"Waiting
for the Axman"-
The
Axeman Panic of 1912 in Texas
By Charles Swenson
(Photo courtesy of Fayette Public Library and Archives)
On a bright spring day in April of 1912, a local delivery man
named Ed Deere came into the newspaper offices of the Bryan Daily
Eagle and Pilot to talk about the latest news that had been rattling
black communities throughout Texas and Louisiana. Just fifty miles
away in Hempstead, Ike Burney and his daughter Alice had been
brutally axed to death. The murderer had been frightened off by
another daughter who had rolled under her bed after she was
assaulted, escaping the slaughter when her screams frightened off the
killer. They were the last victims of the Axman, one of the names
given to arguably the most prolific serial killings in American
history, involving at least forty five men, women and children in
twelve families in Louisiana and Texas. These horrendous crimes remain not only unsolved but virtually unknown over a century later.
The Axman murders created a tremendous wave of panic among black
communities in Texas and Louisiana between 1911 and 1912, a
widespread fear that one's entire family might be wiped out in a
horrendously brutal fashion while one slept at night. This terror
was well justified and a very real existential threat to blacks in
Louisiana and Texas in the spring of 1912. The ensuing panic was
surprisingly well documented by the press at the time due to the
sensational nature of the murders and lurid tales of voodoo swirling
around them. Another name given these killings hints at why these
murders seems to have been largely forgotten – the Mulatto Ax
Murders.
One of the connecting threads in these murders, beyond the use of
an ax, was the fact that they always involved blacks, the only
exception being the white wife of a black man in San Antonio, which
did not keep her from being murdered along with her husband and three
children. At least one member of the family was also a mulatto, one
of the reasons Ed Deere was so distressed when he came to visit the
newsroom. He said that
“...his wife was a 'high
yellow”...like himself, and he felt that he was doomed to a
certainty...he remarked that he had always boasted of his color to
his white friends, declaring he was “no nigger,” but was now
sorry he was not as black as tar.”
The relationship of the white press to these murders provides an
often disturbing insight into the distance the white community felt
toward black communities during these early days of Jim Crow, with
the use of the murders to terrorize black individuals and communities
with letters threatening attacks by the Axman. But what becomes
clear from those press accounts is that there was a sense of near
panic in those black communities in Texas that lasted long after the
murders subsided.
The murders began in Louisiana in February of 1910, with the
murder of a mother and her daughter in Lake Charles. In September a
family of three was killed in Rayne, followed in January of 1911 by a
family of three. The next month, a family of four was murdered in
Lafayette, and then the slaughter expanded into Texas when family of
five was murdered in San Antonio, Texas. The following day a family
of four was murdered in Lafayette, Louisiana.
One of the earliest of the ax murders, and the first in Texas,
took place on March 22, 1911. It happened in San Antonio, Texas,
well before it was clear that it was but one of a series of ongoing
murders, but in retrospect it clearly bore many of the hallmarks that
came to characterize the murders that became much more well known a
year later.
Alfred Louis Casaway was born in Louisiana and had come to San
Antonio as a teenager. After forty years of living there he had
become a well known and much respected member of his mixed black and
white community just east of the railroad tracks and train station.
He developed an interest in local politics, finding a job as a
janitor at City Hall and even serving as a bailiff for the grand jury
at one time. For the previous six years he served as the janitor at
the Grant colored school, arriving early every morning to open the
school. He had “
an excellent reputation for honesty and
industry” and “
did not have an enemy. His domestic
affairs...ran smoothly, he and his family living happily together.”
Elizabeth Castelow Casaway, or Lizzie, as she was known to
friends and family, had lived in San Antonio for a few years before
she met her husband. As a younger woman, she had moved to San Marcos
with her widowed father, but she moved out from their home when he
remarried to live with a neighbor. While living there she met a
young cowboy named Sam Lane, marrying him shortly afterward in
February of 1885. Eight months later he asked her to fix her some
“grub,” saying he was going “down country' to find some cattle.
He never returned. There were some reports that although she had a
fair complexion and was generally considered to have been white, “
she
contained a trace of negro blood, on and that account was divorced.”
She eventually moved to San Antonio, where she met Alfred. Their
relationship bloomed, and in 1891 he introduced her to a local
attorney of his to help her obtain a divorce so they could get
married. The lawyer filed for the divorce, which was granted in
1891, but he warned against getting married because of a very serious
problem they would encounter. He was black, and she was white, and
their marriage would violate the laws in effect against
miscegenation.
Since a marriage in San Antonio was not possible, shortly
afterward the couple took a train to C.P. Diaz (now Piedra Negras),
the nearest town in Mexico, and obtained a marriage license and were
married there. But on their return to San Antonio, charges of
miscegenation were filed against them, and Lizzie was summoned before
the grand jury. However, no charges were ever filed against them
after she gave her testimony, and they continued to live together as
man and wife. They eventually had three children together, Josie,
Louise (also listed as Ruby B. in the 1910 census) and Alfred
Carlisle. They lived in a three room house at 517 North Olive
Street, and by all accounts, they were a happy family and got along
well with their neighbors.
On Tuesday morning, March 21, 1911, Alfred Casaway did not show
up to work. Since he had the keys to open the school and the
students couldn't get in, Principal Tarver of the Grant school
called the Campbell household to see why he hadn't showed up.
Richard Campbell was a local attorney whose wife was a sister-in-law
of the Casaways, who lived around the corner from them. Bessie
Drakes lived with the Campbells, and knew the Casaway family as well.
Her child had been playing with their children just the night
before, and she had spent a few minutes visiting with the family on
their front porch when she went to pick her up around 8 o'clock.
Campbell's wife, Delia, sent Bessie over to see why her
brother-in-law hadn't showed up for work that morning, but couldn't
get any response. Delia then went over to the house, but when she
had no better luck, she went around to a window to look through the
curtains. She was horrified to see Alfred laying dead in his bed and
ran home to telephone the sheriff, as well as the constable and
police departments.
As soon as news of the murder began to spread throughout the
neighborhood, the house on Olive Street became a place of
fascination. A photographer from a local paper arrived early and
captured an image of the house. By the time law officers arrived the
streets were blocked by a crowd of 500 black and white spectators,
which quickly grew to nearly a thousand.
(San Antonio
Express, March 24, 1911, p9)
Bexar County Sheriff John Wallace Tobin was one of the first on
the scene, and from the outset he had a personal interest in the
murders. He not only knew Alfred Casaway from his work as a grand
jury bailiff but Lizzie as well, who had previously worked at his
home as a seamstress. He immediately offered a $250 reward for any
clue leading to the apprehension of the murderer. In the months to
come he would hunt down many leads and at times think he had come to
solve the murder, but it would come back again to haunt him the
following year.
By all accounts, this was the most horrible and brutal murder
that had taken place in San Antonio at the time. All five members of
the household had had their skulls crushed in with the blunt end of a
pole ax, probably taken from the woodshed at the rear of the house
and found at the foot of a bed. Alfred, was found dead in the bed
where his sister-in-law had first seen him, together with his 3 year
old daughter Louise. In a bed in another room were the bodies of
Lizzie, along with 6 year old Josie and the 5 month old Alfred.
Blood splattered the walls, floor and even a child's doll on the
floor, but other than that the house was neat and clean.
The house had not been ransacked, the windows were all closed
and locked, and the rear door was unlocked, with no sign of having
been forced. The rear door was secured only by a thumb latch, and it
was speculated that the family had neglected to lock it before going
to sleep. Almost at once robbery was ruled out as a motive. In
Alfred's trousers, found at the foot of his bed, was a gold watch, a
case with an image of St. Joseph and a purse with some coins in it.
It also held the set of thirteen keys that had not opened the school
that morning, leading to classes being dismissed for the day.
None of the neighbors had heard anything during the night, and the
only possible clue as to the killer were some footprints on the rear
porch which only led a few feet from the house before being washed
away by the previous night's rain.
The lack of good clues did not stop the Sheriff's department from
making arrests. That night a black suspect was arrested, largely
because he was supposed to have made a threat against Casaway at some
point in the past and his shoe sized matched that of the prints found
on the back porch, but he was released the following day. The police
and sheriff's department returned to the scene of the crime,
meticulously examining every article and item of furniture, as well
as the walls and the floors in search of more clues. Again, a large
crowd of hundreds of onlookers of all races, gathered, and boxes and
benches were placed under the windows, allowing the more sanguinely
inclined to look in at the bloody furniture that remained in the
house. The bloody mattresses, sheets and clothing were placed in
the front yard “
preparatory to being burned, although several
negroes protested they should be buried, because they were covered
with human blood.”
(San
Antonio Express, March 23, 1911, p 14)
Arrangements for the burial of the Casaways were handled by
Williamson and St. Clair. Ironically, “St. Clair” was actually
Perry Sinclair, an undertaker who was also the son-in-law of Richard
Campbell, the attorney who was first called by Principal Carver and
whose wife first discovered their bodies.
The funeral ceremonies were held at St. Paul's Methodist Church, and
their bodies were interred at City Cemetery No. 3. The burials were
in three caskets, with Alfred Casaway buried in one, his wife and
their 5 month old son in another, and the girls, Josie and Louise in
a third. The ceremonies were “attended by nearly all the negroes
living near where the Casaways had lived. The murders and the
funeral were the sole topics of conversation, almost, yesterday along
North Olive Street between East Commerce and Nolan Streets and many
of the negroes were wrought up to a high pitch.”
But once the bodies had been laid in their graves and night began
to fall over the neighborhood, the crowds of curious onlookers which
had swarmed around the Casaway house began to fade away.
The house looked lonesome, the
doors closed and windows drawn; everything took on a gloomy aspect
and the shadows about the place assumed curious shapes as distant
lights threw occasional glimmers over all. A dog, the sole surviving
member of the family, sat on the back steps and howled dismally. Few
person passed by, for those who could preferred to go a roundabout
way rather than go by the house in the dark. Those who lived near
appeared to rest badly and frequently faces would be seen at the
windows gazing toward the untenanted home...About 11 o'clock...close
to the hour at which the murders are believed to have been committed,
a little party of negroes was seated in a house near by. The dog,
which had been quiet for some time, suddenly began howling again,
attracting attention to it. As the persons in the group looked that
way a blue light appeared suddenly to leap from the windows of the
house. It vanished, but a moment later again shone forth. Looking
closer, it appeared to the frightened watchers that a light shone
dimly in the house. One of the party was sure heard a sound like a
blow, followed by a sharp cry. The report spread quickly, and soon
many eyes were focused on the house. For thirty minutes the blue
light appeared to shine and then went out altogether. What cause it,
whether a reflection from a distant electric light or what, is not
known. No investigation was made. No one cared to approach the
house. No watch dog was needed to guard it.
As no new strong clues as to the identity of the murderer of the
Casaways or their motives came to light, speculation began to grow.
The dog that continued to wait in vain for its owners on the back
porch was the source of one idea that was to grow over the coming
year about how such a murder could come about. The dog who did not
bark led some police to believe
“...(t)hat had anyone gone to
their house with the intention to commit murder prepearations would
have been made, instead of depending upon finding an ax. One theory
the detectives have had is that the murderer was acquainted with the
family to such an extent that the dog permitted him to pass, for the
animal, if aroused, did not bark, at least not so as to noticed by
any of the neighbors. Persons believe that a dog always knows when a
death occurs in a house and announces the fact by howling
unceasingly, cannot understand how it is that the animal made no
outcry whatever during the night. It has been thought that the dog
may have been doped, too, with something which was used to put the
members into a deep sleep, for it is evident that the murderer went
about his work deliberately, lighted a lamp after fastening cloths
across the windows.”
The suggestion that the Casaways had been drugged had already
been made, but the detectives had decided not to have the contents of
their stomachs examined, feeling that other clues could lead to the
arrest of the murderer.
Another area of speculation involved the mixed race issue, with
Sheriff Tobin “inclined to the belief that the deed was the act of
some fanatic on the problem of miscegenation.”
This was also reported as “
a commonly accepted theory here that
the killing was done by some one who, believing Mrs. Cassaway woman
and being insanely opposed to any mixture of the whites and blacks,
conceived the notion of wiping out the entire family.”
This issue also played a role in the murders over the following
year, where the victims were predominantly mulattoes.
After more than a week with no solution in sight, the murders had
caught the attention of Texas newspapers in Houston, Alpine,
Bastrop, Abilene, Bryan, Temple,Coleman, Brownwood and Galveston, as
well as being reported in national papers in Louisiana, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, California and
Illinois. Confronted with increasing national pressure on a killing
being portrayed as “t
he most remarkable in the criminal annals
of Texas, the murderer leaving absolutely no clue to his or her
identity,”,
the sitting Goverrnor of Texas, Oscar Branch Colquitt, offered a $250
reward for the apprehension of the murderer of the Casaways. Two
days later a mass meeting of the concerned black community was held
in San Antonio as well, with hopes of raising additional funds for
the reward.
When Judge Edward Dwyer of the Thirty-Seventh District court
called together the grand jury a week after the murders, the
importance of solving the crime was made imminently clear in his
charge to the jurors.
Since your organization, I am
sorry to say, a most diabolical crime has been committed in our
midst. The midnight assassin has been at work and exterminated in
one night a whole family – not even sparing innocent and helpless
children. It is a crime that cries to heaven for vengeance and one
that has shocked our fair city and made its citizenship bow their
heads with grief and horror and shame. The officers of the law have
been working day and night to find a clue to this horrible killing,
but so far, I regret to say, have been unable to run down the
criminals, and the outrageous murder is still shrouded in mystery. I
charge you to leave nothing undone toward unraveling, if possible,
this horrible crime, so as to bring the guilty ones to justice. I
also now call upon all good citizens to aid us in every way possible
in ferreting out who has committed this wholesale assassination in
our midst by giving you or the officers any information they may
have, circumstantial or otherwise, that might give a clue toward
detecting the offenders. We all owe it to God, to our State, to
society, to our fair city and ourselves to do all in our power to
bring such miscreants and enemies of mankind to justice and must
unite out energies in that direction...
Immediately after the murders, Sheriff Tobin initiated a search
for Lizzie's family members. Two brothers was located, one in Llano,
and another in Austin. Both were questioned by a deputy sheriff
and a city detective, but neither was able to provide information
pertinent to the investigation.
Several of Lizzie's relatives, including her brother John, her well
to do cattleman brother from Llano, were eventually called before
the grand jury investigating the murders, only to find that a number
thought she had been dead long before the murders.
But it was a more distant family member who had not been interviewed
that was eventually arrested for the murders over four months later
after he had been tricked into showing up at the Sheriff's office.
William McWilliams was a 68 year old white man who had been
raised as a foster child by a relative of Elizabeth Casaway, a Mrs.
Hamilton from Perry Hill, Texas, and was also known as Mack Hamilton.
The Hamilton were a tumultuous family, many of whom who died violent
deaths, and McWilliams eventually lost track track of them after he
moved to the East End of San Antonio. In the spring of 1911 he
received a letter and then a visit from a family member, a Miss
Ballard. It was during that visit that McWilliams learned that
Elizabeth had married a black man and was living less than a quarter
of a mile away from him.
McWilliams didn't believe this at first, and went to go visit
Elizabeth for himself. When he got there he stood outside the gate
talking to her, while watching her children playing in a room of the
house. According to the testimony he gave to law officers, he
initially didn't believe that Elizabeth had married a black man until
he heard her tell him the story of her abuse and abandonment in her
first marriage. He said that Casaway had been kind to her, and that
after they returned from their marriage in Mexico she and Louis were
living a happy life together.
The Sheriff's office had previously been told of his visit with
Elizabeth the day before her murder. She had recounted to another
woman that “
she had been urged to leave her husband and children
and refused to do so.”
This unnamed woman had called in this information anonymously, and
“
refused to give her name, not even, she said, for twice the
amount of the ($250) reward offered.”
They had also received information from a black man named James
Nelson that McWilliams “
talked about having put five negroes out
of the way, that three of them were buried in the same hole. Nelson
further testified that McWilliams had said that Sheriff Tobin was
looking for Mack Hamilton for having done the killing, and wanted
Nelson to understand that he was not Mack Hamilton.”
After he had been arrested,
McWilliams' home was searched and a letter was found whose
handwriting and paper matched those of an anonymous letter which had
been received by the Sheriff's department. That anonymous letter,
received on May 26, had been addressed to Sheriff Tobin and Richard
Campbell, Louis Casaway's brother-in-law, and although at the time
the Sheriff would make a full investigation of it, he also felt it
might well be the work of “some crank.” It intimated not only a
responsibility for the murders as well as animosity toward Sheriff
Tobin, and was clearly the work of a disturbed mind. The full text
of the letter was printed in full in the newspaper two days later.
San
Antonio, Tex., May, 1911. - To Sheriff of Bexar County, and also to
R.A. Campbell, lawyer – I understand that you all are in search for
the man that killed the Louis Casaway family. Well, I am the man,
and I am going to give you trouble in catching me, and whenever you
run across me there will be trouble on your hands.
I am no negro. I am a full-blood white man, and again, I never
wrote this. I had it done by a man that is today about three hundred
miles from here, and I am in the city of San Antonio now. So catch
me if you can and there will be trouble on your hands, because I am
in a dangerous place and I mean to kill the first one that tackles me
about the matter, so you can all pop your whip and get busy. I am
ready to die at any time, so look out.
I
had a right to kill that family, and if you ever catch me I will
explain it to you.
On the basis of this
information, McWilliams was arrested and held in the county jail.
When he appeared at a habeas corpus hearing the following week, most
of the crowd in the courtroom were neighbors of the Casaways.
McWilliams was noted to laugh several times during witness testimony,
and his “aged wife, sitting at his side, also seemed to
find considerable merriment in the proceedings.”
The hearing was not completed that day, and when it continued the
following morning it once again had a large crowd of spectators
attracted by the most spectacular murder in the city's history.
McWilliams' demeanor was noted to be considerably more sober,
punctuated not by laughter but by a severe coughing spell when the
still bloody ax used in the Casaway murder was brought into the
courtroom as evidence.
A federal marshal testified that McWilliams, whom he considered a
nuisance who frequently visited the Marshal's office, had bragged to
him that he knew who had murdered the Casaways, but when he reminded
McWilliams he could receive a $500 reward for that information from
the sheriff's office the reply was “I wouldn't tell Tobin
anything. I have as much use for him as I do for a bedbug, and you
know what to do to a bedbug – kill it.”
After two days of hearings, Judge
Dwyer finally did grant McWilliams bail, set at $1000 per each charge
of murder, but he was unable to make the bond of $5000 and returned
to the county jail to until the grand jury was impaneled in October
to stand trial. But for reasons that remain unclear, McWilliams
never did stand trial for the murders.
Shortly after the Casaway murders the
authorities in Texas were contacted by Louis LaCoste, the Sheriff of
Lafayette Parish in Louisiana. LaCoste had noted a similarity with a
series of murders he had been investigating.
On November 11, 1909 Edna Opelousas, a black woman, and her three
children between the ages of 4 and 9 had been murdered with an axe in
Rayne, a town in Acadia Parish, adjacent to Lafayette Parish. On
January 31, 1911, another Acadia Parish black family, Walter Byers,
his wife and six year son were murdered with an ax in Crowley. On
February 25, yet another black family, Alexandre Andrus, his wife
Mimi, three year old son Joachim and 11 month old daughter Agnes also
fell victim to an ax murderer in Lafayette. When Sheriff LaCoste
heard about the strikingly similar murder of the Casaway family in
San Antonio he suspected the same person may have been involved.
A number of suspects in these Louisiana murders were arrested,
but all were eventually released, save one. On October, 24, 1911
Raymond Barnabet was convicted of the Andrus murders in Lafayette,
but the murders did not come to an end there. The following month,
another brutal murder of a black family occurred in Lafayette. On
the night of November 26-27, Norbert Randall, a 24 year old butler,
his 23 year old wife Asima, 5 year old son Rene, 5 year old son
Robert, year old daughter Agnes and an unnamed nephew were all killed
by ax blows to the head. Their bodies were discovered discovered by
the oldest Randall girl, 9 year old Devine, who had spent the night
at her uncle's house.
The following day Clementine Barnabet was arrested for the murder of
the Randall family, who she was living within a block of. Clementine
was the 18 year old octaroon daughter who, along with her brother,
had testified against her father during his trial the previous month.
Clementine's appearance at a hearing on November 28 was described
as one “t
hat for years will be the subject for 'round-fire'
tales by toothless grandmothers and will form the nucleus for
legendary tales of horror for generations to come...With screams of
hysterical laughter, the girl rocked back and forth in the witness
chair, her great eyes rolling into the back of her head, barely any
of the pupil showing.”
Whether prompted by mental instability, guilt or “
a night in
jail and a third degree”
and a plan by the Lafayette Parish authorities “to be taken to New
Orleans...to have her submit to an examination on the order of the
'third degree' by the New Orleans detective bureau,”
she readily not only confessed to the Randall murders but to the
murder of the Andrus family her father had been convicted of.
Throughout her incarceration and eventual conviction of the murders,
she also claimed be a part of a greater conspiracy, a member of the
“Church of Sacrifice” under the protection of “condjahs”
provided by voodoo doctors to protect them while engaged in blood
sacrifices.
Although the confessed killer was in the Lafayette Parish jail
awaiting trial, the ax murders continued. On January 19, 1912
another murder took place in “
the coontown section of the city”
of Crowley known as the “
Promised Land,” a legally
sanctioned red light district.
Marie Warner was a young mulatto woman who had been divorced from
her husband for four years, but after he left for Beaumont she
returned to their two room home to care for their three children, 9
year old Pearl, 7 year old Garey and five year old Harriet. When
Marie's mother-in-law came to check on her and didn't get an answer
at their front door, she asked a neighbor if she knew where she was.
Finding the back door open and fearing the worst, they found a man
willing to go in to check on them. Although there was no sign of a
struggle, all four were found laying face down on their bed in the
front, along with the bloody ax that had staved in their heads.
Although there were footprints found in the back yard and bloodhounds
were called in, no substantial clue was found leading to the
murderer.
Two days later, on January 21, another black family was murdered,
this time in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Felix Broussard was known as
“a hard working man” who had “an industrious family and bore a
good family.”
He, his wife and their three children, aged 8, 6 and 3, were
murdered with blows to the head from an ax, but this time there were
two additional new twists to the murders. The first was a bucket
found collecting the blood from the blood from the victims beside the
bed. The second was found written on the front door of the family
home, a line of Biblical text which read “When he maketh
inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble,”
followed by the words “human five.”
With the number of murders growing despite one confessed
murderess being behind bars, the public was in an uproar. In Lake
Charles Eliza Richards was arrested in connection with the murders
despite her adamant claims of innocence. For her own protection she
was brought back to Crowley, not only for “
further investigation
on the part of Sheriff Fontenot and his deputies” but for
safekeeping, “
as the wholesale murders around Crowley have
aroused much excitement and resentment, and probably violence may
have been attempted were any one held there in connection with the
bloody crimes.”
In addition, King Harris and J.W. Wilkins were being held in the
Lafayette Parish jail as preachers in the “Church of Sacrifice,”
alleged by Clementine Barnadet to be the instigators of the murders
as “a result of some fanatical belief or teaching.”
But with the murders now numbering in the dozens, despite the
arrest of one suspect who confessed to the murders and even more
suspects being jailed, panic was beginning to spread through the
black communities in southeastern Louisiana. It was reported that
“
(m)any of the Lake Charles negroes have remained awake since
the night of the murder, while not a few have organized into bands to
watch while the others sleep.”
To make matters worse, there were more attempts “
to enter negro
homes” and “
(v)ery sensational tales are being circulated
in regard to these attempts, which are greatly adding to the fright
of the negroes.”
A book agent asking a black woman in Lake Charles about her family
size and their religion found her so nervous about the ax murders and
suspicious over his line of questioning she became “
began to
shout hysterically and finally collapsed. The scared book agent fled
to a negro cabin which was soon surrounded by a mob of more than a
hundred angry negroes. He was rescued by the police.”
In Lafayette there were a number of attempts to enter black homes
at night, adding to the growing sense of fright among the black
population. This led to a mass meeting of 150 black citizens at the
Good Hope Baptist Church, who having “
been recently visited by
some unknown party, or parties who have committed the most horrible
crimes in killing two colored families in a very mysterious manner,”
adopted a number of resolutions “
pledge(ing) ourselves to
furnish the authorities and officers with any information we may have
that would lead to the fereting out of these crimes and we further
pledge ourselves to be used in any capacity by the authorities and
officers of our city in helping them bring about the desired results
in reference to the crimes committed in Lafayette, Rayne, Crowley and
Lake Charles.”
And the panic was soon to spread westward into Texas.
On the night of February 18-19, 1912, the ax murderer crossed
over from Sabine River from Louisiana into Beaumont, Texas. 39 year
old Hattie Dove, a divorced black woman who worked as a domestic, was
last seen at home that Sunday night with her three children, 18 year
old Jessie Quirk (divorced), 16 year old Ethel and 14 year old
Earnest, who worked as a laborer. Another extremely fortunate man
who boarded with the Dove family worked nights, and was not home that
evening when the now infamous “ax man” slipped into their house
on the north end of town, wiping out yet another family. It was
reported that
“Thousands
upon thousands of negroes filed past the four dead negroes lying in
the morgue...(a)nd sent fervent supplications to heaven to be spared
a visitation of this awful vengeance upon themselves. Many of them
moaned that the Lord had deserted them and some of them were heard to
murmur that a curse had fallen upon the race.”
As usual, the police rounded up a number of suspects and detained them but eventually they were released. There was a mass meeting of concerned black citizens and they raised a reward of $500 for the arrest and conviction of the murderer. Tensions were running high and members of the black community were spending nights together, staying up in shifts to keep a watch out for any sign the ax murderer might decide to grant them a visit. Horace Alexander, a 21 year old married man was sharing these duties at the home of Adam Bobinaux on the south side of Beaumont on the evening following the Dove murders. Bobinaux was sitting up with the shotgun when he somehow mistook Alexander for the “ax man,” shooting him in the side and killing him instantly.
45 In nearby Orange, there were “more revolvers purchased ...by negroes than was ever known before.”
46
Reports about the murders and Clementine Barnabet's sensational confessions were becoming more widespread in newspapers not only in Louisiana and now Texas, but throughout the country as well. The managing editor of the Utica Saturday Globe, A.M. Dickinson had traveled from New York to Louisiana and penned an extensive article on the Louisiana murders for the February 17, 1912 edition of his paper. It dealt with the murders in Crowley, Rayne, Lafayette and Lake Charles at length, and was complete with photographs of the houses where the murders took place, a “church of the 'Blood Atonement'” and members of the church being held in the Lafayette jail. It was captioned “Like the Jungles of America – Blood Sacrifices in the Louisiana Rice Belt.”
47
Another particularly lurid article on the murders appeared in the El Paso Herald, titled “Voodoo's Horrors Break Out Again.” The tone of the article is captured by it's subtitle, “How the Cruel and Gruesome Murders of Africa's Wicked Serpent Worship Have Ben Revived in Louisiana by a Fanatic 'Sect of Sacrifice.'” It was dominated by an illustration of a small black child wrapped in the coils of a massive snake, describing how “Here all the horrors of Voodooism are revived and little children go to their deaths a sacrifice to the serpent,” next to a photograph of “A Typical Group of Louisiana Rice Pickers from Whom the Victims of the “Sect of Sacrifice” are Taken” and above a picture of “How the Dead Fingers of the Baby Victims Are Spread Apart with Pieces of Wood After They Are Sacrificed!”
48
(El
Paso Herald, March 14, 1912, p13)
The fear was spreading, and the mysterious murderer or murderers had a name - the Axman. On March 1, a story began circulating in Galveston that the Axman “had posted notices that his toll in Galveston would be 'twenty-three negroes,' and as a result the panic was wild. It was made necessary to call in an extra policeman from the reserve list...to stay at the station and answer telephone calls as well as assure frightened dusky callers that they would receive protection.”
49 The press, feeling somewhat bemused and perhaps slightly insulated from a series of murders that only struck the black population, ran a skeptical article on the varieties of responses the black community of Chenevert in Houston was responding to this fear.
Darkies are Panicky.
Report That Mysterious Axeman Is
in Houston Causes Those of Chenevert District Sleepless Nights.
Midnight oil, mysterious pans of
cold water, uncanny exorcisms, knotted horse tails and too many other
forms of incantations known to darky necromancy are playing part in a
panicky epidemic through the Chevert neighborhood.
This sudden oscillatory, seismic
disturbance in the peace of mind of the colored population of
Chenevert street had its origins in a rumor, from some source that
has not been run to its lair, that the author of the recent negro
family massacres around Beaumont and Lake Charles had come to Houston
and is now stalking the night in the Chenevert neighborhood.
In hope of keeping this mysterious
and sinister being, man or devil, or whatever he or it is, away from
their houses, the whole population is reported to have resorted to
methods of the description alluded to above. Oil torches are left
burning in their rooms all night, pans of water are placed on the
floor and elsewhere about the room for the purpose of absorbing any
portion of the evil influence that may happen to be hydrophobic, and
other prestidigitations are performed carefully and thoroughly before
retiring, in hope that those thus doing may be immune when the
monster passes.
In order to supply the increased
demand of oil growing out of the large consumption for this purpose,
some of the Chenevert grocery and supply dealers on Chenevert street
found it necessary yesterday to lay in extra quantities of kerosene,
while the pan demand took on the proportions of a small flurry.
The
Chenevert negroes have applied the name “Jack the Ripper” to the
otherwise unidentified axman whose alleged presence in their midst is
spreading terror. That some sinister joker is perpetrating one of
the superstitious darkies of that side of town seems evident.
But the next murder was to bypass Houston for a small town next to the railway tracks outside of Columbus, Texas by the name of Glidden. It was discovered by Parthenia Monroe, the 30 year old who lived with her grandmother when she came to check on her mother, 46 year old Ellen Monroe, a local washwoman and mother of 8 children.
51 When Parthenia came by early on the morning of March 27 to check on her mother and younger siblings, she found they had been brutally murdered in their beds. In one room were 8 year old Alberta, 11 year old Jessie (also known as Octavia), 12 year old Dewey were in one bed and 16 year old Willie on a cot, their heads crushed with the blunt end of an ax. In the room across the hall, lying dead by the side of the bed, was Lyle Finucane a widowed 35 year old mulatto
52 who worked as a porter in the rail yards and who roomed with the Monroes, his head also “crushed in and beaten away from the crown to the nose.”
53 Ellen had apparently risen after being struck but only made it to the middle of the room before she died from her wounds. The ax, which had been taken from a woodpile out back, had been left in the house, and the murderer had stopped to wash his hands in pan of water before he left.
(The
Glidden Murder House, from Around Columbus by Roger C. and Marilyn
B. Wade; courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library)
The following day five wagons carried the six coffins to be buried at Rocky Chapel, and nine blacks were held “under arrest, believed to have knowledge of the crime,” though the Justice of the Peace Gregory waited “until after the burial of the victims before taking further testimony.” Only one of these, Jim Fields, eventually went to trial for the murders, while most of the others were held as material witnesses, including his wife, Ida Fields. . Meanwhile, the Mayor, Sheriff, Chief of Police and City Detective of Beaumont came to Columbus to determine if “the perpetrator of the outrage has any connection with the crime of similar character lately committed in Beaumont” but were “of the opinion there is no connection between this crime and series east of here.”
54
But at least one unnamed attorney from Lake Charles felt that there was some sort of connection between these murders, and had mailed a letter to Constable J.M. Everett of Columbus “foretelling of the tragedy at Glidden and predicting that after it the perpetrators would proceed to San Antonio, where another family had been marked for slaughter.”
55 It was similar to an letter that had been received by the San Antonio City Marshal, dated April 2 and stating that “a crime identical with that of the Caraway(sic) atrocity would be committed in San Antonio on April 12.”
56
Early on the morning of April 12, 1912, Callie Burse, a young
black maid, was sent over to the house of William Burton at 724
North Center Street in San Antonio just east of the railroad station.
She a can of kerosene sent by a local preacher to repay a loan of
the same by Burton, a 26 year old porter who worked at Sommer's
Garden, a local saloon and bowling alley. No one answered at the
front door when she knocked, so she went around to a side window. To
her dismay, the curtains on the window were down and covered in
blood. She “
made no further investigation, but notified
neighbors, who called county and city officials.”
When the police forced their way into the house they came across
the body of Burton's 20 year old wife, Carrie, face down on the floor
next to the bed, her skull crushed in and a knife sticking out from
her back. On the bed was Burton, his head also crushed in and a
knife in his back as well. In an adjoining room the Burton's two
children, 3 year old Naomi and 1 year old Edward, were found with
their skulls crushed. Carrie's brother, Leon Evers, who had been
staying with the Burtons, was dead on the bed next to the boy, skull
fractured from an ax blow and a knife blade broken off in his back. A
bucket of water was found in the room, where the killer had washed up
after the murders.
The Burtons had lived a few blocks away from where the Casaways
had been murdered less than a year earlier. As with the Casaways,
aside from the slaughtered bodies of the victims, nothing was out of
order, ruling out robbery, and all the doors and windows locked.
Cassie Burton's mother, Betty Evers, had been by to visit the home
around 8 the previous evening, and William Burton returned home from
work around midnight. Neighbors said he had no enemies, but a next
door neighbor said she had heard some odd noises at the Burton house
around 2 in that morning when her dog began to respond to those
noises, though she thought nothing of them at the time.
(Burton
Home, San Antonio Express, April 13, 1912, p 14)
It became clear that the dreaded killer known as the Axman had
returned to San Antonio. The police and the Sheriff's department
that “
the crime was the result of religious fanaticism. This
belief is based upon the similarity of the condition in which the
bodies of the victims were left in this tragedy and other mysterious
murders which have occurred in South Texas and Louisiana.”
Constable J.M.Everett came to San Antonio, along with the letters he
had received, to see if he could further his investigation of the
murders in Glidden. Three men were arrested in connection with the
murders, including two “'voodoo' doctors” from Alabama, but both
denied “
any knowledge of the horrible butchery which has thrown
seventeen separate and distinct kinds of scare into every negro in
the city.”
Sheriff Tobin began to work under the assumption that “
these
murders are part of the religious propaganda of a secret sect”
and that the fact that Cassie Burton, her brother and two children
were mulattoes played a role in their murder.
He
...requested that all negroes who
know anything of the practices of 'voodooism' confer with the peace
officers. Their confidence will be respected and they will be
afforded police protection...From one old negro yesterday he learned
that the “human sacrifice” idea is taken from the Bible, St.
Matthew, iv. 10, as follows:
'And now also the ax is laid unto
the rot of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth
good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.'
Under a diseased condition of mind
this is believed to have been warped into a literal command from the
Most High to commit murder under certain conditions. Possibly the
fact that the Burton woman was fair-skinned may have been the
incentive in this instance. So far as known, however, she herself
was not imbued with fanatical religious ideas, but lived a quiet and
respectable life with her husband...
For the second time in less than a year, blacks in San Antonio
began to fear that their family might become the next victims of a
horrendous midnight slaughter, especially if there was any white
blood in their background. One of the suspects, arrested after the
murders with a large amount of skeleton keys, had been called upon to
treat corns on a black woman's foot, and when another woman in the
house, a mulatto, asked for him to treat her he “
said he would
not treat a woman of her color...for a million dollars...and that
there would be an end to negroes of her hue.”
In many houses one family member stood guard half the night,
while another stood watch the other half of the night. Some nailed
their windows shut, keeping the curtains up and the lights burning
throughout the night so neighbors could help keep a lookout, and dogs
were now allowed in the house to help raise an alarm over any
intruders. “
In some quarters there was an intensity of fear due
to letters sent from Houston.” These were turned over to the
police, unsigned chain letters which contained the prayer “
We
implore thee to bless all mankind and keep us from all evil and take
us to dwell with thee,” and instructing the recipient to “
copy
it nine times and sen(d) it to nine friends with the promise that
'you will receive a great joy on the ninth day.' In conclusion, it
says, 'Do not break this chain – sign no name, just date.'”
A number of blacks in San Antonio “
appealed to the Sheriff
and police departments for permits to carry weapons, and others,
without such permits, have resorted to the use of firearms when
aroused by strange noises at the dead of night. Two such cases were
considered in police court yesterday and it is reported that several
similar arrests have occurred in which no arrests were made. “
The chief of police called upon “
the city council to offer a
$1000 reward for the capture of the fiends who slaughtered the
Burtons, and Sheriff Tobin will make a like appeal to the governor.”
William and Cassie Burton, as well as their two small children,
were buried in City Cemetery #3, San Antonio's colored cemetery, the
same as where the bodies of Louise Casaway, Lizzie Casaway and their
three small children had been buried less than a year before. But
before the funeral services for the Burtons could be held, the now
infamous Axman was to claim his next victims.
Isaac Burney had been born into slavery in Georgia in 1855, but
had made his way to Texas by the age of 20, when he married Sylvia
Johnson and had six children before she died some time before 1900.
He was a preacher as well as a farm laborer, and in 1912 he was
living a block east of the court house in Hempstead, together with
his daughters, 20 year old Cassie and 30 year old Alice Marshall,
along with Eva Jones and her two small boys.
The night following the murder of the Burton family, As he slept
he was battered into insensibility by blows from either a small ax or
a hatchet, although he did not die immediately, lingering on for
three days before succumbing to his wounds. The assailant then crept
into an adjoining room, where his two daughters and Eva Jones slept.
Alice was killed immediately, her head similarly crushed in. Cassie
was also struck, but before any fatal injuries were sustained Eva
awoke and managed to escape with only slight wounds to a hand before
rolling under a bed and scaring off the murderer with her screams.
This not only saved her life but probably those of her two sons and
Cassie as well.
This was the most atypical of the killings attributed to the
murderer, primarily because the killing was interrupted before every
in the house was killed, but also because none of those killed were
mulattoes.
But it is also unique because the killer had become so well
established in the public's consciousness by this time that on Alice
Marshall's death certificate the cause of death is simply listed as
“Killed by the Axeman,” although the signing physician was
slightly more circumspect three days later when the cause for Ike
Burney's death was given as “Struck on head by the Axman or some
unknown party.”
Alice Marshall's Death Certificate's Cause of Death
Sheriff Tobin, strongly suspecting links between the murders,
sent off detailed copies of the Burton murders to law officers in
Glidden, Hempstead, Beaumont and Lake Charles, with requests for
information on the murders in those communities, noting similarities
such as the presence of at least one mulatto and children in the
cases. Reporters also noted that
Since the five bodies were found
at the Burton home men in the Sheriff's department have been busy
running down every available clue and the affair at Hempstead,
seemingly similar to the one here, has redoubled their efforts. In
an effort to determine whether all of these mysterious murders which
have taken place at dead of night in various towns in South Texas and
Louisiana are not directed by intelligence, Sheriff Tobin dictated to
his stenographer yesterday a full and complete account of the one
here. Copies of this were sent to Glidden, Hempstead, Beaumont and
Lake Charles, La., with a request that the peace officers in those
communities perform a like service for him. The information now at
hand indicates that all of these crimes were similar, the
distinguishing features being the families attacked contained at
least one mulatto, that there were children in all cases, and in each
instance some sharp instrument, such as a knife, was left sticking in
the back of the victim.
It is the belief of those who have
been working on the case here that the murders are due to the
fanatical psuedo-religious teachings of a mysterious Church of the
Sacrifice, whose ritual is reputed to be a queer jumble of voodooism
and biblical quotations. This organization also has many of the
characteristics of a secret society and, if reports which have
filtered in to the police are true, those who are initiated into the
mysteries guard them with zealous dread.
An old negro woman who conferred
yesterday with Sheriff Tobin intimated that she knew something of the
cult. She was wrinkled, decrepit and wore an old bandanna
handkerchief about her head. Just who she was the sheriff declined
to say, nor did he place much credence in her story. She explained
that the words “blood of the lamb,” used figuratively by
Christians, has a more literal meaning in voodooism, and gave this as
a reason why children are killed.
The fact that the object of these
murderous attacks are mulattoes is firmly established in the minds of
the negroes and, while all members of that race here are more or less
apprehensive, in those families where one or more is light-colored
the fear is openly manifested. From midnight until dawn the mounted
police are kept busy answering calls...
By this time the Axman panic was firmly entrenched in the minds
of blacks throughout Texas and becoming a common item in newspapers.
In Austin, the older blacks recalled the unsolved “Servant Girl
Murders” of 1884 and 1885, when five black women and one black man,
as well as two white women were murdered and “
voodoo doctors”
were suspected of “
waging a causeless war of extermination”.
A black tramp who had recently arrived and was asking for food was
feared to be an Axman. Similar suspicions about another stranger who
had been hired to work on a black work gang led the crew to refuse to
work until he was fired. When unsigned letters purporting to be from
the Axmen were found in several East Austin front yards a delegation
of black citizens met with the Sheriff and asked for extra patrols in
their neighborhoods. The sheriff requested all copies of any
letters, but the only one received was eventually “trailed to its
source and found to be a joke. A group of black leaders presented a
petition to the governor requesting that he authorize a reward for
capture of the Axmen.
The colored population
secured all the guns they could find. Much excitement prevailed all
night and many windows and doors were nailed up.”
In Bryan, fear that the Axman was in the black section of town
caused “
a big excitement...(t)he whole population was soon up,
with lights burning and preparations made for defense. A search of
the neighborhood failed to reveal his presence and quiet was
restored.” In Hearne the presence of a chalked letter “s”
over the doors of homes in some areas, led many to fear the Axman was
marking the homes of his next victims. This was coupled with an
unexplained failure of electric lights in the town, but although law
officers were on heightened alert, “
(n)o clue has yet been
found, nor have they found anyone who saw the houses being so
marked.”
Similar “Black Hand” letters were received by some prominent
black ciitizens in Georgetown, followed by warnings from someone
presenting themselves as an Axman. “
Although Jim Fields was still being held for the murders in
Glidden, with his wife offering to give testimony against him, on
April 17 “...
a mass meeting of white citizens was held at the
courthouse to placate the negroes, to give them moral support and to
offer any feasible protection that lies within their power against
the axman...The object of the meeting was stated by the chairman to
be sympathy and protection of the colored people against the axman.”
The meeting, whose audience was about a third white and two thirds
black, was addressed for almost two hours by many prominent white
citizens, including the sheriff, county judge, justice of the peace
and others, as well as S.H. Burford, a black physician. A pharmacist
at the meeting, however, “
warned the negroes of the sanitary
effect of close crowding and sleeping with closed windows and doors.”
The chairman of the meeting stated it's object was “sympathy and
protection of the colored people against the axman,” and adopted a
resolution “
requesting the Governor to offer a suitable reward
for the apprehensions, capture and conviction of the axman.”
The depth of the fears of the black populace and the horrendous
character of the murders finally caught the attention of the governor
of Texas, Oscar Branch Colquitt. But it was the growing number of
letters supposedly from the Axman that brought him to act on this
growing menace to citizen of his state. On the afternoon of April
19, he “
issued a proclamation reciting that his attention had
been called by numerous persons in various communities that negroes
were receiving threatening letters in which the writers threatened
assassination by the “Axeman.” He therefore offers a reward of
$250 for the arrest and conviction of any such person found guilty of
writing or sending such communications.”
This did not stop such letters from preying on the fears of
blacks for many months to come. In Victoria, “quite a number” of
blacks were victimized by letters “
typewritten on slips of bill
heads,” supposedly signed 'The Axman' and 'The Hatchetman.'
They were “
thought to be no more than the work of some joker.
One read: 'We warn you, you half white, and all your family to leave
town in ten days.''
In the coastal town of Rockport the receipt of several “
Voodoo
letters” led the black community to form “
an organization
to protect themselves against expected visits of the 'axman,'”
including a committee to “
visit each incoming train to note the
arrival of strange negroes” and one to “
try to secure
permissions from the police officials to carry weapons.”
In Luling slips of paper signed “
Ax Man, Majority and Gamge,
no. 25” were found under the doors of black residents warning
them to “
either vacate their buildings or leave the town
permanently,” causing some to move out immediately.
Letters from Houston were sent to four blacks in Columbus “
with
pictures of skull and crossbones, a head with an ax sticking in it
and other devices with the words; 'June 19.'”
A family in Houston received a particularly ornate and
threatening letter. “
The envelope had been edged in black,
making it a good imitation of mourning stationery, and in the center
was a black coffin. Stamped on each corner with a rubber letter
printing outfit was the following inscription: “blood We Want and
Blood We Must have.” The letter inside read “
The axman is
in town and he is not a negro. This is a warning for you. Blood,
blood, blood.” This threw the entire neighborhood into a
panic, and when the police arrived to investigate the letter they
gave up on trying to “
persuade the negroes to return to bed and
the officers left them talking of the letter and hovering in groups
supposed to meet any attack from the 'fiend.'” An
investigation by detectives felt “
that the letter is the work of
some school children playing a joke at the expense of the
superstitious negroes.”
Another family received a less ornate letter. “
A large
crossbones and skull were drawn crudely in the center and a large ax
underneath. 'Look out, I am coming; you are next' were the words
written on the paper, and it was signed 'Ax Man.' It is the opinion
of the police the this letter is the prank of some friend taking advantage of the woman's fear of the 'fiend.'”
The Houston Post reported a story of a cruel joke played with a
potato. A porter on the return train from Beaumont went into the
depot master's office to change from his uniform into his street
clothes, but came running out so quickly he had to be stopped by
several depot officials and a police officer. The cause of his
fright was a potato on his suitcase carved to “
resemble a
message from the 'ax man.' It had a skull and cross-bones, the
porter's initials and the sinister legend, 'You next' engraved
thereon. It was signed 'the ax man,' too.” This apparently
caused so much amusement that someone took the potato and changed the
initials to those of a hack driver and dropped it in his carriage,
who reportedly was so frightened he changed from working the day
shift to the night to avoid the Axman's attentions.
In Elgin, “
(t)he axman fright had about subsided here when a
negro man received a card
reading thus: “Harry, you are next from Axman. Mean Axman.”
The negroes are again in a perfect state of agony and despair.”
The
use of threatening letters was still being used in September as well,
with one being turned over the Sheriff in San Marcos being clearly
meant to terrorize blacks. It read
Sarah Adams,
San Marcos: I want to warn you that San Marcos is our next place and
we are after all these stray niggers like yourself. If you are there
when we make our raid we are mighty likely to get you. These stray
niggers running over the country are the ones we are after. It will
only be a few days before we get there. You can take notice if you
don't think we mean business. Wait and see. Your are not the only
ones we are after in San Marcos. You had better lite out before we
get there, which will only be a few days. We always send a letter
ahead, in that way they don't believe it. AX COMMITTEE.”
These attempts to frighten blacks were not limited to letters.
The appearance of a “
peculiar looking man” in Plano who
“
visited many places in the negro quarters of the town, trying
gates and prying around” aroused “
a panic among the local
negroes, some of whom armed
themselves and called on the officers for protection,
which, of course, they were assured they should have.” The
next day
“...about a dozen
signs were found posted about the abodes of the colored population,
and while they bore different wording, all were to the effect that
the “ax-man” was coming, and the negroes had only 24 hours to
make their get-a-way. This work is generally believed to have been
done by boys who, knowing the superstitious nature of the negro,
sought to frighten them. The better classes, who work
and try to do right, have been assured that they shall not be hurt,
and most of them went back to work Tuesday morning, although some of
them were reluctant to do so. Of course the entire matter is
regarded by the whites as a joke, and no trouble is anticipated by
them.”
A letter to the
Alto Herald also addressed the cruelty of these letters.
During the last twelve months a
large number of negroes have been brutally murdered by some person or
persons in Texas and Louisiana. In every instance, men, women and
innocent little children have been brained as they asleep in their
homes. The indications all point to the murderer being a negro, for
an ax is the favorite weapon of the African. No matter whether he be
black or white, I hope he will soon be apprehended, and will meet
with the fate he so richly deserves. Following these brutal murders,
many negroes are receiving anonymous threatening letters, evidently
written by some hellish white man, which have caused much unnecessary
uneasiness among the blacks. Such an act is the height of brutality,
and the writers lay themselves liable to a sever punishment if
detected. They ought to be hung. --- Harpoon
Elijah Branch wrote in a letter to the Houston Post giving his
views as a black man, suggesting that the post office should begin
investigating these “blackmail letters” for possible clues to the
Axman's identity.
All efforts should be made to run
down the 'ax man' – the right one. It is possible in some cases
for an ignorant negro to be caught, one who has not enough
intelligence to exonerate himself, and yet he may be innocent of the
crime.
It ought to be determined by the
officers of the law, first, whether this killing is inspired by a
well organized society whose sole purpose is to intimidate the negro
race or whether each case is independent of the other. In many cases
persons have received blackmail letters which should become the
property of the postoffice inspector, so he could examine same and
see where mailed and what connection they bear to one another, if
any. This, in my judgment, would be the only starting point for the
postoffice department.
I can only speak for my people.
All of the law abiding negroes will unite with the peace officers in
helping to run down these criminals, regardless as to who they are,
and from the fact that they never have and never will be 'desirable
citizens'...
In Lafayette, Sheriff Lacoste even received an Axman letter in
May. It's author, “
evidently a negro,” claimed to be a
member of “
the '105,' who are banded together to kill negroes”
and “
that he is disgusted with the ax murders and willing
confess his part in them...The letter makes the interesting statement
that the victims of the axman are marked in advance by a man who goes
into the towns and makes the necessary selections of victims, who are
then dispatched by others. The writer deprecated the murders, but as
his authority for them, cites the sixth and seventh book of Moses.”
The sender of the letter also stated he was not afraid of being
caught by law enforcement officials, but “
is certain to have
death meted out to him by his fellows.”
Although some blacks were using unique techniques for protecting
themselves, such as the man in Columbus who “
has a system of
fishing lines connected up to a cowbell that looks like a monster
spider web,” most were taking to sleeping together, often at
times with “
as many as fifteen in a small house with windows and
doors battened. Others divide watches and stand guard.”
Having death meted out by one's fellows was a definite hazard for
during the Axman panic, as Adam Bobinaux had found out in Beaumont
when he accidentally shot and killed his friend Horace Alexander.
“
All over Texas and Louisiana the colored people” were
“...sleeping behind barred doors...with shot guns and pistols
inready reach of the watcher, who is prepared to shoot on slight
suspicion.”
In Houston it was “
not regarded as safe for a negro to move
about after dark among people of his own race, as many of them
announce an intention to shoot first and ask pedestrians as to their
mission afterward.”
Law enforcement officials in San Antonio were requested by several
black citizens to be issued “
permits to carry weapons, and
others, without such permits, have resorted to the use of firearms
when aroused by strange noises at the dead of night,”
with several arrests being made for related firearms offenses. It
was reported that in Hallettsville the amount of ammunition being
sold to blacks was greater than it had been in previous years.
In Brenham, the firing of guns and pistols by blacks who had “
been
arming themselves for defense against the terrible butcher who slays
people while they sleep” that the city marshal “
determined
to put a stop to the shooting and a number of arrests will probably
be made as the result of the shooting and of the frequent stealing of
cartridges from Brenham stores.”
The constable in Gonzales arrested two blacks tenants for shooting
at someone sneaking through some underbrush, fearing it was the Axman
when it was just the landlady attempting to locate a turkey nest.
(Dave
McKinney of La Grange. Photograph was taken by local whites mocking
the Axman scare, and is courtesy of the Fayette Public Library and Archives)
Dan Green, of Yoakum was demonstrating to his wife how to use
their shotgun “i
n case the axman made his appearance while he
was absent” when it accidentally discharged both barrels and
shot their daughter in her arms and thighs.
A unnamed white man was traced from a trail of blood after he
attempted to break into the Elgin home of “
a negress, Mary
Colter” and found himself on the business end of a shotgun
wielded by her teenage son, who feared he was the Axman.
Willie Harris woke from a dream of the Axman and ran out of his
house in terror, crashing through a glass door and cutting his arms,
legs and body. Other occupants of his rooming house awoke and
followed him as he ran down the street, leaving “
a trail of
blood on the sidewalk as he ran and ...not overtaken until he fell
exhausted nearly a mile from the house.” Doctors feared he
might not recover from his wounds.
A Houston Post reporter speaking
to a local black man got details of a local “vigilance
committee which was formed for the purpose of protecting the entire
neighborhood.” The men on
watch were required to make five rounds of his neighborhood during
his nine hour watch, and was fined five dollars if he was found
asleep while on duty. The interviewed man stated that while sitting
on his porch on watch one night saw someone on walking around a house
carrying what he was sure was an ax. He picked up his shotgun, went
to the gate of the house and ordered the figure to stop, which it
did. Despite his fright, the man on watch warily approached with his
shotgun at the ready, only to find that what he had thought was an ax
was a shovel being carried by the man who owned the house, who had
been walking in his sleep.
This fatal combination of fear and firearms lead to two deaths in
Smithville on April 16. Ernest Smothers, unable to sleep, got up and
was walking around in his room in a house where Wes Duval was on
guard against the Axman. Duval, “
nerves tautened by the long
watches of a week...ran into the room, and without looking about him
shot the supposed intruder, killing him instantly.” The sound
of the shotgun raised an alarm in his neighbor, Max Warren, who
grabbed his gun and ran over to render aid. But when he got there,
he lost his nerve and headed back to his own house. Yet another
neighbor, Morris Sellers, had also heard the gunshots and when he
saw Warren running mistook him for a fleeing Axman and shot him.
Both Duval and Sellers were held on homicide charges for a week
before being released on $500 bail.
Despite the deaths in Smithville, the Houston Post reported on
“
(t) first real ax man scare in which was blood was shed
occurred yesterday morning” on the 19
th of April.
The Brehnam Daily Banner, playing on the Houston report, went so far
as to report that “
(o)ne of the dreaded axemen has been caught
at last, much to the gratification of many terrorized negroes who are
in mortal fear of having their heads split open at night by the demon
with an axe.” These stories were based on the arrest of
Crawford Bray, a 42 year old junkyard worker who had been arrested
the previous morning after he had terrorized a Houston neighborhood.
After drinking way too much whiskey, Bray returned at three in the
morning to the home of Prince Judge, with whom he'd had supper the
previous evening. When Judge hesitated to let him in, Bray responded
“
I am the ax man; I want to get in the house, and if you don't
open the door I will blow up the place with with dynamite.”
Bray did indeed have an ax, which undoubtedly made Judge less
inclined to let him in. Bray broke a window, crawled in through it
and attacked Judge with the ax, slashing his arm. By this time the
house was in a general uproar, with the women of the house screaming
and the men rushing down to confront Bray, who began swinging his ax
at them. By this time the entire neighborhood was awake and in an
uproar over the possibility of the Axman being about, and an armed
posse led by a local preacher, Rev. E.B. Evans, on the way. Bray
attempted to escape by the back door but was captured before he could
leave, and led by “
a special committee of seven, five of whom
had shotguns...appointed to conduct him to police headquarters.”
Along the way, Bray began to sober up, and on arrival is reported
to have told the Chief of Detectives “
Boss, I sure is sorry
about this thing, and I wouldn't have had it happen for $5000. I
never is been in trouble and I never wants to be again.” He
was held for assault to murder, although the charges were dropped 11
months later. Rev. Evans used the episode to relay to the police
that there was talk in the black community of forming a “
law and
good order committee” offering a reward for anyone posing as an
Axmen and “
that the negroes were in great fear of the ax man
and were honestly afraid and not putting on.” There were also
reports that the neighborhood had received “
several sheets of
paper with skull and cross bones with an axe crudely drawn,
containing the words, 'I am the axe-man – coming soon – you are
next.'” The police, in turn, issued orders “
to arrest
suspicious characters, black and white and all persons who fail to
give a good account of themselves.”
Although the Axman was taking no white victims, his presence was
nonetheless being noted in the white communities throughout Texas. A
Temple newspaper article noted that the Axman scare had struck
locally, and “...
(i)f you haven't seen or heard of him, most
assuredly you have no communication with the colored population. The
axeman is the most dreaded boy that has come to disturb the peaceful
dreams of Senegambia since the long ago days when the “Paterole”
or the “Ku Klux” rode the lanes and by-ways.” Although the
article, titled
Axman'll Get You If You Don't Watch Out, was
clearly made for white readers who might find the whole matter
somewhat amusing, it did note that “
it
is to be considered that if a like epidemic of killing of families
were to prevail with white folks as victims, there would be just as
much fright as there is now, among the darkies.”
The Seagull Yearbook of Port Arthur High School, 1912, p73
The all night vigils
watching for the Axman were beginning to take a toll on whites
dependent upon black workers as well. As far away as Louisiana it
was being noted that the “axeman's
crimes have negroes of south Texas in a state of terror at this time
and in many instances they have stopped work, making the labor
problem a serious one.”
It was reported that around Columbus that “domestic
services in the town and field work in the country is seriously
interfered with. It is almost a daily occurrence for a cook or a
yard man to report that they can not stay awake all night and work
all day and that they will quit their positions to stay awake all
night and sleep all day.”
A local eatery in Bryan even attempted to capitalize on this with
ads such as “When
cookie is scared of the axeman and don't put in an appearance or wife
feels indisposed, call on the Owl Dairy Lunch”
and “Say, did you find
an 's' on your door this morning? Well, don't be afraid of the
axeman, for that is the first letter in 'stop at the Dairy Lunch.'”
A fascination with the possibility of
voodoo and it's racial undertones, compounded by the sensational
confessions of Clementine Barnabet, fed much of the fascination that
reporters were finding in the Axman story. An example of this can be
found in this article, which mistakenly refers to Barnabet's last
name as Crawford.
Despite
the Crawford woman's denials the peace officers are convinced that
she was but the instrument of a more powerful intelligence and her
arrest has involved a “witch doctor,' who confesses to having
provided her with certain “charms.” If the theory of the police
here and elsewhere is correct these charms play an important part in
the religious observances of the Church of the Sacrifice, and if the
head of this sect can be located it is probable he will be subjected
to surveillance, if not arrest.
These crimes have stirred up the
negro population throughout the entire South, and it is not in San
Antonio alone where members of this race are sitting up nights for
fear of the mysterious “axman.” Among many of the more ignorant
ones there is a superstitious dread which intensifies this fear and
which in turn may, and probably has, sent hundreds of them to local
“witch doctors” for charms to keep away the executioner.
For years it has been known that
despite the enlightenment of the Twentieth Century, a species of
voodooism has been kept alive in the “black belt” throughout the
South. Few of the descendants of the slaves are more than four or
five generations removed from barbarism and some even from
cannibalism. Here and there an atavistic member of the race has
handed down the weird practices of natives in Central Africa and in
some instances improved on them. The result is that these “witch
doctors” or “voodoos” as they are called, exercise a powerful
influence over members of their race. They possess the “evil eye”
and they “control the spirits” in such a way as to make them
feared, and the average negro may laugh about it, but down in their
hearts they can't shake off the dread with which they are possessed.
Moreover,
these “witch doctors” do a thriving business, and if he truth be
known, it isn't with members of their race alone. Many whites, just
for fun, visit them, claiming, of course, that “it was just for
the experience.” Fortunes are told or possibly a “love potion”
is given; in some cases a charm is sold to ward off the “ha'nts.”
Practically every child in the South who had a negro mammy has at
some time or another been to “de doctor's” house to have mystic
words spoke or his head rubbed by the queer old darkey.
Another
frequent source of news stories had to do with the
growing use of a number of questionable preventive measures to ward
off the attentions of the Axman. Many played on the theory that
somehow the murdered families had been drugged to sleep before the
killer slipped into the house, preventing them from rousing even as
the were being killed.
The ways in
which the precautions are taken are more amusing that effective. One
favorite belief is that the Axeman in some way wafts chloroform into
the sleeping room of his victims, thus enabling him to enter and kill
all without arousing any. From somewhere, probably from a conjur
doctor, it has been passed along that if water if placed in a vessel
near the door some distance above the floor, the chloroform sill be
taken up by the water instead of the fumes penetrating the room.
A
similar water method reported on in Houston suggested that it was a
sleeping powder used by the Axman, with the inhabitants of the home
which induced “a deep sleep from which they do not awaken before he
has entered and brained them with an axe, his official weapon.”
This particular remedy was being peddled by a “hoo-doo
man” who would “divulge
this information until he has been paid a certain amount”
and moving on to the next potential customer “before his
great and powerful knowledge has been broadcast in the neighborhood
and he loses sales.” Another
remedy was a green ointment sold by “another kind of
'hoo-doo man.'” It was rubbed
on the head in large amounts, but lost it's power after nine hours
and needed to be reapplied, leading one user to complain “that
he could not sleep on account of a fear that he would oversleep
himself and fall a victim to the 'axe man' after his liniment had
lost its power.”
Strangers
began to be suspect in many communities, especially if they were
thought to have any voodoo ties. O.L. Escrow, “a strange
and peculiar negro,” was going
house to house seeking a room to rent and writing down details on the
location of these houses. “It was said that he kept it
up almost all day and negroes fearing that the was the ax man sent
for the police” who arrested
him for vagrancy. After his arrest a”a peculiar hood and
cape resembling a night rider's costume”
was discovered in a nearby ditch, causing further alarm. Despite
police offers of protection and reassurances “that the ax
man is not in Houston...the general excitement and fear...has far
from subsided.”
A
“negro fortune-teller”
in Halletsville was “compelled to leave town”
after she warned of a local Axman attack.
A woman who arrived in Lockhart “who from her dress and
mysterious actions created the impression that she was in some manner
connected with the much talked of axman.”
She was arrested by the sheriff and given orders when released was
given orders by the sheriff to leave on the next train.
In Belton a “'batty' colored woman”
appeared in town “arrayed in a royal purpole skirt, was
adorned with mammoth bows of red ribbon, wore a very large hat and
black beil with white cloth tied over her mouth, and her clothing was
bejeweled with brass dresser drawer handles,”
causing “considerable excitement”
when she announced she was “half crazy and half ax-man.”
When
Mrs. H. Williams appeared in Bartlett, “wearing false
hair made from white people's hair and wearing quite a number of
skirts with large pockets in them, full of various trinkets...cheap
jewelry, plate, knives and forks and other junk”
she was arrested for vagrancy. She claimed her husband was a “faith
healer and fortune teller,”
and while many thought she was a “harmless crank”
a number of local blacks became fearful that she might be “a
Voo Doo priestess and that the trinkets and things found on her were
to be used in the mystic ceremonies and rites of Voo Dooism.”
Thinking she might be an Axwoman a crowd gathered around the jail
where she was held and “told the officers that if they
would give her to them they would kill her.”
After
being delayed by a local meningitis quarantine in Victoria, a blind
woman with dark glasses and “pupils strangely deformed”,
professing to be a “religious and educational lecturess”
possessing “healing powers” arrived from Rosenberg. Her presence
“created a general panic among the negroes of Victoria,
who spoke of her as the axwoman. The more terror-stricken darkies
threatened to kill her, and it took the combined efforts of the city
marshal's and sheriff's departments to protect the woman.”
She was eventually put up “at the home of a negro deputy
sheriff, who was almost as much alarmed as any other negro over the
presence of the woman, and before taking her into his house
admonished her if she made any crooked move he would kill her.”
Around
Lake Charles and Lafayette in Louisiana, Rev. J.S. Anderson was
selling “'Paradise Pills,' for which he claimed the
greatest of 'conjah' powers'”
and “hoodoo bag.”
It was apparently a lucrative business, since he later claimed he
made more than $3000 from his sales. Unfortunately he also fell prey
to suspicions “of being connected with the sect or
society” that was thought to
be associated with the Axman murders. Eventually, “for
fear of his life” he went to
the police and admitted to actually being A.N. Goodman, a preacher
from San Antonio who had been convicted of embezzlement but had
escaped prison in Texas several years previously. He “denied
having anything to do with the murders and only confessed, so he
said, that he might escape the vengeance of the colored people who
suspicioned him.” On his
return to Texas he “begged the officer not to take hi
through Crowley on the trip west, as he would be lynched if seen by
the people of that town (in whose vicinity some of the 'ax man's'
wholesale murders were committed.)”
Initially it was felt by law officers that he might be the Axman,
and was even questioned by Sheriff Tobin and others about his
whereabouts during his years on the run, but was eventually
considered innocent of any murders and returned to Huntsville prison
to serve out his term.
In
early June, San Antonio's black community east of the railway station
once again found itself immersed in a deep panic over what they felt
was a thwarted Axman attack. James Dashiell was a 49 year old
retired mailman who lived with Lula, his 35 year old wife, their
three sons and daughter. They had lived near the Casaway family, but
moved after they had been murdered. Their new residence was within a
few blocks of where the Burton family had been murdered just six
weeks earlier. Dashiell awoke to find a man about to enter into a
side window with what appeared to be carrying “what
resembled either an ax or heavy club.”
After the intruder fled it was discovered he had cut the inner
screen to the window and “red pepper was scattered about
the window and in the yard...Negroes
of the neighborhood say without reserve it was an occurrence
sufficiently grave to again put them in fear of their lives.”
They protested that they were not being allowed to adequately
protect themselves, and also cited the lack of “street
lights in the vicinity of the recent crimes, which makes it easy for
a criminal to rob houses or go to greater extremes.”
Noting that “their votes have been sought to help place
in office some of the men who are not now considering their rights”
they planned to meet with their state representative “and
others in the hope of enlisting their efforts in getting the Governor
to send rangers here to bring about at least a feeling of security.”
Their
protest of not being able to adequately protect themselves had
already been an issue prior to the attempt on Dashiell's home.
Because of previous appeals from the black community, Sheriff Tobin
had been appointing “reputable negroes following the
unrest created in the negro resident districts by the murder of two
men, a woman and two children by the 'Axman.'”
Four of these deputies, despite carrying authorization of their
appointments had been arrested by city police officers for unlawfully
carrying pistols. An unnamed official of the police department
made a statement to the newspapers to justify these arrests that
“nearly two hundred negroes of the city have been
deputized by Sheriff Tobin and in the belief that such authority
gives them the required legal permission are carrying on their
persons arms of various sorts, the greatest number having revolvers.
We do not propose to place the lives of the police officers of the
city in jeopardy through this indiscriminate 'toting' of firearms,
and instructions have been issued to the force to make every effort
to round up all persons unlawfully carrying arms.”
Responding
to these arrests, Sheriff Tobin noted that no more than twelve
deputies had been appointed and that “the police
department should view the arming of these negroes with alarm is
rather absurd to my mind. The appointments were made solely because
of the unrest created in the negro resident districts following the
murders committed by the 'axman.' In these districts the protection
afforded by the city police is practically null.”
He emphasized that each applicant had been thoroughly screened, and
that he did “not believe the police officers need fear
any danger from those holding my appointments.”
In addition he asked for writs of habeas corpus to bring the contest
the arrests of his deputies in county court.
One
of the arrested deputies, M.B. Inman, filed suit against the city
marshal and three officers for false imprisonment, asking for $20,000
in damages. His suit charged that “he was arrested
without legal warrant, confined in a 'vermin-infested cellroom' and
deprived of his liberty and denied bail, notwithstanding the offering
of cash and realty securities in amounts ranging from $500 to more
than $5,000.” After he filed
his suit, he was released from jail on his own recognizance. In
response the city marshal stated that “it would not
surprise me if the other negro deputies took similar steps. The men
were arrested because I believed their carrying of firearms a menace
to the police and the public and the State has declared 'pistol
toting' unlawful.”
At
the end of June the Bexar County grand jury reported its actions
regarding the appointment of deputies by Sheriff Tobin, finding that
they had “been appointed in emergency and no record was
kept of such deputation. We have been advised that all such
deputations have been recalled”
and that “hereafter no deputation of any kind shall be
issued without the proper course being pursued.”
While campaigning for his office again a month later, Tobin
“defended himself in the matter of appointing negro
deputies, explaining this action was taken after the appearance of
the dreaded 'ax-man' and that the negroes of the community were panic
stricken.” Speaking in front
of the Alamo, he insisted “I have no apology to make for
this. I appointed some ten or fifteen of the leading negroes to
patrol the streets in which they live, and should the same conditions
arise again I would reappoint them. If you don't think this was
right, don't vote for me, but I think those negroes were entitled to
protection, and if I'm in a position to do so I'll give it to them.”
He was re-elected Sheriff not only in that election but until 1923,
when he ran for mayor, winning that election and serving in that
office until his death in 1927.
On
August 16, the Dashiell home was once again broken into again, with
what the papers described as “what appears to be another
visitation of the mysterious axman...Undoubtedly the wielder of the
ax had planned to wipe out the entire family, but his misdirected
blows at the head of the woman failed to silence the first victim and
her screams roused the other members of the family.”
according to her account, Lula Dashiell who was sleeping next to
her daughter, awoke to to find a man swinging an ax at her. After a
glancing blow which she hardly felt struck her shoulder she awoke,
“immediately thought of the axman and quickly grabbed my
child, all the while screaming as loudly as I could, when the ax
struck me again on the ankle.”
At this point her husband “fired several shots from a
pistol at the would be assassin, but as far as known none of the
shots sent true...the escape of the would be murderer … as
mysterious as his entrance.”
The following day
law officers declared that they believed “the assault was not made
by the axman. The officers were inclined to believe that the job was
such a bunglesome one that the murderer who caused officers in this
section to spend many sleepless nights would not be guilty of such an
attempt.” They reported that “the weapon used was not an ax, but
the wound in the woman's arm was caused by a shot fired from a small
caliber pistol, while the bruise on the right ankle was a mere
scratch, probably caused by a fall” and “that her screams
awakened the neighborhood (and) in the excitement the theory that the
axman had visited the house spread.” It was not clear from the
news report if the pistol shot was one that had been fired by her
husband at the fleeing intruder.
Although
the original story of the Dashiell being another Axman attack was
carried in many papers throughout the state, the San Antonio Express
was the only paper that published this correction.
In retrospect, it
seems that the Hempstead murders were most likely the last of the
Axman murders targeting families. Other murders were being linked by
the press to the Axman, such as murder on July 6, 1912 of a single
black whose head was bashed in while sleeping in a stable office.
While this hardly fit the modus operandi of the Axman it nonetheless
provided the Houston Post an opportunity to run a lengthy article
based almost solely on the previous Axman murders and giving a
running total of the body count.
Plugan Reed, a black woman in Sulfur Springs was found in June with
her head crushed and an ax on the floor next to her dead body. Fear
that this was the Axman at work again spread, but her two year old
found playing in the same room, making this murder quite different
from Axman murders in which children were slaughtered along with
their parents.
Newspapers
soon were speaking of the panic in the past tense. In Houston, Leon
Narciss had been arrested on a charge of carrying a pistol, which he
had “purchased” a
pistol from a pawnbroker with a “99-year lease in which
the negro agreed to pay a certain price for the weapon and 50 cents
per day.” He was acquitted in
September with “his defense being that during the 'axman'
scare he was on his way home with a revolver when he was arrested.”
Effects of the Axman murders were even mentioned at the 1912
session of the Grand Lodge of the Colored Knights of Pythias in San
Antonio. Among other services, the Knights of Pythias offered
burials to members, and “grand medical examiner” Dr. T.E. Speed
was reporting on the relevant death rates. “Last year,
our death rate was a little over ten to the thousand. This year,
with the axman and twelve murders, meningitis...the big explosion in
San Antonio shops and an increase in our numerical strength, makes
our death rate larger for the year just closed.”
Clementine
Barnabet did eventually go to trial and in late October was
sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Norbert Randall's
wife, although she claimed responsibility for 19 of the murders in
Louisiana.
After being incarcerated in Angola State Penitentiary, she attempted
to escape the following year, but was caught within a day. Otherwise
she incurred no infractions and due to a 1902 Louisiana law was
eligible for reduction of her sentence and released in 1923.
But while she was the only person ever found guilty of an Axman
murder, it is clear that those responsible for the majority of the
Axman murders were never caught.
There
was a series of roughly contemporaneous unsolved ax murders of
families throughout the American Midwest during the same time period,
the most famous being in Villisca, Iowa in June of 1912. Some
contemporary writers have tried to link one of the suspects, Henry
Moore, to the Texas/Louisiana ax murders, but this seems unlikely at
best. The eight Villisca victims, including six children, were white
and affluent, as were the other murder victims, and the author of an
extensively researched paper on the Midwest murders and their
investigation by a Department of Justice Special Agent, M.W.
McClaughry, clearly distinguishes between these murders and the
Texas/Louisiana ax murders.
Unfortunately the Axman murders did not have a Special Agent
assigned to the case.
The
Texas/Louisiana murders have been mentioned in passing in several
murder anthologies, such as Serial Killers: The Method and
Madness of Monsters and The
Mammoth Book of Killers at Large,
and more extensively in Dark Bayou; Infamous Louisiana
Homicides.
There has even been a book on the subject recently published by Todd
C. Elliott with the unfortunate title of Axes of Evil: The True Story
of the Ax-Man Murders.
These focus primarily on Clementine Barnabet and the Louisiana
murders, and do bring to light the interesting proximity between
railroads and the location of the murders, most of which took place
quite close to the railroad stations, an important consideration.
A number of websites on the murders have also sprung up, ranging
from the lurid to archives of related news stories, but these
primarily deal with Clementine Barnabet and can be readily found with
a browser search for her name. A literary connection is suggested by
Janis Stout, who suggests that Katherine Ann Porter may have called
upon her memories of the Axman murders while living in Houston during
the worst of the Axman panic, and “considering how
attuned she was to the newspaper as a social institution”
utilized the imagery of an ax in her short story “Noon
Wine.”
But aside from Bill Stein's well researched The Glidden Ax Murder,
the Texas murders have had little written on them.
One academic
paper on the subject by William Ivy Hair was published in 1972,
incorporating information on several other overlooked black murders
in the South during the same period as the Axman. He also offers
interesting ideas on the prevalence of mulattoes among the victims.
In
a society where blacks were liable to be mobbed for the slightest
breach of racial etiquette, the centuries-old taboo against molesting
whites was strong indeed. Even among violent blacks for whom the
taboo posed no psychic obstacle, killing whites was, as a practical
matter, a more perilous activity than killing Negroes. People of
mixed ancestry, however, were classified by white society as being
members of “the colored races.” In effect, any discernible
amount of Negro blood made one a Negro. To most whites, the murder
of a mulatto family might be a regrettable incident, but was no more
reason for an extensive manhunt than the murder of a very black
family.
It seems very
reasonable to hypothesize that in the mind of a violence-prone black
of the early twentieth century, the mulatto would make a convenient
surrogate for the hated white man. A light- skinned Negro, or a
family with such members, was the closest thing to a white person he
could destroy with relative impunity.
Hopefully this
short essay on the Axman panic of 1912 in Texas will inspire others
to look into these long overlooked murders, not just from a sense of
morbid curiosity but from the broader perspective of looking into
long overlooked portions of history and what this oversight has to
say about how the past is remembered through often unrecognized
racial filters. In the sense that the murders remain unsolved they
remain a mystery to this day. But the greater mystery is why one of
the largest killing sprees in American history, responsible for the
death of close to fifty men women and children, has been so nearly
lost to the collective consciousness of an American public so
fascinated with murder.
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