White Mob Enjoys Night of Savage Brutality When Lynching Disabled Black Laborer

 

October 18, 1933 The night could only be described as a berserk frenzy. Two thousand people gathered to, “save the state $1,000, we did this for 75 cents.” 

Two days before a 71-year-old woman named Mary Denston was assaulted on her way home from the post office in Princess Anne, Maryland.  When she reported the assault to the police she identified a known local man named George Armwood. Armwood was well known by locals for being a very hard worker but also as “feeble-minded”; today we recognize this as an intellectual disability. Black newspapers at the time were already reporting on how whites were taking advantage of individuals such as Armwood by working them incredible hours at starvation wages.

The police put together a search party which wasn’t a good idea as those involved were already spreading misinformation and becoming angry. After a search of a few hours, they found Armwood hiding in the cellar of a white friend. The arresting officers were reported by Armwood’s friends and mother of nearly beating him to death.

Because of the growing community anger and the national bad press of the last reported Maryland lynching in 1931; after the arrest police took him to Salisbury 10 miles north, and then Cecil County, and finally Baltimore City. Despite the police concern over the obvious growing tension in Princess Anne, Somerset County Judge Robert F. Duer and, State Attorney John Robins felt it more important to respond to their local constituents and requested Armwood’s return to the city. The two men had discussed the concerns over violence with the Governor and had made promises that no mobs were forming. Governor Albert C. Ritchie then assented and ordered the transport of Armwood back to Princess Anne and he was returned on the morning of Oct. 17.

All through the day white residents began to gather in the square near the courthouse & jail. Police tried to disperse the crowd and Judge Duer spoke to them asking them to make an oath of honor not to lynch Armwood. The crowd didn’t so Deputy Norman Dryden ordered tear gas to be fired into the crowd, the crowd responded by attacking the police and found two timbers to use as battering rams. They injured the deputy and state police Captain Edward McKim Johnson in the process of breaking into the jail and forced Dryden into giving them the keys.

Armwood tried to hide under his mattress but the mob grabbed him and pulled him out of the cell. Before he was even taken from jail his ear was cut off and he was stabbed and beaten. A noose was put around his neck and he was dragged by a truck to a nearby tree and hung. The violence that was being done to Armwood probably killed him before he was even pulled into the tree. 

This did not satisfy the bloodlust of the mob and they pulled Armwood down and drug the body back to the courthouse where they hung it from a telephone pole and set it afire. After burning the body the mob pulled it down and threw it in the back of a local lumberyard for the police to gather up.

Governor Ritchie blamed Judge Duer and State Attorney Robins and ordered an investigation. The was even pressure from the Department of Justice. A grand jury heard testimony from 42 witnesses to the Armwood lynching, including twelve black men who were held in the jail and had heard, and seen, Armwood dragged to his death. All white witnesses claimed they weren’t involved and that it had to be strangers from out of town. Mobs warned prosecutors and investigators to get out of town. State police did identify nine men who led the mob to action but the grand jury refused to issue any indictments. Maryland Attorney General Preston Lane also ordered the National Guard to Salisbury and arrest suspected lynchers. This led to clashes between residents of both Princess Anne and Salisbury and the National Guard. Crowds started gathering and chanting, “Lynch Lane” which led to Lane leaving town and dismissing the guard. 

After two years of investigations and arrests everyone charged had their cases dismissed. No one was ever penalized for the brutal death of George Armwood. Rather the consequences were for both Governor Ritchie and Judge Duer whose political careers were ended. 

Armwood’s body was buried in a Potter’s Field and the location is now unknown. His murder was the last lynching in Maryland, however racial animus continued to exist for decades and white residents continued to argue that, “lynching is a civic duty when the machine of justice is too slow,” and that “lynching is the best perhaps only deterrent to rape.”

Sources: 

https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013700/013750/html/13750bio.html

https://boundarystones.weta.org/2022/03/01/lynching-george-armwood

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/why-the-noose-is-no-joke-marylands-history-of-lynching/65-439980391

1619: The Year The Troubles Began

 On August 20 1619 America’s original sin took place. The English privateer White Lion arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia with a cargo of 30 Africans.

These men and women were stolen from a Portuguese ship by the privateers and then when they landed in Virginia the Africans were traded primarily for goods. They went into immediate indentured servitude.

A few days later the White Lion’s companion ship the Treasurer did the same. The first Africans were sold for food as Virginia Governor George Yeardly and his head of trade Abraham Piersey made the deal. 

This initial group of Africans were part of a group of 50,000 war prisoners from the Kingdom of Portuguese’s war with the African Kingdom of Ndongo in what is modern Angola. The Portuguese had already begun using these captured Africans as slaves in their territories in the Americas

These Africans were not the first in what would become the US but they were the first to be used by the English and northern European settlers that would form the majority of Americans. There were Spanish slaves in Florida. 

From this point forward things began to snowball and by 1661 Virginia set the standard for African chattel slavery. In 1661 the laws stated a free white man can own Negro slaves and that a child born to a woman is also a slave.

Officials Allow Lynching And Blacks Questioning The Action Are Run Out Of Town

In the Jim Crow period of the South Lynching was so common and so condoned by authorities and others in the dominant white society that often reports were bareboned and lacking in details as to when, why or how an African American was murdered by the mob.

Such was the case on August 5, 1907, when a Black man named Thomas Hall was killed by a mob. News reports appeared all over the country and were all identical from Houston to Honolulu to New York City.

The story was that Hall was in jail after being arrested for attempted assault on two young White girls. The story didn’t say when, who, or even where. What they did report was that Hall attempted to assault the two girls and said lewd things to them. Then the story reported he had been arrested at 9:00 p.m. then was found dead hanging from a tree near the jail two hours later.

The story made no mention of how he was taken from the jail, or if there were attempts to settle the mob. All that is reported is that Hall’s body was found and the order was returned to the town of Runge in Texas. 

What was unexplained is how Hall was taken from jail or if law enforcement was a causal supporter of the mob. No details about Hall’s life are given or if there had been a court date or if there was going to be an inquest into the young man’s death.

What is stated is that any black person questioning the lynching, the failure of law enforcement to protect Hall was asked to leave town and not return. So both the hanging of a man and the creation of a “Sundown Town” in Runge went unquestioned by anyone working for a newspaper and was just another fact of life in the segregated South.

Labor Violence Turns Into Racial Violence In Arkansas Causing Black Exodus

Even though the White laborers had suspicions and even dislike of European immigrants there was one thing they could agree upon; they hated the Black workers who were also working for the Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Gulf Railway. The railroad was building a line in Polk and Sevier County in Arkansas. When a group of approximately 30 Black laborers arrived to begin work on Aug 5th, 1896 they were attacked by a group of White laborers with the tools being used for the railroad.

Of the 30, three were killed, another eight were severely injured, and all were forced into railroad cars and out of Polk County. Soon reports began to trickle out of Polk County regarding the incident and citizens of the county didn’t deny it. They celebrated the incident and the violence. A quote, unattributed, appeared in several stories stating, “The natives have served notice that Sambo must move on, as it is against their religion to permit them to desecrate their soil with pick and shovel or otherwise.”

What is critical to understand is that Italian, Hungarian, and Swedish immigrants took part in this violence and forced Negros out of Polk County, immigrants that otherwise would themselves face prejudice for their skin tone and religion. However as both a labor attack and a racial one workers for the railroad and other Polk County companies such as the Canfield lumber mill and Hawthorne Mills. The fierce labor competition allowed racial extremists to manipulate emotions and rally mobs even to the point that both local law enforcement and the railroad bulls didn’t have an opportunity to stop the mob from driving the Black workers away.

The town of Mena, the county seat, became what was known as a “Sundown Town” at this time with posted warnings that anyone of Negro ancestry must be out of town and out of Polk County by the time the sun went down. This practice lasted well into the 1940s in many Arkansas locations. 

Sources:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23188017?read-now=1&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/polk-county-race-war-of-1896-7390/

 

Paul Robeson Punished By The State Department For Not Keeping Quiet

 

Paul Robeson was quite possibly the most identifiable African American in the world in 195o. His incredible baritone voice was heard on records, stage, and screen, he was known for his posture in civil rights for American Blacks and equality and for his anti-Imperialist politics, which were seen by many as being pro-communist and anti-American

Robeson gained fame in 1925 when he got his first staring role in Eugene O’Neill’s “All God’s Chillun Got Wings” and then the lead in the play “Emperor Jones” his success in theater led him to be part of the  Harlem Renescanice with a social circle of Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Dubois.

Robeson went to London in the late 1920s to perform “Emperor Jones” and he began to see the world through very different eyes. He played Joe in the London production of “Showboat” and his version of “Old Man River” became the international standard. His travels led him to meet a new class of intellectuals and stimulated in him a desire to learn more about Africa and his heritage. He also became a film star and became more vocal about the roles he would not take if they were anti-Negro or supported the colonial view of history in Africa.

He met and formed a close friendship with Einstien over music when the professor came backstage at one of his concerts in 1935

Robeson became increasingly an activist by standing with the Spanish loyalist and Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and then with Jewish refugees during World War II although he had issues with the segregated military of the United States he supported the war effort.

After the war his controversial anti-imperialist stances caught the ear and eye of the attorney general’s office and after a failed meeting with President Truman regarding anti-lynching legislation. Robeson Robeson founded the American Crusade Against Lynching organization in 1946, the organization was then put on the list of “Subversive” organizations by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Robeson was also very vocal in supporting labor unions and the Civil Rights Congress. He was called to testify before HUAC because of his friendship with known American Communists. In 1949 his concert in Peekskill, New York led to riots and had to be rescheduled because he had become such an outspoken activist for civil rights, peace, and against the HUAC, he was also seen as a sympathizer with the U.S.S.R. 

It was against this backdrop and history that the United States Department of State rescinded his passport on Aug. 4th, 1950. This led to an eight-year struggle between Robeson and the Federal Government. Unable to travel Robeson saw much of his income cut and in the U.S. he struggled to find work because of the perception that he was a communist sympathizer, this idea was reinforced when he came out against the Korean action by the U.S. He was very much opposed to the war and spoke out against it in “Hands Off Korea” rallies, he also was very outspoken about the inequality in the U.S. while the nation was intervening in Korea for ‘Freedom’. Robeson and his with were very aware of the times and how, in their view, the United States was acting as an imperialist power in Korea but also puppet regimes in Iran and the activities in Africa especially in Egypt during the 1950s. His career suffered greatly and he was all but black-listed from TV and radio for his views. Without the passport, he couldn't travel to more friendly European countries to perform and thus his income was greatly reduced. Despite this Robeson persevered.

He began a monthly magazine with DuBoise named “Freedom” and he wrote the lead editorial on the front page for five years. He presented the United Nations with a petition claiming genocide by the United States over slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching. He performed at peace concerts at the Peace Arch by the Canadian Border in Washington State. 

In 1956, Robeson was called before HUAC again. In his testimony, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to reveal his political affiliations. However, he did state, “My father was a slave and my people died to build the United States and, I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you and no fascist-minded people will drive me from it!”

Given the Cold War politics and the segregation of America, it is no surprise that Robeson faced the problems he did. Yet none of this deterred him, his ethos, as he stated before HUAC in 1956, “Whether I am or not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.”

Robeson’s passport was returned to him after the 1958 Supreme Court decision in Kent v Dulles ruled that no one could be denied their passport without due process. 

Sources:

https://www.biography.com/actors/paul-robeson 

https://tinyurl.com/2e7pwn8t

https://tinyurl.com/5yxjw6wp

Rumors Of Police Killing Lead To Riot In War Time Harlem

 

On the warm summer night of August 1st an African American solider Robert Bandy met his mother for dinner at the historic Hotel Braddock in Harlem, as they walked through the lobby, and saw a White officer trying to hit an African American woman with his nightstick as he tried to arrest her. Bandy attempted to intervene and was shot by the officer.

Rumors then flew through the city like fiery embers and Blacks started throwing rocks and breaking out the windows of businesses. Although Bandy received just a superficial wound the rumor was that he had been killed, and thousands of people filled the streets attacking not just shops but the 28th Street Police Precinct and Sydenham Hospital. 

Because of the rationing, price gouging, and racism, the African Americans of Harlem were acutely feeling the economic effects of the war. Blacks had hoped that their service to the country would change some of the segregation laws and open opportunities, however, this did not happen sending citizens into a violent rage.

Rioters looted shops, broke hundreds of windows, and vandalized street lights and other public utilities. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sent in nearly 6,000 officers and 8,000 National Guardsmen to quell the riot He also met with Black leaders and set a curfew. He went on the radio and requested rioters to stand down and observe the curfew. The riot did end in the early morning of Aug, 2nd. 

In the aftermath, La Guardia continued to meet with the NCAAP and immediately had city works and sanitation start on clean up. He ordered the taverns to stay closed until the 4th of August and made sure the hospitals were able to meet the demand by asking for aid from other hospitals outside Harlem.

Six people were killed in the night, 700 were injured and another 600 were arrested. It was estimated 4,000 windows were broken out. The Mayor had food delivered to the residents of Harlem and the Red Cross provided lemonade and curlers. 

To meet some of the underlying issues exposed by the riot and how many African Americans felt like second-class citizens. The Federal Office of Price Administration set up an office on 135th Street in Harlem and was soon flooded with complaints. La Guardia pressured all city agencies to make sure rent controls were practiced and forced landlords to go ahead with renewals of leases. These small acts it is believed forestalled another riot

Sources:

https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/disasters/riots-harlem_1943.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Harlem-race-riot-of-1943

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40999915

Top Image: Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

Racial Massacre Caused By Rumors Destroy Slocum Texas

The fuse leading to the Slocum, Texas Massacre was laid a month earlier in Rusk, Texas when a Black man named Leonard Johnson was lynched for assaulting a White woman, then rumors began spreading among the White citizens in East Texas that the Black sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and others were preparing for a race war and were arming themselves because of Leonard’s lynching. These rumors added to the existing tension and then two other events set the spark to the powder keg.

First, a disabled White farmer named Reddin Alford argued over a debt with Black businessman Marsh Holley, although there was no violence between the two men the rumor began to spread that Holley mistreated Alford and demanded money, not something a Black man should do to a White man.

Then a Black man named Abe Wilson was put in charge of a local road construction hiring and a White man named Jim Spurger became enraged by this, not because he wanted the job but because he felt no Black man should be in a position where a White man had to answer to them. Spurger began agitating and demanding that men arm themselves and take action because the Blacks were overstepping their station and even threatening him.

On July 29th all these tensions erupted when at least 200 White men from all parts of Anderson County gathered in Palestine to take action and they gathered their women and children in schools and churches under protection.

District Judge Benjamin Howard Gardner ordered the closure of all saloons, taverns, hardware, and gun stores in an attempt to head off what was coming, this did no good because most of the armed men had already gathered and started to Slocum. These raiders targeted Black neighborhoods and started hunting every Black person they could find, shooting them on sight. After 16 hours they had killed at least 40 Black residents and many others fled the area through the woods. All of them leaving behind their positions and even property. One man Jack Hollie lost 700 acres, his dairy, and his granary.

Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell ordered the Texas Rangers and state militia into Slocum to restore order and conduct an investigation. The Rangers were to assist Anderson County, Sheriff William Black. Black told the press that he only knew of 8 killings but suspected there were a lot of other victims, “they were shooting them down going about killing Negros as fast as they could find them.”

A death toll of 22 Negros and 5 Whites, was reported by the national newspapers, and eyewitnesses stated that the number was at least 100 victims. 

A grand jury was impaneled to review the incident and 11 arrests were made. Judge Gardner ordered a change in venue for the trials. However,  no one was ever indicted for the crimes even with the Rangers involved. As so often happened in the Jim Crow South there was no justice for the victims. Gardner was replaced and had to later defend himself with a pistol, he was the only White man fighting for justice. Over 150 Black pastors and ministers wrote to the Taft administration hoping to get justice but they never heard from anyone in the administration.

In the 1920 census, the unincorporated area that had been Slocum showed a collapse of the local Black population as it was half what had been in 1910. Even today the local Black population of Anderson County is just seven percent in comparison to the 20 percent in surrounding counties.

Sources:

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/the-slocum-massacre-1910/

https://www.texasobserver.org/where-the-bodies-are-buried/

https://tylerpaper.com/news/local/slocum-massacre-historical-marker-unveiled/article_4998e176-fe52-5445-ae5a-b4a2ebeee43a.html

Louisville Police Chief Determined To End Interracial Marriage In His City

 

In the Jim Crow South and frankly many Northern cities it was not rare for authorities to declare a person’s relationship illegal, and even go so far as to redefine who a person was.

At the end of July 1916 in the city of Louisville, Kentucky Police Chief H. Watson Lindsey determined that interracial marriage was of great concern to his department. “We will spare to effort to abate this practice in Louisville and Jefferson County,” Lindsey told the Courier-Journal after the arrests of three African Americans.

The three were Harry Jenkins, his alleged lover Alice Schmaker and an adolescent boy George Eaton. After being discovered together in the same house Jenkins and Schmaker were arrested for disorderly conduct. The problem was that Schmaker identified as Negro but the police chief, one of his patrol officers, and a corporeal felt certain that she was white and ordered her to give a blood sample.

Eaton was arrested for larceny when he tried to get money for a bicycle he allegedly stole. When arrested the young man was found to have photographs of three young white women. When questioned he stated that he didn’t know the girls but Lindsey ordered his chief investigator Corporal Sullivan to discover who the girls were.

The three arrests thereafter didn’t make any other news. What happened to the three who were arrested is unknown and lost in history.

What these arrests did do was increase the wild concern most citizens of Kentucky had regarding interracial relationships. The Courier-Journal and the other newspaper of the city the Messenger-Inquirer ran several editorials restating the moral panic of the residents and stories on how the level of Negro blood was determined. 

While interracial marriage had been outlawed in Kentucky since statehood in 1792, for whatever reason in the summer of 1916 Southern states became focused on making sure no miscegenation would occur. In July over 20 arrests were made in both Kentucky and Tennesee. In North Carolina, the crime could lead to at least two years in prison. 

It wasn’t until the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that these relationships became legal under the force of law, still, Kentucky did not overturn its law until 1974.

Sources:

https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Miscegenation%20laws.pdf

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jul/28

Regrettable Atrocity Leads To Outrage But No Significant Changes

Mae and George Dorsey, Roger and Dorothy Malcolm.

Two married couples were killed on this day in 1946 by the hands of “persons unknown” in Moore’s Ford, Georgia. This vile act gained national condemnation and helped push the national conversation regarding civil rights, except it was all for nothing in the end, four innocent African Americans were killed by a mob of White men and there were no consequences to the murderers.

The two men, Roger Malcolm and George Dorsey were sharecroppers working on the farm of Loy Harrison. Dorsey was a veteran who had served for 5 years in the Pacific theatre during the war; he was married to Mae Murry Dorsey. He had been working for Harrison first. Roger Malcolm had been working for another landowner Barnett Hester near Madison Georgia previously but on the 14th of July Hester ordered Malcolm and his wife Dorthy, who was seven months pregnant, to get off his property. The reason for the eviction was never stated but tempers were high and Malcolm stabbed Hester with an ice pick.

Remarkably for the time Hester’s family did not lynch Malcolm right then and held him until the Walton County Sheriff could come to arrest him. Malcolm was held in the Walton County Jail for the next 11 days until Mrs. Malcolm and the Dorseys could arrange for a bond to be paid. Harrison had agreed to pay the $600 bond if the two men would work in his fields.

After posting bond Harrison was driving the two couples back to his property when they were intercepted by 20 armed White men. The odd thing was that Harrison did not take the direct and shortest route back to his property but took a secondary road over Moore’s Ford Bridge between Walton and Oconee Counties. Although he was suspected of perhaps participating in the crime Harrison insisted he was innocent of any participation for the rest of his life, and being a stout, over-weight middle age man he stated he could do nothing to defend the two couples. I fact in his own account he states when the mob called to pull Dorsey from the car they called him ‘Charlie” and Harrison tried then to interfere but the mob leaders threatened to shoot him too.

Harrison also stated in his statement that at first the mob looked like they were going to leave the women alone until Mrs. Malcolm called out some of the men by name since they were not masked. It was then that the apparent leader of the mob ordered the two women to be brought over to the trees and tied there with their husbands. 

The mob then began firing their guns at the four hitting them at least 60 times each. Moore’s Bridge spanned the Apalachee River 60 miles east of Atlanta, and it was at the end of a dirt cut-off that Harrison later led law enforcement to the bodies.

The news of the killings was immediately nationwide news and rose to both the Georgia Governor’s office and the Presidency. 

Georgia’s Democratic Governor Ellis Arnell called for justice and better civil rights, but he was in a heated primary against former Governor, also a Democrat, Eugene Talmadge who was a White Supremacist who fought against voting rights and when Arnall called for equal rights Talmadge shot back that there was no valid reason to give equal rights and that nothing could be gained by doing so. 

Arnell offered a $10,000 reward but no one came forward with enough information to claim the reward. Arnell lost the election to Talmadge, who then stated that the lynching was regrettable and that he would do everything in his power to, “keep such atrocities at a minimum”.

While this wordplay went on President Truman ordered the FBI to investigate and they interviewed some 3000 people. Even though they took on the massive investigation they could turn up no witnesses. However many people had said that they saw Talmadge in Walton County talking with Barnett Hester’s brother. Although agents doubted Talmadge could be involved they sent the claim to Director J Edgar Hoover. What was concluded was that the Whites of the two counties were, “Clannish and silent and communicated to each other to stay quiet, the Negroes were fearful and wouldn’t talk either.”

While there were numerous questions about Loy Harrison and his decisions, Talmadge being in the area and the sheriff and arresting deputies not investigating the deaths no one ever went on record with testimony or allegations.By the end of 1946 the probe was quietly ended and the world moved on.

A federal grand jury was still empaneled in Athens, Georgia but failed to produce an indictment, deciding that the Malcolms and the Dorseys were shot multiple times, “at the hands of person’s unknown”

Sources:

https://coldcases.emory.edu/george-dorsey-mae-dorsey-dorothy-malcom-and-roger-malcom/

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/07/answers-last-mass-lynching-us-die-when-investigators-close-case-after-72-years

https://georgiahistory.com/marker-monday-moores-ford-lynching/

Loy Harrison

John Henry James Lynched In Virginia For Being Very Black

There wasn’t much, isn’t much known about John Henry James other than he was an ice cream salesman in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was lynched by a mob of 150 White men on a locust tree in Woods Crossing, Virginia. John Henry James was murdered like so many other men in the 100 years after the end of the Civil War because a White woman said a Black man had assaulted her. In this case, it was a woman named Julia Hotopp who was returning to the family farm from Charlottesville, and she had dismounted to open the gate at the farm when someone assaulted her. When she woke up she saw the horse had gone to the house and saw her brother riding towards her. She fainted when he got to her side but woke again back in the house. She told him that a, “very black man, heavy set with a slight mustache in dark clothes and shoes with his toes sticking out”, had done the deed. The newspapers of the times wrote a very detailed account of her words. These papers also reported Hotopp had then passed out again and was under several doctors' care. Other writings on this lynching and the reports of the time John Henry James wasn’t a well-known man, a few people knew him from his ice cream sales route, but whether he lived in his own home or a boarding house, no one knew if he had other jobs, as he probably did because vagrancy and idleness could lead to incarceration. The newspapers though did everything they could to portray him as a vagrant and transient tramp. Based on the description Hotopp had provided authorities they looked for the darkest negro they could find and found John Henry James in a bar called Dudley’s in the town of Staughton. The police chief of Charlottesville arranged for a train to take him and John Henry James back to Charlottesville from Staughton. While a grand jury had already been impaneled and Hotopp’s statement collected, she also said she could identify her attacker if needed. Yet White rage was exploding all over Albemarle County and a mob formed to meet the train before John Henry James could be secured in the jail. The mob of 150 men stopped the train at Woods Crossing and pulled John Henry James off the train and drug him to a tree about 40 yards from the train after a few minutes of him pleading for mercy and declaring his innocence the mob hung him, to make sure he was dead they shot his body to pieces. The mob then dispersed but left the body where others could collect souvenirs. A coroner’s jury a day later declared that John Henry James died from bullet wounds and the hanging at the hands of persons unknown. Sources: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lynching-of-john-henry-james-1898-the/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/72083419/?terms=%22John%20Henry%20James%22%20 https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2018/06/06/the-legacy-of-john-henry-james/

Anguilla, The Forgotten Prison Massacre In Georgia

 

Prison camp labor was a standard in the South in the 20th Century. Southern states loaned them out to help build roads, irrigation ditches, and other semi-public works. Basically, slave labor as convicts didn’t earn anything for a day of heavy labor.

July 11, 1947, Black men refused to go do this free labor for the state because they didn’t want to face ditches full of dangerous cottonmouth snakes. These prisoners refused to get out of the prison truck at the work site and only left the trucks when they were returned to the Anguilla Prison work camp near Brunswick, Georgia. The prison officials had requested the aid of the Glynn County Police Chief (not a sheriff)  to help get the prisoners to get off the trucks. There had been a lot of anger by the prisoners for days because of the demand by the warden that they work barefoot in the snake-infested ditches. In fact, some had been shot for trying to escape the work gang because of conditions. However, those reported escape attempts were nothing compared to what happened on this day.

The police chief eventually convinced the men to leave the trucks and lined them up to head into their barracks, this is when the warden and guards opened fire killing 8 of the 27 men in the road gang and wounding 5 more including a man named Willie Bell who was shot in the leg but who testified Warden W. C. Worthy, ”was half drunk and wanted to kill me.” 

Worthy swore he wasn’t drunk and that the men had either attempted to rush him and his guards or made to escape. Worthy was the official narrative though and his story of an attempted escape was the story the New York Times and many other papers ran with. The story of the attempted escape became national news with editorials and officials backing the shooting of the prisoners and Worthy.

The story might have died there and just become another tragic story of a prison riot except the NAACP received a handwritten letter from one of the prisoners who survived. Suddenly there were two competing narratives as the NAACP conducted its own investigation and fought against the ongoing reporting supporting Worthy’s story.

A grand jury was convened to investigate the shooting, but Georgia assistant director of the State Department of Corrections, J.B. Hatchett told the reporter that “his investigations of the shootings had led him to the conclusion that Warden W. C. Worthy was not drunk and had not been drinking, as charged by a Negro convict at a coroner’s jury investigation Saturday.” On July 18th, a grand jury exonerated Warden Worthy and five guards. 

The NAACP kept pushing back on the official story though and with a well-orchestrated letter-writing and protest campaign forced the state to conduct another investigation. During a hearing looking into the massacre Glynn County Commissioner Sam Levine went on record saying, “There was no justification for the killings, the police had men and tear gas they could have used.” Levine added that he was at the scene and saw two of the Negros fall and crawl under one of the bunk houses to di., “The only thing they were trying to escape was death,” Levine testified before the Georgia Board of Corrections.

The State Board of Corrections determined that the grand jury had conducted a one-sided investigation to white-wash the incident. The board ordered a new inquiry, closed the Anguilla Camp and ordered all 70 prisoners to be reassigned to other facilities across the state.

In October 1947 Worthy and four guards were indicted on federal charges for depriving the 8 men of their lives. The trial began on October 27 and was sent to the jury on Nov, 4th, sadly the jury took 8 minutes to come back with not guilty verdicts.

Image: "July 11, 1947, Brunswick Ga., Glynn County prison camp. Guards fired on 27 convicts, 8 killed, 5 wounded.by Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011), writer and civil rights activist, collected these photographs during the course of his career fighting for equality throughout the Southern United States. Sources:    https://www.anguillamassacre.com/ https://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2012/12/23/the-anguilla-prison-camp-massacre/ https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/SKennedy/id/13123

Elizabeth Lawrence Scolded Children And Was Lynched For It

 

Birmingham, Alabama July 5, 1933. Lynching had become so common in the Jim Crow South by this day in 1933 that all the local Alabama news sources had apparently agreed it wasn’t even newsworthy.

Elizabeth Lawrence was walking home on the afternoon of July 5th when a group of White children began jeering her and pelting her with rocks. She did what any mother would do and reprimanded the kids for their behavior. There would be consequences for this verbal redirection of terrible children as a mob of White men showed up at the Lawrence home later that night and drug Elizabeth out of the house and lynched her for the crime of disrespecting White children who were disrespecting her.

Her son came home and found his mother and their burned-out home he went to the local sheriff and tried to report the crime and was warned on his way there by another Black man that the mob was still looking for him so he ran away and headed north.

The story of Elizabeth Lawrence wasn’t even reported until her son Alexander had made it to safety in Boston and spoke to groups such as the International Labor Defense. Even then no news paper in the South mentioned it. The crime of being a Black woman scolding White children was once again a mortal one, like 361 other victims of the mob in Alabama during the Jim Crow era.

Sources: 

https://crrjarchive.org/incidents/434

https://www.al.com/opinion/2018/04/new_memorial_ends_the_silence.html