0:03 [SPEAKER_00]: January 1886, Carleton, Mississippi, a Saturday afternoon. 0:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Two brothers are hauling jugs of molasses from a wagon into a saloon. 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Heavy earthenware vessels may be 20 pounds each, slick with condensation. 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Ed and Charlie Brown, part African-American, part Native 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The doorways narrow, someone's coming out as they're going in. 0:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Body's shift, a jug tilts, and thick brown molasses drips down a white man's sleeve. 0:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The brother stopped, apologized. 0:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The man, Robert Moore, visiting from Greenwood, looks at his shirt, shrugs, accepts the apology. 1:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He probably wipes it off with a handkerchief. 1:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody goes about their day. 1:08 [SPEAKER_00]: That's it, that's the whole incident. 1:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Two men carrying something heavy, bumped into somebody in a doorway. 1:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And within 60 days, 23 people would be dead. 1:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the question that haunts me about this story. 1:27 [SPEAKER_00]: How to spilled molasses, lead to mass murder. 1:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And once you've killed 23 people in a courthouse, in front of witnesses, in broad daylight, how does an entire town spend a century pretending 1:47 [SPEAKER_00]: welcome back friend to hometown history. 1:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world. 1:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, and today we're exploring how spilled molasses in a Mississippi saloon led to one of the deadliest acts of racial terrorism in American history. 2:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And how an entire town's been a century, 2:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Carolton Mrs. Sippy, county seat of Carol County, founded in 1834 and named for Charles Carol of Carolton, Maryland, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, one of those naming choices that feels ironic when you know what's coming. 2:39 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1886, the town set around a central square, at a tart, a two-story brick courthouse built in 1876, grey white brick, tall windows, a cupola on top, the kind of building designed to project authority, permanence, justice, keep that courthouse in mind, we'll be coming back 3:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Carol County was caught in country, rich Delta soil. 3:14 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1860, just before the Civil War, the county's population was about 22,000 people. 3:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the breakdown. 3:23 [SPEAKER_00]: 13,800 and 8 were enslaved. 3:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Only 8,227 were free. 3:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Black residents, outnumbered white residents, 3:39 [SPEAKER_00]: After the war, after emancipation, after reconstruction, those numbers shifted. 3:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But not the way white supremacists wanted. 3:51 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1880, Carroll County was still roughly 56% black, 44% white. 3:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And for the first time in the county's history, black men could vote. 4:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Black men held elected office, black farmers owned land. 4:11 [SPEAKER_00]: For white Democrats in Mississippi, and when I say Democrats, I mean the party of white supremacy and the post-reconstruction south. 4:20 [SPEAKER_00]: This was the problem they needed to solve. 4:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Not through debate, not through democracy, through violence. 4:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Historians suggest that between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings occurred in the American South. 4:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Mississippi led the nation with 654 documented lynchings, more than any other state. 4:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But what happened in Carleton wasn't unaliencing in the traditional sense, with something worse. 4:58 [SPEAKER_00]: A massacre in a courtroom, in broad daylight, with witnesses and law enforcement present. 5:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about Ed and Charlie Brown. 5:09 [SPEAKER_00]: They were brothers, part African-American, part Native American. 5:15 [SPEAKER_00]: What some records called 5:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Their father had been a free black man from Tennessee, who settled in Carroll County before the war. 5:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The Brown brothers worked as laborers, hauling goods, doing odd jobs. 5:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't politicians, they weren't activists, they were working men trying to get by. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's Robert Moore, white man from Greenwood, a town about 30 miles south. 5:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He was in peril to an on business when the Browns bumped into him and spilled molasses on his clothes. 5:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Evidence indicates he did what any reasonable person would do, except at their apology I moved on. 6:06 [SPEAKER_00]: More wasn't angry, he didn't file a complaint, he didn't demand restitution, 6:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But he made the mistake of mentioning it. 6:19 [SPEAKER_00]: James Monroe Little, that's the name you need to remember. 6:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Little was a Carol to an attorney. 6:26 [SPEAKER_00]: He edited a newspaper in Greenwood called the Greenwood Enterprise. 6:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He had family money, plantation money, the kind that survived the war. 6:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had friends in more social circle. 6:42 [SPEAKER_00]: When little heard about the molasses incident, probably casually, maybe overdrinks, he decided to make it his business, not because more asked him to, not because there was an ongoing dispute, but because in Little's Mississippi, a black man bumping a white man and getting syrup on his clothes was an affront that demanded an answer. 7:09 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1886, White Democrats across the South were systematically using violence to reverse the political gains. 7:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Black Americans had made during a reconstruction. 7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They called it redemption. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Historians suggest they were engaging in systematic terrorism. 7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: little saw himself as an enforcer of the racial order. 7:34 [SPEAKER_00]: A man of standing, who would remind Black residents of Carroll County, where they belonged. 7:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The record show he didn't just want to confront the Brown Brothers. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to make an example. 7:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So some time in early March 1886, about six weeks after the molasses incident, little gathered a group of friends, armed themselves, and went looking for Ed in Charlie Brown. 8:05 [SPEAKER_00]: What happened next depends on which account you read. 8:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Little's version, the one his lawyers would later tell him court. 8:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The Browns fired first. 8:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It was self-defense, an unfortunate escalation. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's what multiple black witnesses said happened. 8:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Little and his men hunted the Brown brothers down. 8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Cornered them, started shooting. 8:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Ed Brown was hit, but survived. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Charlie Brown fired back, killing James Monroe little. 8:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when everything changed. 8:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That's when the machinery of terror shifted into gear. 8:49 [SPEAKER_00]: When a white attorney gets shot in Mississippi in 1886, the system moves fast. 8:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Ed and Charlie Brown were arrested and charged with murder. 9:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So were several other black men, who witnesses said, have been nearby. 9:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether they were actually involved or not, didn't seem to matter. 9:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The exact number varies by source. 9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: at least 10 to 12 black men were taken into custody and held in the Carroll County courthouse. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: 2nd floor the same gray white brick building on the town square. 9:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now a Mississippi in 1886, black defendants accused of killing a white man almost never made it to trial. 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: lynching was the expected outcome. 9:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody knew it. 9:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The defendants knew it. 9:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The sheriff knew it. 9:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And the white community of Carroll County was making its intentions quite clear. 9:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Sources indicate that in the days after the arrest, white men began gathering in Carrollton. 10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Some came from neighboring counties. 10:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They congregated in saloons and hotel lobbies on the 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And the word that kept coming up, in newspaper accounts, in witness statements, was neck-ty-party, that was the euphanism, a lynching, public execution, without trial. 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But there was a problem, the brown brothers and the other defendants were locked in the courthouse. 10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: and by several accounts, Williamson wasn't interested in handing his prisoners over to a mob. 10:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Williamson was a white Democrat in Mississippi in 1886. 10:51 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't protecting the defendants because he believed in equal justice, but he did seem to believe in his authority. 11:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And he didn't want a mob deciding what happened in his courthouse. 11:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So the white man gathered on the square had a choice. 11:09 [SPEAKER_00]: They could storm the courthouse, kill the deputies, and lynch the prisoners, or they could wait for the trial. 11:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They decided to wait, but not because they trusted the legal system, because they had a plan. 11:28 [SPEAKER_00]: March 17, 1886, a Wednesday. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The preliminary hearing for Ed Brown, Charlie Brown, and the other defendants was scheduled for 10 a.m. in the circuit courtroom on the second floor of the Carroll County Courthouse. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The court room was packed, every seat taken, white spectators lined the walls, more waited in the hallway, sources suggest anywhere from 50 to 75 people crowded into that second floor room. 12:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple witnesses later testify that they saw white men carrying concealed weapons into the courtroom. 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Pistols, undercoats, rifles wrapped in blankets. 12:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody stopped them. 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The defendant set together near the front. 12:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Ed and Charlie Brown. 12:24 [SPEAKER_00]: At least eight to ten other black men. 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Farmers, laborers, men whose names appear in some accounts, but not others. 12:34 [SPEAKER_00]: the judge took the bench. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Judge J. N. Stevens, a white Democrat. 12:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The prosecutor began presenting evidence. 12:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, according to multiple witness accounts, compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, a white man in the back of the courtroom stood up and drew a pistol. 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: What happened next lasted maybe 90 seconds, dozens of white men pulled weapons and opened fire, not at one person, not in self-defense, they fired into the group of black defendants at close range, they fired at black spectators trying to flee, they fired at people crawling under benches, when the gun fire stopped, 13:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The courtroom floor was covered in blood. 13:29 [SPEAKER_00]: 13 Black men lay dead at least another 10 were wounded, several critically. 13:39 [SPEAKER_00]: among the dead, Ed Brown, Charlie Brown, and nearly every other black man who'd been charged. 13:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And here's what the record show. 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: After the massacre, after the gunfire stopped, the white men calmly left the courthouse, walked down the stairs, crossed the town square and went home. 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: No one was arrested, no one was detained, no one even tried to stop them. 14:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The bodies were left in the courtroom for hours, sources indicate that family members weren't immediately allowed to retrieve them. 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: When they finally were, many families buried their dead quickly, quietly, a freight 14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: 23 people would ultimately die from the courthouse massacre, 13 in the initial shooting, another 10 from their rooms in the days and weeks that followed. 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: 23 human beings murdered in a courtroom, in front of a judge, in front of witnesses, and nobody was ever charged. 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So what happened next? 15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: news of the massacre spread quickly, telegraph wires carried it to Jackson, the state capital, to Memphis, to newspapers across the south, and the response from white Mississippi was immediate, denial, justification, erasure. 15:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The Jackson-Clayerian Lager, Mrs. Sipy's leading newspaper, ran a story within days. 15:30 [SPEAKER_00]: They were framing. 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The shooting was unfortunate, but necessary. 15:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The black defendants had been threatening. 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The white man had acted in self-defense. 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Self-defense. 15:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In a court room, against shackled prisoners, 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The Greenwood Enterprise, the newspaper that James Monroe Little had edited, went further. 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: They published editorials praising the shooters as defendants of civilization, but here's what's remarkable. 16:07 [SPEAKER_00]: There were calls for investigation, not from Mississippi, but from Washington. 16:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Federal officials in the Justice Department raised questions, how could a mass murder occur in a courtroom with no arrests? 16:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses had identified shooters by name. 16:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Why wasn't the state prosecuting? 16:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And Mississippi's response was to Stonewall, 16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Governor Robert Lowry, a Confederate veteran, a white supremacist Democrat, made his position quite clear. 16:45 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a local matter. 16:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The federal government had no jurisdiction. 16:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The men who done the shooting were upstanding citizens defending their community. 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: No state investigation was ever conducted, no grand jury was convened, no one testified under oath. 17:09 [SPEAKER_00]: the federal government tried to pursue charges under the Enforcement Acts. 17:15 [SPEAKER_00]: We construction era laws designed to protect blacks of a rights. 17:20 [SPEAKER_00]: But by 1886, those laws were being gutted by the Supreme Court, and the political will to enforce them at collapsed 17:31 [SPEAKER_00]: President Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic president since before the Civil War, made it clear his administration wouldn't intervene in southern affairs. 17:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So the shooters, men whose names appeared in witness statements, men who were identified in affidavids, men folks in Carleton could point to on the street, walked free. 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them lived in Carol County for decades afterwards, died of old age, were buried in church cemeteries with headstones that called them beloved father and pillar of the community, and the families of the 23 dead, they got nothing, no justice, no compensation, 18:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The courthouse is still there. 18:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The same brick building from 1876, still functioning as the county courthouse. 18:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The square itself is quiet now. 18:39 [SPEAKER_00]: A few businesses, a cafe, not much traffic. 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Carolton's population today is around 150 people, 18:53 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2019, Mississippi Freedom Trail installed a historical marker on the courthouse square. 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a small bronze plaque, maybe two feet by three feet. 19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: The text is careful and factual. 19:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It describes the events of March 17, 1886. 19:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It names the victims whose names researchers could confirm. 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's there. 19:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1865 and 1950, historians suggest there were dozens of mass racial terror events in the American South. 19:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Most Americans have never heard of them. 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Qualfax, Louisiana, 1873. 19:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898. 19:54 [SPEAKER_00]: what they had in common, they were about power. 19:58 [SPEAKER_00]: About white communities using violence to suppress black political participation, black economic success, black self-defense, and they were followed by silence. 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The Carleton Massacre fits this pattern. 20:16 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1890, Mississippi had enacted a new state constitution, explicitly designed to disenfranchise black voters, poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses that let white registrars reject black applicants for any reason. 20:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Black political participation in Mississippi collapsed and it stayed that way for more than 60 years. 20:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But slowly, too slowly, but finally, communities are beginning to remember. 20:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Historical markers are going up. 20:57 [SPEAKER_00]: museums are opening. 20:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Descendants are telling their ancestor's story. 21:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The Equal Justice Initiative has documented over 6,500 racial terror lynchings in the United States between 1865 and 1950. 21:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And those numbers don't include massacres, White Carolton. 21:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just us. 21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't bring back the dead. 21:25 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't undo a century of silence, but it's a start. 21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of the Carolton Court House massacre, 23 people murdered in a coordinated act of racial terrorism, a century of silence, and a slow, painful process of remembering 21:48 [SPEAKER_00]: If you found this story as important as I did, share it with someone who cares about American history. 21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story. 22:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, it's the one we almost forgot. 22:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Good night, friend.
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