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.

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.

    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.

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.

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 https://amzn.to/3X9dZrd. 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.

Your Cheatin' Hart: A Murder in Palmyra

   In the early afternoon of August 2, 1849, John S. Wise stopped at the post office in Palmyra, Missouri, and asked whether there were any letters there for his wife, Mary Ann Wise. The postmaster handed over three letters, one addressed to Mary Ann Wise and two addressed to a Mrs. Wallenstein. The postman explained that the same woman, whom he assumed to be Wise's wife, had previously called for letters under both names. Wise seemed shocked by the letters, especially after he opened one of them and glanced at its contents. Assuming the worst, the postmaster asked him whether someone was dead. "No, but there will be soon," Wise replied in a low, threatening voice.
   The letters confirmed for Wise what he'd begun to suspect some weeks earlier but had not let himself believe at first. But he now knew his young wife was carrying on a love affair with Thomas Benton Hart, whom the couple had gotten to know in St. Louis the previous year.
   In the summer of 1848, the Wises lived in a boardinghouse in St. Louis, and two of Mary Ann's female cousins (her stepfather's nieces) occasionally visited her at the Wise residence. Thomas B. Hart, who was acquainted with the cousins, started accompanying them on their visits, and he became friends with the Wises.
   A veteran of Doniphan's expedition to Chihuahua during the Mexican War, Hart was strong and handsome and had a reputation as a ladies' man. Some people called him Lord Byron because of his admiration of the romantic poet and the parallel between Hart and the protagonist of one of Byron's most famous poems, The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold.
   In the spring of 1849, Hart, knowing the Wises were not entirely happy with their present living quarters, invited them to move to the Mudge boardinghouse, where Hart lived. After dining with Hart several times at the Mudge place and finding the surroundings pleasant, John Wise agreed to the move, and about the 30th of May he and his wife took up residence in the same building where Thomas Hart lived. Little did Wise suspect that Hart might have had ulterior motives in helping him and Mary Ann find new accommodations, and it's not altogether clear that Hart did have designs on Wise's wife when he first invited the couple to the Mudges's. Suffice it to say, though, that Mary Ann Wise and Thomas Hart quickly became much more than just near neighbors.
   There was an outbreak of cholera raging through St. Louis at this time, and in order to get Mary away from the city so that she might not get the disease, John took her in late June to his brother's place in Marion County, not far from Palmyra. After staying a week or ten days, Wise returned to St. Louis but left his wife with his brother. There's also some evidence that Wise, despite his later protestations to the contrary, might have already begun to suspect something more than friendship existed between Mary and Thomas Hart and he wanted to separate the pair. Upon his return to the city, however, he and Hart greeted each other as old friends. And later, when a woman who boarded at the Mudge place told Wise that Hart had gotten into a dispute with some other boarders while Wise was gone and had also offended the landlady, Wise came to Hart's defense. The woman informed Wise that he was taking the side of someone he didn't really know and that Hart would soon ruin him or his wife. The woman also told Wise, who was a clerk at the post office, that, before Mary Ann went to Marion County, she and Hart were in the habit of spending nearly all their time together while Wise was at work.
   Not until July 31, when Hart left St. Louis, telling Wise that he was going to Carrolton, Illinois, did Wise begin seriously to suspect an illicit relationship between his wife and Hart. Later that day, Wise intercepted a letter at the St. Louis post office, mailed just prior to Hart's departure, that seemed to confirm the husband's worst fears. It was addressed to H. Sappho of Palmyra, and the oddity of the name caught Wise's attention, because he had previously lived in the Palmyra area for several years and did not know anyone by that name. In addition, he thought he recognized the handwriting as Thomas Hart's. Opening the letter, he learned that it was, in fact, written by Hart and that Hart was going to Quincy, Illinois, just across the river from Palmyra, not to Carrolton, as he'd told Wise. In addition, despite the alias given on the outside of the letter, the content and context of the letter convinced Wise that the intended recipient was his wife.
   The next day, Wise armed himself and started for Palmyra to get to the bottom of what appeared him to be a terrible betrayal. On the morning of August 2, during the trip into Palmyra from the Mississippi landing used by steamboat travelers on their way to that town, Wise learned from the hack driver that another man had come up from St. Louis on his way to Palmyra the day before bearing a letter to Wise's wife. Even though the driver's description of the man fit Hart, Wise played dumb, but he was fuming inside.
   After calling at the Palmyra post office and obtaining three more incriminating letters, including the two addressed to "Mrs. Wallenstein," Wise walked on into downtown Palmyra, where he saw Thomas Hart sitting in front of the Overton Hotel. Hart's presence in town and the letters Wise had already read was all the proof he needed. Knowing that Hart went armed at all times and that he was much bigger and stronger than he was, Wise immediately walked up to man, drew his pistol, and fired. The bullet struck Hart in the shoulder but only wounded him, and he rose and started fleeing. Pursuing Hart, Wise struck him with his pistol and then pulled a large knife and proceed to cut and stab him until he was beyond help. Hart died a few minutes later.
   Wise's preliminary hearing in Marion County in late August turned into a scandalous sensation with big crowds witnessing the proceedings every day. At least eight confiscated love letters between Hart and Mary Ann Wise were read in open court, with many of them containing romantic poems and undying declarations of love. Wise was indicted for murder, but he later received a change of venue to neighboring Monroe County, where he was acquitted at trial in the summer of 1850. His estranged wife, meanwhile, had reportedly moved to San Francisco.
   There's much more to this story, but the account given above is a basic outline of what happened.

Hot Temperatures

   We've been having some hot weather here lately. As I write this, at approximately 3 p.m. on Friday July 22, the temperature is currently 100 degrees in the Joplin area, and this marks the fourth day in a row that the thermometer reading has topped out at 100 degrees or more. The weekly forecast shows the temperature continuing to reach 100 or greater each of the next five days. If that happens, we will have had nine consecutive days with temperatures of 100 or more. Plus we had three days in July prior to the current streak in which we reached at least 100. So, we might have at least twelve days this month of triple digit temperatures. That's hot, but there have been at least a couple of Julys in the Ozarks during my lifetime that were hotter.
   One of those years was 1980. The exact figures vary, depending on the source, but according to Weather Underground, Joplin had 19 consecutive days and 22 total days in July of 1980 on which the thermometer reached triple digits. It continued to be hot that summer into August and early September. I was teaching school at the time, and I recall how terribly hot it was during the first few weeks of school in late August and early September. The school I taught at did not have air conditioning at that time, and by afternoon the building was sweltering. The heat was draining on both teachers and students, and by afternoon, it was hard get much teaching and learning done.
   July 1954, when I was a little kid, was even hotter than 1980. Although the total number of days (18) and the consecutive number of days (12) of triple digit temperatures during the month were both fewer than in July 1980, the overall average temperature was hotter. That's because the very hot days in July 1954 were more extreme, with several days reaching into the one hundred and teens, and even the "cooler" days were hotter than the cool days of July 1980. Only once or twice during the entire month of July 1954 did the maximum temperature top out at less than 95, whereas there were several such days in July 1980.
   So far this July, the average daily high temperature has been 91.29 degrees in Joplin, the average daily low has been 66.44, and the overall average temperature has been 83.77. By comparison, the same figures for July 1980 were 93.86, 77.5, and 88.2, and the figures for July 1954 were 98.2, 81.63, and 89.06. As you can see, even though we are having a hot July this year, the overall average has been considerably lower than either 1980 or 1954, mainly because it has tended to cool off more in the evening this year than it did in either of the other two years. But we still have over a week of this month left, and if the forecast is correct, those average figures for 2022 could rise considerably.
   I should probably add that I don't mean to suggest, by pointing out that we have had summers in the past hotter than the current one, that the average global temperature is not rising. The scientific data says that it is. Something like 17 or 18 of hottest years on record worldwide have occurred during the past twenty years. So, I definitely believe that global warming is real; it's just a matter of how much of it is because of human activity, as opposed to the normal cycles of nature. The scientific consensus is that a considerable amount of it is due to human activity, and I tend to agree with that. It just stands to reason that putting smoke and other pollutants into the atmosphere year after year can't be good for the overall health of the planet.

President Bush's Marshfield Visit

   Last time I wrote about Marshfield's annual 4th of July celebration and specifically its 4th of July celebration of 100 years ago. I mentioned in passing, as well, that President George H. W. Bush was a guest of honor at the 1991 Marshfield event. This time, I thought I'd go into a little more detail about that 1991 presidential visit.
   A rumor first surfaced in the Ozarks around the 17th or 18th of June that President Bush was planning to visit the Springfield area on the 4th and attend an Independence Day celebration, but no specific details were known and some observers dismissed the speculation altogether. If the rumors were true, either Springfield, which was planning a big 4th of July celebration in 1991, or Marshfield, which was noted for having one of the biggest and best small-town celebrations in the area, was considered the president's most likely destination. It was not until a couple of days later, however, that a presidential trip to the Springfield area was confirmed and the Marshfield celebration was announced as the one Mr. Bush would attend. Plans called for him to spend the night of the 3rd in Springfield and visit Marshfield the next day.
   By June 23, Marshfield merchants were already trying to cash in on their town's newfound celebrity, suggesting in ads that people visit the town on the 4th because they might get to see the president, and, of course, they could take advantage of the bargains the merchants had to offer while they were at it.
   An advance presidential team arrived in Springfield and Marshfield on June 27 to make arrangements for Bush's visit. It was announced that, after likely spending the night of the 3rd in Springfield, the president would arrive in Marshfield around 10:00 a.m. on the 4th. Members of the team met with Marshfield officials to discuss security and other arrangements for the presidential visit, but whether Mr. Bush would actually participate in the parade or simply observe it from the sideline was not revealed. Many details of the president's visit were deliberately kept hush-hush for security reasons.
   As the 4th approached, Marshfield officials and city employees were hustling and bustling about to make sure the town was "fit for a president," but most of the regular people were taking all the publicity in stride. "It's just another Fourth of July," one resident remarked.
   Although many Marshfield residents were taking the president's approaching visit in stride, many others were getting involved in the hype. An organizer of the event said about 5,000 people usually attended the 4th of July celebration in an average year, but this year they were expecting as many as 15,000. Marshfield stores were doing a booming business selling patriotic merchandise, such as t-shirts with US flags and other American symbols on them.
   On July 2, it was announced that President Bush would indeed be participating in the Marshfield 4th of July Parade, scheduled to start at 10 a.m., and not merely watching it as a spectator. He and his wife, Barbara, would walk part of the parade route, and then the president would give a brief speech at 11:10 a.m. Those wishing to watch the president march in the parade would have to obtain tickets (free of charge) and be screened as they passed through one of two checkpoints that were set up near the parade route. Tickets were being sold not only in Marshfield but also in Springfield and at several other towns in Webster County.
   President Bush arrived in Springfield on the evening of July 3 and spent the night at the University Plaza Hotel, where they rolled out the red carpet for him. Among the special treats waiting for him when he arrived were Godiva chocolates placed on his freshly fluffed pillow. He and his entourage of about 300 people occupied the top three floors of the hotel.
   Early on the morning of the fourth, President Bush ate breakfast at Hemingway's Restaurant on the Bass Pro Shops plaza and then toured the Bass Pro Shops store. Returning to the hotel, Bush then left in a motorcade for Marshfield in time for the 10:00 a.m. parade. Dressed in long-sleeved shirt with no collar, no tie, and his sleeves rolled up, the president walked at the head of the parade as it passed through the town square, occasionally pausing to shake hands with spectators, who stood behind a barricade that lined the route of the parade. After passing through the square, Bush watched the rest of the parade from a viewing stand, where he waved to parade participants as they passed by.
   After the parade, President Bush gave a brief speech praising US soldiers, who'd just completed Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War, and he also had words of support for his recent Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas. The president's visit boosted attendance at the Marshfield Independence Day celebration to an estimated 15,000-20,000, compared to 5,000-10,000 who normally attended.
   About 11:45 a.m., shortly after his speech, Bush's motorcade left Marshfield for the Springfield Airport, where he and the First Lady boarded Air Force One and departed for Grand Rapids, Michigan, shortly before 1:00 p.m.