Prelude to Anarchy: the Longview Race Riot of 1919 Historiography: in Search of History April 12, 2005 Jared Wheeler

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) <http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/ articles/view/LL/hdl3.html>. 3 Earl D. Smith, interview with Ken Durham (24 Apr. 1977) 3. Wheeler 3 begin medical practice. Among other things, he was instrumental in establishing a local branch of the Negro Businessmen’s League.4 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.

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