Lynching of George Ward

Last updated

Lynching of George Ward
EJI George Ward Marker with Bridge.jpg
Marker memorializing George Ward in Fairbanks Park in Terre Haute, Indiana, United States, commissioned by the Facing Injustice Project and the Equal Justice Initiative.
DateFebruary 26, 1901 (1901-02-26)
Location Terre Haute, Indiana
Type Lynching
MotiveWard was suspected of murdering a white woman
TargetGeorge Ward
ParticipantsCertain residents of Vigo County, Indiana
InquiriesA grand jury was convened but no charges were returned

A mob of white Vigo County, Indiana, residents lynched George Ward, a black man, on February 26, 1901 in Terre Haute, Indiana, for the suspected murder of a white woman. An example of a spectacle lynching, the event was public in nature and drew a crowd of over 1,000 white participants. Ward was dragged from a jail cell in broad daylight, struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer, hanged from a bridge, and burned. His toes and the hobnails from his boots were collected as souvenirs. A grand jury was convened but no one was ever charged with the murder of Ward. It is the only known lynching in Vigo County. The lynching was memorialized 120 years later with a historical marker and ceremony.

Contents

Life

George Ward was born in Kentucky, raised by his grandmother in Circleville, Ohio, [1] and moved to Terre Haute, Indiana around 1896. [2] Ward worked at the Filbeck Hotel as a porter, as a coal miner in nearby Seeleyville, and at the Terre Haute Car and Manufacturing Company. According to newspaper reports at the time of his death, Ward was considered by co-workers to be a good worker. He had a previous conviction for burglary and was jailed for 30 days in 1899. [1]

He married Ruth Roberts in 1897 or 1898 and had two children under the age of three in 1901. His wife was from Lost Creek Township in Vigo County, Indiana, which was a Freedmen's town. They lived at 1610 Spruce Street, Terre Haute. [2]

Lynching

George Ward was lynched on February 26, 1901. He had been arrested earlier that morning by Terre Haute police officers and taken to the county jail. Early in the afternoon that same day, a crowd of white people formed at the jail. The jailers feared that violence would break out and made arrangements for Ward to be transferred to Indianapolis. Before the transfer could be made, the mob used a 25-foot long piece of timber tipped with steel to break into the jail through a side door [3] and pulled Ward from his cell. [4] [5] The jailer and three deputies resisted the crowd, were fired upon and the deputies were injured in the melee. [6]

Outside the jail, the mob beat Ward violently and he was struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer which was most likely what killed him. [1] [7] The white mob dragged Ward's body to a nearby drawbridge on the Wabash River, where they hanged him. The Fort Wayne Sentinel described that "the east bank of the river, the bridges up and down the stream, and hundreds of housetops were black with spectators from whom not a word of pity escaped." [5] Later, the mob removed Ward from the bridge and burned his body on the banks of the river. [4] [5] [1] Varying reports estimate that a crowd of at least a thousand people participated, including women and children. [4] [5] [1] Chicago newspapers reported that after the white mob burned Ward's body, some participants cut off his toes and collected the unburned hobnails from his boots as souvenirs. [5] [3]

Ward was suspected of the murder of Ida Finkelstein, who had been attacked on February 25, 1901. Finkelstein, a young white woman and local teacher, was attacked and severely injured from a shotgun blast and pen knife wound. Before her death, she is reported to have described her attacker as "a colored man dressed in hunting clothes". [3] Ward was known to be an avid squirrel hunter. He had purchased a shotgun for hunting in late 1900 and newspapers reported that he was seen in hunting clothes riding on the same streetcar that Finkelstein rode earlier that day. [1] On the morning of February 26, 1901, Terre Haute police officers arrested Ward for her murder and asserted that a pen knife with a missing blade that matched the one that was left behind in the assault was in Ward's possession. [3]

Ward allegedly confessed to the crime at the county jail. [7] His case was never tried in court, [4] and no one from the sizeable mob was ever charged with attacking the jail or the murder of Ward. A grand jury was convened on March 11 but no indictments were returned. [2] Members of the local black community were terrorized by the lynching and fled fearing future violence against them. [7]

In Indiana, between 1877 and 1950, there were at least eighteen black people lynched. [8] The death of George Ward is the only known lynching in Vigo County. [4]

Memorialization

Nearly 120 years after the lynching of George Ward, the city of Terre Haute began memorialization efforts for Ward. In 2019, an organization called Facing Injustice formed as part of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project. [9] Facing Injustice's goal is to assist the Terre Haute community in reckoning with past racial injustices and building towards a more equitable future. [7] One of Facing Injustice's first initiatives was a soil collection ceremony on March 1, 2020. The soil was collected from the site of Ward's lynching and sent to the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. [9]

Straight on photo of the Equal Justice Initiative Marker commemorating the lynching of George Ward. While the bridge where the hanging took place no longer exists, the U.S. 150 bridge crosses nearby. EJI Marker George Ward Side 2.jpg
Straight on photo of the Equal Justice Initiative Marker commemorating the lynching of George Ward. While the bridge where the hanging took place no longer exists, the U.S. 150 bridge crosses nearby.

On April 21, 2021, the Indiana State Senate passed State Resolution 72 and presented it to Ward's family. The resolution memorialized George Ward for the 120th anniversary of his death. It acknowledged that Ward's family and his descendants "continue to be affected" by the event to this day. It recognized that although past injustices, such as Ward's murder, cannot be rectified, Indiana can recognize its history of lynching to begin healing and prevent injustices in the future. [10]

Facing Injustice unveiled a historical marker dedicated to Ward and the legacy of lynching in Indiana during a ceremony on September 26, 2021. The marker is close to the site where the white mob lynched Ward in North Fairbanks Park. Four generations of Ward's descendants attended the unveiling ceremony, including his great-grandson, Terry Ward, who spoke at the event. Terry Ward explained that the ceremony helped lift shame off his family, whom Vigo County residents had labeled as criminals for generations after the lynching. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith</span> 1930 lynching of African-American prisoners in Marion, Indiana

J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith were African-American boys who were murdered in a spectacle lynching by a group of thousands on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. They were taken from jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African-American suspect, 16-year-old James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob; an unknown woman and a local sports hero intervened, and he was returned to jail. Cameron later stated that Shipp and Smith had committed the murder but that he had run away before that event.

On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hazel "Hayes" Turner and his wife, Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day, his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.

White caps were groups involved in the whitecapping movement who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings, with modern viewpoints describing their actions as domestic terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889, Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups, beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vigo County Courthouse</span> Historical courthouse in Terre Haute, United States

The Vigo County Courthouse is a courthouse in Terre Haute, Indiana. The seat of government for Vigo County, the courthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perry massacre</span> Racially motivated conflict in Florida, USA

The Perry massacre was a racially motivated conflict in Perry, Florida, in December 1922. Whites killed four black men, including Charles Wright, who was lynched by being burned at the stake, and they also destroyed several buildings in the black community of Perry after the murder of Ruby Hendry, a white female schoolteacher.

George Armwood was an African American who was lynched in Princess Anne, Maryland, on October 18, 1933. His murder was the last recorded lynching in Maryland.

Matthew Williams was a Black man lynched by a white mob in Salisbury, Maryland, on December 4, 1931.

Fred Rochelle was an African-American teenager from Bartow, Florida, who was lynched and burned to death on May 29, 1901, following the alleged rape and murder of a white woman, Rena Smith Taggart, the previous day. He was said to have been seen near where Taggart's body was found. Newspapers misreported the 16-year-old boy as "35 years of age". A mob of over 100 men as well as bloodhounds from Mulberry and Pebble was assembled to search for him but a local paper mentioned a possible lynching before any evidence was recovered or he was charged.

Ephraim Grizzard and Henry Grizzard were African-American brothers who were lynched in Middle Tennessee in April 1892 as suspects in the assaults on two white sisters. Henry Grizzard was hanged by a white mob on April 24 near the house of the young women in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.

David Jones was an African-American man who was lynched in Nashville, Tennessee on March 25, 1872 after being arrested as a suspect in a killing. He was mortally wounded while in jail, shot twice in the back while resisting white mob members who came to take him out; the whites pulled him into the Public Square and hanged him from a post outside the police station, with a crowd of an estimated 2,000 in attendance. The sheriff interrupted the hanging and took Jones down. Taken back to the jail, Jones died of his injuries on April 9, 1872.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newberry Six lynchings</span> 1916 lynchings in Florida, US

The Newberry Six lynchings took place in Newberry, Alachua County, Florida, on August 18, 1916.

Elmore County is a county located in the east-central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. Throughout its history, there have been many lynchings in the county including on July 2, 1901, when a local mob lynched Robert White. In a strange turn of events, a local farmer, George White confessed in court to the killing and named five other local men as killers. Three men were convicted in the killing and sentenced to ten years in prison. On 9 June 1902, they were pardoned by Governor Jelks.

Leonard Woods was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Pound Gap, on the border between Kentucky and Virginia, after they broke him out of jail in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on November 30, 1927. Woods was alleged to have killed the foreman of a mine, Herschel Deaton. A mob of people from Kentucky and Virginia took him from the jail and away from town and hanged him, and riddled his body with shots. The killing, which became widely publicized, was the last in a long line of extrajudicial murders in the area, and, prompted by the activism of Louis Isaac Jaffe and others, resulted in the adoption of strong anti-lynching legislation in Virginia.

In the early hours of December 12, 1880, a white mob in Clay County, Indiana lynched George Scott, an African American man. Scott had fled after being accused of a crime in nearby Eaglesfield, Indiana, and was captured near Indianapolis and brought to the Clay County jail in Brazil, Indiana. Rumors swirled that a mob might form, but the local Sheriff, James Lankford, paid them no heed. However, the man left in charge of the jail, ex-Sheriff Jacob Baumunk, took the precaution of giving the keys to Sheriff Lankford, who would not be on-site at the jail, after locking up. Sometime between one and three in the morning on Sunday, December 12, a mob of over 100 men, masked, descended on the jail and demanded that Baumunk give them the keys. After informing the mob that he did not have the keys, he was told to “retire to his room.”

William Keemer was the victim of a racial terror spectacle lynching in 1875 in Greenfield, Indiana. Keemer, a Black man, was dragged from his jail cell in Hancock County, Indiana on June 25, 1875 by a white mob from Hancock, Shelby, and Rush counties. Keemer was hung at the Hancock County fairgrounds and over 1,000 people traveled to view the body. Keemer was arrested on June 24 for an alleged sexual assault against a white women in Carthage, Indiana. No trial was held for the alleged crime and William Keemer remains innocent. In 2021 a historical marker commemorating the anti-Black violence committed against Keemer was approved by the Indiana Historical Bureau.

George Johnson, Squire Taylor, and Charles Davis, were three Black men who were killed in a spectacle lynching in 1871 in Charlestown, Indiana. They were memorialized in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1878 lynchings in Posey County, Indiana</span>

On October 11, 1878, Jim Good, Jeff Hopkins, Ed Warner, William Chambers, and Dan Harris, Sr. were lynched in Posey County, Indiana, near the town of Mount Vernon. These men, who were allegedly connected to the robbery of a brothel, were killed by a white mob who broke into the jail where they were being held. Two other men, Dan Harris, Jr. and John Harris, were also lynched in the days leading up to October 11, in connection with the same alleged offense. This racial terror lynching is the largest reported lynching in Indiana's history.

Bud Rowland and Jim Henderson, two Black men, were lynched in Rockport, Indiana on December 16, 1900. The following day, Joe Holly was lynched in Boonville, Indiana for the same alleged crime.

In November 1902, a white mob from Sullivan and Knox counties lynched James Dillard, a young Black man from Indianapolis. Dillard's death resulted in a lengthy legal battle over Indiana's 1899 anti-lynching law.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 McCormick, Mike. "Historical perspective: Crowd cheers as prisoner lynched, burned". indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 Crumrin, Tim (2020). Hidden History of Terre Haute. Charleston, SC: The History Press. pp. 75–82. ISBN   9781467146135. Archived from the original on April 9, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Roznowski, Tom (2009). An American Hometown: Terre Haute, Indiana, 1927. Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books. pp. 159–161. ISBN   978-0-253-22129-2. Archived from the original on April 8, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Legan, Mitch. "Facing Injustice: Terre Haute, Vigo County To Acknowledge Lynching History Sunday". News - Indiana Public Media. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Mullins, Paul R. (2021). Revolting Things: An Archaeology of Shameful Histories and Repulsive Realities. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN   9780813066714. Archived from the original on April 8, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  6. ↑ "Negro Hanged and Burned at Terre Haute: Had Confessed to the Murder of a Young Woman. Mob Composed of Unmasked Men Storm Jail in Broad Daylight -- Three Deputy Sheriffs Wounded". The New York Times . February 27, 1901. Archived from the original on April 8, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Terre Haute Community Memorializes George Ward with Historical Marker". Equal Justice Initiative. December 1, 2021. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  8. ↑ "Explore the Map". Lynching in America. Archived from the original on February 21, 2022. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  9. 1 2 "EJI's Community Remembrance Project". Equal Justice Initiative. Archived from the original on March 2, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Senate Resolution 72. Indiana General Assembly 2021 Session". Indiana General Assembly. 2021. Archived from the original on October 23, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  11. ↑ "Facing Injustice: Terre Haute Acknowledges Lynching History With Historical Marker". Indiana Public Radio. September 27, 2021. Archived from the original on March 3, 2022. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.