'Dangling Between Heaven & Earth': Tuscaloosa's Violent History

Disclaimer: This story includes subject matter, language and accounts of violence that may not be suitable for all readers.

VANCE, AL — Elmore Clark had been on the run for three sweltering days in August and staved off the late summer heat by hiding out in an old smokehouse owned by a Black family in Vance. The year is 1933 and moments before his capture by police, the 28-year-old Black man affectionally nicknamed "Honey" is nursing multiple gunshot wounds and likely wouldn't be alive if not for the generosity of his sympathetic hosts.

Just days before, Clark was left with no choice but to use a friend's bullet-riddled body as a human shield in front of a firing squad on the side of a highway between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Wounded, but alive, Clark survived by playing dead and waiting until the lynch mob's headlights faded to provide the cover of darkness. Then he ran.

By nothing short of divine providence, the young man narrowly survived becoming the fourth lynching victim in Tuscaloosa over a six-week span that year. But the violence was far from over.

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Fast-forward to last week, when Tuscaloosa Tourism & Sports took two buses of officials and dignitaries on a tour of the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Trail. As I previously wrote in a column, there was so much history I had never heard about my hometown and I'm thankful that an emphasis is being placed on preserving and remembering our past.

Among the stops on the trail is the Old Tuscaloosa Jail, which was at the center of several high-profile lynchings during the Jim Crow days that followed the Civil War. There's a historical marker that was placed by the Equal Justice Initiative several years ago in front of the Old Tuscaloosa Jail to commemorate the lives lost to senseless, racially-motivated violence. This got me interested, so I set out to learn as much as I could about the stories mentioned on the marker.

Since then, I've compiled original newspaper accounts from each of the killings attributed to lynchings, in the hopes that the stories will not only be contextualized, but preserved to live on as a micro-anthology of Tuscaloosa's bloody past.

But before we delve into the history, here are some key themes to consider when reading the narrative from local newspaper accounts:

• In most cases, lynchings would not be reported by newspapers in the communities they happened in, for fear of bad publicity. But wire reports from those communities were often submitted to newspapers in bigger cities to satisfy the demand for violent and salacious content.
• While newspapers did become slightly more progressive as the 1900s moved forward, many of the White-owned papers expressed public support for the lynch mobs.
• Accounts of lynchings often varied, depending on the slant of the newspaper or wire service.
• All but one of these cases involves one or more Black men accused of assault by a White woman. All but one were killed before they were ever able to plea their innocence at trial.
• Another consistent theme is that the newspapers published the testimony of White victims as fact, taking them solely on their word, thus becoming the primary source for the narrative.

Andy Burke (July 1884)

TUSCALOOSA, AL — It's a brutally hot summer and tempers are flaring in Tuscaloosa. It would also go on to be a most violent year across the country, with 51 African-Americans killed in lynchings in 1884 alone.

Andy Burke, a 22-year-old man a wire report in the Montgomery Advertiser hatefully referred to as "coal-black," was the first confirmed Tuscaloosa County lynching acknowledged by the Equal Justice Initiative.

In a wire report published in the Montgomery newspaper on July 19, 1884, the writer tells of the outrage spurred in Tuscaloosa County after a young white girl accused Burke of strangling her before being frightened off.

A large-scale manhunt was unsuccessful until a tip led police to finding Burke hiding in an abandoned house. Burke was taken into custody a little after sundown and slipped into the city jail by the sheriff so as to avoid creating any additional "excitement."

But news would spread quickly throughout the city and at about 10 p.m., a mob broke into the jail and dragged Burke to a nearby tree to be hanged.

“While he was hanging, several balls from pistols were fired into him," the newspaper account said. "His body remained where it was hung until this morning, when it was taken down and a coroner's inquest held.”

Burke was also scalped and disemboweled before the mob hanged him from a tree in front of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Tuscaloosa, which historians speculate was likely a warning to the church to cease its practice of helping young Black men become ordained ministers.

The people responsible for the killing of Andy Burke were never brought to justice.

---

Bud Wilson (December 1889)

NEW LEXINGTON, AL — According to one account from the Montgomery Advertiser, published on Dec. 28, 1889, Bud Wilson was accused of entering the home of a "Mrs. James Fowler," whose husband was reportedly away. Fowler accused Wilson of trying to rape her, claiming he was frightened away by a neighbor who responded to the woman's screams.

Wilson was arrested the following day, but as deputies transported him to a jail in Fayette County to await trial, he was taken by a mob of unidentified men and "hung to a limb and his body riddled with bullets" in the New Lexington community of northern Tuscaloosa County near the Fayette County line.

The newspaper would go on to speculate that news of the lynching "seems to have been kept quiet" as word of the killing was apparently slow to reach Montgomery.

The people responsible for the killing of Bud Wilson were never brought to justice.

Charles McKelton & John Jackson (February 1892)

ROMULUS, AL — The killings of Charles McKelton and John Jackson are the only local lynchings documented by the EJI that didn't involve accusations of violence by a Black man against a White woman.

A story published in the Eufaula Daily Times said the series of events was set off when a store owned by D.S. Robertson in Romulus was burglarized and burned to the ground. Robertson reportedly lost a large stock of uninsured goods, effectively rendering his entire business a total loss.

Suspicions then turned to McKelton and Jackson and a search party was organized. Police reportedly captured the men, who they claimed to be in possession of goods stolen from Robertson's store.

While several newspaper accounts make passing references to evidence collected and presented during a court hearing, no specifics were ever provided to publicly establish the guilt of the two men. The trial was held late on a Wednesday night and McKelton and Jackson were left in the custody of two men who were instructed to transport them to the Tuscaloosa County Jail.

About 8 p.m. that evening, the guards were overpowered by a large crowd of masked and armed men, who the Eufaula Daily Times claimed “took the quaking negroes to an oak tree near the scene of their crime and quickly producing a couple of ropes and fastening about their necks, the terrified wretches were soon dangling between heaven and earth." This account does not try to hide its support of what the writer viewed as an acceptable means of justice.

The author of the story penned: “The extreme and swift punishment dealt out to the negroes may be attributed to the fact that arson and robbery had become so frequent in the neighborhood of the lynching that the persons who were the suffered from these continued depredations resolved to adopt this method of showing future offenders what they might expect from an outraged community."

What's more, the newspaper story goes on to say a placard was pinned to the body of each man. On one was inscribed “our homes must be protected and on the other: “A warming to house burners.”

The bodies of McKelton and Jackson were left hanging from tree limbs until the following day, when they were taken down by citizens and buried. No one was ever charged in connection to the lynchings.

Sidney Johnson (July 1898)

COALING, AL — Referred to as a kind of tramp or hobo in several newspaper accounts, Sidney Johnson was accused of assaulting a woman named Lily Hodges in the fledgling community of Coaling in southern Tuscaloosa County. Hodges — a widow who lived in a remote part of the settlement with several small children — claimed she was knocked down and criminally assaulted by Johnson.

A posse was immediately formed and searched the countryside in search of Johnson. The following morning, a "Miss Lizzie Cobb," also claimed she was assaulted by Johnson at her home roughly three miles from Coaling.

About 10 p.m. that night, one of the posses encountered Johnson on the side of a road and took him into custody. He was later taken before Cobb to be identified as her assailant.

Johnson was then “carried him to the woods and strung him to a tree. They filled his body with lead and quietly left the scene."

The people responsible for the killing of Sidney Johnson were never brought to justice.

John Durrett (July 1898)

COALING, AL — Three days after the lynching of McKelton and Jackson, a leader in the Black community was gunned down after speaking out against the violence.

Varying accounts exists of the events that led to Durrett's death. In some stories, he is presented in a favorable light and referred to as a well-known fixture in the Black community in Coaling. In others, he is an accused murder who warns of an impending race war.

But in a rare acknowledgement of violence in its coverage area, a writer for the Tuskaloosa Gazette impishly wrote: “Durrett, it is said, is a bad negro and doesn’t stand at all well in the community. After the lynching on Wednesday, Durrett got to talking pretty big, it is said, and on Thursday was heard to say he was going to have the leaders of the mob punished and that there was going to be a race war. He was told to shut up and was ordered out of the store for his smart talk."

Just after midnight on the day of the alleged altercation at the store, a lynch mob showed up to Durrett's home. Attempting to escape, Durrett jumped out of a window and was shot multiple times as he tried to run from the mob.

This is where the story gets confusing. Several accounts claim Durrett's body was found the morning following the shooting, while others asserted that he had survived the shooting and even knew who was responsible, but would not say.

One report published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on July 16, 1898 went as far as to say Durrett's body was found with a number of bullet wounds. In yet another story that appeared in the Darlington (Wis.) Democrat, the account says Durrett ran about 50 yards before being shot as many as 20 times.

Cicero Cage (March 1919)

RALPH, AL — Perhaps the most peculiar lynching case in Tuscaloosa County history, questions still persist concerning the death of Cicero Cage — a young Black man who vanished after being accused of assaulting a white woman in western Tuscaloosa County.

In a story published in the Tuscaloosa News on March 16, 1919, the newspaper reported on anger festering in the Parks Mill neighborhood of the county, roughly three miles from Ralph. Cage was accused of jumping out and trying to attack a prominent white woman as she road her house down a secluded road.

While the woman insisted on her claims, she managed to escape unharmed. Despite this, the people of the neighborhood were reportedly "swearing vengeance" when news of the alleged assault spread.

Cage then disappeared, likely hiding out at first from the inevitable lynch mob that had become the all-too-common enforcers of Jim Crow Era policies.

Rumors then started to spread that, seeing the attention around his accusations die down, Cage returned to Tuscaloosa, only to be lynched. In numerous accounts, his father — Sam Cage — claimed that his son had been attacked and was "literally cut to pieces."

While the father's certainty in his son's murder was made public, skepticism persisted as other rumors began to spread when the body of Cicero Cage was never recovered.

Many people in the Parks Mill neighborhood believed Cage's death to be nothing more than a rumor started by his family so they could “spirit him away,” fearing the outrage from the public if the mobs were able to capture him alive.

More still, rumors abounded that Cage had been located and would be arrested and that reports of his lynching were false. The Tuscaloosa News also openly expressed fear for his lynching if he were to be captured.

Interestingly, the newspaper referred to conversations with a Parks Mill man who claimed Cage worked for him the previous Saturday in his garden, but hadn’t seen the young man since. This bucked the established narrative that Cage had been killed the previous Thursday. However, accounts of further skepticism were mentioned concerning any garden work that day due to unusually heavy rain.

Tuscaloosa County Sheriff P.B. Hughes said deputies were unsuccessful in tracking down leads in the case, ultimately considering Cage to be dead and unlikely to be found.

“It is pretty certain he has not been buried and it is supposed that after he was killed, his body was sunk in some deep hole in the creek, near where he attempted to pull the young lady from her horse when he attacked her," the Tuscaloosa News reported.

Dan Pippen, A.T. Harden & Dennis Cross (1933)

TUSCALOOSA, AL — It's September and more than 100 National Guardsmen stand watch over the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse. Three machine guns are also fixed in place at the Tuscaloosa County Jail as Elmore "Honey" Clark recalled nearly meeting his death on the side of a dark highway near West Blocton the previous August.

“When the men had gone, I took a brick and broke my handcuffs loose and made my way to the negro house," he said, referring to the family who gave him asylum in their smokehouse after the lynching. "All the men were masked. I didn’t recognize any of them.”

Clark barely escaped with his life the night Dan Pippen and A.T. Harden were shot and killed, and the local coroner, S.T. Hardin, even went as far as to order the bullet-riddled bodies of the two men exhumed for a ballistics examination. After being brought into custody, Clark was treated for his wounds by a Black physician under the watch of the sheriff, before being taken to jail to face the charge of murder.

After Clark was captured, the sheriff commented in a story printed in the Geneva County Reaper that the attempt on his life had left Clark with little use of his right arm, although he remarked that he still had the ability to walk.

The consistent narrative presented in newspapers of the day said a group of masked men overpowered officers and seized the three men as they were being transported to the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham. This was an often-used tactic for authorities when holding Black men accused of violence against their White counterparts, with the thought being that lynchings could be avoided if those accused were held in custody outside of the area as they awaited trial.

The three men stood accused of brutally murdering a young White woman earlier that year. In that case, the body of 21-year-old Vaudine Maddox was found in a ravine in rural Tuscaloosa County.

In a story published in the Huntsville Times on June 15, 1933, Maddox was described as the daughter of a farmer and the oldest of five children who had been missing from her home for several days when her body was found in a ravine near the Hale County line.

Deputies believed at the time that Maddox was struck with a stick and knocked unconscious, before then being dragged about 200 feet off the highway and attacked. Police found a large rock near the woman's body that was thought to have been used to bludgeon her to death.

Shortly thereafter, Clark, Harden and Pippen were rounded up as suspects, with the Huntsville Times reporting on Sheriff F.M. Shamblin's claims that Pippen and Hardin confessed their own part in the crime and alleged that Clark was the ring leader who urged them to participate in the murder.

As Clark's trial moved forward, the New York City office of the International Labor Defense, which famously represented Sacco and Vanzetti more than a decade prior — attempted to step in to serve as his legal counsel. However, those efforts were thwarted by Sheriff Shamblin, who flatly exclaimed that the violence earlier that year was a direct result of the International Labor Defense's legal advocacy. Other accusations of communism also persisted in the legal mayhem that followed the killings.

As the courtroom melees intensified, the violence in Tuscaloosa followed suit. That September, a Black man named Dennis Cross was taken from his home by a group of half a dozen men posing as police officers and shot to death sometime after 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Cross stood accused in an assault case that even the sheriff publicly admitted lacked much in the way of merit from his White accuser. However, Cross was lured to his death by the mob under the false notion that he would have to return to the sheriff's office to post a larger bond.

The sheriff's office was reported to have investigated the killing and admitted to finding no clues leading to those responsible. The sheriff was notified of the mob in the few moments prior to the killing, when neighbors called to confirm if deputies had indeed been sent to pick up Cross.

Cross was shot three times and found dead the next morning near the Tuscaloosa Country Club "in the direction of the Warrior River." The woman he was accused of attacking claimed the assault occurred near the spot where the man's body was found.

Two weeks earlier, the woman claimed Cross tried to "seize her" before running off and later being picked up and identified as the suspect. Cross was held in jail for about a week and released after his bond was set at $300, which was paid by Clade Hinton, who owned the farm where Cross lived.

The sheriff said Cross was accused of a minor, bailable offense and that “the woman had not been attacked. ”

As the violence hit its peak across Alabama that year with the murder of Dennis Cross, Alabama Gov. B.M. Miller offered a $400 cash reward for the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

While the search continued for the mob in the most recent killing, another man was about to see a nightmare end after more than a year in custody.

That November, it was reported that the case involving Elmore Clark had gained the attention of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, who sent representatives from New York to Tuscaloosa to investigate the lynching. As more pressure was applied, state officials eventually caved.

The following May, Clark would see the murder charge dropped after a lengthy and bitter legal battle, thus becoming one of the few survivors of the violence that gripped the nation.

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you're interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com.