Arkansas City Executions of 1902

Lawrence Dunlap and David Jobe, both Black men, were hanged at Arkansas City (Desha County) on February 28, 1902, after being convicted of first-degree murder.

The 1900 U.S. census shows Lawrence Dunlap, a farmer, living in Drew County’s Franklin Township with his wife, Maggie, and three children. His victim, day laborer Nathan Smith, twenty-three, was living in Randolph Township in Desha County.

Newspapers reported that Dunlap and Smith were drinking together in Arkansas City and that Smith displayed a roll of cash. The two went to camp out for the night, and Smith fell asleep on the levee, awakening to find Dunlap rifling through his pockets. When Smith resisted, Dunlap shot him four times and fled. “The boy lived long enough to make a dying statement of the facts which was the evidence which avenged his death,” the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic reported later. Smith died of his wounds on December 3, 1901, and Dunlap was arrested at his home northeast of Monticello (Drew County) four days later. He was held in the Arkansas City jail on $5,000 bond to await trial in January 1902.

Also in the jail was David Jobe, who was held on a murder charge in the shooting of John Jackson at Laconia (Desha County) while he was “at work on a house pulling off shingles.” Accused killer James Kitts also awaited trial in the jail.

The three men were each convicted of first-degree murder on subsequent days when Judge A. B. Grace of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) held court in Desha County in late January 1902.

Kitts’s execution was postponed while he appealed his case to the Arkansas Supreme Court, and Dunlap and Jobe sought to have their sentences commuted to life in prison by Governor Jeff Davis. Davis refused “based upon various telegrams from a large number of the best people of Desha County.”

Details on the double hanging of Dunlap and Jobe are scarce because the telegraph lines from Arkansas City to Pine Bluff and Little Rock (Pulaski County) were down, though the Daily Graphic wrote that the two were apparently hanged at 11:41 a.m. and declared dead sixteen minutes later. Press reports in Kansas and Nebraska newspapers said that twenty-five people witnessed the executions. It was the first legal hanging in the history of Arkansas City; alleged arsonist Mat Orton had been lynched there in 1884.

Kitts, too, would hang in Arkansas City after his appeals failed. He was executed on July 25, 1902—one of six hangings in Arkansas on that date. Lathe Hembree was hanged in Howard County, as were Tom Sims (or Simms) and Dee Noland in Washington (Hempstead County), Dave McWhorter in Crawford County, and Sy (or Cy) Tanner in St. Francis County.

For additional information:
“A Double Execution.” Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, February 28, 1902, p. 1.

“Four Are Pardoned.” Arkansas Gazette, February 26, 1902, p. 3.

“From One Scaffold.” Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, February 16, 1902, p. 1.

“It Is a Record Breaker.” Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, January 24, 1902, p. 1.

“Killed and Robbed Him.” Fort Smith Times, December 13, 1901, p. 4.

“Only Two Will Hang.” Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, February 26, 1902, p. 1.

“State News.” Arkansas Democrat, December 12, 1901, p. 5.

“State News.” Arkansas Democrat, December 16, 1901, p. 2.

“They Pay the Penalty.” Iola [Kansas] Register, February 28, 1902, p. 1.

“Two Will Hang.” Fort Smith Times, January 29, 1902, p. 4.

“Wires Grounded.” Arkansas Democrat, February 28, 1902, p. 7.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System