The lynching of Joe Adams on September 30, 1887, was the first in Nacogdoches County and set off sixteen years of lynchings in the county from 1887 to 1902. This lynching, which local Sheriff Andrew Jackson (John) Spradley failed to prevent, allowed a dangerous precedent of mob violence to grip the county and likely inspired Spradley’s efforts to prevent other lynchings (i.e., Esseck White in 1897 and Jim Buchanan in 1902). The lynching of Adams and the six more that followed in Nacogdoches County also contextualized and demonstrated the growing demographic and economic changes following the Civil War that saw increasingly more African Americans move to Nacogdoches, competing with whites for jobs, housing, and other resources amid a depressed but growing industrializing economy. Additionally, political turmoil in the county, state, and nation continued to spark fears in many whites who had already detested not only emancipation but also Reconstruction efforts to advance African American political and social rights. Specifically, in Nacogdoches, conflict raged between Sheriff Spradley, a Texas Populist who, along with his state and national cohorts, championed a modicum of African American civil and political rights, and local white Southern Democrats and their supporters over the establishment of Jim Crow segregation and racial oppression. Ultimately, while lynching in Nacogdoches County stopped, the Southern Democrats won, Populism died, and Jim Crow laws and oppression came to define life for the county’s African Americans far into the future. [1]
Joe Adams was accused of killing a shop owner named Joe F. Looney in Douglass, about 15 miles west of Nacogdoches City, and was lynched on the night of September 30, 1887. Newspapers described the murder of Looney brutally. Adams, supposedly caught by Looney while robbing his store, cut Lonney’s head almost completely off from his body. The white-led newspapers sensationally reported that Looney survived this near decapitation long enough to stumble out of his store and walk down the street before finally collapsing and bleeding out. Sheriff Spradley later found Adams, his clothes soaked in blood, after he allegedly fled the scene with an accomplice. A mob of about 150 masked men from Douglass, where Looney was a fixture of the community, marched to the Nacogdoches County jail in downtown Nacogdoches City, determined to lynch Adams. The mob first attempted to get the jail keys to Adams’s cell from the jailer, Owen Goff, then from Spradley himself. Spradley refused. But his resistance stopped there. He did not attempt to stop the lynch mob in any other way. Perhaps Spradley did not intervene out of fear of what the mob would do to him. Perhaps he feared for his career, or perhaps he did not truly believe that the mob would kill Adams. Regardless, Spradley failed to protect the man in his custody. [2]
To get to Adams, the mob used a makeshift battering ram to break into the jail (likely a pine log). They then started cutting into Adam’s cell with tools they either stole or received from the local blacksmith. The process took about an hour. An hour must have felt like an eternity for Adams as the safety of his cell slowly disappeared. The masked men who surrounded him were undoubtedly taunting and threatening him to boot. They wanted to kill him. And they got closer with each passing minute. The mob eventually cut through the cell bars. It dragged Adams to the public square in downtown Nacogdoches (near the current Nacogdoches Convention and Visitors Bureau), where they forced a confession. This provided the mob with all the legal evidence they needed to justify the impending lynching. But Adams also implicated another man, Tom Thorn. [3]
While Thorn was not lynched, he was notorious in the county already, and the implication of his involvement incited calls for his lynching as well. Eventually, the authorities arrested Thorn for attempted murder and sent him to Huntsville prison, and he died of unknown causes only six months later. [4] Whatever the case, they lynched Adams that night, hanging him from a chinaberry tree in the early morning hours.
Ultimately, Spradley proved powerless (or unwilling) to stop such a large and aggressive mob. But he doubled his efforts after the incident. For instance, though he was unable to prevent Esseck White’s lynching in 1897, Spradley called on the governor to send the militia and get Amos Phillips—a supposed accomplice of White’s—out of town. In 1902, Spradley attempted to hide Jim Buchanan from bloodthirsty mobs by taking him to Shreveport, then Henderson, and finally Rusk. While ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the lynchings of both White and Buchanan, Spradley did far more to prevent these than he did with Joe Adams’s. This change in his resolve may have come with guilt over his failure to protect Adams, but it is impossible to say for sure. Regardless, ultimately, the overwhelming power of mob rule overcame Spradley and his attempts to prevent lynching in Nacogdoches County. [5]
]]>Jim Buchanan was a 19- to 20-year-old African American man lynched on October 17, 1902, in Nacogdoches, Texas, after being accused of murdering a white family, Duncan and Nerva Hicks, and raping and killing their daughter, Allie Hicks. As news spread quickly across the country, a white mob formed to express their anger and assert their unchecked power, resulting in the legal lynching of Buchanan. The horrifying details of the mob chase and Buchanan's legal lynching, in which he was given a legal trial, underscore the ascent and full power of Jim Crow in a small, rural East Texas community at the turn of the twentieth century. [1] The events leading up to Buchanan's lynching began with the accusation of triple murder and rape on October 11, 1902. [2] With little evidence, Nacogdoches County Sheriff Andrew Jackson (John) Spradley formed a posse and began searching for Buchanan, who was hiding out in the local swamps. Eventually, on October 13, Buchanan was arrested and detained at the Nacogdoches County Jail. The crime made headlines all over the country, inciting white rage and increased demands for so-called lynch justice. The newspapers reported that Buchanan freely confessed to Sheriff Spradley, which, at the time, was admissible as illicit evidence. Fearing that Buchanan would be the target of the growing mob, however, Spradley and other law enforcement officials took Buchanan 35 miles northeast of Nacogdoches to Tenaha (Shelby County). In Tenaha, another mob surrounded Spradley and Buchanan, but they eventually escaped by train. Only ten miles later in Timpson, yet another mob formed, stopping Spradley from reaching Nacogdoches. As a last resort, law enforcement officers took Buchanan into the woods near Appleby, as multiple mobs throughout Shelby County searched the woods for the “negro murderer” and Sheriff Spradley. The group eventually ended up in Shreveport, Louisiana, where they were mostly safe from the mobs still searching the woods of East Texas. [3] Spradley, Buchanan, and the other law enforcement officers left Shreveport on October 15 and headed back towards the mobs waiting and searching for them throughout East Texas in Kilgore, Troupe, Overton, and Jacksonville. They stopped in Longview, Texas, where Buchanan was secretly placed in jail before going to Henderson on October 16. The media in Henderson picked up the story as the local militia, the Henderson Rifles, were ordered to protect Buchanan as the mob outside the jail soared to nearly 3,000 furious locals. Other militias, such as the Horace Chilton Volunteers from Tyler, were ordered to support the Henderson Rifles, and luckily, for the moment, the mob calmed. Finally, Texas Governor Joseph Sayers ordered military protection for Buchanan as he returned to Nacogdoches to stand trial on October 17. [4] (To view a map of Buchanan’s chase throughout East Texas and Louisiana and back to Nacogdoches, visit https://maphub.net/mweems32326/map.) The people of Nacogdoches had signed a petition a few days before agreeing to hold off a lynching and allow Buchanan a trial if done quickly. All the while, they promised that mob “justice” would prevail if the trial was delayed or if they disagreed with the court ruling (which Spradley also acquiesced to). Multiple newspapers also, and purposefully, incited potential violence by reporting the address of Buchanan’s mother, his alleged criminal past, and his alleged pride in his crime. Meanwhile, the African American community of Nacogdoches gathered at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church to condemn Buchanan so as not to draw more racial violence upon themselves. [5] Buchanan’s trial allegedly lasted less than an hour. He waived his rights to an attorney or to contest any evidence and simply confessed to the murders while denying the rape charge. The jury deliberated for only three to five minutes. Originally sentenced to hang 30 days later according to the law, the judge grew evermore fearful of a mob of thousands outside the courthouse doors gathering kindling and kerosene, making it clear Buchanan would not leave Nacogdoches alive that day. The mob had cut the telegraph and telephone lines as well. They had overtaken the militia and seized the train to send it away. With the mob in full control, the judge called Buchanan back to court, and we are told Buchanan waived his 30-day wait period and agreed to be hanged immediately to avoid being burned alive. After being hanged, Sheriff Spradley’s body was left hanging as a gruesome display for the rest of the day, with people posing for photos with his body. No one remembers where they buried him. [6] The lynching of Jim Buchanan stands as a tragic reminder of the injustices faced by African Americans and as the last lynching in Nacogdoches that would lay the foundation for the Jim Crow era. Newspapers across the country exaggerated and sensationalized his story, using it to justify the racial prejudice and violence imposed upon Buchanan. Buchanan’s story also showed the impact that mob mentality and influence held over the American court system and racial relations at the time, despite the passing of anti-mob laws in America. May his memory inspire us to confront and dismantle the legacy of racism and oppression that continues to plague our society.
]]>Esseck White, accused of attempted rape, was one of the final confirmed lynchings in Nacogdoches County on the night of August 8, 1897. While Governor Charles Culberson ordered the militia, commanded by Texas legend General Woodford Mabry, to assist the local Sheriff Andrew Jackson (John) Spradley in protecting White from a lynch mob, they failed. Moreover, White’s lynching represented a wider trend of accusing African American men of rape to stir anger and justify murder. On the night of August 4, 1897 Esseck White allegedly broke into the home of Dr. W. P. Fears in Nacogdoches City and cut a lock of hair from one of four girls attending a sleepover. White was further accused of attempted rape. More specifically, the girl to whom the lock of hair belonged was eighteen-year-old Lollie Berger, the daughter of White’s immediate former employer, Robert Berger. The details of the crime are more than a little hazy. First, the number of intruders is not clear. Media reports from the time variably state that only one intruder broke in while others claim two. The papers also cannot seem to agree on who was first alerted to the intruders, only that Fears was informed and that the intruders fled after taking a lock of Lollie’s hair.[1] Esseck White and Amos Phillips, two African American laborers who had recently worked on Berger’s farm, came under immediate suspicion. There is, however, no real way of knowing who the intruders were. Whatever happened, and whoever did it, the alleged crime was trumped up to an accusation of rape, with the lock of hair as the only piece of evidence. Whether White and Phillips were intent on rape is unknown, but the accusation itself was powerful. Lynching victims were often accused of crimes, but a rape charge was the ultimate pathway to incite mob violence, particularly from poorer white males angered not only by the modicum of advancements made by African Americans in the latter nineteenth century but also by their own failures in the booming marketplace and in providing for their own families. Their wrath and insecurities often manifested as violence toward African Americans.[2] With what happened with Joe Adams ten years earlier in 1887, when Sheriff Spradley failed to prevent mob tyranny, he tried harder. This time, after the arrest of White, Governor Charles Culberson sent in the militia to help, but mob violence still prevailed. Indeed, only a few weeks before the arrest and lynching of White, House Bill #30 had been passed in the Texas Legislature, which focused on outlawing and punishing mob violence. Armed with such a law, Governor Culberson called in the militia, commanded by Woodford Mabry, to assist in protecting White and Phillips and dissuade the bloodthirsty mob. Unfortunately, the militia did not arrive in time to protect White. In the middle of the night, the mob broke into the jail and dragged White out, screaming. The mob brought him to the front of the courthouse, where they tied White up and lynched him with the use of a quickly assembled gallows. Before White’s death, however, it was reported that the mob allowed him to speak, and White supposedly confessed.[3] With the militia in town, attention turned to the protection of Amos Phillips, whom Spradley had successfully moved out of the jail (we do not know how or exactly when). Ultimately, under the guard of the militia, Phillips was escorted into town, met with legal authorities, and simply declared innocent. He was then taken to the train station and spirited out of town. His fate and life after this remain unknown.[4] The accusation of attempted rape, despite the lack of evidence, stirred the anger of the people of Nacogdoches County and made them feel that justice would not be served and that the law needed to be taken into their own hands. They had little evidence, a lock of hair purportedly found on White and a coerced confession under extreme duress. It did not matter. The mob ruled and lynched White anyway. Lynching victims were often accused of crimes or otherwise disrupting peaceful society, but a rape accusation was the ultimate way to put a lynch mob into action. Today, it would be impossible to prove guilt in a court of law with these, but the “justice” of Judge Lynch is most often based on laughably poor cases.[5]
]]>The lynching of Dee Watkins occurred in Nacogdoches County, Texas on June 11, 1898, a result of whitecapping. Prior to the lynching, Watkins had pitched a tent on a plot of vacant land near the town of Libby (14 miles northeast of Nacogdoches City) with the intention of preempting it according to homesteading laws. He then received an anonymous letter telling him to leave. Watkins disregarded the letter, which prompted a band of masked men to attack him at his camp and give him a final warning. Watkins did plan to leave but not before reporting the attack to local authorities. The men he identified in the attack were tried but, as often was the case with whitecapping and other episodes of racial violence, none convicted. Shortly thereafter, on June 11, 1898, a band of masked men returned to Watkins’s home and shot him to death in his bed. No one was ever brought to justice for this crime.
The issue of whitecapping must be explained to fully understand the lynching of Dee Watkins. Whitecappers, whitecapping, and white cap are terms with varied meanings. Most broadly they are terms that came into use by the 1880s and especially by the 1890s to describe mobs of white night riders who attacked victims by beating them, destroying property, and even murdering them. Whether or not they truly or always wore a disguise or uniform notwithstanding, whitecappers traced their origins to several secret extralegal, violent organizations often formed by white farmers in the nation’s rural countryside, including the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, as was the case in media concerning Nacogdoches, it was not uncommon to use the term whitecap or whitecapping interchangeably with the Ku Klux Klan.[1]
Whitecapping and whitecappers also referred to the excessive use of intimidation and/or violence to force property owners or tenants off their land and out of their homes. Particularly active in the years between the end of Reconstruction and World War I, these years also featured a depressed agricultural economy, low prices, rising indebtedness, and increased crowding on land. While both whites and African Americans suffered these conditions, whites could act out their frustrations with little fear of consequence while African Americans could not (though there are some examples of so-called Black whitecapping).[2] The problem of whitecapping had become so widespread that by the turn of the century, however, several state courts finally decided to formally criminalize it (in Texas, Article 314a of the Penal Code; update by the Twenty-Sixth Legislature in 1899).[3]
With little to no social or legal aid, African Americans were easy targets for whitecappers who feared no repercussions for their actions. Watkins’s lynching, in fact, was only one in a series of episodes in which white Nacogdocheans ran African Americans off their land through intimidation and threats of violence. Indeed, by 1903, whitecapping occurred again in Nacogdoches as two African American men, Jim Pleasant and Jesse Robertson, went missing after being run off their land. It is reported that Robertson filed complaints but after his disappearance nothing came of such. Media also reported that, at the same time, eight other unnamed African Americans were “whipped and forced to leave” the town of Libby.[4] In the end, nothing was ever done and no one went to jail.
]]>Three African American men were lynched in Douglass, Texas (about 15 miles west of Nacogdoches City) between February 14 and February 23, 1891. Henry Rollins, Tom Robin, and Tom Rowland were all murdered. Some of their crimes seemed small, but, as we all know about Texas, the consequences were indeed much bigger. These lynchings ultimately underscored the power of violent mobs during a time of escalating racial violence in Nacogdoches County at the end of the nineteenth century, quite literally bleeding into the twentieth century.
On Valentine’s Day February 14, 1891 three masked men lynched Henry Rollins for attempting to assault a white woman. The lynching of Tom Robin took place two days later (February 16, 1891). The reason? The media reported Robin a “notorious character” with allegations of committing many past crimes. Finally, on February 23, 1891 a mob hung Tom Rowland. Contradicting reports tell us that Rowland was lynched for robbing a country store or possibly for the theft of a pair of shoes (or one in the same). Either way, a local Constable arrested him, but a mob broke into the jail and murdered him before any trial or legal proceedings took place. All three men, in fact, were accused of a variety of crimes but received the same extralegal capital punishment, meted out by angry white mobs and not the judicial courts. [1]
The power of the mob reigned during the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Such mobs often sprang from white fears and anxieties, particularly those fueled by demographic change (such as a growing African American population), politics (such as the Populist championing of some African American rights), and economic pressures (such a depressed economy and growing competition among races for jobs and resources). Douglass, Texas by 1891, in fact, had been changing. In 1860, for instance, the population stood at only 380. Most were white. By 1880, however, the population rose to 1,023, including 408 African Americans. The explosion of population and demographic, racial change, along with the arrival of railroads, primarily the Houston East and West Railway, also meant much more competition for work, housing, and other resources. The white population likely feared they were losing out and to African Americans. [2]
African Americans were a common target for mobs. Anxiety and fear about African Americans made it very easy for accusations of petty crimes to spiral into community wide panic, leading to a perceived need to deal with an imagined threat. While a fear of African Americans was also not new and dates to at least colonial slavery, the lack of total white control following emancipation and a diversifying economy with industrialization fueled white anxieties and paranoia nonetheless, leading many to resort to so-called mob justice.
The lynchings in Douglass, Texas happened in quick succession over about a week-and-a-half. They unquestionably reflect the power of the mob, but also a reactionary outbreak of violence by white locals scared of change and competition. The crimes of Henry Rollins, Tom Robin, and Tom Rowland were all accusatory. No one investigated the allegations. No law enforcement officials intervened to force such or to curb violence. No one was convicted for these men’s murders. The white mobs murdered at will.
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