Virginia Beach, Virginia, September, 1926 ― “It seemed like a death ride,” said Father Vincent D. Warren. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I prayed. “
Father Warren was grabbed by three men in hoods while he was standing outside the cabin of Charles Woodhouse a Negro farmer who held several tracts of land. Father Warren was sitting in the car of his friend Belford Emanuelson. While it was only three men who had approached the car the men saw a dozen other hooded men at the side of the property. Warren went with the men given the threat to the children in his program.
There were 22 men in the group that took Father Warren with seven cars. They left the Princess Anne community and went north of Virginia Beach. Emanuelson then went to try and find help.
“I asked myself what offenses I could have committed.” said Warren. “All I could think of was that I had led children to love the Lord.” Warren though was praying with his rosary and said he was steeling himself for the inevitable.
The band was made up of all Black boys and they had stopped playing and sort of wandered around without any adults to direct them. Most went home since they all lived with two miles of Saint Josephs, Warren’s church. Some of them though tried to get the sheriff to look for the Priest but he refused them.
Emanuelson had also gone to the Sheriff’s house, but he wasn’t home. Emanuelson also went on his own hunt for his friend driving around all the backroads of the county; as darkness fell, he went to the city building of Virginia Beach hoping to find aid. All he found was the mayor who refused to send his police because the sheriff would look upon it as interference.
Along a dark road well off any paved roads the Klan had stopped with Father Warren, and they all got out of the car. Two men spoke to the priest, “what is your purpose with these children father?” Warren explained his mission was to help the children just learn music and to be good citizens at his school and that he had brought these boys to share their talent with some older folks like them.
The lead man questioning Father Warren looked at him with hooded eyes and said the group had been misinformed, that they had been told that he had been bringing White children and Black children together with the singular purpose of mixing the races. They refused to inform the priest who had told them this or why they believed it.
They then apologized to the priest and brought him back to town, or at least where he thought he could find an easy way back to Virginia Beach, and he did with an elderly Black man.
There was a strong backlash against the local leaders. When asked why he wasn’t available to conduct a search the sheriff told reporters and Emanuelson it was none of their business. The county prosecutor for Princess Anne County argued that with no actual eyewitnesses able to say who was involved it might be impossible.
Despite the calls from the ACLU, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot editor Louis Jaffé and from Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd no investigation was ever launched. Sheriff J.C. Litchfield kept to his line that there was nothing to investigate. Whether Litchfield, who could not be found the night of the kidnapping, was in the local chapter of the Klan or not clearly wasn’t concerned about their crimes. Which continued with an attack on a Black woman’s home where she was hosting a party and beat a Black for appearing on a Virginia Beach street after 6 P.M. Virginia Beach was an established Sundown Town.
Father Warren served at St. Josephs for most of his life dying at age 85 in February 1975 at the the Josephite Fathers retirement home in Baltimore, Maryland
All information gathered from the NYT: Times Machine and Newspapers.com
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/09/03/98852693.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58631a0c8419c2a7d069205d/t/6537d16cf37fcd48770c6cbe/1698156909475/Virginia+Beach_+A+Sundown+Town.pdf
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