Violence following a murder in Georgia
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hazel "Hayes" Turner and his wife, Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day (May 19), his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
These lynchings are examples of the racially motivated mob violence by white people against black people in the American South, especially during 1880 to 1930, the peak of lynchings. Brooks County in Georgia, and Georgia among the states, had the highest rates of lynching in the nation during this period.
The NAACP referred to the murder of Mary Turner in its anti-lynching campaigns of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. In the lynching era from 1880 to 1930, the great majority of these murders were committed in the South. Most of the thousands of individuals lynched in the United States were Black, and most were men, but at least 120 Black women were known to have been lynched between 1865 and 1965.
Background.
The lynchings followed in response to the murder of Hampton Smith. Hampton Smith was a 25 year old, although newspaper accounts covering his death inaccurately put his age at 31, married white planter who owned the Old Joyce Place, a large plantation near Morven, Georgia, in Brooks County. He was known among black workers for being an abusive boss, making it difficult for him to recruit farm labor. Smith resolved the labor shortage (as did many planters) through using convict labor; he would pay the fees that black men were assessed for infractions and lease their labor for a period of time, paying the local jurisdiction the fees. He was responsible for food and board of such workers. Among the workers whom Smith gained this way was Sidney Johnson, after paying the police his $30 fine (a high payment for a farm worker), assessed after his conviction for "playing dice." Authorities exercised little oversight related to convict leasing, and the black men were often abused in what journalist Douglas Blackmon has called "slavery by another name".
Johnson endured several beatings at the hands of Smith, including a severe one after refusing to work while sick. Smith also had a violent history with other black workers. He had beaten Mary Turner, and after this incident her husband, Hayes Turner, threatened Smith. Turner was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a chain gang.
Johnson shot Smith and his wife through a window in their house, killing Smith and wounding his wife. He fled the scene, hiding successfully in Valdosta, Georgia for several days. A large manhunt was conducted by a white mob, mostly in Brooks County.
Lynchings.
During the manhunt, white people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. On May 17, Will Head and Will Thompson were seized in two different areas; that night Head was lynched near Troupville in neighboring Lowndes County, and Thompson near Barney in Brooks County. Walter F. White, an investigator for the NAACP, was told by mob participants that the bodies of the men were riddled with more than 700 bullets. Julius Jones was also captured and lynched near Barney.
Chime Riley was a black man at first rumored to have left Brooks County. He was found to have been lynched, although he had no known connection to Smith. He was thrown into the Little River in Brooks County to drown near Barney; turpentine cups were tied to his hands and legs to weigh him down.
Simon Schuman (also seen as Shuman) was taken from his house during the unrest and according to Walter White reportedly never seen again, although he had no connection to Smith. His family was driven out of the house, and the interior was destroyed. Schuman was believed by most later historians to have been lynched by white people in this rampage. Walter White's report related to Schuman's disappearance was inaccurate. Newspaper accounts from a month after the May rampage can confirm that Schuman was arrested by Brooks County authorities in late June 1918 after he was implicated in the murder of Hampton Smith by a man named "Shorty" Ford, then in custody in Jacksonville, Florida on charges related to Smith's murder as well. On June 25, 1918, Schuman was removed from Brooks County Jail to an unknown location to avoid being lynched. Schuman survived the ordeal and moved to Albany, Georgia shortly afterward.
Sidney Johnson, who murdered Smith, reached Valdosta, the county seat of Lowndes County, where he hid for a few days. When he appealed to another black man for food, that man notified the police. Chief Calvin Dampier took officers armed with high-powered rifles to the house (among them were his brother), where they engaged in a shootout with Johnson, known to be armed with a shotgun and pistol. After the shooting stopped, the police finally entered the house, finding Johnson dead. He had wounded the two Dampier brothers and Dixon Smith. A mob had gathered and, deprived of the chance to lynch Johnson, mutilated his body, and dragged it behind a car in a procession down Patterson Street and out to Morven. There they hanged the body from a tree (near the scene of Smith's murder) and burned it.
Hayes and Mary Turner.
Among the men picked up in the hunt for Smith's killer was Hayes Turner (August 15, 1892 – May 18, 1918), an African American man, known to have had conflict with Smith, and who was lynched after being accused of murder in Lowndes County, Georgia. His lynching was reported by "The Spokesman-Review" on May 20, 1918. When his wife, Mary Turner, denounced the murder, she was lynched along with their unborn baby.
Hayes Turner was arrested on the morning of Saturday, May 18, and placed in the jail in Valdosta, the county seat of Lowndes County. Later in the day, County Sheriff Wade and a clerk of court took him out, ostensibly to move him to Quitman, the county seat of Brooks County. Along the way, Turner was taken by a mob and lynched near the Okapilco Creek in Brooks County, about 3 1/2 miles from town. His body was left hanging from the tree over the weekend and not cut down until Monday.
Another black man was lynched that day near the Old Camp Ground; he may have been Eugene Rice. Newspaper reports identified him as a victim of the mob; he was never associated with Smith's murder in any way.
Approximately a week later, the bodies of three unidentified black men were taken from the Little River, below Barney. It was not clear if they were new or old victims. At the time of the NAACP's investigation by Walter White soon after these events (see below), the bodies had disappeared from police custody without confirmation of identity.
After Hayes Turner was murdered, his distraught wife Mary, who was eight months pregnant, publicly denounced her husband's lynching. She denied that her husband had been involved in Smith's killing, and threatened to have members of the mob arrested. The mob turned against her, determined to "teach her a lesson". Although she fled, Mary Turner was captured at noon on May 19. The mob of several hundred took her to the bank in Brooks County near Folsom Bridge, over the Little River, which forms the border with Lowndes County.
According to investigator Walter F. White of the NAACP, Mary Turner was tied and hung upside down by the ankles, her clothes soaked with gasoline, and burned from her body. Her belly was slit open with a knife like those used "in splitting hogs." Her "unborn babe" fell to the ground and gave "two feeble cries." Its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel, and the crowd shot hundreds of bullets into Turner's body. Mary Turner was cut down and buried with her child near the tree, with a whiskey bottle marking the grave. "The Atlanta Constitution" published an article with the subheadline: "Fury of the People Is Unrestrained."
Mary Turner (c. 1885 – 19 May 1918) was a young, married black woman and mother of three—including an unborn child—who was lynched by a white mob in Lowndes County, Georgia, for having protested the lynching death of her husband Hazel "Hayes" Turner the day before in Brooks County. She was eight months pregnant, and her baby was cut from her body and killed by stomping. They were followed by the murders of 11 more black men by a white mob in Brooks and neighboring Lowndes counties during a manhunt and lynching rampage.
Early life.
Mary Hattie Graham was born "circa" 1885 to Perry Graham and Elizabeth "Betsy" Johnson, in Brooks County, Georgia. She had an older sister Pearl, and two younger brothers, named Perry and Otha. Sources differ on the exact year of her birth. Most newspaper accounts covering the lynching in 1918 do not mention her age at all. The report by Walter White in "The Crisis" in September 1918 also does not mention her age. In general, historians prior to the 2000s did not make a reference to her age when they wrote about her. In 2008, an article by Julie Buckner Armstrong put her age at 19, but a later historian notes that she did not cite the source of the information. The Mary Turner Project originally put her age at 21 at her death, implying a birth year of circa 1897. Twenty-one was the age used for the historical marker erected by the Mary Turner Project in 2010. A historian has noted the link between the erection of the marker in 2010 and the subsequent widespread use of 21 as her age at her death in modern newspaper accounts. The same historian has contacted Mark Patrick George, the former director of the Mary Turner Project, and discovered that 21 was used before the family of Mary Turner contacted the project and supplied the more accurate birth year of 1885. George also stated that the project has just not gotten around to correcting the information on the Mary Turner Project website. The most current research by a historian into her early life puts her birth at circa 1885, possibly December 1884.
At some point, Mary Hattie Graham gave birth to a son named Willie Lloyd Smith. His birth year varies in records between 1907 and 1910. The identity of his father is currently unknown. He was sometimes referred to by family members as Ocie Lee. Mary Hattie Graham also gave birth to a daughter named Leaster. The identity of her father is also unknown. Mary Hattie Graham married Hazel "Hayes" Turner on 11 February 1917, in Colquitt County, Georgia. He had been previously married. It is unknown if he had any children from his previous marriage.
Aftermath.
Following the lynchings, more than 500 black residents fled the area to escape the violence, although white people threatened to kill black workers who tried to leave. The lynching murders of Hayes and Mary Turner, and several other black people, caused a brief national outcry. They were highlighted in the NAACP's unsuccessful campaigns for Congress to pass federal anti-lynching legislation.
A man named Leamon Wright was arrested in late May 1918 in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1919, he was put on trial in Savannah, Georgia, instead of Brooks County, Georgia for safety reasons, on charges of murdering Hampton Smith and assaulting his wife. Shortly before the trial began, a group of men took an African-American prisoner from the Hamilton County Jail in Jasper, Florida claiming that they had the legal authority to do so. The man was later found dead in the Withlacoochee River, west of Valdosta, bound and with a gunshot wound to the head. "Buried outside the cemetery, 50 feet to the east and marked with wooden cross. Once had a fence around it but it had deteriorated badly and was removed. Local lore has it that this was a man found dead in the nearby Withlacoochee River. (Per Thomas McCulley) A