vigilantism

White man killed by a mob.

The Miners Journal (Pottsville, Pa.), 15 May 1903.

This brief account of the murder of T. Percy Jones snatched at my eye. A man killed by a mob in Wilson in 1903? The backstory is complicated … and surprising.

Jones was a white insurance salesman from Little Rock, Arkansas, who had been boarding at the Fryar Building downtown for several weeks. A crowd of at least eleven white men broke into Jones’ room to confront him about (1) black women occupying his room and (2) suspicions that he was a detective investigating Wilson’s flourishing gambling dens. Allegedly two weeks earlier, the police had gone to Jones’ room looking for Fannie Adams, a black woman from Goldsboro wanted for stealing a watch. Adams was not there, but a letter addressed to her was found, as was a different black woman. Jones allegedly also had been spotted in a “Negro eating house” with a black woman. A posse sent a message to Jones to get out of town. Anticipating conflict, Jones kept a loaded shotgun at the head of his bed. When the mob broke down Jones’ door, guns blazing, Jones fired back. His shot lodged in the ceiling, Jones was struck in the abdomen. (Two of the mob caught friendly fire as well.) The men scattered, jumping out of windows and shimmying down ladders.

The police rounded up fish dealer J.B. Piver, merchant tailor Samuel J. Walls; brickyard laborer, prison guard and whiskey still operator John Pittman; Times pressman George Whitley, who also drove a hose wagon for Wilson Fire Company; W.P. Croom; carpenter William W. Barnes; Lawrence Morgan, who ran a gambling house; William H. Rich, a cotton mill superintendent from Alabama; farmer J. Thomas Bass of Wayne County, N.C.; barkeep Gil D. Ward, originally of Wayne County; and barkeep and Pitt County native John R. Allen, the man who was shot. At the coroner’s inquest, Mayor Doane Herring, who was among the first on the scene, gave testimony unfavorable to the arrested men, and feeling in town ran against them. Additional testimony hinted that police officers W.P. Snakenburg (a 21-year veteran and former police chief), Frank Felton, and George Mumford had been encouraged to make themselves scarce the night of the attack, and A.C.L. Railroad night watchman Peter Nichols had failed to stir when he saw the crowd moving. (Snakenburg was soon fired; Felton drew a ten-day suspension; and Nichols was stripped of police power.)

At trial, Barnes turned state’s evidence, and others each swore their innocence, claiming they had never conspired with their codefendants, were not on the scene, and in general knew nothing about the incident. A single black witness, George Moye, testified:

The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.), 19 May 1903. This paper carried a blow-by-blow of both the coroner’s inquest and the trial.

In his summation, defense attorney Frederick A. Woodard thundered: “… when this crime came to my knowledge there also came to my mind the fact that a man was living here in sight of a church steeple in adultery with a negro woman. … And had he gotten what his acts deserved he would have been driven out and this horrible killing would have been averted.” Prosecutor F.S. Spruill, who had been brought in from Louisburg, N.C., shot back, “They not only killed the body but this defense has attempted to raise over this body the black name of infamy. Let those who are not guilty throw the first stone. Rich, in [Cora Duty‘s] bawdy house; Morgan in the home of a harlot when arrested and Ward, the slayer of his [black] mistress [in Wayne County.] Can these man point at a man who, it is claimed, has committed adultery?”

The first trial ended in mistrial, but in February 1904, Whitley, Ward, Rich, Pittman, Allen, and Bass were found guilty of the reduced charge of manslaughter and given sentences of six to ten months’ hard labor at the state penitentiary. Piver and Walls were tried separate from the others and were acquitted.

——

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: kinship laborer George Moye, 52, widow, and boarders Annie Graves, 40, widow, and Cora Williamson, 23, both day laborers.

Recommended reading, no. 23: In the Pines.

We’ve read of J.C. Farmer, shot to death by a posse in his mother’s yard in 1946. The official version of the altercation that led to Farmer’s murder has never sat right with me, and Hale’s searing work helps me understand my discomfort. In this award-winning work, Hale explores white supremacy, violence, (in)justice, and her own family’s role in the murder of an unarmed Black man in piney-woods Mississippi.

The outrages against the negro race will stop.

Lonoke County was a popular destination for Wilson County Exodusters migrating to Arkansas in the late 1800s. By 1898, white men were trying to drive out their Black neighbors, and the Wilson Advance ran a brief wire service piece entitled “Race War Threatened.” Lonoke’s African-American community was not intimidated: “When the negroes of Lonoke kill about 25 of these lawless men, the outrages against the negro race will stop, and not until then.”

Wilson Advance, 3 February 1898.

For more about Lonoke families with Wilson County roots, see here and here and here and here.

A lynching in Wake County.

Hickory Daily Record, 6 November 1918.

*T R I G G E R  W A R N I N G*

On its face, this account of this terrible crime has no bearing on Wilson County.

More details emerged in newspapers over the next few days, however, and on November 9, the Greensboro Daily News reported: “From the few facts available the affair was one of genuine old-fashioned lynching. [George] Taylor was identified by Ms. [Ruby] Rogers, it was said about 1.30 Tuesday afternoon. Immediately thereafter J.T. Bolling (who, with Buddie Mitchell, of Youngsville, and Dudley Price, it was said, made the arrest at Wilson) and Oscar Barham started to Raleigh with the prisoner.

“About a quarter of a mile from Buffaloe bottom [near Rolesville] about 400 yards from where the negro was strung up, four men wearing blue hoods, completely masking their faces and bearing a single barrel and double barrel shot gun, are said to have met the negro and the officers and carried the party into the adjoining woods.

“There the party was held until Tuesday night when the mob took the negro and hanging him by the feet on a bent pine tree, slashed and cut him up and filled him with over 100 bullet holes. He was left hanging from 7.25 Tuesday night, when the firing was heard until about 9 o’clock Wednesday morning when Sheriff Sears’ office was notified.

…

“Taylor was arrested near Wilson and tied in the foot of an automobile with a pistol pressing against his ribs, he was brought to Mrs. Rogers for identification. At first she is said not to have been positive, but later to have been convinced. When asked after the lynching she said there was no doubt but that he was the man. When he was brought before her Dr. Young of Rolesville said the negro was forced to repeat the words her assailant used and he changed his voice, later she heard him talking in the yard in his natural voice she became positive it was the man. J.T. Bolling the man from and with whom the negro was taken said that after the identification the negro confessed to the crime.”

George Taylor’s murder is the only recorded lynching in Wake County.