Visiting a friend earlier this month in Walhalla, SC, a town of about 4,500 in the northwestern corner of the state, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains and not far from Clemson University, I learned of a lynching that occurred in the 1930s.
The act was murder, certainly as newspaper reports and black history research detail it, but the elements – the victim, the alleged perpetrators and their subsequent acquittal and, most bizarre, compensation for the victim’s widow, make this at least for me, more than an exercise in Yankee voyeurism.
Walhalla, in Oconee County, is located in what was the Cherokee country until President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and pushed the tribes to western Mississippi. The area was then colonized in the middle of the 19th century, mainly by German immigrants from Charleston and by English and Scottish-Irish farmers. The land was suitable for growing cotton and corn. Today, the population is predominantly white, 15% (and growing) Hispanic, 7% African American, and a small percentage of Native Americans.
At one end of the grassy central island that divides the main street is a statue of a Confederate soldier who last year, during Black Lives Matter protests across the country, was the target of some antics and then a counter – aggressive position of several young people. As a result, the statue was surrounded for several months without further incident.
This is the country of the Bible, the church, the roads crossed here and there by vehicles decorated with American and Confederate flags, and billboards, large and small, also here and there, praising Jesus and condemning non-believers in the tradition of the land – that is, conservative – manners.
The county is also home to upscale, often closed, communities built along Lake Keowee, a huge man-made reservoir developed to meet the needs of the Duke Energy utility and public recreational purposes.
It was on the night of April 23, 1930 that a masked crowd of white men, including the mayor of Walhalla, stormed Oconee County Prison in Walhalla, where Allen Green, 51, a black man, was being held on charges of assault. to an 18-year-old white woman married. She testified in a preliminary hearing that Green attacked her.
The mob overpowered the sheriff and took Green to a tree on the main road between Walhalla and Seneca, seven miles away, tied him to the tree and shot him to death.
The death certificate listed the cause: “Numerous gunshot wounds to the head and body. (Killed by the mob.) ”
Seventeen citizens of Oconee County were indicted by a grand jury on charges of murder. In the end, 10 men, including the mayor and a man described as the “Night Policeman”, accused of murder, conspiracy and assault, were acquitted after a jury deliberated for two hours. Un guilty guilty verdicts, the Associated Press reported, were ordered in advance for seven others indicted on the same charges.
According to a newspaper report, “The state has put on jackets that it said were worn by two of the defendants when the black man was lynched. This produced an expert witness who testified that the stains on the clothing were human blood. “
This was long before DNA analysis and any sophisticated forensic study. One of the defendants argued that the blood was the result of a cut on his finger. Newspaper reports said that all defendants had alibis.
As bleak, if not predictable, the outcome, the murder had more sadistic and ironic elements.
Green, the victim, has already been hailed as a hero in Walhalla. His skill as a firefighter, a local newspaper said, “has been credited with ‘practically saving’ the city from destruction by fire” on at least two occasions.
This heroism led Green to parole after being sentenced in 1915 for attempting to assault a white woman. Citizens petitioned the governor, citing Green’s firefighting efforts and also saying they doubted the woman’s testimony in the case.
In 1919, the governor granted parole, and the news was delivered to Green by a gang overseer under the same tree where, 11 years later, Green would be murdered. The place of his death was obviously not randomly selected by the mob of lynchers.
The tree, shortly afterwards, was “stripped of bark and pieces of wood by many who sought to take some souvenir,” wrote a newspaper.
What is curious, to say the least, is the fact, as reported by newspapers, that “Green’s widow received $ 2,000 in damages to be paid by the county, under a state statute for her lynching.”
This law was passed in 1896 and held the county where the lynching occurred for “exemplary damages of less than two thousand dollars”. In Green’s murder, Oconee County refused to pay, the case went to the state Supreme Court and Green’s widow won.
Still, how horrible and how strange: a man, who was once a local hero, awaiting trial in court, is pulled out of prison, tied to a tree under which he was released and shot without anyone being convicted of. any crime, and the man’s widow, under state law, receives $ 2,000 “in damages”.
The University of North Carolina, in a project started in 2015 called “Red Record”, has been, as its website says, “identifying and marking the lynching sites during the old Confederation and, over time, all states in the former Confederation. “
As the background explains, “Our research also supports (Ida B.) Wells-Barnett’s central argument: that lynching was more than just a response to crime. It was part of a narrative of white supremacy that sought to describe the success of blacks, black families and the black personality ”.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, according to the National Museum of Women’s History, was a prominent journalist, activist and researcher in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her life, she struggled with sexism, racism and violence . As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans across the South. ”
It was in the project files that I found Allen Green’s story.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington and was a longtime reporter and columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].