Category: lynching

Hickmaniana

January 23, 1927
Los Angeles

hangingaround

Following up yesterday’s story about whether one Ray McCoy was lynched for looking too much like Edward Hickman…

The verdict of the Coroner’s jury?  Jail officials and other prisoners, all vindicated.  Nevertheless, it seems that Ralph “Ray McCoy” Fuller raised the ire of Angelenos in the grip of Hickman fever, whose Hickmanmania (Hickmania?  Hickmentia?) led an angry mob to chase down and beat Fuller something fierce, believing the twenty year-old to be Hickman, after Fuller robbed a store at 242 South Main and was chased two blocks on foot.

Fellow prisoner Fred Meadows told the Times that once in the hoosegow, the sullen and reserved Fuller was regarded as just another popped burglar.  Meadows related how he and the boys started playing “Sundown” in an outer tank and when he returned, Fuller had hanged himself with Meadows’ scarf.  (Must be nice to have scarves.  And pianos.)

In other lynching news, any and all information regarding Hickman’s departure and route from Pendleton (where he was exhibited in a cage like a circus animal) to Los Angeles County Jail is being kept under strict secrecy.  

damnyoufriedrich 

Strange Fruit

Feb. 1, 1907
Los Angeles

I was all set to write about Leroyxez, “The Human Pincushion,” being nailed to a cross promptly at 4 p.m. at Chutes Park, and then a story about lynching in the U.S. caught my eye.

Year

Number of

Lynchings

1901

135

1902

36

1903

104

1904

87

1905

65

1906

73

Of the 73 victims for 1906, all but four were African American men, the exceptions being an African American woman and three white men, according to the wire story from the Washington Post.

State

Number of Lynchings

Mississippi

13 (down from 20 in 1905)

Georgia

9

Louisiana

9

Florida

6

Texas

6

Alabama

5

North Carolina

5

South Carolina

5

Arkansas

4

Kentucky

3

Missouri

3

Tennessee

2

Indian Territory

1

Maryland

1

Colorado

1

Triple lynchings were conducted in Georgia, North Carolina and Missouri. The alleged crimes including stealing a silver dollar and stealing a calf (both in Louisiana), carrying a loaded pistol, petty robbery, improper proposals, miscegenation, criminal assault, assault and murder, attempted murder, murder and robbery, double murder, quadruple murder and quintuple murder. One victim was lynched for allegedly attacking three white women in one afternoon, the story says.

In the case of R.T. Rogers, one of three whites lynched in 1906, the mob chartered a train from Monroe, La., to Tallulah. His case had been in the courts for two years and eight months on charges that he killed a business rival.

J.V. Johnson, a white man, was lynched in North Carolina while awaiting a new trial after the jury deadlocked on whether he was guilty of killing his brother.

The third white man, Lawrence Leberg, “a tramp,” was hanged from a telephone pole in Las Animas, Colo., for allegedly killing a farmer who had befriended him.

“One victim was shot and the corpse burned; two were shot while they cowered in their cells, the mobs firing from outside the prisons; four were hanged and burned; two hanged and shot; 21 shot in the open; and 42 hanged,” The Times says, leaving us to wonder about the final victim.

There is no further information on the woman who was lynched.

Lmharnisch.com
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E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com




A Gruesome First

Dec. 27, 1907
Henryetta, Okla., by the Associated Press

A little more than a month after Oklahoma achieved statehood, James Garden became a wretched statistic: the first black to be lynched there.

On Dec. 24, Garden went to see liveryman Albert Bates about renting a rig. When Bates refused, Garden accused him of racism, went across the street to get a gun, returned and shot Bates to death.

By nightfall, a group of 100 men stormed the jail, fought off police officers and hanged Garden from a telegraph pole in the center of town, then used his body for target practice, riddling it with bullets.