People's Grocery marker at Walker Avenue and Mississippi Boulevard, Memphis Tennesee by Thomas R Machnitzki.
Memphis, TN 1892 – The Curve
neighborhood in Memphis was a mixed community in the southeast corner of the
city. It was called “The Curve” because of the tight turn street cars had to
make going through that part of the city. For several years this was an area that
was dominated by a single White grocer, William Barret. Because he had a monopoly
Barret could charge higher prices to his Black customers who had little choice
but to pay.
Today such areas are called “Food
Deserts” by economists, anthropologists, politicians, and activists. This euphemism
hides the fact this is the practice of economic apartheid and purposefully determined
restrictions. This practice still happens today but in more subtle ways.
Barret’s monopoly ended for a
brief period when Thomas Moss opened The People’s Grocery in 1889. While Moss
was the majority owner the store worked as a cooperative with a business model
based on the successful Colored Farners Alliance. Money local Black citizens
had contributed to the business. The grocery thrived and brought more money and
a sense of pride to the Blacks who lived in the Curve. This success made Barret
resentful and increased racial tensions.
The People’s Grocery was a
success for three years and inspired the community and at this time in the South, such things were not acceptable to the White community. Always alert for any
social infraction, trouble began for Moss and two of his employees on March 2nd
when two boys, one White, and one Black, began fighting over a game of marbles. The
Black boy was Armour Harris, and the White boy was Cornelius Hurst, during the
argument Hurst’s father stepped in and began hitting Harris. Two men, Will
Stewart and Calvin McDowell, came from the grocery to stop the assault. This
escalated the situation and soon several other people joined in.
The scuffle lasted just a few
minutes before it broke up, yet William Barret was hit with a club. He decided
that this was a weapon he could use to end his rival. The next morning Barret took
a police officer with him and entered the People’s Grocery. They were intending
to arrest William Stewart one of the store’s employees who Barret blamed for the
attack with a club.
Inside the store they didn’t find
Stewart but had an encounter with another employee, Calvin McDowell, when
confronted with the fact that Stewart wasn’t there Barret became enraged and hit
McDowell with his revolver, in doing so he lost his grip on it, dropping the
pistol which McDowell recovered, he ordered the men out of the store and when
Barret advanced on him instead he shot at him and missed. This led to McDowells
arrest
McDowell was released on Bond the
next morning inflaming White residents. Black residents started meeting as well
primarily to plan and prepare to protect themselves, however, some wanted to
rid the Curve of White trash. Tensions were high between Blacks and Whites across
Memphis. This was highlighted by another incident where a White grocer got into
an argument with a Black shopper, John Mosby. Mosby was thrown out of a store
and a few hours later returned with a club and got shot by the clerk.
Moss and other Black residents of
the Curve concerned about protecting themselves consulted a lawyer but were
told that because the Curve was technically outside the city limits, they wouldn’t
have police protection and should prepare to protect themselves and their
property.
On March 6th the
sheriff with a newly deputized posse surrounded the People’s Grocery and then went
to arrest Stewart. This led to an armed confrontation where at least one
deputy was shot and left blind in one eye. The posse retreated to Barret’s
store and requested aid. Soon two hundred armed White men entered the Curve. They
soon arrested the men in the grocery and started a house-to-house search and
arrest. By morning they had arrested McDowell, Stewart, and Moss as well as
Armour Harris.
After the arrests, the White
posse stayed in town near the Shelby County jail as they waited to hear about
deputies who had allegedly been shot and were near death. To protect the men
the Black group known as The Tennessee Rifles stood outside the jail ready to protect
the arrested men. However, when word came that no deputy would die the
Tennessee Rifles decided that there was no threat of a lynching and left.
They were wrong and in the early
morning hours of March 9th 75 White men broke into the jail and took
the three men from the grocery store from the jail. The mob took them to the
nearby Chesapeake and Ohio rail yards. All three men tried to fight back
but the mob shot them to death and left the bodies under some piled brush. Moss
said to the White men, “Tell my people to go west. There is
no justice for them here.” This statement was published the next day in Memphis
Appeal-Avalanche.
The Appeal-Avalanche had been writing
about the violence in the Curve with racial bias and wrote up the crime as something
well done and necessary. Most southern newspapers would write lynching support stories
during the Jim Crow era.
The lynchings in the Curve also
initiated Ida B. Well’s crusade to end the practice. She had been friends with
Moss and wrote of her friend, “A finer, cleaner man than he never walked the
streets of Memphis. He was well-liked, a favorite with everybody; yet he was
murdered with no more consideration than if he had been a dog… The colored
people feel that every white man in Memphis who consented in his death is as
guilty as those who fired the guns which took his life.”
No one was ever arrested or punished
for the murders, or for the death threats Miss Wells received that forced her
to move to Chicago. 6,000 Blacks fled Memphis in the next two years
following Moss’s advice.
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