“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” –Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Lynching is back in the news. On the golf course! Golf Channel announcer and former Duke University Golfer Kelly Tilghman in describing what the other pro golfers could do to stop Tiger Woods, a golfer of African-American descent, that they could “lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley.” While Tiger Woods thinks it is a non-issue on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday signed into law by Ronald Reagan we should not forget that the lynching of African-Americans in this country is one of the motivating forces that inspired King to work for Civil Rights through peaceful protest. These are three stories about an African-American, Jewish-American and a white man from Patrick County. In the new movie The Great Debaters produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions starring and directed by two time Oscar winner (Glory and Training Day) Denzel Washington portraying Professor Melvin B. Tolson and Forrest Whitaker portraying Minister James B. Farmer.) Whitaker is the reigning Oscar winner for best actor for his portrayal of Uganda dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The dramatic moment of the movie takes place in Boston when Wiley College takes on and defeats Harvard in Debate. In reality, in 1935 they took on Forest Whitaker’s alma mater the University of Southern California. The movie about the debating team from Wiley College in Texas has a graphic lynching scene witnessed by Washington’s character and his debating team consisting of two males and one female. The scene is every bit as bad as horrific as that word can mean. Some would say we should gloss over such things, but I think we should talk about such acts. That people would do things to other people in this country should be remembered. Another infamous lynching in this country involved Leo Frank, who was convicted of killing a white girl named Mary Phagan and sentenced to death. This story was portrayed in a 1988 TV movie starring Jack Lemon as Georgia Governor John Slaton, Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher as Frank and filmed mostly in Richmond, Virginia. While watching the American Experience on PBS three part documentary The Jewish Americans reminded me of the story. Frank born in Texas, moved to New York and educated at Cornell University came to Atlanta to manage a pencil factory. On Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1913, Phagan was found murdered in the National Pencil Factory. Tried and convicted Frank was sentence to death. Suspicion then and later pointed to an African-American Jim Conley. Governor Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison. A well organized mob took Frank from a Marietta jail and was lynched on August 17, 1915. In 1986, Georgia pardoned Frank four years after a witness came forward saying he saw Conley dragging Phagan’s body through the factory. The documentary states that Frank was the only Jew known to be lynched, but the Knights of Mary Phagan met three months after Frank’s murder met at Stone Mountain Georgia, burned a cross and revised the new invisible order of the Klu Klux Klan. Within a decade the KKK had four million members. Lynching is not unknown in Patrick County, Virginia. Growing up in Ararat we all heard about Lynch Hollow, a piece of land nestled between the Hunters Chapel Road and The Hollow Road just above the Ararat River. Herman Melton of Pittsylvania County sent me a copy of his book “Thirty-Nine Lashes—Well Laid On:” Crime and Punishment in Southside Virginia 1750-1950. The following comes from his books and oral interviews with many locals including Carrie Sue Culler and others, which contained the following information. In September 1897, a twenty-two year old white man named Henry Walls lived in Ararat, Friend’s Mission or The Hollow depending on what name the post office was using at that time. A member of the Cook family accused Walls of being in possession of a stolen saddle and a confrontation ensued resulting in Walls threatening to run off the entire Cook family even if it meant burning their home down. The following Friday, Walls attempted to burn down the Cook home, but Sadie, the only member of the family at home discovered him. Tracks show that Sadie attempted to flee, but was pursued about seventy-five yards from the house and met her death due a blow to the head, a throat slash and several gashes to her body. Sadie survived this attack long enough to be discovered. Locals questioned her and although unable to talk revealed the identity of her assailant by squeezing a Mrs. Epperson’s hand when she mentioned Walls. The next day Constable Tom Childress arrested Walls and imprisoned him overnight until he could transport him to Stuart. Constable Tom Childress was a relative of Robert Childress, the subject of Richard C. David’s The Man Who Moved A Mountain as preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Emotion running high in area caused Sheriff Rufus Woolwine to venture to the area stopping for the night within a mile of the Childress home that night. Woolwine, a major character in the my book on the Civil War in Patrick County, would be the most famous Confederate soldier from “The Free State of Patrick” if not for J. E. B. Stuart. A mob came to the Childress Home, took Walls and hung him in the hollow behind Hunter’s Chapel Church. Later, locals identified Walls’s tracks as the possible assailant later. People became incensed over evidence of sexual assault on Sadie Cook. The story made it into the Lynchburg News and the New York Sun reporting, “…there was practically no evidence to convict Walls of the crime. It is now believed that he was innocent. There is much indignation in the neighborhood against the mob.” Carrie Sue Culler let me see a book by Charles Seaton entitled After Conestoga Wagons and a Peruvian Odyssey that contained the following information. Seaton writes that the leader of the vigilante mob was thirty-five year old Charles Walter Taylor, son of Surry County Sheriff Samuel Taylor, the owner of Laurel Hill. Charles married Sara Elizabeth Pedigo at the end of 1884 and thus the connection to Carrie Sue. Taylor placed the rope around the neck of Walls. Almost immediately, Taylor realizing the trouble he was in left for California, eventually sent for his wife and children and started a new life. Family tradition holds that Charles experienced problems with his throat in some sort of bizarre psycho-somatic illness due to his actions. Charles Taylor lived until 1942. The murder of Sadie Cook and lynching of Henry Walls was one of those events I heard of from an early age. I remember mowing the grass of the cemetery at Hunter’s Chapel Church that supposedly holds the remains of both apparently buried the same day in unmarked graves. A folk tale rose from the murder and lynching and it metamorphosed into a tale used to scare children into coming home before dark called “Raw-Headed-Bloody-Bones.” The folk tale no doubt gets Raw Head, a traditional Scottish bogeyman and the murder/lynching story intermingled. The story was told to me that a monster lived in Lynch Hollow with a hoe handle for a tail and this monster got boys who played hooky from school to go fishing in the Ararat River and did not get home before dark. This monster made a sound along the lines of “Shifty-Shifty-Thumpty-Thumpty.” For all this monsters powers he could not open a gate or climb over a picket fence, which saved the boy quaking under his bed after barely escaping clutches of the monster of Lynch Hollow. We were told this story so we would get home before dark, but it is rooted in a dark side of our history. James Madison wrote in Federalist #51. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” Believing that you can play God and take another’s life without due process of law is a reason we should remember these horrible crimes. Glossing over or ignoring history because it upsets our sensibilities is a mistake. You cannot have it both ways. We are better people than that. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that we were better than that. If men were angels there would no lynchings and there would be no King Day, but there are still people who think vigilante justice or assassinating the leader of a movement is the right thing to do and thus we must have laws and government. King’s birthday and his life’s work are celebrated today. He was a man influenced by his times and these are three stories about three different lynchings in our history. Sadly, it is still in the news and it will always be part of our history and something we should not forget during Black History Month.
