One hundred years ago today, on April 29, 1918, five followers of the late Charles T. Russell, the founder of what would become known as Jehovah's Witnesses, were jailed in the northeast Arkansas city of Walnut Ridge because of their opposition to American involvement in World War I. A mob later attacked the four men and one woman while they were still in jail. They were whipped, tarred and feathered, then driven out of town.
To our lasting shame, this brutal action in Walnut Ridge was merely one example of many instances when Arkansans took extraordinary means to silence opposition to the world war.
Resistance to the draft during World War I was extensive and widespread. Nationally, a total of 337,649 men either refused to report for induction or deserted after induction. A total of 8,732 Arkansas draftees deserted or refused to report, representing almost 8 percent of the Arkansas total.
Perhaps the most significant resistance occurred across the border in Oklahoma, in what was known as the Green Corn Rebellion. While organized resistance in Arkansas never reached that level, historian James F. Willis has written that "armed encounters occurred in Searcy, Polk, and Cleburne counties during the spring and summer of 1918."
The best known of these violent encounters occurred in a rural area east of Quitman in the rolling hills of southern Cleburne County. Among the farmers living in the area was Tom Adkisson, whose son Bliss had refused to report for military induction. Adkisson was a member of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Russell in the late 1870s. This movement evolved into the Watch Tower Tract Society and in 1931 became known as Jehovah's Witnesses. Among Russell's teachings was a strict condemnation of military service; the sect prohibited participation in governmental affairs altogether.
On Saturday, July 6, 1918, the sheriff of Cleburne County and a posse of four made a sweep through the southern part of the county in search of draft evaders and deserters. Their efforts came up empty-handed until later that night when they reached the home of Tom Adkisson. A gunfight resulted in the wounding of a posse member, whereupon the sheriff and his men abandoned the encounter and left the wounded man behind. Adkisson asked a neighbor to evacuate the wounded posse member, but he died nonetheless.
A later battle resulted in no deaths but prompted the governor to send 30 Guardsmen who left Little Rock in six Cadillacs, with two Vickers machine guns stowed in the cars. Fortunately, the "Russellites" had left the area, and eventually they surrendered. Both Tom and Bliss Adkisson were sentenced to time in the state prison. Bliss Adkisson did not live to finish his prison term, as he was killed by an armed prisoner during a prison break.
I would like to report that Arkansans developed a greater sensitivity to the constitutional rights of Jehovah's Witnesses by the time World War II erupted, but while violence seems to have declined, harassment of Witnesses continued--and sometimes it was the children who suffered the most.
In 2005, Stephen A. Smith, who was then a professor of communications at the University of Arkansas, published a detailed study of how two schools in Washington County punished the children of Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing to pledge allegiance to the American flag before and during World War II.
The Witnesses oppose the pledge because of an injunction against worshipping graven images in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.
The Rock Springs School in rural Washington County did not wait until America joined the war to begin enforcing a mandatory pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag by all children. This was quite legal because in June 1940 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled mandatory pledges of allegiance to be constitutional. The first student to be dismissed for failure to recite the pledge of allegiance was a 10-year-old named Joanne Adair.
In 2003, Joanne Adair recalled her expulsion in a letter: "... there was a lot of talk among the congregation about whether there would be a problem in the fall over the flag salute issue. I don't know what had been said to my parents before school began, but I was told to politely refuse to salute but that I was to stand while the other children saluted. I'm not sure how many days I went to school before I was expelled. Mostly I remember being embarrassed and wanting to cry. I also remember being frightened when I had to refuse to salute. I can't say I was afraid of the teacher, but to this day I remember him telling me I should be ashamed of myself and to go home. This is really the only recollection I have of him."
Joanne's attempts to return to school were unsuccessful, and in 1944 the family returned to New Mexico.
The Cane Hill School district was home to several Witness families, and the school situation there not a happy one for Witness children. Eleven-year-old Kathleen Cannon was sent home during her first week of class in September 1941. First-grade twins Gay and Ray Braly were sent home along with an older sister after four days.
Kathleen Cannon, an older student at Cane Hill, was sent to the school principal, Kate Finley, for refusing to recite the pledge. After a long and intense counseling session which included several shakings of the student's shoulders, Finley beat Kathleen's legs with a black rubber hose. When the Cannon parents appealed to the school board, one member, Stanley Yates, told them: "We don't want to expel her, we want to whup [sic] her. We think another whupping might do her some good."
I wish I could report that Jehovah's Witnesses receive better treatment today in Arkansas, given that the state is home to about 134 congregations--24 of them Spanish-speaking. However, that might not be the case. In 2013 a resident of Centerton in Benton County fired 19 pistol shots at the car of visiting Witnesses.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County, where he is regularly visited by a very nice Jehovah's Witness. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.
Editorial on 04/29/2018