Star City, Arkansas, September 1, 1919― Clinton Briggs had survived being on the lines to load powder in the cannons in France. In that time, he was never wounded by a German bullet. He had been lucky as he only had to serve in the trenches six months before the war ended.
For his heroic participation he received the World War victory medal and lapel pen. Yet based on reports Briggs just came home to help his family and to marry a woman named Cora Goudes.
There are two stories about what led to the lynching of Briggs that Monday, but both are based in the idea that a Black soldier who was trained for the military and had served overseas would embolden the Blacks to think they had political rights.
This concern had been voiced early in the war when Blacks were allowed to enlist or were drafted. Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman said in 1917 that Black soldiers serving and then returning home would invariably lead to disaster.
He might have been right, 1919 was a a bloody year and there had been riots in Norfolk, Virginia, New London, Connecticut and Bisbee, Arizona specifically over the welcome the Black soldiers and sailors had received. Just the the thought of a Black person getting any recognition was enough to send many Whites into a rage.
The first story regarding the lynching of Clinton Briggs is a straightforward story of racial animus and disrespect. Allegedly Briggs was walking down a sidewalk when a White couple approached, and Briggs stepped aside so they could pass. The woman though felt she had to express her feelings and told Briggs, “Niggers stay off the sidewalks down here!”
Briggs pride wouldn’t let the remark pass and responded, “This is a free man’s country.” The woman’s escort grabbed Briggs, and they started to fight but then other White men joined the fray. Soon the White mob had him in an automobile and were taking him out of town. Finding a tall tree, they were set to hang him, but they didn’t have a rope, so they chained him to the tree with tire chains and shot him, riddling his body with bullets. It was reported in the Arkansas Democrat that after this it was several days before the sheriff found the body.
The second story and the one reported the most often and was first printed in the Arkansas Gazette. Briggs was working for his prewar employer a farmer named J. M. Bailey. Allegedly Bailey’s 19-year-old daughter was moving some cattle to pasture and passed Briggs and Briggs was unable to control himself and made some obscene and provocative suggestions. This apparently frightened the young woman, and she rushed home screaming.
Within the hour a band of men had arrived at the farm to defend the girl’s honor, and they captured Briggs chained him to the fence and shot him. In this version three shots were enough to kill Briggs.
The second story adds the almost inevitable sexual deviant characteristic to the Black man. This stereotype was so dominant in the Jim Crow South that nearly every murder of a Black man by a mob was because the man was an animal who couldn’t keep their hands off a White woman.
Regardless of which story was accurate the truth was once again a Black man was murdered by a mob and there was no investigation only a ruling by the coroner of death by the hands of people unknown. Briggs was one of 16 lynching's of Black World War One veterans in the Red Summer of 1919
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment