LeTourneau University Prelude to Anarchy: The Longview Race Riot of 1919 Historiography: In Search of History April 12, 2005 Jared Wheeler
Wheeler 1
It was well before dawn in Longview, Texas on July 11, 1919, and over one hundred white men had gathered in front of the fire station on Tyler Street at the sounding of the alarm. An excited group of about a dozen young men was already there, telling and re-telling the story of how they had walked into an ambush at the house of a local black schoolteacher, Samuel L. Jones.
They had been hoping to teach Jones a lesson when they had arrived at his house around midnight.
Even as the men’s story raced through the growing crowd, four of their companions lay wounded, possibly even dead, around Jones’s house several blocks away. Those who had come as volunteers to extinguish a fire were about to become an angry mob and set several themselves.
Thus began one of the first of twenty-five race riots that took place throughout the United
States during the so-called “Red Summer” of 1919. America had seen race riots before, but never so many, and never before had there been such determination among the black population to resist savaging by the whites. There were a number of reasons for this, and a number of important national consequences of the Red Summer. As such, the Longview Race Riot of 1919 holds a special place in the post-World War I history of the United States, of Texas, and especially of
Longview itself.
The United States in 1919 was a country just beginning to realize the full extent of its new influence on the international scene. However, even as an emerging world power, the nation was still mired very firmly in the mores of grassroots society and the principles of isolationism. Things were changing, and not everyone was pleased with this. The 18th Amendment, establishing
Prohibition, had gone into effect in January, and Congress had ratified the 19th Amendment, granting women’s suffrage, in early June. Internationally, the Treaty of Versailles had been signed in late June, officially ending World War I, and Communists under Vladimir Lenin were coming swiftly to power in Russia. In the wake of the Great War, anti-German hysteria still ran high, and much of the country was in the grip of a “red scare,” resulting in intense anti-Communist Wheeler 2 sentiments. Southern states still had Jim Crow laws firmly in effect, enforcing racial segregation and preventing blacks from exercising the same rights as whites.
Longview, Texas in 1919, more than ten years before the oil boom transformed the region, was a small, sleepy town of 5,700 people, one third of which were black. The total population of
Gregg County was less than 17,000, with a black population of just under fifty percent.1 Located less than fifty miles from the Louisiana border, Longview at that time existed because of the Texas and Pacific Railroad that ran through it. It was a farming and commercial community with one substantial industry: the Kelly Plow Company.2 Geographically, it was significantly smaller as well. Well-populated areas of the town did not extend further north than what is now Marshall
Avenue (a dirt road at the time), or further south than the current location of LeTourneau
University (not established until 1946), a total distance of less than two and a half miles.3
In spite of the large black population in Longview, relations between the races were far from harmonious. In the months immediately preceding the race riot, tensions between blacks and whites were already extremely sensitive. Local black leaders, Samuel L. Jones and Dr. Calvin P.
Davis, had been encouraging black farmers to sell their cotton directly to buyers in Galveston rather than local brokers. Jones had arrived in Longview in 1913 as an employed instructor for the
Longview School District. He served as the local agent for various black newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, which urged African Americans to work towards equality. Dr. Davis, formerly of Marshall (a town located about thirty miles east), arrived in Longview in 1909 to
1 Fourteenth Census of the United States, Vol. III, 1920, (Washington, D. C.: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1920). 2 “Longview, Texas,” The Handbook of Texas Online (8 Mar. 2005. The General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association)
Into the volatile atmosphere of this humid, East Texas summer came the July 5 edition of the Chicago Defender, arriving by train as usual. Jones picked up the shipment at the depot and went about his normal routine of delivering it to the local black population. This particular issue of the Defender, which was widely read and sold at several black-owned businesses in Longview every week, carried an anonymous article datelined “Longview, Tex., July 4.” It carried the headline “Police Work to Keep Lynching a Secret,” and the article went on to relate the story of
Lemuel Walters, a black man who had been lynched June 17. According to the paper, “a prominent white woman declared she loved him, and if she were in the North would obtain a divorce and marry him.” Walters, the article states, was hauled from the jail by a lynch mob with permission from the sheriff, D. S. Meredith, and “shot to pieces” on the outskirts of town.5
The actual truth surrounding the events described by the Defender is difficult to ascertain; the article is not wholly accurate or impartial in its portrayal of events. This much is certain: a black man named Lemuel Walters had developed a relationship with a white woman from Kilgore that the community considered scandalous and possibly even criminal. As a result of this connection, Walters was first beaten and later lynched. However, sources conflict on two things:
First, whether the woman from Kilgore possessed an equal share of the blame for their association, and second, what role the sheriff had, if any, in turning Walters over to his murderers.
As to the first item, it is highly likely that Walter’s relationship with the woman from
Kilgore was completely innocuous, and simply perceived as a bit too friendly by her relatives.
This would have resulted in his imprisonment (perhaps on false charges of rape) in an attempt by
4 Jeremy Lansford, “The Longview Race Riot: A Piece of Forgotten History” (Unpublished Research Paper, 1984) 1-2. 5 “Police Work to Keep Lynching a Secret,” Chicago Defender (5 July 1919) 2. Wheeler 4 the family to put a stop to a scandalous “affair” which was the talk of the town. The Defender’s version of the lynching, which has the mob removing Walters from the jail with the sheriff’s permission and blessing, was the version that made it into the official report of the Texas Rangers.
However, in a 1978 interview, Perry Meredith (son of the sheriff, and age thirteen at the time) claimed that his father, suspecting the arrival of a mob, had hidden Walters in his own home before sending him out of town on a train bound for St. Louis. It was only after Meredith had put
Walters safely on the train, Perry asserts, that he was somehow discovered by the mob and murdered.
Obviously, this particular source is biased, and it is difficult to believe that this is the true version of events. Jones himself investigated the lynching in the days after it took place, and claimed that the testimony of four men who were in jail with Walters bore out the Defender’s version of events. He further described how he and a number of other men, concerned by the sheriff’s role in the lynching, brought their case to County Judge E. H. Bramlette. Bramlette assured them that a quiet investigation would take place immediately. Several days later, Jones discovered that the four prisoners (the only witnesses) had disappeared.6
Ultimately, the truth behind the murder of Lemuel Walters is not the key to the race riot that followed. The direct cause of the riot was not the lynching, but the article about it in the
Chicago Defender. A few days after the July 5 issue was circulated, on July 10, Jones was walking along the sidewalk across from the Courthouse in Longview. Three white men, two of whom were brothers of the nameless woman mentioned in the article, approached him, believing Jones to be the author of the story. One of the men pulled a wrench out of his coat, and they proceeded to beat
Jones severely in broad daylight. When they finally left, Jones was able to drag himself to Dr.
Davis’s office for treatment. At this time, and at all times thereafter, Jones denied having written
6 (Tuttle, Phylon, 325-326). Wheeler 5 the article that appeared in the Defender, and it is by now impossible to discover whether he was telling the truth or who the actual author was.
Throughout that afternoon, tension grew steadily across the town as people learned what had happened. Blacks began to gather at Davis’s office. Meanwhile, when Judge Bramlette,
Mayor G. A. Bodenheim, and a local attorney named Ras Young learned of the events, they began to do their best to defuse the situation.7 Bodenheim sent word to Davis that evening telling him and Jones to leave town at once for their own safety. Davis responded by visiting around twenty- five black men and securing their promise to stand ready to defend the two endangered men. Then, learning that the mayor was holding a town meeting at the City Hall, he went to ask that he be allowed to speak in defense of Jones. Arriving there, he discovered that he, too, was being accused of having written the article, which he also denied. Asking what was to be done in ensuring the safety of the black population, he was told, “You will have to take your chances.”8
Davis departed, leaving Bramlette, Bodenheim, and Young to reason with the hotheaded citizens who wanted to go directly to Jones’s house and punish him further. After hours of discussion, the three believed they had convinced the men to take no further action against Jones, at least temporarily, and the meeting broke up. At around 11:30, however, a group of about fifteen young men gathered in Bodie Park, next-door to the fire station and about a block from the
Courthouse. They determined together that they would go to Jones’s house after all and teach him a lesson. Piling into a few cars, they drove south several blocks to the corner where Jones’s house stood.9
By now, it was midnight. A few of the men stepped up on Jones’s back porch, calling for him to exit the house. Hearing no response, they moved forward to force their way inside when
7 Kenneth R. Durham, “The Longview Race Riot of 1919” (East Texas Historical Journal 18, 1980) 14. 8 Tuttle, Phylon 327-328. 9 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 15. Wheeler 6 suddenly gunfire erupted from all sides. Over one hundred rounds were fired during the next few minutes, but amazing only four of the white men were hit, none seriously. The remainder fled.
One of the wounded, Ernest “Cricket” White, sought cover under a nearby house, where he was discovered and beaten severely, fracturing his skull.10
While the white citizens of Longview continued their heated conference in City Hall,
Davis had not been idle. Taking the mayor’s words at face value, he had returned to Jones’s house and laid an ambush around it with the twenty-five men who had agreed to stand by him in case anything should happen during the night. When it became apparent that the white men were going to attempt to force entry into Jones’s house, he had fired the first shot as a signal to attack. A few minutes later, the fire alarm began to ring downtown, and the defenders knew it was only a matter of time before the others returned with overwhelming reinforcements. They vacated the area.11
The retreating whites succeeded in summoning a hundred more men with the alarm bell at the fire station. Some of them went to break into a nearby hardware store for the necessary equipment while the rest explained the situation. A few returned rapidly to rescue the wounded.
Kerosene was loaded into the back of the buggy, while an undetermined number of the whites armed themselves and the entire group returned to Jones’s house.
By now, it was 4:00 in the morning and, finding the house completely deserted, the men set fire to it. Continuing about two and a half blocks south down Harrison Street, they set fire to a business called Quick Hall, owned by a man named Charlie Medlock. They believed Medlock was storing ammunition in the dance hall, and this suspicion was confirmed when the ammunition began to explode from the heat of the blaze. Two blocks further south, they set fire to Dr. Davis’s house. Dr. Davis was not at home, having gone to hide out at the house of his father-in-law,
10 Ibid. 11 Tuttle, Phylon 328-329. Wheeler 7
Marion Bush, several blocks to the north. However, his wife and children were inside. After some rapid negotiating with the mob, a black man was allowed to enter the house and rescue the Davis family. A car parked next to the burning house exploded from the heat.
The mob now turned east on Nelson Street, and proceeded two blocks to the homes of Ben
Sanders and Charlie Medlock, who lived directly across the street from each other. Both homes were torched, and when Medlock and Sanders’s eighty-year old wife, Belle, protested the burning, they were both horsewhipped. The sun was beginning to come up, and the mob dispersed and went their separate ways, leaving a sporadic trail of destruction stretching six blocks in their wake.12
The response to this sudden outbreak of lawlessness was immediate. Early that same morning, 11 July, Sheriff Meredith and Judge Bramlette telephoned Texas Governor William P.
Hobby, requesting assistance. Hobby placed several nearby National Guard units on alert, but only dispatched eight Texas Rangers to the scene. Captain Roy W. Aldrich set out from Austin with
Rangers Rowe, Singleton, Honeycutt, and McMillan, while Captain William M. Hanson came up from San Antonio with Sergeant Brooks and Ranger Marks. They would be unable to arrive until the following morning. Afraid of what might happen in Longview that night without additional law enforcement on the scene, Judge Bramlette called Governor Hobby again, urgently requesting that a force of National Guard troops be sent immediately.
The governor complied, and a force of nearly 100 National Guardsmen arrived in
Longview that evening, setting up their command tent on the southeast corner of the Courthouse lawn. Longview passed the night in complete peace and the eight rangers arrived, on schedule, at
12 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 15. Wheeler 8
9:30 am Saturday. Even with over 100 additional men keeping order in Longview, however, the trouble was not over yet.13
While Judge Bramlette had been making frantic telephone calls to Austin, an unidentified group of white men had scoured the town for Jones and Davis. Jones was laying his plans to get out of town, while Davis remained hidden in Bush’s house throughout the day. Twice while he was there, men stopped by the house to look for him. The first time he was hidden behind some large cans, while the second time he was sequestered in the attic, armed and carefully watching what went on below. Bush offered the searchers a ladder to inspect the attic, prepared to assist his son-in-law if necessary, but the white men did not call his bluff and left.
Early Saturday morning, even before the Texas Rangers had arrived, Davis donned a soldier’s uniform and snuck out of town. He boarded a train at Camp Switch (a Negro lodge located about ten miles west of town) and eventually reached Mexico. From there he later rejoined his family and settled in Chicago, as did Jones. Neither of them ever returned to Longview.
Ironically, Chicago would experience the worst race riot of the entire Red Summer just two weeks after they fled Longview.
On Saturday night, Sheriff Meredith visited Marion Bush’s house with a friend named Ike
Killingsworth. Bush was about sixty years old and had worked for the Kelly Plow Company for nearly thirty years. He was well known and well respected throughout the town, but he was also the father-in-law of Calvin Davis. Meredith thought that Bush might be in danger because of this, and he asked that Bush allow himself to be kept in the jail for a few days for safekeeping. After a bit of talk, Bush agreed, re-entering the house to “blow out the lamp” before accompanying the two white men. Remembering, no doubt, the widely known fate of Lemuel Walters, he returned instead with a .45 caliber revolver, which he fired at close range at both Meredith and
13 Ibid. Wheeler 9
Killingsworth. There would have been no artificial light outside, and Bush missed both men.
However, he failed to notice this as he went back inside. The sheriff immediately moved around the corner of the house, only to be spotted by Bush, who fired again. Meredith rolled under the house for cover, fumbling for his gun.
Meredith rarely went armed, but during the previous days, he had taken to carrying a large pistol on his hip. It had rubbed the skin raw, and he had left it behind in favor of a much smaller,
.32 caliber pistol, which he now had difficulty finding in the dark beneath the house. Finally, he located it in his right vest pocket, just in time for Bush to tear out of the back door and run due west. Meredith emptied the revolver after Bush, missing completely, and went to find a telephone.
He called Jim Stephens, a friend of his who owned a farm between Longview and Camp Switch, and asked him to “stop Bush.” Stephens located Bush, who refused to halt when ordered to, and shot him twice, killing him.14
As soon as it was discovered that Bush had been killed, at nearly midnight on Saturday night, Mayor Bodenheim called Governor Hobby once again with a request for even more troops.
The Governor responded by sending 150 additional National Guardsmen under the command of
Brigadier General R. H. McDill, and placing Gregg County under martial law, effective at noon on
Sunday, July 13.
Under martial law, a curfew was in effect between 10:30 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., and groups of three or more people were not allowed to gather on the street. Long-distance telephone calls were banned, and all citizens of Longview and Kilgore, including peace officers, were required to turn their guns in at the Courthouse by Sunday evening. In all, local citizens turned over between 5,000
14 Wilmer Meredith, interview with Ken Durham (11 Aug. 1978) 3-4. Wheeler 10 and 7,000 firearms to National Guard troops.15 Reports indicate that “ancient flintlocks, muzzle loaders, dueling pistols, and even one air rifle” were included in the massive collection.16
That same night, McDill asked for the formation of a citizens’ committee to work with him and his men. The committee was made up of about a dozen men: farmers, businessmen, lawyers, and bankers, all white. On Monday morning, July 14, it met in Judge Bramlette’s office, where
Ras Young was elected chairman before the committee drew up a list of resolutions regarding its position on the riot.17 The resolutions first condemned the article in the Defender, its circulation by Jones, and the attack on the white men who came to Jones’s house on Thursday night. The committee went on to declare that “we will not permit the negroes of this community and county in any way to . . . write or circulate articles about the white people of our city and county” before addressing the whites involved in the riot. The actions of the arsonists were also condemned (“we do not believe in applying the torch, even to the homes of Negroes”), and praised the actions of all officials involved in suppressing the violence. They gave the Texas Rangers and National Guard full authority to act as they saw fit, and appointed Bramlette, Meredith, and Bodenheim to work with them.18
Meanwhile, Captain Hanson and his men were conducting a thorough investigation of the riot and its surrounding events under the supervision of Colonel H. C. Smith of the National
Guard. Based on his findings, he and his men arrested twenty-six white men who had been involved in either the attack on Jones’s home or the burnings. All of them were charged with attempted murder and/or arson, and all were released on $1,000 bond on Monday. The following day, 15 July, twenty-one black men were then arrested on charges of assault with attempt to murder. They were placed in the county jail.
15 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 18-19. 16 “General Jake Wolters Arrives.” Dallas Morning News. 14 July 1919. 17 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 18-19. 18 Ras Young, chairman, “Resolutions of the Citizens’ Committee” (14 July 1919) 1-3. Wheeler 11
On Tuesday night, the citizens of Longview were addressed by the military authorities.
The arrests and all other activities of the National Guard were explained, and this swift action seems to have had a sobering effect on the population of the small town. No further incidents were reported from then until martial law was lifted. This took place at noon on Friday, July 18. By
Saturday, all of the troops had left Longview for good, except for Rangers Rowe, Singleton, and
Honeycutt, who would remain in Longview indefinitely to continue investigations and maintain order.19 In his official report, Captain Hanson recommended that Ranger McMillan (who had been sent away with evidence pertaining to the riot) return to take charge and replace Rowe, who was ill.20
Meanwhile, the most exciting thing that happened during the entire period of martial law was a fire breaking out on Wednesday evening in Hopkins-Stuckey Dry Goods Store, directly across the street from the National Guard tent. The troops assisted the fire department in putting out the blaze, and received forty pairs of socks and a wagonload of watermelons from a grateful
Mr. Stuckey. The fire was determined to have been caused by defective wiring.21
As for the consequences to those who were arrested, the black men were removed to
Austin shortly after their arrests, ostensibly for safekeeping.22 All charges against white men were dropped after martial law was lifted.23 No further repercussions are noted. The blacks in Austin were slowly granted bail, beginning July 24,24 and the last of them were freed on August 13. Some were encouraged “not to return to Longview.”25 Officials and citizens alike trod carefully during
19 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 19-20. 20 W. M. Hanson to the Adjutant General of Texas. “Military Report,” 17 July 1919. 21 Tim A. Smith, “Field Report” (16-19 July 1919) 1. 22 Tuttle, Phylon 330. 23 Durham, “Longview Race Riot” 21. 24 “Five Longview Negroes Held at Austin, Give Bond,” Waco Daily Times-Herald (25 July 1919). 25 Tuttle, Phylon 330. Wheeler 12 the months following the race riot, and steps were taken to promote racial harmony. However, the riot would remain a sore subject in Longview for decades to come.
Meanwhile, this small-town outburst caused racial tensions to escalate further throughout the state of Texas, and in the ensuing months, the rest of the United States experienced the worst outbreak of inter-racial violence it had seen up to that time. The end of WWI had brought with it a large influx of African Americans into northern cities. Blacks had played a significant role in the
US war effort (although their units were still segregated), and the economic prosperity that followed had granted them new financial resources as well. Black men returned home from the war having fought with the rest of the United States and Europe to preserve democracy and freedom, and they expected things to be different.
However, things at home were as bad as ever. Returning black veterans were even assaulted for the “impertinence” of daring to wear their uniforms. After witnessing the difference in race relations throughout Europe, many blacks resolved that they could no longer live without self-determination. Black activists would soon find themselves welcomed by the Communist
Party, and these leanings did nothing to increase their popularity with conservative whites.
Prominent black leaders encouraged a more militant response to white aggression, and expressed the awakening spirit of impatience with racism.
This new force would manifest itself repeatedly during that first summer after the war’s end. The white response, however, would be equally strong. In addition to the intense rioting which took place, seventy-eight blacks were lynched in 1919, fifteen more than in 1918 and thirty more than in 1917.26 The battle for equal rights was far from over, but Black Americans would no longer tolerate the white aggression and intolerance that had continued unabated since the end of the Civil War.
26 William M. Tuttle, “Violence in a ‘Heathen’ Land: The Longview Race Riot of 1919” (Phylon 33.4 1972) 325. Wheeler 13
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