An Ooltewah man who shot and killed what he thought was a middle-of-the-night prowler -- actually a 72-year-old man with advanced Alzheimer's disease -- Wednesday in Walker County, Ga., hasn't been charged but he might be later, authorities said.This sort of thing is only too predictable, but in the South the authorities are understanding about reckless gunplay:
"Mr. Hendrix is clearly saddened and heartbroken," the sheriff said. "Mr. Hendrix has to live with his actions for the rest of his life."At least he has a rest of his life, which is more than anybody can say for the sick man, Mr. Westbrook.
My grandfather lived down the road a piece from this place and at one point in his life, when nightriders were after him, slept with a loaded pistol in his hand and a loaded rifle on the floor beside the bed. One night, he heard someone at the door and thought the racists had come for him.
He didn't just shoot, though. Good thing, as it turned out it was just his drunk next-door neighbor who had mistaken the gate to his own house.
Harry,
ReplyDeleteHey, if this is not asking too much, why exactly did your father and those nightriders were in bad terms?
The short version is that there was a lynching -- precisely, a white mob burned a black man alive in his home outside Dalton, Ga. -- and no one in town would testify about it to a federal jury, except my grandfather. The sheriff, as usual, was the mob leader.
ReplyDeleteDuring the year before the trial, my grandfather sent his wife (not my grandmother, his first wife) and year-old son away and stayed on, armed.
One man was convicted and the KKK was ruined in north Georgia for a generation.
This was in 1893.
Yet another reason why I do not believe that local government is always superior to national government.
Pretty interesting history, thanks Harry.
ReplyDeleteDo you know what was the (explicit) motivation for them to burn the guy?
Yes.It began when a white woman was thrown out of her house. (I don't know why.) No one would have anything to do with her, except a black farmer who gave her shelter.
ReplyDeleteA white woman under the roof of a black man set off the sexual jealousies of the whites, who mobbed his house. The farmer shot and killed one of the mob.
The sheriff organized a bigger mob to kill the farmer. Since he was armed they did not try to seize and hang him but burned hm alive.
My grandfather had fought nightriders earlier, as a teenager in 1876. He was not antiracist, although as time went by he became one of a sort. But as a member of the upper class, he opposed and was opposed by low-class white supremacists, and that sometimes came down to gunplay.
The currents of southern politics were complicated. I have never encountered a historian who fully understands the strange alliances (some of them interracial) that formed in a racist society, but if you think of the strange alliances we see today in Syria, you can get some idea of how it was.