This piece of black history happened in 1892. It makes me mad to have to report this travesty. As a matter of fact, I am so mad I need to channel my anger into something more constructive. So before I continue I thought I would brush up on my grammar. Did you know the phrase “to be,” is a verb? It’s also know as a copula. A copula is a connecting word; in particular a form of the verb “be“ connecting a subject and complement. Now I am going to practice using the verb “to be” in a sentence.
Those racist needed to be pistol whipped by a huge gigantic black man with really large calloused hands and big ashy fingers with long dirty fingernails… (Here I am using “those racist” as the subject and “pistol whipped” as the complement..) I would get into dangling participles, but I’m going to leave that one alone. Okay, now that I have channeled my aggression into something more constructive, I am going to tell you the story of the People’s Grocery Lynching Of 1892.
The Curve was a predominantly black area outside of Memphis, Tennessee in 1892. Like a lot of black areas around the country, the former slaves of the Southern renegade colonials began to prosper and take their place among the prosperous and intellectual elites of the reformed Union. Just twenty seven years earlier, the mighty Union Army in its righteousness slew the southern heathens and cast the abominable scoundrels into the fiery pit, where Nat Turner and John Brown did wait to chastise them for the rest of @##!! eternity… By the way, I did tell you the victorious write history didn’t I? Well… that’s way I see it. Anywho, this chapter of racist aggression centers around a store opened up by a group of industrious black men. The store was called the People’s Grocery. Now, the People’s Grocery was very successful. It catered to the large African American and poor white clientele which lived in the Curve. It was all good except for one thing or should I say one person, William Barnett. William (White Power!!) Barnett, owned the only other grocery in Memphis. For years he had a monopoly on the area, until “those people” opened up the other grocery. In addition Barnett establishment was known locally as a place of ill repute… basically it was a sh!thole. Newspapers of the day reported illegal gambling and liquor sales. “Now you go in there to buy your groceries and you got all kinds of drunk folks hanging around the front and back of the place. People are inside gambling, cursing and smoking cheap cigars. Barnett is inside drunk up too… You look at the old moldy beans he is charging five cents for.. he tells you that if you don’t like his beans and prices, you can always go back to Africa and buy em… you look at him and roll your eyes… he tells you the price just went up five cents… you want to walk out, but you got children to feed.. you give him twenty five cents and he tells you, “I ain’t got no change..” you rush towards him and three of the most foulest folks you ever saw jump in front of him.. he laughs and throws you 30 beans wrapped up in yesterday’s newspaper… You look at him and say you will be back to get your change tomorrow… he tells you newspapers ain’t free… you swear to the holy high scepter of the seven moons …you gonna get that #@@!$ one day…” **Twenty five cents in those days is worth about $7.00 in today’s money.**
So yeah, Barnett really hated it when the People’s Grocery opened. The People’s Grocery was operated by three men, or it’s probably better to say, three men were operating the store on the day of the racist aggression. The three men were Thomas Moss, Henry Stewart and Calvin McDowell. Moss was one of the original investors. He was also the local postman and a close friend of Ida B. Wells. Wells was an owner of the Memphis Free Speech newspaper. It was from that pulpit that she launched her famous anti lynching editorials. She was a fascinating woman and we are going to do a story about her in the future. Anyway, Stewart and McDowell were clerks at the store. As it so happened on this fateful day, it all started with an inconsequential fight between two children, Amour Harris who was black and Cornelius Hurst who was white. The fight was over a game of marbles. Well Amour started getting the better of the battle. He was ringing Cornelius’s bell so loud that it attracted the attention of firemen from all over the state. Ring it.. Ring it.. ring a ling, a ling!! Of course when Cornelius father saw that if he didn’t stop this #@@!… his son was going to end up being roadkill. So he stepped in and started beating on Amour. It was at this time that Stewart and McDowell intervened. So in the meantime a crowd was gathering, both black and white. When Stewart and McDowell stepped in to help Amour.. well it was on. Hands were being thrown and people were going down. Now take one guess at who was in the middle of this hot mess? None other than William (White Power!!) Barnett… who promptly got his dome cracked. It was the chance he had been waiting for, a way to finally have the People’s Grocery closed down for good. He hobbled down to the sheriff’s office and told him he had been attacked. He identified William Stewart as the one who cracked that noggin. The next day Barnett and a police officer came to get Stewart. McDowell was at the store at the time. Barnett: ” $@!!## you know why I’m here.. give it up!! Where is Stewart!!” McDowell: Ain’t nobody here by that name..” Barnett: Barnett loses control and hits McDowell with the butt of his pistol. McDowell falls to the floor. Barnett loses his grip on the pistol and it falls to the floor also. McDowell then grabs the pistol. McDowell: You %$$#@!!! Barnett: Barnett and the police officer rush out the store under a hail of bullets!! (I have embellished what was actually said during the exchange between Barnett and McDowell, but the event is historically accurate. Barnett hit McDowell with the gun and drops it. McDowell pick it up and starts firing.) Okay, let’s get back to the events. Barnett and the police officer get back to the sheriff’s office and obtains warrants for McDowell, Stewart and Amour Harris. Later in the day, McDowell was arrested, but let out on bond.
As I said earlier the Curve was predominately black and Barnett’s store represented a menace to the area. They were alarmed that McDowell, Stewart, and Harris were being sought by the law for defending a child that was attacked by a whole white man. They came together and vowed to rid the area of what they called “white trash.” This played right into the hands of Barnett who used their concern to sow animosity between the blacks and whites in the neighborhood. He went to the authorities and in essence said “The nigg@rs are over there threatening god fearing white men and mean to take our white women.” Okay.. he didn’t say anything about women, but as I was doing research, I came across a reference by historian Joel Williamson, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, in which he said “The majority of victims were lynched for the social crime of being economic competitors to whites. Often, the lynchings were justified under claims that the victims had either sexually assaulted white women or committed an unspecified barbaric act against whites.” So really I am not far off the mark, because you better bet if Barnett did not get those warrant’s under the conditions he did, the tried and true accusation of a black man assaulting a white women worked 100 percent of the time. Okay, where were we… So now that Barnett is stirring up the racist stew, he adds one Judge Julius DuBose, who he has taken his complaint to. DuBose, which some reports call a ‘Great Kluxon,” or whatever the #@@! they call them… vows to form a posse to rid the Curve of “those rowdies” (insert the “N” word for rowdies..) My girl Wendy ain’t got nothing on them 1892 drama queens, who whipped that stuff up and then promptly publishes the judge’s vow on the front page of the local newspaper. “Judge Vows To Get Rid Of The Nigg@rs… Rowdies At The Curve!! Now at another smaller store in Memphis on the same day as the judge vows to clean up the Curve, a black man is shot by a white clerk. The black folks in the Curve really start to worry. It was getting realer that Hellmanns Mayonnaise..
The men at the People’s Grocery knew that at any minute things could get very ugly. They decided to seek legal action to see if they could get out front of this pending showdown. However there was no legal remedies for their situation. Although the Curve did have a few police officers, it was technically outside of Memphis, so it was nothing the city could do to help them as far as provide protection. Call me a pessimist, but like they was really going to provide protection for black people in Memphis, Tennessee in 1892? The only reason Barnett and DuBose didn’t just outright shoot all them “rowdies,” was because the black people were armed. Anywho, with that being said, McDowell got several men who were armed and he stationed them at the back door fearing a white mob would soon attack, especially after the DuBose promise and the fact that he had fired a weapon at a white man. He was right on all accounts. Just before midnight DuBose along with his posse, a county sheriff and five deputized civilians came to the back of the People’s Grocery. Now how many of you remember ScarFace when Tony Montana said ” I like you to meet my lil friend!!” When those brothers stationed at the back of the store saw DuBose and his men, they opened fire!! Well it was more like opening an exploding volcano… with smoke, hot molten lava, brimstone and $h!##…. DuBose and his men should have asked somebody.. They had to retreat and seek immediate medical attention… I mean “immediate” medical attention!!. The men defending the Grocery also needed medical attention. A few of them had sprained their trigger fingers and some even had to have them bandaged up. Ring it.. Ring it.. ring a ling, a ling!! Of course you know that it wasn’t going to stand like that. The next morning more that one hundred blacks were rounded up and jailed, among them were Moss, McDowell, Stewart, and Harris, the young kid involved in the fight.
So as you might expect, the Klan owned newspaper whipped that DuBose defeat up to a seething racist high flame boil. They pointed to the warning that Barnett had given to them about the “nigs” wanting to kill the god fearing white man and take his women.. I’m telling you, you can’t make this @##! up!! They said the attack was a cold-blooded ambush. The place was a tinderbox!! With Moss, McDowell, and Stewart locked up, crowds of armed white men stood outside the Shelby County Jail where they were being held. They were waiting to see if any of the white men who were involved in the Scarface massacre… I mean Peoples Grocery Store attack would succumb to their injuries. There would be no punishment until that was known. Now hard as this is to believe, there was a black militia in Memphis at the time. It was called the Tennessee Rifles. They also stood outside the jail as a deterrent to the men being lynch. McDowell was one of their members. Anyway, a few days later word came down that all of the white men shot at the People’s Grocery would survive. Hearing that those men would survive, the Tennessee Rifle militia thought the threat of violence was over and they left. Now I don’t know about you, but for all we know, every last one of them men died, they just wanted the black militia to leave so they wouldn’t have to face another Mount ScarFace. Anyway later that night, about seventy five men scaled the wall of the jail and a small group broke off to searched for Moss, McDowell, and Stewart. The three men were dragged from their cells and taken to the railroad tracks. The account of what happened next is recorded by the “Appeal-Avalanche” newspaper;
At the railroad yard McDowell “struggled mightily” and at one point managed to grab a shotgun from one of his abductors. After the mob wrested it from him they shot at his hands and fingers “inch by inch” until they were shot to pieces. Replicating the wounds the white deputies had suffered they shot four holes into McDowell’s face, each large enough for a fist to enter. His left eye was shot out and the “ball hung over his cheek in shreds.” His jaw was torn out by buckshot. Where “his right eye had been there was a big hole which his brains oozed out.” The account by the five ministers in the Appeal-Avalanche added that his injuries were in accord with his “vicious and unyielding nature.” Will Stewart was described as the most stoic of the three, “obdurate and unyielding to the last.” He was also shot on the right side of the neck with a shotgun, and was shot with a pistol in the neck and left eye. Moss was also shot in the neck; his dying words, “Tell my people to go West, there is no justice for them here.” Appeal-Avalanch – March 10, 1892
Later in the day after the killing of McDowell, Stewart and Moss, DuBose ordered that the weapons be taken away from the Tennessee Rifle’s militia. He sent over one hundred men to the Curve and ordered that “any Negro who appeared to be making trouble, be shot on site.” Ida B. Wells writes, “To prevent further violence, the black men in the neighborhood decided not to confront the mob. They realized their helplessness and submitted to outrages and insults for the sake of those depending on them.” With the racist mob free to do whatever it pleased, it looted and destroyed the People’s Grocery. What they didn’t destroy, the creditors sold. In the end, William (White Power!!) Barnett bought up most of the stuff auctioned off from the People’s Grocery.
I talked about Ida B. Wells a few time in this article and how she was part owner of the Memphis Free Speech. Well the Free Speech received national attention in 1892 for its coverage of the Curve Riot. She advised her readers to abandon Memphis and to move West. Many followed her advice. Another racist who was the editor of the Memphis Commercial, demanded retaliation against “the black wench” for her denunciation of the lynchings. Subsequently the offices of the Free Speech were destroyed by a mob after the urgings of the Memphis Commercial. Fortunately, Ida Wells was out of town. She would not return to Memphis for another thirty years.
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