Execution of Roy Mitchell
{{Short description|1923 public hanging in Texas, US}}
Roy Mitchell was an African-American man from Waco, Texas who was convicted of six murders and executed on July 30, 1923. His arrest, trial, conviction, and execution are considered an example of continued bigotry in the Texas judicial system of the 1920s, but also of reforms aimed at curbing mob violence and public lynching.Bernstein, 2005, pp.185-191 Mitchell was one of the last Texans to be executed in public before the introduction of the electric chair.
Background
Waco was a prosperous town in the early 20th century and home to a substantial African-American population, which included a small middle class. Racial tensions in the town were high and reached a fever pitch in 1916 with the public lynching of Jesse Washington, who had been accused and summarily convicted of murdering a white woman.Bernstein, 2005 Following an investigation and the publication of photographs of Washington's lynching by the NAACP, Waco authorities were under political pressure to discourage further instances of mob violence. The next lynching occurred in Waco in 1921, the victim in this case a disabled white man named Curley Hackney.Bernstein, 2005, p.178
In 1919, Texas had more lynchings than any state except Georgia. Within the United States, 38 people were lynched in 1917, 64 in 1918, and 83 in 1919; lynchings did not begin to substantially decline until the 1930s.Bernstein, 2005, p.173 The Ku Klux Klan was especially popular in the early 1920s, with as many as 170,000 members in Texas. In December 1921, Waco and 54th District Judge Richard I. Munroe gave a speech in which he condemned mob violence, declaring that all those who participated in lynching were themselves guilty of murder.Bernstein, 2005, p.181 Nevertheless, Klan support increased in Waco and throughout Texas in 1922, and another man was lynched in that year.Bernstein, 2005, p.182
In the spring of 1922, Waco was beset by hysteria after a number of couples were attacked in public places. On May 25, Harold Bolton was killed and his companion raped. On May 27, a neighbor kidnapped Jesse Thomas, a black service car driver, who was then declared to be Bolton's killer and murdered by local Sam Harris. His body was subsequently mutilated by a mob.Bernstein, 2005, pp.184-185.
Trial and execution
On January 29, 1923, Roy Mitchell was arrested by Waco authorities after a friend named Jesse Wedlow told local Sheriff Leslie Stegall that he believed a cap, left behind by a fleeing attacker, may have belonged to Mitchell.Bernstein, 2005, p.185 Stegall and authorities described Mitchell as "a yellow negro with gold filled front teeth, speaks good language." Police first claimed that Mitchell had been known to them for months, then years.Bernstein, 2005, pp.186-191
Told to confess because of the great evidence held against him, Mitchell replied that with so much evidence, the prosecution would not need his confession. During interrogation, Mitchell confessed to five murders, four rapes, and three assaults, including crimes of which Jesse Thomas had been accused and killed. Newspapers attributed his crimes to "robbery and lust." At his first trial however, Mitchell recanted his confessions, stating that he had been tortured with beatings, pins, matches, and the threat of lynching by a mob. One source claims that Mitchell may have been coerced into confession through fear, superstition, and psychological manipulation.Morgan, 1921, p.73
Each of Mitchell's trials, held in March 1923, resulted in jury convictions after deliberations that lasted "minutes." Mitchell's wife Minnie and 10-year-old daughter, Marguerite, accompanied him at each trial and testified that he had been at home. After being convicted and sentenced to death for all charges brought against him, Mitchell was accused and convicted of another murder, that of Loula Barker, though two other black men had already confessed to killing her during interrogations.
Waco mayor Ben C. Richards and Sheriff Stegall publicly announced their intention to protect Mitchell from mob violence until his execution. Immediately prior to his execution, Mitchell was said to have confessed, again, to all crimes of which he had been convicted. On July 30, 1923, Mitchell calmly said "Goodbye, everyone," and was hanged at McLennan County Jail before a crowd of 4–5,000 people. Mitchell is normally described as the last man to be legally hanged in the United States.Blackburn, 2006, p.232Wood, 2009, p.33 Nevertheless, Waco historian Thomas E. Turner has written that Mitchell was in fact the penultimate to be executed by hanging in Texas, and that in the month following Mitchell's death, Nathan Lee was quietly hanged in Angleton's Brazoria courthouse.Biffle, 1998
Aftermath
See also
Notes
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Bibliography
- {{cite book|first=Patricia|last=Bernstein|title=The First Waco Horror|place=College Station|publisher=Texas A&M University Press|year=2005}}
- {{cite book|publisher=The Texas History Teacher's Bulletin|year=1921|title=A "Two-Gun" Man of the Law|first=Hazel|last=Morgan|location=Nacognoches}}
- {{cite book|first=Edward|last=Blackburn|title=Wanted: Historic County Jails of Texas|publisher=Texas A&M University Press|location=College Park|year=2006}}
- {{cite book|first=Amy|last=Wood|year=2009|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill|title=Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940}}
- {{cite news|last=Biffle|first=Kent|url=http://www.granburydepot.org/z/biog/biffle_n.htm|title=Waco's claim to last hanging stretches truth|date=15 February 1998|newspaper=Dallas Morning News}}
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Category:20th-century executions by Texas