| Date | 3 June 1893 |
|---|---|
| Location | Decatur, Illinois, United States |
| Participants | Residents of Macon County, Illinois |
| Deaths | 1 |
| Part of a series on the |
| Nadir of American race relations |
|---|
 |
In the early hours of 3 June 1893, a black day-laborer named Samuel J. Bush was forcibly taken from the Macon County, Illinois, jail and lynched. [1] [2] Mr. Bush stood accused of raping Minnie Cameron Vest, a white woman, who lived in the nearby town of Mount Zion.
Lynchings are a form of extrajudicial killings—not protected or sanctioned by law—and are often considered a reaction to black emancipation as well as the danger black freedom supposedly portended. The historian Amy Louise Wood argues that the cultural power of lynching, and of white supremacy, "rested on spectacle...which produced and disseminated images of white power and black degradation, of white unity and black criminality, that served to instill and perpetuate a sense of racial supremacy in their white spectators." [3] An effervescence of lynchings occurred throughout the United States from the Civil War through the 1940s. [3] In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published a report on incidents of lynchings in the United States. [2] The NAACP report found that 114 "colored" persons were lynched in 1893; down from 155 lynchings the previous year of 1892, though still one of the highest years of reported lynchings on record. [2]
On the afternoon of 2 June 1893, Samuel J. Bush was taken by train to Decatur, Illinois, and imprisoned for the alleged assault of Minnie Cameron Vest. Upon his imprisonment, Bush hired Wilson B. Woodford, the only black lawyer in town, to represent him at various pre-trial hearings and, short of any plea deal, at his trial. [4] On Saturday, 3 June 1893, a headline on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune read, "Lynching Threatened at Decatur: Mob Expected from Mount Zion to Hang the Negro, Sam J. Bush." [5] Despite the clamor of an impending lynching, no attempt was made to move Bush or to disperse the large crowd assembled across the street from the jail. While in prison, Bush penned letters to his sisters, and to a cousin, Louis Collins, which were published in the Decatur Daily Republican. [6] Bush wrote, "Now is the time of need ... Send the money to this Lawyer & he will clear me, if not I expect to be Linched." [7]
By 6pm, a crowd of near five hundred people had assembled near the jailhouse. [6] Despite the rain, the number ballooned to one-thousand by early morning; a nearby salon and tobacco store remained open all night. [6] Around 2am, a group of Mount Zion vigilantes stormed the Macon County jail. Having been refused entry, the group led by Charles B. Britton, William Vest, and Thomas Atterbury, smashed down the jail door. Earlier that day, Deputy Sheriff Henry Midkiff locked twelve guards in the cell block and hired four officers to supplement his force; Midkiff refused to surrender the jailhouse keys to the Mount Zion mob. [1] William W. Mason, the Chief of Police, appealed to the mob, asking they see reason and respect the law. His pleas fell on deaf ears: "he was grabbed, kicked in the stomach, and thrown down the stairs." [1] The guards in the cellblock made no efforts to resist the white mob. [1] The prisoner, Samuel J. Bush, attempted to conceal himself inside a mattress, but was found, dragged naked outside, and brought to a telephone pole at the corner of Wood and Water streets, in front of the Brunswick hotel. [1] [8] William Vest forced Samuel J. Bush's head through a noose and asked if he had any last words. Bush tried to speak, but the rope was too tight; Vest loosened the noose and Samuel J. Bush said he wanted to pray. He took to his knees and addressed the mob, proclaiming his innocence and then told the assembled mob that he "hoped to see them again in heaven." Bush then asked God to "mercifully receive his soul in the land beyond trouble." [1]
On Sunday morning, 4 June 1893, all three Decatur newspapers carried "An Open Letter to Decatur's Colored Citizens" in which Wilson B. Woodford condemned "the lawless mob of maddened men" who had murdered Samuel J. Bush. [9] Woodford argued that the lynching was not an isolated incident, but rather part of the dominant strategy of racial repression. [10] Denouncing the "daily occurrences of such depredations upon the race throughout the country," Woodford reminded blacks of "the littleness in which the lives and property of the race are held." Woodford proposed that they "devise ways and means to assist in bringing to justice . . . the cowardly mob of human fiends," at the "indignation meeting." [4] [9] [11] Quoting the Scottish poet Robert Burns, Woodford concluded: "Let every negro with one spark of love for his race and its future, who believe 'a man's a man for all that and a' that,' and who, above all, loves its country and its laws," attend the Indignation Meeting. [12] [13]
On Monday, 5 June 1893, 150 men answered Wilson B. Woodward's clarion call against the dangers of lynching and the necessity for black mobilization. [4]
Governor John P. Altgeld, in a proclamation published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 4 June 1893, forcefully condemned the lynching of Samuel J. Bush, writing: "I hereby denounce this cowardly and diabolical act as not only a murder under our laws, but as a disgrace to our civilization and a blot upon the fair fame [sic] of our state. The prisoner was accused of the crime of rape, but stoutly protested his innocence. He was already in the custody of the law and no matter with what crime he was charged, and no matter whether he was guilty or innocent, he was entitled to a trial, a fair trial according to law. It must never be said that the laws of our great and proud State do not afford protection to all without regard to color or condition. I therefore call upon all officers of the law and especially of Macon County, as well as on all good citizens who respect law and cherish the honor of this State, to do all in their power to bring the leaders of this great crime to justice. I hereby offer a reward of two hundred dollars ($200) each for the apprehension and conviction of every man who helped to break the doors of the jail, overpower the officers, and drag out the prisoner, or who assisted in killing him." [14]
The State's Attorney of Macon County, Mr. Miles, stated: "[we will] at once commence vigorous prosecutions against those who participated in the lynching of the prisoner Bush...The Officers were not to blame at all, as they were overpowered by the mob, who were strong numerically and well equipped with arms." [14] Decatur Marshall and Chief of Police William W. Mason, was cited as attempting to prevent the lynching. However, his Deputy Sheriff, Henry Midkiff's, efforts were not mentioned by the Decatur Daily Review. [4] [11]
In the spring of 2016, students at Mount Zion High School created an exhibit on the Jim Crow era in the basement of the African-American Genealogical Society and Museum located in Decatur. [15] In remembrance of the Jim Crow era, students crafted an exhibit on lynchings, including the first lynching in Macon County. [15] The memorialization of the oppressed past—of histories hitherto elided—are gestures that may help "set the strife in order," as W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, "not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment." [16]
Macon County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2020 United States Census, it had a population of 103,998. Its county seat is Decatur.
Brooklyn, is a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. Located two miles north of East St. Louis, Illinois and three miles northeast of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, it is the oldest town incorporated by African Americans in the United States. Its motto is "Founded by Chance, Sustained by Courage." The mayor is Mayor Vera Banks-Glasper.
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
Charles Samuel Deneen was an American lawyer and Republican politician who served as the 23rd Governor of Illinois, from 1905 to 1913. He was the first Illinois governor to serve two consecutive terms totalling eight years. He was governor during the infamous Springfield race riot of 1908, which he helped put down. He later served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois, from 1925 to 1931. Deneen had previously served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1892 to 1894. As an attorney, he had been the lead prosecutor in Chicago's infamous Adolph Luetgert murder trial.
The Springfield race riot of 1908 consisted of events of mass racial violence committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants in Springfield, Illinois, between August 14 and 16, 1908. Two black men had been arrested as suspects in a rape, and attempted rape and murder. The alleged victims were two young white women and the father of one of them. When a mob seeking to lynch the men discovered the sheriff had transferred them out of the city, the whites furiously spread out to attack black neighborhoods, murdered black citizens on the streets, and destroyed black businesses and homes. The state militia was called out to quell the rioting.
Henry Smith was an African-American youth who was lynched in Paris, Texas. Smith allegedly confessed to murdering the three-year-old daughter of a law enforcement officer who had allegedly beaten him during an arrest. Smith fled, but was recaptured after a nationwide manhunt. He was then returned to Paris, where he was turned over to a mob and burned at the stake. His lynching was covered by The New York Times and attracted national publicity.
Anthony Crawford was an African American man who was killed by a lynch mob in Abbeville, South Carolina on October 21, 1916.
Ell Persons was a black man who was lynched on 22 May 1917, after he was accused of having raped and decapitated a 15-year-old white girl, Antoinette Rappel, in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. He was arrested and was awaiting trial when he was captured by a lynch party, who burned him alive and scattered his remains around town, throwing his head at a group of African Americans. A large crowd attended his lynching, which had the atmosphere of a carnival. No one was charged as a result of the lynching, which was described as one of the most vicious in American history, but it did play a part in the foundation of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP.
In Forsyth County, Georgia, in September 1912, two separate alleged attacks on white women in the Cumming area resulted in black men being accused as suspects. First, a white woman reportedly awoke to find a black man in her bedroom; then days later, a teenage white woman was beaten and raped, later dying of her injuries.
Ferdinand Lee Barnett was an American journalist, lawyer, and civil rights activist in Chicago, beginning in the late Reconstruction era.
R. C. O. Benjamin was a journalist, lawyer, and minister in the United States. He was an editor or contributor to numerous newspapers throughout the country, and may have been the first black editor of a white paper when he became editor of the Daily Sun In Los Angeles. He was also possibly the first black man admitted to the California bar, and may have been admitted to the bar in twelve states. In 1900 he was working as a prominent lawyer in Lexington Kentucky when he was beaten for helping register black voters by a white man who opposed his efforts. Later that day he was killed by the same man.
William "Froggie" James, an African-American man, was lynched and his dead body mutilated on November 11, 1909 by a mob in Cairo, Illinois, after he was charged with the rape and murder of 23-year-old shop clerk Anna Pelley.
David Wyatt was an African-American teacher in Brooklyn, Illinois. In June 1903, Wyatt was denied renewal for his teaching certificate by the district superintendent, Charles Hertel. After hearing about his denial, Wyatt shot Hertel and was immediately arrested. While in jail, a mob captured Wyatt, lynched him in the public square, and set his body on fire.
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.
Paul Jones was lynched on November 2, 1919, after being accused of attacking a fifty-year-old white woman in Macon, Georgia.
The Carterville Mine Riot was part of the turn-of-the-century Illinois coal wars in the United States. The national United Mine Workers of America coal strike of 1897 was officially settled for Illinois District 12 in January 1898, with the vast majority of operators accepting the union terms: thirty-six to forty cents per ton, an 8-hour day, and union recognition. However, several mine owners in Carterville, Virden, and Pana, refused or abrogated. They attempted to run with African-American strikebreakers from Alabama and Tennessee. At the same time, lynching and racial exclusion were increasingly practiced by local white mining communities. Racial segregation was enforced within and among UMWA-organized coal mines.
Styles Linton Hutchins was an attorney, politician, and activist in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee between 1877 and 1906. Hutchins was among the last African Americans to graduate from the University of South Carolina School of Law in the brief window during Reconstruction when the school was open to Black students and the first Black attorney admitted to practice in Georgia. He practiced law and participated in local politics in Georgia and Tennessee, served a single term (1887-1888) in the Tennessee General Assembly as one of its last Black members before an era of entrenched white supremacy that lasted until 1965, and advocated for the interests of African Americans. He called for reparations and attempted to identify or create a separate homeland for Blacks. He was a member of the defense team in the 1906 appeal on civil rights grounds by Ed Johnson of a conviction of rape, a case which reached the Supreme Court before it was halted by Johnson's murder by lynching in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Joe Smith was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on July 7, 1927.