I don't know whether I've ever written on this blog specifically about the Harrison (AR) race riots of the early 1900s or not, but I think maybe I've at least mentioned them. Anyway, that was not the first time that Harrison experienced racial violence. There was a lynching in Harrison more than 25 years earlier.
On Tuesday night, July 16, 1878, a young woman living at Bellefonte, about five miles southeast of Harrison, awoke from her sleep to discover 22-year-old Mose Kirkendall, her father's black hired hand, standing in her room. She screamed, and Kirkendall ran off. Answering the young woman's calls for help, her brother rushed to the scene and fired a shotgun at the retreating figure, wounding him in the right arm.
The next morning, Kirkendall was located in Harrison, arrested, and taken back to Bellefonte for a preliminary hearing. He waived examination and was placed in the calaboose at Bellefonte. It was reported that mob violence that very night was prevented only by a heavily armed guard.
The prisoner was taken back to Harrison, presumably on Thursday, and lodged in the county jail to await trial.
On Saturday night, July 20, a mob of about 30 disguised men made an attack on the jail and after about two hours of labor with an ax and a battering ram managed to break into Kirkendall's cell and took him into the street. Looping a rope around his neck, they started off on horseback, leading Kirkendall by the rope, and he was forced to run along behind them to try to keep from being dragged. After about a half mile, he fell down exhausted, and the vigilantes promptly threw the other end of the rope over a tree limb and drew him up. They tied their end of the rope to the trunk of the tree or some other anchor and left their victim hanging. Kirkendall's body was still hanging on Sunday morning about 9 a.m. when a deputy placed a guard around it to prevent mutilation and sent for the coroner.
One interesting tidbit about this case clearly shows the typical mindset of white men in the late 1800s and early 1900s concerning any encounter or interaction between black men and white women. Even though Kirkendall's offense apparently was only that he appeared in the young woman's room or at her doorway, his action was described in newspaper reports as an attempted rape.
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Saturday, August 20, 2022
The Murder of Willie Gaines
Most people probably think of white mobs hanging black men when the subject of lynching in the late 1800s and early 1900s comes up. However, it wasn't unheard of for a black mob to lynch a black man. That almost happened in the case of Tobe Lanagan.
On Saturday morning, December 26,1896, the body of Willie Gaines, a 14-year-old black girl, was found at the rear of Stampfli's furniture and undertaking establishment in Jefferson City by an employee of the place. The body was in "terrible condition." The girl had been "ravished," her head was cut as if struck by a blunt instrument, and her stomach was "cut almost entirely away."
Tobe Lanagan, who was also an employee of the undertaking firm, was immediately suspected of the crime. He'd been seen walking with Willie about 5:30 the previous evening toward the alley that ran behind Stamplfi's, and that was the last time the girl had been seen alive. Described as "half-witted," Lanagan was arrested and lodged in the Cole County Jail. He said he had left the undertaking office about 6 p.m. and did not return, but his claim was contradicted by a white man who said he'd seen Lanagan coming out of the alley about 9 p.m. In addition, Lanagan's past record was against him, because he'd previously been charged with attempting to rape a 9-year-old girl and he'd been in jail a couple of other times on minor charges. It was reported later that traces of blood were also found on Lanagan's clothing and that he had given away a knife, thought to be the murder weapon, on the morning Willie's body was discovered before he was taken into custody.
The "excitement among the negroes" was at fever pitch throughout the day on the 26th, while, according to one report, "the white people of the city did not seem to take much interest in the case." Early Saturday evening, the knots of men who'd been on the streets discussing the crime all day grew larger and soon formed into a mob that moved toward the jail. Before any actual effort to lynch the prisoner had been made, Missouri governor William J. Stone arrived on the scene and managed to talk the mob down. Most of them dispersed after receiving an assurance that Lanagan would get his just deserts if he was found guilty of the crime. Lanagan was then taken under guard to the nearby state prison for safekeeping and was kept there for some time before it was thought safe to bring him back to the jail.
On Saturday morning, December 26,1896, the body of Willie Gaines, a 14-year-old black girl, was found at the rear of Stampfli's furniture and undertaking establishment in Jefferson City by an employee of the place. The body was in "terrible condition." The girl had been "ravished," her head was cut as if struck by a blunt instrument, and her stomach was "cut almost entirely away."
Tobe Lanagan, who was also an employee of the undertaking firm, was immediately suspected of the crime. He'd been seen walking with Willie about 5:30 the previous evening toward the alley that ran behind Stamplfi's, and that was the last time the girl had been seen alive. Described as "half-witted," Lanagan was arrested and lodged in the Cole County Jail. He said he had left the undertaking office about 6 p.m. and did not return, but his claim was contradicted by a white man who said he'd seen Lanagan coming out of the alley about 9 p.m. In addition, Lanagan's past record was against him, because he'd previously been charged with attempting to rape a 9-year-old girl and he'd been in jail a couple of other times on minor charges. It was reported later that traces of blood were also found on Lanagan's clothing and that he had given away a knife, thought to be the murder weapon, on the morning Willie's body was discovered before he was taken into custody.
The "excitement among the negroes" was at fever pitch throughout the day on the 26th, while, according to one report, "the white people of the city did not seem to take much interest in the case." Early Saturday evening, the knots of men who'd been on the streets discussing the crime all day grew larger and soon formed into a mob that moved toward the jail. Before any actual effort to lynch the prisoner had been made, Missouri governor William J. Stone arrived on the scene and managed to talk the mob down. Most of them dispersed after receiving an assurance that Lanagan would get his just deserts if he was found guilty of the crime. Lanagan was then taken under guard to the nearby state prison for safekeeping and was kept there for some time before it was thought safe to bring him back to the jail.
Lanagan was convicted of first degree murder in Cole County on May 1, 1897, and sentenced to death a couple of days later. He was originally scheduled to hang on October 1, but the execution was stayed until June 22, 1898, when Lanagan and another black man were hanged together from a scaffold erected inside a stockade on the yard outside the Cole County Jail. It was reported that Lanagan "held his nerve well" but that the other man had to be dragged to the scaffold.
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Another Lynching in Pemiscot County
Last week I wrote about the May 1927 lynching of Will Sherrod at Braggadocio in Pemiscot County, Missouri. Several reports at the time, including one in the Democrat-Argus of Caruthersville, the county seat, claimed Sherrod's hanging was the first lynching in the county's history. However, this apparently was not true, because another extralegal killing of a black man had occurred in the county less than sixteen years earlier.
During the first week of October 1911, a black man was arrested in Caruthersville for allegedly attacking two white men with a knife. For safekeeping, the prisoner was taken to the Kennett jail in neighboring Dunklin County. A mob formed at Caruthersville and took a train to Kennett but found, upon arrival, that the prisoner had been spirited out of the jail and hidden at an undisclosed location, thus thwarting the vigilante action.
This incident and a rash of other petty crimes allegedly committed by "troublesome" blacks from the cities who'd arrived in Pemiscot County in recent weeks for the fall cotton picking season had aroused the white citizens of the county. One report claimed that many of the migrant blacks who came to the county were there ostensibly to work in the cotton fields but in reality were there only to prey on those who did work.
In this atmosphere of racial animosity, a black man named Ben "High Pockets" Woods followed two young white women home from work in Caruthersville on the evening of October 10. Frightened by the man's behavior, the women gave an alarm, and High Pockets was found hiding in some shrubbery not far from where the young women lived. At least one exaggerated report claimed High Pockets had assaulted the women. At any rate, he was arrested and taken to the Pemiscot County Jail in Caruthersville.
Later the same night, another black man, A. B. Rich, was arrested for possession of stolen merchandise and lodged in the jail alongside Woods. It was thought Rich had stolen the merchandise himself, and he was also suspected of other petty crimes. He was considered "a worthless character" who was "insulting to white people."
As word of High Pockets's alleged stalking of the young women spread, a mob quickly formed. Shortly after midnight, the vigilantes broke into the county jail and took both prisoners from their cells. The black men were taken to the local baseball field, from where sounds of the two men being whipped could be heard.
A short time later, an abandoned "negro boarding house" in Caruthersville, with a reputation as a place where gambling and other vices flourished, was set ablaze, and it quickly went up in flames.
The next morning, Rich's body was found lodged on the near bank of the Mississippi River about a half mile north of Caruthersville. The body bore numerous cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Reports in the immediate wake of the incident also said Rich had been shot. High Pockets's body was not found, but it was concluded that he very likely suffered the same fate as Rich but that his body floated away down the river. Therefore, initial headlines mentioned the lynching of two black men.
The next day, however, High Pockets turned up at the farm where he worked a few miles outside Caruthersville. According to his employer, he gathered up his things and took off for Tennessee. He said he'd been whipped, but he had not been shot or thrown in the river. Whether Rich was shot was also called into question when a coroner's jury convened after his body was pulled from the river. The body had several holes or cuts, at least one or two that looked like bullet holes. On closer inspection, however, the coroner concluded that the wounds had probably been made by the spike on the end of a pole that had been used to help drag the body from the river. The jury, therefore, ruled that Rich had come to his death by unknown means. It wasn't even definite that he had died as a direct result of the mob action.
Whether the findings of the coroner's jury were part of an orchestrated cover-up is speculation, but little was done to try to bring to justice the mob who broke the two black men out of jail. Local authorities declined to pursue the matter, and even the Missouri governor, who initially offered a reward for the arrest of the vigilantes, withdrew his call for the mob to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law after he learned of the coroner's verdict.
Many blacks fled Pemiscot County in the wake of the mob action, and as far as many white citizens were concerned, it was good riddance, although local observers took pains to distinguish between honest, law-abiding black citizens and the "worthless characters of their race." And apparently the whole incident was soon forgotten, so much so that editors of the Caruthersville Democrat-Argus, a local newspaper that gave the lynching of A. B. Rich extensive coverage, could not recall just sixteen years later, at the time of Will Sherrod's lynching, that a previous lynching had ever occurred in the county. Perhaps it was just a matter of nomenclature, because it's true that Rich was not lynched in the sense of being hanged, but the true definition of lynching involves any extralegal killing, regardless of the means. Or maybe the editor who asserted in 1927 that no previous lynching had ever occurred in Pemiscot County was falling back on the coroner's dubious 1911 verdict that Rich might not have died as a result of the mob action.
During the first week of October 1911, a black man was arrested in Caruthersville for allegedly attacking two white men with a knife. For safekeeping, the prisoner was taken to the Kennett jail in neighboring Dunklin County. A mob formed at Caruthersville and took a train to Kennett but found, upon arrival, that the prisoner had been spirited out of the jail and hidden at an undisclosed location, thus thwarting the vigilante action.
This incident and a rash of other petty crimes allegedly committed by "troublesome" blacks from the cities who'd arrived in Pemiscot County in recent weeks for the fall cotton picking season had aroused the white citizens of the county. One report claimed that many of the migrant blacks who came to the county were there ostensibly to work in the cotton fields but in reality were there only to prey on those who did work.
In this atmosphere of racial animosity, a black man named Ben "High Pockets" Woods followed two young white women home from work in Caruthersville on the evening of October 10. Frightened by the man's behavior, the women gave an alarm, and High Pockets was found hiding in some shrubbery not far from where the young women lived. At least one exaggerated report claimed High Pockets had assaulted the women. At any rate, he was arrested and taken to the Pemiscot County Jail in Caruthersville.
Later the same night, another black man, A. B. Rich, was arrested for possession of stolen merchandise and lodged in the jail alongside Woods. It was thought Rich had stolen the merchandise himself, and he was also suspected of other petty crimes. He was considered "a worthless character" who was "insulting to white people."
As word of High Pockets's alleged stalking of the young women spread, a mob quickly formed. Shortly after midnight, the vigilantes broke into the county jail and took both prisoners from their cells. The black men were taken to the local baseball field, from where sounds of the two men being whipped could be heard.
A short time later, an abandoned "negro boarding house" in Caruthersville, with a reputation as a place where gambling and other vices flourished, was set ablaze, and it quickly went up in flames.
The next morning, Rich's body was found lodged on the near bank of the Mississippi River about a half mile north of Caruthersville. The body bore numerous cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Reports in the immediate wake of the incident also said Rich had been shot. High Pockets's body was not found, but it was concluded that he very likely suffered the same fate as Rich but that his body floated away down the river. Therefore, initial headlines mentioned the lynching of two black men.
The next day, however, High Pockets turned up at the farm where he worked a few miles outside Caruthersville. According to his employer, he gathered up his things and took off for Tennessee. He said he'd been whipped, but he had not been shot or thrown in the river. Whether Rich was shot was also called into question when a coroner's jury convened after his body was pulled from the river. The body had several holes or cuts, at least one or two that looked like bullet holes. On closer inspection, however, the coroner concluded that the wounds had probably been made by the spike on the end of a pole that had been used to help drag the body from the river. The jury, therefore, ruled that Rich had come to his death by unknown means. It wasn't even definite that he had died as a direct result of the mob action.
Whether the findings of the coroner's jury were part of an orchestrated cover-up is speculation, but little was done to try to bring to justice the mob who broke the two black men out of jail. Local authorities declined to pursue the matter, and even the Missouri governor, who initially offered a reward for the arrest of the vigilantes, withdrew his call for the mob to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law after he learned of the coroner's verdict.
Many blacks fled Pemiscot County in the wake of the mob action, and as far as many white citizens were concerned, it was good riddance, although local observers took pains to distinguish between honest, law-abiding black citizens and the "worthless characters of their race." And apparently the whole incident was soon forgotten, so much so that editors of the Caruthersville Democrat-Argus, a local newspaper that gave the lynching of A. B. Rich extensive coverage, could not recall just sixteen years later, at the time of Will Sherrod's lynching, that a previous lynching had ever occurred in the county. Perhaps it was just a matter of nomenclature, because it's true that Rich was not lynched in the sense of being hanged, but the true definition of lynching involves any extralegal killing, regardless of the means. Or maybe the editor who asserted in 1927 that no previous lynching had ever occurred in Pemiscot County was falling back on the coroner's dubious 1911 verdict that Rich might not have died as a result of the mob action.
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Lynching of Will Sherrod
I've written quite a bit about lynchings in Missouri, including a book called Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri. There are still quite a few lynchings that occurred in the state, however, that I have never previously written about. One is the lynching of a black man named Will Sherrod in 1927 at the small community of Braggadocio in Pemiscot County (in the bootheel). As was common when African-Americans were lynched in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the cause of the mob action was an alleged attack on a white woman.
On Saturday night, May 21, 1927, a black man entered the home of 31-year-old widow Mary Ella Hendershot in Braggadocio and, according to the Caruthersville Democrat-Argus, "subdued her by threats of death and by clubbing her with a revolver he carried." He "forced her to submit to his evil desires," allegedly raping her repeatedly over the next three or four hours in the presence of her two young children. The assailant reportedly threatened the oldest child, a 7-year-old boy, with death if he tried to notify neighbors or otherwise go for help. At one point he supposedly knocked the boy across the room when the lad tried to come to his mother's aid. At some point during the man's attack on the woman, she bit him on the arm, leaving an imprint of her teeth, a clue that was later used to help identify the assailant.
After her ordeal was over, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Mrs. Hendershot notified local constable Aubrey Dye of the attack and described her assailant. Based on her description, Dye suspected that the rapist was Will Sherrod, a black man in his early thirties who was already in custody, having been arrested just a short time earlier for breaking into the home of another Braggadocio resident, R. D. Kersey, and firing shots at the man early Saturday night, before the attack on Ella Hendershot. The teeth mark on Sherrod's arm seemed to confirm the constable's suspicion, and, when the suspect was taken before a local justice of the peace for the Kersey crime, he supposedly admitted the criminal assault on the woman as well.
While still at the justice of the peace's house, Sherrod tried to escape. Dye gave chase and shot the fleeing man twice, inflicting a dangerous wound that entered his shoulder and penetrated into the chest. The wounded prisoner was then forwarded to the Pemiscot County Jail at Caruthersville early Sunday morning.
In response to rumors of mob action, Sheriff J. Ham Smith considered moving Sherrod to jail in a neighboring county, but a doctor who examined the prisoner said his condition was too serious for him to be moved. Late Sunday night, May 22, the rumored mob from Braggadocio showed up at the Caruthersville jail, and some of its leaders went to the door and called for the sheriff. The men were so orderly and quiet that the sheriff didn't suspect anything amiss, but when he opened the door, the men promptly got the drop on him and forced him to surrender the keys. I
After gaining possession of the prisoner, the vigilantes, numbering about 100, loaded him into a car, and drove in a procession back to Braggadocio, the scene of the crime, where Mrs. Hendershot readily identified him as her attacker. Sherrod was then hanged from a crude scaffold that had already been erected for that purpose. While he was hanging, several shots were fired into his body, and it was left hanging all night and into the next day.
As was the case in most lynchings during the late 1800s and early 1900s, little effort was made to bring the mob to justice. The sheriff, for instance, said that most of the vigilantes wore masks and that he didn't recognize any of the ones who didn't. And no one else came forward to identify any of the mob.
On Saturday night, May 21, 1927, a black man entered the home of 31-year-old widow Mary Ella Hendershot in Braggadocio and, according to the Caruthersville Democrat-Argus, "subdued her by threats of death and by clubbing her with a revolver he carried." He "forced her to submit to his evil desires," allegedly raping her repeatedly over the next three or four hours in the presence of her two young children. The assailant reportedly threatened the oldest child, a 7-year-old boy, with death if he tried to notify neighbors or otherwise go for help. At one point he supposedly knocked the boy across the room when the lad tried to come to his mother's aid. At some point during the man's attack on the woman, she bit him on the arm, leaving an imprint of her teeth, a clue that was later used to help identify the assailant.
After her ordeal was over, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Mrs. Hendershot notified local constable Aubrey Dye of the attack and described her assailant. Based on her description, Dye suspected that the rapist was Will Sherrod, a black man in his early thirties who was already in custody, having been arrested just a short time earlier for breaking into the home of another Braggadocio resident, R. D. Kersey, and firing shots at the man early Saturday night, before the attack on Ella Hendershot. The teeth mark on Sherrod's arm seemed to confirm the constable's suspicion, and, when the suspect was taken before a local justice of the peace for the Kersey crime, he supposedly admitted the criminal assault on the woman as well.
While still at the justice of the peace's house, Sherrod tried to escape. Dye gave chase and shot the fleeing man twice, inflicting a dangerous wound that entered his shoulder and penetrated into the chest. The wounded prisoner was then forwarded to the Pemiscot County Jail at Caruthersville early Sunday morning.
In response to rumors of mob action, Sheriff J. Ham Smith considered moving Sherrod to jail in a neighboring county, but a doctor who examined the prisoner said his condition was too serious for him to be moved. Late Sunday night, May 22, the rumored mob from Braggadocio showed up at the Caruthersville jail, and some of its leaders went to the door and called for the sheriff. The men were so orderly and quiet that the sheriff didn't suspect anything amiss, but when he opened the door, the men promptly got the drop on him and forced him to surrender the keys. I
After gaining possession of the prisoner, the vigilantes, numbering about 100, loaded him into a car, and drove in a procession back to Braggadocio, the scene of the crime, where Mrs. Hendershot readily identified him as her attacker. Sherrod was then hanged from a crude scaffold that had already been erected for that purpose. While he was hanging, several shots were fired into his body, and it was left hanging all night and into the next day.
As was the case in most lynchings during the late 1800s and early 1900s, little effort was made to bring the mob to justice. The sheriff, for instance, said that most of the vigilantes wore masks and that he didn't recognize any of the ones who didn't. And no one else came forward to identify any of the mob.
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