The intersection of Capitol and Main streets in downtown Little Rock has few distinguishing characteristics: office space, a coffee shop, a parking lot, recently painted murals. But it sure has a past.
What was known as Fifth and Main in 1892 is where Henry James was lynched. The Arkansas Gazette's contemporary account noted his corpse dangled "under the shadow of a building where the words 'Friendship, Charity, and Benevolence' had been engraved."
The location, on what at the time was a busy thoroughfare, "was no accident," says historian Guy Lancaster. "There are rituals connected with lynching. They are often held in significant areas."
Lancaster, the author, co-author, and editor of several books on racial violence in Arkansas including the forthcoming "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" from the University of Arkansas Press, shared insights on Henry James during a Quapaw Quarter Association Preservation Conversation last month.
Conducted via Zoom, Lancaster apologized for not having any photographs to accompany his presentation while admitting his uneasiness at the way those sorts of photographs are often exploited--"the only pictures of [most] lynching victims are when they've died," he said.
Between 1877 and 1950, there were 493 reported "Racial Terror Lynchings" in Arkansas, according to the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative.
Mr. James met his fate on May 14, 1892, for an alleged assault on 5-year-old Maggie Doxey.
Here's what happened, according to Lancaster's entry on the subject in the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas: James, described in some newspapers as a 22-year-old mulatto, was originally from Augusta, Mo., and had moved south three years earlier. For the two weeks before his murder he had been working as a general utility man for the family of Charles Johnson, who lived at 19th and Gaines streets in Little Rock.
On Tuesday morning, May 10, the Johnsons were in Hot Springs, leaving their adopted daughter Maggie in the care of her maternal grandmother Mrs. Pennington, who lived with them. When Maggie's mother returned that afternoon, she learned that James had reportedly raped the child; a doctor said her injuries were serious, although an early report that she had died was false.
Johnson contacted Mayor H.L. Fletcher, who sent Detective Dave Adams to the home, which James had left. Adams advised the family to contact James and tell him that if he returned to their home, they would not punish him. James returned, was arrested, and eventually conveyed to the county jail.
Citizens were enraged. After they threatened to lynch him, James was secretly taken to the state penitentiary.
On the evening of May 13, a mob gathered at the county jail, intending to remove James. Discovering that he was not there, part of the crowd dispersed, but others went to see if he was in the penitentiary.
Hearing of the mob's approach, penitentiary manager Colonel S.M. Apperson told them James would be moved back to the county jail at 8 a.m. the following morning, "and then they could get him," according to the Arkansas Gazette.
Despite Apperson's warnings that they should wait until morning, the mob used a sledgehammer to break in at 12:15 a.m. May 14 and dragged James out.
Charles Johnson claimed "That was the man," and that was that.
After hauling James to 18th Street, where a suitable tree was not available (the Gazette offered no details as to why not), the crowd took him to Pythian Hall at the corner of Little Rock's Fifth and Main, slung a rope over the arm of a telephone pole, and lynched him. His body had only risen partway off the ground before a fusillade of bullets was fired into it (and into Pythian Hall).
Gov. James Philip Eagle happened to be passing through town as the last shots were fired. He arrested the man who fired the last shot, but the mob turned on Eagle and knocked him down, dislocating the governor's thumb in the process.
An anti-populist, Governor Eagle's chief concern had nothing to do with racial equality; it was that the lynching took place on a busy public thoroughfare.
Nearly everyone justified what had been done, include some "respectable" members of the Black community, according to the Gazette. Some dressed as if it was a society occasion, with several men in full evening dress.
The ropes used in the lynching quickly disappeared, cut up into souvenirs to be shared by spectators--standard operating procedure in lynching rituals, said Lancaster.
Despite there being no evidence that James committed the crime, there was no attempt to stop the lynching.
"This was a society unconcerned with any semblance of the truth," Lancaster said. He described a cloud of uncertainty around the event, which could have played out in various ways:
- If James assaulted Maggie Doxey; why did he return to the household?
- It's possible that Maggie invented the story or said something that was misunderstood and was judged true because of pre-existing prejudices.
- The family may have concocted a story to eliminate Mr. James.
"There are times when that higher law which discards legal forms, and marches in a straight line to the execution of its awful decrees, supersedes all other tribunals," The Gazette editorialized. "The brute who assaulted little Maggie Doxey yielded his worthless life to this higher law. His crime was the most atrocious of all crimes; and however we may deplore the methods of the mob, who will say he did not deserve his fate?"
The Appeal, an African American newspaper published in St. Paul, Minn., took an opposing stance: "Does any fair-minded person believe that had Henry James been white and Maggie Doxey Black and the circumstances otherwise exactly the same that there would have been any such exhibition in the defence [sic] of outraged virtue by the 'superior race'?"
Just Communities of Arkansas and other memorial groups, which recently placed a commemorative marker at Haven of Rest Cemetery to honor John Carter, a 38-year-old Black man who was shot, hanged and burned on May 4, 1927, plans to place markers honoring other Pulaski County lynching victims including Homer G. Blackman, Frank Moore, Jim Sanders, Lonnie Dixon, and Henry James.
Researching a different topic led to accumulating information on lynching, Lancaster said. "After doing a book on 'sundown towns' [thousands of towns across the country that between 1890 and 1968 drove out their Black populations] we put together an anthology, 'Bullets and Fire' [which he edited]. I lucked into this being a timely thing to do, having a broader impact by uncovering these stories.
"People are interested in this. Publishing research makes it easier to do more research."
Does Lancaster have any idea what became of Maggie Doxey?
"No, I don't," he said. "I keep meaning to try to follow her through the censuses, but I just haven't gotten around to sorting it all out yet."
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
kmartin@arkansasonline.com