The Hamburg Massacre and Cherokee Bill: South Carolina & Indian Territory

In 1876 an armed white mob killed six Black men in Hamburg, South Carolina, and not one of 94 men indicted was tried. That year Crawford Goldsby, later Cherokee Bill, was born; after Ike Rogers helped capture him, Goldsby was hanged for murder at Fort Smith in 1896.

On July 8, 1876, more than 100 armed white men attacked the Black militia of Hamburg, four days after a parade dispute over a road. They killed town marshal James Cook and Moses Parks, then shot four men they had captured, Allan Attaway, David Phillips, Hampton Stephens and Albert Myniart. A coroner's jury produced 94 indictments, including Benjamin Tillman, and no one was ever tried. Tillman became governor of South Carolina and a United States senator.

Crawford Goldsby was born at Fort Concho, Texas, that same year, the son of a Buffalo Soldier and a Cherokee freedwoman. As Cherokee Bill he rode with the Cook Gang. Judge Isaac Parker's federal court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, convicted him of murdering Ernest Melton, a painter who stepped to a window during a robbery at Lenapah, and jail guard Lawrence Keating, who left a wife and children. He was sentenced to death twice and hanged on March 17, 1896, at age 20. Rogers was shot dead by Goldsby's brother in 1897.

Content note: racial violence, a massacre, a state legislator shot while praying, the shooting of a bystander and a jail guard, and a public hanging.

Foul Play, Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary. Fifty states, fifty crimes. This is Episode 14.

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