Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 August 1936 — Page 3

Saturday, August 22, 1936

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

PAGE THREE

MOB, IN HOLIDAY MOOD AT HANGING, BOOS BOY AND PRIEST AS THEY PRAY: HOWLS FOR ‘SHOW TO BEGIN Courage of Condemned Youth Draws Grudging Admiration From the Mass of Mad Onlookers. Crude Comment Flung In True “Peanut Gallery” Fashion

COMMUNIST. CANDIDATE TO SPEAK HERE

Crowd Madly Storms Scaffold for Souvenirs

(By Special Correspondence)

OWENSBORO, Ky., Aug. 19.—Rainey Bethea Hanged. Rainey Bethea was hanged by the neck until dead before a holiday crowd of 20,000 in the atmosphere of a Mexican bullfight and fiesta or the historical and scarlet pictures of the guillotine during the old French revolution.

The same kind of cries for the*

swish of the, medium which brings death to fh*e convicted and condemned swelled the throats today as in former years. The same kind of persons, haters, curiosity seekers, and those who "just came along , \ and those who were irresistably drawn to the scene in horor cringed beside those who because of some perverted streak or morbid interest came to take a ghoiilis-li pleasure in watching a man drop through a trapdoor into eternity. As the sun rose around five o’clock, lighting the setting, it showed itself a huge scarlet disc’ through drifting sheets of mist from the nearby Ohio River. A mighty roar from the 20,000, half of them children, burst in im- , patience upon a virgin morning heavy with death. “Where’s the nigger?’’ ‘‘Let's get going.’’ “'Bring him out.’ For more than twenty minutes their impatient voices were a rumbling sea of sound, surging up and out its sweeping demand for blood on the gallows. Hysteria, a drunken madness held this pack m its grip, too absolute for reason to break; and albove all, the somber shadow of death moved quietly but with repelling finality in its march to the scaffold to await the brown youth who presently would keep an involuntary trygt which would take him forevermore beyond the hoots of men and the excited screams of children. And through the crowd he came, a priest bearing a cross in front of him and officers shouldering their way through the gawking crowd. He appeared tall and beyond the reach of earthly hurt. In this mad hullabaloo, his bearing was self-contained, his courage stood out like a bright scarlet thread against this grisly background. Handcuffed, he stopped a brief moment at the scaffold, dropped at the foot upon one knee and through stiff grey lips mumbled a prayer. His words were inaudible to other ears than those close by because there continued shouts, both shrill and deep: “Take him up!’’ “Up on the trap where we can see him!” “Let’s go!” When ’the young priest, who converted Bfithea in the LouisviUte jail, had completed his ritual, the boy rose. Two deputies grasped his arms and he marched with firm step to the trap. Crowd Storms Scaffold At the death spot Hethea again faced the East and conversed with Father I^mmana. Hanna’s assistants bound his arms and legs and slipped the 'black hood over his bead. Hanna signalled to Hasch j and the youth plummeted to death. ’ Bethea hunjJ rigid, without twitching, his body swaying slightly in the river breeze. About half of the .crowd started away without awaiting the end. The other half pushed up to the scaffold and began to climb the base. They tore the hood from over his frightened, haunted face as souvenirs and they yelled variously. “Boy, is this a riot.” “Whoever said that boy didn’t have nerve?” — -- — “D-ja see him stick out his chin when he went up those’ stairs.’,’ ’ Drs. Tyler and Seigler tested his heart, at intervals and after

fourteen minutes ripped the hood slightly to observe Bethea’s eyes. The spectators soon reached in and tore at the hood shouting as they obtained bits. When physicians stepped back many hands were snatching at the hood, taking most of it away in fragments, which were prompt-

ly subdivided.

Sheriff Has Beaulty Treatment People stood on the steps of the hearse for a better view. The gallows had /been -so constructed that there was no dearth of views Twenty-five feet high, the portioi beneath the trap was not oib scared, as usual. Sheriff Thompson explained that this was to pre vent the crowd from stampeding Sheriff Thompson quieted her nerves by a visit to a beauty par lor yesterday. She succeeded her husband in office, when the lat ter died in April. Her pretty high school daughter, Mary Lillian, 17 drove her to the execution scene Her three boys, Jean, Pat, and Jimmie, wanted to come, too, but

she demurred.

EDITORIAL ASKS CHANCE FOR MORE RACE YOUTHS

THREE DIE SAME DAY IN TENN. PRISON NASHVILLE, Aug. 19.—(AN P)—Three Negroes, two of them protesting their innocence , to the end, were electrocuted within sixteen minutes at the state penitentiary Friday. C. H. “Curley” Ballard, 56, a one-legged Kingsport brickmason, convicted of killing another Negro for $192 insurance, died calmly. James Smith, 27, convicted of murdering a 6-year-old white man, sang spirituals. The third, James Clark, 23, robbery slayer of a 27-year-old white former athlete, wept in an agony of fear as the end neared.

Declaring “Communism is twentieth centuty Americanism,” the dynamic crusading James W. Ford, Communist candidate for vice-presi-dent of the United States, comes to Indianapolis, addressing a meeting to be held Saturday, August 22, at 8:15 p. m., in the Walker Casino. Ford is fresh from Richmond, Va., at which place he was barred the use of the John Marshall High school auditorium there. Naming them reactionaries, under the. leadership of a

m ?fti§ 1 * flHp m 2ft ' i.>! '• ; % ? m&t. < m ms^. ^ Mapor Darte, the fighting Communist started coutt action to fprce the use of*the school, and he is to return to Richmond, September 20. Members of the National Negro Congress, persons who have worked with Ford in various capacities, and members of the Fisk university group here arc to talk informally with the “Communist whip” at six o’clock in the Walker Coffee pot prior to Ford’s speech at eight o’clock in the Casino.

SENSATIONAL CHARGES MADE AGAINST R. R. REED AS UNDERTAKERS CONVENE AT CINCINNATI

Executive Secretary of the Independent National Funeral Directors Association Unmasked as Arthur Lee Garrett, An Ex-Convict Who Changed His Name After Chain Gang Sentence In North Carolina

Another Affidavit By His Sister's Niece Accuses Him of Seducing Her in His

(By PERRY C. THOMPSON, Director International Press Service) CINCINNATI, Ohio, Aug. 19—(IPS)—The past caught up with R. R. Reed today and exposed him as an ex-conviet who did six months time on a North Carolina chain gang. The charge was the misappropriation of funds, and the date of the offense the year of

1917.

And on the convention floor ofe the Independent National Funeral

'Grand Old Man

Whether the funeral be modest or elaborate, you may be assured of our efficient, sympathetic service. C.M.C. Willis & Son MORTUARY Herbert C. Willis FUNERAL DIRECTOR 632 N. West Street LINCOLN 5651

REV. SOLOMON P. HOOD, “Grand Old Man” of New Jersey Republican politics, a former Minister to Liberia, who was a supporter of the recent Conference of Colored Republicans at Trenton, N. J., which was addressed by Governor Hoffman.— (Calvin Service).

Directors - Association, meeting in this city, a tragically pathetic Reed, heretofore looked upon as a jaragon of moral excellence, stands stripped of his glamour—and doggedly fights the fight that only a Jean Valjean knows. Organizer and dominant figure in the affairs of the Association for the past fifteen years, Reed rose to a height In racial organization practically without parallel in this country. When the powerful NR A was formed, Reed was chosen to head the colored funeral directors and hud lavishly furnished offices in Chicago from which he carried on the Association’s work and edited the Colored Embalmer. Year after year he was re-elected to office. Although known officially as “executive secretary” of the association, Reed’s power was greater than that of

the president. Today Reed is

Vanjean.

Past Mocks Him

Irrefutably accused by written

word and photograph, Reed stands exposed to the men with whom he has associated for years—as an exconvict and the seducer of his

sister’s maturing daughter. Mocking his plea for a clean bill

of health are the cold, impartial, written words of a Cumberland county, North Carolina, jailer who says R. R. Reed is not Reed at all, but an ex-convict named Arthur

Lee Garrett, who did six months time on a chain gang when convicted on a charge of misappropriation of funds. There can be no doubt of his guilt. The cold words of the jailer state that Reed came into court and pleaded guilty. He sends a picture of the man he calls Arthur Lee Garrett. Garrett and Reed are identical! jl Exposes Causes No Furore ■ As proof of Reed’s double life seeped into the consciousness of the convention membership, there was no cry for blood. Those present were inclined to sympathize with the man. Many of the members present, it was later said, had previously heard of Reed’s conviction, and had taken for granted that Reed’s enemies would seek to make capital out of it on the convention floor. They were determined, they said, that if the matter came to the floor of the convention, to stick by Re<*d

VICIOUSNESS MARKS FIGHT TO UNIONIZE SHARECROPPERS; WOMAN, MINISTER FLOGGED

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19—(ANP) —ljundowners use every method to keep the starving sharecroppers from organizing into unions, said Miss Willie Sue Blagden, white social worker of Memphis, before an open meeting Monday of the Washington Committee to Aid Agricultural workers. Miss Blagden, with an Arkansas minister, was recently flogged for investigating a reported Negro murder •in that state. The speaker, who said union organization had to work under a system closely' approaching Fascism, deplored conditions among sharecroppers whom she described as starving and helpless. She charged landowners resorted to floggings and beatings to keep down the union and spoke of her own experiences at the hands of

unidentified white men who whipped her and a companion. “An investigation committee from Memphis found that tenant farmers who hired themselves out to landowners at the end of the year owed the planters money,’ Miss Blagden asserted. “They had to pay from 3 to 10 cents higher for each article allowed them on credit, plus a 10 per cent, carrying charge to the planters. Constitutional rights have /been thrust

aside.”

The Southern Tenant Farmers union and similar organizations are a remedy., she said. The biggest problem within the union is discipline and education of illiterate members with the ulutimate aim of bettering conditions among both white and (black workers. Miss Blagden added.

a modern Jean U11 tji i as t ditch.

Niece Tells Her Story

Then there came to the convention another piece of literature. It was an affidavit by Reed’s young niece, Mrs. Nannie Bell Davis .Appling, who charged in it that her uncle had offered her a home in Chicago upon the death of her mother and that when she came to live with Reed he made her his

secret mistress.

Excerpts from the affidavit fol-

low:

“My name is Nannie Bell Davis Appling. I was born in Mt Ster? ling, Ky., in 1914. I resided there until I was 14 years of age. I lived with Lucy Garrett, the mother of Arthur Lee Garrett. Arthur Lee Garrett moved away from Mt. Sterling, Ky., along about 1921. He later wrote his mother that he had changed his name to Robert Richard Reed and instructed affiant’s grandmother not to use the name of Garrett. Affiant further states that Robert Richard Reed and Arthur Lee Garret is one and the same person. “Affiant further states that her mother, Nola (Booker, died in 1930; that her brother and affiant’s uncle, Arthur Lee Garrett, also known as Robert Richard Reed, came to Mt. Sterling, Ken to the funeral of the deceased, and immediately thereafter persuaded the affiant and her halfsister, Zelma Hogan, to come to Chicago with him, and that after arriving in Chicago we resided with our undo at 3715 Indiana avenue for a long time; that while in the home of our uncle, he made immoral advances toward affiant and had illicit relations with her. Affiant further states that in the spring of 1932 she became pregnant and her said uncle persuad-

ELIZA EDWARDS, FORMER SLAVE. PASSES AT 104

Early Monday morning, August 10, death took its toll in a little house in Glasgow, Ky., by taking the town’s oldest, most respected and beloved citizen—Mrs. Eliza

Edwards.

Having lived in the county since slavery, she knew many fascinating experiences, extending from slavery to modern times. She was known throughout the city as “Aunt Liza.” Tn spite of more than a century of living, she was unusually active before her death. The Revs. R. M. Edwards and C. W. 'Bradford officiated at the First Baptist church of Glasgow. She was buried in the family plot. Mrs. Edwards was the mother of eight children, two of whom reside in Indianapolis: Mrs. Annie Crossen and Mrs. Josephine Bass. Mrs. Olie Gardner, of Louisville, Ky., also survives.

HAUGHVILLE NEWS C. D. Hobdy Mrs. Helen Nelson has returned from Chicago, where she visited her sister. Delbert Sweatt who is working in the southern part of the state spent the week-end with his family in North Belmont avenue. Charles Hobdy and family has returned to their home after vis ’ting Mr. Habdy’s sister in Pitts brrgh, Pu. Mrs. Odessa Simmons : s visiting her mother and fathei in Memphis, Tenn. Mr. and Mrs. t’harles Hobdy had as their weekend guests, Mrs. Beulah Watkins and daughter. Mrs. Casse Govftn of Bridgeport, Conn., also Mrs. Nel lie Rickman of Gallatin, Tenn. Leand Whitney was in Terre Haute, Saturday evening. The funora of Mr. Bracey, father of Mrs Luke Jones and Mrs. Monroe Williams was held Monday afternoon :il the Mt. Olive Baptist church. Miss Bernice Phillips of Columbus, Oiho, is the guest of her aunt, Mrs. Rosa Stratton in Sheffield avenue. Rev. and Mrs. C. J. Dailey are visiting in Tennessee.

Y OPENS CHILD HEALTH CLINIC

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 20— (ANP)—A new type of a clinical service which is to be free t6 all of tihe parents of Nashville is being sponsored by the local branch of the YMCA. This service is to be known as the Child Health Service and is being given to the citizens Iby the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance company, through its Nashville district office which is in the charge of F. B. Edwards. The Child Healtih Service is under the direction of

T. B. Davis, child psychologist, who has designed the program so that the parents will have the services of the best medical authorities and educators in the cjty. These men will collaborate on a series of articles entitled You and Your Children which will appear in the Nashville Globe, and also will be available to any club or organization for either lecture®- or conferences. The main objectives of the Service are: to reduce child

mortality and morbidity, to better adjust the children to the problems of the home and school, and to provide a free souitce of reliable information on child care to parents who are denied such because of their color and economic status. It is the plan of the company to further expand this service to include other cities in the South If the Negroes of Nashville will arouse themselves sufficiently enough to take advantage of the service now being .offered them which will serve as an index of the interest of Negnoes elsewhere.

Get This FREE Sample of BEARD REMOVER

. CLEVELAND, Aug. 19—(By I acclaim him now, it ihould not We all , know ,that A

Leon Lewis for ANP)—yin,a letter, 1 ^ -

addressed to the editor of the Cleveland Press, local daily paper, Atty. Chester K. Gillespie, president of the local branch N. A. A. rC. P., asserted that Cleveland, Ohio State university and the entire state of Ohio had been nationally and internationally advertised through the exploits of Jesse Owen® and that all three were proclaiming him as their hero bestowing upon them heaps of honor and favorable publicity. He forward on Jesse’s ability and industry—fey ’ability, of course, referring to his aptitude for the par-

also said he wondered and it would be interesting! to note after his graduation from Ohio State

would be offered to Jesse to get and keep employment deserving of his feats. The attorney pointed out the probable handicaps Owens would face in seeking employment on account of race, and that since that did not lessen the degree of honor bestowed upon those who

make any- difference one ryear hence when he will need their assistance in securing a profitable

future.

Herewith is a part of the Press editorial answering*the letter: “Well, we should guess that the celebrity Jesse has achieved will certainly give him a hetter-than-average change to get and keep a job. We wish we could say that keeping a job and getting ahead in the world would depend thence- J

I ralrvil i + iT r-t «r> si t n I

next summer what opportunities pticular job and not his ability to

run 100 meters. No form of athletic ability in youth has evfe-r been worth much as a guarantee of earning power in maturity. “iBut Jesse, like other men, will be facing the uncertainties of a world in which economic fluctuations are violent and disastrous.

PEONAGE PROBE PROMISED BY 0. S.

— c

WA3IiI!N€jTO,N, A**?. JS-r^NP) -A fAwSali froM •jnn . -Little

c>6k, 'Ark.l will g

ed her to submit to an abortion.” | The affidavit is also signed by j the half-sister, Zelma Hog-.n, as a

witness.

Nieces’s Story Hurts •Coming like a bomb out of a clear sky—the Appling girl’s story hurt’. Where once had been a decided willingness on the part of convention members to hug to their bosoms a modem Jean Valjean, now came a new fear . . . Could a man who violated his own niece be trusted with another man’s womenfolk? Could honorable men be proud of a leadership so tainted? Today the answer of the undertakers is unknown. The election comes up on the 20th or 21st of

August.

Will Reed be vindicated? Your guess is as good as mine.

Ro6k, Ark.; will get ^Videnfe on violation of U. S. peonage statutes among Southern sharecroppers uncovered by Manuel E. Whitaker, special assistant to the attorney general, according to Attorney General Homer S. Cummings. Whitaker has been investigating violations of federal statutes in the recent sharecroppers’ strike and has completed his report. He declared no evidence has been found of the violation of federal laws in the flogging of Miss Willie Sue Glagden, white Memphis social worker, and the Rev. Claude C* Williams*, white Arkansas preacher. The facts,

PAUL JOHNSON

Last rites were held in the chapel of the Peoples Funeral Home last Thursday for little Paul - Johnson, 10, 1021 Hadley street, who died recently at the Sunnyside Sanatorium after an illness of several months’ duration. He was a pupil of School 24 and was a bright student. Survivors are the mother, Mrs. Kathleen Johnson and several other close relatives. (Burial was in Floral

Park cemetery.

however, have been uncovered and turned over to Gov. Jl Marion utrell, of Arkansas, Whitaker said.

Don't <soV

abound without VA/RiQLe.y'si J

. , dili-

gence have not befeii Sufficient to ‘guarantee* mhny good "-men steady employment in these recent years.

“In addition, Jesse Owens faces a certain economic handicap in the fact that he is a

Negro.

“The demonstration planned for him proves that this community is not dominated by any Hitlerish notions a’bout Aryan" supremacy, notions which Jesse himself exploded completely in one field pf endeavor which Hitler considers important, as his eagerness to hold the Olympic games in Germany shows. “But it would be absurd to.pretend that economic opportunity, even in this liberal-minded community, is open as widely td Negro men and women as to whites. Some degree of discrimination exists throughout the economic scale. It is only recently that the Cleveland Federation of Labor, for Instance has given serious consideration to permitting Negroes to join labor unions In crafts from which they have been traditionally diabarred. “There may be in Cleveland today Negro boys and girls with gifts of far greater potential value to their city and to humanity than the gift of speed on a cinder

track.

“Among them may be figures who, with training and opportunity, could render no- . ble service in many fields of activity clothed with dignity and honor in the eyes of humanity. Among them are certainly thousands of men and women, average in ability, seeking average opportunity. “The great tribute to Jesse Owens in Cleveland ought to prompt this community to open the door more hospitably to Negroes of ability in every honorable occupation.”

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