Lynching of Owen Flemming

Last updated

Owen Flemming or Flemings [1] was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob near Mellwood, Arkansas, on June 8, 1927, after an altercation with a white man who attempted to force him to work on a levee during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

Contents

Background, description of events

Flemming was one of many Black citizens who were forced to assist, often at gunpoint, with rescue operations and levee strengthening following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. White officials rounded up Black citizens of all layers of society (including business men, doctors, and preachers) and put them to work strengthening levees. According to the Pittsburgh Courier , a national African-American weekly newspaper, the Black laborers were coerced to work without food and many were not allowed to change into workwear. [2] White citizens were excluded from partaking in this labor. Nonetheless, according to the Courier, some white men "volunteered to go down and help force the Negroes to work with the aid of a shot gun." [2] In Helena, Arkansas, white police officers walked into a Black church during the service and made the men of the congregation work on the levees. [2]

Flemming, about whom little is known, was among the forced laborers. According to researcher Nancy Snell Griffith in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, various articles describe Flemming as "a prominent black man." [2] The Courier describes Flemming as a "well-to-do race man of this city." [2] The Arkansas Gazette reports that, at the Barton refugee camp, the officials described him as “a bad negro, continually shirking work.” [2] Flemming was coerced to work near Mellwood, Arkansas, an unincorporated community some 35 miles (56 km) from Helena.

According to the Courier, Flemming was already working, forcibly, on the levee when he was ordered by a plantation overseer, Roy Waters, to retrieve the mules of the plantation owner, in an area that had flooded. Flemming refused, killed Waters, and was then captured but not arrested: the Helena sheriff, J. D. Mays, was called by the plantation owner Woods, but supposedly said, "I'm busy. Just go ahead and lynch him." The Courier responded:

Along with other phrases, this will go down in history as one of the most notable ever delivered, for it conveyed into the hands of a white mob of 500 people, the living form of Owen Flemming, well-to-do race man of this city, and made of him one more sacrifice upon the bloody altar of the reign of this country's uncrowned sovereign—'King Lynch 'Em'. [2]

A very different account came from the Gazette, which said that Roy Waters, the overseer, sent someone to fetch Flemming, who was in a boxcar, to come to the work site, but Flemming refused. Waters then went himself to Flemming, who shot him with a shotgun, and then shot him twice more with Waters's own pistol. (Alternately, Flemming wrestled with Waters, took Waters's pistol from him, and shot him, in self-defense. [3] ) Flemming then fled and hid in a tent, and was then surrounded by a posse (of some 500 people [4] ) and shot. According to the newspaper from Helena, his "wife and baby were summoned to the scene before the posse fired into the Negro's body." [2]

Related Research Articles

Phillips County, Arkansas County in Arkansas, United States

Phillips County is a county located in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Arkansas, in what is known as the Arkansas Delta along the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 21,757. The county seat is Helena-West Helena. Phillips County is Arkansas's seventh (7th) county, formed on May 1, 1820, and named for Sylvanus Phillips, the area's first-known white settler and representative to the first Territorial Legislature of the Arkansas Territory. This lowland area was developed for cotton plantations in the antebellum area and is still largely rural.

St. Charles, Arkansas Town in Arkansas, United States

St. Charles is a town in Arkansas County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 230 at the 2010 census. The small town has been at the center of various events in Arkansas' history. St. Charles is best known for the Battle of Saint Charles, which was fought on the White River, which borders the town. St. Charles is also known for being in the White River National Wildlife Refuge.

Cairo, Illinois City in Illinois, United States

Cairo is the southernmost city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat of Alexander County.

Mayersville, Mississippi Town in Mississippi, United States

Mayersville is a town on the east bank of the Mississippi River, and the county seat for Issaquena County, Mississippi, United States. It is located in the Mississippi Delta region, known for cotton cultivation in the antebellum era. Once the trading center for the county, the town was superseded when railroads were built into the area. The population of the majority-black town was 547 at the 2010 census, down from 795 at the 2000 census.

Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 1927 flood of the Mississippi River

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles (70,000 km2) inundated in depths of up to 30 feet (9 m). The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimated to be between 246 million and 1 billion dollars.

Elaine massacre Anti-black violence in Elaine Arkansas in 1919

The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30–October 1, 1919 at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas. Some records of the time state that eleven black men and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, recently ranging into the hundreds. The white mobs were aided by federal troops and terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "the Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States".

<i>Young Guns II</i> 1990 film by Geoff Murphy

Young Guns II is a 1990 American Western film and a sequel to Young Guns (1988). It stars Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Christian Slater, and features William Petersen as Pat Garrett. It was written and produced by John Fusco and directed by Geoff Murphy.

William Brocius Gunman, rustler, outlaw

William Brocius, better known as Curly Bill Brocius, was a gunman, rustler and an outlaw Cowboy in the Cochise County area of the Arizona Territory during the late 1870s and early 1880s. His name is likely an alias or nickname, and some evidence links him to another outlaw named William "Curly Bill" Bresnaham, who was convicted of an 1878 attempted robbery and murder in El Paso, Texas.

LeRoy Percy

LeRoy Percy was an attorney, planter, and politician in Mississippi. In 1910, he was elected by the state legislature to the US Senate and served until 1913.

Frank M. Canton

Frank M. Canton was an American Old West fugitive who had a career as a deputy U.S. marshal under an assumed name. Although an ex-sheriff stock detective in Wyoming, Canton and his associates were accused of operating more by assassination than the law. Extrajudicial measures such as the lynching of Ellen Watson inflamed public opinion against the long-established big ranchers Canton worked for, and to re-establish control over grazing they funded an all out assault on those small operators considered to be rustlers. Canton directed Frank Wolcott's imported gunmen in their planned vigilante campaign, known as the Johnson County War, which was quickly ended by a local posse. Finding himself a marked man in Wyoming, Canton considered it opportune to leave the state. He spent most of the rest of his working life in law enforcement for the court of hanging judge Isaac Parker.

Arkansas Delta

The Arkansas Delta is one of the six natural regions of the state of Arkansas. Willard B. Gatewood Jr., author of The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox, says that rich cotton lands of the Arkansas Delta make that area "The Deepest of the Deep South."

Joe Pullen or Joe Pullum was an African-American tenant farmer who was murdered by a lynch mob of local white citizens near Drew, Mississippi on December 15, 1923. While the circumstances that precipitated the violence were typical for that place and time, Pullen's case is unusual in that he managed to kill at least three members of the lynch mob and wound several others before ultimately perishing himself. Because of his courage, Pullen became a folk hero and his bravery was championed by the Universal Negro Improvement Association. While the incident received only brief national news coverage, the local repercussions were far more profound. As civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer recalled in an autobiographical essay on growing up in a nearby Mississippi town: "it was a while in Mississippi before the whites tried something like that again."

Jim McIlherron was an African-American man who was tortured and executed by a lynch mob in Estill Springs, Tennessee, as part of a group lynching. It was reported by the York Daily on February 8, 1918.

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.

Lynching of Jordan Jameson African American who was lynched in the U.S.

African-American man, Jordan Jameson was lynched on November 11, 1919, in the town square of Magnolia, Columbia County, Arkansas. A large white mob seized Jameson after he allegedly shot the local sheriff. They tied him to a stake and burned him alive.

Lynching of John Carter Lynching of a Black man in Arkansas, 1927

John Carter was an African-American man who was murdered in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 4, 1927. Grabbed by a mob after another Black man had been apprehended for the alleged murder of a White girl, Carter was hanged from a telephone pole, shot, dragged through the streets, and then burned in the center of the city's Black part of town with materials that a White crowd of perhaps 5,000 people had looted from nearby stores and businesses.

The lynching of Henry Lowry, on January 26, 1921, was the murder of an African-American man, Henry Lowry, by a mob of white vigilantes in Arkansas. Lowry, a tenant farmer, had been on the run after a deadly shootout at the house of planter O. T. Craig on Christmas Day of 1920. Lowry went into hiding in El Paso, Texas; when he was discovered and extradited by train, a group of armed white men boarded the train in Sardis, Mississippi, and took Lowry to Nodena, near Wilson, Arkansas. He was doused in gasoline and burned alive before a mob of 500. A reporter from the Memphis Press witnessed the event, and word of the lynching soon spread around the country, aided by an article William Pickens wrote for The Nation, in which he described eastern Arkansas as "the American Congo".

Joseph Upchurch was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob near Paris, Tennessee, on June 17, 1927.

Thomas Bradshaw was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Bailey, North Carolina, in August 1927.

Thomas Bradshaw was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Wilmot, Arkansas, on August 25 or 26, 1927.

References

  1. ↑ "The Law's Too Slow". Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life . January 1928. p. 19.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Griffith, Nancy Snell (October 14, 2014). "Owen Flemming (Lynching of)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
  3. ↑ "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror". Equal Justice Initiative. 2017.Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ↑ Griffith, Nancy Snell (2018). "'At the Hands of a Person or Persons Unknown': The Nature of Lynch Mobs in Arkansas". In Lancaster, Guy (ed.). Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840–1950. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN   9781682260449.

Coordinates: 34°13′11″N90°57′01″W / 34.21972°N 90.95028°W / 34.21972; -90.95028

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.