6 Oct 1906 - The Lynching of Cornelius Richard Robinson and William Thompson in Prichard, Alabama
The Lynching of Cornelius Richard Robinson and William Thompson in Prichard, Alabama
By Sarah Sexton Miller
In late August of 1906, a Mobile, Alabama man named William Thompson was accused of enticing two 8-year-old girls, Lillian Mae Savell and Edna Mae Fowler (The Birmingham News 13), into a vacant house and raping them (The Montgomery Advertiser 1). Thompson denied the charges (The Montgomery Advertiser 1). On August 30th a mob of 500 men broke into the jail yard in Mobile, intent on lynching him, but were stopped by armed sheriff’s deputies. The deputies then allowed a small group of men into the jail so they could see that Thompson was not there. Just moments before the mob arrived, he had been spirited away on a train to Birmingham (Franklin County Times 3), where he was to be held in the Jefferson County jail (The Birmingham News 3) for his own safety.
The following day, yet another mob of 300, led by “a veteran of not less than six lynchings” approached the jail, but this time they were greeted by four volunteer militia companies. They once again were allowed to send a small group of men to search the jail, and eventually the mob dispersed (The Baldwin Times 1).
On September 13th, the Birmingham News reported that Judge O.J. Semmes of the Mobile city court would not hold a trial for Thompson while the militia was deployed to Mobile to keep the peace, stating “Such a trial would be nothing more than judicial murder, and should such convictions exist when Thompson is brought here for trial I shall send him back to Birmingham to await until the people have become quiet (The Birmingham News 3),” and so it was that William Thompson remained in the Jefferson County jail for the duration of September.
Meanwhile, Richard Cornelius Robinson was just seventeen years old, when, on October 2nd Ruth Sossaman, an eleven or twelve-year-old white girl (reports vary), claimed she was raped in a secluded spot near her home. The Montgomery Advertiser described the assault in detail, saying the girl was “returning to her home near the intersection of Florida Street and the Mobile, Jackson and Kansas City tracks, about 11:00 in the morning, [when she] was pounced upon by a negro who she described as about 19 years old, and [he] assaulted her.” It goes on to say that two doctors confirmed that Ruth was assaulted and that she described her assailant to police, who, several hours later, arrested Richard Robinson and brought him before Ruth. The police said her identification was “not positive,” but she “thought he was the same man who attacked her.” A “prominent man” then stated that Ruth positively identified Robinson without hesitation (Gulf City on Powderbox and Grave Fears are Entertained 1). Obviously, this article is full of inconsistencies as to whether the identification of Robinson as the suspect was truly certain. On the same page, The Montgomery Advertiser also refers to Ruth’s identification as “almost positive (Gulf City on Powderbox and Grave Fears are Entertained 1). According to the Washington Post, Ruth was found unconscious, (Two Shot by Mob 1) but this was not mentioned in the Montgomery Advertiser’s story.
A deputy sheriff named Fatch knew that taking Robinson to the jail in the city would result in a lynching, so he took him to a train station in Eight Mile, from whence he, like Thompson, could be transferred to safety in Birmingham (The Washington Post 1). While in the Jefferson County Jail, Robinson adamantly denied attacking Ruth Sossaman (The Montgomery Advertiser 1).
Back in Mobile, an angry mob began to gather downtown, believing Robinson to be incarcerated in the jail there. Fiery speakers incited the mob, asserting that “several attacks upon white women” had taken place in the previous weeks. By 6:30 five hundred men filled the intersection of Dauphin and Royal streets, urging one another to kill Richard Robinson. Soon the crowd was marching upon the jail (The Washington Post 1).
The sheriff of Mobile County at the time, Sheriff John F. Powers (The Tuscaloosa News 1), informed the leaders of the mob that Robinson was not at the jail, and allowed about 40 men from the crowd to inspect the jail to prove he was telling the truth. The sheriff’s plan to avoid bloodshed was futile, however, and a man attempted to breech the building, resulting in in a gunfight that took the life of a popular officer of the railroad who had been acting as deputy, Roy Hoyle, and injured Alderman Sidney Lyons, chairman of the city council of Mobile. Hoyle had been shot in the left lung, and Lyons through the hand (The Washington Post 1).
About a dozen men took part in the gunfight, which temporarily caused the mob to scatter. The Governor, who was in Mobile to view hurricane damage at the time, ordered three militia companies to come to the city as soon as possible. At around 10:00 p.m., the mob once again descended upon the jail, and once again, the sheriff permitted them to search the jail. Finding nothing, they finally dispersed (The Washington Post 1).
Meanwhile, Robinson was incarcerated in the Jefferson County jail, where he joined William Thompson. The two were scheduled to return to Mobile together, where each would stand trial. On October 3rd, the Montgomery Advertiser Reported that Governor Jelks was “opposed to mob law, in which the guilty seldom are punished and the innocent are usually sufferers“ (Gulf City on Powderbox and Grave Fears are Entertained 1). On October 4th the Natchez Democrat wrote that the “Trouble May be Over” in Mobile (Natchez Democrat 8).
The trouble, however, was far from over. On October 6th, Sheriff Powers and Deputy Charles Green, accompanied by a Mobile newspaper reporter named C.J. Flournoy, took the two men from the Jefferson County jail and boarded a train bound for Mobile. Sheriff Powers, who all along had feared a lynch mob would take the prisoners (The Tuscaloosa News 1), would later say that the telegram sent by the governor instructing him to travel via Montgomery, where soldiers would board the train and escort the group to Mobile, had not arrived before they departed Birmingham traveling to Mobile via Selma, in an apparent attempt to avoid the expected mob (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1). Indeed, two thousand men had already attempted to meet the sheriff the previous day but were “disappointed” to learn he had taken another route (The Tuscaloosa News 1).
An October 7th article in the Fort Worth Record and Register detailed how the men were being transported back to Mobile when eight men with masks boarded the train at the Mount Vernon station. Five of them held the lawmen, whom they had disarmed, at gunpoint. The vigilantes said they wanted to hang the prisoners outside of Mobile, away from the troops, to spare the lives of innocent people (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1) who might be swept up in a frenzy of mob violence as the streets of Mobile were filled with thousands of people awaiting the arrival of the prisoners (The Brewton Standard 2).
The vigilantes made the conductor move all the first-class passengers to the rear seats and the sleeper cars to make room for more mob members to board at the station in Plateau, located between Prichard and Africa Town. The leader of the mob, still wearing a mask, in an apparent attempt to legitimize the impending actions of the mob, stated that the people who boarded the train there were Mobile’s “leading businessmen” and that the party had carefully considered and agreed upon their course of action (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1).
Yet another large group of men boarded the train at Creola, also wearing masks and bringing with them straps and ropes. When the train reached the station in Prichard, the men disembarked and walked some 100 yards down Holt Road (Franklin County Times 4) and 25 yards into the woods, taking Thompson and Robinson with them (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1).
While armed men stood guard on the main road to keep the local African Americans from stepping in, twenty-five members of the mob (Franklin County Times 4), who professed to be carrying out the will of the people, quietly lynched the men from two of Mobile county’s famous live oaks. They ordered that no one fire a shot (Mobile Mob Hangs Negroes 1), possibly to prevent anyone from ending their suffering quickly, or possibly to keep from drawing attention to what they were doing while the perpetrators were still present.
Thompson was the first to be hung, and slowly strangled to death. The teenaged Richard Robinson was next. Before hanging him, the leader of the mob indicated to the press representative who had accompanied the mob, that Robinson had confessed, but upon questioning Robinson himself, the reporter stated that Robinson was scared and said “he was not the man.” Richard Robinson was hanged at 12:38 in the afternoon. By 2:00, two thousand people had descended upon the scene, where the bodies still hung from the trees. Some of them took “relics” of the lynching, such as pieces of clothing, bark from the trees, and pieces of the ropes (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1).
At around 4:00 the justice of the peace impaneled a jury, which concluded that the men had died at the hands of unknown parties, and they were buried the next day in a potter’s field (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1).
Governor Jelks immediately made the telegraphs concerning the prisoner transfer public, showing that he had received a telegram the night before the lynching from citizens of Mobile asking that the militia accompany the prisoners back to Mobile for their protection. He then sent a telegraph to Sheriff Powers in Birmingham, ordering him to bring the prisoners by way of Montgomery to pick up the soldiers, but as we know, the sheriff purportedly did not receive the telegram and took the prisoners by way of Selma instead (The Fort Worth Record and Register 1), sealing their fate.
Ruth Sossaman was Richard Robinson’s alleged victim. The 1910 census (Ancestry.com) places her in Napoleonville, Mobile County, Alabama. Edna Mae Fowler, alleged victim of Thompson, also lived in Napoleonville in 1910 (Ancestry.com), and Lillian Mae Savell, another alleged victim of Thompson, lived in Napoleonville in 1900 (Ancestry.com 2). It is quite possible that all three of these girls were living there in 1906 at the time of their assaults. If so, it seems likely that all three would have been attacked by a serial pedophile, yet when Ruth was attacked, William Thompson was behind bars, and Richard Robinson was only 17 years old. Could a different man altogether have attacked all three girls? It is, of course, possible that one or both of the accused men committed the crimes, but without the benefit of a trial to bring to light any evidence against them, they will forever be innocent, and no justice will be served for the victims, whose attacker may have spent the rest of his life a free man.
An article in the Guntersville Democrat on October 11th, 1906, made no attempt to hide the rampant racism that was used to justify the denial of rights to not only William Thompson and Richard Robinson, but other lynching victims as well. It talked of “white girls ravished by negro brutes” and asked, “Does the law protect a mad dog, or a rattlesnake (Justice Satisfied if Law is Not 2)?” Dehumanizing words such as these were used to justify the brutal treatment of African Americans in the south, declaring them to be beneath the protection of the law.
The article goes on to declare “These brutes were far greater despoilers than dumb animals, [and] Mobile has plenty of company.” It then names several lynchings that took place across America on the same day that Thompson and Robinson were lynched, before asking “Has the white race nothing better to do than protect negro rapists, murderers, and thugs? That was the chief occupation of the authorities on Saturday last,” deriding white lawmen for attempting to protect lynching targets (The Guntersville Democrat 2). A reasonable person might wonder, however, why so many accusations against African American men were taking place at the same time and in such great numbers in the south but were not occurring in the states that had remained in the Union during the Civil War.
The same article tells of a man in New York named Bishop Wallace who urged other African Americans to “rise [up] in their own defense,” then, in an obvious threat, suggests he make his speeches in Mobile, Atlanta, Macon, or Montgomery (The Guntersville Democrat 2). Clearly, blatant bias and racism played a role in this lynching and many others that were carried out without evidence or a trial, resulting in the deaths of fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and even pregnant women across the south.
Article Links:
Census Links:
Works Cited
Ancestry.com. "Edna M Fowler." 1910 United States Federal Census. Lehi: Ancestry.com, 1910. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/29252838?h=113bbf>.
—. "Lillian Mae Savell." 1900 United States Federal Census. Lehi, n.d. 2. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/29252773?h=9363e1>.
—. "Ruth Elizabeth Sossaman." 1910 United States Federal Census. Lehi: Ancestry.com, n.d. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/29252910?h=c6bae9>.
Franklin County Times. "No Title." Franklin County Times 6 Sep 1906: 3. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104743746/first-lynching-attempt-on-william/>.
—. "Two Negroes Lynched Near Mobile." Franklin County Times 18 Oct 1906: 4. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104774232/lynching-of-willam-thompson-and-richard/>.
"Mobile Mob Hangs Negroes." The Fort Worth Record and Register 07 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 30 June 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104740965/thompson-and-richard-robinson-lynching-i/>.
Natchez Democrat. "Trouble May Be Over." Natchez Democrat 04 Oct 1906: 8. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104743464/trouble-may-be-over-richard-robinson/>.
The Baldwin Times. "Mob Storms Mobile Jail in an Effort to Hang Negro Rapist, Wm Thompson." The Baldwin Times 06 Sep 1906: 1. Web. 1 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104744078/mob-storms-mobile-jail-in-an-effort-to/>.
The Birmingham News. "No Trial While Militia is Present." The Birmingham News 13 Sep 1906: 3. Web. 1 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104743884/no-trial-while-militia-is-on-hand/>.
—. "Special to the Birmingham News." The Birmingham News 31 Aug 1906: 13. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104773350/william-thompson/>.
The Brewton Standard. "The Mobile Lynching." The Brewton Standard 11 Oct 1906: 2. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104781788/willam-thompson-and-richard-robinson/>.
The Fort Worth Record and Register. "Mobile Mob Hangs Negroes." The Fort Worth Record and Register 07 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 30 June 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104740965/thompson-and-richard-robinson-lynching-i/>.
The Guntersville Democrat. "Justice Satisfied if Law is Not." The Guntersville Democrat 11 Oct 1906: 2. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104782514/justice-satisfied-if-law-is-not-thompso/>.
The Montgomery Advertiser. "Gulf City on Powderbox and Grave Fears are Entertained." The Montgomery Advertiser 04 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104746469/gulf-city-on-powder-box-and-grave-fears/>.
The Tuscaloosa News. "Fears Prisoners Will Be Lynched." The Tuscaloosa News 07 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 01 Jul 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104780238/fears-prisoners-will-be-lynched/>.
The Washington Post. "Two Shot by Mob." The Washington Post 02 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 1 July 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104742506/the-first-attempt-in-the-lynching-of-ric/>.
"Two Shot by Mob." The Washington Post 02 Oct 1906: 1. Web. 1 July 2022. <https://www.newspapers.com/clip/104742506/the-first-attempt-in-the-lynching-of-ric/>.
Comments
Post a Comment