The following are the six instances of lynching known from
available news accounts that took place in Hamilton County, Tennessee, in the
later 19th and early 20th centuries.
Five of the victims were Afro-American and one of the victims was white.
In the latter case, the perpetrators were members of a
vigilante movement that began in Indiana in 1887 and quickly spread across the
country known as White Caps. A movement
rather than an organization, its various cells operated on widely varying
methods, goals, and “principles”, with the majority claiming to be enforcing
community standards and Christian principles.
By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, harsh laws had all
but suppressed the White Caps, but it served as more of a precursor to the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1915 than was the organization that
group claimed as predecessor, the post-bellum Ku Klux Klan.
Dan Tucker, 1870
On 24 September 1870, a band of 25-30 masked night riders surrounded the home of a freedman named Dan Tucker living as a sharecropper on the Cummings farm in Wauhatchie (Lookout Valley). The night riders dragged him from his home, beat him, and shot him to death in place of his cousin Solomon Crooks of Chattanooga, accused of molesting a 14-year old white girl of the community. Before attacking Tucker, the night riders dragged another freedman, Hiram Crockett, from his home some 15 yards away, whipped him, then forced him to witness the lynching
Elridge Merrill, 1873
On 7 October 1873, Elridge Merrill, an Afro-American from the
Gambletown section of St. Elmo in Hamilton County, then well outside the city
limits of Chattanooga, was brutally beaten, whipped, tortured, and lynched from
a corn crib in St. Elmo by a mob of white men angered over his cohabitation
with a white woman named “Dink” Norris.
Charles Williams,
1885
On 7 September 1885, Charles Williams, an Afro-American accused
of murder for shooting a street car driver who tried to enforce Chattanooga’s
segregated seating ordinance, was lynched from the rafters of the third floor
of the Hamilton County Jail the day after his arrest.
Thomas Gailiff, 1889
On 24 July 1889, Thomas Gailiff, probably white, was dragged
out of his dwelling in East End, Tennessee (west and north of East Lake along the
lower end of Rossville Road), in Hamilton County by White Caps who then hung
him from a tree in the yard for being a “traducer of women”. He managed to escape, but was caught and hung
again near Ross’ Gap.
Alfred Blount, 1893
On 14 February 1893, Alfred Blount, an Afro-American migrant
laborer living in a boarding house at the south end of Maple Street (at the
mouth of the gully between Terrace Hill and College Hill) was accused of
sexually assaulting a white woman. He
was dragged from the Hamilton County Jail and hanged from the southernmost (first)
span of the County (Walnut Street) Bridge.
He had not even been formally charged because the victim denied he was
the perpetrator.
Charles Brown, 1897
On 25 February 1897, Charles Brown, an Afro-American of
Bakewell (aka Retro), Tennessee, was lynched from a bridge over North Chickamauga
Creek near Soddy, Tennessee, after being accused of molesting a local white
woman.
Ed Johnson, 1906
On 19 March 1906, Ed Johnson, an Afro-American of the Higley
Row section of South Chattanooga near Hooterville, had been convicted of rape
of a white woman in St. Elmo but had his execution stayed by both the
governor and by the U.S. Circuit Court.
An enraged mob dragged him from his cell in the weakly defended Hamilton
County Jail, dragged him to the second span of the County Bridge, and hung him from
one of its beams for about two minutes before shooting him with more than fifty
bullets.
1 comment:
For Charley Williams's story, see https://bit.ly/2IVXlnJ
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