Shubuta, Mississippi

The county had 10 documented lynchings in the period from 1877 to 1950; most took place in the 20th century.[5]

In late December 1918, five weeks after the armistice was signed in the Great War, four black farmworkers were lynched and hanged from a railroad bridge in Shubuta. They were brothers, Major (age 20) and Andrew (age 16) Clark, along with two black sisters, Alma (age 16) and Maggie House (age 20) (their surname was sometimes spelled as "Howze"), allegedly for the murder of Dr. H. L. Johnston, a married white dentist who was living at his father's farm, where the four younger people all worked. Both sisters were pregnant: Maggie was six months pregnant and Alma was due in two weeks.[6] When the NAACP asked for a state investigation, their representative was told by Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo to "go to hell".[7]

The NAACP contracted with Robert Church, a white detective from Memphis, Tennessee, to investigate the four lynchings. He learned that Johnston was fatally shot while milking on December 10, 1918. Major Clark had found him and carried him into the house. Johnston was said to have sexually assaulted and impregnated each of the House sisters.[8] After the Clark brothers started working on the farm, Major Clark and Maggie House developed a romantic relationship. Johnston the son had jealously threatened Clark, saying he would kill the young black man unless he ended his relationship with House. Johnston apparently had affairs with white women, too, and his father believed he had been shot by a white man,[8] as did others in town.[6]

The lynching was documented as premeditated and coordinated, as many such events were. It was a year of white on black violence: in 1918 there had been 62 lynchings in the United States since January 1, seven of them in Mississippi.[9] Deputy County Sheriff Crane colluded with the mob to provide access to the victims at the jail, claiming that he had been overpowered by the mob. In addition, men cut off power to the town from the main station, perhaps to support witnesses' later claims of being unable to identify members of the mob.[8]

The four young people were brutally treated. Maggie was smashed in the face with a wrench. All four were thrown from the bridge, but Maggie caught on to the bridge and survived the initial attempt on her life.[6] When she was thrown from the bridge a second time, she again grabbed a railing. The mob hauled her up a third time, and were finally successful in throwing her over and hanging her. When the victims were buried the next day, witnesses reported seeing Alma House's unborn baby moving in the womb.[10]

In 1942 during World War II, Ernest Green, a fourteen-year-old black boy, along with Charlie Lang, aged fifteen, were seen speaking to Dorothy Martin, a thirteen-year-old white girl whom they knew from the area. Accounts vary as to what took place. One or more whites who saw the three youths together while driving by reported the incident to Martin's father. Another account said that the incident was "attempted rape" after Dorothy told her parents about it. The boys were arrested by Clarke County Sheriff LLoyd McNeal, and appeared before justice of the peace W.E. Eddins, perhaps in a hearing at his residence, where they allegedly confessed to attempted rape. By October 10 the boys were held in the jail at the county seat of Quitman. On October 12, Quitman Town Marshall G.F. Dabbs handed the boys over to several white men, who took the boys away.[7]

The men took the boys to the Shubuta railroad bridge, where they mutilated them by cutting off their genitals, and hanged the youths from the bridge.[7] The sheriff told the Pittsburgh Courier that the local people respected law and order, but that "Them niggers is gettin’ uppity, you know.”[11] Walter Atkins, a black journalist, asserted in 1942 that the “rickety old span is a symbol of the South as much as magnolia blossoms or mint julep colonels.”[12] Sherriff McLean was said to have expressed remorse on his deathbed for the murders of Green and Lang.[7] Governor Paul Johnson declared that the lynchings were murders, there was nothing he could do about it, and criticized first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for discussing the matter in the national media.[13]

Because of its own history and connection to the white lynchings of thousands of blacks in the South, the bridge was added to the National List of Historic Places in 1988.[14] As of 2016, the abandoned bridge still stands at the end of East Street but is blocked off from access by a barricade.[12][15]

At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Mississippi disenfranchised most black voters through passing a new constitution that raised barriers to voter registration. In Shubuta whites had also suppressed black voting by destroying ballots, imposing poll tests such as correctly guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar, and intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan.[12] Following the 1918 lynchings, many black workers left Clarke County, leaving cotton to rot in the fields. The town's population dropped by 21% (See table below) and the county population dropped 17% from 1910 to 1920. (See Demographics, Clarke County, Mississippi)

The first wave of the Great Migration from the rural South continued to the Second World War. In the 1930s, a number of African-American residents from the Shubata area followed Reverend Louis W. Parson to Albany, New York to escape the violence and in a search for industrial jobs and better opportunities.[12] They created a community to the west of the city, building houses along Rapp Road within what was one land parcel purchased by Parson. Now known as the Rapp Road Community Historic District, the area is listed on the NRHP.