The lynching of African American John Carter and a portion of the lynch mob in Little Rock (Pulaski County); May 1927.Courtesy of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System
John Carter (Lynching of)
In early May 1927, Little Rock (Pulaski County) experienced a wave of mob violence that culminated in the lynching of an African American named John Carter. This lynching and the rioting that followed is one of the most notorious incidents of racial violence in the state’s history. This event reveals much about the history of race relations in Little Rock, as well as the state’s struggle with its national image.
The episode began on April 30, 1927, when the dead body of a twelve-year-old white girl named Floella McDonald was discovered by a janitor in the belfry of the First Presbyterian Church in Little Rock. The next afternoon, police arrested the janitor and his seventeen-year-old mulatto son, Lonnie Dixon, for the murder. Realizing the outrage present in the city, the police secretly transported the Dixons to the Texarkana (Miller County) city jail. This tactic proved to be prudent, as that night thousands of people gathered outside the state penitentiary and city hall in Little Rock, determined to seek revenge against the Dixons.
Although mob activity in the city dissipated over the next few days, tensions over the murder of Floella McDonald remained high. Then, on May 4, a thirty-eight-year-old African American named John Carter allegedly assaulted a white woman and her daughter six miles west of downtown Little Rock. An armed posse quickly formed and searched the countryside for Carter. After finding him later that day, the angry mob hanged him from a telephone pole and shot him. A caravan of cars then dragged Carter’s mangled corpse through the streets of Little Rock, stopping at the intersection of 9th and Broadway, which at the time was the heart of the city’s African-American community.
For the next several hours, an estimated 5,000 white people rioted in the intersection and surrounding neighborhood. Carter’s body was set ablaze, with doors and furniture from neighborhood businesses and churches serving as fuel. As a result of warnings from the city’s black leaders, including Scipio A. Jones, no local residents ventured into the streets, and further bloodshed was avoided. Three hours after the rioting began, Governor John Martineau deployed the Arkansas National Guard to the scene, and upon arrival, they found a member of the mob directing traffic with a charred arm that had been broken off of Carter’s body. Soon thereafter, the crowd dispersed. The next day, the police detained a boy on Main Street for selling pictures of John Carter’s lynched body for fifteen cents a copy.
Local leaders—including Martineau, newspaper editors, and businessmen—strongly condemned the lynching and rioting. A grand jury was convened to investigate the incident, but it deadlocked and was dismissed without issuing indictments. The lynching also received immediate coverage from the national media, whose attention was already focused on Arkansas because of the devastating Mississippi River Flood of 1927. Consequently, local leaders were very concerned about damage to the state’s image and the negative impact that the lynching might have on the flood relief efforts.
Anxiety continued in Little Rock for the next several weeks. There were reports that dozens of African-American residents fled the city, some leaving the state entirely, and the Board of Censors banned two out-of-state black newspapers—the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier—from circulation out of fear that they were inflaming racial tensions. Then, on May 19, with 200 National Guardsmen protecting the courthouse because of bomb threats and rumors of another lynching, Lonnie Dixon was tried and sentenced to death. He was executed one month later.
Although it would be over twenty-five years until Little Rock experienced another major episode of racial unrest—the Central High Crisis—the lynching of John Carter left immediate scars on the city’s residents that would not heal for decades.
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Today is
American History, hidden from the world, and from whites who choose not to remember or know
The American History, is steeped with "Hidden Racism & Racist Facts" from the world, and the even from the family members of some who were racist at night, and good, law abiding, and loving bible toting husbands during the day.
Acts of Racism in America's past is as many as the granules of sand on the beach, but, conscientious leaders of racist communities during the past would ensure that no records of any racist act are allowed to be shown to the media outside of the local county.
Even Black News Papers were shut down in an effort to ensure that even the local black news does not cover the local lynching's, the local beatings, or the local Klan's raping of black woman.
Mr. John Carter, is only one of many stories of an unjustified lynching that took place in American's history post slavery.
The fact is, more blacks were beaten, lynched and even "enslaved" after slavery than the abuses that slaves dealt with during slavery years.
Slavery By Another Name, a documentary by Douglas Blackmon, does an excellent job at scratching the surface of the level of degradation blacks were subjected to post slavery. Slavery by Another Name, describes how black men were systematically, stolen from their lives, place in a corrupt jail system that was designed to allow the sheriff to sell the black arrested men as physical labor to any business the needed a physical body.
Mr. John Carter story, although, extremely brutal to the extent that it was "barbaric" treatment of a human being, his treatment was standard operational procedures for the treatment of blacks for upwards of 100 years after slavery.
Mr. John Carter subjection to barbaric attacks by whites in 1927 display the degree of inhuman and lacking compassion that whites were capable of, in that, Mr. John Carter was hung on a pole, then while hanging, he was shot several times, then his body was cut down, drug through the streets for all to see, and white crowd took his body to the center of the black community, at which time, the crowd destroyed local business and stacked the wood in the middle of the intersection, to include the doors of a church, and the place Mr. John Carter over the stack of wood and set him on fire.
The Purpose of this article is to simply remind American Citizens that the United States of America has a very bad history, most of which is hidden, and stories like this one of Mr. John Carter could fill many libraries.
The Evidence is right there in the records of all the cities of the U.S., and all of the news papers of the past in all the cities of the U.S....
To this day, thousands of stories of barbaric behavior of whites from 1870 through 1970, are yet to be brought to the public eye.
In My Opinion
ASKFMB
5/1/2012
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