The Lynching of Mose Kirkendall

   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.