At least 17 blacks killed by mobs in Ohio
_ G O D _
Lynchings didn't happen only in the South
At least 17 blacks killed by mobs in Ohio since 1876
by Amelia Robinson
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/1127lynch.html
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots.
Black body swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh.
And the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather
For the wind to suck
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop.
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
- From Strange Fruit, first performed
by Billie Holiday in 1939.
Southerners didn't shout "hold the police," "lynch the nigger,"
and "smash the doors" in Springfield on March 6, 1904,
as shots rang out and the mob used a heavy railroad iron,
sledge hammers and cold chisels to beat at a jailhouse door.
Southerners didn't overpower sheriff's deputies and drag
Richard Dixon out to a courtyard shortly after 11 p.m. And
Southerners didn't club and fire nine bullets into the accused
cop killer's prostrated body as a jubilant mob rejoiced.
Ohio men tied a rope around Dixon's neck and fired several
hundred shots at his swinging corpse as it hung for four
hours from a telegraph pole at Main Street and Fountain
Avenue in Springfield. Blood ran down Dixon's legs forming
pools on the ground, according to newspaper accounts.
As gruesome as the scene was, Marilyn K. Howard, a
Columbus State Community College assistant history
professor, said Dixon, also known as Richard Dickerson,
wasn't the first or last Negro lynched in the Buckeye State.
'The same things that happened in the South happened
in the North'
In recent months, new attention has been given to lynching.
Earlier this year, investigators exhumed the body of Emmett
Till - the 14-year-old Chicago boy history books say was
lynched by a white mob in Mississippi for whistling at a
white woman.
Till's case was reopened last year based on evidence that
several more people may have been involved - including
Henry Lee Loggins, an 82-year-old black man from Dayton
who has long maintained his innocence.
Lynching is often thought of as the South's shame, but
Howard said the practice happened in Ohio, too.
"The same things that happened in the South happened
in the North," she said. "We think it is only a Southern
issue, and it is clearly not."
When the U.S. Senate apologized earlier this year for
never enacting an anti-lynching law, its regret for the 4,742
mostly black people murdered by mobs between 1882
and 1968 included at least 26 men who were lynched in
Ohio — 16 black and 10 whites.
'Ohio is not Mississippi,
Ohio is better than that'
Eighty percent of lynchings were carried out in the South,
but the practice occurred in every state except Alaska,
Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire
and Rhode Island between 1882 and 1968, according to
records at Tuskegee University in Alabama.
Unlike in the South - where news coverage of lynchings
could last weeks - relatively few newspapers wrote articles
about most of the Ohio's lynchings, Columbus State's
Howard said. The explanation, in part, is that many elite
Ohioans found lynching to be embarrassing.
"Ohio is not Mississippi, Ohio is better than that," she
said of the prevailing attitude.
David Gerber, a University of Buffalo history professor,
said Northerners generally prided themselves on being
more progressive on matters of race than Southerners. Ohio was, after all, a leader
in the drive to abolish slavery and was a vital part of the Underground Railroad.
"People actually congratulated themselves by saying it is unfortunate, but it is not
as bad as in Mississippi, Georgia or North Carolina," said Gerber, who wrote the 1976
book Black Ohio and the Color Line.
Still lynchings in the North were clearly a fact of life.
Howard said the first verified Ohio lynching of a black man came in January, 1876. A
black "tramp" named Ulrey allegedly "ravished" — an euphemism for rape — a
10-year-old white girl who later died. Ulrey admitted guilt, but while awaiting
trial, a mob attempted to break in to the jail, but failed, Howard said. A second mob
succeeded. No one was ever charged.
In her research, she also found nine instances when officials or citizens stepped in
to halt lynch mobs. On Aug. 31, 1916, in Lima, Sheriff Sherman Ely was beaten,
slashed and nearly lynched protecting Charles Daniels, a black rape suspect, from a
mob of 3,000.
'Children laughed and grinned at the corpses'
Between 1890 and 1952, seven Presidents petitioned Congress to end lynching.
Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of
the 20th century, according to the Senate resolution.
Vernellia R. Randall, a University of Dayton law professor, said the lynchings were
not secret and in some cases became social events enjoyed with a picnic and banter.
"It didn't occur in the backwoods. It was up-front. Everyone from grandma to baby
participated," said Randall, who teaches a course entitled "Race, Racism and American
Law." "It was seen as normal ... Children laughed and grinned at the corpses."
Federal legislation failed for more than six decades because the majority believed it
was not Congress' place to pass such laws, Randall said. "The federal government
didn't lynch anyone," she said of the rationale against a federal law. "It happened
in the state, and it is the state's responsibility to stop it."
Ohio adopted an anti-lynching law in 1896, in the wake of the lynching of two black
men and three averted lynchings two years before. Families of lynching victims could
sue the county in which a lynching occurred for $1,000 to $10,000.
Gerber said the law boosted the black population's confidence in its political power,
but did not stop lynchings. The decline of the practice in Ohio was natural, he said,
but Dixon's lynching occurred after the law's passage.
Ohio counties where lynchings were recorded include Butler, Clark, Clermont,
Cuyahoga, Franklin and Greene.
An unusual case in Greene County involved a black mob lynching a black man at the
fairgrounds in Jamestown on or about June 11, 1887, for allegedly beating and raping
a black woman.
Peter Betters was "a very bad man, despised by the colored people and avoided by
everyone," the Dayton Daily Herald reported. The Xenia Daily Gazette described
Betters, who was about 38 at the time of his death on a broken-down tree, as "very
ugly looking."
"Timid folks all feared him, and he had the appearance of a gorilla especially when
very angry," the Xenia Democrat News said.
Betters' case is the only known lynching by blacks in Ohio, Columbus State's Howard
said.
Betters, who, according to the articles, had been in prison for committing an outrage
against an aged white woman in Fayette County (and horse stealing), was arrested on
accusations that he savagely beat Martha Thomas, a 65-year-old widow who was black,
news accounts said.
Betters attempted to "savage" Thomas, who had been in the home with her young
grandchildren, before beating her with a club and a glass lamp, newspapers said.
A crowd of black men — most from Xenia — ordered people into their homes and posted
guards on street corners before battering in the doors of the police station and
securing Betters.
"Lynching was a common way of dealing with trouble makers," Howard said.
'The mob went fairly wild
with delight'
Dixon, described in one newspaper account as a "bad nigger" from Cynthiana, Ky., was
accused of, but never tried for, the killing of police Sgt. Charles Collis of
Lagonda, who had been called to a domestic dispute between Dixon and a woman.
According to the Dayton Evening Herald, a mob of as many as 4,000 Springfield-area
residents watched his lynching. Men and boys lobbed stones and emptied revolvers into
his mutilated flesh and joked with neighbors as his tattered clothes fluttered in the
wind "like shreds of a battle flag."
"The body was kept swaying from the force of the rain which poured in on it," the
March 8, 1904, Dayton Daily News reported. "Frequently, the arms would fly up
convulsively when a muscle was struck and the mob went fairly wild with delight."
The night Dixon was killed, the mob torched five Negro "joints" – a restaurant, two
saloons and a woman's house — in Springfield's levee district on East Washington
Street between Gallagher and Spring streets, newspapers reported.
The Ohio militia stayed in the city a week to stop the riot that threatened other
black neighborhoods, and attracted 25,000 curious seekers in the days that followed.
Several men were indicted, but no one was ever convicted in Dixon's death.
Gerber said the Dixon lynching and the riot that followed are the most extreme
example of race-related mob violence in Ohio during the time period.
"The idea is that crime is out of control, that law enforcement is weak," he said.
"It became putative that mob justice rein in what is perceived as a problem."
There had been 12 murders in the two years that preceded Dixon's lynching, according
to newspapers.
F.E Snypp, a Springfield resident interviewed by the Dayton Daily News following
Dixon's death, said the lynching would "do Springfield good."
"Last night's mob was but a culmination of the feeling of disgust and unrest that has
been rankling in the hearts of many for months," he said in a March 8, 1904, article.
"The whole town was greatly excited after the deed was done. Hundreds are glad it is
over and are not sorry that the slayer of Patrolman Collis met such summary justice."
Amelia Robinson is a staff writer. Contact her at (937) 225-2384.
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all COck-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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