Lynching of Wilbur Little

Wilbur Little (also William[1][2] or Wilbert[3] in some sources) was a black United States veteran of World War I, lynched in April 1919 in his hometown of Blakely, Georgia, for refusing to remove his military uniform. Servicemen who had been discharged from the army were permitted under War Department regulations to wear their service uniforms for three months after their demobilization date.[4][5] Reportedly, Little was still in uniform beyond that date.[6][7] He was one of many African-American servicemen of the time who were subjected to violence for continuing to wear their uniforms after being discharged from the military.[8]

Not to be confused with jazz musician Wilbur Little.
Map of Blakely on a map of Early County (left) and Georgia (right)

Little was killed by Blakely residents, but the details of his death are uncertain. One source says he was hanged and burned.[9] Another states he was beaten to death.[10] The lack of authoritative information about these types of killings was not uncommon.[10]

Lynching

Little returned to Blakely wearing his military uniform, and was seen at the train station by a group of white men, who demanded he remove the uniform. He was threatened with arrest but, lacking civilian clothes, was allowed to return to his home in uniform.[11][12] According to historian Isabel Wilkerson:

"Soon anonymous notes were warning him to leave town if he wanted to wear his uniform. Days later, a mob attacked him as he greeted friends congratulating him on his achievements. He was found beaten to death on the outskirts of town. He was wearing his uniform. He had survived the war only to be killed at home."[13]

The lynching of Little was memorialized by poet Carrie Williams Clifford in "The Black Draftee from Georgia" (1922):[14]

What though the hero-warrior was black?
His heart was white and loyal to the core;
And when to his loved Dixie he came back,
Maimed, in the duty done on foreign shore,
Where from the hell of war he never flinched,
Because he cried, 'Democracy,' was lynched.

Claims of hoax

The story of Little's death appeared in the April 5, 1919 Chicago Defender.[11] In May of that year, a number of other papers ran reports that the lynching was a hoax. Most notably, Blakely's Early County News published editorials on May 15 and 29.[15][16] The latter asserted that "No negro has been lynched in this county because he refused to take off his soldier uniform" and that Little was still alive and employed on a farm. On May 24, the editor of the News, W. W. Fleming, wrote a letter to the New York Sun, again denying the lynching had occurred, and objecting to a letter run by The Sun several days earlier.[17][18]

The Kingston Daily Freeman (May 8), the Winston-Salem Journal (May 13), the Raleigh News and Observer (May 15), and the Taylor Daily Press (May 19) all ran variations of a story questioning the accuracy of an April 20 report in the Philadelphia Public Ledger.[19][20][21][22][note 1] Assertions were made that the original reports erroneously mixed up the lynching of Little with another murder, that of Clifford Hughes.[1]

Investigation by the NAACP

A month after the article appeared in the Chicago Defender the NAACP sent Monroe N. Work to Blakely to investigate the incident. On June 7, 1919, Work sent a telegram to NAACP officer J.R. Shillady stating "Have investigated report. Blakely, Georgia, lynching does not appear to have occured [sic]." Work concluded his investigation by recommending that allegations of a lynching be dropped. The denial by the Early County Times and the subsequent investigation by Work led the NAACP to delay publication of the Wilbur Little story. However, the organization eventually rejected the recommendation of their investigator, publishing the story in The Crisis three months later.[7][10]

See also

Notes
  1. The date is likely incorrect. April 20, 1919 was a Sunday; the Philadelphia Public Ledger was not published on Sundays. "Library of Congress: Chronicling America collection".

References
  1. "The Lynching Project: Early County". African American Experience in Athens. Retrieved July 26, 2020.
  2. Gambino, Lauren (February 10, 2015). "Jim Crow lynchings more widespread than first thought, report concludes". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  3. Gilbert, Tony (March 25, 2015). "The meanest little town…: A lingering humiliation from 96 years ago". Early County News. Blakely, Georgia. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  4. Onion, Rebecca (March 4, 2015). "Red Summer: In 1919, white Americans visited awful violence on black Americans. So black Americans decided to fight back". Slate Magazine. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  5. Krugler, David F. (December 8, 2014). 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back. Cambridge University Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-1-316-19500-0 – via Google Books.
  6. Klay, Phil (November 9, 2019). "Opinion | The Soldiers We Leave Behind". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  7. Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (July 1919). The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races. 18. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. p. 155.
  8. "Navy admiral gets it all wrong about Kaepernick at Pearl Harbor ceremony". The Undefeated. December 9, 2016. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  9. Fessenden, Tracy (April 27, 2018). Religion Around Billie Holiday. Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-08720-7 – via Google Books.
  10. Mikkelsen, Vincent (2007). Coming from Battle to Face a War: The Lynching of Black Soldiers in the World War I Era (PDF) (PhD). Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences. pp. 139–140. S2CID 161488986.
  11. "Army Uniform Cost Soldier His Life". The Chicago Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (published April 5, 1919). Century News Service. April 4, 1919. p. 1. ProQuest document ID 493381239. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  12. Richardson, Allissa (January 2016). "The Platform: How Pullman porters used railways to engage in networked journalism". Journalism Studies. 17: 398–414. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2015.1110498. S2CID 148325904 – via Resarch Gate.
  13. Wilkerson, Isabel, The Warmth of Other Suns : The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, p. 145, ISBN 978-1-4915-4542-3, OCLC 881023508. Cites "Army Uniform Cost Soldier His Life," Chicago Defender, April 5, 1919, p. 1.
  14. Davis, David A. (2008). "Not Only War Is Hell: World War I and African American Lynching Narratives". African American Review. 42 (3/4): 477–491. JSTOR 40301248.
  15. "Genesis and Nemesis of a Lynching Story". Early County News. Blakely, Georgia. May 15, 1919. p. 4. Retrieved July 29, 2020 – via Georgia Historic Newspapers.
  16. "A Matter of Fact and Truth". Blakely Early County News. Blakely, Georgia. May 29, 1919. p. 4. Retrieved July 28, 2020 – via Newspaper Archive.
  17. Fleming, W. W. (May 28, 1919). "A Denial That a Negro Soldier Was Lynched in Blakely". The Sun. p. 12 (column 6). Retrieved August 8, 2020 – via Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
  18. Holden, Wm. H. (May 21, 1919). "The Lynching of a Negro Soldier in Georgia". The Sun. p. 10 (column 6). Retrieved August 8, 2020 – via Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
  19. "A Baseless Yarn". Kingston Daily Freeman. Kingston, New York. May 8, 1919. p. 4. Retrieved July 20, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. "Negro Agitators Cause Riots". Winston-Salem Journal. Winston-Salem, North Carolina. May 13, 1919. p. 4. Retrieved July 20, 2020 – via Newqspapers.com.
  21. "A Lynching That Never Occurred". News and Observer. Raleigh, North Carolina. May 15, 1919. p. 4. Retrieved July 20, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. "A Baseless Yarn". The Taylor Daily Press. Taylor, Texas. May 19, 1919. p. 2. Retrieved July 28, 2020.

Further reading
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