'Hard history': Shiloh Museum program recalls 1856 murders

"I don't know when I was born. When the Civil War ended, I was 'bout four or five years old."

"Part white children sold for more than black children. They used them for house girls."

"I toted water for a whole year when I was a boy about eight years old. I was the water boy for the field hands. Later I worked out in the fields myself. They would make me sit on my mammy's row to help keep her up."

'They'd put you up on the block and sell you. That is just what they'd do -- sell you. They'd take your clothes off just like you was some kind of a beast."

"You better not say you were free them days. If you did, they'd tell you to get out of there. You better not stop on this side of the Mason-Dixon Line either. You better stop on the other side. Whenever a [Negro] got so he couldn't mind, they'd take him and whip him. They'd whip the free [Negros] just the same as they did the slaves."

"When I first heard them talking about freedom, I didn't know what freedom was. Master said, 'You all free now. You can go where you want to.' They never give you a thing when they freed you."

No one knows exactly what life was like for enslaved people of color in pre-Civil War Arkansas. These words are from "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938." Stored in the Library of Congress, it contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery, including some from Northwest Arkansas.

According to the website, "these narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration. At the conclusion of the slave narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the 17-volume 'Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.' In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition."

Unfortunately, none of their own words exist to tell the stories of Randall, Aaron and Anthony, three enslaved African-American men who lived and died in Washington County before the Civil War.

"What we know about them is almost entirely based on what we know about their enslavers," says Margaret Holcomb, a local historian who will speak March 7 at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. "Randall was enslaved by the family of David Wilson Williams. Aaron and Anthony were enslaved by James Monroe Boone. They lived in Richland Township, southeast of Fayetteville, near current day Elkins.

"It is known that Randall was around 26 years old in 1856; Aaron and Anthony's ages are unknown," Holcomb adds. "Most likely they all three served as field hands, as part of an enslaved labor force that transformed the native hunting ground and territorial wilderness around Richland Creek into an agricultural center."

Holcomb is a member of the Washington County Community Remembrance Project Coalition, created in 2018. RoAnne Elliott is its coordinator.

"In April 2018, two members of the coalition attended the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., by the Equal Justice Initiative," Elliott picks up the story. "The National Memorial is dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people who were terrorized by lynching, humiliated by segregation and the indignities of Jim Crow. The memorial is intended as a sober and meaningful gathering space for reflection on our nation's history of racial injustice, and on the strength, resistance and resilience of Black people.

"Inspired and deeply moved by the experience," Elliott and a colleague returned to Fayetteville and "shared our thoughts and feelings about it with a friend, who then organized a meeting of people interested in establishing a memorial for victims of racial terror in our area's history."

"Similar to the Equal Justice Initiative monument, the Washington County marker, with the names of actual victims, is planned as a way to honor the lives of mistreated and murdered black people," Elliott explains.

Randall, Aaron, and Anthony are the three names on that list.

"The three men were accused of attempting to rob and then assaulting James Boone on the night of May 29, 1856," Holcomb continues the story. "After Boone's death, they were incarcerated and tried for murder. The case was built on hearsay."

According to Holcomb, the court released Aaron for lack of evidence, and a jury acquitted Anthony from the charge of murder.

"Nonetheless, Aaron and Anthony were lynched by a white mob on July 7, 1856, somewhere between Fayetteville and the Boone farm," Holcomb says. "A Fort Smith newspaper account reported that some members of the court tried to discourage the mob, but to no effect."

Randall was refused a retrial and was hanged by the state of Arkansas on Aug. 1, 1856, Holcomb says, most likely on Gallows Hill, near the flagpole of what is now the Fayetteville National Cemetery.

No one knows what happened to any of their bodies.

"Enslavement is a cruel system of dehumanization, effectively removing the enslaved individual's identity and personhood," says Holcomb. And just because enslaved people in Northwest Arkansas weren't picking cotton in the brutal Mississippi heat didn't mean their quality of life was vastly improved.

"In town, they served in hotels, liveries and in the homes and businesses of wealthy trades people. In the countryside, they served as field hands with some in domestic service. Some were leased to other white families who could not afford to purchase an enslaved person outright," Holcomb explains.

Of the 9,936 people living in Washington County in 1850, 1,199 of them were enslaved African-Americans and 14 were freed people of color. And "although free blacks may have enjoyed certain liberties, they too were subjected to the same social standards as those who were enslaved," Holcomb says.

The Washington County Community Remembrance Project Coalition, made up of "active community members, local historians, University of Arkansas administrators and faculty, young professionals and retired persons, black people and white people," wants to create the memorial to "reflect upon the truth that enslavement, racial injustice and racial terror are parts of the history of our community," Elliott says.

"The marker will be placed in the historic Oaks Cemetery [in Fayetteville], established in 1867 as the first planned black cemetery in Washington County," Holcomb says. "This placement was chosen out of a desire to venerate the three men in a sacred space."

Holcomb is a native of Washington County who is, in her retirement, researching family and local history. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Joseph Holcomb, first mayor of Springdale, and his first wife, Cener Boone, who was part of the hard history of 1856.

Elliott, the coordinator of the Washington County Remembrance Project, relocated from Minnesota after retirement from her career as an educator and school district administrator and is now an active community member in Fayetteville.

Their program, "Facing Hard History: Racial Terror Lynching in Washington County," is scheduled for 2 p.m. March 7 at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.

"When we talk about Ozark history, we mean everyone's history in the Arkansas Ozarks, everyone's stories," says Allyn Lord, director of the Shiloh Museum. "That means we don't just tell happy stories or stories of proud moments, but also -- and perhaps more importantly -- stories of hardship, pain, loss, death, mistreatment, discrimination and similar topics. No history is without these issues, and if we don't tell them, we won't ever learn from them. They may be, in fact, the most important stories to tell, although difficult and heartbreaking.

"There's never a good or bad time to talk about difficult issues," she adds. "The important thing is that you do talk about them."

NAN Our Town on 03/05/2020