The Last Lynching in Missouri: The Murder of Cleo Wright

   In the wee hours of Sunday morning, January 25, 1942, 29-year-old Grace Sturgeon and her sister-in-law, LaVerne Sturgeon, were awakened from their sleep when they heard someone crawling through a window in the house where they were staying in Sikeston, Missouri, while their husbands were away in military service. Grace's 8-year-old son was asleep in another room. The intruder, a black man, confronted the women, lunging at them with a knife. LaVerne made her escape and ran from the house screaming for help, but the man grabbed Grace and cut her across the abdomen. He also slashed her hand when she tried to grab the knife. About this time, Grace's son was aroused from his sleep by the commotion, and the intruder took off. When LaVerne returned with help, Grace was lying in the floor with severe wounds.
   Law officers immediately went looking for the assailant. About a half mile from the Sturgeon home, Sikeston policeman Hess Perrigan and a citizen who was driving Perrigan's vehicle spotted a black man walking along the street with blood on his clothes. Perrigan arrested the man, took a knife away from him, and got into the back seat with his captive.
   Although Perrigan had his revolver trained on the prisoner, the man, later identified as 26-year-old Cleo Wright, whipped out another knife that he had hidden on his person and attacked Perrigan with it, severing an artery. Despite the severe wound, the officer managed to get off four shots, all of them striking Wright.
   Mrs. Sturgeon and Officer Perrigan were both taken to the Sikeston hospital with serious wounds, while the gravely wounded Wright was taken at first to the city hall, where the city jail was located. Walking under his own power, the prisoner, however, collapsed as he was led into the building. He, too, was then taken to the hospital and placed in the emergency room in the basement. Sometime after 5 a.m., however, he was moved back to the city hall and placed in a temporary detention room rather than the steel-barred jail in the basement. Here he reportedly admitted that he had attacked Grace Sturgeon.
   By about ten o'clock Sunday morning, a crowd had gathered at the city hall and were attempting the break down the ordinary wooden door of the detention room. A highway patrolman succeeded in temporarily dispersing the small group. The patrolman called for backup, and two other highway patrolmen and the city police chief arrived to help guard the prisoner.
   Over the next couple of hours, however, both the size and the determination of the crowd grew. About noon, prosecuting attorney David Blanton arrived and tried to reason with the growing mob, but his remarks only "seemed to inflame the crowd," according to the local newspaper, the Sikeston Herald. With shouts of "What are we waiting for?" the crowd surged into the city hall, shoved past the officers, and easily broke down the door to the detention room. Wright, already unconscious from his wounds, was dragged from the building. One report said he was immediately tied by his feet to the bumper of a car and dragged through the street toward the black section of town, while a conflicting report said he was crammed into the trunk of the car, taken to the edge of the black section, and then tied to the bumper. In either case, he was dragged back and forth through Sikeston's black neighborhood on the west side of town. After a few minutes, Wright's lifeless and nearly naked body was cut loose, gasoline was poured on it, and it was set ablaze "in front of the Negro school." The mob then gradually dispersed.
   The charred body lay unclaimed for several hours, before it was finally taken late that afternoon to a local cemetery and buried in the "Potter's Field." Grace Sturgeon and Hess Perrigan, on the other hand, gradually recovered from their wounds.
   As was generally true in cases of lynching, law enforcement made at least a superficial effort to identify and prosecute the ringleaders of the mob that dragged Wright from the city hall but to little avail. A grand jury early the next year failed to return a true bill against any of the perpetrators. Citing a lack of cooperation from potential witnesses, the jury said none of the guilty parties could be positively identified.
   The murder of Cleo Wright is generally considered the last lynching in Missouri, although the shooting death of town bully Ken McElroy in Skidmore in 1981 by an unidentified member of a crowd of townspeople who were confronting the hated McElroy has occasionally been characterized as a lynching as well. For a thorough account of the Wright lynching, I recommend The Lynching of Cleo Wright by Dominic J. Capeci, Jr.