE” in both English and Austrian creating a panic. The man was never found. His alarm though caused a panic and the 400 to 700 people crowding the hall tried to escape. Like so many early 20th Century buildings the fire exits were nonexistent and the doors inadequate for the crush of such a mass of people. Worse, it was the children who got knocked down and crushed on this night.

By the time order was restored 73 people were dead including 59 children, most died of suffocation, but the coroner refused to provide a cause of death because most of those who were at the party and worked in the mines were Italian immigrants who spoke little to no English and this created an extreme prejudice. Also to a large degree, the strike was unsupported by officials because much of copper country and northwest Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula were company towns for the three large mining companies, particularly the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company.

Ladies Auxiliary president Mrs. Annie Clemenc and others felt the man who yelled fire was an anti-union activist from what was known as the Citizen’s Committee for Calumet. However, while a great many people believed this, including folk singer Woody Guthrie no one was ever able to prove such.

In the days that followed the disaster, the people of Calumet and the other mining communities raised over $20,000 to assist the families with burials and recovery. However this too became a matter of contention as The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company stockholders such as Quincy Shaw, and the Agassiz brothers gave nearly $10,000. Still, the union was against the people using it. This created a giant division between the workers and the union.

There were four investigations of the incident and the city requested the Department of Labor help settle the strike but President Woodrow Wilson told Secretary of Labor William Wilson to stay out of it.

The aftermath was another four months of a strike but it ending with the union folding. There were bitter feelings for decades. The folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “1913 Massacre” about the disaster.

  

Sources: 

https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/12/photos_from_michigans_italian.html

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/KeweenawGeoheritage/CalumetGeosites/Italian_Hall.html

https://www.newspapers.com/image/735645576/

Black Man Hung For Stealing A School Lunch

 

Dec. 22, 1896, A poor black man was apparently lynched for being hungry in Woodstock, Alabama on this day, however, newspaper accounts can’t seem to get the poor man’s name right. It might have been George James as reported in several Kansas and Illinois papers, of Charles Jones in other papers and on the Lynching Memorial in Birmingham, Alabama he is listed as James Joseph.

Regardless the man, we will call him Mr. Joseph per official record, was hung in Woodstock by a White mob for supposedly bothering a 17-year-old white girl named Fannie Smith on her way to school and asking for or trying to steal her lunch. This is a part of the story that is confirmed in all newspaper accounts. Some accounts say her dress was torn though. When Mr., Joseph was caught by the mob miles from Woodstock he confessed to stealing the girl’s lunch but denied any other behaviors. The mob took him to see the girl who stated he was the man and that he had only grabbed her lunch.

In Alabama, during the years of Jim Crow though this minor crime was considered worthy of the death penalty and Mr. Joseph was hung in front of the local store. There was no investigation or inquest, and no one was ever charged for his murder.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/87835301/?terms=Lynched&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/82463537/?terms=%22George%20James%22&match=1

https://www.al.com/news/2018/04/alabamas_racial_lynching_victi.html

https://fpsudbury.org/w111p/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Lynching-Victims-1860-1950.pdf

Deerfield Illinois Residents Vote To Block Intergration By Blacks

 

Dec 21, 1959, in a referendum, Deerfield residents voted overwhelmingly to prevent an integrated housing development in Deerfield from being completed, this followed The Deerfield, Illinois city council voting to stop integration of their white community saying they needed more parks. The suburb of Chicago is the province of affluent families led by businessmen who were reportedly more worried about property values because of who their neighbors were.

The group ‘Modern Community Developers’ led by Morris Milgram was a New Jersey development group with deep pockets but also powerful connections as they had former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt backing the development. They had also created similar developments in Philadelphia, PA, and Princeton, NJ that had not received as much attention and negative publicity.

After hearing the announcement of the intent to build with a 20 percent occupancy by Negro families Deerfield residents immediately took sides with the larger group called ‘Organized Resistance’ declaring that they had no racial bias but were very concerned about the effect of the development on the affluent suburb’s property values, which according to reports were consistently rising. The community of 10,000 did have a higher than normal, for the Chicago area, turnover as the businessmen climbed the executive ladder and moved to other locations.

Village manager Norris Stiphen stated at the time that while there was no issue with where Negros lived, he and the town board felt that there was subterfuge in the initial planning because this percentage of allocated housing was never mentioned and that they were concerned about ‘panic selling’ if housing values did begin to drop. A second group had also come forward in support of development prior to the Dec. 21st referendum. The group calling themselves, ‘Deerfield Residents for Human Rights’ advocated for the project but was by far in the minority as in the weeks leading to the referendum and subsequent park zoning designation there was a cross burning on the site.

After both the referendum vote and rezoning Milgram and his partners sued the village and eventually, that case was rejected by the Supreme Court leaving in place an appellate court ruling allowing the village to mandate the park

Today Deerfield remains a 94 percent White community with issues regarding “Affordable Housing”

Photos by: Art Shay, © Art Shay Archive

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/45405699/?terms=Deerfield&match=1

https://www.nprillinois.org/equity-justice/2018-11-15/why-is-deerfield-still-so-white

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/deerfield-district-agrees-to-rename-park-tied-to-decades-old-housing-inequality/2292418/

https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/04/12/712880913/deerfield-residents-gather-to-resolve-a-history-of-resisting-integration

Lynching of Negro Barely Makes News

December 21, 1914, White mob violence was so regular in the Jim Crow era that when it happened, and a Black person was lynched it was usually just a few lines. Such is the case with Charles Williams a Black man in Ruleville, Mississippi on this day. A mob took Williams from the local jail and hung him for the reported crimes of assaulting a local plantation manager, Thomas King, and biting off his chin. There are no other facts reported in over 60 newspapers

Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/194348285/?terms=%22Thomas%20King%22&match=1

Forgotten History: Operation Legacy When British Destroyed Its Colonial History

 December 9, 1959, the British Foreign Office sent out a memo to all their offices and all colonial offices ordering that all ‘top secret’ and “non-accountable files from colonies like Rhodesia and Kenya be burned as part of “Operation Legacy”.

Operation Legacy was a plan by British officials to keep a permanently sealed lid on their appalling human rights record in the former empire. British agents across the world. In the 23 nations bargaining and fighting for freedom from Britain in the 50s-70s MI5 went about both collecting and destroying records of incidents like the 1948 Batang Kali Massacre where British Army forces killed 24 Malaysian rubber plant workers to end a strike or all papers on the Kenyan concentration camps during the Mau-Mau uprising.

The memo detailed the destruction of all migrated records to the home office from Operation Legacy. Previously to this orders had gone out to collect these files and any files that could embarrass the military, and the royal family, the memo itself ordered the destruction or removal of “all papers which are likely to be interpreted, either reasonably or by malice, as indicating racial prejudice or bias”.

Operation Legacy had gone into effect when the British government recognized that a mass “de-colonization” movement was picking up across Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Africa following the 1947 independence of India. In fact, in 1947 there was an actual early run of this burning of files that became known as the “Pall of Delhi” when Raj officials tried to destroy all records of the occupation of the Indian Subcontinent kept in India.

It is unknown how many records were actually destroyed under operation legacy. In the 80s the rules changed and there have been some large, migrated file stores discovered but only a very small fraction of what should exist based on historical study.

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-british-empire-s-dirty-secrets-went-up-in-smoke-in-the-colonies-8971217.html

 

https://mandemhood.com/operation-legacy-how-the-british-government-destroyed-its-history/

Everything Old is New Again: The Founding of the John Birch Society

 December 9, 1958, Retired candy manufacturer Robert Welch saw communists. He saw them in the White House. He thought the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had to be one. So on this day in Indianapolis he and a few other men founded the John Birch Society to stop the spread of “Collectivism” and agitation for civil rights by Blacks.

The political advocacy society was named by Welch after one John Birch, who was an American Baptist who went to China as a missionary in 1940 but became an intelligence officer during World War Two and then was killed by Chinese Communists in 1945, in Welch’s mind he was a fervent anti-communist and the first causality of the cold war.

Welch brought in the founding members of the JBS including Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder of the Allen Bradley Company and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Fred C. Koch, founder of Koch Industries. Koch's sons, David, and Charles Koch, were also members of the JBS. However, both left it before the 1970s.

Welch was a conspiratorial thinker who coined the now ubiquitous term, “New World Order” and the belief their objective was a “'one-world socialist government.” He was against integration and believed that the Brown vs Board of Education decision was a hallmark of communist thinking and was an avowed enemy of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Welch wrote in a widely circulated 1954 statement, The Politician, "Could Eisenhower really be simply a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes." He went on. "With regard to ... Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason

Welch was also against the Civil Rights Movement.  According to the JBS, it constituted a communist plot to build a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the United States.  The “average American Negro,” according to the JBS in 1965, “has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases.” 

The radical and extremist ideas of the JBC were a rallying cry for many conservatives through the 50s and 60s but they also caused much dissension in the Republican party. Goldwater didn’t want their support, Reagan did not fully distance himself and William F. Buckley believed Welch was a dangerous nut.

During the civil disruptions of the 60s the JBS grew and grew but by 1968 the popularity was weakening and today, while still existent, it is behind groups like the Oathkeepers.

Sources:

https://politicalresearch.org/2014/01/21/john-birch-societys-anti-civil-rights-campaign-1960s-and-its-relevance-today

https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/12/09/roots-john-birch-society

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/a-view-from-the-fringe

The Ebenezer Creek Massacre: When Sherman Failed The Freedmen

 

December 9, 1864, The Union Army was supposed to be protecting and aiding the Freedmen of the south as they marched, unfortunately through panic and poor decision-making on this night dozens, perhaps hundreds of former slaves drown, or were shot to death, and more enslaved again under the Confederate forces.

In Sherman’s March to the Sea and his cutting across Georgia, it became inevitable the Union Army would collect refugees. On this date, the army was pursuing Confederate forces with Union POWs from Camp Lawton. Some 20 miles north of Savannah the Union army encountered a rain-swollen Ebenezer Creek a tributary of the Savannah River. By this time it is reported that the former slaves accompanying the army were at least 600 and might have been as much as 2000.

Knowing that they had to cross the raging creek because the Confederate forces had burned the bridge and complicating battle plans Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler was actively harassing Sherman’s rear guard.

Sherman’s corps commander Brevet Major General Jefferson C. Davis ordered the construction of a pontoon bridge across the creek and for his provost marshal to keep the Freedmen from crossing until the Confederate forces on the other side, which were not there, were dispelled. Once all of the 14,000 Union troops were across Davis ordered the pontoons cut loose. With the pressure of Wheeler coming up behind them panic rushed through the Freedmen and they rushed the water. Many drown, and others were crushed in the rush.

Some Union troops did fell trees to assist the Freedmen but Davis ordered them a shot if they continued and ordered them to march. When Wheeler’s men came up on the chaotic scene they opened fire. Davis's orders infuriated several of the Union officers who witnessed the ensuing calamity. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton received so much public pressure from the clergy that he brought the incident up with Sherman and Davis during a visit to Savannah in January 1865. Davis defended his actions as a matter of military necessity, with Sherman's full support.

 Veteran Col. Charles Kerr of the 16th Illinois Cavalry recalled the incident some 20 years after with disgust, “As soon as we were over the creek, orders were given to the engineers to take up the pontoons and not let a negro cross. . . . I sat upon my horse then and witnessed a scene the like of which I pray my eyes may never see again.”

 

Sources:

https://aaregistry.org/story/massacre-at-ebenezer-creek-a-story/

https://archive.vn/20130126024745/http://www.historynet.com/magazines/civil_war_times/3026396.html?page=1&c=y

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ebenezer-creek-massacre/

Injustice Served: Robert Wayne Holsey Disabled With a Drunk Lawyer Dies By Lethal Injection

December 9, 2014, Robert Wayne Holsey was executed by the State of Georgia While there is no denying the fact that in 1995 Holsey did in fact kill Baldwin County Georgia Deputy Sheriff Will Robinson the question is did Holsey receive the best defense and should that matter if we are seeking justice.

Two things regarding the execution of Holsey are important to note. First, he was intellectually disabled and had been severely abused as a child. During the trial, his sister talked about abuse and did so again in appeals for clemency. Whether this contributed to his development is unknown, what is well documented is that Holsey had never been able to live alone and had problems cooking for himself, handling money, or many other simple everyday life skills. He had also tested on an IQ test to have a borderline score of 70. So while he was able to drive and did have a girlfriend this did not mean he fully understand all of his actions and the consequences.

This in of itself does not warrant a lesser consequence but it is worth examining by a jury, Holsey was not granted this consideration because he was being represented by an alcoholic lawyer Andy Prince. Prince was not in fact a public defender either as Georgia did not actually have such a system until 2003 and relied on each counter to assign lawyers for the defense of indigent and poverty-stricken defendants,

Prince had been circling down the drain due to his alcoholism for a few years and had been making some extremely poor decisions. He was deep in debt, over $50,000, and he was looking at a malpractice case that could lose him his license as he had stolen from an estate, he represented over $100,000.

At the time of Holsey’s defense, Prince was drinking a quart or more of vodka a night. The attorney’s responsibilities in a capital punishment case are more than in a standard guilt trial and it takes n invested lawyer to look for an argue mitigation based on disability or other precedents; at this time Prince was lacking all necessary skill and involvement because he was doused with vodka. Also about six months into the trial process Prince had a domestic incident with his African American neighbor where he used slurs. He struggled to find a co-council as the state required and he did not challenge the selection of a juror whose son was killed in an armed robbery.

Also at the trial, the prosecution took the jury to the store Holsey was alleged to have robbed and talked to the clerk without Holsey or his lawyer present.

The prosecution painted a picture of Holsey as a rabid animal of a perpetrator. The defense mounted no defense in return failing to call witnesses. To cross-examine a DNA specialist with any authority and many other mistakes.

An appeal was made to the Georgia Supreme Court after the conviction in the initial case and they found nothing wrong

Holsey was contrite the night of his death. While his actual guilt might never be in debate the system itself failed to give him the best defense and the courts saw nothing wrong with these failures, this is a .supreme injustice.

Sources:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/alcoholic-lawyer-botched-robert-wayne-holsey-death-penalty-trial/

http://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/holsey-robert-wayne.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/robert-wayne-holsey-faces-lethal-injection-in-georgia.html

 

Achievement Stories: Roy deCarava First African American to Win a Guggenheim Fellowship

December 9, 1919, Roy deCarava was born in Harlem, New York. DeCarava became a critically acclaimed photographer, primarily for his black & white imaging of the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. In 1952 he became the first African-American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship and as a result of the fellowship, was able to photograph his community and New York City for one year; expressing early creative impressions through the black and white silver gelatin process. He went on to have 15 solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He published five art books, including “The Sound I Saw” about the Bebop Era jazz musicians of New York and “The Sweet Flypaper of Life” with Langston Hughes. deCarava's photos and Hughes's story, told through the character Sister Mary Bradley, depict, and describe Black family life in Harlem, in the 1950s.

“I'm not a documentarian, I
never have been. I think of myself
as poetic, a maker of visions,
dreams, and a few nightmares.” ~ Roy deCarava

Miles Davis From The Sound I Saw by deCarava

“Joe and Julia singing,”  from "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" 1953. 

Credit...The Estate of Roy deCarava/Courtesy of David Zwirner

 

1915: Cordella Stevenson Lynched In Mississippi

 December 8, 1915, Even being a ‘respected’ member of the community in the eyes of Whites would not stop them from harming you once they decided you were guilty of something. So it was in the case of Cordelia Stevenson.

On October 25th of 1915, the barn of local White planter G.C. Franks was burned to the ground causing a huge loss of equipment and four mules. The sheriff’s investigation turned toward the son of Cordelia and Arch Simpson. The Simpsons were said to be ‘respected’ members of the community for their work ethic and church-going. When their son could not be found the sheriff brought the couple in for questioning. However, they apparently had no information about their son or the fire so they were released after five days.

If the couple hoped to return to their previous lives, they were mistaken. At approximately 12:00 AM a mob of White men broke into the Stevenson’s cabin and kidnapped Cordelia. They aimed guns at her husband who ran out a back door.

The mob took Cordelia to a train stop ten miles from Columbus Mississippi and hung her. The body was left there for two days because the Justice of the Peace was out of the county. Because she was found nude and beaten severely it is believed she was raped and beaten before being hung.

The local papers and papers throughout the south reported that “The discovery of the body is a mysterious affair and efforts to the cause of her death still unavailing.”

No one was ever charged with her murder and her husband disappeared. 

Sources:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/dec/08

https://blackthen.com/gut-wrenching-lynching-cordella-stevenson-1915/

https://blackthen.com/gut-wrenching-lynching-cordella-stevenson-1915/

CRT Snapshot: Two Men Taken From Jail and Hung Along the Road

 

December 7, 1896, Across Missouri it was believed the heinousness of the crime James Nelson and James Winner were accused of justified their lynching. The two men were arrested in early November for the murder of Winner’s wife and two children. It was alleged that Winner, Nelson, and another man named Lon Lackey had used an axe and killed Mrs. Eva Winner and her two youngest children on Oct. 29

Residents had attempted to remove Lackey and Winner from the jail a week earlier but had been turned away. At 1:30 in the morning, a larger mob of approximately 250 rushed the jail and removed Winner and Nelson, Lackey having been removed to the Richmond, MO jail earlier in the day.

The mob removed the two men and crossed a bend on the Missouri River and hung the two men from a burr oak. No one reported the incident until the next morning when the sheriff passed the bodies bringing back Lackey. As news spread around the county people came to see the hanging bodies. They were cut down by the coroner who said that the deaths were caused by hanging by “Persons Unknown”.

The Richmond Conservator reported that the people of Ray County are “Peaceable and law-abiding but this heinous crime was just more than their morals could bare.”

Sources:

http://files.usgwarchives.net/mo/ray/news/richmond/winner/winner4.txt

https://www.newspapers.com/image/649167831/?terms=Lynching&match=1

CRT History: Election of Black Sheriff Leads To Massacre of Hundreds of Blacks

December 7, 1874, Blacks rallied in support of Sheriff Peter Crosby in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Crosby, a former slave, had been legally elected but the whites refused to recognize his authority and falsified evidence of bribes and corruption and got the board of supervisors in the county to remove him.

On this day when the black population of the county tried to host a rally for Crosby white mobs attacked and began randomly killing blacks. The mobs were declared a “Militia” and began hunting down negros sweeping into black neighborhoods and the outlying black areas where planters and sharecroppers lived. Killing as many blacks as possible and white Republicans.

Southern newspapers such as the “Republican Banner” in Memphis and the New Orleans Bulletin reported on this mob violence as a war for Vicksburg and claimed that hundreds of blacks were armed and marching on the city to massacre whites. These were lies.

Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames refused to request federal troops at this time and issued a proclamation calling the incident a riot. He did call the state legislature into special session to her of the causes and see if there was anything to be done as violence continued for weeks, eventually, he did request federal aid and in January President Grant sent in troops to restore order. They restored Crosby to the office after an investigation. Crosby made a white man named J.P. Gilmer his undersheriff. Gilmer shot Crosby in June of 1875 but was never arrested. In fact while as many as 300 blacks were killed no one was ever charged with any crime

Sources:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/dec/07

https://www.newspapers.com/image/604770210/?terms=Vicksburg&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/604770210/?terms=Vicksburg&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/604770210/?terms=Vicksburg&match=1

 

Forgotten History: U.S. Marines Massacre Peacful Protestors in Haiti

December 6, 1929, The United States Marine Corps had been occupying Haiti to protect private U.S. corporate interests for nearly 15 years and an increasingly restless population had declared a national general strike, in response the U.S. and the figurehead government declared martial law.  

On December 6 protesters began marching on the port of Les Cayes peacefully. They were protesting the economic conditions of the nation and Les Cayes is the largest port where shipments of sugar cane and tobacco are shipped. The protestors were reported to be requesting the release of three protest organizers and strike leaders. Marines who were standing guard on the outside of the city had machine guns and as the large crowd advanced made requests, but the Haitians threw rocks and cut threw the sugar cane fields. This apparently unsettled and panicked the marines and they fired into the crowd killing 22 and wounding over 50. In response to international protests, U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson defended the marines stating the patrols showed, “great forbearance and judgment.”

President Hoover ordered 500 more marines to Haiti the same day and two naval warships. The senate also passed a $500,000 appropriation to study the situation and determine what was causing the “Rebellious attacks and attitude,” of the Haitian people.

This senate investigation evolved to become The Forbes Commission which after taking time to look into the occupation declared it a failure and recommended the withdrawal of the American Marines from Haiti as soon as possible. This finally did happen in 1934.s

Sources:

http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part08-slide19.html

https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/massacres-perpetrated-20th-century-haiti.html

https://www.newspapers.com/image/543684340/?terms=Les%20Cayes&match=1

 

Forgotten History: Supreme Court Rules "Get married and Lose Your Citizenship"

December 6, 1915, On this day the Supreme court handed down one of their worst rulings and upheld part of the Expatriation Act of 1907 which stripped women of their citizenship if they married non-citizens of the U.S.

The 1907 act read in part that, “Any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.” There was language in the act that said a woman could get her citizenship back if the marriage was terminated, however, there were limitations in this regarding reporting the American counsel if in their husband’s nation. However, American men who married foreign women were permitted to keep their citizenship.

In Mackenzie v. Hare the plaintiff Ethel Mackenzie sued the Election Board of San Francisco and the State of California after she was barred from voting under the grounds, she had voluntarily given up her citizenship (In California at the time women had the right to vote)

The court ruled that the status of marriage is an older and more important one than U.S., citizenship and so there was nothing unconstitutional about the Expatriation Act. It was added in the judgment that these were consequences women went into a marriage knowing so the woman found it acceptable.

This Expatriation Act remained in effect this way until 1922 when it was revised, the revision was only for women marrying European husbands, and extreme rules regarding the citizenship of Asians remained in effect until the reformation of immigration law in the 1960s. In 2014 the U.S., Senate passed a resolution apologizing to women who gave up their citizenship. 

Sources:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/239/299/

https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/260mackenzie-hare.html

https://immigrationhistory.org/item/an-act-in-reference-to-the-expatriation-of-citizens-and-their-protection-abroad/