HISTORY
GET READY FOR THE FUTURE IT IS MURDER.
BY GUY LANCASTER This piece is inspired by Guy Lancaster’s new book, “American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching,” available locally at Wordsworth Books, through the website of the University of Arkansas Press, or wherever else you might buy good books. COURTESY OF THE ARKANSAS STATE ARCHIVES
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n June 1897, a white mob in Lonoke County kidnapped a Black teacher named D.T. Watson and gave him a thorough beating. Local African Americans were warned “that they had education enough” and were only needed for chopping cotton. A few months later, Watson went missing, only to be found hanging from a tree with a sign pinned to him: “A warning to ‘nigger’ schoolteachers. We want none of this kind of people in this country; others beware.” Watson was but one of 97 Black people lynched in Arkansas in the decade spanning 1891 to 1900 — 93 males and 4 females. By contrast, 16 white males were lynched during the same time. This was a real change from the previous decade. From 1881 to 1890, there were 36 Black males lynched in the state, compared to 27 white males. While every lynching was an evil, comparing the numbers raises the question of what exactly happened to foster this spike in anti-Black violence. The answer is rather simple: the perfection of a one-party state through the scapegoating of Black political and economic power. And African Americans in Arkansas had real power during the Reconstruction era and beyond. Textbooks of a previous generation loved to portray newly emancipated slaves as disastrously unready for the “burdens of freedom.” For example, the 1966 textbook “Historic Arkansas” by John L. Ferguson and J.H. Atkinson reads thus: “After the war, the Arkansas Negro became a ‘freedman’ who had to provide for his own needs and those of his family. Not only was he poorly prepared to look out for himself, but the poverty of his surroundings gave him little opportunity. The outlook for the freedman in Arkansas and other Southern states was made darker by the fact that his former owners had been killed in the war or were now too poor to help him.” But such assertions prove utterly laughable in the face of actual history. Before the year 1865 even came to a close, freed Black men in Little Rock organized the Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Arkansas, which met from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, in large part to advocate for equality before the law in the government to come, as well as to implore the government for educational opportunities for freed people. And the eight Black men who participated in the 1868 Arkansas constitutional convention included some particularly well-educated and cosmopolitan figures. Among them was Helena businessman William Henry Grey, born a free man in Washington, D.C., who would later become the first Black man to address a national presidential nominating convention when he seconded the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant at the 1872 Republican convention. Alongside him was James W. Mason. Born a slave in Chicot County but acknowledged by his father (and owner), Mason was educated at Oberlin College in Ohio and later in France, and became the first African American appointed to serve
WILLIAM GREY: A prominent Black leader during Reconstruction.
as a postmaster in the United States. Grey and Mason were among the 35 Black men who served in the Arkansas Legislature between 1868 and 1874, the year “redeemer” Democrats were able to push through a new constitution and drive Republicans (the party to which most African Americans were loyal) from statewide office. Black men continued to be elected under the Republican (and occasionally Democratic) banner in the coming years, but in much smaller numbers, and increasingly limited to Delta counties where the Black population was highest. And when white Democrats could not successfully connive their way into office, they used violence. The 1898 coup d’état in Wilmington, North Carolina, has been popularly portrayed as the first such overthrow of a government to occur in the United States. But 10 years before the violence in Wilmington, white Democrats carried out a similar strategy in Marion, in Crittenden County. The population in Marion was 80% Black by the year 1880. Despite their overwhelming numerical advantage, Black Republicans engaged in “fusion” politics with local Democrats, which entailed the local parties meeting before the election and working out for which offices each would field a candidate. This allowed something of a balance, but it was not enough for white Democrats. Early in the summer of 1888, a group of prominent local Democrats (including the sheriff) met across the river in Memphis. They cooked up a scheme to indict the county judge, D.W. Lewis, and County Clerk David Ferguson, both Black men, on charges of public drunkenness. On the date of the trial, July 12, numerous prominent white residents announced they had received letters threatening their lives if they did not leave the ARKANSASTIMES.COM
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