Probably the most prevalent reason why black men were lynched during the late 1800s and early 1900s in America was for supposedly molesting white women. And often it didn't take very much to be considered molestation. For a black man even to associate with a white woman was seen as a blatant threat to white, male authority. Take the example of Henry Duncan of Webb City (MO).
On Saturday, August 20, 1904, Henry sent an unsigned note to Mrs. Minerva Owens, a forty-two-year-old widow, stating that he would come by the Owens place on Sunday evening and asking her to meet him at the back fence. The letter was not actually addressed to Mrs. Owens but to "the woman in the hammock who smiled and nodded" at him. He said that he had "an important message" for her.
According to newspaper reports, Minerva was "greatly shocked and unnerved at the receipt of such an epistle," and she notified the Webb City police. Two officers were dispatched to lie in wait at the Owens residence on Sunday evening. When Duncan showed up, Mrs. Owens asked him whether he was the person who had sent the note, and, when he replied that he was, the officers sprang from their hiding places and took him into custody.
Charged with disturbing the peace and of "low offensive conduct and indecent utterances against Mrs. Owens," Duncan appeared in police court on Monday morning, August 22, and pleaded not guilty. His employer, H. W. Currey, put up his bond, and Duncan was released with the stipulation that he return for trial at 7 p.m. that evening.
However, Currey, who was a lawyer, assumed he'd be able to get the case continued until Tuesday morning and told Duncan that he need not appear on Monday evening. The judge had other ideas, though, and when the case was called at 7 p.m., he denied Currey's request for a continuance, partly because angry sentiment against the defendant had been building throughout the day in Webb City and a mob of about 100 men jammed the courtroom demanding "justice." An equal number were milling around outside.
Two officers, in company with Currey, were dispatched to the Currey residence to bring Duncan back to court. Some of the mob made threats of what might happen if Duncan wasn't brought back pronto.
After a half hour or so had elapsed and the officers still had not returned with Duncan, some of the mob traipsed to the Currey residence and learned that Currey had convinced one of the officers to take Duncan to Joplin for safekeeping.
The mob found the officer and Duncan at a nearby streetcar stop waiting for the next streetcar to take them to Joplin. The crowd started making threats that Duncan should be taken back to police court or else they would take the law into their own hands, and the officer decided that it would "be best to yield to the wish" of the mob and take the prisoner back to court rather than risk inciting them further. The officer managed to get Duncan back to the police station by holding the crowd at bay with a drawn handgun.
By the time they got back, however, the judge had tired of waiting and postponed the hearing until the next morning. The mob dispersed, but in the wee hours of August 22, a smaller, less boisterous but more determined crowd formed and took Duncan out of the unattended city jail. They whipped him severely with a bull whip and drove him out of town with orders not to come back.
So, in titling this post "The 'Lynching' of Henry Duncan," I am using the word "lynch" in its strict meaning of any extralegal punishment, not in its popular sense of being hanged to death.
2 comments:
It is a common misconception that the majority of black men lynched throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been accused of molesting or assaulting white women.In reality, less than a fourth of black male lynching victims had been accused of such crimes, and in only less than 2% of the cases had there been any evidence suggesting that such a crime had occurred. Of those 2%, nearly half had been determined to be false allegations. Between 1865 and 1877, scholars believe that somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 black men, women, and children had been lynched - the majority of whom were targeted for political involvement and/or simply as acts of retaliation by angry former Confederates. Between 1877 and 1930, some 9,000 black people were reportedly lynched - the majority of whom had been accused of committing some wrongdoing involving unpaid debts, theft, or speaking poorly of a white man. The period of time spanning from the and of the Civil War through the turn of the century is believed to be the most violent period in our nation's history.
Ms. Jackson, thanks for your valuable insight. I'm sure you're probably right as far as the overall statistics are concerned. I was speaking mainly from my own experience in having read about a lot of lynchings in and around Missouri. I suspect, but I have no real statistics to back this up, that Missouri was somewhat different from the deep South. For one thing, there were probably more white people lynched in Missouri, as a percentage of the population, than was the case in the former Confederate states. I also still think, based on my limited research, that an alleged attack on or insult to a white woman was the incident that ignited a large percentage of the lynchings of black men in Missouri. Maybe not a majority of cases but close to it, I would say.
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