A in St. Paul? Almost—in 1895, an Era of ‘Vigilante Justice’ Page 11 Summer, 2002 Volume 37, Number 2

Life on the Mississippi: Singles, Doubles and Pairs, Fours and Quads— The Boat Club’s 132 Years —Page 4

The home of the Minnesota Boat Club, circa 1880s. This photograph by C. A. Zimmerman “was one of the most remarkable pieces of photography ever accomplished,” according to an article in a 1903 issue o fT h e Razoo, a Boat Club publication, adding that it “and has been commented upon by photographers all over the country.... In order to get it, Mr. Zimmerman had to keep a sketch of the boat­ house in his mind while he took photographs of the members and the ladies. These he afterward arranged in groups so that they appear in the completed picture to be all posing together. ” From the Minnesota Historical Society archives. See article on the Minnesota Boat Club’s history beginning on page 4. RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Executive Director Priscilla Famham Editor Virginia Brainard Kunz

R A M S EY C O U N TY Volume 37, Number 2 Summer, 2002 HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Howard M. Guthmann CONTENTS Chair James Russell 3 Letters President 4 Singles, Doubles and Eights, Fours and Quads Marlene Marschall First Vice President Life on the Mississippi: The 132 Years of the Ronald J. Zweber Minnesota Boat Club and Its Rich History Second Vice President Jim M iller Richard A. Wilhoit Secretary 11 ‘Hang Him! That’s the Best Way’ Peter K. Butler A Lynching in St. Paul? Almost, in 1895— Treasurer An Era of ‘Vigilante Justice’ in America Charles L. Bathke, W. Andrew Boss, Peter K. Paul D. Nelson Butler, Norbert Conzemius, Anne Cowie, Char­ lotte H. Drake, Joanne A. Englund, Robert F. 15 Is This Houston Osborne? Garland, John M. Harens, Joan Higinbotham, Scott Hutton, Judith Frost Lewis, John M. Lind- Paul D. Nelson ley, George A. Mairs, Richard T. Muiphy, Sr., Richard Nicholson, Marvin J. Pertzik, Glenn 16 The Road to the Selby Tunnel: Or, How Wiessner, Laurie Zenner, Ronald J. Zweber. To Make It Up the St. Anthony Hill EDITORIAL BOARD Virginia Brainard Kunz John M. Lindley, chair; James B. Bell, Henry 18-20 Lost Neighborhood: A Story in Pictures Blodgett, Thomas H. Boyd, Thomas C. Buckley, Mark Eisenschenk, Pat Hart, Thomas J. Kelley, 21 Growing Up in St. Paul Tom Mega, Laurie Murphy, Richard H. Nichol­ son, Paul D. Nelson, G. Richard Slade. Manager, Fight Promoter, Minnesota Game Warden— Johnny Salvator and his Impact on Boxing in St. Paul HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD Elmer L. Andersen, Olivia I. Dodge, Charlton Paul R. Gold Dietz, William Finney, William Fallon, Otis 24 Book Reviews Godfrey, Jr., Robert S. Hess, D. W. “Don” Larson, George Latimer, Joseph S. Micallef, Robert Mirick, Marvin J. Pertzik, J. Jerome Publication of Ramsey County History is supported in part by a gift from Plunkett, James Reagan, Rosalie E. Wahl, Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen in memory of Henry H. Cowie, Jr. Donald D. Wozniak. and by a contribution from the late Reuel D. Harmon RAMSEY COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Commissioner James McDonough, chairman Commissioner Susan Haigh Commissioner Tony Bennett A Message from the Editorial Board Commissioner Rafael Ortega Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt iven this summer’s 90-degree temperatures, Jim Miller’s history of the Minnesota Boat Club Commissioner Janice Rettman Gprovides a refreshing glimpse of an early St. Paul athletic enterprise. Founded in 1870 by a Commissioner Jan Wiessner number of the city’s leading men, rowing at the MBC was strictly for amateurs. It also afforded an Paul Kirkwold, manager, Ramsey County opportunity to attend social events on the Club’s yearly calendar. In addition, Miller’s research greatly increases our understanding of the value of Raspberry Island, where the MBC is located, to Ramsey County History is published quar­ the city’s cultural heritage and riverfront beauty. terly by the Ramsey County Historical In contrast, Paul Nelson’s account of the near lynching of an African American, Houston Os­ Society, 323 Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth Street, St. Paul, Minn. 55102 (651-222- borne, in St. Paul in 1895 is tense and suspenseful. Nelson not only explains what happened in 1895, 0701). Printed in U.S.A. Copyright, 2002, he also shares the steps through which he went in uncovering this shameful and forgotten piece of the Ramsey County Historical Society. ISSN city’s history. Unlike the Houston Osborne saga, the existence of the Selby Tunnel is well known Number 0485-9758. All rights reserved. No today. What’s less well known is its origin and how its construction changed the neighborhood part of this publication may be reprinted around it. With words and photos, Virginia Brainard Kunz provides a brief history of this St. Paul or otherwise reproduced without written landmark. “Growing Up in St. Paul,” about boxer Johnny Salvator, is written by an avid promoter of permission from the publisher. The Soci­ St. Paul boxing history, Paul R. Gold. After Minnesota legalized boxing in 1915, St. Paul became the ety assumes no responsibility for statements second largest center for training and supporting boxers in the United States. Johnny Salvator was made by contributors. Fax 651-223-8539; one of the many St. Paul boxers who contributed to the city’s athletic prominence in the first third of e-mail address [email protected].; web site address www.rchs.com the twentieth century. John M. Lindley, Chair, Editorial Board

2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY ‘Hang Him! That’s the Best Way’ A Lynching in St. Paul? Almost, in 1895, an Era of ‘Vigilante Justice’ in the Nation

Paul D. Nelson

“Hang him!” Emancipation and the loss of the Civil “Beat the hound to death with a club!” War had reached full strength, mani­ “No, let’s hang him, that’s the best way” fested in an unholy trinity of measures: “Well, get a rope then and be quick about it; five minutes is too long for him disenfranchisement of black voters by to live. ” means formal and informal; Jim Crow In the gray light o f the early morning a frightened Negro cowered before a crowd public accommodations laws and prac­ of resolute men. They were wild with anger. He trembled like a leaf and between his tices; and violence, tolerated and some­ gasps for breath implored his captors to be merciful. Their answer was a burst of times encouraged by government. These righteous wrath. So declared the St. Paul Globe on June 3,1895. were overwhelming phenomena of the former slave states, but the forces behind Duluth, 1920? No, St. Paul, 1895. ever, reached mainly an African American them were so powerful that they affected The only Jim Crow-style lynching— audience. Elsewhere a certain template the North and Midwest too. It was as that is, the ritualized, often public seems to have lodged in the popular though, a generation after Emancipation, of an African American (almost always imagination: the prowling black, sub­ a wave of revulsion against all things a man) by whites acting in concert—in human brute intent on defiling the purity African American swept the nation. St. Minnesota history took place in Duluth in of white womanhood; the enraged com­ Paul, home to a tiny and harmless black 1920, and that story is well-known. What munity acting as one to avenge the vic­ population, felt the wave too. has been overlooked until now is how tim; the emotionally satisfying result of Stories of and other forms close St. Paul came to anticipating the swift and public justice. of vigilante “justice” appeared often in Duluth outrage by a full quarter century. By 1895 the Southern reaction to the Twin Cities daily press during this The occurred near the end of the fifty-year period, roughly 1880s to 1930s, when these served to intimidate and control black Americans, mostly in the South but in the later years in the Midwest too. By 1920 the frequency of lynchings had fallen to a third of its highest levels, and few oc­ curred in the North, so the Duluth crimes seemed to come.out of nowhere. The St. Paul event, by contrast, came during the worst decade of such murders nation­ wide. In the 1890s, it is now estimated, more than 1,000 African-Americans lost their lives to this kind of mob violence; countless more perished unknown or in white riots or following rigged legal proceedings. As early as the late 1880s the great anti-lynching investigator, writer, and campaigner Ida B. Wells Barnett exposed as a lie the popular view of lynchings as spontaneous vigilante justice against black rapists of white women. In fact, al­ legations of sexual assault figured in only about one fifth of cases. Her work, how­

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 11 leaders of the Illinois mob, “among the Martin Street [now vanished in the free­ most prominent men of the county,” way trench] Kachel descried a number of feared that the rapists would be par­ men milking cows at McMenemy Bros. doned, the St. Paul Pioneer Press re­ Dairy [413 North Lexington]. He shouted ported on May 26, 1895. In Florida, the to them. Under any other circumstances lynchings contributed to public harmony: the spectacle of a Negro tramp pursued “Twelve negroes have now been lynched by a naked man in the dusk of the morn­ in six months, and it would seem that the ing, and across green fields, would have fate of the last three should prevent fur­ been highly amusing; but they did not ther attacks upon the white women. . . . stop to consider it. Four of the milkmen There is no fear of trouble between the stopped work to join in the pursuit.” races,” the Pioneer Press had noted five Osborne then turned west southwest days earlier on May 21. toward Kittsondale, pioneer fur trader The people of 1895 St. Paul, then, had Norman Kittson’s old stable and race to do no more than read the newspaper to track in the Midway. “Up and down, grasp the elements of the classic lynching: across pastures, plowed fields, fallow white woman assaulted, black brute pur­ ground, fences and hedges went the pur­ sued, community outrage boiled, cathartic suer and the pursued. [Kachel’s] feet justice carried out. The parts had been were bruised with the hard clods and his written and the stage directions marked; bare legs scratched with briars and bram­ then onto the set wandered the unfortunate bles, but he did not slacken his pace. Not Houston Osborne. far behind were the four milkmen, puff­ Osborne was a transient, one of tens of ing like porpoises.” thousands roaming the country in this de­ Just beyond Kittsondale, west of Snell- pression era of the 1890s. He apparently ing Avenue, Osborne got tangled up in worked sometimes as a waiter. For rea­ barbed wire fences, slowing his flight. From the June 3, 1895, issue of the St. Paul sons never fully explained, he broke into Kachel, apparently unencumbered by Pioneer Press. Minnesota Historical Society the little house located at 1097 Iglehart, clothing, shot through these fences “like newspaper archives. near its intersection with Lexington Av­ an eel,” and brought Osbom down. “Both enue in St. Paul (the current site of the men were almost exhausted, but fought Oxford Pool), just before dawn on June like tigers. Gradually the young man over­ time, sometimes in long, wire-service 1, 1895. He entered through a window, came his opponent and crushed him to the pieces full of detail, just as often in tiny, into the bedroom occupied by the Kachel ground. Osborne was not ready to give up, space-filler items. In the month before sisters—Maggie, Katherine, and Frieda. however, and by a quick stroke threw the St. Paul case, for example, six lynch­ Frieda, age eighteen, awakened, saw Os­ Kachel off . . . . Once more they went ing stories appeared in the St. Paul Pio­ borne, and asked him, “What are you down and rolled over and over on the neer Press. doing here?” He put a hand over her ground. . . . With what little strength re­ The two most prominent ones dealt mouth and demanded silence, but she mained in him, Kachel cast himself upon with events in Florida, where the victims screamed, rousing her sisters, who added the tramp’s back and clutched him by the were black, and Illinois, where they ap­ their screams too. The din woke up their throat. Osborne staggered back and fell parently were white. The two pieces, brother, Anton, sleeping in the house heavily on his face,” the Pioneer Press re­ both wire service stories, followed the next door. ported in describing the chase. The chase classic formula. Young white women The Pioneer Press described the chase was over. It had gone on for a mile-and-a- were “assaulted” and grievously injured in its June 3 issue. Anton dashed outside half. Assisted by the milkmen and his or killed. Angry citizens, not police, in just his nightshirt, to see Osborne take neighbors, Kachel led Osborne back to the identified and caught the criminals. The off running. Anton chased him, soon scene of the crime, where another crime accused readily confessed, though in the aided by neighbors D. W. Horst and A.M. would soon take place. Florida case threats of instant death were Thompson. The chase, described in detail Up to this point, Anton Kachel and used as persuasion. In both stories the by all three St. Paul dailies, looks to the other pursuers had behaved well, per­ writers assumed the young men’s guilt. today’s reader like a movie scene. Os­ haps admirably so. Now, however, they The instruments of death distinguished borne, a trim young man himself, sprinted gave way to the impulse for instant “jus­ the two events: the three black men in northwest, across what is now the campus tice” that afflicted much of the nation at Florida suffered torture, flaying, then of Central High School, but then open that time. Someone in the party—the burning, while the Illinois men were land belonging to the State Reform St. Paul Globe identified him as A.M. hanged from a bridge. Both stories re­ School. The nearly naked Kachel pur­ Thompson—shouted, “Get a rope and ported the popular justifications. The sued, Horst and Thompson trailing. “At hang him.”

12 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY The June 3 St. Paul Globe continued growing problem (nothing in the news re­ the account: “The others took up the cry. ports of local crime so indicated), and Someone ran in the house for a rope, and that the only way to stem them was for the most intense excitement reigned. The the too-lenient courts to get tough on the Negro pleaded for mercy, but nothing but bad guys, try them (and convict them, ob­ curses were heaped upon him. The man viously) quick, and punish them hard. who had gone after the rope [identified Without such reform, vigilante action by the Pioneer Press as Anton Kachel] was understandable. This too conformed reappeared . . . with a long piece of win­ to the practice of Southern papers and dow sash cord. He made the noose as he lynching apologists, who often portrayed walked towards the crowd. . . . In the the murders as the natural corrective ac­ rear of Horst’s house [stood] a large tree tion of the people, betrayed by exces­ with a convenient limb at the proper sively mild and dilatory courts—pure height. The Negro was dragged towards nonsense. the tree and the rope was hastily thrown We do not know how the Twin Cities over the limb .... In an instant more African American community reacted to than half a dozen pairs of hands grasped the Osborne outrage; all issues of its the slack end of the rope and Osborne weekly paper, the Appeal, for this period dangled in the air. His body began to are lost. The daily press reported no Attorney Fredrick McGhee, who defended twitch convulsively.” Houston Osborne. Minnesota Historical protest meetings or marches. Whatever At this moment, normally law-abiding Society photograph. local black citizens and their leaders may white citizens of St. Paul stood on the have felt or said privately, it is certainly brink of degrading themselves and their possible that they kept quiet in public. city beyond redemption. Though St. Paul clear no rape had occurred. The Negro “is They knew how to raise a ruckus and had already had lost to Minneapolis the battle undoubtedly guilty of the most dastardly done so often enough, but they also knew for regional economic and population and most shameful crime in the annals of how to pick their battles. superiority, it retained a great deal of vi­ wickedness,” opined the Dispatch. “A Given the climate of the times, and tality and its leaders fostered an image wretch like Osborne has no right to en­ black Minnesotans’ limited political as­ of enlightened progressiveness. Houston cumber the earth. . . . ” “[EJvery man will sets, Houston Osborne’s was probably not Osborne’s death would have marked St. rejoice that the criminal did not escape, the best case for making a statement. He Paul as the instigator of the northernmost and will demand that he suffer the ex- evidently had been guilty of a low crime Negro lynching in the nation to date, a tremest penalty of the law,” added the (though not rape), had not been killed, and badge of shame even in that Jim Crow Globe. Osborne was “a vile wretch who now had able African American legal era. St. Paul’s air of civic superiority, could claim no pity.” In these remarks the counsel. What’s more, Osborne belonged something that survives to this day, St. Paul dailies imitated their Southern to a class of people, a transient proletariat, would have been irrevocably exposed as counterparts, which often proclaimed the which made the upstanding, striving black a sham. suspects’ guilt, stirred up venom, and en­ middle classes uncomfortable. The local press unanimously identi­ couraged lynchings while the suspects Two cases a few years hence illustrate fied an older sister of the three Kachel remained on the loose or in jail. the calculations that local black leader­ girls, Mrs. D.W. Horst, as the heroine of On the other hand, however, both pa­ ship made from time to time. In 1903 a the day. She pleaded with the men not to pers expressed relief that Osborne had black man named James Haynes had ab­ kill Osborne, and they relented. Soon the been spared. He deserved the worst, ac­ ducted, apparently for the purpose of police arrived, and Houston Osborne cording to the Dispatch, but “it is the law rape, a fourteen-year-old white girl. After surely greeted the closing of a cell door alone that can determine the degree of his his capture, the black community con­ behind him with relief. The next day the punishment.” Mrs. Horst had saved St. vened a mass meeting and adopted a reso­ distinguished African American criminal Paul “the ineffable disgrace of a Negro lution deploring “the unspeakable horror lawyer, Fredrick McGhee, undertook his lynching.” The Globe probably had it ex­ [of] the brutal crime and condemning] it defense. actly right, saying that only “a happy ac­ with all earnestness as law-abiding citi­ Osborne’s crime had taken place on cident” had spared the city “the reproach zens.” They offered to help track down June 1. On June 2 both the Globe and the and lasting regret that must follow law­ and bring to justice any similar malefac­ Dispatch published editorials about the lessness. . . . St. Paul is law-abiding. Let tors. Just two years earlier, however, they case. Both expressed a troubling (to us never lose that good repute, even had rallied to protect a killer. Harry Sum­ today’s observer) fractured reaction. On under the strongest provocation.” mers had killed a white man in Tennessee the one hand, both papers assumed Os­ Both editorials went on to reach dubi­ and fled to St. Paul where he lived for a borne’s guilt of the crime of rape, even ous conclusions: that sexual assaults by time incognito. Upon capture by local po­ though their own news reports made black men against white women were a lice, a Tennessee sheriff came to town to

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 13 take Summers back South for trial. On those cases they were preceded by a them. Many, perhaps most, Southerners this occasion the black community mobi­ surge of black immigration and white understood perfectly well that lynching lized to try to block Summers’s extradi­ resentment. St. Paul, with no history of was an instrument of white supremacy. tion, on the ground that he might be slavery and a small, slow-growing black The history of lynching reminds us lynched in Tennessee. They took the case population, lacked the crucial elements that slavery did not really end with the to the press, the public, the governor, and for the festering of murderous racial Civil War. Lynching, peonage, and to the state Supreme Court. animosity. other institutions preserved many of The differing reactions reflect sensible By “happy accident” Houston Os­ the elements of slavery into the middle judgment. The Summers case, with its borne survived his brush with the mob of the twentieth century. American his­ genuine danger of a Southern lynching, and the noose, but the events of that Sun­ tory cannot be fully understood without offered the prospect of success and the en­ day morning perhaps brought about his recognizing lynching’s place. listing of white public opinion. (Summers death soon enough: he died of tubercu­ Four excellent books on the subject was extradited to Tennessee, where he re­ losis in Stillwater prison less than two have appeared in the past few years. ceived a mild sentence for his crime.) In years later. The most current is Philip Dray’s At the Haynes and Osborne cases, by con­ the Hands o f Persons Unknown, The trast, by the time the black public got in­ Paul D. Nelson is a member of Ramsey Lynching of Black America (New volved all danger of lynching had passed, County History’s Editorial Board and York: Random House, 2002). This and the accused had competent counsel author o f the recently published biogra­ thorough and well-written book goes (in both cases Fredrick McGhee.) Public phy o f Fredrick McGhee, the first African well beyond the stories of the crimes protest probably would gain nothing. American lawyer admitted to the practice themselves, to explore the politics and With attorney McGhee at his side, o f law in Minnesota. Nelson’s article social conditions in which lynching Houston Osborne quickly and quietly published here is adapted from his book, thrived and finally expired. pled guilty—not to sexual assault, appro­ Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Leon Litwack’s Trouble In Mind, priately, but to burglary (breaking and Line, 1861-1912 (St. Paul: Minnesota Black Southerners in the Age of Jim entering with intent to commit a felony), Historical Society Press, 2002). Crow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, a crime of which he was probably guilty. 1998), covers much of the same None of the men who tried to murder him N o te s ground, with more attention to African faced any criminal charges. Information on the number and places of American culture and daily life. His Why did Houston Osborne live while lynchings in the United States is from chapter devoted to lynching, “Hell­ so many in his position died by the rope, US: NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching hounds,” is compelling and horrify­ the bullet, or the bonfire? The press gave in the United States 1889-1918 (New ing; the descriptions of one grisly all credit to Mrs. Horst, but it was proba­ York: Amo Press and the New York crime after another suggest the cu­ bly more complicated than that. Several Times, 1969, originally published by the mulative degradation that lynchings elements of the case may have played a NAACP in 1919); Appendix I, page 29 inflicted. part. For one, Frieda Kachel had suffered (number of persons lynched); Appendix The photo book, Without Sanctu­ neither rape nor other physical harm, and II, Chronological List of Persons Lynched, ary: Lynching Photography in Amer­ her unhurt presence at the scene pre­ pp. 43-103. ica, (Santa Fe: Twin Palms Press, vented wild rumors. The events also took 2000), by , reprints many place early on a Sunday morning in a photos of lynching scenes. These were thinly populated part of town, thus in­ not snapshots but souvenir postcards hibiting the gathering of a big crowd: in produced to celebrate the crimes. many lynching cases, enormous crowds Books On Lynching Michael Fedo’s The Lynchings in raised the emotional pitch, egged on the Duluth (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical killers, and blurred individual responsi­ Why read about lynchings? Because Society Press, 2000), admirably illumi­ bility. The small crowd, estimated at they have played a big part in Ameri­ nates one of our state’s worst crimes. about a dozen, also probably helped can history. Contrary to one popular Fedo takes the reader through the make Mrs. Horst’s entreaties both heard image, most lynchings were not iso­ events in horrifying detail; the book is and heeded. lated acts of vigilante justice carried gripping and profoundly disturbing. The most important factor of all prob­ out by backwoods rednecks. Lynch­ The author makes clear that this horror, ably was St. Paul’s lack of deep race ha­ ings are better understood as a durable, though in a way anomalous, arose from tred. The huge majority of lynchings took semi-official institution for the control the same poisonous elements as other place in the South, where the races had of the first two post-Emancipation gen­ lynchings of black Americans. Yes, we lived together in discomfort for centuries. erations of . Respect­ Minnesotans were capable of this. Re­ Slavery left a poisoned legacy. Of course able white citizens often directed and par­ cently republished, the book’s only lynchings sometimes took place in the ticipated in them; Southern civic leaders flaw is its lack of footnotes. North and Midwest too, but in most of and politicians defended, even celebrated P.D.N.

14 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY The Minnesota Boat Club on Raspberry Island below the Wabash Street bridge in 1908. Across the river: St. Paul’s west side. S e e a rticle be gin n in g on p a g e 4.

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