Critical Race Theory and Forgotten History: Willie Earle: The Last Lynching In South Carolina And The Aquittal Of His Killers

Feb. 17, 1947, a cab driver named Thomas Watson Brown was stabbed to death in Greenville, South Carolina, it was rumored that 24-year-old Black man Willie Earle was his last passenger so naturally suspicion fell upon him, and on this circumstantial evidence, he was arrested and jailed.

Even though it was 1947 and some tolerance was beginning to form, or if not tolerance at least respect for the laws of the land, but not for Willie Earle. Early on the morning of Sunday the 17^th the other cab drivers of Greenville and Pickens County formed a convoy with other White vigilantes and stormed the jail and forced the release of Willie Earle into their custody from the jailer J.E. Gilstrap.

The mob forced Willie Earle into a car and proceeded to a lonely road outside of town, beat him viciously, stabbed him, and then took a shotgun to his face. Afterward, someone telephoned the Black undertaker in the town of Pickens to tell him that there was, “a dead nigger in need of his offices by the slaughter-pen in a dirt road off the main road from Greenville to Pickens.

It had been 20 years since there had been a lynching in South Carolina and even the White Supremacist authorities didn’t believe mob justice was the correct outcome of this case. Governor Strom Thurmond ordered the state patrol to investigate the case and J. Edgar Hoover sent FBI agents.

In a case that was already different than any before it more than 150 suspects were questioned in the days after Earle's murder, and 31—all but three of whom were taxi drivers who were charged with the crime. 26 of the suspects wrote self-incriminating statements basically confessing to at least a conspiracy to commit murder.

Judge J. Robert Martin warned that he was considered an excellent jurist and fair, and he was a Greenville native. He told the assembled court that he would “not allow racial issues to be injected in this case.” During the 10-day trial, the defendants chewed gum and chuckled each time the victim was mentioned.

The defense presented that Wille Earle was an epileptic drunk who was prone to having violent outbursts and, not complying with the judge's order, it was said he hated White men. They talked of how the murdered taxi driver was a wounded veteran of the world war.

The prosecution did not present any evidence but the confessions and a statement from the elderly jailer, however, he insisted he didn’t recognize the men.

John B, Culbertson one of the two defense attorneys also based his defense on ‘Northern Interference,” and in his closing arguments stated that, “Willie Earle is dead and I wish more like him were dead!”

So when the 10-day trial concluded it came as a little surprise that the jury of 12 White men were acquitted. The normal strain of racism had asserted itself along with the defiance of both state and federal intervention.

While the nation was shocked the people of Greenville celebrated the acquittal. They had little use for either Blacks or Northerners and this verdict was just justification for those feelings.