Racist Violence
Racist Violence in Lawrence
In his path-breaking book, This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927, Brent M. S. Campney uncovered ten incidents of racist violence in Lawrence in which white supremacists terrorized Black residents in order to maintain their socio-economic power and control of the Black population that peaked in 1880. His ten incidents include: one mobbing and one homicide (in 1865), six incidents of threatened lynchings (1873-1898), one lynching (1882), and one killing of a Black man involving a Black policeman (1913). These different types of racist violence stemmed from routine violence in which white men, alone or in groups, insulted, demeaned, humiliated, or harassed Black people at work, on the streets, and in newspapers.¹
In addition, Campney considers rape by white men on Black women as “a type of routine violence because it was so widespread and frequent, so ordinary, that it scarcely attracted extensive public attention.”² His reasoning stems from the fact that white men followed the violent “tradition” of white enslavers who raped Black women frequently during human bondage, in part because these horrific sexual assaults were not considered a crime. Like today, white men used rape as yet another means of asserting their power and control over so-called “inferior” women against their wills.
However, rape or attempted rape committed by Black men against little white girls heightened racial tensions considerably and, in four cases, also led to threatened lynchings in Lawrence, as did two homicides of white men committed by young Black men. While there can be no justification whatsoever for criminal rapes and murders by any person, regardless of race, the unique emotional, psychological, and social traumas of human bondage may (or may not) explain the potential reasons for Black men’s criminal actions.³ We have no knowledge about what happened to these men and their families during their enslavement. Nor do we know why a few men would rape or attempt to rape girls other than to take power over their unknown and uncontrollable situations while asserting their manhood.
We do know that severe racist threats led two 18-year-old men to murder their white oppressors in 1875 and 1879. Three years later, another murder of a white man led to the horrific lynching of three Black men, followed by a fifth and sixth threatened lynching for attempted rapes in 1883 and 1898.
With these frameworks in mind, this section documents several cases of racist violence committed by whites against Black men. It begins in 1865 in order to establish the routine violence published in newspapers before and after a mobbing and a homicide with additional incidents. Tracing major acts of racist violence chronologically allows us to better understand the racialized contexts within the community that led to the climatic lynchings of three Black men in 1882. All the while readers need to keep in mind that these few sensationalized cases comprised a tiny minority of tragic events that occurred over a 50-year span from 1865 through 1915.
Racialized Incidents, 1865
Filling the Quota with Black Soldiers
As the Civil War dragged on in early 1865, President Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 more Union soldiers. Lawrence was required to fill its quota of 14 white and Black recruits alike by mid-February or face a forced draft. John Speer, editor of the Lawrence Tribune, exposed his racial biases when he wrote: “It is especially important that the colored men should fill up their share of the recruits. It would be a shame to our white men, if Kansas should be permitted to enroll a single drafted man, and a disgrace to the colored men, who have sought and found asylum here.”⁴ Yet around one-third of Black men were not fit for military service due to physical disabilities wrought by the violent cruelty they endured during their enslavement.⁵
Days later, Capt. H. Ford Douglas, a newly appointed Black officer, came to Lawence to recruit Black men for his independent battery at Fort Leavenworth. Speer cheered: “Now, this is just the chance for us [to fill our revised quota of eight men]. Several colored men in this city have signified their determination to enlist, if any bounty is offered [to] them….Let us go actively to work—secure enough to pay all bounties, and then we will have no trouble to get recruits.”⁶
The city did indeed fill its quota of eight men, “thanks to the zeal of Capt. Douglas”:
Lawrence [is] indebted for this gratifying circumstance. Not a man from the white population was taken. Who would have dreamed, four years ago, that Lawrence would be indebted to a colored man….But the world moves. Such men as Capt. Douglas are taking their proper place. While he has been here, Democrats, Republicans and Abolitionists fraternized with him as though he were as white as they.
We hope that the Captain may be rewarded according to his merits, and that his future may be as successful and as glorious as his past has been patriotic.⁷
Yet when Leavenworth failed to meet its quota, around 30 Black men in north Lawrence were kidnapped and forced into military service there—a “gross injustice” and severe hardship on the remaining two-thirds of the township’s Black population.⁸
Daniel Stone
In June, a racist controversy erupted when Daniel Stone was denied a saloon license on a technicality, apparently not applied as scrupulously to white men. In keeping with the city’s ordinance, he was deemed “a fit person” like white petitioners, but the City Council rejected his petition for these reasons:
…[We] find attached to [his petition] the names of thirty-eight of the occupants on the block [of Vermont street] on which said saloon is proposed to be kept. On examination we find the whole number of occupants of said block to be seventy-seven, of which thirty-nine are required for a majority; the petition lacking one of that number, the Council could not grant it.
Your committee further believes that the social, industrial and moral interests of that class [of Black people], for whose accommodation said saloon is intended, would be better subserved by the rejecting than the granting of the petition. That the costs to the city, accruing, directly or indirectly, from the keeping of said saloon, would greatly exceed the [$250] amount the city would receive for a license for the same, and that the petitioner has the reputation of having keep a disorderly place heretofore.Your committee would, therefore, recommend the rejection of the petition.
[Signed by Kimball, McAllaster, and Love, Committee] ⁹
Two anonymous white men responded to this rejection with wholly racist justifications. “Justice” felt “pained” for several contradictory reasons, “not applicable to our white population, why a whisky shop should not be opened for the special accommodation of the colored people”:
They are just out of bondage. They have not yet formed the habits of self-control. They lack experience and maturity of judgment. They are utterly untrained in the virtues of prudence and discretion. Upon these grounds, I say, it is a flagrant wrong to place before them temptations which they cannot resist. Were their characters mastered by the discipline of freedom, were they equal to the whites in knowledge and self-respect, could they exercise the same self-control, I would certainly withhold from them no privilege, no favor, which I would grant to the white man….I would exercise over [the negro] the same watchful care, the same wise restraint as I would over a minor.
Is it an act of injustice and oppression in our city fathers to withhold a liquor license from this Daniel Stone? ...Have those men who signed the petition…witnessed the drunken orgies of those men who frequented it? Have they ever listened to the sad story of wrong and outrage which weeping wives and mothers have related to their husbands and sons who have been enticed into that den of shame? …Instead of finding fault with the City Council for rejecting the petition of Mr. Stone, I thank them for the manly stand they have taken…
….If a majority of the colored men and women of this city ask for the reopening of this saloon, there might be, at least, a show of reason for granting their petition. But they do not ask it. Four-fifths of them, in my opinion, would remonstrate against it if they had an opportunity. They are a temperate people; are not addicted to drunkenness, and do not wish to be led into temptation.¹⁰
“Truth” responded to an article in the Lawrence State Journal by calling out Capt. James Christian: ”Had this article been written by any person of a true anti-slavery antecedent, it would have been different; but it comes from a person of known pro-slavery views, and who has held the idea that slavery was the best condition of the colored man. Had the writer of that article not been defeated at the last city election for Mayor…, he probably would not wish to vilify the present Council.”¹¹
Samuel Kimball, a committee councilman, quoted the June 15th article in the Journal together with Christian’s closing argument: “If it is right for a white man to hang around a saloon and spend his money, it cannot be a great wrong for a black man to do the same thing. Either open the door to all or close against all; no distinction on account of color.” Kimball justified the Council’s decision: “The rights [of drunkards] are not among the inalienable rights…; and even should the City Council consider it necessary, in order to prevent drunkenness among a class of people who have been heretofore comparatively temperate, who have but just emerged from a state of slavery, and whose elevation rather than degradation should be sought—should they, I say, see fit to deny them dram-shop licenses, I believe they cannot justly be charged with doing any wrong.” ¹²
At the City Council’s July 19 meeting, R.W. Ludington, a white distributor of liquor, and 44 other men, again recommended Daniel Stone “as a fit person to keep a saloon.” Mayor Grosvenor broke a tie vote on his petition and Daniel Stone was granted a license that served Black and white customers alike for 30 years.¹³ Upon his death in 1895, the Journal-Tribune characterized him “as [an honorable] man who paid his debts….He had dealings with many of the leading men of the city and was universally well thought of.”¹⁴
The Mobbing of George McGee
In July, George McGee experienced mobbing when a gang of eight or nine white men entered his house by smashing a window. While one man held a cocked revolver at his head, others ransacked the house for whatever they could carry off, destroyed dishes, furniture, and the stove, and then left. Maj. Thompson arrested and jailed some unnamed men.¹⁵
Two days after this outrage, the Tribune reported “threats [made] against all the negro families” in East Lawrence. “Learning this the colored men determined to protect themselves and families to the utmost of their ability.” A white “gang numbering some twenty men” went to the southeast boarding house of Mrs. Barker, a Black woman, kicked in the door, and represented themselves as the “Provost Guard” with orders to take all firearms from Black people. One Black boarder “refused in very few words with ‘I’ll see you in hell first,’ and seizing his gun rushed out through the window and ran to alarm his neighbors. The man soon returned with some thirteen of his colored friends; and a rough-and-tumble fight ensued, in which one of the white party was knocked down with a musket and severely injured. The whites then began retreating.” Black men fired several shots at them as they went by. In regard to this Black resistance, the Tribune concluded: “The colored men of the city are united and resolute, and we are of the opinion that if another assault like this is made upon them, the ruffians will not fare so well.”¹⁶
Subsequently, Dan Austin, a Wisconsin soldier, was “indicted for house-breaking” and jailed on this mobbing charge “since last July.” When the jury could not agree on a verdict, former territorial Gov. Wilson Shannon, a pro-slavery man, defended him and moved that Austin be discharged. “It was the opinion of the court that it would be very doubtful as to whether he could be convicted…under the evidence, and that the defendant had [already] been punished pretty severely”—so he was discharged.¹⁷
The Murder of David Golden
On September 3, Oliver Hodge, a 21-year-old white man and former soldier, murdered David Golden, a Black man from Arkansas, over a dispute regarding two revolvers. They agreed to settle the matter by playing a game of cards, and Golden won both revolvers. An argument ensued “in which Golden told Hodge ‘it is a [damned] lie.’ Hodge said, ‘he would not take the lie from any man, white or black,’ at the same time drawing his revolver and shot Golden through the head, causing his instant death.” At the coroner’s inquest, one witness who saw this homicide testified that Hodge put his revolver to his head and “told him if he spoke…he would shoot him.” Another witness, a young 15-year-old white boy, heard Hodge say that he killed Golden because Golden called him “a damned liar,” and not to tell anyone else; then hurried away on a stolen horse. The third witness, a 17-year-old white girl, also saw Hodge “scared, as he had just killed a negro, in self-defense.”¹⁸
Two weeks later, Hodge was arrested on a tip from Mr. [Mark?] Freeman and sent to prison. The following spring, Hodge’s trial for murder in District Court took two days. After deliberating for four hours, the jury gave its verdict of manslaughter in the second degree (meaning murder without intending to kill someone in advance). Although Hodge’s sentence was not reported, “The law fixes the penalty for this crime at not less than five nor more than twenty-five years imprisonment in the [Kansas] penitentiary.”¹⁹
Mr. and Mrs. William Scott
An anonymous “Citizen” reported another incident of racist violence because residents generally “are not aware of the unparalleled outrages that have been committed…on the persons and property of industrious, quiet people in our midst.” In late September, Justice Ladd received a complaint that “a wealthy gentleman of Anglo Saxon blood was living in an illegal manner with a colored woman. A warrant being issued, the parties were brought before the Justice to answer the charge….[The couple] declared that they had been pledged to each other for a long time; they only being deterred from fear of violence.”
As a result, a “self-constituted committee” gave Mr. William Scott a “short notice to leave—threatening him with violence in case he did not comply. Mr. Scott accordingly left on the same night for a place of safety. Mrs. Scott and her family—consisting of six small children and two grown daughters—were next assailed and driven from their house in the dead of the night. This [violence was] repeated night after night for two weeks. Last Thursday night their house was broken open, the door being smashed all to pieces with a beam, their money and other valuables stolen, and a good cooking stove destroyed. These are the facts. Please make your comments.” The Tribune commented: “Without reference to any of the peculiar considerations which have been made the pretext of some disturbance in this case, it is clearly the duty of the city authorities to see that these parties are protected in all the rights which the law accords them. If they have transcended these, let them submit to the penalties [for miscegenation or inter-racial cohabitation], but until then they are entitled to equal protection.”²⁰
Soon after, Rev. Richard Cordley and John C. Archibald asked the City Council “for protection for Mrs. Scott and other colored people, in their persons and property.” After several motions, the petition was postponed indefinitely—apparently with no actions taken.²¹
Attempted Rapes and a Threatened Lynching, 1873-74
In March 1873, the Tribune heightened racial tensions considerably by reporting an outbreak of attacks on young white women by Black men. “During the past week or ten days, there have been several shocking cases where women or young girls have been stopped on the street, insulted and maltreated by a set of devils incarnate in human shape.” One instance involved a young white girl about age 16 who was struck on the head with a large stone by a man who had followed her at night. “She is not positive, but thinks it was a colored man.” The following night, Olivia Sone, a young Swedish woman about age 25, was struck suddenly by a Black man with some heavy blunt instrument on her breast. In another part of town that same night, a young lady heard a knock at her door and asked who was there. “I am a poor colored man and want something to eat.” When she refused to let him in, he kicked the door furiously, then broke a window, pulled the curtain, and said, “I was bound to have a peep at you,” and disappeared. The reporter concluded that “this state of affairs…must be borne no longer. Lawrence has heretofore been a model town for peace and quiet, and ladies have been in the habit of going where they pleased in the city limits, day or night, without the least apprehension of molestation.” To stop “this beastly conduct,” the Tribune recommended that a special police force should stop “vagabonds [from] loafing around our streets in large numbers. If not this, then let something else be done, and at once.” ²²
Something was done immediately when three Black men were arrested. Tom Berry faced a complaint by Ada Nelson, a young Swedish woman, who identified him among fifteen or twenty others and charged him “with assault with intent to ravish.” Dan Stone took surety (responsibility) for him. ²³ Berry’s trial attracted “a large number of colored people of both sexes” and “a considerable number of Swedes” who expressed “a great deal of suppressed excitement.” “Fortunately, no disturbance took place.” ²⁴ While Berry was out on bail, his next trial was postponed but went unreported, suggesting he was discharged weeks later.²⁵
William P. Grant was arrested for “attempting to commit a rape” on Kitty Munday about 18 or 19 years old “with a rather handsome face and good figure.” Grant was described as “a young man, a light mulatto, with a rather ugly mouth [and] a ‘pop eye’ protruding from its socket and rolling in several directions at once.” His trial also attracted “a dense crowd of whites and blacks” that not only filled the court room but also spilled into the hallway and pressed against windows outside. Miss Munday testified that Grant kept following her at least four times. He first asked if she was a “fancy woman” and wanted her to take his two dollars. The second and third times he seized her arm or hand, “insisting that she should comply with his desired demand.” When he grabbed her arm again and revealed a pistol in his coat pocket, she screamed loudly, and he ran off. Grant’s defense attorney moved that he be discharged, because the evidence had not proven any offense had been committed; but the court refused. Ultimately, Grant’s case resulted in “forfeiture of recognizance”; that is, the court kept his $300 bail (paid by his father) when he failed to reappear in court.²⁶
James Givens raped Lizzie Johner, an 11-year-old girl, after throwing her on the floor in her home next door to him. This additional outrage provoked people to remark “We’ll have to hang some of them rascals yet.” Givens’ sister Betty told Judge Christian that “she had heard a mob was being organized to take her brother out of jail and hang him,” but he “assured her no violence would be committed.” ²⁷ Multiple rumors and exaggerated stories spread across town:
that the jail was heavily guarded on Friday night [March 28] to prevent the lynching of Grant and Givens; that the Swedes had 250 revolvers [for exterminating the men]; that colored troops had purchased an equal number of revolvers, and intended to fight nobly with razors beside, a common practice with the Dan Stone gang.
These stories arose from the excited condition of the public mind against the brute Givens, and the general feeling that the ends of justice and the good of the community would be advanced by his being hung. This feeling has at no time taken the shape of a plan for lynching anybody. No extra guard has been put over the jail by the Sheriff at any time. The story about the [Swedes and Blacks] arming [themselves] may or may not have had a foundation in fact….
The general sober sentiment among the whole people is in favor of the law taking its course, but at the same time, if we may be allowed to advise the colored people, we would suggest that no more rapes be committed, for some time, at least, and that gentlemen with razors take a back seat and sing small.
We would further suggest, as a means of preserving the peace of this city, that Dan Stone’s crib [saloon] be suppressed….
The respectable, industrious colored citizen has no better friend than we are, but we object to the existence in this city of a gang of thieves and ruffians, whether white or black. The honest colored men of Lawrence owe it to themselves to join in driving these vagabonds and rascals out of town. ²⁸
The Black community responded immediately to these “great calamities”:
Whereas There have been unlawful deeds committed by some person or persons, of the most damnable character, we hereby do denounce all who may be found guilty of any such unlawful deeds as unworthy of a home or shelter in our midst; and we hope that the guilty will be punished according to law; and
Whereas We do respect our wives, sisters, daughters and mothers, and all respectable families alike, irrespective of race or color; and we hope that the city authorities will give protection to the peaceable and respectable classes of all citizens, but no protection or shelter to the lawless vagabond, male or female, black or white, short of the county jail; and
Whereas There are rumors afloat of an organization to assassinate those that are accused and in the custody of the city authorities, we hope that this great evil will be stopped in due time.
Wm. Gray, President.
E. L. Bradley, Secretary.²⁹
The Journal described Givens as “a tall, long-legged, loose jointed, worthless fellow, very black, and apparently about twenty years of age.” Lizzie, “quite small” for her age, appeared “truthful and intelligent.” Given that “her injuries compelled her to see the physician,” a rumor spread that “the child contracted from him a loathsome disease.”³⁰ For its part, the Tribune interviewed Lizzie, her mother, and older sister at their small home on Ohio street near 10th street to correct false rumors. Here, the reporter also learned that “Givens’ sisters and other colored people living in the immediate neighborhood take occasion to heap abuses on Lizzie and her sister every time they meet them on the street.” He urged the police to “look into this matter and arrest the parties” because “The family should be protected at all hazards.” ³¹
As for Givens, he was released from jail on $600 bail with a writ of habeas corpus but was arrested again days later for carrying a concealed weapon. After his preliminary examination, he returned to the county jail with his bail fixed at $1,000.³² When the jury failed to agree on a verdict, his charge was reduced to “assault with intent to commit rape,” “according to the latest revised rules governing rape.”³³ Months later, after leaving town, he was arrested again for committing yet another rape on an 11-year-old Black girl and was sentenced to five years at the penitentiary. ³⁴
When Henry Ingraham was captured after his escape from jail in the fall of 1874, “His first request was for poison” so he could kill himself because “Lawrence folks will kill me if you take me back.” While jailed for his attempted rape of a 10-year-old Swedish girl, two white prisoners had threatened him with violence unless he hit a deputy with a piece of iron which he did. After his long escape to different towns, Sheriff Carmean captured him and told him that Deputy Campbell was not dead. “He appeared wonderfully relieved and became at once as submissive as possible.” Initially, public indignation had been very strong against him, but his story proved that he was “not so much of a villain as he might be after all.”³⁵ Likewise, as a Tribune reporter wrote, “Our malice against Ingraham has totally disappeared….[He] is neither surly, murderous or brutal looking” but actually a “pleasant spoken” 22-year-old Black man who “had no malice against deputy Campbell and was anxious not to kill him.” ³⁶ Even so, he was sent to the penitentiary for fourteen years for attempted rape, assault with intent to kill, a jail escape, and robbing clothes on the run. ³⁷
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¹ Brent M. S. Campney, This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2015). Within his Introduction, see definitions on page 2, 4-5, and incidents in Appendix I, 220-36.
² Quoted, 6 (emphasis added).
³ See Dr. Joy DeGruy, Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Joy DeGruy Publications: Portland, OR, 2017 revised edition).
⁴ Quoted in “Draft in Kansas,” Tribune, Jan. 5, 1865.
⁵ “Drafting and Its Results,” Tribune, Mar. 1, 1865.
⁶ Quoted in Tribune, Jan. 31, 1865. Bounties were financial incentives to encourage men to enlist in lieu of families losing their wage-earners. See Roger D. Cunningham, “Douglas’s Battery at Fort Leavenworth,” Kansas History 23, no. 4 (Winter 2000/2001), 200-17.
⁷ Quoted in “The Quota,” Tribune, Feb. 8, 1865. His recruits included Sgt. Gabriel Gray, Sgt. Peter Jones, Corp. James Mumford, Pvt. George Ellis, and possibly Henry Clay. See Gabriel Gray in Tribune, Feb. 18, 1865. Sadly, Capt. Douglas passed away nine months later in November.
⁸ “Outrageous Conduct,” Tribune, Mar. 15, 1865.
⁹ Quoted in “City Council Proceedings,” Tribune, June 24, 1865 (emphasis added).
¹⁰ Quoted in a letter to the Tribune editor, June 18, 1865.
¹¹ Quoted in a letter to the Tribune editor, June 21, 1865; see “City Election” results, Tribune, Mar. 9, 1865.
¹² Quoted in a letter to the Tribune editor, “The License Question,” June 20, 1865 (emphasis in original).
¹³ “Council Proceedings,” Tribune, July 22, 1865; see Ludington’s liquor ads, Tribune, Feb. 1 thru June 10, 1865.
¹⁴ “Dan Stone Dead,” Journal-Tribune, July 19, 1895.
¹⁵ “A dastardly outrage,” Tribune, July 21, 1865 as cited by Campney.
¹⁶ Quoted in Tribune, July 23, 1865.
¹⁷ Quoted in “State of Kansas vs. Dan Austin,” Tribune, Dec. 16, 1865. The 1865 census listed Austin as a 35-year-old married man born in Indiana.
¹⁸ Quoted in “Murder—Negro Killed,” Tribune, Sept. 5, 1865 (cited by Campney). Descriptions in the 1865 census.
¹⁹ In Tribune, “Arrest for Murder,” Sept. 22, 1865; quote in “District Court,” May 25, 1866.
²⁰ Quoted in a letter to the Tribune editor, Oct. 18, 1865. Kansas repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1857.
²¹ “City Council Proceedings,” Tribune, Oct. 21, 1865.
²² Quoted in “A Series of Barbarities,” Tribune, Mar. 23, 1873; also cited and quoted in part by Campney, 47, 53.
²³ “Arrested,” Journal, Mar. 23, 1873 and Tribune, Mar. 27, 1873.
²⁴ Quoted in “Tom Berry’s Case,” Journal, Mar. 27, 1873. See “Berry’s Case,” Western Home Journal, Apr. 3, 1873; Journal, Apr. 13, 1873. Berry was arrested for a “mouth fight” with a Black girl, Journal, Apr. 17, 1873.
²⁵ Quoted in Tribune, “Another Arrest,” Mar. 27, 1873; “The Attempted Rape,” Mar. 28, 1873; “District Court,” Aug. 19, 1873; “Grant’s Case,” Western Home Journal, Apr. 3, 1873; “The Recent Outrages,” Spirit of (Lawrence) Kansas, Apr. 5, 1873.
²⁶ Quoted in “Another Horrible Outrage,” Tribune, Mar. 29, 1873, cited and quoted in part by Campney, 47. Newspapers misspelled her last name as “Jonah”; see Lizzie and her Johner family in the 1870 census.
²⁷ “The Situation,” Journal, Mar. 30, 1873.
²⁸ “To All Whom it May Concern,” Tribune, Apr. 1, 1873.
²⁹ Quoted in Journal, “Another Shameful Deed,” Mar. 29, 1873 and “The Givens Case,” Mar. 30, 1873.
³⁰ Quoted in “The Givens Rape Case,” Tribune, Apr. 1, 1873.
³¹ In Journal, “Out,” Apr. 13, Apr. 15, “The Givens Case,” Apr. 16, 1873; Tribune, Apr. 15 & 16, 1873; cited and quoted in part by Campney, 52.
³² In Tribune, Apr. 22, 1873; “District Court,” Aug. 19, 1873.
³³ In Tribune, Feb. 27, 1874; “Jim Givens Caught,” Feb. 28, 1874; Western Home Journal, May 28, 1874.
³⁴ In Western Home Journal, “Ingraham Retaken,” Nov. 19, 1874; “State vs. Henry Isham [sic],” Oct. 22, 1874.
³⁵ In Tribune, “Behind Bolts and Bars,” Nov. 18, 1874; “Ingraham Caught,” Nov. 17, 1874; “Will M. Campbell,” Oct. 24, 1874; “Caught—Almost,” Nov. 5, 1874.
³⁶ Western Home Journal, Jan. 28, 1875.
The Cases of John Blunt and Strawder Hines
In the winter of 1875, John Blunt murdered Charles Ingersoll, a white Kanwaka farmer. The Leavenworth Times picked up the story from the Western Home Journal, and its reporters learned more from men who came over from Lawrence: Shortly after Blunt was arrested at Fall Leaf, “an attempt was made by some parties to lynch the prisoner, but the sheriff summoned a posse, and the attempt was frustrated. When the prisoner arrived in Lawrence, another attempt was made to take his life, but it was also frustrated. He was placed in the Douglas county jail to await an examination.”¹ Days later, the Journal confirmed that this murder, “so apparently unprovoked, so cold-blooded,” sparked “a few hot-headed persons [who wanted] a vigilance committee and lynch law; but there was no movement in such a direction, although the feeling ran high.”²
Reports concerning this tragic murder offered somewhat conflicting views on whether the killing was in self-defense or premediated. Two weeks or two months earlier, Ingersoll had hired John to work on his farm after his 63-year-old father Benjamin Blunt had applied to the township trustees for aid to his family. When Ingersoll found some work undone, he “severely scolded” John who “drew a revolver and fired four shots” at him. The wounded man entered his house and fell across the bed. “As Blunt came up, Mrs. Ingersoll said, ‘Don’t kill my husband,’ to which [John] replied, ‘I’ll kill anyone who calls me a damned nigger. Don’t touch me or I’ll shoot you.’” Mrs. Ingersoll left and made her way to Wakefield’s nearby house.³
Previously, Mr. Ingersoll had “expressed his disgust for the three shiftless Blunt boys” and told Wakefield that he “had threatened to have them arrested as vagrants.” Ingersoll also told him that “he had heard the boys [say] they would kill him, and he had seen them prowling around his house after dark several times.” Recently, John had tried to borrow another man’s pistol. From this or another pistol, the coroner reported one fatal bullet in Ingersoll’s neck, one in his right arm, and another lodged in the kitchen door.⁴
John Blunt told his side of the story to a Journal reporter as follows:
I am eighteen years old and have been working for Mr. [Charles] Ingersoll for about two months. Last night as I was coming up to the barn, Mr. Ingersoll came out of the barn door and yelled out at me, ‘You damned black son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.’ He had a hay knife in his hand and aimed a blow at me, which I dodged, and the knife struck a fence post. I had taken my pistol out of my pocket to put it up while I cut some hay, and as he struck at me, I raised my hand and the pistol went off. I had no intention of shooting him.
He then ran towards the house, and I followed. Mrs. Ingersoll met me and begged me not to kill her husband. I then dropped my pistol. Mr. Ingersoll had fallen across the doorway. Mrs. Ingersoll at once started for Mr. Wakefield’s.
I saw I had killed Mr. Ingersoll, and I knew I must get away; so, I picked up his watch and pocketbook, which had fallen out of his pocket, and took a coat from a nail near the door, and running to the barn jumped on the dark sorrel horse and road as fast as I could toward Lawrence. When I got near town, I jumped off the horse and walked into the city.
On the main street I met a boy named ‘Mitch’ and with him I bought a watch key at [Frazer’s] jewelry store and a woolen scarf at Steinberg’s. I did not offer to sell the watch to anyone. With ‘Mitch’ I went to Mrs. Pembleton’s house on a side street and went to bed. I got up at 6 o’clock and walked over to the depot and bought a ticket for Fall Leaf.⁵
Near Fall Leaf, two officers found John who “permitted himself to be secured without a struggle.” He handed over a gold watch, a pocketbook containing a small sum of money and papers, and Ingersoll’s overcoat. He also told the officers where his pistol could be found in a chest. His jail cell was covered from the view of a large crowd.
Meanwhile, John’s father, “gray headed and bowed with age,” dug a grave for Ingersoll “solemnly and alone.” The Journal reporter “spared him any questions” and instead visited John’s two half-brothers who “appeared to be totally indifferent as to the fate of their brother.”⁶
At Blunt’s trial, “the courthouse was filled with a crowd of men and boys.” Here, the testimonies of Mrs. Ingersoll, Wakefield, and others went unreported. In their speeches to the jury, the defense attorney argued for justifiable homicide because John’s first shot was in self-defense. The county attorney argued for premediated murder with intent to kill. In less than thirty minutes, the jury of twelve white men rendered a verdict of murder in the first degree. John received the news “with the stoical indifference [that] marked his conduct during the entire trial,” but his father “was visibly affected.”⁷
Given that John was known as “a quiet, well-disposed boy,” suspicions were raised that his step-brother Jefferson Holloway may have incited him to murder Ingersoll. Jeff had tried to rob Ingersoll with another Black man, but they did not succeed; and as soon as John was arrested, he left town. When word came that he had returned home, thirty “citizens” went to the Blunt home and demanded to see him. Mrs. Blunt, “very much frightened,” did not allow them into the house. When they learned he was not there, they left word that he should leave the county and never return.⁸
John Blunt was sentenced to being hanged by the neck after spending one year of hard labor at the penitentiary. However, Governor Thomas Osborn would not sign any death warrants because the current ambiguous law seemed to abolish capital punishment and sentence criminals to life imprisonment. Although he urged the legislature to amend this 1872 law in unequivocal terms, various bills languished as legislators continued to shirk their responsibility. ⁹ In 1881, 25 prisoners, including Blunt, still faced death by hanging or life imprisonment. During this time, John worked as a bookkeeper at the Lansing penitentiary. Benjamin Blunt applied for his son’s pardon in 1884.¹⁰
For fourteen years, John’s conduct was so good that he never received even a reprimand from prison officials—yet no one ever visited him. With “one of the best prison records of any one confined,” he began making a great effort to get a pardon to be released from prison while working in the shoe factory.¹¹ Finally, in 1894, former governor Charles Robinson and Judge James S. Emery appealed to the State Board of Pardons. They argued that Ingersoll appeared “to have been very abusive to Blunt, whose exasperation led to the killing,” and that these circumstances “did not warrant a life sentence.” At the age of 37, John Blunt was released from prison, having served 19 years of his 24-year sentence as a model prisoner.¹²
Five years later, John Blunt was arrested for forging a mortgage on his father’s 51-acre farm and obtaining $300, $100 of which he returned. This “sad case [was] regretted by all who knew” him. While he had worked hard, there appeared to be no reason why he needed to borrow money. His lawyer told him “he could commit the forgery, and it would never be found out.” He plead guilty and was sent back to the penitentiary for one year. Near the end of his term, Governor Stanley granted him citizenship papers.¹³
After his release from prison for a second time, John packed his belongings and “departed for parts unknown,” save for a brief visit with some dear friends in Kanwaka.¹⁴ Nothing more is known about what happened to him.
Around age 92, Benjamin Blunt died in 1904, one year after his wife.¹⁵ They were buried next to one another at Oak Hill Cemetery with no stone markers (Section 9, G41-42). Dr. Frederick D.G. Harvey handled the Blunt estate.¹⁶
In 2006, a white marble tombstone for the Blunt’s five-year-old daughter Anna Jessie Blunt (1873-1878) was discovered in a field near Stull Road and given to the Wakarusa River Valley and Heritage Museum to put on display. After seeing the stone, Bob Wandel and Delmar Koch, members of the local Sons of the Union Veterans, placed the stone in a concrete base at Clinton Cemetery near other African American graves. An old mortuary record also revealed that a Blunt son had also been buried on the Blunt homestead.¹⁷ It seems fitting to have at least one physical remembrance of the Blunt family.
***
The end of Reconstruction in the South sparked a Great Exodus of 6,000 destitute Black people who came to Kansas, increasing white fears and hostilities. White racists continued to believe that lynchings would deter vicious crimes, ignoring the ongoing routine violence they themselves inflicted.¹⁸ Newspapers continued to incite racist violence knowing full well that Black men feared death by hanging far more than prison sentences. While wrestling with the influx of Black Exodusters, Governor John St. John refused to sign death warrants because legislators still had not decided whether to abolish capital punishment, leaving prison sentences up to local judges.¹⁹
***
In Lawrence, the Tribune railed against jury decisions and judges for letting guilty murderers get away with lesser charges and penitentiary sentences.²⁰ Therefore, in 1879, the paper reacted to another cold-blooded murder as follows:
There was considerable talk on the street last evening of lynching Strawder Hines, the fiend who murdered Samuel J. Odell. The turnkey at the jail was disturbed a number of times during the night by squads who were loitering around, but no attempt was made to use violence. Of course, it is best to let the courts apply the penalty prescribed by law; but cold-blooded murder and outrages are becoming so common that an indignant community would hardly be blamed for meting out justice informally, while the public mind is in a state to make the lesson impressive.²¹
Strawder Hines, an 18-year-old man, gave himself up at the jail at 2 a.m. and told the sheriff he had shot Odell through a window in self-defense because Odell had threatened to kill him, first last summer and again the previous night. In his detailed story, Hines explained that he worked on his father’s 40-acre farm next to Odell’s five rented acres south of the county poor farm. Last summer, he followed his hogs onto Odell’s property and suddenly came upon Mrs. Odell who was “very much frightened [and] her fright caused considerable foreboding of evil” in her pregnant state. Angered by his wife’s fear, Mr. Odell met Hines, called him “hard words,” drew his pistol, and fired a shot but not at Hines. After several more meetings, Hines asked Mrs. Odell “to use her influence to heal the breach,” but Odell told him again, “I am going to kill you.” Hines told his parents that “either he or Odell must die.”
Before the shooting, Hines warned Odell, “I’m here on hellish business,” but Odell ignored him and went inside his house to read to his children. Hines said, “I got so mad I could not hold myself” and shot Odell in the temple with his extra loaded musket through the window. Mrs. Odell screamed at him and grabbed the butcher knife in his pocket. He took it away from her, accidentally cutting her hand, and went home where he told his parents what happened. His father told him to get on the horse and give himself up to Sheriff Clarke, which he did.²²
The Standard reported Hines’ same story as the Journal, adding, “Strawder Hines says that the moment he fired the fatal shot he felt better [for] a great light seemed to shine in on me.” He slept soundly, was not disturbed by dreams, and read a Bible. While confirming threats at the jail, the reporter also asserted, “There is a loud call for the enforcement of the death penalty for crimes of this nature, and that penalty or lynch law are believed to be the only terrors that will prevent the continual recurrence of such bloody affairs.”²³
Hines said that “he has been a great sinner all his life, but that for the past two weeks he has prayed every night [to relieve] the burden [that] he might not be killed by Odell….He thought he could kill a man…and be sure of heaven….He expects to go to the penitentiary but does not care anything about it [because] his mind is so relieved from fear now.”²⁴
At the trial, his father explained that when Strawder was about 11 years old, he was kicked in his forehead by a horse whose hoof left a print there. Ever since then, he “had headaches [and] was afraid to have a light near him at night, as he said, ‘for fear someone would shoot him through the [covered] window.’” After several sleepless nights, he had “one of his bad spells” with “swelling above his eyes” during the day of the murder.²⁵
For these reasons, Hines’ defense attorney plead insanity, and also argued for a new trial which Judge Stephens denied. Like Blunt, Strawder Hines was sentenced to be hanged after one year in the penitentiary for murder in the first degree. Three years later, he died “suddenly,” and his body was buried in the pen’s graveyard.²⁶
Another Rape and a Threatened Lynching, 1878-1880
Unlike earlier events, Edward Fry did not face a threatened lynching for raping a white 30-year-old married woman, perhaps due to her age. Furthermore, his family lived in a house formerly owned by Sheriff Carmean and his father had an “honest and industrious” reputation. Unlike previous trials, crowds were removed from the courtroom. After pleading guilty, Fry was sentenced to 21 years in the penitentiary (until 1900).²⁷ His parents Eliza and William Fry applied for his pardon in the 1880s, but he was still at the penitentiary in 1890 with a new release date set to expire in February 1896.²⁸
Yet it appears Fry was released earlier, perhaps for good behavior, because he married Carrie Jones in December 1894 and worked as a driver for stores. They divorced in 1901.²⁹ Five years later, Edward was killed in a construction accident inside a cave in Kansas City. His body was brought back to Lawrence and his sister Mrs. Maggie Fishback held his funeral at her home before his burial at Oak Hill Cemetery (Section 11, row F, grave 11).³⁰
In August 1880, Bob Thompson was captured for attempting to rape an 11-year-old white girl after William Fry, Edward’s brother, had been wrongly arrested. When confronted, Thompson “begged Colonel Walker [his previous employer] repeatedly to protect him from any mob,” saying “he did not accomplish anything [but] only threw the girl down”—and tore off her clothes before her mother arrived.³¹ Having scooped the story the day before, the Tribune claimed, “We are not in favor of encouraging mob law, but [the laws] do not have the desired effect when lynching would forever relieve the land of one hell hound….We for one will help pull one end of a rope that is over a limb and a rapist fastened by the neck to the other.”³² After Thompson’s arrest, an organized mob intended to lynch him that afternoon, so Sheriff Asher moved him to Topeka, even though “in his heart, he felt the man ought to be hung.”³³
Weeks later, Judge Steele charged Thompson for attempted rape and sent him back to the county jail because he could not pay his $1,000 bail. During the night when Thompson was taken to Topeka and the afternoon of his examination, a Black militia with loaded guns paraded near the jail, leading the Journal to wonder: “Of course, the colored people do not uphold Bob Thompson in his action, and we presume their parading on both of these occasions was purely accidental.” Indeed, Captain A.H. Brooks of the Lawrence Guards confirmed that their practice drills had nothing to do with protecting Thompson. Its members “have no disposition to take into their own hands the execution of the laws and certainly do not uphold any man in crime.”³⁴
While Thompson remained in jail at least through February 1881, his final sentence in District Court was not reported but he may have been discharged by August 1882.³⁵ Regardless of his sentence for attempted rape, he felt “elated for getting off easy” on the charge of stealing hogs and spending seven years in the penitentiary.³⁶
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¹ Quoted in “Repeated Attempts to Lynch the Murderer, Leavenworth Times, Jan. 31, 1875. Although the Journal’s initial report is not available online, the Times reprinted its article, “Murder Most Foul,” Feb. 4, 1875 (see below).
² Quoted in “The Ingersoll Horror,” Western Home Journal (WHJ) Feb. 4, 1875, cited by Campney, 224. Note: The Tribune suspended publication from Dec. 1874 to Oct. 1875.
³ Quoted in “Murder Most Foul,” WHJ, Feb. 4, 1875 and Leavenworth Times, Jan. 31, 1875. See Ingersoll, Blunt, and Wakefield Section 26 properties in Beers’ 1873 Atlas, https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/208302/page/7.
⁴ Quoted in “The Ingersoll Horror,” WHJ, Feb. 4, 1875.
⁵ Quoted in “The Ingersoll Horror…and an Interview with the Prisoner,” WHJ, Feb. 4, 1875 (emphasis added).
⁶ “Interview,” WHJ, Feb. 4, 1875. The 1865 census listed John (b. 1857) with his parents, Benjamin (ca. 1812), an American Indian identified as “colored,” and Ann Maria (b. 1830) both born in North Carolina, and 3 Missouri-born siblings. After Ann’s death, Benjamin married Mary Holloway (b. 1833) on Nov. 26, 1870, and the 1875 census listed six Blunt children without John who was at the Lansing penitentiary.
⁷ “The Blunt Murder Trial!” WHJ, Feb. 11, 1875.
⁸ “Supposed Accomplice,” Tribune, Dec. 16, 1875. Jeff Holloway did return. He was arrested for passing forged checks, found guilty, and sentenced to sixty days in the county jail, “in Trouble,” Democrat, Oct 31, 1888.
⁹ John Blunt, WHJ, Feb. 10, 1875; Leavenworth Commercial, Feb. 10, 1875; “Governor’s Message,” WHJ, Jan. 20, 1876; “Capital Punishment,” Tribune, June 21, 1882.
¹⁰ See John Blunt, bookkeeper, in 1880 Leavenworth census; in Leavenworth Times, “A Day at the State Pen,” June 19, 1881; Blunt in “Sentenced to Death,” Feb. 22, 1883; “Application for Pardon,” Western Recorder, Feb. 8, 1884.
¹¹ John Blunt, National Anti-Prohibitionist Journal (Leavenworth), Dec. 13, 1889; quote in “When the Boys Will be Home,” Journal, May 26, 1890; “In the Lansing Prison,”(Leavenworth) Evening Standard, Nov. 24, 1890; “The Board of Pardons,” Leavenworth Times, Nov. 15, 1891.
¹² Quoted in ”A Pardon Asked,” Gazette, Apr. 1, 1894; “John Blunt Pardoned,” Journal, May 22, 1894; Gazette, May 23, 1894.
¹³ Blunt had expected to purchase a mule team and to get married, Gazette, July 18, 1895; “Pardoned Too Soon,” World, Jan. 16, 1899; Gazette, Jan. 19, 1899; quoted in World, “sad case,” Feb. 3, 1899 and lawyer, May 10, 1899; citizenship, Journal, Dec. 18, 1899.
¹⁴ In Gazette, Feb. 1, 1900; Apr. 19, 1900.
¹⁵ “Benjamin Blunt Dead,” Gazette, Aug. 24, 1904; Mrs. Mary Blunt, Journal, May 2, 1903.
¹⁶ “Notice of Appointment,” World, Dec. 1, 1904.
¹⁷ Mike Belt, ”Young Pioneer’s Tombstone,” Lawrence Journal-World, May 27, 2007, 1B, 6B.
¹⁸ During the Exodus, Campney points out only one lynching in Fort Scott occurred in Kansas, far less than the seven victims who were killed in 1864-65 during the war, in addition to seven threatened lynchings, 66.
¹⁹ For example, see “Kansas Legislature,” Tribune, Jan. 27, 1876.
²⁰ “Murder,” Tribune, Mar. 30, 1879.
²¹ Tribune, Nov. 20, 1879.
²² Quoted in Hines’ Story, “Premeditated Murder!” Journal, Nov. 18, 1879. William, Queen, and Strawder Hines came from Arkansas in 1863; see 1865 and 1875 Wakarusa census. Samuel Odell, born in Britain, wife Ida, and infant son in 1875 Wakarusa census.
²³ In Standard, “Murder Most Foul!” Nov. 20, 1879, cited by Campney, 225; “Capital Punishment,” Nov. 27, 1879.
²⁴ Quoted in “Waives a Preliminary Examination,” Journal, Nov. 21, 1879.
²⁵ Quoted in “Defense Pleads Insanity,” Tribune, Apr. 15, 1880; also “District Court,” Journal, Apr. 15, 1880.
²⁶ In Journal, “Application,” Apr. 29, 1880; “Sentence,” May 1, 1880; “Strawder Hines Dead,” Jan. 26, 1883.
²⁷ See Lavana Lamborn in 1875 Wakarusa census; in Standard, “A Shocking Outrage,” Dec. 13, 1878; “Examination of Frey [sic],” Dec. 20, 1878; Aug. 24, 1879; 1880 Lansing census of prisoners.
²⁸ In Journal, applications for pardons, Oct. 7, 1881; May 29-June 18, 1888; “Record of Douglas County Prisoners at Lansing,” May 29, 1890; see 1875 census.
²⁹ “Married in probate court, Edward Fry and Carrie Johns [sic],” Journal-Tribune, Dec. 4, 1894. Carrie Williams, a widow, had married Edward Jones in 1889 but he died several months later, Tribune, July 6, 1889; Gazette, Apr. 1 & 4, 1890; his employment in 1896 and 1900 directories; divorce granted, Journal, Sept. 25, 1901.
³⁰ On Jan. 12, 1906, “Ed Fry is Dead,” World; “To Be Buried Here,” Gazette; body, Journal; funeral, Journal, Jan. 13, 1906.
³¹ In Journal, “The Right Man This Time,” Aug. 26, 1880 and “The Assaulted Girl,” Aug. 25, 1880, cited by Campney, 225. Fry was exonerated, Tribune, Aug. 25, 1880.
³² Quoted in “An Awful Outrage,” Tribune, Aug. 24, 1880 by Campney, 75; and “If He Escapes Lynching, He will be Fortunate,” Tribune, Aug. 25, 1880.
³³ “A Prisoner from Lawrence,” Topeka Capital, Aug. 26, 1880.
³⁴ In Journal, “Bob Thompson,” Sept. 3, 1880 and “As We Expected,” Sept. 4, 1880.
³⁵ “Insane or Not Insane,” Journal, Feb. 1, 1881; Bob Thompson, Spirit of Kansas, Aug. 23, 1882.
³⁶ In Journal, “The Sentence of the Criminals,” May 16, 1885; “When the Boys will be Home,” May 29, 1890.
Two More Threatened Lynchings and a Killing, 1883-1916
In late July 1883, Frank Strode broke into the home of Major Theodore Wiseman at 1119 Tennessee street while he and his wife were away with the intention of raping his 11-year-old daughter. He used the Major’s large decorative cane to break in, telling the girl he had gotten it from a boy in Kansas City, and left the cane in the house before he left. When her older brother came home, she told her story to a police officer and a doctor, who had seen Strode with the cane the day before and knew where Strode lived. They found Strode at his home, arrested him with no resistance, and placed him in the county jail. There, he refused to say whether he owned the cane and disclaimed any knowledge of the little girl.¹
Several days later, forty men planned to take Strode from the jail “and either hang him or inflict such punishment as his crime merits.” Upon learning of the plan, Sheriff Asher “placed a guard in the jail strong enough to resist attack.” He then captured a couple men—“well-known citizens who would be greatly ashamed to have their names made public”---rebuked them severely and told them “there surely would trouble if any attempt was made to enter the jail. Finding that an attack was useless, the valiant forty dispersed.” The Journal agreed that “it is high time that mob law talk ceased,” especially after last summer’s lynching.²
This controversy heightened when the Herald published what a “well-known businessman in Lawrence” told the Kansas City (MO) Times that “There is going to be a regular war some day between the whites and blacks of this city”:
There has always been a very large negro population in Lawrence, and it seems to be on the increase. Among this population is a class of worthless men who won’t work and whose time is spent in petty thieving and sometimes worse crimes are committed by them. There have innumerable instances of negroes following young girls and women home and insulting them whenever they found them after dark. This has caused a general feeling of indignation to prevail against the whole class and someday a regular war will follow some outrage committed by them.
You remember the Bausman murder last year [and the lynching of three men]….
We came very near to having another hanging there last week and had the case been a little stronger against the negro he would have swung sure. The negro’s name is Frank Strode and it is believed that he made the attempt to commit an outage upon the 12-year-old daughter of Col. Theodore Wiseman….and Strode was put under arrest.
When the circumstances became known, a number of the boys collected, and it was strongly urged by some that Strode should be strung up. Owing to the fact that he had not actually offered the girl any violence, it was finally decided to let the matter drop. When Col. Wiseman returns however, I shouldn’t be surprised to hear of his killing the negro.
It is such occurrences as these that keep the public indignation aroused and unless there is a sudden and thorough reformation on the part of our negro population, there will be a war one of these days that will startle the entire country.
---Lawrence Correspondence, Kansas City Times³
John Waller responded to the Times article as follows:
Whoever wrote the above is a fool, and little apprehends the trouble he is about to cause this city. A man who would advise a mob or a riot is no conservator of the peace. There is no reason that this community should be further disgraced. We are sure that Strode…will be punished to the fullest extent and penalty of the law. No harm has been done to the little girl; no violence has been committed. We have no sympathy for Strode nor any other man who would make such a dastardly attempt to the person of any girl or woman.
It is a mistaken idea for a set of hot heads to assume that every colored man who is charged with a crime in this community must be taken from jail and hung.
[We hope that the lynching of old Pete Vinegar, against whom there was no charges] will never occur again in the history of Lawrence….[Citizens here] know what the editor of this paper has done for the interest of law and order. We stand here now to advocate it, but we will not advise the colored people of this city and county to hold up their hands while a set of law-breakers ruthlessly murders them. If all the colored men are to be charged with the crimes committed by the scoundrels of any race, then let the colored people stand together when the hour which the Times correspondent advises shall come.
We say, once for all, that no more colored men will ever be taken the Lawence jail and hung. We speak thus, plainly and seriously. No one desires to see a riot in the Athens of Kansas, but a riot is inevitable should there be an attempt to mob another colored man in this city. We have remonstrated and done what we could to preserve the dignity of the law and the good name of this city, and now patience has ceased to be a virtue. The jail must not be disturbed. Strode must await the sentence of the law; should there be an attempt to disturb the jail, it will be the signal for a wanton and inhuman slaughter, a riot, such as will disgrace the name of the city for all time to come.
As to colored men following white girls in the night, the example is set by white men who should respect their homes too much to be caught in company with colored prostitutes. But these white men are following this class of colored women almost every evening in the week. They stand on the street corners and whistle and beckon them.
Our sympathy is with the little girl, even though the vile hand was not laid upon her. We know Major Wiseman, and there is not a more thorough gentleman in this city than he. He has a just right to defend his fireside. But we do not believe that the Major would do a thing which he thought would widow a single innocent wife or orphan a single little one. Shall this whole community be clad in sorrow on the account of the attempted crime of one man?⁴
Given that Waller had brought up his name, Major Wiseman explained his positions in the Herald:
…I know there are a great many respectable, well-meaning, honest, hard-working colored men and women in Lawrence, who I respect, and with whom I sympathize, and who are as much opposed to crime and lawlessness as the same number of white citizens. I would say to these that to uphold or sympathize with one of their color who is guilty of a crime and lawlessness will not benefit them or their race. The colored people should be the last ever to draw the color line, or speak of violating law, as they need the protection of the law more than any other class.
The substance of the article in the Western Recorder, if I read correctly, is that in the event a great crime was perpetrated by a colored man, and a number of white citizens should feel so aggrieved at the crime and conclude to take the criminal out of jail to hang him, that in the event all peaceable, quiet, law-abiding white citizens would lay themselves liable to mob law on the colored population.
Now I think I am a law-abiding citizen, [but] my nature has been sorely tried by the attempted outrage on the person of my eleven-year-daughter, the only one I have left of five daughters. While sitting in the court the other day listening to the recital of my little daughter’s experience during my absence and in the presence of that horrible monster Strode, I say it was a terrible strain upon my nature to refrain from killing the black monster in court. I am thankful I had the moral courage to let the law take its course, which I believe is always best….
The offense committed by Strode was not only an offense against my family but against every family in town. There is a large percent of low, thieving, lazy, crime-plotting, [and vagrant] colored men and women in this town. This is no news but a fact, and the respectable colored people know it as well as I do….It is especially to the interest of every respectable colored man and woman to do all in their power to either reform them, or if they know of a crime committed by this class to do all they can to have them punished….
Colored men, I advise you as a friend, don’t draw the color line on every occasion, for if you do the words of the editor of the Western Recorder may come true; to wit that, ‘it will be the signal for a wanton and inhuman slaughter, a riot, such as will disgrace the name of the city for all time to come.’ And I might add that the colored race might come out of such a riot worse for wear. Speak of everything as citizens, and not as colored men. Be law-abiding but don’t threaten what you will do in case the law is set at defiance.
You are yet in the minority; you have not yet advanced so far in intelligence, and influence, and power as to believe that you can afford to bring on a conflict with the white race.
In conclusion, I beg leave to express my opinion that only the hoodlum class of colored people endorse all that is said in the article referred to. The editor said some very sensible good things in the article, and if he had stopped without the threat made, would have received the hearty endorsement of all right-minded people.
I served over four years of my best life to get you your freedom, lived three years in the south after the war, was Klu Kluxed out of the south for doing my best to get the colored men their civil and political rights, and lost all my property, and I have done more for the colored race than they can do for me. But should ever a conflict come, such as the editor of the Recorder speaks, just put me down on the side of law and order. I shall be found protecting my family and fireside the same as I protected my country years ago. I believe I speak the sentiment of the old soldier element in this community. At least those I have conversed with feel as I do about the matter. By all means bring every violator of law to justice; it’s the only safety for us all.
Respectfully, Theo. Wiseman⁵
In addition to Wiseman’s letter, Waller’s response set off a series of published disputes with Charlie C. Thacher, editor of the Herald:
If we understand Mr. Waller rightfully, he threatens that should certain law-breakers attempt to take from the jail another colored man, he would himself join in a revenging committee that should murder white men unceremoniously. Mark his words. ‘We have remonstrated and done what we could to preserve the dignity of the law and the good name of this city, and now patience has ceased to be a virtue. The jail must not be disturbed. Strode must await the sentence of the law; should there be an attempt to disturb the jail, it will be the signal for a wanton and inhuman slaughter, a riot, such as will disgrace the name of the city for all time to come.’
Mr. Waller by simply publishing such a threat as this encourages the lawless class, which we believe he sincerely deprecates. Though fifty attempts at lynching should be made, we want no mob law. Mr. Waller’s duty and mine and every good citizen is to insist that men who make this sort of threat, black or white, shall be promptly arrested.
We do not want to be a walking arsenal simply to protect life from hot-headed fools; neither do we want to be killed by some worthless scamp simply because somebody else did a foolish thing.
Let Mr. Waller join his efforts with us in saying drive from the streets the harlots, the hoodlums and incentors [sic] to riot of both colors and he will accomplish much more toward the peace of the community than by the article he has published this week. That article gives the hoodlum element to understand that they will have the moral support of such men as Mr. Waller. John, you are wrong.⁶
Waller responded in two columns as follows:
Our esteemed contemporary has taken special pains to EMPHASIZE that portion of our article to which is taken exception. We do not regret what we have written, for it was intended for a warning. We are aware that the patience of the worthy colored people of this city and county have become thread-bare, because they are set upon, both by a part of the press of this city and not unfrequently by the Kansas City press, especially the Times.
In our city we are all chickens and coal thieves and are so treacherous that it is unsafe for the people of this city to leave their families at home alone; so, say some of our city press.
The Kansas City Times says the colored population of Lawrence must be reformed, thus placing all the colored population of this city in the same category. Whenever one colored man commits a crime, every other man, woman or child, born or unborn, is called to suffer for it. There is nothing to encourage the colored people. The Daily Press of this city has no word of commendation for them. We have become tender and sore on the account of these stripes being laid on in the same place so long. We ask when one colored man commits a crime that he alone meet the punishment of the law, and that every other colored man who has committed no crime be separated from him.
Now, Charlie, we are pleased to learn that you are ready to assist in keeping the peace. So are we. We never aided or abetted a riot or murder in our life, and we never will.⁷
Explanation
There is only one passage in our article of the 10th which we feel should be explained, and that is the portion with reference to what would be done in case there should be an attempt to mob another colored man. We did not mean in this article there would be a slaughter of peaceable citizens of this town. On the contrary, we would do all in our power to defend them. We meant this and no more, that the colored people of this city had been threatened long enough and have become so restless on this subject that a riot between colored men and white would take place at the jail, and not that peaceful law-abiding citizens would be disturbed.
We hope the Herald will attack the articles found in the Kansas City Times, which want only insults every colored man here with most slanderous and infamous lies. There is no word of condemnation of that paper, although they boldly declare that there will be a war here on the colored population of this place. No one in this community has done more to keep the peace than we.
We said nothing disrespectful of Major Wiseman in our issue of the 10th. Though we are in the minority that is no reason why we should resent an insult. The Major cannot excel us in obeying the law. We have always been law-abiding, and we are proud to say there is no court record that will show that we ever had a charge against us.
We are raising our children the same way. We stand ready to protect the family of Major Wiseman and every other good man, but we want ours protected too. We will turn out and assist in capturing every colored and white villain who attempts a rape or commits a murder, but we ask that they may be tried. That right, we believe, is not denied even in uncivilized communities.
We protest against the mob, because they often shed innocent blood, because they lead to other acts of violence in any other locality. If [the] law is inadequate to mete out just punishment in some classes of crime, let the legislature make laws to meet such cases, with the rope [at the state penitentiary]. Then no innocent man or woman will be hung.
Neither Mr. Charley Thacher, [Rev.] H. R. Pinckney or anyone else who have been so wrought upon by our article has anything to say condemnatory of the Kansas City Times article. It is all right and must not be criticized. We can say we are not at all intimidated and are not afraid to defend our rights.⁸
In “Mr. Waller Explains,” the Herald acknowledged that Mr. Waller “fully explains himself and places himself right. We are glad to give Mr. Waller the benefit of his correction[s]. After reprinting some of his passages quoted above, the Herald added:
Mr. Waller asks us why we did not condemn the Kansas City Times article. We certainly had no word of commendation for it. We thought at the time we copied it that it was an exaggerated article and published it to show how people outside were talking about us.
A dispatch was received in this city last night from Leavenworth saying that a rumor prevailed there that the colored people were about to burn Lawrence and saying that if there was any such danger troops would be sent over at once to give protection. Now this rumor was probably started by some drunken fool and does not, as everybody knows, tell the true state of affairs.
The Kansas City Times is not the organ of the white people of Lawrence, and whatever it might say would only be the word of a neighboring paper. We do not think it would much affect the peace and quiet of our city whatever correspondence that paper might publish.
But John Waller is supposed to be running a paper that represents the sentiments of the colored people of this city, and it might make a great difference what he should say. We are glad that Mr. Waller has placed himself right and hope we shall have no occasion to find fault with him again. If he and men like him always voice the sentiments which he does this week, there will be little danger of any rioting.⁹
But the Herald continued to publish inflammatory reports from outside newspapers, such as one entitled “Degenerate Lawrence” from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that stated in part, “If [Lawrence mobs] would occasionally hang a white ravisher of wealth and influence, as Mississippians do, the colored people might join in the sport. But the latter certainly have a right to object to a race discriminating in such affairs….” In response to this article, Thacher exposed his wholly racist biases:
Mr. Waller wants us to comment when we make such extracts, and so we will say that to our knowledge, there has not been a murder, or an assault of the kind committed in Lawrence by a white man since we have lived here, except once, and that one was killed by a colored man. We don’t want any man hung up by a mob, white or black, but it is thinner than skim milk to ask why an occasional white man is not hung. Constable [Louis C.] Bowers, a colored man, shot a white man and killed him instantly who attempted to rob [a] store, and every white man in the city commended him for the act.¹⁰
The white people of Lawrence are not making a war against the colored people. Any man in Lawrence knows that the colored people are treated better here than in any city in the United States. There is a set of lazy louts among them that would do nothing but steal, whom we would like to see put where they will be obliged to earn an honest living; but when one of these is brought to the rack, this cry of race persecution is raised. The white people of Lawrence uncomplainingly pay $100 for school tax when the colored people pay one [a matter of record]. Yet if a white child objects to sit in the same seat with the colored boy a duce of a row is kicked up. There are colored men in our board of Education [Waller and C.C. James], [and] Mr. Waller was nominated by white men for the Legislature.¹¹
Talk about oppression—they are not even made to behave as well as white men would be. The full length of the rope is given to them, and they slobber a long ways over that. Mind you, we do not say this is the case with even a majority of the colored men and the majority behave themselves. But the worst hoodlum element we have is among the colored people and instead of being restrained they are encouraged. We think the better class of colored people have it in their power to improve this state of affairs and can do it if they will. If they would try, they would certainly have more cause for complaint and be more respected by everybody.¹²
Obviously, Thacher ignored the fact that white people had been “making a war” against Black people through ongoing racial discrimination since the 1860s. His racist prejudices also ignored the fact that the white people were not responsible for and had not reformed white rapists, thieves, saloon keepers, drunkards, etc.
Yet again, Waller responded to Thacher who “is still complaining of the colored people. We dislike much [having] Charley feel badly towards us, but it is even thus.” In regard to Constable Bowers, Waller wrote, “We think it comes with ill grace for Charley Thacher to wait two years and then try to kick up a muss about a dead burglar and would-be murderer”—who shot and wounded a police officer and then shot at Bowers on the run. As for taxes, he claimed that “the colored people here pay school taxes in proportion to their number [of about 2,000]” for roughly 150 to 200 Black children (or 9%) out of 1,935 enrolled students. “As to the colored children making a ‘fuss’ because white children refuse to sit by them, nobody will be frightened about that. It was only done to create strife between the children in school….The Herald is imaginary.”¹³
Five months later, John Waller and his law partner C.W. Mitchem defended Frank Strode. The jury found him guilty of burglary in the first degree within twenty minutes and Strode was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary. Waller commented, “We do not doubt that the community feels better to see a man sentenced according to the law than to disgrace the town by mob-law.”¹⁴ By 1890, Strode’s sentence had been reduced by two years with his time expiring on February 7, 1892.¹⁵ His actual release, death, and burial site remain unknown.
After her husband’s sentencing, the Journal reported that Mrs. Anna Strode was ill and “in very needy circumstances.” The family was “crowded into a little house” at the corner of Tennessee and 14th streets and did not “have the facilities to keep themselves comfortable during the cold winter.” Benevolent citizens were asked to contribute toward their welfare by contacting Marshal Prentice.¹⁶
Five years later, Anna Strode died from blood poisoning and was buried in potter’s field (lot 1464) at the city’s expense. The city paid for the burial permit and the opening and closing of her grave—likely because her husband Frank Strode was serving time at the state penitentiary in Lansing.¹⁷ She left seven children (ages 8-21).¹⁸
***
In 1895, Arthur and Preston Porter, two brothers ages 12 and 10, ran away from their home in Baldwin City and stole a horse and buggy in downtown Lawrence. After officer Sam Jeans caught them, Arthur told the probate judge that “he alone was responsible for the misdeeds” of his younger brother whose mind had been affected by a rock struck on his head at age five. So, the judge decided to let Preston go but to send Arthur to the Topeka reform school for “free disciplining” even though his father Preston Sr. “was not anxious” to have him taken away.¹⁹
Shortly after the family moved to Lawrence in 1898, Arthur and Preston assaulted and badly abused a 9-year-old white girl on a road north of town. “There was strong talk of lynching last night, but no mob appeared at the jail, although one was expected….Had the people in the neighborhood found the wretches, they would have made short work of them. The neighborhood was out hunting for them with ropes.”²⁰ After the brothers were convicted of attempted rape, they were sent to the Hutchinson reform school.²¹
After his release from the reform school in 1900 at age 15, Preston, also known as John, went to Limon, Colorado with his father and brother Arthur to work on the railroad. While in Denver, he was accused of brutally murdering an 11-year-old white girl and was taken to the jail with his family, where he confessed to the crime—under duress—to save his father and brother.²² When the sheriff escorted him on a train to Hugo for his trial, the girl’s father and 16 men took him from the train in Limon with 300 to 700 men and women of Lincoln County. They tied him to an iron stake with chains and burned him to ashes at the very spot where the girl had been murdered the previous week, even as he cried out, “I’ve got something more to tell you,” while holding a Bible. The coroner buried his ashes in a small box at the scene.²³
Completely broken and strained, Preston Sr. and Arthur joined Mrs. Addie Porter also distraught in Lawrence. Days later, Mr. Porter hired an attorney in an attempt to force the state of Kansas to collect financial damages from the state of Colorado, but nothing came of it.²⁴
Instead, Colorado Governor Charles Thomas, a Confederate veteran, refused to express an opinion, and the district attorney for Lincoln County also decided that “criminal proceedings against the leaders of the lynching would be futile [due to] public approval.” Indeed, the coroner’s jury ruled that Porter’s death “was at the hand of parties unknown,” even though the girl’s father lit the fire.²⁵ The sheriff of Lincoln County, who could not stop the Limon mob, also agreed that no jury in the area would convict anyone, concluding:
….I do not justify the cremation, but I do object to have you [the district attorney] and Governor Thomas saddle the blame of burning on me, and I will not involve Lincoln county [in] political capital for somebody. Politics cut no ice in this affair. While Lincoln is a republican county, the men who participated in the lynching were representatives of all political parties. When it comes to administering death, …I take it that true Americans lose sight of mere politics and remember only that they are fathers and brothers.²⁶
Preston Porter Jr. now has a memorial dedicated to him in Colorado.²⁷
***
The final incident of racist violence in Lawrence cited by Campney was not a killing-by-police, because the coroner’s jury found that “Jack Walker came to his death as the result of a gunshot wound inflicted by persons unknown.”²⁸ In December 1913, Jack Walker, the 20-year-old son of Sherman and Ida (Carr) Walker, was shot and killed while attempting to board a train with his 24-year-old friend Walter Peterson in North Lawrence. Walker was found lying on the tracks with a .44 or .45 caliber bullet wound in his chest that had been fired from above downward upon him. He was taken to the hospital but died ten minutes later. Officer McKissack found Peterson wounded in his hand and took him to the county jail.
Ed McKissack, a Black policeman, told his story as follows:
The conductor and the porter came running up to me and asked me to come with them. They told me that two colored boys had made an effort to board the train. They said that one of them had attacked the conductor with a knife when he attempted to put them off. The conductor’s trousers were cut on the leg. They said the other had struck the porter over the head with a bottle.
I ran around the rear of the train with them when I saw two men cross over in front of the engine. I suspected that these were the men and started toward them. Then I heard a shot fired. I ran up to the engine where the engineer and fireman asked me to climb into the cab and ride out of the yards with them. I did. Then we proceeded west. About a block out of the yards, one of the two jumped into the steps of the cab. He was flourishing a revolver in his hand. Almost instantly he left the train again and jumped to the ground. I jumped after him. Then I heard two more shots. I saw the flash of fire from the gun, and I am convinced that one of the two boys was doing the shooting. I saw them both running down the track and I fired two shots. Then they disappeared in the fog.
The train pulled on out but by this time a number of people who had heard the shooting appeared and soon the two men were found, one dead and the other wounded. They both had their backs to me when I shot, and I feel sure that I did not fire the shot that killed Walker.²⁹
In February 1914, a jury found Peterson guilty of assaulting the conductor and porter of the Rock Island railroad company with the intent to kill. Rather than send him to the state penitentiary, the judge sentenced him to the Hutchinson reformatory as the jury requested.³⁰ One year later, Sherman and Ida Walker sued two receivers of the Rock Island railroad company and the American Express Company for the death of their son Grayson, also known as Jack, but had no success.³¹
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¹“Attempted Outrage!” Journal, July 31, 1883; Wiseman’s address in 1886 city directory.
²Quoted in “Attempted Mob Law,” Journal, Aug. 7, 1883; cited by Campney, 226.
³Quoted in Herald, Aug. 6, 1883.
⁴Quoted in Western Recorder, Aug. 10, 1883 (emphasis added).
⁵“Waller Answered,” to Editor Daily Kansas Herald, Aug. 11, 1883 (emphasis in original).
⁶“The Color Line,” Herald, Aug. 10, 1883 (emphasis in original).
⁷Quoted in Western Recorder, Aug. 17, 1883, 2.
⁸Quoted in “Explanation,” Western Recorder, Aug. 17, 1883, 2. Waller was referring to the 1872 Kansas law that sentenced criminals to the state penitentiary for one year before being hanged. For years, governors refused to sign death warrants for prisoners until the legislature would amend this ambiguous law by clarifying whether or not to abolish capital punishment. Like others before him, Gov. George Glick urged that the death penalty law be amended, see “Death Penalty,” in “Governor Glick’s Message,” Gazette, Jan. 4, 1883.
⁹Quoted in “Mr. Waller Explains,” Herald, Aug. 17, 1883.
¹⁰Bowers was fully exonerated from all blame while strictly performing his duty as a duly authorized peace officer, “Constable Bowers,” Journal, Aug. 21, 1881.
¹¹This was the only time in Lawrence’s history that two Black men served on the school board at the same time; see James and Waller, in “Board of Education,” Herald, July 3, 1883; Waller lost the nomination for the 18th District to John Speer by five votes on the fifth ballot, Journal, Oct. 22, 1882.
¹²“Degenerate Lawrence,” Herald, Aug. 18, 1883.
¹³Western Recorder, Aug. 31, 1883.
¹⁴Western Recorder, Morning News, Journal, and WHJ, all dated Jan. 3, 1884.
¹⁵“Record of Douglas County Prisoners in Lansing,” Journal, May 29, 1890.
¹⁶“Deserving People,” Journal, Mar. 4, 1884.
¹⁷Journal, Feb. 10 & 12, 1889.
¹⁸While their parents Preston and Addie were born in Kentucky, Arthur and Preston Jr. were born in Ohio, in 1885 and 1895 censuses.
¹⁹Quotes in “To the Reform School,” World, Aug. 5, 1895; application, World, July 31, 1895; Journal, Aug. 3, 1895. The 1895 Baldwin census listed the brothers born in Ohio and their parents born in Kentucky.
²⁰Quoted in “A Dastardly Crime,” World, Aug. 23, 1898; cited by Campney, 230; Journal, Aug. 23, 1898.
²¹In Journal, “District Court,” Nov. 21 & 26, 1898; Arthur’s parole, Aug. 15, 1900.
²²“Lawrence Negro in Trouble,” World, and “Lawrence Men Arrested,” Journal, Nov. 13, 1900; “Will Lynch Him,” Journal, Nov. 15, 1900; “Negroes Warned,” Journal, Nov. 16, 1900.
²³“Burned at the Stake,” World, and “Burned to Ashes,” Journal, Nov. 17, 1900; “Coroner’s Inquest,” Journal, Nov. 19, 1900.
²⁴In World, “The Porters Here,” Nov. 17, 1900; “Wants Damages,” Nov. 20, 1900; “The Porters Reach Lawrence,” Journal, Nov. 19, 1900.
²⁵Quoted in “No Steps Taken,” Journal, and World, Nov. 17, 1900.
²⁶Quoted in “Sheriff Talks Back,” Journal, Nov. 26, 1900.
²⁷See his photos and an EJI memorial to him at https://www.coloradolynchingmemorial.org/preston-porter-jr.
²⁸See Campney, 236; quoted in “Hold No One for Jack Walker’s Death,” LDJW, Dec. 17, 1913.
²⁹Quoted in “The Officer’s Story,” “Death in Gun Play on Train,” LDJW, Dec. 15, 1913.
³⁰In Gazette, “Tried on Charge of Shooting at Crew,” Feb. 2, 1914 and sentence, Feb. 2 & 28, 1914.
³¹“Railroad Sued for Death by Shooting,” Gazette, June 26, 1915.