My friend T just returned from a visit to Ellisville, Mississippi. He went there with his 107 year old mother Mamie Lang Kirkland to document her return 100 years after she and her family fled in terror. Mamie had pledged never to return to Mississippi but recent events may have persuaded her that the time had come.
Mamie’s story began on September 3, 1908 when she was born in Ellisville. She remembers the panic that filled their small wooden house in 1915 when her father and a friend, came home after midnight fearing they would be lynched. By morning her entire family had packed up their lives and were headed to East St. Louis, [Illinois]. Her father survived but John Hartfield, who according to Mamie, left with her father that night in 1915, returned four years later against his advice. We’ve discovered articles and photographs documenting his lynching as one of the most brutal in the white terrorist period.
Back in February, T received a report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) called “Lynching in America,” documenting 3959 names of Africa American lynching victims from 1870-1950 (700 more than previously reported, and these are just the names that we know). Reading their report was one of the inciting incidents for this journey. It documents and displays a front-page article from a June 26, 1919 issue of the Jackson Mississippi Daily News, the states largest newspaper at the time, with the headline, “John Hartfield to be Lynched Today by Ellisville Mob at 5’oclock.”
Two attorneys from EJI met T and Mamie in Ellisville. This is from their account of the trip.
When a black man named John Hartfield was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi, on June 26, 1919 – hanged from a gum tree alongside nearby railroad tracks, riddled with bullets, and then burned – press coverage in newspapers throughout the country reported that ten thousand white men, women, and children had traveled from throughout the state to watch his gruesome murder. Photo postcards of the brutal spectacle were sold afterward and a gleeful spectator even boasted of cutting a finger from the corpse to keep as a souvenir. No reports, however, gave voice to the whispered horror, sadness, and fear of those who knew and loved John Hartfield, those who experienced his lynching as an act of terrorism aimed at intimidating the entire black community, and those who fled in fear for their own lives.
It has taken nearly 100 years for that side of the story to be told. Mrs. Mamie Lang Kirkland has been waiting.
Mamie’s escape from terror did not end when the family left Ellisville. T picks up the story.
Two years after settling in East St. Louis, she experienced one of the bloodiest race riots of the 20th century ignited by a rumor that a black man had killed a white man. Hundreds of African Americans died and more than six thousand fearing for their lives fled the city. Mamie’s family was one of them. They migrated north, moving into a predominantly white neighborhood in Alliance, Ohio where they were greeted by cross burnings on their lawn. Protected by caring white neighbors her family survived yet another assault.
In addition to the attorneys from EJI, New York Times reporter Dan Barry and a Time photographer joined T and Mamie in Mississippi.
Barry has written a moving account in his “This Land” column in today’s Times. You should read the entire piece.
Now, after many decades of saying she didn’t even want to see Mississippi on a map, Ms. Kirkland was here for the first time since 1915. Here in Ellisville.
Behind her loomed the Jones County Courthouse, built in 1908, the year of her birth. A marble Confederate soldier facing north in defiance, erected when she was 4. And two identical drinking fountains, with plaques covering up the distinguishing inscriptions: “White” and “Colored.”
T’s goal for this project is to create a 30 minute documentary. They’re off to good start raising funds for the film but they can use help. Any donation is appreciated. For those needing a tax deduction, checks can be written to Great Leap, Inc. Please indicate Mississippi Project on your memo section of your check. Checks can be mailed to 1730 W. Olympic Blvd. #300, Los Angeles, CA 90015. If you don’t need a tax deduction donations can also be sent via PayPal to T’s email address at: tarabu@sbcglobal.net.