Ralph Downing illustration that
appeared in the Joplin Globe, April 16, 1903
April 15, 1903 – Joplin, Missouri
– It began with the lynching of one Black man and ended with every Negro in
Joplin fleeing the city and local area. In the early morning, a city policeman,
Theodore Leslie, tried to break up an indigent camp near the railroad. Leslie
met with resistance from the men of the camp, and during the scuffle, Leslie was
shot and killed. Hearing the gunshot, other law enforcement officers rushed to the scene.
The group of men had scattered, but the law officers discovered a Black man in a
nearby alley and arrested him for the murder of Leslie.
That man was Thomas Gilyard, who
insisted he was innocent and had no idea what had happened. Word had
spread rapidly around the community and throughout Southwest Missouri.
Within the hour, hundreds, perhaps 2000 men had gathered in the streets of
Joplin. They were enraged not entirely for racial reasons as Leslie was a
popular policeman. Gilyard had been arrested by Sheriff James T. Owen and taken
to the jail. Men continued to come into town, and by 1 pm in
the afternoon, nearly 5,000 White men and boys roamed the street.
Owen could feel the pressure
building and tried to defuse it by talking with the men who seemed to be becoming leaders of the White horde. Owen also met with city leaders trying to calm the crowd.. None of it worked, and at five o’clock, a White mass of men attacked the city jail, breaking down a wall and pulling
Gilyard out and beating him with their bare hands, clubs, and rocks. They had attacked
and driven off Sheriff Owen, his deputies, and the jailer. They dragged Gilyard
about a block away and pulled him up on a rope over a telephone pole. The crowd
cheered and excitedly moved about the city. The saloons and taverns closed by Sheriff Owen hours earlier, opened them Owens hoped this would relax and finally
diffuse the crowd.
It didn’t; the alcohol fueled the
bloodlust fueled even young men and many women. Whispering that it was time to
make sure the Blacks could never harm a White person again. The mob reassembled on the street. They demanded
the release of a White man called “Hickory Bill” from the jail; he had been
arrested for pistol whipping a Negro. The city officials agreed and released Bill, but this did not appease the mob.
The throng emptied the bars and
began marching towards the Negro section of town. Law enforcement had gathered
and tried to stop them, but with thousands of people bearing down on them and
not wanting to increase the violence, or perhaps out of either cowardice or
sympathy with the mob’s desires, they broke off and ran away from defending the
Black population.
The White mob descended on the Black
settlement with guns and torches, driving out the African Americans and burning
down their homes. They cheered every fire started and continued to scream out
for revenge for Theodore Leslie. The Fire department responded and did their
best to put out the fires, but with the mob continually setting buildings ablaze, they couldn’t.
The mob then turned from the north
side of town and marched down Main Street and across the railroad into the
other Black section. There, they repeated setting a conflagration, and by physical
force and fear, they ran every Black person out. Within hours, they had burned
every home to the ground. Finally, the mob's bloodlust seemed to be exhausted.
Surprisingly, an investigation
into the affair did go forward, and an arrest was made. A man named Sam Mitchell
was arrested and charged with the murder of Gilyard and for inciting the mob.
Mitchell was arrested by Owens the next day. He was held for a month while the
City Attorney P. D, Decker proceeded with the case and a jury was impaneled.
Shortly before the trial began, Judge Hugh Dabbs censored Sheriff Owens for leniency
and allowing Mitchell to work by himself, separate from other prisoners and
without a guard. Regardless, the trial went forward.
Shockingly, Mitchell was actually
convicted of the charges in June of 1903. This was actually a surprise in an
area that was so racist they drove all Blacks out. However, after the trial, Mitchell’s lawyers convinced Dabbs to throw out the conviction because a
juror had spoken to someone outside the sequester and revealed he knew a witness had perjured himself.
A second trial was held in November, and Mitchell was exonerated with all charges dropped when the jury failed to
convict. Mitchell, interestingly, was hailed a hero two years later when word
came from Fort Smith, Arkansas, that he died saving two children from a runaway wagon
pulled by a team of horses. Sheriff Owen was not reelected in 1904, and Judge
Dabbs was removed from office by the Missouri attorney general for serving in a
district that didn’t exist.
The lynching led features in the
national news, but not for the death of Thomas Gilyard but the aftermath. The
exiling of Blacks was widely condemned but also soon forgotten. The racial
animus in Missouri remained and 3 years later a greater tragedy happened in
Springfield, Missouri when an enraged mob lynched three innocent men for raping
a White woman, who told the mob they had gotten the wrong men.
Sources:
https://medium.com/the-awl/100-years-later-a-black-man-finally-loves-joplin-cd879f208b0a
https://oaahm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/exodus/ozarksraceriots/joplin--april-15th--1903
HARPER, KIMBERLY. “INTRODUCTION.”
White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern
Ozarks, 1894-1909, University of Arkansas Press, 2010, pp. xv–xxv. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1ffjhm9.5. Accessed 16 Apr. 2025.
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