Documenting Racial Violence in Kentucky

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, which relies on newspaper archives and contemporary accounts to document the incidents of racial violence across the United States, lynchings and other racial violence were prevalent in the state of Kentucky at the end of the nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth century. Historian George Wright estimates there were 353 people lynched in Kentucky between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, “placing Kentucky ninth among states with the largest number of mob murders.” For instance, between 1877 and 1934, Fulton County, Kentucky witnessed 19 lynchings of African Americans. This number included the entire Walker family in 1908, a family of seven African Americans who were killed by Night Riders. From the western border of Missouri to the eastern border of North Carolina, nearly every county in Kentucky recorded a lynching. 

Racially motivated violence has become the focus of renewed attention recently, after the killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minnesota led to a summer of racial reckoning and protests in 2020. Importantly, while protests have emphasized the injustice of these murders, activists have insisted that Taylor, Floyd, and others be remembered as more than victims. They must be remembered for the lives they led before they died. 

By Joe Noce

Green “Easy” Ellis was a man of unknown origin residing in Guthrie, Kentucky. It is likely that Ellis had been raised as a sharecropper, given his location in relation to heavy farming communities. Ellis had developed a reputation as a small-time criminal and was notorious within Guthrie and the surrounding areas. He had been suspected of his criminal nature by the local populace, however, never caught in the act of robbery or any other crime. This suspicion was likely due to his race and lack of employment in the town. Ellis had been suspected of robbing farmers after they had sold their crops in Guthrie, jumping them on the highway out of town toward the Northern farming communities. 

Ellis was hanged on August 26th, 1880 in Guthrie, Kentucky. He had been accused of robbing Mrs. Duncan several days prior, when she was traveling back from Guthrie after selling her crops in the local market. Ellis attacked Duncan, who defended herself with a knife, inflicting several wounds upon Ellis before she was knocked unconscious. Ellis stole twelve dollars from her wallet, and journeyed back to Guthrie. Duncan’s husband found her the following day still alive, and contacted the local authorities of Guthrie. Ellis was identified by the cuts he had endured from Duncan during the assault at a local saloon. He was tried and jailed in Guthrie on August 25th. During the night, a mob approached the jail and demanded Ellis be handed over to them, to which the jailor abided. Ellis was taken from his cell by a mob of 25-50 men during the night and hung just outside of Guthrie. The members of the mob were not prosecuted, and hailed by the local press for bringing Ellis to justice.

By Joe Noce

Sam and John Campbell were born to Lavina Campbell and an unidentified father in Campbellsville, Kentucky in the early 1860s. Lavina was a housekeeper for a local farmer. Both Sam and John attended school, and were known to be literate. In the late 1870s, both brothers moved to Hart County, Kentucky. Sam, the older of the two, became a farmhand for John A. Gardner. John also became a farmhand for an unidentified farmer in the same community. John and Sam grew to resent Gardner, and in 1880 plotted to murder him. 

On December twenty-third, 1880, John and Sam Campbell were hanged by a local mob. John was about nineteen years old, and Sam was twenty-one. On the night of John A. Gardner’s murder, John Campbell planned to spend the night at the Gardner household. During the night, Sam claimed that the cows in Gardner’s barn had gotten ill, in which Gardner ventured to the barn to investigate. When Gardner entered the barn, the Campbell brothers attacked and killed Gardner. The brothers stole his wallet and were attempting to escape the scene; however, Gardner’s wife had heard the struggle and went to alert the local police. Soon after, the Campbell brothers were rounded up by the police and taken to Hart County jail, where they awaited their trial. At midnight on the night the brothers were jailed a mob of between seventy-five to one hundred men extracted them from the prison, and hung them. The mob hanged John first, stating that he refused to speak on his or his brother’s behalf. Sam had allegedly claimed before he was hanged that the plan was mainly drawn up by John, who had always been stubborn and resentful of Gardner. The local authorities, despite knowing of the impending hanging, did nothing to avert this, and the mob dispersed, unidentified, shortly after the lynching. Like many other lynchings of the day, the local papers hailed the mob as heroes bringing criminals to justice. 

By Joe Noce

Ernest Baker was born in October of 1879 to Pryn and Josephine Baker. He was born and lived all of his known life in North Cadiz, Trigg, Kentucky. It is documented that Baker could read and write and was cited holding a job as a porter at Sam Smith’s Saloon. Baker had two siblings, Jager and Lillie, who were younger than him and also attended school. During his life, Baker attended black-only dances and was known within his community. Baker would ultimately be accused of assault and arrested in 1905, after which a mob would lynch him. His younger brother, by about seven years (Born in about 1886), Jager, was shot and killed several years before Baker’s lynching. Jager Baker had allegedly broken into the house of Ed Sumner, a Cadiz local. Sumner stated that he had attempted to drag his daughter from her bed, in which she screamed and garnered his attention, causing him to enter the room and shoot Jager on sight. 

Ernest Baker was accused of assaulting sixteen-year-old Mary Gentry while going to the post office with her ten-year-old sister on Saturday, January twentieth. Baker had allegedly pulled Gentry into an alley and began to attack her, while her sister called for help. Gentry and her sister’s calls were heard by locals and Baker retreated into the alley and escaped the scene. Gentry had identified him as wearing a black shirt, as well as pointing out the tracks on the ground of rubber heels stating “Terry & White”, a local shoe vendor. The authorities questioned Terry and White, and they indicated that they had sold Baker rubber heels earlier that day. Baker was rounded up along with other suspects, he was found at a black-only dance that he had been known to frequent, wearing a white shirt instead of the black shirt that Gentry had claimed he had worn. Baker was taken to the Cadiz jailhouse and held there until three A.M., when a mob approached the jailhouse demanding his release into their custody. The jailer, Harry Timmons, made futile attempts to protest and quickly gave in to the mob. The mob took Baker to a beam near the jail and hung him within the hour. Baker reportedly refused to speak during his time jailed and prior to his lynching. 

By Cameron Smith

Lon/Lewis Beard, African American man, was lynched in Spencer county, KY on July 7, 1905. He was the second oldest son of seven siblings in 1900, and lived in a predominantly white community. His father’s occupation is simply listed as “laborer” so it can be expected that he did farm work in this rural community (population was only 1,539 in 2010). Beard was 18 when he was lynched.

Lon Beard was accused of attempted assault against a white woman and thrown into jail in Taylorsville, KY. Fearing a potential lynching, authorities put Beard on a train to transfer him to a safer jail in Shelbyville. At a routine stop, 25 men got on board, went to Beard’s cabin, and shot him seven times. It’s generally accepted that the husband of the woman that Beard had allegedly attempted to assault, Chester Crawford, was the one who shot him as he immediately confessed to the crime afterwards.

By Cameron Smith

On September 24th, 1905, an African American man from Williamson, West Virginia by the name of Moses Lovern was arrested for assaulting James Butcher, a well-off businessman, and began serving a 60 day sentence for the alleged crime. In the middle of the night on September 24th,  Lovern and his white cellmate Thomas Blackburn were kidnapped by a group that called themselves the “white ribboners.” The usual guard for the jail had taken a day off and the mob of around 20 men took full advantage of this situation. After sneaking into the jail, the white ribboners found Lovern and Blackburn’s cell and threatened the two with a Winchester rifle.

After they were bound and gagged, Lovern and Blackburn were thrown into a boat and rowed outside of West Virginia and into Pike county, Kentucky. After arriving in a secluded location, the mob grabbed Lovern, stripped him naked, and tied him to a tree. The mob then whipped and stoned Lovern to death. Blackburn went unharmed. The white ribboners then rowed the men back to the Williamson jail where they tossed both Lovern and Blackburn back into the cell. Lovern’s body was not found until the next morning when the morning guard returned to the jail. Blackburn was able to recognize eight of the men that had kidnapped him and Lovern the night before, but it is unlikely that any of them were tried in court. 

By Qwenton Briggs

Virgil Bowers was an African American man residing in London, Kentucky.  Information about his life, including birth and census records, is not available.  The information about the lynching of Virgil Bowers is provided by several contemporaneous news sources.

Bowers was prosecuted in two trials for the shooting and killing of George Farris, a notable lumber dealer from Knox County, while at the London Fair on August 26, 1905. The first trial resulted in ten jurors voting for the death penalty and two jurors voting for a life sentence. He then faced his second trial with jurors gathered from Rock Castle County. The second trial resulted in the verdict of a life sentence, although ten jurors voted for the hanging of Bowers.

 Although he was tried and convicted, some newspapers mention that his appeal was being organized. While Bowers was detained in the Laurel County jail, a large mob, numbered between 40 to 200 men, gathered in front of the jail. On October 16, 1905 the masked mob broke into Laurel County Jail and kidnapped Bowers. The mob dragged him to an apple tree about half a mile from the jail, along a road leading to the city of Barbourville, where Bowers‘s hands were tied and he was hung from a noose.

His body was found by James Bowling, a hotel porter within the early hours of October 17, 1905. Pinned to his body was a handwritten note justifying the murder of Virgil Bowers. The author of the newspiece explained that since the note quoted Abraham Lincoln -  “The voice of the people must rule in all instances” - the lynching of Bowers would be the end of the matter.

However, the murder of Boiwers caused a local uproar among the African American residents. They condemned the hanging and pressured the London police force to find and arrest the killers. Eventually warrants were issued for five of the mob members, most from Knox county, in early February of 1906.  According to the Stanford (KY) Interior Journal, over 100 indictments were issued in the Bowers case.  However, the case was dismissed on insufficient evidence. 

By Joe Noce

William Clifford, also known as W.M. Clifford or Will Clifford, was a farmhand and laborer from Zanesville, Muskingum County, Ohio. Born to Mary and John in February of 1867, Clifford had up to five siblings. By the year 1900 he was the only child living at home. He was 33 years of age. The following year in 1901, his mother, Mary Clifford passed away. She was 76. It is possible that William’s had a close relationship with his mother, as he left Zanesville soon after her death. Some time following this, before 1907, William left his home and took up residence in Tiptonville, Tennessee. Clifford had no record of being married or having children. William would be accused and admit to the rape and murder of a woman in 1907, leading to his lynching and death. During his arrest he admitted to at least one other murder of a female, implying that this had been a pattern for him since his move to Tennessee. Though William was lynched in Hickman County Kentucky in 1907, there is no record indicating that he even took up residence in Kentucky.

In August of 1907, William Clifford was arrested in Tiptonville, Tennessee, and confessed to the assault, rape, and murder of a white woman by the name of Mary Cowan, as well as the murder of an unidentified woman in the prior year. Clifford had allegedly beaten, raped, and killed Cowan, and thrown her body into a river due to the location of Tiptonville. This was probably the Mississippi River or an immediate tributary. Clifford was arrested by Constable Burrus and taken to the Lake County (Tennessee) jailhouse. Constable Burrus received several requests and threats from locals to release Clifford into their control, all of which were denied. Burrus did, however, feel that the situation was growing more dire, and believed that Clifford would need to be moved immediately to be tried in Kentucky. Burrus took Clifford discreetly from his cell and moved him across the border into Kentucky. He then instructed one of his deputies to allow the mob into the jail, so as to convince them that Clifford was gone and that they may disperse. On the sixteenth of August, the mob noticed Clifford’s absence from the jail, and unlike Burrus had suspected, tracked Burrus and Clifford to a barn in Mabel, Kentucky. Burrus and Clifford found themselves trapped, and Burrus handed over Clifford to the mob, who then sweated and lynched Clifford after taking him into Hickman County, Kentucky. Local authorities stated that the mob had dissipated and Clifford’s body was the only evidence present. Once Clifford was hanged, it was reported that there was only one other black resident in Tiptonville at the time, leading to the belief that this crime was motivated by racial tensions in the community. 

By Qwenton Briggs

Virgil Jones, John Jones, Robert Boyer, and Joe Riley were lynched in the early morning of August 01, 1908. The group lynching was motivated by the death of James Cunningham, a farm overseer reported to be a leader of the local Ku Klux Klan Klaverns. The four were arrested on July 24,1908 and imprisoned in the jail of Russellville, Ky, on claims of supporting Rufus Browder’s shooting out of self defense, which led to the death of Cunningham. 

Based on Browder’s statements, he “went to work for Mr. Cunningham, about three months ago” after leaving his father’s farm. The individuals all worked as tenant farmers alongside one another and were members of the True Reformers, which met in local houses to conduct meetings before creating lodges. The True Reformers worked to promote self -sufficiency throughout the early 1900s. A relevant newspaper explaining statements made by Browder also states that it was a “society composed of negroes, which was organized for the purpose of providing insurance and burials. Further testimony from Browder included the following statements describing his relationship with the other men.

“One of them was serving a sentence for carrying a concealed weapon and the other three were awaiting trials on charge of the breach of the peace”. Joe Riley was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon. Boyer was convicted of breaching the peace and unlawfully assembling to interfere with the prosecution of Browder. John and Virgil Jones were also charged with breach of peace. Virgil Jones, approaching 20 years of age, and John Jones, born in 1869, are presumed to have been relatives, either as father and son or brothers, according to census records appearing in Louisville, Ky.

Aware of their location, an armed mob estimated between 50-100 men marched into the jail and demanded the four victims. The mob was believed to have been made of members from southwestern area of Russellville, in which Cunningham had lived prior. They demanded the jailer, J.L. Butt to handover the keys which made their capture successful. The mob then marched each victim by force to the famous Proctor lynching tree located in the southwestern suburb of Logan Co and proceeded to lynch them. Their bodies were pinned with a note warning other African Americans to keep their distance and stop lodge meetings. Photographs of the lynching were taken and turned into postcards, which was a common occurrence. This quadruple lynching received federal attention and influenced the passing of federal law to condemn this practice.          

By Joe Noce

The Walker family was a family of 7-8 people who resided on a farm North of Hickman, Kentucky during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The members of the family included David Walker, born in Tennessee in 1870, his wife Annie Walker, born in Tennessee in 1871, and their five to six children with ages ranging from their mid-twenties to infancy at the time of their death in 1908. Local news sources described the Walker family as uppity and successful, owning twenty-one and a half acres of farmland they had purchased following David and Annie’s marriage and move to Kentucky in 1890. The land had been purchased from the West Tennessee Land Company, which had recently bought up the previously public lands surrounding Reelfoot Lake. Reelfoot Lake had been used by locals for fishing and farming, and the acquisition and sale of the land angered many of the locals of Hickman, nonetheless that it had been sold to a black family. In September of 1908, David Walker had been accused of slander against Flora Long, a white woman residing in Hickman. Walker was found not guilty of the crime. However, this angered the local night-riders to the point of action, leading to the death of Walker and his family.

    Following David Walker’s trial regarding slander, on midnight of the third of October, 1908, night-riders approached the Walker cabin and used coal oil to set fire to the house. Walker and several of his children ran outside, allegedly begging for their mercy. This was met with nothing other than bullets, as the mob of about thirty men opened fire, killing Walker and the children with him. Immediately following this, Annie Walker and her infant son attempted the same plea, and were met with the same fate. The remaining son of the Walker family did not leave the house, and is believed to have died in the fire, though there is no evidence that his body was found, or that he escaped the scene. Regarding the murder of the Walker family, there are various speculations; the most prominent being that the oldest son, John Walker, being about twenty-four years old at the time of the lynching may not have been present and survived. There is no record however, of any of the Walker household after 1909, leading to belief that he perished in the fire set by the night-riders. Following the murder of the Walker Family, the Governor of Kentucky released a statement offering five-hundred dollar reward for the apprehension of anyone involved in the murder. The governor went on to state that the night-rider situation in Kentucky was out of control. Many news outlets bashed the governor stating that David Walker was to blame for the incident, as he had begun the quarrel with his slander against a white woman. Few if any of the Walker family murderers were brought in, and the Walker family murder went unpunished.

By Cameron Smith

John Maxey was a black man born by his father John H. Maxey and his mother Cordelia Maxey in 1884 and raised in Frankfort, KY alongside his sister Alice Maxey. His father was well-known in the Frankfort community originally as an attache and later in his life as a pullman porter. John Maxey found work in Frankfort as a “boot blacker,” otherwise known as a shoe shiner. 

A circus, hosted by a group from Valdosta, Georgia, arrived in Frankfort on June 2nd, 1909. John Maxey claimed to have arrived drunk to the circus and attempted to sneak under the flap of one of the tents instead of paying for a ticket. B.C. Bowers, an employee of the circus, caught Maxey in this act, and here the details vary. One paper claims that Bowers shot at Maxey in surprise and Maxey shot back in retaliation, fatally injuring Bowers. However, most papers claim that Maxey shot first after being caught attempting to sneak in. Regardless of who shot first, after Maxey shot Bowers, several of the showmen grabbed Maxey and began beating him with stakes. A crowd surrounded Maxey screaming, “lynch him!” and a noose was hung around his neck and as the crowd was about to draw Maxey up a tree two officers arrived in time to stop the lynching. Maxey was thrown into a Frankfort jail that night around 12:30a.m. At around 2a.m. the jailer was called and awoken at his home near the prison. He was told that an officer wanted to put another man in the jail. As soon as the jailer opened his door he was overwhelmed by a masked mob who took his keys and seized Maxey from his cell. Within 10 minutes Maxey was strung up around the St. Clair Street Bridge, otherwise known as the “Swinging Bridge.”