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lightly and disappeared
 

What else was going on, in Farmers’ Review in 1902?

Drilled sideways with the words “negro” and “negroes” in this volume. The unsettling though unsurprising results follow.

No contexts were provided, beyond what is transcribed below. What did Farmers’ Review readers make of any of this? Did any wonder what really happened? why? how? who these people were?

In some cases, I’ve provided some contextualizing links. Unless otherwise indicated, these are all “current news” shorts. A constant and casual background noise of racism, hatred, violence — all conveniently somewhere else.

1. The negro named Parker, who attacked McKinley’s slayer, has been given a position at Washington. (January 8, 1902)
2. A mob attacked the jail at Flemingsburg, Ky., and wounded a guard in an attempt to lynch a negro prisoner. (January 22, 1902)
3. A Beaumont, Tex., gang of negro women and white men are believed to be responsible for the murder of twenty or more men reported missing there. (March 19, 1902)
4. Four negroes were killed and one probably fatally beaten not long ago by white men at Madrid Bend, Ky. The victims were accused of stealing chickens. (March 26, 1902)
5. Lawton, Okla., recently attempted the expulsion of all negroes from the town. A fierce fight followed in which one negro was fatally wounded. (April 9, 1902)
6. A negro charged with attacking a white girl at Rome, Ga., recently was taken from the jail by 4,000 men, who battered down the prison doors and hanged him to an electric light pole in the principal part of the city. (April 9, 1902)
7. Three men were killed, three mortally wounded and four seriously wounded as the result of an attempt of a sheriff to arrest a desperate negro at Tuscumbla, Ala. The negro was then shot and thrown into a burning building. (April 9, 1902)
8. Mary Peterson, 15 years old, was recently attacked and murdered and her brother killed to prevent discovery while returning from church at Des Moines, Ia. A negro suspect was arrested. (April 23, 1902)
9. By the will of the late Colonel John McKee, of Philadelphia, a colored man and former slave, his estate of $2,000,000 is left in trust for educational purposes, with a bequest for a Catholic church retory and convent in McKee City, N. J. At this place the will also directs that a school shall be built and maintained for the education of both colored and white orphan boys. Mr. MeKee was the richest negro in the United States. It is thought that relatives will contest the will. (April 30, 1902)

   John McKee (1821-1902), quite a story at wikipedia

10. Governor Davis of Arkansas recently pardoned a negro on condition that he go to Massachusetts, as he said that state sympathized with the race. (May 14, 1902)
11. Martinique, the scene of the recent volcanic eruptions, is a comparatively small island. It covers only 381 square miles. The population, however, is dense and numbers about 190,000 persons, or did before the recent catastophe. Of this number about 5,000 were laborers brought from India, and a like number consisted of laborers fom Africa. The white population numbers 10,000 and there were about 500 Chinese. The rest of the population consists of half-breeds and native negroes...
    from a one-paragraph article (filler) about “Martinique” — (May 21, 1902)
12. Severe measures have had to be adopted for the punishment and prevention of looting. The natives who escaped seem still dazed and helpless, and they are doing little or nothing to assist the workers. Some of the negroes seem absolutely insensible to their obligations, refusing to bury even their own dead.
    “Martinique and St. Vincent” (Re: aftermath of the volcano eruption) (May 21, 1902)
13. So she bade Martha, their old negro housekeeper, to hitch up Dobbins, and set forth for her drive. in a story “Opened by Mistake” by John H. Raftery, from the Chicago Record-Herald) (May 14, 1902)
14. Eight men were killed, over a score wounded and a block in the suburb of Atlanta, Ga., was recently burned in a race riot between the negroes and the white residents of that portion of the city. (May 21, 1902)
15. I tucked my old fiddle under my chin and scraped away at ‘The Arkansaw Traveler.’ I had not been playing for a minute before twenty feet were keepin time to the noise, and several negro waiters were doing Jubas. from “Statemen’s Violin Duel” (May 21, 1902)
16. A mob of 4,000 at Lansing, Texas, recently burned a negro criminal at the stake and tortured him while he was dying. A companion, whom he implicated in crime, was saved by officers who removed him to another section of the country. (May 28, 1902)
17. Booker Washington says an educated negro is very apt to be a “sassy nigger.” The chief ambition of the educated negro is to preach—that is to give advice and get out of work. Where, think you, did the negro get this idea about wearing a boiled shirt, doing no work, and giving advice about both this world and the next? Why, he borrowed it from us whites—the negro is simply a child, therefore an imitator. And yet we have been encouraging both whites and negroes alike to quit their work and talk about things instead of doing them.
    from “The Gospel of Work” by Elbert Hubbard in The Philistine. (June 4, 1902)
18. A negro preacher at Meridian, Miss., tried to organize a mob to wipe out the Kemper county white residents, but the latter armed and stopped the threatened uprising. (June 11, 1902)

    some (chilling) context, from 31 years prior —
    The Meridian Race Riot (1871), contributed by Sheren Sanders (January 11, 2018)
    concludes : “Fearing for their own safety, hundreds of blacks left Meridian. As there was no criminal action taken against anyone in the Meridian race riot, racial violence, led by the Klan, spread throughout the South.”
    source and Meridian race riot of 1871 (wikipedia)

    also — “Negro Uprising Frustrated, Mississippi Whites Arm and Intimidate Blacks Inclined to Riot.”
          Meridian, Miss., June 8. — A threatened uprising of the negroes, which so alarmed the people of Meridian, has been frustrated by the determined stand of the whites, who armed themselves and placed the leaders of the gang, Green Johnson and Nate Moore, under arrest.
          A call for the negroes to band themselves against the whites was addressed to Nate Moore, and was signed by a negro Baptist preacher named Buffin. The latter said that a mob of fifty negroes would form at Rio, Kemper County, twenty-five miles northeast of Meridian, and march to Green Johnson’s house, and from there through the county, kill all the whites, destroy their farms, and burn their houses.
          As soon as the whites learned of the purpose of the negroes, who outnumbered the whites two to one, they armed themselves with Winchester rifles, and in a short time had so intimidated the negroes that it is now thought that the upreising is at an end.
          The people of threatened districts, however, are very much alarmed, and will be on the alert until all danger shall have passed. The people of Marion, from which news of the uprising and threats first reached the city, are much wrought up and prepared for emergencies at a moment’s notice.
    The New York Times (June 9, 1902)

    see also W. E. B Du Bois his Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935), especially chapter 16, “Back toward Slavery,” for context.

19. Two negro boys who were under arrest charged with killing Miss Benson on a farm in Rowan County, N. C., were recently taken from jail at Salisbury, N. C., and hanged to a tree in the railroad yards. The members of the mob numbered 50 and wore masks. (June 18, 1902)
20. Ferrey Chesney, a negro, said to be the oldest man in Tennessee, died on his birthday, July 4, at the age of 126 years, in his cabin at the summit of Copper Ridge. (July 16, 1902)
21. Two negroes were lynched at Philippe, W. Va., July 23. (July 30, 1902)
22. A Georgia woman has asked the privilege of officiating as hangman when the negro murderer of her father is executed August 22. (July 30, 1902)
23. “No Defendant.”
          Representative Williams of Mississippi has a new negro story, says the Washington Post.
          “Are you the defendant?” asked a man in the courtroom, speaking to an old negro.
          “No, boss,” was the reply, “I ain’t done nothing to be called names like that. I’se got a lawyer here who does the defensing.”
          “Then who are you?”
          “I’s the gentleman what stole the chickens.” (July 30, 1902)
24. A negro accused of murder was recently lynched at Leesburg, Va., almost in sight of the national capital. (August 6, 1902)
25. The degree of Master of Arts was recently bestowed on Moses Leonard Frazier, a negro, by Columbia University. He was born in slavery in New Orleans 42 years ago. He was a hairdresser and chiropodist for 20 years, and then concluded that he would enter college, at Alliance, O. He graduated from there in 1896, and went that fall to Cambridge, but did not like it there. He began the course in the New York Law School. He was admitted to the bar in New York and also conducted a school of dermatology and chiropody. He intends to go to Heidelberg. (August 20, 1902)
    

    New York Law School, class of 1899
    Moses Leonard Frazier is believed to have been New York Law School’s first African-American graduate. A December 1902 issue of Successful American (published by The Writers’ Press Association) refers to Frazier as “a shining light” and “the only negro who was ever graduated from the School of Political Science in Columbia University.” Frazier received an M.A. from that school in 1902. He had received his Ph.B. degree from Mt. Union College in 1896, and a Ph.M. in 1899, the same year he graduated from New York Law School. In 1903 he received an LL.D. degree from the law school of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, where he served as dean.
    Although the extent to which he practiced law is uncertain, Frazier was active in a number of business ventures, including a real estate firm, a barber shop, and serving as president of the Academy of Chiropody & Dermatology.
    source

26. In a race riot at Tupelo, Miss., August 21, growing out of the stealing of some corn by a negro, three negroes were killed and one white man injured. (August 27, 1902)
27. “A Courtesy in Passing.”
          When the late Samuel G. King was mayor of Philadelphia, he was walking out Chestnut street one afternoon with William S. Bunn. It was early in King’s administration, and the question of negro policemen was one of general local interest. He and Bunn walked on the subject from the mayor’s office, then at Fifth street, until they neared Broad, when they were bumped against by a couple of skylarking gamines — a newsboy and a shoeblack. The dignified old mayor turned, patted one of the boys on the head, and asked:
          “Now, what is your name, my son?” “Carney—Dick Carney,” replied the gamin, eyeing his honor suspiciously.
          Bunn, too, was puzzled; but his amazement grew when the mayor turned, faced him, pulled the boy gently around, and went on:
          “Well, Mr. Carney, permit me to introduce my friend, Mr. Bunn, formerly governor of Idaho. Br. Bunn, Mr. Carney.”
          Bunn and the bootblack gasped, mechanically shook hands and stared at the mayor, who courteously raised his hat, said “Good afternoon, Mr. Carney,” and then continued on his walk, taking of the discussion of the “foorce,” where he had been interrupted by the collision. — Philadelphia Times. (September 10, 1902)
28. One day a creole from Matagorda sailed his greasy, fish-smelling lugger into the slip at Galveston and made fast to the docks. Then he put a sign on his mast which read: “For sail. $25,” and went to be a cook in a dingy eating-house in the Strand. Upon the stern of this odorous lugger, in drab letters upon dirty green, was the vessel’s name, Fleur de Lys of Matagorda.
          The other day I wandered down to the Strand to the slip where the Mosquito fleet lay shimmering in the sub. Beyond, against the otuer dock, lay the iron-clad Ikball, an English ship, loading with rice and cotton. At the corner of the slip was a dry goods box, with a bit of awning above it, a fly-specked glass case upon it, and hehind it a sunburnt, black-eyed, slim girl of perhaps 15, who was ladling out icecream and lemonade to a gang of sweaty stevedores. Gigantic negroes, swarthy Portuguese, grinning Irishmen, stolid Dutchmen, bought treacle candy, water melons, ice cream and lemonade, and pulled their forelocks, or touched their oily caps when she spoke to them. Across the warped front of this “stand” was the sign, “Polly Gurney. Refreshments.”
          Just beyond her, moored to the docks, lay the Fleur de Lys, the deck green with melons, red with chains of red peppers, ornate with piles of peaches, gorgeous shells and cut flowers. Forward there were coops of spring chickens, and aft, under an awning in the shade, were cases of “new-laid” eggs...
    ex The “Fleur de Lys.” — Chicago Record-Herald (September 17, 1902)
29. Seventy-eight persons were killed and more than 100 others injured as the result of panic caused by an alarm of fire during a convention of negro Baptists at Birmingham, Ala., September 17th. Booker T. Washington was present but escaped injury. (September 24, 1902)

    This would the Shiloh Baptist Church “stampede” (wikipedia; points to several contemporary accounts, including The New York Times — “NEGRO DEAD NUMBER 115; No White People Killed in the Birmingham Panic. Majority of the Victims Died of Suffocation — Vain Efforts of Leaders to Check the Panic.” (September 21, 1902))

30. Thomas Clark, a young negro of Corinth, Miss., who had confessed to having murdered Mrs. Whitfield, a white woman, was burned at the stake in the presence of a crowd of citizens September 28th. (October 1, 1902)
31. Three white men and eight negroes were killed in a race riot at Littleton, Ala., twenty-five miles west of Birmingham. The riot was caused by a crowd of negroes attacking a white woman who was passing over a railroad bridge. (October 22, 1902)
32. A negro charged with having assaulted two white women was lynched at Sullivan, Indiana, November 20, by a party of 600 men. (November 26, 1902)
33. Three negroes were recently sold [?] for vagrancy in Lancaster, Ky. (December 3, 1902)

    “The defining feature of the Black Codes was broad vagrancy law, which allowed local authorities to arrest freedpeople for minor infractions and commit them to involuntary labor.”
    wikipedia and, specifically to Kentucky, wikpedia

    loitering (wikipedia)

34. A recent appeal for an injunction against the State Board of Canvassers of Virginia on behalf of negroes dis-franchised by the recent legislation was denied by Chief Justice Fuller of the United States Circuit Court on the ground that he had no jurisdiction. The case will be appealed to the Supreme Court. (December 3, 1902)
35. in “Meeting of Agricultural Students.”
    Mr. [Mortimer] Levering declared that the two greatest instruments signed by Abraham Lincoln were the emancipation proclamation and the bill for the establishing of the land-grant colleges. The one had emancipated the negro race, the other had emancipated the youths of American farms... (December 10, 1902)
36. A negro who had murdered a policeman was lynched at Pittsburg, Kansas, on Christmas day. (December 31, 1902)
     

25 March 2022