Journalistic Complacency on Episodic Lynching In

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The Shame of the Buckeye State: Journalistic Complacency on Episodic Lynching in

Ohio from 1872 to 1932

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Science

Claire M. Rounkles

December 2020

The Shame of the Buckeye State: Journalistic Complacency on Episodic Lynching in

Ohio from 1872 to 1932

CLAIRE M. ROUNKLES

has been approved for

the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Aimee C. Edmondson

Associate Professor of Journalism

Scott Titsworth

Dean, Scripps College of Communication Abstract

ROUNKLES, CLAIRE M., M.S., December 2020, Journalism

The Shame of the Buckeye State: Journalistic Complacency on Episodic Lynching in

Ohio from 1872 to 1932

Director of Thesis: Aimee C. Edmondson

The lynching era in Ohio lasted from 1803 to 1937. During these years thirty-five

people died at the hands of a lynch mob and seventy-nine escaped from a mob’s clutches.

This thesis situates the history of lynching in Ohio from 1872 to 1932 and discusses the

issue of complacent journalism in the Ohio press through a study of twenty-four cases of

white-on-white lynching and racial terror lynching. This thesis shows that lynching was

employed as a means to enact fear to keep Black Ohioans in a marginalized position and

prevent them from prospering economically or politically.

The author also argues that journalists were not objective bystanders but were key to the social voice and national conversation that accepted the practice of lynching in

America. By utilizing the concept of critical race theory, the author shows that the racist ideal of Whiteness was able to become hidden by seemingly objective reporting, thus allowing the mainstream press to accept the practice of lynching without the guilt of unlawful “justice.” There is also a paucity of research on Harry C. Smith, a Black journalist who pushed for the first anti-lynching law in Ohio. As such, this research aims to make a significant impact not only on the literature involving northern lynchings but also in the history of Ohio and the need to understand its dark past. In 2020 this historical research hold saliency regarding the racial violence which continues today in America.

iii Dedication

In remembrance of Grandma June who taught me the true meaning of compassion and

unconditional love.

And to my family and mentors who kept believing in me.

iv Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my amazing advisor, Dr. Aimee Edmondson. Thank you for inspiring and encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone of writing. I would have surely failed without your support and patience in the editing process. I am forever indebted to you for putting up with my constant inquiry on research and advice in teaching. To Dr. Mike Sweeney, who introduced the power of history and research, I am forever grateful for everything you taught me. And to Dr. Marilyn Greenwald, I was truly blessed to learn from you during our time working together.

A special thanks to my Scripps family: Bailey Dick, Natascha Toft Roelsgaard,

Yasmeen Ebada, Irma Omerhodzic, and Michelle Michael. I will forever appreciate the coffee dates and Sunday Casa brunch. To my parents, thank you for the love and support these many years. This academic journey hasn’t been the easiest to handle but thanks for sticking with me this far.

v Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments ...... v Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 1: Literature Review ...... 8 Chapter 2: White on White Summary Justice (1872 – 1876) ...... 41 Chapter 3: Racial Terror Lynching (1877 – 1932) ...... 63 Chapter 4: Analysis of the Mainstream Press ...... 120 Chapter 5: Analysis of the Cleveland Gazette ...... 152 Chapter 6: Conclusion ...... 165 References ...... 174 Appendix A ...... 194 Appendix B ...... 200 Appendix C ...... 201 Appendix D ...... 203 Appendix E...... 204

vi Introduction

A group of “outraged” citizens from all parts of Adams County, Ohio, quietly gathered for a “united movement” to seek swift justice after the horrific murder of an elderly White couple in southern Ohio.1 The suspect of the murder in 1894 was a black, sixteen-year-old boy named Roscoe Parker. The Commercial Gazette, a daily newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio, was notified of the gathering and its focus of taking Parker to “Judge

Lynch” for punishment.2

Only a select few were informed of this gathering in order to avoid suspicion from the local authorities. The leaders of the lynch mob sent out messengers across the county to spread the news, keeping the plan so quiet among the men that “not even their wives were trusted with the secret of the self-constituted regulators.”3 However, the

Commercial Gazette decided to send reporters to “experience” this event rather than notifying the authorities in the Adams County seat of West Union in southwest Ohio.4 In an article that retold the “adventure,” the newspaper correspondent who viewed the hanging of Roscoe Parker stated:

It is just a question whether the privilege of attending such an affair is one to be sought or shunned, but certain it is that it is an experience, which is not often afforded.5

A day after the mob killed Parker, the Commercial Gazette retold the great lengths that the reporters and staff took to get to West Union, fifty-five miles from

Cincinnati, in order to witness the lynching in one of the many articles published on this episode. The way that journalists covered this case in the 1890s would have been considered normal at the time, as the complacent role that journalists had during the

1 lynching period has previously been noted by media historians.6 However, what followed the lynching was unique. The trial of Roscoe Parker that was supposed to happen before his murder still took place after his death—but with a different judge. Moreover, at this trial, the judge presiding over the case not only called for the case to be reviewed but also to indict everyone who was present at the lynching for murder. With these indictment charges, the judge specifically called out the journalists who knew that the lynching would take place and did nothing to prevent it.

Also notable, weeks after Parker’s lynching, the first anti-lynching law in Ohio was passed by the Ohio House of Representatives. It became law in 1896, holding counties legally and financially responsible for lynchings in their jurisdiction, and is viewed as the leading anti-lynching law to pass in the North in the 1890s.7 Unlike the case of Roscoe Parker where a judge specifically called out the complicity of journalists in the lynch mob, the conduct of and content created by Ohio journalists has yet to be studied by media historians.

This thesis, through an examination of twenty five cases of lynching in Ohio from

1872 to 1932, shows that lynching was initially used as a White-on-White form of summary justice, and later evolved into racial terror lynching of Black men by White mobs.8 Second, it shows how mainstream newspapers reported on lynching in Ohio. The thesis also situates the Black-owned Cleveland Gazette and its owner, Harry C. Smith, as a prominent figure in the promotion and fight for anti-lynching legislation in Ohio. This thesis also argues that the Cleveland Gazette was the most significant publication in Ohio to report that the use of lynching as a form of racial terrorism. This thesis is rooted in

2 historical research methods and employs critical race theory to understand the usage of journalistic objectivity to perpetuate racial bias.

Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to Ohio race history and provides a clear definition for lynching in terms of distinguishing its initial form of White-on-White vigilantism justice to its evolution as a tool for racial terror to control the Black community. Through an examination of existing literature, this chapter also discusses mainstream newspaper coverage of lynching as well as the work of the Black press and

Smith. It introduces the history of journalism ethics and the usage of objectivity and information through the lens of critical race theory. The chapter concludes with an overview of the methodological approach in this historical study.

Chapter 2 situates the initial usage of lynching in Ohio as a form of White-on-

White summary justice, through a review of seven cases of lynching. The chapter starts with information on how lynching was initially developed and used. Chapter 3 focuses on the shift from White summary justice to racial terror lynchings. Starting off by describing the political and racial climate of Ohio, the chapter introduces and explains why racial terror lynchings were used in Ohio. Through an analysis of fifteen racial terror lynchings and four White-on-White lynchings, the chapter shows how racial terror lynchings differed from White summary justice. Chapter 4 provides an in-depth analysis of the

White mainstream newspaper coverage of cases detailed in the previous chapters and focuses on the journalistic processes of coverage as the cases evolved from White summary justice to racial terror lynchings. Along with discussing the process of coverage, the author of this thesis employs critical race theory (CRT) to help make sense

3 of journalists’ acceptance of racial biases in lynching coverage. Chapter 5 analyzes how

Harry C. Smith used the Cleveland Gazette to push for anti-lynching legislation and situates Smith as a leading anti-lynching advocate through his editorials and his work alongside other anti-lynching advocates. Chapter 6 serves as the conclusion.

It is worth noting the importance of this research relating events that occurred in

2020 while this historical thesis was being completed. Every decade since 1865 the Black community has achieved civil and socio-economic advancements greater than their predecessors. But there has been at least one constant—random racist violence. The use of lynching as a tool of terror to the Black community is also prevalent in American society today in the wake of ongoing police brutality and the death of Black Americans at the hands of police. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement after the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the country has continued focus on the racial bias of its institutions, notably the police. Protests erupted yet again across the country as White officers killed Black men and women in cities across the country in subsequent years, and again after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands of

Minneapolis police. There also have been reports about possible lynching victims9 and threats of lynching. For example, in June 2020 a noose was found in the garage stall of

Bubba Wallace, a Black NASCAR driver, at the race in Talladega, Alabama.10 These occurrences paired with the current push to finally pass the first federal law against lynching shows that the practice and threat of lynching are still alive and well today.11

In another example, two White men murdered Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in

Georgia in February 2020. The case did not receive national attention until a graphic

4 video of the last moments of Arbery’s life went viral three months later.12 The same month, on May 25, Minneapolis police officers arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-old

Black man, after a convenience store employee called 911 and told the police that Floyd had bought cigarettes with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Witness videos of the incident showed Floyd pinned to the ground by officer Derek Chauvin, who is White, with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck. Chauvin held his knee there for at least eight minutes and forty-six seconds. Chauvin did not remove his knee even after Floyd lost consciousness and for a full minute and twenty seconds after paramedics arrived at the scene. Floyd was later pronounced dead.13

In both of these cases, the public was informed only by the documentation of those who witnessed these murders. Much like the coverage of lynchings during the historical period studied in this thesis, citizen journalist and witness accounts were readily shared and critiqued. While public opinion was outraged about the treatment of

Arbery and Floyd, the use of cellphone videos depicting the domination and abuse of

Black bodies is heavily reflective to the coverage and accounts of lynching throughout history. This has shown that the desire to master and dominate Black bodies as well as to document and share these instances have not ended in our society, and America has never come to terms with these moments in our history.

5 NOTES

1 From this point forward all race descriptors such as Black and White are capitalized except for direct quotes.

2 “A Court Held at Midnight, ” The Commercial Gazette, January 13, 1894.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ira Wasserman, How the American Media Packaged Lynching (1850-1940):

Constructing the Meaning of Social Events (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006),

199.

7 “Harry C. Smith, ” The Journal of Negro History 27, no. 1 (1942): 128-29.

8 The author has found a total of thirty-nine cases of lynching in Ohio. For information on each case please see Appendix A.

9 Jason Slotkin, “California City Residents Demand Answers after Black Man

Found Hanging from Tree,” National Public Radio, June 14, 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial- justice/2020/06/14/876807835/california-city-residents-demand-answers-after-black- man-found-hanging-from-tree.

10 John Zenor, “Noose Found in Stall of Bubba Wallace at Alabama NASCAR

Race,” AP News, June 22, 2020.

https://apnews.com/2efdc16f18bd1e04373a72d36eaa0c5a?utm_medium=AP&utm_sourc e=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow.

11 Note H.R. 35—“Emmett Till Antilynching Act Has Passed the House but Still

Needs to Pass the Senate,” https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/35/text.

12 Sean Collins, “The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an Unarmed Black Jogger in

Georgia, explained,” Vox, May 26, 2020, https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/6/21249202/ahmaud-arbery-jogger-killed-in- georgia-video-shooting-grand-jury.

13 Evan Hill et al., “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody,” The New

York Times, June 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd- investigation.html.

7 Chapter 1: Literature Review

In history Ohio is well known for the Underground Railroad—a network of roads, safe houses, and churches through which runaway slaves escaped to their freedom. It had more than three hundred stations to assist slaves traveling north. Seen as the boundary between slavery and freedom, Ohio provided a destination toward a free society.1

However the beginning of Ohio’s legacy of race relations is conflicted and engrained in the fabric from which the state was formed.

Before Ohio became the seventeenth state in 1803, groups of varying ethnicity, religion and culture had settled the land, starting with multiple Native American tribes.

As with many of ethnic groups, Black Americans increased their movement into and through the state during the early 1800s, most attempting escape from the grip of slavery.2 The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in all areas of the

Northwest Territory.3

The new land became a major center for production of pork, lumber, clothing, iron and glass.4 Many of the newcomers benefited from the economic growth of the state; however, the opportunity to prosper and vote was not readily afforded to the Native

Americans and Black Americans because Ohio’s authors of its original 1802 constitution primarily wrote it with White males in mind.5

That constitution prohibited slavery and denied Black Americans the right to vote.

Increasing migration of Black people from Kentucky and Virginia (now West Virginia) angered Southerners and the communities in along the southern region of the state.6 In response the Ohio Legislature passed a bill to restrict Black migration in 1804 after

8 Kentucky and Virginia planters complained that their slaves were fleeing through Ohio on the way to Canada. However, in reality, the new law acted as a fugitive slave bill. The bill declared, “No negro or mulatto should be allowed to settle in the state unless he could furnish certificates from some court in the United States of his actual freedom.”7

These laws hindering Black migration as well as aiding escaping slaves lay the foundation for the “Black Laws,” which followed shortly afterward and continued until

1849.8 The Black Laws, a series of restrictions placed on the Black citizens of Ohio, prevented the Black community from voting, testifying in court against Whites, holding offices, and serving in the state militia. 9 The laws also affected Whites as well. Anyone caught harboring runaway slaves was fined one hundred dollars, with half of that amount given to the person who informed the authorities. Blacks also were prohibited from sitting on juries and even were taxed for schools in which they were not allowed to attend.10

Although the Black Laws were not strictly enforced, individual communities put forth their own efforts to target Blacks. Anti-Black feelings and actions were not as strong in the northern region in part because there were so few Black settlers. However, in the southern areas of the state Blacks migrated at what White Ohioans saw at an alarming rate. While the White southerners of Ohio were not slave owners, they did hold and reflect many of the prejudices that the bordering southern states did.11

In the antebellum years there was an apparent North/South split in the state. Many in the North supported legal and social aspirations of Black Ohioans.12 Abolitionist and anti-slavery societies in 1848 were able to repeal the Black Laws. Ohio later would be

9 viewed as a leader in the drive to abolish slavery.13 After the ending of the Civil War,

Ohio==like the rest of the country—entered a period of Reconstruction and

Reconstruction politics. And while the end of the war brought freedom to slaves in the

South, it did not immediately change the status of free Black Americans in Ohio until the

Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the Ohio Legislature without opposition in 1865.14

The state legislature instead focused on Black suffrage.15 The northwest region of Ohio supported the Black suffrage movement, but residents in central and southern Ohio continued to oppose the efforts.16

In 1867 Ohio became the seventh state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the

United States Constitution. The amendment guaranteed all persons equal protection under the law and prohibited deprivation of due process of law.17 At the same time a proposition was introduced to amend the state constitution to eliminate the word White from the document and thus give Blacks the right to vote. However, there was great opposition to this effort. The Democratic Party of Ohio went so far to prevent the Black vote that it campaigned on a platform of saving Ohio from “niggerism.”18 The state receded its ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment before it could be enacted.19

In 1870 the state legislature changed its position and ratified the Fifteenth

Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus giving Black Ohioans the right to vote. The decision was a narrow vote of nineteen to eighteen votes in the Senate and fifty-seven to fifty-five in the House.20 Although claiming the right to vote, many Black

Ohioans still faced racial terrorism and intimidation. Characteristics of southern democracy, including preventing Black advancement after the short period of

10 Reconstruction, reached up through Southern Ohio. The animosity towards the Black community and immigration into the state helped create a climate in which the practice of lynching could thrive. 21

Judge Lynch

To gain a better understanding of the long history of lynching in America, it is helpful to understand that the development of what became recognized as lynch law and

“Judge Lynch” that was created over a long period. This development could be broken into four phases.22 Phase one: Lynching began in the 1830s and ended with the outbreak of the Civil War. The second phase then began shortly after President Lincoln’s assassination and covers the Reconstruction era, 1863-1877. The third phase started in the late 1880s when the “conquest of Africa” became a leading topic. During this phase, racial hierarchies grew as the colonization of African territories became more prevalent.23

The fourth period began after World War I in 1914 and continued through the Jim Crow era into the 1960s, in which racial segregation bolstered legally sanctioned White superiority.24 Public spectacle lynchings started to fall from public acceptance after the lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Scholars do not recognize a specific date on when lynching ended.25

The last three phases are the most defining phases of the development of the culture of lynching in America. This is apparent during the second phase, for as slavery became abolished and the pattern of Black and White violence changed drastically.

Starting as violence associated with Blacks’ resistance to slavery, the pattern switched to

White-oriented violence after the end of the Reconstruction era. To maintain control over

11 the freed slaves, White aggressors used urban riots and lynchings in the North and South.

These means were used to maintain the racial status quo of the slave era. White aggressors set boundaries for the Black community, forcing them into lower legal and social status, without power and without political voice, so they would not be a threat to

Whites.26

Lynchings were common in rural and small towns. Most began with an accusation of a crime being committed. In his studies of lynching throughout U.S. history, Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal reported that 38 percent of the lynching victims were accused of homicide, 24 percent of miscellaneous offenses or no offenses at all, 16 percent of rape, 7 percent of attempted rape, 7 percent of theft, and 2 percent of an insult to a White person.27 Myrdal wrote in 1944: “case studies of nearly one hundred lynchings since

1929 [found] around a third of the victims were falsely accused.”28 It is important to take into account that lynching was not so much a response to the crimes reported in newspapers but rather a disciplinary tool to keep the Black community in its traditional place.29

In crimes committed interracially, Blacks often did not expect to be found innocent since most of the presumptions of the court were against them from the start. 30

The author of this thesis employs critical race theory (CRT) to help make sense of journalists’ acceptance of guilt regarding Black victims of lynching. If they were to be sentenced for a crime (which happened in most cases), they tended to receive a higher penalty than if they committed the same crime against another Black American.31 This issue did not fall only on Blacks in the South but also in the North. However, Blacks in

12 northern states were also more likely than Whites to be arrested under any circumstances and dealt with harsh treatment while in police custody.32 Northern lynchings typically occurred in Black communities that were medium-sized and small. Moreover, Blacks lacked the strength to protect themselves through community organizations such as religious, racial, and governmental groups.33

One common reason reported for lynchings as an alternative to legal justice was that taxpayers hoped to rid the state and county of the cost of convicting a criminal who would end up with the death penalty anyway.34 This is underscored by a journalist named

J.S. Tunison, who reported “The most potent reason for the practice of lynching, the reason which only the most outspoken will acknowledge and the one which will sustain it longest in the region where it flourishes, is to be taken as if it is a measure of economy.”

He added, “To have strung up the alleged murderer, whether he be guilty or innocent, obviates the expense which his trial would have laid on the body of tax-payers.”35

Many lynchings took place between 1890 and 1940 in the atmosphere of a public holiday.36 What became known as spectacle lynching evolved in the South, drawing huge crowds of Whites to see “justice” meted out in public. 37 During spectacle lynchings the

“main event” was a period of mutilation and in some cases emasculation. Typically, in spectacle lynchings, torture was used to extract a confession while entertaining the crowd. After a lynching typically came a frenzied effort to gather souvenirs, such as clothing and rope and in some cases body parts.38 Fueling these events were the widely circulated newspapers of the time.39

13 Mainstream Newspaper Coverage of Lynching

Newspaper penetration was high in the years before broadcasting, reaching its peak in 1916, and although many southern Whites participated and witnessed these spectacle lynchings, many northern and southern Whites and blacks learned about these events through newspapers. In many cases, the accounts were written by reporters who personally witnessed the lynchings. Before the 1890s the topic of lynching tended to be ignored by magazines or written in small accounts by local newspapers. With the modernization in journalism and innovations in technology such as steam-powered rotary presses and halftone engravings that led to massive circulations, a dominant narrative of lynching evolved and became more circulated, inviting readers to follow the horrific tales of violence and “swift justice.” This evolution began in the 1890s, with expanded newspaper coverage, bigger crowds, and the public need for vigilantism and racial control adapted to lynch-mob use of public execution.40

During what was recognized as the Gilded Age of journalism, 1876-1893, the term “lynching” appeared more often in newspaper columns.41 It was so common that some newspaper editors became worried that their audiences might become numb to the term.42 In 1882 the Chicago Tribune began publishing an annual tally of lynchings. It reported that more Whites were lynched than blacks.43 However, the next year the paper reported that sixty-two Whites and seventy-one Blacks were lynched. Following the

Tribune’s findings, observers began to recognize the Gilded Age lynching as a predominantly Southern experience. The Tuskegee Institute at Tuskegee University in

Alabama and Chicago Tribune collected newspaper reports and authoritative accounts of

14 lynching from 1882 to 1930. 44 The Chicago Defender and Cleveland Gazette are examples of the many Black newspapers that reported on lynching and kept records of racialized lynchings.

As previously discussed, White mainstream newspapers reported on lynching often.45 In many cases these reports were lengthy, gruesome and filled with detailed accounts of mob violence. In many instances these articles used prejudicial language and villainized Black victims of lynching.46 For example, from the first newspaper article published, Roscoe Parker was a suspect.47 Articles defined him as the murderer and vilified his character.48 Such descriptions in the local press included: “The Red-handed

Wretch Guilty Beyond a Doubt,” “Roscoe Parker the colored demon,” “Murderer

Parker,” “young desperado,” “the butcherer of the Rhines,” and ”Roscoe Parker the

Winchester murderer.”49 The mainstream press described Parker as the murderer in every story located for this thesis.50 Articles also reported that his lynching was to be expected before he even was tried.51 This treatment of Black lynching victims was common in the mainstream press; however, the Black press spoke out against the atrocities.

The Black Press

In 1827, an important newspaper made its first appearance in New York City. At first glance, anyone passing by would have viewed this paper as one of the others on the newsstand. However, if a reader were to take a deeper look, they would notice a drastic difference.52 In response to the remarks the New York Enquirer editor made about free

Blacks’ right to live as citizens when slavery was legal in the United States, John

Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded Freedom’s Journal.53 It was the Black

15 community’s first collective effort to protest racism regularly and in print.54 “We want to plead our own case,” the journal’s publishers, Russwurm and the Cornish wrote in the first issue. “Too long have others spoken for us.”55 In their first editorial, Russwurm and

Cornish developed the tone the Black press would take. Almost immediately, Russwurm introduced the demand for civil rights to the public. Russwurm wrote, “The civil rights of a people being of the greatest value, it shall ever be our duty to vindicate our brethren, when oppressed; and to lay the case before the public.”56

Swedish scholar Myrdal conducted a comprehensive study on race relations and the conditions of Blacks in America in the 1940s, concluding that the future of race relations in America rested in the hands of the American press.57 The New York

Enquirer’s comments demonstrated a need for the Black press in the U.S. to counter the racist rhetoric of the White newspapers. While Freedom’s Journal was the first Black publication to openly support civil rights and the first publication to support Black

Americans, it introduced a legacy that empowered future Black journalists.58

After the end of Reconstruction, arguments circulated that Black Americans benefited from slavery and that they were part of an inferior race, contributing to the widespread belief that Jim Crow laws were necessary to American society.59 Besides a small number of White dissenters, it was up to journalists, academics, and Black writers to challenge the American rhetoric and mindset.60 As time went on, the role that the

Black press took was one of informing Black Americans of stories of importance to their community because mainstream media did not publish stories directed to them.61 The

Black press expanded throughout the United States and kept a system of informing the

16 public of racial violence and discrimination. There is no way to know the exact number of Black newspapers operating during the post-Reconstruction period. Media historian

Patrick S. Washburn noted in his book, The African American Newspaper: Voice of

Freedom, that multiple historians have tried to find the total of Black publications, but the findings have not been cohesive.62 However, between 1885 and 1917, the Black press was especially important in reporting on the more than 4,000 lynchings in America.63

Black newspapers reported on lynchings with obvious outrage. Although they adamantly spoke out against the horrific crimes, many such journalists in close proximity to the South were silenced by fear, afraid to report on lynching for fear lest they be killed themselves.64 Editors from papers outside of the South such as the New York Age and the

Chicago Conservator were able to speak out without fear of violent retribution. However, one Black newspaper in the South stood out as being the most militant protestor of lynching.

The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, published by Reverend Taylor

Nightingale, informed the Black community in Memphis about racially motivated violence. However, its militance and outspokenness would not be fully revealed until Ida

B. Wells became one of its editors in 1889.65 By 1891, Wells’s sole focus was attacking the myths and practice surrounding lynching. She visited sites where lynchings occurred and documented each case. For this Wells became well known among Whites as a troublemaker, and many Memphis newspapers did not take kindly to her outspokenness.

For instance, Wells published a provocative editorial stating that no one in the South believed that Black men raped White women, but rather came to a conclusion that if a

17 consensual relationship between a Black man and a White woman were discovered, it would “be very damaging to the moral reputation of their [White] women.”66 Backlash from the editorial forced Wells and the paper’s business manager to flee the city from a mob that threatened to lynch them. The paper and its press were destroyed, and Wells never returned to Memphis.67

She continued her campaign against lynching by giving lectures abroad, and publishing booklets and pamphlets.68 Later in life Wells married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, an attorney and journalist who founded the Chicago Conservator, which is recognized as the first Black newspaper in Chicago. In 1893 Wells began writing for the newspaper and later bought partial ownership and assumed the role of editor.69 Before becoming a co- owner of the Chicago Conservator, Wells wrote for the New York Age in 1892. Her long exposés published in the New York Age proved to be her greatest work yet. They were published as the pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all Its Phases, the first comprehensive study of lynching and racial violence. Wells then started an international lecture series where she shared her anti-lynching campaign.70 One of the biggest supporters of Wells’s campaign was the Cleveland Gazette, owned and published by

Harry C. Smith. Besides analyses of Wells’s anti-lynching campaign and the coverage of the most prominent Black owned newspapers there is little research regarding lynching coverage in the Black press.

18 Harry C. Smith and the Anti Lynching Campaign in Ohio

The Cleveland Gazette was founded in 1883 by a partnership of four men as the first Black newspaper in Cleveland since the Civil War. Within three years, Harry C.

Smith became the sole owner and managing editor of the weekly newspaper.71

The Cleveland Gazette’s campaign against lynching started in 1887, and throughout its coverage the paper heavily referenced Wells and Albion W. Tourgée, both leading civil rights activists. Tourgée was a White radical Republican, a lawyer and a judge from North Carolina. Smith used the paper’s editorial space to convey the energy and persuasive nature of Wells’s campaign.

By incorporating Wells’s recounting of the atrocities committed, Smith was able to create his own sharp critique of America and the state of Ohio with its lynching issues closer to home.72 Smith’s effort to incorporate Wells into his battle for an anti-lynching law in Ohio was not a one-sided relationship. For her part, Wells referenced the

Cleveland Gazette and Smith’s work throughout her own publications. In Southern

Horrors: Lynch Law in all Its Phases, Wells quotes the Cleveland Gazette reporting in chapter two, The Black and White of it.73

Tourgée was Smith’s strongest ally for pushing anti-lynching legislation in Ohio.

The Cleveland Gazette actively published Tourgée’s editorials and commentary. Tourgée was a Civil War veteran, lawyer, writer, politician, diplomat, and “Ohio carpetbagger,” according to Carolyn L. Karcher in her book A Refugee from His Race: Albion W.

Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy.74 After the Civil War Tourgée and his wife settled in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he became involved in Reconstruction

19 activities. Tourgée served in the 1868 state constitutional convention, the same year he won election as a superior court judge. He was defeated by resurgent White supremacists in 1874.75 Practicing a form of “color blind” justice at the time, Tourgée fined lawyers for using the racial epithet “nigger,” and included Black juries in his court. After his judicial term Tourgée faced terrorism from the Ku Klux Klan. When the Klan savagely murdered two of his close associates, Tourgée tried to convict the murderers but was unsuccessful.76 Blocked from advocating for Black Americans in the political and judicial sphere, Tourgée turned to writing as a way to mobilize Blacks and sympathetic Whites to advocate for legislation across the United States.77

Besides working as the managing editor, journalist, and publisher of the

Cleveland Gazette, Smith was active as an Ohio legislator. That was uncommon considering that only twenty years beforehand, Blacks could not hold governmental offices.78 In 1892, Smith was elected as a Republican to the Legislature, and he served three consecutive terms, from 1893 to 1899.79 During his time in office, Smith used the

Cleveland Gazette as a platform to push his legislative agenda, fighting against segregated schools, minstrel shows, and Ohio’s Black Laws.80 One of Smith’s greatest successes during his career was introducing the Smith Act in 1896, which became one of the strictest anti-lynching laws in America and was recognized by anti-lynching activists as a model law for other states.81

The Gazette maintained a circulation of 50,000 for its first twenty years then dropped to approximately 18,000 around World War I. By the time Smith died in 1941, the paper had become the longest-running African American weekly in the U.S. and had

20 earned its nickname “The Old Reliable” for never missing a Saturday publication date in its fifty-eight years. The paper’s last edition appeared May 20, 1945.82

Journalism Ethics

As racial violence became popular throughout the United States, journalists struggled to ethically handle coverage of lynching. The newspaper business has been part of American society since 1690. And as the need for news expanded over time, journalists questioned the standards and the power of their platform. In 1859 Lambert. A.

Wilmer, an editor of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor and a writer, charged the press with multiple counts of what he considered to be corruptions and crimes in his exposition Our

Press Gang.83 The charges that Wilmer brought forth were:

1. It is alleged and implied that the American Newspaper press possesses extraordinary and tremendous powers. 2. Public journalists have “no just claims” to the possession of these powers. For instance, no legal, moral or intellectual qualification which would entitle them to these powers of which controls the direction of public affairs. 3. American Newspapers practice power in an oppressive and tyrannical manner. 4. American Newspapers encroach on the Political rights of the American People.84

Questions began to arise regarding what standards and ethics newspapers were governed by.85 It was not until 1850 that the word “ethics” appeared in discussions of journalism, and it remained a rare concept in the practice of journalism throughout the

1880s.86

Before the term “ethics” was used, writers, in reference to journalistic conduct, used the term “moral.” Little effort was put toward setting a clear standard of ethical practice in journalism until the early twentieth century.87 While some news organizations might have had rules for their reporters and editors, it was not until 1870 that Melville

21 Stone, newspaper publisher and founder of the Chicago Daily News, introduced a set of systematic principles.88 Stone stressed that the limitations on journalists were “infinitely greater than those of other businesses.” Therefore, there should be a greater sense of responsibility from journalists, as they held a more accountable power that they acquired

“neither by birth or legislation.”89

In order to have a social purpose, a newspaper must be interesting but at the same time, it must convey important facts. How far a newspaper and the general public are devoted to sensational and trivial articles depends on the individual community.90 It is recognized that the era of yellow journalism developed in the later part of the nineteenth century with the practice of misrepresenting news, especially in headlines. Sensational news was not new in the age of yellow journalism; rather, it was imbedded in the very nature of journalism.91 All that it did was emphasize certain aspects of the facts of a story and exclude or minimize others.

Crime served as a constant source of news that could be sensationalized. In

Wilmer’s 1859 exposition of newspaper coverage of crime, he argued that the ceremonies of a criminal trial are a melodramatic performance for the entertainment of the readers and a mockery of the accused. Wilmer complained that the accused would probably read about his sentence in print three or four weeks before being arraigned, as the press appeared to decide the suspect’s fate even before a grand jury had found a bill of indictment.92 Wilmer’s critique of the status of journalism and its practice of crime reporting illustrates that journalists have long been concerned about the ethics of the field.

22 Crawford argues that these issues could be directly linked to the business interests of the newspaper. In many cases, sensationalist stories were not due to misinformation but rather because had an absence of guidelines or were even encouraged by editors to write and practice sensationalism in hopes that it would enhance the value of a story for the paper.93 If troubles arose, editors would evade responsibility and place the full blame on the reporter who was following their instructions, yet they would accept the reporter’s story if no complaints arose.94 Even if a complaint were to be reported to a paper on a sensationalized or even false article, rarely did a paper make an effort to correct any errors.95 Not until 1908 did a news organization make an effort to curb the amount of negative feedback it was receiving due to false articles.

After a false article about an interview with the German Kaiser, Joseph Pulitzer’s

New York World established the Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play. The object of the bureau, as stated by Ralph Pulitzer in 1913, was “to promote accuracy and fair play, to correct carelessness, and to stamp out fakes and fakers.”96 After the creation of the department, complaints about inaccuracy of news or unjust treatment of subjects mentioned in articles were turned over to the bureau, which investigated each claim.

Within the first year, a total of 262 complaints were submitted, and 164 corrections made within the paper.97 As Pulitzer’s efforts show, newspapers began to work to correct inaccurate and unfair reporting. However, such an effort was not granted to coverage of lynchings, this thesis will show.98

With the slow development of standards and systems set up to address problems within articles, the concept of treating journalism as a profession in America became

23 more pronounced. In 1908 Walter Williams founded the first journalism school in

America, the University of Missouri School of Journalism, which became a leader in teaching future journalists to consider their work as a profession.99 Before classes began at the school, University of Missouri President Albert Ross Hill gave a speech to the general faculty, in which he emphasized the importance of the new school of journalism:

The University of Missouri is the first in America to establish and organize a school of journalism. I believe it is possible for this school to give dignity to the profession of journalism, to anticipate to some extent the difficulties that journalism must meet and to prepare its graduates to overcome them; to give prospective journalists a professional spirit and high ideals of service; to discover those with real talent for the work in the profession, and to discourage those who are likely to prove failures in the profession.100

The next year, journalism fraternity Sigma Delta Chi was founded, later known as the Society of Professional Journalists. Even though individual efforts pushed for ethical journalism, ethics involving coverage of criminal cases would be tested again and again as the nation grappled with racial violence.

The Principle of Objectivity and Lynching Coverage

As journalism ethics developed, objectivity became an ideal and principle for proper professional conduct.101 The start of the objectivity ideal within the “law” of journalism arose during the 1890s. As the news and editorial pages became two separate entities in a newspaper, there became a more pronounced division of what purely was news and what was not. This conveyed “objectivity” as an ethic of news that distinguished fact-based coverage from the opinions of the editorial pages.102

An article is viewed as objective if it presents information in a manner that is fair to sources and to rival viewpoints.103 Critics of the use of objectivity note that journalists

24 do not just report facts, as there is a process of selecting which facts, sources to use, and the “angle” of the story. Even if a report is as objective as possible, the reporter of the article would still include their own personal bias, Ward pointed out in 2006. Objectivity protects journalists from criticism because it allows them to stand by the facts and claim neutrality without attachment or commitment to the story.104

The use of objective reporting and its problematic usage are especially visible in the coverage of lynchings. In the mainstream papers, many reporters covered lynching in an objective form by introducing the most important facts within the first few paragraphs of the article.105 For example, an 1892 article published in the New York Times shows this within the first paragraph of its article “Negroes Lynched by a Mob”:

Memphis, Tenn., March 9. – At dawn this morning the dead bodies of three negroes riddled with bullets and partly covered with brush were found in a lot about one and a half miles from the heart of the city.106

By using objectivity, reporters appeared to maintain the common understanding that all lynching victims were guilty, which was assumed from the start.107 Operating under the assumption that lynching victims (specifically those of color) were criminals, newspapers sought common ground in accepting the lynching, and thus not evoking outrages against the lack of official justice.108 In the case of lynching coverage, besides accepting the common understanding of guilt, reporters also could not convey certain information without inserting their cultural and racial biases.109

Critical Race Theory

The author of this thesis will employ critical race theory (CRT) to help make sense of journalists’ acceptance of racial biases in lynching coverage. CRT developed in

25 contemporary legal studies, and initially was used in the 1970s to study how American laws uphold and maintain White supremacy. CRT has been used to analyze the many ways in which race and racial power are constructed and represented American society as a whole.110 Noted scholars such as Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado are recognized as some of the creators of the CRT theory.111

Bell, a civil rights activist and Harvard University law professor, introduced the concept that civil rights advances for blacks coincided with changing economic conditions that followed the self-interest of elite Whites. Bell’s analysis and conceptualization that sympathy and evolving standards of decency and conscience rarely amounted to push for change. With his analysis Bell discussed another theme of CRT, which is revisionist history. This theme reexamines historical record and replaces what the majority would find as comforting interpretations of events with ones that accurately reveal minorities’ experiences.112

In addition to Bell, Freeman, a law professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law, also wrote about the dimensions of CRT. Freeman expands upon Bell’s explication of racism within the legal system and how CRT scholars did not try to merely remain neutral and “color blind” in its different fields that had ultimately legitimized racism.113 Beyond legal studies, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic expanded upon the concept of CRT and introduced it to other areas of study, such as education, political science, and gender studies.114

As the CRT movement expanded, a collection of activists and scholars studied the relationships among race, racism, and power. CRT studies are similar to civil rights and

26 ethnic studies discourse but place issues in a broader perspective to include economics, history, context, and group and self-interest.115 CRT also incorporates and builds off two previous movements, radical feminism and critical legal studies.116 CRT recognizes five specific tenets. The first is that racism is ordinary and not aberrational.117 Use of the term

“ordinary” means that racism is difficult to address because it is not acknowledged, for example the lack of acceptance of the history of racial terror that lynching caused.118 The second theme of CRT is its “interest convergence.” Racism advances the interests of both

White elites and the White working class, which leaves a lack of incentive to eradicate the practice of racism. Third, CRT views that race and races are products of social thought and relation. These categories are created by society rather than being objective or inherent.119 Fourth, CRT recognizes that during shifting societal needs, the dominant society (Whites) racializes minority groups.120 This flows into the fifth and final theme of

CRT, which notes that there is a voice-of-color thesis. This recognizes that people of color could share experiences with oppression through personal interaction and communication—points that their White counterparts are unlikely to know or fully comprehend.121 Incorporating CRT theory within this thesis will advance the concept that objective journalistic coverage of lynching was in fact masking racial bias within the mainstream press.

Methodological approach

The purpose of this thesis is threefold. First, to tell the story of the misrepresented and forgotten part of Ohio’s history of lynching—specifically, how it was initially used as a White-on-White form of summary justice then evolved into racial terror lynching of

27 Black men by White mobs. Second, to show how mainstream newspapers reported on lynching in Ohio. Through a lens of critical race theory, the author will explore how journalistic objectivity can perpetuate racial bias. Third, to situate the Cleveland Gazette and its owner Harry C. Smith as a prominent figure in the promotion and fight for anti- lynching legislation in Ohio. This thesis will argue that as a Black-owned and edited newspaper, the Cleveland Gazette was the most significant publication in Ohio to report the use of lynching as a form of racial terrorism, mirroring at the state level the work of

Ida B. Wells at the national level.

This research draws upon a variety of primary sources, including articles gathered from the databases Newspapers.com, Access Newspaper Archive, and Readex: African

American Newspapers. Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive and holds more than 260 Ohio newspapers.122 Access Newspaper Archive is another online database that includes many local Ohio newspapers from the late 1800s and early

1900s.123 Both Newspapers.com and Access Newspapers Archive were used because each held unique Ohio newspaper titles. The Readex: African American Newspapers database has the most comprehensive collection of Black publications with more than

350 newspapers in its archive. All three online databases allow users to access articles from a collection of newspapers by keyword search. To find the optimal sample of articles concerning each case, search terms such as the name of the victim, location, date, and the terms “lynching” and “Ohio lynching” were used. Given that one aim of this study is to analyze how the mainstream Ohio press reported on cases of lynching, only articles published within Ohio were assessed in this thesis.124 Attempts to search for other

28 newspapers in the Black press proved to be less fruitful. Once it was determined that the

Cleveland Gazette was by far the dominant Black newspaper in the state, the researcher looked for other documents and journals relating Harry C. Smith. Unfortunately, there are no surviving personal items of Smith. Work by the Cleveland Gazette did appear in an

Ida B. Wells pamphlet, Southern Horrors. Wells used the Cleveland Gazette’s coverage of a White woman falsely accusing a Black man of rape as a case study.125

The research reviews a total of twenty-four cases of reported lynching that were found through the search methods above. Starting with the first case, which occurred in

January 1872, and ending with the last case, which occurred in June 1932, this thesis will explore the timeline of lynching in Ohio. Furthermore, the Cleveland Gazette will be reviewed to understand how the coverage of the lynching cases in Ohio helped Harry C.

Smith push for anti-lynching legislation in Ohio. This thesis will also recognize Smith’s important role as an anti-lynching activist and recognize his impact in Ida B. Wells’ anti- lynching campaign. Articles from White mainstream newspapers and the Cleveland

Gazette were analyzed to answer the central research questions: How did newspaper coverage of lynching evolve overtime in Ohio? How did mainstream newspapers use objective reporting involving race in the coverage of lynching? How was Black lynching reported by newspapers compared with White lynching? What was the difference in reporting of the White mainstream press and the Black press?

29 NOTE

1 Marilyn K. Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in

Ohio, 1876-1916, (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1999), 47.

2 Ronald Shannon, Profiles in Ohio History: A Legacy of African American

Achievement (New York: iUniverse, 2008) 1.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., 11.

5 “Ohio Constitution of 1803,” Ohio History Central, https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Ohio_Constitution_of_1803.

6 Charles Thomas Hickok, “The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1870” (PhD diss., Western

Reserve University, 1896), 40.

7 Ibid., 40-41.

8 Ibid., 42.

9 Van Tassel, David Dirck, and John J. Grabowski, The Encyclopedia of

Cleveland History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996) 109.

10 Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land,” 50-51.

11 Ibid., 53.

12 Ibid., 55.

13 Ibid., 48.

14 Hickok, “The Negro in Ohio, 72.

15 Shannon, Profiles in Ohio History, 51. 30

16 Ibid.

17 Gabriel J Chin, “Ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment in Ohio,” Western New

England Law Review 28, no. 2, (2006): 185.

18 Eugene H. Roseboom and Francis P. Weisenburger, A History of Ohio

(Columbus: The Ohio Historical Society, 1973), 201.

19 Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land,” 59.

20 Ibid., 60.

21 Ibid.

22 Walter White, Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (New York:

Arno Press 1969), 82.

23 Ibid.

24 Richard M. Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 205.

25 “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice

Initiative, 2018, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report. EJI expands upon the issue, not recognizing a specific point when the practice of lynching ended. In its argument the report states that instead of ending the focus shifted to the mass incarceration and increase use of the death penalty.

26 Brown, Strain of Violence, 93. For more information on the history of lynching,

Strain of Violence is a helpful resource.

27 Gunnar Myrdal, An America Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern 31 Democracy, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969), 526.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 560.

30 Ibid., 561.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., 560.

33 Ira Wasserman, How the American Media Packaged Lynching (1850-1940):

Constructing the Meaning of Social Events (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press,

2006), 199.

34 Brown, Strain of Violence, 155.

35 Ibid., 155-56.

36 Christopher Waldrep, Lynching in America (New York: New York University

Press, 2006), 22.

37 Ibid.

38 Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the

South, 1890-1940 (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 204.

39 Waldrep, Lynching in America, 22.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 115.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid. 32 45 Wasserman, How the American Media Packaged Lynching, 199.

46 Patrick S. Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom

(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 67.

47 “Ghastly Discovery,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 20,

1893.

48 “Murdered,” The Peoples Defender (West Union), December 21, 1893.

49 Note in order of when terms were presented: “Mutterings,” The Cincinnati

Enquirer, December 24, 1893; “Parker May Be Lynched,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial

Gazette, December 30, 1893; “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching,” The (Cincinnati)

Commercial Gazette, December 31, 1893; “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams,” Defiance

Evening News, January 13, 1894; and “Lynched,” The Salem Daily News, January 12,

1894.

50 Sixty-one articles were found that described Roscoe Parker as being guilty and a villain.

51 “Murdered”; “Ohio State News,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, December 21,

1893; “Mutterings”; “Both Helpless,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 27, 1893;

“Parker May Be Lynched”; “Without Bond,” The Peoples Defender (West Union),

December 28, 1893; “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching”; and “The Old Folks,” The

Peoples Defender (West Union), January 4, 1894.

52 Carl Senna, The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York:

Franklin Watts, 1994) 31.

53 Todd Vogel, The Black Press: New Literacy and Historical Essays (New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001),33 20.

54 Senna, The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 31.

55 Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights

Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 12-13.

56 Senna, The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 31.

57 Ibid., 32.

58 Ibid., 33.

59 Gilda Graff, “Post Civil War African American History: Brief Periods of

Triumph, and Then Despair,” Journal of Psychohistory 43, no. 4 (2016) 247-61.

60 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (New

York: Harper & Row, 1988) 609-13.

61 Washburn, The African American Newspaper, 20.

62 Ibid., 40.

63 William T. Martin Riches, The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 1-6; and “Lynching in America: Confronting the

Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice Initiative, 2018, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report. The EJI stated that more than four thousand

Black Americans were lynched in America from 1877 to 1950.

64 Charles A. Simmons, The African American Press (Jefferson, NC: McFarland

& Company, Inc., 1998), 16.

65 Ibid.

66 Washburn, The African American Newspaper, 68. 34 67 Ibid., 68–69.

68 Ibid., 69.

69 Patricia Schechter, Ida B. Wells and American Reform: 1880-1930 (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 176.

70 Paula J. Ida Giddings, A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 2.

71 Van Tassel, Dirck and Grabowski, The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,

242. There is limited information about Harry C. Smith outside of his editorials in the

Cleveland Gazette. Two published works touch on Smith: Carolyn L. Karcher, A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgee and His Fight against White Supremacy (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2016); and Percy E. Murray, “Harry Clay Smith:

Black Journalist and Legislator” (PhD diss., Miami University, 1977). Neither mentions his efforts in the anti-lynching campaign. He did not have any family, so after his death all of his assets and property were donated to the Negro Blind Association in Cleveland.

The Cleveland Gazette was continued under the ownership of the Cleveland Publishing

Co. with Dr. Geo. W. Brown as managing editor. It is unknown if any documentation is available for either business.

72 Karcher, A Refugee from His Race, 223.

73 Jacqueline Jones Royster, Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-

Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (London: Macmillan Higher Education

Publishing, 2016), 54–55.

74 Karcher, A Refugee from His Race, xi.

75 Ibid., 4. 35

76 Ibid., 5.

77 Ibid., 7.

78 Bruce A. Ragsdale and Joel D. Treese, “Black Americans in Congress, 1870-

1989,” History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian, vol. 101 (US Government Printing Office, 1990), 1, https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-

Essays/Introduction/Introduction/.

79 “Harry C. Smith,” Ohio History Central, https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Harry_C._Smith

80 Van Tassel, Dirck, and Grabowski, The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,

242.

81 “Harry C. Smith.”

82 Van Tassel, Dirck, and Grabowski, The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,

242.

83 Lambert A. Wilmer, Our Press Gang, or, a Complete Exposition of the

Corruptions and Crimes of the American Newspapers (Philadelphia: Arno Press Inc,

1970).

84 Ibid., 62.

85 Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America

(Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). Although it is common to find dissident voices against the press, it is important to note that with the expansion of the

use of the newspaper in society, questions began to arise on what standards and ethics there were for newspapers.

86 Ibid., 219.

87 American Society of Newspaper Editors “Code of Ethics or Canons of

Journalism (1923),” Illinois Institute of Technology, Ethics Codes Collection, http://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/node/4457.

88 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America. Stone’s rules were: 1.There could be “no pandering to the vitiated taste of the unthinking and no publishing of so-called sensational and exaggerated or scandalous material” to achieve sales, or anything a “worthy young gentlewoman could not read aloud in mixed company; 2. Every man’s activities in relation to the public were a proper subject for attention but in his domestic relations; 3. Every effort must be made to be accurate and impartial and a fair frank and open acknowledgement and apology must follow any errors; 4.The paper’s owners were not permitted to hold stock in any public utility corporation; 5. Advertising must not encroach on news space; 6. “Puffs” calling attention to advertisements were not to be published; 7. “good plays were called good and bad ones called bad.” See pages 219-20.

89 Ibid., 206.

90 Nelson Antrim Crawford, The Ethics of Journalism (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1924; repr., 1969), 107.

91 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America, 238.

92 Wilmer, Our Press Gang, 218. 37

93 Crawford, The Ethics of Journalism, 108.

94 Ibid.

95 James Melvin Lee, History of American Journalism (Cambridge, MA: The

Riverside Press, 1917), 401.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 Wasserman, How the American Media Packaged Lynching, 230–31.

99 Ronald T. Farrar, A Creed for My Profession, ed. William E. Foley, Missouri

Biography Series (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 148.

100 Ibid.,149.

101 Stephen J.A. Ward, The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to

Objectivity and Beyond (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 39.

102 David T.Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define

American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 114-15.

103 Ward, The Invention of Journalism Ethics, 49.

104 Ibid., 43-44.

105 Ibid., 118.

106 “Negroes Lynched by a Mob,” New York Times, March 10, 1892.

107 Mindich, Just the Facts, 122–23.

108 Ibid., 123.

109 Ibid., 133. 38

110 Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil T. Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas,

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: New

Press, 1995), xiii.

111 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,

2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 4.

112 Ibid., 24.

113 Mario L. Barnes, “‘The More Things Change’: New Moves for Legitimizing

Racial Discrimination in a ‘Post-Race’ World,” Minnesota Law Review 100 (May 1,

2016): 2045.

114 Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 3.

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid., 4.

117 Ibid., 7.

118 Ibid., 8.

119 Ibid.

120 Ibid., 9.

121 Ibid. There have been very few studies involving critical race theory and journalistic coverage of lynchings. The only two relevant studies the author found are

Carol A. Stabile, White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US

Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006), and Grace Elizabeth Hale. Making Whiteness: The

Culture of Segregation in the South 1890-1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998). Both 39

studies report on lynching and whiteness; however, they focus only on Southern lynchings and leave out Northern lynchings.

122 “About Newspapers.com,” https://www.newspapers.com/about/.

123 “Our Mission,” Newspaper Archives, https://newspaperarchive.com/about-us//

124 The author of this thesis defines mainstream newspapers as newspapers that were White-owned.

125 Royster, Southern Horrors and Other Writings, 54-55.

40 Chapter 2: White on White Summary Justice (1872 – 1876)

Lynching became known as a means of regulating crime and behavior throughout communities and was viewed as a form of extra-legal justice. The beginning of lynching in Ohio started as a form of White-on-White summary justice.1 Even though lynching in frontier territories did occur, most lynchings occurred in areas with an established court system.2 Lynching provided rural communities with what some viewed as effective justice, avoiding the types of legal weaknesses seen by vigilantes as endemic in official legal systems. Although attitudes focused on the court system and due process began to gain traction in the 1830s, the rural and working class viewed arraignment, trial, conviction, and sentencing as weak and less efficient than direct physical punishment.3

Many believed that lynching provided harsh justice that courts might not advocate, and prevented the possibility of release on a form of court technicality.4

Lynching was also a form of community building. It allowed the dominant class to maintain power by reinforcing the status quo of social, economic, racial, and gender hierarchies.5 Leaders of lynch mobs tended to be within the upper echelons of society.

The people who carried out the hangings were of the middle class, and the victims were those who fell into the lower categories of social and economic class. Many viewed victims of lynch justice as unwelcomed and immoral outliers of society.6 Ultimately the use of lynching, especially in rural communities, was a form of vigilante behavior.

The action of lynching legitimized and gave focus to mob violence.7 The typical crimes that prompted lynching were rape and homicide.8 The community’s rage would erupt into collective emotional action, typically in the forming of a mob.9 Those

41 participating in the lynch mob viewed themselves as working in an orderly nature with one focus, to seek justice. The action and outlook of the crowd seeking justice in an orderly manner would justify and support the actions of the lynch mob.10

The mob, formed by “angered citizens,” would then storm the local jail or court to haul away the accused. As a way of justifying the lack of effort on the part of the law to prevent a lynching, officers of the law would show some resistance but would typically be overcome by the lynch mob.11 The nature of lynching would then move the accused from jail and commence with what is loosely interpreted as a “trial.” Most often, the trial occurred at what became the lynching site. This “sham trial” operated under the presumption of guilt and did not allow defense for the accused.12

Another crucial part of the lynching system is the documentation, reporting, and publication of the event itself. Local newspaper coverage led to the acceptance of the actions of the lynch mob.13 Even if a newspaper did not support the lynching, excuses often excuses justified the actions. Throughout the process of documenting a lynching, journalists would emphasize the horrific nature of the crime, the innocent nature of the victims or victims, the sympathetic reaction of the community, the guilt of the accused, absence of a law enforcement structure, and the overwhelming public support of the lynching.14 Newspapers rarely reported prosecution of the lynchers.15

After the Civil War, lynching flourished throughout the West and Midwest, targeting Whites and Blacks alike.16 In Ohio after the war and until 1877, lynching was purely a White-on-White form of summary justice. The coverage of each lynching case during this era of White-on-White violence shows how journalism evolved in its

42 coverage of lynching. Throughout archival and newspaper retrieval as part of this thesis, the author found Ohio had nine cases of lynching from 1803 to 1876. Six of the victims were White. Due to the limitations of accessible newspaper articles, this chapter will only examine the six cases of White-on-White vigilante lynching from 1872 to 1876. It should be noted that the first case in this chapter is not the first lynching case in Ohio but is the first time that journalists, in Ohio, could be found to have dedicated print space and time to report on lynching.17

Absalom Kimmel & Alexander Mcleod (July 1872)

On June 23, 1872, Mary Arabella Secaur, aged fourteen, was returning home from

Sunday school with a few friends.18 She lived in Liberty township in Mercer County outside Rockford along the Ohio and Indiana border.19 Mary was seen as “intelligent modest and remarkably attractive in appearance, and a general favorite in the community,” according to the Elyria Independent.20 And she would be the victim of “one of the most horrible chapters in the history of Mercer County.”21

Mary’s family did not worry about her whereabouts when she did not show up at home because they thought she had stayed overnight with neighbors. About fifteen men formed a search party after Mary did not return the next morning.22 The group followed the route Mary would typically take from church. This went through a section of thick woods, which caused the search party to go through the fields and woods along the road.

Near a thicket of bushes, they found pieces of ripped clothing and heard some wild hogs.

The men found a cluster of hogs fighting over Mary’s body, which they were devouring.23 Mary was unrecognizable; after a piece of clothing was identified as hers, it

43 was apparent that she suffered a brutal death.24 A post-mortem examination revealed that

Mary’s skull was broken into fragments and she had other wounds, which pointed to signs of struggle rather than an animal attack. The examining physician reported that someone murdered Mary and her death was not a random animal attack.25

Suspicion shortly fell on two young tin-ware peddlers from Fort Wayne, Indiana,

Alexander McLeod and Andrew J. Kimmel. Both men were visiting Henry Kimmel, a relative who lived close to Mary’s home and reportedly left a few days before the discovery of Mary’s body. Henry Kimmel’s sons Absalom and Jacob were also thought to be guilty by association.26 The Elyria Independent reported that Mary was last seen alive by her Sunday school companions on her way home accompanied by several men, one of whom was the young Kimmel.27

Shortly after the arrest, Absalom confessed that with Andrew McCleod and others whom he did not name, he had raped and murdered Mary. The following day Sheriff

Thornton Spriggs, along with two others whom he deputized, pursued Alexander

McLeod and Andrew J. Kimmel to Fort Wayne. The morning after his arrest, Andrew J.

Kimmel was released when he signed an affidavit against the others and posted a $500 bond with an agreement to appear at the next court session in November.28

On Sunday, June 30, Alexander McLeod, Absalom Kimmel, and Jacob Kimmel were presented before the court. During the preliminary examination, Absalom’s confession was ruled inadmissible due to a technicality. It was reported later by The

Cincinnati Enquirer that the defense objected to the testimony of Andrew J. Kimmel

(seen as the state’s witness), arguing that the statement was made under fear and hope of

44 reward. However, the court sustained the objection. The Enquirer reported that this occurrence “outraged the citizens” and caused them to “fear that through the technicalities of the law justice would not be meted out.”29

After a preliminary hearing, the prisoners waited for a grand jury to convene.30

The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune reported, “Unless the persons can clear themselves of this chain of evidence that encircles them, Judge Lynch will assume jurisdiction and institute summary justice.”31 Throughout the next few days, community members whispered threats of lynching and tensions grew throughout the community.32

On Monday, July 8, in the early morning, people began to gather in Celina. The crowd grew as people came to town on foot, on horseback, and in wagons. The

Portsmouth Daily Times reported that a crowd of two thousand to three thousand people had gathered from around the county.33 They surrounded the jail and forced the sheriff and jailer to hand over the prisoners. The mob then took the prisoners to the Absalom family home twelve miles from the jail.34

With three thousand people in attendance, the lynch mob laced the three men on crudely made gallows.35 The mob allowed each man to make a final statement. McCleod proclaimed his innocence, Absalom reaffirmed his confession, and Jacob proclaimed his innocence and stated Absalom and Alexander were guilty. Within the mob, Mary’s brother, Elias, pleaded with the vigilantes to release Jacob Kimmel because he doubted

Jacob’s involvement. Surprisingly, the lynch mob released Jacob and returned him to the county jail.36 The carriage was removed from under their feet and both men hanged in the view of the Absalom family home.37

45 Once the bodies were cut down, they were given to physicians in Shanesville for dissection.38 A few years later, a man named Thomas Bradwell Dougless from Denver,

Colorado, confessed on his death bed that he had raped and killed Mary. Furthermore, he also admitted to leading the lynch mob that killed Absalom and Alexander.39

Jeff Davis (July 1873)

Jeff Davis was a man with many identities: John Miller, John Foanbieger, John

Smith, Richard Roe, and many others that would only be known as “John No Name” to those who reported on his final moments.40 Dubbed a “notoriously reckless character” by

The Coshocton Democrat, Jeff Davis would find his death at the hands of a mob before he even met a judge.41 Davis was an intimidating figure weighing two hundred pounds with a muscular build.42 He was a regular in the courts of Turcarawas and Coshocton counties, and did jail time in Zanesville, Ohio, twenty years before. He had recently finished a four-year term at the prison in Tuscarawas.43

On Sunday, July 20, 1873, Davis made a “villainous attempt” (a euphemism for attempted rape) on Miss Humerickhouse, who was walking with another girl on a highway near Ragersville in northeast Ohio. The same day he was accused of assaulting a girl named Flora Lehn, who was nine years old.44 Constable D. Neff arrested Davis and brought him before Judge Levi Travis for a preliminary hearing.45 While authorities waited for witnesses to arrive for the hearing, a mob of twenty to thirty unknown men converged on the building and shot out the town hall lamps. They knocked Davis down with a poker then shot him as many as seven times.46

46 Even with three gunshot wounds to the head, Davis was still alive.47 Members of the mob then tied a rope around his feet and dragged him through town. After two blocks, the mob hanged Davis in a tree, where he finally succumbed to his wounds.48 Ragersville would later be known by the nickname “Hangtown.”49

The mob cut Davis’s body down from the tree and hid it in a pile of sawdust in

Holmes County, where he was supposedly buried for a short time, only to end up in the attic of a local doctor. Dr. Herman Peters obtained the body to preserve the skeleton except for a few parts that he distributed as souvenirs.

Three months after the lynching, the Cambridge Jeffersonian reported new doubts of Davis’s guilt in the attempted rape.50 In response to these new details it was reported that a grand jury had convened and returned indictments for murder in the first degree against four men who were involved in the lynching party.51 The men accused were recognized as “prominent” and “excellent citizens,” who were married and had families with a “good reputation.”52 The newspaper reported that the mob had been urged on by enraged members in the community.53 However all the charges against the mob would be dropped. 54

The location of Davis’s body was unknown until 1980 when the local undertaker’s daughter donated the skeleton to the Ragersville Historical Society. It is still on view at the Historical Society’s museum, sealed in a glass case with the original fireplace poker.55

47 George W. Ullery (January 1875)

In Urbana, a city in northwestern region Ohio, Sheriff Benjamin Ganson anticipated the possibility of another attempt by a disguised mob to seize and lynch the prisoner in his custody. The faceless mob tried two times before and was unsuccessful.56

So Sheriff Ganson kept watch with a strong body of armed citizens. The mob that appeared for the third time was more formidable and heavily armed.57 The sheriff tried to keep the mob at bay for another night, but a brief struggle ended with the guards being bound in the courtyard and a dozen men beating at the door to exact justice.58 The target of this summary justice was a man who had confessed to the rape of a nine-year-old girl.59

Nellie Morgan, the daughter of J.B. Morgan, was a “pretty and sprightly” girl, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.60 Returning home from school, Nellie was coerced by a young man to follow him into the woods, where he raped her.61 Nellie made it home and was unable to describe her attacker or what occurred until the next day.62

The description Nellie gave along with a $500 reward encouraged citizens to start a search party. In less than forty-two hours they had in custody George W. Ullery, a man who matched the description given by Nellie. Ullery proclaimed innocence and said he was passing through the area. However, his underclothing showed bloodstains. 63

Ullery, from Berrien County, Michigan, had worked in a grocery business with his brother, but Ullery, an alcoholic, lost his job and became known as a “common tramp.”64 Very little is known about Ullery except that was accused and confessed to the rape of Nellie.65

48 His confession was heavily publicized, and reporters wrote that Ullery boasted of his actions to strangers. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Ullery didn’t know “what tempted him to commit such a fiendish act except that he was mad that day.”66 Ullery’s confession paired with clothing splattered with blood convinced the mob of his guilt, even though a similar instance of rape involving a young girl occurred while Ullery was in custody.67

That night Sheriff Ganson thwarted two attempts by the mob. The next day The

Cincinnati Daily Star reported that the attempts generated a “considerable disappointment” at the failure to give Ullery “his deserts.”68 The third time the mob was successful in taking him. They broke down the doors of the jail and dragged Ullery out with a rope around his neck toward the courthouse yard. He was then placed on a box under a tree and given two minutes to pray. The mob moved the box, and he died shortly after.69 It took an hour before the coroner cut down Ullery’s body. Ullery’s unclaimed body was buried in Oak Dale Cemetery, shortly after a few medical students were caught trying to steal his corpse. The students were unsuccessful and Ullery’s grave has been undisturbed since.70

James Schell (September 1875)

Seven months had passed since the lynching of Ullery in Urbana, and another lynching would follow eighteen miles down the road in Bellefontaine, in the northwest region of the state. Headlines touted that scarcely had the excitement died out throughout the countryside about the last lynching and now the new one would be more dramatic in its details than the previous.71 James W. Schell would be the next victim to meet

49 summary justice in Ohio after being accused by his wife of murdering an affluent farmer’s sixteen-year-old daughter.72

On Wednesday, September 22, 1875, James Schell and his wife invited Josiah

Laughlin’s daughter, Alice “Allie” Laughlin, to accompany them plum hunting at a reservoir.73 The Schell family lived as tenants on the Laughlins’ farm near Belle Center.

James Schell, thirty-one, often was known to help the Laughlin family often so the invitation to go to the reservoir was not uncommon. However, that afternoon Laughlin was reported missing.74

Reports are conflicted on what exactly happened between the time the Schells left with Laughlin and the search party found her body the next day in a swamp. Later reports would assert that Mr. Laughlin had offended Schell before the outing and thus

Schell resolved to murder his daughter as a form of retribution.75 Others would tell the story of a specific plan to “ravish,” then kill, Allie Laughlin purely out of lust.76

During a preliminary hearing, Mrs. Schell testified that her husband told her that he intended to “ravish” Allie Laughlin and kill her afterward. Mrs. Schell also testified to other crimes committed by her husband, including barn burning.77

After the hearing, a mob started to form. The Weekly Marysville Tribune reported, “There was no brag, no bluster, and no whiskey, but a settled determination looked out from every honest face, and gleamed from every eye.”78 As a way to mask identities, many in the mob used handkerchiefs, wore their coats inside out, and had hats slouched over their eyes.79

50 When the mob came to the jail, they shouted “Mr. Sheriff” in a long, loud voice three times. The sheriff didn’t answer, so the mob’s leader turned to the crowd and said,

“Company One, do your duty.”80 “Company One” advanced, carrying a railroad tie. In quick succession they delivered a series of blows to force the door from its hinges. The mob searched for the keys to the cell that housed Schell but were unsuccessful.81

With cold chisels and sledgehammers, the mob hewed a path to the cell, bursting in the outer door and dragging Schell out.82 The mob placed Schell on a wooden box under a silver maple tree in a corner of the courthouse yard.83 Schell continued to declare his innocence and said that his wife murdered Allie Laughlin because she was jealous.

The Van Wert Weekly Bulletin reported that once asked again to confess, Schell replied,

“Do you suppose I’d do such a thing? Mr. Laughlin was my best friend.”84

Schell denied a request for a minister and instead asked to be buried by his son.

He also requested someone notify his family in Canada that he had died as an innocent man. The box was kicked out from under his feet and Schell hanged. After about eight minutes, someone in the crowd shouted to cut him down. But the mob leader yelled, “If any man makes his appearance to cut him down, I’ll put five balls through that man,” brandishing a revolver, according to the Van Wert Weekly Bulletin.85 After Schell had hung about fifteen minutes, a physician pronounced him dead and the crowd dispersed with Schell left hanging in the tree.86 Schell was buried in a potter’s field. Some of the people in attendance later cut the tree, rope, and box into pieces as souvenirs of the lynching.87

51 Mrs. Schell was arrested after authorities found long hair in Allie’s hands and

James Schell’s seven-year-old daughter testified against her mother. 88 According to The

Eaton Democrat, threats of lynching spread throughout the community though this time it was the women who wanted to lynch her.89 However, she was released and did not face the same fate as her husband.90

George Maugram (July 1876)

George Maugram drove in a buggy to the Abbot family house in New Richmond, a small town along the Ohio River in the southwestern region of the state. After introducing himself as Mr. Williams, he asked Mrs. Abbott if her daughter, Amanda

Abbott, would be willing to work for his family for a few weeks. Amanda, the oldest of three girls, was known to help other families as a way of earning extra income for her family. Williams said his wife had just been confined to bed after childbirth and needed some help. Mrs. Abbott gave her consent, and her daughter, packing up a few clothes to take with her, bid the family goodbye, taking her seat in the buggy with Maugram. A few hours later, the front door to the Abbott family house opened and Amanda Abbott staggered in and collapsed on the floor. 91

After two hours Amanda Abbott regained consciousness and was able to convey what happened to her. As soon as the couple had entered a covered area on the road,

Maugram turned on Abbott choked, raped, and beat her until she lost consciousness.

After stealing her valuables, Maugram left her for dead. Abbott regained consciousness and was able to drag herself home, two miles in the hot sun.92

52 The town constable found Maugram at a saloon near the Abbotts’ house. He said he had never seen the girl and declared his innocence. His buggy, however, was standing outside and recognized. Maugram was arrested and taken to jail where a dozen people identified him. But this was only one of his crimes, journalists informed their readers.

There was another.93

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Maugram called on the family of Mary

Hooper the day before, telling the same story to Mary that he told to Mrs. Abbott, that his wife needed help around the house. Like Amanda Abbott, Mary Hooper had gone with him in his buggy and no one had heard from her since. Mr. and Mrs. Hooper and their son went to the jail and at once identified him.94

This discovery angered many in New Richmond, and someone suggested

Maugram be taken out of jail and lynched. A crowd divided themselves up into squads and set out to find Mary Hooper.95 While the search parties were out looking, a reporter working for The Cincinnati Enquirer came to town to investigate. The constable allowed the reporter and a man named Perry J. Nichols to interview Maugram at the jail.96 Shortly after the interview, the search team returned to town and became agitated at not finding

Mary Hooper. The mob started battering against the unbarred windows of the jail, and the constable, fearing that his prisoner would be taken from him, hastily rushed him into a cell. As the constable reached to lock the outer door, the mob made a rush. The leader of the lynch mob exclaimed: “We won’t give him another god damned minute! Let us hang him on the spot!”97 The Cincinnati Enquirer reporter attempted to beat back the crowd but was flung into the street and the angry mob poured into the jail.98

53 Members of the mob in their hurry had forgotten to get the cell keys from the constable, so they used an assortment of tools to pry open the cell door. The mob dragged

Maugram into the street by the neck and took him to the foot of Ashburn’s Hill and permitted a Lutheran clergyman to see him for a moment.99 Maugram announced that his real name was George Maugram and not Williams, and that he came from Alexandria, in

Campbell County, Kentucky, and that Mary Hooper was dead, but that he had not killed her.100

The loose end of the rope was passed over the limb of a tree nearby. Between the tree and the road there was a deep drain. With the rope pulled tight, Maugram was jerked off his feet and hung.101 Someone in the lynch mob yelled, “There is an Enquirer reporter down in that crowd, see that he gets no names.” The reporter later recounted in another article that he fled the scene.102

Maugram’s body was left hanging in the tree until late Sunday morning. The remains were then buried along a riverbank. Medical students dug his body up, but the head was missing, removed by Dr. William Kinkaid of New Richmond, who kept it in a jar of alcohol as a keepsake. Some of the bones were passed around as souvenirs.103

Mary Hooper’s body was later found.104 After hearing the testimony of three witnesses, the jury returned a verdict:

The deceased came to her death by violence, and [we] further find that the said body has upon it the following marks and wounds; One wound upon the forehead, finger marks upon her throat, and the neck broken; and do further find that one George Mangrum was concerned in the perpetration of said wounds and death.”105

54 NOTES

1 Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1975), 21.

2 John Walton Caughey, Their Majesties the Mob: The Vigilante Impulse in

America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 6-9.

3 Brown, Strain of Violence, 108-9.

4 Ibid., 152-54; and Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch:

Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York: Springer, 2002), 93.

5 Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in

America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 8-9, 24.

6 Brown, Strain of Violence, 88-89.

7 Michael J. Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 42.

8 Ibid., 63.

9 Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch, 94.

10 Caughey, Their Majesties the Mob, 19; and Wood, Lynching and Spectacle, 9.

11 Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch, 94.

12 Caughey, Their Majesties the Mob, 10-13.

13 Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch, 95.

14 Ibid., 88-90, 92-94, 97.

15 “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice

Initiative, 2018, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report.

16 Brown, Strain of Violence, 309-10, 315; and Waldrep, The Many Faces of

Judge Lynch, 97.

17 See Appendix A for full list of lynching victims and attempted lynching victims in Ohio.

18 “Lynched,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1872. The spelling of Mary’s name varies throughout articles. The other variation is Mary Belle Secore and Secour.

For consistency the variation of Mary Secaur is used.

19 “Horrible Crime,” Elyria Independent, July 10, 1872.

20 Ibid.

21 “Lynched.” For a better understanding of this case, see David Kimmel, Outrage in Ohio: A Rural Murder, Lynching, and Mystery (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 2018).

22 “Lynched.”

23 “A Little Girl Murdered,” Van Wert Bulletin, June 28, 1872.

24 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 34.

25 “The Liberty Township Murder,” Celina Journal, July 4, 1872.

26 “Mercer County Horror! The Murderers Arrested, Their Trial and

Commitment,” Delphos Weekly Herald, July 11, 1872.

27 “Horrible Crime.” 56

28 James H. Day, Lynched! A Fiendish Outrage! A Terrible Retribution! (Celina,

OH: A.P.J. Snyder, 1872), 10-11.

29 “Lynched.”

30 Ibid.

31 “Horrible Crime,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, July 3, 1872.

32“Lynch Law In Mercer County: The Secore Murderers Taken by a Band of

2,000,” Wyandot County Republican, July 11, 1872.

33 Ibid. Note: [No headline], Portsmouth Daily Times, July 13, 1872, mentions that three thousand people attended.

34 Ibid.

35 David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio:

1772 – 1938 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2019), 35.

36 “Mercer County Horror! The Murderers Arrested, Their Trial and

Commitment.”

37 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 35.

38 Ibid., 35.

39 Ibid., 36.

40 “Indicted,” The Summit County Beacon, November 19, 1873; and Meyers and

Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 36.

41 “Lynch Law in Tuscarawas County,” The Coshocton Democrat, August 5,

1873. Meyers and Walker, in Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, note that Jeff Davis’s 57

real name was John Miller. However, for the sake of consistency, Jeff Davis is used to avoid confusion.

42 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 36. No detail is provided on Davis’s criminal past, and little sourcing is provided on this information.

43 “Lynch Law In Tuscarawas County.”

44 Ibid.

45 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 37.

46 “Lynch Law in Tuscarawas County.”

47 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 37.

48 “Lynch Law in Tuscarawas County”; “Man Lynched for Rape in Tuscarawas

County,” Cincinnati Commercial, July 29, 1873; and “Telegraphic,” The Spirit of

Democracy (Woodsfield), August 5, 1873.

49 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 37.

50 “1873 Grand Jury Indictment,” Cambridge Jeffersonian, November 27, 1973.

51 “Indictments Found,” Holmes County Republican, November 20, 1873;

“Tuscarawas Co.,” The Stark County Democrat, November 27, 1873; and “Indicted,” The

Summit County Beacon, November 19, 1873.

52 “Indicted Found”; “Indictments Found”; “Tuscarawas Co.”; and “1873 Grand

Jury Indictment.”

53 “Indicted.”

54 “Court Proceedings,” New Philadelphia Ohio Democrat, March 20, 1874. 58

55 Ibid.; Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 37; and

“Skeleton of Jeff Davis in Hangtown,” Roadside America, https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/29689.

56 “A Failure—Another Attempted Outrage,” The Cincinnati Daily Star, January

16, 1875.

57 “Retribution,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 18, 1875.

58 Ibid.

59 [No headline], The Cincinnati Daily Star, January 15, 1875; “Retribution”; and

“That Lynching,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 19, 1875.

60 “That Lynching.”

61 “Retribution”; and “That Lynching.”

62 Ibid.

63 “That Lynching.”

64 Ibid.

65 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 37.

66 “That Lynching.”

67 Ibid.; and “A Failure—Another Attempted Outrage.”

68 “A Failure—Another Attempted Outrage.”

69 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 38.

70 Ibid., 38.

71 “Lynching in Bellefontaine,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, September 29,

1875.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.; “Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder near Belle

Center, Ohio,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, October 1, 1875.

74 Ibid.

75 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy! The Miscreant Taken from His Cell and Lynched,

Mrs. Schell Threatened,” The Findlay Jeffersonian, October 1, 1875.

76 “Lynching in Bellefontaine.”

77 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!, The Miscreant Taken From His Cell and

Lynched, Mrs. Schell Threatened”; and “The Logan County Tragedy,” Coshocton Age,

September 30, 1875.

78 “Lynching in Bellefontaine.”

79 Ibid.; “Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder near Belle

Center, Ohio”; and “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!, The Miscreant Taken from His Cell and

Lynched, Mrs. Schell Threatened.”

80 “Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder near Belle Center,

Ohio.”

81 Ibid.

82 “Lynching in Bellefontaine.”

83 Ibid.; and “Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder near Belle 60 Center, Ohio.”

84 “Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder near Belle Center,

Ohio.”

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 40.

88 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!, The Miscreant Taken from His Cell and Lynched,

Mrs. Schell Threatened”; and “According to an Urbana Dispatch,” Cambridge News,

October 7, 1875.

89 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!, The Miscreant Taken from His Cell and Lynched,

Mrs. Schell Threatened”; and “An Innocent Man Hung,” The Eaton Democrat, October

21, 1875.

90 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 40.

91 “Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9,

1876; and “Richmond’s Revenge! Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy,” The

Cincinnati Enquirer, July 10, 1876.

92 [No headline], The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1876; “Diabolical: Horrid

Deeds of a Human Devil”; “Richmond’s Revenge! Succient History of Saturday’s

Tragedy”; [no headline], Gallipolis Journal, July 13, 1876; and [no headline],

Portsmouth Daily Times, July 15, 1876.

93 “Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil”; and “Richmond’s Revenge!

Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy.”

94 “Richmond’s Revenge! Succient History61 of Saturday’s Tragedy.”

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 “Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil”; “Richmond’s Revenge!

Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy”; and [no headline], Portsmouth Daily Times,

July 15, 1876.

102 “Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil,” “Richmond’s Revenge!

Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy.”

103 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 43.

104 “Richmond’s Revenge! Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy,”; [no headline], Gallipolis Journal; and “Mangrum, the Rapist,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July

13, 1876.

105 “Richmond’s Revenge! Succient History of Saturday’s Tragedy.”

62 Chapter 3: Racial Terror Lynching (1877 – 1932)

At the of the Civil War in 1865, Ohio joined the rest of the United States in a period of Reconstruction and Reconstruction politics. The end of the war brought freedom to slaves, but it did not immediately change the status of free Black Americans in Ohio. The Ohio Legislature ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery without opposition.1 The leading political and social issue then became Black suffrage.2

The northwest region of Ohio supported the Black suffrage movement while residents in the central and southern Ohio continued to oppose the efforts.3 The Fifteenth

Amendment gave Black men the right to vote in 1870, and thus allowed Black Ohioans to advance further than other states.4 But they faced racial terrorism and intimidation, characteristics of the South in 1870 that reached up through Southern Ohio.

Lynching was one of the vicious tools of racial control in America. Unlike the vigilantism White-on-White lynchings, which occurred in Ohio from 1872 to 1876, the racial terror lynching period from 1877 to 1932 had all the hallmarks of White southern

“justice.”5 As the Black population grew in Ohio, Whites used mob violence in an effort to re-establish White supremacy in response to racialized economic competition, violations of the racial order, and unproven allegations of crime.6

Throughout archival and newspaper retrieval as part of this thesis, the author found that from 1877 to 1932, lynchings of twenty-six people occurred in Ohio. Sixteen of the victims were Black and the other ten White, the latter illustrating that White-on-

White “summary justice” continued. Due to the limitations of accessible newspaper articles, this chapter will examine only eighteen cases. The remaining cases are not

63 included because there simply was not enough information about them that could be located in historical newspaper databases. This section includes thirteen cases of racial terror lynching, four instances of White-on-White lynching, and one example of a Black victim lynched by a Black mob. To distinguish between racial terror cases and White-on-

White lynching, the word White is included in the title of a White victim. In the title of the Black victim lynched by a Black mob, identification is with the word Black. This chapter focuses on the victims, the actions of the lynch mob and the aftermath of the lynchings. As stated before, racial terror lynching was a tool to maintain the social and economic status of the White community over the Black community. Each case discussed in this chapter expands upon the use of racial terror lynching as a tool of terror and shows differences between White-on-White lynching and racial terror lynching.

Simeon Garnet, Black, (September 1877)

Simeon Garnet, a twenty-five-year-old Black man residing in Oxford, Ohio, in the southwestern region of the state, was accused of raping Perry Kingrey’s wife.7 According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, Mrs. Kingrey was an “estimable lady of Oxford, who was one of the first families of Butler County.”8 After the purported assault, Mrs. Kingrey rushed to her husband for help and described her attacker.9

Perry Kingrey headed for Oxford to enlist the help of Marshal Henry Kyler, the local law officer, and Kingery reportedly recognized the man described to be Garnet in town.10 Reported in the newspapers as a person of “bad character, mulatto and negro desperado,” Garnet became the prime suspect.11 Later the Cincinnati Commercial stated

64 that this was his fifth offense of a similar nature, but he was never found guilty in the other cases due to the lack of evidence.12

The next morning Mrs. Kingrey went to the jail to identify Garnet and during this meeting, she attempted to shoot him.13 Kingrey’s friends and family then stationed themselves around the jail, declaring they would hang Garnet. The next day two attempts to lynch Garnet were foiled and the mob managed only to shot Garnet in the back. He survived. 14

A few days after the failed attempts, Mrs. Kingrey and her husband came to town for a hearing in the case.15 The crowd around the jail was so large that it was impossible to step into the trial room. Garnet said he could prove that he was at the town depot at the time the rape occurred, but his witnesses were absent, so the trial was postponed.16

The Cincinnati Commercial reported that outside the crowd shouted to kill

Garnet.17 Before noon Kingrey led a crowd and shouted: “Boys, for the sake of my poor wife, I want vengeance!” Kingrey then kicked in the door.18 Newspapers noted the lynch mob consisted of first-class farmers, nearly all of whom were reportedly friends with

Kingrey. The Richwood Gazette stated sympathies of the whole community appeared to be with the lynch mob. The paper went on to describe the lynch mob as “noble in its actions” and that when a “rough” from a lower social class named Jim Hann attempted to lead the crowd, no one followed.19

Garnet tried to escape the mob by running into a side room of the courthouse. But this was futile, and he received a heavy blow from a sledgehammer that knocked him unconscious. The mob shot Garnet multiple times and dragged his body outside to hang

65 in order to “send a message.” Instead the mob left Garnet in the road and continued to shoot bullets into his body.20 The Cincinnati Commercial reported that congratulations and handshakes freely passed among the lynch mob and later large crowds viewed

Garnet’s body on display at the city hall.21

William Taylor, Black, (September 1878)

A full year would pass before another Black Ohioan was the victim of the lynch mob, this time in Sandusky, Ohio, in the northern region of the state. Alice O’Donnel, a

White servant girl for the A.K. West family, was found dead hidden in a fence corner with grass covering her with her “throat cut nearly from ear to ear,” and skull fractured.22

The suspect, William Taylor, was a Black man employed by the West family to manage the stables. In the stables were random blood spots, and in the hay was a club allegedly stained with blood.23

Taylor made a confession to the town marshal while in custody, according to The

Summit County Beacon and the Sandusky Weekly Journal.24 Taylor’s confession reported in newspapers stated that Taylor said he found O’Donnel laying on the floor of the stable with her throat cut. He was afraid of becoming suspected of the crime, so he hid her body about four miles from town. Taylor denied that he had anything to do with the murder.25

As word of the murder spread throughout the county, a large crowd gathered and threatened to lynch Taylor. The Summit County Beacon reported that citizens in the lynch mob were “peaceable and law-abiding.”26 That evening a mob consisting of one thousand to five thousand men stormed the jail.27 Sheriff M.L. Star warned of the lynch mob before he placed Taylor in a buggy and drove toward the county infirmary three miles from the

66 city. The infuriated lynch mob immediately chased him. The sheriff was overtaken by

Billy Higgins and Dan Donovan, who informed him that they had been commissioned by five hundred men to secure Taylor’s body. The men overpowered the sheriff and dragged

Taylor to a “howling and infuriated mob,” according to The Summit County Beacon.

They struck and kicked him on the way to the city park to hang him. By the time they arrived, Taylor was unconscious.28

The Summit County Beacon reported that Taylor stated, “I buried the girl, but another nigger killed her.”29 Other newspapers also stated Taylor claimed that another

Black man by the name of John Scott killed O’Donnel.30 Despite Taylor’s pleas of innocence, a noose was thrown over his head and a dozen hands grasped the rope thrown over a lamp post and pulled his body up. The rope broke but Taylor was seized again and under the flaring gaslight, The Summit County Beacon wrote, and the mob “swung

Taylor’s soul into eternity.” 31 Taylor’s body dangled in the air for twenty minutes before the dwindling members of the crowd cut it down.32 After Taylor’s lynching, there was some concern that John Scott would face the same fate. But no evidence was found during a hearing, so Scott was released.33

Christopher C. Davis, Black, (November 1881)

Christopher C. Davis, a twenty-four-year-old Black farm laborer, lived near

Albany, Ohio, in the southeastern region of the state with his wife and two children. On

October 29, 1881, he stopped by Lucinda Luckey’s farm to see if she needed him to do any errands in town.34

67 Davis’s family were neighbors and known to help out Luckey, a White woman, who was widowed and elderly.35 After giving him a small sum of money, Luckey asked

Davis to buy her some sealing wax. Davis was unable to meet Luckey when he got back from town, so he left the sealing wax on the windowsill outside.

Reports on what happened next are conflicted. Davis was attending Sunday school that morning, but he was accused of forcing his way into Luckey’s house to assault her. The Athens Messenger reported that throughout the attack, “The ears of the lustful brute was closed to her [Luckey’s] appeals and in the struggle to resist the violent accomplishment of his hellish purpose.”36

Davis was arrested and arraigned in Albany. After a quick hearing, he was transported to the jail in Athens. Word of the assault spread throughout the community as did talk of lynching Davis. Sheriff Tim Warden learned of a possible lynching and moved

Davis to nearby Chillicothe to protect him from the lynch mob until the excitement died down.

After a few weeks Sheriff Warden returned Davis to Athens to await trial. This decision would prove to be fatal for Davis.37 A mob of at least thirty men marched into

Athens that night, stationing guards at the sheriff’s and town marshal’s residences, churches and city hall to prevent any interference or alarms. The remaining members of the mob proceeded to the jail. Under the veil of turning in a horse thief, the mob breached the jail without batting down the door. Slipping a noose over Davis’s neck the mob dragged him out of the jail.38

68 The lynch mob dragged Davis to the bridge over the Hocking River and demanded Davis confess his guilt. In fear of his life and the assurance of the lynch mob leader that he would return Davis back to jail if he confessed, he made a confession.39

Instead of returning Davis to jail, the mob gave him three minutes to pray. The Richwood

Gazette stated that a shout went up from the lynch mob, “Hang the Dog! Hang him!” But

Davis did not pray.40

The lynch mob then threw Davis headfirst off the bridge with his hands and feet bound and the end of the rope tied to the bridge. Death was instantaneous, and Davis was left to hang. An hour later, the local coroner with the assistance of others cut Davis’s body down.41 The next day he was buried in the West State Street cemetery. That night without his family’s permission the Sterling Medical College exhumed his body.42

Frank Fisher, Black, (April 1882)

Barbara Retting, age thirteen, lived with her family a mile and a half south of

Galion, near the Morrow County line in the northwestern part of the state. On her way home from a neighbor’s house she was raped in a thicket of timber. She crawled back to her home and described her attacker.43 The first suspect was Frank Fisher, who earlier that day had been chopping wood close to the scene of Barbara’s attack.44 He was twenty-six years old, described by the Telegraph Forum as a “full blooded negro, stoutly built, slightly bow-legged, with a stubby beard.”45

The next day in Fredericktown, Fisher was apprehended not far from Galion.

Under examination, Fisher’s underclothing had patches of blood, but he insisted that his

69 nose had been bleeding.46 Fisher was placed in jail at the Galion City Hall, and officers planned to move Fisher to the county jail at Bucyrus due to lynching threats.

The threats were well founded. Shortly after news of Fisher’s arrest, a large crowd of “determined men boldly, defiantly and unmasked, with hammers, crowbars and other implements,” gathered at the entrance of the city hall prison.47 The lynch mob demanded officers turn Fisher over, but they refused. The lynch mob converged on the jail and broke open the jail doors, dragging Fisher out to beat and stab him.48 A few of the mob leaders ended the beating by yelling to the crowd that they needed to hang Fisher and not beat him to death.49

At least two thousand people, men, women, and children witnessed the lynching, according to The Marion Star.50 Sunday schools adjourned early so that those attending could witness the lynching.51 Earlier that day, a physician visited Barbara to see if she could identify her attacker. She replied she could. Knowing this, the mob dragged Fisher to the Retting residence with “hoots, yells, and cheers.”52 She proclaimed, “That is the man who did it,” before fainting. In their coverage of the lynching, newspapers said that

Retting exhibited “budding woman hood and received admiration and respect of men but arouse the base passions of creatures who disgrace the image of manhood.”53

After Barbara’s positive identification of Fisher, the Telegraph-Forum stated that from the crowd came “a savage cry which could be likened to nothing so much as the fierce blood-curdling growl of the tiger as he springs upon his victim,” shouting for the lynching.54

70 The lynch mob then threw a noose around Fisher’s neck and dragged him to a nearby tree. Many in the lynch mob protested and stated that Fisher should be lynched at the scene where the assault occurred.55 From there, they dragged him to this new site while continuing to beat him along the way. Fisher protested his innocence, but to the lynch mob, the bloodstains on his clothing and the girl’s identification were enough to condemn him.56 The Democratic Northwest and Henry County News stated that “a trial by law would only send him [Fisher] to the penitentiary and cheat the gallows of a black- hearted demon.”57

When the lynch mob reached the location, they gave Fisher a few moments to pray. He stated, “O Lord take care of me; I know I am going to die, but I have my friends.”58 After this short prayer, Fisher again proclaimed his innocence, but it was drowned out by the cries of the lynch mob to hang him.59 Fisher’s hands were tied behind his back, his feet tied, and a handkerchief placed over his face. The rope was then pulled, and Fisher was lifted off the ground and hanged. The mob then riddled the body with bullets.60 The Perrysburg Journal noted later that “this has been the most exciting day in history of the city and the county.”61

After Fisher’s lynching, local coroner Phillip Moffat said that if a mob of two thousand people had murdered him, there was no way he could find out who did it. The local law officials also declined to start an investigation.62 Fisher’s body was left hanging. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that night that two fires were kept burning by the body so that people could still view the corpse.63 It wasn’t until the next morning that the mayor ordered the body cut down. Hundreds of people viewed Fisher’s mangled

71 corpse on display at the courthouse. Two days later the body was interred in an obscure corner of the town cemetery with only a board inscribed with his name to mark the spot.

The next day someone from Cleveland dug up Fisher’s body to dissect. The whereabouts of his body remain unknown.64

Richard Hickey, White, (February 1884)

Richard Hickey was the owner of one of “the most disreputable dives found in a mining town,” according to the Telegraph-Forum. The Hickey household, composed of

Hickey, his wife, two kids, and a “fluctuating number of white and colored prostitutes,” lived in Rendville, Ohio, a small coal mining town in the southeastern region of the state.65 Peter Clifford, twenty-three-years old and a brakeman on the Ohio Central

Railroad System, was the brother of James Clifford, who was married to Hickey’s daughter. Peter was not in good standing with the Hickey family.66 Returning home from work Peter Clifford got into a scuffle with several members of the family. One of them threw out his foot and tripped Clifford. Retaliating, Clifford clobbered the person who tripped him. The Telegraph-Forum reported that the person who tripped Clifford

“received a terrific drubbing.”67

Later that night Peter Clifford was awakened from his bed by a knock on the front door. When he opened it, someone shot him in stomach. Staggering back, he exclaimed to his wife, “Mollie, I am done for! The Hickeys have shot me!”68 He died moments later.

Within the hour, three people were arrested: Richard Hickey, Joseph Reddy and Mike

Glen, the son of Mrs. Hickey who was believed to be twelve or thirteen.69

72 The next day people openly threatened to lynch the men in prison. A mob of reportedly two thousand men formed and seized the prisoners.70 The lynch party took all three men to the center of town to a grove of sycamore trees. Joe Reddy was pulled up first, but upon the urgent appeals of some in the lynch mob he was let down and allowed to leave. Glen was next to be pulled up, and under great duress he accused Hickey of murdering Peter Clifford.71 Glen was later lowered and returned to his home.72

Hickey was then pulled about three feet from the ground, but somebody from the lynch mob shouted that he had not been given time to say his prayers. Hickey was then let down and ordered to do what praying he wished to do. According to the Democratic

Northwest and Henry County News, Hickey asked the Lord to have mercy on his soul and said he would die an innocent man.73 The mob then pulled him up again, but with Hickey two feet above the ground, the rope broke and he fell on his face in the mud, too weak to move. The mob secured a new rope. The Democratic Northwest and Henry County News reported that James Clifford took the new rope and threw it over a limb and helped hang his father-in-law.74 Hickey was suspended in the air for about ten minutes until someone sounded the alarm that the authorities were coming. The lynch mob fled and left Hickey hanging.75

What followed Hickey’s lynching would be different than the lynchings that occurred before, perhaps because the victim was White. Ten men were arrested and charged with murder. Mrs. Hickey was also arrested and charged with being a party to the crime for which her husband was lynched.76 Many articles followed the accounts of

Hickey’s lynching, and the trial of those in the lynch party continued on for a few

73 months. Some of the articles would published the names of those involved in the lynch mob.77 By the end of the trial, Judge Friesner charged those arrested with murder in the first degree.78

Fanny Graham, Black, (June 1885)

Turner Graham and his wife, Fanny Graham, both Black, lived in Osgood, a small village nineteen miles northeast of Greenville in Darke County, Ohio, in the west central region of the state. The couple were said to be alcoholics who fought when they were drunk, so people in the village asked them to leave the area.79

The Graham family disregarded the threats. In response, several White men broke into the Graham home and proceeded to wreck everything it contained. They smashed the stoves, split up the furniture, ripped the beds to pieces, and threw into the street every article in the house, besides breaking down the door and knocking out the windows.80

When Turner Graham and his wife came home later that night, the mob ambushed them and shot at them. Both husband and wife made their escape even though they were struck by bullets. The lynch mob reloaded their guns and chased the couple. Turner

Graham jumped behind a large scale near a warehouse and rolled into a ditch. Thinking he was dead, the lynch mob chased Fanny Graham, shooting her point blank in the chest with a shotgun.81 Turner Graham later testified that he overheard one person in the mob say, “I guess the nigger is dead.” Graham, who was badly injured, continued to hide in the ditch until daylight.82

Unlike the other lynchings, public sentiment favored the Grahams and not the lynch mob. Police arrested Dr. Aaron Greer, Job Goslee, Wyant Mills, and Isaac

74 Medford. The latter was the mayor of Osgood. Greer was a practicing physician and member of the Town Council. Goslee was a corporation treasurer and Mills the town clerk. As the Van Wert Weekly Bulletin stated, “The Town government seems to be pretty well represented in the lynch mob.”83 At the end of the trial all four men were indicted and convicted for murder in the first degree.84

Henry Howard, Black, (June 1885)

On June 19, 1885 Eliza Bache, aged eighteen, and Ellen Phillips, aged twenty, were assaulted by a Black man as they were picking strawberries along the Pan-Handle

Railroad line four miles outside Newcomerstown in the east central region of Ohio.85

Phillips was knocked out and Bache raped at knifepoint, according to coverage in the

Hocking Sentinel. After regaining consciousness Phillips called for help, and the suspect was pursued and captured near West La Fayette in an old barn.86 The man identified himself as Henry Howard, a Black man from Apalachicola, Florida, who migrated north five years before as a laborer with a traveling circus. Howard said he was working during the attack and could prove that he was digging in a mine near Coshocton when the attacks occurred.87

The next day a large delegation arrived from West Lafayette for a preliminary trial. Phillips was among the group, with a bandaged head. She swore that Howard was guilty, and several others also identified him.88 Howard still maintained his innocence.89

A physician who examined Howard stated that he was wearing freshly washed clothes and was suffering from a “loathsome disease.”90 Bache’s father attended instead of his daughter, and wanted to kill the Howard on the spot. But the authorities stopped him.91

75 After Howard’s preliminary hearing, it became evident that soon there would be an attempt to lynch Howard. Throughout the day a crowd grew around the jail. The Hocking

Sentinel wrote: “On every corner could be heard open conversation about the lynching, and no one cared to conceal the fact that he was ready and willing to be one of the number who would take Howard out and lynch him.”92 Newspaper reports that day mentioned an excitement in the air regarding the possible lynching.93

That night, a lynch mob of around one hundred “picked men” met in the outskirts of the city, masking themselves and marching to the jail.94 Cheers arose from the crowd there to watch the lynching. The group seemed to The Hocking Sentinel to be “as well- drilled as a military company.”95 The Springfield Daily Republic reported that when in front of the jail, the mob demanded the “nigger.”96

Howard was dragged out of jail, begging for mercy. The mob slipped a noose over his head and threw the rope over a large elm tree branch in the courthouse yard.

Before he was hanged, he reportedly confessed three times and stated he was sorry for the crime. With Howard’s hands and feet tied, the mob’s “willing hands” seized hold of the rope and hauled him up. After his death the lynch mob left Howard hanging.97 A reporter from The Stark County Democrat reported:

While your correspondent is now writing, the negro’s body, with life hardly extinct, is yet dangling from the tree. The whole affair, except when interrupted by the shouts of the multitude, was an orderly one. Your correspondent talked with some of the masked men, whom he well knew, and they are men of property and well respected citizens of the community. Most of them live in the neighborhood where the brutal act was committed and participated in the affair feeling that it was a duty they owed to the community.98

76 The next morning, Howard’s body was finally cut down and taken to a potter’s field for burial.99 News reports on the lynching would not cease, even after Howard’s burial. A clothing store in Coshocton published advertisements in response to the lynching and editorials regarding the lynching appeared in newspapers across the state.100

Black residents in the town of Coshocton received death threats after the lynching.101

William Mussel, White, (December 1886)

In the middle of the night, Daniel Christman, a White, seventy-five-year-old farmer, and his wife, were awoken by a knock on their door in Eaton, Ohio, in the western region of the state. When he opened the door, Christman saw that it was William

Mussel (also White.)102 Mussel had been employed as a farmhand during the last few years, so it was not uncommon to see him at their door. Christman welcomed Mussel into his home.103

Mussel attacked Daniel Christman and ordered his wife to give him all the money in the house. After the demands were met, Mussel struck her on the head with a stove- wood stick and knocked her out. Thinking she was unconscious, Mussel threw a lamp and set the room aflame. Regaining consciousness, she was able to extinguish the flames and call out to her neighbors for help. Daniel Christman died shortly after the attack from his injuries.104

For two weeks authorities in Eaton were unable to locate and arrest Mussel. Soon law enforcement received a dispatch from Greencastle, Indiana, stating Mussel was in the custody of the sheriff. Ohio police traveled to Indiana to extradite Mussel to Eaton.105

Vigilantes tried multiple times to lynch Mussel while he sat in Eaton’s jail.

77 On the third attempt the lynch mob included the community’s “leading citizens,” the Ohio Democrat reported.106 That night the lynch mob rushed the jail. The sheriff protested, but it was only seen as a “formal protest” and did not hinder the lynch mob.

The mob hauled Mussel across the courthouse yard and hung a rope over an electric light tower. They asked Mussel if he had any final words. Mussel insisted on his innocence but was unable to finish his statement because he was swung up “between heaven and earth.”

After twenty minutes Mussel’s body was cut down and handed over to an undertaker.107

Peter Betters, Black, (June 1887)

Martha Thomas, an elderly widow, was awakened by a loud noise in the middle of the night. What followed was a brutal attack in her home on June 11, 1887. The grandchildren who were visiting her at the time escaped and ran to a neighbor’s house for help. Thomas was found unconscious, her arm broken, skull crushed, and the contents of a feather bed, which had been torn apart, thrown over her. The room showed a fierce struggle had taken place and that the woman had fought desperately for her life.108

Thomas, sixty-five and Black, was well liked by the Jamestown community, a small town in Greene County in the southwestern region of Ohio.109 Her injuries were so extreme that it was thought she would not survive her attack, yet she was able to identify

Peter Betters as her attacker.110 Thomas and her husband had given a home to Betters in exchange for help around their property. After the death of her husband, she had asked

Betters to move out. Betters had a bad reputation in Jamestown. Betters, age thirty-five, worked at Stinson Brothers Livery Stable. The Springfield Daily Republic reported that he was recently released from prison after serving two terms for sexual assault of a White

78 woman and horse theft.111 As he was known as a common thief among those in

Jamestown, it was no surprise when Betters was accused.112

A few hours later, in the early morning, the town marshal caught Betters and put him in the Jamestown lock-up.113 News of Betters’s arrest spread and threats of vengeance grew.114 A mob of about fifteen men, Black and White, with hats pulled over their faces and coats turned the wrong side out as a way of disguise, walked toward the jail.115 People looking on from the street were ordered back into their homes, and people driving into the town were turned back.116

The mob forced its way into the jail and dragged Betters out of his cell while he screamed, “Murder!” “Save me!” But his pleas fell on deaf ears. The mob took Betters to the fairgrounds and hanged him from a tree.117 According to The Dayton Herald, the leader of the lynch mob said: “Now, disperse and go home! We have done good work!

Now, keep quiet, and all will be well. Colored people are as true to virtue and justice as steel.”118 The group quietly dispersed and left Betters hanging for the rest of the morning.

His body was cut down and buried in the township cemetery. At an inquest held shortly after Betters’s lynching, no one in the town seemed to know anything about the incident.119

Henry Corbin, Black, (January 1892)

The Horner family was one of the most prominent and wealthy families in the town of Oxford, Ohio, in Butler County. Georgianna Horner, age fifty-two, a widow, was noted by the Hamilton Daily Democrat as being very handsome and had many friends.

She was a favorite with the poor because of her charity. Her daughter, Lizzie Horner, an

79 “Oxford belle,” was also very popular, according to the Hamilton Daily Democrat.120 For two years Henry Corbin, a Black twenty-five-year-old, had served as a hostler and servant for the Horner family. 121Georgianna Horner reportedly had implicit faith in

Corbin. At Christmas time, it was said, she went to Cincinnati and returned with nice presents for him. She told her daughter that she went to Cincinnati to buy them because she could not find any that suit him in Oxford.122

Yet on January 12, 1892, Corbin was reported to have taken a stick of stove wood and landed three blows to Georgiana’s head, the last “horribly disfiguring her face.123

Lizzie Horner, who was upstairs at the time of the attack, rushed downstairs after hearing the commotion. Instead of fleeing the scene, Corbin attacked her. During the struggle

Corbin struck her and tore off her clothes. Lizzie still managed to escape and run outside into the snow, where she fainted. After regaining consciousness she went to a neighbor’s for help.124 Lizzie Horner was then taken to the Presbyterian Parsonage to be cared for, and Georgianna Horner died from her injuries that night.125 The reason as to why Corbin attacked the Horner’s would be conflicted.126 Some newspapers reported that Corbin wanted to rape Lizzie Horner, while others stated his motive was robbery.127

News of the attack and murder spread through the town and surrounding county, and people took to the streets clamoring for vengeance. For two days, all business was suspended in the community while search parties hunted for Corbin.128 The Xenia Daily

Gazette reported that Miami University students even abandoned their studies to search for him.129 If Corbin were caught he would have surely been lynched, newspapers in the area noted at the time.130 The Oxford community was so outraged that they called a

80 special city council session, where city officials and a private citizen offered a one thousand dollar reward for Corbin’s capture.131

It was generally thought that Corbin fled from Oxford, but he was hiding about a mile from town, sheltered by those in the Black community.132 Hiding in a shed, Corbin was able to avoid the lynch mob until a constable saw James Overman, a Black youth, enter a bakery to buy some rolls. The constable arrested Overman, and Overman confessed, telling the constable he was buying food for Corbin, who was in a shed on a nearby farm.133

The mob started on the shed were Corbin hid, and as they came near, the mob shouted curses and threats. To avoid capture, Corbin placed a twenty-two-caliber pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger.134 The gunshot did not kill him. Corbin was taken to the jail, but on the way the wagon was overtaken, and the crowd started to hang

Corbin. The Hamilton Daily Democrat had a reporter on the scene who overheard lynch mob cheers and shouts of “Hang him! Kill the Nigger!”135

A rope was then placed around Corbin’s neck, and the Hamilton Daily Democrat stated that, “It was evident that Judge Lynch would soon open his court.”136 However, law enforcement cut the rope and took Corbin back into custody. The lynch mob rushed the jail again later in the day. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the mayor pleaded with the lynch mob, stating: “Gentlemen, don’t disgrace your town by committing this outrage. The man is dead and there is no use of hanging him. Go to your homes and for

God’s sake don’t be rash.”137

81 A rope was placed around Corbin’s neck, and the lynch mob dragged Corbin through the snow to a public park.138 The Salem Daily News reported: “murderer Corbin’s blackened soul was ushered into eternity.”139 The crowd then “amused” themselves by firing bullets into Corbin’s body.140 Somewhere between fifty and four hundred bullets wounds were found.141 The body was cut down a few hours later, and after the relatives refused to take Corbin’s remains, he was buried at Woodside Cemetery in an unmarked grave.142

The rope used to lynch Corbin was cut up and handed out as a souvenir. Relic hunters even went so far as to take buttons from Corbin’s clothes to preserve as curios.143

Newspapers reported that the lynching would be the breaking point for a possible race war that had been brewing in Oxford long before.144 These claims were quickly quelled when a statement was published in the Hamilton Daily Democrat with the names of thirty people adamantly denying any possible interest in a race war.145

Joseph Lytle, White, (March 1892)

Joseph Lytle, White, had served in the Civil War. After a stint in a Soldiers’

Home in Dayton, Lytle attacked his divorced wife and two daughters with a hatchet and butcher knife after an argument.146 In his rage, he also destroyed all of the photographs in the house and the keyboard of a piano. When neighbors heard the noise, they rushed over and found Mrs. Lytle and her two daughters near death in pools of blood. Lytle was arrested shortly after the discovery.147

Fearing a possible lynching, local authorities created a plan to smuggle Lytle out of jail. Before they had a chance, though, a lynch mob of two hundred to one thousand

82 surrounded the Findlay jail.148 Many newspapers stated that the lynch mob was composed of the people who are well known and the “best of Findlay’s citizens.”149 The Cincinnati

Enquirer reported that if a list active participants’ names were made, it would reveal a number of whom in their “calm moments” would regret the part they took in the lynching.150

That night the lynch mob broke down the doors of the jail and took Lytle to the nearest telegraph pole. They hanged him and shot him sixteen times.151 The Marion Star reported that during the lynching, the police were present but made no attempt to stop the lynch mob.152 The next day, big crowds assembled in front of the undertaker’s office, waiting for a view of the body.153 Before he was taken by the mob, Lytle knew his fate and left a note asking that his body be turned over to his brother, with the request that he be buried beside his mother.154

Roscoe Parker, Black, (January 1894)

There are conflicting reports of how the discovery of the murdered couple was made at the house a mile out of the Winchester township in Southern Ohio. Some newspapers reported that schoolchildren were asked by neighbors if they had seen the

Rhine family, while others said neighbors just went to the house to check on the family on their own.155 But one thing was for sure, the Rhine family was brutally murdered in their home. Neighbors forced their way into the home and searched the house, finding the bodies of L.T. Rhine, age eighty-one, and his wife, Martha J. Rhine, age seventy-one, in their bedrooms lying in pools of their own blood and the room covered in blood spatter.156 Both Mr. and Mrs. Rhines’s throats were cut from “ear to ear” and their “skulls

83 crushed.”157 It was believed that the Rhines were killed either Sunday or Monday because both bodies showed obvious signs of rigor mortis and portions of their bodies had been eaten away by cats and rats.158 The coroner said the Rhines died at the “hands of unknown assassins.”159

Squire Gilbert of Winchester Township led the inquiry and reported that Mr.

Rhine’s pocketbook turned up empty.160 Immediately suspicion fell on sixteen-year-old

Roscoe Parker. He and his family lived close to the Rhines and were known to help with tasks around their farm.161 In multiple articles Parker was accused of having a “bad character” and “having a history of thievery.”162 A week before the crime Parker had been seen helping Mr. Rhine drive a calf to Winchester, where it was sold to a butcher for thirteen dollars. As multiple articles stated, Parker noticed the money and spoke of the amount as he accompanied Mr. Rhine home. The following week the Rhines were murdered.163 On Wednesday Parker was brought in for questioning in the murder and a search was conducted at Parker’s mother’s house. There a five-dollar bill was found stashed under his bed. Searchers also found a pair of stockings, which were believed to be property of the Rhines, and clothing with bloodstains on them.164 Questions of how

Parker had the money became the main evidence of the case. However, upon further questioning Roscoe stated that he had received seven to eight dollars from work that week.165

Parker went into great detail of where he had earned the money during his questioning by Squire Gilbert, but it was not enough to demonstrate his innocence. He was arrested and set to have a preliminary examination at the town hall in Winchester.166

84 Newspapers noted that never before had such a crowd packed the courtroom—“every available inch was gone.”167 In response what was recognized as “intense excitement,” lynching Parker was freely discussed both on the streets and in the vicinity of the preliminary hearing.168

Many articles reporting on the pretrial actions recognized what seemed to be a united effort of enforcing mob law.169 One article even mentioned a mob numbering

1,300 men who were prepared to take the law into their own hands.170 During a hearing

Parker pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer, N.P. Clyburn, of Winchester, stated that his client would waive preliminary examination as well.171

At the end of the preliminary hearing, the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette reported, “It was thought Parker would be taken from the court room and hanged to the nearest tree.”172 He was escorted out of the courthouse and taken to jail. Although there are no other reports of this event happening, the Commercial Gazette also went into great detail about a conversation that Parker had with a member of the crowd when he was being escorted out. It was reported that someone yelled out: “His neck would be stretched before another day had dawned,” and in response to this statement Parker replied, “I’ll throw in a nickel for a rope, if that isn’t enough I’ll make it fifteen cents.”173

Constable Bayless drove Parker to West Union to place him in custody of Sheriff

Greene N. McMannis due to the large crowd and possibility of a lynching.174Although

West Union was fifteen miles away, the mob still followed Parker.175 With tensions rising

Sheriff McMannis received word that citizens from Winchester and the surrounding area were forming a mob that planned to take Parker from the jail and lynch him on Thursday

85 night.176 Sheriff McMannis spread the word that Parker would be moved to Georgetown, thirty-two miles from West Union, on Friday.177 But instead, Sheriff McMannis placed two deputies in charge of him and told them not to stop until they landed Parker safely in the Portsmouth jail, thirty-five miles in the opposite direction.178 Sheriff McMannis then moved his family from the living quarters in the jail, along with another prisoner. He then threw open the doors and placed lanterns throughout the hallways and cells, the

Commercial Gazette reported.179 However, the lynching mob never showed that night, according to the Commercial Gazette’s article:

The coming of lynchers from Winchester was patiently looked forward to, but the sheriff and citizens of west union waited in vain, the steadily drizzling rain which fell throughout the entire night put a damper on the mob and they preferred to remain snugly by their firesides at home.180

Word soon spread that Parker had been moved from the prison, yet it was unclear where he was sent. The Commercial Gazette went on to state that mobs of armed men waited at different points on Friday night to catch the wagon carrying Parker. At 11 p.m. a Commercial Gazette reporter passed through a checkpoint and was halted by some of the men who forced him to tell them what he was doing. The reporter’s response was that he was going to Parker’s lynching, and the men in the group responded that they were on the same mission. However, the group soon learned that Parker was moved the day before, and because they had missed him, the mob dispersed.181 Sheriff McMannis was later commended for his quick thinking in the newspapers that also reported Parker’s whereabouts in Portsmouth.182

As weeks passed into the new year the tension of the case seemed to die down.

Marion Dunlap became the newly elected sheriff before the grand jury on Parker’s case

86 was to convene.183 Dunlap felt that it would be safe to bring Roscoe from Portsmouth and place him in the West Union Jail.184 Unbeknownst to Sheriff Dunlap, word got out that he was planning to move the prisoner. A mob secretly formed that night, and one person in the group was a reporter from the Commercial Gazette. As was stated earlier, only a select few were informed of this gathering as to avoid suspicion from the local authorities. The leaders of the gathering sent out messengers to all sides of the county to spread the news quietly, person to person.185 Sheriff Dunlap thought it was safe to bring

Roscoe Parker back, but he still set out checkpoints in case there were any strangers entering the town. If any were spotted an alarm would be sounded and Parker would be moved again.186

Early Friday morning, a mob of what was described as consisting of one hundred to about four hundred of the “best citizens” descended upon the town of West Union to lynch Parker.187 Members of the mob knocked on the door of the jail acting like a marshal delivering a prisoner. Taking his first look out the door, Sheriff Dunlap noticed the masks that the men were wearing and immediately shut and bolted the door.188 The mob used a piece of timber to batter in the door. When they surged into the jail, they demanded that Parker be handed over. Restrained by three men in the mob, Sheriff

Dunlap heard as the mob demanded. “Give us the keys; we don't want to hurt you; we want Parker.” To this statement the sheriff responded “No,” and “Let me talk reason to you for a minute. There may be others in this crime.” Members of the lynch mob said they didn’t want to hear a sermon and proceeded to struggle with the sheriff. From the top of the stairs Dunlap’s wife pleaded with him to hand over the keys and not risk his

87 life over a prisoner. Yet Sheriff Dunlap stood firm. In response to this, his wife started throwing any key she could find down the stairs to the mob, yet none were the correct fit with the lock on Parker’s cell.

Somebody called for a sledgehammer, and a member of the mob retrieved it from the wagon. While this was taking place, the deputy sheriff returned and was held at gunpoint. The mob smashed through the door with the sledgehammer, finding Parker barefoot and shirtless. To avoid the men, Parker climbed on top of the cell and armed himself with a tin wash pan. Sheriff Dunlap, realizing that his efforts to free himself were not working, pleaded with the crowd a second time: “Gentlemen, once more I appeal to you to stop.”189 As they dragged Parker out of the jail, he looked pleadingly to Sheriff

Dunlap, and the lawman responded that he had done all that he could do to protect him.190

Sheriff Dunlap made one last plea for the mob to release the prisoner.191

The mob took Parker out of West Union toward North Liberty, a Black settlement, aiming to teach Whites and Blacks a lesson, no matter the cost.192 It was noted that although he was barely clothed and it was a bitterly cold winter night, Parker had droplets of sweat falling from his face. Parker said, “I would like to see my mother before I die.”

Then quickly he added, “I guess it’s no use.” A member of the crowd then asked: “What song would you like us to sing to you before you die?” His response was, “I don’t care a damn what you sing.” When the caravan reached a path that led to North Liberty, they stopped. A rope was thrown over a large, arching branch and fastened around his neck.

When asked if he had any final words or a final prayer, he responded no, and he did not wish to pray. Yet he restated his innocence. He was then hanged, but one of his hands

88 came free and he was able to take hold of the rope as to relieve the strain. His body was lowered, and his hand was retied, and he was hanged a second time. Members of the crowd shot into his body more than a dozen times and left his body to be discovered the next day.193

It took until noon the next day before his body was brought down from the tree.

Parker’s death would have seemed to be the last, harsh part of his story; however, his mother had to refuse to claim his body because she could not afford to bury him, and the county would not help her with the expenses.194 Many cemeteries in the county refused to bury Parker. After much effort a cemetery finally agreed to bury him.195

Although it was reported that by lynching Parker, Adams County could be spared the expense of a trial, it still went forward.196 Judge Frank Davis of Batavia took over as the presiding judge after Parker’s death. In his statement to the grand jury Judge Davis stated.197

A great and atrocious crime has been committed in this county, and it is for you carefully, prudently, without passion or prejudice, to examine as to the guild of persons charged, and while the great and awful crime has been committed in the murder of Luther Rhine and his aged wife, another crime, such as tends to overthrow the very foundation of society, to annihilate all law and order, to bring about a reign of anarchy, and a conclusion which might have resulted in shedding innocent blood has taken place here in your midst.198

He went on to specify the nature in which he wished to indict the members of the lynching mob:

A band of men disguised, wearing masks, carrying rope, armed with revolvers, which intent and purpose to take out of jail, out of the custody of the officers of the law one accused of murder for the purpose of murdering him-this band of men invaded your town. Broke down the jail doors, demanded of the sheriff the prisoner, publicity declaring they were determined to violate the law. These men should be indicted if not guilty of murder they are within the provision of the act

89 of March 23, 1889—the finding and punishing of persons who unite and combine together to commit any crime while disguised with masks as being guilty of riotous conspiracy, punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, and you are charged with the duty of making an honest, earnest effort to discover the names of persons engaged in this mob, and indicting them. The law must be respected and obeyed. Our very existence as a state and nation depend upon this. The Vigilance Committee, the White Caps, the Ku-Klux and the regulators belong to a semi- civilization. They have, or should have, no place in our midst Adams County has enough to stain its name and fame without adding mobs, regulators, White Caps and other outrages.199

After stating the indictment against the members of the mob he then preceded to make a statement that was unheard of during a normal criminal trial during this period.

A great newspaper is advised a day in advance of the proposed mob, of the determination to violate law, a newspaper which has knowledge of the causes and awful results of mob law in Berner’s case, the mob in Cincinnati the killing and wounding of many innocent men, the burning of the Court-house, and the loss of valuable public records, the immense cost in money, and knowing all this. The newspaper concealed from the officers of justice the fact of the coming of the mob and sent reporter to accompany the mob and report. In all its horrible details, another murder. There is such a thing as news and enterprise, but to become accessory to murder and crime in order to procure news, is a dastardly and willful violation of law. These reporters are known, and it is your duty to indict them.200

And although Judge Davis did not specifically call out the Commercial Gazette’s role in being complicit of Parkers lynching, others were willing to.201

Even with the strong statement by Judge Davis, the grand jury of Adams County returned with no indictments. After the lynching of Parker, Harry C. Smith, a Black newspaper publisher and state legislator from Cleveland, held a conference with

Governor McKinley and proposed an anti-lynching bill to the Ohio House of

Representatives.202 On January 31, the Ohio House of Representatives passed the bill unanimously.203 With the Senate’s approval in 1896, the anti-lynching bill became law.

Also known as the Smith Act, it became recognized as one of the strictest anti-lynching

90 laws in the United States during that time, and soon other states followed Ohio in introducing anti-lynching bills. The Smith Act passed the Ohio House two weeks after

Parker’s death.204

Seymour Newlin, Black, (April 1894)

A few months later, thirty-one-year-old Seymour Newlin (also known by the last name Nevill or Newland) would be the next victim in Ohio. He was accused of the rape of Eliza Knowlen, an eighty-one-year-old woman who lived alone in Rushsylvania, a small town in Logan County in the Northwestern region of the state. After regaining consciousness from her assault, Knowlen stated she thought her attacker was Seymour

Newlin, who had a bad reputation throughout the community.205 Having served three stints in the Ohio Penitentiary, Newlin was the prime suspect. According to The

Cincinnati Enquirer, he had recently been found “hidden under two respectable ladies’ beds.”206

News of the assault traveled fast, and in a short time, nearly the entire population of the village was acquainted with the story and the search for Newlin began. The next morning a mob caught Newlin a few miles from town. They planned to lynch Newlin immediately, but the sheriff was able to get the lynch mob to hand over Newland to be put in jail.207 The excitement at lynching Newlin was so great the sheriff called for the local militia. This seemed to further enrage the lynch mob, and they plotted to blow up the jail. The sheriff became aware of this plot and succeeded in removing the bomb, and to avoid further confrontation, the militia was ordered to withdraw.208

91 The crowd surrounding the jail grew to more than two thousand men, woman, and children.209 The Cincinnati Enquirer even went to great lengths to report how the women in the crowd had “excitement bordering on frenzy holding their children up so they could get a look at the hanging wretch.”210 The reporter went on to say that thirty women approached to ask what was causing the delay of lynching Newlin. One woman even stated, “If they fail, I will organize a party of women to hang the monster.”211

The mob finally broke the jail door down and dragged Newlin out howling in terror. According to The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, Newlin “fought savagely” picking up a large piece of coal and hurling it into the crowd. He struck someone in the mob but was knocked down and a rope placed around his neck. The lynch mob with wild yells dragged Newlin to a cottonwood tree and a mock trial commenced, but abruptly stopped, as the lynch mob was too impatient to wait.212 Newlin appealed for mercy and claimed his innocence but with a sudden jerk, he was hanged. Newlin was then cut down and carried to the mayor’s office. The coroner decided that Newlin came to his death at the hands of an unknown mob.213 Since no new developments come up following the lynching, no arrests were ever made.

Noah Anderson, Black, (August 1895)

Franklin Friedman, White, was one of the wealthiest men in Clermont County.

Nearly eighty and the president of the First National Bank, he was a staple in the community of New Richmond, Ohio, a town along the Ohio River in the southern region of the state. At one of the houses he owned, Friedman was supposedly attacked by Noah

Anderson, a Black, muscular, itinerant wallpaper hanger. According to the Newark Daily

92 Advocate, Anderson choked Friedman to death with the “power of a demon.”214

Anderson did not conceal his crime as the Sandusky Register stated he gloatingly told all the details and said he had given the old man what he deserved.215 Later it was said that

Anderson was mentally ill, and one of his hallucinations was that Friedman owed him a large sum of money. Neither man knew the other.216

A crowd surrounded the jail and shouted, “Lynch him,” “Hang the Coward.” The town marshal attempted to move Anderson to Batavia, a town a few miles away.217

However the mob rushed the jail and found Anderson in his cell, on his knees crying for mercy. The lynch mob seized Anderson and took him to the closest tree and lynched him.

There was no effort to conceal who participated in the lynching.218

Charles Mitchell, Black, (June 1897)

Initially Elizabeth “Eliza” Gaumer accused Charles “Click” Mitchell, a twenty- three-old hotel porter, of breaking into her home and beating her when she refused to sign a $500 check. Her accusation then changed to rape. Gaumer was the widow of a well- known newspaper publisher, Dr. T.M. Gaumer in Urbana, Ohio, a town in the northwestern region of the state.219 With a wooden pencil as the only evidence, Mitchell was arrested.220 At first, Gaumer stated that she couldn’t fully recognize her attacker, yet when Mitchell was brought before her she cried, “Hang the brute, how dare he face me!”221 Two days later, Mitchell went before the court where the grand jury was impaneled to hear from five witnesses. Mitchell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to the maximum of twenty years for criminal assault.222

93 A crowd consisting of about one thousand to two thousand people formed outside and threatened to lynch Mitchell.223 In command of the militia, Captain George W.

Leonard addressed the crowd and gave them three minutes to disperse. Twenty shots were fired into the crowd as the lynch mob tried to advance on the jail. The soldiers killed a man named Harry Bell and another named Austin Becker and seriously wounding others in the crowd.224 The next morning, when a new company arrived and marched through town, a mob pelted them with mud and yelled at them.225 They were met with a mob of more than two thousand people when they arrived at the jail.226 The mayor ordered the new militia company back to the depot and assured them that their services were unnecessary because the people of Urbana were law abiding.227

The mob, seeing that the militia was withdrawing, rushed the jail and broke open

Mitchell’s cell. Throwing a rope over Mitchell’s head, they dragged him out to the courthouse yard while kicking and beating him, not too far from the tree where George

Ullery had been lynched twenty-three years before.228 The end of the rope was thrown over one of the limbs and Mitchell was jerked up until his neck was broken. The rope was slackened and his body dropped to the ground. The crowd repeated this a few more times as if he were a puppet. Then they tied him up to hang above the crowd of women and children who were there to witness the event.229

There was no attempt to disguise those who actively participated and witnessed the lynching.230 Mitchell’s body was placed in a rough coffin but was still left under the tree, where hundreds of people continued to view it.231 Despite the murder in broad daylight, the grand jury failed to indict anyone due to a “lack of evidence.” Later,

94 Mitchell’s family sued Champaign County under the recently passed Smith Act, which allowed surviving descendants of a lynching victim to receive damages from the lynch mob and county in which a lynching occurred.232 The judge of the Common Pleas Court at Urbana declared the law unconstitutional, and the family was not entitled to collecting damages. This ruling was overturned by the Ohio Supreme Court a few months later.

Five years later the family received a settlement.233

Richard Dixon, Black, (March 1904)

Richard Dixon would meet his death at the hands of an incensed mob that would later burn down and terrorize the Black community. This event would become misidentified by newspapers as the Springfield Race Riot.234 The cause of this terror was

Dixon’s shooting of Police Sergeant Charles Collis of Springfield, Ohio.

Dixon had requested law enforcement assistance to obtain personal clothing that had been left with his wife, Anna (also known as Maime) Corbin, after a fight. Collis accompanied Dixon to the room, and in a short time, Dixon and Anna Corbin became engaged in a quarrel, which resulted in Dixon shooting Anna in the chest just over the heart. She fell unconscious at the first shot. Collis stepped in to stop Dixon, and instead

Dixon fired four shots at Collis, the last of which penetrated his abdomen.235 The wounded Collis pursued Dixon, firing at him and called others to assist him. Although

Dixon escaped Collis, he later turned himself in at the police station. When Collis died from his wounds, talk of lynching Dixon grew.236

A crowd started to form outside the jail, but police didn’t think they would try to lynch their prisoner. According to the East Liverpool Evening News Review, later that

95 night members of the growing crowd shouted, “Hold the police,” “Smash the doors,” and

“Lynch the Nigger.”237 The mob was composed of about two thousand men, it was reported, but those who killed Dixon formed a number far smaller than that, probably no more than 250 people.238 Sherman Gregory, the jailer, was grabbed by the mob and ordered to turn over Dixon. With a revolver placed against his head, he told the mob which cell Dixon occupied. Dixon pleaded with those in the jail to spare his life. He was dragged down the stairs and into the jail yard. Someone stuck Dixon over the head with a club, and he fell to the ground. The mob then began to shoot him more than ten times, killing Dixon instantly. Yet the mob was not finished. They dragged Dixon’s body and hanged it in the cross-arm of a telephone pole. According to the Hamilton Evening

Democrat, men, women and children followed the lynch mob screaming, “Lynch him!”

“Lynch him!” 239 After the body was hanged, the mob continued to shoot the body.240

The next day, the leaders of the (White) lynch mob set fire to homes in the Black community of Springfield.241 Cheered on by thousands, there arose cries such as “If they don’t get out, burn them or lynch every disreputable person in town.” People also cut fire hoses to keep the local fire department from nearing the burning buildings. The Piqua

Daily Call said the mob was “purifying the town.”242 Soldiers from the local militia stood by and watched, and women with their children even pushed their way to the front to get a better look at the chaos.243 For two days White mobs set fire to Black-owned businesses and homes, trying to chase out any Black citizens.244

96 Carl Etherington, White, (July 1910)

Before Prohibition spread across America in 1920, the Ohio General Assembly passed the Rose County Local Option Act of 1908. This act permitted individual counties to decide for themselves whether they would permit the sale of alcoholic beverages. A few years after the law took effect, the voters of Licking County voted against alcohol sales. This excluded the town of Newark, whose citizens were in strong favor of it. When the law took effect, Newark saloons were permitted to sell only non-alcoholic drinks.

However, the mayor and police chief in an under-the-table agreement charged bar owners

$10 a week to sell alcohol.245

Carl Etherington, seventeen years old and a former Marine, was a special detective for the Anti-Saloon League hired by Licking County.246 He and nineteen other special agents raided local saloons alleged to be violating the Rose County Local Option law. During one of the raids, Etherington reportedly fired a shot that killed William

Howard, proprietor of the “Last Chance,” a saloon in the suburbs.247

Etherington was held in jail, and a mob of several thousand people surrounded him. The sheriff and mayor attempted to prevent the mob from getting into the cell block.

Etherington’s last moments were spent in prayer and writing a note to his parents, who were farmers near Willisburg, Kentucky. After finishing his note Etherington attempted suicide by smothering his head in his coat and set fire to it. However, he was unsuccessful and dragged out of jail.248

Etherington was allowed to say some final words but was hanged before he could finish.249 Reportedly women and little children were in the crowd of 2,500 people

97 attending the lynching. No member of the mob was masked, and no attempt was made to conceal their identity. It was believed that the leaders of the lynch mob were personal friends of the man who was shot in the raid.250

Articles published across the United States detailed the brutality Etherington faced during his lynching. Since Etherington was White and a special detective hired by

Licking County, the incident brought negative attention to Ohio. Because of the shame that the county and state faced, Ohio Governor Harmon personally stepped in and removed the mayor of Newark from office pending an investigation of his official conduct.251 The acting Ohio attorney general also publicly declared that those who urged the mob to lynch Etherington would be tried on the charge of aiding and abetting murder.252 This threat was not taken lightly. Altogether twenty-five people initially were taken into custody for alleged implication in the lynch mob.253 Some who were not part of the main lynch mob were also arrested. Mabel McManiway was arrested on the charge of inciting the crowd. The Democratic Banner stated that McManiway was standing on the seat of a car during the lynching, crying to the leaders of the mob: “Pull him a little higher so that I can see.” 254 McManiway reportedly took a taxicab from Zanesville to

Newark, a twenty-six mile drive, on the night of the lynching “to see the fun.”255 There were thirty-nine indictments, fifteen of which were for murder in the first degree.256 Four years later, many of those indicted received pardons on their convictions.257

Luke Marion, Black, (June 1932)

The last recorded lynching in Ohio occurred in the summer of 1932. Unlike the other lynching cases described in this chapter, historians have not recorded Luke

98 Marion’s brutal death. The lack of record is due to the uncertainty of whether Marion’s murder would be considered as a lynching. There is also limited newspaper coverage of the incident. Around June 11, 1932, Marion’s battered and badly decomposing body was found in the Ohio River. Earlier that week, the Black, thirty-five-year-old chauffeur from

Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested and lodged in a South Point jail after getting into an argument with two White men whom he threatened with a knife.258 South Point is a small town along the Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia borders.

A short time after his arrest a mob stormed the jail and took Marion. At the time, authorities believed that he was roughed up and run out of town, so they initially paid little attention to the case.259 Marion’s body bore marks of a severe beating, but it was undecided if he was dead before being thrown in the river. Authorities arrested Theodore

Johnson, Taylor Napier, Garland Massie, Millford Massie, and Ben Hall and took them in for questioning.260 The sheriff planned to arrest twelve other White men, but there was no subsequent reporting on Marion’s murder.261 There is no other information concerning

Marion’s case.

NOTES

1 Charles Thomas Hickok, “The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1870” (PhD diss., Western

Reserve University, 1896), 72.

2 Ronald Shannon, Profiles in Ohio History (New York; iUnivers, 2008) 51.

3 Ibid.

4 The amendment passed by a slim margin—19 to 18 in the Ohio Senate, and 57 to 55 in the Ohio House of Representatives.

5 Equal Justice Initiative, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of

Racial Terror,” 2015, 27.

6 Ibid., 44-45.

7 The name of Perry Kingrey’s wife was not mentioned in any of the articles published.

8 “A Black Brute,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 3, 1877.

9 Ibid.; and “Horrible Crime,” The Findlay Jeffersonian, September 14, 1877.

Information of the rape was reported in “Judge Lynch’s Court: A Negro Rapes a White

Woman at Oxford, Ohio,” Cincinnati Commercial, September 3, 1877.

10 “Horrible Crime.”

11 The term “person of bad character,” was used in “Horrible Crime”; “Mulato” was used in “A Ravisher Shot to Death; A Mob Deals Out Summary Vengeance,”

Cincinnati Commercial September 4, 1877; and “Negro Desperado,” Athens Messenger,

September 6, 1877.

12 “A Ravisher Shot to Death; A Mob Deals Out Summary Vengeance.”

13 “A Black Brute”; and “Horrible Crime.” These articles were the only ones that mentioned this fact.

14 “A Black Brute.”

15 “Horrible Crime.”

100

16 “A Mob at Oxford, Ohio,” Richwood Gazette, September 13, 1877. A similar article was also published with the same title in The Highland Weekly News and the

Somerset Press on the same day.

17 “A Ravisher Shot to Death; A Mob Deals Out Summary Vengeance.”

18 “Expiated; So Far as His Miserable Life Could Atone,” The Cincinnati

Enquirer, September 4, 1877. This was the only article that mentioned Mr. Kingrey’s involvement. Others said he was not involved.

19 “A Mob at Oxford, Ohio.”

20 “A Ravisher Shot to Death; A Mob Deals Out Summary Vengeance.”

21 “Expiated; So Far as His Miserable Life Could Atone.”

22 “Lynch Law in Erie County,” The Summit County Beacon, September 11, 1878.

23 [No headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal, September 5, 1878.

24 Ibid.

25 “Lynch Law in Erie County”; and [no headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal,

September 5, 1878.

26 “Lynch Law in Erie County.”

27 Ibid.; “Lynch Law in Erie County,” reported five thousand people attended and

[no headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal, September 5, 1878 reported one thousand in attendance.

28 “Lynch Law in Erie County.”

29 Ibid.

30 [No headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal. 101

31 “Lynch Law in Erie County.”

32 Ibid.

33 [No headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal.

34 “Mrs. Luckey’s Statement,” Meigs County Republican, December 28, 1881.

For more detailed information regarding the Christopher Davis case, see Jordan L.

Zdinak, “The Lynching of Christopher Davis: A History of Race Relations in Athens,

Ohio” (master’s thesis, Ohio University, 2020).

35 “A Terrible Crime,” Athens Messenger, November 24, 1881.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 “Ohio Lynchers,” Richwood Gazette, December 1, 1881.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 “An Ohio Lynching,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, November 25, 1881.

42 “A Terrible Crime.” There is no definitive reasoning as to why the Sterling

Medical College exhumed Davis’s body.

43 “Vengeance Is Mine!” Telegraph Forum (Bucyrus), May 5, 1882.

44 “Brutal Outrage,” The Marion Star, April 29, 1882.

45 “Vengeance Is Mine!”

46 Ibid.

47 “Judge Lynch,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, May 4, 1882.

48 Ibid. 102

49 “Vengeance Is Mine!”

50 “Lynched,” The Marion Star, May 1, 1882.

51 Ibid.

52 “Judge Lynch.”

53 “Vengeance Is Mine!”

54 Ibid.

55 “Judge Lynch.”

56 “Mob Law,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 1, 1882.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid. “Lynched” mentioned that instead Fisher stated; “O Lord, take care of me!

I know I’m going to die. I have no friends.” This is the only article to report a different final sentence. See also Marilyn K. Howard “Black Lynching in the Promise Land: Mob

Violence In Ohio 1876-1916” (master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1999), 88. Howard writes that Fisher stated, “I have no Friends”; there are no other articles that support this statement.

59 “Mob Law.”

60 [No headline], Cleveland Leader, May 2, 1882.

61 “Lynched,” Perrysburg Journal, May 5, 1882.

62 “Vengeance Is Mine!”

63 “Galion,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 2, 1882.

64 [No headline] The Ohio State Journal, May 1, 1882.

65 “In the Cole Regions,” Telegraph-Forum (Bucyrus), February 8, 1884 103

66 “Tangled Threads,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 9, 1884.

67 “In the Cole Regions.”

68 Ibid.

69 “Tangled Threads.”

70 The “Murder and Lynching,” Bucyrus Journal, February 8, 1884. Mention of a few hundred appeared in “Hung By Ohio Vigilantes,” The Summit County Beacon,

February 13, 1884. The article reported that there were around two thousand in attendance.

71 “Murder and Lynching,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News,

February 21, 1884.

72 “Tangled Threads.”

73 “Murder and Lynching.” The article “In the Cole Regions” reported that Hickey refused to avail himself of the opportunity for prayer, simply declaring that he would “die like a man.”

74 “Murder and Lynching.” Note that “Hung By Ohio Vigilantes” also mentioned

James Clifford’s involvement in lynching Hickey.

75 Ibid.

76 “Corning a Sensation,” Coshocton Daily Age, March 15, 1884.

77 Some of the articles naming those in the lynch mob: “Miscellaneous Items,”

Richwood Gazette, March 13, 1884; “Fresh Fuel,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 7,

1884; “Tangled Threads”; “Miscellaneous Items,” The Highland Weekly News, March

12, 1884; “Miscellaneous Items,” The Eaton Democrat, March 13, 1884; and [no 104

headline], The Hocking Sentinel, March 13, 1884. The article “True Bills,” The

Cincinnati Enquirer, March 19, 1884, stated that the second-degree murder charge was given to Mary A. Hickey, Michael Clifford, James Clifford, William Blakely; assault with the intent to kill, William Hannigan; riot, Michael Harryhill, Thomas Joyce, Thomas

Welch, Patrick Hannigan, Peter Doran, Anthony Mcdonough and Hugh Mckenna; manslaughter, William Dixon.

78 “Judge Friesner’s Charge to the Perry County Grand Jury,” The Hocking

Sentinel, March 20, 1884.

79 “Crimes and Casualties,” Sandusky Sunday Register, June 14, 1885.

80 “Another Bloody Crime,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, June 26, 1885.

81 Ibid.

82 “Osgood Murder,” Drake County Democratic Advocate, June 25, 1885.

83 “Another Bloody Crime.”

84 [No headline], The Greenville Journal, July 3, 1885. Little information was found regarding the sentence lengths for the four men. On June 21, 1885 the Darke

County Democratic Advocate reported that Wyant Mills died in the Darke county penitentiary. Mills only served seventeen months on his four year sentence.

85 “A Ravisher Lynched,” The Hocking Sentinel, June 25, 1885.

86 “Lynch Law in Ohio,” Perrysburg Journal, June 26, 1885.

87 “Died Like a Dog,” The Stark County Democrat, June 25, 1885.

88 “Lynch Law in Ohio.”

89 “Died Like a Dog.” 105

90 Ibid.

91 “Lynch Law in Ohio.”

92 “A Ravisher Lynched.”

93 Ibid. See also “Good Chances for Lynching,” The Dayton Herald, June 19,

1885.

94 Also reported in “Died Like a Dog,” that the men covered their faces with scarves, traded hats, and turned coats inside out to disguise themselves.

95 “A Ravisher Lynched.”

96 “Lynched for Rape,” Springfield Daily Republic, June 21, 1885.

97 “A Ravisher Lynched.”

98 “Died Like a Dog.”

99 Ibid.

100 [No headline], The Democratic Standard, July 11, 1885. The Democratic

Standard is a Coshocton paper and published the ad. Please see Appendix B. For images published alongside the articles, see Appendix C. Editorial responses to the lynching of

Howard can be found in: “The Feeling Toward Lynching,” The Marion Star, June 24,

1885; and “Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885.

101 [No headline], The Coshocton Tribune, July 4, 1885; and [no headline], The

Daily Times, July 9, 1885. Both reported that Charles P. Henry, a Black barber of

Coshocton, received an anonymous letter to leave Coshocton within thirty days with the rest of the Black people of the town or face another lynching.

102 “For Money,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1886. 106

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid.

105 “Mussel, the Murderer,” The Dayton Herold, December 21, 1886.

106 “Mussel Lynched,” The Ohio Democrat, January 1, 1887.

107 Ibid.

108 “A Midnight Mob,” Springfield Daily Republic, June 13, 1887.

109 Ibid.

110 “Jamestown Tragedy,” The Dayton Herald, June 13, 1887.

111 “A Midnight Mob.”

112 [No headline], Xenia Democrat News, June 18, 1887.

113 “Jamestown Tragedy.”

114 [No headline], The Wilmington Journal, June 15, 1887.

115 “Ohio News,” The Hicksville News, June 23, 1887.

116 [No headline], Xenia Democrat News.

117 “Jamestown Tragedy.”

118 Ibid.

119 [No headline], Xenia Democrat News.

120 “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid.

123 “Clubbed to Death,” The Akron Beacon Journal, January 13, 1892.

124 [No headline], Oxford Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892. 107

125 “A Black Fiend.”

126 Note the historical account and the oral history shared by Corbin’s descendants is vastly different. The descendants said Corbin only looked at and talked to a wealthy

White woman, and the woman’s daughter killed her mother. For more information about this account see: Mark Curnutte, “Lynched in Oxford: Descendant Tries to Reconcile

Official, Family Histories of 1892 Killing” The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 30, 2018, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/04/30/woman-retraces-her-ancestors-final- steps-oxford-before-he-lynched-1892-site-spectacle-lynching/519126002/; and Tessa

DiTirro, “2 Black Men Lynched in the 1800s Remembered in Oxford,” Local 12, May

13, 2019, https://local12.com/news/local/2-black-men-lynched-in-the-1800s- remembered-in-oxford.

127 “A Black Fiend”; and “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” Piqua Daily Call,

January 13, 1892. The Piqua Daily Call stated Corbin wanted to rape Lizzie while the

Oxford Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892, stated he was robbing the Horner family for jewelry, a gun, and $25.

128 “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death.” This article was also published in Lima

Daily Times, January 13, 1892; The Lima News, January 13, 1892; and The Maron Star,

January 13, 1892.

129 “Oxford Tragedy,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 13, 1892.

130 All of these articles mention that if caught Corbin would be lynched. “Clubbed to Death,” The Akron Beacon Journal, January 13, 1892; “Clubbed to Death,” The

Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, January 13, 1892; “Oxford Tragedy”; “Reward for a 108

Murderer,” Piqua Daily Call, January 14, 1892; and “We’ll Lynch Him,” The Marion

Star, January 15, 1892.

131 “Reward for a Murderer”; and “Still at Large,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January

14, 1892.

132 “Relic Fiends,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 16, 1892.

133 “Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 15, 1892; and “A

Dying Negro Lynched,” Defiance Democrat, January 21, 1892.

134 “Awful Revenge,” Defiance Daily Crescent, January 16, 1892.

135“Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 15, 1892.

136 Ibid.

137 “Red Spots,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 15, 1892.

138 “Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Evening Journal, January 15, 1892. A similar article was published the same day by the Hamilton Daily Democrat.

139 “An Ohio Lynching,” The Salem Daily News, January 15, 1892.

140 “Judge Lynch Acts.”

141 Ibid.; and “Lynched,” Piqua Daily Leader, January 15, 1892, which stated about fifty bullets were fired. “Awful Revenge,” Defiance Daily Crescent, January 16,

1892, stated four hundred pistol balls were shot into Corbin’s body.

142 “Judge Lynch Acts.”

143 Ibid.; and “Relic Fiends.”

109

144 “Fears of a Race War,” Marion Daily Star, January 29, 1892; “Fears of a Race

War,” Newark Daily Advocate, January 29, 1892; and [no headline], Democratic

Northwest and Henry County News (Napoleon), February 4, 1892.

145 [No headline], Hamilton Daily Democrat, February 2, 1892.

146 “Swift Vengeance,” Bucyrus Journal, April 1, 1892. The same article was

published with the same headline in The Akron Beacon, March 31, 1892; The Bucyrus

Evening Telegraph, March 31, 1892; and The Summit County Beacon, April 6, 1892.

147 “Savage,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 31, 1892.

148 “Lytle Lynched,” The Hocking Sentinel, April 7, 1892. It stated two hundred were in the lynch mob and “Swift Vengeance” said one thousand.

149 “Dropped,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 31, 1892.

150 “Farewell,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 1, 1892.

151 “Penalty Paid,” Hamilton Evening Journal, April 1, 1892.

152 Ibid.

153 “Farewell.”

154 “Swift Vengeance.”

155 News reports are conflicted on who discovered the bodies. The Commercial

Gazette stated that neighbors living near the Rhine family suspected that something was wrong, which was noted in the article “Ghastly Discovery,” The Commercial Gazette

(Cincinnati), December 20, 1893. The People Defender (West Union) stated that the neighbor asked schoolchildren if they noticed the family leaving their house in the article

“Murdered,” December 21, 1893. 110

156 The article “Murdered” states that Mr. Rhine’s name was L.T.; “An Awful

Double Crime,” The (Richmond) News-Herald, December 28, 1893; states that Mr.

Rhines’s name was John P. Rhine and his age was eighty-one and his wife’s age was seventy-one.

157 “An Awful Double Crime” describes Mr. and Mrs. Rhine fighting for their lives, as was noted the room showed signs of a struggle and Mrs. Rhine’s hands were badly cut. It went on to state that Mrs. Rhine’s neck was cut to such extremes that she was nearly decapitated.

158 “Murdered,”

159 Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers, A History of Adams County, Ohio; from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (West Union, Ohio: E.B. Stivers, 1900),

393.

160 “Ghastly Discovery” stated that Mr. Rhine was known to have seventeen dollars in cash in the house.

161 Ibid.; Evans and Stivers, A History of Adams County, 393; and “Ohio State

News,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, December 21, 1893.

162 “Murdered” used the words common thief; “An Awful Double Crime,” used the phrase bad character. And “An Armed Mob,” The Daily Reflector, January 13, 1894; and “Murderer Parker,” The Daily Advocate, January 13, 1894 used the phrase shiftless colored lad.

163 The amount of money Mr. Rhine received for the cow varied by newspaper publication. “Ghastly Discovery” reported he received seventeen dollars; “An Awful 111

Double Crime” stated fifteen dollars; and “Murdered” stated thirteen dollars and twenty cents.

164 Evans and Stivers, A History of Adams County, 393. Articles that pointed out the evidence were “Murdered”; “Mutterings,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 24,

1893; “Both Helpless,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 27, 1893; “An Awful Double

Crime”; “Without Bond,” The Peoples Defender, December 28, 1893; “Roscoe Parker

Escapes Lynching,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 31, 1893; “Saved

His Neck,” The West Union Scion, January 4, 1894; “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams,”

The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, January 12, 1894; “An Armed Mob”; “In Our

Own State,” Sandusky Daily Register, January 13, 1894; and “Murderer Parker.”

165 The detail of Roscoe using money before the bodies were discovered is found in “Ohio State News”; “Both Helpless”; “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams”; and

“Murdered.” The last of these describes Parker having earned three dollars from commissioner Collins which he cashed later, a dollar from Ben Hudson, two dollars from

Tom Gustin, and a dollar from Frank Johnson. These articles were the only articles that publish information on where Roscoe received his money.

166 Evans and Stivers, A History of Adams County, 393.

167 “Pleaded Not Guilty,” The Marion Daily Star, December 29, 1893.

168 “Murdered”; and “Ohio State News.”

169 “Mutterings.” These following articles mentioned that lynching of Parker would occur after the pretrial: “Murdered”; “Parker May Be Lynched,” The Cincinnati

112

Enquirer, December 28, 1893; and “Parker May Be Lynched,” The (Cincinnati)

Commercial Gazette, December 30, 1893.

170 “Both Helpless.”

171 “Without Bond.”

172 “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette,

December 31, 1894.

173 Ibid.

174 Evans and Stivers, A History of Adams County, 393.

175 “Without Bond.”

176 “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching” stated that on Friday morning Sheriff

McMannis received a letter from a citizen stating that a lynching party would be on hand that night, and he was cautioned to not offer any resistance.

177 “Adams County Grand Jury,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette,

December 30, 1893.

178 “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching.”

179 Ibid.

180 Ibid.

181 Ibid.

182 “Saved His Neck.”

183 Evans and Stivers, A History of Adams County, 393.

184 Ibid.

113

185 “A Court Held at Midnight,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, January

13, 1894.

186 “Avenged,” The People Defender (West Union), January 18,1894; and “A

Court Held at Midnight.”

187 Articles that stated that four hundred men were involved were: “A Lynching

Bee in Old Adams”; “Lynched,” The Salem Daily News, January 12, 1894; “Roscoe

Parker Lynched,” Evening News Review (East Liverpool Ohio), January 12, 1894; and

“In Our Own State,” Sandusky Daily Register, January 12, 1894. The article that stated one hundred men were involved was “Murderer Parker.” Articles that mentioned the

“best citizens” participated were: “A Lynching Bee,” The Chillicothe Daily Gazette,

January 13, 1894; “A Court Held at Midnight”; and “Avenged.”

188 “A Court Held at Midnight” and “The Parker Lynching.”

189 “The Parker Lynching.”

190 “Strung Up,” The West Union Scion, January 18, 1894.

191 “The Parker Lynching.”

192 “Strung Up.”

193 “The Parker Lynching.”

194 “Strung Up.”

195 “To Condemn Lynching,” Akron Daily Democrat, January 18, 1894.

196 “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams.”

197 “The Parker Lynching.”

198 Ibid. 114

199 Ibid.

200 Ibid. Multiple articles published Judge Davis’s statement. These articles were:

“Wholesale Indictments Ordered,” The Daily Reflector, January 17, 1894; “Lynchers to

Be Punished,” The Daily Advocate, January 17, 1894; “The Regulators,” The Chillicothe

Daily Gazette, January 17, 1894; “Your Duty,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 17,

1894; and “Couldn’t Get His Breath,” The News-Herald, January 18, 1894.

201 “Couldn’t Get His Breath.”

202 “That Lynching,” The Cleveland Gazette, January 27, 1894.

203 “Now a Law,” The Cleveland Gazette, February 3, 1894.

204 “Harry C. Smith,” The Journal of Negro History 27, no. 1 (1942). For more information on the Smith Act please see Appendix E.

205 “Speedy Justice,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, April 16, 1894.

206 “Jerked to Doom,” The Newark Advocate, April 16, 1894; and “Not Dead,”

The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 17, 1894.

207 “Vengeance.”

208 “Speedy Justice.”

209 “Not Dead.”

210 Ibid.

211 Ibid.

212 “Speedy Justice.”

213 “Verdict in the Newlin Case,” Norwalk Daily Reflector, April 18, 1894.

115

214 “Swift Vengeance,” Newark Daily Advocate, August 22, 1895. The Lima

Times Democrat, August 22, 1895, also published the same article.

215 “Ohio Lynch Law,” Sandusky Register, August 22, 1895.

216 “Swift Vengeance.”

217 “Ohio Lynch Law.”

218 “Swift Vengeance.”

219 “Attempted Lynching,” Piqua Daily Call, June 3, 1897.

220 “The Tragedy at Urbana,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, June 5, 1897. No detail was given as to why the wooden pencil was the only clue.

221 “‘Click’ Mitchell,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 3, 1897.

222 “Fired on the Mob,” Sandusky Daily Register, June 4, 1897.

223 “Two Killed,” Lima Times Democrat, June 4, 1897, stated that two thousand people were in the crowd.

224 Ibid.

225 “Quiet Reigns,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 5, 1897.

226 “Mob’s Violence,” Steubenville Herald, June 5, 1897.

227 Ibid.

228 “Mob’s Violence.” The information on Ullery’s lynching was found in

“Dangled from a Tree,” Delphos Daily Herald, June 5, 1897.

229 “Mob’s Violence.”

230 Ibid. To view an image of the lynching of Charles Mitchell, see Appendix D.

231 Ibid. 116

232 For more information on the Smith Act see Appendix E.

233 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 131.

234 Note the race riot was a White mob attacking the Black community.

235 “Negro Murderer Lynched at Springfield,” Sandusky Daily Register, March 8,

1904.

236 “Murderer Is Lynched,” Portsmouth Times, March 12, 1904.

237 Lynch Law in Ohio,” East Liverpool Evening News Review, March 8, 1904.

This article was also published in Massillon Evening Independent, March 8, 1904; and the New Philadelphia, March 10, 1904.

238 “Mob Kills a Springfield Negro,” Defiance Express, March 8, 1904.

239 “Negro Murderer of Policeman Lynched by Mob at Springfield,” Hamilton

Evening Democrat, March 8, 1904.

240 Ibid.

241 “Will Punish Mob Leaders,” Defiance Express, March 12, 1904.

242 “Mob Applies Torch to Negro Resorts in Springfield,” Piqua Daily Call,

March 9, 1904.

243 Ibid.

244 “All Quiet at Springfield Last Night,” Xenia Daily Gazette, March 10, 1904;

“Is Now Quiet,” Defiance Crescent News, March 10, 1904; “Rioting in Springfield,”

Newark Advocate, March 9, 1904; and “Officials Have Complete Control,” Steubenville

Herald, March 11, 1904.

245 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 172. 117

246 “Officers Disappear after Newark Mob Lynches Detective,” The Dayton

Herald, July 9, 1910.

247 “City Quiet after Her Awful Carnival of Blood,” Coshocton Daily Age, July 9,

1910.

248 Ibid.

249 Ibid.

250 Ibid.

251 “Governor Suspends Newark’s Mayor as Result of Lynching,” The Dayton

Herald, July 11, 1910.

252 “More Suspects Held to Jury,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, July 14, 1910.

253 “Newark’s Jail Is Popular Resort,” The Democratic Banner, July 19, 1910.

254 “Charge Woman with Inciting Lynchers,” The Democratic Banner, August 26,

1910.

255 Ibid.

256 “Mob Indictments from Newark Are 39 on All Counts,” The Akron Beacon,

August 11, 1910.

257 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, 176.

258 “Four Questioned in Death of Atlanta Negro,” Hamilton Evening Journal,

June 11, 1932. Other publications of this article, under different headlines, were: “Arrest

Four Men at Ironton after Finding of Body,” The Journal News, June 11, 1932; [no headline], Dayton Daily News, June 11, 1932; “Four Held as Mob Victim’s Body is

Found,” The Hamilton Evening Review, June 11, 1932; “Body of Negro,” The Cincinnati 118

Enquirer, June 11, 1932; and “Lynch Crew Face Arrest,” Chillicothe Gazette, June 11,

1932.

259 “Victim of Mob Found in River Four Arrested,” Steubenville Herald Star, June

11, 1932; and “Supposed Lynching of Negro Prisoner Seen When Body Discovered,”

Xenia Evening Gazette, June 11, 1932.

260 “Arrest 5 When Man’s Body is Found in River,” Portsmouth Time, June 11,

1932; and [no headline], Dayton Daily News, June 12, 1932.

261 “Victim of Mob, Found in River, Four Arrested,” Steubenville Herald Star,

June 11, 1932.

119 Chapter 4: Analysis of the Mainstream Press

This chapter provides a deep analysis of the mainstream press’s coverage of lynching in Ohio. Through a study of six hundred articles and editorials, this chapter shows the evolution of lynching coverage to one that relies on the journalistic standard of

“objectivity,” including quoting racial epithets from rabid crowds, to perpetuate racial bias. Describing the common news processes used by the mainstream press in covering

White-on-White lynching, this chapter starts by presenting the common reporting practices press. After these findings, the chapter ends by employing critical race theory

(CRT) to examine how objectivity was actively used to incorporate race in coverage during racial terror lynching. Four elements of CRT became apparent during the analysis of newspaper coverage of race in racial terror lynchings.

White-on-White Summary Lynching Coverage

As previously noted, White, mainstream newspapers commonly reported lynchings.1 Most reports relied on hearsay and observers’ racial views, which differed among publications and regions.2 Often those in the lynch mob consisted of the upper class, such as businessmen, prominent farmers, and politicians. Their social class influenced journalists to be sympathetic toward the mob’s violence and view the victim as deserving of the lynching. The author observed story frames for lynchings developing during the first period of lynching in Ohio. Key elements of stories included (1) details of the crime, (2) the guilt of the person lynched, (3) the particular publication’s acceptance or opposition to lynching, and (4) reporting lynching as a form of entertainment.

120 Details of the Crime

Journalistic coverage began with the depiction of the crime. To justify a lynching, the journalist masked the crime of lynching behind the morbid and gory details of the often-unproven crime. In the lynching Absalom Kimmel and Andrew Mcloud, White, in

1872, reporters went to great lengths to recount the murder of White fourteen-year-old

Mary Secaur. Articles published before the lynching recounted the discovery of Mary’s body and focused primarily on the horrific details of the state of the corpse; some newspapers described Mary’s sexual assault.3 As the Elyria Independent reported:

The head entirely severed from the trunk; the hogs having eaten through that part of the neck not severed by the murderous hands. The intestines were missing and the body otherwise horribly mutilated.4

In the lynching of George Ullery, White, newspapers heavily reported on the rape of nine-year-old Nellie Morgan, White. Many articles included details of her injuries.5 As the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, “By threats of life and everything that could naturally break down the will of a child, he accomplished the most beastly deed the mind can entertain.”6 Nellie also was described in a way that would suggest why she was targeted for rape. The Weekly Marysville Tribune included in its description that she was “well developed” which would lead readers to think she was older than she was.7

Reports on the lynching of James Schell, White, similarly focused on the victimization and innocence of the victim, Allie Laughlin, White. When her body was found, many articles described how she fought against her attacker. For example, The

Findlay Jeffersonian stated, “The ground around gave the lie to his statement, showing

121 that she had fought for her honor, and the inquest showed she had sacrificed her life to save her honor, and that she died the pure girl she had lived.”8

The Guilt of the Person Lynched

Examples of the assumed guilt abounded. For instance, the Elyria Independent reported that both Absalom Kimble and Andrew McCloud had drunk the night before the crime and said they were going to “hunt a woman.” The newspaper continued that when both men returned, they “washed blood stains from off their hands and clothing, and unceremoniously left the neighborhood.”9 Journalists reporting on the case of Jeff Davis,

White, took much space in print to demonstrate his villainy. One article by the Coshocton

Democrat said:

It is said in justification of the proceeding, that, in addition to his beastly conduct to several little girls and grown women, the frequent vulgar exposures of his person to females on the public road, he had also threatened certain parties to shoot them, using the most violent and abusive language, and also made threats that he would burn their property. It would seem, from all accounts, that he was regarded as a desperado and feared by the whole neighborhood particularly the female portion thereof. 10

Even when stories focused on the members of the lynch mob, reporters went into great detail about Davis’s character as opposed to that of his lynchers. As the Ohio Democrat reported, “His mouth was ever filled with the vilest slang, and uncaring for society or law, he roamed through the country, & dirty beast, committing the vilest depredations.”11

In the case of George Ullery, newspapers heavily pushed his “apparent guilt.”12 In the two articles published before Ullery’s lynching, he supposedly pleaded guilty, but it wasn’t until after his death that newspapers included the purported confession.

Publications did not question the confession’s validity, nor print the confession in its

122 entirety. Instead the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, “Words are indecent when couched in such forms as are required to give an idea of the extent of his crime and the injury he has done. The telling of it as he tells it is almost an outrage and cannot possibly be done in print.”13 These sentences, combined with the outlandish story of Ullery bragging about what he had done were the only published portions of the confession.14

A Cincinnati Enquirer reporter considered the way Ullery faced death as evidence of his villainy. Showing he was not worthy of justice, the paper stated he barely prayed when given the opportunity before his death and instead screamed at his captors in agony and terror.15 The paper described Ullery as “the monster who had not hesitated to torture and outrage an innocent baby-girl, and lacked even the brute courage to face the death he knew to be inevitable.”16

Physical evidence played a major role in stories of lynching. Besides focusing on the innocence of Allie Laughlin, many papers included sections describing the

“evidence” against James Schell. The Weekly Marysville Tribune stated Schell had a knife and bloody clothing. At the same time The Findlay Jeffersonian reported that after getting rid of any evidence, Schell led the search party directly to the body and then faked tears as a way of deflecting attention form himself.17

Another way to justify the lynching of Schell was to provide examples depicting his character. As the Findlay Jeffersonian included in its retelling of the case,

James Schell, a man who has been in the habit of repaying his offenses in his own way, returning evil for evil, and “allowing no one to get ahead of him,” as has transpired since his arrest. His moto was “Revenge is sweet,” but his tracks were so well covered that Mr. Laughlin a man so upright in character as not to conceive of a character; o fiendish—would not believe he was the wicked man that a great many of the community believed him.18

123

A final point is the connection of guilt to the socio-economic status of George

Ullery. In historical accounts, writers stated that George W. Ullery was Black and would suggest his race as the cause of his lynching.19 However, Ullery was, in fact, White.

Instead of race, analysis of the articles relating to his case points to his economic status as a “tramp.” Ullery was seen as the lowest of the hierarchal system, and thus the mislabel of race is seen as a further mark depicting his class as the bottom of a civilized society.20

The Weekly Marysville Tribune underlined this fact by stating that Ullery was “one of that roving class of ‘tramps’ with which this country is daily infested with.”21

Newspaper Acceptance / Opposition of Lynching

After a lynching, many newspapers published opinion pieces supporting or opposing the mob’s violence. After the lynching of Absalom Kimmel and Andrew

Mcloud, The Mercer County Standard published two opinion pieces with divergent opinions.22 The first followed the common tone taken by other newspaper accounts of the lynch mob. The Mercer County Standard stated,

We declare, that our neighbors of Mercer County are not only excusable but did that which was unqualifiedly just. They moved together quietly, soberly, orderly, without excitement, but with deliberate determination; each one of three thousand – old men, middle aged, and young – ready and willing to take the responsibility. And so, they went to work undisguised, for they were neither ashamed nor afraid of what they were to do. Not knowing of the purpose previously, we fully approve of what was done.23

On the same page, the other opinion piece stated, “No excuses will justify the crime under the law, and we were surprised to see good men, men whose counsels should have been against such illegal proceedings, the leaders of the mob and encouraging others.” The article added, “Others took their families and rode thirty or forty miles

124 through the broiling sun to the place of execution, thus indirectly aiding and inciting others on that occasion.”24

After the lynching of George Ullery, journalists wrote that the common justice system was not sufficient in its response to certain crimes. As a reporter for the Weekly

Marysville Tribune stated,

Precaution cannot be taken, and the law is inadequate. We have but one safeguard, and that is example. The oldest member of the bar said well: “If you catch the villain, I don’t want you men to talk of law.”25

Some articles even thanked the lynch mob. The Cincinnati Enquirer stated:

The popular, the moral sentiment of this community virtually condemned, Ullery to an ignominious death, and three dozen men of iron nerve executed the sentence. They do not aspire to the laurels of heroes, but unknown as they are, and as we hope and believe they always will be, they receive the outspoken thanks of our people. The heart of the community is satisfied. The loud tongue should now be silent that peace may reign among us, and all things are forgotten as quickly as may be.26

According to The Coshocton Democrat, Jeff Davis was lynched after members of the community reported they feared Davis would not face justice. 27 Besides providing a forum for opinions supporting the lynching, journalists also took great lengths to separate the dark act of the lynching from the community’s purer love of lawfully administered justice. As the Coshocton Democrat reported;

We cannot justify this lawless act of violence, conceived and executed, as it was, in such hot haste, and notably wanting in the order, regularity, deliberation, and even percussion, that frequently accompanies such law less proceedings. The State is, no doubt, well rid of a dangerous character; but it would have been much better for all concerned, and he have been disposed of according to the forms of law.28

125 The same article continued, “Our informant says that no citizens of Ragersville took any part in the affair, and many good citizens advised against it when found that violence was intended to the prisoner.”29

It should be noted that some journalists did call out the lawless action of the lynch mob as well as fellow reporters whose words stoked readers’ emotions. During the lynching of George Ullery, The Hamilton Examiner published a collection of op-ed pieces from the many reactions published in newspapers across Ohio.30 Near the end of the op-ed the paper noted,

The complacency with which a leading journal tells the public that the skill of a Montana butcher had to be obtained before the “job” could be accomplished, augers no good to the future of society.31

This statement by The Hamilton Examiner points out that newspapers took more effort to elaborate on the criminal nature of the lynching victim than to accept the lawless action of the lynchers.

Reporting Lynching as a Form of Entertainment

Before 1875, journalists tended to give more space and weight to the victim and than perpetrator. James Schell’s lynching in 1875 inaugurated a new template for covering a lynching: entertainment value. Throughout Schell’s case, the greatest portion of published words focused on the glorification of the lynching and the community’s action and reaction.

Similar to Schell’s lynching coverage, reports on George Maugram’s, White, lynching in 1876 cast it as a form of entertainment. Many publications covering

Mangrum’s lynching republished updates on the community’s reactions after the

126 lynching and offered editorial comment. For example, The Cincinnati Enquirer published the following in its first long article on the lynching:

Nearly the entire populace of New Richmond participated, together with delegations from Brown County, O., and Campbell County, Ky. And no voice but what said “Amen!” it is a rare thing in Ohio, this thing of lynching, but there are few of our readers this Sunday morning who remembering the poor girl lying in her darkened home, and picturing to themselves that other murdered and perhaps mutilated girl lying in the woods, will join in that cry of “Amen!” by that dangling corpse that swings in the glimpses of the moon.32

Articles reporting the Mangrum lynching also introduced another new component: lower classes and women accepting the practice of lynching. Participants in the lynch mob were described as both White and Black. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, “when the rope was pulled tight, forty ready hands, black and white eagerly grasping it.”33 As for women, the Cincinnati Enquirer stated, “The ladies of New

Richmond endorse the hanging with wonderful unanimity, and it was no doubt owing to their advice that the men acted so promptly.”34

Racial Terror Lynching (1877 – 1932) Coverage

The practice of reporting a lynching as an entertaining event for a community developed well into in the White-on-White phase of lynching. Yet it would be commonly used in racial terror lynching cases. The first journalism template for covering lynching in

Ohio reappears in coverage of racial terror lynching. This main structure repeats the three components of the crime attributed to the accused, guilt of the accused, and the acceptance or opposition to a lynching.

One large difference in racial terror reports from White-on-White lynching is the attempt to report objectively regarding race. In articles of the mainstream papers, many

127 reporters covered lynching in a standard, “objective” form by introducing the most important facts within the first few paragraphs of the article.35 Reporters embraced a common, “objective” understanding that all lynching victims were guilty, as was assumed from the start.36 Operating under the assumption that lynching victims

(specifically those of color) were criminals, newspapers sought common ground in accepting the lynching, and thus not evoking outrage against the lack of lawful official justice.37 In covering lynchings, besides accepting the common understanding of guilt, reporters also often did not convey certain information without inserting their cultural and racial biases.38 During racial terror lynchings, one way a journalist practiced “objectivity” was to convey information of race.

Physical Appearance

The lynching of Simeon Garnett, Black, is the first example of racial terror lynching in Ohio. Although the coverage of his lynching would seem to follow the typical framework of the White-on-White lynching, a notable difference was the coverage of his race. Multiple newspapers wrote that his race was the key reason he committed the crime of which he was accused. The Cincinnati Enquirer went in depth by describing Garnett’s physical appearance and distinguishing features as a means to justify his villainy:

The deceased was about twenty-one years old, five feet eight inches tall, lithe, muscular build, rather spare than fleshy, and the most noticeable feature was the conformation of the head, which measured from forehead to the back about eleven or twelve inches, very narrow, retreating forehead, and almost the entire brain back of the ears, so much so that the peculiarity was at once observed. This phrenologically defined, means that the nature of the man is all animal and brutish.39

128 Describing racialized physical features was common throughout racial terror lynching coverage. After Henry Howard’s lynching in 1885, multiple newspapers reported that the

Black Howard was powerfully built, about five feet and six inches in height, with “very thick lips and as black as the ace of spades.”40 The Stark County Democrat would also mention that Howards suffered from a “loathsome disease.”41 Henry Corbin’s physical appearance was also similarly covered, the Hamilton Daily Democrat and Hamilton

Evening Journal stated Corbin as being “very black.”42 The Piqua Daily Leader went even further in its description of Corbin stating him as “a very dark-skinned colored man.” The paper continued with its description stating Corbin’s mouth and lips are “very large” and has the appearance of being blind in the left eye.43 Frank Fisher was also described by the Telegraph Forum as a “full blooded negro,” about twenty-six years old, stoutly built, slightly bow-legged, with stubby beard.44 The Democratic Press depict

Fisher as a “burly negro.”45

Racialized Actions

Besides describing the physical appearance, newspapers also incorporate a racialized tone when reporting the actions of the Black lynched victim. Unlike the White- on-White lynchings, newspapers would only enforce the horror of the crime in the details of the body or other extenuating actions to depict guilt. The actions described in racial terror lynchings typically incorporated a more horrific tone and were seen as enough to justify guilt. In describing Henry Howard’s supposed assault on Eliza Bache and Ellen

Philips, The Stark County Democrat stated, “Seeing the peril of her companion Miss

Bache uttered a cry of horror, when the demon sprang upon her with the ferocity of a

129 wild beast and grasping by the throat bore her to the ground and accomplished his purpose.”46

In the case of Henry Corbin, The Hamilton Democrat stated that he deliberately and premeditatedly assaulted Georgianna Horner. This statement by the reporter was reinforced by adding, “This so maddened the beast that seizing a stick of stove wood he struck the victim three cruel blows on the side of the head, fracturing the skull.”47 Like

Corbin, Frank Fisher was characterized as a beast in the Richwood Reporter during the supposed assault of Barbara Rettig.48

Racialized Words and Headlines

The most obvious purpose of “objectivity” in reporting racial terror lynching was the reporter’s use of racist rhetoric, often gathered from the crowd of witnesses. Although many articles used racial epithets, more often, newspapers relied on descriptive words, such as metaphors, to reaffirm the race depicted. In some cases, these descriptive words would purportedly come from the lynch mob. During the lynching of Christopher Davis, reporters mentioned multiple times that Davis was seen as a “dog.”49 The Richwood

Gazette noted that this term came from the lynch mob: “A shout went up, “Hang the

Dog! Hang him!”50

Other instances include a racial slur describing the person to be lynched. In the lynching of Henry Howard, the Springfield Daily Republic and The Marion Star reported that the mob demanded to be handed the “nigger.”51 Similarly The Hamilton Daily

Democrat and Hamilton Evening Journal stated that Oxford’s name for Henry Corbin was “No count Nigger.”52 Newspapers throughout Corbin’s lynching used “Nigger” to

130 reference Corbin.53 The Hamilton Daily Democrat stated in its description of the lynching, “The crowd started to hang Corbin amongst the cheers of ‘Hang him! Kill the

Nigger!’54 The usage of “nigger” continued throughout the lynching of Frank Fisher.55

The Marion Star even named Fisher’s lynching as the “Galion Nigger Hangin’.”56 And the Drake County Democratic Advocate stated that a person in the mob said, “I guess the nigger is dead,” in reference to Turner Graham.57

Besides the use of racial slurs, more often, racialized words were directly used as descriptors. In every racial terror lynching, journalists used descriptor words. At the beginning, these descriptors occasionally appeared alongside the common racial markers of “colored” and “negro,” but as years went on these depictions became more widely used. For example, in Frank Fisher’s lynching, The Democratic Press reported him as a

“black beast.”58 Henry Howard was also a “black villain” in The Coshocton Tribune.59 In response to Howard’s lynching, the paper described a feeling of relief once the

“lecherous brute” was dead.60

After the lynching of Henry Corbin in 1892, journalists depended more heavily on word descriptors. Noted by the Xenia Daily Gazette as a “colored slayer,” Henry Corbin was subjected to racial descriptors throughout the full coverage of his lynching.61 Six other newspapers recognized Corbin as the “negro fiend” without naming him in articles.62 Describing Corbin’s attempted suicide, the Hamilton Daily Democrat and

Hamilton Evening Journal stated, “Before the mob reached his lair, the black fiend turned his pistol upon himself and his blood stained the snow before it could be shed by the officers of the court of judge lynch.”63 Even during his lynching, The Salem Daily

131 News noted that “murderer Corbin’s blackened soul was ushered into eternity.”64

Similarly articles throughout Roscoe Parker’s lynching defined him as the murderer and vilified his character.65 Descriptors of Parker included: “The Red-handed Wretch Guilty

Beyond a Doubt,” “Roscoe Parker the colored demon,” “Murderer Parker,” “young desperado,” “the butcherer of the Rhines,” and “Roscoe Parker the Winchester murderer.”66 Seymour Newlin also faced the labels “black demon,” by The Union County

Journal, and “doomed negro” by The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph.67

Although racially charged words and phrases were commonly used throughout reporting, one of the more obvious uses appeared in headlines, which are designed not only to summarize a story but also to grab attention on the street and sell the paper. In the lynching of Henry Howard, The Stark County Democrat published an article headlined

“Died Like a Dog,” on June 25, 1885.68 Throughout coverage of Henry Corbin’s lynching, racial descriptors in headlines were widely used. Headlines such as “A Black

Fiend,” “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” “A Negro Brute Lynched” and “A Dying

Negro Lynched” were among those published.69 In the lynching of Richard Dickerson in

1904, headlines included “Negro Murderer of Policeman Lynched by Mob at

Springfield,” “Springfield Negro Quickly Lynched,” “Negro Murderer Lynched at

Springfield,” and “Negro Killed by Springfield Mob.”70 Even to the final reported lynching in 1932, of Luke Marion, headlines included racial descriptors. Some of the headlines were, ““Body of Negro,” “Supposed Lynching of Negro Prisoner Seen When

Body Discovered,” and “Negro Lynched Near Ironton.”71

132 In conclusion, one significant component of reporting of racial terror lynching was the effort to specifically note the race in physical appearance, action, word descriptions and headlines. Through the employment of critical race theory (CRT), one can see journalists’ acceptance of racial biases – not objectivity – when conveying information of race in racial terror lynching.

The first element of CRT found is that racism is ordinary and not aberrational, meaning that racism is difficult to address because it is not acknowledged as an issue. For instance, the lynching of William Taylor in 1878 showed that journalists knew the importance of race and impact of racialized words. Acknowledging the importance of race, journalistic coverage then contradicted the argument that the use of racialized words was “objective.” After Taylor’s lynching, the Sandusky Weekly Journal made efforts to describe it as not being racially motivated. On September 12, 1878, the paper stated:

We will not even insinuate, as we have heard it boldly proclaimed on the streets, that race or color had any influence in the matter of lynching the murderer Taylor. Were this the case, the dreadful spectacle of last Wednesday night would indeed assume a tenfold more revolting aspect in our eyes. . .. It certainly must have been the atrocity of the crime, and nothing else, that actuated them. Had the circumstances been reversed, and had an Irishman outraged and murdered a poor innocent colored girl and been guilty of precisely the same crime that Taylor was guilty of, it cannot be otherwise the same than that the same men who wrested Taylor from the hands of the Sheriff, dragged him through the streets, stuck knives into him, kicked him and stoned him, put a rope around his neck and dragged him over the stony street and then hung him to a lamp post, would have done precisely the same thing to the criminal we have supposed.72

Other editorials appeared throughout Ohio that compared the lynching with similar circumstances in Southern states, arguing that if the same instance occurred below the Mason-Dixon line, Taylor would have faced worse.73 By making note that race was not the main reason behind Taylor’s lynching it is apparent that journalists recognized

133 that racial terror lynching is different than White-on-White lynching. Even with the recognition of the differences in lynching, racial terror lynching was not recognized as a

“racist issue.”

The second element of CRT is the use of race as a product of social thought and relation. For instance, the use of “objectivity” to convey race. This is apparent in the efforts of journalists to specifically attribute guilt with race regarding physical appearance, action, word descriptions and headlines. In cases with a Black lynching, the victim’s race was the only definitive proof of guilt. Newspapers never attributed race with guilt when covering White-on-White lynching. When covering racial terror lynchings newspapers published the race of a Black person but the race of the victim of the accused crime is assumed as White. Only in five articles were both the race of the victim and the person lynched reported.74

Acceptance and Advocation of Lynching

Besides the efforts by newspapers to note race more often during racial terror lynchings, papers became more forthcoming with the acceptance of racial terms and the advocation of the practice of lynching. In editorials published and within the main reporting of the case, newspapers accepted and advocated for a lynching and in some cases thanked the lynch mob. Notable is the coverage of the lynching of Christopher

Davis in 1881. The Jackson Standard stated,

We hope no jury can be found in the country that will convict a single person engaged in the lynching of the black fiend and scoundrel Davis, up in Athens two weeks ago. Every brute that perpetrates the crime this villain was guilty of should be roasted alive at a stake. Hanging is too mild a punishment for such black hearted wretches and their infamous crime.75

134 The next year in the coverage of the lynching of Frank Fisher, the Belmont Chronicle similarly covered the Cristopher Davis lynching. The Chronicle said, “This style of summary punishment of scoundrels who commit such infamous crimes is becoming fashionable, and it should serve as fair notice to such villains who infest almost every community.”76 Along similar lines, The Union County Journal stated that the lynching was a “rather questionable action, but a mighty good example.”77 Besides incorporating some editorial freedoms of accepting and somewhat advocating lynching, some newspapers even announced lynchings in advance by stating the accused were sure to be killed by mob justice. In the lynching of Henry Corbin in 1892, the Xenia Daily Gazette advertised Corbin’s lynching to be a “bloody carnival.”78

While many newspapers were upfront in their advocating a lynching, some noted that lynching arose from a breakdown of law and lack of faith in the law throughout

Ohio. In the lynching of Henry Howard, The Coshocton Tribune said:

The hanging of the brutal negro rapist Howard at Coshocton last night is another scathing criticism of the law’s uncertainty and delay. If the people were assured that justice would surely and swiftly done, so that the terrors of punishment would operate to prevent crime, there would have been no lynching at Coshocton. But they have learned from experience that even the vilest wretches are able to defer trial and punishment for months and even years, and in the end oftentimes by legal ingenuity defeat justice entirely. Even when a criminal gets his deserts in the end. The punishment is usually so far removed from the offense that the moral effect is almost entirely lost.79

Blaming lynchings on a breakdown in legal authority and the inability to enact justice in a timely manner continued as lynchings became more common in Ohio. During

Henry Corbin’s lynching in 1892, the Marysville Tribune stated, “It is said the best citizens of Oxford engaged in the hanging, being prompted by the belief that the negro

135 deserved death and that the course of criminal law is too doubtful these days to depend upon the court for justice.”80 The Weekly Marysville Tribune, in response to Seymour

Newlin lynching went so far as to say, “Human nature, so far as regards the impulse to inflict condign punishment for such unnatural offences, seems to be about the same everywhere in this county. The only way we can see for bad people to avoid such punishments is to behave themselves.”81

Even during moments of a paper’s endorsement of lynching, racial undertones were apparent. In Henry Howard’s lynching, The Coshocton Tribune noted:

The law makes no distinctions of race or color in offences of this kind and can make none for the maximum punishment as death in any case. But there is a difference. The white race has a natural antipathy to social relations with any other race. To compel a pure and sensitive white woman to submit to the embraces of a brute of another color, would be to exhaust the ingenuity of mental and bodily torture. An offense of this kind is revolting and enough under the most palliating outward conditions.82

It should be noted that many newspapers were not as forthcoming regarding race as The

Coshocton Tribune. However, in some cases racial bias was still apparent, as during

Seymour Newlin’s lynching when The Newark Advocate stated, “A Negro Villain forfeited his life by Raping respectable White woman aged 81 who will die from shock.”83

In all types of lynching, many newspapers openly accepted and, in some cases, advocated for the practice; however, it is important to note how common such newspaper advocacy arose in racial terror lynching. Viewing newspaper advocacy through the lens of CRT, the third element of the theory became clear. This element recognizes that racial terror lynchings followed “interest convergence.” Racial terror lynching advanced the

136 interests of both White elites and the White working class to maintain social and economic power over Black Ohioans. Newspaper advocacy during racial terror lynchings reflects the White public’s interest in maintaining power in judicial, societal, and economic areas.

Derrick Bell and other CRT scholars repudiate the idea of a color-blind justice system. The extra-legal lynchings detailed here certainly represent a type of defacto legal system, and it was most certainly not color blind. By extension, journalists in many instances legitimized and endorsed the profoundly racist defacto legal system as viewed through the prism of critical race theory.

The only occasion when a newspaper fully called out the lynch mob and did not treat the victim as deserving of a lynching occurred during the coverage of Fanny

Graham murder in 1885. While some papers did point out that both Fanny and her husband Turner Graham were alcoholics, the Van Wert Weekly Bulletin dedicated a large portion of its pages to call out the lack of action by the community. At one point an editorial stated:

During all the racket made in gutting the house, and all the noise of the murderous attacks upon these defenseless colored people, not a man in the town raised a hand or spoke a word in their behalf; and when daylight disclosed all the revolting results of the bloody orgie, and the corpse of a defenseless woman lying in the street where a cowardly murderer had shot her down, not one had manhood enough to swear out or warrant for the arrest of the assassins, through their identity was common talk.84

This editorial was the only one found throughout this research besides the editorials published in the Cleveland Gazette, a Black-owned paper, which fully condemned the lynch mob. Some newspapers alluded to having some issues with lynching, but they still

137 claimed the victim of a lynching deserved his fate. Similarly, the only time a White- owned newspaper called out the actions of a lynch mob occurred during the coverage of

Peter Betters, a Black man lynched by a Black mob. The News-Herald wrote in 1887:

The lynching of the negro Betters, at Jamestown, adds another chapter to the records of Ohio’s disgraces. No matter how grave the character of the crime, the men who violate the law by lynching a criminal are just as culpable under the law as he. This sort of thing is becoming too frequent lately. The authorities should hunt down and prosecute these criminals just as vigorously as the first offender.85

Journalists’ Placement in the Narrative

It was common practice for journalists to insert themselves in the story narrative.

This created a personal connection with the reader. The vivid details and eyewitness nature of these reports were eye-catching. A reporter from the Stark County Democrat wrote in covering the brutal lynching of Henry Howard:

Most accounts from journalists were like those of The Stark County Democrat, in which the journalists situated themselves as keen observers. However, in the lynching of

Roscoe Parker, a newspaper reporter became personally involved and participated in the lynching. The Commercial Gazette article “A Court Held At Midnight” described with great detail how the Commercial Gazette reporter participated and viewed the lynching of

Parker. It was noted that no other reporters physically viewed the lynching, just the aftermath.87 The article said the newspaper was notified at 4 p.m. Thursday that a mob

138 was forming to lynch Parker. In order to get what the paper termed the “scoop,” the article retells the reporter’s difficulties in getting to West Union. At one point the article stated, “A covered wagon, to which two sprightly mules were hitched, stood in the shadow of the clump of trees and drove out after the train had passed on, and in its cavernous depths reporters and all were quickly stowed away.”88 On the way to West

Union, Sheriff Dunlap set out checkpoints, which would raise an alarm if persons unknown were traveling into the town. It was reported that at one of the checkpoints the driver was recognized and let through, yet the contents of his wagon were not checked.

Throughout the article, the writer used descriptive imagery to capture the attention of the audience and, separately, to call out the Commercial Gazette’s competitors:

The reporters had, throughout the dramatic scenes, been most interested spectators, and now returned to the consciousness that they were not there to execute vengeance nor enjoy the scenery, but to get a report into a paper that went to press in less than an hour, and there were still four miles to the station where a telegraph instrument could be found. Down the hill over the rough stones and logs, and past the rail fence into the road they secured a conveyance and urged the driver to exert his utmost to reach Winchester in the shortest time ever made on the road, and very creditable was the showing made on the drive. At the station the accommodating and handsome young agent had been up all day. But made it a night to accommodate the Commercial Gazette. And soon the wires were made hot by the special operator with the news of the remarkable lynching. The story was almost told, and the assurance that it was to be a “scoop” was in a measure consoling for the hardships undergone on the way, when suddenly the local representatives of the Cincinnati papers from West Union, Manchester and half a dozen other towns came tumbling into the office having just heard of the affair, which had happened under their noses.89

The researcher found this article to be credible because of the statement made by

Judge Davis on the active role of reporters during the lynching. Multiple papers carried

Judge Davis’s statement when reporting on the grand jury convened to review Parker’s

139 case, post-mortem. One paper, The News-Herald from Hillsboro, Ohio, specifically called out the Commercial Gazette.90

Participatory journalism allowed reporters to beat their competition. An example of this could be found in an article published by The Cincinnati Enquirer, “Both

Helpless,” regarding the lynching of Parker. It stated that Parker made a confession in the presence of the Enquirer’s correspondent and no other reporter. Parker was reported to have said:

I am a foolish boy and got myself into this trouble. I know I have not got long to stay here. They have got me down. The socks I got from the old man give me away. I am going into court to tell them to hang me if they want to. I want them to hang me, to get me out of my trouble and miser. Sam Johnson got out of it because he had more time to fix up his witnesses, for he was arrested two days after I was. Some people think Sam Johnson was not in the killing, but he was as much as I was. The Old folks had not gone to bed yet when they were killed.91

The desperate need to beat the competition could also be fully shown in how the

Commercial Gazette covered Parker’s lynching. It published the full details of the lynching on the day Parker’s body was found, titled “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams.”92

Other instances in which journalists attacked competition was through the use of editorials calling out their rivals. In many cases, these articles assailed papers that had been sympathetic to the victim of lynching. For example, The Spirit of Democracy published an editorial calling out the Athens Messenger:

Athens, Athens County, this State, the seat of learning and rabid Republicanism, had a lynching by unmasked citizens on the night of the 20th inst. A Negro named [Christopher] Davis had brutally assaulted a lady named Luckey, near that place. He was confined in jail and from there was taken and hanged from a bridge near the town. The lovers of Negroes, the [Athens] Messenger and the leading Republicans at Athens, should petition Congress for an investigation of the outrage by which the light of their “man and brother” was snuffed out. Clearly the act was a Northern Outrage.”93

140

During the coverage of Henry Howard’s lynching, the Akron City Times called

The Coshocton Age “the Republican organ of that county”—an insult, one would assume.

Within this editorial it noted that the Age had made every effort to denounce the lynching of Howard for “killing a white girl.” 94 After the lynching of Seymour Newlin, The Union

County Journal and The Weekly Marysville Tribune traded blows over their differences in reporting. The Union City Journal stated:

Did you note how very gently the Tribune touched upon the lynching of Seymour Newlin the colored rapist of Logan county last week? It condones the offenses and came very near praising the action the lynchers. How different it would have treated them had they been residents of Georgia or Alabama. Rapists deserve hanging whether white or black, it matters not where their place of residence.95

In response, The Weekly Marysville Tribune published a rebuttal:

By the time the journal man chaws this matter over two or three times more he may possibly become surfeited. Mr. Hare probably intended to say, “rapists deserve lynching.” If that be his meaning, then he is not a law-abiding citizen. This is the exact size of it. In our civilization we have a well-defined legal course of proceeding, outlined to meet all cases and phases of crime, and the man who will counsel proceedings of violence to take vengeance upon offenders is not a good citizen in the American sense of the term. Nor is he a safe man to stand at the head of a newspaper with a heart so full of insubordination as to counsel the public to acts of violence instead of following the regular course of justice provide to meet all cases of lawbreaking. Such teaching is wrong, wholly, absolutely wrong; and if it were to become general no man would be safe in his life or property. Change your morals, Bro. Hare, for they will not stand the scrutinizing test of good citizenship.96

In conclusion, the practice of journalists specifically inserting themselves in the narrative of the story was common throughout the genre of racial terror lynching. This practice created a personal connection with the reader and proved a unique tool to battle competitors. Publication of the involvement of the journalist, as opposed to the bystander

141 observation that was typically depicted in White-on-White lynching, is another difference between the two types of lynching coverage. The shift in a journalist’s role in racial terror lynching coverage introduces the fourth and final element of CRT theory. During shifting societal needs, Whites racialized Black people in newspaper coverage. The consumer needs of readers encouraged journalists to ignore moral and ethical measures in order to procure a breaking story.

White on White Lynching alongside Racial Terror Lynching (1877 - 1932)

It’s important to note that although it would seem that racial terror lynching was a subset in the coverage of lynching, it was actually unique. White-on-White lynching still occurred throughout Ohio. These lynchings followed the initial, “objective” reporting, unlike racial terror lynchings. Although avoiding mention of the offender’s White race, some editorial efforts nevertheless described the “villainy” of those lynched. For instance, Joseph Lytle was noted as a “inhuman brute” in four newspapers.97

In William Mussel’s lynching, The Eaton Democrat said, “All good citizens deprecate mobs or lynching parties, but if ever there was a case when the people were justifiable in dealing out summary punishment to a heartless criminal, it was that of

Mussel.” The justification for this statement was that the community witnessed several similar affairs that did not have an outcome they saw as appropriate justice.98

In White-on-White lynchings, as in racial terror lynchings, newspapers were quick to point out the issue of law enforcement. During Richard Hickey’s lynching, The

Jackson Standard stated:

If we desire the fair name of our State not to be tarnished with a resort to mean to punish criminals not sanctioned by law, then our courts ought to see to it that the

142 law is enforced. If the statutes are lame, they ought to be named that there will not be so many loopholes through which criminals may jump at their will. The cure for mob violence is good law rigidly and promptly enforced.99

However, unlike the racial terror lynchings, the likelihood of the lynchers being arrested and punished could be found only in coverage of White-on-White lynchings.

After the lynching of Richard Hickey in 1884, ten men were charged with murder.100 This outcome never occurred during racial terror lynchings.

Another interesting factor in news coverage throughout the course of White-on-

White lynchings was that newspapers adamantly spoke out against Ohio’s stance on lynching in the South. The Coshocton Daily Age said of Richard Hickey’s lynching:

“Ohio is prone to point the finger of scorn at sister States, especially those of the south, but she does it to her shame while the inscription is written in letters of blood across her brow, ‘More murder in 1883 than any other state in the Union. Whiskey did it.’”101

Identifying White-on-White lynching as the main style of lynching for Ohio implied that lynching of Black Ohioans was not as bad.

NOTES

All newspapers cited below were published in Ohio.

1 Ira Wesserman, How the American Media Packaged Lynching (1850-1940):

Constructing the Meaning of Social Events (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006),

107.

2 Ibid., 110.

143

3 “Horrible Crime,” Elyria Independent, July 10, 1872. A description of the assault on Mary can be found at “Lively Times: Foul Murder Recalled by an Old

Account,” The Daily Herald, January 8, 1900.

4 “Horrible Crime.”

5 “Retribution,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 18, 1875; “That Lynching,”

The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 19, 1875; “Lynch Law in Urbana!” The Weekly

Marysville Tribune, January 20, 1875; and “Judge Lynch at Urbana,” The Times-

Democrat, January 28, 1875.

6 “That Lynching.”

7 Ibid.; and “Lynch Law in Urbana.”

8 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy! The Miscreant Taken from His Cell and Lynched,

Mrs. Schell Threatened,” The Findlay Jeffersonian, October 1, 1875.

9 Ibid.

10 “Lynch Law in Tuscarawas County,” The Coshocton Democrat, August 5,

1873.

11 “Court Proceedings,” New Philadelphia Ohio Democrat, March 20, 1874.

12 “Retribution”; and “That Lynching.”

13 “That Lynching.”

14 Ibid.

15 “Retribution.”

16 Ibid. 144

17 “Lynching in Bellefontaine,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, September 29,

1875; and “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!”

18 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy!”

19 David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio:

1772 – 1938 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 37; and Marilyn K. Howard, “Black

Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in Ohio, 1876-1916, (PhD diss., Ohio

State University, 1999). Both identified George Ullery as Black.

20 [No headline], The Stark County Democrat, January 21, 1875.

21 “Lynch Law in Urbana!”

22 Bylines not included in both opinion pieces published in the Mercer County

Standard.

23 “The Opinions of Our Neighbors of Us,” Mercer County Standard, July 25,

1872.

24 “The Mercer County Mob,” Mercer County Standard, July 25, 1872.

25 “Lynch Law in Urbana!”

26 “Judge Lynch at Urbana.”

27 “Lynch Law in Tuscarawas County.”

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 “The Urbana Outrage,” The Hamilton Examiner, January 21, 1875.

31 Ibid. 145

32 “Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9,

1876.

33 “Richmond’s Revenge! Succinct History of Saturday’s Tragedy,” The

Cincinnati Enquirer, July 10, 1876.

34 Ibid.

35 Stephen J.A. Ward, The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 118.

36 David T.Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define

American Journalism (New York University Press, 1998), 122-23.

37 Ibid., 123.

38 Ibid., 133.

39 “Expiated; So Far as His Miserable Life Could Atone,” The Cincinnati

Enquirer, September 4, 1877.

40 “Mob Law,” The Marion Star, June 22, 1885; “Died Like a Dog,” The Stark

County Democrat, June 25, 1885; and “Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune,

July 4, 1885.

41 “Died Like a Dog.”

42 “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892; and “A Black

Fiend,” Hamilton Evening Journal, January 13, 1892.

43 “A Fiend,” Piqua Daily Leader, January 14, 1892.

44 “Vengeance Is Mine!” (Bucyrus) Telegraph Forum, May 5, 1882.

45 “Judge Lynch Acts,” The (Ravenna)146 Democratic Press, May 4, 1882.

46 “Died Like a Dog.”

47 “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat; and “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton

Evening Journal.

48 “Vengeance Is Mine!”

49 “Ohio Lynchers,” Richwood Gazette, December 1, 1881; “Lynching at Athens,”

The Jackson Standard, December 1, 1881; and “An Ohio Lynching,” Van Wert Weekly

Bulletin, November 25, 1881.

50 “Ohio Lynchers.”

51 “Lynched for Rape,” Springfield Daily Republic, June 21, 1885; and “Mob

Law.”

52 “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat; and “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton

Evening Journal.

53 Ibid.; “We’ll Lynch Him,” The Marion Star, January 15, 1892; “Judge Lynch

Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 15, 1892; and “Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton

Evening Journal, January 15, 1892.

54 “Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat and Hamilton Evening Journal.

55 “Judge Lynch,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, May 2, 1882;

“Vengeance Is Mine!”; and “Judge Lynch Acts,” The Democratic Press.

56 “Lynched,” The Marion Star, May 1, 1882.

57 “Osgood Murder,” Drake County Democratic Advocate, June 25, 1885.

58 “Judge Lynch Acts,” The Democratic Press.

59 “Coshoction’s Disgrace.” 147

60 Ibid.

61 “The Oxford Tragedy,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 16, 1892.

62 “Clubbed to Death,” The Akron Beacon Journal, January 13, 1892; “Clubbed to

Death,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, January 13, 1892; “Negro Clubs a Widow to

Death,” Piqua Daily Call, January 13, 1892; “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” Lima

Daily Times, January 13, 1892; “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” The Lima News,

January 13, 1892; and “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” The Maron Star, January 13,

1892.

63 “Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat; and “Judge Lynch Acts,”

Hamilton Evening Journal.

64 “An Ohio Lynching,” The Salem Daily News, January 15, 1892.

65 “Murdered,” The Peoples Defender (West Union), December 21, 1893.

66 These terms appeared, respectively, in “Mutterings,” The Cincinnati Enquirer,

December 24, 1893; “Parker May Be Lynched,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette,

December 30, 1893; “Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial

Gazette, December 31, 1893; “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams,” The (Cincinnati)

Commercial Gazette, January 12, 1894; and “Lynched, ” The Salem Daily News, January

12, 1894.

67 “An Ohio Lynching”; and “Speedy Justice,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph,

April 16, 1894.

68 “Died Like a Dog.”

148

69 “A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat; “Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,”

Piqua Daily Call; “A Negro Brute Lynched,” Marysville Union County Journal, January

21, 1892; “A Negro Brute Lynched,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News,

January 21, 1892; “A Negro Brute Lynched,” Richwood Gazette, January 21, 1892; “A

Dying Negro Lynched,” Defiance Democrat, January 21, 1892; and “A Dying Negro

Lynched,” Delphos Weekly Herald, January 21, 1892.

70 “Negro Murderer of Policeman Lynched by Mob at Springfield,” Hamilton

Evening Democrat, March 8, 1904; “Springfield Negro Quickly Lynched,” Defiance

Crescent News, March 8, 1904; “Negro Murderer Lynched at Springfield,” Sandusky

Daily Register, March 8, 1904; and “Negro Killed by Springfield Mob,” Xenia Daily

Gazette, March 8, 1904.

71 “Body of Negro,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 11, 1932; “Supposed

Lynching of Negro Prisoner Seen When Body Discovered,” Xenia Evening Gazette, June

11, 1932; and “Negro Lynched Near Ironton,” Athens Sunday Messenger, June 12, 1932.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Note the only time both the victim of the crime and the lynching victims’ race was given was Seymour Newlin : “Jerked to Doom,” The Newark Advocate, April 16,

1894; “Speedy Justice”; Henry Howard: [No headline], Akron City Times, July 1, 1885; and “Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885.

75 “Lynching at Athens.”

76 [No headline], Belmont Chronicle, May 4, 1882. 149

77 [No headline], The Union County Journal, May 4, 1882.

78 “Lynching Bee,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 15, 1892.

79 “Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885.

80 [No headline], Marysville Tribune, January 20, 1892.

81 “Bad Transgressions and Swift Justice,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, April

18, 1894.

82 “Coshocton’s Disgrace.”

83 “Jerked to Doom,” The Newark Advocate, April 16, 1894.

84 “Another Bloody Crime,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, June 26, 1885.

85 [No headline], The (Hillsboro) News-Herald, June 23, 1887.

86 “Died Like a Dog.”

87 “A Court Held at Midnight,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, January 13,

1894.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 “Couldn’t Get His Breath,” The (Hillsboro) News-Herald, January 18, 1894.

91 “Both Helpless,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 27, 1893.

92 “A Lynching Bee in Old Adams.”

93 [No headline] The Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield), November 29, 1881.

94 [No headline], Akron City Times, July 1, 1885.

95 [No headline], The Union County Journal, April 26, 1894. 150 96 [No headline], The Weekly Marysville Tribune, May 2, 1894.

97 “Swift Vengeance,” Bucyrus Journal, April 1, 1892; “Swift Vengeance,” The

Akron Beacon, March 31, 1892; “Swift Vengeance,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph,

March 31, 1892; and “Swift Vengeance,” The Summit County Beacon, April 6, 1892.

98 “Captured!” The Eaton Democrat, December 23, 1886.

99 “An Ohio Lynching,” The Jackson Standard, February 28, 1884.

100 “Causing a Sensation,” Coshocton Daily Age, March 15, 1884.

101 Ibid.

151 Chapter 5: Analysis of the Cleveland Gazette

Black Ohioans were subjected to lynchings more often than their White counterparts. Many mainstream newspapers failed to recognize the disparity. Mainstream newspapers questioned a racial terror lynching only in the case of Fanny Graham.1 The only newspaper in this study that specifically decried any form of lynching regardless of race was the Cleveland Gazette.2

Founded on August 25, 1883, by a partnership of four men, the Gazette was the first Black newspaper in Cleveland since the Civil War. Within three years, Harry C.

Smith became the sole owner and managing editor of the weekly.3 The Gazette maintained a circulation of 50,000 for its first twenty years then dropped to about 18,000 around World War I.4 The Gazette was the longest-publishing, Black-owned newspaper in Ohio. While the Gazette is the only Black publication noted in this thesis, others appeared during the years studied. Online access to them proved to be scant.

Previous research stated the Gazette’s anti-lynching campaign started in 1888; however, this study, found that it began in 1887.5 Throughout the Gazette’s anti-lynching campaign, its articles often referenced Ida B. Wells and Albion W. Tourgée, both of whom were leading civil rights activists. Smith used the paper’s editorial space to convey the energy and persuasive nature of Wells’s campaign and the legal knowledge of Judge

Tourgée. While the Gazette’s primary focus was lynchings in the South, it also published stories about the lynchings occurring in Ohio.

152 Smith and the Gazette tended to reprint commentaries or reports from other anti- lynching publications instead of fully analyzing a lynching on their own. This process of reprinting news clippings was common for small and underfunded weeklies.6

The Gazette placed all editorials on page one, and Smith wrote most of them.7 As a four-page weekly newspaper costing five cents a copy, the Gazette was widely available throughout the Black community.8 Smith worked hard to provide readers with information on all aspects of the anti-lynching movement.9 While the Gazette did publish articles providing facts, details and outcomes of cases, the paper focused more on editorials.

The first lynching case the Gazette reported on in Ohio was that of Peter Betters in

1887, and the last one was Carl Etherington’s lynching in 1910. Altogether the Gazette published articles concerning eight Ohio lynchings. The Gazette did not report all lynchings equally. For example, unlike the other cases in this chapter, the Gazette failed to thoroughly discuss the lynching of Peter Betters by a Black mob.10 Publishing only one editorial about Betters’s lynching, the Gazette implored the law officials of Greene

County to arrest those in the lynch mob. The column failed to mention that the lynch mob consisted of mostly Black men, and the Gazette did not follow up on this case in subsequent articles. After Betters’s case, the Gazette alluded to the weak mental state of the next victim. It described Henry Corbin as a “half-demented Afro-American,” suggesting, perhaps, either a compromised sense of right and wrong or insufficient mental capacity to stand trial.11 The Gazette also failed to follow up after the first article.

153 These were the only two cases that deviated from the Gazette’s pattern in covering lynchings in Ohio.

After the lynching of Roscoe Parker in 1894, the Gazette used its full editorial voice to call out the way other newspapers reported that the “best citizens” participated in the event.12

The “best citizens” of Adams county have need to be ashamed of themselves and those who took part with them they have proved themselves no better than the untamed aborigines who roamed the forests a hundred years ago, they have committed a crime that should land every mother’s son of them in the state penitentiary for the term of years decreed against him who is convicted of manslaughter.13

Similarly, in the lynching of Seymour Newlin, which occurred shortly after Parker’s death in 1894, the Gazette thoroughly explained the paper’s stance regarding other newspaper coverage—especially when they decried the act but welcomed the death.14 As the Gazette stated, “Whatever the charge may be against any person, he is entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury. Whether Newlin was guilty or not guilty, the mob had no authority, either in law or morals, to pass on the question of his guilt or innocence.”15 The article added that if those in the community felt that the law provided no adequate punishment instead of lynching, the answer was to appeal to the law-making power of the state to remedy the supposed legal defect.16

Smith and the Gazette were quick to proclaim that those involved in the lynching of Newlin, even the people encouraging it, were guilty of murder. By speaking in plain language and calling out discrepancies in cases of lynching, Smith felt that there would not be any misunderstanding in the tone and focus of the Gazette.17 Taking a stance that adamantly proclaimed the guilt of the killers, the Gazette wanted to establish itself as a

154 force against murder by mob.18 Smith went on to state, “If mob law is not checked in this country, our children will live to see the day when they will be burdened.”19

The Gazette was not afraid to call out communities as a whole. In the Gazette’s coverage of Noah Anderson’s lynching in 1895, it called the Whites of New Richmond

“negro haters” because of their the opposition to desegregated schools and proximity to the former slave state of Kentucky.20 The Gazette also noted the absurdity of lynching because Blacks could not adequately defend themselves in a court of law.21 This is in keeping with Derrick Bell’s assertion in his CRT writings of the 1970s, that the justice system is inherently racist. After the lynching of Charles “Click” Mitchell in 1897 on an accusation of rape, the Gazette stated:

There is no little town in the state of Ohio, that more surely has long shared in the spirit of southern mob violence than Urbana. It was the hotbed of secession and copperheadism [Republican sentiment to split with the Confederacy] in time of the war, and the people believed in the institutions of slavery as earnestly as the slaveholder himself. Their schools and churches were of an inferior kind, and the majority of the residents are still quite illiterate. Hence there has been little regard felt for the law, and the long pent up animosity has at last been betrayed. We speak for the law. The mob had no mitigating excuse for setting at defiance the laws of the great state of Ohio.22

The Gazette called out newspapers for their racist language. The Morning Sun newspaper, published in a tiny town in Ohio, called Charles Mitchell a “darkey” and

“nigger.” The Gazette implored that no one “patronize” the paper.23

Articles published in the Gazette presented facts that mainstream newspapers left out.24 After the lynching of Mitchell, Smith published an editorial stating, “In justice to the side of humanity and the friends of the Urbana victim of lynch law, the paper would present to the public things that other newspapers would not.” 25 In the retelling of the

155 accused’s assault, Eliza Gaumer described her assailant as a “thick-lipped colored man who wore a checkered coat and brown derby hat.” In response to this statement, the

Gazette stated that Mitchell’s lips were not thick, and the newspaper's description was false.26 The Gazette also noted that Gaumer’s injuries were not as critical as many mainstream papers made them out to be.27 The Gazette asserted that Gaumer possibly misidentified Mitchell; when interviewed about this possibility, she stated “it was only a

‘nigger’ anyhow.”28

Throughout the coverage of Mitchell’s lynching the Gazette showed its religious roots. It proclaimed, “Ohio is a law abiding State, it leads in Christian civilization, in the broader intelligence and conception of American jurisprudence and cannot be enrolled with the states in the south doomed to barbarism and iniquity.”29 The article also said that if Urbana wanted to endorse lynching in its community, it might as well “burn their bibles, tear down their churches and let their schools be forever blotted from existence.”30

Aside from presenting facts and calling out communities, the Gazette followed the aftermath of a typical lynching long after the mainstream papers’ coverage ended. After the lynching of Richard Dixon, 1904, the Gazette continued to report on the Black community's damage from the riots and the legal murder cases that followed.31 The

Gazette was the only paper to state the monetary loss to the Black community business destroyed in the riots putting it around $16,000.32 The Gazette also followed a lawsuit against the Ohio guardsmen who faced punishments for not stopping the rioting and instead stood by to watch.33 No other mainstream newspapers covered these facts.

156 The last lynching in Ohio that the Gazette covered was of that of white officer

Carl Etherington in 1910. Etherington’s case showed that besides focusing on racial terror lynchings, the Gazette also made efforts to cover White-on-White lynchings.

Etherington's lynching had an extraordinary outcome: thirty-nine indictments, fifteen of which were for murder in the first degree, against the lynch mob. The Gazette used

Etherington’s case as a means to promote anti-lynching in Ohio.34 The paper followed

Etherington’s case into the next year, even dedicating an article to report the suicide of

Mabel McManiway, who was charged with inciting the lynch mob.35 The Gazette called the efforts made by the local law enforcement and the power of the Smith Act to be a

“body-blow” that would put lynching “out of business” in Ohio.36

A Legal Remedy

Smith did not settle with just writing editorials and covering lynching cases in

Ohio. In response to the lynching of Roscoe Parker in 1894, Smith joined with two other lawmakers to confer with Governor William McKinley and Attorney General David

Adams Hollingsworth. Lynchings had been on the rise, and lawmakers hoped that state officials would become more involved in ending lynching in Ohio.37 Although the governor published editorials condemning lynching, he did not take official action.38

With the lack of help from elected officials, Smith partnered with Albion Tourgée, a

White radical Republican and longtime defender of Black rights, to develop a legal strategy targeting lynching in Ohio.39

Only Georgia and North Carolina had anti-lynching laws by 1894. Both states had voted to pass the laws after a string of lynchings the previous year. These laws were

157 feeble, penalizing only sheriffs found negligent in protecting prisoners from a lynch mob, and holding counties in which lynchings occurred to be financially responsible for court costs.40 Although these laws did not hinder lynch mobs from acting, they were still seen to be revolutionary.41

The legal effort behind an Ohio anti-lynching law gained momentum after the lynching of Roscoe Parker in Adams County in 1894. The same week that a grand jury returned no indictments against the lynch mob, Smith had a second meeting with

Governor McKinley and proposed an anti-lynching bill to the Ohio House of

Representatives.42 On January 31, 1894, the House passed the bill unanimously.43

However, the Senate’s approval would not come until 1896. Many Black newspapers took their cue from Smith to push this new form of anti-lynching legislation. The

Colorado Exponent, a Black newspaper in Colorado, editorialized that Smith’s bill placed him “ahead of any of his compeers on the lynching question.”44 The New York Age said,

“Mr. Smith is bending his best efforts to securing the passage of a law which will curb the tendency to mob lawlessness.”45

With the Senate’s approval and governor’s signature, the anti-lynching bill passed into law. Also known as the Smith Act, it became recognized as one of the strictest anti- lynching laws in the United States at the time, and soon other states followed Ohio in introducing anti-lynching bills.46 The bill presented by Smith defined the terms of a

“mob” and “severe injury” and allowed counties to file criminal charges against members of a lynch mob. The law defined “mob” as:

Any collection of individuals pretending to exercise correctional power over other persons, by violence and without authority of law, shall for the purposes of this

158 act be regarded as a “mob,” and any act of violence exercised by them upon the body of any person shall constitute a lynching.47

It also required collecting damages from members of a lynch mob. One of the most significant portions of the Smith Act entitled a victims’ survivors of mob violence to collect damages from the county in which the assault occurred. Under the Smith Act, survivors and families of victims of lynching could receive $500 in damages; for severe injuries, victims could receive between $1,000 and $5,000, depending on the injury. The legal representatives of a lynching victim could also collect up to $5,000 for legal fees.48

Within four years, South Carolina, Kentucky, New Jersey, West Virginia, and

Wisconsin copied the Smith anti-lynching bill. Later, the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used the law to model its efforts to push

Pennsylvania to pass a similar bill.49 The first Ohio case that drew upon the act was the

1897 lynching of Charles Mitchell. Mitchell’s family sued Champaign County. In response, Judge Duston of the Common Pleas Court at Urbana declared the Smith Act to be unconstitutional. The Ohio Supreme Court overturned this ruling a few months later. It was not until five years afterward that the family saw any form of settlement.50

NOTES

1 [No headline], The Greenville Journal, June 19, 1885; “A Terrible Crime,”

Piqua Miami Helmet, June 25, 1885; “Another Bloody Crime,” Van Wert Weekly

Bulletin, June 26, 1885; and [no headline], The Highland Weekly News, July 15, 1885.

159

2 Subsequently, the author will refer to the Cleveland Gazette as the Gazette.

3 David D. Van Tassel and John J Grabowski, The Encyclopedia of Cleveland

History (Indiana University Press, 1996), 242. There is limited information about Harry

C. Smith outside of his editorials in the Cleveland Gazette. Although there are two books that discuss Smith, neither mentions his efforts in the anti-lynching campaign. The books are: Carolyn L. Karcher, A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgee and His Fight against White Supremacy (The University of North Carolina Press, 2016); and Percy E.

Murray, “Harry Clay Smith: Black Journalist and Legislator” (PhD diss., Miami

University, 1977. He did not have any family, so after his death all his assets and property were donated to the Negro Blind Association in Cleveland. The Cleveland

Gazette continued to publish under the ownership of the Cleveland Publishing Co. with

Dr. Geo. W. Brown as managing editor. It is unknown if any archive or biographical material is available for the publishing company and Brown.

4 Ibid.

5 Carolyn L. Karcher, A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016),

223. Karcher stated that the Cleveland Gazette’s anti-lynching campaign started in 1888.

No other publication could be found that specified the start of the Gazette’s anti-lynching campaign.

6 Ibid., 203.

7 Percy E. Murray, “Harry Clay Smith: Black Journalist and Legislator” (PhD diss., Miami University, 1977). 17. 160

8 Ibid. According to the in2013.com, the value of $1 from 1890 is equal to $28.33 in 2020. With with this data, a nickel in 1890 would be equal to $1.41 in 2020.

9 Ibid.

10 “Ohio Again Disgraced,” Cleveland Gazette, June 24, 1887.

11 [No headline], Cleveland Gazette, January 30, 1892.

12 "Ohio Disgraced," The Cleveland Gazette, January 20, 1894.

13 Ibid.

14 Instances in which newspapers decried an act of lynching but approved of the

death were: “Lynch-Law!” Richwood Reporter, May 6, 1882; “Murder and

Lynching,” Bucyrus Journal, February 8, 1884; “An Ohio Lynching,” The Jackson

Standard, February 28, 1884; “Lynch Law in Ohio” Perrysburg Journal, June 26,

1885; [no headline], The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885; “The Feeling toward

Lynching,” The Marion Star, June 24, 1885; “Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton

Tribune, July 4, 1885; “Corbin Hanged by a Mob,” Piqua Daily Call, January 16,

1892; [no headline], Marysville Tribune, January 20, 1892; “Bad Transgressions and

Swift Justice,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, April 18, 1894; [no headline], The

Union County Journal, April 26, 1894; “Ohioans Use the Rope,” East Liverpool

Evening News Review, August 22, 1895; “ “Click” Mitchell Lynched,” Norwalk Daily

Reflector, June 4, 1897; “Mob’s Violence,” Steubenville Herald, June 5, 1897; and

“A Lynching in Ohio,” Norwalk Daily Reflector, March 8, 1904.

15 “They Tremble,” Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

16 Ibid. 161

17 Ibid.

18 [No headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

19 “They Tremble.”

20 [No headline], Cleveland Gazette, August 31, 1895.

21 Ibid.

22 “The Mob at Urbana,” Cleveland Gazette, June 12, 1897.

23 “That Urbana Lynching,” Cleveland Gazette, June 12, 1897.

24 “Not Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette, August 28, 1897.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Many mainstream articles mentioned that Gaumer’s medical condition was critical. Articles that published this statement include “The Militia on Guard,” Norwalk

Daily Reflector, June 3, 1897; “Attempted Lynching,” Piqua Daily Call, June 3, 1897;

“‘Click’ Mitchell,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 3, 1897; “Threatening Crowd,”

Delphos Daily Herald, June 3, 1897; “Trouble Is Brewing,” Sandusky Daily Register,

June 4, 1897; “Fired on the Mob,” Sandusky Daily Register, June 4, 1897; “From a Tree,”

Portsmouth Daily Times, June 4, 1897; “Twenty Years,” Delphos Daily Herald, June 4,

1897; “Intense Excitement,” East Liverpool Evening News Review, June 5, 1897; “Make the Punishment Fit the Crime,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 5, 1897; “Ohio Disgrace,”

Piqua Daily Call, June 10, 1897; and “Condemned Lynch Law,” Xenia Daily Gazette,

June 11, 1897.

28 “Not Guilty” 162

29 “The Mob at Urbana.”

30 Ibid.

31 “Lynching,” Cleveland Gazette, March 12, 1904.

32 According to the in2013.com, the value of $16,000 in 1890 is equal to

$463,455.28 in 2020.

33 Ibid.; and “To Try the Guardsmen,” Cleveland Gazette, June 4, 1904.

34 The Cleveland Gazette’s full coverage of Carl Etherington consists of “Three

Plead Guilty to Newark Rioting,” Cleveland Gazette, October 8, 1910; [no headline],

Cleveland Gazette, April 15, 1911; “Another Lyncher Pleads Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette,

May 13, 1911; “‘Good Citizens,’ Responsible,” Cleveland Gazette, May 20, 1911; [no headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 20, 1911; “Doings of the Race,” Cleveland Gazette,

May 27, 1911; [no headline], Cleveland Gazette, September 2, 1911; “Woman Lyncher

Takes Acid,” Cleveland Gazette, September 2, 1911; “Convicting Lynchers,” Cleveland

Gazette, November 4, 1911; and “Another Ohio Lyncher Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette,

November 4, 1911.

35 “Woman Lyncher Takes Acid.”

36 [No headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 13, 1911.

37 “Parker Was Guilty,” The Commercial Gazette, January 18 1894; and “To

Condemn Lynching,” Akron Daily Democrat, January 18, 1894.

38 “To Condemn Lynching.”

39 Marilyn K. Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in

Ohio 1876-1916” (PhD diss., Ohio State University,163 1999), 154.

40 Ibid., 159.

41 Paul Finkelman, Lynching, Racial Violence and the Law (New York: Garden

Publishing Inc., 1992), 201.

42 “That Lynching,” The Cleveland Gazette, January 27, 1894.

43 “Now a Law,” The Clevelad Gazette, Febuary 3, 1894.

44 “Pleased with It,” The Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

45 “The Cleveland Gazette,” The Cleveland Gazette, June 9, 1894.

46 Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land,” 167-68.

47 “Lynch Bills,” The Cleveland Gazette, May 12, 1894. To see all sections of the anti-lynching bill, see Appendix E.

48 Ibid.

49 Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land,” 167-68.

50 Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio: 1772-1938, 131.

164 Chapter 6: Conclusion

The purpose of this thesis was threefold. First, to tell the story of the misrepresented and forgotten history of lynching in Ohio—specifically, how it started as a White-on-White form of summary justice and evolved into racial terror lynchings of

Black men by White mobs. Second, this thesis illustrates how mainstream newspapers reported on lynching in Ohio. Through a lens of critical race theory, the author of this research analyzed how journalistic dedication to “objectivity” perpetuated racial bias.

Third, the author sought situate the Cleveland Gazette and its owner Harry C. Smith as central to the promotion of and fight for anti-lynching legislation in Ohio. This thesis also argued that as a Black-owned and edited newspaper, the Cleveland Gazette rose to become the state’s most significant publication reporting on the use of lynching as a form of racial terrorism.

Through a thematic analysis of 600 articles published in Ohio relating to lynchings from 1860 to 1932, this study made two significant findings: 1) the reporting style developed with White-on-White lynching from 1865 to 1877 and carried over into black lynching; 2) The use of objectivity depicting race in racial terror lynching.

Chapter four analyzed details of the accused’s crime, guilt of the person lynched, and newspapers’ acceptance or opposition to lynching. However, as chapter four would further show, racial terror lynching coverage incorporates the practice of objectivity to depict race as the main factor in guilt. Blackness automatically brings suspicion to the suspect. By using objectivity to incorporate race in articles, papers perpetuated racial bias. Such bias was perpetuated in the mainstream press by using racialized language

165 depicting physical appearance and actions, as well as specific terms in stories and headlines. Unlike the White-on-White lynching cases discussed in chapter two, mainstream newspapers were more likely to accept and even advocate lynching during the racial terror era. Journalists were known to insert themselves into the narrative of a story more often in racial terror lynchings than White-on-White lynchings.

Chapter five situated the Cleveland Gazette and its owner Harry C. Smith as prominent figures in the fight for the anti-lynching movement in Ohio. The chapter showed that the Cleveland Gazette was the most significant publication in Ohio to report the use of lynching as a form of racial terrorism. The Gazette fought vehemently against lynching and racially biased reporting. It’s important to note that Smith played a role at the state level that was similar to that of the famous Ida B. Wells at the national level: to become a leading editorial voice against lynching. The chapter also recognized the role

Smith played to obtain anti-lynching legislation in Ohio, which became a model for the country.

This study has brought to light the issue of how “objective” journalism during the lynching period in Ohio perpetuated racial bias and narratives. This thesis and continuing research on the topic are important because the history of lynching in the United States, especially lynching that took place in the North, has been understudied by historians.1 In many cases of research on lynching, victims are seen as a number, not a person. The twenty-four victims discussed in this thesis were real people. Historians would find it difficult if not impossible to prove their innocence or guilt, but that was not the point of

166 this thesis. Instead, the thesis shed light on the complacency of newspaper reporters, citizens, and government officials that led to such barbaric, extra-legal incidents.

This research indicates that journalists during this time where not just bystanders but in fact were critical to the social voice that accepted the practice of lynching in

America. Although ethical standards in journalism at this time were still being developed, it is apparent that the need for the story trumped the simple ethics of right and wrong, such as the Christian ethic of “Do unto others…” Newspaper sensationalism was typical during the period studied. 2 However, it is important to note that although it was common practice, observers occasionally challenged sensationalism's taint. Throughout the lynchings mentioned in this research, multiple newspapers sensationalized stories, changed the narrative to make each story seem even more gruesome, and in some cases, specifically spoke toward journalism’s role in the lynching.

Recommendations for Future Research

No research could be found that went into detail about the role of journalists during the coverage of lynching in Ohio, or about Harry Smith, the African American journalist who pushed for the state’s first anti-lynching law. Limitations in accessing other Black newspapers in Ohio through online data bases also presented an issue of incomplete analysis of the Black press for this thesis. It should be noted that the

Cleveland Gazette is the primary Black press publication in Ohio, but other smaller,

Black-owned papers deserve a more in-depth study.

It was found that Ohio had more lynching cases than have previously been reported.3 Also, there is very little research surrounding journalism's role in covering

167 lynching. More analysis of this kind is needed regarding lynchings in both the South and

North, as it may inform our understanding of the racial violence that continues to plague the nation in the twenty-first century. Critical Race Theory derives from the critical legal studies movement, over time, evolving to study of how race and concepts of race are central to the American experience. CRT has been used to analyze the many ways in which race and racial power are represented and constructed in American society.4

This thesis points to the practice which furthers the norm of making Whiteness within journalism. Incorporating CRT theory within this thesis showed that objective journalistic coverage of lynching was masking racial bias within the mainstream press.

No other historical study of lynching has utilized CRT to study journalistic complacency.

The use of artwork depicting lynching published in newspapers and business advertisements also deserves further study.5 Historical accounts surrounding lynching cases rely on newspapers to tell the stories, and because of this, it is important to critically study how newspapers reported on lynchings. This thesis demonstrates that the practice of “objectivity” in journalism perpetuating racial bias in cases of racial terror demands more research.

Ties to Current Events

During writing this thesis in 2020, the senseless killings of African Americans

Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd occurred. As protests followed

George Floyd's death, conversations among journalists online created a day of reckoning.

Some are calling out the lack of Black journalists as well as other journalists of color in newsrooms.6 Others are finally recognizing the historic disfranchisement journalism has

168 perpetuated among the Black community.7 One example is the decision by the Associated

Press to change its style and capitalize the word Black when used to indicate racial, ethnic, or cultural topics.8 And finally, an outcry has come from the journalism community that journalists of color—particularly Black journalists—deserve to tell their truth. For them, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are not just faces in the news. They are reminders of the risks that they themselves and their family face every day, even when they should be safe on their own streets or in their own homes.9 The author hopes this thesis will join these rising voices and help the White journalism community recognize, accept, and learn.

The use of professed objectivity in this thesis reflects current practices. Ultimately what was found in this research was that the mainstream press has held the power to define objective truth. White reporters and editors almost exclusively create this “truth.”10

As Wesley Lowery, a reporter for CBS News, stated in an op-ed piece in the New York

Times, “These selective truths made seeming to be ‘objective’ have also been calibrated to avoid offending the sensibilities of white readers.”11 The fact that many White views and inclinations are accepted as objective and neutral leads Black and Brown communities to be further disfranchised. This is especially apparent when Black and

Brown reporters and editors challenge moments of whiteness, as challenging the norm more often leads to one being labeled and having credibility questioned. This thesis shows that the effort of “racial objectivity bias” is not merely a product of White journalistic institutions, but is instead something that is embedded in the very foundation and history of journalism. This history has greatly affected how journalists report on

169 minority communities. Until we address the history of using “objectivity” to vilify and further disfranchise Black and Brown communities, the profession and practice of journalism will not change its ways with regard to race.

Multiple parallels regarding this research and the racial violence of 2020 were found using the lens of critical race theory. Through this research, the use of lynching as an extra-legal version of justice and the lack of trust in the legal system differs from the racial violence of 2020. Instead of an extra-legal effort of the lynch mob in 2020, the death of Black people is by the hands of law enforcement. This occurrence reflects the traditional application of CRT in critical legal studies. Another parallel is the role of journalism reporting racial violence. Instead of the traditional reporter discussed in this thesis, in 2020, citizen journalism's role expanded the reach of reporting. The final connection in this thesis and 2020 on news of racial violence is the audience reach.

Unlike the conventional use of Newspapers as a means of reaching audiences discussed in this research in 2020, social media has expanded the scope of the news.

And finally, throughout this study the apparent vilification and malicious commentary and depiction of Black Americans and the Black community further amplify

America’s racial divide today. While many would readily accept and defend the statement “Black Lives Matter,” the author of this thesis notes that it is not enough to recognize that Black lives matter. Black lives also need to be valued. Without such value, senseless Black deaths will continue. Recognizing each case of racial terror lynching as well as the lack of acknowledgement of the humanity of those lynched, this thesis

170 introduced facts and statements made by journalists who had the platform to set the historical narrative—and set it badly.

NOTES

1 Few publications specifically focus on northern lynching. They include

“Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice

Initiative, 2018, https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report. and Michael J. Pfeifer, “The

Northern United States and the Genesis of Racial Lynching: The Lynching of African

Americans in the Civil War Era,” The Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (2010): 621.

2 Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America

(Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 238.

3 Throughout this research; only two studies could be found that discuss lynchings in Ohio. See David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in

Ohio: 1772-1938 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 37; and Marilyn K. Howard, “Black

Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in Ohio, 1876-1916 (PhD diss., Ohio

State University, 1999). It should be noted that this study does not include all recorded cases of lynchings throughout Ohio. For the author’s complete table of lynching cases and attempted lynchings in Ohio, see Appendix A.

171

4 Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil T. Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas,

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: New

Press, 1995), xiii.

5 For examples of the images found throughout the study, see Appendix C; for the advertisement, see Appendix B.

6 Sara Atske, Michael Barthel, Galen Stocking and Christine Tamir, “7 Facts about Black Americans and News Media,” Pew Research Center, August 7, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/07/facts-about-black-americans-and-the- news-media/.

7 An example is the decision to halt the publication of mugshots of suspects in newspapers. Tribune Publishing told readers, “We’ve come to realize that without context, the galleries have little journalistic value and may have reinforced negative stereotypes.” See Kristen Hare, “More Newspapers Are Cutting Mugshots Galleries,”

Poynter, June 16, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/more- newspapers-are-cutting-mugshots-galleries/.

8 Nicole Asbury, “AP Will Capitalize the B in Black,” Poynter, June 19, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/ap-will-capitalize-the-b-in-black/.

9 Doris Truong, “Dear Newsroom Managers, Journalists of Color Can’t Do All the Work,” Poynter, June 5, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/dear- newsroom-managers-journalists-of-color-cant-do-all-the-work/.

10 Wesley Lowery, “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists,”

The New York Times, June 23, 2020, 172

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists- coronavirus.html.

11 Ibid.

173

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Newspaper Articles

“A Little Girl Murdered.” Van Wert Bulletin, June 28, 1872.

“Horrible Crime,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, July 3, 1872.

“The Liberty Township Murder,” Celina Journal, July 4, 1872.

“Lynched,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1872.

“Horrible Crime,” Elyria Independent, July 10, 1872.

“Mercer County Horror! The Murderers Arrested, Their Trial and Commitment,”

Delphos Weekly Herald, July 11, 1872.

“Lynch Law In Mercer County: The Secore Murderers Taken by a Band Of 2,000,”

Wyandot County Republican, July 11, 1872.

180 [No headline], Portsmouth Daily Times, July 13, 1872.

“The Opinions of Our Neighbors of Us,” Mercer County Standard, July 25, 1872.

“The Mercer County Mob,” Mercer County Standard, July 25, 1872.

“Man Lynched for Rape In Tuscarawas County,” Cincinnati Commercial, July 29, 1873.

“Lynch Law In Tuscarawas County,” The Coshocton Democrat, August 5, 1873.

“Telegraphic,” The Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield), August 5, 1873.

“Indicted,” The Summit County Beacon, November 19, 1873.

“Indictments Found,” Holmes County Republican, November 20, 1873.

“1873 Grand Jury Indictment,” Cambridge Jeffersonian, November 27, 1973.

“Tuscarawas Co.,” The Stark County Democrat, November 27, 1873.

“Court Proceedings,” New Philadelphia Ohio Democrat, March 20, 1874.

[No headline], The Cincinnati Daily Star, January 15, 1875.

“A Failure – Another Attempted Outrage,” The Cincinnati Daily Star, January 16, 1875.

“Retribution,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 18, 1875.

“That Lynching,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 19, 1875.

“Lynch Law In Urbana!” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, January 20, 1875.

[No headline], The Stark County Democrat, January 21, 1875.

“The Urbana Outrage,” The Hamilton Examiner, January 21, 1875.

“Judge Lynch At Urbana,” The Times-Democrat (Lima), January 28, 1875.

“Lynching In Bellefontaine,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, September 29, 1875.

“The Logan County Tragedy,” Coshocton Age, September 30, 1875.

181 “The Bellefontaine Tragedy! The Miscreant Taken From His Cell and Lynched, Mrs.

Schell Threatened,” The Findlay Jeffersonian, October 1, 1875.

“Crime: Further News Concerning the Horrible Murder Near Belle Center, Ohio,” Van

Wert Weekly Bulletin, October 1, 1875.

“According to an Urbana Dispatch,” Cambridge News, October 7, 1875.

“An Innocent Man Hung,” The Eaton Democrat, October 21, 1875.

“Diabolical: Horrid Deeds of a Human Devil,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1876.

[No headline], The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1876.

“Richmond’s Revenge! Succinct History of Saturday’s Tragedy,” The Cincinnati

Enquirer, July 10, 1876.

[No headline], Gallipolis Journal, July 13, 1876.

“Mangrum, the Rapist,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 13, 1876.

[No headline], Portsmouth Daily Times, July 15, 1876.

“A Black Brute.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 3, 1877.

“Judge Lynch’s Court: A Negro Rapes a White Woman At Oxford, Ohio,” Cincinnati

Commercial, September 3, 1877.

“A Ravisher Shot to Death; A Mob Deals Out Summary Vengeance,” Cincinnati

Commercial September 4, 1877.

“Expiated; So Far as His Miserable Life Could Atone,” The Cincinnati Enquirer,

September 4, 1877.

“Negro Desperado,” Athens Messenger, September 6, 1877.

“A Mob at Oxford, Ohio,” Richwood Gazette, September 13, 1877.

182 “Horrible Crime,” The Findlay Jeffersonian, September 14, 1877.

[No headline], Sandusky Weekly Journal, September 5, 1878.

“Lynch Law In Erie County,” The Summit County Beacon, September 11, 1878.

“A Terrible Crime,” Athens Messenger, November 24, 1881.

“An Ohio Lynching,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, November 25, 1881.

[No headline] The Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield), November 29, 1881.

“Ohio Lynchers,” Richwood Gazette, December 1, 1881.

“Lynching at Athens,” The Jackson Standard, December 1, 1881.

“Mrs. Luckey’s Statement,” Meigs County Republican, December 28, 1881.

“Brutal Outrage,” The Marion Star, April 29, 1882.

[No headline] The Ohio State Journal, May 1, 1882.

“Lynched,” The Marion Star, May 1, 1882.

“Mob Law,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 1, 1882.

[No headline], Cleveland Leader, May 2, 1882.

“Galion,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 2, 1882.

“Judge Lynch,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, May 2, 1882.

[No headline], Belmont Chronicle, May 4, 1882.

[No headline], The Union County Journal, May 4, 1882.

“Judge Lynch Acts,” The (Ravenna) Democratic Press, May 4, 1882.

“Judge Lynch,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, May 4, 1882.

“Vengeance Is Mine!” (Bucyrus) Telegraph Forum, May 5, 1882.

“Lynched,” Perrysburg Journal, May 5, 1882.

183 “Lynch-Law!” Richwood Reporter, May 6, 1882.

“In the Cole Regions,” (Bucyrus) Telegraph-Forum, February 8, 1884.

“Murder and Lynching,” Bucyrus Journal, February 8, 1884.

“Hung By Ohio Vigilantes,” The Summit County Beacon, February 13, 1884.

“Murder and Lynching,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, February 21,

1884.

“An Ohio Lynching,” The Jackson Standard, February 28, 1884.

“Fresh Fuel,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 7, 1884.

“Tangled Threads,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 9, 1884.

“Miscellaneous Items,” The Highland Weekly News, March 12, 1884.

“Miscellaneous Items,” The Eaton Democrat, March 13, 1884.

“Miscellaneous Items,” Richwood Gazette, March 13, 1884.

[No headline], The Hocking Sentinel, March 13, 1884.

“Corning a Sensation,” Coshocton Daily Age, March 15, 1884.

“True Bills,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 19, 1884.

“Judge Friesner’s Charge to the Perry County Grand Jury,” The Hocking Sentinel, March

20, 1884.

“Crimes and Casualties,” Sandusky Sunday Register, June 14, 1885.

“Good Chances for Lynching,” The Dayton Herald, June 19, 1885.

“Lynched for Rape,” Springfield Daily Republic, June 21, 1885.

“Mob Law,” The Marion Star, June 22, 1885.

184 “The feeling Toward Lynching,” The Marion Star, June 24, 1885.

“Died Like a Dog,” The Stark County Democrat, June 25, 1885.

“A Ravisher Lynched,” The Hocking Sentinel, June 25, 1885.

“Osgood Murder,” Drake County Democratic Advocate, June 25, 1885.

“Another Bloody Crime,” Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, June 26, 1885.

“Lynch Law in Ohio,” Perrysburg Journal, June 26, 1885.

[No headline], The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885.

“Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune, June 27, 1885.

[No headline], Akron City Times, July 1, 1885.

[No headline], The Greenville Journal, July 3, 1885.

“Coshocton’s Disgrace,” The Coshocton Tribune, July 4, 1885.

[No headline], The Democratic Standard, July 11, 1885.

“For Money,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1886.

“Mussel, the Murderer,” The Dayton Herold, December 21, 1886.

“Captured!” The Eaton Democrat, December 23, 1886.

“Mussel Lynched,” The Ohio Democrat, January 1, 1887.

“A Midnight Mob,” Springfield Daily Republic, June 13, 1887.

“Jamestown Tragedy,” The Dayton Herald, June 13, 1887.

[No headline], The Wilmington Journal, June 15, 1887.

[No headline], Xenia Democrat News, June 18, 1887.

[No headline], The (Hillsboro) News-Herald, June 23, 1887.

“Ohio News,” The Hicksville News, June 23, 1887.

185 “Ohio Again Disgraced,” Cleveland Gazette, June 24, 1887.

“A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892.

“A Black Fiend,” Hamilton Evening Journal, January 13, 1892.

[No headline], Oxford Daily Democrat, January 13, 1892.

“Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” Piqua Daily Call, January 13, 1892.

“Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” Lima Daily Times, January 13, 1892.

“Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” The Lima News, January 13, 1892.

“Negro Clubs a Widow to Death,” The Maron Star, January 13, 1892.

“Clubbed to Death,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, January 13, 1892.

“Clubbed to Death,” The Akron Beacon Journal, January 13, 1892.

“Oxford Tragedy,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 13, 1892.

“A Fiend,” Piqua Daily Leader, January 14, 1892.

“Reward for a Murderer,” Piqua Daily Call, January 14, 1892.

“Still at Large,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 14, 1892.

“We’ll Lynch Him,” The Marion Star, January 15, 1892.

“Lynching Bee,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 15, 1892.

“Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Daily Democrat, January 15, 1892.

“Judge Lynch Acts,” Hamilton Evening Journal, January 15, 1892.

“Lynched,” Piqua Daily Leader, January 15, 1892.

“Red Spots,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 15, 1892.

“An Ohio Lynching,” The Salem Daily News, January 15, 1892.

“Relic Fiends,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 16, 1892.

186 “Awful Revenge,” Defiance Daily Crescent, January 16, 1892.

“The Oxford Tragedy,” Xenia Daily Gazette, January 16, 1892.

“Corbin Hanged by a Mob,” Piqua Daily Call, January 16, 1892.

[No headline], Marysville Tribune, January 20, 1892.

“A Negro Brute Lynched,” Marysville Union County Journal, January 21, 1892.

“A Negro Brute Lynched,” Democratic Northwest and Henry County News, January 21,

1892.

“A Negro Brute Lynched,” Richwood Gazette, January 21, 1892.

“A Dying Negro Lynched,” Defiance Democrat, January 21, 1892.

“A Dying Negro Lynched,” Delphos Weekly Herald, January 21, 1892.

“Fears of a Race War,” Marion Daily Star, January 29, 1892.

“Fears of a Race War,” Newark Daily Advocate, January 29, 1892.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, January 30, 1892.

[No headline], Hamilton Daily Democrat, February 2, 1892.

[No headline], Democratic Northwest and Henry County News (Napoleon), February 4,

1892.

“Negroes Lynched by a Mob,” New York Times, March 10, 1892.

Savage,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 31, 1892.

“Dropped,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 31, 1892.

“Swift Vengeance,” The Akron Beacon, March 31, 1892.

“Swift Vengeance,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, March 31, 1892.

“Swift Vengeance,” Bucyrus Journal, April 1, 1892.

187 “Farewell,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 1, 1892.

“Penalty Paid,” Hamilton Evening Journal, April 1, 1892.

“Swift Vengeance,” The Summit County Beacon, April 6, 1892.

“Lytle Lynched,” The Hocking Sentinel, April 7, 1892.

"Ghastly Discovery," The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 20, 1893.

“Murdered,” The Peoples Defender (West Union), December 21, 1893.

"Ohio State News," Hamilton Daily Democrat, December 21, 1893.

“Mutterings,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 24, 1893.

“Both Helpless,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, December 27, 1893.

“Without Bond,” The Peoples Defender (West Union), December 28, 1893.

“An Awful Double Crime,” The News-Herald, December 28, 1893.

“Pleaded Not Guilty,” The Marion Daily Star, December 29, 1893.

“Parker May Be Lynched,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 30, 1893.

“Adams County Grand Jury,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 30, 1893.

“Roscoe Parker Escapes Lynching,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, December 31,

1893.

“The Old Folks,” The Peoples Defender (West Union), January 4, 1894.

“Saved His Neck,” The West Union Scion, January 4, 1894

“A Lynching Bee in Old Adams,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, January 12,

1894.

“Lynched,” The Salem Daily News, January 12, 1894.

“In Our Own State,” Sandusky Daily Register, January 12, 1894.

188 “Roscoe Parker Lynched,” Evening News Review (East Liverpool), January 12, 1894.

“Murderer Parker,” The Daily Advocate, January 13, 1894.

“A Lynching Bee in Old Adams,” Defiance Evening News, January 13, 1894.

“A Lynching Bee,” The Chillicothe Daily Gazette, January 13, 1894.

“An Armed Mob,” The Daily Reflector, January 13, 1894.

“A Court Held at Midnight,” The (Cincinnati) Commercial Gazette, January 13, 1894.

“Wholesale Indictments Ordered,” The Daily Reflector, January 17, 1894.

“Lynchers to Be Punished,” The Daily Advocate, January 17, 1894.

“The Regulators,” The Chillicothe Daily Gazette, January 17, 1894.

“Your Duty,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 17, 1894.

“Couldn’t Get His Breath,” The (Hillsboro) News-Herald, January 18, 1894.

“Strung Up,” The West Union Scion, January 18, 1894.

“Avenged,” The People Defender, January 18,1894.

[No headline], The Ohio Democrat, January 18, 1894.

“Parker Was Guilty,” The Commercial Gazette (Cincinnati), January 18,1894.

“To Condemn Lynching,” Akron Daily Democrat, January 18, 1894.

“That Lynching,” The Cleveland Gazette, January 27, 1894.

“Now a Law,” The Clevelad Gazette, Febuary 3, 1894.

“Speedy Justice,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, April 16, 1894.

“Jerked to Doom,” The Newark Advocate, April 16, 1894.

“Speedy Justice,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, April 16, 1894.

“Not Dead,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 17, 1894.

189 “Verdict in the Newlin Case,” Norwalk Daily Reflector, April 18, 1894.

“Bad Transgressions and Swift Justice,” The Weekly Marysville Tribune, April 18, 1894.

“Ohioans Use the Rope,” East Liverpool Evening News Review, August 22, 1895.

[No headline], The Union County Journal, April 26, 1894.

No headline], The Weekly Marysville Tribune, May 2, 1894.

“Lynch Bills,” The Cleveland Gazette, May 12, 1894.

“They Tremble,” Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

“Pleased With it,” The Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 19, 1894.

“The Cleveland Gazette,” The Cleveland Gazette, June 9, 1894.

“Swift Vengeance,” Newark Daily Advocate, August 22, 1895.

“Ohio Lynch Law,” Sandusky Register, August 22, 1895.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, August 31, 1895.

“Attempted Lynching,” Piqua Daily Call, June 3, 1897.

“The Militia on Guard,” Norwalk Daily Reflector, June 3, 1897.

““Click” Mitchell,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 3, 1897.

“Threatening Crowd,” Delphos Daily Herald, June 3, 1897.

“Fired on The Mob,” Sandusky Daily Register, June 4, 1897.

“Twenty Years,” Delphos Daily Herald, June 4, 1897.

“Trouble Is Brewing,” Sandusky Daily Register, June 4, 1897.

“From a Tree,” Portsmouth Daily Times, June 4, 1897.

“Two Killed,” Lima Times Democrat, June 4, 1897.

190 “The Tragedy at Urbana,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, June 5, 1897.

“Intense Excitement,” East Liverpool Evening News Review, June 5, 1897.

“Make The Punishment Fit The Crime,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 5, 1897.

“Quiet Reigns,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 5, 1897.

“Mob’s Violence,” Steubenville Herald, June 5, 1897.

“Dangled From a Tree,” Delphos Daily Herald, June 5, 1897.

“Mob’s Violence,” Marion Daily Star, June 5, 1897.

“Ohio Disgrace,” Piqua Daily Call, June 10, 1897.

“Condemned Lynch Law,” Xenia Daily Gazette, June 11, 1897.

“The Mob at Urbana,” Cleveland Gazette, June 12, 1897.

“That Urbana Lynching,” Cleveland Gazette, June 12, 1897.

“Not Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette, August 28, 1897.

“Lively Times: Foul Murder Recalled by an Old Account,” The Daily Herald, January 8,

1900.

“Negro Murderer of Policeman Lynched by Mob at Springfield,” Hamilton Evening

Democrat, March 8, 1904.

“Springfield Negro Quickly Lynched,” Defiance Crescent News, March 8, 1904.

“A Lynching in Ohio,” Norwalk Daily Reflector, March 8, 1904.

“Negro Murderer Lynched at Springfield,” Sandusky Daily Register, March 8, 1904.

“Lynch Law in Ohio,” East Liverpool Evening News Review, March 8, 1904.

“Negro Killed by Springfield Mob,” Xenia Daily Gazette, March 8, 1904.

“Mob Kills a Springfield Negro,” Defiance Express, March 8, 1904.

191 “Mob Applies Torch to Negro Resorts in Springfield,” Piqua Daily Call, March 9, 1904.

“Rioting in Springfield,” Newark Advocate, March 9, 1904.

“All Quiet at Springfield Last Night,” Xenia Daily Gazette, March 10, 1904.

“Is Now Quiet,” Defiance Crescent News, March 10, 1904.

“Officials have Complete Control,” Steubenville Herald, March 11, 1904.

“Murderer is Lynched,” Portsmouth Times, March 12, 1904.

“Lynching,” Cleveland Gazette, March 12, 1904.

“Will Punish Mob Leaders,” Defiance Express, March 12, 1904.

“To Try the Guardsmen,” Cleveland Gazette, June 4, 1904.

“Officers Disappear After Newark Mob Lynches Detective,” The Dayton Herald, July 9,

1910.

“City Quiet After Her Awful Carnival of Blood,” Coshocton Daily Age, July 9, 1910.

“Governor Suspends Newark’s Mayor as Result of Lynching,” The Dayton Herald, July

11, 1910.

“More Suspects Held to Jury,” The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, July 14, 1910.

“Newark’s Jail is Popular Resort,” The Democratic Banner, July 19, 1910.

“Mob Indictments From Newark Are 39 On All Counts,” The Akron Beacon, August 11,

1910.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, April 15, 1911.

“Charge Woman With Inciting Lynchers,” The Democratic Banner, August 26, 1910.

“Three Plead Guilty to Newark Rioting,” Cleveland Gazette, October 8, 1910.

“Another Lyncher Pleads Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette, May 13, 1911.

192 [No headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 13, 1911.

““Good Citizens,” Responsible,” Cleveland Gazette, May 20, 1911.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, May 20, 1911.

“Doings of the Race,” Cleveland Gazette, May 27, 1911.

[No headline], Cleveland Gazette, September 2, 1911.

“Woman Lyncher Takes Acid,” Cleveland Gazette, September 2, 1911.

“Convicting Lynchers,” Cleveland Gazette, November 4, 1911.

“Another Ohio Lyncher Guilty,” Cleveland Gazette, November 4, 1911.

“Four Questioned In Death of Atlanta Negro,” Hamilton Evening Journal, June 11, 1932.

“Four Held as Mob Victim’s Body is Found,” The Hamilton Evening Review, June 11,

1932.

“Victim of Mob Found in River Four Arrested,” Steubenville Herald Star, June 11, 1932.

“Body of Negro,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 11, 1932.

“Lynch Crew Face Arrest,” Chillicothe Gazette, June 11, 1932.

“Arrest 5 When Man’s Body is Found in River,” Portsmouth Time, June 11, 1932.

“Arrest Four Men at Ironton After Finding of Body,” The Journal News, June 11, 1932.

[No headline], Dayton Daily News, June 11, 1932.

“Supposed Lynching of Negro Prisoner Seen When Body Discovered,” Xenia Evening

Gazette, June 11, 1932.

“Victim of Mob, Found in River, Four Arrested,” Steubenville Herald Star, June 11,

1932.

“Negro Lynched Near Ironton,” Athens Sunday Messenger, June 12, 1932.

193 Appendix A

Lynching In Ohio

Name Race Sex County Year

Unknown man B M Jackson 1803

Wilson 1841

Terry, William “Old Bill” B M Adams 1856

Kimmel, Absalom W M Mercer 1872

McLeod, Andrew W M Mercer 1872

Davis, Jeff W M Tuscarawas 1873

Ullery, George W. W M Champaign 1875

Schell, James W. W M Logan 1875

Maugram, George W M Clermont 1876

Simeon Garnet B M Butler 1877

Taylor, William B M Erie 1878

Stephen Whade 1878

Unknown man W M Licking Early 1880’s

McDonald, Thomas W M Pickaway 1880

Davis, Christopher C. B M Athens 1881

Wagoner, John W M Lawrence 1882

Fisher, Frank B M Crawford 1882

Hickey, Richard W M Perry 1884

Graham, Fanny B F Darke 1885

194 Guest, Albert W M Perry 1885

Howard, Henry B M Coshocton 1885

Mussel, William W M Preble 1886

Betters, Peter B M Greene 1887

Boles, William W M Hardin 1891

Corbin, Henry B M Butler 1892

Lytle, Joseph W M Hancock 1892

Parker, Roscoe B M Adams 1894

Newlin, Seymour B M Logan 1894

Anderson, Noah B M Clermont 1895

Nelson Weatheroff B M Logan 1895

Mitchell, Charles “Click” B M Champaign 1897

Dixon, Richard B M Clark 1904

Etherington, Carl W M Licking 1910

John Jordon B M Cuyahoga 1911

Luke Marion B M Lawrence 1932

195 Attempted Lynching

The following table is information collected by the Author of this thesis and Meyers and Walker, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, Appendix II. Name Race Sex County Year

Unknown W M Hamilton 1846

Lohrer, Constance W M Hamilton 1861

Lohrer, Romain W M Hamilton 1861

Kimmel, Jacob W M Mercer 1872

Unknown B M Hamilton 1876

Scott, Luther W M Gauga 1877

Storey, William W M Clermont 1879

Zeek, Bill W M Lawrence 1882

Holmes, William “Bill” B M Meigs 1882

Unknown M Athens 1884

Reddy, Joseph W M Perry 1884

Muntz, Charles W M Sandusky 1885

Horn, John W M Erie 1886

Haley, Bill W M Paulding 1886

Dolph, Simon W M Richland 1886

Umphreys B M Franklin 1888

Martin W M Wood 1888

Carn, Joseph W M Summit 1888

196 Jackson, Sherman B M Greene 1889

Gardner, Richard B M Ross 1890

Burkett, William W M Wood 1890

Stottsberry, George W M Licking 1892

Cook, William W M Wood 1890

Davidson, Curtis W M Stark 1893

Chaedle, Madison W M Morgan 1894

Dolby, William “Jasper” B M Fayette 1894

O’Neill, Charles B M Defiance 1894

Hart, Charles W M Paulding 1894

Cain, Leo B M Paulding 1894

Martin, Leander J. W M Seneca 1895

Murray, Rome M Greene 1896

Wald, Edward B M Cuyahoga 1896

Unknown M Clermont 1897

Samson, S.H. W M Hocking 1898

Wright, E.S. W M Muskingum 1899

Zeltner, Paul W M Wood 1899

Zeltner, John W M Wood 1899

McGowan, Joseph W M Portage 1900

Snyder, Dan W M Portage 1900

Summers, Frank W M Portage 1900

197 Peck, Louis B M Summit 1900

Beeks, F. B M Delaware 1900

Weinstock, Walter W M Morgan 1901

Brant, Wil B M Summit 1902

Upshaw, Thomas B M Summit 1902

Coney, Charles B M Summit 1902

Williams, Charles B M Franklin 1902

Bower, Charley W M Lucas 1902

Crooms, John B M Ashtabula 1902

Glasco, William W M Lawrence 1902

Dilling, Frank W M Crawford 1903

Pleasant, Robert B M Lorain 1903

Hall, Charles B M Lorain 1903

Spivey, Joseph W M Butler 1903

Anderson, William B M Franklin 1904

Unknown B M Clark 1904

Jackson, Ben B M Franklin 1904

Copeland, George B M Knox 1905

White, Henry B M Warren 1906

Sweeney, John W M Washington 1907

Terwiliger, Ernst W M Licking 1908

Goodlove, James W M Wyandot 1908

198 Beam, John W B M Allen 1909

O’Neal B M Hamilton 1909

Haring, Herbert W M Allen 1909

Underwood, LeRoy W M Licking 1909

Wallace, Harry W M Fairfield 1910

Kline, Thomas W M Athens 1910

Mickens, Harvey B M Stark 1911

Eley, Sherman W M Allen 1916

Daniels, Charles B M Allen 1916

Warner, George B M Marion 1919

Wheeler, Goldie W F Belmont 1928

Berry, Lester W M Belmont 1928

Janik W M Belmont 1930

Johnson, George B M Mahoning 1934

Odell, Okey W M Hardin 1937

Matthews, Vandy B M Tuscarawas 1937

199 Appendix B

Published after the lynching of Henry Howard in The Democratic Standard (Coshocton),

July 11, 1865.

200 Appendix C

An Illustration of Henry Corbin’s lynching

Published to the front page of The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 15, 1892

201

The Commercial Gazette (Cleveland), January 12, 1894.

“Quiet Reigns,” Newark Daily Advocate, June 5, 1897.

202 Appendix D

The lynching of Charles Mitchell, Urbana, Ohio, 1892.

203 Appendix E.

““Lynch Bills,” The Cleveland Gazette, May 12, 1894.”

A Bill for the suppression of mob violence,

Sec 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio. That Any collection of individuals pretending to exercise correctional power over other persons, by violence and without authority of law- shall for the purposes of this act be regarded as a

“mob,” and any act of violence exercised by them upon the body of any person shall be constitute a lynching.

Sec 2. The term “serious injury,” for the purposes of this act, shall include any such injury as shall permanently or temporarily disable the person receiving it from earning a livelihood by manual labor.

Sec. 3. Any person who shall be taken from the hands of the officers of justice in any county by a mob, and shall be assaulted by the same with whips, clubs, missiles, or in any other manner, shall be entitled to recover from the county in which such assault shall be made the sum of one hundred dollars as damages by sections as hereinafter provided.

Sec. 4. Any person assaulted by a mob and suffering lynching at their hands shall be entitled to recover of the county in which such assault is made, the sum of five hundred dollars; or, if the injury received is serious the sum of one thousand dollars; or if it result in permanent disability to earn a livelihood by manual labor, the sum of five thousand dollars.

204 Sec. 5. The legal representative of any person suffering death by lynching at the hands of a mob, in any county of the state, shall be entitled to recover of the county in which such lynching may occur, the sum of five thousand dollars damages for such unlawful killing. Said recovery shall be applied first to the maintenance of the family and education of the minor Children of the person so lynched, if any be left surviving him, until such minor children shall become of legal age, and then be distributed to the survivors, share and share alike, the widow receiving a child’s share. If there be no wife or minor children left surviving such decedent, the said recovery shall be distributed among the next of kin according to the laws for the distribution of the personality of an intestate. Such recovery shall not be regarded as a part of the estate of the person lynched, nor be subject to any of his liabilities.

Sec. 6 Actions for the recoveries provided for in this act may be begin in any county of the state in which a party to interact any reside and in any court having original jurisdiction of an action for damages for malicious assault, within two years from the time of such lynching.

Sec. 7 An order to the commissioners of any county against which such recovery may be made, to include the same with costs of action in the next succeeding tax levy for said county, shall form a part of the judgement in any such case.

Sec. 8 Any person entitled to a share in any recovery under this act who shall consent to a release or compromise of such claim in consideration of the payment of any sum less than the full amount of said recovery, shall be liable to indictment for a misdemeanor and punished at the discretion of the court, as in other misdemeanors.

205 Sec. 9. In case the descendent has left minor children, him surviving, the fund shall be turned over to a regular appointed guardian, who shall apply the same under the direction of the judge of probate, allowing not more than five hundred dollars for counsel fees in the action for such recover.

Sec. 10 This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.

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