Eutaw riot

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Eutaw riot
Part of Reconstruction Era
Location Eutaw, Alabama, U.S.
DateOctober 25, 1870 (1870-10-25)
TargetBlack civilians and Republicans
Attack type
 Riot
Deaths2-4
Non-fatal injuries
54
Perpetrators Ku Klux Klan and supporters
MotiveVoter intimidation

The Eutaw riot was an episode of white racial violence in Eutaw, Alabama, the county seat of Greene County, on October 25, 1870, [1] [2] during the Reconstruction Era in the United States. It was related to an extended period of campaign violence before the fall gubernatorial election, as white Democrats in the state used racial terrorism to suppress black Republican voting. White Klan members attacked a Republican rally of 2,000 black citizens in the courthouse square, killing as many as four and wounding 54.

Eutaw, Alabama City in Alabama, United States

Eutaw is a city in and the county seat of Greene County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 2,934. The city was named in honor of the Battle of Eutaw Springs, the last engagement of the American Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.

Greene County, Alabama County in the United States

Greene County is a county in the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,045; it was the least populous county in Alabama. Its county seat is Eutaw. It was named in honor of Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. In the 2010 census, the county's population was 81.5% African-American.

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Black Republicans feared for their safety, staying away from the polls or voting Democratic. The Democratic Party won the 1870 gubernatorial election, as similar intimidation was conducted against blacks in other heavily majority Republican counties.

Background and violence

Old Greene County Courthouse in Eutaw, Alabama SOUTH ELEVATION (FRONT), EAST SIDE - Greene County Courthouse, Main and Boligee Streets, Prairie and Monroe Avenues, Eutaw HABS ALA,32-EUTA,2-1.tif
Old Greene County Courthouse in Eutaw, Alabama

As in other states of the former Confederacy, Alabama citizens had been terrorized frequently by the Ku Klux Klan in the run-up to the 1870 gubernatorial election: [3] in Calhoun County, four blacks and one white had been lynched in July 1870. [1] In Greene County, Gilford Coleman, a black Republican leader, had been lynched, fatally shot and his body mutilated, after being taken from his own house. His was the first of two political assassinations of black men in the county in the summer and fall. [4]

Ku Klux Klan American white supremacy group

The Ku Klux Klan, commonly called the KKK or the Klan, was an American white supremacist hate group. The Klan has existed in three distinct eras at different points in time during the history of the United States. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism and anti-Catholicism. Historically, the Klan used terrorism—both physical assault and murder—against groups or individuals whom they opposed. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered right-wing extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.

Calhoun County, Alabama County in the United States

Calhoun County is a county in the east central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population was 118,572. Its county seat is Anniston. It was named in honor of John C. Calhoun, noted politician and US Senator from South Carolina.

Lynching in the United States extrajudicial killings in the United States by mobs or vigilante groups

Lynching is the practice of murder by a group of people by extrajudicial action. Lynchings in the United States rose in number after the American Civil War in the late 1800s, following the emancipation of slaves; they declined in the 1920s but have continued to take place into the 20th century. Most lynchings were of African-American men in the South, but women were also lynched, and white lynchings of blacks occurred in Midwestern and border states, especially during the 20th-century Great Migration of blacks out of the South. The purpose was to enforce white supremacy and intimidate blacks through racial terrorism. On a per capita basis lynchings were also common in California and the Old West, especially of Latinos, although they represented less than 10% of the national total. Native Americans and Asian Americans were also lynched. Other ethnicities, including Finnish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, German-Americans and Italian-Americans were also lynched occasionally.

Earlier in the year, on the night of March 31, 1870, James Martin, a black Republican from Union, Alabama was killed, as was white Republican County Solicitor Alexander Boyd, shot in his hotel in Eutaw, the county seat, by members of a 30-member, masked and costumed lynching party who rode into town on horseback. No one was prosecuted for either death, and state attempts to end violence in Green County stopped after Boyd's murder. [5] [6]

Union, Alabama Town in Alabama, United States

Union is a town in rural Greene County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 237, up from 227 in 2000. According to the 1980 U.S. Census, it was incorporated in the 1970s.

Alexander Boyd is notable as the Republican County Solicitor and Register in Chancery of Greene County, Alabama in 1870 during Reconstruction who was murdered by a lynching party of Ku Klux Klan members. He was fatally shot on March 31, 1870 in Eutaw, the county seat. The Klan members apparently intended to hang him in the square in a public lynching, to demonstrate their power during this period and their threat to Republicans.

On October 25, a Republican political rally was held at the county courthouse in Eutaw, attracting 2,000 blacks. The rally was attacked by Klansmen (supporting Democrats), [1] who first verbally harassed the attendees and then started shooting; [4] they left two to four blacks dead [1] and 54 people injured. [4]

Old Greene County Courthouse

The Old Greene County Courthouse is a historic courthouse in Eutaw, Alabama, United States. It housed the seat of government for Greene County from 1869 until 1993. The building is a two-story masonry structure in the Greek Revival style with Italianate influences. Architect Clay Lancaster proposed that it may be the last Greek Revival public building to be built in Alabama. It replaced an earlier wooden courthouse on the same site that was built in 1838. The prior courthouse was burned in 1868, in what is considered by most historians to have been a deliberate act of arson that was executed to destroy indictments brought by the recently installed Radical Reconstruction government against local citizens. The fire destroyed paperwork pertaining to some 1,800 suits by freedmen against planters which were about to be acted on. The courthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1971, due to its architectural significance.

Federal troops in the area did not intervene that day. Black voters stayed away from the polls on election day in fear of more violence, contributing to Democratic electoral success for the governorship. [7] In the 1868 presidential election, Greene County had voted for Republican Ulysses S. Grant by a margin of 2,000 votes; in the 1870 gubernatorial election, voters carried Democrat Robert B. Lindsay by a margin of 43 votes. [1]

Ulysses S. Grant 18th president of the United States

Ulysses S. Grant was an American soldier, politician, and international statesman, who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. During the American Civil War Grant led the Union Army as its commanding general to victory over the Confederacy with the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln. During the Reconstruction Era, President Grant led the Republicans in their efforts to remove the vestiges of Confederate nationalism, racism, and slavery.

Robert B. Lindsay American politician

Robert Burns Lindsay was a Scots-American politician, elected as the 22nd Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama during Reconstruction, and serving one term from 1870 to 1872.

After the riot, local man Samuel B. Brown, likely a low-ranking Republican politician, appeared before U.S. Circuit Court Judge William Woods. His testimony resulted in a complaint charging fourteen whites with violating the First Amendment, and white Democrats with violating the Constitutional rights of Brown and six others by the Eutaw attack. [8]

Election day was calm in Eutaw. Black voters, intimidated and fearful, stayed home or voted Democratic. While state officials took no action (besides arresting some of the black victims of the riot), the U.S. Commissioner in Demopolis issued arrest warrants, and $4000 bonds to ensure the defendants appeared in court.

A federal grand jury indicted twenty of the rioters on December 24, 1870, while Woods was awaiting a response to a letter he sent to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, inquiring whether federal law, particularly the Enforcement Act of 1870, was applicable to these events. Bradley responded in January 1871, indicating he understood the real question: whether the rioters had violated the victims' constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments protected individuals against the state, but in Eutaw, private individuals, not the state, had violated citizens' rights. [9]

The matter was considered especially pressing as some Southern states had been readmitted to the Union. But despite passage of the Enforcement Acts in May 1870 to end Klan violence, Democratic politicians and their supporters in those states continued with violent suppression of the black (Republican) vote, resulting in significant Republican losses in the U.S. Congress. These events strengthened Bradley in his resolve to defeat violent white Southerners by legal means. [10]

United States Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, a former Confederate and slaveholder who became one of the Klan's most outspoken enemies, directed prosecution of the case. In the end, federal prosecutors failed to gain a conviction in United States v. Hall, which was against one of the white defendants, as the court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment was limited to acts by the state. Bradley was eventually swayed by Miller, and backed away from application of the 14th Amendment to protecting natural rights of individuals. [11] If US v. Hall had been decided in favor of the government, it has been argued, the case could have set an important precedent for the protection of African Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment. [12]

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References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Shapiro 12.
  2. ↑ Richter l.
  3. ↑ Hennessey; summarized in Lincove 270.
  4. 1 2 3 Waldrep 137.
  5. ↑ Rogers, William Warren (2013-01-02). "The Boyd Incident: Black Belt Violence During Reconstruction". Civil War History. 21 (4): 309–329. doi:10.1353/cwh.1975.0009. ISSN   1533-6271.
  6. ↑ Waldrep 143
  7. ↑ Hennessey; summarized in Lincove 270.
  8. ↑ Waldrep 137–38.
  9. ↑ Waldrep 138–40.
  10. ↑ Waldrep 140–41.
  11. ↑ Waldrep 148-151.
  12. ↑ Clauson iii.

Bibliography

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