The Lynching Of Robin White And The Confession Of George Howard
The series looks at the victims of lynching and the aftermath of their murders, the Advertiser's indifference to the terror and the potential impact of the memorial, both on the city and in the long process of reconciliation.
Almost all we know about
He was mobbed. He fought. He was overpowered, dragged into a swamp and murdered.
He was black.
In most lynching stories, that would be the end of the tale. But seven weeks after a white mob killed
The testimony led to something almost unheard of in
But that was not the end of the story.
Like so many other lynchings,
The papers, discovered by the Advertiser earlier this month, provide a detailed and often horrifying look at a lynching unfolding in real time. They capture the chillingly matter-of-fact manner in which Howard described
And, tragically, the documents also show the difficulties in reconstructing the lives of lynching victims, and the politics that finally denied justice to
Not much can be said with certainty about White, not even his first name.
"Robin" is traditionally a diminutive of "Robert." What he preferred is not known. The 1900 Census listed him as Robin. Most witnesses at the trials referred to him by that name, as did accounts of the murder after the sentencing of Howard and the others.
But the coverage immediately following the lynching called him Robert, as did a handful of witnesses. His brother Abe, who would play a major role in the events before and after the lynching, used both "Robin" and "Robert" in a letter dictated in 1902.
Newspaper accounts and the Census give the barest facts of White's life. He was born in
His older brother Abe, born in 1871 or 1873, lived next to him with his wife, Lena, and their son Henry, about 2 1/2 years old at the time of the census. A description of
Both brothers were listed as illiterate and worked as tenant farmers for a "
White's 82-year-old father, also named Robin, lived nearby with White's mother, Mollie, 60 at the time of the Census. The elder White told the Census taker he was born in
The elder Whites lived with a
In later efforts to win release for his killers, local whites would smear Robin and Abe's characters while trying to elevate those of his murderers, never offering evidence for either proposition.
"The threats and bad character of the deceased negro, while perhaps not amounting to legal justification, does in our opinion greatly mitigate the offense," said one undated petition, likely circulated around the time of the trials. "While the former good character of the parties involved and their dependent families present a strong appeal for mercy and clemency."
A "
There are no records of the Whites running into legal trouble -- either in newspaper accounts or public documents -- before the events of
The White brothers had a neighbor named
The start of the "difficulty with one
Sometime before the afternoon of
What happened next is unclear. Later newspaper accounts said
Thomas, unhurt, went to his neighbors with a story that would dominate initial reports of the lynching. The White brothers, he said, attacked him. They had let their chickens roam free. They attacked his house with shotguns. They tried to kill him.
By
The neighborhood whites formed a mob, organized to the point that some brought dogs with them. Thomas and Clap Taunton, the local bailiff, were in the crowd.
Robin and Abe fled. The crowd chased
The
Whites converged on the store throughout the night. Many later testified they planned to "hunt" -- and possibly lynch --
"I stayed the balance of the night, except a short time, when at the Negro's request, he told us to go and tell his wife to bring him some clothes," Nails later testified.
By dawn, Thomas said, "there was a right smart crowd around there," with mules and buggies converging on the store.
The plan, Taunton later testified, was to take White to the
"There was such a stirring there among the people,"
Also among the crowd that morning was
Taunton got in the mule-drawn carriage -- described as a "hack" -- along with
The hack pulled away from the store sometime about
By then, some in the store decided the carriage would not reach its destination. Howard said he talked "sorter (sic) privately" to Thomas before White left the store. According to Howard, Thomas said that Goodwin, who the Whites worked for, had sent a runner to
"(Thomas) told me the Negro ought to be killed, and he said he would have killed him that night if he had been left alone," Howard later testified.
Meanwhile, White and the other men continued down the road. Shortly after leaving the store, they passed
The farmer also recorded the only word known to come from
Within minutes of White's departure, Howard and other members of the crowd began going down the road -- all except Thomas, who for the moment stayed behind.
"He said he didn't have any way to go down there, and I told him he could get my mule and go down there ... to take the Negro, is what he meant," Howard later testified.
Others at the store later testified they planned to go to the farm of
"Some of us were riding mules and some in buggies, and riding along," Howard said. "It was said we would take the Negro and kill him."
Meanwhile, the mules conveying White drove over a "tolerably good road" at different paces -- "sometimes we trotted, sometimes we walked," Taunton said.
Nails, holding the reins, was near a place called Lazenby's ford -- about 8 1/2 miles from Thomas' store -- when, he said, Howard suddenly emerged from behind the carriage and grabbed the lines "in front of my hands."
The four men saw a crowd of 15 to 20 whites bearing down on the carriage. At least one and likely many others carried a firearm. It is not clear from the record if Taunton, Pittman or Nails had guns. Even if they had, the crowd had the drop on them.
The mob engulfed the hack and tried to pull White out of it. "They said 'We have got to have our boy,'" Pittman later testified. Taunton remembered Howard saying "he was going to have the Negro."
"They took the Negro out of the buggy and told us to get and we asked them to let the man alone," Pittman, the justice of the peace, said. "Pugh said, 'We don't blame you gentlemen for objecting to this.' "
Beyond talk, though, none of the three men driving with White said they tried to stop the assault. Nails, sitting next to White as he struggled to fight the mob, said he never let go of the reins. Taunton, the bailiff, simply said "they told us to git, and we got."
As Taunton, Pittman, and Nails fled, other buggies began arriving. Whether they stumbled upon the lynching or were active participants in it became a source of controversy later.
Fuller claimed he fled the scene: "I didn't want to be in it or have anything to do with it," he said. Will Still claimed they were "so surprised we reined up and left."
Lem and
"Someone said, 'come on boy,' "
"And therefore, I was afraid to go away,"
The preacher got out of his buggy and stood on the ground, his hands gripping his team.
Howard remembered things very differently.
Fuller and Still, he said, were "10 to 15 paces" behind him when they overtook the carriage containing White.
"
The mob -- whoever belonged to it -- took White and dragged him at least 100 yards south of the road through "dense growth," according to one witness, so no one passing by could see what was about to happen. It was not yet
Near an oak tree, Howard testified,
The fall didn't kill him.
Howard said he left before White died. One by one, the mob walked back to road.
"There was not a single word,"
Taunton, Pittman, and Nails went about a half-mile past the spot where the mob took White. They had no plan to pursue White's killers.
On the way back, they encountered
"(Thomas) says, 'What have you done with the Negro?' " Pittman said. "And we told him that a crowd had taken him away from us, and went down in the swamp with him. He said he didn't know anything about that."
Thomas drove on to the farm of
"He said, 'What has become of our Negro?' and I told him," Howard said. "He says 'You were most too hasty. I wish I had got there sooner, and I would have done the work for you."
The mob went from Timmerman's farm to the house of
But White was not there. Later that day, a group of men found
Timmerman and Dr.
The news of the lynching spread through central
"The negroes, heavily armed, attacked Thomas, firing six shots at him," the Advertiser said.
But even an editorial board nominally opposed to lynching but usually indifferent to it found a man getting lynched over a chicken dispute too much.
"There was no use for the lynching of that Negro victim of that gang of lawless white men, and everyone engaged in it ought to be indicted and punished to the fullest extent of the law," the newspaper wrote. "There was no assault in this case on a white woman."
On
"
Jelks offered a
Grand juries in lynching cases were routine, as was their consistent failure to return indictments. In 1898, a mob led by "some of the best and most prominent citizens of
The men who killed
In Denson, 45 years old at the time, the lynchers faced a well-connected judge -- a former state legislator considered for a congressional run the previous year -- who may have wanted to make an example of them.
In 1898, months after the lynching in
"Mobs are not cool and clear-headed enough to decide questions of guilt or innocence," he said. "They make mistakes, nor will they confine themselves to one class of cases. Obnoxious and friendless persons will always be in danger in communities where mob law prevails. Such barbarous deeds give a State a bad name all over the world, and mildew our civilization."
Despite Denson's charge, the 1898 grand jury returned no indictments. There was little reason to think the jury seated in a hot, stuffy room on
The court summoned witnesses, the first being Taunton, Nails, and Pittman to give their account of what happened in the carriage. The three men refused to appear. Pittman later testified that Howard and two other members of the mob threatened him, saying "I could go like the Negro if I divulged it."
Denson threw all three in jail. Two days later, the men made bail and promised to testify before the grand jury. By
"A great crowd thronged the courtroom" on
"Without hesitation and in a clear voice" Howard testified in detail about the crime and named 12 other men who participated in it. Among them:
The defendants, whether out of sincere conviction or adhering to the omerta of the lynchers, denied any knowledge of a plan to kill
"If you hated it so bad, why didn't you tell these men not to do it?" he asked.
"Because the postal man had come from that direction, and I didn't want to know about it," Thomas replied.
"Well, it does look like a minister of God ought to have the power to quell a mob, but someone called out whoever gives this away will go like the Negro," he said. "Yes, I remained because I was afraid they would shoot my head off."
That fear may still have gripped the witnesses. When asked the identities of the members of the mob, most men on the stand -- notably Fuller and Still -- would only name Howard and the men who fled the county. The Advertiser described Fuller, tried with
Howard's motives for confessing remain a mystery, but not for a lack of questions during the trial. During Howard's testimony in the Strength and Fuller trial, Jones asked Howard why he became a witness.
"You told me that I was under indictment, and there was no law to make me tell anything and that whatever I told would be used against me, and I said it is a burden on me and I want to get rid of it," Howard said.
Howard also repeatedly denied getting anything in exchange for his testimony: "No one said it would go lighter with me," he said at one point from the stand.
But doubts persisted. Howard gave his statement after Taunton, Pittman and Nails agreed to testify, and it is possible that Howard -- knowing the men in the carriage could identify him -- turned state's witness hoping to ease his punishment.
Defense attorneys had no doubt there was a deal, and in closing remarks compared Howard to Judas Iscariot and
"The opinion is rapidly proving
There is no record in the available public documents about whether Howard agreed to a formal plea deal -- which a newspaper would likely have reported -- or if he received any compensation.
What is clear is the lack of sympathy for
The Herald, even as it congratulated
"The Negro must in some way be taught that the wages of sin is death, and the same is true with his physical life as with his spiritual life," the newspaper wrote.
It took just four days to finish the trials. After Howard made his statement on
"The verdict was evidently a great surprise to Howard and his friend(s) but Howard gave no sign of emotion while listening to its reading," the Advertiser reported.
Over the next three days, the jury convicted Strength, Fuller and Thomas, almost entirely on Howard's testimony. Each got 10 years in prison.
The verdicts received editorial approval across the nation.
"It shows there (are) spots in the South where people are beginning to think that it is a crime to hang a black man without process of law," the editorial said. "Let the idea spread. It is a good one."
But some could not give their endorsement without employing the ugly racial language of the day.
"The Negro displays the brutality of the untamed savage," wrote
Howard, Strength and Fuller went into
Thomas, the only convicted lyncher to file a formal appeal, remained in jail, along with
On
On reporting to prison, a corrections official took note of
And, White told the official, he was now a widower.
White said he had a major reason for the plea: The "great and intense hatred" directed at him following the lynchers' convictions.
As quickly as the three men went to prison, the tide of opinion in the local white community coalesced into a tsunami in the opposite direction.
The Herald -- which had so forcefully condemned the lynching in July -- wrote on
By November, the alleged murder of a white man by a black man had turned the Herald against the convictions entirely.
"The white people of
Petitions began circulating, one signed by the jurors who convicted the men. By December, the Advertiser was reporting that one demanding a pardon had made its way to
What caused the shift? Some believed Strength and Fuller were innocent.
"We must have public sentiment behind (the) law to enforce it," he wrote Jelks. "If you are not careful justice cannot be secured in the future. I am here and know the feeling of the people."
The shift also came as white politicians entered a statewide campaign to rob black people of their votes. Days after the convictions of Howard, Strength, Fuller and Thomas, a convention sent a new state constitution -- aimed at disenfranchising blacks and poor whites -- to the public for consideration. The Advertiser and Herald both pushed hard for ratification, with both reporting on -- and making -- racist appeals for it.
"The stationery to be used by the (Montgomery County Campaign) Committee contains the slogan of the campaign: 'A vote for the new
When the
And it may have been as simple as bone-deep racism, immune from political or social winds -- a white community unable to tolerate the thought of a white person suffering for harming a black person.
More letters arrived in Jelks' office in early 1902. In February, Strength's wife and Fuller's mother wrote to Jelks on the same day. Strength's wife wrote that she was "worser than an orphanage" trying to raise two small children.
"Now, will you please think of my condition, and of my innocence(sic) husband and let him come home to me," she wrote.
Fuller's mother said Jelks would be "reward(ed) from one who moves all things" if her son received a pardon.
"I know I will rejoice to here(sic) that you have pardened(sic) him," she wrote.
In May,
"Governor you can not sympathize much in this trouble I know with me but I do hope and prey(sic) that you will grant him a parden(sic) in the near future I am here in the agony of trouble of home affairs & his trouble too," she wrote.
Jelks waited. It was not out of compassion for the White family. The governor's racist beliefs long predated the lynching trial. As a newspaper editor in the 1880s, he had called for blacks in
The official reason Jelks gave for waiting was
If there were other motives, they cannot be determined with certainty. Most of Jelks' official papers and Denson's collection of private and legal correspondence are silent on the lynching trial.
But political calculations may have been a factor. Jelks, who took office in 1901 after the previous governor died, was seeking a term in his own right and might have been seeking votes. Denson, too, may have been thinking of moving up. When approached to run for
"I am a poor man and have to depend on the salary that I get from my office for the support of my family, this is one of the reasons that I have written above, that I would make the condition as to the resignations," the judge wrote. "Of course if I were nominated and the necessities of the situation should require my resignation, we could consider that afterward."
When the
"I believe to 'temper justice with mercy' by the pardon of those named above is right and I sincerely trust that you will pardon them,"
Denson -- who had warned about the murderous fickleness of mobs; who said the friendless person was always their victim; who called such deeds barbaric -- wrote to Jelks on
He worded the letter carefully. Denson noted that Howard had given his testimony voluntarily. The judge denied the existence of any bargain.
"(Howard) sought to have an interview with me about the case and I positively declined to talk with him about the case in any shape," Denson wrote.
The judge wrote that Howard testified against Strength and Fuller, and that it "showed that Strength and Fuller were nearby if not present at the killing and tended to show that they were participants in the conspiracy to kill White."
But, the judge said, Strength and Fuller denied involvement. The three men, he wrote, had families to support. The "very best citizens" of
"Some of them are of the opinion that if further punishment is insisted upon the just administration of the law in the future will be jeopardized," he wrote. "That is to say, the sentiment that so strongly favored the trial and conviction of the persons engaged in the mob, will be turned against conviction in such cases in the future."
Denson wrote he did not share "in all the opinions advanced." But under this dubious reasoning, the judge recommended the governor undo the court's work, and the sentences he once believed just.
"I have reached the conclusion that it will subserve the ends of justice if a parole is granted to the three,
On
"I am led to this course by the appeal of the judge trying the case, the solicitor of the circuit, and a petition from the jurors who tried the cases, and a very large number of the best people of
The three men were swiftly released from the
"As
On
"A cry of joy, a cry so unrestrained that it was almost shriek" erupted when
The Alabamian reported that
Jelks would go on to win the Democratic nomination for governor, but Brewer's bid for
Three days after pardoning Howard, Strength and Fuller, Jelks quietly released
"Petitioner has spent five months more or less in jail in
Denson recommended the pardon, saying the "peculiar circumstances" of the case favored it.
"The Judge trying the case recommends that he be pardoned," Jelks wrote blandly. "It is therefore ordered that full pardon be issued to him."
The releases touched all save one:
But soon, petitions circulated to get Thomas out. The letters and petitions, like those for the other three men, inevitably focused on his wife and seven children left without support.
"The condition of the family arouse the sympathy of the people,"
Denson hesitated. On
"If it is time that you are ready to pardon and want recommendation, write me to that effect and I will take up the matter and consider it," the judge wrote.
Inevitably, Denson came around. On
"The same reason for extending clemency to the other convicted (men) who were pardoned for this offense, exists in favor of Thomas," Denson wrote. "I respectfully recommend that clemency be extended to
Jelks never pardoned Thomas. Nothing in his papers or Thomas' pardon files shed light on the governor's thinking or show any engagement with Denson or the petitions on Thomas' behalf. Safely re-elected to office in 1902, Jelks was term-limited and may not have seen anything to be gained.
The correspondence on Thomas' behalf stops after
Denson sat on the local bench for about two and a half years after the trial. At the end of
"All right-thinking people regret that such violations of law, and invasions of human rights, have occurred in our State, and since condign punishment has fallen upon some who were actors in the lamentable drama, doubtless in their more reflective moods, they, too, regret their misdeeds," Denson said.
In the
Jelks, somehow, developed a national reputation as an anti-lynching crusader, despite comments to a
Lynching continued throughout
The principals in the Robin White trial, for the most part, faded from history.
The pardon granted
Osillis White,
On
The cause of death was senility.
___
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