The Lynching of Willie Earle

64 years ago, the last lynching in South Carolina took place about 10-15 miles from where I live. And next week, after a very long 64 years, there will finally be a memorial on the rural back road where it happened.

[Trigger Warning]

On February 16, 1947, Thomas Watson Brown, a white cab driver, picked up a black man on Markley Street in Greenville, South Carolina. Brown was later found half-dead, his taxi driven off the road in rural Pickens County. He had been beaten, robbed, and stabbed three times.

The Pickens County sheriff reported that muddy footprints at the crime scene led to the house of Willie Earle, about a mile away, where officers reportedly found cash, a blood-covered knife and bloody clothing. (Many of these facts have always been in dispute, but this is what was presented at trial.) Willie Earle, age 24, wasn't at his residence; he was in another cab, driven by a man who would later become one of the 31 defendants.

Earle was arrested and put in the Pickens County second-floor lock-up.

The news of Brown's stabbing traveled like wildfire, as did the news of Willie Earle's arrest. The nexus of unrest was the Yellow Cab office on West Court Street, where Greenville's taxi drivers had congregated in an angry pack, and started passing around a bottle of whiskey.

The Greenville News, recently granted access to some of the trial records and police reports, offers some chilling accounts:

The attitudes of the time are reflected in the casual manner in which one of the defendants, Hubert Carter, explained in his statement to police how he joined the mob.

The 33-year-old driver and father of four called for a ride home from the Cleveland Street taxi stand at 1 a.m. on the 17th, according to the Greenville Police Department file. He was picked up by another defendant, Paul Griggs, who "asked me if I wanted to go with the others to get the Negro being held for stabbing Mr. Brown.

"I told him I'd go along with the crowd," Carter said in his statement.

And so, in a tableau reminiscent of the famous scene in To Kill A Mockingbird (and perhaps it was an inspiration for it), the taxis all lined up in the early morning hours and drove in formation out to the Pickens County jail, maybe 20 miles away. It was February 17th.

I have often re-imagined the striking sight of the line of yellow cabs driving down the old rural road I have traveled down so many times myself. Did other people see them? They must have. Did the onlookers know where they were going? Did they tell their wives or girlfriends first?

And there was, sadly, no Atticus Finch to stand by the door. Instead, there was a jailer named Gilstrap, who suddenly had two shotguns pointed in his face. He didn't argue.

The mob took Willie Earle from the jail.

A call to Greenville's black funeral home, notified authorities of where the body was.

Thomas Brown died six hours later.

~*~

The first lynching since 1912, the murder of Willie Earle became big news. The trial was biggest lynching trial the state had ever seen. Most lynchings had never even been investigated, while this one had then-Governor Strom Thurmond threatening to put the perpetrators away (yes, you read that right). Time magazine sent reporters, and The New Yorker sent no less than Dame Rebecca West to cover the event.

From Time magazine:

Somebody "pulled the Negro out of the car by his belt." The drivers ''hit him several times with their fists and knocked him to the ground." One of the drivers pulled out a knife. "Before you kill him," he said, "I want to put the same scars on him that he put on Brown." Said Jessie Lee Sammons: "I could hear the tearing of clothing and flesh."

Then the drivers "beat the side of his head with a shotgun." Said Marvin H. Flemming's statement: "I could hear some licks like they were pounding on him with the butt end of a gun. I heard the Negro say, 'Lord, you done killed me.' " Finally, said Charlie Covington, he heard Roosevelt Carlos Hurd Sr., a Blue Bird cab driver, cry out: "Give me the gun and let's get this over with." Just then, "a tall, slender boy with bushy hair hit the Negro in the mouth and knocked him down. The Negro started to get up when Mr. Hurd took the shotgun. He shot the Negro in the head. He unloaded the gun and called for more shells. . . . Mr. Hurd shot the Negro two more times." The tissue of Willie Earle's brain was left hanging on the bushes. The lynchers went back to Greenville and drank coffee.

Of course, it was an all-white jury. Of course, they offered no defense at all. And of course, they were acquitted.

Of the acquittal, Dame Rebecca West wrote:

There could be no more pathetic scene than these taxi-drivers and their wives, the deprived children of difficult history, who were rejoicing at a salvation that was actually a deliverance to danger. For an hour or two, the trial had built up in them that sense of law which is as necessary to man as bread and water and a roof. They had known killing for what it is: a hideousness that begets hideousness. They had seen that the most generous impulse, not subjected to the law, may engender a shameful deed. For indeed they were sick at heart when what had happened at the slaughter-pen was described in open court. But they had been saved from the electric chair and from prison by men who had conducted their defense without taking a minute off to state or imply that even if a man is a murderer one must not murder him and that murder is foul. These people had been plunged back into chaos.

Chaos is the word. Chaos was the state of race relations in the south until the Civil Rights movement, when the chaos was at last addressed.

Next week, after many long decades, the spot where Willie Earle was murdered will be officially and historically marked. Future generations will not be like me, driving by a rural place in the road without knowing whose blood was shed there. We will see, and we will know.

Tessie Robinson, Willie's mama, died 8 years ago. I am so sad she will never see the memorial to her son.

For black people, a memorial and a reminder of what they already know and do not have to be told. For us white people, a souvenir of our savagery, and the cover-up of that savagery. Which is why the memorial has taken 64 years.

Rest in Peace, Willie Earle.

~*~

crossposted at Womanist Musings.

SC dog is smartest in the world!

At left: Chaser the wonder dog, photo by Ken Osburn of The Greenville News.


Mr Daisy's late Uncle Cecil had the ability to train dogs to do all kinds of tricks. He liked to hunt, so he preferred hounds, especially beagles. One beagle had been his favorite, the smartest dog in the world, he said. There was a large painted portrait of the late beagle on his wall. "I loved that dog," he would say wistfully, showing the picture to visitors.

The best trick the dog did (I regret I can't remember the pooch's name) was pick up lettered blocks BY LETTER. Uncle Cecil would keep the blocks in a little bag, and then spread them out on the floor as the dog sat obediently and waited. He would scatter and arrange the lettered wooden blocks, and then, tell the dog to pick up the letter....B!

And the dog did.

Everyone was amazed.

Uncle Cecil would gather up the blocks in the bag and do it over and over, spilling the blocks onto the floor as the dog watched. He would spread the blocks out carefully again, then...F! (He changed the letter each time, which was the really incredible thing.)

And the dog picked up F.

There was never any rhyme or reason to the letters chosen; it was never the same letter every time. People couldn't believe a dog was so smart. They came from miles around to see Uncle Cecil's ultra-smart dog.

Can you guess the trick?

I thought of Uncle Cecil's dog when I heard about Chaser, the smartest dog in upstate South Carolina, maybe the world. He will be profiled on the PBS show NOVA (on February 9th), since he has learned 1000+ words, more than any dog on record. He has over 1000 toys, all with different names, and when he is asked to fetch them by name, he does.

Okay, Uncle Cecil made me skeptical, so I will have to watch NOVA and see if this is for real.

From the GREENVILLE NEWS:

It’s a scientific record.

Chaser is top dog in the current issue of the scientific journal “Behavioural Processes,” as noted in the Christmas Day edition of “The New Scientist,” and will be featured in a Feb. 9 NOVA documentary on PBS television.

Soon after [retired Wofford College psychology professor John] Pilley brought Chaser home as an 8-week-old puppy, he read an article by German researchers about a border collie that could understand 200 words. Pilley took that as a challenge.

“Border collies, because of their history of listening to the master and keeping their eyes simultaneously on the herd, may be especially prepared to learn language,” Pilley said.

Pilley and Alliston Reid, a Wofford psychology professor, with the help of some students, began three years of research to gain new insight into the intellect of border collies.

“These dogs can understand,” Reid said. “If you own a dog, you know the dog has emotions and is an intelligent being.”

In controlled experiments, Chaser demonstrated that she could remember each of her 1,022 toys by name. With that number, the two psychologists — who had to write the name on each toy to remember them all — decided there probably was no upper limit to what Chaser could learn.

~*~

Here is the trick:

Uncle Cecil had no reason to put the blocks in a bag. Also, he would do the trick over and over, but only after putting the blocks in a bag and repeating the whole ritual. He never asked the dog to pick up two lettered blocks IN A ROW. Even so, no one ever guessed his secret.

He would carefully spread the blocks on the floor... and it was always the last block he touched.

Sometimes, Uncle Cecil would touch one just at the last second, almost as an "afterthought" to try and fool him, but the dog always did the trick correctly. He always knew which block he was supposed to pick up, but waited to be "told". Uncle Cecil would tell him to pick up the last one he touched (A! P! M!)--and only then, would he pick up the correct wooden block. The dog greatly enjoyed all the laughter, applause and attention, wagging his tail enthusiastically; he loved doing the blocks trick!

Nobody ever figured it out. Uncle Cecil did not tell the secret until after his beloved canine friend had passed on.

He said he could not bear to teach the trick to another dog.